Kim Findlay, Author at Facets of Faith

Mirror, Mirror, What do You See?

05.17.2016 by Kim Findlay //

Here at Facets of Faith, we’ve been talking about how God has changed our perspective of ourselves. While our stories are unique, one thing binds us together: God’s redemptive work. He took broken women and created something new, something beautiful. Tracy and Jennifer shared earlier this month so be sure to check them out by clicking on their name. Otherwise, today it’s my turn (Kim) to share.

It was a few days after my oldest daughter married the love of her life. Her wedding was beautiful. Her dress, the ceremony and location, their love. I may be partial but I don’t believe there was ever a more beautiful bride. She experienced a lot of loss growing up, so to see her filled with joy warmed this momma’s heart.

Pictures from the day had started to show up on Facebook and through texts. Stunning pictures of the bride and groom surrounded by their wedding party; magazine-worthy shots of the happy couple; even the storm clouds from that day seemed a magnificent backdrop for their wedding photos.

My heart swelled with joy as I gazed upon each picture until . . .

Joy quickly turned to embarrassment as I stared at the woman standing next to my beautiful daughter in one of those pictures.

Her ill-fitting dress.

Her pudgy arms.

Her plump body.

Shame flooded my face as I realized who I was looking at: me. Scrutinizing what I saw, questions assaulted me. Did I really look like that? That dress? My hair? What was I thinking?

Funny, thinking back I thought I looked nice the day of the wedding. Maybe not as nice as I had several years earlier after losing a significant amount of weight. But since then I had walked through a divorce. Aside from losing my youngest daughter in a house fire, nothing had come so close to completely breaking me. The pounds crept back on as I wrestled to find my identity, my value, even my worth.

Honestly, I felt like an utter failure during that season of my life. Words spoken in anger became the tape I played over and over. I longed to embrace God’s view of me, to believe what He said, but all I could see was where I’d failed.

And now it felt as if the picture displayed every flaw I held. A chorus of condemnation rang in my head.

Mirror, Mirror, what do you see?
I see a middle-aged, overweight woman looking at me.

Mirror, Mirror, what do you see?
I see a broken, unrepairable woman looking at me.

Mirror, Mirror, what do you see?
I see shame & grief & sorrow looking at me.

Tears flowed as I continued to look at that picture. Until slowly, another voice joined in. At first, the words were but a whisper.

You are treasured.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

The whispers grew louder, stronger.

You are loved.

You are mine.

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1, NLT

You see pudgy arms but I see arms that have wrapped your children in love.

You see an ill-fitting dress but I see a woman draped in My glory.

You see a plumb body but I see a woman pursuing Me, fear-filled broken heart and all.

Gradually, the truth of God’s Word gently washed over me, shifting my gaze from my physical body to what He had been cultivating in my heart. Healing work. Holy work. Redeeming work.

The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7, NLT

I took a deep breath and looked at another picture. I remember the moment this one was snapped: it was just before the ceremony began and I stood in front of my daughter with my arms wide. She held tightly to my hands as the reality of the marriage commitment dawned in her eyes. I stood there, ready to embrace her, to try and bear some of the weight of her struggle. Instead, I watched my daughter stand firm while she learned to find her own balance.

As I took in the tender moment captured in print, I realized the size of my triceps no longer mattered, nor did the fit of my dress, or the shape of my body. She mattered, my sweet girl who had endured so much. We mattered, the sorrow we survived and the joy we welcomed together. I mattered. Not because of my physical appearance but because I was made in His image, and I am His.

And so are you.

I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom dressed for his wedding or a bride with her jewels.” Isaiah 61:10, NLT

What do you struggle to believe about yourself? Are you willing to allow God’s truth change your perspective?

The Beauty and Work of Friendship

04.26.2016 by Kim Findlay //

Today we’re excited to introduce the winner of our first contest through Facets of Faith – Gloria Cooley. Gloria is a gifted writer & speaker, friend, wife, and mom of 2 littles. Read on to learn how a necklace, a backpack, and a little girl helped her see the beauty of friendship.

Recently, my seven-year-old daughter wanted to buy a necklace. Not just any necklace but a “best friends” one. You know, the kind that has a heart or puzzle piece or some other object divided into two parts with “Best” written on one piece and “Friend” on the other? She brought the necklace over to me with great enthusiasm and asked if she could use her money to buy it. My gut reaction was “NO” but thankfully I hesitated before answering. I asked her with whom she would like to share the necklace. She really did not have a specific friend in mind and quickly listed a few names of girls at school. A short conversation ensued as we talked about what friendship and a best friend looks like. After a few minutes my daughter named a girl who truly is a good friend to her. We talked about why it might be nice to share this necklace with her. The purchase was made and my girl left the store with the joy of childhood friendship on her face and a plan of how to gift her friend with this necklace.

Friendship. If only it were as simple as purchasing an inexpensive necklace and gifting it to another with a pinky promise of being friends for life; however, developing and maintaining friendships is not always that easy.

C.S Lewis spoke of friendship in this way – “The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”

God, the Creator, is at work revealing the beauty of others and Himself through the gift of friendship. It takes work on our part to acknowledge that beauty and respond. Some friendships develop naturally over shared neighborhoods, activities, and churches. Other friendships are a little more unlikely. These friendships develop despite geographic location, shared interests, and ethnicity.

