(in)courage Archives - Holley Gerth

What You Just Can’t Do on Social Media

I stood in a park on a fall day, leaves a kaleidoscope of colors around me. I held a bouquet of burgundy flowers in front of my simple black dress, a gold ribbon wrapped around my waist. In front of me two of my dearest friends sniffled, trying to hold back a river of emotion, clutching the tissues they’d secretly wrapped around the stems of the flowers they also held. A third dear friend with hair the color of flame wore a white dress and said “I do” to a man who had won her heart.

Afterwards there was music and dancing, the forest floor a stage, the sky a ceiling. We ate cookies instead of cake—chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal and toffee. I snapped a picture of the bride with her head thrown back, laughing as the groom twirled her around during their first dance. It’s the closest I’ve come to witnessing a fairy tale.

Those moments don’t come often in life, the ones full of holy magic and wild wonder, the sort that make you want to ease time down to a trickle and let it run over your hands, your heart slowly, slowly. As I breathed in the scent of campfires and sugar my mind drifted back to another moment, years ago, that felt entirely different.

It happened during a year when I’d gotten on a plane twenty times, when peanuts and pretzels in little packages felt like a solid meal. It came during a season where I cried in hotel bathrooms and stared at the ceiling at midnight. It snuck up on me when, if I wasn’t traveling, I spent most of my time looking into a computer screen. The world felt flat and pixelated, the desire to prove myself in some mysterious way a constant drumbeat in my weary bones.

One day I went to coffee with the bride—although it would be years before she took on that role. Months had somehow slipped by without a meaningful conversation between us. I’d been distracted and exhausted, distant and a bit depressed. She sat across from me and pulled a letter from her purse. It said many kind and beautiful things. But they all came down to this: She loved me and she missed me.

I felt like the Apostle Paul with the scales falling off my eyes. I could suddenly see what all my hustling had done to the people closest to me. Later in the car on the drive home I told myself things had to change.

I’d like to say the alterations were easy. But I was hooked on approval like an addict in a dark alley, every round of applause or “like” on social media another hit. I felt the withdrawals of saying “no” to good opportunities, of choosing to be present in my everyday life where I was quite ordinary rather than on a stage where no one could see my flaws. I worried that I wasn’t keeping up or that I was letting everyone down.

Click here to continue reading this post over at (in)courage.

Also, if you’d like more encouragement you’ll find it in my new devotional, Hope Your Heart Needs: 52 Encouraging Reminders of How God Cares for You. Right now you’ll also receive my exclusive, limited-time-only bonus ebook Hope for the Holidays (get all the details here).

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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What If We All Gave Each Other Grace Instead of Advice?

by Holley

I’ve just come from a long walk in the summer heat (be thankful you can’t smell me). Mark and I were running errands and he suddenly remembered he needed to be somewhere soon. I wanted to head home. When we got to the end of the main thoroughfare to our neighborhood I said, “You can drop me off at the corner and I’ll walk. I was planning to exercise anyway.”

He agreed and unceremoniously deposited me in front of a stoplight. I wondered what the truck in front of us speculated about this occurrence. Lovers’ quarrel? Suspicious character in yoga pants?

I’d driven down this particular road dozens of times but never walked it. Whizzing by in the car I didn’t notice how the red dust tastes like copper on your tongue. I didn’t hear the roar of cars in a hurry and know the way a semi-truck can sneak up on you like a snorting bull. I found out the pair of scruffy dogs behind a chain link fence were friends not fighters.

At first I felt intrigued by all of this but as the minutes went on and the sun beat down I began to notice other things too. I realized how unbearably warm the air is mid-afternoon, how there are cracks in the sidewalk waiting for unsuspecting toes, how the hills seem so much steeper and more exhausting when you don’t have an engine.

I glanced at the cars going past me and imagined one of them noticing my growing angst then rolling down their windows to give me advice. “Pick up the pace,” they might say, “Swing your elbows more.” At this point my response might be something which could not be publicly mentioned. I then considered how we live in a world of drive by opinions. We face a challenge in life and suddenly people have all kinds of thoughts about it. Well-meaning folks make off-handed remarks that start with, “You know you really should….”

I’ve come to believe if we have not walked a particular road personally then we ought to approach any comments about it very, very carefully. Because sometimes life drops us off on the corner and there is no time for preparation—only perspiration. When this happens we don’t need “how to” but instead “me too.” We need folks who will just come alongside us or at least tell us they’ve been there. We need to hear we’re still loved, it’s okay to not be okay and small steps add up to big things. We need the grace of Jesus.

If we find ourselves the recipient of lots of unsolicited advice (or even criticism) we often become overwhelmed. Then we feel shame and guilt because we’re not doing it right, because we’re melting on the sidewalk while going the speed of an ancient tortoise. The cars keep coming by with people yelling what they think we should do out the windows. We try to apply it all but we can’t. If we were good people and better Christians then we would be able to do it the way everyone tells us we should. What’s the matter with us?

