Hope/Encouragement Archives

7 Amazing Strengths of a Highly Sensitive Person

Do other people’s moods affect you? Do you get stressed when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time? Do loud noises and strong smells bother you? Then you might be a highly sensitive person.

About twenty percent of people have a nervous system that makes them especially in tune with what’s happening around them. I’m one of the twenty percent—and it’s likely that you or someone you love is too.

When you’re asked, “Why are you so sensitive?” or told to toughen up it can seem like being an HSP is a struggle. But I believe it’s actually a superpower.

7 Amazing Strengths of a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

1) Relationships – HSPs make great friends, parents and partners. We’re aware of what’s going on in the hearts, minds and lives of those we care about most (sometimes even more than they are). We’re attentive and responsive to the needs of others.
2) Empathy – HSPs actually feel the emotions of others. This is beyond sympathy, which is more like pity. Because of this we’re gifted at making people feel truly heard and less alone.
3) Consideration – HSPs are highly in tune to how their actions impact others. We’re not going to be the ones cutting others off in traffic, talking loudly on our phones in a quiet coffee shop or having too many items in the express lane at the grocery store.
4) Intuition – HSP nervous systems are constantly taking in tons of information. Because of this we often “just know” things in ways that are hard to explain. When we’re making decisions this adds a deeper layer that can give us unusual discernment.
5) Courage – HSPs are tender and tough. Having a soft heart in a hard world is courage not weakness. Kindness is an act of bravery. Engaging with the emotions of others takes guts. Never, ever let someone tell you that being sensitive is being weak.
6) Living Fully – HSPs don’t go through life half asleep. We’re not phoning it in or doing the minimum. We’re engaged with the people around us, the places we’re in and the purpose we’ve been put on earth to complete.
7) Resilience – HSPs are deeply affected by everything from news headlines to heartbreaking news about a close friend. Keeping our hearts open is a battle because it would be so much easier and less exhausting to close ourselves off from everything. We get knocked down and keep getting back up. We’re not weak; we’re warriors.

Next Steps

- If you want to know whether or not you or someone you love is an HSP, search for “Highly Sensitive Person Quiz” and take it online.
- If you love, lead or share life with HSPs, will you remind us of our strengths today, especially if you haven’t understood them before? Your encouragement matters more to us than you know.
- If you’re a Highly Sensitive Person, keep being who you are. Our cynical, bitter world needs you now more than ever. You are here for such a time as this.
- Take time to work through the gift I send everyone who joins my (free) courageous community — 15 Minutes to Your Mission Statement: 4 Exercises to Help You Discover Your Personal Strengths and Direction

“Now that I’ve quit trying to be like everyone else, I’m enjoying new-found freedoms that have brought me contentment, peace, and unexpected joy.” – Cheri Gregory, HSP and founder of the site Sensitive and Strong (a great resource!)

Your sensitivity isn’t a struggle, it’s a superpower.

XOXO

Holley

p.s. If you liked this post you’ll love Episode 16 of More than Small Talk: Strong Women, Soft Hearts (available now on KLRC.com or your favorite podcast app.)

You’re Loved Right Here, Right Now, Just As You Are

by Holley 5 Comments

Let’s talk about how loved you are. Here’s what I want to share with you today to remind you to pause and embrace your life — no matter how messy it is:

Listen: Dare to Be Who You Are (More than Small Talk podcast, episode 4)
Watch: A behind-the-scenes Instagram video with the More than Small Talk cast about self-care. Disclaimer: includes giggling.
Read (below): A one-minute reminder that you’re so loved.

Take One Minute to Remember…You’re So Loved

We really are loved. Just as we are. More than we know. There’s nothing that can change that in our lives. Not a bad day, not a mistake, not all the ways we may sometimes worry we fall short. Not messy hair or not fitting into our skinny jeans or that word we accidentally said when we stubbed our toe. Not the dust bunnies in the corners or the secrets in our hearts. Nothing.

Why? Because Jesus.

Whew. Let’s take a deep breath and remember we’re loved today. And one of the best things we can do for the people we love too is believing that’s true. “We love because God loved us first.” (1 John 4:19)

XOXO
Holley

Small Next Step: Pause. Deep breath. Pray, “God, thank You that I am loved right here, right now, just as I am today. Amen.”

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I’d love to continue to connect with you! My goal is to help you embrace who you are and become all you’re created to be, one short and sweet email at a time. Join over 33,465 readers who have decided to be regularly inspired and encouraged!

We Are Imperfect…And Perfectly Loved

by Holley 19 Comments

{my graphics are free goodies for you}

We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8

We walk through the door of a room that smells of earth and dirt, fallen trees, and ancient seasons. The table is rectangular, surrounded by a rainbow of small chairs. My daughter and I are decades ahead of our fellow participants in this clay class. The others are pig-tailed and freckled, dark-headed and clad in neon tennis shoes. “Did you know it would be like this?” she asks. “Nope,” I reply. We grin.

