Ugh. Budgets. A Guest Post by Jenny Schermerhorn

Written by on April 13, 2012 in Blog, Girl-Life; God-Life, Guest Bloggers - No Comments

This blog has been, like my life, a bit scattered lately. But although I haven’t written much about it, the impact of Jen Hatmaker’s book Seven is still rocking my world. Today I’m sharing the stage with a new friend I met when I was teaching a retreat this Spring. When I meet a woman who’s honest, passionate and willing to be a work in progress, I’m always excited to share her with my friends. So, here’s Jenny…on life, budgets, and discipline. You’ll love her. :)

Clotheslines, Budgets and God’s Influence….by Jenny Schermerhorn

I’ve often felt like an impotent evangelizer.  I’ve been walking with Jesus for twenty four years, and when I talk with non-believers, I feel like I have everything and nothing to offer.  I know, for certain, that Jesus offers eternal and abundant life, but – I’ve got zero street cred.  “Hey, I know your life is a Jerry Springer episode, but let me tell you how awesome Jesus is in my Cosby show life.” Driving my black Honda Odyssey and wearing ballet flats, I feel more like a wimpy little girl than Billy Graham on wheels.  But a few months ago I faced a domestic challenge that changed my perspective.

In January of 2012 I received a shocker of a power bill.  Immediate action was required. I bundled the kids up and turned the thermostat down to 62.  I also bought a retractable clothesline. I was serious about cutting our electricity usage.

I started hanging out my family’s clothes out to try to dry them.  Note the word “try”. Only an especially domestically-challenged gal like me could fail at DRYING CLOTHES. The first couple of loads I hung out worked great, it was bright and sunny and although the clothes came out stiff (it helps to use fabric softener when line drying) they were dry.  But four loads into this new experience I went outside to pin up my clothes and noticed it was overcast.  O well, I thought, it’ll just take a bit longer.  Six hours later- in the dark of night, I took down a laundry basket full of wet clothes and stuffed them into the dryer.  The sun is not just a part of the recipe folks, it’s the key ingredient.  So now I wait to do laundry on sunny days, and I get dry clothes off the line.  And, I have a whole new appreciation for the power of sunlight.

Did you know there is enough energy hitting one square foot of earth per day to power an average house, for a month?  Or that without photosynthesis (remember third grade science?) all life on the planet would basically shrivel up and die?  Summary: sunlight, it’s really important.

Sunlight has been present and greatly impacting my life for ahem, thirty two years, and I’ve only recently appreciated and even noticed its effects. I’ve been following Jesus for almost as long, and I take for granted His life changing effects as well.
My pastor shared a few months ago that the fruit in a Christians life grows slowly. “An apple doesn’t ripen overnight and in the same way the fruit of the Spirit develops over time.” he explained.

So I took a few minutes to consider how Christ has influenced and changed me over the past 2, 4, 10 years, and stepped back to examine the fruit that has been maturing slowly, in my life.

I noted my marriage is a still growing fruit.  I married a believer, and although neither of us do it well, we’re trying to learn to love each other unselfishly.  That’s quite different than the “let’s do this while it makes us both happy” attitude of most American marriages.

Our family finances are another faith fruit.  It’s HARD to give and save and budget, and I cheat. (I hate you Target. Not really, I love you- but I can’t come to visit for a long time). But this God centered stewardship plan is much different than my whatever-I-want plan.

There are others maturing fruits, my parenting, what I watch and read, how I handle forgiveness and fear. And I realize now how different my life is–  because of Jesus. I have plenty to bring to the table when I have conversations with non-Christians. I didn’t realize how much. And this isn’t me bragging about my awesome life people, this is seeing how Jesus is working in my gack and producing change I could never bring about alone.

So I invite you to consider how God is influencing your day-today, molding, changing, renewing.

As you consider, I’m going to go start a load of laundry, because it’s sunny today. And two days ago, when I got my power bill, we had cut that baby IN HALF.  I’m going to be utilizing the power of that sunshine for a long time to come. And I won’t be underestimating or under-appreciating it any more.

Jenny is a ministry leader, mom, and writer living in the gorgeous mountains of NC. Catch her blogging here! 

The Love/Hate List

Written by on October 14, 2011 in Blog, Girl-Life; God-Life - 3 Comments

There are some things that are simply a love/hate proposition.

