I'm on a USTA tennis league and have been for the past 2.5 years. There are many aspects of playing that I enjoy, but the one that has been a particular blessing lately is the opportunity to work on my thinking.
You wouldn't think that I would be nervous on the tennis court, being a speaker who's comfortable with any size crowd. But when I first started the league, my anxiety was crippling. The second I thought about losing the point or double faulting, that's exactly what happened.
I've been reading a variety of books on the mental game of tennis, but this one really convinced me that no matter how far behind I am, I can still win. The author gives many examples of pros who just gave up and lost matches that were theirs for the taking and other examples of players who seemed to come back and win against impossible odds. The key to winning? Believing that you can.
A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I handily won the first set of a match, then fell apart in the second, and finally lost the tie break. Yesterday, we seemed to be repeating that disappointing pattern. We won the first set without much trouble, then soon found ourselves down 5-2! If you know anything about tennis, you know that the other team just needed one more game to win the set.
I could see the discouragement and frustration in my partner and I could feel it developing in me. Then I told her, "We're going to pull a David Freese and win this set." She smiled. When either of us made an error from that point forward, I made a point of saying, "That's okay. We can still win." Many times we were in a David Freese, World Series kind of way by being one point away from losing the set (though not the match). I felt the pressure, but refused to give in. Neither did my partner. We came back to win the set and match 7-5.
The truth of Allen Fox's words became very clear to me on the tennis court, but they've become clear to me in life, too. Maybe you're against impossible odds like:
You're getting older and you still haven't met "the one."
You've filled out dozens of job applications and you're still unemployed
You have a hundred pounds or more to lose
You've been trying to conceive for months to no avail
Your house is such a mess that it seems it would take a team months to clean it out
You've been unhappily married for years and nothing you've tried has worked
You have an addiction you just can't beat
You're tens of thousands of dollars in debt
Your loved one is elderly and still hasn't received Christ
While it's true that the right attitude doesn't guarantee victory, I believe it's also true that no matter how far behind you are, you can still win. I could give you examples of people I know personally who've experienced an unexpected victory in these situations. The key? Believe that you can.
Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” (Luke 18:27)
I was on relay teams in high school track and while I had plenty of poor starts and bad hand-offs, there is one thing I never did in response–go back. Imagine the reaction if I had jogged back mid-race to the starting blocks to try it again. What if I just ran off the track in defeat? Or picture me insisting that my teammate hand-off to me again. Crazy, right?
Yet that is what you and I often do when we feel like we've gotten off to a bad start or have made a poor transition. We oversleep, don't have time to work out or make a healthy breakfast, and we figure the day is lost. We stop running and fret about our imperfect start. We might even do this in marriage or career settings. We might wonder if we really knew what we were doing when we said, "I do" or took the job. Instead of finishing the race we're in, we long to return to the start.
I didn't realize what havoc my habit of returning to start was wreaking in my life. If I didn't get up on time or get every part of my routine done, I was either getting quite cranky about it or I would foolishly try to get my morning routine done when it was too late. Believe me, if I miss my devotional time before the kids are up, it's an exercise in frustration trying to have it with them around. The more I tried to catch up, the behinder I got! I found myself running the wrong way on the track, getting tripped up, and wondering what was wrong.
In a race, I worried about getting out of the blocks poorly or fumbling the baton after the race was over. Until the next practice, I just ran for all I was worth, not worrying about what didn't go well before. That's what I'm practicing now. If my day is interrupted, I start where I'm at. If I have extra time to go back and do the things I missed (fat chance), I can. If not, at least the latter part of my day will go smoothly. At day's end, I can evaluate what went wrong in the morning and take steps to prevent it from happening again.
Maybe you're struggling with something more serious than an upset day; perhaps it seems that you've gotten a bad start in life and you'd like a do-over. What if you started where you are? Made the most of the marriage and career you have? I'm not suggesting that this is good advice for every situation, but it's an option to consider.
If today's gotten off to a bad start, either pick up your routine from here on out, or make a new, short list of what you'd like to accomplish with what's left of the day. Remember, plenty of relay teams have gotten off to a bad start or bungled the hand-off and went on to win the race.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1)
I don't know what took me so long to make my book available for the Kindle when I'm the Kindle queen! My sweet mom bought me a Kindle for Christmas a few years ago and I loved it. When I got an iPad, I loved the Kindle iPad app even more. Lots of women ask me about the ins and outs of Kindles and iPads but they're not usually the women reading my blog, so I won't bore you with that! If you don't have a Kindle or an iPad, you can still read my book for just 99 cents! Just download this free online Kindle reader.
