The Mere Mother Blogcast with Catherine Segars

He was a very famous father, only he wasn’t known for being a dad. He changed the world with his inventions, his ingenuity, his ambition, and his genius. Tragically, his life was cut short due to illness. In his final months on earth, this extremely private man authorized a tell-all biography allowing the world to have an intimate view of his life.

But he didn’t do it for the world. No, when asked by his biographer why the sudden transparency, he said,

It has been widely publicized that Steve Jobs

Those words are haunting.

He wanted his children to know him from some

Jobs was aptly named with the kind of handle that would be too obvious in a film or play, too on the nose. The workaholic father named Jobs. Ha! That would never happen in real life.

But it did.

The man named Jobs was obsessed with his work, and his work changed the world.

But in the end, Jobs thoughts turned to his children. And in the end, his children have a book written by a stranger to remember him by, and the rare moments he was there, as his daughter Lisa reminisced, like “a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours.”

Hands down, the best part of our day, every day, is when the garage door engages making that tell-tale humming sound, usually mid-evening around dinner time, and all the kids from 14 years to 2 squeal with delight, “Daddy! Daddy’s home!” And they run to the kitchen door and tackle this unassuming, forty-something man carrying a half dozen dress shirts fresh from the cleaner and a gallon of milk.

A dad is supposed to be an everyday hero and a protector and, eventually, a friend, never some distant deity who graces us with his presence when he can find the time.

A dad is supposed to be flesh and blood, not print on a page.

Steve Jobs left an impressive footprint in the world, but not an impressive footprint with his kids. That is why, at the end of his life, he had to tell a stranger who he was so this stranger could tell his kids. In his desperate attempt to record his final thoughts, Steve Jobs was trying to leave a piece of himself for his children, to leave something meaningful that wouldn’t die.

How noble that he tried.

How sad that he had to.

I

I believe our best chance at immortality is instilling something valuable from our lives into our children, and into their children. Moms and dads who value legacy over livelihood make an investment that isn’t easily forgotten and doesn’t need to be written down by strangers. Their impact may not be a convenient gadget that mystifies the world. No, the impact that really matters is not that grand, but it is far more necessary.

End of life realizations tend to put things in the proper perspective. In

We are all born with an innate desire to make a difference in the world, but so many strive for the wrong kind of difference.

No one made a greater impact than the Man from Galilee, a real-life deity. This man made a mark on the western world that NONE will ever match.

And yet, world recognition was the furthest thing from His mind. He didn’t hang out with the right kind of crowds to further that kind of ambition. Jesus became infamous for investing His life in all the little people around Him. Most of those people were not important in terms of their notability or significance—they were culturally irrelevant—but they meant the world to this Man.

Especially

That is how He changed the world, by focusing most of His time on the forgotten.

And

“Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”

Spending your day caring for the citizens of heaven can seem like a pretty important job if you have the right perspective. What they require might seem trivial and mundane in comparison to conquering the world, but Jesus didn’t seem to mind. And He managed to do both.

Maybe we can too by not falling for the lure of what will, in the end, be mere. Maybe we can conquer the world by not letting the world define who we are and what we consider valuable. Maybe we can conquer the world by focusing on our little ones and giving them a better world to conquer themselves some day.

I think mothering

The post Job Performance appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Today, I want to tell you a story that takes place in a land far, far away, but hits very close to home.

Sometimes…

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is that my boyfriend forgot to tell me that he is next in line for the throne of a tiny European country no one has heard of making him the most eligible bachelor in the western hemisphere, a fact that somehow escaped my notice during our six months of dating, as did his origin from a place where, oddly, everyone speaks with a fake British accent; so we travel to his childhood castle where his mother, the queen, thinks that I am unqualified to be a royal but eventually comes around because I am the best thing that ever happened to her country and her son. Mmm-hmm.

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is that I have to leave my very important corporate job in the big city to take care of my father who broke his ankle during the busiest season of the year back at the poinsettia farm where I run into my old high-school flame, who dumped me and broke my heart, but—he dumped me because he didn’t want to keep me from fulfilling my dream of becoming an illustrious event planner in a thriving metropolis, and now that I’ve fulfilled that dream, I can chuck it, take over the family business, and we can live happily ever after.

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is that a brash but handsome executive from a land development company comes to my small town to buy up all the family-owned businesses so they can put up some condos out in the middle of nowhere that will ruin the community; so the cute corporate dude and I badger back and forth, like Harry and Sally only with really cheesy dialogue, while I start a petition and call a town meeting where I give an impassioned speech about how special our town is—and all the small business owners refuse to sell out, even though it would fully fund their retirements, and my attractive archrival falls in love with my passion, quits his job, and becomes a small town guy.

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is that my non-stop flight to meet my fiancée and his stuck-up, rich parents is grounded during a blizzard and I have to take a cross-country road trip with an outrageously handsome stranger in his late thirties who is completely normal but somehow never married because this guy, yea—this guy, was left at the alter by his fiancé for some short accountant type who happens to be his brother, right, and this stranger makes me question my future, and my past, and, well, just everything, and we fall in love and I break up with my boyfriend, whose snooty rich parents thought I wasn’t good enough for him anyways, and they are happy, and so am I.

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is that my big important dream job in the city doesn’t fulfill me so I go on a vacation to a beautiful country B&B with bad plumbing, and a shockingly attractive but strangely unattached single dad, who is the town fix-it-all, fixes the pipes and fixes my heart showing me what really matters in life, so I quit my wildly lucrative corporate job to carve ice sculptures for a living because that was my childhood dream, and we get married and live happily ever after on food stamps and Gatorade.