Dancing.

Camping.

Road Trips.

Running.

(I happen to be on the LOVE side of all of those.)

Yesterday I was so pumped to be back at Thrive, the women’s ministry at Hope that meets each Thursday. I LOVE women, or as my friend said last night, I love to be back in that sorority feel. (some of you hate sororities, if that’s you, just ignore the last sentence.) So we made a HUGE love/hate list yesterday, including:

Licorice.

Shopping.

Coffee.

Beer.

Crowds.

Reading.

Being Pregnant.

Wind.

So, it’s your turn! What things do you LOVE or HATE on this list? And what do YOU think people usually LOVE or HATE?

I Need Your Help! (Again)

Written by on May 27, 2011 in Girl-Life; God-Life - 21 Comments

Remember when you helped me shape my teaching on idolatry a few weeks ago? You were awesome.

The insights and thoughts you shared provoked my own thinking and have shaped me since. That’s one of my favorite things about blogging and writing–the way that we form this little community of seekers who sharpen one another with our own questions of faith.

And I need your help again.

I wrote about Skechers Shape-Ups and the messages they send to our girls and then continued the conversation over on Gifted for Leadership. Can I be honest? I’ve got some ambivalence toward teaching about body image in the church, yet I’m feeling drawn to this very topic. On the one hand, I’d love to engage in healthy discussion with mothers and daughters about this topic. But on the other, I worry that what will be conveyed is “change your behavior” rather than “change your heart.” I worry that girls will think it’s all about what you do, not how you are. That if you wear a purity ring and avoid spagetti straps and bikinis, you will be good, you’ll be safe, you’ll be happy. But I worry that what sometimes happens in this teachings is that we breed self-righteousness and legalism rather than compassion and grace.

So I need your help. Again.

What do you think? Should churches teach on body image or healthy sexuality? Does your church do this? What is one (or two) things you wish young people would hear from the church when it comes to body image? How does our culture hinder healthy body image? Does it ever help?

I told you I had a lot of questions. And I’d love your help!

Sketchy Skecher Shape-Ups…and other news

Written by on May 23, 2011 in Girl-Life; God-Life, identity, journey, writing - 1 Comment

It’s more than a little ironic. The same week I joined with many of you to live on rice and beans and raise awareness about the 983,000,000 people around the world who go to bed hungry every night, I also got the opportunity to post with the Christianity Today women’s blog, Her.Menuetics, on the ever-present discussion of women, girls and body image. I’d love your thoughts on how you talk about “sexiness” with your daughters or younger women in your life! Here’s an excerpt. Click through for the whole story!

A new ad campaign by Skechers takes its popular Shape-Up sneaker and markets it to girls. Skechers’ line of “Shape-Up” sneakers was originally targeted solely to women but now includes men’s and girls’ versions. It promises to burn calories, improve posture, and tone your legs and butt – ”all without stepping foot in a gym!” Conspicuously missing from the lineup are boys’ Shape-Ups, which only add to the controversy over what, exactly, Shape-Ups are about….(read more)

…

Of Junk Drawers and Shadowy Places

Written by on April 18, 2011 in Daily Life With Jesus, Fears and Blessings, Girl-Life; God-Life - 6 Comments

An actual pile from my house...

I hide things in the corners of my house.

In one kitchen corner is a basket with compartments, presumably to allow for sorting items into groups. But the Barbie sunglasses, flash drives, broken crayons, foreign coins and vending-machine toys it contains don’t easily fit into neat categories.

Then there’s the basket by the front door, presumably to allow one to tote necessities from car to house. But dried-up baby wipes, four different methods of hand-sanitizing, coloring books that are almost all scribbled and coupons that are almost all expired don’t seem to have a place anywhere.

So my clutter remains, in the kitchen, at the front door, in my bathroom drawer. I would love it organized, but who am I kidding? I don’t want to commit the effort or time or brainpower to the job. So they remain, standing like silent guards, reminding me of my failure to keep it all together.

I hide things in corners in my soul, too. Cluttered up space where I’ve thrown some issues, things that I tell myself I’ll deal with later. Occasionally I’ll look over and see what’s there: my fear of rejection or a consistent feeling that I’m misunderstood or my worry about where I’m going with life. But those things don’t fit into easy categories, so I give up and leave them in a heap.

