Healing

How To Be A Little Less Nuts – 3 Lessons From The Trenches

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I ate and ate and ate, stuffing in chocolate cake, ice cream, sweets, candy, and lollipops. And why?

I don’t know.

“Why do we do stupid things?” is a good question.

Why do we make that wrong romantic decision or escalate a fight when we know we can never win?

(Of course, winning an argument is not the ONLY reason to purposely escalate fights. For more helpful marital advice, go here. You’re welcome!)

Why come down so hard on our kids that we’ve discouraged them from trying again?

Why do we yell at our spouse and then assume the “happy, polite voice” when the phone rings?

And then why do we turn to ice cream, and when we’ve polished off that container, search the cupboards for that half box of stale cookies we are sure is in there somewhere?

And why do we repeat this cycle?

“Yeah, sure, I get it,” I respond, a mouthful of ice cream making it hard to annunciate my words. “We feel bad, and so we want the endorphin rush that sugar or crystal meth provides.”

Yeah.

But how do we step off this crazy cycle and reassess our lives and decisions from a thousand feet up?

How do we get back onto the trail in the forest, the one where we meander on the hike with our friends, laughing a bit as we walk, resting at the cabin in the woods before continuing our journeys?

How can we be a little less nuts?

Lately, this is the question I have been pondering lately as I try to extract myself from my recently constructed crazy loop.

Got any advice?

My ice cream is finished and I have a few seconds before heading to the cupboard to look for stale treats.

How do we stop being the nuts-o little bird I saw that day repeatedly pounding its head against the window and instead peck around in the forest like we were made to do?

Maybe we’ve finally discerned the right question to ask:

How are we behaving in ways humans were never designed to behave?

1. Well, Jesus has been knocking on our door for the last few minutes, or hours, or decades. He greets us with a smile and a wave when we finally open the door, holding the first draught of the medicine we need that will make our hearts and stomachs ache but eventually feel better. Do we slam the door in His face again and return to our lonely rooms and video games, telling ourselves that our cheap thrills and distractions are better than tea with a friend who understands our deepest headaches and offers us a Kleenex and some hope, Jesus?

2. Did we stop long enough to listen to the warning sounds, the alarm bells that indicate something is amiss, long before we act out irrationally?

For example, when I started homeschooling, I surprised myself by lashing out in anger at my unsuspecting kids over a minor infraction. I couldn’t figure out my behaviour but my first step towards healing was noticing the growing hint of resentment as my husband sat on the couch, the jealousy towards my kids that they were reading while I was cleaning up again, and the longing for time by myself. Would I stop playing the martyr when I first noticed these cues and head out for a walk or a visit with a friend, my understanding husband wishing me well and patting me on the back for being proactive this time?

Or would I wait for the full volcanic eruption, spewing my partially digested insides for all to see?

3. Am I being patient with myself? Growth in all plants and animals takes more time than we have to sit around waiting for it. Can we pat each other on the back whenever we see growth in our friends, family, or ourselves?

For example, yeah, I ate a bunch of extra dessert this week, and no, not even on a Sunday!

I slipped in that habit, but I’ve been growing in other healthy practices.

Did we remember to count our wins?

. . . it’s important to build a rule of life slowly, deliberately, and prayerfully . . . is there one practice (Sabbath, prayer, spiritual friendship, witness, etc.) that would be most fruitful for you to begin with? Do you sense the Holy Spirit leading you to focus on a particular aspect…?

Ken Shigematsu God in My Everything – How An Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God

We don’t compare ourselves with where we want to end up. That’s too discouraging. But when we pick ourselves up after a fall and jump back in the race, then we can be sure Jesus is cheering us on.

Because we’re growing!

Well done, friend!

No, you’re not a nutcase – you only seem that way!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

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

What Did God Say? Heal Our Children? Are Our Ears Clean?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I wasn’t sure if I could keep the car on the road because I couldn’t see through my tears.

