Perceptions (borrowed from Growing Into Lovely)

We all are raised with different perceptions. Some of us develop values because we don't want to be the adults that we were reared with. Others of us have to find books to know what values we'd like to adopt as our own, because as we grow older, we realize our original values weren't healthy. Yet others have such a lovely, godly set of parents, they simply hope to continue the legacy of love their own parents have raised them in and share their parents' values.
One of the values I have had to learn to appreciate and develop in my own life was the ability to look past what and who a person appears to be, and look deeply into who they are in their heart, whether its wildly in love with Jesus, or wounded so deeply they cannot find Him. Maybe this lesson is so dear to me because I so prayed people would look past the surface of my own life and find someone whom God loved despite my actions. Appearances and words are often simply cover stories, what matters is who someone is to Christ...not what they have earned, been, or are trying to be! World influences teaches us that successful often is connected to identities that are not God honoring. The world gives laud and honor to people who have powerful skills, power moves, and ability to accomplish things that simply are not of value unless powered by God within them. Humility is the same way....if we are too intent on being quiet, withdrawn, or un noticeable, we can often dishonor that which God is calling us to be if we are too busy protecting our image or keeping ourselves safe! Like the parable of the three servants given the talents...God doesn't want us to bury the talents He gives us to produce more with!
I am a nobody. An Alabama mom and stepmom who simply wants to be God's girl. Two failed marriages, a zillion public and private mistakes... I've got a pedigree of public failures that reach back for four decades now, and private ones that I have to fight my flesh daily to remember God has forgiven me.
God has richly blessed my life, continually forgives me as I come to Him with my sin and has forgiven me my past. I am so aware that His saving me from the darkest of storms, nightmares, and ugliness I created in my own life, that anything I become or have accomplished is His.
As my husband Les loves to say when he succeeds and is recognized "That was God, that was ALL God, I'm just His boy, Les..." and indeed it is true in my life as well. Nothing I accomplish is without Christ, for alone I am nothing.
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' love and righteousness, the old hymn....has true and special meaning to me. I felt I was unloveable for so many years, and indeed my pattern of behavior was affirmed by many in my life as just that....but God has redeemed me....wiped away the masks I had built over the years, and has set me up on His knee and is explaining once again the lesson I am to hear......the lesson that we are ALL... ALL God's children, and like a child who makes mistakes, He still loves me, forgives me, disciplines me, and wants me to win. My new friend Thelma Wells, shared with me in Dallas at breakfast Monday (yes, pinch me I got to have a 1:1 breakfast with her!!!God IS Good!) how God had indeed given her a love for all women...for all creatures...because of her own brokenness as an unwanted child, a child who won despite the odds, a life rich with God's promises delivered. She gives me hope as she shares with me the perceptions of God He has given her....and allows me to grow through her teachings of His ways.
Like the Grinch's story, my heart had to grow about 100,000x this past week from the scared, broken, hollow woman I was in my twenties and thirties. I was so deceived about who I was in God's eyes. I believed Satan's lies, I believed I was unsalvageable..my family's disappointment, I believed society's whispers....that I was indeed a shame to my family....a shame, some sort of mistake that the Creator, Almighty made, yet was God was too godly to destroy me, simply trying to look aside me somehow and forget he made me. Why would God need to destroy the mistake? I was doing a great job of self destructing....and prideful that nothing could be changed that somehow I was unfixable,unloveable, not even by a Creator or Sovereign God! As if I was somehow past what a God Almighty could work with....How could God truly love someone such as me I thought...and Satan encouraged the answer to always be....No one could love you, look at you, how worthless a life.
Fast forward to the past ten years, I am now 44. God has restored my heart over a decade of rebuilding the million broken pieces of my heart, piecing each brokenness one step at a time, creating a new life. Like a toddler learning to walk, I still fall down, ride to fast and crash, I still scratch my knees and make huge messes sometimes. God has sent Les into my life as husband and father to my children. I am living out a happily ever after real life marriage, I have four beautiful childen and step children, a home I never imagined I could own, a God given purpose that is so meaningful and clear to me....God IS God, and only He can do this kind of restoration work in a human like me.
Last week I had so hoped to learn from teachers of faith in Dallas, how to walk more quietly, to contain the excitement that God has built inside me, to somehow become someone as gracious and walk as beautifully as Lori Kasbeer's walk, who is so steady, serene, and lovely, who is a reviewer for Christian Women Online. Truly she is more than that, a darling, Godly woman, who has children my children's ages....so full of wisdom and astute observations and God's love...she would be the first to tell you, quiet is not just a word to describe my personality, or my voice (Lori's ears were ringing after a few days sharing a hotel suite with me...bold is an understatement, if you are defining my personality style) But God whispered to me through my tears upon arrival home, knowing I had so miserably failed in containing that which is me in Dallas, talking too much, sharing too often, miserable that once again I probably made a exuberant mess in a new environment, and so disappointed in myself.....God whispered to me that I too am just the way He made me warts and all.... that He is the God of the bold and excitable too.

I am thankful today for new perceptions of how God made all of us in love...and have a new message to take to all places. That our perceptions, beliefs, and structures in God's activities at church and in organizations of "rules" "methods" and "practices" must be focused through the perception of inclusiveness to ALL of God's children, families, and people, not simply the beautifully behaved or dressed ones....for that IS our commission from Christ to love all people, even the messy ones like me and my step and blended family.....as Christ loves us.....and to learn to love ourselves, who are made in His image.....if you notice, not every creation of God is calm like the cool dew on a leaf, God also made the running rivers, buffalo herds racing, the raging storms and even the exploding volcanoes....and this morning I experenced the joy of the Father's hand pointing in my mind to each of the wildly colored animals, exotic plants, and storms God showed me hundreds of images in my prayer time..."I made them all uniquely...and they are good!" As much as I appreciate gentle women of God like my friends Gloria, Lori, Katherine, and Rachel Anne, and adore them as sisters in Christ, I will never ever be as eloquent or have as peaceful a countenance as God made them....but God is God and to everything there is a purpose and He has defined and written in my heart His purpose for me....to share the message of including all of God's children into the larger family of God....through changing our perceptions of what the church is called by God to be, to help church leadership create new perceptions of hw to include all of God's children and link them together to build new churches, stronger, more transparent, allowing the broken to have a safe place to be loved and learn of our God, the restorer of our souls.....

God is good, He restores my soul, and loves me despite me....Praise God!