That One Time I Ran for Her Life

Running a 5k didn't change me. It moved me. Forward. Literally.

Friday night, Baby Girl Mo decided sleep wasn't that important and so we pulled a close-to-all-nighter. That was fun.

At 5:40AM, my melodic alarm started singing to me and I wish I could say I popped out of bed, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to run on behalf of girls I love and hold dearly.

But rather, I cursed it's robotic nature and hit the snooze button. Nine more minutes. I just need nine more minutes, because nine more minutes will definitely solve exhaustion.

Nine minutes later, I whipped off the covers, sat up as fast as I could, waiting for the rush of excitement, anxiousness, anything to get me moving.

And then I actually looked at my alarm. I'd forgotten I titled that morning's alarm She's been up all night. You run for her. 

That moved me.

With each piece of clothing I pulled on, I prayed over the homes of My Refuge House. For each girl who finds safety and love and freedom in their four walls, though I don't know their names.

With each strand of hair I braided, I thought about the millions still trapped in the sex trade, this disgusting business that somehow thrives in this world.

With each shoe lace I weaved into their sturdy double knots, I wept knowing the She I was running for told my friend Crystal only weeks before, I never knew this kind of love existed. And she wasn't talking about romantic, fuzzy, over the top love. She was talking about the kind of love that hugs, clothes, feeds, and laughs with a child.

Basic yet powerful love.

That's why I'm running, I coached myself. But by that point, I didn't need anymore coaching. I was ready to run across the world for her.

Maegan and I crossed the finish line together (at 34:16!), and our team raised over $5,000! Thank you so much for your comments and notes and messages of encouragement! And thank you to those who donated! Especially my Becoming Girls. You are the future and you're making it look goooood.

Special thanks to Maegan, Andrew, Lindsey (and friends), my mother and little sister for coming out and running with me!

Thanks to Crystal for having an infectious heart for your girls and letting me be a small part of your world. I got the bug :) 

Thanks to Christina and Joanna for cheering me on and bringing me donuts! Real friends bring their friends maple bars after a morning run ;) #psyourenotoffthehookforgettingpregnantanddroppingoutoftherace

And thanks to Tyson, for making fun of me along the way and watching Baby Girl Mo when I needed drag my booty outside to run. I'm so glad I get to do life with you. 

The One Where She Learns Not to Run in the Mountains | #seejulesrun

#seejulesrun is a campaign to raise money and awareness for the restoration work of My Refuge House with human trafficking victims. I started my running plan at 6,500 ft altitude in 30 degree weather. Not the brightest idea I've ever had. But now it's all downhill from here huh? #runningjoke 

I'll be blogging my running journey until March 15 both for your amusement and inspiration to participate. 

YOU A RUNNER? Join our "Becoming Girls" team here:http://bit.ly/1elZxBq
NOT A RUNNER? Give a couple bucks here: http://bit.ly/1i8Klqt

More information at becominggirlsconference.org or follow the hashtag #seejulesrun on Twitter and Instagram.

#seejulesrun = A Regret I'll Never Take Back

Jules doesn't run. Unless there's a clown chasing her. With a knife. But even then, it's questionable. 

I'm the girl that reposts humorous e-cards on Pinterest that say things like, "I just ran my first marathon this morning! Just kidding, I'm on my third cupcake." And, "I exercised once. But I found I  was allergic to it. My skin flushed and my heart raced. I got sweaty and short of breath. Very dangerous." 

That's me. I'm that girl. 

So why, oh why, would that girl, commit her out of shape, 7 months postpartum, booty to running a 5K (which is 3.1 miles by the way), in less than 2 months? 

Good question. I'll show you.

These girls.

And these girls. 

You see, the amount of passion I have against running and sweating and messing up my teased ponytail, is easily surpassed by the love and hope I have for the next generation of world changers. 

I left my home town shortly after high school graduation, and began to discover the world wasn't quite as black and white as I had once thought it was. The grey areas started to expand and my dogmatic, Christian girl world views were challenged at their core. 

There was so much hatred in the world I had never really seen and so much brokenness I hadn't yet experienced. Is this okay? I remember asking myself on a very specific May evening. Is this just how people do things these days? But instead of fighting through that vein of challenge, I succumbed to the desire to be accepted. Besides, it was fun. For now. 

Peer pressure. Value shift. Identity crisis. Whatever you want to call it, I was in it and it wasn't very pretty. 

