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Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

Sister Stories

Turbo

December 9, 2013 by Gindi Leave a Comment

This is the sixth week of studying Priscilla Shirer’s God is Able in preparation for each week of a new Sisters Stories installment.  Priscilla beautifully steps us through Ephesians 3:20:

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  Amen. 

Last week we looked at that mighty concept of totality, more than we could ask or think, and today we look at those words in bold above as we explore this concept of TURBO.

This chapter of the book had me looking at this scripture in a whole new light.  After years of praying Ephesians 3:20 as my own, I’d spent so much time focused on “more than we can ask or think” and hadn’t really focused on words right after it conditioning it all on the power working within us.

First off, that power.  Crazy power.  Power to do anything.  Priscilla says, “even if we do get tired, exhausted even, we don’t need to feel impotent.  God’s power doesn’t negate weariness, it just enables us to press through it with an uncommon persistence.  No matter how tall our challenges are, His power in us is greater still.  Paul said the power of God that whirls and throbs within us is a power of “surpassing greatness.”  It is “immeasurable,” “incomparably great,” “incredible,” a matter of “utter extravagance.”  We’re talking about more power than we can imagine.”

Whoa.

But.

Here’s the kicker.

His Power won’t work if you’re not hooked up to it.  There are lots of examples of power available but not working in a source.  The light switch in your home may have all the power that it needs, but it won’t work unless you flip it on.

That means that we have to operate under His leading if we’d like to see that power at work.

It also means we may have to up-just our expectations.  And then stand back and steel ourselves for what can happen.

Priscilla writes that sometimes we’re so in the habit of seeing only thimblefuls of God’s activity that we only bring a thimble to the vast ocean of God’s power.  That’s all we experience.  If we’d remember what power truly is available to those seeking, then you might bring a bigger container.  Priscilla writes: bring a bucket? fill a bucket. bring a wheelbarrow? fill a wheelbarrow. bring a two-ton tanker? fill a two-ton tanker.

hispower

This is the BEST part.  Priscilla closes with what that power at work means:

This all-important issue of power working within us is so much deeper and wider than we think.  It truly touches all of life.  It produces changes in us that are every bit as miraculous as any change in our circumstance could ever be. 

Because, Priscilla notes, immediately after this verse in the Bible there is a “therefore.”  Therefore, what?

Therefore, because of God’s ability operating within your heart, you are able to ‘walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.’ (4:1)  You’re empowered to experience the kind of changes inside you that start changing things around you….It can transform your reactions and responses…It can transform your contributions to His body…It can transform your character….It can transform your home, your work life, your reputation, everything. 

This week’s sister story is not only a testament of what this turbo power does look like, but a prayer for what this turbo power may look like.  There is a transformation, but there’s still a transformation that we’re holding out for along with our sister, LL.  Join me on Wednesday to hear her story.

Filed Under: Faith, Sister Stories

Sisters Stories: Restoration from Sexual Addiction

December 5, 2013 by Gindi 4 Comments

sistersforgindi

We left our sister, Rebecca, yesterday having her husband return on emergency leave after she made a deeply shattering discovery about his pornography addiction and infidelity.

Rebecca, a longstanding believer in an able God, remarked of Christians naïve responses to marriages in crisis:  Christians say the worst things in response to marriages facing sexual addiction and infidelity.  You might see lists of things wives can do to “prevent” this – like wear make up every day – as if somehow that’s going to keep your husband from cheating.  The way to stay away from cheating is NOT to cheat.  You commit yourself to marriage because that’s what God says to do.

Certain friends were incapable of providing support.  Rebecca had a dear friend reflexively say that God would take care of these things over an abbreviated lunch and then leave.  “She couldn’t spare more than an hour when I was in crisis,” Rebecca shared.

After Ben’s emergency return for Rebecca’s surgery in June, she decided she would try.  By the first of August, she told him she would move back to their home when he returned from his deployment.  Ben committed that they would actively participate in Celebrate Recovery, a Christian 12-step program for addicts and their families.

“We acknowledged it was going to be a bumpy road,” Rebecca told me.  “We didn’t pretend that it was all fixed.  I wasn’t going to pull out the divorce card, but it was going to be hard.  I wouldn’t commit to a year or forever but that we would live under the same room today.”

There were hard intimate challenges.  They had to hash out the logistics of sex.  Part of his addiction was a fear of rejection and Ben had to learn that it was okay to receive a “no” in response to initiating sex sometimes.  Rebecca told him, “This isn’t a porn video.  You have to initiate it.”

Ben told Rebecca that the fact that she stayed with him gave him the motivation to tackle the addiction.  Rebecca believes, had she left, Ben would have continued down a vicious spiral of sexual addiction.

