Renew Your Soul '09

with Liz Curtis Higgs.

Wow. Wow wow wow.
What a joy it was to be able to attend this ladies conference this weekend.
My heart came home so overflowing, so light, and so renewed.
I don't think I've laughed so hard, for so long, in such a long time.
I knew I was in for a good time when they opened the conference with the clip of Dancing Queen from Mamma Mia! That set the mood right there baby!
Laugh and have some fun.
And we did!
We're talking hours worth of laughing.
Oh how I do love to laugh.
Liz loved to laugh. And she was incredibly funny on top of it.
It's so refreshing to be around people who love to laugh and enjoy life. Who can have fun, cut loose, laugh at themselves when they need to, and just look at life with the utmost joy.
That woman was filled with all kinds of joy!
And it was so refreshing.
I came away with a lot. These are some things that touched my heart, made me think, made me laugh, and just left me feeling good...(in no particular order from the weekend)

"Why be gray when you can be silver, or platinum!"

"Don't give the mirror power over you. Don't look at yourself expecting to see a problem...instead look at yourself in the mirror and say....TA-DAAAAAA!!!!!!" ( with your arms raised in the air of course-how fun is that!)

" If you can't remember to say TA-DAAA!, say SHA-ZAMM!" ( oh yeah)

"God loves us just the way we are. We are His creation." (from the smallest to the largest, from the shortest to the tallest, bad hair days, bad face days, bad heart days, He loves us all. I never get tired of hearing that truth.)

"After God made man He said, "it is not good." (buah hah ha ha hah ha!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness I laughed so hard when she said that!!!! Of course she finished the verse :) )

The gospel of Mark is a very intense, edge of your seat, what's gonna happen next!? kind of book, "instantly! and then, suddenly, immediately!"

"Embracing someone is much different than giving them a hug."

"It's even more important to be home for your kids when they're teenagers than it is when they are toddlers." (good to know-since I'm not quite there yet :) )

Lavish is a very special word meaning "to give in great amounts, or without limit."

Wretched is a chewy word. (chewy? what a way to describe a word!)

"When you hear a baby cry 'whaaaaaaaa', that must be what we sound like to God sometimes. Thank goodness God doesn't respond to us like that"
(there were a couple of darling little babies doing just that during the conference. Liz graciously stopped and pointed out how great it is that the moms came out with their babies, rather than staying home because of them. Loved that! Rather than giving them "the eye" b/c their babies cried, we gave them a round of applause. Sometimes moms need a round of applause! So much more uplifting!)

All you have to do is turn towards God, and He'll be there to do the rest. He never takes His eyes off us. He runs to us with His arms open. Embraces us. Welcomes us home. (Luke 15:11 prodigal son)

"You can not out-sin the grace of God." (Amen to that!!)

John 8-woman caught in the act of adultery brought before a crowd and Jesus to be stoned to death. During this story is the only time that Jesus writes anything, and we don't know what he wrote! He stands up, after writing in the sand, and says to the people, "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone." "She was guilty of her sin, but she didn't have to pay for it-Jesus paid it for her." (again, love that. I know this, but I never tire of hearing it over and over and over and over again! Jesus paid for it all.)

"Grace is not the license to sin-it's the freedom to live life full tilt for God"

"The duh-ciples" (ha ha ha! seriously, who thinks to say these kinds of things?!) "the disciples are just like us, they didn't always say or do the brightest things" (true that!)

"Satan condemns, he accuses. None of which God does to us."

"We don't necessarily want people to know about church, we want them to know about Jesus" (Another awesome point. No doubt the church is important, but it will always be made up of sinful people. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus first, who is perfect.)

"Why do we complicate the Bible when Jesus makes it so easy?!"

"The concept of forgiving yourself is not in the Bible. To say that you can't forgive yourself is saying that God's grace isn't good enough."

"When insults or hardships come our way we assume it's from the enemy. Look closely. Is there a way to use this hurt or hard time to witness, to make ourselves draw closer to God"

Cool weekend, cool woman, cooler message. Hope hearts are changed because of it. I know mine was. :)