Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone we trust could suddenly appear in each of these circumstances, offer us their hand and point us to the best path?
Wouldn’t it be outstanding if that person never tired or gave up on us but offered grace and strength and sometimes even rubbed our aching feet as we rested?
Wouldn’t it be wondrous if this person was always by our side, could be leaned on when we lacked strength and helped to calm the chaos in our lives?
Any of us would give the world to find someone like this.
The substitute people that we esteem so highly instead, including movie stars, sports heroes, self-help experts and billionaires, eventually fall off their pedestals, and we trample them in our disappointment.
But wait . . .
Before we choose another human we highly esteem to take their place (someone with eventual skeletons in their closet, too), let’s pause and reassess . . . for just a moment.
Is there anyone who can be trusted, admired and in some ways, even followed?
I woke up one morning and realized with a start that I was also alive spiritually. I poked myself to be sure I was awake. I was the same on the outside.
What had caused this inner transformation?
My circumstances were the same. I lived in the exact physical location as many years ago. But undoubtedly, something had shifted recently.
Like all births, the growth had begun unnoticed in the hidden places long before.
My story of waking up is a long story of twisting paths, walking in circles, and many falls.
This morning, my rear felt particularly sore from all the falls recently. Jesus held his hand to me again today, offering to help me get up.
I’ll start there.
I woke this morning in a cyclical funk created by my discouragement. I was spiralling down, ready to flush the new thing God had been stirring in my heart down the toilet of my despair again. Then I heard a quiet thought encouraging me.
You are in the fight of your life.
(Would I jump into the battle or claim immediate defeat, like usual, keeping my soul asleep?)
I was in a fight for God’s whisperings to be brought forth like a new babe into the world. But I had to surrender my half-eaten lunch. Would I obey?
Would I throw away my hope that God can grow something beautiful through the dry depleted soil of my life again today?
Would my discouragement win?
The question is not how big is our faith. The question is, how big is our God? I shrunk God, again, into my image.
And so I was asleep.
I awoke when reminded in a time of prayer this morning of this truth:
The impossible thing He whisperers that he wants to bring forth in our lives is easy for Him.
How exactly this discouragement transformed into hope is a story for another time.
But for now, suffice it to say that I was reminded that God made an amaryllis bloom after twenty years or more of bareness.
And He made a lilac bloom after ten years or more of barrenness.
And so He can make our lives bloom after seasons of bareness, too.
We begin to wake spiritually every day by opening our spiritual eyes.
Here’s how:
We fix our spiritual eyes on God, the master gardener of hope, instead of keeping our eyes closed by focusing on our bareness.
We open our eyes to the fact that harvest will come for every field, including that unwatered corner of our hearts if we allow the Master Gardener to work His ways within.
We wait, not passively, but prayerfully, with anticipation, like a farmer planting seed in fertile soil.
This subtle shift in my thinking helped me soar on the wind of hope I found this morning. I picked up the hope. I carried it next to my heart.
For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
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.
God is standing next to us with seeds, a shovel and a watering can. He wants to dig deep, exposing old roots to create room for new growth. I want to get out of the way to allow Him to do his work.
You?
While waiting for life to sprout, consider praying along to this song.
This song begins like the prayer of a person who doesn’t honestly believe what they’re praying (like many of many prayers over the years):
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
The song ends in a loud declaration of the exact words, daring the soul to believe.
Time for a battle for you, too, as you pray along to this song?
What is He saying to you through the pages of His book, asking you to have faith to believe?
“Wait, what are you doing right now?” he asked me.
I was melodramatically pretending to cry as the youth left the party.
“Oh, I’m just pretending I’m sad to see him leave,” I explained. “I made fun of him a lot tonight, and so now I’m building up his self-esteem.” The youth listened, mouth agape, staring at me.
As I’ve said before, my magnetism to youth is remarkable.
But unfortunately, we’re not supposed to make fun of millennials anymore. In fact, we’re not supposed to make fun of anyone anymore. So, at the next party, I tried to conform.
I stuffed snack after snack into my mouth in an effort not to speak.
The problem is that if we really want to do this self-esteem thing right, we shouldn’t say anything true at all. Millennials, for example, have self-esteem that is 1/4 inch thick. If we accidentally blow the truth in their vicinity, they cry or get upset. “How dare you assault me with the truth?” they retort. “Don’t you know I’m sensitive?”
And so we apologize and cower to the needs of their egos.
“You’re doing great!” we assert, every time they look up from their iPhones or get out of bed.
“I can see you are trying to do some math! You get a star!”
“You ran in a race that you didn’t even train for? You get a medal! Everyone gets a medal!”