I want to live in a land where the worst thing that happens is that I make a silly wish and wake up in an alternate universe where I never married or had kids and I’m a successful, rich and famous career woman who shatters glass ceilings and lives in a pristine, magazine-cover-kind-of mansion with unstained furniture and sparkling floors, and I drive an Audie RS 5 Sportback, and I wear designer clothes that fit my trim body—and then, I realize how empty and shallow and meaningless all of that is and more than anything I miss my best friend, and I miss my munchkins, and I miss my filthy house filled with stained furniture and my 2004 Honda Odyssey with the cracked windshield and my closet filled with pregnancy clothes that still fit—and I wake up right back where I’m supposed to be, at home in my crazy stressful life with my husband and my kids.

Yes, it’s true. I’m a fully grown, responsible, competent, educated

And sometimes I want to live in a snow globe.

I want to live in a land where icing conveniently smears on my cheek so that a special someone can wipe it away, and mistletoe is conveniently placed right where I want it to be, and my balance conveniently fails when I’m on a ladder near the most attractive stranger in town.

A land where everything is beautiful and everyone is beautiful and anything bad that happens happened a long time ago and I don’t ugly cry about it anymore with snot dripping off my nose while doubled over in a fetal position in my closet as guttural screams of “Why, dear God, Why?” gush out of me making my two-year-old run out of the room yelling, “Mommy crying again!” as I sob and the house quakes.

A land where there is a slight bit of tension and frustration but everything is resolved in 115 minutes, and everyone falls in love and kisses with perfect lighting and synthesizer music playing in the background as the credits roll giving the distinct impression that they live happily ever after.

No one does. Not even the people who make Hallmark films.

No. We live in a place where accidents wreck families and

I hate to bring up all that stuff after painting such a lovely picture of life in a Christmas

I weep over the loss and the disappointment and the despair and the heartache and the tragedy of it all. I weep over what should be and isn’t. I weep over betrayal and abuse, disorders, disease, and death.

Compared to all that, a Hallmark film looks pretty good. So, sometimes I gobble up a movie or two with a La Croix and big bag of Lays. And afterwards, I sit there bloated, distracted, and a bit dazed.

But ultimately–unsatisfied.

Because I don’t really

I don’t want to live in a land where love is so easy and

I don’t want to live in a land where there aren’t real obstacles and real victories and real pressures and real people.

I don’t want to live in a land where there isn’t a God and

One day, I’ll live in a land that really is perfect, the

I want to live in a land where a Man dressed in white runs toward me with unwavering focus, his eyes staring straight into mine, and, after what feels like a lifetime, He embraces me beside some pearly gates on some streets made of gold and tells me that He could hardly wait for me to get there, and that I lived my life well—that I pressed through the pain, that I had faith in the storms, that I mastered the challenges, that I overcame the obstacles, that I perfected the gifts, that I worked oh-so-hard, that I let Him heal everything that hurt me and then I helped heal the hurt in those around me, that I made a difference in a lot of lives, that I led a lot of people to those pearly gates, that I consumed so much of His Word that I became one with it and it made me look like Him, that I made Him proud, that I did what He created me to do—that I was a good and faithful child.

No—I don’t really want

I want to live in heaven.

I want to live with Jesus.

Until then, I want to live right where I am. And I want to do all that I can to help a lot of people live with Jesus in that land someday.

Don’t you want to live there, too?

The post I Want To Live in a Hallmark Film appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Seven-hundred women sing with reckless abandon, “You are good, good, oh. You are good, good, oh.” Hands stretch high as they harmonize the heavenly tune. I try to sing with them, but something in my spiritual gut cracks open. The well deep inside bursts, and I double over in a silent scream.

God is good, but this isn’t.

Piercing pain, loss beyond words ruptures my soul. My precious friend is gone. We prayed every single day for over a year, claiming healing Scriptures over her body, fasting, pleading, proclaiming, declaring. I believed. She believed. So many people believed that the miracle would come.

She is now with the Lord, rejoicing. Her husband and five children are here, grieving.

God is good, but this isn’t.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand why Scripture says one thing when reality seems to say another . . . sometimes. There must be a loftier view. There must be a greater truth. Higher ways. Higher thoughts. I know the verse, but it offers little comfort to me now. What is this way that is so much higher than mine? What are these higher thoughts of the Divine?

God is good, but this isn’t.

I know that Scripture is faith not formula, but where two or more are gathered in His Name, He is there. He has given us authority. We can bind. We can loose. We can command mountains like cancer to be removed and cast into the sea. We did. But cancer remained. Cancer took her home and left her family here.

God is good, but this isn’t.

I know the theology. I understand that we

I know that God didn’t cause this. But He could have prevented this. He could’ve answered differently. Sometimes I long to be God so that I can tell a different story. Yes, the story would’ve turned out so differently if I had written it. It would’ve been miraculous and triumphant and victorious!

But the second such thoughts take hold, I

After all, if I had written Jesus’ story, He wouldn’t have died either.

Then I remember the words given to another disenchanted soul . . . “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Matthew 11:6 ESV)

Jesus sent these sentiments to his cousin,

“Are you the Messiah or should we look for another?” he pleads.

Wasn’t he whispering what we all want to

The real Messiah would put an end to this! The real Messiah would come! The real Messiah would stop this injustice! The real Messiah would heal! Are you not the real Messiah?

