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To End a Generational Curse

January 16, 2020 by Lauren 18 Comments

Boy, this is tough.  I have a confession.  Whew.  Ok, here goes.  I have been insecure about the way I look since forever.  You aren’t surprised are you?  Most women share those feelings.  As author Jennifer Dukes Lee put it, “We tell ourselves that we’re not enough – or we let our bathroom scales tell us that we’re too much.”  If this was the mindset of only a few, the diet and beauty industries wouldn’t be generating between $50 and $60 billion dollars a year!  Each!

 

I could tell you stories about what I believe caused the genesis of my flimsy self-esteem, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole.  What’s important to me now is helping my daughter avoid the pitfalls of misplaced self worth.  So I jumped at the chance (actually sat in my favorite chair with a cup of tea) to read and review Confident Moms, Confident Daughters:  Helping Your Daughter Live Free from Insecurity and Love How She Looks by Maria Furlough.

 

In the first chapter, the author despells any notion that becoming confident is important simply for its own sake.  As believers in Christ, anything good in us comes from God and God alone.  Furlough tells us that “security is in us.  It always has been.  When we think insecure thoughts or act on our lack of self-confidence, we make the decision to hand our security away.”  And “confidence in who we are as God’s beautiful creations protects us from harming ourselves and others.”  I personally made many unhealthy decisions and gave myself over to risky behaviors and relationships in the quest to feel attractive.

 

The author’s premise is that in order to instill confidence in our daughters, we moms have to be secure in how we look.  And although I agree with this, Furlough’s methods are a little too hokey and simplistic for me.  She advises making lists of things we love about ourselves and having mirror pep talks telling ourselves that we are beautiful.  Although Psalm 139 is a great place to remind ourselves of our worth in our Heavenly Father’s eyes, saying some of those things into a mirror feels a little insincere to me.  And so does a fake it ’til you believe it strategy.

 

The book includes an interview with a pediatrician who advises us to eat “5-2-1-0”.  Five servings of fruit and vegetables per day, two hours max of screen time, one hour of active time and the zero stands for limiting things such as sugary drinks.  This is fabulous advice, but looks like zero teenagers I actually know.

 

Furlough states that we as moms are the confidence standards in our home.  I believe this is absolutely true up until the teenage years.   By that point (according to an expert source that I can’t for the life of me remember but promise I read) parents are in the fourth place of influence for their children.  We lag behind friends, the culture at large, and other authority figures such as teachers and youth ministers.  So while I agree that the stuff we continue to carry around, we pass down to our girls, there are also many other balls in play.

 

Even if we could end our own obsession with physical beauty, society’s obsession rages on.  And that voice is strong for my fourteen year old.  What this book gets so right, though, is that true beauty comes from within.  We wear ourselves out when we focus primarily on the physical, because there will always be someone prettier.  “No matter what we do, say, eat, crunch, or tuck we will never become beautiful enough to fix our confidence problem…Our only hope is healing from the inside out.”

 

We, unfortunately, have an enemy that whispers constantly in our ears that we aren’t good enough.  Our daughters hear it and we hear it.  We can only counteract the negative with God’s truth.  He never intended us all to have the same size noses or the same color complexions or the same size jeans (genes).  He poured His creativity all over us.

 

After reading this book and giving it plenty of thought, I think we moms of girls have three action items here.  First, to pray to the God of miracles for supernatural confidence.  Second, to use our words and actions to help our kids appreciative the unique and beautiful ways God made them.  And three, pray some more and ask God to cover over the many mistakes we will make with our words and actions.

 

The end of each chapter of this book lists “Confident Daughter Discussion Questions”.  My daughter and I have been working our way through them at the table after dinner each night.  We are having the best, most valuable discussions!  (See the second action point above.)  I would pay the cover price many times over for these exchanges with my girl.

 

Your turn.  Do you have any advice for nurturing more confidence in yourself or those under your influence?  Join the conversation by leaving a comment.

