January 2017 - Gina Brenna Butz

Why I Don’t Teach Sunday School . . . or . . . Finding My Yes

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 26, 2017
Post category:expectations grace identity

Why I Won't Teach Sunday School . . . or Finding My Yes — photo by Jorigė Kuzmaitė

You will never see me teaching Sunday School to children.

It took me years to be able to say that without embarrassment. What kind of person isn’t willing to teach children? Does Gina not like children? Does she not see the great potential in shepherding young souls? These are the questions I was sure people would ask.

When my kids were little, and someone stood up front at church to talk about how important children’s ministry is (I swear in the background I could hear Whitney Houston singing, “I believe the children are our future . . .”) I would sink down in my seat, refusing to make eye contact, feeling terrible.

Then, one day, it hit me, “I am not called to this.” And suddenly I was free. I felt like Phoebe, in the pilot episode of Friends:

I don’t want to because it’s not what I’m supposed to do.

My calling is to other activities, things that you probably don’t want to do. I know this, because often when I tell people what I enjoy doing, they get a look on their face like they just smelled something weird. They would hate what I love. And that is as it should be.

We weren’t all given the same passions or gifts. How boring would that be? And ineffective. This isn’t Divergent. Five factions isn’t going to cut it.

Since coming back to the States, I have had opportunities to minister in a variety of ways unavailable to me overseas, which is fabulous.

What’s hard is discerning what I should and shouldn’t do.

At first, I felt I should say yes to everything because if I didn’t they might stop offering. Over time I’ve learned that when I say no to less ideal opportunities, it leaves space to pursue that which I love. God knows the good way I should walk, and He can guide me to the best yeses.

There is great freedom and joy in knowing that I am learning to give my time to what I am created to do, rather than just doing what I see, or what is asked of me. I want to give my energy to the activities God has for me, not what others want me to do.

In saying no, I am leaving space for someone who truly IS called to do that.

And I hope she does. She probably will, because she wants to say yes. And I will say yes somewhere else. There, we will both find joy and life.

So go ahead, ask me to teach Sunday School. I will politely decline and feel no remorse. It’s just not my calling.

What about you? What are you saying yes to today?

Related posts:

Stand at the Crossroads

Learning to Respect My Limits

Drop the Hot Dog – Learning to Feed on What Truly Satisfies

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 20, 2017
Post category:dependence on God expectations identity loved

Confession: While I deeply want to be loved for who I am (and fear that I might not be), I settle for admiration. It feels like love. But that’s like eating a hot dog when what I need is rich soul food.

It’s easier, feeding off admiration. Admiration is more accessible. It’s more within my control to seek out the praise of others than it is to lay myself bare before them and hope I am enough in myself. I pour my energy into dazzling others with my gifts and tell myself I’m satisfied while my true hunger lies under the surface, unmet.

We all have our hot dogs.

Our hot dogs are those easy, cheap, artificial substitutes for what our hearts deeply crave. We eat the worldly foods we hope will bring us life. Because we don’t believe our true needs will be met, we settle for less.

We all settle for something lesser to satisfy our souls.

We want to be wanted, but we settle for being needed.

Our souls need true connection, but we settle for false peace, fueled by a fear of confrontation.

We want intimacy, but we settle for staying in control, hiding our weaknesses where they cannot be touched.

We feed on competence, reputation, usefulness, perfectionism, security, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, busy schedules and so much more.

A few years ago, the taste of success began to sour for me.

Oh, don’t get me wrong-I love the feeling that I have accomplished something. I never fail to appreciate admiration. But I could feed off success all day long and twice on Sunday and never satisfy the deep hunger of my soul to be known and loved for who I am. That is a desire for which admiration is a pale substitute.

It’s like I woke one day and realized I have been feeding myself bread made from sawdust. Worse than a hot dog. That is the act of a person who is starving and must feed herself any way she can. It is the act of a person who doesn’t believe there is manna for her to eat instead.

God in his mercy keeps showing me ways I am trying to find life and love where it is not meant to be found. He keeps drawing my eyes back to Him and His provisions. God loves me too much to let me go hungry.

He calls me to drop the hot dogs.

He tells me to stop trying to feed myself something that isn’t going to satisfy. (We can have a pretty tight grip on our hot dogs. Sometimes He has to outright smack them out of our hands. Word to the wise-just let go. It’s easier).

Instead of our hot dogs, God is offering us a feast.

When we stop scrambling to feed ourselves, we see how He is providing rich food all around us. We see the manna of His presence, peace, joy, and love in all the ordinary moments He gives us throughout the day. He is constantly trying to feed us.

As I step back from seeking admiration, the deeper hunger of my heart has come to the surface. I am learning to own the hunger, to feel it more deeply rather than ignore it. I hear His invitation to the feast. The call to feast on Him alone is more satisfying than anything I could feed myself.

Don’t believe the lie that the hot dog will satisfy.

It’s not what you need. What He offers is better. Ask Him to show you what you are settling for, and how you are trying to feed yourself. What you hunger for is found best in Him. He is the source of love, the bread of life. Be satisfied in Him.

Stand at the Crossroads

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 16, 2017
Post category:rest transition truth

It would never have been in my plans to make an international move pregnant, but that is exactly what I did in the fall of ‘99. When I was thrown into the newness of being a first time mama six months later, I was still wrestling to grasp a language as different from English as possible, learning how to lead a ministry alongside my husband, and finding my place in a new culture.

I was swimming in transition.

