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Erin Weidemann

About Erin Weidemann

http://truthbecomesher.com

Posts by Erin Weidemann:

Prepare Your Girl For A SMART Year

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Does it feel like the new year has rolled out the red carpet on a brand new path to success?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it feels more like you’re standing at an unfamiliar trailhead, fumbling desperately for your map.

Don’t panic. It’s time to set some goals that will keep you and your girl moving in the right direction.

At Truth Becomes Her, developing action plans and then executing on them is one of the most important ways we get things done.

We encourage women at every age and stage to dream big and to envision their lives and leadership through the lens of their unlimited potential, and we practice what we preach.

We know the past several months have been hard, which is why we want to help you combat the challenges your girl is facing by helping her maintain her motivation and achievement this year.

She can do it with effective goal setting.

While setting goals for yourself is important (you know this), it is even more important to ensure that you set SMART goals and show your girl how to do it too.

Even if you’ve never learned how to set SMART goals, you can do it easily. It just takes practice.

SMART is an acronym, and you can use it to guide the way you set intentional goals. This way of goal setting is commonly attributed to Peter Drucker and his management by objectives style of joint goal setting with provided feedback.

To make your goals easy to understand and attainable, each goal should be:

  • Specific (sensible + simple)
  • Measurable (motivating + meaningful).
  • Achievable (actionable + attainable).
  • Relevant (realistic + reasonable)
  • Time-limited (focused + urgency)

Read on for TIPS to help you consciously build on the goals you and your girl began last year—and create new goals for this year.

For your relationship this year, revisit or revise your strategies and goals with the above SMART bullets top of mind…

Use the questions below to discuss and define your goals:

  • Over the last year, what worked well? Why?
  • The goal is to build on what worked well. What can we do to develop further?
  • What are we going to do this year that is new, different, or adjusted front the previous year?
  • What effects do we foresee this new plan will have on our spiritual growth, learning, and development?
  • Do we have the tools + resources we need to accomplish these things? Be specific.

The start of a new year represents a brand new chapter that YOU get to write. 

We know this means making new commitments and pressing in to some hard work. Here are a few ideas to help you work smarter as you set your goals with your girl and break them down together how you’ll accomplish them.

To start, you can organize your annual goals into three sections:

  1. Faith Goals: (quiet time, prayer, fellowship, community, giving/generosity). We call ours “God Goals.” 🙂
  2. Relationship Goals: In most mentor/daughter dynamics, once you establish a vision and build your culture, the next step is to set goals that move you toward your vision and achieve your desired outcomes…together.
  3. Personal Improvement Goals: What goals do you want to set that will improve your character, skills, and capabilities? Setting these goals involves self-assessing and honing in on areas in which you can improve and reach your maximum potential. These need to be based on the improvements you need to make SO THAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE #1 AND #2 ABOVE.

Praying you and your girl into a fantastic and SMART 2022!

Erin

P.S. We’re celebrating an all new set of activities for our new subscription, Bible Belles Monthly! It’s the perfect way to grow your girl’s faith, character and confidence this year. Click here to learn more.

What We All Need Right Now

I just officiated my first wedding.

The pressure was off (the couple had already officially wed in a pre-Covid ceremony), and I was asked to preside over a day of rededication and commitment to love in the lives of two amazing people I hold very dear.

I was blessed to be there as a friend to both of them, and I’ve been grateful for their many years of influence over my life, both as friends and advocates for my life and post-cancer health and wellness journey.

I loved getting to be part of the celebration because I’ve been cheering on this couple ever since they phoned me up on the way to their honeymoon and asked me if I would preside over the day when they would get to celebrate their union with the family, friends, and special people in their lives.

I was just as overjoyed to officiate as I was on the other end of that phone call and hearing the love and excitement in both of their voices as we discussed what we would get together to do.

Now, that phone call is a beautiful memory of a different, less complicated time.

I was so honored and struck to be able to assume such an intimate role in one of life’s most incredible events. It’s these kinds of gatherings that make life worth living. Even through all of the heartache, pain, suffering and events in life that would leave us empty, or embittered, there are many more lovely and beautiful events that are so sweet and awe-inspiring they just take your breath away. 