I signed up for this class as part of my resolution to be a tourist in my hometown this year, to do things I never have before. I’d pictured fellow adults around me, a serious and substantial exercise. Instead, it’s like art class in elementary school. Already the table is messy. Already it’s clear I’m not among Picassos or Monets. I’m delighted and relieved.

We sit and the instructor points to a block of gray in front of us. “This is your clay. Today we are going to shape it into hearts.” We trace outlines on the surface with a thin stick, then dig deep. All that is not necessary or useful is stripped away. We hold the hearts in our hands, and their cool, still surfaces grow warm and alive beneath our touch.

“Now you can design them however you’d like,” the teacher says. My daughter chooses freehand. She swirls and writes. I use little presses to make polka dots and patterns. Hers will be spoon rests. Mine a set of ornaments. And I think of Jeremiah, sent by God to the potter’s house, and how this prophet watched a craftsman with the clay, “shaping it as it seemed best to him” (Jer. 18:4).

This work is intimate and personal. There is no mass production. No uniformity or conformity. It would be impossible to replicate one of these. Two little girls across from us gleefully push their hands into their pieces and I see fingerprints. If we ever wonder if God wants us to be like someone else, ever worry He’s disinterested in the details of our lives, ever fret He’s after machine-like perfection with us, then all we need to remember is that He is a Potter.

After we shape, we paint. But before this comes a disclaimer from the instructor: “When the clay goes through the fire, it will come out white.” This is beautiful and familiar to me, the way trials bring out something unexpectedly lovely and strong in us. I choose red paint and follow lines and curves, working with care. And the whole time I have this vision in my mind of what will be. I work toward that, steadily, and when the form is imperfect, when it has dents or cracks, uneven edges or inconsistencies, I am not deterred. I understand this is the nature of clay.

And I come to understand, too, this clay has but one role: to yield itself to my care. It has nothing to worry about, to fear, to strive for as long as it remains in my hands. “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). We are dirt and we are the crafts of divinity. We are dust and delight. We are in progress and already perfectly loved.

At the end of the class, I look at the places where those plain gray slabs had been. Each one now holds a new creation. Some thick-skinned. Others delicate. Pink and yellow and blue. Some decorated with ponies and others looking suspiciously like pizza slices. None of them are museum- or art-gallery worthy. But they all have this in common: each reflects their maker in some way.

And I realize, suddenly, this was always the whole purpose, the entire point. To display the vision of the Artist is what success looks like for clay.

XOXO
Holley Gerth

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This post is an excerpt from my new devotional, Hope Your Heart Needs: 52 Encouraging Reminders of How God Cares for You. It’s a little book that’s big on encouragement. Get your copy (and some extra for Christmas gifts) at your favorite place for books today and you’ll also get an exclusive, limited-time only ebook, Hope for the Holidays (get all the details here). Yay!

I’m also over at (in)courage today sharing about how you truly are making a difference. Join me?

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You’re invited to join the “Let’s Have Coffee” link-up! Simply write a post that has the kind of encouragement you’d share with a friend over coffee (the link-up goes live at 5:30am CT every Wednesday, and you can view the Link-Up Guidelines here). Don’t have a blog? You can still write an encouraging comment. If you’re reading this by email, go to holleygerth.com to see all the fun and join in too.

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When Our Hearts Need Someone to Count On

by Holley 22 Comments

{my graphics are free goodies for you}

I am nine, sitting cross-legged on an elementary-school gym floor that smells vaguely like rubber soles and ketchup. My friends and I are lined up in a row waiting to go to recess or art class or the library. We’re likely wearing scrunchies in our side ponytails and neon shorts; children of the eighties. The girls nearest me lean in, grinning, and say, “We want to tell you something. We’re best friends.” I look back and forth between the two of them, confused, because just yesterday the one with the strawberry hair told me that I would always be her best friend.

I ride my bike home alone that day, forlorn, and sit at the kitchen table with a cookie in my hand and my mama across from me. These things happen, she explains gently. I nod, feeling very grown-up and wise, even in my disappointment. I will think of this again when my crush flirts with me one day and holds the hand of a long-legged athlete the next. I will feel it when the conversation with the editor at the conference seems to go so well and then the rejection letter comes in the mail. I will revisit it when the whirling crowd online is landing on my site today and taking off to another one the next like a flock of spring sparrows.

It is the nature of humans to be fickle. We put rings on each other’s fingers and then signatures on divorce papers. We are employee of the month and then find ourselves on the lay-off list. We are dear friends and then time and space and life make us drift until we’re looking back at old photos and thinking, I haven’t seen her in a while. Yet we keep searching, hoping, longing for that person who will stay. The constant who will never go away.