The downpour we were driving through didn’t help, either. “Keep it together. Keep it together. . .” was my mantra until I could get inside, close the door to the world, and let these emotions out.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to drive the car home.

Inside, I collapsed behind a closed door and told my husband the news. His sadness began deep, deep in his soul, in the place where love resides, and found its expression. It was the future we mourned.

A dark cloud had cast a shadow over the future of one of our children. Like a candle in the snow, her joyful little light was sensing wind on the horizon. And the odd pieces of cardboard I found nearby to try to shield her from the wind didn’t look like enough right now.

Heal her, God whispered to me months later.

I was minding my own business, letting my mind wander while in the hot tub.

“Um, what now?” I asked. I sat upright and perked up my ears. “What did you say?”

Silence.

I had heard him. Would I take the next step in faith? Or would I put cotton in my ears and dunk my head under the hot tub, ensuring I could not hear any more of this foolish talk?

They told me this was incurable. Everyone knew that! The best we could hope for was some moderate success with behaviour modification – a few small wins.

And so, which road should I take?

This is where we stumble.

Is that a jewel I just about stepped on along the path of life?

Will we pick it up, inspect it, hold it to the light and find a friend with a hammer to crack it open?

Or will we put it in our pocket to consider later if we remember?

The joys and the sorrows of life arrive, and we hang up our clothes at the end of the day. We forget them there for awhile. When we remember, through foggy memories, that there may be a jewel in our pocket (!), we look again, but it fell out. There are only the singed edges of our pocket to remind us that we were holding a bit of heaven for a while.

But it’s gone now.

What’s for lunch?

And God feels far away, again, even though He just descended from heaven to meet us. We treated His gift like just another stone on the path. Will we catch the next jewel He holds out to us? Will our eyes be open enough to see this time, or will we trample, again, the precious jewel that He offers, His firelight shining in the darkness?

It’s only a sparkle at first.

Time to bow low and fan the flame of His voice in your life, friend?

Come along. Let’s journey together.

Oh. And she was healed, God guiding and then redeeming my pathetic attempts to listen, Him re-directing me and helping me up when discouragement hit. For that is His way.

Jesus said, “There is no need to dismiss them. You give them supper.”

“All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish,” they said.

Jesus said, “Bring them here.” . . . The disciples then gave the food to the congregation. They all ate their fill. They gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. About five thousand were fed.

The Message

We give Him what we have. It’s all we have but it’s not very much. We work with Him, following His direction so that the miracle can occur.

But that is a story for another time.

It’s also a repetitive story found here and here and in any heart willing to receive what He offers.

Ready for an adventure into the miraculous?

We Can (Spiritually) Fly If We Find Our Ears (Do You Hear?)

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

She held her head in her hands.

Her heart pain rose up, up out of her chest and demanded expression in deep sobs. Jesus saw her. He stood by her side, his arms outstretched to offer love and guidance.

She didn’t notice Him.

In the prayer room that same week, Jesus communed with another woman, one of his dear ones. In the quiet, she was growing in hearing His voice. And then, prompted by Him later that week, she took a risk.

“Jesus sees the tears of the mother,” she whispered that day to the stranger, to the hurting woman. The stranger was the one who had been sobbing all alone. And in that busy place, at work, hearing the words from God, she burst into tears again.

The hurting woman could now sense Jesus was near. Jesus spoke His words through the mouth of one of His servants. Her words came from the heart of God and were received by another as a hug from Jesus.

The hurting friend relayed the story to me.

“I didn’t tell her anything about my daughter,” she gushed at me, astonished.

But heaven met earth that day. Light from beyond our sun, from the Son himself, streamed into the heart of one of His children and exited her mouth to wrap the hurting woman in a hug from Jesus. And a seed of faith was planted in the heart of that hurting woman that day.

And all heaven rejoiced.

Breakthrough happened in one more heart.

The unseen became visible, if only for a flash of a moment. Will this spark be fanned by the flame of the hurting woman making time for God, giving expressions to her reservations about church and the brokenness of His people? Will she push past the frustrations and find her way, in the quiet, to the place in her soul where Jesus speaks?

