Jennifer Dukes Lee

How to Find the True Rest Your Soul Needs {and a book giveaway!}

September 18, 2018 By Michelle 35 Comments

Jennifer Dukes Lee is a stellar writer, and I have been grateful for each of her books and the wise, insightful, funny, real guidance and truth she offers. Her newest book, It’s All Under Control, releases today, and friends, this one resonated deeply with me because, well, I’m Triple Type A, right? I love me some control! Jennifer writes friend to friend, and her insights strike a solid note because they are gleaned from an authentic place of personal experience.

I’m thrilled to welcome Jennifer Dukes Lee to the blog today. AND I have a free copy of her beautiful new book to give away. Details on how to enter the drawing are at the end of the post.

Guest Post by Jennifer Dukes Lee

I know how this noisy world can get in the way of me hearing God’s still, small voice. So, in the past few years, I’ve been intentional about quieting the outer noise in my life.

My biggest challenge is silencing the inner chatter.

I know the value of resting in Jesus, but it’s like my brain won’t stop moving in fifteen different directions. Corralling my thoughts is like herding a nursery full of fork-toting toddlers who just learned how to walk and are weeble-wobbling their way toward electrical outlets on opposite sides of the room.

Take, for instance, one of the places where I go to escape the noise: my bathtub. I’ll toss a bath bomb in the water and sink into the warmth. There’s no TV. No iPhone. Yet even here, my mind is running on high gear. I often receive some of my best writing inspiration in the bathtub, which is why my friend Cheri gave me a set of child’s bathtub crayons. (Yes, part of my latest book, It’s All Under Control, was written on the walls of my tub.) So while it might look like I am resting, I’m actually still working.

God is reminding me that my brain needs rest as much as my body does. I loosen my mind by simply dwelling with him: “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4).

If I have a lot of noise around me—even in the form of the silent iPhone scroll—I can’t hear God.

My friend Lindsay Sterchi, mom of twin toddlers, learned the hard way what happens when she doesn’t get the rest she needs. She told me, “Without rest, I’m not very fun to be around— just ask my kids and husband. I get irritable way too quickly. I lose perspective on the bigger picture of life, and the little things seem bigger than they really are. I get in this fog where I’m going through the motions of life but not really living intentionally.”

The answer for her: finding rest in small pockets of time each day. “Rest means that when the kids nap, or after they’ve gone to bed, I’m not going to zone out on TV or scroll through social media, which might seem restful but ends up being draining.” Instead, she does something that feels life-giving—without feeling guilty. Her escapes: reading a book, journaling, or simply being still, alone with God and her thoughts.

Maybe your escape is Netflix, and if that’s the case, you do you. But make sure it gives you life instead of draining your energy.

No matter what: make rest a priority. It’s vital.

Resting in God serves two purposes: First, rest allows you to intentionally connect with God. God wants to meet with you, not simply to give you the day’s marching orders. He wants to be with you because he likes you.

Second, rest calms the noise around you so you can hear God’s clear direction.

Here are a few ideas to incorporate more rest into your life.

Instead of scrolling, go strolling. Everybody has time for rest. How can I be so sure? Because that’s the time we use to check social media. Put down your iPhone for the fifteen minutes you would’ve spent on Instagram and take a walk instead.

Don’t let your “yes” encroach on your rest. If you say yes to something new, evaluate everything else on your list to see what might have to go. Refuse to put rest on the altar of sacrifice.

Let your work assignments flow from soul realignments. If “everybody is looking for us,” our souls and agendas need realignment so we can hear clear directions from God.

Protect the freed-up time you have already created. God prunes all of us, but achievers try to immediately fill those pruned spaces. Protect the space that God created for you. Downtime is okay; in fact, it will make you more productive in the work you were designed to do.

Adapted from It’s All under Control: A Journey of Letting Go, Hanging On, and Finding a Peace You Almost Forgot Was Possible, by Jennifer Dukes Lee, releasing today from Tyndale House Publishers.

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Jennifer Dukes Lee is the wife of an Iowa farmer, mom to two girls, and an author. She loves queso and singing too loudly to songs with great harmony. Once upon a time, she didn’t believe in Jesus. Now, He’s her CEO. Jennifer’s newest book, It’s All Under Control, and a companion Bible study, are releasing today! This is a book for every woman who is hanging on tight and trying to get each day right―yet finding that life often feels out of control and chaotic.

I have an extra copy of Jennifer’s lovely new book It’s All Under Control that I would love to mail to one lucky recipient (continental U.S. only).

