by Lucy | Oct 6, 2016 | emotions, whole health wellness |
With self care, a woman flourishes. Yet we women often stumble into a dangerous trap: self neglect.
A while back, I counseled a woman who felll into self-neglect after months of caring for ill relatives, one after another. She ran their errands, took them to the doctor, cooked and cleaned and cared for them. Then she hit extreme exhaustion that brought of depression. Her adult son cared for her!
When you neglect yourself, it’s tough to be the mom-friend-worker-wife God desires. You may become anxious, angry, moody, and self-absorbed. You may also become physically and spiritually weak. Self care is taking care of yourself emotionally, physically, intellectually, and spiritually. It is whole health wellness.
In this short article, you’ll discover:
- Self care is not selfish.
- 7 signs of self-neglect.
Self Care Is NOT Selfishness
There’s a Grand Canyon-sized difference between selfishness and self care.
As mentioned, self care is taking care of your emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual needs with a heart motivation of loving God and loving others. Wouldn’t you agree healthy self care is good since your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6: 19-20, ESV
On the flip side, selfishness is putting yourself above everyone else. Your needs, your wants, your everything prevails. This is neither healthy nor caring.
Jesus prioritized the most important attitudes and actions:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. Luke 10:25-28, NIV
7 Signs of Self Neglect
Neglecting self care may signal a need to show greater care of the temple of the Holy Spirit, and in turn, God. Are any of these true of you?
1. You want to lose excess weight.
2. You have fatigue because you lack sleep and exercise.
3. Your emotions are frazzled.
4. You lack laughter.
5. You spend little meaningful time with friends in real life.
6. Your financial budget spells stress stress and more stress.
7. You think God doesn’t love you or care or is too busy elsewhere.
If you’ve gotten off track, you can choose self care out of love for God. You can lose weight, get great sleep, start walking, have better emotions, laugh again, spend time with friends, get financial peace, and know that God loves you.
God promises to change your heart. Why not choose selfless self-care?
Just for You
Downl
oad: Get this New Priorities and Planning download.
Counseling: Would you like biblical help in making better choices–emotional or spiritual? Contact me and we’ll set up a time to talk in person or by Skype.
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Sharing Hope with Your Heart,
by Lucy | Jun 30, 2016 | biblical counseling
DO YOU HAVE an ongoing struggle with a family member a friend? Is stuff from your past interfering with your present? Addicted to something, even a good thing like ministry work? Are you lonely or sad or fearful or angry?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then counseling may be your answer to peace and contentment for your struggle. Specifically, biblical counseling.
Core of Biblical Counseling
Biblical counseling is all about helping people:
- God’s Word truly helps people who hurt.
- Biblical counseling is intense discipling. A window — no one needs biblical counseling year in and year out.
- God’s people can counsel effectively.
I received my training through the Pastoral Care to Women program at Western Seminary, Portland, OR, and have had further training through Association of Biblical Counselors and through the Assoication of Certified Biblical Counsleors.
In-person biblical counseling is not always possible; sometimes Skype counseling is best. This one reason why I offer a free initial phone consultation. Then we can decide your counseling needs and decide which direction the Lord wants you to go. To set up the free initial consultation, simply contact me.
An experienced, certified biblical counselor, I will guide you to discover the solutions for your struggle. Together we’ll pray. We’ll laugh. Sometimes we’ll cry. We’ll look to loving truth in Scripture to change your heart and change your life!
Counseling by Skype
I counsel some people over Skype or FaceTime. This works well for many people. I’ve counseled women and couples as far away as Australia and Hong Kong. Learn more about the advantages of Skype-counseling here. They include cost savings and convenience! Skype-to-Skype calls are free!
Advantages of Biblical Counseling
Biblical counseling is caring and effective, and looks to God for his answers.
In additions, itis highly affordable and convenient. Together we uncover the root issues of a problem you struggle with. You get practical, God-honoring solutions.
Do you know that you will improve how you think, feel, and do as God changes your heart’s desire?
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23
Isn’t it amazing that God empowers you to live full and godly lives that please him?
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:3
Do you want everyday victory when you continue to follow Christ’s way?
