I’M HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE EARLY FLIGHT WORKED! THANK YOU FOR PRAYING, SIESTAS! My man is so cute.

Hey, you Sweet Things!

How’s your weekend going? I have checked back into a hotel in Toronto. The first leg of my flight got cancelled and it’s a tad hard to catch that second leg without it. I got to the airport really early because one of the young women on the LifeWay event team had an earlier flight. It’s also Spring Break here so the Nashville team felt like we’d better not take any chances in case the airport was super crowded. After wandering around a while, I finally meandered to my gate. Not very long after that, the dude at the counter announced that my flight was cancelled and, due to overcrowding, there were no more available flights today.

The Lord and I just had a long dinner at the hotel restaurant. I’m not sure what He ate but I got a New York strip. Yep, in Toronto. I was so hungry! No, I don’t usually eat that way but during events, my stomach is too wonky to eat many normal meals. When it’s over, I have a one-track mind: F.O.O.D.

I am full of praise to Him. He gave us such a neat group here in Canada. This was our first LPL of 2010. We were delighted to have it here. God knew in advance I’d be recovering from surgery and would need to start the travel schedule later in the year than usual. Many months ago, long before I had any kind of health scare, He led the event planners to schedule our kick-off later in the new year than we’d ever started before. He’s so brilliant.

We had 3300 beautiful faces lighting up that arena this weekend and most of them were Canadian sisters. I wish you could have heard them sing. Many times Travis and the team stepped back from their microphones and let the women’s voices fill the house with God’s glory. We had an invitation like we always do and, though we hope they’ll come let us know if they received Jesus as Savior, we don’t pressure them to tell us. Today something happened that we’ve never experienced in 12 LPL years. In that raging sea of estrogen, A MAN actually came forward to receive Christ. Hold up. That’s not all. He was one of the security guards. How about that??? Does God love that guy or what? I didn’t get to talk to him but Kelly, one of our darling young event team members, did. If she hadn’t been so cute about it, I might have been jealous. As it was, I couldn’t take that from her for anything. What a memory that one will be! Lord, please grant him an unusual, contagious love for You and a voracious appetite for Your Word.

Well, your Siesta Mama is one tired woman. Pray me out tomorrow, you wild-praying-thangs. They are expecting the same weather tomorrow. The rest of the team got out okay this evening and I’m thankful for that. They’d had lots of problems on the inbound flight so I’m not bitter. I just miss that man of mine. I’m so homesick for him. I came in a day early so it seems so much longer than usual. Anyway, tomorrow will be here before I know it. I’ve got two different flights booked in hopes of getting out on one! Thank you, Michelle, my dear Hawk, for all your hard work this afternoon from Houston. You surely didn’t get a Saturday afternoon off! May God give you a double portion of rest in Him tomorrow. Your boss loves you.

Ok, Sweet Things, I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for letting me chat with you for a little while. I was the teeniest bit lonesome.

I’m going to text my man. I love it when he texts me back.

Oh, and don’t forget, tomorrow is time-change Sunday. Spring forward!

Hey, Girls! You are doing such a fabulous job with your group discussion. I’ve especially loved watching you respond to one another. You really are such a tremendous and unique community of women. I’m honored to journey with you here. Let’s continue hearing from all those who have been active from the beginning but let’s also hear from more of you out there who are watching and reading but haven’t really jumped in here and participated. I promise you that when we wrap this thing up, you will be far more satisfied with the experience if you personally invested in it.

We are reaching the halfway point in our journey and have arrived at a place of utmost importance in our pursuit of wholeness. Your assignment this week is based on only one chapter of the book: CHAPTER 9. As you will soon discover, it is not a chapter you just read. It’s a chapter you actually do. A chapter you actually pray. Please take it seriously. Everything ahead of us hinges on this experience. It is placed at this point in the journey prior to the prescriptive and practical phase of the book so that the way is cleared and our dignity restored enough to move forward. It will help place us in a posture God can bless with the rich kind of confidence He wants for His people and activate the power we have within us to think and FEEL differently. That’s essentially where the remainder of the book heads.

Here are your very simple assignments this week:
1. Do (don’t just read but actually do) Chapter Nine. In your comment to this post, simply reflect back on your time with God and share anything specific that you received from it.

