Attention all Little Girls - You Go Girl! June 6, 2009

Jack and I will celebrate 35 years of marriage next week. What an amazing journey. Wonderful, adventurous, powerful, and still intriguing. I love him and he loves me. We have grown in our love for each other and have learned a lot about love from each other.

It is amazing when I think that I was a 15 year-old kid who "got in trouble" and married the 17 year old that was responsible for the seed growing inside of me that so drastically changed my life as a sophomore in high school.

I'm 50 now. Not a kid, but the same little girl that I was back then still lives in me. She seems more confident now, more experienced and mature than that other little girl . . . at least on the outside. Inside the same feelings of curiosity, fear, and anxiety lurk. Every little girl, no matter what the age of her body, wants to know that she is loved, she is special, she is valuable, and that she is worth the time, attention, and devotion of those around her.

When I was a little girl, in my little girl body, I wanted to know that I was pretty, that someone saw me, heard me, cared for me, valued me. I went out of my way to look for the approval of all that was ME. I was hungry for affirmation of a value that I wanted desperately to believe was inside. Seeking to find my value in what others thought of me, and using their measuring sticks to somehow determine if I was close or not.

Well, the little girl is still inside and still wonders if I am valuable, but now when I ask that question, I do not ask the world. I ask my Father. My value to Him far outweighs worldly measurements and His answer always makes me smile with a powerful assurance. When I misdirect my value question to the world, the smile and the assurance is woefully absent, or at best fleeting creating a cynicism that is not particularly attractive.

I have learned that my worldly approval rating is incredibly unreliable and vulnerable to my ability to perform well enough. I know now that I cannot perform to everyone's expectations no matter how hard I may want to, whether for my own feelings of self-worth or for the pure and honest love for the people for whom I am trying to perform. Performances are highly over-rated and are subject to the critics of the world who choose to judge you like food or movies. Critics who judge a chef's special recipes or the creative genius displayed on movie screens across the nation, and I rarely agree with them anyway.

Don't ask the world if you are valuable. Don't ask the world to approve of who you are, what you believe, or whether or not you measure up. They are asking the same questions of you, so how could they have the answers! You are both searching for the same thing and it is found in God. Our creator. Our Father. Dad is pleased with all of us, and His answers to our questions of value have nothing to do with performance, and they will always put a smile on your face and an assurance that no critic can take away.

You are loved. You are valuable. You are beautiful. You are intelligent. You are fabulous. You are special. Your Father placed a value on you that is unmatched by all of the treasure in all of the world, and He made all the treasure of the world! This is something that I almost find impossible to teach - like trying to get others to see the picture in a picture and no matter how much you try to point it out, they just squint and tilt their head in quirky disbelief. It almost feels like they have to dig through the mire for themselves, just like I did, in order to believe me, but what they will find, just like I did, is a value that was there all along. Just under the critic's reviews, measuring sticks, and painful life lessons.

My life story is often the key to hope for those who hear it. I will try again to offer hope by sharing these thoughts and other life principles that all little girls (and their mothers) face, at my You Go Girl Conference on Saturday, June 6, 10am to 3pm. Watch this blog for weekly updates.