Last time, I told you everything I know about Psychotherapy. Here are five steps to summarize the previous post on fighting overwhelm based on my experience with Psychotherapy. (With any luck, these steps will also help us to become a little less nuts – The point of this post).
1. We slow down.
2. We quiet ourselves.
3. We come as we are, bringing our scattered emotions and lifting our situations to God.
So, I found myself mindlessly thinking about lunch right after breakfast and my mid-afternoon sugar snack right after lunch, which, of course, I would NEVER do!
However, I know some of you struggled with this once or twice in your life, perhaps. And how to solve this challenging problem reminds me of a funny story about my dog. THIS is a picture I already showed you of my dog in his Superman costume.
With an uncharacteristic lack of self-knowledge, I suddenly realized I was still in pajamas, curlers in my straight hair, that day as I yelled at my homeschooled kids to get up, get dressed, and get to their work!
The only problem was that I hadn’t done any of those things yet, either.
So, I was on a long swim because I am so athletic and fit, and while I saw a few fish, I sensed God speaking to my heart.
“Who cares?” you ask.
Well, Holy Spirit was speaking about you.
I know you have been waiting in suspense, clicking “refresh screen” every few minutes since you read THIS POST, and I promised to share one of my fish stories with you, so let’s get down to business.
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
That day, as I swam, I came across a brownish green slimy patch of regular-looking water weeds that I swam over.
I sensed from God that the slimy patch of brownish green weeds was my writing.
“Wow!” I thought. I felt so encouraged by that! There were many, many, much more than usual, minnows1 swimming around in this little unremarkable patch of weeds, which encouraged my heart so much.
I have been astonished at how God has brought so many readers (people from 33 countries so far have read this writing online2), or how there are so many minnows around this brownish colored, slimy patch of weeds!
I kept swimming, because as you know, I swim VERY far, and after I turned around and began swimming back home, I suddenly stopped at the location of that little patch of weeds because THERE WERE SO MANY MINNOWS I couldn’t find a way to swim through them.
There is purpose, there is something God is doing, as He is drawing us together. I no longer feel like I am writing to the wind with the sole purpose of building up my shallow self-esteem, begging for “likes,” and trying to inflate my ego.3
So, would any of you be interested in attending a weekly prayer and connection gathering, starting in the fall? 5:00pm Pacific time Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday are potential times that work. Please let me know in the comments, by email, or through the contact forms, which day would be preferable.
The time would be to discuss together and pray together. No talking experience or prayer experience is necessary! It would be great to share prayer and tea regularly, friend.
Thank you for liking me! I like you too! (Proven HERE, HERE and HERE!) Let’s journey together!
1 Also, minnows are small fish, and small fish will, by definition, get bigger (I think?), and so I hope that you hang out with me in my little brown weed patch long enough so that I can get all the credit for your growth! (Editor’s note – Try to think of others, not just yourself. Lori’s note: Whatever!)
2 Yes, the stats of which country you are from are posted for free! Yes, the web is super weird. I’m sorry, but I didn’t even ask to know! “Not all visitors who visit your site will have their location enabled in their browsers. Some visitors might access your site through an incognito browser or a Virtual Private Network (VPN).” So, get an incognito browser or a VPN! The web is weird! You’re welcome! Good luck!
I was mindlessly living my life, as we all do, being blown by the wind of the general opinions and attitudes of others, as the hidden currents of our culture pull us. (And by the way, if you think you are immune to the pushes and pulls of your current culture, that is the very air you breathe, then HAHAHAHAHAH! We laugh at you!) The only thing more ridiculous than being blown by the wind of the general opinions and attitudes of the culture you live in is NOT KNOWING you are being blown by the wind and of your culture!
THE POINT is that we are all shaped by the voices of others that enter our minds unobserved, and that God’s voice serves as a salve, as medicine, correcting our lives by a degree or two, if our ears are open to hearing Him convicting us.
This is what happened to me recently.
I had been swimming that day, as I do in that lake in the summer.
Usually, I see one fish, maybe two, as I swim along before I tire.
But that day I saw a school of fish, something rare in this lake. “Wow!” I thought. When I saw another school of fish, a large fish, and another large fish, and then two more huge schools of fish, I began to think, “This is VERY, VERY unusual.”
Literally hundreds more fish passed me that day, until I finally asked, “God, do you want to speak to me?” through this very unusual situation.
And He did speak. And His voice healed my heart. But that is for next time because my time is up again, and as mentioned HERE, your attention span is much too short (No! It’s NOT that I get distracted and forget what I’m even writing about – of COURSE NOT!)
God uses anything, everything, to grab our attention – poke and startle us a little- if our eyes, ears, and hearts are open to this possibility.
