The amaryllis opened its two enormous blossoms this week, revealing pink and white splendor and raising the scent profile of the room to a higher level.
And I am that amaryllis.
And so are you.
Let me explain.
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It’s “combed hair and a clean outfit day” on Restoring Life!
I updated the Restoring Life “Description”, which is located HERE.
The fresh “About” page is located HERE.
The new “About” page is actually an old “About” page I am putting back in place after a time.
The first page, updated HERE, seems to “Fit” better, like a comfortable old shirt, instead of starched slacks.
(What IS starching anyway? And what exactly ARE slacks?) Whatever.
Here is a quote that seems to summarize the essence of Restoring Life’s new “About” page and “Description”:
By an act of faith, [he] said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place . . . When he left he had no idea where he was going.
I hope you have fun travelling your life adventure and that you have no idea where you’re going, too!
That’s the funnest way to travel!
And now you know something else about me!
(Or at least, you know more stuff about me that I don’t know, either. Whatever! Same thing!)
Please feel free to return the favour and share something fun about yourself or your journey related to this newsletter in the comments or notes section.
It’s an honor to fly with you, friend.
Thank you for liking me! I like you, too!
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?
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.
How do we become the kind of homeschooling parent with time to exercise?
Good question.
As discussed here and here, we throw our old identities of competent, non-butt-smelling parents out the window. Then, we think up a new plan that is dissonant with the parent we thought we would become. We embrace our inner loser.
And so, when I therefore stopped trying to be excellent as a homeschooling parent, the solution became apparent:
Let them rot their brains!
I decided, in my excess of homeschooling wisdom born from a recognition of my incompetencies, to begin each day by pouring into my children’s brains not challenging academic subjects, but . . . content dribbled from online devices straight into their beautiful little brains as they stared intently at screens!
I essentially bribed them.
“Look,” I said that morning as I pulled out their new to-do lists. “Do the stuff on the list this morning and then you will get to rot your brains with time online!” I promised them that big carrot held out tantalizingly close.
And so they finally got up, brushed their little teeth, put away the milk (one of their to-do items in that season), got dressed, combed their cute little hair, and then sat down to veg out on a device.
I let them watch anything they wanted from the RightNow Media app. I can trust what this company produces. And for a high-tech tip, if you triple-click your iPad or iPhone the kids can’t suddenly switch from the app of your choice to their favourite “Candy Plus Violence!” (or whatever) app.
We all won!
I got my sweat on downstairs on my elliptical machine for half an hour while they watched something that was loosely a morning character development program. (That was the rationale of the old “I must be an exceptional homeschooling parent” tiny voice remnant that still lurked in the recesses of my mind.) I got my sweat on, and the best thing was that I could find them all at 8:00 am, and they were ready to go!
When I sneakily put pencils into their hands in the last 10 seconds of their program, it was a transition they barely even noticed, from vegging out to doing math!
By 10:00 am every single day, I felt I should have won a homeschooling award. (I didn’t. No one cared. God does though!*)
So, lose your respectable homeschooling parent identity!
Let them rot their brains online early every morning instead!
You’ll feel amazing AFTER exercising! (Not before or during exercising – Let it be known). It feels pretty great (eventually) to shift identity, too. And so, how do we change our identity to the kind of parent who exercises?
1. All of our initial ideas about who we will become as homeschooling parents are kind of nut-so if we’re honest! Let’s toss those ideas with our huge egos and embrace mediocrity for our children instead!
2. Our children may need their brains to rot a little so that this homeschooling journey is sustainable for all of us. So be it!
3. Time for popcorn and a group educational video at 11:00 am, little family? We did something useful today! Let’s celebrate! We give each other a high five, and I have time for a visit with a homeschooling mom that afternoon. (While the kids build a mini-nuclear reactor or do whatever it is homeschooled kids do in their spare time).
This homeschooling ship is on course!
When a mom’s long-term well-being matters EQUALLY as much as the (nut-so, unrealistic) goals we have for our children*, this homeschooling ship can sail into the future as long and as far as God calls us.
Well done, parents!
Love others as well as you love yourself
Jesus of Nazareth, a guy with tons of wisdom!
As you listen to this song below, consider asking the King of Kings, the guy who longs to pour love on you as your Father, what gifts He longs to put into the hands of His favourite child, you.
(Because we’re all His favourite child. Shhh… that’s God’s secret that He is whispering to you even now. Hear Him?)
Blogpost Footnotes
*That discussion is for next time – we are all works in progress!
I woke up one morning and realized with a start that I was also alive spiritually. I poked myself to be sure I was awake. I was the same on the outside.
What had caused this inner transformation?
My circumstances were the same. I lived in the exact physical location as many years ago. But undoubtedly, something had shifted recently.
Like all births, the growth had begun unnoticed in the hidden places long before.
My story of waking up is a long story of twisting paths, walking in circles, and many falls.
Just like your spiritual story.
And I’m still walking.
(You? That’s good. Very good.)
This morning, my rear felt particularly sore from all the falls recently. Jesus held his hand to me again today, offering to help me get up.
I’ll start there.
I woke this morning in a cyclical funk created by my discouragement. I was spiralling down, ready to flush the new thing God had been stirring in my heart down the toilet of my despair again. Then I heard a quiet thought encouraging me.
