Sister Act

My sister, Carmen and I recently spoke at her women's event in Derby. It was a journey that began two years earlier, when after a deep conversation about past hurts and some groundbreaking healing, I distinctly felt God telling me that someday we would speak about what we had learned to women and sing a song together. I called Carmen to tell her my "vision" to see if she had heard the same word from God. "Absolutely not!" was her emphatic answer. I must say I was relieved to hear it!

Now we both know that was all part of God's grand plan to give us the confidence to move forward when, two years later, the opportunity to do just as He had shown us came about.

You can read our talk at my Hide 'N Seek web site if you want the unedited version. Be forewarned, there's even more there than we said that night since we quickly realized we'd be there until midnight if we said everything we had written.

The heart of the lies we believed were summarized in this portion of our talk:

Cheri: You know how there are those people who just have a way about them. When they tell the story, it’s funnier. When they sing the song, you feel it more. When they play the game, it’s more fun. Well, that is my sister. This was obvious to me at a very young age. So I was left trying to figure out where my value came from when I didn’t have these innate, intangible qualities that brought her such attention and affection. So I became the one who cooked and helped out and tried to keep the peace. And when I became good at these things, the lines were drawn, the competition established and the turf divided up. I don’t remember Carmen having a deep desire to cook and sew and earn money for her own clothes. But I do remember wanting to enjoy music or our neighborhood friends and feeling like I had crossed into enemy territory. So I wondered, “She knows me better than anyone and she hates me. So no one else could ever possibly really like me for who I am. They will only like me if I serve them.”

Carmen: You know how there are those people who just have a way about them. They have the ability to visualize something and then create it into being with their hands; When you have a decision to make you seek their wise council; When you need something organized and planned that is who you go to to get it done right. Well, that is my sister. Man, in my eyes, she never got in trouble and was always on the side of right. I was the extreme teenager, too happy, too sad, too funny, too sensitive, too cute, too dramatic…too much! I knew me in all my “too muchness” made her feel over-shadowed and I felt judgment and disappointment from her. So I wondered, “She knows me better than anyone and she hates me. So no one could possibly really like me for who I am. They will only like me if I tone it down a notch.” In the shadow of my strengths, she felt overlooked. In the shadow of her strengths I felt misunderstood.

We have finally come to realize that God created each of us in His image for His unique purposes and that the beauty we see in the other in no way diminishes the beauty He has created in us. But it's been a long road to get there. And the road could not have been navigated in our own understanding but only though the truth of God's word and a willingness on both our parts to find truth and healing.

Our talk focused on our "Thought Closet", a term borrowed from author Jennifer Rothschild in Self Talk, Soul Talk. We identified several lies we as women tell ourselves when we wallow in past hurts and bitterness, compare ourselves to others, or envy others' beauty thinking it dimishes our own, or when we live in a spirit of fear and anxiety. We then helped the audience to understand that we must RECOGNIZE the lie, REFUSE it, RELABEL it with the truth of God's word and REPEAT this process again and again until the lie is sucked dry and the truth lives large! You can read the lies and corresponding truth on the HNS web site. There is also a version for teens/pre-teens as well as one about the media.

It was God thing and that is always a good thing, never to be missed when He brings it your way, irregardless of the fear you must push through to do it. I heard a great quote the day of the event. The speaker said, "If you don't have the courage to do what God has asked you to do, don't worry about it. Just do the thing you would do if you did." So we did.