This morning I woke up far away from my cottage in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Instead of the pungent smells of pine and cedar, I drink in the scent of the sea. And instead of my pot of steaming tea, I sip slowly from a foamy bowl filled with cappuccino served with a spoon. In just a few hours a group of hand-picked parents will make their way from Albania’s capital city, Tirana, to the coastal town of Durres, on the edge of the Adriatic Sea.

These are leaders— in business, in government, in NGO’s, in churches. They are followers of Jesus in a country that is nominally Muslim and predominately atheistic.

And they have kids. Children they love who are being raised in a culture that goes against everything they believe.

Sound familiar?

In just a few hours Phil and I will tell our story. How we met and married with high hopes. And how, when pregnant with our first child, we realized we had no idea how to raise children who want Jesus. And how that scared us.

And I’ll look into the eyes of the mothers and I’ll see that same fear. We’ll know each other in that long look. The camaraderie that comes from a shared passion.

Every parent there wants what we wanted: children who grow into people who are passionate, all-in, wise, fruitful, faithful followers of Jesus.

We will spend hours talking and listening and teaching and delving into the Scriptures and praying and sharing stories and laughing at the ridiculousness of our dreams for our children.

And God will be here, bending down to listen.

I will tell these parents, so like us when we were young, about how we prayed, over and over again, for wisdom. How we held hands and cried out to the Father for what He promised in James 1v5:

If any of you lacks wisdom,

 let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach,

and it will be given to him. 

And then we’ll share with them the treasures He gave with so much generosity that we’re overwhelmed and overflowing. I’ll watch in wonder as they scramble to write it down, filling the notebooks with letters I cannot read.

And I’ll tell them that He’ll do the same for them, here, on the other side of the world. With Macedonia’s snow capped mountains off in the distance and Greece right behind us, Phil and I will pour ourselves into a new generation of parents in the hope that they will pour into a new generation of Albanians who will, in turn, raise up a new generation of leaders who will bring Jesus to a country that desperately needs Him.

Will you pray for these people? These parents? This generation?

And will you pray for me? For us?

I have relished praying for those of you who dare to dream with God. Keep telling me those stories and I will keep hoping with you and praying for you.

From my heart far from home,

Diane

(source)

For the next few weeks we will be reposting from He’s Not Your Prince Charming, reaching way back in the archives to remind and reteach and rethink what we’ve been learning together. I have asked my blog team to help choose their favorites, and I am hoping you will add fresh comments to shed new light on these posts.

In the meantime I will be writing ahead for the new series, studying, reading, thinking, and praying about what to say and how to say it. Any suggestions and thoughts about what you’re wondering about will be most welcome— after all, you are my girls! 

From my heart,

Diane

repost 09/13

Dear girls,

Last week I said: “I think its time we all moved past the resentment that makes us crabby and cranky and cold to our men.” 

We talked about the need to forgive, to let go of the anger that controls our spirits and contorts our view of conflict.  And I’m not just talking about those horrendous offenses that leave women mortally wounded. Because it is often those less-than –earth-shattering irritations that we forget need to acknowledge and forgive in order to heal up properly. Kind of like paper cuts that render our fingers hot and throbbing but don’t actually send us to the emergency room.

The little stuff.

This week I promised I’d show you how to forgive, but first I need to tell you what forgiveness is not. Because if we lump forgiveness in with all the other ingredients of conflict resolution we end up with a messy goop of impossible expectations.

Here’s what I don’t mean by forgiveness:

1.  Reconciliation:

Some relationships cannot be immediately reconciled by simply pardoning the person who hurt you. Abuse, for example. Or unfaithfulness. There are wounds that go so deep that only major surgery can heal them.

2.  Condoning:

Forgiveness is not the same as making excuses. Last week I wrote:

“Make believe doesn’t work here girls. You can’t pretend he didn’t mean it or it doesn’t hurt or you’re not mad… That’s just stuffing it and as we all know, that ugliness has a way of either seeping out of our pores or blowing up in our faces… And making excuses isn’t effective in the long run. He’s tired, pressured, stressed… but that can only go on for so long and then what?”

3.  Forgetting:

“The only way for the ‘forgive-and forget mentality’ to be practiced is through radical denial, deception, or pretense.”[1] It is not possible for us to forget, only to choose to “not remember” over and over again.