Some of my favorite childhood books included stories of unlikely friendships or better yet what I like to refer to as God ordained friendships. Wilbur and Charlotte (Charlotte’s Web), Tod and Copper (Fox and the Hound), Pooh and Piglet (Winnie the Pooh), Mowgli and Baloo (The Jungle Book), Anne Shirley and Diana Berry (Anne of Green Gables), David and Jonathan (1 Samuel), the list could go on and on. Each of these friendships was unique and comprised of two unlikely individuals whose paths crossed and a friendship was formed.

Over the years, I myself have had a number of friendships that could only be God ordained and most certainly used to reveal His beauty. One such friendship developed across an ocean and a generation. We were the unlikeliest of friends: me, a college student from Florida, serving as a missionary in Hawaii, she a church secretary, wife and mother from Georgia. There was no reason our paths should ever cross, but God knew otherwise.

God used this unlikely friendship to teach each of us about Himself and reveal to us the beauty of the other. As Anne Shirley would say, it was “positively providential” that she and I would meet. Through a crazy series of events including a young college student from Georgia, a stolen backpack, a gift of help, a visit to Maui, a seminar at a conference for Sunday school teachers and later a trip to Georgia, this unlikely friendship began to blossom.

This friendship spanned miles and years filled with much laughter, joy and sorrow. We did not see the beauty of this friendship from the start and there have been times over the past 18 years that we have lost sight of the beauty God intended to reveal, but ultimately this friendship has been a picture of our Creator. A beautiful picture of what it means to share life with another. To encourage, uplift, admonish, teach and rebuke when needed.

The beauty of this friendship is not because of the two, flawed individuals involved but by the grace of God and our willingness to look past the surface and trust what God intended for our friendship. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”

As I think back to the joy on my daughter’s face as she purchased that necklace I can only pray that she will experience a number of friendships that will point her to God, reveal her inner beauty and allow her to return the same.

Life is Better with Friends

04.19.2016 by Kim Findlay //

It’s my (Kim) turn at Facets of Faith to continue the conversation about friendship. If you missed what Tracy and Jen shared, click on their names to catch their perspective.

I’ve thought a lot about this topic and feel I keep coming up short. What am I suppose to write about friendship that you might not already know? What words do I pour onto the page to encourage others to engage or simply read what I write? If I were completely honest, I would tell you how often I wonder if I’m even a good friend at all. I can be self-centered and ultra-focused. I forget birthdays, anniversaries, and making deadlines.

I can be somewhat afraid of people, too. Not in a weird, I’ve-got-to-hide-at-home kind of way. Truthfully, I often feel like I just don’t measure up. So I withdraw with polite hello’s and intentional how-are-ya’s. But not much connection beyond that. Humans can be so complicated and confusing – of which I may be one of the most confusing and complicated. Hormones kick in (yay for those middle years!), circumstances rise up, and I’m a mess. How in the world do I walk through someone else’s mess when I struggle with my own?

I’ve seen the damage done to a woman’s heart when a friendship is betrayed by gossip. I’ve witnessed the brokenness that occurs when pettiness wins and critical spirits take root.

Why does that happen? Why do we, as women, compete against one another? One up each other?

Who has the thinner figure . . .

The cuter kids . . .

The sweeter husband . . .

The prettier nails . . .

So I used to stay away from friendships like that. Partly because my figure was always larger, partly because I don’t have all of my kids anymore, divorce marred me, and as for my nails? Well, I’ve never been one to worry much about those.

But as years passed, God healed the deeply broken places where love resides. I realized I did have precious friendships. Women who loved me with my quirks and simple preferences. Women who supported me, prayed for me, spurred me on, and who allowed me to do the same in their lives.

And now? Well, now I have friends like Tracy and Jen. And no, they don’t know I’m writing about them. Being true to my challenging nature, I’m writing this late and they probably won’t even read it before it posts.

I’m grateful for these two in my life because we get to live life together, embracing the joys and sorrows, the celebrations and uncertainties. There’s no pretense and no competition with these two ladies. Probably because we know and celebrate Tracy’s incredible style, Jen’s wiz at all things technical, and my need for connection.

But more than that is because we get each other. We each have our own stories of broken hearts and insecure dreams. We each wonder if what we’re doing for our kids or our husbands (and husband-to-be) is our absolute best. We each seek after God, pursuing Him first – well, most of the time. We’ve experienced grace when we’ve messed up and offered grace when someone else does.

We ask the tough questions of one another and allow space for our own answers to pour out from those deep hidden places within. We tell silly stories we don’t want anyone else to hear, and we laugh. A lot. Sometimes those stories are borderline inappropriate, and sometimes they’re so saccarine-y sweet, we laugh until our laughter is laced with tears.

But what I’ve learned most about friendship from these two ladies is the gift of being present, of being real. No, this isn’t a plug to continue to read our posts at Facets. This is a snapshot into our real-life friendship. A friendship that has grown out of the love for the written word over the past couple of years. A friendship that has been a refreshing, life-giving gift to me. A friendship that has become a living, breathing example of one of my favorite passages in Scripture:

So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.

1 Thessalonians 5:11, NLT

Because that’s what we do, no matter what happens. We know how tough life can be and we’ve chosen to be each other’s cheerleader, encouraging each other on toward a life of love and grace, of obedience and faith. After all, isn’t life better with friends?