Depression

How Death Of This Plant Creates New Life In Us

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The amaryllis is slowing diminishing in size and splendour, and shrinking back to that mysterious place in its pot where life begins.

My amaryllis blossom will be no more very soon.

You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. 

The Message

And like all death, the point is not that there has been a death but that a new season is beginning for those who carry on.

Plants take time to grow. He has time to wait. And though this amaryllis flower has no voice, God spoke quietly, inaudibly to human ears, through the life of this ordinary bulb when it flowered for the first time in twenty years, as described here.

This flower is a megaphone, taking the inaudible sound of the voice of Jesus from deep, deep within the earth and transforming His words into a glorious flower that our eyes can perceive.

The flower has no mouth to magnify the words spoken by God, and yet its life points us to Jesus, to the place in His heart where inaudible sounds are translated to the muffled sounds that we pick up and examine and ask each other to help us translate.

This flower is another clue on the journey.

Are you ready to go on an adventure with me, dear friend, and to try to unpack what God may be whispering through the life of an ordinary plant, one that blooms for as long as we can stare at our watches, unhurried, before it’s life is consumed, once more in darkness?

This flower teaches us how we should live, our lives erupting as a firework from below ground, to just as quickly be extinguished as the fire of our lives burns out, and we return to dust.

And this silent flower has spoken so loudly to my soul that an awakening has occurred deep, deep within. Do you sense it, too? Come with me, friend, on a journey of waking up, sitting up, opening our ears, getting our legs to move and run, and learning to fly.

And as is the case, whenever the most important lessons are to be grasped, we find our most significant clues in the things the world ignores. I sent this plant on its last stop before the garbage dump, not once but twice. I didn’t have patience for the things that required me to be transformed before I could perceive them.

This amaryllis plant became my teacher.

A series of blog posts (if I remember to write them) will describe what this plant taught me so far, including:

1. It’s not our lives that matter, dear friend, and we comfort each other once we have the strength to recognize this truth. And yet, when our lives produce an aroma like fresh bread, that strengthens another, God’s orchestra produced from the instruments of each life overwhelms the darkness. This symbolic orchestra is our hope.

2. Sometimes, God upturns the soil of our lives. This uprooting is chaotic for us and disorienting. But this is also where we find hope.

3. Where is God about to grow a new leaf in your life? We can never tell exactly where the amaryllis will sprout leaves, only that it will, eventually, despite all apparent odds, sprout. Everything living must grow.

Can you remove the rocks where He may be hovering over the waters or the soil, about to spout new life in you?

4. Do you need a friend who can help you lift the rocky burden that stops the new life from flourishing, where His Spirit is hovering? We need those who see in the Spirit when we are looking for our eyes on the ground next to us. We need a doula or a medical doctor to help us give birth. Journeying with others is safer for the life we carry. Who is on your team?

5. The thing that kept me awake at night back then, that my community and I pleaded with God to change, is the amaryllis that has grown through my softened heart this season. Noticing how God watered, tended and then showed us a new leaf sprouting in our past hopeless situations or dry amaryllis pots gives us faith for the next impossible thing He whispers.

God, give us faith for the hope you long to spring forth from our dry amaryllis pots. You have enough breaths from Your Spirit of guidance and encouragement for every seemingly hopeless situation. Give us eyes to see further than the mundane ordinary.

How To Be Brave At The Dentist’s And Doctor’s

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I was having considerable dental work done, about a 3-hour appointment.

I brought my audiobook so “I can pretend I’m somewhere else,” I told the dentist. I was listening to a dramatization of people who were persecuted and even martyred for their faith. That audiobook helped to put my own relatively minor suffering in perspective.

And yet, as the dentist said, “This is the part when I’m like a woodpecker,” and placed a metal rod on my teeth which he then proceeded to hammer on like a mallet, I felt slightly… uncomfortable.

I sensed Holy Spirit in the room, almost like He was sitting beside me, wanting to hold my hand.

It used to be surprising to me when God wanted to speak or envelope me in His love.

But not anymore.

At that moment, I briefly remembered some ridiculous things my daughter feared. One summer, for example, she was scared of house flies and would not go to the park or eat outside without screaming as this terrifying flying animal approached her. I brushed off her fears and told her to move on.