And so, the best way to course correct to avoid walking off the cliff by the invisible wind of culture? Clean out your ears to the voice of God, friend. He’s already speaking. We simply need to find our ears on the ground and reattach them to hear what He is saying—more on this next time.
Photo Credit – Will He Fall Off The Cliff Or Receive Help? by Felipe Souza on Unsplash
Thank you for liking me! I like you too! (Proven HERE, HERE and HERE!) Let’s journey together!
Photo Credit – Loser and Winner by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash – Notice that the “Winner” here has less money than the “Loser,” so it’s not about more money, but you already know that! For additional proof, however, consider this quote from one of the wisest people I know:
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
I swam to my friend’s home two bays down at the lake where we were staying as a regular training exercise.
Then I suddenly got a bit older, and I wasn’t QUITE as fit anymore, at least as I thought I was. “Could I swim to her home again?” I asked myself. A few quick years had passed, of sitting on the couch and eating donuts at every meal, but otherwise, I still felt pretty fit. That summer day, I swam and swam. I did it! Wow!
I sat on her wharf in my solo victory party, my pride rising around me like a great cloud, buoying up my low self-esteem until the cloud tried to suffocate me with the sudden unwelcome thought, “But CAN I swim back home?
No walking trails existed along the shore of these “boat access only” cottages, and of course, cell phone reception was an impossibility in that remote area, even if I did have a phone with me (I didn’t, of course).
My stomach quavered.
How would I get home?
And The Point of this Newsletter is that sometimes, as graciously illustrated HERE and HERE, we aren’t QUITE as amazing as we imagine ourselves to be.
What if that’s true spiritually, too?
Now, before you hold up your hands and caution me against speaking further, responding with the most common objection, like: “Well, at LEAST I’m not Ted Bundy or someone super bad like that! Therefore, I’m sure God will open the Great Golden gates to me!”
Again, I ask, what if being a bit “nicer” than a serial killer like Ted Bundy is STILL not an “A” on your spiritual report card according to Jesus?
(Just asking the question).
And so, how did I get home that day that I swam WAY too far and exhausted myself with my pride? A person I knew saved me. As I swam, when I saw someone I knew, I would crawl up their ladder onto their wharf to sit awhile, resting (and pretending to visit while I caught my breath), until I had enough strength to continue my journey.
And luckily for you, that’s how you can find the way to your true home, too – Just drag your tired butt out of wherever you are struggling just to get by, and rest awhile with Jesus.
The most crucial spiritual stuff we are struggling to understand is already well understood by children.
Of course, it’s understood by children and ME, too! So that’s how you know I have great spiritual depths – sometimes I am immature! (Reread the first sentence if you are confused.)
But reflecting on the first sentence in this newsletter, this immaturity may be the source of my extraordinary spiritual wisdom!
Now, what was I saying?
Ahem.
As I was saying, since children understand the most significant spiritual truths well, I will deduce essential insights from the children’s story I shared at the front of our church last Sunday for you to enjoy!
In that riveting and insightful children’s story, I was trying to make The Point that God is NOT (notice the NOT!) a gumball machine in the sky! What I mean is that more often than we care to admit, we adults think of God’s love as transactional:
We put in a quarter and out pops a gumball from the gumball machine, or
We put in a prayer, and out pops the stuff we want – i.e., a healing, the OTHER person to change (This is an excellent prayer by the way!1), or to hear His voice more clearly.
When we don’t get what we want, when the gumball doesn’t pop out of the machine after we insert our quarter of prayer, we get frustrated and shake the machine a bit, before we kick it and put it in the corner where only spiders building webs will visit it for a while.
We put God into a box and then realize that there is something wrong with the box.
There is.
The thing that is wrong with the box is us.
“And what is your point?” you ask, looking at your watch, with one hand on your laptop, ready to slam it closed.
Children don’t have as many boxes they are trying to shove God inside.
And so, this is one of the essential things we can learn from children and other immature people.
If God didn’t whisper between the “Amen” and the passing round of the Thanksgiving fixings, we think something is wrong with us or assume He is mute. It turns out that our box is way too small for God to fit inside. Would you consider being open to the possibility of Holy Spirit right next to you, whispering and trying to wake you up in ways you could never imagine.
For example, God spoke quietly and inaudibly to me as I watched some fish once.
I will let this riveting example blow your mind next time so as not to overwhelm you with spiritual profundity. The Point is that God is way more creative than we give Him credit for, in how He is reaching out to us and trying to get our attention. He is EVEN MORE creative (AND smart!) than we are, for example!
He answers our prayers, even our prayers to be able to perceive Him, in more unusual ways than we imagine.
As the song below plays, consider asking Holy Spirit how He longs to poke you, to wake you up, and in what ways you can’t seem to feel His nudge. Consider doing a 180-degree turn from how you knowingly run in the opposite direction. May more of the scales on your eyes fall off so that you can more clearly see the creative ways He is dancing in the corner of your field of vision, waiting for you to look His way, if only the blind eyes are healed.
