BEING MARY | Lindsay Anderson

Thanks for hoping on this Monday afternoon!

I am so excited to be sharing with you this wonderful and heartfelt story from Linsday. In May, Linsday was asked to do a devotion for our ladies Mother's Day gathering. As I sat there in a room filled with woman of all ages and chapters of life I saw that there was not a dry eye, along with me.

This story touched me and I wanted it to be shared.

Thank you, Lindsay, for letting me share and for opening up for us to relate and feel like it's okay to not be perfect, and to be more like Mary.


Linsday Anderson:

When Lori asked me about a month ago to speak to you all tonight, I laughed because I thought, “what could I possibly share or encourage these woman, most of them older than I am.” But deep down inside, I knew I would end up doing it. Just because, that Is the way God works. When you’re asked to “pray about something” God usually changes your heart, and not always the way you have it all planned either.

I wanted to share with you what the Lord has recently been doing in my life, It’s not easy for me to be vulnerable but I pray that It touches you in some way that you can walk away feeling encouraged and that the Lord uses this to speak to you in some way or another.

I want to read Luke 10:38-42 with you.

38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

39 And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, does not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. 

I know all of you are familiar with Mary & Martha in the Bible.

There are several different ways I could go with this tonight, but I just kept coming back to using my story and what God has shown me in the past few months, and as Dave, my husband says, “It’s her revelation”.

See, I am Martha- through and through. I could defend her up and down and still to this day, could say, “but she was just making sure everything was prepared! Don’t be so hard on her.”  And why I don’t think Jesus meant to make Martha look bad, I think he meant for us to focus on Mary because it is so very easy to be Martha, I believe we as a woman naturally fall into that roll. Mary on the other hand, probably knew Martha was upset with her, but this was a lifetime opportunity. To sit at the feet of Jesus.

Some of you know my story about me always wanting to be a wife & mother. How things didn’t go quite the way I had planned out with getting pregnant.  But God is faithful; he heard my cry and knew the desires of my heart. He blessed me, not only once but now, with 3 beautiful, healthy babes. The ones you hear on Sunday mornings!

 I thought being a mother was the one thing I would be good at. The one thing I felt I had a good grasp on from growing up watching all these other mothers and their children, what I was and wasn’t going to do with my kids.

I had a picture in my head, you know the one, a picture of a mother with her babies on pintrest…the one you pin under, “SOMEDAY”, along with the board, “FUTURE HOME”.  It’s way too easy for us to hop online throughout our day and scroll to see all these perfectly captured moments and honestly, sometimes makes us feel bad about ourselves. Girls your age wearing the latest styles, or the selfies of their perfect hair & makeup. Mom’s posting about their kids getting married to what seems to be the perfect mate or the family picture that just looks like everyone has it “all together”.  So on and so forth.

And you wonder, what am I doing wrong, because THAT is NOT how my life is going!

For me, it’s trying to maintain a Pinterest looking home. I’m not saying that Is like “the worst sin ever” but It defiantly was effecting my life and my family. I would find myself frustrated time and time again that I could never keep up with the housework. That no one seemed to appreciate the room I just cleaned & organized only to go about dumping the tote of legos. I would constantly be picking up or be busy with all things to keep a house.  I found myself discontent with my home, frustrated at my family and honestly, upset at myself for not being able to juggle it all. My kids would often hear, “just a minute, mommy’s busy” or “you’ll have to wait until I’m done”. It makes me sad to know now that I did this so much to them.

 Last year, I threw Solomon a little birthday party with just family. I remember being so busy preparing the food, getting the presents all setup, taking pictures & cleaning up after everyone, that by the end of the night, I sat down feeling sad, because I felt like I had missed out on actually experiencing his birthday. I think as woman, like Martha, we can get so wrapped up on preparing everything to be “just perfect” that we actually end up missing out on the event...or on life.