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it hat no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.Colossians 2:6-8
Your Next Step
Contact me for your no-cost 20-minute introductory session by phone or Skype. I’d love to answer your questions and together decide whether biblical counseling is a good fit for you and to help to find a real solution to your struggle.
Sharing Hope with Your Heart,
by Lucy | Mar 22, 2016 | emotions, relationships
Dads are important to kids growing up healthy. Living without a dad is tough. Experiencing a dad who hurt you is unimaginable. Did you know your heavenly Father loves you best of all?
In my early 30s I wrote a poem titled “Shadow Man.” Tears stained the lined paper. Full of grief, I poured out my pain while I wrote it and every time I read it and I leaked. I’d share the poem it here. So personal, I hand-shredded it many years ago. It was “for my eyes only.”
Have you experienced pain so raw, so real, that you cried until you had no tears left? Or perhaps you want to feel something you can’t. Is you pain pushed down and bottled up?
Please know that your heavenly Father wants to heal your father wounds. You aren’t alone. There is a loving solution I outline near the end of this article.
Many girls grow up with fathers who were absent in one way or another.
Others have loving, involved dads. If you are among the girls with fathers who were there for you emotionally, physically, and spiritually, you are blessed.
When Fathers Wound Their Girls
Others — me included — have father wounds.
Some dads slapped their young ones or punched them. This is criminal. They should go to jail, the sooner, the better. Other dads slipped into their daughters’ rooms under the cover of darkness and did unspeakable things. This is sick. Beyond sick. If this describes you, you are not at fault for his sin. He is.
Some dads left the family. Divorce, separation — these legal terms fail to capture the pain of a dad’s absence. Or maybe — like my dad — your dad was there physically but absent emotionally.
The Effect of AWOL Dads
I cannot begin to describe how much my dad’s emotional absence confused me and set me up for depression and anxiety as an adult. Thank God, my early 30s ushered in an intense time of healing. I found the strength to forgive my dad. He never asked for forgiveness. I gave it to him anyway. I had to. For my sake.
He truly didn’t realize how much he hurt me. He didn’t intend to.
Back then, I needed to know he loved me, that I reigned as his princess. His there-but-not-there-ness crushed what I thought of myself. It mangled what I thought God himself thought of me.
But you know what? Years ago, I decided years ago to follow the apostle Paul’s instruction, “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (Philippians 3:13). What is ahead for me is heaven. My “now” is loving my kids as best as I can, together with my husband, because this is God’s desire. Mine too.
A Turn-Around
Now my dad and I have a great relationship. I cannot explain the reason why. In my heart I believe it’s God’s healing.
He phones me. I phone him. (He hasn’t joined the ranks of Facebook. . .yet, and doesn’t know how to text.) When my brother died a year and a half ago, we began having lunch together almost weekly after my Saturday counseling sessions at my office in greater Chicago. First grief and a need to make sense of a tragic death filled our conversations, then pretty boring but important things surrounding legal matters, and finally jokes and laughs as God healed my dad and me. In our loss, we grew close.
You may know this bible verse:
I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. (Joel 2:25).
The prophet Joes wrote these words to the people is Judah and Jerusalem, reassuring them that when he brings a calamity (in this case, to bring his people to repentance), he is fully able to recompence. And so this is what I experienced in my relationship with my dad. What the locusts ate, God has given back.
What to Do When You Still Hurt
May I encourage you to try three solutions?
- Read the Bible often. Good places to begin are the Psalms, the Gospel of John, and Philippians. God’s words bring comfort and hope.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NIV).
- Confide in a trusted Christian friend or counselor. Talk with her privately. Tell her what’s going on and ask her if she can make the time to listen well, pray with you, and share healing Scripture.
- Contact me for biblical counseling. I counsel women and girls in person and by Skype. I offer a free phone consultation to help you decide if biblical counseling is what God wants for you.
Counseling hearts to hope,
by Lucy | Oct 27, 2011 | biblical counseling, emotions, relationships |
With God’s power you can mend a broken friendship. Learn His two ways of restoration. He loves you. He loves your friend.
