Green-eyed monster

I don't know where this picture originated, if it's yours, please let me know!

I am an almost 40-year-old woman. I own my own home, have a job, a car, and can buy everything I need and most of the things I want, but I fall prey to the “I gotta’s” Have you ever experienced those? I see someone with something and “I gotta have it…” or I think I do. It can be an advertisement on TV or a post on someone blogs, or mercy, someones shoes I see at church and that green-eyed monster rears it’s ugly head and I buy into the fact that if I just have that I will be happy. Lies. All lies from Satan. Satan in advertisement? Yep. I’m taking a hard line on this one. God will provide for all our needs, but how much do we truly need and how much do we just “think” we need and why am I writing so much in quotation marks?

I can remember being a child growing up and there was a certain brand of tennis shoes that everyone else had (yeah, right,) but hey, in my world everyone else had them and my parents refused to buy them for me. I was growing so fast and money at the time was not plentiful. I had a perfectly good pair of tennis shoes, I didn’t NEED another pair and I certainly didn’t need a pair that cost such a high amount just for the label but in my mind, it kept me from fitting in. But I was the one who kept myself out of the “in crowd”. I was intimidated and overwhelmed and I believed the lies that I wasn’t cute enough, thin enough, funny enough, and most of all, not rich enough to belong to that crowd. Talk about being a self-fulfilling prophecy. I became obese, I became depressed, I became poor, not only in finances but also in spirit.
In the past 20 years I have discovered something very interesting. One of the girls I admired, who I am now close with, had the same insecurities that I did. I wanted so much to be her friend but just didn’t know how to do it. She has shared with me some of her own foibles and fears that wonder of wonders; they were so much like mine. It was just all in how we responded to those. She has always had a confidence and a sense of style that I have looked up to and I admire the woman she has become and consider myself fortunate to count her as a friend and I cherish the times we get to spend in our back porch conversations.
The friends that I did make in school, they are still around, but very distant, and that makes me sad. But God has brought women into my life that I don’t share a past with but I do get to share a future with. Women who are smart, beautiful, funny, inspiring, amd every single woman, no matter who she is, comes with battle scars, comes with insecurities, comes with her own set of fears.

It makes me wonder sometimes if when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and we became separated from our Heavenly Father, did we trade our compassion for conceit, did we trade our joy for jealousy, and did we trade our concern for contempt? Harsh words, but we did lose paradise. For me paradise would be where everyone would feel love; not only from God, but also from each other and where women wouldn’t have to work to overcome the walls we put up, but would instead build bridges to connect hearts to hearts.

Friends and Contest Winners!!!!

It was so much fun having the contest but what was even more fun for me was seeing what happens when friends come together. Stop for a minute and just think about the friends that God has brought into your life. Over the last few weeks my friends have been surrounding me from my group of God’s Girls Growing (G3) to friends that I serve with, to friends that hold me accountable, to friends that speak the truth in love and help me to see Him when sometimes all I see is me. True friends. We weren’t meant to go through this life alone. Jesus knew this and picked 12 men to follow him and they became his friends. Did they all agree, no, did they let Jesus down along the way, yes, did they love each other, most of the time, and did they, through the power of One man, change the entire world…yes. All by word of mouth too I might add. Before the age of twitter, facebook, blogs and the internet. Society has existed on word of mouth. I got to see that over the past few days first hand. People spreading the word about the blog, telling their friends, and people stopping by from all over, California, Canada and even overseas. How cool. Because a friend suggested they come by. Friendships are powerful. They can lift us up by speaking honestly but with love, they can hold us accountable by showing us where we stumble before we have a chance to fall, and they can hold us when we are too scared to hold on. My friends have all done that and more.

This will be brief this morning, well as brief as I can make it, I’d like to challenge you to think and pray for your friends today. Send someone a note on FB to let them know you are thinking of them, send them a card online if you want, just stop a few minutes and give a little bit of the love away. It’s free, it multiplies, never divides, and when you give a little bit you get so much more in return.

And the winners of the Blog Brain Contest are:

Amy New won the “What Happens..” book. She was picked via the Random Number Generator website.

And

Tammy Marquess won the “Becoming More…” book. Tammy sent more then 25 different people by the blog. Now that’s the wonder of word of mouth and sharing with our friends.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by. Ladies if you will email me your mailing address to leigh at leighfrance dot com. I will send out your books!

Thanks for playing everyone!!!!