When she was in the hospital, only a few days before her death, my fierce, feisty, incredible but aging grandmother fixed her intense blue eyes on me and said the one thing I never thought she would say.
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So it happened again.
I had a moment where I thought, “Wow! EVEN I didn’t know that! I’d better write that down!”
You see, I’ve been attending church for a LONG time, so there isn’t much I don’t already know!
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
Actually, the full truth is that there are many things I ONCE knew but then forgot, and had to be taught again, which is slightly different (technically speaking). And in fact, this is where most of my “new” information seems to come from as I’ve gotten a bit older.
For example, when I was a teenager, I proudly announced, “God, I surrender all that I have to You!”
A couple of decades later, I confessed to a mentor that I was having trouble surrendering everything to God. “It’s a lot easier to give God everything when you don’t have anything to give,” was her unperturbed quip. (Her comment was slightly insensitive, don’t you think?)
But she was older than me, so she had a lot more experience with knowing stuff, not applying it, forgetting it, and then trying to relearn it again.
And the same thing happened in church recently. Of course, I know ALL that stuff! But then the speaker that day asked us what it seemed God was nudging us to do, before our immediate response to God of: “Nah!”
That speaker then insulted me by insinuating that fear holds us back from stepping into the adventure Jesus leads us on.
Please! But after I got mad at that speaker, I later realized he was right. (Don’t tell my husband. That’s our most consistent “Marriage Pattern” too, but I prefer not to admit the latter half of that first sentence, so our stable “Power Balance” doesn’t get disrupted.)
The speaker then described the following fears that often hold us back from spiritual authenticity:
Author’s Spiritual Reflection And Wisdom: Ha! I would never be afraid of that! I was voted the best dressed in my red-neck high school, after all! I obviously have style and a certain “coolness” which I take GREAT PAINS and often feel compelled (for some reason?) to humbly hint at when I am with others!
Author’s Spiritual Reflection And Wisdom: I feel very spiritual and EVEN connected to God in the morning after I pray! However, if my kids or anyone else shows up in my life, then I always seem to be yelling at them against my (spiritual) will! That proves that it’s OTHERS, not ME, that make me behave badly.
I would be a great Christian if it wasn’t for all the people.
Adrian Plass in The Sacred Diary Of Adrian Plass Aged 37 3/4
(Author’s Comment: Exactly!)
Author’s Spiritual Reflection And Wisdom: Yes! For example, I didn’t tell you my exact address. (Besides the fact that you don’t care) I heard there was a mean person on the internet once! And also, why DO more Christians feel “called” to Hawaii more often than to the Democratic Republic of Congo? Well, we won’t know the answers to ALL of life’s riddles!
Author’s Spiritual Reflection And Wisdom: Yes! The dreaded fate of not many “Likes” as we project our egos on the internet! Terrifying! Good thing that I know that “I am deeply loved exactly as I am, eternally, by God’s grace.” Actually, I’m trying to relearn (or perhaps to learn?) this truth, which has been helping me recently to drastically cut back on self-medication through excess chocolate consumption at one sitting, but that is another story for another time.
Hey! I can’t share ALL my wisdom at once! As mentioned at the beginning of this article, I’ve been going to church a LONG TIME, so OBVIOUSLY I know a lot of stuff!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
As the song below asks, “Why are you so afraid to fail?” can you (Just for a moment, and not aloud if that’s impossible) admit to God that fear MAY just be holding you back a teensy bit, too, friend? And then, as she sings, “Why are you so afraid to lose if all the love you ever dreamed of already belongs to you?” what do you sense God whispering to your heart?
Christ has set us free to live a free life
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I know why you couldn’t sleep last night, tossing and turning.
I know why you are looking at me wide-eyed and wondering how you can live your life authentically.
I didn’t publish a blog post last Friday like I usually do, and THEREFORE, your normal rhythms for coping through life have been disrupted because I didn’t tell you how to live your life this weekend!
But first, I will explain why I didn’t write a blog post.
It was because I was busy. What was I doing? Remember in this blog post when I mentioned that our Pastor is a crazy nutcase because he travels to politically volatile places?
The places he visits for a fun vacation are some of the poorest countries on earth, riddled with civil war, genocide and other stuff we don’t like to think about because we need to get to Walmart and back before the ball game starts and if we think about other stuff, we may forget to buy all the snacks we need for the game. We all have a lot of things going on and to think about already – Thank you very much!
