Dreams

My First Love

September 21, 2015 by Gindi Leave a Comment

The smell of worn wood, ocean air from the propped open door, and thousands of bound and printed pages almost made me cry. Do you remember the smell of actual pages? The smell that assaulted you as you curled up in a bean bag in the corner of your neighborhood library and escaped down the hole with Alice?

While vacationing on the Emerald Coast of Florida, my friend and I were enticed into a local bookshop. It’s rare to write those words. There is hardly a local bookshop to be found anymore. I wandered into this coastal gem and fell madly in love. Or fell back in love. Words are my first love.

Faded and scratched wooden beams carried out of the store and onto the front porch to beckon passersby. Once through the painted portal, the homemade painted bookshelves rose nearly to the ceiling overstuffed with perfectly curated treasures. The children’s section had gorgeous cover pictures displayed along with bins of toy son the floor and puzzles perched atop the shelves. Not puzzles you might find in your local superstore, but gorgeous puzzles of interesting shapes and sizes displaying old fashioned ice cream stands and schools of fish…

Won’t you join me over at God-sized Dreams today for the rest of the story?

God-sized Dreams Mission Moments Plea

June 1, 2015 by Gindi Leave a Comment

The headline blared: Boko Haram Militants Raped Hundreds of Female Captives in Nigeria.

It was the above the fold story. The first thing I read in the paper that morning. The opening paragraph from the Times on May 18th screamed this indictment: Hundreds of women and girls captured by Boko Haram have been raped, many repeatedly, in what officials and relief workers describe as a deliberate strategy to dominate rural residents and possibly even create a new generation of Islamist militants in Nigeria.

The voice in my head screamed louder: HOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW?

The how rapidly morphed into a howl: within the same 24 hours I read the gut-turning, mind-shattering story of the atrocities being committed by ISIS against NINE YEAR OLD girls over at Ann Voskamp’s corner:

Click away, turn the other way if you want, but those girls are wild to turn and escape — and they can’t. They are categorized. Stripped. And shipped naked. Examined and distributed…

Please join the God-sized Dreams community today as we seek to support the girls and women surviving horrific assaults in Iraq and Nigeria.

On Being Brave

December 31, 2014 by Gindi 11 Comments

There’s a theme out there in the blogging world about selecting ONE word for the new year ahead. I’ve never done it. I’m not doing it this year. But I love the concept. If you had to capture all you want out of the year ahead in one word, what would it be?

For me, as I have written earlier, my word for 2015 would be brave.

Brave as dressed in entirely new clothes.

Brave as being rather than doing.

You see I’m a doer. It turns out being takes far more courage (for me) than doing.

When I wrote a God-sized Dreams link up post last year at this exact same time, I wrote about wonderful stuff but it generally involved doing. I did not envision just being one year ago. I envisioned doing. And so I did. I thought I was brave this year by working on a second book and taking more significant assignments at work and speaking on bigger and brighter stages in front of hundreds of women and leading an organization with an increasingly national profile.

That was not actually all that brave. It was good, don’t get me wrong. God opened those doors and I am grateful for every single one of them. But what God is teaching me, in these hours we’re spending together, is that brave MUST look different this year.

It takes more bravery for me to offer a dozen neighbors cookies in my front yard that to stand on a stage in front of a thousand women. It takes more bravery for me to read bedtime stories every single night I’m given with my children this year than to finish writing my next book. It takes more bravery for me to wake up early every morning and work out so that I can lose weight and be a healthy momma than to attend dinner parties with “the important people.” It takes more bravery for me to spend less and live “smaller,” than to gain everything but lose my soul (Matt. 16:26).

It will take a mighty act of courage, with significant assistance from my patient Heavenly Father, to focus on my influence within my property lines than my influence within my city or state or anywhere else.

