**The Best Yes**

I recently read this book and it completely changed my life.

There was so much great advice from Lysa. I have commonly felt rushed in my life and pulled in too many directions. This book talked about how there is many things we can commit to, but that we need to figure out what is the BEST YES to give our time and energy to.

“We must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please. “

A woman who lives with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule will often ache with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul.

I blindly live at the mercy of the requests of others that come my way each day. Every assignment feels like my assignment.

You need me?  You got me.

Because I’m too scared or too cowardly or too busy or too something to just be honest and say, “I can’t this time”.

We must not confuse the command to love with the desire to please.

In God’s plan, you’ve got a part to play.

If you know it and believe it, you’ll live it.

You’ll live your life making decisions with the Best Yes as your best filter.

You’ll be a grand display of God’s Word lived out.

Your undistracted love will make your faith ring true.

Your wisdom will help you make decisions that will still be good tomorrow.

And you’ll be alive and present for all of it.

When all of life feels like an urgent rush from one demand to another, we become forgetful.

We forget simple things like where we put our car keys or that one crucial ingredient for dinner when we run into the grocery store. But even more disturbing, we forget God. We say with our mouths that we are trusting and relying on God, but are we really?

A quick check to see if this is true is our ability to notice what God wants us to notice and our willingness to participate when God invites us to participate.

Other people’s requests dictate the decisions we make. We become slaves to other’s demands when we let our time become dictated by requests. We will live reactive lives instead of proactive. And reactive lives get very exhausting, very quickly. We get requests. We fill up our schedules all the way to the limit. We leave very little white space. We live lives that exhaust us.

A woman who lives with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule will often ache with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul. An underwhelmed soul is one who knows there is more God made her to do. She longs to do that thing she wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about.

The decisions we make dictate the schedules we keep.

The schedules we keep determine the lives we live.

The lives we live determine how we spend our souls.

So, this isn’t just about finding time.

This is about honoring God with the time we have.

Never is a woman so fulfilled as when she chooses to underwhelm her schedule so she can let God overwhelm her soul.

Never despise the mundane. Embrace it. Unwrap it like a gift. And be one of the rare few who looks deeper than just the surface. See something more in the everyday. It’s there. We can learn right here, right now, in the midst of all that’s daily how to become wise.

I’ve learned the best “no” answers are graciously honest. A simple no I will sometimes use is, “While my heart wants to say yes, the reality of my time makes this a no.”  Because I am someone who carries a great desire to make others happy, my heart is usually always jumping up and down demanding, “Say yes! Say yes!” But my brain has learned it must boss my heart around a bit once it checks my schedule, considers my capacity, and understands what is and is not my responsibility.

The difficult moment of saying no is worth it if it helps you avoid being resentful later.

Saying yes all the time won’t make me Wonder Woman. It will make me a worn-out woman.

We dread saying yes but feel powerless to say no. Why?  Because of the elephant called people pleasing?

We are afraid of people not liking us. Not admiring us. Not being pleased with us. So we spend the best of who we are doing a million things we know we aren’t supposed to be doing.

It is impossible to please everyone. And wearing yourself out trying will often make you the unhappiest person in the room.

We fear disappointing people.

When you have a pattern of saying yes when you know you should say no, it’s time to reevaluate some things.

Step back and think about what’s really going on. You said no because saying yes would invite crazy into your life. And you’ve been telling yourself over and over, NO MORE CRAZY. If they push back when you say no, that’s disrespectful on their part. And if you play along, it’s dysfunctional on your part.

You won’t ever be able to keep up with unrealistic. Unrealistic demands lead to undercurrents of failure. So don’t allow the unrealistic demands of others to march freely into your life.

Those who constantly try to impress others will quickly depress themselves. That’s not love.

We must not confuse the disease to please with the command to love.

For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose love, their hearts are fully committed to him.

The sooner we can make peace with the facts we can’t please everyone and some people won’t be pleased no matter what, the sooner we can be freed from that elephant sitting on our air hose. We’ll have the oxygen and the energy to simply and generously love. After all, love, real love, is a very Best Yes.

Saying no isn’t an unnecessary rejection. It’s actually a necessary protection of our Best Yes answers.

Whenever you say yes to something, there is less of you for something else. Make sure your yes is worth the less.

Together is a really good word. Together is what we need when we hit tough patches in life. Making decisions when life is making you cry shouldn’t be done alone.

Friend, you are strong. You are persevering, tough, able to bend without breaking, willing to be humbled to the point of humiliation, not blinded, a hunter for wisdom, a praying-through-it woman, a courageous gal, one who wants to learn the deep dependence of following hard after God himself. From that cracked-open-heart place, a God-breathed strength will rise. Rise. Rise. And help you spit in Satan’s face as you declare, “You picked the wrong woman to mess with this time!”