Anyway, while we were busy cleaning out our garage last week, I suddenly thought, “Why not join our Pastor on one of these trips to an unstable country?”
So, that’s why I didn’t write a blog post. Our Pastors had to talk me off the window ledge of my fear to jump into the unknown*. Should we go to the place where the worst day there is EVEN WORSE than my worst day, for example?
When I researched one of these countries, it seemed EVEN MORE DANGEROUS than our family vacation to Disneyland last year!
During that vacation, we got stranded in a shady area of Los Angeles, and no Ubers came because it was the night of the Oscars and they were busy driving celebrities. Luckily, an LA city bus driver held the bus and waited for us for 20 minutes until we could connect with another ride because the bus driver didn’t want us left alone there (How sweet!). So don’t worry, Mom! (She reads this blog.)
And so, what is the simple life hack to losing fear?
Find someone who is doing something stupid, and mindlessly follow them!
Since you are doing something scary, you no longer have to fear your fear!
So, our motto this weekend is:
Another helpful thought for you to mull over as you continue to ponder this topic of losing fear is to consider the second reason why I didn’t write a blog post this weekend. It was because I spent many hours binge-watching a new historical period drama this weekend. So, another motto for this weekend is:
Choose your motto with whichever one fits best, and remember to read every blog post so I can help you live your life more authentically!
P.S. – There’s probably a third motto for how to shake fear and live authentically, but I haven’t figured that one out yet.
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Footnotes
*There is not civil war in that country right now, as there was when these events happened to Chrissy Chapman, so it’s likely not quite as unsafe as I’m pretending it is, but stay with me for the emotional effects of this blogpost that I’m trying to create.
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She was a shell. She was skinny, sickly, and often lost in her little world.
Her stomach racked her in pain. Friends were elusive. She was unhappy, never having exploded in childhood giggles that should have been her right.
My husband and I oscillated between worry and confidence that she would grow out of “this.” One of us, either he or I, carried the ball of fear for this child. The ball never went away.
Occupational and physical therapists dribbled through our home – in and out – like a constant stream, reminding us that something wasn’t quite “right.” The ball of concern for our child, which we took turns carrying, grew heavier.
Doctors punctuated our lives.
An exclamation point with a specialist doctor in September. A question mark with that prominent city specialist who visited in April. The regular full stops of our home doctor, where “many” childhood milestones were missed, again, were a part of the regular background noise.
The cloud of “something” felt suffocating.
It was hard to breathe.
And doctors get so concerned nowadays. Our other daughter was told she “might” have a problem detectable only by modern medicine (pulmonary stenosis!), and yet that asymptomatic “problem” mysteriously resolved itself only a few years later.
“Would the same thing happen with this other daughter?” I wondered on the days when my husband carried our ball of worry.
And then it happened.
God’s voice was carried by the wind of the Spirit that day as I chatted with a friend about her struggling child.
“Try it.”
What now? I looked around, wondering if I had heard right. My heart sensed my Father’s love for me and my daughter as He spoke. Was I imagining things, though?
“Could you repeat that?” I asked
Nothing. Stillness. Quiet.
Had I heard correctly?
I had been learning that God speaks when we remember to attach our spiritual ears. I bent down to look for my spiritual ears which seemed to have fallen off again. Had He spoken?
At the moment that I wondered if God was nudging me, my good friend had been talking about a special diet – Yes, a special diet – that she was preparing for her son, who had developmental delays.
Diet?
But that’s not what the specialists EVER recommended!
But that was what was working for him. I felt God was asking me to try this same approach. Would I obey?
And so, how are we led on God’s specific, chosen path for our lives and families that usher in His healing?
That’s it.
And oh – our daughter was healed. But that’s a story for another time.
By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. . . . As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
An additional fun result of following Jesus where He leads is buried within the quote above if our eyes are open – Intimacy with God! Wow.
As the song below plays, ask Holy Spirit, “What is the ONE NEXT step, or person you want me to ask advice from, regarding this problem in my life that is literally burning a hole in my gut?”
God:
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Previously, we talked about the fear that sometimes descends over our culture like an unwelcome blanket, smothering us. And yet, we cling to our fear as a self-soothing exercise. We are used to it
How do we throw away the fear that always seems to linger on our hands, like unwanted gum we are trying to put in the trash?
