Spiritual Thirst

Relax and Have More Fun! They HAVE to Love You!

/ Lori Lawe / 3 Comments

What if people HAD to love you?

I figured out what my family REALLY thought about me lately, and it was a bit of a shock.

Here’s what happened.

We were reading an excellent book together as a family.

Caveat: Before you get the wrong idea of us all drinking hot chocolate and stringing popcorn and cranberries by the fire as we each take turns reading aloud together, singing a song between each chapter, aka Little House on the Prairie style, no, it wasn’t like that. It was an audiobook played in the car during our day-long drive to visit extended family. The book just helped us not to want to kill each other.

Setting the mood.

Anyway, the book was excellent. It was called Jesus Revolution. I would highly recommend it*. We all got into the story, and even the child we initially had to bribe to listen to the story with us asked for more!

At one point in the book, the author, Greg Laurie, is described as having something like “deep spiritual depth and a bit of an unpredictable, crazy personality. You never knew what he was going to do next.”

My husband looked at me sneakily out of the corner of his eye, smirking. “WHAT???” I asked. “What are you smirking about??”

“Oh,” he replied, looking away casually, “just something said in the book.”

“What??” I protested. “I’m not…!” And then he laughed, and there was a muffled chuckle, I think, from the back seats.

So I guess my family thinks that his personality describes me!

Hmmm. . .

But that’s okay because my family HAS to love me.

What do I mean, you ask?

Well, we homeschool them, so we read to them from books that say things like this:

Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it.

The Message

Then, we go to a church where they read the same stuff.

At church, they HAVE to love you, too! If you find people who don’t love you there, find some others to love. You’ll find true believers who promise to love you no matter what your personality – even the “unusual” ones – whew!

So we can finally relax and have fun.

We’re loved!

And this reminds me of what we did last night. I bought a gift for my family – well, sort of. Okay, yes! I did buy it for myself and pretended to give it to the family!

It is called The Adventure Challenge. You scratch off an “Adventure,” and then the family HAS (Yes, teens, that word is “HAS”) to do the Adventure together. Last night, we strung out yarn as an obstacle course through the basement, and we had to go through it as fast as we could, being sprayed in the face with water each time we accidentally touched a string.

It was fun.

And my superhero outfit? Yeah, I am wearing a bathing suit over the top of my leotards. And yes, the big “S” on my shirt WAS made a spur of the moment. It helped me go faster!

I even got first place!

Before any of the others went, I was ranked first, that is.

So relax! Make your teens do fun and crazy stuff with you! If you’re unsure how, try making “fun” a prerequisite to “food,” for example! They’ll thank you later (Okay – maybe MUCH later).

Your kids are loved, too!

And that was the message of the Jesus Revolution book, actually. It was about a bunch of crazy hippy kids who were overcome, in some cases literally, by the love of God. That love overflowed to others and transformed a nation (Even Time Magazine did a cover article about this movement on June 21, 1971).

So go ahead and be the real you, whatever that looks like.

They HAVE to love you!

Blogpost Footnotes

* If bribing your kids to watch a movie with you is less expensive than bribing them to read a book, the movie Jesus Revolution can be rented here.

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.

When Seeking a Simple U-Turn From Drowning To Delight

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Homeward Bound, Again

A cacophony

My head explodes from the noise

Quiet!

The mundane and the repetitive and the

Scrambling over one another

The pressing down of the other

Must STOP

At last

It is quiet

My boots crunch the spring needles

And I finally feel peace

Alive

Look!

A spring visitor with her mate

Chirping at us, welcoming us to

Our own home

A home we forgot to visit

“Come hither!” she beckons

We remember our true home

And journey deeper

Into the forest

Your heart and mine

Beat as one now

I left my idols at home

My schedule

My dominion

My distractions

My crutches

I am a vulnerable beast

Among others

Walking

Remembering my true home

You

Guide me

Comfort me

Show me what you see

Give me a glimpse through

Your telescope

Of the distant mountains

Snow melting

Rivers filling

It is spring

Get ready

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?

