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?
“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:
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 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.
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!”
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
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.
Was that a whisper or a nudge from God as we live our lives in the mundane ordinary? Will we listen? He speaks, and it can seem so small and easy to ignore.
Will we obey?
The Father trusts those with big things to those who have been faithful in the small stuff.
Make some for yourself, too, God seemed to whisper to me that day several years ago. God had been nudging me to make fleece pants with my kids and their friends. Now, he seemed to be nudging to make fleece pants for me, too.
So, I was online ordering fleece fabric.
A particular type of fabric seemed to stand out to me as joy bubbled from the inside. I bought the fabric with the golden retrievers stamped all over them (true story). I made my pants.
And now, I will try to convey something challenging to articulate.
These doggy fleece pants are like a key opening a door between another culture and me. Once, someone exclaimed jubilantly that she loved my pants and then recounted a surprising quantity of her life story as I stood listening, stunned and speechless, my to-go coffee cup waiting in my hand mid-air for her to finish. This kind of thing happens often.
It happened today.
The teenage guy working at Tim Horton’s spent five minutes before he took my order telling me he loved my pants, told me a story about his dog, and then spoke with the lady next to him about whether she liked dogs or cats better.
I listened mutely and smiled.
My table was laden with crumbs, so I asked for a napkin to clean it. The young man leaned in to confide that they are understaffed but insisted on cleaning the table for me. As he wiped, he said, “People really surprise me sometimes.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
He was quiet, so I offered, “You mean how people are always making messes?”
He nodded.
I wondered what I could say in the several seconds left of our interaction that could be like a crumb to feed him just a little. “Well, it’s a good thing that God forgives us after we create our messes.” I looked innocently away, waiting for the metaphor to nourish his soul.
The crumb nourished, and his hunger pangs caused him to sputter forcefully.
“I can’t believe people don’t know I’m a Christian,” he exclaimed. “I don’t smoke.” My brain was overheating as I was trying to deduce the connection between not smoking and being a Christian.
He was in his own world, however, and felt the need, for some reason, to be honest with me, a perfect stranger.
“Well, I do smoke weed.”
Where do we go from here, God? Clearly, he was being nourished, somehow, by the crumbs from Your table. What do I say in the 30 nanoseconds before he departs?
I settled on, “Well, if we can truly understand that God loves us, that’s the important part, right?”
He stared at me, fumbled, and then dropped his cleaning cloth. His hat fell off as he bent over to pick up the fabric. He stared at me a moment before picking that up, too.
He was deep in thought.
Eye contact one more time before he walked away.
Was there a nanosecond of redemption, a glimpse of light lit for a moment, so that You redeemed this ordinary day for the clerk at Tim Horton’s, God? May this generation find messy tables wherever they go, we pray. And may the crumbs somehow, by your grace, be multiplied to nourish the soul.
There is more, there is more, there is more, He is saying to the teenage boy working at Tim Hortons.
Restoring Life 