May she find her ears.

Will she pick them up, attach them and give them a listen?

They are lying there on the floor next to her. She may put them upside down or not quite in the right location initially. Will she re-attach them and try again tomorrow?

Will you?

Oh God! Open ears! Un blind eyes! Help us exchange our mud puddles of entertainment and distraction for the vast ocean of Your joy and presence! May Your Kingdom come! Help more and more of Your beautiful children, the ones You paid the ultimate price for on the cross, get out of their boxes and realize they have wings! Help them soar, Jesus, we pray.

(Is this post speaking to you?)

If so, take a risk. Consider laying down your pride and showing up at the church near you where Holy Spirit is moving. Or join us online as we learn to lay aside our distractions, pick up our ears, and learn to love to pray. And may you, too, friend, be set free.

Caveat: This isn’t a promise of a highway to an easy life. But we do have Someone to help us. And walking with Him leads to more life.

It’s worth it.

What is the next step on your spiritual journey? Do you have time to follow your clues? May you keep travelling, dear friend.

Is your next step a little scary?

Flying is worth the risk.

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.

It’s The Women Who Suffer In A Culture That Promotes Abortion

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

We don’t see them, the women, head in hands, often alone in their apartments, suffering.

They suffer through the choice of, the procedure of, and the after-effects of their abortions. We don’t see them for a few days, but that is nothing new. We don’t see many friends or family members for a few days.

We didn’t notice.

We don’t hear them either, crying into their pillows, muffling their grief.

We don’t know their stories because it is not easy for them to speak about. The pain lies hidden deep in their hearts, placated by medication in the terrible times. Who wants to dive into the depths of the human heart and open Pandora’s box of pain that lies within?

We didn’t notice their cries because much pain emerges silently.

What TRULY is best for the woman?

What if we set aside the unwanted child within her womb, the man who is in or out of her life, societal expectations – everything? Let’s set everything aside and focus on the woman.

On her.

On you.

I see you. I feel your pain, though I may not know you. I hear you crying, though I have never met you.

I have an inkling of the pain that you feel because I feel it, too, in a different sort of way.

I am an adoptive parent.

I also, like you, have cried the anguished tears of a woman who is not in control of the timing of when a child enters her life. I too have shed tears for the unfulfilled longings of my heart, though different from yours.

I, too, have suffered grief because of the child.

But this is not about me.

This is about you.

Should you be the one to pay for the abortion procedure, handing over your savings to get it done?

What about the man?

Would a sperm say to a father, ‘Who gave you permission to use me to make a baby?’

The Message

He pockets his savings, perhaps buying more beers for his friends. He is still drinking, having fun, eyeing up the next woman at the bar while you are at home, alone, suffering through the painful side effects of aborting his child.

Is this the best we can do for women’s rights?

In ancient Greek culture, women were considered more powerful than men.

Some were worshipped as Greek goddesses. Temple prostitution was an honored position within Greek society, unlike cultural stigmas towards prostitution today. The cultural mindset was that women can control their sex drives more successfully than men.

Women have control over something men desperately want.

When sex is withheld for a season, the power balance shifts to favor women.

What if, and I am only asking the question, withholding sex from a man until he promises to be by her side if a baby comes is the best way to honor women?*

Here’s another thing we know. . . . Sexual activity is not a life-threatening proposition for guys. Neither are the consequences. We won’t die if we get our partner pregnant. We don’t lactate once she gives birth. Males are really off the hook. We engage in the same reproductive activity [as females] but there are great differences in what each has to lose when they engage in it.

Your Best Brain by John J. Medina – Lecture 18: Sex And Your Brain

Women, are we ready to assert our power?

Then let’s say “no” except to the honorable man who has already asked us to marry him*.

This is the first step towards truly honoring, valuing, and assuring women’s rights.

Use your superpower! Assert your strength and the dignity, rights, and freedom of women. Don’t hand him your future suffering, both physically and emotionally, for free.