And with all of this self-esteem and encouragement, and “Well done!” floating around, you’d think our youth would be boyoed up by all this praise and floating happily on their circumstances in life.
Of course, we all know that youth depression and mental illness are at an all-time high.
So why not try another approach?
What if we tell everyone they’re losers?
It’s counterintuitive (like all my best advice), but we can finally let our stomach fat out and relax! We can stop pretending to be someone we’re not. We can get on with enjoying the party games, popcorn and time together.
“What are you talking about?” you ask.
Well, if we could relax and let our kids relax, I think we’d have a lot more fun. We don’t have to, in fact, shield our kids from the fact that they’re messed up and that we are, too. There is surprising freedom in realizing that we are all losers.
Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us.
Once we stop showering accolades on each other, and accept that we are all dorks, lost on the ship we call life, the adventure can begin!
Anyone around here seen a Captain? We could certainly use some help getting cleaned up a bit, and figuring out how to work together to get all of our oars on this boat pulling in the same direction.
And so, how do we feel better?
1. We realize we are a directionless loser.
2. We find someone to help clean us up a bit.
3. We follow this person and therefore, all grow together in the same direction.
He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
Our neighbour at the lake was working on his house.
He told us the story of running out of roofing screws. Now, where we live, we can’t walk or even drive 10 minutes to the hardware store to buy supplies. We must wait until the intense storm on the lake has passed (insert dramatic music here) before attempting to dodge large waves in a small boat to get to the other side.
(It’s not that bad most of the time – It could be a lovely kayak in sunny weather, but you get my point).
Anyway, THEN, you have to pay money to park your boat, or get the trailer and take it out of the water. Then there’s the 20-minute drive to civilization. Picking up supplies is a significant hassle. Being lake people, we share stuff.
So, I offered to share.
“Well, anytime you want a screw, just come on over,” I offered helpfully, smiling.
(Yep. True story. Anyway, back to the tale.)
The man and his grown son burst into laughter. My husband turned and walked away. The wife stared at me with her head cocked to one side, trying to discern if I had always had a significant head injury.
But the most facinitating part of this story was my inability to see.
I literally meant roofing screws, of course. And I rationalized all of the hints that I had said something askew. When the man and his son burst into laughter, I reasoned, “Must be an inside joke.”
When my husband suddenly left, I blamed him by assuming he was in a bad mood. When the wife stared at me, I internally rationalized that too. “An interesting bird behind me?” I reasoned, also looking over my shoulder.
I was seeking evidence that fit my worldview.
The point is that I couldn’t see the clues. I wouldn’t see the clues. How often I do that in other areas of life is the question that keeps me up at night.
Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”
How are we worse than blind and UNWILLING to see the truth?
To avoid humiliating ourselves again, or worse, to avoid missing out on God showing up in our lives, consider three ways to prevent willful blindness:
Notice the clues. Why did everyone behave strangely (a clue!) after my comment? Similarly, could God speak through the clues of another’s spiritual experience?
Ask for help. My husband gave me the key that opened the door to a more nuanced understanding of my comment. Similarly, others sometimes hold the key to our spiritual growth.
Expect the unexpected. Did I, the caricature of Ned Flanders from the Simpsons, speak with sexual innuendo to a random neighbour? Of course! Did God speak to you? Of course!
Holy Spirit, remove the blinders we construct, carefully keeping You out of our lives. Help us to BE WILLING to see the obvious, we pray. As I finally saw the truth of my speech faux pas, Jesus, help us finally see, with fresh insight, how You are at work in our lives today, we pray.
After a moment of quiet, considering asking God, “How am I blind?”
Like a well-trained doctor who assesses your symptoms and states with certainty your sickness, I (though not trained in this stuff at all*) also state with certainty your malady:
And before we begin, I must start by saying I am well aware that, for some reason that I do not quite understand, when I give excellent advice on how to live your life, you say things like, “That’s funny!” And thus, sometimes you laugh at the wrong times or things. And yet, despite this blatant persecution, misjudgment and bullying (what’s the difference?) I will continue giving my sage advice.
To get your belly laughs warmed up, here are some unusual things my brain has noticed lately.
Advice #1: How To Rise And Shine With Enthusiasm Every Day!
I hate my alarm clock.
The little “chirp, chirp” sound startles me, so the last time I went camping, I found myself swearing loudly at 4 am at the little birdies chirping in the trees outside, thinking they were my blasted alarm clock. My cussing woke the other campers, who were still glaring at me over their thick campfire coffee brew several hours later. Why do they make “bird chirp sound” as an option on alarm clocks anyway?
