Friday at Allume {In Which God Breaks Me, Uses Me, and Gets ALL the Glory}

Today was the day. Today I had a chance to share my passion for people-centered blogging and my heart for serving over seeking fame with my blog. If I could just get the words to come out straight, I’d survive.

Oh, plus there was that whole other issue I’d been dealing with all weekend. (If you get my personal newsletter, you know about this already, but here’s a recap for the rest of you…)

Bigger than my fear of messing up my talk, was my fear of totally rocking my talk. Yes, you heard that—I was afraid of success, because I was afraid of pride. Remember last year at Allume? How prideful I had been? And how the Lord had been kneading humility into me ever since? Well, I was plumb terrified that if I succeeded in sharing my message in a cohesive manner—if my talk was at all passable, it would feed that pride I’d been a slave to, and I’d be back where I started—a stuck up snob, thinking of myself more than others.

But God.

But God had a plan. He had hinted of that plan Thursday morning, in the quiet of early morning in my hotel room, chiding me oh-so-gently for my lack of faith, for thinking that I could get back into the pit {of pride} He’d delivered me from, for thinking that I had to manage my own sanctification, for not believing that He had a plan. Some reason, I didn’t trust Him yet, and continued to fear.

Then, Friday at 11 am, just 3 hours before I was supposed to speak, you’ll never guess what happened…

Aunt Flo arrived at Allume.

I saw her step off the elevator (not literally, I’m just trying to make as light of this TMI detail as possible, people!) and I thought,

“No! Not you! Again!” (she’d followed me to Allume last year, too, the annoying relative that she is)

Then I thought,

“Bummer. I really wanted to be pregnant this month.”

Finally, I thought,

“Oh, my gosh, how embarrassing. I’ve been telling everyone I was pregnant. How in the world am I gonna save face after this snafu?”

(whoa, hold it—I didn’t even know that word was in my vocabulary—what’s a snafu??? Just a minute…OK, Merriam Webster says it’s “a situation marked by errors or confusion”. OK, yeah. Perfect word. Carry on…)

How do I describe the next three hours? I spent about half of it crying in my room, with my roomates gathered around me, comforting and praying for me, and the other hour and half trying to gather my wits and compose myself so I would be ready to speak at 2. I totally missed my friend Kristina’s session, managed about 4 bites of lunch, and finally made my way to the room assigned to my talk,  my prepared speech a crumpled wad in one sweaty, shaking fist.

The room was empty when I arrived, but slowly began to fill with the Gideon Band that God had gathered around me that weekend: Diane and Milan, September and Sarah, Jess, Mandy, and Kateri, all from my mastermind group and all with comforting hugs and promises to pray. Then Lisa-Jo arrived—Lisa-Jo, who had spoken such words of affirmation into me Thursday night, telling me how excited she was about the theme of my talk and giving me such a boost of confidence by assuring me she was going to attend. Kris was there, and Jodi, and Dana, and many of the other women I’d connected with already that weekend. I thought, ‘”Why should I be nervous, I’m just going to be speaking to a handful of friends!” But I still was. Because not only did I have a speech to deliver, I had a snafu to confess.

Yes, yes, I’m serious. There would be no attempt to save face. I felt the Lord telling me that my blunder was the perfect story to illustrate one of the key points in my speech—the call to embrace humility as a blogger. It was all there in my notes…

“Embracing humility means not shying away from those moments that show me and however is watching that I’m not the next mommy-blogger-superstar.

Embracing humility means thinking more of other’s needs and less of my own craving for attention and validation.

Embracing humility means seeing myself through God’s eyes—beautiful, worthy, a treasure, but ONLY because of grace.”

So, instead of figuring out a way to mask my blunder, and casually un-tell people about my mistaken pregnancy only if it happened to come up in conversation, I chose to take the grace the Lord heaps up for the humble, to go ahead and just be me, without the masks of having it all together. I could just be me and let Christ fill in the gaps with grace.

So I did. I shared with the women what had happened that morning, and I could tell from the gentle laughter in the room that I wasn’t the only one who’d ever done such a silly thing. I shared with them the choice I had to make: to fight a humiliating moment with more pride, or to embrace the grace to be humble. And I applied it to blogging—to the need to be humble and authentic with our stories, with our mistakes as we learn to navigate the land of tweets and statuses, and with every interaction with our readers and acquaintances. Humility is a key to having a Kingdom impact with your blog.

And some how the words came. It was just as Tricia and September and Jana told me—the Holy Spirit would give me words if I was just obedient to open my mouth.

And here was the mighty deliverance Gideon’s God worked for me that day:

He delivered me from pride, and the fear of pride, by gently bringing me to a place of utter brokenness and inadequacy, and then used me in that broken state to further His kingdom.

See, God totally rocked my talk, friends. And He did it all with a broken vessel who both felt ill-prepared and was an emotional wreck just hours before her talk so that when the words the He wanted said were shared, He got ALL the glory.

And I praise His name. 

It’s still unreal to me that I was a part of this awesome group of men and women–the speakers at Allume 2012. (I’m in the front, second from left–at the feet of Sally Clarkson, Ann Voskamp, and ProBlogger–great place to be!)

Recordings of all of the Allume sessions are at last available for purchase!(I know I told you they’d be free, but I was mistaken. Still, the content is gold, I tell you, pure gold!) I’m totally getting the package for myself for Christmas. Oh, yes. But watch this here blog for more of the content from my talk, which I’ll be making available for my readers in text form—soon!

Oh, and did you like this series of posts about my experiences at Allume? I hope so, because I have one more miracle to tell!