Pain

Despairing? Focus On Cleaning Your Teeth (And More Right Thinking) To Be Surprised By Hope!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Get our teeth cleaned or throw out everything good with the bathwater?

man in blue polo shirt smoking cigarette

Sometimes the bad things that happen to us (1) have a more straightforward solution than we realize, or (2) there is a silver lining of hope surprisingly close.

For example, that time I came back after three months in India and Nepal, my FRONT (!) teeth had a growing blackness to them. “Oh my goodness,” I thought. “I am rotting from the inside out!”

“Tea stains,” said the dentist.

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

I did have a profound appreciation for Chai tea.

And so sometimes things aren’t as bad as we think.

Another time, I suddenly developed tooth sensitivity. My dentist had been warning me, asking me, “Do you feel sensitive yet in that particular area?” He told me I had root recession and that I would start feeling sensitive soon.

“There it is,” I thought that day. I didn’t bother going to the dentist because I knew this was coming. I thought, “Well, I guess I’ll have to suffer with this until I die!” I drank hot and cold drinks, and then most foods on one side of my mouth. When I finally went to the dentist months later, he said, “Oh wow, your filling fell out!”

He even repaired it for free because, I guess, it shouldn’t usually happen.

This filling was the best gift I ever got. A free filling! Well, the free filling wasn’t the gift.

The gift was a new lease on life.

I didn’t have to suffer for the rest of my life just because I was suffering a little now.

Older age wasn’t necessarily a slow march through increasing pain and suffering until we fall off the cliff.

We may need a new filling! Or we need the tea stains cleaned off our teeth! How can I not assume that my body is running towards hell and taking me with it as I get older?

What new aches and pains must be accepted, and which ones must be fought (or repaired or cleaned?)1

We may need to get our teeth cleaned or have a new filling placed. Or perhaps God will reach out his hand to heal, as many thousands have attested. But if the pain must be accepted, there’s always a hidden redemption in the pain if we know where to look.

That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

The Message

As the song below sings “This is the refreshing”, consider asking God, Where have I allowed despair to cloud my judgment? Do I need to get my teeth cleaned, or find an alternative solution to this seemingly oversized or insoluble problem? How do You see this challenge that I am facing from Your heavenly perspective?

Will you give me the strength to weather the storm, Jesus?

(His answer is always yes.)

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.

The Message

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

Photo Credit – Guy Choosing Easier Way Out Of His Problems by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

1 As a not-unrelated aside, Canada has got it wrong with its steep descent into killing each other as the new, favorite way out of the pain.

Lies Exposed: 5 Important Gifts Can Emerge With A Little More Suffering

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Why not swap pain for something better, friend?

a close up of a barbed wire with the sun in the background

At our prayer group, I whined1 about a new bunion I was developing.

At the end of the meeting, our Pastor told me he had a bunion, and when I saw it, it was a lot more advanced than mine. He shrugged his shoulders. He still goes for RUNS at age eighty-plus with a painful bunion and a bum knee.

Maybe a little pain is not the end of the world, as much we tend to believe.

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

“Get over it,” he seemed to be hinting at me with his sparkling eyes. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we need to learn to live with a bit of pain, and this is not such a bad thing.

His perspective reminds me of the person twenty-five years younger than me that I work out with at the gym2.

She moaned about it being hard getting “older” because of the new aches and pains.

“Take heart!” I thought to encourage her. “ALL the aches and pains I had at her age are GONE!3

And sometimes, God even makes our bodies capable of healing from pain, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Who knows? For example, my friend offered the contact information of a specialist who helped her with her bunion.

Sometimes He gives us each other to help us find our healing.

Sometimes God simply touches us as we reach up our hand to Him and ask for this.

But in the meantime, how do we temper the storms of life as they come?

In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties.

Jesus Christ in The Message

The (relative) good news is that:

Suffering may be our opportunity to become who our friends and family have always longed for us to become.

In fact, at least five gifts can emerge if we partner with the suffering4 in hope.

We can become:

  1. A little more empathetic,
  2. A little more humble,
  3. A little more thankful for the small things we take for granted,
  4. A little more capable with increased capacity to weather the inevitable storms of life (Or, a little “tougher” my outdoorsy Dad would have said),
  5. A little more willing to stop slapping Holy Spirit’s hand when He reaches out to comfort us.

Lord, help us to allow the suffering that we experience to transform us, we pray. Please help us bear the sufferings we all experience. When it becomes too great for us to bear, increase our connection to You, that You may comfort us and be our crutch to help us walk out our days with Your strength, we pray.

And may your time with bunions or your time immobilized in bed be productive, in a surprising sort of way, friend.5

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Photo Credit – Thorns and Sunrise by Josie Weiss on Unsplash

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

1 (Only slightly, okay?!)

