This Girl Can!

On By Codie Winslow1 Comment

“…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  – Philippians 1:6 “

Yesterday I did the unthinkable, for me. I went to the gym. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve donned a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra and don’t forget my hide-me-I-feel-fat oversized white t-shirt that looked like it was from a men’s big and tall store. I wanted to hide from everyone and everything – not sure that was a well thought out plan since it was like rush hour traffic on the 101 in Los Angeles at our recreation center at 6:30 pm. STRONG/Barre class was my personal torture while others battled with free weights and exercise machines like they were slaying dragons – wielding and grunting, steam seemingly rising from the heat of their labor like the nostrils of a beast.

Not only was I tired and grumpy about the whole thing before I even started, I felt the twinge of a familiar uneasiness rise, a familiar playlist you know all the words to like a worn out 80’s mix tape.  You don’t belong here. You won’t stick with this. You’ve let yourself go and you only have yourself to blame.

While I survived the class last night and the Gremlins in my mind, I am in pain today. Not just physical. I needed a little hope to help me push past the shame fog this morning. And Tauren Wells did not disappoint with his song, God’s Not Done With You. One of the habits I am slowly forming is dedicating my time in the car to uplifting music. It is one small way I can book end my day, protecting my mind from the Gremlins of doubt, fear, self-loathing, and shame.

Shame is my jam; it’s everyone’s jam really. We all have this emotion. I happen to treat it like it’s my BFF, always hanging out together and sharing wild stories; so, I really needed to hear this song today.  

One of the lines says, “Even when you’re lost and it’s hard and you’re falling apart, God’s not done with you.” It was just the hope-filled reminder I needed to lift me out of my funk. We don’t have to be defined by our shame stories. We can take our thoughts hostage, grab them and hold them up to the light of what God says about us – what He is doing in us. (2 Corinthians 10:4-6)

I fired up Audible and listened to Brené Brown on my evening walk tonight, putting the other book end on my day, filling my mind with truth about shame from the shame researcher herself. It helped to know I was not alone. My legs hurt so bad from the sudden workout I did yesterday that a friend had suggested I get out and walk tonight so that I didn’t stiffen up. Partially working. Partially look like Monty Python Silly Walks when I am trying to get up and down the stairs to my room.

I worked out, and, as my friend Robbie says, I did not die. This girl can! And you can too! Whatever it is…God is not done with you yet. He will be faithful to complete the good work he started in you.

My Portion

On By Codie WinslowLeave a comment

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul. “Therefore I have hope in Him! The Lord is good to those that wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. – Lamentations 3:24-26

I’m feelin’ it. The weight of the world’s groans. Our souls yearn for true, lovely, holy and we are swallowed up in busy, ugly, fake. Being the parent of a middle schooler, the curtain has been drawn back on just how yucky humans can be to each other. There’s a tug-o-war not for win or lose but for right and wrong. A game used to be something you played together at the dinner table every Tuesday with family faces. Now the players are virtual, often strangers, and instead of innocent, competitive banter and laughter echoing through our homes, there’s amped up shouting and name calling, and the counting of kills. I’m sick.

Kids I know hustle for their worth on social media, as if Instagram and SnapChat are a mirror reflection of who they really are…and, filters. They beg the magic mirror to tell them they are the fairest of them all; it’s as wicked as Snow White’s queen. Deep breath, refresh, how many likes do I have….how many hearts…oh, a snarky vomit of comments about how I look, what I should do for them or to them, whether I even have the right to post my face on the space at all. Gross!

When the darkness reigns and my best efforts to parent fail miserably, I shrink into sadness like a spring flower curling inward when the sun retreats and showers fall. Any yet, I know that the Lord desires us to have joy, peace, and hope in Him, even when it’s dark all around us. Even when we can’t keep bad things from happening.   

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

He has overcome the darkness of this world, so I CAN lift up my countenance, unfurling my petals and turning my face toward the Son once again. I CAN fix my mind on my Eternal Hope. I CAN wait quietly for Him. The Lord is my portion. Clinging to this reminder today.