(Says God) in The Message

Know This About The Challenge Of Annoying People To Avoid Being Derailed Finding God

/ Lori Lawe / 4 Comments

We take libraries for granted.

But think about it for a minute with me for illustration.

So we excitedly sign up for a library card, rubbing our hands with glee. We think, “I am now a MEMBER of a special COMMUNITY!” These people will give us access to tons and tons of books!!

At your request, they will order what they don’t have in the vast building of books from another library.

OH! All of these books are FREE to read and borrow. Who WOULDN’T be excited to be a member of said community?

(Besides people who don’t like books but stay with me for illustrative purposes.)

So we rub our hands with glee, excitedly awaiting a moment to sit in a corner with our favourite snack and a travel adventure.

“Are you a member of the LIBRARY COMMUNITY,” we are asked. We are annoyed. We want to enjoy our free book, which we borrowed from the LIBRARY.

“Sure,” we say, returning to our snack and the next paragraph.

“Oh.” The person nods assent and then sits cross-legged, cross-eyed, cross-limbed, and sticks out their tongue in a strange pose.

We are not interested in this behaviour because we want to return to page 4 of our book.

Then another person, and another, joins the first person, sitting next to them, adopting the same pose, staring cross-eyed at each other.

“Um – what are you doing?” we reluctantly ask.

“Oh, this is what we do at the library,” the person calmly states. She goes back to her pose.

WHAT??? Now, we are baffled, and we have one of three choices.

1. Renounce our library cards. These people are crazy! Of course, we also lose the privileges of ALL those free books . . . OR

2. Stay at the library and join them in the weird poses. After all, it’s only a tiny amount of time, and there are ALL those free books . . . OR

3. This is my recommended choice: We MAINTAIN our library membership, but clearly state that we will not join in the weird cross-eyed poses.

And what is the point of this entire post?

1. A library membership is like belonging to a church.

2. The weird poses are like some aspects of church culture.

3. Do we give up the church simply because a few weird-os are doing a bunch of strange poses – or otherwise having some sub-culture that has NOTHING to do with reading books or, in the case in point, with Jesus?

No.

That’s the answer.

So, let’s fight past the people on the front lawn standing with one leg up and posing in strange ways. Let’s fight past the person wearing a pink unicorn suit.

No – wait – that person is me, and I am reading a book and waiting for you. Unicorn suits are cool.

But don’t let them ruin your enjoyment of reading great books, or – SURPRISE! – of finding Jesus behind that huge library bookshelf. He offers you a hug.

He’s so glad you made it.

How Death Of This Plant Creates New Life In Us

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The amaryllis is slowing diminishing in size and splendour, and shrinking back to that mysterious place in its pot where life begins.

My amaryllis blossom will be no more very soon.

You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. 

The Message

And like all death, the point is not that there has been a death but that a new season is beginning for those who carry on.

Plants take time to grow. He has time to wait. And though this amaryllis flower has no voice, God spoke quietly, inaudibly to human ears, through the life of this ordinary bulb when it flowered for the first time in twenty years, as described here.

This flower is a megaphone, taking the inaudible sound of the voice of Jesus from deep, deep within the earth and transforming His words into a glorious flower that our eyes can perceive.

The flower has no mouth to magnify the words spoken by God, and yet its life points us to Jesus, to the place in His heart where inaudible sounds are translated to the muffled sounds that we pick up and examine and ask each other to help us translate.

This flower is another clue on the journey.

Are you ready to go on an adventure with me, dear friend, and to try to unpack what God may be whispering through the life of an ordinary plant, one that blooms for as long as we can stare at our watches, unhurried, before it’s life is consumed, once more in darkness?

This flower teaches us how we should live, our lives erupting as a firework from below ground, to just as quickly be extinguished as the fire of our lives burns out, and we return to dust.

And this silent flower has spoken so loudly to my soul that an awakening has occurred deep, deep within. Do you sense it, too? Come with me, friend, on a journey of waking up, sitting up, opening our ears, getting our legs to move and run, and learning to fly.

And as is the case, whenever the most important lessons are to be grasped, we find our most significant clues in the things the world ignores. I sent this plant on its last stop before the garbage dump, not once but twice. I didn’t have patience for the things that required me to be transformed before I could perceive them.

This amaryllis plant became my teacher.

A series of blog posts (if I remember to write them) will describe what this plant taught me so far, including:

1. It’s not our lives that matter, dear friend, and we comfort each other once we have the strength to recognize this truth. And yet, when our lives produce an aroma like fresh bread, that strengthens another, God’s orchestra produced from the instruments of each life overwhelms the darkness. This symbolic orchestra is our hope.

2. Sometimes, God upturns the soil of our lives. This uprooting is chaotic for us and disorienting. But this is also where we find hope.

3. Where is God about to grow a new leaf in your life? We can never tell exactly where the amaryllis will sprout leaves, only that it will, eventually, despite all apparent odds, sprout. Everything living must grow.

Can you remove the rocks where He may be hovering over the waters or the soil, about to spout new life in you?

4. Do you need a friend who can help you lift the rocky burden that stops the new life from flourishing, where His Spirit is hovering? We need those who see in the Spirit when we are looking for our eyes on the ground next to us. We need a doula or a medical doctor to help us give birth. Journeying with others is safer for the life we carry. Who is on your team?

5. The thing that kept me awake at night back then, that my community and I pleaded with God to change, is the amaryllis that has grown through my softened heart this season. Noticing how God watered, tended and then showed us a new leaf sprouting in our past hopeless situations or dry amaryllis pots gives us faith for the next impossible thing He whispers.

God, give us faith for the hope you long to spring forth from our dry amaryllis pots. You have enough breaths from Your Spirit of guidance and encouragement for every seemingly hopeless situation. Give us eyes to see further than the mundane ordinary.

3 Common Responses To God’s Clues – Choose This One

/ Lori Lawe / 2 Comments

My child said she saw an angel.

And so, children sometimes peel back the curtain of heaven for us to quickly glimpse before the curtain is closed again. All we have left is a memory. What is our response to hearing stories that seem to push us into the realm of the divine, whether we want to go there or not?

Will the divine moments that we hear about be wasted on us?

There are three typical responses to another’s spiritual experiences: we become blind, jealous, or thirsty.

Most commonly, we become blind. Like a beautiful pristine camping spot, one mountain range further than we usually travel on our summer holidays, we won’t go there. It is not within the realm of our routine.

And so we are unable to see.

WAS there ever a pristine camping spot one mountain range over, we wonder, years later? WAS it an angel she said she saw? And then we are distracted again by our lunch.

The second most frequent response to stories of divine encounters is jealousy.

Instead of falling on our knees in worship and petitioning for a similar outpouring of the divine in our parched lives, some of us will compare. The soil of our hearts hardens just a little bit. That didn’t happen to ME.

They must think they are SPECIAL, we reason. They must assume they are MORE SPECIAL than ME. Often, that idea hadn’t crossed their minds.

But we’ve already tossed the implications of the divine moment in self-righteous indignation.

The third response, that very few travel, is a recognition of our spiritual thirst.

This heart response is gas for our car. We understand that each of us is offered an adoption certificate into the family of God, which comes with a royal inheritance. And from that identity, we can petition the Father, on our knees before Him, and ask, “Can You please pour out the divine in my life, God?”

We can beg Him for water because we see another who seems to have found a drink.

He always has more water.

I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.

The Message

God, soften the soil of our hearts equally through the encounters we experience in ourselves and those we hear about from others. Thank you that we can come to You with our doubts too and that You meet us exactly where we are. I pray we stop trying to stuff You into a box.

Keep waking us to a deeper understanding of your love, I pray.

