You're Already Amazing

Embracing Who You Are, Becoming All God Created You to Be

Holley Gerth

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780800720605
• eBook ISBN: 9781441236098
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Women feel enormous pressure to be perfect. To have the perfect body, to be a perfect woman, to have the perfect career, and to have the perfect attitude. All the time. Under all that pressure and all those expectations are women carrying burdens they were never meant to carry and suppressing the dreams they were always meant to live.

In You're Already Amazing, popular blogger and cofounder of (in)courage helps women understand and embrace the fact that they don't need to do more, be more, and have more--because they're already amazing just the way God created them to be. As a licensed counselor and certified life coach, Holley knows what readers need to hear. Like a heart-to-heart talk over coffee, reading this joy-filled book encourages women to forget the lies and expectations the world feeds them, instead believing that God made them for a purpose and that he loves them right now, at this moment, and always. Holley takes readers on a journey of the heart to discover their strengths and embrace all God created them to be.

My friend sits across the table at lunch. She’s lovely, wonderful, a bringer of joy to my heart. Yet today there’s little light in her eyes. She talks of endless juggling—kids, work, church, marriage, sex, groceries, and God.

She whispers, “Sometimes I don’t even like my life. And I feel so guilty because I’m so blessed.”

She speaks of reading books, doing studies, and listening to sermons that say she needs to give more, have more quiet time, find more friends.

“I try,” she says. “I try so hard and I just fall further behind.”

She describes her spirituality as a treadmill that keeps having the speed turned up. She runs faster and faster, only to become more exhausted.

As she shares, I think not of where she is going but of the One who is pursuing her heart. He stands just behind her, but she can hardly hear his voice above the whir of the track.

“Dear daughter,” he whispers. “Come to me. You are weary and burdened. I will give you rest. You’re already pleasing to me.”

I tell her this and she pauses, sighs, leans into that truth for a moment. I watch the treadmill slow and then stop as she rests instead in the arms of grace.

A woman settles onto the couch in my counseling office. I can tell she’s got something hard to say this week. She shifts back and forth. I see the words rolling around in her mind and finally making their way to her lips. She tells of abuse from those who should have protected her. Rejection instead of love. Names called in the privacy of her home and the public of the playground. Sticks and stones could break her bones, but it’s words that have broken her heart. She finally comes up for air, and as the tears run a river down her cheeks, it seems a single lie follows their tracks.

“You could never be enough.”

If it were audible it would be said with a hiss—the same one that has haunted Eve’s daughters since the Garden. And within me I feel the response rising from a more Tender Voice.

“Tell her the truth.”

So I do, and the rivers of tears become torrents, buckets of loss and fear poured out in that office. Empty and full, she looks up and smiles.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her do so.

She writes me an email from across the world. I’ve never seen her face or even visited her continent. But we are more alike than different.

She tells me of feeling meaningless and wondering if she has anything at all to offer. She types, “Everyone else matters but me. Everyone else has something to offer but me. God must be so disappointed.”

As I read her words I feel a physical ache in my chest, a longing for her to see what I can see in just a few sentences—that she has kindness, creativity, gifts, and strengths. She is brave, compassionate, and valuable.

I think of God placing his hand over hers as she types those sentences, wanting with all of his heart to replace those wounding words with new ones that reflect his love for her.

I type back, “Yes, you matter. No one can take your place. God made just one you, and this world needs you just as you are.”

I hit “Send” and pray the truth will make its way straight to her heart.

Wherever I connect with women, it seems the same hurt is there. I recognize it well because I’ve felt it too.

I know what it’s like to stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night and ask hard questions with few answers. I know what it’s like to hide in the corner of the room, hoping no one will notice me, wondering if I’ll ever be wanted. I know what it’s like to wrestle with insecurity, guilt, and impossible standards of my own making.

I know.

Yet there also came a point when my heart began knowing something deeper as well. In my desperation, I started asking God what he really wanted for his daughters. I searched the Scriptures, talked to women, pondered and prayed. I’m still trying to understand all of it and, quite clumsily, to fully live it. But what I discovered just may be the best news you’ll ever hear.

So let’s talk.

Would You Like to Have Coffee?

Imagine I ask you to have coffee with me—which is exactly what I do with my dearest friends. There’s just something about sitting across a table from someone you truly care about that really gets a conversation going. (And if you’re not a coffee drinker, then tea or a yummy dessert are perfectly acceptable substitutes.)

