Lynne Hybels - Nice Girls Dont Change the World

nice girls dont change the world

lynne hybels

For my mother, Leah Keyser Barry,
and my daughter, Shauna Hybels Niequist

I WANT TO TELL YOU about someone I used to know very well.

She was a nice girl: obedient, polite, socially acceptable. A bit too reticent, some might say, but so very pleasing, nonetheless. A really nice girl.

Oh yes, her gaze seemed empty at times and her words sometimes rang, well, not false really, but perhaps a bit flat.

Okay, I sometimes had the feeling she was just going through the motions of life, but they were such nice motions. Everybody liked her.

She had an uncanny ability to keep almost everybody happy almost all the time, though she didnt truly seem to be very happy herself. But I could be wrong; she was always smiling. I dont know that I ever heard her laughand no one ever accused her of being wildly in love with lifebut she had such a nice smile.

She was a very caring person, though in a passive sort of way. She was not the type to turn the world upside down.

Still, she was a very nice girl.

What I mean to say, as you might have guessed, is that I was a very nice girl.

A nice girl. Theres nothing wrong with being a nice girl, especially when you consider the alternatives:

A naughty girl?

A mean girl?

A bad girl?

Who wants to be like that? I didnt.

I really didnt.

What I wanted was to be a godly girl. From the time I became a Christian at age seven, I wanted to please God, and I took that desire very seriously.

a nice girl

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s in a small Michigan town, where I attended a church that was a fine church in many ways. But the preaching during my most impressionable years was pretty much hellfire and brimstone. I heard a lot about sin and punishment, guilt and shame.

I was a very sensitive little girl. Based on what Id heard about God, I concluded that the only way to earn the favor of this hardhearted demanding deity was to work very hard, be very good, and walk a very straight and narrow path.

So I did. At age ten I traded my ballet slippers for a flute because Id been taught that dancing was a sinbut making music was an acceptable form of worship. From that time on, I tried very hard to make what I thought were God-honoring decisions about life. If there were rules to follow, I followed them. If there were pleasures to give up, I gave them up. If there was work to do, I did it. I was determined to earn Gods love.

I was also convinced that part of earning Gods love was earning everybody elses love toopleasing everybody, keeping everybody happy, being very nice.

Every morning I got out of bed and prayed: Dear God, what am I supposed to do today? Just tell me and Ill do it. Anything. I seldom got a clear answer, which was very frustrating because I knew how important it was to get it right. How could I keep myself under the umbrella of Gods favor if I didnt get everything right?

So I kept trying.

For years I tried: I prayed, read my Bible, and worked harder and harder in the hope that one day I would experience what this whole Christian thing was supposed to be about. I hoped that one day I would feel Gods love, know it deep inside, and at last be able to rest in it.

But you can only work hard and seek love for so long. Eventually you just run out of energy. And I did.

At that point I had been a pastors wife for seventeen years. At twenty-two, I was delighted to marry a man who felt called to the ministryI felt called too. I never viewed starting a church as something I was obligated to do because of who I was married to; I wanted to do it. But after seventeen years I was so exhausted I didnt want to get out of bed. In fact, to state it plainly, I didnt want to go on living. Later I came to understand that I was not just tiredI was seriously depressed.

Most people didnt know the state I was in. I was still pretty good at going through the nice girl motions, but things were definitely not nice on the inside. Fighting the all-too-common myth that only certifiably crazy people seek professional help, I decided to see a Christian counselor.

In counseling I heard for the first time that there is an alternative to being a nice girl, and it has nothing to do with being naughty, or mean, or bad.

a good woman

The opposite of a nice girl, I learned, is a good woman Being a good woman means trading the safe, passive, people-pleasing behavior of niceness for the dynamic power of true goodness. It means moving from the weakness and immturity of girlhood toward the strength and maturity of womanhood.

Whereas a girl of any age lives out the script she learned as a childa script too often grounded in powerlessnessa woman acknowledges and accepts her power to change, and grow, and be a force for good in the world.

Whereas a nice girl tends to live according to the will of others, a good woman has only one goal: to discern and live out the will of God.

A good woman knows that her ultimate calling in life is to be part of Gods plan for redeeming all things in this sin-touched world.

A good woman knows she cannot be all things to all people, and she may, in fact, displease those who think she should just be nice. She is not strident or petty or demanding, but she does live according to conviction. She knows that the Jesus she follows was a revolutionary who never tried to keep everyone happy.

That picture of a good woman made me want to be one. It made me want to grow up and trade the innocuous acceptability of niceness for the world-changing power and passion of true goodness.

I was thirty-nine years old when I walked into my counselors office and said, Ive been working so hard to keep everybody else happy, but Im so miserable I want to die. I spent the decade of my forties digging out of that hole. Now, nearly midway through my fifties, Ive discovered that growing up is an ongoing processI have not yet arrived. Still, I have learned some things on the journey to becoming a good woman.

A good womans life is grounded in the love of God

Ive learned that a good womans life is grounded in the love of God. In my thirties, I would have told you that my life was grounded in Gods love because thats what my adult mind believed. My rational, all-grown-up theology assured me God did, in fact, love me.