This Little Light of Mine

On By Codie Winslow1 Comment

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. – 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NKJV)

I have struggled for over a week to put words together following a recent school shooting here in Colorado. The focus on this blog is hope and at times like this, I feel like we owe it to each other to just sit with one another without words like the friends that surrounded Job when he lost his home, his kids, and his health all at once. “Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him…they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.” (Job 2:11-13)

Not only did our community and the families of the kids at the STEM School Highlands Ranch go through a horrific tragedy last week, this week we observed Peace Officer Memorial Day. Having lost one of our own Sheriff’s Deputies, Zack Parrish, a little over a year ago, people are overwhelmed, angry, hurting, outraged…insert a synonymous adjective…and as the pendulum swings, others are flat out numb.

Is it guns? Is it humans? Is it humans with guns? Is it evil? Is it mental illness? And is it ever going to stop?!

How does one sprinkle hope in situations like this, at times like this, in a society like this. The only way I know how to overcome darkness is to turn on the light -– like lighting a candle in a midnight black room, it creates a gentle glow. That gentle glow is what I endeavor to share with this post – kind of like when you attend a Christmas Eve church service and you pass the light of a small individual-sized candle repeatedly down each row, sharing the light until it fills the whole room.

Look for hope in the soft glow of a friends’ eyes reminding you they are with you in it, or share hope in a soft whisper of encouragement about the thing God carried you through. It’s like a San Diego ocean breeze lifting, just slightly, the discomfort of a sticky summer day.

It reminds me of mothers that pick up the habit of rocking back and forth on their hips, the motion they learn to use for comforting a crying baby. Even when our kids grow up, if there is a baby in the room, we are swaying right along with that mother like a Polynesian dancer. The rhythm of comfort is one that is learned, and it can become our hope habit in a world like this, in moments like this.

God comforts us so that we are able to comfort one another. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” the old Sunday school song goes. “Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.”

Hope in Thee, Not Me

On By Codie WinslowLeave a comment

“But I will hope continually and will praise You yet more and more.”
Psalm 71:14

Merriam-Webster defines hope as a “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.”

I didn’t wake up expecting or believing for God’s provision or fulfillment this morning. I was coughing, my ears plugged up by a cold and my heart heavy with regret from the night before. I went to bed frazzled by an argument with one of my kids. It kept me awake all night like a bad dream waiting to pester me each time I closed my eyes.

My hope, the desire I carry deep in my soul that I long to see God bring to fulfillment, is that my children grow up to know Him and serve Him all their days. The part of it that is outside of God’s plan is the part where I take control of the reins. It’s like a toddler trying to ride a thoroughbred – dangerous and destined for disaster. That is how my conversation was last night. I wanted to clamp my hands around my child’s future and arm wrestle it to the ground by sheer force of my will. I wanted to stand in the way of the bad things I imagined would be the outcomes of decisions made and I wanted my hope to be enough to change things.

Ends up, hope in myself is not gonna get it done. Hope in myself is like a thirsty traveler running to an imagined oasis in the desert just to scoop up a mouthful of sand. Hope in myself produced frustration and a whole bunch of ungodly words. Forgive me, Lord.

There are moments like this for all of us, when we misplace our hope in things or people or ourselves – when we cease to expect God to fulfill the things we desire. The good news is that we can reset. Every morning as faithful as the golden sunrise, God provides us new mercy – I’ll take it! I praise You continually for Your grace that allows me to once again peel my fingers off my kids’ futures, yielding to the only hope that is true – You, Lord!

In the Knowing

On By Codie Winslow4 Comments

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony… – Revelation 12:11 (New King James Version)

The words lifted off the page to meet me as I read them, like a mirror image reflecting my face, the scars and the light. The blemishes and the hope.

“An unexpected life as difficult and undone as it might be, could end up becoming the life you’ve been searching for all along.” Michele Cushatt

I was on short hop to Phoenix for work and I couldn’t put the book down despite my lack of sleep the night before. Instead of stealing a two-hour snooze on the plane, I poured over every word of her story and it felt like my story. Unexpected suffering.