So, now that we’ve cleared away some of the debris attached to the concept of forgiveness, what do I do with all those bitter feelings that crop up when that husband or boyfriend or parent or friend wrongs me?

Here’s where to start:

1.  Be honest with God. No playing pretend games or shaming yourself for feeling the way you do. Tell Him all about it. Be specific. What exactly happened, what exactly do you need to choose to forgive? Say it out loud.

2.  Ask God for help. Only He can wrestle my immensely dominating will into sweet submission. Forgiveness goes against the grain of every base instinct we have.

3.  Trust God with the outcome. Anger is a means of control and of protection. To release this weapon requires that I entrust myself (my feelings, my heart, my future) into the hands of the only One who can keep me safe in the midst of all the hurt this life entails.

4.  Untwist the lies. You have an enemy who works with the offenses of others to smother us with untruth. Satan cannot stand our reflection of God’s beauty. He will use the hurts of others to try to convince us that we are ugly and awful and less-than. We need to separate those enemy-fed lies from what actually happened.

5.  Repent of my reaction. No one can make me angry. Anger is always, always, always a choice. What I do with that anger is my responsibility. We mess up relationships by getting on that roller coaster ride of you-hurt-me, so I-hurt-you-back, but you-started-it! The only way off is through recognizing my wrong response and repenting.

6.  Choose to forgive with my will. My long time mentor, Muriel Cook writes:

The world says, “If you don’t feel like doing something, don’t do it, because it’s not honest.” I’ve learned a secret: if I operate with my will, my emotions will eventually follow. But if I follow my feelings, my will goes along.[2]

7.  Act out forgiveness with my actions. Then Muriel illustrates her point with a story I’ve told my own daughters over and over again:

Let me show you what I mean. Every morning when the alarm goes off, my will and my emotions have an argument. My will says, “You’ve got to get up. You have to go to work today.” My emotions respond, “Oh, no, I can’t. I don’t feel good.” I never feel well in the morning. Now I have a decision to make. Am I going to stay in bed or get up? If I stay in bed, my will stays in bed too. So I get up with my will, go to the bathroom, and brush my teeth. My emotions still protest. It is only after I take a shower, drink a cup of tea, and start moving around that my emotions catch up with my will and I’m a whole person.

We do something similar when we forgive. We use our will, for Jesus’ sake, because He asks us to, and sooner or later our emotions follow.

That’s it girls. Forgiveness does not require years and years of professional counseling. It is not a process as much as it is a heroic act of our wills. The process part is the sluggish following of our feelings to catch up with what we choose to do with our wills.

If you’re finding yourself reacting to your man in unfriendly ways— snapping and snarling or withdrawing and colding him out, might the real cause be an unforgiving spirit?

Take this list with you and go on a long walk with the Father. Pour it out to Him. Let Him clean off the grunginess of unforgiveness. Let Him renew your love for your husband or your boyfriend or that guy who hurts your feelings. Let Him wash all those hurts away and leave you sparkling with the joy of your freedom.

From my heart,

Diane

PS: Here’s what we need: How do you act when you’re mad at something minor? Or have your feelings hurt. Can you tell us stories, even laugh at yourself? You might help us to be a little more honest with ourselves…

---

[1] Dan Allender, Tremper Longmann, Bold Love

[2] Muriel Cook, Shelly Cook Volkhardt, Kitchen Table Counseling

Last week I asked women to write and tell us what they really want from their men. I’d anticipated your answers, made a list of things I thought you’d say, outlined what I wanted to write about. But you surprised me by both what you did and didn’t say. Every one of you included somewhere on your list, this one thing… What every woman really wants…. Spiritual Leadership

Dear sons,

I have been writing to the women in your life for a long time now.

Words about their need to find all their hope and soul-satisfaction from Jesus.  About how to then turn around and pour the love they find in Him back into you, with skill and on purpose.

I hope you’ve noticed the effort your women are making to love you well, to love you the way you want to be loved— with respect and friendliness and with an awareness of who you are.

Now it’s your turn to listen.

Because the imperfect-but-trying women in your life have needs too. And because sometimes we women talk too long and too much about things even we don’t understand.

I think we’ve made something simple sound impossible.

And I’m hoping you catch a glimpse of a way to be who your are meant to be in a way that works for you.