“It’s the stuff that we avoid because it hurts

that is exactly the stuff we need to tackle.”

Back on February 2012, I wrote in my journal about the hardships that I was going through and the unknown I was walking into with Jackson.

At that time I took Jackson to the hospital for an echo of his heart,

lots of bloodwork,

and some x-rays.

I got the test results back and the echo of his heart was normal as were the x-rays.

But the bloodwork came back with extremely high numbers indicating that

something big was still going on inside my little boy.

Our pediatrician got me hooked up with a pediatric neurologist and I waited a few weeks and finally went in to see him.

It was February 22nd, 2012.

I remember that day so well, and I always (unfortunately) will.

I remember playing with the boys that morning and having a grand ol’ time,

I remember I wore this cute pink top because it was my favorite color,

i remember i took this picture…….

this picture now has significant meaning to me.

It’s been over  2 years since that day and this photo signifies

the last day I had where I felt joy.

Full, unbridled, optimistic, full of life happiness…..JOY.

Because I thought I knew hard before that day.

See, my whole life I have been a very happy, optimistic person.

I actually have a HUMONGOUS love of quotes and I’ve had books where I write my favorite quotes down ever since I was a little girl.

I’ve always been drawn to them,

I’ve always written them down and hung them all around,

they’ve gotten me through all sorts of things.

So as I look back, I think “hmmm….maybe there was a reason why I’ve always loved quotes.

Maybe I was building a library for myself for when something really terrible happened,

I would have plenty of books of mine to go back and look at and uplight myself.”

February 22nd, 2012 Jackson and I went in to see this specialist and had no idea what to expect.

But the worse thing ever was about to smack me in the stomach with the news the doctor would give me.

He took a very quick exam of Jackson and mumbled some things and calmly said,

“I think your son has either Duchenne or Becker Muscular Dystrophy”.

Just like that. As cold as stone.

Actually, I can’t even get across to you how cold he said it to me.

I had NO IDEA what that meant and as I scrambled to write those things down and asked him how to spell it.

I will never forget the sadness,

the grief,

and in that moment my stomach fell down to my knees

and I couldn’t breathe right.

He told me to get a genetic test done on Jackson and in 6 weeks I’d  know the answer.

and then he walked out.

He also said some rude comments to me, but I will not share them and will try to put them out of my memory.

I walked out, went to the car, tried desperately to hide my emotions from Jackson who was happy and had no idea what was going on.

But I failed.

I burst into tears and I just remember thinking, “I don’t understand”.

See, I hadn’t done ANY research and didn’t know a thing about what the doc was talking about.

Later that night I googled it and this is what it said:

 Duchenne muscular dystrophy is an inherited disorder that involves rapidly worsening muscle weakness.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a rapidly-worsening form of muscular dystrophy.

By age 10, the person may need braces for walking. By age 12, most patients are confined to a wheelchair.

There is no known cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy leads to quickly worsening disability.

Death usually occurs by age 25, typically from lung and heart disorders.

I read that and I just sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

I was just sitting there shaking.

Then I ran to the bathroom and got terribly sick.

I shut my laptop, I was numb, I couldn’t sleep.

I went into Jackson’s room and just laid next to him, and cried.

I eventually went to my room and fell asleep, but I woke up at 3 am, got sick again, checked on Jackson, and then slept until 4am.

Right then in the haze of waking up I thought this whole thing was a dream.

I thought to myself,

“What a horrible dream”

and then I realized it wasn’t a dream.

It all hit me like a ton of bricks, like I was literally getting the crap beaten out of me.

I couldn’t go back to sleep.

I just laid there…..numb.

I took him to school and came home and I just sobbed in bed.

I decided to get out of the house so I went to Costco, but it was no luck, I wandered around like a zombie and didn’t eat all day.

I just felt so empty.

I am just so hollow inside.

I don’t know why this is happening.

Later that night the bishop from our church come over and gave Jackson and I blessings.

I really think it helped.

My heart felt calm.

Everyone just keeps trying to reassure me that the test will come back negative,

that doctors are wrong all the time,

but I know deep down that it isn’t the case.

I can feel it,

I think he truly does have this disease,

and that’s why I’m breaking down so bad right now.

I was driving to pick up Jackson from school and I was blown away by the weather.

It was a gorgeous sunny day when I got on the highway and then about 2 seconds later I hit a giant rainstorm.

I had to capture this crazy phenomenon, mostly because it felt like my life.

In the rearview mirror was the beautiful day, and up ahead this is what I was heading into.

It was total symbolism for me in the fact that looking back things were easy, but now I was headed into the eye of the storm.

Three days later…

Ever since I’ve gotten this news it’s been hard to eat, sleep, do anything.