Before I dove into the ceremony message and some thoughts I have about marriage, as well as some advice for the couple, I took a meaningful moment to acknowledge the special friends and family members who made both the decision and journey to be there. We gathered together to honor and support two wonderful humans during a very challenging time in our world.

The current cultural moment has sown and continues to sow a lot of division and strife, but what an incredible opportunity we all said Yes to — to choose to come together to celebrate a loving union.

The latin writer Syrus gave us a really sweet sentiment that also packs a powerful punch when I think about what it takes today to gather in joy, in love, and in celebration. He said: 

“Where there is unity, there is always victory.” 

Syrus was a Latin writer in 1st century BC Rome, a Syrian originally from Antioch who was brought as a slave to Roman Italy. And for a man who lacked freedom in the physical sense (I know everyone reading this can relate to feeling that way after the last 18 months), he understood that together is not simply a wonderful place to be: it is the key to overcoming division, anger, and fear because unity activates the power of God to operate in the human family and in the body of Christ. 

And wherever you are, if you’re choosing to gather–to being together with others–I know you can fully appreciate that victory Syrus was talking about.

Together is not just a state of being. It is a place where a person can know and perceive a sense of his or her own self worth because it is being reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being. 

And as I considered what marriage is, that it is a union, a joining of hearts, a mingling of two souls, I couldn’t help by think about what our culture tries to do. Culture certainly attempts to jade the perspective of marriage as something more negative than positive, restrictive, that the marriage bond somehow binds you or prohibits the individual from reaching his or her full potential.

Some would contend that marriage is no longer relevant, an antiquated practice that hinders or forces a person to live in a way where what you want takes a backseat, or becomes an afterthought, or the individual’s life and dreams are never fully realized.  

The truth is what I spoke over my friends on their special recommitment day, and it’s what I want to speak over you today. The truth is that marriage is a wonderful, meaningful gift from God, given with such great and intentional care by a loving Father. It is fueled by grace and redemptive power and HOPE. God wired marriage into the instincts of humanity when he said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

He weaved it into the fabric of human nature to stir longing and prepare hearts for love, first the love of your earthly counterpart and then the eternal love of Christ. 

Marriage is a glorious demonstration of the triumph of God’s plan to gather all things under his Son.  Marriage is not a battleground but a field of victory, where two uniquely imperfect people can remain united to each other in temporal pursuit of an eternal goal. Indeed, it’s God’s chosen illustration of Christ’s covenant love for his church.

So for all of us (whether you’re single, married, divorced, or widowed) we can pray for married couples, but also celebrate the intimate union of all believers with Christ—the one to whom we will one day be united in the ultimate “match made in heaven.”

I’m thankful that my sweet friends know and understand that marriage is meant to be entered into and built atop the foundation on which it was intended: Jesus. They’re about so spend the rest of their lives finding out exactly what that means. God designed marriage to be the lifelong union of one man and one woman working toward a shared goal, not toward mere happiness. This means two saved sinners huddled up as one team under the rule of Christ to love God, love people, and to make disciples.

To seek the Kingdom first and at all costs.

Marriage is about making an important discovery: you will be more blessed by serving God together than by making personal satisfaction your governing idol.  A loving husband and a devoted wife, pursuing the goal of the gospel.

That’s what marriage is.  A journey into the unfamiliar, a daring adventure that invites you to partner together to follow God’s leading and to say Yes to Him in your life’s shared mission—the Great Commission is a CO-mission to be shared between the couple: the two becoming one to bear witness of the goodness and the grace of God to the people their lives will touch.

The purpose of the marriage is to pray, to partner with God, and to execute on His plans for your lives for the good of others and for His ultimate glory. The goal of the marriage is not that you would benefit—although I told them I have no doubt that what you have committed to be holy and pleasing to God will bring favor and blessing to their family team you never imagined—the goal of your marriage is to benefit others while you out bless each other.

Married or not, I think we could all do well to recommit ourselves to gather and seek unity, no matter what issues aim to divide us.

In Syrus’ words, we need the victory that unity always brings, and we need it NOW. 

Erin

If this post struck a chord with you, I want you to know I care deeply about how we can all build unity inside our relationships, including with the young girls we lead. If you’re looking for ways to dive deeper and connect with your girl, be sure to check out our brand new digital subscription, Bible Belles Monthly. Click here to sign up for our email list and we’ll send you all the details!