Three Ways To Be A Spiritual Leader:

1.  Initiate

What your women are hoping for more than anything else, is so simple it’s almost laughable. They want you to understand their need to be led. Not dominated. Not preached at. Just gently and consistently led back to centering their hearts on Jesus. They’ve grown weary from feeling like they’re always the ones to lead the way back to God.

They want you to say:

“Let’s go to church tomorrow…”

“This morning I was reading in my Bible…”

“That message really spoke to me about…”

To a woman, that is spiritual leadership. When you take the initiative, when you make the suggestion, when you say it first… something inside of her falls more deeply in love with you. A woman admires a man who alerts her to focus on God. Respect grows, not because you’re perfect, but because you recognize who is and you love her enough to point her back to Jesus.

2.  Remind

Your women are smart. They know better than to think you can meet their every need and want and expectation. They know what you sense- that they’re needy, achingly so. It is the plague of every woman. And your women know that only Jesus can fill that emptiness.

Still, we forget... every day we forget.

And that’s when a woman becomes crabby or whiny or short-tempered or demanding.

What a woman really needs from you is simply a reminder. Bring the conversation back to Jesus. Remind her that He is taking care of her. Point out His faithfulness in her past. That He will not fail her now. That He loves her more than she can possibly know.

If you do this, and you’re nice about it, you will see immediate relief. She’ll sigh. Her shoulders will relax. She’ll nod her head and look up to you and be filled with gratitude. Because she knows… and agrees… and forgot. Again.

 3.  Pray

This is the big one. The hard one. Yet the one thing every woman will recognize as the ultimate spiritual leadership. You don’t have to pray long. You don’t have to pray first thing every morning or last thing every night. All you really need to do is grab her hand when she’s worried or frightened or feeling something she shouldn’t. Just hold her close and bring her to the Father. Out loud. By doing that you are showing your wife or girlfriend that you love her enough to bring her to the One who can fix everything. Yes, you are strong, yes you can solve most things… but by leading her into the presence of the One who is fully in charge, she sees you as the ultimate loving leader. Her relief and peace of heart will be palpable.

That, my dear sons, is what spiritual leadership looks like.

You don’t have to be eloquent or perfect. No theology degree required. All you need is an awareness of Jesus and the boldness to bring the woman you love to Him.

So simple. So very hard to actually do.

But I guarantee you this- if you will do these three things:

If you will initiate and remind and pray with her… she will respond.

She can’t help it. A woman’s feelings of love and attraction are so tied to her feelings of respect that she cannot separate the two. And nothing elicits the respect of a Jesus-following woman like a man who is bold enough to grab her hand and say, with Paul,

“Follow me, as I follow Christ.”

(1Cor 11:1)

May God give you the boldness to lead her closer to Himself.

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. Girls, your comments are fueling these posts. Can you tell me how your husband or boyfriend leads you spiritually?

And men, is there something we should know? Can you help us learn how to approach this often intimidating subject with grace? We're learning... all of us. To hear directly from you men would be an incredible help.

(source)

"Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue; God's voice is its most essential part. Listening to God's voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine."

Dear girls,

It’s time I let you in on a secret I’ve kept close to my heart for a long while. As open as I try to be on these pages, there is a part of me that cringes at revealing too much.

What will you think? What if I fail? 

But I have learned to trust your hearts.

You are gracious women who know about failure and yet have the courage to dream. You are women who risk, women who know their limits and choose to reach further.

So here’s my secret: I am writing a book. Or at least trying to write a book.

This has been my dream for so long I’d almost stopped trying to make it a reality. Until I got an email from a literary agent who told me his wife read my blog. Low and behold, he thought I might want to write a book. And more, he’d help me learn how.

That was well over a year ago. Since that time, Bill has become a friend to Phil and I, encouraging, pushing, patiently enduring my foot dragging perfectionism and overloaded schedule. With his help I’ve finally finished my proposal, all 50+ pages of it.

Next week he’s sending it out to real live editors. People who will flip through the pages I laboriously wrote and rewrote and agonized over. People who will make a choice to either throw it away or take it to the next step.

And I tell you because I just cannot wait alone. This does not feel like waiting for Christmas… more like that long, drawn out, stomach-clenching wait for the results from Final’s Week.

“Don’t take it personally”, my husband warns. But that, as every woman well knows, is not possible. For a woman, for me, everything is personal!