2. Go to last Saturday’s post (3/6/10) and look at all the verses in the comment section. You will find a wellspring! Pick five Scriptures that speak most powerfully to you right now – five that you feel like you need the most – and write them on the inside of the back cover of the book. (This should be a lot less intimidating than what I asked you to write inside the front cover at the beginning of our journey!)

And that’s it for this week! I want the prayer journey to stand by itself and clear the way for mighty works ahead. We have some of our most eye-opening moments in the second half so stay with it, Girls!

Since we only have one chapter this week, this is a great time for many of us to play catch-up!

I am packing this very moment and about to head to Toronto for our first 2010 Living Proof Live. We can’t wait to see a God-show in Canada! Come on, Canadian Sisters! We’ve got plenty of room for you!

I love all of you very much.

Wake up at 6:25 a.m. to my son telling me he’s “scared,” AKA ready to get up. Nudge his daddy to spring into action.

Alarm goes off at 6:45. Go for a run. Realize I don’t feel very good. Walk home.

Make toast for the kids and me. Appreciate that Annabeth can feed herself.

Have “quiet” time. Hide in dining room for a few minutes to pray.

Kiss Curtis goodbye. Thankful that Jackson doesn’t cry today.

Repeatedly send Jackson in the backyard to play. He’s operating at a 10 out of 10.

Put Annabeth down for a nap. Try to keep the house quiet.

Realize I either forgot to moderate blog comments yesterday or a bunch just suddenly appeared in the moderating queue. Yikes.

Comments from last summer and fall keep showing back up. Weird.

Annabeth wakes up happy.

Get the urge for Papa John’s pizza. Order the $10 large, any toppings pizza.

Twenty minutes later it shows up.

Drop the pizza and watch Canadian bacon and pineapple spill all over the entry way and splatter on the delivery man.

Despite my protests, he generously leaves to get us another one.

Sit on the couch and wonder if that really happened. Embarrassed. Frustrated.

Yell at Jackson for climbing on me. Receive imaginary bad mom of the day award. Apologize to my boy.

New pizza arrives. Give a good tip.

Jackson says, “I want to share with my pizza. With Annabeth. That’s what Jesus likes.”

Wonder if that’s a ploy not to have to eat. He eats all his pizza. He meant it. Sweet boy.

Encourage Annabeth to walk toward Jackson. She claps her hands, calls him “Dat dat” for the first time, and takes a few steps toward her brother.

Heart is happy.

Kids get a bath. In the chaos afterward, Annabeth dumps out the wipes. Towel falls into the water. Jackson sucks toothpaste out of tube.

Annabeth takes 9 steps toward her brother. A new record.

She hits her mouth on her rocking chair. Cries.

Naptime #2.

Try to read Where the Wild Things Are to Jackson before his rest time. He says it’s too long. Not gonna argue with that. Pick a shorter book.

Bribe him with candy if he’ll sleep today. Probably should be ashamed but I’m desperate for the stillness.

Quiet now.

And all is well in the Jones home.

***It’s Sunday evening and you just passed 500 comments on this post. YOU DID IT, GIRLS! Honestly, this is the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever seen. As you know, we’ve posted Scriptures many times, especially through our 2009 SSMT, but this is the first time we’ve had a theme like this. These verses will stand a woman to her feet and put a shout of praise on her tongue. Let’s remember this spot, Siestas, so we can return to it many times. As my grandmother used to say, “It’ll cure what ails ya.” Memorize the date of the post – 3/6/10 – and turn back to it any time you need Christ to fill your sweet soul with an extra measure of divine strength. Thank you so, so much for your participation here.

ORIGINAL POST:

I slept until 8:30 this morning! I can’t even remember the last time! I am so hyped up and happy I hardly know what to do! There ain’t no estimatin’ how different the world can look when we get a little sleep. Sometimes when we think we need a new man (I’m not thinking that right now, just using an example), a new job, a new set of kids, a new house, or a new friend, we may just need a nap. Maybe you can work one in today.

OK, Girls, I have a weekend assignment for you. I am so jazzed about our on-line journey through SLI and I am very happy with how it’s going. Please don’t misunderstand this to mean I’m not. I’m THRILLED with the honesty you guys are expressing and I hope you’ll keep it up. This is a safe place. But I agree with one of our sisters who said something like, “Let’s pour it out here but let’s get it dealt with and get out there and be strong.” All the moaning about how hard it is only makes it harder. Breaking Free will nearly kill you but then, if you stick with it, like many of us out here have, God will use it to turn around and heal you. We have to press through and not be so easily discouraged. Our attitudes will make or break us. Let me say just as quickly that so many of you have been tremendously encouraging in the journey even through the difficulty of what we’ve had to face. We just want to band together and reach out and pull some sisters up on their feet here.