However, the crazy part about that short season in my life, is that while all those things are virtually unavoidable for most of the population, there are tools my parents, somehow, had the foresight to equip me with. 

Critical thinking. Decision making. Wisdom seeking. And love. Lots and lots of love. 

I think every girl should have access to those same tools. Which is why, Becoming Girls Conference exists and why we partner with other young women who hold that same perspective with equal, if not greater, zeal, like My Refuge House. 

I believe this upcoming generation will restore our world even better than the one before it. I believe there is freedom raining in like a flood. I believe there is passion leaking out into their bones. I believe there is power running through their souls, revving up for an awakening and I want to do whatever I can to cheer them on.

Even if that means running and regretting it every step of the way. I wouldn't take it back in a million years. 

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I'll be blogging my running journey until March 15 both for your amusement and inspiration to participate. My conference girls and I have a goal to raise $3,000 before the race. In one weekend, we knocked out $2,100 of that! #theyknowwhatsup 

Wanna help? Give here.

Wanna watch? Follow #seejulesrun on Instagram. ;)

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*Becoming Girls Conference photo by the lovely Jenna Peterson Photography. Hire her. 

Beckoning Challenge Brings Triumph

The teens of today are searching, frantically, feverishly, for substance. They want something great. They want their value to supersede their existence. (Tweet that!) 

When I set out to start Becoming Girls Conferences, I had no idea how deep the well I was dipping into. I knew it was full, ready to be drawn from, but that's about it. I didn't know how it was going to happen. I didn't know who was going to help me. 

I was both terrified and electrified. Have you ever felt that? Like you know you're supposed to do something but actually doing it feels like you're falling, head first, into a rushing river of emotion and doubt and fear and possibility. 

That's what I'm experiencing right this very minute. I do every year, the last three weeks leading up to our conference. 

But if there's one thing I've learned in the last year, with church planting and mothering and worship leading, it is that if God calls, He will equip. (Tweet that!)

Let me say that again, a little more confidently:

If God calls you (me), He will equip you (me). 

He promised. Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Mary, Joseph, Samuel, Saul

So I will smile at whatever comes these next couple weeks, beckoning the great challenge. For I know, with great challenge comes great strength. And with great strength comes even greater triumph.

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So what is it that you've been called to? What both terrifies and electrifies you?

So That Was Awesome

9 months, 16 staff, 40+ volunteers, 350+ teenage girls, moms and leaders, a little bit of rain and one God. This is Becoming Girls Conference 2013. More pictures on Facebook.

Leadership Creates the Culture | Teen Girl Series

At Becoming Girls Conference, our leadership is the heartbeat of the conference. They create the culture that ignites the new generation of young women, because they were once a generation's young woman. 

They speak and lead from the passion of experience, good and bad; and I believe experience, covered with grace and the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the most effective and life changing form of leadership. 


So what kind of culture, atmosphere, momentum and growth are we trying to create in our sphere of the world?

A SWEET one.

Safety - This is the primary goal with Becoming Girls Conferences. We are one piece of a very large  puzzle in these girls lives. We are not their solution. We are the starting point for some and pushing point for others. We want them to bring their baggage, their relationships, their mess ups and the darkest secrets. If they can’t leave them with us, a community based on grace, where will they leave them? 

Witty - I’m a church girl, born and raised in the church and though I love it with everything in me, I think, as a whole, we can do better. There is a big culture of “scarcity” in the American Churches today. "We can’t afford that or that’s too controversial." There is a major tendency to be extreme on issues that damage and neutral on the ones that will actually do damage. I believe the Church is filled with talented, smart, and creative men and women who can do better. We want Becoming Girls Conferences to be as close to the creative, controversial, culturally pin-pointed edge as possible, without falling over it. 

Expectancy - We want girls to come with questions to be answered, fears to be broken through, chains to be released and to leave our conferences feeling cared for, respected, freed, loved and empowered. Our leadership does that by boldness in prayer. We recognize that without the movement, power and favor of God, Becoming Girls Conferences are 2 days of pretty chaos. Therefore, my team prays for four specific things from God for our weekends: 1) Purpose, that our plans would align with God's 2) Passion, that we would be filled with a divine love for the next generation 3) Providence, for both spiritual and physical needs and 4) Protection, from the enemy who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. We expect great things at Becoming because we know we serve a great God who loves His girls. 