To enter the drawing, just leave a comment below telling me your favorite way to rest your mind, body and soul. I’ll randomly draw one name at 8 p.m. CT on Friday, September 21 (winner will be notified by email).

How The Happiness Dare Opened My Heart to God’s Delight

August 2, 2016 By Michelle 43 Comments

“Michelle, God delights in you.”

These words were spoken to me and over me as a blessing twice after I’d revealed my breakthrough (i.e. breakdown) to my traveling companions in Italy. Two beautiful women prayed two beautiful, intimate prayers over me at two different points during the trip, and though their prayers were full of wisdom, insight and God’s truth, I remember only five specific words, words both of them uttered:

Michelle, God delights in you.

Those are the words, the promise, I took home with me. And while I wish I’d held a recorder in my hand so that I would still have every one of the beautiful words those two lovely women spoke to me, I do believe those five I tucked into my mind, soul and heart are enough. Those five words comprised the essence of their prayers, and I grabbed that truth and held it tight.

Two weeks ago, as my family and I winged our way to New England, I pulled Jennifer Dukes Lee’s recently released book, The Happiness Dare, out of my carry-on bag. Though I hadn’t yet cracked the binding, I knew Jennifer’s book would be good. In fact, I knew it would be excellent. Her first book, Love Idol, knocked my socks off, and I know Jennifer and her writing well enough to know The Happiness Dare would do the same.

What I didn’t expect, though, was that The Happiness Dare would speak so clearly into my heart, straight into the place I’d tucked the hope and prayer of those five words I’d received in Italy.

The Happiness Dare

The truth is, I may have known, hypothetically, that “God delights in me,” but I didn’t truly understand or even believe it personally. I didn’t believe it applied to me. I assumed God approved of me (on my good days), and was even possibly pleased with me from time to time, but delighted in me? Delight seems over-the-top. Delight is giddy, wildly joyful, grinning from ear to ear, cartwheels, jumping up and down with glee. Never once in my forty-six years have I ever considered that God delights in me.

Until Italy, that is. Until I experienced an altogether different God than the distant, vaguely curmudgeonly God I’d crafted.

Looking back, it’s so obvious: of course God delights in me. If he didn’t, why would he have gone to the trouble of wooing me in all the ways he knows matter most to me — in the birds and the blooms, in the warm breeze, heavy with the scent of jasmine and lavender, in the hot sun blanketing fields of green and gold. He is so particular, so specific. He knew the magical landscape of Tuscany was the place I would meet him and accept his invitation, long before I ever imagined the possibility of such a trip.

That, my friends, is a God who not only approves of us and is pleased with us, but delights in us.

And that is also a God who desires delight for us in our everyday, ordinary lives. Just as God delights in us, he has also wired us for delight. He has planted the seeds of happiness deep in our souls.

“Do not imagine the Lord as some miserly mall security cop, with his arms crossed over his chest and a whistle around his neck, waiting for you to mess things up down here,” Jennifer writes in The Happiness Dare. “God is the inventor of happiness and the chief spreader of it. When you desire happiness, you are not a pleasure-seeking heretic. Your desire to live happy is not a flaw. It is your soul’s memory of the original paradise, etched and alive in you.

God delights in each and every one of us, and I believe one of his deepest desires is that we delight in him too, in all the ways, big and small, he lavishes his love on us. We have to look for it, Jennifer reminds us, because sometimes this delight, this happiness, shows up small – in the scent of lavender, in the steady drone of bees under a hot Tuscan sun, in the sing-song call of the Oriole, right in your own backyard.

Friends, I invite you take the Happiness Dare with me. I invite you to allow happiness, “the holy fuel of our personhood,” to open your heart to God’s delight in you and your delight in him.

I finished Jennifer’s book the first two days of my vacation, and I was right: it was absolutely as fabulous as I thought it would be! Superbly crafted, wise, and engaging, The Happiness Dare will inspire you to embrace God’s desire for you and begin the journey toward spiritual and emotional transformation.

And here’s a cool thing: Jennifer has also created a Happiness Assessment – a five-minute online quiz that will help you discover your happiness style (I’m a Doer and a Thinker). You can take the Happiness Assessment here.

And the best news of all: I have a copy of The Happiness Dare to giveaway! Just enter the drawing below for a chance to win [email readers: click here and scroll down to the bottom of the post to enter the drawing].

a Rafflecopter giveaway

When No Doesn’t Mean No

October 1, 2014 By Michelle Leave a Comment

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One of the things I noticed in researching and writing about the lives of 50 Christian women was just how many of these women refused to take “no” for an answer.

