Happy New Year

Wishing you a girls a fabulous, fun, unforgettable (and safe!) New Year! Thanks for being a part of Wonderfully Made in 2010! We'll see ya in the new year! xo

I'm off to the beach to hopefully get my last surf in of the year (even though it's super small!).

What are you girls doing to celebrate?

Prone to Wander

Latley, I’ve been chasing everything I think I ought to be and everything I think I ought to own. My wanderings have left my soul ravenously hungry and totally dissatisfied.

I am hungry for everything I want and nothing that I need.

Haggai 1:6 captures my self-inflicted predicament:

"You have planted much, but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm.”

David Guzik nails it in his commentary: "If our priorities are wrong, nothing will satisfy us. Each accomplishment soon reveals that there must be something more, something that can really satisfy, Nothing fills the God-shaped void in our life except putting Him first."

Nothing.

Not endless hours of window shopping. Not my brand new Lululemon Dance Studio pants that I got for Christmas or my Anthropologie bedding. Not the loving of my guy, a fabulous profile picture or an exotic trip across the world.

Nothing but the peace that surpasses all understanding. Peace that comes only from deliberately and habitually abiding in our Abba Father.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart. O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.*

*Come Thou Fount

Can you relate?

HerStory - I Am Second: Victoria Childress

Merry Christmas from Wonderfully Made

Thankful for you girls and wishing you a very joy-filled Christmas with your family, friends and loved ones. May you celebrate your Redeemer Jesus Christ, the greatest gift this world has ever received.

HerStory Invitation

There is power in your testimony. We invite you to share your story via our HerStory feature. Email us at info@wonderfullymade.org.

To everyone who emails us HerStory, we'll mail you a copy of our WM Conference DVD featuring 3 powerful messages by our friend and wmVoice Jennifer Strickland!

Submission Tips:

• Keep it under 600 words
• Be real & authentic - be you!
• Share 1 or 2 verses which relate to your story
• Focus less on what YOU did and more on what GOD did & is doing
• For more tips on how to write your testimony, click here.

Question: Why scares you about sharing your story (aka God's story) of what He's done in your life?

A Prayer for God's Daughters

A Prayer for God's Daughters

by Allie Marie Smith

Rescue us with your soul-saving love.

Set our feet firmly upon you, our rock and safe harbor.

Open wide the gates our hearts, but guard them like a lion.

Keep our little girl dreams big and our worries small.

Let us not be called daughters of little faith or grow weary in doing good.

Unveil our authentic beauty and call us to something greater than ourselves.

Clothe us with compassion, kindness and the joy of salvation.

Teach us our true value and raise us up to serve humanity.

Shine your face upon us and keep us safe in the shadow of your wings.

What is your hope and prayer for God's daughters? I invite you to add to this!

Read Old Books & Keep the New Ones

Some wise legend (I can't pinpoint who) once said "the only bad thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones." Only lately have I eagerly been discovering the richness contained within the pages of antiquated books. Books so old the originals smell just like the basement of my grandma's early 1900's home.

My new, old favorite is a 1936 edition of "Victorious Living" by E. Stanely Jones, which we inherited through Paul's dad's collection. The original owner was evangelist Dr. Amy Lee Stockton, a never-married, fire-ball of a woman who from the 1940's to 60's was a regular speaker and counselor for missions conferences and whose "leadership...brought about many decisions for Christ." I just might have to do a blog all about Amy as she is my new unsung hero in the faith!

I have been enjoying it so much I've skipped ahead in its daily devotions. December 20th's struck a cord with me, having lately been convicted of "eating the bread of idleness" and opening Facebook more often than the pages of a truth-rich book.

"We need to be saved from laziness, inertia, lack of ambition and noncreativeness. The soul must be re-energized, en-kindled, and made alive and fruitful."

December 20th's devotion concludes with this prayer:

"O Christ, I pray Thee that today I may be saved from all lethargy, all dodging of responsibility; may I be really alive and alive in worth-while things. Amen."

Merry Christmas girls. I thank God for you and pray that you have a joy-filled weekend filled with laughter, good fun, friends, family and all things "Christmasy."

HerStory: Reflections on Something Sacred

Dirty. Damaged. Ashamed. Alone.