Ladies, the devil knows that if we’re too scared to even face our insecurity, we’ll never get freed up from it. If we just put the book down because it’s too heavy, how are we supposed to get up? (No, you didn’t say you were putting it down and I’m so thankful for that. But I’m convinced it’s what the enemy’s trying to get some of us to do.) We can’t deal with what we won’t face. GIRLS, WE CAN DO THIS. Are you telling me it’s harder to face it and get over it than it is to deal with it day in and day out, letting it minimize us and make fools of us and mentor the next generation to be just like us? Not to me, it’s not. I’m a whole lot happier today than I was this time a year ago. Please, keep up the honesty and let’s work this thing out together but, if you are in Christ, stop giving yourself so little credit. YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES. We can do ALL THINGS through Christ who strengthens us. Let’s honor what He’s done for us by doing what it takes to accept it to the marrow of our bones. The question will ultimately be this: Do we believe what God’s Word says enough to act on it?

So, that brings us to our weekend assignment: (And this is not only for the ones going through SLI. All of us could use this.) Look up Scriptures that have to do with strength and power and victory and write some out in a comment to this post. Be sure to put the reference and the translation because your sisters will want to know where they can find many of them. Try to limit your comment to the actual Scripture so that we can read one after another and claim them for ourselves through the power of Christ in our inner man.

THEN, ladies, get on here and read some of them OUT LOUD. Restate them in first person between You and your God.

I’ll get us started with one I’m saying almost every morning right now. Isaiah 52:1 NIV says…

“Awake, awake, O Zion, clothe yourself with strength.”

I say it out loud and picture myself right then putting on the power and might of Christ like a coat. Sometimes I might even stretch my arms like I’m pulling them through sleeves. Go ahead and think I’m such a weirdo. It’s a well established fact but I have loved it and it’s working and, anyway, I think that kind of stuff makes God grin. I’ve used it in my journey to be physically restored after my surgery and through the pain of a badly herniated disk but it is just as pertinent to our present journey toward soul-deep security.

Your Siesta Mama loves you. This is how I would talk to my own daughters when they were growing up. They could well tell you that I only put up with “This is sooooooo haaaarrrrrddddd” so long. “It won’t be near as hard when you get your tail up and do it.”

Go for it, Girls! Get your tail up and do it. Let’s clothe ourselves with these:

So Long Insecurity Discussion from LPV on Vimeo.

Hey, Girls! How are you sweet things? You newbies well surpassed the 100 mark on our last post. Way to go! Now, keep it up! God willing, we’re walking another week closer to waving a happy good-bye to insecurity. “KB” posted a comment last night saying, “Did anybody see Jessica Simpson on Oprah and could you believe how much it sounded like what we’re studying??” Yes, I saw it and I thought exactly the same thing. (She was talking about how she was chastised in Hollywood and the tabloids for being a full size 4.) It was this whole beauty around the world thing and it occurred to me that our female insecurity epidemic obviously isn’t limited to the West.

I read countless responses to the questions raised in Week Three and held a number of your stories close to my heart. Some of you may have been shocked by what others in our community have endured but I’ve been in women’s ministry way too long to anticipate less. The common ground does not, however, diminish our compassion. We can’t let it. It still hurts to tell. And hurts to read. Epidemic insecurity needs to lose its mystery for us to find our liberty. As you can see, many of us earned the right to this battle but those of us who know Christ possess an infinitely greater right. In Him, we have the right to be free and whole.

We have the God-given right to be secure.

In many ways, we qualify as a microcosm of almost any community of women you could find in this culture. You just can’t make it into adulthood on Planet Earth without getting pretty beat up somewhere along the way. Look at it like this: the enemy of our souls wanted more out of those hits than he got or we wouldn’t be here trudging this path toward wholeness together. Many of you are marvels. Others are pure miracles. Praise God, there is healing for all of us. AND, praise God, there is also meaning.