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How To Have An Unwavering Spirit In Uncertain Times

The future is female.

It wasn’t too long ago you’d hear or see that phrase around town or across the internet. As captions on social or on stickers, t-shirts and coffee mugs.

But right now it feels like the future is far from anything except uncertain, worrisome, and downright grim.

After the craziness of the last year and everything we’ve been through, it feels like the future isn’t full of much hope, promise, or possibility. 

There are thousands of crazy messages and challenges coming at your girl. They’re HITTING HER HARD, on all sides…

…and in reality, you’ve realized that it’s you who has to TAKE CONTROL of this situation. You have to show her how to navigate these uncertain times so she can face challenges daily with PERSISTENCE, GRACE, and GRIT. 

And you’ve tried, but it seems to hard to engage her in the right way, it takes too much time, or you feel like you don’t know the right thing to do or say, and all it does is leave you with a pit in your stomach, exhausted, disappointed, and unmotivated to keep trying. 

Or worse, you’ve got a front row seat to watch what the current cultural climate, the division and ugliness is doing to your girl. You know it’s negatively impacting her, and you’re frustrated, annoyed, and ANGRY because you want to do something about it. 

The TRUTH is THE WORLD IS NOT THE PROBLEM.  Not having a simple, easy-to-use, practical and resilience-building resource for her is. 

Girls today face an uncertain future, and one thing is clear: they need a new set of skills to succeed.

Life is filled with uncertainty and worries about the future. While many things remain outside our control, our mindset is the key to coping with difficult circumstances and confidently facing the unknown.

For girls, in particular, they need a mindset shift now more than ever. Our daughters need to develop the essential qualities that will see them through these unsettling times. Your girl needs a map to inhabit traits like grit, resilience, and adaptability.

Developing these traits will be the key to her mental health and whether or not she will fully flourish, despite all that’s going on around her.

What your girl really needs is a faith that will stand the test of these hard times.

That’s exactly why we created Bible Belles Monthly. It is our specialized, research-based digital toolkit to help your girl develop the essential traits + mindset that will see her through these unsettling times. A super simple, digital subscription that allows you to just show up, NO PREP NECESSARY, and give your girl a roadmap to fully flourish, despite all that’s going on around her. 

Because these two statements will always be true:

  1. We live in uncertain times.
  2. Our hope is certain when we anchor ourselves to the Author of all HOPE.

We can foster critical twenty-first-century skills in our girls and help them to recognize and develop their inherent strengths—not just to thrive but to find joy, peace, and purpose no matter what they face.

Because what we choose to do in the present will affect their future.

Have an awesome day!

Erin

***If you’re looking for ways to help your girl cultivate peace and a non-anxious presence as she manages the unexpected and unsettling challenges life continues to hurl at her, details are coming soon for our brand new resource, Bible Belles Monthly! Click here and join our email list to learn more.

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How To Develop Your Girl’s Healthy Body Image

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“Thank you so much for your podcasts!  I got connected a few months ago when I ordered Ringleaders for my daughters.  They were gifted the Bible Belles series a year ago and love them so much we just had to add to our library.  My daughters love to talk about the Bible Belles!

I have a question that’s weighing heavy on my heart.  I’m guessing you’ve address this at one point, so if you aren’t able to do a new podcast on it, could you point me to one you’ve done in the past?  My 8-year-old is a solid girl with curves.  She’s gorgeous inside and out, but last night she asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks. She asked if being skinny was good. 

I did my best to explain it’s not about skinny or big; it’s about being healthy.  But I know I fumbled. I also know this is a mindset I have struggled with on my own weight journey. I’m not skinny…but I’m not unhealthy.  Her friends, however, are very tiny girls. Her younger sister is also tall and thin.  I know she see that she looks different, and I’m almost 100% sure a “friend” has said something about the size of her very muscular legs, or told her she was too big to do the gymnastics moves they all practice at school. She tries to do the splits… but I keep telling her God doesn’t make everyone the same and that’s on purpose.  He needs us to do something else with our bodies. 

