Make THIS the year you put your dream into action.

Because she had a dream in her heart

Because someone believed in her

Because she was brave...

Her beauty spilled out and over.

Your light shines Bright Brandy!       

Friend her on Facebook: Brandy Taylor Barr.

Hug her at Church: Austin Christian Fellowship

Love her new blog: www.brandybarr.wordpress.com

ACF Ladies, love on this woman, because when you applaud a sister, you applaud The Lord’s plan for her life...and in the process it might make you feel brave too.  Hand in hand we are sisters becoming what He created us to be.  

Happy New Year.  Happy NEW endeavor.  

   

      

Merry Christmas From ACF WOMEN!

This Christmas as we string lights, bake cookies and open our gifts, let’s remember to stop in the midst of it all and take a picture.  No, not a selfie. Not a picture where the lens is focused on US but a picture that comes when we stop and are so present in the moment that gratitude floods our hearts, spilling over and we’re able to see the true meaning of Christmas.  Let’s take THAT picture and let it hang in the gallery of our hearts all year through.              

And now just for FUN: 12 days of Christmas gifts every woman should give herself!   

1. Stillness.  I CHALLENGE YOU!  

2. Hot herbal tea and a warm bath by the glow of a candle (add chocolate for maximum pleasure)

3. Serve the community - it will give you a better glow than the spa!

4. Get out of the house...GO!  NOW!  RUN!  Open your eyes and ears to nature

5. Permission to not overspend. Don’t over buy. - more stuff = the need for managing stuff = less time = stress!   

6. Time- coffee with a friend and good conversation.  Hear her heart and share yours.

7. Forgiveness- Time to let go of any grudges.  Unforgiveness is like tree sap.  It sticks to you until you tap into it and turn it into something sweet.  

8. A warm blanket.  Because every woman I know is always cold in winter. And because blankets say “hope”  They say I hope someone will snuggle with me and share the love!

9. A life verse:  Give yourself a verse from the bible that you memorize and claim any time anywhere for any reason.  It’s like having a gold visa card only no-one can steal it and the gift it buys you is priceless.

10. LOVE and laughter.  Believe that you are worthy of unconditional love and see the humor in the things that normally make you crazy. Don’t take yourself too seriously.  Life is beautiful and so are YOU!

11. An ACF Women's t-shirt!  Yes.  Not just any t-shirt.  A t-shirt to live and GROW IN GRACE in.  Seriously... a soft, comfy, flattering and awesome hug.  Get yours today!  ;)

12. A personal relationship with the coolest, most awesome loving, caring, unchanging guy in the whole universe.  Someone who will never break your heart.  Someone who will always listen to you, never leave you and who cares enough to know how many hairs are on your head.  That GUY is Jesus.  Get to know HIM and your life will never be the same again.         

Have a Merry Christmas Sisterhood!  Pass on the things that truly matter! 

You and Me Sister

To the woman who longs for a baby.  To the woman who comes to church alone.  To the woman who takes another pill just to feel ok.  To the woman who’s husband walked away forever.  To the women who can’t find the energy to do the laundry.  To the woman who’s child can't seem to make any friends.  To the woman who stands alone at the school, feeling unknown. To the woman who has cancer....again.  To the woman who has to wait longer than she can bare.  To the woman on facebook who’s hoping you see her.  To the woman who’s choosing to end her life.  To the woman who just lost her son.

"He’s got the whole world in his hands.  He’s got you and me sister...in HIS hands." 

This song?  The one we sang when we were little girls?   It’s the same song today.  And tomorrow.  And forever.   When things get hard and the demands of the world come at us all at once,  let's sit down for just a moment, because that’s how long it takes to breath in deep and breath out slow HE HAS YOU IN HIS HANDS.  YOU and ME.   In a whisper He says to the woman at the well who thirsts, "come to me" and the moment she reaches HER hand out to HIS... THE WHOLE WORLD becomes tiny and quiet... in His hands.