These are painful feelings I experienced after intimate encounters with guys during high school. Feelings I now understand, but didn't back then.

I entered my freshman year of high school assuming I would lose my virginity the night of my junior year of prom (which I am so thankful I didn't). Like the majority of "non-churched" girls today, the idea of purity or waiting to have sex until marriage didn't even cross my mind. It wasn't until I was nineteen, shortly after coming to faith in Christ that I realized there was a different way - that sex was a sacred gift intended for only for marriage. And for good reasons.

The following short film was shot and edited by our brilliantly talented and sweet photographer Katee Grace for Christie's talk on guys, sex and the treasure of purity at our last WM Conference. Music by JJ Heller. We hope you appreciate the honesty and vulnerability.

Have you ever felt this way? This is a safe place to share your thoughts...

Wonderfully Made | Boys Trap | from Wonderfully Made on Vimeo.

My Dad Story

Today is my dad’s sixty-third birthday. Words or actions will never suffice to express the love I have for him.

To me, my dad is invincible. So is my Heavenly Father.

My dad is gentle, yet strong. So is my heavenly Father.

My dad is a man of utmost integrity and fidelity. My Heavenly Father's faithfulness endures forever.

My dad believes in the big dreams of my little girl heart. My Heavenly Father is the One who put them there.

My dad has been my provider and a strong tower in the darkest of nights, and so has my Heavenly Father.

My dad reflects much of the character of God – a feat I believe to be the divine calling of every father, but one a majority of dads do not recognize or sadly fail to accept.

After a brush with lymphatic cancer that easily could have easily robbed his life thirteen years ago, with every day I am more grateful to have my dad alive and well. While I am beyond blessed to have the dad I do - the truth is so many girls - maybe even you are not as lucky. I think of one of my best friends Maleah, whose father committed suicide, or my friend Marian whose dad died in a car accident when she was in high school, or my mom's dad who didn't fully know how to love his family they way they needed to be loved. We're living in a world of broken fathers. Broken fathers who can only be made whole by the Father who created them. Fathers who can only love their daughters the way they deserve when they've been changed by God's. Imagine how different the world would be if every girl had a fully present father who reflected the character of God.

I wonder if every girl would know her value.

Happy Birthday Dad. I'll always be your princess.

How about you. What's your dad story?

HerStory: Kelsie Lambeth

Today's HerStory is from high school senior Kelsie Lambeth, a kind-hearted, bright-eyed girl we had the privilege of meeting at the Reflections conference at NorthPointe Church in Fresno. Thank you for sharing your story with us, Kelsie!

This was the time to have it all together, to show everyone what I was capable of and to carry out God’s will for my life. I have grown up in a Christian home and have been surrounded by Christians my entire life, so I know how important it is to seek God’s will and I had convinced myself I was going to do just that! The summer before my senior year of high school I prayed day in and day out that I would put God first and seek Him in all I do and really focus on the relationships in my life. I asked God to help me because putting Him first and trusting solely in Him has been something very difficult for me. I am a very structured person. I thrive off of making lists and calendars. When it comes to any sort of planning, I am your go to girl. So, naturally, I decided to have a plan for everything I was going to do throughout my next school year: I would keep up with my AP classes by scheduling my homework time, post my work and extracurricular activities schedules so I would know when I am available, have my college applications in by the earliest deadline so that I could focus on scholarships and weighing out the pros and cons of each school, and have some social time on the weekends to spend with my family, friends, and my boyfriend.

It seemed foolproof. By planning everything and having a schedule there would be no way I could miss anything that God had planned for me. But, as I’m sure you expected, my foolproof plan collapsed.