And yet that’s not how Holy Spirit treated me with my concerns, which are so tiny in the scope of life.

Every time the dentist gently smashed me in my face, I could sense my adrenaline rise, and then I could sense Jesus comforting me. Like a roller coaster constantly about to head uphill, he smoothed out the hills and valleys of this experience so that my roller coaster ride was less bumpy. As I fearfully clutched His hand, He calmed me repeatedly so that the essence of this experience was the peace of His comfort.

He seemed to be holding my hand.

When the ordeal was over, the dentist and dental assistant commented that dental work would be much easier if more patients were as calm as I was.

I couldn’t have been more shocked.

“Who, me?” I wondered, looking around.

God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.

The Message

And God, may I be the comforting presence to another’s fears next.

And so, what are the easiest ways to be brave at the dentist’s or doctor’s?

I have no idea, unfortunately, however three clues we can glean from this recent experience are:

1. Listen to audiobooks about people who die for a cause they believe in while people are deliberately maiming you. It helps! Try this one to get you started.

2. Practice picking up the clues of God’s presence in your life, and talk to a trusted friend about your questions and experiences.

3. Ask Him to comfort you and hold on tight when Jesus surprises you by showing up in your life.

God, may You comfort everyone reading this at their upcoming medical appointments more intimately with your soothing words, voice, and tangible arms of love. We pray for strength for today with the challenges each of us faces. Help us to learn how to more fully lean on You when life’s challenges come, we pray.

True Freedom For The Woman Is This (Join The Dance, Friend?)

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

She sat on the grass, picking wildflowers.

She danced alone in that grassy place.

Free.

My choice is you, God, first and only.
    And now I find I’m your choice!
You set me up with a house and yard.
    And then you made me your heir!

The Message

I waited in the lineup, laughing.

Then I danced on the speakers at the bar.

Free.

Love me, hold me, ‘cause I’m free to do what I want any old time. And I’m free to be who I choose any old time

The Soup Dragons and Junior Reid

What is true freedom, then?

The freedom we danced and sang of when I was a youth at the bar left many of us imprisoned, wrapped so tightly in our bondage that joy dissipated.

The constraints God defines for us bring us to that grassy place where true freedom and joy are found.

And I danced alone, outside in the field, to the music God sang in my heart again this morning.

Your God is present among you . . .
Happy to have you back, he’ll calm you with his love
    and delight you with his songs.

The Message

And so, what is best for the woman, dear friend?

Come.

I beckon you to this side of the fence, where true freedom and joy are found.

Have you found your dancing shoes yet?

Put them on! Come – let’s dance together, friend!

Joy awaits!

What are you waiting for?

God longs to delight in you, too, as you put your hand in his and follow Him on a journey.

The term Hephzibah is Hebrew for “my delight is in her.”

You’ll be called Hephzibah, my delight

The Message

Come and dance with us!

Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it? . . .

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.

Timothy Keller, The Reason For God

How To Defeat The Monster Of “Not-Enough-Time” Once and For All

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Is time clasping its fingers around your neck, too?

Does it tighten its grip so you struggle for breath now and then, too?

Do the fingers around your neck create fear that makes your every breath panicked, too?

And so, how do we fight the enemy of time?

Openly discussing our fears is the hand that removes this snake from around our neck for a while.

Why is time so scary?

We watch the snake slither next to us as we sit here on the sidelines, pondering the game of life.

It doesn’t look so big anymore as we see it now, here beside us.

It is not the kind of snake that can choke the life from us, a constrictor. It is a harmless, small snake, but its pressure, when wrapped around our necks, feels suffocating.

And so, how is your life going?

Let’s chat, be honest.

Did you shoot and nail every basketball into the hoops you aimed for when you were younger and your dreams were less tarnished?

If you did, how are you doing now, after the applause ended?

Just another one of us, a straggler in old rags, sitting by the side of the court, wondering what the game is all about?

Yeah, I hear you. I put my arm around you. Got any wisdom for the rest of us – the confused, discouraged, and hungry?