 

Revell Books generously provided me with a copy of this book for the purposes of review.  All thoughts and opinions, unless otherwise stated, are my own.  

 

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5 Yoga Teachings That Make Me a Better Jesus Follower

August 24, 2018 by Lauren 16 Comments

Don’t give me the side-eye.  I know yoga has it’s origins in eastern spirituality, but the majority of Americans who practice, do it for the health benefits.  If you only know me from the blogosphere, or we haven’t seen each other’s faces in several years, you may not know that I teach yoga for a couple of different gyms in my area.  I am a reformed hard-core gym rat who once thought yoga wasn’t real exercise.  But after a torturous back injury, I tried it and fell in love.

 

It occurs to me that even though I “do” yoga for physical fitness and not the “spiritual enlightenment” some claim they can attain, that my yoga classes correlate to my life as a disciple of Jesus in many ways.

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  1.  It helps to be flexible.  Not every pose is about muscular elasticity, but when you are doing this:  or even this:  it certainly helps.  In a similar way, following Jesus requires a willingness to be stretched beyond our comfort zones.  Proverbs 16:9 NASB tells us that, “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”  As Christians we must often put aside our own desires to glorify our Maker.  And when we do it helps us reach (think stretch) to new levels of intimacy with Him.
  2. A social discipline of yoga is the tenet of non-violence, which encompasses non-competition (considered violence against oneself).  In a class, it is emotionally and physically unhealthy to compare yourself or your poses to someone else’s.  Trying to match another’s stamina, flexibility or fitness level can manifest in injury, frustration and self-hatred.  This is one of the reasons we refer to yoga as a “practice”.  Few are considered masters.  In God’s kingdom, if we take our focus from Jesus and look around too much at each other, jealousies easily arise.  If you have been reading this blog for even a few weeks you know that I fight against envy in my life, coveting what someone else has or even the talents God entrusts to them.  The Bible compares the global church to a body in 1 Corinthians 12 and addresses this type of jealousy.  “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?  If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.”  v. 17-18 NASB
  3. Yoga invites you into child’s pose any time you need it.  As one of the most common and popular resting asanas, child’s pose brings rest and rejuvenation when another pose or series causes discomfort or fatigue.  And bringing yourself face down helps block out distractions, increasing focus.  When life events generate discomfort or fatigue, as they often do, going face down before the Lord in prayer and/or worship invites Him to heal the hurt as we call on His mercy and power.  “Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”  Psalms 95:6 NASB
  4. Warrior poses (there are five primary and many variations) strengthen and stabilize the body.   I often feel unmovable and steadfast holding a solid Warrior pose.  Outside the classroom, my human nature falls short of this kind of reliability and sturdiness.  But my Heavenly Father provides what I lack.  He describes the tools, or armor, He gives to me in Ephesians 6:13-17 NASB “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.  Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
  5. We benefit from quiet and stillness.  The majority of yoga sessions end with Savasana – a time of relaxation and meditation.  Most instructors teach students to use corpse pose (don’t focus on that name) for this time, although a number of other poses substitute nicely for it.  After the exertions of practice, savasana allows for a rejuvenation of the mind and spirit as the body regroups and resets.  I once regularly skipped out on this time during sessions, not fully understanding the value of it.  I now fully look forward to these precious moments of the day.  After, or even better BEFORE, the exertions of life in general, spending time in quiet solitude, meditation of scripture, and rest (and not just when you are asleep) is one of the only ways we can pay attention to the heart whispers God sends to us.  “He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.'”  Psalm 46:10 NIV

Namaste!

 

 

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About Me

I love Jesus, my husband and caffeine. The order of these can change depending on how tired I am. When my two daughters, stepson, and 4 grandchildren get to be too much, I practice yoga. God graciously allows me to share our adventures, victories and flub-ups from my laptop. May He be glorified here.
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