Want to get happy? The following is my interpretation of the philosophically based “Four Levels of Happiness.” We will then compare the original version of these Four Levels to my interpretation later in this Newsletter.
Click HERE to continue reading.
Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!
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?
The first step is to be cool.
You’ve always wanted to know how to be cool, too.
And I’ve figured out how to find our inner cool!
But why do you want to be cool? It’s essential to evaluate our motives. If we are cool, then people will like us! And by “like,” I mean “like” the things we say on social media! Then we can feel important!
And this is how we know we have significant lives!
For example, in the book Deep Work, Cal Newport says that social media is popular because we agree to certain codes of conduct with our friends that make us feel important! For example, we agree to like every inane and boring comment that our list of friends says, as long as they obey the unwritten rule to also like our inane, superficial and uninteresting comments.
Cal Newport states that if we wrote the comments on a blog that we write on social media, we would have precisely 0 readers.
In contrast, people read this blog! Last week, I learned that people from 24 countries have read this blog (Seriously!). Why this level of success, you ask?
1. One reason could be that I constantly write incredibly jaw-dropping, interesting facts. However, we all know that you laugh at me whenever I say something particularly insightful, so saying interesting things can’t be why you read this blog.
2. The unusual favour could be because God sometimes whispers between the words to mysteriously touch your soul, which should be the case for all of us who learn to listen to and follow Jesus- He speaks through our lives. (So no, I’m NOT saying I’m special (you Loser!) because we’re all losers -but this is good news!– remember?)
3. I am finding my inner cool. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am cool quite yet, but perhaps that is a matter of opinion.
I prefer to assume it’s Option 3.
So yes, how do we find our inner cool? Good question. This way:
1. Think of things that cool people do!
2. Do those things.
3. Wait to be covered in cool, too!
Here’s an example from my own life recently.
1. Cool people surf.
2. So I tried surfing for the first time last week!
3. Now I’m waiting for the cool to glom itself onto me.
That hasn’t entirely seemed to happen yet. And in the photo above, for some reason, I don’t look quite as cool as those cool super dudes, but that must be the camera angle or something.
We drove to a surfing location recently, and I will have my first ocean surfing lesson soon. Wish me luck! I’ll let you know what I learn to share my insights into being cool with you!
I’m not sure exactly why, but I sense God hinting that this ancient verse below fits perfectly with today’s theme.
The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do.
My husband said that being cool is overrated. But since he’s married to me, obviously, being cool is a big part of our image! How is it possible he has never noticed that before?!
Anyway, you’re welcome!
Good luck!
And so a peony blossom suddenly appeared one morning in my untended flower garden.
Of course, God’s fingerprint can be found within every living thing, but was God’s Holy Spirit wind hovering over this flower, asking me to notice His hope through this blossom?
God made plants that I thought were dead or non-existent to bear beautiful blossoms three times this spring – amaryllis, lilac, and now this peony.
What was He saying? I sat up a little straighter in my seat, adjusted my tie in my executive-looking suit and sharpened my pencil, ready to hear the encouragement from God that I knew was my due. His reply knocked the legs out from under my chair, and I landed back on the floor where I belonged.
God showed me a picture of Him trying to give this peony to someone else because I wouldn’t take it.
The message was that I was receiving this gift from God not because I had something inherently unique in me. I was receiving this metaphorical flower because I was available. And the leeches of arrogance that had somehow covered me again had to be pulled off one by one, painstakingly, as I sat on the floor, having fallen off my stool of self-righteousness again.
God will use anyone available.
He doesn’t use little Jesus look-alikes. The ones who view themselves this way are so covered in leeches that we can’t see any reflections of the light of God in them anymore. I’m not special, He was reminding me.
Jesus is.
Would I follow him out of the barren garden and take this message that He was offering me in the form of a peony to others?
Because if not, he would offer this flower to another.
This thought felt a bit like a sucker punch to me, but one that would remind me to put away the robes of self-righteousness that I so cleverly fashioned and to dress myself again in the beautiful royal attire of the robes that He purchased for me, to put on the signet ring of the authority of his kingdom that he offers to each one of us should we have the humility to dress like a child of the king.
And now that I dress this way, will I get to work scrubbing the filth I encounter with living water? Jesus’ sleeves are rolled up, and we smile together as we rub shoulders, cleaning together and doing the work He has called me to join him in. Will I do it?
Will you?
What exactly I felt God calling me to will be discussed another time, but perhaps what doesn’t matter. It’s more about the yes. If I am available to follow Jesus on the journey He leads me on, we can expect a trail of blossoms to follow our lives.
Are you available when you hear Him whisper?