If they REALLY wanted me to get out of bed quickly in the morning, they would make an alarm clock that makes the sound my dog makes just before he throws up beside my bed.
Advice #2: How to Enjoy Marital Bliss, Even When You Feel (Just A Little Bit) Like Choking Your Spouse!
Certified professionals, the ones that charge $160/hr – who knows why? Is it just because they have training?* – often say annoying things like “Talk about your problems.” That only backfires from my experience. How do you have marital bliss? Keep your mouth shut! Follow the saying:
“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half closed after that!”
So, for example, if your spouse keeps running out of gas (I speak in idioms – NOT that anyone you know would ever do this!), make sure that “gasoline” is one of those words that must NEVER be mentioned! Except when he runs out of gas next time, the word “gasoline” can be used as ammunition for why you should win the next disagreement! Trust me!
It works!
Advice #3: How To Be Attractive, Even When You Are Getting A Bit Older!
With back pain, showering or brushing your teeth can be difficult.
Yet, do this if at all you think you can!
(Also remember to take the laxative EARLIER in the day so that the house doesn’t smell as bad at night when you and your spouse are relaxing and enjoying a romantic evening at home together!)
Advice #4: How To Choose The Best Pet That Fits Your Family Perfectly!
How long does it take for the excitement of a new puppy, or bunny or pony, to wear off, and then the kids return to cratering their iPhones like a newborn baby while we entice our kids to PLEASE take poor Alfred for a walk and to brush his mangy hair! And yet, buying pets is what good parents do, and we want to be like everyone else!
So the next time one of our children wanted another animal, I surprised myself by confiding to the clerk at the pet store when my child was out of earshot:
I was shocked when the notification blared its announcement.
I was in the top 3% of users of a new nutrition app I was using.
The TOP 3%.
Everyone else (or 97% of people – whatever! – stay with me!) had already given up.
Now, I have to back up a bit to explain.
As you know, and have been forever changed by, I wrote a riveting blog post series last fall on weight loss. (To my editor: Why DIDN’T anyone read those posts, anyway?)
I have been (more or less) within the healthy weight range (basically – okay!) for my entire life, which has been no small feat.
However, when following my advice failed me, I decided to switch it up and buy a nutrition app. Truthfully, I am constantly trying new approaches and programs and learning a bit more about implementing healthy habits, which is the point of this post. But I’m not talking about that right now.
I’m talking about the notification that startled me.
I thought I was the ultimate failure in using this nutrition app. Check this out. The photo below is an actual graph of my progress over two months, showing NO improvement in achieving my ideal weight.
None.
There are normal fluctuations, but the graph of this line is flat.
Same, same, samers.
I immediately unsubscribed to the “encouragement” texts accompanying this app because so many people complained in a way I could not comprehend.
“I only lost 5 pounds this month!” they would complain.
Huh?
I hadn’t lost anything, so I could not relate.
But I kept going with the program.
And the results EVENTUALLY paid off. EVENTUALLY. I lost 10 pounds recently and feel a lot better.
And I believe the results would have also paid off for many, many other app users.
If only they kept trying.
And now, we’ll switch gears to talk about God, but it’s not changing gears, because the concept is the same.
MOST PEOPLE GIVE UP TOO SOON IN THEIR SEARCH FOR GOD
Is it annoying people that keep you away from your search for God? Get over them! (Get over yourself too, but that’s for when you are MUCH more spiritually sanctified and you realize that you are a loser too!)
Is God distant, just out of reach? You’re on the right path. God hides Himself as a critical component of his character.
He is not a dictator, shouting orders and wanting us to go off somewhere and obey every minute detail of his complicated directives. He longs to walk WITH us on this journey we call life. He wants us to WANT to want Him.
And so, right now, He is bending down low but right next to you. Will you reach out, tag his back, and say, “Gotcha!”
Will you seek Him?
If we don’t give up, even though most people do, and keep walking forward, following where we last saw his footsteps and carving out time in our busy day to sit with Him, unhurried, if we read his word, and ask others what it means even when we don’t understand it, then we will find God.
He’s waiting for you right now, holding out His hand to you.
And so, what is the one valuable ingredient to lose weight and find God?
Perseverance.
There’s more to come . . . keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.
Hunger for Jesus attracts the manifest (felt) presence of His Spirit. Does your hunger for God outweigh your discouragement? He’ll help you up, point you in a new direction, lighten the weight on your feet, help you soar.
Don’t give up just before your breakthrough, friend.
When we were five years old, we thought everyone was laughing AT us until we suddenly realized they were laughing WITH us.