And I probably shouldn’t tell you because now you’ll ask… Have you heard yet? And I’ll pretend it doesn’t matter. Shrug my shoulders and act all cool and nonchalant. When inside I’ll be hoping every day that someone will want my story.

But you’re my girls, my friends, the ones who listen to my stories and tell me your own. The ones who give courage and take courage and delight together in the Father who cares.

My book is simply my story. In it I give all the details and events that led up to my diagnosis of deafness, then the miraculously beautiful rescue I didn’t deserve. In it, I try to let you see who I really am— how I felt, what I feared, why I fell, what brought me back. I’ve written details even my own daughters don’t know, dredging up memories I’d tried to push aside in order to capture the lessons learned the hard way.

My goal in writing this book is to help you and other’s like you. Because I have this crazy sense that you want intimacy with God as much as I did and do. And that you want to hear Him. That you don’t want to miss those messages He has for you everyday. That you want to know what He is saying and why. And that, like me, you have am insatiable appetite for more, something that no one but the Father can ever begin to satisfy.

So now you know. My secret’s out. I’ve dared to tell you about my dream even before it’s become a reality.

Will you pray? For me as I wait with heart in hand… for each of those editors are who will find a file in their email and decide… for Bill (my friend and agent) who will do his magic…

I promise to let you know because I love you, girls.

From my heart,

Diane

(PART ONE)

Dear Matthew,

Today I just want to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful maiden. She was the delight of her father and the joy of her mother.  She was extraordinarily intelligent, a voracious learner, a lover of God, a passionate follower of Jesus. And she loved people.

She really loved people.

Hurting souls flocked to her for warmth and care and she never failed to give. Sometimes she brought the broken ones to her father and mother and said, “Here’s one for you to fix, won’t you pour some wisdom into this failed one?”

One day this Beauty went away on a Grand Adventure. She left her love-filled home to seek her fortune and her calling in a place that cried out for all she had to offer.

Her parents prayed… and cried… and prayed yet more. To let their delight, their joy go into a world filled with so much bad frightened them.

While she was in that land away from home… the beautiful maiden met a boy.

Messages flew back and forth between the beloved girl and the mother and father way back home. Hers filled with descriptions and wonder and feelings and hope. Theirs weighted with dire warnings, lessons, reminders, and worry.

One day the father mounted on the wings of the wind and flew to where the daughter lived and loved. He brought a thick black Bible, an arsenal of words, and a fierce scowl.

The boy came trembling but true. He shook the hand of the father, looked him in the eye, and assured him of his faithful following after the King.

A pause…

They sat… They talked… They even laughed a time or two.

And then the father said this.

For more than two-score years I have protected my daughter in every way. I watched over her when she was just a babe in her mother’s arms. I provided for every need before she had it. I have loved her and taught her and poured the best years of my life into her. I have prayed over her and for her and with her.

I ask just one thing of you: Guard her purity.

With that warning, the father mounted his flying steed with a swish of his cloak, and returned home.

The boy did what the father commanded. He watched over the beloved daughter. He cared for her and loved her and won her heart.

And he protected her purity.

When the day came for the father to give the girl-turned-woman to the boy-turned-man in marriage, a great celebration took place in all the Kingdom.

With the greatest joy, the father and the mother who had loved their girl with so much hope, embraced the one who had honored the King by protecting their daughter.

And every day they thank the King for that mighty man. And they pray for him and they believe in him and they love him as their own.

May Steve and Rebekah live happily ever after.

The End.

And so my son, may you do the same when someday you see a daughter of the King you want for your own.

May you protect her purity with the fierceness of a warrior.

From my heart,

Mom

(source)

Tonight I will tell my story at a church in Eugene called Ekklesia. 

I'll be nervous of course, trying frantically to memorize what I wrote but will not say...

But I'm excited too. This is a church full of young people with great hearts to listen and learn and do. They're coming to hear how the Father worked in my life and it is my prayer and hope that they leave filled with wonder at His goodness.

So will you pray? Please?

Last night I heard Pastor Mutatu, from Zimbabwe say,

 No prayer, no power.

Little prayer, little power.

More prayer, more power.

Much prayer, much power!

And so I cry out for much prayer.

God's power to grip our hearts and heal deep wounds and teach and encourage-- especially that! 

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. I'll be sure to send lots of pics via Instagram...