We can become discouraged when we begin to think we have to do what everyone else tells us is the best way. The reality is it’s their way.

I finally rounded the corner to our neighborhood and breathed a sigh of relief.

From now on I’ll look at the road I walked down differently. And if someone told me they were about to start down that same path there would be plenty I could say. But I think I’d stick to this, “Thanks for telling me. I’ve been down that road too. You can do it. It’s going to be both harder and more beautiful than it seems. I’m cheering for you.”

XOXO
Holley Gerth

This post is featured on (in)courage today. You’re invited to join the conversation and leave a comment there!

p.s. If you’d like more encouragement in your walk with Jesus you’ll find it in Hope Your Heart Needs: 52 Encouraging Reminders of How God Cares for You. It’s brand new and here’s a free excerpt.

There’s Grace for All of Us Today

by Holley

I walk the aisles of an unfamiliar grocery store in the town where we’re vacationing. It’s strange how places have their scents — this one is sunscreen and mangoes and salt. I pass the deli and the cereal aisle, the ice cream coolers and the rows of egg cartons. Eventually I find the school supply section. It’s small, as if such pursuits in a beach town are to be hidden rather than encouraged.

I stand in front of the spiral notebooks, clean and new. Small worlds of possibility bound with wire. In my eagerness I reach too quickly for a notebook. In doing so I clumsily brush the edge of a box of light bulbs sitting just to the left of it. I watch, slow motion, as they tumble like a bird shot by a hunter and land with a thud on the linoleum floor.

The box is solid and I can’t see the bulbs inside so at first I hope. Surely they’re fine, I tell myself. It wasn’t that hard of a bump. It wasn’t that far of a fall. But when I pick up the little package I hear it, the sound of shattered pieces on the inside. I shake it just to be sure like an inquisitive baby would a rattle and it sounds like wind chimes. I cannot appreciate the lovely noise. It only sounds like fear and failure to me.

I stand for a moment, notebook in one hand and box in the other. Then I march, determinedly, to the customer service desk as if I’m a student on the way to the principal’s office. I have always been a rule follower and on the single occasion I got sent to the office (for chatting with my boyfriend in the hallway long after the bell had rung), I walked with my head lowered and shoulders slumped. My posture is the same as I approach the counter and hold out the box, the source of such shame.

The young woman behind the counter tilts her head curiously. I clear my throat and prepare for my confession, sure I will be sent to the grocery store version of jail. “I knocked this over and it broke,” I say, finally daring to meet the eyes of my judge and jury.

She pauses for a moment and considers me, standing there in such a state of sad penance. Then she laughs right out loud, a sound like the waves against the shore, and exclaims, “Girl, we all make mistakes every day. You don’t have to pay anything.” I stand there, shocked and grateful before stammering a “thank you” and backing away slowly as if she might change her mind. Then quite unexpectedly, tears come to my eyes.

Click here to continue reading over at (in)courage…

P.S. If you’d like more encouragement and grace, you’ll find it in my new gift book with DaySpring, Promises from God for Life’s Hard Moments, and the companion journal (the cover says, “She Believed She Was Loved and It Made Her Brave”).

Let’s Never Stop Being Awkward

by Holley

I’ve had a week filled with awkward. It happens.

First, I went to a women’s event where I hardly knew anyone. I stood in the foyer picking at a plate of pasta while my heart almost pounded out of my chest. I attempted to make small talk. I went to the bathroom three times in forty-five minutes just to hide. I occasionally stared at my phone so it would seem like someone, somewhere might know and like me.

Now here’s the thing: Last fall I did a speaking event at this very same place. I stood on the stage and talked about being Fiercehearted with calmness and confidence. I signed books and snapped pictures with a couple hundred folks. But this casual mingling in the foyer was so much harder.

A couple of evenings later I sat around a table with a group of local writers. As we talked about books and blog posts and what it’s like to be in the world of words, I felt the same anxiety coming back. My cheeks felt hot, my shirt got sticky with sweat and the inner critic became so loud I could hardly hear anything else. I knew many of these women online before I met them in real life, and having a screen between us changed everything. I could be confident and witty. I never said “um” or laughed at the wrong time or worried about my hair.

My husband and I are hooked on the television show Nashville right now (don’t judge) and one of the main characters, Juliette Barnes, said something that keeps ringing in my ears. Her personal life is a train wreck but as she’s about to step on stage to do a concert she remarks, “It’s easy to make 20,000 people love you.”

Isn’t that what our world tells us? Post the perfect pictures on Instagram. Work the crowd. Craft an image. Create an audience instead of meaningful relationships. Avoid all the awkward.

But despite its difficulties, I’m falling in love with the awkward. It’s where we find out which one of our friends laughs so hard she snorts. It’s where the mascara runs right down our faces and we discover how lovely the ugly cry can be. It’s where we remember we are not God — and that is a very good thing. It’s where we learn to believe we’re loved for who we are and not who we sometimes wish we could be.

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