I love being a woman. I love being a mom, wife, friend, sister, and daughter. I love studying the Bible and teaching the Bible. But most of all, I love knowing that I serve no other audience than an audience of One – God.
One thing that you should know about me is that I am in continual recovery from living for the approval of others. For years, I struggled to serve every audience within my reach and lived and longed for their approval. Until one day in 2015, when it all fell apart. (I share about it in my Audience of One blog).
I spent ten years in ministry and heard time and again women share feelings of inadequacy. “I am not spiritually qualified to…,” “I have made so many mistakes,” “I did/did not ____________.” These false self-beliefs ring true in the seventy-year-old woman as well as the seventeen-year-old girl. No woman is exempt.
Do you know these feelings? I understand these feelings because I am a frequent rider of the “inadequate feelings struggle bus.”
My Gal Tuesday was birthed in 2015 from this desire – to help women cultivate the spiritual in their hearts – instead of feelings of inadequacy. By “spiritual” I mean a deeper understanding of God and self.
I used to believe that as a Jesus following woman, I needed to know and instill as much Bible as possible into my little sphere of influence. In hindsight, I am pretty sure this is how the Pharisees in Jesus’ day thought too – the idea that knowing a lot about God was the same as knowing God. But over time, I very slowly began to recognize the lie that says: “knowing was growing”. Do you know this lie? The one that tells us that we are free because we “know” things?
I long and desire for My Gal Tuesday to be a place where women can simply be with the Lord and with one another – through the Word and through a caring community. It’s a space where women are free to be just as they are and it’s shaped around the truth found in God’s Word.
I believe with all of my heart that the more we understand ourselves, the more we understand God, and the more we understand God, the more we understand our world and our place in it. When this happens, the struggle bus of inadequacy makes less frequent visits and joy is more readily found.
Go in peace sweet friends,
My Gal Tuesday offers seasonal Bible studies (spring and fall sessions) and summer book clubs. We meet at the Lake Murray Community Center in Lexington, South Carolina. Get more detailed meeting information here.
