Normally I don’t pay attention to what the people around me say, but because of all the shuffling just as the movie was starting, I heard the lady say to her robust male companion, now seated right next to me, “Is this seat all right?” He murmured that it was. Pause. Pause. “Are you sure it’s all right?”

Oh no. I don’t know what their story is, but the self-abasing self-doubt, the tentative questioning, as if she were a blank space next to him, instead of a fellow human being perfectly capable of having her own opinion about where they sat . . . she was a People Pleaser.

The reason this sounded so familiar is that I have worked hard for years, as a mature follower of Christ, to move away from the shackles of that kind of thinking. People pleasers think we are loving, giving, and quite possibly the best Christian you can be. We are deluded.

The man sounded perfectly nice. He didn’t demand anything, he didn’t let her stew about whether she had pleased him. These urges to gain his approval were coming from inside her, not from his demanding behavior. I sensed they were in the early, polite stages of a relationship. But if they remain together a long time, her continual urges to check in with him like that will either push him to start considering himself to be above her (if he is prone to that sort of sinful pride), or he will become uncomfortable with her consistently childlike behavior.

What is her best option? Grow up. Grow up!

Paul tells us via the Colossians:

And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,

and not holding fast to the head, [that's Christ] from whom the whole body, [that's us] nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

We need to grow up.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings.

These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value, serving only to indulge the flesh. Colossians 2:13-23

If you are getting the impression, from the scripture I have chosen, that I am not in favor of such fawning, codependent behavior, you are right. As followers of Christ, we are taught in many different ways to choose a better, more grownup path.

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called . . .

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints . . .

That’s you and me, if we are believers.

for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.

Don’t let anyone, not even the voices inside your head from the past, talk you out of this maturity in Christ!

But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. Ephesians 4:1,11-16.

As we who are more comfortable serving learn to grow in maturity (and backbone!) and in having an opinion, we allow opportunity for others to grow in learning to love and to serve. All of these are what we see in Christ and learn from His example.

May we grow together in Him!

I wish I knew more about her. All we have are a few photos with names and dates on the back. I think I got her eyes, though!

1 peach

1 pluot (half plum, half apricot, yum!)

1 small mild pepper from our garden

some sprigs of lime thyme from our garden

a couple of splashes Extreme Heat Mustard

My brother and I would tear around the neighborhood on our bikes doing wheelies and riding with no hands. Sometimes he got tired of hanging around his little sister, so I’d have to go find some girls to play with. When I was lucky, I’d find other girls who were tomboys and we’d rope my brother back in because lots of games are fun with more people.

Learning to “speak girl” was a slow and difficult process. Even freshman year of high school, well after hormones kicked in, I still went around looking like a cross between hippie and Seattle grunge, buying engineer’s overalls and painter’s paints from a uniform store and wearing my hair long and straight, parted right down the middle.

My two best friends bought me a Seventeen magazine one summer and ordered me to read it. My eyes were opened to a whole new world–makeup, grooming and fashion. I still liked to go hiking and camping, but I started to look like a girl while I did it.

Right around the same time frame, I became a Christian. Because I did a good job of disguising myself as a girly girl, I fit right in with some of the conservative teachings about how to be feminine, at least on the surface. But I was very uncomfortable. I felt like a fraud.

I would hear lectures about how women like do all the talking in relationships and feel mannish because I am less talkative than most people, less than a lot of the men in my life. I would go to church parties and get pulled into the kitchen where ladies wanted to talk to me about recipes. What? I could barely boil water. I did know how to fix barbed wire fencing on my uncle’s ranch, but that didn’t really come up in conversation.

I loved the Bible stories about King David. He was small and cute, and a lot tougher than he looked. He wasn’t taken seriously at first. But of course he was God’s chosen, and I was really just a girl.

I remember once hearing God speak to me about all the books I was reading about proper behavior for a Christian woman. I was really stressing out about it, I felt completely miserable and unable to “do the right thing.” I’m sure I was crying about it, one of the girly things I do quite freely from time to time. I heard a still, quiet voice cut through all my emotions and tell me, “Throw all those books away. Get rid of them!”