Remember that?
Well, that happened to me recently. I’m unsure which side of the laughing AT me/ laughing WITH me continuum I ended up on. But at least my rear end isn’t THAT sore from the fall.
This story starts, like all good narratives, with dog barf.
So after the dog… ahem… expelled his undesirable digestive remains (well said?) . . . we looked around at each other, wondering what to do next. We were enjoying heartfelt gut-level sharing. I guess the dog wanted to join in in his own way.
We only had a few minutes left together and desperately needed time to pray together, to invite God into the messes of our lives that had been unearthed.
Thinking that we won’t have time to pray, I fetched paper towels to clean up the mess the dog had unearthed. Someone pleaded with me to stay. “Let’s pray together while we have time,” he said.
At another’s brilliant suggestion, I quickly covered the dog’s mess with paper towels, and we stood in a circle, sharing hearts, tears and compassion.
“Don’t step in the dog barf on your way out!” I called cheerfully.
They genuinely thanked me for the reminder, side-stepped the soaked paper towels, and left with a wave and a smile.
Years later, our dear friends complimented us about that meeting.
“Recently, we were learning about the levels of friendship,” they explained. “There are friends that you dress up for. You wear a corset under your sparkling dress to ensure you look as good as possible. You enjoy an evening with them and then put your feet up. Your stomach fat and your real selves come out later.”
Who needs another “See how great I look when I suck in my stomach” kind of friend?
“Then,” she continued, “you have the friends who invite you onto their couch when you are crying and simply move the laundry hamper to the floor so there is room for you to sit down. These are true friends.“
I teared up at her warm assessment of our friendship.
I was about to hug her, but she was still speaking.
“And you guys took it to a whole new level. We come over, and you just suggest walking around the dog barf”. The others in the room stared at us, mouths agape, not wanting to ask for elaboration. I didn’t blame them.
But yes, a compliment . . . right???
And so the secret to a healthy relationship? Get real. We get real because we want to be authentic.
1. Authentic in how we REALLY look. For example, we don’t use the “Make me look better than in real life” filters on our Zoom meetings. (Have you SEEN that function? It’s AMAZING! I WANT to turn that filter off but wow! Do I EVER look better!) Give me a break! We are all a work in progress, ok?!
2. Authentic in how we REALLY feel. For example, maybe we ask our friends to clean up the dog barf later. What we just unearthed emotionally or spiritually is a lot viler and should take precedence.
3. Authentic in our RESPONSE to our friends. We are humans clothed in the limits of time. We can clean up the dog’s barf or clean up you. Which do you prefer?
So, let’s get real.
And if that sometimes means standing around dog barf, so be it.
As a dog eats its own vomit, so fools recycle silliness.
This saying doesn’t quite fit this post, but it perfectly fits in another, less profound way. Let’s go with a partial fit today and move on. There is someone at my door ready for a cry.
Lord, teach us to order our values to reflect your heart more accurately. After a moment of stillness, consider asking God where your life may not be aligned with the upside-down priorities of the kingdom of God. Maybe He is asking you to stand around the dog barf, too!
“Well, there is a bit more,” she explained. The plant was in the winter season. All that could be seen were a few branches poking above the ground.
Sounded like my life at that moment.
“But spring is coming,” she encouraged me. I picked up my discouragement and continued walking on this ill-marked path that it seemed God was leading me down, wondering if, in the future, sometime, there would be fruit.
Come here every morning, God seemed to whisper.
So I sat each day in my office chair, which seemed to be on fire because it was so uncomfortable to sit in. You want me to write, I clarified? I don’t see myself the way God sees me.
How do you want to work within my life, Jesus?
It seemed I had to follow Him to find out.
But I was learning to walk in obedience, even if I was blind to where we were going. I sat with Him each day long enough for my discouragement to be appeased by a God who knows who I was created to be. Could I learn to trust that if he can use other losers He can use my tattered, edited pages, too?
God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it . . . by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
I look back in awe at where He has been leading me. People from 23 countries so far have read the neurotic ramblings of a spiritually intense person, walking in circles but seeking God and falling and getting up again. And since people from so many countries are reading this blog, this is how we can know my life has meaning!
But He does take our pathetic gardening efforts and redeem them to give strength to each other.
God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure it had nothing to do with my natural abilities. And so here I am . . . writing about things that are way over my head . . .
And he reminds us that spring, the season of blooming and life, follows winter, the season of rest, as we work with the master gardener to see life bloom as He leads.
Where is He leading you, friend?
May you soar on the wind as He leads you deeper into the wormhole of His purposes that always lead to life, growth and joy as we take one tentative step and another in the direction He is travelling, holding his hand as we go.
