Not of this World - July/August 2013 by Courtney R

Not of this World July/August 2013

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%!>4&"$'" =$#%&#%9 On God

30/32 | Heart of Worship

On You

22/29 | The Very Thing I Desire

On TCKs 10/11 | 15 Things

On Life

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What’s in Your Carry-On?

3 2

4 5

1. Gussy Sews Wallet // 2. Bonlook Glasses // 3. Kiehl’s Lip Gloss // 4. Minted Business Cards // 5. Bobby Pins

Favorite City Malibu

Dream Vacation Any beach!

Longest Trip Long plane rides would be NY to London or LA to Hawaii

Train, Plane, or Car I love road trips!

Favorite Trip My favorite trip I have ever been on was my honeymoon to Playa de Carmen!

Favorite Part of Traveling My favorite part of traveling is being with friends or family; I love the memories together!

Casey blogs for:

The Wiegands

I am Casey Leigh. I love to share my life through my little blog. When you stop by you can expect pieces of my perspective on life, faith, kids, marriage, loss... with touches of art, creative inspiration, fashion, projects & things I love along the way. My gift to you, our story...

-The Wiegands

15 Things I Want to Tell

My Third Culture Kids

by Rachel Jones

You are the coolest kids on the planet.

You cliff-jump and climb

up and then down into active volcanoes. You flew internationally on your own before becoming a teenager. You sleep under the stars on the beach and know how to pee on a toilet or in a hole or behind a bush or where-there-is-no-bush.

I know it is hard.

I watched you, proud and teary, the first day of school when you

didn’t know how to count to ten in French and on the first day of school in America when you didn’t know how to eat lunch in a cafeteria. I see your moments of hesitation when kids talk about something you don’t understand. I saw your shoulders droop that day you wore your traditional Djiboutian dress to church and then, once you saw how other kids were dressed, asked if you could take it off. I hear all three of you refer to a different place as home.

I don’t know what it is like.

I know what it is like to parent a TCK but I

don’t know what it is like to be a TCK. I’ve read books and listened to talks and attended seminars but you are forging a path I have not walked. I’ve got your back and I’ve got a box full of Kleenex and an ache in my belly from our shared laughter. I do not know what your particular journey is like but I will hold your hand, fierce, until the very end.

I am sorry for the things this life has taken from you. The names of all the friends you have said good-bye to are branded in my mind.

Grandparents and cousins at your birthday parties and school events. The feeling of belonging to a specific place, house, culture, language. A mom who can be a parent chaperone without having an accent. Sports and musical and academic activities at which you naturally excel but will never fully experience.

I am thrilled for the things this life has given you.

Adventure and a wide-cracked-open worldview. The opportunity to trust God when nothing

around makes sense or when everything around makes sense. Friends all over the world of diverse faith and languages and skin colors and food preferences and economic levels. Multiple language fluency. Creativity and the intrinsic ability to look outside the box, to see from another person’s perspective. Real gratitude, stemming from an understanding that things are fleeting, gratitude for relationships and for time spent in togetherness. Adaptability. Courage. Courage. Courage.

Read the rest on Rachel’s blog here. You know that book, I Love You to the Moon? Well, I love you to Somaliland. And Kenya. And France. And Djibouti. And Minnesota. And anywhere else. And back.

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Jess summer lookbook

mint silver peach

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I like clothes that are comfortable and cute. Maxi skirts are my new favorite thing to wear; you can dress them up or make them casual. My favorite fashion motto is "wear clothes

tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to show you're a lady"

the very thing I desire by kelly donehey

Hey.