We can’t entirely eradicate fear.
The reality is that we are tiny little people, and who knows? A comet may arrive in ten minutes, throwing us into another ice age like it did for the dinosaurs. Then we’re hooped!
But this, ironically, like all my best advice, is where we find some of our hope.
What if we didn’t fear “death” (I said THE word!) QUITE so very much?
It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives
This one fear, the fear of death, instead of being a blanket that twists itself around our neck, strangling us, is the one fear that can ultimately comfort us.
For example, it doesn’t matter to me whether I get two likes or one like on a post (No, that wasn’t 2,000 likes or 1,000 likes – Why do you ask?) when I remember that one day, I will die.
So, one of the best ways to eliminate a bunch of our lingering fears, it turns out, is to confront the biggest, most terrifying fear looming in our bellies’ most bottomless pit.
It’s to confront our mortality.
So, how do we recognize our mortality, though we (kind of) don’t want to?
When we realize that we are resting in the palm of our Saviour’s hand and that His love is the warm blanket that comforts us, we find we can sleep a bit easier, and this life is a little easier to live.
But what if we’re having trouble grasping hold of God as we clench our frightened fists around His Spirit, grasping for something to hold onto?
What if we reach out to touch God, and our fingers, instead, only close around thin air?
Well, let’s return to something I learned in university while wrestling most deeply with this question. (Don’t you find that you thought more interesting things in university? These days, the thing I seem to think about most is when I can next grab some deep-fried chicken or chocolate cheesecake.)
When I wrestled most deeply with this question at University, the philosophical argument called Pascal’s Wager, was a great balm to my soul.
Here it is, summarized. A fuller version can be found here:
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (…) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.
As the song plays, consider asking God, “Am I afraid of the right things?” When we face our fear of death, a most surprising thing happens. Other fears seem to fly away somewhere!
Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now?
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When she was in the hospital, only a few days before her death, my fierce, feisty, 89-and-a-half-year-old grandmother fixed her intense blue eyes on me and said the one thing I never thought she would say.
“Lori,” she said, “I never thought this would happen so soon!”
She was talking about death.
My mind was like one of those old-fashioned calculators that was overheating, trying all different ways to understand what she was saying to me. In the end, was she saying that she was 89 and a half years old and hadn’t figured out that she could die soon? Yup.
That’s exactly what she said.
Of course, the fact that we die was not a truth that my grandmother was wholly unaware of. This fact approached her through all the deaths she witnessed during the Great Depression and the Second World War. However, this knowledge seemed to approach her from the side, not head-on. Unfortunately, she suffered from anxiety in her long life and feared a lot of stuff. But she was too busy fearing other stuff to remember to fear everything!
And so, you’re probably afraid of the wrong things, too.
You cringe at home, cornered up against the wall, afraid. I know. I can see you.
Actually, I can’t see you, but we all kind of live that way.
Sometimes, it feels like a blanket of fear settles over us all. And this fear comforts us somehow, just like a blanket comforts us from the cold. The only problem is that as it comforts, it also eats away at our souls, destroying us.
I pondered how to avoid fear as I read the book The Night The Angels Came about missionary Chrissie Chapman, who chose to spend her life in war-torn Burundi instead of peaceful Britain.
One day, she had a really bad week.
It was a bad week in a way that our first-world minds can’t really wrap our heads around. For example, her child was kidnapped. Yup. Seriously. That same week, a grenade was accidentally thrown into their yard as civil war was fought outside their house, and a gunshot bent the frame of her bedroom window.
Then, she was held up at gunpoint for a bag of rice due (in part) to food scarcity.
I look downstairs at my freezer, which is full of food, and I can’t remember what’s in it. So, I have a hard time relating to food scarcity. What a privileged culture we live in, in so many ways.
And yet, I know precisely how author Chrissie Chapman feels because I’ve had bad weeks, too!
I’ve had a bad week where fear was like a blanket, wrapping itself around my neck and choking me, too.
For example, one day this summer there was a clear blue sky, and the birds were singing. I live in peaceful rural North America, where the deer that eat my tulips are the most irritating intruders. (Why? Why do they have to do that?)
And yet, as I looked around, my heart was a cancer full of fear, consuming me.
What about those things in the news that might happen? What about that stuff I read on social media that might occur? And the worst question is, What if I’m worried about the wrong things?