If you’re able, please watch the video greeting I included in this post. It’s a rough cut if you’ll ever see one and very impromptu (I decided to do it that morning while I was putting on my mascara, thinking about you). But it comes to you with much love and desire to see you free in Christ. I want you to get the best possible benefit out of this journey. God is so able and so willing. Hang with it here. We are taking the turn toward solutions in a very short time. We’ve got one whopper of a chapter to read before then, however. Your reading assignment this week will be CHAPTERS SEVEN AND EIGHT. Chapter Eight will be a welcome relief and will introduce one of the major components in the acquisition of soul-deep security. But let’s talk about Chapter Seven first.

You’ve heard of the house that Jack built. Chapter Seven is the chapter that YOU built. This blog community (that we regulars around here call Siestaville) makes its mark in multiple places over the course of the book but this chapter is entirely your input. Those of you who were with us a little over a year ago will perhaps remember it well. I threw out a question – Has insecurity ever made a fool of you? – and, boy, did I get some answers. Some of you more tenderhearted sisters will be sorely tempted to skip or skim over this chapter because it’s hard to read at times but, unless you’re hyper-sensitive or feeling too pathetic already (we’ve got to break out of that), try to read the whole thing. Get started post haste because it’s the lengthiest chapter in the book. It’s meant to hammer a point till you’re practically screaming:

THAT’S IT! I AM SICK TO DEATH OF THE TOLL INSECURITY TAKES. I’M WILLING TO DO WHAT IT TAKES TO DUMP IT.

As long as you come to that conclusion, you don’t have to read the whole chapter if it’s above your threshold. I hope most of you will read every page of it but, if you’re having a really rough week, you can have a hall pass on the long version. Just flip through various section headings and read the ones that resonate most. And always read the wrap-up of any chapter. In an ideal world, all we’d ever need is positive motivation. The truth is, sometimes a little negative motivation mixed into the positive is exactly what it takes to shake us up enough to deal. In Chapter Seven, you’re going to get a glimpse of what happens when insecurity deals with us instead of us dealing with our insecurity. Hopefully the point will be made and we can move on. Then we can dive our scalded souls into some healing waters in the coming chapters. I promise relief is coming. We will still have plenty of issues to grapple with in future chapters but new responses will begin to shape up shortly and fresh God-given strength is on its way. We are not wimps, Girls. Let’s rise up.

OK, here are your questions for this week. Since I’m giving you four this time around you’re welcome, if you prefer, to pick two of them to answer in your comment:
1. What part of Chapter 7 hit home with you most and why?

2. (If you’re choosing only two, please include this one.) Based on your journey so far in chapters 1-8, list your own personal top three reasons why it’s time to deal with your insecurity. (We’re not looking for right answers. We’re looking for YOUR answers. Don’t copy off your fellow sojourners’ papers on this one. Grin.) So that you don’t get your numbers confused here, list your 3 reasons under A.B.&C.

3. Based on Chapter 8, briefly describe a recent trigger of insecurity and whether or not it got a rise out of you.

4. Also based on Chapter 8, what does dignity mean to you?

You guys are doing a fabulous job with this. I am so proud of you for sticking with it! Your extra effort will not be in vain. May God meet you in these pages.

You are loved here!

Good morning, Siestas! I hope everyone is doing well today. We are often asked about Bible study materials for men, so I thought I would take a minute to let you know about a new one available from Curtis Jones, AKA my husband. Most of you know that Curtis’ role at LPM is to create resources with your men in mind (whether your husbands, sons, fathers, grandfathers, or friends). This new resource is called Drive Thru the Bible Volume Two: The Holy Spirit and the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a CD set consisting of twenty-five 7-10 minute messages that your guy can listen to on the way to work or school or wherever he may go. This is basically a 25-day supply of on-the-road devotionals.

You can also find Curtis’ Drive Thru the Bible Volume One: The Life of Elijah and his Turbulent Times 3-CD set in our online store. The Turbulent Times CD set would be great for the young adult in your life.

Just scroll through the CD Studies section of our online store and you’ll see them there.

Tomorrow we’ll have our fourth So Long Insecurity discussion post. I’m really excited about this one because Beth made a video for us. It’s been a while since we’ve done one of those! Be sure to come back tomorrow for a word from your Siesta Mama. Have a great day!

It’s a gorgeous, cold morning in Houston, Texas and not a cloud in the sky. Let’s put last week’s severe weather fiasco behind us, Houston-area girls, and have us some Bible study tonight! (Some of you may know that we had 17 flakes of snow and it shut the city down. Exciting times at the Gulf Coast!)