Come sit across from me. Grab a cup of coffee or a

peppermint tea and pretend to look me in the eyes. Let’s talk. Lets get real shall we. Let’s look into the depths of our hearts and pull out the crutches that we are hiding and the sin we are pretending isn’t there. You see, I haven’t been real with myself lately and thought, just maybe, you were in the same boat. I may need this more than you. A time of confession you could say. A time to be real with you because I’m just now realizing that there is an idol in my heart that I didn’t want to admit was there. This idol proves that I am fully capable of being selfish, narcissistic and so consumed with my daily crap. I consistently think about me, feel sorry for myself, and drown myself in a sea of self pity. I have let it consume me and keep me from compassion and love towards others. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way I was thinking or feeling until I read the definition of an idol according to Tim Keller. He says this, “It is

anything more important to you than God,

anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit god is anything so essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy on it without a second thought. It can be the way you look, how much money you have, getting a romantic relationship, how smart you are, approval from other people, your morality and virtue, or even success in a Christian ministry. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, – ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.” Phew. Convicted yet? I am.

“...we belong to truth.”

You see…ever since my miscarriage, this idol crept into my life. I was convincing myself that there was nothing wrong with wanting another child, which is true. But when I looked into my heart, I knew that I was placing this desire before God. I’m ashamed to admit that. It got to the point where it was all I could think about and I was constantly anxious and worried. It got to the point where I couldn’t be happy for my friends who were getting pregnant. It got to the point where I found myself not rejoicing with those who rejoiced and not mourning with those who mourned. I became a selfish, consumed individual and it was because this Idol was ruling my life. I’m ready to place the King of Kings back on the throne of my heart where He belongs and where Joy ultimately resides. The very last statement to the whole book of 1 John is “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Why does it end this way? When you read prior to that it says, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us! And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life - therefore - keep yourselves from idols!” Idols lie to you! They tell you that you won’t be happy unless you have this certain thing. They tell you that your life utterly depends on it. They tell you that you are most important in this life. However, God is truth! We belong to God so we belong to truth! Not lies….we are in Him! It is not about me, It is not about whether or not I get the desires of my heart. This whole thing we are living is about God and knowing God. God is the very thing our heart searches for and longs for and the only thing that will completely satisfy us. In His presence are Joys evermore. And when we realize that and we turn our eyes from the lies to the truth we

will see Him and see others. Our thoughts will turn off of ourselves and onto the One who can give eternal life. Romans 12:15 says this, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” This one sentence sums up so much of community and the focus of others. When we have an idol residing in our life we cannot honestly rejoice with those who rejoice and cry with those who cry. Idols keep us with our hands tied up, disabling us from serving others wholeheartedly. It keeps us in a pit of disappointment rather than pointing us towards hope in knowing our God hears our prayers. I am ashamed at the way I have acted towards certain friends who got the very thing I wanted and I didn’t. If I could go back, I would have rejoiced in their gladness; I would have hugged them rather than allow the anxiety to build; I would have cheered them on and trusted that God knows my heart and He is the very thing I long for and have already received.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Idols keep us with our hands tied up, disabling us from serving others whole heartedly.â&#x20AC;?

Ok...take a sip of your coffee and take a deep breath and look into your heart of hearts - is there anything more important to you than God right now? Is there something you are seeking to get value and acceptance from that isn’t God? Is there something in your life that, if you were to lose it, your life would feel unworthy of living? Is there anything, if you were to gain it, that you would feel significant and worth something? I know these can be hard questions to ask. And believe me we don’t want to answer them. You could do what I did and just pass over this going on with your life and letting it be. That would be the easy thing to do. But I am here to tell you that God loves you too much to let you get away with that. And sooner or later He will always bring your idols to light and you will have a choice to do something about it or just pretend that it’s no big deal. I urge you to dig out the things that are consuming your thoughts and replacing God in your life and confess them before the Lord. Allow Him to remove these idols and I promise you: you will find what you are truly looking for.

taken with permission from agirllikeme.com

Heart $' Worship: My God-Given Passport >0"),=*!&4!"'(!#%H

As third culture kids, we areÂ more thanÂ familiar with the process of getting a passport, ugly pictures and everything. We know that when we open to the second page,

the symbol of our birth country will be there, along with our name, gender, birthday, and some other random letters and numbers that are probably code for important information. Our visas reside on another page in the booklet and the stamps of the myriad countries we have visited occupy a few more pages. This little book is our identity; it allows us to leave certain countries and enter other ones. We use it for everything because it tells us who we are.

