Untying Life's Knots One Day at a Time: Keeping Hope, Faith & Expectancy Alive

Life doesn’t have to beat you up. Circumstances need not keep you down. Situations have no power to keep you stuck. Hurts won’t last if allowed to heal. Behaviors and attitudes can change. Change is a certainty of life, while lessons learned in the process of change can turn out to be your most valuable asset. No matter how responsible you are or how congenial you may be with people, you will inevitably slip up on uncomfortable, threatening circumstances that can tie you up in knots.

Picture your life as a series of knotted ropes of different colors all jumbled together. The different colors represent the certain spaces that occupy your life, like family, finances, career and so forth. Let’s say each knot represents a form of chaos, some sort of struggle.  It obviously took some time to knot those ropes together, and it will take some time to unknot them back to order.

It may appear at times that you aren’t making any progress. It could be the Lord is untying your knots one at a time. The restoration process doesn’t have to intimidate or bankrupt your self-esteem and slap the wind out of you. I know it may be hard. You are tempted to throw up your hands and quit. “Why me, Lord?” The important thing to remember is, no matter how long it takes, don’t give in to the temptation to murmur and complain. And never give up.

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Embracing Who YOU Are: Getting Over the Need to Be "Every Woman"

Whitney Houston’s and Chaka Khan’s renditions of “I’m Every Woman” has sent a resounding message to most women that they can do everything: “I'm every woman, it's all in me, Anything you want done, baby, I'll do it naturally, I'm every woman.”  It’s no wonder then that when it comes down to it, we want to be everything. There's something about the idea of being accepted, driven, successful, connected to the right friendships, being recognized for one’s achievements and living an extraordinary life that makes us want to claim that moment of fame, “I’m every woman.” We want to be like our friends. We want her figure, her soft luxurious hair; we want the shopping sprees and luxurious vacations; we want the car she drives; and we want our husbands to give us the material things that her husband gives to her; we want to take care of everyone while neglecting ourselves.

We want to be every woman.

I’m sorry Whitney and Chaka, but you are not every woman, and neither are we. We are women. Not every woman. Only one. And this is how we were created. Whether we think our teeth are crooked; waistline is too large; eyes are too small; feet are too wide; or we are simply too flawed, we are yet women made in the image of God. And everything He has made is good.

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Walk in your Confidence: Out of the Shadows into the Light

 

Bi-weekly column by Dr. Deana Murphy

Last week I was the speaker at an eWomen event where I met a lady who began talking with me about her lack of confidence.  What a strange way to begin a conversation, nevertheless, she obviously wasn’t embarrassed to share this with me. It happened that she pricked my heart.  I have this bell that goes off inside of me when I hear a woman say she has no confidence in herself.  I don’t know, perhaps it’s the compassion in me that wants to fill her void, or the cheerleader who ushers her on. I believe the conversation provoked a little of both. She has been overshadowed for so long by her influential husband, a physician, only recognized as “the doctor’s wife.” She had forgotten how to be herself. She was noticeably miserable.

I am hearing more and more of this lately.  It I called a loss of identity.  Overshadowed. It’s a state of emotional numbness or a lost sense of self.  Like this lady, many women give up the pursuit of their dreams in favor of helping a mate achieve his. She may withdraw from pursuing her dreams for “just a while” while he pursues his, expecting him to one day return the favor. But too often the day of favor never comes. As a result, he’s in the spotlight and she has “willingly” lost her way. She sees him as the influential one but she succumbs to subordination, complacency, weakness and lack of focus. She has lost her identity to the light of his, and often times, even he is not aware of it.

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