grace Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Gina Brenna Butz

The Soul Needs Gentleness

Post author:Gina B
Post published:February 19, 2015
Post category:grace loved

I have been accused, more than once in my life, of being “too hard on myself.” I will not deny this. However, speaking on behalf of all the people in the world who tend to be hard on themselves, it isn’t helpful. What we generally hear when people say that is, “You’re too hard on yourself. You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Stop doing that,” which we will add to the long list of activities we are already should-ing ourselves about.

I know, it’s messed up.

I can be hard on my soul. And while pushing myself might help me accomplish more, it’s not life-giving.

My soul needs gentleness.

This is what God has been whispering to me the last few weeks, “Be gentle with yourself” and I say, “that sound like a great idea, God. What does that look like?”

Being gentle with my soul looks like grace. It looks like taking a deep breath and enjoying the moment. It looks like letting go of the should’s and ought’s and could have’s. It looks like smiling at the mistakes and moving on. It looks like compassion for ourselves.

This week, for me, it’s looked like seeing the to do list still undone at the end of the day and saying, “It’s ok.” It’s looked like turning around and apologizing for a quick word and forgiving myself in the process. It’s looked like saying, “You’re enough.”

So what could you say that would be helpful to the “too hard” crowd? Maybe the question, “I wonder what it would look like for you to be gentle with yourself right now?” However you say it, do it gently. Our souls need it.

What does gentle look like for you?

Stop Telling Me to be Amazing

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 31, 2015
Post category:expectations grace identity

Be Amazing

I saw a shirt at Old Navy once that said, “Be Amazing.”

It felt like way too much pressure. And that’s coming from an Enneagram 3. My husband says 3s are driven by “the need to be awesome.”

It might have felt that way because I was in the middle of power Christmas shopping that should have been spread out reasonably over 5 days, but had been crammed into one due to sickness.

That same sickness forced me to bow out of a speaking engagement and left my house a bit of a disaster (pro tip: if you keep wearing shoes in the house, you don’t feel all the stuff you haven’t swept off the floors). I was just proud to be upright and not in yoga pants.

It felt like that again later, on day 15 of my husband’s 16 day trip around the world (Lord, have mercy) when I was just happy that I was awake and communicative without the help of legal stimulants. We only ate 2 frozen pizzas and a deli chicken. This I call victory.

What the World Tells Us

It seems everywhere we look, we’re being told we can do it.

We can be amazing, and awesome, and over the top sparkling, beautiful, jaw-dropping.

Ordinary is for suckers. Lazy people. Those who don’t really care, who don’t want their lives to count. I shouldn’t just survive when my husband travels; I should thrive.

And we have our moments – all of us do. We have shining moments when we reflect the glory of God. We have red-letter days, it’s true.

But living there? Gosh, it’s exhausting. And truthfully, I don’t think it’s what the world needs.

What the world needs is not more amazing.

What the World Needs

The world needs people who are living and loving faithfully, authentically, with hope and perseverance and grace. People who have shining moments and messy moments and are ok with all of them. This is what our souls need too – we need the freedom to be who we are.

The world needs people who get up each day and choose to live the ordinary moments with trust that even this is significant.

We need people who accept who they are, with all their good and bad, beautiful and messy, all together. People who believe it’s all worth offering, and then offer it.

We were created for great works, but also for ordinary ones.

Sometimes we will amaze and other times we won’t. There’s nothing wrong with not being incredible at every moment. It’s called being human.

So please. Stop telling me to be amazing. Tell me just to be me, and I will gladly oblige.

Death by Gingerbread House

Post author:Gina B
Post published:December 13, 2014
Post category:Christmas grace

Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, all due to the intense and relentless desire of our son to make a gingerbread house.

We made one once, in the U.S., before we knew that you could preserve your sanity and use a kit. I vowed never again to make one from scratch. I would have used a kit here, but IKEA ran out before we got one, and the other places are too expensive.

So here I am, so exhausted, frustrated, and stressed that I resorted to taking a few old potatoes and hurling them at my shower wall as hard as possible.

I need more potatoes.

I thought that it might be hard to make a gingerbread house here because of the high humidity. That was the least of our issues.

I thought it would help to use a box inside for reinforcement. Yeah, that wasn’t much help.

I could list out the problems, but let’s say that in the end, we have a gingerbread house precariously held together with not just frosting but also tape, glue, staples, nails, and sewing pins. It is a house that any inspector would instantly condemn.

I’m afraid to let the kids decorate it because I know the second someone touches it, it will collapse. So it will remain undecorated. In fact, when I get around to it, I’m pitching it. I’d like to pitch it against my shower wall too, but I still have to clean up the potatoes. And the nails might scratch the enamel.

I informed our son that we are never ever going to attempt another gingerbread house from scratch. The crazed look on my face convinced him not to argue. I told him maybe we could just paint a box brown and decorate that. He said maybe we could just eat the decorations. Hey, even better!