The real Messiah responds in a flesh-searing way. “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Translation: “Blessed is the one who believes that I am good when life isn’t.”

Do I believe that? Do I believe that God is

The song continues. Surely in a room this

A song . . . can become an act of war, a prophetic proclamation, an emphatic declaration that what I see today will not be what I see tomorrow.

A song . . . can become a battle cry sung into a different dimension, one that rules this one, one that commands dust to become flesh and dead things to become alive again (Romans 4:17).

A song . . . can become a testimony confirming that the story is miraculous and triumphant and victorious, but we just haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet.

So, I sing — not as a reflection of this present reality, but as a declaration of who He is despite this present reality.

I sing in gratefulness that my friend’s suffering is over. I sing in humble faith that the suffering her family must now endure will not be without redemption.

I sing, commanding the bad that is to surrender to the good that is to come.

I sing, telling the testimony of some distant tomorrow which will proclaim a greater victory, a mightier miracle, a loftier triumph than any story I could feign to tell.

I sing because beauty will come from ashes, gladness will come from mourning, and praise will come from despair (Isaiah 61:3).

I sing not because of what I see today but because of what I have seen and what I will see again — the goodness of my God in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13).

I would like to dedicate this blogcast to my friend Susan, and to Cayden, Diane, and precious Caroline Rose. Your families are forever in our prayers, and your stories are forever in our hearts. We know that God isn’t finished telling your stories yet.

A very special thanks to Sarah and John Mark

And a shout-out to InCourage.me for publishing God is Good, But This Isn’t on May 15th, 2019. If you need an encouraging word, head over to Incourage.me, that is I-N-courage.me to find one.

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Today’s message is a tribute to all the mama birds out there and our little birdies who are about to fly.

fly.

In this journey called parenthood, some seasons seem to crawl. Quite literally. The crawling season is filled with sleepless nights and bleary-eyed mornings. But then you blink and your child is talking and walking and reading and writing and working and driving, and contemplating colleges, and considering callings. And you realize that the seasons aren’t crawling anymore. Huh-uh. They are flying by in a hurried haze of ballgames and birthdays, proms and graduations.

Yes, the seasons have indeed flown by, and that sweet little life that

It is that time of the year when seasons shift in nature and in life. Little adults gather in dark robes and funny hats with tassels that will fly high on a fleeting day.

An ode to our graduates is in order, whether you have one yet or not.

I have a dear friend named Paula who sent me just such an ode that she

In her poem, Paula touches on a significant theme that strikes a resounding chord in me, in every mom. She says that as mothers, we create a “forgettable history,” forgettable in the sense that the history books are silent about the work we mothers do. Our work is too simple to be noted. Unadorned with the accolades that others achieve. To slay dragons may be the calling of some, it may be the calling of our little swallows, but the silent work of the mother bird goes unsung. It is a forgettable history.

But not today.

As Paula so boldly declares, we women are powerful, writing

In this season of seniors and on this eve of Mother’s Day, I will sing the mothers song. I will praise her history by sharing this poem with you . . .

A final thought: If your baby birds, like mine, still remain close requiring your daily nurture and care, savor these moments. For you won’t find another season like this one.

The post fly. appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Today, I want to tell you a story about a race I never wanted to run, and a life I never wanted to live.

Made to Mother

I’m not

I tried

In high

These meager

My lack of

I despised running. With the kind of passion usually reserved for political discussions, grave acts of injustice, or American cheese. What is up with American cheese? It isn’t cheese. There is no dairy in it. At all. But I digress . . . Whenever I ran more than a few dozen feet, I would collapse with a mind-numbing pain in my side as I gasped for breath like an opera singer after competing in a battle of the long note. Only there was no beauty in it. And no victory.

If someone had given me twenty physical activities,

At least with soccer and football there is an objective, a point to all the running. You get to score a goal or make a touchdown. You get to win! What is the point of running a long distance? The bumper sticker?

So, how did

My initial response,

I didn’t say

Then she did

“I

“Anyone

Still, a good challenge doing what I hate—nah. No thanks.

“Come on, what do

Why not? Why not do what anybody’s mother can do? Why not

I could hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth.

“Ok. I’ll

The next week, I started training. It was rough going at

Now I may not be athletically inclined, but I am not a quitter. I am good with the follow through. And I know I could’ve walked the 5k, but there’s no glory in that. So, I pressed through the pain, forcing my body to do

The morning of the big race finally came. The adrenaline

And I kept on running. Three miles became five, and five

And all of a sudden, after many months and hundreds of

From there, the only place to go was the Music City Half,

The day of the big race came, and I was beyond stoked. I couldn’t wait to get out there and earn that 13.1 bumper sticker for my mom-mobile. I shot out of the gate like a gazelle, running the first six miles at record pace. Then, the left knee gave out, but I kept on running. Then, at nine miles, the right knee gave out. But still, I ran. My pace slowed to a jog and then to something that resembled Monty Python’s Ministry of Funny Walks, but I crossed the finish line at more than a saunter. Wasn’t pretty, but I did it. I got the medal and that bumper sticker.

In an incredibly frustrating side note, the very first

So what is the point of all this?

Well, I learned some powerful lessons from crossing that finish line. I learned that we are made to do hard things, things that we may not be naturally inclined to do. If you’ve ever picked up a Bible, that shouldn’t be surprising. Those pages are filled with bear killers and lion chasers, giant slayers and ark builders. There were no arks at the time, by the way.

