becoming a better you

Alright, Friends!  Who’s ready to begin the new year right?

I was asked to speak about a year ago to a group of about 50 single mothers at our church on the idea of “Becoming a Better Me.”  As I thought and prayed about this idea, and what these women—who have undoubtedly heard their fair share of self-help propaganda instructing them how to live a “better life”—really needed to hear, an outline began to come together that felt pretty strong and pretty God-inspired.

I warned the women, as we gathered that night, I was not going to be teaching your typical self-help shtick.  I was not going to waste their time talking about secular self-improvement.  I would not tell them five ways to become more productive, six keys to being more efficient, three steps to becoming more positive, the top ten ways to be more effective.  If they were looking for that, they were not going to find it there.

I warned them we were likewise not going to talk about resolutions aimed at changing surface behaviors or attitudes.  I would not encourage them to get up early to exercise, only touch each piece of mail once, say five positive things for every one negative, stop watching TV, or always say please and thank you.  Not that these were BAD things.  Indeed, not a bit of it was bad advice.

But that was just it.  These platitudes were just well-meaning advice, meant to increase productivity or efficiency or any number of other good things that weren’t ultimately THE GOOD THINGS.

I told them we were going to focus that night, instead, on things that would really make a difference—would really make us better— in the places that really mattered most—our hearts and our spirits.

The teaching was so well-received, I began thinking that perhaps I needed to do something more with it.  And then you came to mind.  I thought perhaps you would like to hear it, too, and dialogue with me about what really makes us better people in our deepest, most messy places.

So, with that in mind, I decided I would take the first several weeks of the year and devote them to sharing this information—Becoming a Better Me.  It’s not a complete, hermeneutically dissected treatise, but for what it is—a bit of revelation given at a particular moment for a particular group of women—I think it’s pretty darn okay.  And I hope you’ll enjoy it over time, and that you will find a bit of truth in it meant for you, as well.

Blessings to you as we all move toward becoming BETTER!