So You're Not Wonder Woman is a book inspired by God, my life story, and the requests of women I speak to. It's a get-real look at women's issues and how God wants to empower us to deal with them. Here is what I have heard from women who've read it:
I can really relate!
I had no idea you struggled like I do
I am so inspired to finally lose weight
I'm ready to get organized
My husband is just like your husband
I love it!
I've read it three times!
I would love for you to read it, too. If you do, please write a review and feel free to lend it to one friend for free (via the Kindle guidelines). If you prefer to order a paperback, I've recently reduced the price by a third to $9.99. It's included in a buy 4-for-3 promotion right now, too. Click on the underlined, colored links above to find my book on Amazon and thank you for reading!
I was in my third month of expecting my fourth child when I had a very disturbing dream. I dreamt that I miscarried in very vivid detail. I remember looking in the mirror the morning after, feeling satisfied that all was well. I had seen my doctor several weeks before and he said I was fine.
A short time later, however, that dream came true. How good of God to prepare me for one of the toughest times of my life using a dream. The OB on call reassured me that bleeding could be perfectly normal, but in my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn’t. Not for me. At the hospital, the ultrasound technician confirmed that my baby had stopped growing four weeks previously. There was nothing to do but go home and wait for the loss to be complete. I didn’t feel comfortable doing anything surgically. I had driven myself to the hospital and my husband had met me after we got someone to watch the kids. I felt completely alone when I got behind the wheel and turned on the radio. The lyrics playing on my favorite Christian radio station were, “When you feel like you’ve lost it all, Jesus will still be there.”
I was comforted and really thought that knowing for sure I had lost a baby would be the worst of it. It wasn’t. The next several weeks brought excruciating pain as I miscarried at home alone, a hormonal roller coaster that made PMS seem refreshing, and painful questions about God, relationships, and the future. Even while in the middle of the valley, I knew that I was there for a reason. I called my editor and asked to write a pamphlet for Lutheran Hour Ministries called “Losing a Baby Without Losing Hope.” My experience and the process of writing opened my heart to so many women I knew who had miscarried. I even called a friend who lost a baby years before and apologized for not being as sensitive as I should have been.
One of the recommendations I made in the pamphlet was to find a way to memorialize the baby. I knew I wanted a Christmas ornament, but I hadn’t yet chosen one when I spoke at a church on the subject of grief and loss. (As an aside, that speech happened to be scheduled the day after 9/11.) I was given a gift as a presenter–an angel ornament. I am comforted looking at that ornament every year as I decorate the tree, but I really look forward to seeing my angel in heaven one day.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)
Me in early 1986 at my highest non-pregnant weight
I had tried just about everything to lose weight from the time my high school nurse expressed shock that I weighed 128 pounds as a freshman. I already got lots of exercise being on the track team, but I added more working out to my schedule. I also went on a very low calorie diet, eating dry toast and having lettuce with lemon juice dressing. I quickly lost 13 pounds; I regained it even faster.
Every year of high school I tried to lose the weight and ended up heavier than before. Then I went to college and entered a world where eating had no built-in controls. I gained the Freshman 15 in a matter of months. I know I don’t look particularly heavy in that photo, but my extra 30 pounds had become a very weighty issue in my life. I jumped at the chance to take a weight loss class in college. The instructor was really nice and the weekly weigh-ins motivated me. I became a walking caloric encyclopedia. At meals, my friends would ask me for the calorie counts of foods and I knew them. I lost the Freshman 15, but I was very despondent about something our instructor had said. She told the class that people like us would never be able to eat hamburgers, pizza, or ice cream.
The following year I read the books, Thin Within and Diets Don’t Work. I became convinced that dieting had resulted in my weight gain and that I could be at my ideal weight without counting calories or restricting certain foods. Within a very short period of time, eating anything I wanted according to hunger and fullness enabled me to lose another 13 pounds. I was ecstatic, but not for long.
