‘Twill take you 30 seconds to read, but it’s definitely  worth it: People Can’t Talk to Pastors  

Many thanks, again, to Carolyn McCulley! This dear and wise sister continues to hit it out of the park on her blog, SoloFemininity.com. Quoting Michael Lawrence on counter-cultural beauty, she posted this: “Finally, immerse yourself in a counter-cultural understanding of beauty. I stand by what I said at the beginning: Beauty is culturally determined and we cannot escape our culture. If you are surrounded by people and media that say beauty is merely a matter of body shape and color, then you will find it almost impossible to be attracted to anything else. But if you are in regular conversation with people who think otherwise, if you are listening to…

During our vacation, one day I had over an hour to myself to just sit and think and pray. I was very relaxed and I began to “replay” or think about my entire adult life. It made me very sad. I thought about high school where I so desperately wanted to have real friends and some sort of “home” … and I thought I did in my circle of (choir / marching band / french club / speech team / NHS) friends. But then I remembered how my friends confronted me on my (many!) weaknesses and I had to PERFORM to get to keep being around them (which I did)…

Today I received an email from a woman and my silly email is on the fritz! so I can only receive but not respond. Eek! I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t care, however, and so I hope that she won’t mind me posting her note here (with all identifying information removed) and my response. I’ll call her “Janet” — and please, “Janet,” if it bothers you that I posted this, please just email me and I’ll delete this posting immediately. (I can receive email and access the web, but that’s it until Fred returns to our hotel room from his conference this evening.) “Janet” wrote this: Tara,…

If you’ve ever heard me teach at an event (or listened to one of my tapes or teaching CD’s), you may remember my die-hard-RULE about what happens to my journals if I croak … Fred promises to burn them—destroy them—throw them away—whatever it takes to ensure that no one ever reads them. SO … how do you think I’d feel if one of my journals was OUT THERE in the public somewhere? Can you say not too good? Well, that’s where I am. That’s how I feel. Why? Because I’m fairly certain that I took my journal out of my bag and put it on the roof of my car…

Let’s pretend there is a 35-year old woman who struggles with a pervasive sense of being “not good enough.” We’ll call her Sara. And let’s further pretend that “Sara” tries really really hard to relate well with people, honor the Lord, etc. etc. but often she fails. Miserably. She says the wrong thing. Does the wrong thing. And her overarching sense of being “bad” often clouds her thinking and feeling and leads her to do the extremely annoying thing of putting herself down. Yes, yes. “Sara” knows this is wrong. There is nothing lovely or edifying about someone putting herself down all the time. It’s unpleasant. Stupid. Unbiblical. Ridiculous. Not…

I had the most lovely and edifying conversation with a friend today. (It turns out that she and I have the same “in-network” cell phone coverage so Yay! Even my tiny (tiniest available) cell phone minutes each month won’t have to be eaten up.) During the call, she was reflecting on how the Lord may be calling her to minister to her unsaved family members. (Parents, siblings, etc.) Her childhood had a lot of struggles and sorrow, and now as an adult, she and her husband are prayerfully considering how God might be ministering His grace to her family through them. (It’s not pleasant to intentionally engage in these difficult…

Today I leave on another trip out of state. This one is strange for me, however, and I am not feeling good about it. Pretty much every single thing I will do over the next five days is unknown to me–way out of my comfort zone. I can’t picture it. I can’t imagine what will happen, who I will meet, how I will have the opportunity to serve. (I can, however, imagine in living color many of the mistakes I might make, stupid things I might say, ridiculously foolish things I might do — all trying to love well and honor God, but failing miserably.) So why go? Because God…

Back in grad school, I once had the privilege of serving a wonderful pastor who was beginning a new ministry. Fred and I respected this man greatly and was thrilled to get to work for him. I remember one day he said to me, “Tara, you don’t get to grade your own report card. Let Freddy and I do that.” He said this because he observed me being very down on myself. Very self-critical. Always seeing the worst in me, my failings, my weaknesses, my horribleness—never giving myself a break as it were. He wanted to encourage me to think more rightly about myself. (Not to dismiss our total depravity,…