6/25/2013
THIS "TEMPLE" NEEDS AN OVERHAUL![]() 1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." I (Annice) will admit...I am overweight...look at me...it's very obvious! I have given birth to 4 children. My body is not what it used to be 7+ years ago. I look briefly in the mirror each day and do not recognize the person standing before me. Where did I go? I feel like I am in a fat suit and that surely I am not this large. Then realty sets in...I am that fat! There, I said it. Up until a few weeks ago, I have mentally thought I was thinner. Ever feel that way? Your inner person is "different" than your outer person? My inner person is me pre-baby days. I was never super thin, but wasn't this sumo wrestler that I have become...the outer me. I know that I need to be more active, eat better, cut back on sugary stuff, stop drinking iced tea and pop, etc. I am lazy and stubborn. I don't want to do any of that. I want to wake up one morning and be "skinny" me. As my birthday approaches, I am reminded that two years ago, my husband purchased an elliptical machine for me. I was going to use it every day and see the pounds melt away. Um..not so much. It is mostly used to hang stuff on or a toy for the kids to play with. It sits in our Schoolhouse, calling out to me daily, dusty, lonely, waiting. Then there is me, sitting at my desk, trying to avoid looking at it, eating Twizzlers or whatever I have stashed away in my filing cabinet, getting larger and larger. In one of the devotionals I have read lately, I was reminded that our bodies are a Temple for the Holy Spirit....say what? My Temple is not in shape to house the Holy Spirit. I need to remodel this place for Him to reside comfortably. Not only my physical Temple but my mental one as well. I cannot do this alone. I have learned that over the years. I have tried dieting, not eating, WW, exercising, etc. What I truly need is to feed my hunger with God's Word. I need to do a "room by room" assessment of my Temple and begin the process and realize that the transformation will not occur overnight. Stop comparing myself with others. Be content in who God made me. So, starting now, my body is under construction...just like most roads in Pennsylvania. Not sure how long the construction will last or how many detours I'll have to travel, but the orange signs and cones are going up. My foreman is God and I couldn't be any happier. Heavenly Father, Lord I thank you for giving me the strength to open up to these women about my major insecurity in life, my body. Guide me and give me the endurance to rebuild the Temple you gave me. Forgive me for not taking better care of myself, Lord. Be with other women out there who feel as I do. Give them the endurance and strength they need. They are not alone, Lord. You are with them always. For that, we are grateful. Amen
6/19/2013
ARE YOU IN?![]() So I (Mandy) bring this post to you straight off the cuff. Bear with me and the bumpy ride this may be. I am typing quicker than the thoughts are coming to my mind. I just read a blog post about joining to gether in community. And I got excited! I got excited because I have been feeling this stirring in my heart for years. But more recently it has been a burning passion deep in my soul (hello, melodramatics!) and the genesis of Deliberate Women. I had a vision (not the prophetic, crystal ball variety) planted on my heart for ministering to women. And ministering to women in a way that is a little different than has been my experience. Absolutely there are some phenomenal, talented, gifted women in this world and I certainly have my favorites... But my desire is to be a speaker and an author (Lord willing) to share my story in all its gory detail to help others make peace with and reconcile their own. But after reading and listening to these women and others, I was crushed at the idea of never being able to measure up to them. For one, I am from up North and acquiring a soft, Southern lilt is just not in the cards for me. Also, and more seriously, while I know their stories, I still feel like their lives today could appear to be wrapped up in a pretty bow and I can imagine other women feeling like I do...like my messy life just doesn't match. So I have a desire to reach women by being real. Transparent. Authentic. And at the risk of over-using this phrase; Relevant. I don't want to be SO relevant, however, that God's message completely disappears into the landscape of this world. But I want to make people laugh. I want to make people cry. I want to make people say "Oh my gosh! YES! I know EXACTLY what she's talking about!" I want to connect. I want to connect with YOU. And I want ALL the glory to go to God! That last one has been my prayer for so long. And I got to thinking...surely this isn't a revolutionary thought. I'd like to think I am unique, but--c'mon! This idea has to have crossed others' minds... So join me. I'm not suggesting we all whip out a laptop and start typing up a manuscript or volunteer to be keynotes at women's conferences across the country. But I am suggesting that we start being more like Jesus in the way He was in His time. He was a revolutionary. He was a renegade. He bucked the rules of His culture and stepped outside the rules of convention. Sign me up. I am longing for more than the surface connections of potlucks and Bible Studies. Don't misunderstand me...these are fabulous and have their place. But let's not stop there. Let's reach beyond and move toward one another in ways that shatter convention and take us beyond ourselves. Let's start stepping outside of our comfort zones and preconceived notions of what a "good" Christian is. Of what is considered "enough". Let's start studying...really studying...who and what Jesus was. His mission first and foremost was to serve and please God. He willingly gave up His life-- and in such a painful and disgraceful manner--to obey the will of His Father. I don't know