Now, I am not qualified in the least to try to conquer the whole "letting Christ define you" topic from a know-all standpoint. I am just a girl who wakes up every morning, fighting the daily battle against worldly lies to let my heart fully realize the security and confidence that is available to me. Not just security in my salvation, not just confidence in who my God is, but the assurance that I am beautiful and I am lovely and I am valuable because He says so. Even before God gave me the gift of faith to believe in His saving grace, He thought of me as a wonderful child of Himself. I never realized how much I let the bullies of my elementary school days define who I was. I let myself truly believe that I could make myself more valuable by changing myself.

I did not realize how poorly I thought of myself until I moved back to the United States. I was constantly apologizing for myself, thinking that my friends should be pitied for having to put up with me. I scrutinized and compared myself to every inch of the girls around me and always found myself coming up short to my very high expectations. I felt completely unworthy of love and of belonging and every time someone got close to me, I fully expected them to run in the other direction. I also put up with abusive treatment, telling myself I could put up with the put downs because the compliments on the other side felt so nice. But then...then I started to let myself believe that there must be something more. There had to be a way for me to better absorb God's love for me. There had to be a way to let the outpouring of His love flow into my crackfilled heart and fill all the gaps to overflowing. But how? How could I undo 12 years of hating myself? Of not believing that I had worthy skills and talents compared to my peers? Of looking in the mirror and deciding that I was not worthy of anyone's acceptance? What a tiring and empty way to live, yet it is all I have known. Not anymore. I am planting my steps, one foot in front of the other, walking to the well of grace and truth about who I am. When God gives me a passport, He writes on it that I am loved, cherished, desirable, talented, and awesome. It is not a conditional passport. He does not change it because I have stretch marks on my skin or because I say something rude or because I purposely don't work to the best of my ability. He does not say, "Oh your passport expired, you have to reapply and prove that you deserve it.â&#x20AC;? He is not phased by my mistakes and my imperfections. He knew before He made me that I would be a human being with a sinful nature and that I would fail Him all. the. stinking. time. And yet He still chose to make me anyways because I bring Him joy. That fact is a healing balm for my heart, one that goes back to all the times I was told I was not enough and sews up the gashes of rejection so that I am not left with open wounds, but only with scars that remind me of how God showed me who I am.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When God gives me a passport, He writes on it that I am loved, cherished, desirable, talented, and awesome.â&#x20AC;?

His grace is not only sufficient for me today, but it is sufficient for my 8 year old self, just trying to survive the rough waters of peer-pressure and bullies with my head above water. Sometimes, in my low moments, I just have to walk around chanting to myself "God made me smart, God made me kind, God says I'm important, God sees me as beautiful" until I start to believe it. This journey isn't easy and it isn't over but this one change in my perspective is breaking down barrier after barrier between me and my Creator and between me and His creations. It's a miracle. One thing is for certain, I will be carrying my passport from God with me always. The other night, I took a bike ride at sunset and ended up at a secret pond. As I rode up next to a turtle on the path, he retracted his head into his shell to protect himself from potential harm. It reminded me of how I try to avoid vulnerability with people I don't feel comfortable around because I am afraid of rejection or harm to my fragile feelings. In the same instant I saw a white heron, flying against a dark landscape without shame. I want to be a heron, not a turtle. I want to wear my identity loud and proud, even if it means getting hurt sometimes. God made me who I am and I should never apologize for that or try to cover it up with some fake version of "normal.â&#x20AC;? I will show my God-given passport to anyone and everyone, proclaiming that I am not only a general daughter of His but I am also a unique daughter, made so for a purpose. That is freedom to my self-hating heart. That is healing balm to wounds of "you are not what the world is looking for.â&#x20AC;? I really am smart, kind, important and beautiful, no matter what. And you are too.

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