Have you time to find the royal princess shoes He gave you that are stuffed in your closet behind so many other pairs of shoes it will take a bit of work to find them? Will you step down the rungs of the spiritual ladder of self-importance you’ve been climbing, too? Or if a cloud of self-hatred surrounds you, will you climb up the spiritual ladder to meet Jesus?
In either direction, He’s waiting there for us, ready to give us His love and the strength to complete our spiritual assignments if we remain shoulder-to-shoulder with Him.
Are you available for a cup of tea, a sharing of the heart, and the healing balm he offers? Come on! Let’s go!
And so the astonishing reason God feels far away is because we won’t receive the flower blossom He offers us.
By faith, Noah . . . acted on what he was told [by God]. . . As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
The astonishing surprise of Jesus is that he desperately wants us to follow Him on a journey to learn to garden with Him so that blossoms arrive unexpectedly in our world, but He doesn’t need us in particular. (It’s not about us.) Let’s not waste the opportunity.
Come on!
Let’s try flying!
God, help us to long to receive what You offer.
I looked out my window this morning and saw something surprising in our overgrown “flower” patch.
This flower was so entangled in the weeds I had to cut back greenery all around it to snap a photo.
I knew God was speaking through this flower and will explain why soon. But I also wondered, “What are You saying?” I felt confused, which is usually how I feel when God seems to be whispering.
Several years ago, I shared with friends that God was whispering, calling me into something new but I was stuck in the weeds of my fear and misplaced identity, and I had shrunk God down to my own size again. But those are other stories for another day.
My friend had a prophetic word for me that night several years ago about a stick of a plant above ground in winter.
That stick was me. “But a blossom is coming,” she said. Three times this spring, a flower blossom has surprisingly appeared even though I did nothing or very little for ten years, thirteen years, and more than twenty years as amaryllis, a lilac, and now this peony appeared out of nowhere.
I didn’t plant a peony.
We’ve lived in this home for thirteen years, and this is the first time a peony blossom has appeared in the flower garden the previous owners planted. I didn’t know one of the plants without flowers (was it a also weed?) was a peony. The peony was my favourite flower when we lived in another home.
Perhaps because the blossoms on this flower are so remarkable, the peony had become a symbol of this word about a blossoming season that is coming.
I had a photo of a peony on my iPad wallpaper and a painting of peonies hanging on my physical wall for a long time, symbolizing a blossoming season that is coming, God seemed to whisper.
I had filled dozens of journals in the last few years, but early this week. I sensed God asking me to purchase this journal, which features an artistic rendition of peonies on its cover.
And today, one peony appeared amidst the weeds of my garden.
What did it all mean?
We can make several mistakes when our ears start itching with the things God is saying and we try to interpret His heavenly language into our own language.
Here are three common ones:
What are the solutions to these three problems?
With these three attitudes – honesty (that we are spiritually lost and confused again), thirst and surrender- we are ready to take our next step on our spiritual journeys.
Is the map you received becoming a bit less blurry for your next step, friend?
Mine too.
Let’s rest here at this cabin in the woods before we go our separate ways on our journeys following Jesus.
I’ll tell you more about what I think God may have been whispering through the surprise of a peony in an unkept garden next time.
Yes! I forgot to finish the blogpost series about “Hosers” I started last week! Thank you for reminding me!
I meticulously and fastidiously conducted extensive research for this blogpost series.
For example, I made a note to figure out what the slang term “Hoser” means and learned this:
1. The NCAA states that in hockey, before the invention of the Zamboni, the ice would have to be “hosed” down after a game. The losing team would traditionally do this mundane job. Thus, the term “Hoser” is synonymous with the term “Loser.”
2. So when I called you a Hoser, not knowing what that meant, I was calling you a Loser, but I have already done that in other blog posts, where I encourage all of us to embrace our inner loser!
3. “To get hosed” is also a Canadian slang term that means “to get drunk.”
So how can we get drunk on God, Hoser? Great question. This way:
1. We realize that deep down, we are all hosers, or losers. When we want to draw near to God, we must ask, “Are we honest?” We are all a bit like a rat’s behind when we stand next to God.
So let’s bow our knees, get down on our faces, and acknowledge that we aren’t God, but are specks of dust floating through the world until we return to the dust we emerged from.
We all have ego problems if we are honest. For example, MOST people believe they have greater than average intelligence. As we both know, dear reader, only you and I have above average intelligence, and no one else does.
(Wait – wha..? What is my editor yelling at me about now? Whatever!)
The summary is we’re not as impressive as we imagine.
It’s time to be on our faces on the floor. This truthfulness about our human condition allows God, who is truth, to draw a bit nearer with his FELT love, which we can sense, a bit more. (Caveat: He is always near whether we sense His love, but that is a topic for another day).
2. Do we bury the jewels we find along our path in life, the hints of the divine, and trample them in our busyness?
If so, this makes us a bit more deaf to the whispers of God the next time He blows the breath of His wind in our direction.