about you, but I don't like to be uncomfortable. I don't like waiting. I don't like being told "no", and I don't want to suffer. At all. Ever. Not even a little. But I want to please Him. I want to connect with His children just the way He always intended. I want to look beyond what is socially acceptable. I want to reach farther than what is conveniently close. I want to get my hands dirty. I want to put myself out there. I want to start loving and stop judging. I want to share His love everywhere and with everyone without hesitation or pretense and without pre-qualifying. And I'd love for you to do that with me. Did you just do a mental inventory of your day-to-day and think there's no way you could ever do what I am talking about? Do you stay-at-home with your child(ren), wiping butts and noses, folding laundry, cleaning up (and cleaning up and cleaning up) toys, make 2,000 meals and snacks a day, and pray for a solid 5 minutes to use the bathroom uninterrupted? Do you work outside of the home and feel like you're being torn in 37 different directions by your various responsibilities and know that you know that you know that you could never have time to contribute to something like this? Are you more of a behind-the-scenes type of person who breaks out into a cold sweat at the mere thought of speaking in front of people or introducing yourself to someone? Are you a new Believer who reads blogs like this one to learn more and get more confident in your faith? Are you a seasoned Veteran who has been-there-done-that and served on every MOPS steering team, led 500 Ladies' Bible studies, acted as President of the VBS planning committee for 10 years straight and feel now is your time to let the next generation take the lead? Are you a woman who has felt disenfranchised for whatever reason and the very idea of being part of a "ministry" makes you want to throw up because of the hypocrisy that surrounds so many who call themselves Christians? If so...I understand. I do. I have felt the same way every. single. one. of. you. has felt/is feeling. I have felt incompetent, incomplete, unprepared, green, scared crapless, annoyed, burned out, and dubious on many, many occasions. And those same feelings still creep in from time to time. Okay...all the time. But I have decided that I am going to press forward. I am going to wear Christ the best that I can and pray that God will fill me with the spirit and strength and wisdom needed to let others see Christ in me. I will screw up. I will fail. I will fall flat on my face. But I intend to keep getting up and allowing Christ's strength to show through my weakness. Our job here on Earth is to spread the good news to all creation. And then Jesus can come. And I don't know about you, but I am ready to be in Paradise with Him. And I intend to join all of you there. If you're "IN" feel free to pray this prayer with me. Wherever you are. Father, I am guilty of so many things; pride, jealousy, disobedience, judgment, disbelief, and the list goes on...but one thing I am rarely guilty of is serving you wholeheartedly and being absolutely, completely, 100% sold out to You. Please work on my heart. Please open my eyes to what You see. Please soften my heart to how You feel about Your children. Please mold my will to Your own. Please change me. And please make me approachable to others so that they can see Your love in my life. I serve You and You only. In Jesus' name, Amen. Feel free to comment and let me know you're IN this with us. Even a simple "IN!" will fill my heart (and His) with joy!
6/10/2013
CLEARING AWAY THE CLUTTER![]() My husband and I {Ginny} put aside our fears and recently made the decision to begin the process of selling our home. That means, of course, that it is time to go through our home and make it showcase worthy. Something I need to tell you right now - I am not queen bee when it comes to keeping a home clutter free and shiny clean. God just thought He would bestow me with other gifts but for some reason, cleaning wasn't a gift or a passion He decided to give me. That means...we have our work cut out for us! We decided to tackle our basement first because that gave us the most heart palpitations out of any part of our house when we looked at it. It took us a few days to summon the courage to even go down there, but we finally rolled up our sleeves, put our hard hats on, and began to dig through the clutter. It really felt like we were on one of those hoarding shows! We made four piles - one to give away, one to sell, one to keep, and one for trash. And then we painstakingly made our way through bins and boxes galore. Slowly, we began to notice a strange thing appear underneath all of the "stuff" - a floor! Who knew that was there all this time? And before long, we made a path, and then...days later - bins were neatly stacked along the walls, we posted our for sale things on Craigslist and Facebook, and the Veterans came and took things we wanted to give away. We stood back and looked at our newly organized and clean basement and took a deep breath. I felt like I had been holding my breath for days, and now I could finally feel that sweet oxygen flowing through me again. When I think about how that clutter that we had been holding onto in my basement scared me and made me feel like I couldn't breathe, I began to realize that more than my basement was cluttered in my life. My heart was cluttered as well. All this time, I have been holding onto pain from my past, thinking about other people's issues, and worrying about things. I haven't truly let a lot of those things go. I have them packed up in boxes inside of me, and I haven't really taken the time to open those boxes and sift through the mess inside. I need to decide what is worth holding onto that will strengthen me and help me move forward in my quest to glorify God and what is worth letting go. What are you holding onto that you need to finally let go of?