Maybe that’s totally off mark and I shouldn’t say that. Again, I need advice.  I feel ill-equipped for this part of the journey.   My heart became so heavy when she asked.  I realized I wasn’t prepared to talk with her about body image.  I prayed she would be so confident it would never come up.  But as she grows I see I’m going to need to re-focus myself to help her navigate this tough topic in a strong confident way.  I would so greatly appreciate any advice you can provide.  This is a tough one, and a moment I know could define the person she becomes. 

Thank you, again, for all you are doing to help us moms navigate this tough world.  And it gets even more complicated with 2 very strong and different girl personalities in one house.  If you have a podcast or advice on that, I’m all ears, too. I really struggle on those days when they both need me to walk with them through tough stuff, yet very different tough stuff.”

Thank you for reaching out, Christy. Believe me, I get it. I have spent a considerable amount of time praying about how to lead these types of conversations with my own girl. Today’s episode is for you.

Girls often face extreme pressure to meet strict and rather unrealistic ideals when it comes to beauty, body and build.

A girl’s weight, and the right shape, feel like a never ending quest for perfection that will never be obtained.

And these feelings about her body can wreak havoc on her mind, heart, and soul.

This is why I invited Terra Mattson to weigh in and help us tackle this touchy subject. Terra is a social entrepreneur and a marriage and family therapist, and co-founder of Living Wholehearted, a professional counseling and organizational development firm.

You do not want to miss this opportunity to lead your girl in this area of her life. Click here to listen to today’s episode.

If you’re looking for ways to connect on a deeper level with the girl you’ve been called to lead, be sure to watch my free video series, 3 Keys to Unlocking Her True Potential. Click here to watch.

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The Key To Being A Credible Leader

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“It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.”

I don’t know who said that, but they are so right. And today we are going to steady ourselves around the idea of carrying our load correctly.

In my experience, the key ingredient for teamwork, which is at the heart of effective leadership, is the ability to make agreements. The agreements we make are what help lighten the load; they give us the clarity we need to create a culture where the team (whether professional or family) fires on all cylinders.

You may think that you know how to make the kinds of agreements that truly keep things running smoothly—but it’s a pretty safe bet you’re not using them in the best way for optimal results with the girl you’re leading. You will soon, though.

What impacts every goal you set and every person that comprises your team? Conscious agreements do. However, these agreements are often “hidden in plain sight.” Your relationship with her is functioning, but the “who, what, how and why” of your specific roles or the tasks and activities required are unclear and have not been discussed or agreed upon by both parties. That’s the beginning of the confusion. And the more confused you are, the more confused she is, the heavier the load you both will carry.

Is she clear on what you want her to do or are things a bit murky for her? Is the way you’re delegating fuzzy? Maybe the work is getting done, but at the cost of something important. A lot of the time, it’s the integrity of your relationship.

Challenge: Do not fall into the trap of getting frustrated and taking back the work from her, thinking, It’ll be better if I do it myself. Instead, get in the habit of making conscious agreements with her.

Action Step: Align the outcomes and make agreements together. Set her up for success to efficiently take action. When she is better able to do her part, your credibility increases and so does her buy in for what you’re trying to teach her long-term. Success grows, and so does your relationship!

On the flip side, say she misses an important deadline, or drops the ball on something. Or maybe she’s confused about what she’s supposed to be doing. Enter into a new conversation to establish another conscious agreement.

If you need some help to lead her and clarify what agreements will get things better aligned, use the questions below as a conversation guide:

  • How does what I contribute fit together with what others are doing our family team?
  • What other areas of our home and life does my role impact? (chores, schedule, spaces etc.)
  • Who do I go to when there are updates, changes or adjustments that might change expected outcomes?
  • Where am I expected to be and at what time? (Agreements for work, check ins, meetings, discussions, breaks etc.)
  • Why are we doing this? (Agreements clarify responsibilities and draw us back into ‘the bigger picture’ — not just what we’re doing but why we do it)

Think: Where are the breakdowns happening right now. That’s where agreements are needed. Don’t let them continue to hide in plain sight. Bring them out into the open.

Have an amazing day!

Are you looking for ways to inspire and equip your daughter with both solid character and God-centered confidence? My newest book, Ringleaders, is a simple and immediate way to strengthen your girl’s character and confidence, as well as your ability to lead her. Click here to learn more.