We were on the other side of having relational connections that could help us (we were travelling)
We didn’t have a place to stay or some food either (we were robbed)
We were in a hostile situation (teen females travelling in a country that believed women brought trouble on ourselves for having the nerve to travel alone)
We were below being helped (the police wouldn’t let us use their phone to call our embassy!)
We were up the creek without a paddle (as the saying goes).
After the local police pushed us out of their office and told us to solve our problems ourselves, we looked around, stunned.
What do we do next?
“I know!” I announced energetically, my Ned Flanders optimism in high gear, even back then, more than twenty-five years ago. “Let’s return to our lodge and read what to do in our “Let’s Go, Europe!” guide!
“This is the worst thing that could have happened to us!” my friend yelled. “Nothing in that book tells us what to do next!” The truth of our situation was dawning on me, like a light bulb on a dimmer, slowly illuminating.
We sat on the curb, watching the street kids, whose faces had more grime than ours, though all our faces were marked with tear stains. They had bare feet, but otherwise, our hearts entwined as one as we experienced the beginnings of the emotions any other human would have felt in a similar situation – despair, alienation from “the rest” of culture, and fear. A few short hours had erased much of the divide between “us” and “them”.
“What now?” my friend and I asked each other silently. We were sitting curbside outside our motel. Despite our protests, the motel owner told us to get our stuff and ourselves out onto the streets where we belonged.
And then she came.
A local woman arrived bringing a tray of fruit and local bread to share.
She had heard about our “misfortune” from her daughter.
The one hiccup in this story of rescue is that her daughter was the one who immediately told us NOT to chase after the guy who robbed us. Was she an accomplice? Was her mother? Were they all working together as one terrifying mob? We didn’t have many choices, and so after inhaling the food, our eyes still wide with fear, we begged this stranger to let us stay at her home that night.
And she opened her home to us.
And she shared the Gospel with us.
In the years that followed, I had often wondered, did Jesus prompt her compassion so she would want to show up and check on us?
Maybe.
But opening her home to two teenage strangers until the embassy representative could arrive after Spain’s long weekend holiday altered the trajectory of my life.
What would my life have been like had I been tossed out onto the violent streets of the city for a week instead, I have often wondered.
This woman, obeying the inner voice of God, or perhaps the outer voice of a Pastor, or the words of a Sacred Text, saved my life from physical, emotional and/or spiritual trauma.
Oh, and so, why do we choose to open our eyes to dangers foreigners are susceptible to being exposed to?
But for the grace of God, that foreigner could be you or one of YOUR loved ones.
When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. . . Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. . . . Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”
And so now I can put myself in more dangerous and stupid situations because I KNOW that you will help me!
Thank you!
And you’re welcome for the advice!
Good luck!
Seriously though – Who is God asking you to remember in prayer, or what is He asking you to do this morning as you open your eyes to another? Who can you share your measly lunch with? Who could use a heart of compassion and an “I see you” smile?
And I wonder at the joy unveiled, like the opening of a present, when we meet the people in Heaven who credit us as those who were the hands and feet of Jesus through listening and obeying and changing the trajectory of their lives for the better.
How much future joy are you stockpiling? Got your heart open to the promptings of Holy Spirit? Oh, and thanksfrom those of us who appreciate your open eyes.
Part 1 – A story (about ME!!!) – Written by my daughter, Esther!
Part 2 – An explanation (also by ME!) of why I randomly thought of porcupines after reading this!
Additional profound extrapolations of the text (by ME! – Of course!) are in the footnotes!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Part 1: Story by Esther
Sparse and invisible rain floats gently from the sky, sometimes merging on the skin or the pavement as several droplets.
The speckled street gives way to the cars that cruise amiably down it.
There is no rush in this town; there is a sense of welcome and leisure despite busy schedules and people filled with excitement for the day. Everyone knows everyone else by name, and even if one wanted to stay anonymous, one could not. The small businesses are like people; each one has their personality.
Or perhaps it is due to the lack of stores that each of them stands out all the more brightly.
One couple meanders down the street, hand in hand.
He is tall and strong, but his face radiates gentleness, and his laughter shows not only on his face but also in his eyes. The woman1 mirrors many of the same features, but her eyes gleam with a fire of intensity not commonly found. Despite this, her kindness (See Footnote 1) is evident in the smile lines around her mouth and her loving (See Footnote 1) eyes.
Woe unto the person who stumbles across the man’s path while he is hungry.
And woe unto the person who stumbles across the woman’s path when the woman is tired.2 Yet, they grow together. They challenge each other. They fight the battles of life together, side by side. They complement each other (See Footnote 1) with a bond made one of the strongest in the world.
The couple passes by the library, a place steeped in magic.
