Permission to Stand Your Ground
What it means to be Christian and still have conflict
Note: One of the working titles that keeps bubbling up for my next book is Permission Slips. It’s prob publishing suicide to REVEAL that before it’s concrete, but I’m not here for traditional or filtered and I told you this would be the cutting room floor. Because of it, I’ll be starting a new ongoing series, on various topics, where women may or may not need a permission slip. I’m not an expert by any stretch, nor am I even an authority to be the one to give you PERMISSION to live your life - and yet, I find in my conversations with women, we’re oftentimes searching for that friend to just give us permission to do what we already know intuitively to do. So if that’s what you need, I’m happy to be the one to grant you permission. Would love your feedback on each of these as we go along - they most likely moving forward will be for paid subscribers only.
Somewhere along the road, I internalized the message that as a Christian woman, it is right to avoid conflict. That somehow, avoiding conflict was more noble and a sign of strength. Like a literal translation of turn the other cheek meant, “be a doormat and don’t cause strife if you can avoid it”. The source of this messaging is irrelevant, but I believed it to be true on some level because I’ve honestly always been pretty strong, steadfast in my confidence in who I am, that I could handle other people’s mishaps, or lack of good choices, because I was strong enough to let it just roll off me.
Ignoring things = strong & noble.
*SMH*
And for the most part this is true, but just because I CAN be strong and just because I AM, shouldn’t mean that I don’t stand my ground or stand up for myself, even if I was a declaring Christian.
Recently, some newer girlfriends and I started a neighborhood book/bible study and opted to go through Lysa Terkeurst’s “Good Boundaries and Goodbyes”. Each week we’d gather and chat about this concept that boundaries weren’t just a good idea, but God’s idea. Somewhere in the midst of our weekly get together’s, and Lysa’s workbooks, this concept that I “should” just take it in butt began to unravel. I have a tendency to just avoid conflict because that felt more noble oftentimes, but also because conflict is super uncomfortable. But Lysa points out in her book that boundaries are meant to serve and protect your most precious asset and tool: your heart.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for out of it is the wellspring of life.”
Why had I never read this as a command to keep me safe? I guard and protect my bank account, and my internet password from my kids, and would never just carelessly toss those around to any Dick, Rick or Nancy (shoutout to my FIL Rick – guess you’re not getting my passwords LOL) – EVEN if I was a Christian! No, that would be UNWISE. Similarly, I must guard and protect my HEART because how much more precious is that than my bank account? My mind began to shift and I began to believe the value and worth that I had to secure, and maintain, boundaries. Sure, I had been doing affirmations and my body is a temple blah blah blah, but never had I ever applied this concept of boundaries to my heart. Mel Robbins says it this way, “letting things slide to “keep the peace” only starts a war inside of YOU.
THAT ONE TIME WE BUILT A POOL
Eighteen months ago, we started the process of building a pool. Rewind the story because where we left off (in my last book), we were living in the Seattle suburbs in our dream home and people in Seattle don’t have pools. We’ll get to the meat of this new story soon enough, but for the sake of this chapter – we live in Arizona now. This whole building a pool thing was a new process for us, despite the bajillion homes we’ve remodeled at this point. God had given me a vision for how to build and use this new dream home in Arizona, and having a fun and inviting backyard space in order to host the local junior high kids to tell them about Jesus was a MASSIVE part of why we had made the financial investment to go all in.
If you build it, they will come (also for junior highers, I’ve been told if you feed them, they will come).
Initially the pool company told us they should have it done within 4-6 months. At month 7, with no end in sight, I finally decided to take outward action. Never have I ever used my social media platform to be anything other than a place to connect, a place to laugh, a place to sometimes rant, but definitely not a platform to blast people. I was learning though that playing nice, and asking politely behind the scenes for a job to get done, and for them to honor their word or simply finish the job wasn’t a strategy that was producing any forward progress.
A couple of months prior to all this, Blake and I had started going to counseling again. It started as a “proactive” method, but once we sat down and started talking, we realized there were some definite patterns of unhealth that had crept up into our life during the last few years of massive transition. In one particular session with our counselor, we offered up the vision that we were going to be starting to host and build a local ministry for the nearby junior high kids. Our oldest was about to enter junior high at the time, and we knew how eternally influential it could be to create a safe space for him and his friends, along with the neighbor kids, to just have a mentor in their life. Someone just a generation prior had said yes to something similar, opening their home to a high school kid like me to take over their house each week & hear about Jesus, which led to the entire trajectory of my life shifting.
Our counselor responded to our declaration of adventure with a reminder, “you know what happens when you start to build a ministry or enter into ministry right?”
I looked at him blankly. “Umm not really, but do tell.”
“You’re going to get attacked, and you will be fighting a battle for this ministry.”
