It’s Friday before the sun is the up. I’m in my bathrobe, coffee beside me, at the kitchen table, a fruit fly just flew past my face. Life is very very very good.
Life is very good.
Did you know there was a time when I could’ve won the lottery, inked a record deal from the comfort of my own jacuzzi looking out on the Grand Tetons with a flute of champagne in my hand and I still wouldn’t have said those four words? It’s true. In my mind I thought it wasn’t something a “good girl” should say.
I wanted to play the part of a good girl so much. But how do you know? How do you know if you’re a good girl or not? Here’s a little smattering of how I thought a good girl should live:
A good girl is too busy, she’s always a little stressed out. She worries a lot because it’s a sign that she’s taking life and her duties extremely seriously. A good girl painfully admits to not being “good” on her diet and laments with her friends about needing to lose more weight. A good girl is in constant battle with how she’s not living up to a high standard of outward beauty. A good girl doesn’t ask for help unless she’s at a breaking point. A good girl dutifully remembers how God never promised her good things and so she obediently accepts a life full of hard things without ever wondering if it’s possible to change because to want something is not the sign of a good girl. That’s why cookies and brownies and netflix and Chardonnay are so important because they’re the only things she’s allowed herself to have. A good girl worries a lot about her relationships and how to get people to like her. She bends and changes according to whatever situation she finds herself in order to fit in and be what people want her to be. She really goes over her verbage with a fine toothed comb , feels terrible about the things she may have said in error, feels terrible about the things other people say in error. It really takes up lots of brain power for a good girl to live in community. She says “Sorry” like all the time. She works really hard to sense weird vibes or tension between her and her friends and cooks up confessions in order to say “sorry” for something just hoping to clear the air. A good girl never lets go of the past- whether it’s to relive old hurt that she did to others or if it’s old hurt she received. A good girl should always remember all of it otherwise she might make mistakes all over again. And then how would she be good?
Should I keep going? I could go on for pages and pages. Dudes. These weren’t just bad habits, these thoughts were assigned virtue- I thought I was being a good girl by remembering how hard everything is supposed to be. I thought there was merit in the struggle.
But now I think it was all garbage that kept me in a garbage can like a garbage person (my words) for way. too. long. (And yet even in my foolishness, God was so so good to me)
Because life is amazing. And it’s not easy or perfect or without tragedy and trial. But still. Life is amazing. And it took me 42 years to feel like I could say something like that without my inner critic’s voice saying, “Who the hell do you think you are, Missy?”
None of that shit is good. None of it. None of it is worthy of praise or encouragement because it fosters hiding and smallness and fear. It’s all fear based. All. Fear. And it’s all sad. All. Sad.
So sad.
Letting go of old habits and rewriting scripts is hard, but it’s the best work I’ve ever done in my whole life. And I can speak three languages and write songs from nothing. That stuff is easy easy compared to letting go and being willing to step into something new.
There are no good girls and there are no bad girls. As much as I believed it to be true, there’s no truth in any of it. Moreover, as a Christ Follower, there’s no Gospel in any of it.
I know a lot of you are looking forward to Halloween next Thursday, but probably even more of you are looking forward to celebrating Reformation Sunday and singing a real busted up version of “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” I know I am! And also, “Thy Strong Word.” ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT, SON!
Reformation Sunday is when we remember the work of the church reformers of the 16th Century- specifically my boy, Martin Luther. Do you know what happened to Luther? Essentially, after years and years of living in fear of God’s judgment (and he was a monk who had dedicated his life to the church), he woke up one day to the true meaning of the Gospel.
And the Gospel didn’t make him perfect or likeable or good. It made him free. So free that fear couldn’t chain him up anymore. He felt so free that he fell in love with life and the life he was called to live. And he lived so big and so crazy that over and over again people looked at him and said, “Who the hell does this guy think he is?”
Oh him? He thinks he’s free. So free he walks around here like he owns the place. Not in a way that makes you feel small, but in a way that dares you to live BIG.
Who do I think I am? I think I’m free. And in my freedom I say this life is so so good.
I wonder if I made up that whole good girl thing on my own or whether it was taught to me subconsciously. I wonder where it came from originally. Not that it matters where it came from. What matters is that I can see it for what it is. Lies and garbage.
Since I’m not perfect, I still have moments tempted by lies and garbage, but mostly it’s fading into nothing. What’s awesome about this “Good Girl Go Home (and by ‘home’ I mean ‘go away forever’) Campaign is that not only does it help me feel free, it sets everyone around me free. I don’t think about any of that stuff for myself or for anyone else anymore.
Instead I like to practice seeing the beauty in all the things we get to experience every day. Even the challenges we’re invited to experience, we’re being invited into something new, some new discovery. And that’s beautiful in its own way.
Life is amazing. So are you. I hope you have a great weekend. This is was longer that I originally thought it would be. Love, Hope