But I learned something else from crossing that finish line that might surprise you because it sure surprised me. I learned that we are made to do things that we don’t like, things that we may even despise at first. In our “if it feels good, do it culture,” this revelation is quite counter-cultural.

God has made us to do some things that, at first glance,

That is what happened to me.

You see, I never wanted to be a mom. And now I homeschool

In my twenties, I saw women doing what I’m doing now, I

But now, it is me.

And a little hand reaches for mine, and my heart skips a

Yep, I’ve experienced the mother’s high. And I love it! I love what I once loathed.

Sure, there are plenty of pulled muscles and bum knees in this journey called motherhood, but I love this life I never wanted.

I met a woman at church one day who looked at my

Funny thing is, I was living my worst nightmare and turns

Look, my life certainly isn’t for everyone, but, like me, maybe the life you want isn’t the life you were meant to live. Don’t rule something out because it seems impossible. Don’t rule something out because you aren’t naturally inclined. Don’t’ rule something out because, at first glance, you despise it.

Whatever you were meant to do in this life, there will be

You just might end up dearly loving that thing you dread. And like me, you might discover that it’s your destiny.

The post Made to Mother appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Today, I want to tell you a story about a dream that died a long time ago, but it isn’t quite dead.

Helena in Heaven

“Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

And . . . scene!

I peered out into the audience but there was no applause. Only two pairs of droopy eyes and some heavy panting. Maybe a bit of drool? It was to be expected seeing as how my audience was comprised of my beagle mutt and basset hound. I had taken to doing Shakespeare in the basement. Don’t judge. There are worse secret obsessions.

Helena was the role I was born to play. Well, sort of. The script says that Helena towers over her female friend, Hermia. I don’t tower over anyone, at least not anyone fully grown. I am 5 foot 4 in spiked heels. Helena doesn’t wear spiked heels. Huh-uh. Chasing after nefarious forest fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream isn’t conducive to sporting stilettos.

So, I never performed my dream role, at least not in its entirety and not for anyone significant.

Well, that’s not quite true either. I peformed highlights from this neurotic and oft misunderstood Shakespearian goddess for the final exam of my advanced acting class in grad school. My professor, Dr. Gillette Elvgren, was a tough audience, tougher than my dogs. He was well known for his Shakespearian adaptions having directed the Bard’s work for decades.

I had a take on Helena that was off the beaten path. I saw something in her that I had never seen performed before: an adorable insecurity paired with an overactive imagination and a strange compulsion for metaphors. I have no idea where my connection with Helena came from as we clearly have nothing whatsoever in common. Ahem.

She just wants the depth of her heartache to be heard. Is that so wrong?

 I labored for months over this scene, crafting the nuance of each transition, laboring over every whimsical epiphany, fashioning every fleeting flight of fancy. I was nervous but oh-so-excited to finally play a snippet of this role for a real-live audience, and an educated audience at that. After soaring through the double-cherry section, emphasizing every bizarre but hilarious two to one reductive simile and gently landing on the reflective conclusion, there was genuine, rousing applause from my peers in the audience.

But Elvgren, he just stared. After a while he shook his head and muttered, “I usually cut that scene.” Sacrilege! It is her finest moment. Clearly. How can you cut this brilliant scene?

But . . . in all of his years directing Shakespeare, Elvgren hadn’t seen this side of Helena either. Because, despite my vertical shortcoming, then he said, “You need to play that role.” Triumph! Oh, so sweet the sound of acclimation!

I fed on those words for years.

I never got to play the role of Helena, though. In what waning ingenue years I had left, I took on another far more challenging role, the role of a lifetime, the role of mother. Late night rehearsals didn’t jive with this new part I played so I walked away from acting, my first vocational love. It stung to leave the stage, but my second love was far deeper and more abiding, it was greater than the passion that preceded. God called me to something less notable but more noteworthy.

Now I act on a different kind of stage, one made of a builder-grade carpeted slab downstairs. For a long time, I would steal away while the babies were sleeping and perform Shakespeare in the basement for my dogs. Rather pathetic, I know. My pups are now in heaven along with any hope I have of playing young Helena.

Photo by Dmytro Tolokon

The Apostle Paul said, “Since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1)

Sometimes, God asks us to lay down precious things in order to pick up what He has called us to do. And it doesn’t make sense to people who live without eternity in mind.

I miss acting. I miss digging into a challenging role. I miss the adrenaline of a live performance. I miss making people laugh and cry and think and dream. That is what I did for over a dozen years, and God asked me to lay it down and trust Him. So, I did. The sacrifice left a hole for some time and I keenly felt the loss of it. Ask my poor dogs who listened to countless soliloquies of Portia, Viola, Beatrice, Kate, Lady Percy, and my beloved Helena.

But it was worth it. My family was so worth it. God’s plan was better than the play I would’ve written for myself. I can honestly say that I would choose my homemaker life over Helena any day of the week because it is the race that God has set before me.

Photo by Kyle Head

Do you know the race that God has set before you? Have you walked away from some precious things to go where He has called?

It’s hard, I know. But these precious things may not be gone forever.

Years ago, I read a mesmerizing book about a sick woman who slipped away from the confines of her mortal body and experienced heaven. Over and over she urged readers to realize how interconnected our lives on earth are with eternity. In heaven, she witnessed lectures given by Martin Luther, and she heard John Wesley preach. She listened to new symphonies from prolific composers and glimpsed new paintings by masterful artists.