The biggest bummer is that I was at a Christmas luncheon on Thursday and part of the dessert was these really cute little figures made of sugar – trees and people. I asked everyone at our table to give me theirs so I have a virtual sugar forest and village. They will be homeless this Christmas.

Just Grace

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 7, 2013
Post category:31 Days of Victory grace

I am not a spontaneous person. I’m not free spirited. I like plans, routines, to do lists. Sometimes, I wish this weren’t true about me. I’d like to be more relaxed and just take life as it comes, but I’ve learned that I function best when I stick to what I know. God made me a planner, and it is good.

So yesterday I took time to plan out my week. I made menu plans, scheduled activities, even wrote tasks for each day. I felt good, because I knew that when I do that I put my time into the things that matter to me. It seemed like a victory was ahead.

But then I came home last night with a raging headache that kept me up until after 1, and made me sleep till 8. Suddenly, my best laid plans were off. There just weren’t enough hours for all my to do’s. See, this is the problem with schedules – when you make them, you’re acutely aware of when you aren’t following them!

It would be so easy to look at my list and see what didn’t happen, to be disappointed, to be stressed. Throughout the day, whenever this temptation came to mind, I said simply, “grace.”

Plans are good. Intentionality is good. But life doesn’t go the way we expect so much of the time, so instead of looking at what didn’t happen, my victory today is to be happy for what did. For all the rest, it’s just grace.

What are you calling victory today?

Being Human

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 8, 2013
Post category:courage grace identity

So I’m in this women’s group about shame. Yep, shame. Sounds fun right? And not at all awkward.

We’re talking about it because it’s the topic of a book we’re reading by Brené Brown, and if you don’t know who she is you should go find out. Wow. Just wow.

The book we’re reading is called I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn’t). It’s about recognizing shame and building shame resilience.

Shame is the fear of disconnection. It is the feeling that there is something about us that is wrong, and that wrongness separates us from others. It sends us into hiding.

What I keep coming back to as we talk about this topic is that so much shame comes from the fact that we all have a hard time just being human. Shame outright sucker punches us when we buy into the messages all around us about what we should be, what we should do, what we should have.

The expectations are huge and conflicting and impossible, but we try with everything we have to meet them so that we don’t have to feel like we’re the ones left out. Shame tells us that it’s not ok to just be who we are, to be human.

I have a friend who says we all vacillate between believing that we are superhuman or subhuman. When we’re superhuman, we think we can do it all, that if we try just a little harder we can achieve that ideal. We refuse to accept that we have needs or limits.

Or we decide we can’t do it, we’re not good enough, we’re less than, and we put ourselves in the subhuman category. We vote ourselves off the island. Either way it’s shame at work.

I’m realizing through this group that shame doesn’t have to win.

We can all just be our imperfect, struggling, up and down, awesome and less than awesome selves. But to do that, we have to take a hard look at those expectations. We have to stop listening to them. But more than that – we need to talk about what they do to us.

We’ve been doing that in this group, because the cure for shame is empathy. We share our stories and we listen and try to enter in and say “you’re not alone.” At times it feels awkward and uncomfortable, because we want so much to do it well, but more and more it brings the greatest sense of relief and acceptance. It’s a joy to be able to say, “This is me being human” and to have others say, “Yeah, I’m human too.”

Why can’t we all just be human?

I Quit Pinterest

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 8, 2013
Post category:grace

I quit Pinterest.

Seriously, I did.

I realized that after looking at Pinterest, I would have this vaguely uneasy, discontented feeling, like maybe my health, my house, my relationships, and certainly my parties, were all a little lacking. Sub-par. Less than awesome.

True, I’ve found some great recipes there. I’m currently looking at what is a highly satisfying DIY project of ceiling medallions adorning my dining room wall, thanks to a pin I saw (but FYI ceiling medallions are NOT inexpensive unless you can magically find them at a salvage yard or something). I have new ideas for exercising. I have been amused by some e-cards.

But what I’ve found, and I’m finding all over the internet actually, is that we all seem to be striving for just a little bit more, just a little bit better. And we don’t just strive for it, we have to put it out there that we’re striving for it. And sadly I think that generally produces one of two results, at least it does in me: either a zealous attempt to keep up with the Jones who appear to produce fabulous non-processed organic meals for their continually-improving-through-homemade-activity-children and going on meaningful dates with their spouses while maintaining rock hard abs, all in their chemically free, Pottery Barn inspired yet DIY decorated homes, OR, it makes us want to throw in the towel.

Me – I’m doing the latter. It’s not that I don’t want some of those things. I just want them not that much. Not so much that I make them my god. My idols. That’s what I find happening in my heart when I sit and stare at page after page of what I could do, what I could be, what I could have. I am sure there are people out there for whom Pinterest is nothing more than a fun way to gather ideas and grow, and that’s great. For me, I have to go back to my word of the year – content – and own that Pinterest is one of those things that stands in contradiction with it.