Beautifully His.

She shares with us in a soft voice that she has mental illness.  

The kind that can sometimes keep you from living life.  

She looks sad when she tells her story.  And I feel her loss.  Loss of the life she dreamed of having when she was a young girl.  Then the worship music starts and the words spill out into the room: “So I’ll wait here at your feet and I’ll pour out my life”.  Her arms stretch up to heaven, and she sways with the beat, putting on the words of the song, like a necklace you never want to take off.  And in that moment as I watch her, I think...THIS is what it looks like to truly worship.  She relies so much on Jesus for her JOY because sometimes her illness won’t allow the joy IN at all.  And we can all take a lesson in obedience from this sweet girl because when the illness comes down hard, she dances straight to HIM with all she has.  Arms up, swaying, trusting. Worshipping.  SHE is a song.  SHE is a dance.  SHE is beautifully HIS.    

Love ACF women.  Real.  Raw.  Radiant.   

(Thank you to the BRAVE woman who gave me permission to write & post this.  When you share, you make others feel brave too.)  

To My Dear House,

Friends, this was a personal note I wrote last winter.  More of a rambling than a letter.  A dear friend was encouraged by it and suggested I share.  Maybe it will resonate with you too.  I am so grateful for all I have.  I just don't want to be a slave to the things that in the end, won't really matter.  I struggle all the time, but I'm learning to let go.  How about you?  

You are a safe place.  A comfortable place.  A warm place.  A refuge from rain and heat, insects and amphibians!  You hold our food, toys, toiletries and clothes.  You are where we let go.  Where we strip off the makeup and the smiles.  Where we can rest, love, cry, and just work out all of our issues.  But here’s the thing.  As much as I love you and need you, I need boundaries. 

I can no longer be a slave to you.  

My soul craves freedom.  Freedom from shining you, dusting you, obsessing over you.  You steal my time, joy and energy.  I want to just once be able to walk through you and not have to stop and worry that you need arranging and fixing, fluffing and trips to target to make you sing.  The truth is, you are beautiful when we LIVE in you.  When I say LIVE....I mean when we are free to be creative, make messes with paint slipping onto paper, laundry piled up because we’re running free outside, flour all over the kitchen because we’ve made pizza, books left in the corners of rooms, opened and calling.  Rooms that invite us to get silly.  Baths that are rimmed with bubbles.  Candles that are burned to the wick. 

I don’t want to have to worry about whether or not I have enough matching dishes to entertain a few guests or if you are perfectly picked up and scrubbed clean before a friend comes over.  I won’t put my neighbor off again, just to satisfy your need to be worshipped.  SHE comes first.  Her words in my kitchen, her hands holding the coffee mug with the crack in it, pouring out her heart.  SHE is worthy of my time.  Not you.    

Don’t call to me anymore.  

Don’t tell me I SHOULD be cleaning the ceiling fans, washing the windows and scrubbing the floors.  What I should be doing is writing down the words that feed my soul.  What I should be doing is tickling my girls on the floor until they yell mercy.  What I should be doing is cooking and leaving the dishes to go on a nature walk before dark.  

What I want to be doing is NOT worrying about my house being good enough or pretty enough or clean enough or decorated enough.  Because enough is enough. 

 And you are enough for the here and now.  Because no matter how much time and energy I give to you, you will always just be a house.  The HOME I long for, the one I’ve strived to have here, but can never achieve...is truly a place that doesn’t exist here on EARTH.  

Letting go of perfection and embracing you as you are...

my messy LIVED IN house!

Light in the dark.

She is your neighbor.  The woman with the long black hair.  The one with all the children.  The messy house. She borrows eggs from you to make pancakes on Sundays and her dog is always wandering over to your yard.   She’s getting on a plane to go visit her mother who might pass away in the night.    

She is the one you see on Facebook.  She posts a lot.  Her business is doing well.  She seems happy.  Her hair is always perfect.  She’s too busy to make it to bible study, but you keep messaging her.  No-one knows about her anxiety disorder.        