We loved hearing from you northern Siestas who said that, all winter long, you basically schedule and cancel, schedule and cancel, schedule and cancel. And we think we’ve got Bible study problems!

One of my favorite things that has happened on the blog in the last week is hearing from at least 100 new commenters through last Thursday’s post. I did a shout-out to people who’d never posted and you immediately came out of the wood work, as my grandmother would say, and totally made my week! All the regulars on here loved it, too. You are a delight to us. Completely refreshing. Stay with it!

That delight got me in the spirit! Let’s have another shout-out today to a different set of newbies. How about some Houston area women who have never been with us at Tuesday night LPM Bible study heading our way this evening? It’s a completely interdenominational women’s gathering at Houston’s First Baptist Church at 7401 Katy Freeway. We start praise and worship at 6:30.

We would be jazzed out of our minds to have you! By this time in our series, we always have plenty of seats for visitors so why don’t you make the trip, brave the traffic, persevere to find a parking place, and come have Bible study with us? (This invitation is not meant to take anyone from an already existing Bible study group on Tuesday night. Stay with your own! But, it you’re not participating in another one, come get a Word with us!) Look for a LPM staff member or volunteer and tell them you are new with us and that you took today’s challenge. She’ll make you so glad you came.

Now, let’s open it up for your own shout-outs. If you have a Bible study (any day of the week) open to the public that you want to let your Siestas in your area know about, give the invitation as a comment to this post. I was so blessed that one of you wrote in a comment this week that you went to a new church last Sunday and met a Siesta and God caused you to feel welcome from the very start. Now, THAT’S what this community should be all about.

I am so honored to journey with all of you. Jesus is life, Girlfriends. Jesus is life. Let’s run after Him with every ounce of energy we have.

Hey, My Darling Siestas! How’s your weekend been? You guys that keep up pretty well know that I blogged last on Wednesday while we were on our way six hours northwest to our acreage in the middle of nowhere. We are now heading back to Houston so once again I’m writing you from Keith’s truck. My man of 31 years is driving next to me, singing to 60’s music and our two dogs are snoozing in the back seat. (He just stopped me and held my hand for a minute because the song was so sweet that he felt romantic.) We got to be away for four nights. The perfect amount of time! I wish I could say it was vacation but I had to take a ton of work with me. That’s ok. At least it was from a different venue and that can help a lot.

(I just got a text from Travis with a picture on it of his youngest son who just lost two teeth. Just living a little life here. Had to stop and text back and tell Levi how cool he looks.)

My heart is full where you are concerned and full with the last four days of life out in the country with Keith. And that’s why I’m going to share a little of it with you: because I love you and love how we can share so many parts of our lives with one another. This is going to be one of those posts when the girls (Amanda or Melissa) might say, “Are you sure you want to share that? You might get hit by somebody for that.” We, the girls and I, provide checks and balances for one another. If we’ve written anything at all besides your garden variety kind of post, we usually run it by one another. Sometimes we talk each other out of an entire post because we’re afraid someone will get offended or out of sorts or just take the opportunity to be ugly or critical. It happens in the blog world which many of you know from your own blogs.

Other times we just talk each other out of a few sentences or a paragraph or two. Most of you should wish you’d seen Melissa’s original Song of Songs Valentine post before I talked her out of a whole chunk. (Yes, we did have a few little words over it. Not a fuss. Just a good, healthy discussion. All four of us are strong willed and opinionated. We just speak our minds back and forth, work through our differences, and, a whole lot of the time, end up making a private family joke out of it.) Those who wouldn’t have wished to see Melissa’s original post are the reason none of you did. (Laughing and with much love.) There was nothing wrong with it. It was just extra colorful – kind of PG13 – because the Scripts happen to be extra colorful – kind of PG14 – in that particular book.

I’m not complaining one iota. To tell you the truth, we get so little ugliness from our commenters. You guys really are so loving and encouraging and patient and understanding and leave ample room for several generations to express themselves here in very different ways. We think we have the most amazing community in bloggerville but we’re not immune, of course. Sometimes we just flat out ask for it and don’t even realize it. Other times we expect somebody may take exception but we just decide it’s worth the risk.