Value the woman.

Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for?

The Message

Lord, raise women who are okay with standing alone. Thank You for restoring us to wholeness, no matter where we have travelled, Jesus. After a moment of quiet, consider asking Holy Spirit, “How do you see me?”

Blogpost Footnotes

*And no, I am not referring to the teen boy who buys $20 cubic zirconia “Promise Rings” in bulk from Walmart and hands them out to myriad teen girls, seeking his reward. The promise rests on the character of the promise-er.

This post is part of our Say-It-Again On Friday series.

Do You Cower Inside Your Box, Too?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

What if I am in a box, but the box is too small for me? I push on every side, but no luck. I remain, for the rest of my days, perhaps, encased in something that contains me, squeezes me.

After a while, like shoes that are too tight that have been worn for a long, long, time, we cease to notice the pain. It feels normal.

Jesus was calling me, wooing me out of the box I had squeezed myself into. Like a safety blanket, the box held me close, and comforted me somehow, in an unhealthy, painful way.

He leaned down and put his head close to the opening of the box. Come, He bid me, metaphorically. His eyes reflected and deepened my pain. He held out His hand to me. Would I follow?

I hadn’t noticed that the box was open. But like those who have been imprisoned for too long, their eventual freedom scares them. They long to be imprisoned again, and may even commit an offence to return to their prison cell.

Freedom is just too scary. It’s comfortable here, we reason.

But I listened to Him recently. I gently clasped His hand, but then struggled, letting go of his hand after a brush with discouragement.

I tried again. He waited patiently for me, encouraging me. Come. Try again, He seemed to beckon, his arm outstretched. So I did.

And now I am free of that box. I can stand, dance and move around now.

I am in a new box now, but one that is bigger. He is beckoning me still, however, to come, to come out of the new box I have created for myself.

I am more free, yes, and this is good, He seems to be saying, joy in His eyes. But more freedom awaits, He seems to be saying. I made you to fly.

Who will give me wings,” I ask— “wings like a dove?” Get me out of here on dove wings.

The Message

And this description that I have written today is the spiritual side of the story. The human side of the story, like the other side of the same coin, the part that is easier to talk about, is my journey of learning to fast, to abstain for a time from food.

Sometimes in doing what we don’t want to do, in fasting, or in stepping out of the box we have created for ourselves, we finally are a bit more free.

Our vision expands when we fly.

Do you also feel you are stuck in a box? If so, as the song below plays, and after a few minutes of thanksgiving, consider asking Holy Spirit: What is one step I can take to find my way out of this box, and test my wings?

The “Unwanted” Baby Is Wanted By All?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I’m wiping the tears from my eyes again.

It was movie and popcorn night. We watched UnPlanned, the astonishing, true story of Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson’s journey across the line from Choice to Life.

We were all undone.

As my tiny and insignificant contribution to this whirlwind topic of our day, like a feather battling a windstorm, I include below a poem I wrote.

May our prayers reach the ear of God, that the prevailing cultural winds would change direction and blow the feather toward God again and again and again . . . we pray.

Lord, have mercy on us, all of us, for we are a sinful people.

And may we pause to consider the following:

Simon Peter [who] . . . fell to his knees before Jesus. “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.”

The Message

and

If . . . my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health.

The Message

They Say She’s Not Wanted

They say she’s not wanted in this world.

Yet I’ve seen her mom, belly swelled in mystical expectation, nervously meeting prospective adoptive parents for the first time. Tears flowed on all sides at the first introduction, bonded somehow at the initial meeting. I’ve chatted with her mom many times while she lay curled up in the womb.

My heart broke for her mom because she could not raise her now.

I met her birth grandma and cried with her over the expectation of the first grandchild in the family.

The fulfillment of a grandmother’s dreams was not that the child would be whisked from her arms before they would know each other well. “You take good care of her,” the grandmother whispered to the adoptive mother through tears.

I’ve met her birth father.