I studied the 40 Day Prayer Circle Challenge by Mark Batterson this fall, and in it he writes about drawing a circle of prayer around the area you most fervently want God to work. Then he uses this beautiful image of how God draws a circle around us:”Long before we woke up this morning and long after we go to sleep tonight, the Holy Spirit was and is circling us in prayer. And if that doesn’t infuse us with holy confidence, I don’t know what will. But it isn’t just the Holy Spirit who is interceding for us; the Son of God is interceding for us as well. They are interceding for the will of God to be accomplished in our lives. We are double circled. They are circling us all the time with songs of deliverance.” (Day 15, Draw the Circle)

He wants His work to be done in you even more than you want it! I could just visualize that 2015 is the year God is drawing a circle around my family and saying, Here. Here is where you stand. You stand in this circle this year. I have a plan for you. But it will take you being brave to trust me that I can accomplish it while you stand right here in a circle that might feel a little small at first.

I wrote for God-sized Dreams, “God sometimes requires us to lay down our dream, even the dream He placed on our heart, in order to know him more.” I want to be brave enough to do that.

He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:30

The line in a song by Francesca Battistelli resonated in my core, “I don’t need my name in lights, I’m famous in my Father’s eyes. Make no mistake, He knows my name. I’m not living for applause. I’m already so adored. It’s all His stage. He knows my name.”

You see, it’s all HIS stage. Thousands of articles have been authored by media specialists and blogging experts about the size of your platform (aka your stage). Your reach is supposed to grow and your name found at the top of every search engine. But it is His stage. I only need HIM to know my name.

So my God-sized Dream for 2015 is for the size and shape of my stage to just so reflect Him. The stage may look, from the outside, smaller and less bright, but oh friend it feels so brave and big to me.

Linking up with God-sized Dreamers today:

The New Face of Brave

November 17, 2014 by Gindi 2 Comments

Go on, jump, jump! C’mon, everyone else is doing it! JUMP!!! They yell at her standing on the precipice of the cliff staring at the waters below. Something in her warns, You shouldn’t jump. You should not jump. This is not the right choice for you.

So she steps back despite their heckling and jeers. Chicken, they charge.

But sometimes bravery is not jumping.

Sometimes bravery looks like saying no.

Sometimes bravery means stepping out of the throngs pressing you into a choice and saying, This isn’t for me. I’m not scared. I’m wise.

There’s a difference. Risk taking can be just as much standing up against the tidal wave of pressure and stopping the momentum. In fact, that is often the face of brave. Challenging gravity. The tide. The force of public opinion. Accepting the possibility of anger or ridicule or alienation.

I’ve written a lot about risk when it comes to leadership. But we don’t always talk about what the risk looks like. In fact, one of my favorite quotes likens risks to jumping off a ski slope. What if risk was turning around when the slope was beyond you? What if you could endanger those coming up behind you by foolishly launching off a slope that wasn’t skiable?

Won’t you join me over at God-sized Dreams today for the rest of the story?

The Dream Giver

October 8, 2014 by Gindi 2 Comments

Sometimes we have to be willing to give something up to God in order to get it back from God…God will test us to make sure the gift isn’t more important than the Gift Giver, the dream isn’t more important to us than the Dream Giver. He’ll test us to make sure it’s not an idol. If it is, that dream, gift, or desire might need to die so that it can be resurrected. But God often takes things away to give them back so that we know they are gifts to be stewarded for his glory.

Mark Batterson, Draw The Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

It finally arrived. The professionally edited video of a 25 minute keynote address I gave to a large women’s conference in May. I was so excited. I’d been visiting with an executive coach who speaks nationally, and she shared that was the piece missing from my website. At long last, the missing piece.

I love to speak at conferences. I put on my game face (aka heavier make up than I’d wear out of the house) and my game uniform (which nearly always involves stockings – yuck!), and I head out with queasy stomach and rattling nerves. But then I get up on stage to speak and I love it. The endorphins kick in and the audience engages, and I’m on a high for hours afterwards.

Won’t you join me over at God-sized Dreams to read the rest of the story?

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