I had the opportunity to listen to some girls recently.  They shared that they heard their parents say they loved them, but their actions weren’t matching up.  It made me think that perhaps those parents were getting into a love rut with their student.  What’s a love rut? It’s like a tractor rut. A tractor rut is a well-worn and deep path where the tractor has crushed the ground underneath and it would take lots of dirt to fill in the gaping path.  I think sometimes it’s possible to only demonstrate our love in a certain way to students that they get so used to it that it doesn’t even look like love to them anymore.  Talk with your parents in your girls ministry and see if they would be willing to break some routine and move out of a love rut into a love trampoline. Hang with me 🙂

1. write a short note to your daughter and lay it on her pillow before she goes to bed with a piece of chocolate. (words of affirmation/encouragement)

2. buy her a pair of fun socks and put them on her bed along with the verse Isaiah 52:7. (gifts)

3. Schedule a Saturday for you both to go serve at your local homeless shelter together and then take her for a snack break to talk about all that you experienced. Make a rule that you can’t talk about home issues or school issues…  (Quality time)

4. Surprise her when she comes home from school by setting up a nail station where you are serving as her personal nail technician.  For mothers and daughters that struggle with the love language of personal touch…this is a great starting activity as it allows you to hold her hand as you paint her nails.  You may want to provide a book of “Would you ever” questions to help with conversation during this opportunity.

These are just 4 ideas for parents to get out of their love language rut and show their daughter they love them in a new, fresh way. They are dying to hear those words, and they may just be tuned out because it has become routine for them to see them.

I have great intentions of getting together with people for coffee. By the time I’m done with responsibilities on a Sunday or Wednesday, I have a handful of people that I know I need to touch base with over coffee or lunch.  The problem is sitting down to set up those meetings and get them in to my calendar. Anyone else have these problems?  I’ve tried countless scheduling programs but I am most excited about Tungle.  I even love it more after they just allowed me to select the days and hours to allow someone to set up meetings with me. There are several ways now that I can begin the process of connecting with those I have good intentions of getting together with.  1. I can send log into my Tungle account and select some days and times I’m available and send a request to emails I enter.  The recipients never have to register to Tungle to accept an appointment, and it even adds our meeting automatically to each other’s calendar.  2. I can send out my personal tungle link. Mine is

Tungle.me/Girlsminister

From this link, people can request times from my posted availability.  Tungle will then alert me to a request and ask me if I want to accept.  In addition, I can post my link on my blog, email, facebook—wherever…and if students, parents, or leaders want to contact me for a meeting–they can go ahead and go to my tungle.me link!  The amazing thing is that Tungle will not double book me so on Mondays, I can send out several meeting invites and the first people to respond get a meeting booked.  So far it has worked great!  Just passing it along to you guys.  What do you think? Could this be something you would use?

Mentoring in a flash(card) by Amy-Jo Girardier is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

As a new school year begins, I can’t help but feel a little winded from a summer of giving. I knew it was time to take a spiritual inventory before I continued to give as a girls minister to our leaders and girls. I have a folder titled “Spiritual vitality” which I had created almost 6 years ago that contains some nuggets of wisdom and some checklists to help me personally in terms of my “giving meter”. It had some scraps and documents scanned in from various retreats and/or conferences I had attended. In one of the documents, it contained the following paragraph. and so I thought I would share it with those who also are constantly giving of themselves in hopes that you too take wisdom from the 12th century as I did. 🙂
Wisdom from Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century)

We must not give to others what we have received for ourselves; nor must we keep for ourselves that which we have received to spend on others. You fall into the latter error, if you possess the gift of eloquence or wisdom, and yet–through fear or sloth or false humility–neglect to use the gift for others’ benefit. And on the other hand, you dissipate and lose what is your own, if without right intention and from some wrong motive, you hasten to outpour yourself on others when your soul is only half-filled.

If you are wise therefore you will show yourself a reservoir and not a canal. For a canal pours out as fast as it takes in; but a reservoir waits till it is full before it overflows, and so communicates its surplus…We have all too few reservoirs in the Church at present, though we have canals a plenty…they (canals) desire to pour out when they themselves are not yet inpoured; they are readier to speak than to listen. excercise authority on others, although they have not yet learnt to rule themselves..Let the reservoir of which we spoke just now take pattern from the spring; for the spring does not form a stream or spread into a lake until it is brimful…Be filled thyself, then, but discreetly, mind, pour out thy fullness…Out of thy fullness help me if thou canst; and , if not, spare thyself.

Extracted from Great Devotional Classics: Selections from the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Edited by Douglas Steere (The Upper Room, 1961). pages 24-25
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It’s crazy to think that this October marks my 7th year as a professional girls minister.  I remember my first days on the job. In fact my very first day on the job was Fall Retreat 2002.  The buses were waiting outside to take me to a campground where I would meet students for the first time.  I walked away from the weekend excited and scared stiff of the new task I had taken on.  I remember conversations ranging from people pointing out to me the girls who had eating disorders and needed counseling…all the way to leaders who were depending on me to make some traditions for some girls that had already experienced too many changes to mention in their high school career.  I remember not being invited into many conversations with girls, but having to figure out a way to get into their world.  My fall-back phrase at the retreat when I couldn’t figure out a way to start a conversation was: “Hey do you know where I can get a soda around here?”.  When I left that retreat, It wasn’t long after that I took a 6 hour drive back to my teenaged roots and spent some time with my 1st girls minister who happened to be my mom.

I read a journal I had written as an 8th grader and I prayed that God would give me direction.  I talked with my mom and we prayed as God began to reveal to us what were some key elements of my spiritual growth as a teen girl.  We wrote down a list that was able to be summarized in 3 categories.  As I spent the first year as a girls minister, I met with every grade of girls, with the leaders of those girls, and with some of the parents.  Each time I would ask them what they believed a girls ministry should be about, their responses would hit on those 3 categories.   As I observed what resources were being created for girls at that time, I found it interesting that there were different categories being offered to teenaged girls.  I began to see the same categories over and over again.  I needed a phrase to capture what I was seeing so that I could talk with moms and other leaders regarding this phenomenom, so in the fall of 2003 it hit me.  DATING, DIETING, AND DRESS were the 3 topics that were constantly being discussed in resources and events for girls.  I began to coin the phrase: “The 3-d’s of girls ministry” and was excited to hear it was helpful to other ministry leaders as well.  Since that time, I have continued to hear friends in girls ministry use my description of the often talked about topics but I would like to clarify what we should be offering instead.   The 3 categories that God confirmed with my mom and I and later among the girls ministry I work with were what I am calling “The 3 G’s”.  We began our girls ministry by clearly defining what we would be about. We would not be about “The 3 D’S”.  We would be about the 3 G’s.  Those 3 G’s are what makes up our girls ministry name:  Grl3: Girl to girl, girl to God, and Girl to go

Those 3 G’s were key elements to helping me grow into the Christian woman I am today.

Girl to girl is : connecting girls to Godly relationships with girls of all ages.

Girl to God is: connecting girls to grow in their pursuit of God

Girl to go is: connecting girls to their world to shine God’s love.

I am excited to begin writing more about how the 3G’s impacts girls ministry and how the 3d’s impacts girls ministry. Both have an impact, but unfortunately one leads towards a self-less journey and the other leads deeper into the Self-ish mindset.

Stay tuned for more info as I work on the future book: Tossing my tiara.