You see, who God created us to be is who we will be for all eternity. The writer will write, the singer will sing, the craftsman will build, and the dancer will dance on streets of gold. We are eternal creatures who will one day slip from time and live out our calling on an eternal stage.

So, some dreams may be meant for this earthly sphere, but some may be meant for the other side.

Photo by Jr Korpa

But just when I thought that this dream was buried for good . . . a few months ago, my pastor encouraged us to write out a dream list including all those of things that we yearn to do in life. Secret hopes. Desperate desires. Crazy goals. Buried dreams. “Write them down!”  he charged. I hesitated to write this one. I’m too old, too matronly, too short, too far gone to ever play my dream role now.

Photo by Amy Treasure

But somewhere deep inside, the dying embers of a long-lost dream flickered and swelled as if someone was breathing a bit of life onto the charred branches of a fire lit far too long ago.

“Don’t limit God! Nothing is impossible with God!” my pastor exclaimed. So, I wrote it down: “Play the role of Helena, period.”

Oh, I felt so silly, but it’s in writing now. It’s official. It’s on the bucket list.

Who knows, maybe the hubs and I will move to a retirement community someday, and I will join a peppy pack of geriatric players who have a strange desire to dress up like fairies and skip through the forest with their canes and walkers. Yes, we will put on a riveting senior production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at long last, I will be cast as Helena opposite some matronly soul whose spinal curvature has caused her to shrink more than I have. In the end, I will tower by retaining bone density! Ha!

Or maybe God has some other trick up His sleeve. I wouldn’t put it past Him.

But one way or another, I will play that role . . . even if I have to play Helena in heaven.

Photo by J. J. Jordan

The post Helena in Heaven appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Today, I want to tell you a story about an ancient garment that never gets old.

GRANNY’S HOUSECOAT

She was the perfect southern Granny with a fully stocked fridge and a freezer full of lima beans and okra from her garden. I was on a short weekend break from college visiting my grandmother in Nashville, TN, and she was determined to send me back buttered up and busting at the seams.

My Granny, Sarah Frey

“Are you hungry? Can I fix you somethin’?” She’d ask a hundred and eighty-nine times a day.

“No Granny, I’m fine,” I replied. Again.

“Do you want a biscuit? I could make you some biscuits.”

“Really, I’m fine Granny. I don’t need anything.”

“I have pimento cheese. Do you want a sandwich?” she insisted.

“I don’t like pimento cheese, Granny. And I’m not hungry.”

She would have none of it.

“Oh, but it’s so good. I’ll fix you a pimento cheese sandwich. With some pickles. And a coke-cola.”

“Sure, Granny. That’d be great!”

There was no use arguing. It was easier just to give in. She wasn’t happy if she wasn’t filling your belly with something. And she did buy bottled coke, a southern delicacy.

Granny’s servant heart and giving spirit didn’t stop there. She would give you the shirt off her back, or the housecoat, as the case may be.

The next morning, she was getting ready in the teensy half-bath that made her bedroom slightly grander than the other two bedrooms in her matchbox of a house. I was laying across the bed, enjoying a little girl time with one of my favorite people on the planet.

She was wearing the most adorable pink dressing gown with blue and white lattice across the top. Adorable in a matronly, senior citizen kind of way, not a hip college student kind of way. She looked like the birthday cake at a 4-year-old’s princess party. Cute as she could be.

She was perfect.

“That housecoat is so cute on you, Granny!” I made the mistake of saying out loud. Before I could get the words out of my mouth, she had disrobed and was shoving the matronly moo-moo at me.

“Here, honey. Take it!”

“Oh, no, no, no Granny. I couldn’t take your housecoat.” I pleaded.

My inner monologue was more like: “Please, don’t make me take your housecoat, Granny. Please!”

“Take it. I insist. I want you to have it.”

Sigh.

“Ok. Thanks Granny.”

There was no getting around it. That housecoat was heading back to college with me. I buried it under a pile of clothes in my closet and didn’t give it a second thought.

Until one morning several weeks later when I was about to cake my hair with spray, it was the 90’s after all, and I paused realizing that my delicate silk blouse would never be the same after the onslaught of my salon products. I needed a layer of protection, something durable and polyester. Something that I didn’t mind getting dirty. Something that would never leave the room.

Eureka! I had just the veneer I needed.

I dug the adorably hideous housecoat out of my closet, covered my fragile blouse, and sprayed to my heart’s content.

After that, Granny’s housecoat became a regular part of my morning ritual. Before long, I ventured out into the hallway and even into the lounge wearing it. Everybody already thought I was odd, looking like a pink petit four only added to the mystery.

But one day, I was in-between church and some high-brow choral concert, and I didn’t want to change my sleek, sliver suit. So, I put Granny’s housecoat over it to eat lunch. I was in a frantic hurry. I needed to pick my roommate up off campus and I was still stuffing my face, so I decided to brave it.

I ventured out of the dorm into the wild, wearing this very domestic, matronly attire.

Ohhhh!

To my absolute horror, I ran into the one person on campus that I didn’t want to see, the guy I had been pining after for months. I called him GG, short for Greek god. I had a monstrous crush on him, though we had never actually spoken. Sometimes words aren’t necessary. And sometimes words are better left unsaid. As I was soon to find out.

I was running between two closely parked cars and there he was, smack-dab in front of me. And here I was looking like a pink and blue doilie in my Granny’s housecoat.