A month ago, when Lori asked me to speak, I was on the tipping point of God saying, “Lindsay, let go. Let go of all these things you think are important. You are missing out on your children’s lives because you are trying SO HARD to keep everything perfect”

I had a lot of frustration built up because I would get on Pinterest and see these beautiful houses and then look at my house and think, “well this needs more…or I need to paint this, or… if only Dave wouldn’t be so busy, he could do this stuff for me”. I would not even enjoy having company over because I would be so worried that my living room hasn’t been painted yet and pictures weren’t on the walls. How silly is that? I was completely missing out because I wanted to be perfect before I’d let others in.  Why do we do that? Why do we think we need to have it all together? Why are we scared of letting people see our un-finished selves? The truth is, we are never finished, we are always a work in progress and that’s actually an exciting thing.

One night, after finally getting the boys to stay in their beds after the 8^th drink of water, and multiple trips back to their room, Dave was asleep on the couch, I was exhausted and my house was in my eyes, a disaster. I curled up in my bed and decided to write my husband an “I’m sorry” letter. I’m sorry I’ve been really short with everyone and I’m sure coming home hasn’t been the most pleasant thing. I told him how being a mom was the one thing I thought I would have been good at but that I knew I was failing. And that how I was responding to situations was not how I wanted to be. I wanted God to change my heart.

It’s in those dark and breaking, un-beautiful times that GOD makes something beautiful out of us. How many times have we really changed for the good in the not-so-hard times?  God is so patient with us.  But it’s up to us to get to that point of surrender and give it to him.

That next morning, I found myself picking up a book my mom had given me several months’ back that I just hadn’t gotten around to reading. I now know that God directed all these little things in order to reveal to me where I needed to change. The book was called, “the magnolia story” by Chip & JoAnna Gaines, I highly recommend you read it if you haven’t already! As I got to the end of the book, JoAnna shares her story about letting go of her expectation of their home being a beautifully designed house instead of a joyful, livable home for her family. Everything she said was hitting me right in the heart and as I’m just bawling over her words, I knew God was using that to speak to me.

He showed me that I needed to let go of these things I was holding onto so tightly. I wanted to be the perfect mom, but I he showed me I AM THE PERFECT MOM, to MY KIDS. He showed me I needed to be more intentional with my kids and sit down and play legos with them.  I wanted the clean, picture perfect house, but He showed me I HAVE THE PERFECT HOME for us, I needed to let go of what I thought others expectations were.  What my expectations were. That these imagines I’m seeing online are photo shopped, or displayed for a snap of a photo and then after that, I’m sure they are lived in too.

I called Dave on his work phone the morning after God had revealed to me what I needed to let go of, and I was so excited because I literally felt a weight lifted off my shoulders.  When I had pulled into our drive-way from running errands, I sat in my car and just cried, happy tears because I had this overwhelming contentedness and thankfulness that God had blessed me with our home.  The weeks have gone by and I am seeing my house with new eyes, I know it sounds corny, but I have enjoyed our home and just living in it more in the last month than ever before.

Sure, I still have great ideas for my walls and my boys’ bedroom, and of course, I still love the feeling of a clean home but I don’t want that to consume me anymore. I want my home to be a place of welcoming others, peaceful environment, & livable. But first, I need to be that way.

What we hold on to, or put our focus on can truly way us down. Some of you may be thinking, “I don’t even care what my house looks like, or I don’t even have a house yet” HA!  But what is God asking you to let go of? Is there an image in your head of how your life is supposed to be that you need to commit to God?

 Whether it’s having a successful business, your children and how they’ve turned out, how you want to look or dress, or maybe the future you’ve planned isn’t quite unfolding the way you wanted it to go. Whatever it may be that is weighing you down, remember Jesus wants us, he doesn’t care what we look like if we feel like we’ve failed, or what imagine with are trying to portray. He just wants us…to listen, to grown, to dive deep in his word and get to know HIM better.

 He wants us to be Mary, sitting at his feet soaking up every word.