How To Wake Up To Divine Moments – Treasure The Clues

/ Lori Lawe / 2 Comments

So, my toddler said she saw an angel one day.

Fast forward about seven years. We had moved to another house by that time. The subject of angels came up over lunch.

“You saw an angel once,” I ventured to that same child, now about ten years old.

I wondered if she would remember.

“WHAATT?” Her older sister demanded. She prided herself, as an older sister’s right, to know ALL of the family stories. How had she never heard this one?

I hadn’t mentioned it in all those years except for telling one friend and my husband what happened immediately afterward.

Who would have believed her anyway?

Children don’t have many words when they are three years old. Would she remember the incident now? And if so, could put more words around the experience? As much as possible, I wanted the conversation to come from her, not directed by me or influenced by my memory.

“Do you remember seeing an angel?” I ventured.

She said, “Yes”

I wanted to test her, to see if she was speaking accurately.

“Where were you when you saw the angel?”

“At the other house.”

I was startled.

Yes.

“And where was the angel?”

She said, “Outside”.

Oh no, I thought, she doesn’t remember. This event happened in the playroom. I was about to clean up the dishes when she continued, explaining more, “The angel was outside”.

Oh! Yes, I thought, the angel was outside the window we were staring at. That made sense.

Without my prompting, she explained that she was looking out the window in the playroom at the time.

She had remembered this very incident, which brought me shivers. This child was officially diagnosed with memory challenges a short time after this event*.

And yet she remembered the details of this event from many years earlier.

“What did you see?” I asked gently.

“The angel was singing. It had gold shoes and a gold sash.”

I sensed that we were standing on holy ground.

“Oh,” I said.

What else was there to say?

And then we finished our lunch.

~

And what is our response when divine moments encroach upon our lives?

Everyone should allow divine moments, either our own or others, to propel them further along God’s spiritual path for them. But how? The softness of our heart, exposed as one of three common responses, will determine whether we stay stuck in the mud spiritually or whether we are launched further and deeper along our spiritual paths.

In the next post, we will evaluate these most common heart responses after God interrupts the mundane.

He ordered his angels to guard you wherever you go.

The Message

God, thank you that sometimes, for a brief moment, You open our eyes to the possibility of the divine through our or others’ experiences.

Help us wake up to grasp what is right before us when our eyes are opened and our ears can hear. Help us to speak openly about what we have heard and seen. May the unusual become commonplace in each of our lives, we pray.

While we do not place our faith directly in angels, we should place it in the God who rules the angels; then we can have peace.

Billy Graham

What unusual divine moments have you experienced? Or what is a sacred moment that another has told you about that seemed plausible? Has this moment or a curiosity about this experience propelled your spiritual journey?

Blogpost Footnotes

*These cognitive challenges were later healed years after this event through diet, but that is a story for another day.

The Fastest Way To Faith – Walk Through Doors Children Open

/ Lori Lawe / 5 Comments

“Mommy, Mommy!” she called out, running into the room.

She was an adorable three-year-old redhead. Her older sister is comparatively more excitable. The older sister would emotionally max out due to many stimuli, including re-noticing her pink fairy wand or anyone visiting, no matter how sullen and grumpy.

This three-year-old was more even keel at both ends of the excited-angry spectrum.

And I had very rarely seen this child so exuberant.

She grabbed my hand and led me to a run. Where were we going? I wondered with a smile. I tried to get my excited face on, not wanting to squelch whatever new joy she had discovered.

We ran hand in hand to their playroom, and she stopped in front of the window. She looked triumphantly at me. I looked around, trying to grasp what she was showing me.

“Angel!” she exclaimed with desperation, pointing to the window.

Oh! I nodded and smiled.

I didn’t want to correct her, to say, “Oh honey, there is no angel there.”

What if she was seeing an angel? I let her correct me instead. And so my spiritual journey was fueled anew.

We stood hand in hand, looking out the window for a minute or two.

“Oh! Angel gone!” she exclaimed. And just as suddenly, she sat on the floor nearby, re-stacking her blocks.