Two months in to my senior year I found out I had mono. The doctor told me I got it from running my body down and doing too much, so I cut out everything besides school; trips to see my boyfriend, extracurricular activities, and work. Things started to get a little rocky with my boyfriend and I around that time. I had been planning since August, when he left for college, to visit him the weekend of his homecoming but was unable to when I found out about a Wonderfully Made conference at my aunt and uncle’s church in California. I chose to make the trip out to Fresno rather than to go see my boyfriend. It was just a week after this conference that I found out I had mono, so any future plans of being able to visit him were abolished as I was not feeling up to much of anything. I asked him to come visit me instead, but he said no. Not because he didn’t want to, but because of his study schedule. He’s a big planner as well—go figure. He is very focused on school and I think it’s important to focus on your studies, but I also thought it was absurd that he was so focused on school that he had no time for me while I was sick and missing him. Things progressed into me feeling more and more like an option rather than a priority and my boyfriend was feeling more and more beat up because I let him know how I felt. One month later, I broke up with my boyfriend. I told him I couldn’t keep putting pressure on him to make me a priority when he had so many other things to worry about and focus on and that I felt like I just needed to back off. Things did not end very well with us, and that more than anything saddens me, but that is out of my control. All I could do was let it go.

When I was at the Wonderfully Made conference in Fresno, I heard some things that really helped me through my hardships between my boyfriend and me. I had heard it said multiple times that I should be treated as a princess, but never thought much of it. In my mind, the girls who acted like princesses were the stuck up girly girls who I wanted absolutely nothing to do with! Even when I was little, if I pretended to be a princess, I pretended to be Cinderella and clean the floors on my hands and knees—I wasn’t one to parade around in a big dress all done up. But realizing that being a princess is actually Biblical changed my perspective. Drawing the parallels that I am a daughter of the King and therefore a princess, made me realize that my boyfriend wasn’t treating me how I should be treated. He’s a great guy and a strong Christian, but the fact that he wasn’t willing to make sacrifices for me or even pamper me a little bit when I was sick, threw up some red flags for me. I can’t even tell you how many different people I talked to about my boyfriend throughout the course of our relationship. I thought this was going to be a guy I was going to be with for a long time, but truth is, it wasn’t much of a relationship.

On top of battling mono and this breakup, I was still dealing with my job. After I found out I had mono, I had to take three weeks off of work to get better. That did not go over very well with my boss and the HR department. My employment was terminated as I was denied extended leave for my illness. I asked my boss if I had any other options. He told me I should reapply and he would consider me for a possible rehire. He also said if I wanted to come back that I would have to commit to working more than I had been before I got sick. My response was that with my schooling schedule I was not going to be able to do that and asked that he would please consider my resignation. I lost my job my first semester of my senior year, but never once complained! My job paid really well, but I hated the hours and wasn’t too fond of my co-workers either. As this is my senior year and my last year home, I wanted this year to be about spending time with my family and friends and building the relationships that would last far beyond this nine month period.

My prayer at the conference in October was that the Lord would shake some things up in my life. I have no doubt that God is faithful and answers prayer! I was not expecting any of the things that happened, but am so thankful for every one that did. Through all my tears and smiles I have experienced this year, I have thought back so many times to the conference and sat reading my notes from that weekend over and over again. I cannot thank the entire Wonderfully Made team enough for that weekend. God used them so profoundly to speak to me and tell me that I had been doing it all wrong!

In trying to master everything, I had denied my Master. I was not following God’s will for my life, but my own. It was so easy for me to convince myself that I needed to be put together all the time and always know what was coming next. That was a lie. I have found so much more peace in trusting the Lord and letting Him lead me to what is next than I did when I was trying to do it all by myself.

Romans 12:1-2 says,

“I plead with you to give your bodies to Christ. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.”

God has done so much for me these past few months in redirecting me to what I had asked him to help me with. Never doubt that God does not answer prayer—he answered my prayer to keep me close to Him and not stray from doing that. When I wondered off on my own He took things into His own hands and got my attention. God is faithful and He knows better than I ever will what is best for me.

My story is nothing special—but the story of the King’s daughter, his beloved, that is. That is your story; you are God’s beloved—you are a princess. My prayer for all of you who read this is that you will remember how good, pleasing, and perfect God’s will is and that you will know your value. I end with Proverbs 31:10,

“Her value is far above rubies and pearls.”

Don’t ever settle for what the world has to offer; reach for the Heavens.

Keep In Touch!

Beloved Readers & wmGirls!

Thanks for your friendship, presence and support and for being a part of Wonderfully Made!

We'd love to snail-mail you a Christmas card this year! If you don't think we already have your mailing address, please sign up for our snail-mail list HERE so we can keep in touch!

Love & Hugs,

Allie, Kayla, Natalie & Christie