I wanted to blend into a wall, and I could have if I had been in an outdated, Victorian spinster’s cottage covered in frilly pink and blue wallpaper. But there was no wall here. Only air.

Something had to be said. Something witty and clever. I stuttered . . .

 “Hi. This is my grandmother’s. It isn’t mine. Well, it is now. I didn’t steal it. She insisted that I take it. I didn’t want it, but she made me take it. She will make you eat pimento cheese even if you don’t like it. You can’t say no.”

The words wouldn’t stop coming. They hung in the air like the overwhelming fumes from my hair products.

Clever and witty words were nowhere to be found. But there was a bounty of bizarre. 

Then, there were no words, just an eternal pause filled with nervous laughter on my part and a very peculiar expression on his.

He squeezed past me and went on his way. There was no glance back like in the movies. Nope, no, huh-uh . . . he kept on walking.

Mortification is too mild a word.

I realized that the nervous verbiage I spewed covered me in colors far more awkward than the Pepto-Bismal pink and baby blue moo-moo I was wearing. Why, why can’t I make myself shut-up sometimes? Like my housecoat, my inner monologue should’ve stay inside where it belonged.

It was a brilliant first impression, so stellar that there never was a second. Granny’s housecoat wasn’t just hairspray repellant, it was college-crush repellant as well.

Blasted.

In a very odd twist of fate, ten years later, three states and 600 miles away, a man on whom I did manage to make a good first impression, a man I married, crossed paths with GG in a job interview. Yep. My husband hired my college crush and became his boss. I’m not kidding.

Turns out GG wasn’t very dependable. He wasn’t a very hard worker, and he didn’t like to show up for work when he was supposed to.

So, my husband fired my college crush.

Maybe Granny’s housecoat protected me from more than hairspray. Maybe wearing it out the dorm that day wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

I’d like to think that I’ve inherited a lot of things from my Granny. Her generous spirit, her hospitality, her love of bottled coke and biscuits.

But more than anything, I’ve inherited her faith.

Granny didn’t have a fancy faith. It was deep and abiding, but it wasn’t progressive. Huh-uh. It wasn’t subject to the winds of cultural change. It wasn’t in style. No, Granny’s faith was old-fashioned. It was tried and true. It was durable.

She was never ashamed to wear it out of the house, but it was most clearly seen in the day to day domestic duties of life, in the thousands upon thousands of generous acts she did for others on a daily basis.

I have a lot to live up to there. I often fail, but her faith is the fabric of who I am. It is strong and sturdy. It is built for the long haul. It often makes me stick out in this lost world, but it is made to protect me for a lifetime. It is made to last.

Fifteen years later, when Granny left us, I gave the eulogy at her funeral. I talked about her steadfast, old-fashioned faith . . . and I wore her housecoat. Proudly, in public. And I didn’t have to dig it out of a closet or search for it high and low. It was hanging on my bathroom door where it still hangs today.

Granny’s Housecoat

Yes, to this day, Granny’s housecoat is a part of my morning ritual.

But it is so much more than that. It is a part of who I am. It’s the best part. The strongest and deepest part. It’s the part I want to pass on to my children and my grandchildren.

I will give this faith to them. I will insist that they take it, and I won’t take no for an answer.

Still, I know that I can’t make them wear it. But it is my deepest desire that one day they will find the need for something to cover them. And they will find that this old-fashioned faith fits them well. And they will wear it proudly . . . indoors and out.

The post Granny’s Housecoat appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Today, I want to tell you a story about how the season of silver bells offers us a silver lining.

Silver Bells and Silver Linings

I’m a dreamer. Always have been. I daydream, and I have vivid dreams at night ever since I was a child.

Some dreams I forget, but I will never forget this one.

It was 2:30 a.m. during the season of silver bells, and I woke up screaming at the top of my lungs. An onlooker might have thought it was an old-fashioned nightmare, or some sort of trauma visiting my dreams, but it wasn’t. It was more than that. It was a warning. Something assaulted me in my sleep, something from another world.

I was twenty-six weeks pregnant, and I was visiting family in Alabama with the kids for Christmas while my husband worked long holiday hours back home in Tennessee. I knew that Bryan needed rest, but I had to call him. We had to pray.

He picked up after two rings.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered with an urgency in his voice.

“Something attacked me in my sleep. Something evil.”

We took authority over whatever it was, rebuking that vile thing with the Scriptures we had been praying every day for the past year. At the seasoned age of forty-five conceiving this child was just the first miracle. Carrying her to term would be the next. After we had lost a precious little one on Thanksgiving Day the year before, God told me that we would have to fight for our promised fifth child. So, we fought like never before . . . on our knees. We hadn’t prayed this long and this hard for nothing. This child was staying put!

Finally, peace washed over me, and I went back to sleep.

In the morning, I alerted my ladies Bible study and pleaded with them to pray. I knew that I was standing on a precipice, and I needed their support. I reminded them of the dream I had a few weeks prior. In it, I had been given army fatigues to fit my burgeoning belly and was told that I was being transferred to a battle station. Joy! Every pregnant woman wants to go to war. All the soldiers being transported with me were lying flat on their backs. How curious. What could it mean?

Do you ever get the feeling that the course of your life is about to shift dramatically and destiny lies in the balance? That is how I felt on December 18th, 2016.

The day seemed normal but the hairs on my arms were standing at attention. Everything in me was on high alert. That evening, I found out why.

As the kids opened their gifts in the annual cousins’ Christmas party, I felt the shift inside me. There was a gush, and a quick trip up two flights of stairs to my room, where I first felt the attack in my dream, confirmed my worst fears. I was bleeding. Badly.