But just like the basket and the drawer, the corners of my soul don’t get cleaned up by themselves. They just stay, cluttered and chaotic, until I trip up on them one too many times and say enough is enough.

For me, mothering has brought those cluttered corners of my soul front and center. For every tear of joy I’ve shed over my children, I’ve shed four in pain: frustration, despair, boredom, anger. Before children I could leave those ugly emotions stacked up in a pile, but something about becoming a mother expanded my heart and brought light into the shadowy places of my soul.

I don’t want to commit the effort–but my children deserve it. I don’t want to look hard–but I can’t keep expending energy avoiding it all. So I hunker down, dumping all those issues into a pile. I pick them up, one by one. I examine the shadowy places of the heart in the presence of the One who’s well aware of what needs to be sorted, thrown out, put away. I quiet myself to listen carefully to a God who will speak into every single need as I hold them up for examination.

For a million reasons I’m honored to be a mother. But for this particular reason, I’m thankful that God loves me enough to never leave me behind in my clutter.

What does God use in your life to bring the “junk” out of the corners of your heart?

I Gave Up Makeup for Lent

Written by on March 9, 2011 in Daily Life With Jesus, Girl-Life; God-Life - 20 Comments


The writing is fat, penciled with deep loops, filling each line with preteen girlishness. I still have that page in the journal, the first one I owned. On that page I declare my vow to my future daughter, to allow her to wear makeup at exactly the same age as I was when I gripped my first eyeliner.

That pearly pink lipgloss and Great Lash mascara were symbols of something more, my first foray into womanhood, a doorway into another life. I was a girl who wanted to be a grownup before I even figured out how to be a child.

I’ve evolved since then, as has my makeup. But what hasn’t faded is my love of all. things. beauty.

Last Friday I woke at 3:30am, drove two hours to the airport, made a beeline to the bathroom and staked my claim in front of the mirror. I whipped out my powder brush, dabbed some bronzer on my cheeks, and swept some magic from my Bobbi Brown bronzing brick over my lids. But horror of horror! I forgot my eyeliner. I felt naked. I love my eyeliner and was relieved to hop over to the MAC Counter in Orlando before the conference got started.

Sound ridiculous? Maybe it is. And maybe that’s why this morning I had the unmistakeable impression that I should give up makeup for Lent.

At first I thought I was mistaken, that couldn’t possibly be what I was hearing. I mean, who gives up makeup for Lent? I love makeup. It’s no big deal, it makes me feel good and bright and ready for the day! I have six speaking engagements over Lent! I can’t not wear makeup and stand in front of people! Plus, God, did I mention I like it?

Sound ridiculous? Yep. And that exact monologue is the exact reason why this is a good idea.

There’s nothing wrong with makeup, and I plan to go immediately back to it on Resurrection Sunday. But, like many other good things in my life, I am prone to making luxuries necessities. Makeup is fun. But sometimes it makes me hide. Sometimes it helps me be more of my false self, less of my ideal self. It’s vanity.

Today I head out for a full day of work. I feel stripped, another reason I know this is a good decision. I take the extra ten minutes in the morning to read a Lenten devotion. I feel those feelings of insecurity rise up and instead of pressing them back I let them go, up and away, rising to my God who is incredibly creative and intimately involved in shaping me into his exact impression of beauty. And I believe that has very little to do with my eyeliner.

So I submit to this one small sacrifice, to the extra minutes each morning to remember the great and wonderous and crazy God I serve, one who uses bread from the sky and talking donkeys and bronze snakes and palm trees and mustard seeds to teach us about Himself. And I’m smiling.

Why not makeup?

I wonder, have you given up anything from (or added any practices) for Lent?

If My Mind Was A Hot Tub

Written by on January 29, 2011 in Girl-Life; God-Life - 2 Comments

…I’d be bubbling full blast. Here’s a random smattering of goings-ons. Yep. goings ons. Say that a few times fast.