You are in the fight of your life.
(Would I jump into the battle or claim immediate defeat, like usual, keeping my soul asleep?)
I was in a fight for God’s whisperings to be brought forth like a new babe into the world. But I had to surrender my half-eaten lunch. Would I obey?
God had been whispering, waking, urging my soul towards the new life he wanted to see sprouting in my heart.
Would I throw away my hope that God can grow something beautiful through the dry depleted soil of my life again today?
Would my discouragement win?
The question is not how big is our faith. The question is, how big is our God? I shrunk God, again, into my image.
And so I was asleep.
I awoke when reminded in a time of prayer this morning of this truth:
The impossible thing He whisperers that he wants to bring forth in our lives is easy for Him.
How exactly this discouragement transformed into hope is a story for another time.
But for now, suffice it to say that I was reminded that God made an amaryllis bloom after twenty years or more of bareness.
And He made a lilac bloom after ten years or more of barrenness.
And so He can make our lives bloom after seasons of bareness, too.
We begin to wake spiritually every day by opening our spiritual eyes.
Here’s how:
This subtle shift in my thinking helped me soar on the wind of hope I found this morning. I picked up the hope. I carried it next to my heart.
For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed.
They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.
God is standing next to us with seeds, a shovel and a watering can. He wants to dig deep, exposing old roots to create room for new growth. I want to get out of the way to allow Him to do his work.
You?
While waiting for life to sprout, consider praying along to this song.
This song begins like the prayer of a person who doesn’t honestly believe what they’re praying (like many of many prayers over the years):
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
The song ends in a loud declaration of the exact words, daring the soul to believe.
Time for a battle for you, too, as you pray along to this song?
What is He saying to you through the pages of His book, asking you to have faith to believe?
May your eyes be opened, your soul awake.
“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.
If we are at the bottom of the pit, there’s nowhere to go but up!
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.
Hope abounds because things can only get better!
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.
And life gets a little easier!
Spiritual people, for example, those who know that they are losers because they desperately need someone to clean them up, lead them and help them all row in a similar direction, tend to struggle a bit less frequently with their mental health.*
So stop building up people’s self-esteem! Trash them instead, knowing that this is the best way to build them up! They’ll (eventually) feel better!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Blogpost Footnotes
*Of course, many people within the church struggle with mental health, and research is based on averages.
That time when I was discouraged, when I sensed God calling me into something new, something that made my knees quake, she said she saw a picture of something in her mind whenever she prayed for me.
It was a picture of a dead plant.
The dead plant was me.
“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.
He seemed to say enough, sometimes after only one letter, one word typed, bidding me to dance in joy with Him.
And so, to return to the start of this post, “A winter season,” she had suggested that day.
And then a few people read these blog posts. (Yes! Accidental clicks count!) And I still write boring things and even you read them!
And so I rejoice this spring with one amaryllis blooming and one lilac blooming after a decade or more of relative death for each.
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?”
May you find the strength to follow.
I was startled when I saw it yesterday.
It was a mundane circumstance for those without eyes to appreciate it.
But my heart quickened many beats. God whispered, calling me to see something more profound than this mundane object. Would I have ears to hear? Did I have time to listen? Was I too busy to notice?
Here’s what happened.
At least ten years ago, I decided to plant two lilac bushes.
My husband encouraged me to plant the lilac bushes in our yard because they are my favourite flower. I love lilacs because they confidently fill the air with their scent. You can smell them from a distance.
Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God
They are the only flowers I have planted in our twelve years of living in this house.
Unfortunately, I made a classic mistake when I planted them. I planted them at the edge of our lawn, where two lovely bare spots were in the grass. I found out later that these two spots were bare because our automatic sprinklers didn’t reach that far.
I watered these plants by hand once or twice and then forgot about them.
Every spring, I (perhaps pathetically) mourned these lilacs, thinking I wish I would have loved on them, poured into them and helped them get established. When I drove past our neighbour’s wall of lilac bushes this spring, I was startled at their beauty and again mourned that my lilac bushes had died. I didn’t get around to buying more lilac bushes and planting them again.
And then last week I saw it.
One little lilac blooming in the exact place where I had planted that lilac bush over a decade ago.
God seemed to whisper that we are like this lilac blooming.
Huh?
I stared at the lilac, trying to figure out if God was speaking and what he could possibly be saying through the life of this flower.
My mind wandered a bit as I stood staring at the lilac, waiting. I found myself impatient for next year. “This small flower, on an established plant, ushers in hope for more flowers next year and even more the year after that!” I found myself thinking.
And this is what I am saying to you, God seemed to whisper.
Where I had thought there was death, God was silently, patiently growing life. And my pathetic, misguided gardening efforts were enough for the master gardener to redeem. The lilac’s foliage blended with the background foliage of the nearby leaves, so I hadn’t noticed the bush was still alive.
Do you feel hope rising?
How is God growing hope in you?
What do you need hope for? How may God be offering you hope? Can we use the hidden winter season to store hope deep in our roots, waiting for spring to blossom?
That was God’s message to me last season.
He had asked me to plant, and to establish a habit in my life that would eventually bear fruit.
I’ll explain next time.
But today, my arm is outstretched to you. Here’s some hope, friend. What step of faith is God asking you to take?
Restoring Life 