A boy-man, wearing the tough guy mask in front of his friends and family. I sat with him while he, head in hand, sobbed a mountain of anguished tears, knowing that her birth mom could not stay with him forever and be the family unit that he dreamed of.

I’ve cried with him too.

I’ve also met them – the crowds of families, with polished faces and pages full of dreams in shiny dossiers, cartwheeling over each other in efforts to impress. They plead, “Please pick us. We want her. We want to be her family. Oh, won’t you please pick us?”

I know them because I was also a member of one of those families. And our family was chosen. And oh, how the aching in our hearts was finally filled with love and gratitude for this cherished life.

Thank you, birth mothers, birth fathers, and birth grandparents, for standing firm in love and truth, regardless of the shifting sand of popular opinions.

We honor you, and we love you.

Thank you for placing your child in the arms of a family who will love and care for her.

Thank you for allowing this child to thrive in the healing love of all of us in her extended birth families and her extended adoptive family.

And we share a secret, don’t we?

Even if they don’t know it, we know these children are wanted by MORE people than can be counted.

I Lied Again But Here Are 3 TRUE Tricks To Curb Sugar (Healthy Habits Post 9)

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Yeah, OK. I lied again.

I said I FORGOT to finish the blog post series I started on Healthy Habits. That is only PARTIALLY true. I am more organized than you think!

The TRUTH is that I didn’t think we would want to discuss fasting the week before Christmas when we are constantly stuffing our faces with stuffing and turkey and homemade treats and eggnog.

But now that we are on the couch, stomachs in pain and feeling like losers (Losers in a good way, if you haven’t read that post), let me help you get off the couch and let’s punish our bodies again by doing things we don’t like: eating less food, exercising etc.

Or let’s trick ourselves into believing we like doing the stuff we may not always feel like doing.

Whatever.

So January is here!

I would recommend starting off the year by re-reading my blogpost series about Healthy Habits.

Time to get fit!

This post in the Healthy Habits series is a recommendation to try to (more or less) eat dessert on Sundays only.

But that is impossible, right?

Yeah, I know, but we have to try to wean ourselves off the hourly Christmas treats, eventually.

Here’s how:

1. Trick yourself into thinking you are eating dessert when you are not.

Like a cocaine addict (are they the ones that use needles, again?) seeking a fix, I MUST HAVE a snack like this one every day. This is the FIRST item I make when I run out. I’ll skip cooking supper to have a week of these on hand.

Why? Because they FEEL like dessert, even though they are not! Fat and sugar and chocolate and yum all rolled up into a ball! But it’s healthy fat (nuts) and healthy sugar (dates) and chocolate (of course). I eat these at 3:00 pm when I’m craving my fix, and there is just enough heroin (substitute) to help me last another few hours till supper and my nightly camomile tea fix.

2. Downscale your addictive personality.

Our church has been reaching out to our city’s homeless population, and it is AMAZING how much sugar these people who have kicked their drug addictions mainline (Can you mainline sugar?) Whatever.

But let’s face it, mainlining sugar is a LOT healthier than mainlining crystal meth!

Since the reality is that we, too, are just nicely dressed balls of addiction, chasing the wrong desires, let’s learn from them!

Let’s downscale our addictions!

For example, I met a lady last week who stopped smoking and then gained 30 pounds. But stuffing our faces with food is better than stuffing our faces with cancer sticks!

In my case, I am more addicted to sugar than I am to processed chips. So I TRY to eat chips instead of sugar. Once I’m addicted to chips, it’s easier to wean myself off of that addiction. I’ve been downscaled!

It’s easier to eat less chips than it is to mainline crystal meth!

Get the pattern?

While we’re at it, downscaling our addictions, let’s upscale our Levels of Happiness!

3. Let’s look forward to making massive pigs of ourselves.

As per the theme of point two above, we don’t start out at the finish line, having already won the race.

Meaning let’s cut ourselves some slack! We are all basically crack-addicted homeless people, seeking happiness in all the wrong places, so let’s cut ourselves some slack!

