never been here before

Since moving to Arizona, the holidays have always had a tinge of sadness for me. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not “home”, because there isn’t snow to get me in the spirit, because 70 degree weather doesn’t feel like Christmas to me. (Because I love those freezing cold nights with hot chocolate, a fire going, me covered blankets galore with a great books.)  Or maybe the sadness is something else altogether. I’m fond of the lament. I guess because it feels more real to me than… well, not lamenting. I know people who force a positive attitude on themselves and others, and while I appreciate the idea that if we act happy, perhaps we will become happy… I believe there is a time for sadness. For lament. (There is a whole book in the Bible about it, so I'm thinking I can't be the only one who feels this way.) I’ve had a tough couple of years. For a variety of reasons. I’m no Job, but I’ve been through a lot in ’14 and ’15 and I’m about to go through a lot more in 2016...

Women spend most of our lives worrying that we are not good enough. It’s possible men do too, but I have no firsthand knowledge of this, so I am wiring from my own experience today. This disease of not being good enough has another name: perfectionism. This idea we get in our heads of what we are supposed to be can be debilitating, painful, and relentless. It also robs us of all our joy. I have made a lot of mistakes in the last few months. I feel like it’s a lot more than I normally do, but the reality is that I have probably always made this many mistakes. It’s just that now one major thing in my life has shifted: I am in a season of complete and total raw emotion, so those mistakes are magnified by the woundedness of my own heart. But here’s the thing: making the mistake isn’t really all that painful. It’s the haunting the mistake does to you afterwards that is torture. Because you can’t go back and change what you did or what you said. You can’t go back and take it all a...