Are we thirsty for Him, asking Him to draw near, begging Him to touch us with His love? Are we reading about God, asking questions, and seeking Him to help our boxed-up minds open to the new ways He wants to reveal Himself? These actions help us remove the blinders we put over ourselves, making us unwilling to see Him standing at our door, knocking.
3. Will we put aside our maps for our lives that we ask God to follow and instead, will we be willing to follow Him?
Will we surrender?
God is not looking for people who know He is near but who thumb their noses at Him again and again. Will you, friend, pick up your mat and follow Him when he shows you the way out of your mess, the path to healing?
These 3 heart attitudes – honesty, thirst, and surrender – are a bit like a nest for the dove of the Spirit of God to rest awhile, to linger so that our hearts can receive more of His love.
Jesus . . . saw God’s Spirit—it looked like a dove—descending and landing on him.
Ready to take another step on the path towards being drunk on the love of God, Hoser?
Jesus holds out his arms to you.
He is so glad you came.
(And so are we)
It’s an awakening season.
Holy Spirit has been poking me early, early every morning. Wake, wake, He is saying. There’s something new. Do you see it? Do you perceive it?
Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is!
It is time to get dressed in the clothing of royalty, the robes my Father gave me.
Do you see the clothes your Father gave you? They are crumpled up and dirty in the corner of your room. Can you find the shoes He gave you? They are in your closet behind dozens of other pairs of shoes you’ve purchased. It’s time to sort your closet.
What has God been stirring in your heart?
Let’s start there. After our morning coffee and looking out at this new day dawning, let’s leave room on our to-do lists. Action item number one is left blank. This item is the most important I need to do today, and I must try to do it first as soon as I have time.
It is the response to God’s whisperings to my heart.
What is it for you?
My first task is to turn down the noise in my head, the cacophony of sound that tells me that God can not use me. For me, my first task is remembering who I am. It is shrinking myself down to the size of a piece of dust, my proper form.
The body is put back in the same ground it came from. The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.
It is raising God to the glorious infinite that He is big. I am small. He has always used insignificant people!
Good morning!
And as I put on the long princess gloves that God gave me, I remember that these hands were bought with a price.
The color red of the gloves reminds me of Jesus’ blood that was shed for us so that these hands can be used to help, comfort and serve.
I found my shoes! Here they are in my closet, behind all those pink heels I had forgotten about. These shoes the Father gave me are decorated with jewels, a reminder that the message I understand is rare, a priceless gem many step on but few pick up to keep close to their hearts.
And many more have only seen cheap, counterfeit copies of the real jewels we wear on our feet. Will we carry the message of a long obedience following Jesus, shined in its brilliance, wherever we walk today? Is He asking you to walk a new path with Him, a path overgrown with branches because so few have travelled in that direction?
And I wear a smile on my face.
This smile is not shallow, resulting simply from the movement of the muscles on my face. A genuine smile is the outpouring of a great joy born in the heart, which overflows out of my eyes as a sparkle that can’t be hidden. (Need some?)
Let Him awaken you and help you out of bed, friend.
Then:
1) Remember the size of you and the size of your God.
2) Donn your gloves.
3) Find your shoes.
Then let the joy bubble forth.
Being with You is to be full of joy
The problem I couldn’t solve in that season was, “How do I, a VERY busy, mentally fragile (We’re around kids a LOT) homeschooling parent, find time to exercise?”
I did, eventually, find a solution to this problem by embracing my inner loser. I hope this problem-solving method helps you find solutions to your biggest problems, too! Here’s what happened, which is a continuation of this post.
And yes, I realize this last post was useless without an explanation, which I didn’t have time to provide.
Now, where was I? Ah yes. Smelling kid’s butts. After the low of us parents becoming butt-sniffers, we hit an even lower low several months later.
Butt-sniffing became our accidental family culture.
Our two-year-old, who loved to mimic our behaviour, stopped next to me as I sat on an office stool and then had a sniff before she carried on with her other little tasks. I looked at her, startled and then smiled lamely at my husband.
How did we become THAT family?*
The point is, as discussed last time, the person we become is not always the person we aspire to be.
Not only did I find it convenient to assume the identity of a butt-sniffing parent, but I also found it convenient to shirk the identity of a homeschooling parent who has all of her ducks in a row.
Which brings me, finally, to embracing our inner loser so we can become a homeschool parent who exercises.
Before I started on this homeschooling journey, I, like you if you homeschool, envisioned myself as a particular type of homeschooling parent. This is not the parent I eventually became. I’m okay with that now.
But the shaky ground of this identity incongruence was a roller coaster ride.