What a relief that was, but I still felt at odds with the church world around me. I loved my church world, I loved learning from the Bible, I loved singing worship songs, I loved being part of the community. But I still felt like a fraud. A pretender. A fake girly girl.

Thirty odd years later I’d like to say I’ve figured it all out, but I haven’t. I still feel like I don’t quite fit in. I have figured out a couple of things though. It’s perfectly all right for me to passionately pursue being a disciple of Christ. And I don’t need to take a class to learn how to be a woman. God made me a woman, and that’s what I am. He didn’t make a mistake, and I don’t have to correct any errors. (As if! I can’t believe I was ridiculous enough to think I had to make up for His “mistakes.”)

I wonder if there are others out there who have felt the same way?

Then from there I started thinking about Ephesians 5:2, which says, “And walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

Later in Ephesians 5 when Paul is talking about Christians submitting to one another, starting with husbands and wives, he says “for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.” (Ephesians 5:23)

Since he equates head with savior, how must Paul have been thinking of that metaphor? Last night hubby Don and I just watched a movie about Lincoln and the Civil War, and I was picturing a soldier going to the head of the battle line. The front line goes in first, and brings all the other soldiers along with them. The front line takes a grave risk, but the other soldiers bravely join in the fight, pressing ahead with a common goal.

Then I thought of a baby being born. The head comes first, and then brings the rest of the body along with it, out into the world. They are tied together, the head and body. One goes first and then the other comes along too.

Then I thought of Christ, how He went first, teaching us how to live. Then He sacrificed for us. Now He asks us to come along with Him, taking part in His plan for the whole world to come too, if they will, into the kingdom of heaven.

“For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.” (Ephesians 5:29-30)

This means we don’t have to go it alone, whether as husband and wife (verse 31: “the two shall become one flesh), or as members of the same body with Christ attached to us as head. We are part of Him and He is part of us.

Yesterday’s was made with the first big, juicy, ripe nectarine I picked from our tree, 1/2 a small poblano pepper that fell off the pepper plant Don and I were trying to stake, chopped lime thyme, a few splashes of “Extreme Heat Mustard Fever,” and a few borage blossoms. Everything except for the mustard sauce came from our garden.

Last week’s salsa was made from 2 little satellite peaches, 2 kiwis, chopped mint, and the same spicy mustard sauce.

It only takes a few minutes and it’s a great way to use up some of that fruit sitting on the counter getting ripe. I love summer!

If I take 2 capsules every day, along with a certain vitamin and mineral, I don’t get migraines. I thank God for herbs!

My recipe to prevent headaches is:

350 mg feverfew
100 mg vitamin B2
500 mg magnesium

I take it twice a day, morning and evening. It isn’t like a painkiller, it’s a preventative, although if I start to get a headache it doesn’t hurt to take my next dose right then (because that’s when I usually realize I forgot to take it).

Have you ever noticed Jesus does a lot of things backwards? Here he is, the Son of God, the King of Kings, and yet when he talked to people he was always calling himself the Son of Man, which basically means “The Human Being.” He totally downplayed his greatness.

And he was always telling the disciples all his secrets; how to do all the great stuff he did. He didn’t keep anything just for himself. In fact, he told them they would do even greater works themselves.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” John 14:12 14 NKJ.

And just in case any of us were going to wonder later whether we qualify as his disciple, able to do all these great things, he explains that too, a few sentences later:

“ . . . you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” John 14:20-23.

In other words, anyone who becomes his follower is truly his disciple. Don’t forget, his disciples healed people, even raising some from the dead. And we can be his disciples too. He withheld no important work from them, and he withholds no important work from us either. He didn’t save any special job for himself, except for the redemption of all mankind. That one he did himself!

There’s one final important way disciples must be like Jesus. I think we often forget:

But Jesus called them [his disciples] to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:25-28.

Backwards and upside down!