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[Guest Post] The lies Satan tells us.

The Father of Lies has to start somewhere. If you believed, truly believed with all of your being, with all of your heart, your strength, your mind, and your soul that the God of the Universe loved you and held you in the palm of His hand, then Satan would be utterly defeated. Satan would have no hold on our hearts if we believed that God loved us as passionately as He does.

Satan’s biggest defense, one of his greatest weapons against us, is doubt. If he can get you to start doubting that God loves you then he begins to work his way into your heart and soul. He doesn’t come at our hearts in big, obvious ways because then we would see him coming and avoid him. Satan is not the giant sink-hole in the street waiting for you to drive into it, we would simply drive around it. Satan isn’t even the giant sink-hole in the middle of the street with an asphalt-colored tarp draped over it, for even that would be too obvious.

Satan is far more like a tiny nail in the street that you drive over that pokes a tiny little hole in your tire. You don’t realize you drove over the nail, and chances are you don’t hear the air slowly leaking out of your tire. In time, though, your tire goes flat and Satan has hindered your ability to go anywhere or do anything with any amount of ease.

So, how can we avoid the nails in the road if we don’t see them? Do we have to check our tires every night and listen for the leaks before we can go into our houses? Not necessarily. We need to learn to see clearly, to prepare ourselves for the nails and recognize them for what they are. We recognize them by starting with the first lies Satan tells us as women. Just as we learned as little kids, once you tell a lie you usually have to tell another lie to cover up the first one, and another lie to cover up the second lie, and on and on we go. So does Satan. We must uncover the lies and be aware that he uses them to build even more lies because his main and only goal is to keep us away from God, locked in a pit of desolation, just as he is. …

Have you ever felt unnoticed? Unseen? Have you ever felt that no matter what you did no one would even take notice? You could put on the most beautiful dress, get your hair and make-up done, and still no heads would turn. You could dress like Julia Roberts in the opening scenes of Pretty Woman and there would be no Richard Gere there to pick you up in some fancy foreign car. We feel unseen. As women we long to be found beautiful, stunning, attractive, sexy. One of my favorite books sums up what we long for in the title: Captivating. We want to walk in a room and light it up. We want heads to turn, people to take notice that we are there and we are radiant. We possess within our very souls something magical, something mystical that shines and begs to be noticed.

That isn’t to say that every woman wants to be the center of attention when she walks in a room, many women do not. Some of my best friends would actually hate walking into a room and having everyone stare at her beauty. They would fear all the attention and wonder if they had something stuck in their teeth or that there is toilet paper stuck to their shoes. Those same women who don’t want to be the center of attention will admit that they at least want one person to take note when they enter a room.

Satan knows this about the heart of women. What is the first lie that he often tells us? We are unseen. He whispers it to us, “No one notices you. No one sees you. No one cares. There is fundamentally nothing at all that is special about you, and therefore no one bothers to take notice of you.” We hear him and we begin to believe him.

– – – –

This post is an excerpt from Amanda’s book Worthy.

About the blogger: Amanda Mortus is a woman after the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. Amanda is also a Colorado native, who graduated from Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina in 2009 with a B.A. in Theology, as well as minors in Psychology and Philosophy. Amanda is a youth minister and author of Worthy, available now on Amazon, Kindle, and CreateSpace. Signed copies can be ordered through her website. She is a Managing Editor at Ignitum Today, and an Associate Editor at Catholic Lane. She blogs at worthy of Agape.

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“I can’t do this without You.”

After communion, I shut my eyes and knelt.

I breathed in, and sought a silent respite from the to-do list I haven’t yet learned to push away from the forefront.
“I can’t do this without You.”
My own tone caught me off guard. This wasn’t “I can’t do this without You” as in “I need You. Thanks for being there.” This was “I can’t do this without You” as in “…where the heck have You been?”
I laughed a little.
As if He ever left.
As if when I am on Twitter first thing in the morning instead of in prayer, it’s because God didn’t show up.
He has been where He always has been.
All we have to do is go there.
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“Check out my daughter’s butt!”

My purse still stinks of the cigarette smoke that clouded the air at a bar on Friday night.

There, one of my brother’s bands played (he’s in two). I brought cupcakes (true story), sipped water, sat alone while they played, and watched people.

One woman wore a blue sweater and a big smile with jeans and black boots. She danced the slow songs with her husband and the fast ones with her daughters.

Between songs, she spun a daughter around, whose back end she pointed toward the stage.

“Check out my daughter’s butt!”

It is unusual, in my experience, and mildly awkward for a proud mother to invite a band and bar patrons to gawk at her daughter’s body.

Our bodies are under critical spotlights enough.

The commercial that boasts the cure for “embarrassing” stretch marks illuminates our stretch marks. How thin our lashes are is magnified by the product the promises thick ones. The fastest route to freedom from unwanted facial hair implies something is wrong with the people who have it.

I have a problem with this.

I have a problem with a mom’s decision to compare one butt with others, and with makeup manufacturers making up problems and making the products that “solve” them. With advertisers telling us there’s something wrong with us when the inevitable happens (like wrinkles or gray hair). With our culture’s complicity in perpetuating the longstanding myth advertisers have created: one kind of body is better than others.

Who says butts have to look a certain way (except for the maker of Spanx, who is now a billionaire)?

Who says legs on female bodies have to be hairless? If the rumor I’ve heard is right, women in the US don’t shave because God wants women to be hairless. We shave because Bic created a razor for women, said body hair isn’t ladylike, and put an ad about in a magazine.

Think critically.

Would we be embarrassed by stretch marks if commercials didn’t call them embarrassing?

Would women be desperate to rid their faces of hair if ads didn’t call it unwanted?

Would women be motivated by what other people think of their bodies if their parents (or significant others) didn’t encourage it?

Would women be devastated when their bodies don’t fit the right mold, the right bra, the right pants?

Our worth doesn’t depend on how we look, or on what other people think of it. We don’t have to stand under critical spotlights, but we hold daughters and sisters and mothers and wives there when the only compliments we give them are about their bodies.

There is nothing wrong with bodies, but we thankfully are made of and for far more than bone and flesh.

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Arleen Spenceley, M.A.

Yesterday, I graduated with my master of arts in Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling from the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences at the University of south Florida.

I’ve written a lot on the blog about grad school already. This time, words aren’t necessary. 

730+ recipients of doctoral and master’s degrees.
I’ll buy dinner for the person who finds me.

USF’s President Judy Genshaft and me on the Jumbotron.
Photo courtesy of my dad.

The academic hood is obviously designed to keep a graduate’s ego in check.
Yes, you have a master’s degree, but you don’t know how to put clothes on.
Big thanks to the girl who helped me put it on, and to the girl who bobby
pinned my cap to my head. Two thumbs up, ladies, two thumbs up.

Not ready to let go, I wore the cap to dinner.
Possibly also because nobody likes cap hair.

Arleen Spenceley, MA #boom
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Thoughts on graduating.

And so I sit in a silent house, beside a dog whose slumber is disrupted by the nearby sound of somebody’s lawnmower.

I am graduating tomorrow.
I’ve already reflected a lot, out loud and in my head about what I’ll miss and for what I’m grateful. About how far from me this day felt when, in August in 2009, I sat in the second row in a classroom in jeans and a racerback tank, quiet but smiling on my first day of grad school. Graduation, then, was a figment of my imagination.
But today I reflect on tomorrow.
On “no more pencils, no more books…”
On knowing that because I know what I know, I am gratefully obligated to modify my behavior accordingly.
On putting my world (and my closet, and my car) back together. Reorganizing. Praying more, sleeping more, drinking more water. Exercising. Socializing. Dating? Writing.
On fulfilling responsibilities.
Growing up more.
Growing.
Graduating!
How many times I said “let’s do this!”
How great it feels finally to say “we did.”