Grit 'n' Grace: Good Girls Breaking Bad Rules

With wisdom, wit, and great tenderness, Michele Cushatt talks about the pain Jesus suffered to alleviate our pain. The wounds He received to heal our wounds. This is the very grace we need for dealing with other hurting people. Join us as Michele shares the remedy for our smarting souls with Cheri and Amy.

We all need grace for our failures, and Jesus' disciples needed it too. Suzie Eller points to both Judas and Peter as stunning failures who had Jesus' forgiveness extended to them. One chose to accept grace and one rejected it. Will we live a life of thank you for the grace we've been extended? This is the perfect season receive grace with thankfulness.

How can we truly focus on others in healthy ways this holiday season? When holiday emotions are high, God calls us to follow Jesus' example in cherishing others and handling them gently. Cheri and Amy discuss how to shift our thinking in ways that lovingly prioritize our people.

The holidays inevitably boil up some difficult emotions. Childhood hurts fly reemerge, too many people around fray our nerves, or loneliness leaves us feeling hollow. Cheri and Amy process helpful ways to deal with our emotions instead of just pushing them down only to have them pop up later.

Every holiday image we see is centered around family, friends, and rooms full of smiling people. Facing a holiday spent alone — or feeling alone — is hard. Cheri and Amy talk about shifting our perspective so that a "silent night" isn't a painful night but one filled with peace instead.

What to wear? What to wear? With humor and practical tips, Cheri and Amy, along with special guest Kim Nowlin, attack the bad rules of holiday fashion and body image. Dress yourself to match your inner sparkle this holiday season!

Although it's pretty funny to have a host and co-host who are challenged in the kitchen talking about the ultimate holiday meals, Cheri and Amy get to the heart. Food isn't just fuel for our bodies; it's juice for relationships too.

We've all tried to achieve decorations that live up to the pages of a magazine only to fall short and fall-out with exhaustion. Cheri and Amy offer solutions that will delight your heart and express your truest self. Don't forget to visit the website for even more amazing resources! gritngrace.info

There's nothing better than seeing someone light up when they open your gift... until you open the new year bills. Cheri and Amy talk about giving out of our abundance as a solution for the post-Christmas blues, and they give practical suggestions for great gifts you can give this year!

Is there an alternative to filling our calendars and emptying our wallets with endless activities and trips this Thanksgiving and Christmas? This holiday season we can make proactive decisions that leave more margin for joy in our interactions with others. Cheri and Amy give two word mash-ups that will help us identify what's worth it and what's not.

In the first of the Holiday Break episodes, Cheri and Amy tease out the difficult issues of holiday expectations and traditions. How do we decide what's worth keeping and what needs to go? They come up with key questions to ask and a permission slip to enable you to move away from holiday dread and move toward more delight.

Cheri and Amy process lessons learned from Lucille Zimmerman about play and grief.  There are choices to be made in both: Will we choose the bonding play provides? Will we let time soften and redeem?

We've pinned negative labels on some very human processes like play and grieving. Play is often consider slacking and grief is sometimes seen as a pity party. Lucille Zimmerman, author of Renewed, explains why both are essential to the full life and how they serve as powerful tools to creativity and healing.

Cheri and Amy process last week's interview with Sheila Gregoire through the lens of conflict and no-black-and-white circumstances. It turns out that messy doesn't mean ugly. There is redemption and positive personal change that happens when we face the natural complications of life instead of ducking them.

For most reforming perfectionists, peace seems like the ultimate goal no matter how it's attained. Sheila Wray Gregoire shares that true peace is often attained through painful conflict. She helps us to understand the difference between conflict and fighting.

Cheri and Amy discuss the hard but important work of developing new ways to develop greater happiness. As they examine their own happiness habits (and their opposites!), gratitude, hope, and choosing the positive emerge as ways to break out of the rut of our default to unhappy.

Jennifer Dukes Lee talks about ideas from her newest book, The Happiness Dare, that challenge our church girl preconceptions about happiness. She helps Cheri and Amy answer questions we all have like: Does God want me to be happy? Do I have to act happy when I'm sad? Why do I find happiness in things that other people don't? It's really ok—listen and increase your happiness quotient today!

What do you do when someone's perfectionism is driving you around the bend? When the relationship is about to end? Valuing perfection over people shatters relationships, so Cheri and Amy tease out solutions for being on both the giving and receiving end of relationship-eroding perfection.

Failure can seem like a total loss. An unredeemable mess. A sum total of zero. But what if we redefine failure? What if we start to recognize the growth opportunities in our failures? Amy and Cheri talk with Michele Cushatt about her encounters with failure and how it’s changed her view of perfectionism. Don’t miss her rich wisdom!

God works His good plan in the midst of very imperfect circumstances and in the lives of flawed people. Cheri and Amy discuss the struggle of embracing failure in the reality of our messiness.  Join with them and grab onto the hope of a Perfect God who redeems our failures!