During high school my two best friends and I dubbed ourselves the three amigas. Together in school, at lunch, on the weekends, the number three might not work for many women friendships. But it worked for us.
Until senior year.
They met boys. College boys. College boys who roomed together on campus.
Three didn’t work anymore.
I felt forgotten. They didn’t mean to hurt me but I felt hurt. Should I still be their friend or kiss ’em goodbye? A tough question for a 17 year old. For any woman.
Have you been hurt by a friend and wondered how to mend a broken friendship? Yes and yes.
With God’s power you can mend a broken friendship by one of two ways. See which works for your situation or for someone you care about, like your daughters. (They learn how to mend friendships by watching us. Kinda scary but also an honor.)
1. If the wound is not horribly deep — or you feel compelled — cover an offense with love.
I was able to do this with my two best high school friends. They didn’t mean to hurt me, and I had other friends to hang with. But I still missed them and the way it used to be.
1 Peter 4:8 reads, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”
So when you can and as the Holy Spirit empowers you, let the hurt go. Let love cover the offense. Letting go can lead to restoration. After high school graduation, we three went our separate ways, as we attended different universities but we kept in contact and had no ill will.
But what it you can’t just let it go. Then what?
2. Here is the other practical step the mending a friendship and it is tough: Confront with love.
Years ago when I was a women’s ministry director at a local church, my team and I made a decision to switch the day of our morning Bible study for several good reasons. At least we thought they were good. But not Ann (not her real name).
Angry about the decision (and behind my back), she phoned each women in the bible study and complained about the day change and complained about me. She even went to the pastors and complained.
I felt hurt and sad and angry.
Eventually, Ann and I confronted one another in love. I apologized that the change took her by surprise, that I should have communicated better with everyone. She apologized for gossiping.
Our friendship was never the same, however. We hadn’t been super close but now we were tentative around each other, fearing more hurt. It was as mended as could be.
Solomon said, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love” and “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Proverbs 27:5,6.
I learned a lot from this mess. I continue to value Ann and see her from time to time. We say “hi” and make small talk. I confronted, forgave and moved on.
Do you have a broken friendship? Will you cover the offense with love? Or confront your friend in love? Please share and encourage others.
Psst. . .if you like my blog posts, you’ll love my not-quite-monthly eLetter Cup of Joy. The next one comes out next week. When you subscribe, you’ll get my eBook “5 Amazing Names God Calls You.” Just type in your email address. Many, many thanks.
You Are Blessed!
by Lucy | Mar 21, 2011 | biblical counseling |
Forgiveness frees you to know God deeply. . .even when hurt by Christians.
Life’s battles maim, immobolize, and mock. What’s worse? Battles in the church. Yes, we Christians can slice and dice by our sisters and brothers in Christ, as Debbie Taylor Williams learned the hard way.
The author of The Plan A Woman in a Plan B World, What to Do When Life Doesn’t Go According to Plan, Debbie served on a divided pastor search team that was a huge challenge to her, both emotionally and spiritually.
The other day she told me, “I had never experienced such intense conflict within the church and was shocked and saddened. I was also hurt. I wanted to stay home instead of continuing to go to church. It was hard to continue to serve the body. God showed me, however, that I had to let go of my anger if I was going to continue to serve Him.”
Debbie felt bitter, but she didn’t let bitterness get the best of her. I invite you to hear the rest of Debbie’s story and how God showed her the path to forgiveness.
She is my guest on my online radio show, “Sisterhood of Beautiful Warrior,” on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern (11 a.m. Pacific). To listen to the show LIVE, simply click this link and you’ll hear it though your computer. 🙂 Are you busy at this time, then listen to the archived show. Here’s the link.
Have you walked where Debbie has? In the land of bitterness? Has a Christian sister or brother hurt you so bad that you fel like giving up and stop worshipping God at church? Debbie understands. I do too.
Yet Scripture says, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Forgiving isn’t easy. But it hurts. It hurts to hold on to unforgivenss. Thank God that He has a better plan for us.
Question: Do you think it’s possible to forgive. . .always? Leave a comment and enter the book giveaway.
You Are Beautiful!
