You Are Irreplaceable!

I had only been married 6 months, and I began to feel insignificant.

No one told me what a crisis of identity a woman can often face when she is Mrs-So-and-So instead of the Sassy-and-Single-yet-Confident-Woman I had worked years to cultivate.

Now I was a wife.

I felt boring and redundant, not striking or special.

And to top it all off, with my new husband joining the ministry team at church, he could do everything that I did {and better}, not to mention the office assistant that I had been training for a couple of years who could mimic my admin skills almost to a tee.

I felt irrelevant, insignificant,VERY REPLACEABLE.

I went to the visiting female minister, and she prayed for me and challenged me not to be in competition with my husband.
Wow!
A hard pill to swallow, but ultimately wasn't that what I was doing??
I didn't want to do that. I did NOT want to be "that girl."

I wanted to be an AH-MA-ZING wife - this ideal I had in my mind that a WIFE was supposed to be - heck, I might have even been working towards Stepford.

Except.

I don't have a formal, Stepford, sweet, perfectly-presented personality.

AT. ALL.

And even when you know this proving-yourself-competitive-attitude is wrong, how do you change it?

Then one day, about a year after we were married, Arno's spiritual father spoke a word into my life that radically transformed my present and would forever shape the way I viewed myself in my marriage.

"Lindsey, you are NOT called to be everyone's wife; you were called to be ARNO's wife."

So simple, but what a revelation!

What my husband's needs are may not be another husband's needs therefore the title of "wife" in my house will look very different to the next person.

And I realized that this bled over into every relationship in my life - no one could be ME better than me. Nobody could fill the role that God had called me to fill BUT me. Even if someone is more beautiful, more talented, more successful, more whatever, no one....and I mean NO ONE....can replace me.

Because my worth and value come from the Father who placed me in seasons, in situations, in relationships.

HE. PLACED. ME.

I am irreplaceable.

And so are you, my dear, precious friend.
You are the ONLY one who can love your children the best.
You are the ONLY one who can take care of your husband the sweetest.
You are the ONLY one who can hold your friends' hand in the middle of her circumstances the way that YOU do.

You are the ONLY you that the world will ever know!

You, my amazing, awesome, breath-taking pal, are IRREPLACEABLE!

"Use the talents you possess for imagine how silent the woods would be if the only birds that sang were the best."