I’ve felt like dying,

I’m constantly in the bathroom getting sick,

I feel hollow,

I’ve been so cold,

I barely get through the day and fall straight asleep at 10pm,

but then I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t settle my mind enough to get back to sleep.

I don’t do laundry,

I don’t clean the house,

I haven’t made a meal,

I haven’t worn makeup,

I haven’t watched tv.

I feel like a shell of a person,

i don’t smile,

my heart hurts,

i’ve cried so much.

This morning I woke to Jackson puking all over himself and his bed and his pants were soaked with poo.

Logan was delightfully in his room screaming at the top of his lungs.

5 bags of puked on bedding.

I don’t know if it was the blessing I got a few days ago or because I was FORCED into doing laundry, but today was the first day that was o.k.

I didn’t spend the majority of the day crying.

I spent the day playing with Jackson,

I got him new “dino” sheets,

we watched “Dolphin Tale” while cuddling on the couch,

we painted our feet with fingerpaint  and made a family collage.

I feel warm again inside.

I feel like I am getting a teeny tiny bit stronger.

I know he is my angel.

A few weeks later at church I found this quote  in our monthly newsletter and it really spoke to me:

“There must be a gap of time when things don’t make sense, when confusion ruffles our peace of mind.

But that gap is a special place.

The gap is where faith is found.”

Then on April 2nd I got the news.

The test results came back,

they were positive.

Jackson has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Last fall my friend Tammy hosted an amazing event aimed at gaining money for Duchenne Research.

She brought out Sarah Burgess, who you may recognize from American Idol, who is supremely talented.

Sarah’s little brother was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy as well and she now makes it her life mission to bring awareness through her music and talents to try to find an end to Duchenne.

I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah for the first time this past summer in Chicago at the Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy Connect Conference.

She is so sweet and it was wonderful to again see her and watch her perform.

At the All in For Duchenne Event, Sarah sang a lovely song she wrote called “The Spoken Word”.

To say that I was sobbing during it would be quite the understatement.

For she so eloquently put into words,

just how I feel so very often.

This is the lyrics from her song and then her video is underneath that.

I encourage you to watch it and visit her website to keep up with her and see how she is changing the face of duchenne.

Here is some more information on her and her partnership with Cure Duchenne.

The Spoken Word by Sarah Burgess

Everytime I’m asked to speak at an event, I always shudder when I give my reply.

Of course it’s a yes, I want to help.  Whatever you need.

I’m not nervous. I’m just hoping to God that my knees don’t shake, and I don’t cry.

My little brother, Jacob, he has a condition called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

It’s a devastating, horrible, ruthless disease that robs little boys from growing up and becoming men.

I’m 27, married, and I’d like to think I’ve experienced a whole heck of a lot.

I’ve pursued my dreams and traveled overseas.

Don’t google Duchenne.

But right away my mind told me to disagree.

I fired up my laptop and typed the letters D-U-C-H-E-N-N-E.

I read that my little brother is going to have limited days.

This disease affects one out of every 3500 boys.

And there’s no cure or medications to help his muscles stay.

At first I didn’t believe Jacob’s diagnosis.

I mean, they must’ve gotten it wrong.

With my world crashing in all around me, I knew for Jacob, that he needed his family to be strong.

I never thought something like Duchenne would show up in our lives.

Duchenne is violent tornado, ripping and destroying families, making it close to impossible to survive.

Being a big sister is never going to be an easy thing, but I know, whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.

I refuse to live life governed by the things I cannot control, and instead live life doing the things that I can.

I trust and I believe in a God that knows exactly what he is doing, for he knows the ones that can change this outcome.

I’ve stopped questioning about how our lives will be centered around Duchenne, I’m reminded of the hope every single time I bow my head & listen to the words, Amen.

My brothers only gripe is when he loses at a level on a video game, yet he never complains when falling and failing to keep up with his friends, knowing that his muscles just don’t work the same.

Everytime Jacob giggles and laughs, or looks at me with those big, blue sparkling eyes, I choose to ignore the ones who don’t understand or have comments that are snide. People that whisper and say, “What about your life?”

Over a year ago, I made the decision to use my gifts and talents to help my brother and every other afflicted by Duchenne. It’s the toughest road I’ve ever taken, but it’s one that I would choose over and OVER  AND OVER AGAIN.

You may not understand the pain, or the little struggles a Duchenne family faces everyday.

 Just like a thief in the night, never expecting, without warning,  your life can completely change.

Life’s about cherishing the little moments.

Loving, celebrating, appreciating each day.

They know what causes Duchenne and they know how to fix it.

But the lack of funds has haulted a cure from coming into motion.

I will use every bit of my spoken emotion, do whatever I can to cause a commotion, convince you of my undying devotion, to have just one of you help cure Duchenne.

Will you help?

Together we WILL runaway.

Here’s the video of it: