Spirit

Everyone Has Someone To Mourn With!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Last time I talked about mourning together with the group.

I also talked about coyotes, but let’s face it, we all know I just made that stuff up. You should never trust stuff you read on the internet, anyway!

Except this post, of course.

So I spoke to my friend this week about her experiences mourning together in community.

The only problem is that she has read some of this blog once and so if I talked about what she said, I would have to tell the truth.

I’ll stick to my own experience.

So last week I was a blathering mess at church.

This was embarrassing, even for me, but the cool thing is that I didn’t have to purposefully stop the flow.

Imagine you’re in a room and the God of the universe (who exists) commands everyone in that room to love you. And they try their best to obey God (in our pathetic, limited, human way).

That’s what church is supposed to be like actually. We can bring whatever emotion is tagging along behind us and we don’t have to hide it. Sometimes we may need to cry and that’s OK. They have to love you!

Sometimes just sensing the presence of God in communal worship is what starts the tears.

And when we finally open our hearts to God and allow one disappointment to surface, don’t you find that a geyser opens up within us sometimes? There is a lot of other stuff that probably should be released as well.

And just letting some of that stuff emerge is actually healing.

That’s the irony. There is an opportunity for healing to occur if we can just stop holding it together for a few minutes, stop sucking in our guts, and stop pretending our real life matches our online persona (I’m not as neurotic and whiny in person as I seem online of course!).

I accidentally caught his eye -the guy at church I don’t know super well. But his look of empathy towards me, of real empathy, even as he tried to hide his gaze, was enough to open up the cracks on some more layers of disappointment that needed to be released.

Keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time. The Message

Sometimes what comes out, weaved into the tapestry of stuff that has wounded our hearts over the years is bitterness and disappointment towards God.

He is standing there, ready with a towel to dry off all the tears that are soaking you. He already knows how you feel. He is so happy that you’re finally bringing who you are, and letting him comfort you.

You can rest in his arms now, like a child sitting on their mother’s lap, clinging to her, and receiving comfort somehow.

It’s going to be OK little one, he whispers to your ear.

I’ve got you now.

As you listen quietly to the song below, may you open up your heart to God, and may you find comfort, dear one.

Everyone Can Find Their Best Friend On The Internet!

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

More and more people like me! What I mean, of course, is that some of my posts have gotten “likes”! That means you like me, right? I tried to “like” your “like” of my post to show you that I like you, too. My daughter, who is all Wise, because she, like all teenagers, has exceptional skills at “liking” things, says you can’t like someone’s “like”. I did “like” my own post once, which says that I like myself, I think, which is not unrelated.

What was I saying? Oh, yes! You seem to like me!! And since you like me, that means you are my friend!!

And since you are my friend, that means that I can call you at 2 AM when I can’t sleep so you can listen to my (real or perceived) problems! That’s what friends do, right?

So can you please send me your phone number? Thanks.

(Oh, and you want my phone number, so I can listen to you? Whaat?) Since so many people spend time liking me, you can’t expect me to have any time to listen to your problems!

This is a one-way street and I like it that way. Thank you very much.

(Wow. People are so needy nowadays.)

Seriously, members of this blog (so far, just me) meet to pray and listen to each other, and there may be someone who also attends one of these meetings, who is outward-focused enough to listen to (some) of your neuroses, IF we’ve spent enough time working through the nuances of my neuroses, of course.

You’re welcome!

. . . speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. The Message

Seriously, (and this is the real Lori Lawe speaking, not the super neurotic persona I use as the voice of this blog. Why is that voice coming out of me when I write anyway??) Huh. Anyway… As mentioned here, distraction can sometimes solve our problems, but when that doesn’t work, Jesus is waiting, patiently, like a true friend waiting for you, to listen to you at a coffee shop even though you’re late again. He longs to hear what’s on your heart.

whisper . . .

And may you find the best friend ever, maybe even on the internet, friend.

Three Keys To Transitioning Gracefully To Life’s Next Season

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

In the last post, I said I would offer advice for how to transition gracefully to life’s next season.

I forgot to actually say something that would help you in that post. Hey, I never promised I would say something useful! The fine print in the Terms and Conditions of this blog was purposefully crafted to avoid high expectations. Wow! People expect so much nowadays!

But I’m not very good at following rules so I thought I’d actually say something useful in this post. Here goes:

Ahem… Clearing throat

Three Keys to Transition Gracefully to Life’s Next Season

Let’s take some pointers from this ancient text:

Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? The Message

1. Forget the old. Stop whining because your kid got a bit older, you don’t have babies anymore, or you hit another milestone birthday. I mean, get over it! Are you going to whine forever just because your kid moved out? (Yes, I do find that I process my thoughts through writing so yes, I am counseling myself right now.)

2. Ask God to remove your blinders so you can see the new thing. For example, who is the new person God may be asking you to serve? One year, while I was praying, Jesus showed me a picture of me washing the feet of one of my children.

Having loved his dear companions, [Jesus] continued to love them right to the end . . .So he got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, and put on an apron. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron. The Message

Help her, Jesus seemed to be silently imploring my heart.

This year, I have a specific homeschooling goal.

You know your goal is from God, by the way, if it’s too big for you to successfully accomplish on your own. He always gives us goals that are too big for us to carry alone, so we will cry out for Him to help us. He wants to walk together with us through every step of life.

The third tip to allow excellence in transitioning to life’s next season doesn’t come from the ancient text written above but is extrapolated from this blog post. (I guess I did say something useful in that blog post! Who knew!)

3. Be thankful you’re alive (I.e., I mean, you’re not dead today!)

I find that this attitude solves 99% of my First World Problems.

If you haven’t heard of First World Problems or FWP, check out this video (produced by nigahiga).

I’m sorry if these problems describe one of your biggest challenges!

(I know, I know! I had to go for counseling after watching this video too!)

Anyway, good luck!

I hope that helps!

You’re welcome!

Gracefully Transitioning To Life’s Seasons?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I wrote a post about sending our first kid off to college last time.

If you haven’t read it yet, I’ll summarize it for you:

Whiny, whiny, boo-hoo, cry, send our kid away… boring, boring.

But this is the thing that really bothers me, as I think about it a bit more.

It’s not really fair that just when our kids become helpful we send them away.

I mean think about it for a minute. Kids come out of the womb as little Machiavellis. I can give an example from my own life. Before one of my kids could speak she was bossing me around.

“How?” you ask.

We had taught her sign language and she knew about four words. She knew how to say “I love you” and she knew how to say “Milk”. We were teaching her to ask for what she needed. This is good. But we didn’t expect a little tyrant to emerge.

For example, when I walked into her room in the morning she didn’t gaze up at me with loving, thankful eyes and ask for some milk with a smile.

Her face screwed into a scowl, she was standing and angrily clenching both fists, glaring at us, and non-verbally (effectively) yelling the sign for milk.

“WHERE is the hired help?!” her nonverbal cues were sending us. Clearly, we weren’t measuring up to her expectations. And we were only two months in on this parenting journey. (OK maybe it took her longer than two months to become a tyrant but not much more than that.)

And compare that to now. I mean homeschooling teenagers can cook! And they know how to do the dishes!

Why would we get rid of them now?

I think parents should form a union.

We should demand that homeschooled teenagers stay with us forever. They should be massaging our feet and feeding us grey poupon (Do you swallow that stuff whole?) after all the blood, sweat, and tears we poured into them.

If people do need to change and mature over time, then I think that after we’ve had our homeschooled, helpful kids and teens for a long time, then sure, they can change back into babies.

Then we can send them away because we’re losing the unhelpful babies and not the helpful teens.

Wait. What’s that you say? God already designed the universe that way?

Ah!!! I guess you are right!

When God gave teenagers parents, he designed the parents to do just that. Parents are helpful to their teens, and then the parents are the ones that mature into essentially incoherent, helpless babies again.

Ah!!! 

I didn’t think of that!

Maybe it’s all about perspective!? I’m alive today!

This is a good day!

I don’t mind that my helpful, kind, sweet daughter went off to university!

The way the universe works is just fine, come to think of it!

Go away!

If I’m not poised halfway between land and sky, about ready for them to shovel earth on top of me, then this is a great day!

It’s amazing that being grateful that we’re alive is a balm to so many of our problems!

I think I’ll see if my husband wants to learn English country dancing with me now that my daughter has left for university.

We have some extra time.

What a perfect world we live in!

(. . . But if distraction isn’t a perfect solution for you either . . .

As you try desperately to hang onto the rope as you swing through the seasons of life, you could cling to God by praying through the lyrics of this song: “I’m here traveling down this long and winding road. Seasons come, seasons go . . . But I’m still standing on the only rock I know.”)

Every Homeschooling Parent Will Be Ready To Wave Goodbye To Their Teen

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I’m mad at you! At all of you with a child more than 17 years old who left home! I hate you all! Why didn’t you tell me it would be this hard to say goodbye when they left for college!?

And all of you with babies too, babies that are older than my oldest baby, I hate you all too! Before we had babies, why didn’t you tell us that looking after babies would be so hard!?

Ah, yes . . .

It is because we wouldn’t have believed you even if you would have spoken up.

And if our teens truly understood the depth of our loss, many of these kids wouldn’t leave home. They are good kids. I relayed these thoughts to my husband, processing them aloud through my tears.

“And we want them to leave,” I cried out. “Yes, we do,” my husband comforted. Then he shoots me a sideways, knowing look. I remembered that this morning our teen was definitely right when she was definitely wrong and instead of bursting into tears, I burst into laughter.

I feel some joy mixed with some sorrow.

And so, “Goodbye!” we say as we wave. Except it’s not kindergarten they are heading off to on a bus. We homeschooled so we missed that milestone. It’s 600 km away and the tearing, the necessary, painful cleaving continues.

Reflecting God’s nature He created them male and female. . . Therefore, a man leaves his father and mother . . . The Message

I told you it would be that way, Jesus reminds me softly. Many years earlier, in prayer, Jesus showed me a picture of my daughters, one after the other, ready to board a plane, to soar off on their journeys of independence. He was preparing my heart to say goodbye many years ago, even then.

Many of us homeschooling parents pushed the love boundary of our hearts a little further than expected when we cracked open those brand new math texts on day one of homeschooling.

The depth of love surprises us all, and surpasses the boundary markers we set up to protect ourselves.

If we love what we know, then we will get to know these kids and our love for them will transform us, them. Love always does.

I’m not saying that homeschooling is one domino after the other of perfect days. I have homeschooled for 4,745 days (I’m convinced you don’t have enough math skills to figure out how many years I have spent homeschooling- Who does?). Out of all those days, I have NEVER yet had one perfect day.

Nope. Not one.

Just daily joy mixed with daily sorrow.

Master storyteller J.R.R. Tolkien explains it this way:

The possibility of [sorrow and failure] is necessary to the joy of deliverance . . . giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

And so saying goodbye to the teen as she flies off to college is just another homeschooling day: some joy mixed with some sorrow. We are used to that. We’ve gotten stronger over the years. It’s just another part of the daily homeschooling rhythm.

We will be ready because we have been practicing every day for this: some joy and some sorrow, repeat tomorrow.

We’re going to be OK.

And so as we watch them soar, we nurse our grief a little, and then flap our baby wings and listen for the call from Him into a new adventure.

And in the same way that we invest in our future by putting aside a few dollars each month, is He asking us to invest in our spiritual future by putting aside a few minutes each day to listen to Him calling us, comforting us, asking us to set aside the old, and to pick up the new?

How is he calling you to wake up?

Where to next God?

I can’t quite fly yet but I am sensing another adventure.

Yes, I’ll follow!

(How about you?)

Encouragement For When You Can’t Take Another Step Down Homeschooling Road

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

“You. You have nice kids.” People say this to us. Often. And this is what I want to reply: If you put plants in partially acidic soil and leave them there, they will grow but not to their full height. They won’t blossom with flowers of kindness. They are hunkering down, in survival mode.

If you want your plants to thrive, you need to put them in well-aerated soil of the proper pH. How much kindness is in the soil that your kids are stuck in?

Then we pull our little plants out of that soil and stick them in other soil with just as low of a pH or perhaps even more acidic. Time for hockey culture and dance practice. We wonder why they are withering, skinny characters blown by the wind into an awkward shape. We wonder why they are so fragile, so easily broken, with so little inner strength to stand against the wind, in joy.

It’s the soil. The rocky, sandy, paltry soil.

And the truth is, dumping manure on our plants is a hard job, that makes us sweat and that only seems to make the problem worse. The plants scream in protest. It burns.

But as we hold their hand, bring water on a cloth to cool their foreheads and to pour on the plant, the water seeps, bringing much-needed nutrients to their roots. They taste of your love, your love tinged with your sweat and your blood, and the water fills their small, malnourished bellies and satiates.

Your sacrifice is what is encouraging them to flourish.

And when little flowers of kindness bloom on your child, you can lean in close, smell the fragrance and let the rich scent soothe your soul.

Well done, homeschooling Mom, Dad.

And when our child graduates from high school or from our homeschool, that is the time to put our feet up and rest, not years earlier.

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

And now, brush off your knees where you skinned them when you fell, wipe your eyes, dear homeschooling parent, and let’s take another step, Jesus holding your arm to steady you.

You’ve got this.

Let’s take it one year, one day at a time, shall we? Where is Jesus leading you next?

Blogpost Footnotes

Homeschooling is one of the many ways to pour water of kindness onto the parched soil our kids are trying to grow in. What are some other ways?

God Spoke Through You And You Didn’t Notice?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

It was amazing. God is soo amazing! I mean, why COULDN’T He use other people, even, yes, STRANGERS to speak to us, if we have ears to hear?

This is what happened.

I had been working on growing to LOVE reading my bible, not blowing dust off the cover, reading it for 90 seconds, slamming it shut, and flicking YouTube back on. How do we LOVE to read our bibles?

One mentor suggested that AS I read a few verses of ancient text that feel particularly FRESH in this season to pause and ask God what He may be saying as I read.

For example, I was meditating on Psalm 139. This is the Psalm describing how God made each one of us with SUCH exquisite care. “Do you have anything else You want to say about how You made me?” I asked him.

I saw a picture in my mind of Jesus making a pot of soup, and adding a dash of this spice, a dash of that.

I am the soup that Jesus was making.

He is the master chef, knowing just how much spice a dish needs to be delicious.

My mentor suggested that I ask Jesus more specifically, “What are the spices you put into my soup?”

He said basil was one of the spices.

Kind of an ordinary spice.

I thought I must have heard incorrectly. Didn’t he mean SAFFRON or maybe something a bit more exotic? Nope. I asked Him again that afternoon.

Basil.

I felt that I should learn a bit more about basil, just in case I was hearing from God correctly, so I typed that keyword into Wikipedia.

I didn’t know this but basil is used by the Greek Orthodox Church to make holy water.

Purify my church, He seemed to be saying.

Not quite sure how to do that except perhaps to speak truth about the absurd in church culture. And perhaps He was encouraging me in my various roles of prayer and ministry?

The next day I was at the grocery store, and a customer one foot away from me asked the clerk about basil. She was yelling.

“You don’t have any basil?“ She was incredulous.

“I’ve been to every store in town and there is no basil anywhere!”

“Are we in a basil shortage?”

Now, there are lots of other foods to eat in our culture, praise God. But this woman REALLY WANTED basil. She pondered aloud with her daughter what they would do about the Thai wraps they were supposed to make that night.

I felt that God was speaking to my heart, that what I carry is a unique gift to the world. Something that others want.

Kind of like basil on the night you are making Thai wraps.

Kind of like the gift God put inside of you.

“The key to our identity is if we can love ourselves . . . If we know we are loved, then we have something to give others.” Steve Chua

Are you transparent enough that others can see your basil when they are searching high and low for it?

What gift that the world needs is lurking deep inside of you stuck behind layers of fear? Ask Holy Spirit to whisper what the next step is to reveal this. He’ll give you a shovel and help you dig it out.

God Speaks Hope Without Speaking – Do You Have Ears To Hear?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

We look at the Son and see the God who cannot be seen. The Message

She spoke in metaphor at the prayer meeting.

Kind of like Jesus did.

His disciples came and asked [Jesus], “Why do you use parables when you talk to the people?” Ancient Text

Holy Spirit reached through the metaphor, through her words, and touched my heart.

Her metaphor, her prayer, was one of the ways Jesus spoke to me recently without using words.

“Coming to Jesus, with our box of “need” is like going to the chiropractor,” she began.

She didn’t know I had been to the chiropractor the day before. I had even forgotten, until that moment, that this chiropractor was a gift from God to me. A gift I forgot to be thankful for.

But I was attentive to the metaphor, tracking.

“Yes, we come to God with our problems just as we come to a chiropractor.” I concurred with her words as they flowed from her mouth, ministering to me.

Some of her words penetrated a deeper level of my heart, further than words can go.

“Do any of you feel that your life is a clock and you are constantly late? And not just by minutes but by decades?” she continued.

I had just poured out my heart to God that week, alone in the car, tears flowing, “Lord, time is a monster that terrifies me, renders me immobile!” I cried out.

This was a depth of my heart that lay buried beneath more pressing items: making dinner for the family, paying the bills, helping the struggling one, being busy, busy, doing the life stuff.

What do I do with the angst that lies buried within, at a depth no scuba diver, and no words can plummet?

Under it all, lay this monster, most often asleep, but threatening to awaken just before I fell asleep at night. Would I wake this monster when I fell asleep? In the depths of night, would this depth of my heart surface and waken me, demanding conversation again?

I came as a patient, God as my chiropractor. “I can’t help you adjust me,” I say to Jesus. “I bring only my pain. Adjust me. Realign me. I surrender to your unusual ways.”

The chiropractor bent my body and slammed herself against my leg, dropped a part of the table beneath me on purpose, and I walked out straighter, with less pain.

Like a healing chiropractor, God wants to adjust the depth of my fears, to re-align my thinking to His ways, to help me run without so much pain on this journey of life.

Yes, God can pick me up again, like the toddler that has fallen, and say, “Good job, keep walking in that direction.”

He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us. The Message

Re-aligning my thinking to the truth that Jesus completed his work on earth in only three years, that He multiplied the meager child’s lunch to feed a stadium, that God created the universe in one breath, that God lives outside of time is the healing oil that soothes my anxious heart, today.

May each one of us come to You, Holy Spirit, with the tangled mess of our fears that we have no words for. May You, like the faithful chiropractor, realign our thinking to flow from Your thoughts of the direction You want for our lives.

May we walk in joy, again today, because our thinking has been re-aligned, put under submission, to the great chiropractor of our hearts, You. May You, without using words, heal even what we don’t have words to express.

We surrender the outcome of our lives to You and choose to walk in obedience along the path You lead us on. You’ve got this.

May we run and dance in freedom, again, on this day, we pray.

Jesus Longs To Guide You Through Pain (And Hold Your Hand)

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I hobbled around, one hand on my back, bent over and twisted.

I did too much at my new CrossFit class, and I could feel the muscles in my lower back clenching, pushing me into a C-shape. Maybe this strain will get better on its own? I was in denial, but my body kept slowly bending me over.

The name of my chiropractor popped into my head. Oh right! But we were leaving on holiday. I didn’t have time. I continued to pack, holding my aching back. But again, and again her name went through my head that morning, as I was thinking of other things.

This is one of the ways God speaks to me. He reminds me, again and again.

I don’t always notice the first time.

So I called the chiropractor, the one I hadn’t seen in five months, the one I had somehow forgotten about after a season of happy back. She surprisingly had one cancellation that morning, which worked perfectly before we left on holiday.

Her touch was like the hand of God. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic but that is what it felt like to me. My body obeyed her and re-aligned. My posture was upright. I (carefully) went about my day and in only several days, instead of several months, I was running again.

“Yeah, I don’t even know how I found her,” I mentioned to my husband offhandedly, as I distractedly finished my lunch. I had forgotten.

The next morning, my prayer group reminded me.

Years earlier, a friend had some trouble with her foot. She mentioned the name of the person who is now my chiropractor.

Her, Jesus seemed to say.

My friend was reluctant to give me her contact information. “I have no idea what she’s like concerning backs,” she cautioned.

Her, Jesus repeated.

I was in a phase of rejecting all therapy.

Everything I tried, every physiotherapist, chiropractor, masseuse, and others had made me worse. Much worse. I was afraid to try anyone else. “I’ll just have to solve this on my own,” I had thought.

But with a nudge from God, I made the call.

I was tense and nervous in her office that first day.

But she became the gift God gave to me.

I could run faster, complete the triathlon, and horse around with the kids again sooner, much sooner.

(There is Another and another who helped my back a ton as well, but those are different stories).

God walked with me in my pain and His Spirit guided me to a person who used her skills to allow God’s healing through my body.

And I am thankful for her.

And I have remembered, now, to be thankful to God for her, too.

If I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me. Ancient Text

Need some advice?

Ask!

God, you long to give out treasures, but we so infrequently come to You to receive. Help us, Jesus, to run to You as a small child in distress runs to their father, longing for an embrace. May we receive Your love, and may Your hand guide us ever more often to the gifts You long to pour out upon us, as a good father loves to give good gifts to his children. May we trust You more deeply with our headaches, heartaches, body aches, and spiritual aches.

Shhh . . . Do You Hear Jesus Speaking To You In A New Way?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Jesus, while He was walking the earth as a human, said a LOT without speaking.

Consider the following example:

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, gasping for breath. . . Peter and the other disciple left immediately for the tomb. . . Simon Peter . . .entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself. The Message

We scratch our heads. Our ears are lying on the floor. We can’t hear Jesus speaking through the bolded words above! You must be making stuff up!

We read the newspaper instead and remain locked in fear. We call this freedom.

Jesus stands next to us, holding out a shovel. Are we willing to dig for some gold? Our freedom is at stake. His words are purposed to help us soar.

And so we rub our eyes from our sleepy state, reluctantly receive the shovel He holds out to us, and try with one hand to hold up one ear to our head so it won’t fall off again. “What exactly are You trying to say?”, we ask, yawning, digging awkwardly with the other hand.

In Jewish culture in the time of Jesus, folding up a napkin (translated above as “kerchief”) after a meal was a way of saying “I am finished.”

We hold onto our ear, about to fall off again. “Uh-huh,” we murmur. Yes, it was finished at the resurrection. We know this.

HANG ON before your ears drop to the floor again and you go back to sleep.

Jesus said “It is finished” to His confused followers because they hadn’t seen the end of The Jesus Film yet. They didn’t know how things would pan out.

But He speaks to US through the folded napkin too, as we apply what He said many years ago to our lives today.

Don’t drop your ear yet!

He says:

I speak in ways that you don’t expect, without words, sometimes. Do you want to hear me? If so, get out your shovel, hold up one of your ears to your head, and dig, friend, dig.

I offer freedom.

Do you want My gifts?

Jesus, may we hold both ears up to our head, eventually, as we learn to listen and to dig into Your words. May you answer our every question. May we come to another with our questions, and may they help us to dig, or may they offer the gold they have already found from studying Your life.

May many, many more of us learn that we have wings.

As you listen to this song, consider holding one of your ears up to your head and asking Jesus to touch your heart with His love. May you receive exactly what you need to fully satisfy your soul, whether He speaks with or without words to you today. May your heart be filled with His love for you, we pray.

A way Jesus recently spoke without using words will be discussed in future posts.