The second Good Girl Project is officially complete. We talked about the masks we wear and the lies that hide behind them. Their honesty was beautiful and refreshing. I loved reading your comments last week about what you would tell your high school self. I realized two things as I read through them. One, all those things we would tell ourselves then we should probably tell ourselves now. And two, even if we could have told ourselves stuff, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Because the truth is, you can’t escape being seventeen. There has to be room to grow and mess up and learn all by ourselves. When it comes to these girls, I’m so thankful I get to have a front row seat.

There will be thirty of them. Many of them don’t know each other. Some are best friends. A couple might not really even like each other all that much. I get it. I was in high school once, too. Girls are funny when we get together. Put a bunch of high school girls in one house over night and out spills the best and the worst of them all. At least, that’s what we hope for.

I’m looking forward to hosting the 2nd annual Good Girl Project (along with my best girl Kendra) this weekend at my house. It’s for the girls in our youth group who are stuck in a private battle with that perfect, invisible good girl. A place for those of us who are caught in the cycle of trying hard to measure up with varying shades of success. A place for those of us who need to be reminded to simply be and receive in the midst of a world telling us to do and achieve. We’re gonna call that good girl out for what she is: a liar and a very bad friend.

And we’re gonna laugh a lot and share our Jesus stories and eat some chocolate because that’s what girls do. I wish I could have come to a weekend like this when I was sixteen. I’d tell myself to trust more, worry less and enjoy that stretch mark free tummy. Is there anything you wish you could tell your high school self?

If you are a good girl like me, chances are that moving toward others is easy. We will help others, serve others and pray for them, too. But there is a distinct possibility that if they turn it on us, we will move quickly on and deeply inward. We retreat to our comfortable living room behind the wreath-wearing front door of a well-built house with its white picket fence.

I will smile and wave at you from a distance, because who you think I am is infinitely more important than who I really am. Especially when I’m in a funk.

The Bible is filled up and overflowing with people who had to get close in order to be healed: The woman in the crowd. The leper. The blind man.  To be healed, they had to be touched. To be touched, they had to be close.

Good girls tend to think we are the exception.