I think sometimes as Christians, and particularly as Christian women, we assume “no” is the last word. We hear “no,” and we wonder if we’ve misinterpreted our calling or taken a wrong turn on the path. In the word “no” we often hear a reprimand. We wonder if it’s a sign signaling that we’ve strayed.

But what if “no” is not, in fact, the final word? What if the “no” we hear is simply a God-ordained detour?

…I’m over at one of my very favorite author’s place today, my good friend Jennifer Dukes Lee! Join me over there to talk about when no doesn’t mean no? [and thank you, thank you for your patience as I send you all over hill and dale these days with guest posts for 50 Women. We’ll be wrapping up the visitations soon – thank you for sticking with me!]

An Interview with Love Idol Author Jennifer Dukes Lee {and a giveaway!}

April 23, 2014 By Michelle 32 Comments

My friend Jennifer Dukes Lee and I are doing something fun today – she’s over here at my place, and I’m over at hers, which is perfect, because that’s exactly how we’ve walked this road to publication: arm-in-arm the whole way.

If you don’t know her yet, Jennifer is the author of the recently released Love Idol: Letting Go of Your Need for Approval – and Seeing Yourself through God’s Eyes. Friends, this book is fab. u. lous. I read several chapters of it in its early draft stage and loved it. Then, when it was released a few weeks ago, I read it again from start to finish, and man oh man, this book spoke to me exactly where I am. And I suspect it will do the same for you.

I met Jennifer in person a few years ago when she came to Lincoln to run the Lincoln Half-Marathon. I still remember the gifts she brought for me: Lee Family Farm Soy Nuts and soy candle in a beautiful votive, which still sits on my dining room window sill (I polished off the soy nuts long ago). She is just as sweet and generous in person as she is online – I am so grateful to call Jennifer a good, good friend.

Here’s Jennifer, chatting about Love Idol, writing, family and everything in between…

1. I think it’s easy for us as readers to assume that you, as the author, have everything all figured out and all your “Love Idol” issues resolved, but I suspect that’s not quite the case! So what does all this look like for you in the day-to-day? Do you still struggle with your Love Idol – with your desire for approval – and if so, how do you get a handle on that?

Oh Michelle, I wish that I could tell you that I had this Love Idol business all tidied up and tossed out with the week’s garbage. But truthfully, I’ve found that idols are pesky and persistent. They crawl out of the garbage bags, drag their stinky selves up the sidewalk, and bang on the front doors of our hearts. When I began writing the book, I texted a pastor these words exactly: “This is a book about making peace with yourself and with whom God made you to be. It is for people who crave approval … and who fear that at any moment the world will see what a mess they really are. Funny, because you might think a person should be cured before they write such a book, but even as I write, I find myself in the midst of this battle daily.”

(Yes, I am one of those people who writes insanely long texts, using proper punctuation. But I digress.)

The pastor texted me back, mercifully with more brevity: “That is the thing—the cure is the process.”

And that is what I’m learning and re-learning. The cure IS the process.

Removing Love Idols is daily work, much like the daily tending of a garden. I have to tend to my heart-garden every morning, sometimes several times a day, to weed out Love Idols.

And right now, I have to be even more vigorous than ever before with my heart-garden tending. Because even the book itself is subjected to a system built on approval or disapproval. Simply take a look at Amazon.com: Readers can now assign one to five stars to our books — indeed, to our hearts.

preapproved

2. When did you first get the idea for Love Idol? How long did the idea simmer before you actually made the leap into writing the book?

From about 2005-2009, I entered a very intense time of Scriptural study. I led numerous Bible studies in my community, mined Scripture, and then began to write about a lot of what I was finding and learning in a blog that I started in 2008. In 2010, I looked back on those Bible study workbooks, highlighted Scriptures and old blog posts. I was surprised to see a theme emerging: this striving for approval and significance in life.

The book was really born at Laity Lodge on the Frio River in Texas, during a retreat for the editorial team of The High Calling. It was a Friday night, and I was sitting across the dining room table from another farmer’s wife. We talked about how our husbands loved crops and pigs — and how their wives loved words. And this other farmer’s wife reached a hand across the table, and she said to me: “When are you writing your book, Jennifer?” That woman was Ann Voskamp. I’m tremendously grateful for her guidance and encouragement early on. I didn’t start writing the book until a year later, but that moment between two farm wives was a key moment for Love Idol.