I encourage you to find support from a trusted person in your life or a counselor to help you begin to declutter these things from your life. But most of all, remember that God is the one who can truly help you let them go and to work through the process of forgiveness of others and yourself. Give them to Him and pray He will help you. I have already seen him work in my own life by placing the right people and opportunities in my path that have helped me start to work through the pain of my past. I pray that as you do this, you will finally be able to breathe again, feel joy that you haven't felt in a long time, and have the freedom to stop letting these hold you back from serving God fully with your life. ![]() Our world is going to hell in a handbasket. Just this week, I {Alayna} ran across two articles that made me cry, sob even. They made my heart hurt and stomach turn. (Warning graphic content!) In the first article, a Chinese newborn baby, perhaps only a few days old, was extracted from a sewer line this past Saturday, where he had been heard wailing for two days. The sewer pipe was only 4 inches in diameter, and the baby was stuck there after he had been flushed down the toilet in a residential building in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang. Firefighters cut the pipe loose and took the pipe with terrified baby inside to the hospital, so that doctors could cut the baby loose. He's being called "number 59" because of his incubator number at the hospital. The whole community has reached out to care for this baby with donations and offers to adopt, while the Chinese public has been expressing a good bit of outrage on the Chinese version of Twitter. If you haven't seen this story, it's also tough to read and even tougher to look at the pictures. In the second article, an OBGYN doctor is testifying in Congress in the last week about a bill to ban abortions beyond 20 weeks where the baby feels pain. This doctor, who had performed 1,200 first and second trimester abortions before becoming prolife, describes performing a second trimester dilation and extraction (D&E) abortion on a baby as though the listener or reader were the doctor. It's the most graphic, most disturbing description that I have ever heard, and I have read a lot about abortion. He talks about pulling the baby out, body part by body part. And finally clamping the baby's head, about the size of a plum, and crushing it to extract it from the woman's uterus. He said, "Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you." Wow. If you can stomach to read or watch a video of the doctor's testimony, see the full article here. In reading these stories, I was sickened and troubled. How we treat our most vulnerable says a lot about our society. Or as Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, so eloquently said: "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." The soul of America, and the soul of our world, is dark. And I think it's a reflection of our own souls, even the souls of those who say they follow Christ. Did you hear about these stories? Do you care? I know too many Christians who don't like to read about uncomfortable, controversial things such as late term abortion. Or don't want to hear about things that make them sad like starving and abandoned children. And I don't think that is right. If you call yourself a Christian, this is written to you. I am very passionate about babies and abortion. Is everyone? No. But I believe, as Christians, we should be passionate about the things that God is passionate about. But there are too many of us who aren't passionate about anything. Or maybe we are just passionate about ourselves. Hard to hear? Yes. Am I selfish beyond belief sometimes? Yes. We all are selfish. We are born with a human nature, where pride, arguably one of the sins at the root of many other sins, the sin that made Satan fall, is almost automatic. Pride is self love, self importance, arrogance, and haughtiness. Putting our wants, needs, and desires in God's place. Or setting ourselves up as God, to dictate our own lives, to rule. Pride keeps sinners from Jesus. Pride and selfishness keep Christians so worried about ourselves that we don't see or care about the plight of anyone else. When all we love and care about is ourselves, we don't have space or time in our lives to care about the things that God cares about. And God loves and cares about people. God cares about life. Young lives, old lives, and even lives that aren't yet born. I believe that if you call yourself a follower of Christ, you should care about life, too. Jesus says that he came that we may have life and life abundantly. How can you have life or life abundantly, either spiritually or physically, if you never get a chance at living? If you can never take your first breath? Do I think that all Christians should be praying outside of abortion clinics? Probably not. But I believe that everyone is called to do something for those that are marginalized and discarded. Even if its just being knowledgeable about the problem of abortion. About the problem of child trafficking. About the plight of children in foster care in America. About the epidemic of abandoned children all across the world. About the lack of water in third world countries. About