Rebecca said that she didn’t know at the outset that God would free Ben of his addictive cycle or that their marriage would be restored.  She shared, “I just knew that the bottom had dropped out of my whole world, and my only option was to cling to Christ at all cost; John 15:5 – I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

She took one day at a time.  She didn’t actively try to change Ben – knowing she couldn’t.  She took the advice of wise counsel:  finding a Christian counselor who specialized in sexual addiction (who offered the sessions free to military families); telling a few friends who rallied to her side so she didn’t have to walk the journey alone, and while everyone wasn’t able to support her, she had tremendous support from far flung corners; and, she talked to God, even when there were more tears than words.  “Even my deepest questions were directed TO God, not ABOUT God to someone else.”

These are Rebecca’s words about this journey:

I often wondered if I would be able to forgive Ben.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 18 that it’s not enough to forgive up to seven times, but seventy times seven! During this time, those verses took on new meaning.  I would forgive my husband for some past transgression one day and wake up the next morning hurt all over about the very same thing.  I had to choose day after day to forgive him for the same act.  It wasn’t easy, but over time, the pain would pop up less often…and when it did, it wouldn’t sting quite as much. 

As the one year mark approached, I realized I had forgiven him.  I didn’t know when or how it had happened, but it happened!  Forgiveness… complete forgiveness!  I enjoyed being around my husband again.  And we were enjoying our new marriage.  All the will power in the world can’t make my husband stay abstinent, and it can’t make me forgive.  But as we say in Celebrate Recovery, “God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”  We just have to believe that He can do it.

It’s okay to feel like you’re never going to get “there.”  And it’s still a risk.  You don’t know.  You take the step of faith and you don’t know that your husband’s not going to betray you again.  That’s scary.  But it’s so worth trying.  You can’t promise your marriage will be safe.  During this period, I felt like Moses asking God who he was to be God’s spokesperson and asks Him for a sign to which God replies, “you’ll have one after it’s all over.” 

Forgiving here has been the model for me elsewhere.  We let ourselves hold on to tiny resentments and leave forgiveness for the big things.  I had to choose to forgive.   Going through that process increased my capacity to forgive everywhere.  If I forgave my husband for cheating on me, then I let the guy who cut me off in traffic off the hook.  Everything is little after this. 

It’s 6 ½ years later and we are very much in love and have been blessed with a third child.  Even now as I reflect on what we’ve been through, I still can’t believe how far we’ve come.   I’m grateful for my current relationship with my husband, but the status of our marriage is not the miracle…it’s the status of our hearts.  Do I wish there had been another way to teach me this lesson of forgiveness?  Yes.  But my loving Savior has given me a small glimpse of what it was like to forgive me. 

Filed Under: Marriage, Sister Stories

Sisters Stories: Ravages of Sexual Addiction

December 4, 2013 by Gindi 4 Comments

sistersforgindi

In this installment of Sisters Stories, a dear friend has agreed to share her journey through a marriage attacked by infidelity and pornography.  Because of the personal nature of their story, their names have been changed to ensure their privacy.

Ben had recently shipped off.  An eight month deployment.  Rebecca was searching the computer for pictures of the kids when the pornographic images stopped her cold.  Horrified, Rebecca wrote Ben asking him what he knew about the photos.

You see, they had switched computers so Ben could take the desktop on the ship with him and Rebecca would be left with his laptop. 

She was ready to believe a lie. 

She was waiting for a lie.

But he told her everything. 

The next morning, Rebecca received an email that altered her world forever.  Ben admitted to an entire secret life of sexual sin which included a longstanding addiction to internet pornography and incidents of physical affairs, including an affair with a woman Rebecca considered a friend. 

“My biggest nightmare had just become my new reality,” Rebecca shares. 

She had known about his struggle with pornography when they married.  She knew that struggle continued their first two years of marriage.  After their second discussion about the pornography, and Rebecca’s sadness and anger in response, the topic never came up again.  She’d not considered pornography was still an issue until that day on the computer.  Nearly seven years into their marriage.  Rebecca says that whatever he saw on her face after that last discussion, Ben knew he couldn’t admit to pornography again and went into secrecy about his addiction. 

The addiction to internet pornography then grew into more.  Ben began a long-term affair with Rebecca’s friend which continued during her pregnancy.  It lasted on and off for a year.  During that affair, Ben had a one night stand with a stranger.  Things spiraled out of control.  Then they were reassigned to a station halfway across the country.  Ben saw a way out of the affairs.  But the pornography struggle continued, even as he shipped off two months before Rebecca’s discovery. 