It is a chest that holds the secrets of life and beauty, and its key is given generously, though not many take it. Those who deem it ridiculous are those who refuse the key, but to the one who graciously takes it, wonders are in store. The couple’s two children are currently there, for the couple sees their melancholy dog sitting patiently outside, waiting for someone to pet him. He gets up and furiously wags his tail, assured that this means he is finally going home. After reassuring the dog that they would be back soon and trying to ignore the forsaken and betrayed look in his eyes, the couple wanders up the steps and into the library.
There they find a friend and exchange greetings. The man is asked about his work. His hands, though gentle and unassuming, have ministered to and helped thousands, but by his humble3 nature, he never boasts.
His wife, who stands beside him, is just as accomplished (See Footnote 1), with a heart for the betterment of people’s lives (See Footnote 1) and a passion for the preservation of the planet (See Footnote 1).
She sacrificed her career (See Footnote 1) for her children’s careers, homeschooling and helping them find what interests and motivates them. Sometimes, they drive her crazy. Well, maybe it’s a lot of the time. And sometimes she drives them crazy, too (See Footnote 2). Perhaps it is God growing everyone’s patience4.
The family checks out their stacks of literature and heads to the car, picking up the relieved5 dog on the way. The car slowly pulls out and heads leisurely home. There’s no rush. Or, maybe there is because now the man is hungry.
Part 2: Random Thoughts Including: Porcupine Quills Can Eventually Bring Joy! by Me
I think of porcupines who quill each other when I think of this story. For example, I am mad at my daughter for writing things that are BLATANT lies about me and that don’t make me look as stupendous as I know I am deep down! Anyway, we (for example – HER) each come with our own set of quills, like porcupines, and we accidentally and purposefully (sometimes) quill each other and even ourselves. I.e., Remember when “the man” in the story above gets hungry? Watch out!
However, being quilled by porcupines (ironically) promotes our healing.
Why?
Because in our inevitable relational pain (that THEY cause), we finally draw near to God, who has been calling out and wooing us our entire lives.
And so, as we bring our faces full of another’s (and our own?) quills, God can use this situation to heal US, as He lovingly tends to each quill, sometimes removing it immediately and sometimes giving us healing oil and the strength to persevere.
1 Author of this blog’s note – This is ME! She is talking about ME in this story! That’s how you know I’m famous and important, by the way!!!
2 WAIT – WHA…? I thought she only said NICE stuff about me in public! I’m going to ground her to her room for a month! But wait – she’s flying back to her job and University tomorrow!
As mentioned HERE, I’ve noticed a disturbing rise in pretty young restaurant servers and other seemingly normal people1 enjoying tattooing their bodies with overtly demonic art.
Why?
That’s my question.
I struggled with this question for a while, which means I thought and thought about it without doing any research or talking to anyone else about it, when it suddenly occurred to me that course, if we want to know the answer to ANYTHING, we only need to ask AI!
AI explains that demonic art is increasingly popular in modern culture for the following reasons:
Satanic symbolism [can be used] to explore moral dilemmas and question power and corruption, [and is] . . . a powerful emblem of change and resistance
And hey! These themes are very healthy to pursue and are topics I agree should be thought deeply about! My friend Ned told me not to get a demon tattoo, so I won’t, but the spirit behind what people are looking for when embracing this art is something I agree with, too!
But here’s the thing- Jesus has a way cooler way of talking about these themes!
For example, Jesus talked to a DEAD person, too!
Have you ever thought about that?
Of course, when Jesus talked to the dead person, he returned to life, one of the (more than!) three reasons Jesus is so much cooler than demons! Spiritual, intellectual, emotional and sometimes even physical LIFE happens when we hang around a guy like Jesus!
The second reason Jesus is cooler than demons is that when we align ourselves with Jesus, all kinds of great things come into our lives. When we align ourselves with the demonic, we’re very quickly over our heads, as this Exorcist Files Podcast is documenting is happening more and more in Western culture.
The third reason why Jesus is cooler than demons is because Jesus is all about love, and demons are all about hate. For example, think about all the great heroes of the movies you love best, and all of them gave up something so that someone else could flourish. (Sounds a lot like Jesus!2) Demons devour you for their advantage. For example, think about all the bad guys in movies.
And wouldn’t you rather be a good guy than a bad guy?
1 It’s not just Hells Angels members who are tattooing themselves with demons anymore. Hells Angels members are definitely not normal, but NO OFFENCE if you are a Hells Angels member, of course! We like you! Or we don’t like you, I mean, because maybe you don’t want to be liked! Whatever! (Who wouldn’t like to be liked? I thought that being liked gives our lives meaning and purpose! So Hells Angels are definitely whacked!) Note to Editor- I DID say that respectfully! And yes, I DID update my Life Insurance Policy. Why do you ask?
Restoring Life 