3. You have a beautiful and unique ability to weave personal story into your book in an authentic, transparent way. Was it hard for you to be so honest about yourself in the book? How did you overcome any reservations you might have had about being so honest about your flaws?

Honestly, no. It wasn’t hard. I think I had grown accustomed to that level of honesty and transparency on the blog. The harder transition came, perhaps, when I moved from writing for newspapers from 1988-2005, and then, in 2008, turning the reporter’s notebook around and asking the hard questions of myself. So by the time the book came out, I’d had years of practice. I had witnessed what happens when we get honest with each other. It’s like what C.S. Lewis says: “Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”

4. What’s a typical day-in-the-life of Jennifer Dukes Lee look like? How do you balance the demands of writing and family and everything else in between?

Typical? What’s that word? Since March 21, I’ve forgotten what typical is. Because the days have sounded like variations of this: LoveIdolLoveIdolLoveIdolLoveIdolLoveIdolzzzzzzzLoveIdolLoveIdolLoveIdol. (Notice the very brief respite of sleep in there.)

A good friend reminded me that books are like babies, and that they need round-the-clock tending. Love Idol has needed lots of feeding and diaper-changing. And even at night, I have sneaked into the nursery to make sure she hasn’t stopped breathing.

But when I’m not raising book-babies, I lead a far more balanced life on this fourth-generation Lee Family farm in northwest Iowa … where we’re raising crops, pigs, a herd of cats, an occasional sheep, and two humans. The girls are both in school now, so I get almost all of my writing work done in the mornings, while they’re away at school.

5. I stole this question from Sarah Caldwell, who asked me the same thing: Write a six-word memoir that captures your life as a writer (I know! Isn’t that a killer question?!)

Once upon a … Oh look! Squirrel!

JenniferLee Love her answer to that last question! Thanks so much, Jennifer, for taking the time in between tending your book baby to answer my questions.

Jennifer Dukes Lee is an award-winning news journalist and author of Love Idol: Letting Go of Your Need for Approval—and Seeing Yourself Through God’s Eyes. She blogs at JenniferDukesLee.com. She invites you to connect with her on Twitter @dukeslee and on Facebook.

I am thrilled to be able to offer one reader a free copy of Love Idol. To enter the giveaway contest, complete the Rafflecopter below. And if you don’t win, treat yourself to your own copy. Love Idol is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, ChristianBook.com and in stores nationwide.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And don’t forget…stop by Jennifer’s place today, too – she’s giving away two copies of Spiritual Misfit – see you over there!

Spinning Cartwheels, Tap Dancing, Shouting from the Rooftops: Love Idol is Here!

March 24, 2014 By Michelle 19 Comments

I know Mondays are typically devoted to the Hear It, Use It community around here, and we’ve been spending these last three Lenten Mondays a bit more quiet than usual. But. Sometimes you have to take a break from all that solemnity to jump and shout and hang by your knees from the jungle gym! Today is one of those days. Jennifer Dukes Lee releases her first book, Love Idol, to the world today, and there’s just no way I can be quiet or solemn or devotiony about that!

I’ve read Love Idol twice through already. It’s dog-eared, underlined, wrinkled and worn — and it’s still brand-new! I admit straight-up that I am a book snob, so I do not say this lightly: Jennifer Lee’s book is one of the best-written, compelling, life-changing books I have ever read.

Jennifer has the remarkable gift of weaving personal story together with biblical instruction in such a way that the reader, so captivated by the story, doesn’t even realize she is ingesting an important, life-altering message. Until, that is, she puts the book down and lets that God-infused message seek in deep. Only then does she realize this book, this message, is what she desperately needed to hear all along.

I am a perfectionist, an approval-seeker, a comparer, an envy-er. All my life I have looked at others and thought, “Why don’t I have that? Why isn’t it easy like that for me?” Never once did I consider that these tendencies are deeply ingrained in idolatry – in my lack of trust in God, in my refusal to see how much he loves me.

Jennifer’s book has opened my eyes and my heart in such a new, refreshing, invigorating way, I don’t think think I’ll ever be the same. And that is a very good thing.

So friends, don’t put it off: buy yourself a copy of Love Idol today. You’ll want to send me a thank you note and a box of chocolate for recommending it, but do this instead: after you read it (and love it), write a quick review of it on Amazon. Until I became a writer I had no idea how important those little reviews are, but something about having a lot of good ones there impacts the crazy Amazonian algorithms (try spelling that word without Googling it first) and can really make a difference for book sales, which is really important for a first-time author. I know, who knew?

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Welcome to the Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word each week. If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information.

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Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

Jennifer Dukes Lee

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