2 Yes, that IS an impressive statement! Check out THIS article and THIS one to be even MORE impressed with my gym “buff-ness” (Or at least perseverance – same thing!)

3 I have a lot of new ones that are MUCH worse, but the point is, we don’t ALWAYS have to worry about keeping the pain we have!

4 I know that the beginning of a bunion forming example is (only a bit!) pathetic. For a less pathetic example of suffering, check out this article, when I could barely get out of bed for a month, for more thoughts on the possible redemption of suffering.

5 As outlined in the numbered statements above.

New Lessons I Learned After 29 Days Of Bed Rest

/ Lori Lawe / 3 Comments

Sometimes essential life lessons come in strange gift packages, no?

a bench sitting on top of a lush green hillside

The first week on bed rest1 wasn’t too bad.

I was initially hopeful that my body would figure itself out, my back would crack in the right direction, and I would be up and running in no time. I opened an office on my bed, barking orders at my homeschooled kid, and attending meetings online. I forgot to tell one male teacher why I was in bed during the online homeschooling call, which was embarrassing in retrospect.

But I’ve done more embarrassing things2 in good health.

Click HERE to continue reading.

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

Value The Comfort Of Fear More Than Freedom?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

That meadow in the sunlight. The place where we dance and feel free. The place outside that smells of wildflowers and the freshest air.

Where is it?

I lost it in the busyness of life.

Instead, I am inside, head down, working on my computer. Was that a rat scurrying in the distance? I didn’t have as much weekend time to deep clean as I would have liked.

Where did my dream of what life was supposed to be like vanish?

I live in this tiny apartment created by my fear.

What if?

I don’t have time to wander outside with my backpack, eating the apple I distractedly packed along the way. How can we stumble upon life’s meadows if we don’t have time to look for them? What does it look like for my eyes to search the most distant horizon?

I forgot.

Jesus opens the door in this stuffy room. The open door beckons me outside. Come for a walk with me, He offers.

And the pile of to-dos stays on the desk as I walk and then run outside with my friend, Jesus.

My legs felt weak, and I stumbled as I laughed, breaking into to run.

I haven’t used my legs for a while.

All that sitting and worrying has caused my muscles to atrophy a bit.

But as I run with Jesus in that place of rest, I feel my legs, arms and lungs growing more robust.

The Lord replied, “I will personally go with you . . . and I will give you rest

Ancient Text

I can see further when He beckons me to look at the far, far distant horizons. My eyes hurt from the strain. I hadn’t lifted my vision beyond my overwhelming concerns for a while.

I can sense my muscles are more substantial, my bones sturdier, my thoughts sharper. I feel more like the human I am meant to be after spending time in the spiritual clouds.

And it’s going to be okay.

Because when I walk, hand in hand, back to that tiny apartment with Jesus, he holds a button attached to a long cord that snakes to my apartment. The button can ignite the fuse attached to the dynamite that explodes the tiny apartment I used to live in, the one confining me by my fears.

It’s not that my fears have left me but that I have left them.

Jesus gives me enough food for today to live in freedom.

And I’m snatching up this food and eating my fill.

I’d rather fly.

You?

Don’t Attend Church Looking Bad – How To Look Good!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

As you know or can presume from the style and classiness of these posts, I have excellent taste.

Ahem.

And I hesitate to point out, most reluctantly, that in this post, the exact BRANDS and style of clothing I was wearing were noted for interested readers! (I mention that cautiously and with true humility, of course.) In this post, I describe the fancy hat collection I am developing for use in my old age.

So yes!

I CAN EASILY advise on how to look good!

So, HOW do we look VERY GOOD at church, you ask? Great question! I’m SO glad you asked! Ahem!

First, set aside your pride and go ahead and have a big ‘ol ugly cry at church. Seriously! I describe my own (rare) undignified moment here.

You’re welcome.

But wait, wait, you ask, “How does ugly crying make us look good?” It seems the opposite would be true! You hang on my every word, waiting to discover how to lock and seal this seemingly disparent advice into a philosophically coherent indisputable argument.

I’ll explain.

The more we air our neuroses (sorry for the analogy, but it’s like flatulence), the less we smell bad! Seriously! Now, you know that I never even like to MENTION the word flatulence, as described here. However, the analogy fits SO perfectly.

When we hold in, er- what SHOULD be aired – the inside of us smells terrible, though the outside has no odour. Okay, this analogy MAY be breaking down a bit, but you get my point, I think? If we HOLD IN our neuroses, and pretend everything is okay when it isn’t, the inner neuroses pick away at us, and the rotten stench that all of us carry around with us festers there, though often we are the only ones who can smell it.