I would learn months later that my husband paced the ship for hours wrestling with how much to tell me.  He chose to admit all the ugly.  Even though that’s more of his story than mine, it’s pivotal to understanding that the Holy Spirit was working in ways neither my husband nor I knew at the time.

He vomited out everything in his response to her email (since he was deployed, there were limitations on their ability to communicate).  The internet pornography revelations showed vast deception, even more than the affairs, from how he planned and orchestrated access to the lengths he went to in order to get a fix of porn.  His admissions exposed a deep addiction.   

After reading the email that morning, Rebecca’s mother arrived to stay with her son while she took her daughter to a doctor’s appointment for her chronic illness.  At the doctor, Rebecca felt like the whole world knew. She was mortified.  She had to be tested for STDs.  She thought about the pastors or politicians wives that found out this kind of news and the world did know. 

She was embarrassed too.  People would wonder how she could NOT know.  But as Rebecca told Ben, she never needed or wanted to find a reason he would be cheating on her because she simply trusted that he wouldn’t cheat.  She shouldn’t be embarrassed for trusting her husband – the one person she should trust!  When the real information was put in front of Rebecca, she didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t the truth.  But she accepted it was okay that she hadn’t been searching for secrets. 

She sat in her rental apartment, where she’d moved to be near her mother during the deployment, thankful for not having found out in their home.  A place that represented their life together.  Instead, she could process what this meant in a temporary place. 

Rebecca thought:

Well, I guess that’s what I have to do.  Divorce him.  It angered me because of my own parents’ divorces growing up.  And divorce wasn’t going to change all of what happened.  It wasn’t going to take away the pain of being cheated on.  Death was the only thing that would take the pain away.  A “reason” wasn’t going to help since then “I’d done something” to make him cheat. I didn’t have the emotional reserve to go there. I just let myself hurt. I couldn’t do anything – not even plan to leave.

Three months after her discovery, during which time they had each begun seeing counselors, Rebecca had emergency gallbladder surgery.  The military flew Ben home for two weeks on emergency leave.  They had two weeks to see each other face-to-face.  To meet with the counselors in person that they had dealt with remotely.  His stay brought up additional issues which could be vetted with counselors in real-time.  It gave Rebecca a snapshot of what it would be like to be together: “I started to believe that all of the recovery he had been telling me about remotely was sincere.” 

How could they form a life together after this earthquake cracked the ground she stood on?

Filed Under: Marriage, Sister Stories

Totality

December 2, 2013 by Gindi 1 Comment

In this fifth week of seeing how God is Able, we will meet our fourth sister in this Sisters Stories series.  As always, we lead with a chapter from Priscilla Shirer’s book, God is Able, which studies Ephesians 3:20 – Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  This portion of the verse, “all that we can ask or think,” is so appropriate for this transformative sister story.

We’ve seen Now.

Looked To Him. 

Understood He Is Able To Do.

And studied Exceedingly Abundantly Beyond.

But beyond what?

ALL.

Priscilla investigated the original language of that word, “all,” and discovered that it meant ALL.  As in TOTALITY.

His activity is not confined to the spectacular…sometimes our problem is not that we won’t believe Him for the supernatural but that we don’t believe He cares about the routine.  Limiting our view of God’s interest and activity to the stupendous is not really much different from limiting our view of God to the boring….His ability comes all the way down to the ground.  Where you are.  Every day….The same God who made elephants and buffaloes also made pansies and ladybugs.  Big and small.  He cares about them all. 

The verse doesn’t stop at all though. No.  It goes further.  God works beyond all you can ask or think.  Or in my favorite translation, all you could ask or imagine.

allimagine

I’m pretty imaginative.  But God.  My God.  Well He’s not constrained by my imagination.  He is not limited by whether we know the right words to ask or have a handle on the future enough to know what we should ask.

And as Priscilla notes, He’s not telling you to ask to be neighborly.  He wants to invite us into His blessing – to involve us – to show us that, “when we request and He answers, we know beyond any doubt that He was the One working in our experience.”

Priscilla closes the chapter on Totality with this:

The things we don’t know how to pray, as well as the things we don’t even know to be praying for at all, are still under His control.  He can do all that we can “ask or think.”  More than we can imagine.  Did you hear that?  The vast extent to which your mind could draw together what, in your estimation, would be the most exquisite plan for the solution you need doesn’t even begin to touch the hem of His ability.  He does beyond it.  Beyond all your words.  Beyond all your thoughts. 