So, as illustrated in the paragraph above, I can exactly relate to Burundian author Chrissy Chapman and her fears!
I’m just like her because my (peaceful) world makes me feel afraid, too!
And so how do we throw off the blanket of suffocating fear?
Let’s talk about that next Tuesday in Part 2 of this post.
For now, let’s constantly ponder . . . (that thing we never think about, that we all pretend will never happen).
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Shhh. . . but:
(You learn more at a funeral than at a feast)
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So we decided to take surfing lessons in our summer holidays this year.
I had never tried surfing on the ocean before, but as you know, I tried surfing for the first time behind a surf boat on a lake this summer.
As I was putting on my wetsuit for my first ocean surfing lesson yesterday, I was surprised that our group consisted of about two dozen teenagers, with my husband and me. We have kids their age. There were three parents nearby.
“I’m glad at least there are a few parents,” I whispered to my husband.
He nodded appreciatively. The parents didn’t suit up. They were there to watch.
“Should we be concerned about that?” my huband and I asked each other silently.
I wasn’t quite sure of the wisdom of this whole surfing gig, even without the fact that this seemed to be a teen activity. As you know, I spent a month this fall in bed with a back problem. Was this really wise?
I felt God whisper to try, to do less of the lesson, but to give it a go.
Also, the pain specialist said that often, people get stuck and won’t do anything new after their injury. Their backs freeze up, and they get stuck in cycles of every-more-limited mobility.
I don’t want to be constrained by fear.
The surfing lesson was super fun! Except I did have to ask one of the teens to help me carry my surfboard down to the beach because it was too heavy for me, and I didn’t want to explain about having a sore back last fall lest one of them ask, “Lady, what the heck are you doing in a surf lesson then???” But apart from the minor hiccups, it was great fun!
My husband said we should continue to do this kind of stuff, meaning that we should push ourselves outside of the limits that we set for ourselves, i.e. as non-surfers. I agree with his philosophy. Before the trip, he said, “This will be a great trip because we have aspirin!”
But this got me thinking about midlife crises.
The teen instructor asked us, “What made you want to get into surfing?”
“Trying to avoid a midlife crisis?” I offered.
But there may be some truth in expanding our horizons a little bit and in allowing ourselves some room to grow to avoid a midlife crisis.
So here are some thoughts on avoiding a midlife crisis:
Why be satisfied with our old identities and a boring turkey sandwich when God offers us His world to soar into, friend?
Ready yet for adventure?
After gabbing it up with my teenage daughter as they waited in line that day, the stranger grabbed my arm and whispered, “You did a great job with her. She is so kind. Well done, Mama.”
After I picked my ego up off the floor, where it has been the last two decades, trampled by societal expectations for a productive life (Hint – Homeschooling is not a candidate in this employment contest), I pinned my self-esteem back onto my chest, and thought, “Yes! You are right! She IS amazing!”
But the thing is, she didn’t come out of the womb this way
Even after 10,893,231 conversations in which I turned blue in the face and explained how to fit into society (i.e. NOT by wearing pasta in our hair when in a restaurant), she STILL wasn’t that easy to be around.
The POINT is that homeschooled kids are often well-adjusted because:
(1) Parents KNOW what is going on, in terms of that naughty behaviour we would rather not deal with, but that we have to address because we are spending 10,000 minutes (almost all the time) with them again this week,
(2) Parents can’t ship them off on a bus every morning, even BECAUSE they know what is going on (They would say “Thank God” if they would go on a bus SOMETIMES), and,
(3) Parents are confronted day after day, hour after hour, minute after long minute some days with the FACT that they are spending INORDINATE amounts of time with unsanctified humans.
Worse, parents are confronted with the reality of OUR need for sanctification, and this is humiliating for us. So, we run to God and beg for help on our knees BECAUSE we are ALL such desperate losers. But the sweat and tears of our prayers eventually sanctify our kids BECAUSE they receive this message of grace through our lives, as God sanctifies us.
Translation: We ADMIT we parents are losers, and then we gently reveal the truth to our child that she, too, did the wrong thing again when she smacked that kid on the head with her firetruck because she wanted HIS cupcake too.
But this grace in our lives, this deep understanding of our need for forgiveness, softens our speech a little.
do not provoke your children . . . by the way you treat them
And this broccoli seasoned with the melted cheese of our own desperate need for forgiveness becomes a food our kids can swallow.