(If you think you always smell good, have you ever wondered – “AH! What IS the meaning of my life?” – JUST before you fall asleep? If so, that’s a case in point. You are more messed up than you let on, too!)

So, let out the uglies! A little cry at church is just the thing. You’ll find that people who love you bring you a Kleenex and a pat on the shoulder.

They may not be able to help you much, but they genuinely want to, which counts for something.

You see, at church, God COMMANDS others to love you. Now, granted, NONE of us are that good at loving others, but some have figured out how to channel a morsel of God’s love for us through their arms into compassion.

These are the people we can be honest with, and -no surprises here – they have already taken their turn in the ugly seat.

They are not surprised by your big cry!

And somehow, expressing what we feel is enough to keep the evil dragon at bay for a while.

Knowing that someone is praying for us helps too.

Add a little time with the Father to ask Him a bit more about WHY we were neurotic freaks at church last week and He gives us the Kleenex that is the softest kind that dries all of our tears because His Kleenex is fragranced with hope.

At church, they will read to you from a book, and it may say something like this:

For everyone. . . fall[s] short of God’s glorious standard.

Ancient Text

And this will put a bounce in our step and hope in our hearts.

We’re not as neurotic as we thought!

Well, we are if we dig deeper, but that’s for next Sunday.

The point is, we’re not sucking in our guts anymore, pretending our way through life.

‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’

CS Lewis – Letters to Malcolm

Whatever we bring to the light can be healed.

Whatever we hide infects us, rotting away at our insides.

So let’s let our neuroses out!

And maybe after we’ve let out some of the uglies, we may shift the direction of the ship we are sailing a little closer to true north.

And as we go about our week, we’ll find we are starting to smell better!

We’ll look better, too, through God’s eyes.

How To Be Brave At The Dentist’s And Doctor’s

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I was having considerable dental work done, about a 3-hour appointment.

I brought my audiobook so “I can pretend I’m somewhere else,” I told the dentist. I was listening to a dramatization of people who were persecuted and even martyred for their faith. That audiobook helped to put my own relatively minor suffering in perspective.

And yet, as the dentist said, “This is the part when I’m like a woodpecker,” and placed a metal rod on my teeth which he then proceeded to hammer on like a mallet, I felt slightly… uncomfortable.

I sensed Holy Spirit in the room, almost like He was sitting beside me, wanting to hold my hand.

It used to be surprising to me when God wanted to speak or envelope me in His love.

But not anymore.

At that moment, I briefly remembered some ridiculous things my daughter feared. One summer, for example, she was scared of house flies and would not go to the park or eat outside without screaming as this terrifying flying animal approached her. I brushed off her fears and told her to move on.

And yet that’s not how Holy Spirit treated me with my concerns, which are so tiny in the scope of life.

Every time the dentist gently smashed me in my face, I could sense my adrenaline rise, and then I could sense Jesus comforting me. Like a roller coaster constantly about to head uphill, he smoothed out the hills and valleys of this experience so that my roller coaster ride was less bumpy. As I fearfully clutched His hand, He calmed me repeatedly so that the essence of this experience was the peace of His comfort.

He seemed to be holding my hand.

When the ordeal was over, the dentist and dental assistant commented that dental work would be much easier if more patients were as calm as I was.

I couldn’t have been more shocked.

“Who, me?” I wondered, looking around.

God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.

The Message

And God, may I be the comforting presence to another’s fears next.

And so, what are the easiest ways to be brave at the dentist’s or doctor’s?

I have no idea, unfortunately, however three clues we can glean from this recent experience are:

1. Listen to audiobooks about people who die for a cause they believe in while people are deliberately maiming you. It helps! Try this one to get you started.

2. Practice picking up the clues of God’s presence in your life, and talk to a trusted friend about your questions and experiences.

3. Ask Him to comfort you and hold on tight when Jesus surprises you by showing up in your life.

God, may You comfort everyone reading this at their upcoming medical appointments more intimately with your soothing words, voice, and tangible arms of love. We pray for strength for today with the challenges each of us faces. Help us to learn how to more fully lean on You when life’s challenges come, we pray.

Anger, Expressed As Love, Is Hope For Culture

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

God is very different from who I thought He would be.

I’m a lot different from who I thought I would eventually become when I first started longing to know more about God, too.

At Sunday school or elsewhere when we first heard about God, He often appeared as a “turn the other cheek” when an enemy tried to smack Him kind of a guy.

And since we are made in His image, I had a vague impression that the ultimate goal of the spiritual life is to become the kind of person who lies down so people can wipe their feet on us.

If that’s the case, then I was blown away by what God spoke into the recesses of my heart that day. God, are you who I think you are? 