This week I have the honor of introducing you to Rebecca.  A dear longtime friend of mine.  When devastation shook her life, this verse took on a whole new meaning.  She could never have imagined what lay ahead, yet our big God promised to act on her behalf even when she couldn’t see a way forward.  When she couldn’t have known how He would restore what the locusts had eaten (Joel 2:25).  Join me Wednesday as you hear how God sees ALL and acts beyond what we could have imagined.

Filed Under: Faith, Sister Stories

Sisters Stories: Missy’s Military Moves, Part 2

November 21, 2013 by Gindi 2 Comments

sistersforgindi

Yesterday you met Missy and heard about her nearly nomadic existence as a military spouse.  Today, Missy shares the good, the bad, and the in-between associated with moving so often.

The hard stuff is, first, the family stuff.  Missy says being far from family while having babies or celebrating milestones is is often lonely.  Even harder is being far from family when their stuff is going on – illnesses, holidays, graduations, babies…

Not to mention all the kid stuff: having a doctor you’ve never met before deliver your baby, entrusting children to virtual strangers when childcare is necessary in a new location, uprooting kids from their routine and friends.  Starting over.

Financially, Missy highlights how expensive each move can be.  Simple things like startup costs, house cleaners, down payments or deposits, and expenses to move pets.  Dislocation reimbursements never cover it all.

And of course, spiritually and emotionally.  They have to find a new place to connect for their spiritual growth.  A place to develop new friendships.  Figuring out the new routine because each new location came with a new assignment and a new schedule which impacted the entire family.  Managing all the stressors in the context of your marriage relationship proves difficult and can create an enormous strain.

But there’s been such good in all of it too, Missy reports.   A lot of it centered around seeing the beauty of America.  She describes her 11 long-term “stay-cations.”  There’s not just one place they go every summer  because they “tour” the city and surrounding areas of their current assignment before moving.  They lived four years in California, a state Missy had dreamed of visiting.  Plus, they had an overseas assignment which afforded them the chance to see another part of the world.  They’ve driven from the East Coast to California and back twice seeing lots of America.  They are also really lean on “stuff.”  As you all well know, I’m constantly being called to acquire less and purge more.  Well, as a result of 11 moves, Missy is pretty darn selective about what she chooses to be sentimental about.  (Except for books.  Far too many according to the movers.)

While Missy reports this being a perk of the moves, ahem, I’m not sure I’d be as sunny.  She’s enjoyed the variety of decorating that came with living in 11 different homes.  Not to mention, she laughingly informed me, she REALLY knows what she wants in the family’s retirement home when that time comes.  She’s tried on 11 long-term and knows what works.

As for the in-between, the downsides also have their own upside.  The upside of having to leave old friends is the opportunity to make new ones.  Missy has friends all over the world and a really impressive Christmas card list!  The upside of being away from your family is that you have to stand on your own, independent from your parents, and figure things out as a marriage partnership.  The upside of having to move to a new assignment is that you have a job.  A blessing, Missy notes, to have job stability in a time when the economy was uncertain.

Along with the ups and downs of the moves, Missy’s faith has had ups and downs.  Early in their marriage, the couple were in different places spiritually and had a different ideas on what role faith played in the family.  At that time, the balance tipped in favor of faith being more important to her.  But it cycles. Recently, Missy’s faith hit a low.  Her marriage was struggling, her beloved uncle passed away suddenly, her mother’s cancer returned and is incurable, and her father was diagnosed with a chronic illness.  She recalls crying in church and telling her husband that she was “having a spiritual crisis.”  She prayed.  She put prayer requests on the cross at church.  She knows God is carrying her through.  She recounts “out-of-the-blue” re-connections with long-lost friends (thank you Facebook), an unexpected reminder of her worth to another person, a divinely offered Bible Study focused on marriage, and a husband who decided to accept Christ…publicly and whole-heartedly.  Although God’s love is always there, she says it sometimes feels like “tough love.”

They recently relocated to a rural area where they’ve yet to connect to a faith community.  She feels God is posing the question, “How hard are you willing to work?”  In this season, she says she’s learning grace and some other lessons too.

I have a penchant for wanting things to be easy.  I’ve relied on the theory that life should be easy for far too long.  As if the mere fact that something was easy means it’s right.  I think some of the hardness of the last few years is God culling that out of me.  Parenting, marriage, moving, finding a church….. It’s not supposed to be easy.  Anything worth doing is hard. 

I’m learning about myself.  I need self-discipline .  When things get hard, I must keep going.  I have to push forward instead of throwing my hands up in exasperation when things get confusing or require too much perseverance.  I believe God is at a place with me where He’s moved from whispering to shouting at me to follow through on things that are hard.

Sharing this story has been a start in that direction.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3

Filed Under: Sister Stories, Women

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