And we both grow a little more today, our plant’s roots grasping a little more of the water that truly satisfies, and so fruit in our lives and our kid’s lives will begin to grow.
It’s a law of nature.
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.
And when they compliment you again for having kind kids?
You can sit back, relax, take a sip of a cold summer drink and know that the path of life you chose was a good one, which is bearing fruit in your life, too.
Pick some fruit from the tree of your life and enjoy it today.
Well done, Mom and Dad.
God sees your investment in your kids. His praise that you followed His lead is the food that truly satisfies. Nothing good comes without sweat and handing over our fears to God.
How are you choosing to invest your life?
We were discussing the more profound things of life, unearthing the cultural assumptions that keep us in bondage.
And this is what she said: “Homeschooling gave me the confidence to try new things.”
She said it matter-of-factly, confidently, as if she believed it. She was homeschooled, and then homeschooled her kids. So she had many years to mull over homeschooling.
I was struck by her confidence and creativity to try new things, but she brushed me off, attributing these traits to being homeschooled. For example, she is a self-taught photographer and took these photos of our daughter, assuring us that her red dress would “pop” in the pictures at this location. She was right.
She explained her homeschooling philosophy to me as her camera clicked, “When you are homeschooled, there aren’t as many kids hovering over you, making fun of you for trying something different. So I felt free to try new things.”
She painted her family’s camping trailer with flowers and a mountain scene and then was commissioned by her city to paint a mural.
“I’m mostly self-taught,” she explains, but she’s having fun, exploring the talents God endowed her with, instead of burying them in fear, as so many of us accidentally do.
“I was afraid I might disappoint you . . .”
(Jesus) was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live!”
But we’d rarely seen another way.
She reminds me of my kids, who are also homeschooled.
For example, today, our family is in Salt Lake City, Utah, attending a “Reborn” doll conference.
Our 15-year-old daughter had the confidence and time to explore the God-given gifts endowed to her, too
Last week, she sold one of her dolls overseas for over $400.
“I didn’t know you could do that!” I exclaimed from my public-schooled worldview.
She didn’t know either.
But she’s not afraid to try.
Our other daughter wrote and self-published a novel by the time she was 15 years old.
What would we do if we weren’t afraid to try?
I would keep writing even though you may laugh at me. How is God calling you to awaken? What do you imagine the next step is on the life adventure He has mapped out for you?
Ready to take another step, friend?
Let’s hold hands because I’m afraid, too.
I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.
The definition of courage is NOT “Not being afraid” but “Doing it anyway.”
What is God whispering to you?
What’s the next step?
Let’s go!
She rejoiced.
It happened!
She danced in the field that summer morning, praising her maker.
What He promised, quietly, with a whisper of love, that He would guide and comfort, HAD materialized.
Here is what happened.
At the women’s gathering that day long, long ago, this good mother poured out her heart to another.
The tears racked her body as she openly shared her fears.
Generational problems pursued her family. Her grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, sister, and auntie bathed in the pool of these problems. None of them had figured out how to get out of this pool, dry off, to dance in that grassy place in freedom.
They all felt like they were drowning instead.
How would her relationship with her daughters differ from what was experienced by every other family member?
The despair of this situation overwhelmed her.
They bowed their heads, these two women, and prayed together that day so many long years ago.
And God spoke, in the recesses of this desperate mother’s heart, a strategy and plan to walk in freedom, step by step, to carve out a new path from the dysfunctional road all her family member walked.
I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
And she was joined in marriage to a man who also longed to walk a new path, the one that Jesus walked ahead of them and beckoned them to follow.
And they did.
And years later, when their first child leaves home, they look back with a cool drink and remember the pain and branches across the path of the road they followed Jesus on. They remembered their hair and clothes full of the pieces of branches, yet their hearts grew larger each day as they learned, through following Him, how to love a little less selfishly, and pour more of their lives out on the other.
And He healed their union, their diversion from the path the others in their family travelled, with a different destination.
Their relationships with their children were healthy.
Not perfect.
Each member of this small family worked through and argued past, chopped chunks off each other, as a sculptor does to a piece of art.
But their path led to healthier relationships.
This couple celebrated the new lineage of increased unity that bonded their family, as they were all refined by this artist, Jesus.
And they danced together in that grassy meadow, this small family, for something new had risen from the depths into life.
Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?
Blogpost Footnotes
*Also known as “God”
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