Something was not right. There was an initial panic as I realized that the spiritual and the natural had collided. The battle was no longer out there. It was inside me. The countless hours of prayer and the graphic warnings were for now, for this moment!

I called Bryan as we rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital in downtown Birmingham. He left work immediately. I kept pressing on my belly, trying to get my sweet angel to move. I wasn’t in pain, but was she? Was she ok? I couldn’t feel her. Why was she so still?

They immediately wheeled me into an examination room. They don’t mess around with pregnant ladies. They lied me flat on my back, just like all those soldiers heading to battle, and hooked me up to a monitor. Finally . . . I heard her heartbeat, strong and steady. So reassuring. Thank God, she was alive! She was fine. Chaos surrounded her, but she was untouched.

Still, twenty-six weeks was far too early to have a baby.

My phone lit up like a Christmas tree for hours as my prayer ladies sent encouraging words and Scriptures. They were fighting alongside me. I wasn’t alone. Bryan made the three-hour trip in record time, arriving around midnight. He held my hand and prayed into the wee hours. The bleeding subsided and I was released the next day under the strictest of orders to see my obstetrician in Tennessee as soon as possible.

I did not yet know that my placenta was abrupting and would continue to do so for the next two and a half months. I didn’t know that this abruption would risk not only my child’s life, but mine as well. I did not know that I would be put on complete bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy, thus the soldiers lying flat on their backs in my dream. I didn’t know that I would visit the hospital again from a second bleeding incident four weeks later, and then, after a third occurrence, spend the last month of this pregnancy on the sixth floor of Centennial Women’s Hospital in downtown Nashville. I didn’t know that I would fully abrupt ten weeks later in what would resemble a crime scene investigation from an episode of CSI, maternity ward unit, and be rushed into surgery for an emergency C-section, where my longtime OB would jump on top of the operating table with two scrub techs to cut, tug, and pull my precious girl out of my womb with mere minutes to spare.

My home in Centennial Women’s Hospital

I didn’t know any of that because we never know where the battle is going to take us when the conflict starts. We only know that His grace is sufficient.

And His grace was. The war raged all around this child with an enormous 11 cm fibroid tumor blocking her way to the birth canal, a placenta that barely held on to 36 weeks, and a breach position that resulted in a particularly dramatic and brutal C-section. One that, in the haze of anesthesia, made me feel like I had been abducted by aliens and taken aboard their space ship to have my internal organs probed and prodded in an effort to become fully acquainted with the human species.

And yet, during the daily two-hour monitoring sessions in the hospital, the nurses told me that Evangeline’s heartbeat and movement were textbook perfect. Every single day. Even during the final tearing of the connection between her life and mine, while my doctor struggled to set her free, her heartbeat remained steady and strong.

How could she be at perfect peace in the midst of all this carnage?

Isaiah 26:3 tells us: “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.”

War is bloody business. Some gifts and promises come to us with comfort and ease, but others must be fought for and won in bloody battle.

Even still, we can be at peace in the midst of a war, and sometimes we can have a blessed reprieve . . .

I’ve heard many stories of raging international conflicts that stop for a single day, Christmas day, in honor of the Christ child. My war stopped on that day in 2016 with the most incredible silver lining. My husband usually works 15-hour days throughout the Christmas season. He worked Christmas Eve and Christmas Day every year at one of the biggest holiday tourist destinations in the south. When his boss heard that I had been released from the hospital on complete bed rest, he sent Bryan home with the strictest of orders not to return until after Christmas.

In over two decades with this man, I had only spent two Christmases with him. Now we would have four whole days together to celebrate the Christ child with our family. What a gift! We had a reprieve from the war. The final victory would not come for many weeks after numerous long and arduous days of battle, but that Christmas we celebrated with the Prince of Peace.

The silver bells of Christmastime provide a silver lining in the midst of our battles, even if the silver lining is just the promise of an eternity free from the heartache and toil of this world.

Still, in this world God has promised to bring beauty from the ashes of our lives. Emanuel, God with us, has promised to redeem. My war really started on Thanksgiving Day thirteen months before when my little one left this life for another, and the child I fought for in the wake of that loss is the beauty from those ashes. She is my redemption. She is my silver lining.

Me and my silver lining

Whatever war you are waging this holiday season, I pray that you have a reprieve to celebrate the Christ child, who promises us redemption in this life and victory in the life to come.

May the silver bells of Christmastime bring you a blessed silver lining.

If you know someone who needs to be encouraged this Christmas season, someone who’s struggling, would you please share this message with them.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The post Silver Bells and Silver Linings appeared first on Catherine Segars.

Today, I want to talk to you about the standard you use to measure the meaning in your life.

A Full Life

Last year, comic Sarah Silverman stirred-up the social strata on Twitter by issuing this statement:

“As a comic always working & on the road I have had to decide between motherhood & living my fullest life & I chose the latter.”

Ooooh, thems fighten’ words to some hard-working mamas out there. Yep, Silverman caught some serious flak for expressing those sentiments. A lot of mothers took issue with the idea that a woman with children cannot have a full life.

Silverman responded by insisting that she was referring to her fullest life and no one else’s. Fair enough. This world-famous comedian has every right to determine what her life should be. Motherhood would pop a pin in the full life that she envisions for herself.