This is one of those times. I’m about to show you guys some pictures – poor quality ones just off my i-phone – to give you a small taste of Moore life out at the acreage our family has. I know in advance that I’m setting myself up for someone to say sarcastically “Must be nice” but I’ll just sigh when I get it and, if it doesn’t get too ugly from there, post the comment anyway and wish she hadn’t misunderstood. The thing is, I love biographies. Glimpses of people’s real lives. Parts of their stories. For instance, every time I talk to Georgia Jan, I wish I could see her surroundings so I could picture her better. Know her in her own world. Every time Mom of Eleven (actually has 12 now, we learned at the SSMT celebration) comments I wish I could see a picture of all of them. It’s one way we, scattered all over the place, take a virtual stroll through a mile or two of one another’s worlds.

Actually, the world I’m about to share with you really isn’t my world. It’s my man’s. But once a couple has been married over 25 years, you really can’t know the one without knowing the other. You can no longer tell for sure where one stops and the other starts. This isn’t land I would have chosen in a thousand years but it’s what my man chose and I chose him. SO, when I talk about us heading to what I call our cactus land, this is the kind of place I’m talking about. I’ll describe it a tad first then I’ll stroll with you through some shots.

It’s a place where your cell phone won’t work and your land line is likely not to.

It’s the kind of place where Keith and I use (or misuse) English in a way we’d never do it at home. We don’t do it to make fun. We, for those few days, say it like we mean it. Like that’s who we are. Like, for instance, just this morning on an early ride with Keith in the old jeep, I heard myself say, “We ain’t seen deer one.”

It’s a place where men are not limited to inside facilities…but I’ll not elaborate on that.

It’s a place where our favorite show is “The Duck Commander.” We laugh our heads off…and, perhaps most worrisome to some of you, totally get it.

It’s the kind of place with a VERY small town nearby that I have fallen head over heels in love with. It has one real grocery story, a “Super S,” and just yesterday while I was picking up a few items, as I live and breathe and without one hint of exaggeration, the woman at check-out got on the microphone for the store and said over the loud speaker, “Mr. Brown, your wife called and wants you to pick up a bag of potatoes.” Ain’t no doubt in my mind he got some. I was so happy I nearly got some, too.

It’s a place with a LOT of these, hence the name:

It’s a place where a woman (even a non-hunter like yours truly) sometimes dresses like this on an early morning ice-cold jeep ride (with no windows in it) with no make-up on:

It’s a place where, if the temperature’s right, a woman would be wise to wear snake boots like mine:

It’s a place where your man’s taller than usual and where manliness can sometimes be gaged by how old and beat up your vehicle is: (For those of you who can’t fathom it, that’s a corn feeder on the front of the jeep for feeding wild life. You guys just have no idea what my life is like at times. Or his, because of mine.)

It’s a place where your man’s favorite hot rod looks like this:

It’s a place where the gate might latch with a horse shoe:

It’s a place where that tiny one hundred year-old German farm house that I told you about in So Long Insecurity resides. My man went to great pains to restore this thing back to its original look. Every window and door in it is a century old.

It’s a place where the sunrise this morning from my little porch looked like this and this one’s not even an especially good one:

It’s a place with, I reckon, my favorite place of all tucked right in it. I swing here and think about all sorts of things and sing hymns and pet Star:

It’s a place where a woman can take her spirals and practice them loud without a single soul hearing or caring:

It’s a place I wish all of you who wish you had one, did. Maybe one day, when you’re older like Keith and me, you will. It’s a place others of you might be bored out of your mind. Maybe your wish list would be a tiny little bay house instead. It’s just all a matter of taste. Sometimes not your own.

It’s a place where my man seems to love me a lot.

So it’s a place I love to go.

Help Haiti February 27th – HelpHaitiLive.com from Compassion International on Vimeo.

See it online tonight (for free) at 7:30 CST at HelpHaitiLive.com.

Tickets are still available for those of you who are in the Nashville area.

Performances by Big Kenny, Alison Krause with Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, Jars of Clay, Matt Kearney, Jon Foreman, Brandon Heath, Matt Wertz, NEEDTOBREATHE, and Dave Barnes.

Please watch, pray, and give.

Hey, Girls!

I am sitting in the passenger seat of my man’s blue Ford truck with a bird dog’s head on my shoulder heading west to cactus country for a few days. Do you remember that place I told you about where I have to hike with a shotgun because of all the rattlesnakes? Yep, that’s where we’re headed. I don’t think I told you that Keith only lets me have one shotgun shell (thanks, Adrienne!) per walk so I only get to run into one snake at a time. For those of you who have been around for a while and are wondering, yes, we have Star, our Border Collie with us, too. She’s too busy looking out the window trying to herd the traffic to snuggle with me though. It would be tough to type with both on them on top of me anyway.