Let’s LOOK FORWARD to making a COMPLETE PIG of ourselves on Sundays! A COMPLETE cheesecake with Oreos and highly processed foods on Sunday, anyone?

Start where we’re at!

We’ll eat ONE piece of cake with good manners and a napkin sometime on the future Sunday. Even if our progress is WAY OUT in the future, we celebrate successes! You’re awesome!

Good luck!

You’re welcome!

The Best Christmas Was The Most Painful Christmas

/ Lori Lawe / 3 Comments

I held my head in my hands, the non-physical pain consuming me, twisting my body to reflect my inner state.

The mother placed the baby in my arms and spoke of WHEN I took her home, enveloped her in our family. This baby was the gift that came no less miraculously than a child that emerges, astonishingly from one’s own womb. Except she traversed from God, through another’s womb, through the arms of another mother, into my arms.

And like a child ripped from her mother’s arms, she was taken from my arms and placed in another home.

We were pleased that the child would be taken care of, her needs met, thrive in a loving home.

And yet the pain in our hearts was only partially placated.

Every human soul carries its own pain within.

A loved one passes, an illness, a broken relationship, broken dreams, general ennui, desperation, hopelessness, despair. . . The waves of trouble that break over the human soul break us too, as our souls hit the rocks, making us bleed from the trials that have arrived on our doorstep, unbidden.

We open the door to today and the tidal wave of disappointment has arrived. We are left sitting on the floor alone in our world, unable to stand.

As we look around for a hand to help us up, something to hold onto, it seems hope is a long way away sometimes.

Can you see it?

I couldn’t either.

And then Christmas knocks on our door with the request to give to the needy, to distract ourselves with shallow merrymaking, to make ourselves sick with food that is sweet in the mouth and cancerous to the bones.

“Is this all there is?” we ask, our Santa hats adorning our heads in an effort to embrace the spirit of the season, our TV remote flipping from channel to channel, waxed chocolate at the fingertips.

Numb, again.

Another Christmas season has arrived, and we are numb.

No!

The old life is gone; a new life emerges!

The Message

That Christmas, the one when I could hardly breathe, I took off the old.

I crossed off the list of people that we were “supposed” to buy presents for. No more presents for friends, friend’s kids, extended family, parents, grandparents, my spouse. “And no presents for me,” I announced. We bought a few small gifts for a few children. And joy returned.

I crossed off the list the duty to make the Christmas treats I made every year, unthinkingly. I tried a few simple treats with a healthier spin. And joy returned.

I left the box of Christmas decorations in the basement unopened. When I finally gazed inside, I pulled out a few items that were handmade by friends or had sparked a particular delight, or a cherished memory. And joy returned.

I said no to every party, to the ones we were expected to attend that were too loud, had too much drinking, and too much shallow joy. We had a couple of quiet celebrations with a handful of friends or family, and good food. And joy returned.

No more expectations. The old has gone.

And the new life emerging?

And like the caterpillar that makes time for the quiet of the chrysalis, we too made time for the quiet.

– Time in the quiet morning hours, seeking my King

– Time for Christmas church services, as we sought to awaken our senses to the awe of the season through the life of the babe in a manger

– Time for a hug or a smile or an understanding look, more, more often from those around me

I spent time every evening that season with our little toddler at the outdoor skating rink. The one that is free.

When we fell, we would laugh and then sit quietly together for a moment noticing how the lights rimmed the rink, peering through the darkness. I could almost discern the light of the season through those lights.

And like the lights shining in the darkness, at the skating rink that is free, His free gift of love burst through my heart a little more often in the quiet mornings, in the moments of quiet at the worship services, in the quiet smiles of those whose lives I stumbled across.

And each smile was like gazing into another’s soul because I took the extra moment to see them, to know that they too, being human, have heart wounds. Can my smile, my love, be a drop of healing ointment to them, as theirs is to me?

And it was the best Christmas of my life.

As the song plays, consider asking God: How can any anticipated pain of this Christmas season be transformed into joy?