Kids usher us into the divine. And parenting, because it involves kids, is like steroids for the spiritual life. They violently remove our blinders to how we have stuffed God into the small box of our expectations.

Spend time with children, and we fall to the ground, our knowledge tripping us up. Everything we thought we understood about spirituality has been upended and we are on our rears with dirt in our hair. Our children offer to help us to our feet.

They simplify things for us.

Consider Diane M. Komp, MD, a pediatric oncologist from Yale who:

“found a personal faith while treating . . .. dying children”

A Window to Heaven

In Dr. Komp’s words, children are the “littlest of God’s giants.”

So, can children help us on our spiritual journeys? That depends on our heart’s reaction to the clues children show us – more on this next time. But let’s assume that children sometimes walk ahead of us in critical ways.

Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom

The Message

God, give us humility to be led by our children further and deeper into the essential truths of Your Kingdom, we pray.

I’ll continue this story next time.

How To Rise From The Dead This Easter Season

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The amaryllis opened its two enormous blossoms this week, revealing pink and white splendour and raising the scent profile of the room to a higher level.

And I am that amaryllis.

And so are you.

Let me explain.

About two decades ago, a neighbour gave us an amaryllis bulb in a cardboard package. “Water is all that is needed!” the box guaranteed. Beauty was promised to erupt from within this dry soil and ordinary pot.

I was excited about this, but I forgot about the plant in its little cardboard box in the rush of moving to another city. I felt guilty when I noticed it again a couple of years later. It was strewn between other forgotten items in our garage.

I gave it a few drops of water half-heartedly, looking at my watch as I waited for it to sprout life.

Then I got distracted.

“Well, I gave that a try, at least,” I thought, many years later when I saw the pot, out of its box now at least, but perched precariously on some items that needed sorting in the bowels of our garage. At least my guilt at not having TRIED to bring it to life was dissipated. “But I should give it another try,” I thought on my lunch break one day years later.

But when lunch was over, to-do items kept me running in circles. Days stretched to weeks and months. Another decade passed.

Our kids outgrew even more clothes, and I returned their small clothing items to the garage to deal with later.

“Remember me?” the amaryllis seemed to ask that year as I dumped a pile of too-small clothes on the floor beside it.

“We sometimes have to admit defeat,” I thought to myself, my advancing years having created a deep wisdom, called complacency, within. My few strands of grey hair had made me more rational and truthful. I didn’t look up from the floor as I spoke to myself.

My gaze had become limited.

I moved the plant to where we put things going to the dump.

At the prayer meeting that week, we were reminded to ask God to bring to life the seeds He had planted in us long ago. The ones He spoke in the whispers of the early morning hours or through the words of a friend – the ones we can’t quite find faith to believe.

And we were reminded to pour out our disappointments and frustrations to God. And to beg Him to make life sprout from the barren soils of our hearts.

And then I added a drop of water, two, on a whim that day to the amaryllis that was placed en route to the garbage dump.

Maybe?

And life sprouted.

And buds came in the form of hope.

And my soul was watered every time I watered that plant because hope was sprouting in me, too.

When the forgotten bulb in the little brown pot that hadn’t flowered in 20 years burst forth in all its fullness this Easter, I gazed at it in wonder.

And I don’t give up on you, either, Jesus whispered.

Because I know what the soil of your heart is capable of if you let Me pour some water on the seeds I have planted in your life.

Are you ready yet, dear child, to dare to hope in the impossible?

Friend, are you?

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!

The Message

What impossible seed has He planted that you have forgotten about or nearly given up on? Does He want to plant an impossible seed in you today? Can you squeeze a few drops of Easter hope from dry soil to water this seed?

Consider asking for the strength to ponder this question, clean ears to hear His love, a heart to trust His goodness, and hope from the water of His Spirit.

And may your life blossom in great fullness against all expectations too, friend.

To God be the glory!

(Happy Easter.)