God, help each of us to see further than we could before, using your glasses.
While listening to the song below, consider quieting your heart, being thankful, and asking God, “What is one next step you are asking me to take that will eventually lead to blooming in my life?”
It was a mundane circumstance for those without eyes to appreciate it.
But my heart quickened many beats. God whispered, calling me to see something more profound than this mundane object. Would I have ears to hear? Did I have time to listen? Was I too busy to notice?
Here’s what happened.
At least ten years ago, I decided to plant two lilac bushes.
My husband encouraged me to plant the lilac bushes in our yard because they are my favourite flower. I love lilacs because they confidently fill the air with their scent. You can smell them from a distance.
Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God
They are the only flowers I have planted in our twelve years of living in this house.
Unfortunately, I made a classic mistake when I planted them. I planted them at the edge of our lawn, where two lovely bare spots were in the grass. I found out later that these two spots were bare because our automatic sprinklers didn’t reach that far.
I watered these plants by hand once or twice and then forgot about them.
Every spring, I (perhaps pathetically) mourned these lilacs, thinking I wish I would have loved on them, poured into them and helped them get established. When I drove past our neighbour’s wall of lilac bushes this spring, I was startled at their beauty and again mourned that my lilac bushes had died. I didn’t get around to buying more lilac bushes and planting them again.
And then last week I saw it.
One little lilac blooming in the exact place where I had planted that lilac bush over a decade ago.
God seemed to whisper that we are like this lilac blooming.
Huh?
I stared at the lilac, trying to figure out if God was speaking and what he could possibly be saying through the life of this flower.
My mind wandered a bit as I stood staring at the lilac, waiting. I found myself impatient for next year. “This small flower, on an established plant, ushers in hope for more flowers next year and even more the year after that!” I found myself thinking.
And this is what I am saying to you, God seemed to whisper.
Where I had thought there was death, God was silently, patiently growing life. And my pathetic, misguided gardening efforts were enough for the master gardener to redeem. The lilac’s foliage blended with the background foliage of the nearby leaves, so I hadn’t noticed the bush was still alive.
Do you feel hope rising?
How is God growing hope in you?
What do you need hope for? How may God be offering you hope? Can we use the hidden winter season to store hope deep in our roots, waiting for spring to blossom?
That was God’s message to me last season.
He had asked me to plant, and to establish a habit in my life that would eventually bear fruit.
It seemed that God wasn’t finished speaking to this clerk at Tim Hortons yet, but I had some pressing paperwork to do. Would I trust Him to interrupt my more essential tasks again? Was I too busy?
My bagel was burned.
I could eat a bagel, slightly dark at the edges. Tell them it seemed God may have been saying. Really?
I already had one interaction where God somehow fed this young man a crumb.
Why did I have to ruin it by criticizing the food? I obeyed, and co-incidentally, perhaps, it was the same young man whose turn it was to speak to me. Several others were working the till.
I showed him my bagel and explained that I recently learned that burned food contains carcinogens, substances capable of causing cancer.
I apologized for the nuisance. “Maybe I should come to you for advice,” the clerk called loudly across the restaurant, as I walked away. I smiled.
He thinks he is drawn to me, but he is drawn to You in me.
May he learn the difference.
As I was about to leave, I thought the Lord said to buy another coffee. But I didn’t want another coffee! “Maybe my life is not entirely about what I want,” I reminded myself.
I stood in line.
Clerks were running everywhere, and many different people were taking orders. Again, I wasn’t surprised when I got the same clerk because this felt like a God appointment. Ask him about his church, God seemed to nudge as I ordered coffee.
“Hey, you said you are a Christian. Have you found a good group of people at a church around here to belong to?”
I wasn’t surprised when he said no. Theology that revolved around the type and frequency of product he smoked, the topic of our earlier conversation, didn’t seem completely orthodox. “Even though my mom is an atheist, I used to go to church. But I don’t have a ride right now,” he said as he gave me my change.
Again, a nudge from the Lord.
Do you have a car? God seemed to ask me, tongue in cheek. I offered him a ride to our thriving church. He declined, and I presumed there were deeper reasons why He wasn’t in a church community.
I walked away, carrying a bagel I was too full to eat.
Use me, Lord. There is so much food here at Your table. I pray this young man’s hunger pains will be satisfied one day.
May he truly know he is accepted and thus seek his next step in a relationship with You and other believers.
May he find another who can lead him to the feast.
Teach us more clearly to scatter a bounty of crumbs from Your voice, and with Your love, we pray.
Restoring Life 