  • For the second time in two weeks, I insisted on enlighting women’s groups on current acronym slang. Last week it was DTR. This week it was FOMO, a term coined by a witty twentysomething friend which is a disorder known as “Fear Of Missing Out.” I share only because there are many of you out there who need to know that you suffer from this disorder. I’m considering starting a support group.
  • Can small groups work? The thoughts from this post continue to bubble up. This Sunday we are attempting something new in our high school ministry: mid-sized community groups designed to facilitate real conversation and spark relationships. This is all related to the “so what if it fails” mantra. I’m praying that we’ll experience God’s presence in a real way.
  • Speaking of God’s presence, last spring on my Vegas trip I struggled to find any love for  sin city. This year, with my one word JOY, I’m planning to work harder to experience abiding joy no matter the circumstance. Looking forward to blogging that this week!
  • Next week we’ll be focusing on how month one is going with the One Word 2011 project. Looking forward to hearing from a couple of guests next week that I know you’ll love!

I wonder: How’s your One Word going? And if you haven’t signed on yet for a focus for 2011, it’s never too late! Catch up with the project by cruising over to my One Word tab or at Grit and Glory to check out the resolution revolution!

Don’t Judge Us for using Shoe Lifts

Written by on December 8, 2010 in Daily Life With Jesus, Girl-Life; God-Life - 16 Comments

Nothing like a trip to Disney to bring out your best and worst parenting moments.

Take, for instance, the use of shoe lifts.

We have three kids. We are two adults. There is only 2/3 of each of us for each child, and although I can multitask like a superhero, I cannot actually be in two places at one time. (Neither could Jesus. Just sayin.)

Zone parenting is not much fun when one child is under forty inches (40 inches is required to have any actual FUN at Disney.) The problem is we parents actually LIKE having fun and neither one of us is selfless ENOUGH to do little-kiddie stuff even though ONE parent went through a week’s worth of labor and thousands of minutes of throwing up to BIRTH these three children.

And our little-kiddie is JUST under the fun height.

Like 39 3/4 inches. Not to mention, this is our kid who says things like:

I love rides! I love rollercoasters! Why is this ride over? When can we go again? I’m big! Can I bungee? How about jump out of planes? Can I have a shotgun? (*sarcasm alert)

So what are two fun-loving adults spending their week stuck vacationing at Disney to do?

Desperate times, people, call for desperate measures.

Sooo…we take the cardboard from our Blue Moon 12-pack and cut it up with a serrated knife and eighteen heel-shaped cardboard pieces later, we are in business.

Of course, the boy loves his lifts that gain him access to everything FUN. He keeps them in the entire day.

So, while I’m busy judging the mom with the seven year old on the leash,

the mom of the bibbiti-bobbito-boo triplets with Fantasy princess hair (the cost of which could feed all of Burkina Faso for a month),

or the guy buying a beer at Epcot at 10AM…

I’m cheating the system with cardboard.

Judge not at Disney, lest you be judged.

Travesty of the Faith #3: Forgetting Fun

Written by on June 28, 2010 in Girl-Life; God-Life, identity - No Comments


My interest in teenagers and young adults isn’t completely benevolent. I actually have an addiction to fun, and in seems my younger friends haven’t forgotten what it means to play. All that’s left from our night out is sore feet and memories, but we had the best time. Girl’s Night. Dancing. Singing loud and laughing. And as we shimmied and moonwalked to the newest summer hit and classic Michael Jackson, I thought to myself, why don’t we do this more? What’s with Chrisians not having fun?

God did create our senses. He created us with bodies to move and music to hear and food to taste and beauty to see. Think about it. He could have just made all of nature green. Green grass, green trees, green sky. Green flowers, green animals. He could have just kept dropping manna from the sky, little light wafers of nutrition wafting down like snowflakes and giving us what we need to live.

But He didn’t! He made us sensual. And He gave us amazing variety and color and complexity to enjoy. So why are we so freaked out by this as Christians? Maybe sensual just feels too close to sexual, and although God made that too, we decide to shimmy away from that faster than look away from the homeless guy begging at the stoplight.

This amazing Creator gave us all this, yet we relegate him to a boring building and a program. We sit around in living rooms, sipping coffee and enjoying awkward silences while a couple of people discuss the finer nuances of predestination and the rest of us surreptitiously check our watches. We forget, or ignore, or are scared of the fact that God is enormously creative and flexible and reaches people in all kinds of ways.

One of the things that was stifling about my early years as a counselor was my feeling that I had to adhere to all kinds of counselor-y rules. I would have a young teenage girl angry at her parents in my office. I would smile gently and nod and seem grandmotherly or whatever, and inside I’d be thinking, “you know what you need? You need me to take you on a really hard run, and then punch a punching bag and yell for a little bit. And then maybe we can talk like this.”