I’ve got one story. Here it is:

A dilemma confronted her. The dilemma woke her in the middle of the night. It was the calm, clear voice of her Lord.

Invite him to stay here, He said.

She was supposed to invite him to stay at her home. Nothing too extraordinary. Except that he was the leader of one of the most savage street gangs in New York. He was a bad guy, rotten to the core.

Or so everyone knew, and the track record of his life proved.

And she was the proverbial sweet old lady, tough as nails inside, under the veneer of an opulent mansion, her world in order.

Invite him to stay here.

No one else would let him into their home.

But she did.

True story.

This one act, this time at her home, was the safe respite, like a rest in Rivendell, that he needed as he journeyed away from Mordor. (Apologies to non-Lord of the Rings fans for this sentence).

He couldn’t go back to the streets. His old gang would kill him. But he was forging a new path that would lead him toward Jesus and to an international ministry speaking about his life’s events.

But this story isn’t about him.

It’s about the woman who invited him into her home.

She took a risk.

She obeyed God.

[He] protested, “Master, you can’t be serious. Everybody’s talking about this man and the terrible things he’s been doing, his reign of terror . . . !”

But the Master said, “Don’t argue. Go!”

The Message

Of course, we can never know this, but as a thought experiment, what if this ONE ACT redeemed an entire life?

This ONE ACT allowed millions to be touched and inspired by a life that otherwise could have vanished in the wind.

Poof.

It’s possible, again as a thought experiment, that in this ONE ACT of obedience, the fruit from a life was as expansive as the sand on a seashore.

And I step on the snake next to me, crush its head.

God told the serpent:
“Because you’ve done this, you’re cursed . . .
I’m declaring war between you and the Woman,
    between your offspring and hers.
He’ll wound your head,
    you’ll wound his heel.”

The Message

Time is no longer around my neck, squeezing me, leaving me gasping for breath.

I obey God.

I leave the results of my life up to Him.

I fly.

You?

Living Joyfully – Be A Liar, Nutcase, And Tyrant!?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

So one day I’m sitting on the couch, head in hands, overwhelm consuming me.

The next day I’m dancing.

What was the path that took me from there to here?

Good question!

I’m glad you asked.

Here are the key stepping stones that led me across the river, onto a narrower path, without so many hurdles.

1. Pretend to be sick when you aren’t

What I mean is, if a few sniffles and a “headache” can help your kids bring you tea, quietly close the door behind them, and get all their homeschooling work (mostly) done in a hurry to “help” you out, then isn’t that just a helpful parenting strategy?

Yes, they may play a few more video games that day, but sometimes we have to negotiate with the enemy (is there perhaps a more precise word here?)!

And how do we need fewer “emotionally unstable” or “sick” days? This is the obvious question we want to ask ourselves as the mature adults that we are. We don’t want to HAVE to lie (I prefer the term “play pretend”) to our kids quite so often. What I’ve learned is the following:

2. Try not to be such a nutcase

Oh, come ON, admit it! You ARE a nutcase, too! I haven’t met even ONE homeschooling parent, for example, who didn’t start this way.

We start our homeschooling adventure with our new homeschooling planners (I have paid up to $99.99 for mine – a VERY expensive calendar with a bunch of blank paper inside).

We ALL start with our new, sharp pencils and energy overflowing from within. We purchase a shiny new curriculum or textbook and dutifully divide the book into 36 weeks, the total number of weeks in a school year. When we have completed this exercise with our stack of texts, we wipe the sweat from our brow and think – GREAT! I know EXACTLY what my kids will be learning on March 16, next year!

We pour ourselves a martini and wait for the homeschooling year to start.

What we forgot is that we are teaching little Machiavellis.

We also forgot that we are nutcases, and unfortunately, for 99.999% of us, we OVER-estimated our kids and our energy levels after Christmas.

Plus, they STILL cry every day when we do math.

And we are still in our pyjamas.

Another “sick” day, anyone?

Noooooo! That’s not for you!

We listen. We reattach our ears. We get down on our knees and humbly beg our God to give us wisdom in parenting in exchange for the promises each curriculum provides (none of it works anyway).

We ask for ONE or maybe TWO areas of prayer for each child. Oh, and for us.

