We are honored to have Lori Schumaker writing for us today on the Dance With Jesus Birthday Beach Bash and Blog Tour.
Lori is currently a wife and mama to three beautiful children. Before becoming a full-time stay-at-home-mom, she was a teacher both in the elementary classroom and at the community college level. Her MA is in Bilingual and Multicultural Education, so she was given the amazing opportunity to teach second language learning children and adults the English language. Lori loved meeting people from around the world and was blessed by so many of these children, families, and individuals.
These days Lori don’t find herself teaching in any classrooms. Rather, her sweet kiddos keep her in a full-time state of chaos! Her boys are avid athletes and have this awe-inspiring gift and passion for basketball. They play competitively which means they play it ALL.THE.TIME. My daughter came home to us from Bulgaria a little over three years ago. And spending the first 5 years in an orphanage causes unique challenges we now address every day with their precious daughter, who is a beautiful little girl with spunk and tenacity like no other!
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
Ephesians 1:4-5
The memories seem to stay with me. The words penetrating my heart, eating at my soul. Sometimes they were just more than I could bear and I needed an escape. Just outside our door was a red picnic table and, in the summer months, that picnic table became that place of solace.
It was there I would wrestle with the feeling of not good enough.
Not worthy.
I desperately attempted to fix things … to make them happy. Maybe if I could just say or do the right thing, they wouldn’t be angry anymore. They would be happy with each other – With me. If only the words didn’t hurt so badly and if only I could be good enough to make them really love me.
Are you like me? Do you wrestle with ‘not good enough’?
Each of our stories may look a little different, but the outcome of family dysfunction often leaves us in a common place. A place that says, in no uncertain terms, “I’ll never be good enough.”
We allow the label placed upon us by the brokenness of others to have more weight than the identity given to us by our Heavenly Father.
We allow the enemy to use the brokenness of people in our lives to aid him in what he is so profoundly adept.
The telling of lies.
The truth is, ‘good enough’ will never fix those around us, nor will it bring them to love us the way we desire. And it doesn’t define us.
The ugly words are NOT our labels.
They will NEVER be our labels and that is a truth Satan wants to remain secret.
So, he works diligently to keep us believing the lies.
He pressed in on me as a little girl sitting at the red picnic table so long ago and, in complete honesty, I can tell you he continues to press in even today.
But today I recognize truth and I have a deep relationship with the Author of Truth. You see, God’s truth dispels the lies of the enemy every single time.
That, my friends, is good news!
Our Creator, the God of the Universe, has given us a different label. A label of love and beauty.
In His Word, He says…
To continue reading Lori’s words, click here.