Or I’d talk to a girl about feeling sad and low and whatever, and I’d think, “I want you to come with me, let’s volunteer to help some teenage moms out. Perspective will bring you gratitude and make you get serious about doing something with your life.”

But I would sit, and nod, and smile gently, and act old. But a nagging little part of me wondered, really, what would Jesus do.

And I’m changing. My sabbatical from professional counseling has given me perspective on all kinds of things. I realize that sometimes, my faith is best expressed in laughter and silliness and yes, even sensuality.

My sabbatical from counseling has allowed me some time to spend with a little group of girls each week. The week before we had each shared a verse that we’d been reflecting on. What I loved was that some of the girls in the group used verses in their paintings. Some didn’t. And that was fine. We drank wine and talked and painted and laughed. We encouraged each other and shared moments.

Have you experienced your faith minus the fun? Why do you think Christians ignore the sensual aspects of ourselves?

(Miss)Labeled?

Written by on May 26, 2010 in Girl-Life; God-Life, relationships - No Comments

This week we’ve been talking about nice girls, and why that label is so unappealing. Yet as women seeking to live a life honoring to God, there is a void of descriptors between “nice girl” and all the bad-gal choices.

So here’s what some of my “nice girl” friends have to say about this label:

“Whether the perception is accurate or not, you feel as though you’ve been pegged before people really get a chance to know you. And … when you get screwed over (and you eventually will), you’re left wondering why you bother to be so nice·”

“…nice girls get taken advantage of.”

“…it isn’t always fun.

(and in typical nice-gal fashion, she follows that up with ‘am I allowed to say that?’)

“It isn’t “hip” by the world’s standards – which are pretty low. …in business “nice” equates to “weak” and “gullible”. It goes back to, when you are young, you are labeled a “prude” if you don’t, a “tramp” if you do. Older, a “doormat” or a “b**ch” PERSONALLY, I think women need support from other women and not look anywhere else (but God) to get it.”

“Being the “nice” girl allows very little room for honest brokenness. It’s difficult to believe that world won’t abandon you if your faults are put out on the table or if you have a bad day. When we are constantly reinforced for our “goodness”, then what happens we can’t measure up to this fake standard of ourselves? I think that being the nice girl can bring with it a lot of fear.”

“I was always the “nice girl” in school…I needed to get a little un-nice to find out what I was really made of.”

“Being ‘nice’ can become a mask that we can hide behind and never show our true selves, including our faults.”

“I think that if someone calls me a “nice girl” it’s because they don’t know me well enough to use other descriptors. Not that I don’t think of myself as nice…I just think calling someone nice is the easy way out.”

Rachel sums it up nicely:

Hmmm. I guess that if it’s a choice between being a mean girl and a nice girl, I’d rather be known as a nice girl. But if it’s a choice between being a nice girl and a loving girl, I’d rather be known as a loving girl. I think Jesus called us to be something more radical than nice.

So what about guys? How and why do they use the “nice girl” label?

“I have never been with a nice girl so i wouldnt know…
(wow, yikes.) but the term “nice girl” to me would be someone who cares for you, someone that wants to actually be with you and have a good time doing whatever.”

“There was a time when the term “nice girl” didn’t do much for me. But that was my problem, not theirs. Now I thank God many times a day that I actually married one, and pray many times a day my daughter becomes one.”

(thanks for keeping it real!)

“When a guy says, “she’s a nice girl,” it is often a way of saying “she’s a great girl that I don’t have romantic feelings toward.” Other times he might say “she’s a nice girl” in order to avoid expressing actual romantic emotions that he does have for a girl. Yes, I recognize the pattern in the contradiction here: a man will use an ambiguous term like “nice” in order to avoid illuminating and dealing with his actual feelings.”

I think that the nice girl label is like any label–insufficient and inaccurate. My beef with “nice girls” is any perpetuation by the church of Christian culture that leaves women to believe that at the end of the day, God’s gonna ask you: ‘were you nice?’ My reading of scripture gives a much more radical label to our life of following God. Radically loving, kind, patient and forgiving–yes. But also radical in our choices, whether people like them or not. Seeking truth AND peace, not just an avoidance of conflict. And mostly, seeking the label or “name” that God would give us –nobody else.

Your Turn: What word would you like God to use as your “label?”

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