In these moments, it comforts me to know “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). He isn’t going to pick someone else on the playground. He isn’t going to bring us roses and then forget to call the next day. He won’t recruit us for the pet project and then neglect to invite us to the celebration party. He won’t use us up and throw us out, pull us close and then push us away, whisper in our ear and then lose our phone number. Because His love for us isn’t based on our charm; it’s rooted in His character. It doesn’t come from His emotions but instead from an eternal commitment. It isn’t dependent on what we do for Him, but what He’s already done for us.

It gets even better: Jesus also tells us, “I am making everything new!” (Rev. 21:5). Who He is doesn’t change, yet He moves and pursues in endlessly creative ways. It’s what our hearts long for, what we’re really looking for when we exchange the friendship bracelets or say the vows or sit down at the desk in a new office for the first time. We want to know we can trust, completely, the one with whom we have aligned ourselves. And yet we also want to know that doing so will lead to life and growth and adventure. We want stability and excitement, consistency and change, familiarity and novelty.

When we try to demand all of this from a human being, we always end up disappointed. But the answer isn’t to shut down our hearts, to tell ourselves we’re being unrealistic or irrational. Instead, it’s to take those desires to the One who put them there in the first place, the only One who can truly fulfill them. Jesus “is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8) yet He also says. “I am making everything new!” (Rev. 21:5). Both are what we need. Both are eternally true.

XOXO
Holley Gerth

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Waffle Fries, Grace and Our Worst Moments

by Holley 17 Comments

Crumpled tissues create a fortress in front of me, flanked by medicine bottles. I’m behind them, slumped down, surrendering to sleep at last. My husband comes into the room and says something. I struggle to hear, to process through the fog. But I miss what he’s trying to express entirely. Instead, I misunderstand. I snap. Angry words. Then tears. A retreat to our bedroom. A slammed door. I’m a crazy woman, out of my mind. What am I doing? What am I saying?

I don’t trust myself to calm down or behave. So, still in my pajamas, I grab my purse and walk out the door. I back up the car and then sit in the street, unsure of where to go, what to do. I’d likely give our entire town the plague if I entered a public space, and besides, I don’t feel well enough to take another step.

Then a moment of pure southern inspiration: my vehicle begins the familiar journey to the Chick-fil-A drive-through. I get my waffle fries and a diet Dr. Pepper, effective as any prescription. I pull into the final row of the parking lot.

I call my friend and say something like, “I had an epic meltdown and I can’t calm myself down and I’m in the parking lot in my pajamas eating fries.” She tries to understand me between bites and might have stifled a giggle before she tells me this is not the end of the world and, no, I am not the worst human ever.

{my graphics are free goodies for you}

She convinces me to go home. “Sleep,” she says. “Sleep and then work it out.” I walk back through the door of my house, repentant and exhausted. I crawl under the covers and wake three hours later. I go to our living room, to the mama-bear red couch. I sit on it and wait, unsure of how to proceed. My husband comes out from his office and eyes me warily, as one might a normally docile pet who has recently taken up biting. I pat the couch to let him know it’s safe. He sits beside me and the tears come—a river, a flood. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

Surely he’s going to reprimand me. He’s going to tell me all I’ve done wrong not just today but in all our marriage. He’s going to make me feel the shame I deserve. I am ready. I have it coming. But instead my husband looks at me, puts his arm around my shoulders, and says only, “None of us are at our best all the time.” This is it. All he offers. The end. I lean into his shoulder and I almost can’t receive it.

But then somehow I do, and I feel loved, so loved, in a deeper way than I even do in my best moments. Because in those I-have-it-all-together times, it can seem as if somehow I have earned the affection and the accolades and the acceptance. But I know, with my messed up hair and messed up words and cough-syrup stains, that I’ve got nothing to offer just then. Not a thing.

I think of Jesus and how He knows what’s true about us too—that we are not always at our best. We act as if He will be shocked and surprised and dismayed when we fail or falter. But hasn’t He known what we are capable of all along? Isn’t this why He came? And when we come to Him in that state, broken and sick, sorry and hurting, He doesn’t offer condemnation. He offers compassion. “It is finished,” He said on the cross. It is over. It is done. You are forgiven.

I hope I never end up eating waffle fries quite like that again (they taste better with ketchup than shame). And I hope you never follow my greasy-fingered example. But we are human, you see, and if we find ourselves in such a situation, at least now we know more about what to do. We’ll know we can go, right away, still in our pajamas and holding our tissues, to the God who loves us. The One who has seen us at our worst and still, always, loves us best.

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This post is an excerpt from my new devotional Hope Your Heart Needs: 52 Encouraging Reminders of How God Cares for You. It’s also featured on (in)courage’s Recommended Reads page today. See it there and find other recommendations for great books too!

If you’d like more encouragement like this, order Hope Your Heart Needs today (it would make a great Christmas gift for all the women on your list!). When you do, you’ll also get an exclusive, limited-time only, bonus ebook called Hope for the Holidays (click here for all the details on how to download your free ebook).

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