I've written on here before about my love for the team at Southern Weddings Magazine, so I was thrilled when CT's Her.meneutics editor Kate Shellnut asked me to interview Lara Casey. Lara is the creator and editor-in-chief of Southern Weddings, and she has a great new book coming out in January (really, it's great--I got a sneak peak and loved it!).

The full interview is over at the Her.meneutics site, but here is just an excerpt:

Why did you decide to write this book, Make it Happen, and why this topic?

Over the last six years, seven in January, I’ve led a workshop called Making Things Happen. And when I started this workshop seven years ago I was a very different person. God had yet to beautifully flip my life inside-out, but I started the workshop to encourage other people to make more things happen, to chase their dreams, to go after those big ideas. And as God started to completely refine my heart, it changed. It’s the total opposite now. Now, the goal is to help people live meaningful lives, to simplify their lives, and to do less and let go of things, to say no in order to live life on purpose instead of by accident.

What compelled me to write this book is hearing the stories of thousands of women who are and were living by fear, motivated by fear—fear of people, comparison, of so many things that were crushing them and crushing their ability to give to this world the things that it needs. And that just pained me. And so I would write blog posts trying to encourage people in the right direction, and encourage people from my own mistakes too, and then I just thought “I need a way to be able to hand people a book of paper that tells everything I want to say,” and so that’s where the book came from.

What would you say to someone who says she doesn’t have big dreams or a desire to make big things happen? Is your message only for entrepreneurs?

I would say that this book is redefining what “making it happen” means. Defining the “it” is the point. Because for me, my “it” was big dreams and more money, and popularity and status, and really fueling my pride, and now I know that the only “it” that matters is the gospel, and it is living on purpose for loving people well—to glorify him and not us. So really the book is about surrender, and you see that from the very first pages.

I’ve learned that surrendering to his plans over trying to control and craft our own plans, that’s really where life starts to happen. And I’ve seen that in my own marriage specifically, which I do talk about a lot in the book. God really flipped my marriage on its head too, and he showed me through my marriage crumbling, and almost ending, and then him redeeming that, that the impossible is possible only through him—not through my own effort, but through me surrendering my ways to his.

Check out the full interview for more of Lara Casey's wisdom, and for some insider info on Southern Weddings Magazine. And be sure to check your local magazine seller for the latest issue!

*Photo credit: Faith Teasley Photography