Emotion - We want girls to see their emotions as a gift from God. The woman emotion bank is vastly different from a man’s. Women are awakened in their emotional responses and I think our culture has tampered with its sacredness. At Becoming Girls Conferences, we want older women teaching the younger women how to begin to channel and freely see their emotions as a unique trait instead of a inhibiting feature. 

Truth - Teaching, singing, speaking, writing, photographing (etc) truths of God’s word, in a relevant and reverent way. In American society, we are failing to communicate to our youth the relevance that Scripture plays in their lives and the reverence we have for it. Our speakers will always be agreed upon by the team, unanimously, along with the year's theme and direction. We will always portray truth by the light of the Bible and the power of the Holy Spirit. We want them to know Love. 

Everyone contributes to some sort of culture shift around them, what are you contributing?

How Looking Back Moved Me Forward | Teen Girls Series

Teenage girls are amazing to me. I didn't think so while I was one, of course. Between the acne, frizzy hair, puberty and braces phase, it felt like 7 years of constant and quick changes that I couldn't keep up with. 

And the hormones, holy cow the hormones! Crying was a regular thing and my poor dad suffered way too many silent treatments. But he was a champ of a father. I'm lucky for that. 

I know you and I could sit in my living room for hours, sipping adult lattes and telling story after story of those monumentally traumatizing shaping years. 

Between the ages of 11 and 18, the whole world was at our finger tips. We could be anything and everything we wanted to. We could pick a job right out of the sky, a college off a list, a dream from a bucket of glitter and we had enough time and energy to make it come true. 

I look back at photos, the printed ones in a big bulky album on my coffee table, of a Mexico high school trip my youth group took, and I see my pod of friends. We're all smiling, as if life hadn't touched us yet; though for some it had, and in not so graceful of ways. 

One picture in particular, we're all in a van, huddled in at the sound of our youth pastor's wife squealing,"Ok girls, picture time!" Cheese! 

The girl seated at the front of the photo, a friend I still see and love dearly, her eyes broke me today. Looking back on the decade of love, loss and battles she's fought makes me want to hold her precious Sophomore face and whisper, You don't have to fight. God sees you. He loves you, for YOU.

I wish I could have prevented the years of heartache that would befall upon her; some by bad choices and others by victimization. None of which are okay. 

My heart is broken for the girls of my youth. Myself included. But that only spurs me to move faster and more powerfully for the girls of my present and my future. I don't want to look back and cry over their photos as well, apologizing to them for not trying harder. For not telling them how much they are loved. How much they are valued and wanted. How beautiful they are and how they will someday change their world; for better or worse. 

Because I've seen too many beautiful birds stand on the edge of fear or be shot down by killers around them. And I've had enough.

No more. 

I will show generation after generation of teen girls how to fly as high as they were designed to go. 

For the rest of my life, I will show them how to be brave. 

On Teen Girls

Teen Girls: We can't live with them and we can't live without them. Some of them are easier than others and others are more fragile than some. But remove the drama, the black eye liner, the lipgloss and flat irons, the peer pressure and the boyfriends, and you have little girls who are just trying to figure this life out. 

What they don't know, that you and I now do, is that you never really figure life out. It's the world's dirty little secret. 

This week (Monday-Friday) is leading up to a conference my staff and I have worked the last 9 months, through blood, sweat and tears, to put on. Every year we create time and space for teen girls to come and bring their lives, baggage, questions, and dreams into one room and share it all with us. (To learn more about it, go here.) 

The series, Teen Girls, will hit various personal and professional aspects of that journey. 

It will be explorative of the average American teen girl and what goes on in her brain, as well as motivating, to both you and me, about what we can do to move forward a new generation of women to shape, heal, and change our world. 

Enjoy -

Becoming Into the Weekend

This conference has been consuming the better part of my year. Tomorrow we're having one of our last team meetings before the big event (Jan 25-26). I could start a whole blog about my team and how they work together, sparking one another's inspiration and creativity.

I love these girls and all that they represent.

I am passionate about this next generation of women and girls, rising up to be who God called them to be.

Not feminists with an I am woman hear me roar, but girls who are discovering the heart of God and more specifically, the heart of God for them. 

If you're new, myself and team of (amazing) women and girls put on a 2 day conference for Middle School and High School girls. We invite moms to come too.

We have fun and there is always lots of goodies~

This year, we're incorporating a real live horse...on stage...doing backflips.

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In other news,

Next month's blog series will be on The Secret Life of American Teenage Girl. Not related (entirely) to  the TV show. The boy series will follow.