God’s priorities will not be those we choose for our kids. We prioritize hockey and extra math lessons so that EVERY KID born in this country will be in the NBA (or whatever the popular sports leagues are) and have myriad universities begging them to attend.

Instead, we humbly exchange our vanity, linked to our child’s successes, for God’s chosen priorities for them.

And His priorities for us are interior postures of the heart, a heart sickness within each of our kids, and in us to focus on. Lying? Selfishness? Bickering? Jealousy?

Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

The Message

The other stuff comes.

Look at our family. We stink at looking good when we are homeschooling, and yet even our children have astonishing accolades! Maybe that’s just because homeschooling kids give hope to our culture.

Whatever.

The point is that when they leave the house, you’ll suddenly realize it matters a lot more than you initially thought that your kids are kind instead of culturally amazing. And then the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree! Just like a clean house, exceptional kids lacking in character are DEFINITELY overrated.

3. Become a tyrant

It’s the kids who are born as tyrants, but if you become a tyrant, there is order in the home. Then the true skill we need to learn next is how to become a tyrant to ourselves. We need to grow in the skill of bossing OURSELVES around.

When we show up at a paid job, in our office clothes and clipboard, we say “Yes Ma’am!”, do what we are told, then come home exhausted and put our feet up.

But when we show up on our first day of homeschooling, for example, no terrifying boss threatens to fire us each day.

It’s easy for us and our kids to stay in our pyjamas.

Learning to manage our own time is a skill.

Shout out to Mystie Winckler, who helped me a lot here.

Essentially, what is the MINIMUM work that needs to get done by my kids and by me? CHECKING my kid’s work is MY JOB I need to do, whether I feel like it or not. How am I doing with that job?

And if you find you are in overwhelm again? No problem, dear friend.

1. Declare another sick day!

2. Pray a LOT!

3. Learn a couple of tangible skills to proactively manage the ship!

It’s all about rhythms, and this is your rhythm, Mom, Dad.

Don’t give up!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

The Dark Abyss Is Where Joy Can Be Found

/ Lori Lawe / 2 Comments

This is the hand that reached way, way down, clasped my own and lifted me up, up out of my self-induced pit.

It was a hand connected to a person who gave me a hug and a pat on the back. He told me He was pleased with me.

And then He asked me to go back to the trenches, back to where I was.

Why? Just because we are at war doesn’t mean our role is to give up the fight.

He put a slip of paper in my hand before he held out the rope to lower, lower me back down the pit, back down to the kids with their swirling needs and to a dog with multiple dietary discomforts.

When I returned to the couch and to the kids and the dog that day, I held the folded slip of paper He had given me in my hand.

I opened it carefully and somehow the room quieted in my soul, even through the sharp noises of bickering kids and an excited dog.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.

The Message

The words seemed to dissipate the storm cloud over my head. Was that sunlight breaking through? I looked up.

“Can you help me up off the couch?” I asked, looking up at Him. And He did.

And He tied my favorite shoes on my feet, the ones I thought I had lost. The shoes meant for dancing.

I already had my apron on, the one that I wear when I work.

And His gaze pointed to the next job, one that we would do together, Him at my side, the arm I held onto for balance.

And then, after the kids and I cleaned up a bit, and I cleaned myself up a bit, our homeschooling family read a book together on the couch.

The book I love that I longed to introduce to my children.

When she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to a teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used. For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.

That Distant Land by Wendell Berry

And then we did some math.

And when the kids were tucked into bed that night, after dreaming longingly of martinis for a while, I poured out my heart to God.

And He got a big red pen, the one that I use on my kids to edit their writing, and He edited my life.

This has got to go. This too. And this.

He gave me one or two things to focus on this season, one for each child and one for me.

And it got a little easier.

I was the one who needed to change, to tweak our homeschooling life so that joy could erupt through the cracks of the brokenness of our lives a little more often.

Thank you, God, for the hard times.

For only then am I broken and quiet enough for You to usher in my transformation.

Consider asking God what wounds He wants you to lift to Him so He can remove the bandaid to allow light to shine through the scar, blinding others so they too, may seek their healing.