My love for our host country, coupled with a deep need for external validation, drove me through the spring to squeeze life out of every hour: studying the language while our son napped, taking him with me to meet students, our team passing him around as we met and planned. I once nursed him with one arm while wiping a poop explosion off the wall with baby wipes so I could finish in time to meet a student for discipleship.

I wanted to do it all. Six months later, I was overwhelmed.

To read the rest of the story, and how God used this verse from Jeremiah to minister to me, go to my guest post at (in)courage here: Stand at the Crossroads

The Power of Story

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 12, 2017
Post category:identity loved

“All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.” – The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield

In the last few years, I’ve thought a lot more about my story. Partly this is from coaching others to know their stories, partly through reading To Be Told by Dan Allender, and partly it’s just the way God is leading me.

Many people think the past is just the past-over and done, let’s move on. But the past is part of us.

We are a composite of our stories and how they shaped us.

There are messages on our hearts from every moment we have lived-messages about who we are, what it takes for us to find love and belonging, and how to safeguard our hearts.

The problem is that those messages are often fuzzy versions of truth.

They lead us to seek ways of saving ourselves rather than calling us to rest in God. It’s unlikely we will change those messages and the behavior that stems from them unless we really examine the stories that shaped us.

And more importantly, we can’t know our stories well on our own.

The last spring we lived overseas, a group of us met every other week to watch a video series by Dan Allender called Learning to Love Your Story. Afterward, we broke into groups and reflected on what we heard. In the process, we told our stories to each other.

It’s interesting when you tell a story from your life to someone else. You think you know it and understand it, but until you tell it to someone else, you don’t see it for what it is.

I’ve had people tell me incredible sad stories, but they laugh while they tell them, not realizing their laughter helps them avoid feeling the pain of what happened.

I have told others stories, heard them say, “That must have been so hard,” and until that moment, I didn’t see it that way. We see our stories through a certain lens; we need help to zoom out and see them more clearly.

When we tell our stories, others can ask questions and help us connect the dots to who we are in the present because of our past. We need their reflection to help us see how what happened to us in the past still shapes us now, for good or harm. They can point us to wounds that need healing, sin that needs redeeming, lies that need the truth.

One of the greatest gifts is someone listening to your story, feeling it with you, and loving you in it.

It opens the door for healing and transformation. In telling our stories, others wipe the film from them to reveal the truth, to recognize the lies and vows we have embraced to help us save ourselves.

They can give us the grace and compassion many of us missed in our stories the first go around. This is the power of story.

Do you know your own story? Do others know it?

Climbing 2017 One Step at a Time

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 5, 2017
Post category:faith grace rest

Two days into the New Year, and I whined to my husband, “I have too much to DO!”

“Like what?” he reasonably asked.

“I don’t know. EVERYTHING,” I told him (let me have this dramatic moment, mister). I have big plans this year, and those big plans are looming.

It didn’t help that I spent most of the last week and a half sick and fairly inactive. New Year’s Eve I was in bed by 9 pm (oh, who am I kidding? I’m always in bed by 9 pm, even on New Year’s Eve. A night owl I am not). After all that laying around, I came into 2017 like a racehorse fresh out of the box, like Pac Man ready to gobble down all the pac-dots and level up.

In all that down time, I was able to reflect on last year and dream big for this one. I filled that new planner with goals I want to accomplish and habits I hope to keep and books to read and ponies to ask for. I even added an extra page to capture the other roles and responsibilities I know God’s put on my plate for this year (I’ll send my planner 2.0 version to subscribers soon!). I immediately found myself wanting to chase down every goal, check every box, fulfill every hope that sprang to mind as I thought about this new year. And I wanted to do it before the end of the week.

It’s good and right to look ahead and hope for bigger and better, to plan for change and set our hearts in new directions. We want to lift our eyes from the path we’re on to see the next mountain we could climb. The problem is: mountain climbing is hard. Where to even begin?

Some of us look at that mountain and think, “What was I thinking? I can’t mountain climb,” and we give up. Others, like yours truly, think, “Well, if I run, I’ll get to the top faster.” Moron. You can’t run up a mountain.

It’s no secret I’m not the best at pacing myself. This may be why so many resolutions fall by the wayside: we who are so accustomed to instant results struggle to see the mountain and know how to conquer it a little at a time. We don’t know how to do the long journey. We have seen what could be, and we want it now. We see how hard the journey will be, and we doubt our ability to endure. It’s easier to decide not to climb.

The Chinese have a saying, “千里之行，始於足下.” (Qiān lĭ zhī xíng, shĭ yú zú xià for those of you who are familiar with Mandarin, or who just want to have a slighter better chance of reading it) We know it as, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

It’s important to lift our eyes, to dream of what could be. We must keep it in mind, as we live with the reality that today, maybe I only inch toward it. Tomorrow, maybe I leap. Tomorrow, maybe I check a box, or I accomplish something big. Then the next day, maybe I rest, or I go back and do the same step again. We keep our eyes on the top while we take the next step.

This morning as I walked, I prayed about this. I was reminded that I want to hold goals and dreams and hopes that are God-honoring, that are from Him. I want to do what He has called me to do, nothing more, nothing less. So if these are the mountains He has given me to climb, He can help me climb them, one step at at time. He can guide my pace, give me grace for the days when not much happens, and strength for the days I need to push through.

So I ask Him, “What step should I take today?” Do that, and it is enough. Remember: we don’t just have all year. We have our lives to keep moving in the direction He’s leading. The journey continues each day, one step at a time.