I’ve been thinking about you every single day. I have no idea how many of your comments I’ve read. Tons. Because we get the whole week to finish the assignments, I can read a certain amount almost every single day. I’m getting to keep up even better than I’d hoped. I really thought this would be a neat experience but you have surpassed my expectation in your answers and insights. The transparency is so incredibly refreshing. So many wonderful things have hit me in the last two weeks as we’ve gone through the first four chapters together. There’s one eye-opening and troubling thing I want to talk to you about before we proceed to our assignments. I’ve been touched by how many of you (thankfully) confessed that you even feel insecure about your comments and about whether or not the other women participating will think you’ve said something lame. Others mentioned being scared they’d misspell a word. As we seek freedom from God, let’s not let the enemy mess with us that way. Let’s not give over one inch of extra ground to the very issue we’re trying to escape.

What do you say we make this discussion stream a NO INTIMIDATION ZONE? What do you say we make a conscious choice not to compete with one another? Not to judge one another? Not to try to measure up to one another or feel less or more than the other? We have to put up with all that trash almost everywhere else a group of women meets up. We can make up our minds not to have to put up with that here. We are smart women. We can determine to share our struggles, challenges, and victories over insecurity without feeling insecure about them. Talk about double indemnity! In Jesus’ Name, let’s make up our minds to treat one another with respect but not give a rip about trying to keep up or compete. Even while we’re on our journey to freedom, let’s make this community a microcosm of what we hope, when it’s behind us, to find and to become. I can’t think of a better place for us to practice making up our minds not to let circumstances or people draw out our insecurities.

I esteem you highly and find you so entirely interesting. What I’ve learned from you already can’t be overstated. I have become increasingly certain over the last two weeks that God is up to something BIG among us. Bigger than I first thought. In fact, I can tell you this. There’s no way we came up with this. God is pursuing us. He’s setting us up to get sick and tired of our insecurity and to do anything we must in order to find wholeness in Him. Let’s not stop Him in any way.

Oops, I got distracted for a minute. We just stopped at a Valero’s near Llano, Texas, for a bathroom break and Star started barking her head off at a man minding his own business and walking into the store. “What on earth is the matter with you?” I asked. (To Star, of course. Not the man.) Then I saw what he was wearing. Short shorts with winter white legs and black socks. I think Star is terrified by black socks against bright legs. Somebody tell me why that dude didn’t feel insecure. Not really. Don’t get off on that. But admit it. It’s a mystery.

OK, so let’s get to this week’s assignments. We’ve reached a very important point in our journey. We’re about to dig up eight deep roots of insecurity. No, we’re not looking for excuses but a little understanding can go a mighty long way. Haven’t you ever wondered why it dogs you so? You may be about to find out. This week I’d like for you to give special attention to Chapters FIVE and SIX. Here are the two questions I want you to answer here on the blog:

1. After reading these two chapters, what do you believe to be the TWO primary roots of your struggle with insecurity? Keep in mind that more may apply but try to lock in on two that you believe to be most impactful.

2. What, if any, insight did you gain about the roots of insecurity and did you sense that God was trying to speak to you in any specific way through it? (This answer does not need to be limited to the two roots you identified in the previous response.)

These may sound like simple questions but I promise you we will have some interesting reading this week. Go to it, Girlfriends! I can’t wait to hear from you. Remember, you have until next Thursday morning to make your comment. By the way, a number of you have asked if women can jump in late with us. Absolutely! Any time. Everybody’s welcome.

Here’s a special challenge this week: Let’s still hear from all of you who’ve been commenting over the last two weeks but let’s ALSO hear from at least one hundred of you who have never posted before. Remember, this is a NO INTIMIDATION ZONE. Get in there and learn how to make a comment and if you find it posted later and see that you misspelled a word, who cares? This journey will mean ten times more to you if you get all the way into it. Come on in and participate. This is a really cool group of women.

Come, Lord Jesus, and minister to us. Open our eyes. Open our hearts. Grant us signs of great freedom and healing even this week as we discover where our insecurities may be coming from. We know, Lord, that no flesh and blood can bring us what we need. If we come out of this with liberty, all glory will go to You alone. I love You, Father. Do Your Thing.