Each night when I closed my eyes the week leading up to this trip, I dreamt my three children were standing in the middle of a two-lane highway, straddling solid, bright yellow stripes – a Mack truck heading their way. My mind filled with panic and my heart thumped hard in my chest. And there was nothing I could do – in my dream. And there is nothing I can do in real life. My kids’ dad is not well. Though we are no longer together, his ongoing health issues do and will affect them. And this affects me. I have this compulsive desire to keep bad things from happening – and if I can control good and bad, then I can keep them from suffering, right?! Can I, though?

We all experience heartbreak in our lives and difficulties that threaten to crush us to dust like the elements from which we came. There are days I doubt that what I have done to rise above my circumstances will ever be enough to produce the outcomes I have desperately prayed for in my kids’ lives or in my own. There are days when shots ring out in the halls of our schools or across the thresholds of our synagogues, and we aren’t sure we can go on in this wicked world.

This particular day, as I settled into my aisle seat in coach, I needed a fresh breath of real. A dose of you’re not alone. Michele delivered. Hope is delivered in so many ways – this day it was in the knowing, the belonging created by the words of someone else’s testimony of overcoming.

In this world, we will have difficulties, and as Jesus reminds us in
John 16:33, we can find hope in knowing that He has overcome this world. We have hope in Him – may we remind each other.

For those curious about the book I finished in two, 2-hour flights, check out Undone, A Story of Making Peace in an Unexpected Life.

Living Hope

On By Codie WinslowLeave a comment

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. – Psalm 27:13 (New King James Version)

Scotty stood at the front of the conference room, as he had done many times before with my leadership team, crisp checkered button down, pressed slacks and inspired eyes, waxing eloquent on how to get from here to there with our strategic plan. He is an engineer and I am not. I deal in concepts. He brings the structure to my whims and draws my team toward our plans of making a difference in public service. But this day, he said something that didn’t sit right with me like marinara laced with heavy garlic. “Hope is not a strategy.” 

What did he mean hope wasn’t a strategy! My heart raced alongside my mind and I was agitated like when a prickly thistle is poking your ankle through your sock after a hike. I get it, I mean we are talking about planning and taking action for ongoing business operations, I said to myself. I understood that action was required to “keep the lights on” as they say. Why was I so irked?

A few weeks later, with my focus on work culture this time, I invited Walt to guide my team through a breakthrough exercise in attitude. He pulled up a stool to the u-shaped gallery of faces and softly inquired, “what’s the one thing you have control over each day?” “My attitude,” a manager chimed, and he coached us in the art of ownership. And then suddenly in the middle of a beautiful take to the basket, he flagrantly fouled like my 13-year-old when he’s over the elbows in the paint. “Hope is not a strategy.”

What! Stop! Wait! It’s my only strategy.

 “Hope is not a strategy” irritated me like the grit that makes a beautiful pearl inside the dingy shell of a clam. As I reflect on Easter, the rub of it makes me realize that it’s not hope itself that’s the strategy – it’s what you put your hope in; it’s who you put your hope in. 

Reflect with me. Easter is the reminder that even in the darkness of our circumstances or the depth of our bad choices, we are not defeated because Jesus overcame the darkest hour and the heaviest burden so that we could find forgiveness and new life in Him.

The goodness of the Lord is available to us here and now – He is our hope. He is our strategy.

The Wonder of Words

On By Codie Winslow6 Comments

The right word spoken at the right time is as beautiful as gold apples in a silver bowl.  – Proverbs 25:11 (New Century Version)

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For as long as I can remember, words have captivated me like Orion glowing in the night sky. I knew they had power from a very young age, and I was mesmerized by the thrill I felt when I scribbled out my 5-year-old thoughts, my 8-year-old thoughts, and my 15-year-old thoughts. I used words a lot, on paper and out loud – still do. Sharing words is like wearing a special dress, it makes me want to twirl around so the skirt floats magnificently on the air.

As I begin this blogging adventure, it is my intention to remain keenly aware of the power of the words I use and put out into the world. Intentions don’t always match impact, and I know that not everything I write will wrap you up like a cozy blanket on a rainy day. Words don’t always play nice in the sandbox. There are words that give life and there are words that bring death (Proverbs 18:21) And in knowing that, I still embark on this journey of discovery and obedience.

Wide-eyed, red crazy-curly-haired little me has known the tug of words and I can’t un-know it.

Join me as I rise to meet the road.