Christmas is 16 days, 2 hours and 40 minutes away.

For those of you who hear my cries for help on Facebook, thanks for your input! Loving the Etsy stores.

Ty and I, as horrible as it is, are in a not so silent Christmas Gift competition every year. We set a budget on what we're allowed to spend on each other and this year, I'm going to win. Guaranteed.

Have you seen this Instagram vid?? #peedmypantsitssotrue

Oh, and it's the weekend.

Ephesians 5:15-17 - (Day Fifteen)

About a month ago, I became aware of a blessing I knew the Lord was going to explode. In a good way. Every year, since 2009, myself and a team of about 15 girls and women put on a conference for middle school and high school girls and their moms. 

We call it, the Becoming Girls Conference. 

Our first year, we planned almost the entire conference in my upstairs bedroom. Our first year was a chaotic year I affectionately called, "The Disaster of 2009." Now, it probably wasn't as bad as it felt, but we had no idea what we were doing. 

Our second and third years were spent fine tuning the infrastructure, the program and the vision of our conference. I cannot tell you how amazed I am at the women that have surrounded and embraced Becoming. We have the most qualified and gracious women I could have ever asked for. 

This year, year four, we planned our conference over a September weekend in an estate in Southern California, with 15 women and girls (ages 13-50+) and we are bravely calling it our "Next Level Year." 

We settled on the theme: Becoming Brave, because we feel for the leadership and the attendees, this is a year to stand up and change our world. 

You see, what I did not know in October 2009, was our conference, it wasn't just for us. Becoming Girls Conferences is part of a much bigger agenda that our God is distributing across the globe. 

There is a global awakening of women who are standing, not fighting, standing up and demanding respect, presence, and a voice by their very conduct. This isn't a rerun of the feminist movement. 

Women are shifting their cultures by example and with the intention of bettering all of mankind. 

My 15 leaders have changed my life, maybe in ways they won't ever really know. They showed me what it looks like to live out Ephesians 5 with zeal, passion, and grace. 


Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. (Ephesians 5:15-17)

We don't have time to care what our opposers think of our actions. We don't have time to dwell on popularity contests. There is a world of people that are longing for something more. And we have that answer. 

Together, we are making the most of every opportunity.

Together, we are, Becoming Brave. 

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*For my Mom, Sam, Madi, Bailey, Jodie, Joanna, Marcy, Erica, Christina, Carly, Bryckley, Tangee, Brittany, Chelsie, and Monica. 

**If you're just joining us, first you'll notice I'm behind. But we don't talk about that ;) For the month of October, I'm sharing 31 verses that changed my life. Do you have some too? Share them with us on Facebook!

Becoming Girls Conference | Beginning Planning Stages

Working on the Becoming Girls Conference today. I feel so much more excited about this year, yet ironically less inspired. I usually have all these ideas ready to burst from my brain but this is I'm ready for those ideas to burst and nothin. However, I am one lucky girl to have an amazing creative team that jumpstarted so many ideas at last night's meeting. 

This year's gonna be good. ~
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Ps. Congrats to Jesi Rae for winning the Stress Point Raffle! Thanks to everyone for playing! :) 

Becoming Girls Conference // My Weekend

For the last three years, I (with an amazing team!) have been putting together a weekend conference for girls, ages 11-18. The vision for this conference was birthed my sophomore year in college when I was counseling a group of 10 middle school and high school students. 

It took us forever to get to know each other and have real conversations outside of High School Musical and boy toys. But when we did, it was as if the floodgates bursted open. These girls shared everything from struggling with eating disorders, to abuse in their homes, to regular teenage insecurity issues. I cried. 

It was burdensome to me how they felt there was no safe place to talk about the "taboo" subjects in their lives. Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. Boys. Image. No one really knew those issues were already being discussed among their peers. 

So I made it my mission to create that space. 
At Becoming Conferences, we talk about all of the above and then some. No bars, no limits. I mean, if girls should feel safe talking anywhere it should be the Church, shouldn't it?? Not only can we relate to them, but we have answers! We have the truth and we know the truth sets people free. 

This year our theme is: Becoming a Girl of Dreams.
We want to show girls how there is such hope in Jesus Christ and freedom to dream.

So this weekend I will be teaching, singing, giggling, crying and having the time of my life with 300 girls from all over the states. What do you get to do?? ;) 

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*For more information on the conference go here.