My mouth hung open. I stared at the woman walking past me. It was not polite to stare (I know, okay!), but I forgot that my mouth was still hanging open.
I had just worked out at the gym. My muscles were getting EVEN stronger! For example, this time I didn’t have to go to the far edge of the gym to find lighter weights than the ones our instructor set out for the group class.
Have you tried every other path to success, friend? There is only one more way to try!
We are serving up some previously published articles for you to feast on this week, while our family is on spring break in Victoria, Canada.
Goodbye, winter! Hello, flowers! Victoria has regular spring flowers, like these daffodils, found in the rest of Canada, albeit a bit earlier that the rest of us.
(Who CARES?)
But they also have bushes of things like these already in bloom, flaunting us.
We are serving up some previously published articles for you to feast on this week, while our family is on spring break.1
Goodbye, winter!
Hello, flowers in Victoria, Canada! Enjoy some of this site’s top articles from around this time last year.2 And may these articles help you stride confidently through life!
I was pushing my shopping cart in the grocery store. I was in a hurry (Of course!) and pushing more on one side because the thing kept veering off to one side as I walked, trying to smash into every aisle. “I. Only. Have. To. Get. A. Few. More. Items,” I grunted begrudgingly, pushing hard with both hands on one side of the cart.
I don’t want you to go through life like this. I thought I sensed God whispering in my heart.
And while we’re chatting, do you want another cookie and to join me in playing a game on my iPad, friend?
The sun peeked through the darkness.
The storm was lifting. Hope filled the air along with the fresh scent of life, stirring, awakening with the rain. It was a new season.
Today.
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
I stretched, removed the covers from my bed and sat up, looking around me blankly. What would this new day, this new season bring, now that this storm was lifting, I wondered? I poured my coffee and asked these questions of God, and his whisperings startled me.
There is so much in my life that He is longing to awaken. How about in yours?
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
And how do we awaken, if we, like Sleeping Beauty, have been spiritually resting for a few years?
Try this: As the song below plays1 and as you sit with your morning coffee, pondering this new day or this new season, what stirrings in the dry soil of your heart, of seeds coming to life, do you sense?
Oh! And she sings of repentance in this song, but I wouldn’t recommend THAT or anything! In my humble opinion, there doesn’t seem to generally be any need to travel down any spiritual path as far as repentance would take us.
Please!
I definitely recommend turning back and hanging out with the rest of us who don’t want to walk THAT far! And anyway, the part of the song about repentance doesn’t apply to me, thankfully! (It may, however, apply to you, of course.)
True repentance [is] not merely . . . sorrow over sin, but . . . a “sweet sorrow” arising from a new, awakened delight in the beauty of God.2
1 She’s a little serious in this song. You’ll want to offer her a cookie and tell her, “Hey, Lady! Relax a bit!” (At least I do.) The point is that it’s good to wake up spiritually. She gets that part, so we can at least learn that bit from her!
2 And may you awake a little more with each poke repentance gives our sleeping form, friend.
Got time to remove the cultural hook in your nose, leading you, friend? You’ll feel better after!
I recently learned that the article below was one of my (relatively) more popular articles published around this time last year.
(Look! I don’t know why people read this stuff, either! But hopefully I figure out – or invent? – something useful to say to you one day, so keep reading, just in case a nugget of wisdom accidentally appears amidst the banality of life!)
Got time to watch the movie going on right next to you, friend?
The bird flitters from branch to branch.
It’s a yellowish green. It has yellowish-green feathers and a little white circle around its eye – a flycatcher. This family of birds has built its nest here for at least a dozen of its little bird generations, for as long as we have visited this summer cabin.
We didn’t notice them for the first few years.
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
We only heard them, the little “Whew-it!” sound, rising at the end, every two minutes or so. “Just another bird sound,” we thought, eating our food at the outside table and distracted by the food and by each other. But that sound sure was insistent.
Could there be more to this incessant sound than just another bird flitting around nearby somewhere?
“Can you pass the peanut butter?”
And we forgot about them again.
Until the baby bird fell out of the nest that summer and flapped pathetically on the floor right beside our table outside.
“Whew-it! Whew-it!” We heard that same sound now, but more intensely, more insistently, louder.
It was the Father bird calling, imploring the little bird to stretch its wings, give flying a go, insistent now.