She is the mother you read about in the newspaper holding her dead child in her arms wailing while the world discusses whose fault it is.   

She is the woman who serves you at the grocery store.  You notice her arms are covered in tattoos but it’s not polite to ask so you look away.  If you had asked, she might have invited you to church and told you her story.  She was baptized by her grandfather last week. She can‘t wait to share the gospel.      

She is you. Watching the news as it spews more bad news.  The virus.  The fighting.  Don’t swim in the water or go out into the sun.  Another baby was left alone in a car and the police are under investigation for beating a man to death.  YOU watch and wilt and wonder if the Jesus you learned about since you were four years old will come in your lifetime.  Maybe even today?

We wait and sometimes even whisper, “come Jesus, we need you.”  Because in the night, when it’s very dark, it’s hard to imagine the light. 

Have faith.  Hold tight to the word.  There is hope.  He will come.

And there IS beauty shimmering all around her...and her...and her....and her, and yes, you too.  The Holy Spirit, like a lighthouse, shining from the inside out in all of us who believe.  

The Desires of Your Heart.

She was barely in her 20’s when she whispered her dreams in her husbands ear.  He stared at her in disbelief.  “What am I supposed to do with two kids?”  

I was one of those kids.  Too young to know that my mom had just told my dad she wanted to be a missionary.   

That desire stirred in my mothers heart for many years.  She had wanted to go but instead she raised us first.  Loved us well.  Modeled the love of the Lord.  Studied the word, went back to school to get her degree in education and after we had left home, spread her wings as if they had been growing in grace and beauty for just the right timing.  God’s timing.   

There are dreams we have inside of us.  Some must wait.  Others never come to be.  But to dream...is to breathe.          

Recently I spoke with a woman who told me that her daughter very much wanted and expected her to be a nanny to her child.  This sweet woman looked at my mother who was visiting me from her life as a missionary in Cambodia and said: 

“Now that I’m retired, I so long to get rid of my things and just go.  I want to live MY life.  I just don’t know how to tell my daughter that.”  

I wonder if that daughter has ever heard her mothers dreams?  The desires of HER heart.  The ones that God planted before she was even born.   There is so much MORE to a woman than just one label.  One chapter.  One season. Wife.  Mother.  Grandmother.  Lawyer.  Nurse.  Stay at home mom.  Social worker.  Teacher.  We are these things as women.  But we are also so much more.    

The dreams of others need lifting not anchoring from the hands of loved ones.  If only we could find it in ourselves to let go and watch them soar.    

Let go of who you think your mother, your father, your sister, your brother are supposed to be...so they can go live THEIR dreams without your imposed guilt.  ( cue the animated theme song, we all know and love... Let it go!)  Balloons drifting up and away in the sunlit sky.  Freedom.    

And I think of my mom.  So young.  Two little girls and a husband to take care of and her dreams burning bright inside of her.  My mother was a WONDERFUL, nurturing mother, but it wasn’t the only desire she had.  She waited patiently until it was her turn and then she flew magnificently out into the place of her dreams. (with my dad by her side) To the place where she heard The Lord call to her.  The place where she would no longer be labelled just mother or wife.  She would be so much more and is.      

How about you?  What dreams are growing inside of you?  Have you prayed about it?  Are you in a season of waiting for your dreams to be fulfilled?  How has the waiting been a challenge for you?   What about letting go?  Is there something or someone you need to let go?  Someone else’s dreams you need to support, pray for and encourage?  

God is the creator of all dreams.  He alone gives us the desires of our hearts.  We should go to Him in our need, in our waiting and in our yearning.  We should ask Him to fill us while we wait.  Ask him to give us a desire to be MORE than the label we’ve heard all our lives and ask Him to surround us with encouragers when we become brave enough to step out into our dream...at the right time.  His time.

Psalm 37:4

Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.