Although I never again returned to my freshman weight high, I also was unable to maintain my ideal weight. I couldn’t understand it. I knew that if I ate according to hunger and fullness, I didn’t have a weight problem. I just couldn’t seem to restrict myself to eating when I was hungry and stopping myself when I was satisfied. This was particularly upsetting to me as a future psychologist. I wondered how I would be able to help others make behavior changes when I couldn’t make them myself.
In graduate school, I began lifting weights and briefly tried dieting with my friends again, but to no avail. When I met my future husband, I became more committed to exercise and when we got married I weighed what I wanted to. The problem was that maintaining it was a constant battle. My weight bounced up and down like crazy. The only thing crazier were the thoughts bouncing around my head. I would get up in the morning, weigh myself, and decide that I would be “good” all day. By mid-morning, I had already blown it, so I would commit to eating like a rabbit at lunch. When I blew that, I would promise to do well at dinner. When that didn’t work, I would spend the evening ruminating about my fat and my lack of self-control.
One day I saw the article title, “Can God Make You Thin?” on a Woman’s Day Magazine in the grocery store checkout. I had to know the answer to that, so I bought the magazine and read the article. I was so excited to read that men and women were combining the Thin Within hunger/fullness philosophy with a reliance on God and were losing weight for good. I ordered materials and offered a class at church. At first I quickly lost weight. Then as the months wore on, I had the same disappointing results. I would eat when I wasn’t hungry or until I was stuffed.
As the class facilitator, I was quite embarrassed that I couldn’t succeed. I would dedicate myself to eating extra slowly and reading my Bible before and after eating. But to no avail. The weight was not only not coming off, it was coming back on. After confessing my sin of gluttony and worshiping the idol of food countless times, and after praying about the problem over and over, I don’t know what finally led me to quit. But that’s what I did. I stood in my kitchen, looked up at God, and said, “I can’t do this! I quit! If you want me to lose weight, you’re going to have to do it, because I’m done.”
For the life of me, I cannot recall how I ate after that. But I do not remember always sitting down, eating slowly, eliminating distractions, only eating when hungry or until satisfied. I really meant that I was done. Three months later I finally weighed myself to discover that I was at my ideal weight. I had no idea how I arrived at that comfortable number. I do suspect, however, that God removed my weight problem without giving me a clue how it was done so that when people ask, “How do you stay so thin?” I couldn’t give them the Melanie Plan. God took away that weighty issue and I remained at my ideal weight for five years when I had another crisis that is a story for another time.
in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:6)
Are you starting to wonder if I HAD any clean rooms when I started organizing? This was my youngest sons’ bedroom before I started the simplify101 organizing with kids class. Problems here are once again laundry and poor storage for things like sleeping bags, toys, and a favorite suitcase.
Another problem was too many books and no place to store things the boys wanted easy access to. In case you’re wondering, we have so many books because my husband sells them.
The closet had a similar problem to my daughter’s room. Half the closet was taken up with my husband’s clothing and there was inadequate toy and outsized clothing storage. Having five boys means the youngest has a lot of hand-me-downs! That and the neighbor gives me clothes, too.
Toys were spread out with inefficient storage.
Hanging from the bunk is a hamper that was being used for toy storage by the next to the youngest.
Using the same drawers from Target I got for my daughter’s room, I was able to organize all the outsized clothing. I am drowning in regular plastic bins, so couldn’t justify a really cute toy bin, but this is functional. The legos are stored in the closet now and the suitcase doesn’t have to be pulled off a top shelf.
Sleeping bags are now stored in handled plastic bags that can be easily pulled down and just as easily stuffed back in.
More Target drawers for more outsized clothing and I’m so proud of my husband for decluttering his clothes!
The baby and preschool books were donated, bookends were put in place, and the kids’ banks and junk bowl were put where they can be accessed easily.
One plastic chair was decluttered, leaving only the matching chair that the little guy needs to reach his undies drawer. That drawer was seriously decluttered, too.
I moved the sheets from the top shelves of the closet to an underbed bin for the lower bunk and into the hamper for the top bunk. This will give me one less thing I have to help with.
On the wall facing the bedroom door, I put another cute piece of artwork that matches the color scheme of the room in a Target art frame.
Hope I’ve inspired you to get your litte boy’s bedroom organized!
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