Oh sheesh! I hadn’t really thought of that. But I guess that makes sense. The summer prior, our family had volunteered at a camp for a month, where thousands of teenagers were told that the God of the universe is madly in love with them. As a volunteer and staff team, we actively prayed every day for armor against the battles we’d face as we went to the front lines of eternity here on this side of Heaven, battling for the eternity of these precious souls. We were about to do the same thing, but in our own backyard. I hadn’t yet prayed one prayer of protection. And in fact, out of all our remodels to date, building this one has come with the most hiccups, the most setbacks, and the most stress & roadblocks by a mile. So when the house was completely finished, but that pool wasn’t done, I knew in my guts, this was a battle. It was time to not shy away from the conflict (because that’s what a nice Christian woman would do), and go to battle. Because getting this pool done meant being able to open our doors for kids to hear about Jesus. For kids who, behind closed doors in our squeaky clean 50 shades of brown (houses that is) suburban neighborhood, most definitely weren’t living the perfect suburban life. We didn’t just want this pool and backyard to get done because we had paid close to our first born’s dowry for it, but because it was the difference between being able to build a legacy for God right in Gilbert, Arizona using the one thing we’ve always know how to use – our home.
So I did what any good modern day millennial did – I went to social media (you can scroll my pool saga highlight to catch up). I was kind and nice, and mostly was tongue in cheek about the lack of our pool company showing up for work, but mostly I was truthful, and I leveraged what I had been given: a platform. After I hit post in my momentary second of boldness, I threw my phone down and wanted to hide. As a lifelong conflict avoider, here I was, an emboldened daughter of the King, inviting the fight and battle right into my living room. All because I had the audacity to start believing the truth that to be Christian didn’t mean avoiding conflict, or allowing people to walk all over you, but instead it meant fighting the battles worthy of fight, and guarding your heart above all else. I’m actually writing this portion of the story out in real time. The pool company has not yet shown up to finish, but they have sent aggressive texts and have made aggressive excuses and comments about me blasting them on social. It’s okay though, I feel prepared to stand guard. I’ve got my shield of faith, my breastplate of righteousness, my belt of truth, and my sword of the Spirit ready to fight for the vision that God has given us. We know because we know because we know, that the vision for that backyard, was given to serve others. But that can’t happen unless the people we’ve paid to do their job, do what they said they were going to do. That is not WRONG to expect them to show up and honor their contracts and words. This conflict though is admittedly rocking me. I went for a walk to try and get the negative energy out. Even just typing this out, I am reminded to believe the truths that I KNOW are right. I can stand up for myself, and I should.1
I am not one to usually over spiritualize things, but honestly, I encounter so many women all the time – myself included – who play SMALL because they think that is right, or what they are supposed to do. If I speak up and am the one to demand for rightness and justice, I’m easily labeled aggressive or a bitch. And because I care so much what other people think, instead I stay quiet and just shoulder it. I’m strong enough right? I don’t want to come across as needy and I definitely don’t want to dwell on the past.
Except the body keeps the score, and the only one that loses in those scenarios is ME. God said Ashley, guard your heart above all else. That means waging battle when a battle is warranted, not shirking from a battle or conflict because you think that’s more noble, or that it will just go away if you ignore it.
Conflict is inevitable. This is a big part of the human experience - Jesus told us this would be the case. There is no amount of strength that is Christian “enough” that will allow us a path, or life, of conflict-free living in our relationships. It’s not possible - we’re all too human.
We do not need to skirt conflict, especially when it means having our boundaries taken advantage of. I’m learning the importance of not just shouldering conflict or putting extra grease on my shoulders to let everything slide. That sometimes, it’s okay to stand my ground. That everyday, I am fighting a battle in the work that I do. I am fighting to shephard the souls of my kids that have been entrusted to me in my home; I am fighting for the impact globally in our food supply chain in the work that I do with my job, even when it’s leveraging a business model that lots of people don’t understand and judge; I am fighting for the liberation of greatness in the women that I am privileged enough to mentor and serve; I am fighting for a marriage that beats the odds and doesn’t just survive, but thrives during the brutal and demanding years of child-rearing.
Every part of my life, and yours, is a battle.
The worthy things will take work - and sometimes that work will bring about conflict.
When you are living a life filled with purpose, that means that everything you do has meaning and power, and you have good intentions. Which means everything you do with impact, purpose, meaning, and power will have an enemy attempting to sit you down, keep you quiet, and most definitely keep you from speaking out and fighting the just battles that need to be fought.
He wants you to forget you have armor and weapons to fight these battles.
He wants you to forget that you have influence and a platform to help make right what should be made right.
He wants you to forget that you have been given a voice of power to speak truth, and protect what is most worthy – your heart.
Sister, you have full permission to stand your ground. And not just permission, but a command from above – not from me - to stand firm in guarding & protecting your heart (anyone know that Bachelor reference?) for out of it flows all of the life around you.
The battles will keep coming so long as we have breath. But it is not a doom and gloom message because we have tools that we’ve been equipped with to fight the good fights. Justice - of any kind - is worthy of our discomfort and our boldness.
My lesson that I continue to learn - both with this ongoing pool saga & just growing as a human - be bold in your boundaries and only grant access to those that are responsible with the treasure of sharing your heart.
And even when you know that doing the right thing, standing up for what is right, will cost you - do it anyway.