You know, in a strange way, I can relate. I chose to leave my career as an actress to pursue my fullest life in full-time motherhood, and over the years, I’ve gotten flak for that. You see, I’ve let down womanhood. Silverman has let down motherhood. With women, that knife can cut both ways. Unfortunately.

Of course, I never had an enormously successful career like Silverman, so the sacrifice of my vocation for the sake of motherhood wouldn’t register on a scale like hers. Likewise, she doesn’t have five amazing kids, so her sacrifice of a family for the sake of a career doesn’t register on a scale like mine.

Silverman is wise, however, to recognize that some kind of sacrifice is necessary whatever you choose. I appreciate Sarah’s acknowledgement of the magnanimous sacrifice that motherhood would require of her. It requires that kind of sacrifice from all moms. And I appreciate her candor in stating that her priorities lie elsewhere.

But . . . I would like to challenge Silverman’s statement of what constitutes a full life. “Always working & on the road” sounds like a person who is investing every ounce of energy into their own career, into their resume. And while we each have the right to define a “full life” as we see it, this seems like a less than full definition to me. But that’s just me.

Or is it?

A recent news article in Time Magazine highlights new research that supports a different pathway to personal fulfillment:

“Scientific research provides compelling data to support the anecdotal evidence that giving is a powerful pathway to personal growth and lasting happiness. Through fMRI technology, we now know that giving activates the same parts of the brain that are stimulated by food and sex. Experiments show evidence that altruism is hardwired in the brain—and it’s pleasurable. Helping others may just be the secret to living a life that is not only happier but also healthier, wealthier, more productive, and meaningful.”

Scientists have proven that altruism fulfills humanity on par with stimulants like food and sex. Wow. Philanthropy is pretty powerful stuff!

So, might we conclude that a life spent “always working and on the road” is a less than full definition of a life? Scientifically speaking, that is, of course.

Look, I’m not trying to cast stones here, truly I’m not. I’m challenging definitions. What is a full life? What truly matters when all is said and done, when the last song is sung? That is a question worth asking when trying to define our fullest life.

You know, I was all kinds of self-absorbed in my 20’s and early 30’s before I had kids. And Sarah Silverman may take time off from her busy tour-schedule to do all kinds of charity. You can’t judge a life based on a twenty second tweet. So, I’m not trying to.

But . . . she did offer a rather myopic, career-focused definition of a full life.

And you know what, I can relate to that too. The scientific findings in this Time Magazine article registered with me about 15 years ago, not because I read them somewhere, but because I recognized the need for something more than me in my own heart and in my future.

At that time of life, I was all about building the resume, getting that next big part, writing that next big play, clipping another great review, making another strategic connection.

But one day, I saw an unsettling vision of myself. I saw a geriatric me on Christmas morning watching a bunch of little kids, my grand-nieces and nephews, opening presents with beaming grins from ear to ear, squealing with delight. They would run to their grandparents to thank them. Then they would whisper,

“Nana, who is that lady?”

“That is your great-aunt Cathy,” she would reply.

“Oh, where are her babies?”

“She’s holding them.”

I was sitting there watching it all unfold while clutching my chubby resume filled with prestigious accomplishments.

This scene played out in my head. Many times. I wondered how fulfilling that list of accomplishments would be to me then. I wondered if that resume would mean to me in my old age what it meant to me in my youth. I wondered if investing my life in people might be more meaningful than paper.

I couldn’t shake that image. I realized that my definition of a full life might change as life went on, and the choices I made in my young adult years could bless or haunt me as I got older.

That vision changed my life. I decided that I didn’t want to be that woman.

So, my husband and I cranked out five bambinos from the time I was 33 until I turned 46. We were good and done after the first three, btw, but that is the subject for another day. Suffice to say that God saw a much fuller life for me than I ever imagined. And I am so grateful that I caught His vision.

The full I feel now doesn’t compare to the full I wanted back then. They are in different worlds, different galaxies, light years apart.

Like Sarah, I would like to clarify that this was my path to a full life and no one else’s. The Apostle Paul said that for him it was better not to marry or have children at all so that he could focus more intently on others. That is a wonderful definition of a full life.

A person doesn’t have to be a mother to be a generous, sacrificial, philanthropic human being. Mother Theresa proved that. And some mothers can be incredibly selfish despite taking on a role that is designed by God to kill narcissism. So, you don’t automatically get a full life by becoming a mother, nor do you forfeit one by choosing another path.

That isn’t the point. But this is:

Fullness in life comes when we focus most of our attention on the needs of others. Jesus proved that. Good mothers prove that. Science is even proving that. And you know what, Sarah Silverman herself may prove that by making a lot of people laugh. It’s all in the motive, really. And that is something only God can see.

If the motive is me, then I haven’t found my fullest life. Not yet.

So what is your definition of “a full life?” Have you ever thought about it? The world offers us a definition that falls well short of God’s definition, and apparently, Time Magazine’s definition too.

A full life may be spent investing most of your waking hours in a career that God inspired you to pursue, or it may be spent sacrificing a career that you once aspired to pursue. No two full lives are the same. So in a way, Sarah Silverman was right. Your full life doesn’t have to look like mine.

But a full life comes when we pray the prayer of our Lord, “Not my will but Thine.”

You see, when it comes to a full life, the question isn’t what you do, but Who you do it for.

The Time Magazine article referenced in A Full Life is entitled, “The Secret to Happiness is Helping Others.” It was written by Jenny Santi and was published on August 4, 2017.

http://time.com/collection-post/4070299/secret-to-happiness/

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