I envisioned myself nicely coifed and looking like my favourite public school teacher in Grade Three, Mrs. Chamberlain. Instead, I very quickly became that parent still wearing a house coat and curlers in my hair at 11:00 am, downing my fourth coffee, and trying to find the kids so I could corral them inside. We began the day with our “Homeschool Morning Routine”, which, for us was trying to find our books or pencils strewn around the house and yard the day before.
A new problem also emerged: I knew my inconvenient, neglected body needed to start exercising again.
I couldn’t even figure out how to encourage, bribe or command my children to put the milk away after they finished breakfast (In fact, I still haven’t figured that out with one of my teenagers). How would I keep these little ones on their homeschooling tasks while I left their side to exercise?
The feat seemed impossible.
Until my new identity as an incompetent homeschooling parent thought up a solution.
Realizing I was – ahem- a BIT of a (whisper) homeschooling loser, once I stopped trying so hard to be an exercise enthusiast, and embraced mediocrity, the solution to my problem was obvious!
I’ll tell you specifically what that is next time.**
The point is, let’s embrace our inner incompetence!
Perhaps the solutions to your problems can be found there, too!
Since we’ve . . . proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God . . . 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.
Once we accept our identities as people who are incompetent in so many ways, life suddenly gets much more manageable!
Time to stop trying so hard and embrace your inner loser, too?
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Blogpost Footnotes
*See this post for a perfectly reasonable answer, thank you very much, okay?!
**Ah! I forgot to say something useful again!
How do we develop an exercise routine we can stick to as parents?
We must morph into the parents we never dreamed we’d become.
And I mean to become the parent we feared we would become.
I’ll explain.
It all started the day I started sniffing my kid’s butts.
When I was a well-coiffed, austere young woman in my twenties, I wrinkled up my nose at those homesteading women with several children crowding around them as they made cookies and managed a beehive simultaneously. “Isn’t that disgusting?” my sophisticated friends and I whispered, and we looked away in horror when one of these busy moms lifted her toddler, sniffed around their child’s middle for signs of a “Number two” and quickly set them back down on the floor again. This mom then happily continued stirring cookies, unpasteurized honey, or whatever she did all day.
“I would never do that butt-sniffing manoeuvre!”
When my children were toddlers, I gasped my way to a mom and toddler’s event one morning, my hair dishevelled, unmatched dirty clothing thrown over my and my toddler’s forms. I was clinging to a half-drunk coffee for dear life as I sat next to a fellow mom and empathized delightedly with her. We shared similar tales of near survival, of these miniature beings often holding us hostage to their need.
Suddenly, I remembered that I should probably check the older daughter, who was not yet fully toilet trained.
I grabbed my daughter’s arm and yanked her away from her friend. My daughter morphed from playing contentedly to screaming like a fire truck. I nearly lost the battle of the wills but managed to stuff her into the change-room, where I opened her training diaper and
. . . nothing.
There was nothing there.
When I returned to my friend, she was already chatting with another dishevelled woman, and for the rest of that “mom’s time,” my two toddlers had incessant needs again.
So it didn’t take long before I happily lifted my toddlers when they were playing contentedly, smelled their butts, and set them back down again with a wink and a nod.
I continued my coffee and well-deserved amiable chat with other homeschooling parent survivors,
My identity had shifted.
And similarly, what kind of identity shift do we need to become the kind of homeschooling parent who exercises?
1. We realize that if we are going to stay in this game long-haul we’ve got to surrender our pre-conceived ideas of success as defined by this culture, or worse, by our expectations of ourselves.
2. Our identity must be firmly linked to those who are societally undignified. We delight in our identity as children of the king, not as classy members of a specific culture (i.e. of any culture).
3. We have fun, dancing with joy with our two-year-olds because we finally figured out that when we are happy, our little ones are too.
Throw off your chains, captive daughter . . . ! God says, “You were sold for nothing. You’re being bought back for nothing.”
And it was this change in perspective, from “culturally respectable” to “daughter of the King,” that led me to be the kind of parent who exercises regularly, as well.
The link between a shift in identity and exercise will be discussed another time.
I promise to say something useful sometime! That is if I remember to finish this blogpost series on exercising when homeschooling. This post was essential to set the foundation for when we will dive into the nitty-gritty of the shift in identity required to exercise while homeschooling young children.
For now, the first step is to stop trying to be “respectable”!
It doesn’t work anyway!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
The photo below shows undeniable proof that no one cares about hygiene now that the Covid pandemic has ended!
They put the baby changing station right on top of the water fountain!
The photo above is a REAL, unadulterated photo taken in Banff, Canada, at the Banff Gondola Interpretive Center, so that is ANOTHER reason to prove the validity of what is written in these blogposts!
(And the point of this blogpost? Laugh more! You know you need to.)
You can finally relax and have more fun when you realize that everyone is ridiculous, and you are, too!
In Your presence is fullness of joy
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Restoring Life 