I searched for a photo of a group hug, because I thought that illustrated tonight’s chat. When I found this photo of beautiful little girls, holding hands and dancing, well, I thought that it might just be the perfect picture of how God sees us. What do you think?

Thanks to all the ladies who joined us tonight. What a great conversation we had!! I know a couple of you mentioned looking forward to my recap, but to be honest, I’m still processing a lot of what we talked about, so I’ll keep this brief.

First, if you’re just now joining us, you can read all the posts about our online study of Me, Myself & Lies (including weekly recaps). We’ve got a great group of ladies going through the book and discussing it each week, and we are always open to anyone who wants to jump in.

To purchase the book, you can get it at your local Lifeway store or on the Lifeway website. And if you’d like to download each week’s video (there is a cost), you can also get that on the Lifeway site. And if you have the book but not the videos, you can still get the answers for the last page of each chapter by downloading the (FREE) listening guide answers.

As for tonight’s discussion – wow. On one hand, it’s clearly no accident (duh!) that we are studying this topic. As we laughed about during the chat – all God’s women got issues, and this group is not immune! But on the other hand, these Monday night chats are really turning into a great, supportive environment where we can come and work through the issues that our study is addressing.

Thank you to the women who are participating. You are awesome, and I just love you!

One of the first things we discussed is that most of us are behind in the homework. Part of this (at least for me) is due to life’s circumstances and busy summers. But most of the reason is actually that this study is so dense, so full of material and truth to chew on, that it takes longer than just one day to process one lesson.

And I think that’s okay.

We talked about a couple different topics tonight. Rather than repeat all our words verbatim, I’m going to throw out a few bullets here and ask that everyone join in the discussion in the comments.

• Dealing with self-talk issues is overwhelming and, at times, feels impossible.
• But, we know that we can do all things with God. And it’s less overwhelming if we take this growing and changing process one day (or baby step) at a time.
• God has made each of us, giving us individual personalities. Some of us are more passionate and fiery than others – but we all need to make sure that “fire” is the righteous kind of passion God wants.
• We must be alert, guarding our souls (thought closets) to keep out the negative stuff.
• If we don’t pay attention, we might not even notice the bad stuff that’s in there. But the scary thing is – even if we don’t know it, everyone around us can see it.
• This is why we need a true accountability partner – something that none of us in tonight’s chat have at the moment. Our prayer this week is that God will lead each of us to a person who will support and encourage us in our walk with God. And as we discussed, we have to remember that accountability is serious business and we shouldn’t jump into a relationship without seeking God’s guidance.
• Questions that accountability partners could ask (per the study video): What do you see in my life that encourages you? What do you see in my life that you’d like to caution me about? Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?
• Week 4 talks about speaking peace to ourselves. Most of us on the chat admitted that we are no good at that! So rather than dwell on that as a failing, we agreed to search the Scripture this week and find a verse that will help us speak peace.
• We also talked briefly about how we present ourselves to the world as having it together, being happy, being perfect – both online and offline – and how that’s hurting everyone. Being authentic will not only free us to be ourselves and experience true growth and real intimacy, but it will also allow our friends to have perspective and be authentic themselves.

Do you have an accountability partner? Does trying to work through your issues get overwhelming? How do you speak peace to your soul?

I do not have an accountability partner, and to be honest, I’m scared to open myself up to someone like that. Working through my issues is always overwhelming, and my typical reaction is denial. I just push the issues down – with food, with TV, with internet, with talking – and pretend like they’re not there. And speaking peace? Well, sometimes I can do this – remembering truth and reciting scripture. But more often, I am much better at speaking fire and getting myself all riled up. So, I’m going to be finding a verse this week to help me calm down and listen to God and accept His peace.

What about you?