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The Demise of the Good Girl, Part 2

I killed her. It had come down to either her or me. I’m a survivor so I choose me and stomped her into oblivion. Her being the Good Girl. She had become a dictator and I needed to cut her loose. A long time ago really. But hey, better late than never, right?

I’ve written about her before. Who she is and what she can make us become. You can check it out here. I find this whole topic rather interesting. Someone suggested to me recently, that I read Lynne Hybels book, Nice Girls Don’t Change the World. Obviously, it got me thinking about it again. I know intimately what she’s writing about.

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Trying to live our lives as the “good girl” or ‘nice girl” is just plain exhausting. She had to go. We can only keep up with the “Good/Nice” standards for so long and then it becomes a contest of perfectionism, lacking all forms of grace or love. She is a relentless master, that good ole nice girl. It’s downright deceptive.

She buries all the truly good stuff so the idol of “Good/Nice” can reign. Responsibility, dependability and niceness beat down creativity, rest and love. We lose our core self in the effort of pleasing others. Of trying to measure up. In striving to be enough. We think our personalities, our quirks make us too different. We tamp them down and dress up a lie.

Letting her have all the say, leads to bitterness, resentment and a feeling of entitlement. We’ve tried to be so good, worked so hard that we think our lives should work out according to our agendas. When they don’t, we get mad. Or depressed. We mentally go through the list of what we did wrong. Becoming our own judge and jury. It’s no way to live. Keeping score like that.

The disappointment when life almost never goes our way is crushing. We’ve sacrificed ourselves, our dreams, desires and sometimes our relationships all in the name of being good, dependable, nice. What we are left with are the remnants of a life sacrificed on the altar of GOOD/NICE. We feel duped. Because we fell for that Good Girl’s false stories.

The Good Girl told me I had to work hard to be a Good little Christian. Working for God is so important. She had taken my faith and made it into a religion. To the point where I didn’t even know whom I served anymore. You notice I wrote serve? It was a unconscious action. To write serve rather than love. Shouldn’t it be about whom I love? But the good girl serves first and maybe has a little bit of love left in her for later. Probably not.

I’m tired of doing because I have to. I don’t believe anymore that Jesus called us to be servants. He called us to love Him first and out of that love, to serve. There’s no have to involved. I have such a different attitude if I do something because I love someone rather than doing it because I feel I have to. Don’t you? I would much rather love Jesus so much that I would do anything for him (what a real Christian lives like) than be so tied to the rules that I do it resentfully (living the Good Girl life.)

The Good Girl is so concerned with appearances that her freak-o-meter shoots off the charts. We’ve all done the Fight-all-the-way-to-church-and-then-fake-it-once-we’re-there scenerio. What is so wrong with just admitting it’s a bad day? People respond to authenticity. Perfectionism isolates.

She told me good girls don’t rock the boat. Ha! Truth is going to rock the boat. Just look at Jesus. He rocked it so hard as he ushered in God’s plan, he didn’t just turn the boat over, he sank it.

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She told me that as a Pastor’s Wife, I had to be the ultimate Good Girl. Which translates: I have to do all of the above plus more. It’s a set-up for failure. Instead I choose to love the only One True God. And tear down the false idol of good.

Good girls/ boys are false images. It’s a burden hoisted upon countless children who grow up under it’s weight and then live behind it’s mask as adults. True goodness isn’t about other people’s perspectives about us. What we do or think we have to do.

True goodness comes from God because He is good. To witness it first hand, go read your bible and take a good long, hard look at Jesus and how He lived his life. He is goodness. Authentic goodness. Once we trust He is good then I think we are able to love Him more. Our relationship with Him deepens and as a result, we too begin to live out that true goodness.

So goodbye Good Girl. So long lies. Hope we never meet again. I choose true goodness and it’s one and only source. For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting And His faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 100:5

And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. Luke 18:19