Keeping it Real

So who, exactly, is Beth Tollett? Beth Tollett is a mother of four who loves them very much but is sometimes very, very glad when her children are gone to the grandparents for weeks at a time and doesn’t miss them at all when they are. I worry that this makes me sound like a really selfish person and an even worse mom. Did I admit that out loud? Just keeping it real.

Beth Tollett likes to read. Yes, Christian fiction like Left Behind, and favorite authors Karen Kingsbury and Francine Rivers, but also science fiction and fantasy—things along the lines of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Twilight. I try and read my Bible some every day, but did you really think that I toted it around everywhere I go to the exclusivity of anything else? Just keeping it real.

Beth Tollett likes to watch television shows. And not Homes and Gardens. No, I prefer suspense and action, fantasy and superheros…Lost, V, Fast Forward, Smallville , Legends of the Seeker. If I were very righteous, maybe I would ban the TV from my house. But I don’t. Just keeping it real.

I recently cold-turkey quit my 10-year addiction to a particular mass multi-player online computer game because I felt it was eating up way too much of my time and attention. We gathered in groups with our swords and shields to go slay various dragons and monsters. I had a very important character—she was the one in front who attacked first. When she went down, usually everybody did. The withdrawal shakes have stopped now, but I still miss her. Hard to understand how I mourn a series of memories generated by pixels? Just keeping it real.

Why do I bother saying all of this? Because people have this idea of what a Christian Person is supposed to look like. And when we are caught saying or doing anything that goes outside of the lines of that box, then we are viewed as being hypocritical to the unsaved world at large. So I’m going to just get it out in the open right now so we’re straight. I am a very imperfect Christian Person, but with a very Perfect Holy Spirit living inside of me. GOD HIMSELF stands in the gap for me many, many times…helping me and strengthening me to not tumble off the cliff edge when it comes time to make choices in life. God simply wants me to live my life for Him and He will help me trim the things from my life that don’t belong, as I go. All I have to do is listen and obey.

Saul-who-became-Paul was a D. Gibbons—a “very bad man” (FlashForward fans, anyone?). He threatened, imprisoned and killed Christian people. Yet God redeemed him and used him greatly in his later years. If God used Saul, who killed uncountable people, can’t he use us? Where do we get the notion that we are too dirty, too unrighteous, too messed up to be bathed clean in Christ?

I’m hoping if I am honest about my faults and struggles, then that transparency lends me credibility as a writer. Believability is important. This is me, not hiding or pretending. This is me, not being judgmental toward others because I have my own issues I’m busy working through. We will all one day answer for our own junk. I’m not going to sift through yours.

But as for me, even while I’m sifting through my own dirty laundry, I want to be used by God. I want to be clean.

This is me, Beth Tollett, keeping it real.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Elizabeth Allison Cross Tollett and none of you know me. Oh, you know of me, or you know what you think you know about me. But you don’t really know me. I look in the mirror at times and don’t even know myself, so don’t feel bad about that. I have looked in the mirror countless other times and haven’t wanted to know me. Not because I have some deep, dark secret. Not because I’m a horrible person. But because I’ve been such a pathetic example of a Christian life.

I became a Jesus-believer, born-again, Christian follower around the age of 6. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, but I have never doubted that it was absolutely sincere. What I haven’t done since then is live it. And for that I’m ashamedly regretful.

Revelation 3 talks of the lukewarm church of Laodicea. God talks of spitting their lukewarm yuckiness from his mouth. As I like my cocoa scathing hot or my water ice cold, I get this. Believe and act like it, or don’t believe and at least not be hypocritical about it. There is no value in riding the fence.

Our nation is in trouble. Our world is tilting out of control. We try to fix the anger, the sadness, the despair—with all sorts of things. We need our President…or a new President. We need to go to war…or we need to boycott the wars. We all need drugs…or maybe we need to ban all of the drugs. We need to be accepting of others to the point of not having any rights ourselves. Acceptance of our jobs, our income, our friends, our contacts, our relationships, our orientation—can’t we all just love one another and live in peace? But none of that is the answer. We will never have personal peace and we will never see reform in this world—until this nation returns to God-centered lives. And it starts with those of us who claim to be God followers.

My blog is not about harassing anyone to follow God. It is not about converting, preaching, or condemning. It is about one regular person, a stay-at-home mom with four children, who had everything outwardly going for her but was simply going through the motions of life. Until one day when she finally did what she felt God was calling her to do, and since then has been experiencing the rush of John 10:10b …I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Is your life full of good things or junk? Do you have peace? Or, like me, do you look into the mirror and try to reconcile what you see there with what you feel and know to be true on the inside?

God took me to Africa to open up my eyes and heart. It would be my desire for everyone to feel what I’ve felt. Come and go on this journey with me and see what God might want to say to you.