Of course not,

is His inaudible answer, and in his fury at the audacity of the question, He erupts as a violent volcano, splashing the earth with ashes of his love.

A volcano . . . erupting . . . love? I can explain because I am a mini-volcano formed in His image.  I haven’t exploded yet. But I can feel the rumble, and I know it is coming. 

And he is edging me on.

Don’t be afraid of your anger,

He spoke gently into the recesses of my heart recently. He comforted me in empathy, the way my dad would rub my back when I was a child, just before I would throw up. You know that feeling just before you are sick when you remember you will feel much better to have the bile removed from inside of you? That’s how I have been feeling.

I had been covering up the threatening volcanic eruption with my best church bonnet and long white Sunday dress. 

Like the person who travels to a volcano that threatens eruption, and pours a bit of water, a shovel full at a time, on top of the huge mountain to pacify it a little bit, I placated my growing anger. 

I shoved the equivalent of a baby pacifier into my mouth at church, turned aside, and listened to relentless chatter. Another shovelful of water, please. Or she’s a gonna blow.

My anger terrifies me. 

I once climbed an active volcano in Costa Rica, la Rincon de la Vieja. Tourists would never have been allowed that close to an active volcano in ultra-safe Canada. They wouldn’t have been allowed within miles of that place. And as I stood at the top of that mountain and looked around, I was shocked at the scale of the devastation. 

An entire mountainside of bare rocks, with the jungle forest beginning abruptly in the valley far below.

Yet scientists know that after the initial devastation, volcanic ash enriches the soil with its dense nutrient load. 

Soil from this ash produces some of the lushest plant life on earth. 

So as God rubs my back, gently telling me it’s okay to be sick, I realize that holding in my anger only makes me feel sicker.

At that moment, the clerk at the checkout counter seemed to silently ask me as she wrapped my package with a smile, “Would you like modern-day slavery with that?¨

And my anger, rightly expressed as love, compels me to take one small step in a direction that opens the door to better alignment with my true identity.

And this anger, no longer stuffed inside but rightly expelled as love, contains the soil that can nourish the seed of hope.

Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?

The Message

Where Do We Go In Winter When We Are Lost Again?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Looking for a way out of another winter that suffocates?

A pika was lost in a snowstorm.

She looks around her. Which direction to turn? She is cold, alone, afraid and doesn’t have much time before the cold winter chills her to the bone. Death arrives quickly out in nature.

And that pika is me.

(You, too?)

Why a pika? Because who knows what a pika is? (And how known do you feel?)

We look around us, seeking a direction to follow or something solid to hold onto.

The days of our lives are thrown in the garbage can like the pages on our daily calendars. There goes another day, week, decade.

We find our first and then our 100th gray hair. Do we continue to pull these hairs out? At what point are we defeating ourselves, even harming ourselves, by pretending that the clock of time isn’t ravaging us?

What do we hold onto?

What direction do we travel next?

Who can lead us?

Do we hunker down, curl into the fetal position for warmth, and hope for spring?

Will the joy in our souls remain at the end of this winter?

Where is the warming hut, the cup of hot chocolate, and the friend with the listening ear?

I am here, He whispers.

Do you hear?

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.

What Is The Best Way To Fight The Dragon, Nibbling Us?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Terrifying dragon breath

Steamy exhalation, drifting closer, nearer

I cringe back against the far edge of the cave

Trying to catch the life within my heart, fleeing

Closer, nearer, pungent aroma of steamy breath, foul stench of death surrounds me

“HALT!” I yell. “BACK DOWN!”

It cowers at my feet

My raised hand bears the silhouette of a dagger

In this eerie place

I light my torch

It’s blazing fire light comforts

And the dragon vanishes with the darkness

It lurks nearby, I know

Ready to draw nearer, to pounce

Should I forget, again, who I AM

It flies at me again

Like a mosquito

Irritating

Except it is the dragon

It will consume me if I let it

It seems to be only a minor irrigation

But it will leave me cowardly, a broken shrivelled residue of myself if I listen

To my thoughts

And so I pick up my sword

And I fight

Though I am already exhausted

And I win

Only when I remember

Who I AM

The Accuser of our brothers and sisters thrown out,
who accused them day and night before God . . .
So rejoice, O Heavens, and all who live there . . .

The Message

And so infused [by reading this], we’re again fearless, unimpressed by the bluster of the dragon.

Eugene Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible

God, may we no longer be blustered by accusations. May we remember who You are, and therefore remember who we are as heirs of the King. Please empty our head of the thoughts that do not align with how You think of us.

May we keep Your thoughts of us, Jesus, closer than the dragon’s.

As you listen to the song below, consider asking Holy Spirit, “How do You see me?”