all of the issues that are matters of physical life and physical death. Jesus talks very directly about believers being judged at the final judgement on whether they provided for the physical needs of others in Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus says in Matthew 25:35-40, "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’" Jesus tells this story to show God's judgment on those who met the physical needs of the "least of these" of the society. Followers who met the needs, and by doing so served Christ, went on to eternal life. Those that didn't meet the needs, went on to eternal torment. I believe that rescuing children from sex trafficking and forced slavery, rescuing abandoned babies, saving babies and women from abortion, and providing water in communities that have none, are right in line with meeting the physical needs of the "least of these" that Jesus talks about. Don't mis hear me and assume that I am neglecting spiritual life in Christ. I am not. Introducing people to Jesus and giving them a chance at eternal spiritual life through Him is extremely important. But God cares about meeting people's physical needs too. If we are physically dead, how can we choose to trust in Christ for spiritual life? So, Christians, don't bury your head in the sand when you hear about stories of children sold into sex slavery, because they make you uncomfortable. Don't ignore the unpleasant parts of life, the stories or pictures of aborted babies and starving children, because they make you feel sad or uncomfortable. The cross made Jesus uncomfortable. And he embraced it and suffered it for you. He put aside His wants and desires (read the garden of Gethsemane) to embrace that which was uncomfortable to do the Father's will. Be like Jesus. If you are faced with these unpleasantries, a simple heart nod toward the neglected and downtrodden isn't really enough. Learn about these issues of life and death and let your heart be moved to care about that which God cares about. Be passionate about the things that God is passionate about. Be passionate about people, about babies and children, who are certainly the least of these. Pass your knowledge and passion on to other Christ followers, that together we can shine a light into this present darkness. If the plight of unborn babies and abandoned children - and their mothers who often just need someone to care and to lend a hand to help - in America is disturbing to you, here are a few suggestions... 1. Help at a pregnancy resource center. They are popping up across America, seeking to bring truth and love and most importantly help to women faced with unplanned pregnancies. Support one. In Pittsburgh, we have two, Pregnancy Resource Center of the South Hills in Bethel Park and Homestead (PRCSH on FB) and Choices Pregnancy Center in Coraopolis. Give money or your time to help women in need. If you can physically, emotionally, and spiritually help the women who may choose abortion, maybe there will be a day that no women will feel the need to choose abortion. Pregnancy resource centers often have post abortion counseling for women to help them heal from the trauma of abortion. 2. Be an advocate for children through adoption. Adopt a child, if you can, from the US or from abroad. Encourage women in crisis pregnancies to offer their baby for adoption. Adopt from the foster care system or become a foster parent. Give kids love and a home. Even if it's just temporarily. This isn't for everyone, as the emotional baggage can be a strain on some families. But if God is calling you to it, adopt kids from foster care or be foster parents. I think this must be one of the most difficult things to do, and my heart goes out to good foster parents with good foster homes. If adoption or foster care isn't for you, reach out to kids in need, kids who are lost through great organizations like Big Brother, Big Sister. Everyone needs someone to care. 3. Know the truth about abortion. Know about the risks and emotional scarring from early abortion, late term abortion, and all in between. Be an advocate for the unborn, for those who haven't yet had a chance to live. And have compassion on women hurt by abortion. Many choose abortion because they are scared, alone, and believe abortion to be their only choice. Love them. Don't heap abuse on them as though you know what you would have done in their situation. Direct hurting women to post abortion counseling and the love and healing of Christ. 4. Volunteer with 40 Days for Life. There is movement of prayer and fasting happening outside of abortion clinics all around the US several times a year called 40 Days for Life. It happens right here in Pittsburgh, outside the downtown Planned Parenthood, twice a year. I went for the first time this past spring. It's not violent, it's not in your face, it's not loud. It's offers of prayer and a presence to women who may be in crisis situations. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. |
This space is reserved for Founder Mandy's perspectives and viewpoints of Scripture. Man is fallible, but God is not. It's strongly encouraged that you study the Scripture for yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in your understanding.
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