Our eyes had finally awakened to EXACTLY WHICH bird made that insistent sound, and was the nest far away? Directly above where the little bird was flapping, we finally noticed the obvious – a nest in the rafters just above us. The birds flitting above us as we ate our meals several times per day were the parents. They were doing their little bird jobs, telling the babies to wait a bit – they would bring more food once the scary demon humans had eaten their meals and finally cleared out. The birds were flitting and making noise above us as we were eating our meals.
A lot was going on that we didn’t have eyes to see until the unusual happened.
A baby bird flapped, and its Father called next to our feet as we ate our lunch that day.
And when we got up from the distractions of more food and of each other, and took a closer inspection at this bird, and then followed the clues to notice the bird’s nest above our heads, finally, we were awakened to a whole other world that had been going on right next to us for years.
And in precisely the same way, God wants us to open our eyes to see the realities of the spiritual dimension, happening right next to us every minute of our lives.
Sometimes we see something remarkable, something that makes us rub our eyes and say, “What now?” kind of like a baby bird flapping at our feet during breakfast.
Sometimes we hear a sound, repetitive and gentle, kind of like the “Whew-it!” sound of a flycatcher repeatedly calling to its young while we distractedly eat breakfast.
“What was that?” we wonder, but then all is quiet again, and maybe it’s just another bird in the trees doing who-knows-what, we think, returning to our breakfast cereal.
Well, there was a bit more as she explained it to me. The plant was in winter. All that could be seen were a few sticks for branches poking above the ground.
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
Sounded like my life in that moment.
“But spring is coming,” she encouraged me.
I picked up my discouragement and continued walking on the ill-trodden path that God seemed to be leading me down, wondering if, sometime in the future, there would be life above the snow.
The word “establish” kept coming to my mind as I prayed. What needed to be established? Holy Spirit also seemed to be nudging me to write. Now, I had always written copiously in journals, but I would never think of sharing my written thoughts with others!
“Who would read such neurotic pretensions?” I asked myself. Certainly not me! I looked at my piles of completed journals, all of them unopened and unread, even by me.
Keep writing, God seemed to encourage me.
The first time I sat at my desk and tried to write something I intended to publish, it was like the seat of my office chair was on fire – It was so uncomfortable. I couldn’t sit there! Only a pompous, inflated prig would would presume she had something to say to another!
But it’s essential to fit in with others, so, of course, I pretended1 to be a pretentious know-it-all with an inflated ego so I would have something to write about!
And then I pressed publish.
The simple reality is that if you ever want to do anything significant for the Kingdom, you will have to overcome fear and internal resistance. If could be fear of the unknown, fear of what others will think2, fear of harm or injury3, fear of failure, fear that you’re not ready or equipped for the task. There is ALWAYS fear.
And so, to return to the start of this article, “A winter season,” she had suggested that day.
“Establishing,” God had seemed to be whispering in my prayers. Establishing a habit of pressing “Publish” and letting my words be carried off on the wind. I was learning not to care what others thought about the things that deeply mattered to me.
I was learning to listen to His voice and to dance in joy with Him.
And when the amaryllis, the lilac, and the peony bloomed that spring after a decade or more of relative death, I looked back in awe at where He has been leading me.
And he reminds us that spring, the season of blooming and life, always follows winter, as we rest in Him.
Is this an establishing season for you, friend? May your roots grow deep as you trust that “if you’re not done working, God, I’m not done waiting,” as the song below sings. As the song below also sings, “Though the winter is long, even richer, the harvest it brings,” after a moment of silent reflection and thanksgiving, consider asking God, “What new thing are you trying to water in this season, God, and how can I best be obedient to Your gentle nudge in a new direction?
Oh, and the question is not so much, “Where will you go?” or “What will you do?” but “Who will you become?”
And so, what is a simple habit to find our identity? We obey His promptings from our prayer times. Then we wait and trust that life sprouts.
Because spring always comes with new life.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.
3 I definitely fear that, but thankfully, I am pretty safe at home writing on my computer in my safe little town in Canada with all the doors and windows locked! (Just in case.)
Sit by me, friend! Even if I forget to say something useful, we can have a great chat!
I looked out my window that day and saw something surprising in our overgrown “flower” patch.
This flower was so entangled in the weeds that I had to cut back the surrounding greenery to snap a photo.
I knew God was speaking through this flower and will explain why soon. But I also wondered, “What are You saying?” I felt confused, which is usually how I feel when Holy Spirit seems to be nudging.
Restoring Life 