I call, text, or email: “Can we get together? There’s something I’d really like to tell you.”

We pick your favorite spot. I meet you at the door. We settle into a quiet corner. Order our favorite drinks. Swap small talk over mochas or tea.

Sip by sip we go deeper, until we land at the level of the heart . . . that place where it’s hard to go in the middle of the busy and the broken.

I clear my throat, lean back, look you in the eyes, and say:

~ “It’s time you knew you’re amazing.” ~

You smile, laugh awkwardly, glance at the ceiling. “I know, I know,” you reply. “So kind of you to say.”

I respond, looking at you more intently.

“I mean it’s time you really knew. And there’s more:

• You’re not only amazing.
• You’re enough.
• You’re beautiful.
• You’re wanted.
• You’re chosen.
• You’re called.
• You’ve got what it takes . . . not just to survive but to change the world.”

By this time your fingers are wrapped around your cup. You stare down at the bottom of it, focused on the emptiness, wondering why these words are so hard to hear.

Finally, you ask, “Who told you that?”

And I respond, “The only One who really knows—Someone who loves you.”

You’re God’s “Is Girl”

There’s a pause in our conversation, and you point to a frame on the wall. It’s a portrait of a woman taken by a professional photographer. The image makes it clear that she’s the kind of girl who makes heads turn and smiles appear out of thin air. She looks entirely serene and effortlessly chic. We speculate that even grande mochas don’t go to her hips.

“Okay,” you laugh, “I could understand if you told her she’s amazing. But me? I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m not exactly the ‘it girl.’”

“Good thing you’re not,” I casually respond.

You’re a bit surprised. “What did you just say?”

“I said it’s a good thing you’re not the ‘it girl.’” And with a twinkle in my eye, I lean in to tell you why.

Our culture is obsessed with the “it girl.” She’s defined as a woman who has it all together—whatever “it” is at the moment. We want to be like her and do what she does. We can’t imagine anyone feeling the same way about us. Life becomes a competition to see who can be the prettiest, trendiest, and most stylish. In the corporate world, it’s who can climb highest, fastest, farthest. In the church (don’t think we’re exempt) it’s who can be the sweetest, godliest, most servant-hearted. Depending on the day or year, who that woman is changes. It’s an endless game of “tag—you’re it” that exhausts us all and makes us competitors rather than sisters.

But when we look at the kingdom of God, it’s a different story. There aren’t “it girls” (or guys). There are only “is girls.” God looks at you and says, “She is loved, accepted, and valued. She is created just the way I wanted her to be.”

Our biblical buddy Paul wrote letters to some of the first churches. He told early Christians that we’re a body. Someone is a hand. Another person is a foot. There’s no competition—only complementing and completion. Part of the beauty of that is how different we are from each other. As my friend Jennifer Leep says, “God creates each of us to be uniquely who we are—just like each part of the body is unique. We don’t need more than one of a given body part. Nor would we want more than one. Sure, we have two hands and two feet. But not two right hands or two left feet. Each part of the body has a purpose that only it can fulfill. The same is true for us. That’s a truth that’s easy to understand and easy to forget.”

Most People Don’t

In my life, forgetting the truth we just talked about often starts with one phrase: “Most people don’t . . .”

Those three words ping, ping in my mind over and over like pebbles against a glass window. When they do, I pause and consider, “It’s true. Most people don’t spend so much time sitting in front of a laptop and writing.” And then it comes: “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you relax and be more like most people?”

You’ve had these words thrown like stones at you too, haven’t you?

Most people don’t . . . wear themselves out in the kitchen because they believe a meal feeds hearts and fills bellies.

Most people don’t . . . throw off their entire schedule because they take time to listen to the stranger in the grocery store who’s having a hard day.

Most people don’t . . . pore over spreadsheets until their eyes are red because they see numbers as a sort of art and a way of bringing order to a chaotic world.

It’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: The Dare
• 1: A Heart-to-Heart Talk
• 2: Who Am I, Really?
• 3: Why Is It So Hard to Believe I’m Amazing?
• 4: Why Do I Feel This Way?
• 5: Where Am I Going?
• 6: Who’s with Me?
• 7: How Do I Connect?
• 8: What Does God Want Me to Do with My Life?
• 9: What Are My Next Steps?
• 10: Is It Okay to Take Care of Myself?
• 11: What God Really Wants Your Heart to Remember
• Go Deeper Guide(for Individuals and Groups)
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About Holley
• Back Ads
• Back Cover