Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it? . . .
In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.
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 wasn’t sure if I could keep the car on the road because I couldn’t see through my tears.
The downpour we were driving through didn’t help, either. “Keep it together. Keep it together. . .” was my mantra until I could get inside, close the door to the world, and let these emotions out.
I wasn’t sure I would be able to drive the car home.
Inside, I collapsed behind a closed door and told my husband the news. His sadness began deep, deep in his soul, in the place where love resides, and found its expression. It was the future we mourned.
A dark cloud had cast a shadow over the future of one of our children. Like a candle in the snow, her joyful little light was sensing wind on the horizon. And the odd pieces of cardboard I found nearby to try to shield her from the wind didn’t look like enough right now.
Heal her, God whispered to me months later.
I was minding my own business, letting my mind wander while in the hot tub.
“Um, what now?” I asked. I sat upright and perked up my ears. “What did you say?”
Silence.
I had heard him. Would I take the next step in faith? Or would I put cotton in my ears and dunk my head under the hot tub, ensuring I could not hear any more of this foolish talk?
They told me this was incurable. Everyone knew that! The best we could hope for was some moderate success with behaviour modification – a few small wins.
Will we pick it up, inspect it, hold it to the light and find a friend with a hammer to crack it open?
Or will we put it in our pocket to consider later if we remember?
The joys and the sorrows of life arrive, and we hang up our clothes at the end of the day. We forget them there for awhile. When we remember, through foggy memories, that there may be a jewel in our pocket (!), we look again, but it fell out. There are only the singed edges of our pocket to remind us that we were holding a bit of heaven for a while.
But it’s gone now.
What’s for lunch?
And God feels far away, again, even though He just descended from heaven to meet us. We treated His gift like just another stone on the path. Will we catch the next jewel He holds out to us? Will our eyes be open enough to see this time, or will we trample, again, the precious jewel that He offers, His firelight shining in the darkness?
It’s only a sparkle at first.
Time to bow low and fan the flame of His voice in your life, friend?
Come along. Let’s journey together.
Oh. And she was healed, God guiding and then redeeming my pathetic attempts to listen, Him re-directing me and helping me up when discouragement hit. For that is His way.
Jesus said, “There is no need to dismiss them. You give them supper.”
“All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish,” they said.
Jesus said, “Bring them here.” . . . The disciples then gave the food to the congregation. They all ate their fill. They gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. About five thousand were fed.
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.
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.
We were preparing our family to go skiing for the first time this year.
Only two people had mini meltdowns. Yes, one of them was an adult. Frustration levels were rising as we tried to find all our stuff.
We THOUGHT we had checked our daughter’s gear to make sure it fit from last year, but we forgot that she grew like a troll, and her skis were now only about half the correct size.
The only helmet we could find for one daughter was so big that she needed several thick toques under it for her to see when she was skiing.
We made do.
When we arrived at the hill (yes, I’m just venting now- who says writing isn’t cathartic?), one daughter snapped her boot into her ski. Snap. It fit.
The other boot wouldn’t snap into the bindings, and on closer inspection, we realized that although we paid a LOT of money for the guy at the hill to turn the screw so that the bindings fit the correct size of her foot, apparently, he only did this for ONE of her boots. Not for the other. Did I mention that our province recently legalized pot and that everyone seems to smoke it?
Enough said.
So we were frustrated.
And yes, marriage is just like that. It’s a lot like preparing to go skiing on the first day of the year. A lot can go wrong!
Thankfully, we have the following two nonsense words to share with you to save* your marriage:
1. sorryf’r – A contraction from the full “I’m sorry for . . . ” The details of what exactly we are sorry for are unspecified and undescribed. This word is used a lot in our marriage.
Like, every day.
By both of us.
An example would be “sorryf’r” after I accidentally kicked you while trying to get my ski boots on because I (honestly) didn’t see you walking past me. Or “sorryf’r” drinking the rest of the coffee cream because I didn’t want to share. I felt bad afterwards, though, if that counts.
It means that I know that I am an idiot – a lot.
And I know that you are an idiot, too.
We don’t overanalyze or even discuss details to describe WHAT exactly we are apologizing for. We don’t have to. The beauty of this phrase is as long as BOTH people remember that we have married dorks and that we each do dorky things ALL the time, well, we don’t dwell on that.
We move on.
And now I will teach you the correct response to sorryf’r.
2. yaIknow – A contraction from the full “Yeah, I know.” This means, as per sorryf’r, that I KNOW I’m an idiot a lot of the time, and I know that I mess up, and let’s move on, okay? Yes, you also are an idiot!
Can we change the subject yet?
And then we move on.
What’s for lunch? We forget about all the “stuff” and “incidents” and “offenses” and “infractions” that occurred before and after and around those words. Having low expectations for each other saves a LOT of grief.
Give it a try!
Have low expectations for your spouse!
Oh, and for you, too.
In another blogpost, we continue the skiing metaphor, discussing two acronyms for moderate and expert skiers only. Have you mastered the groomed ski runs of the sorryf’r and the yaIknow? If so, move on to the next post.
“. . . we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners . . . and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us”
In (some) seriousness, God, help us to have the humility to know we need to forgive and to be forgiven a LOT. And in (less) seriousness, help us to take ourselves and our spouses a LOT less seriously. Thank you for your continual spirit of forgiveness towards us, should we turn towards you to receive this from your outstretched hand.
The song below is about an ancient king named Manasseh. He needed forgiveness for being a jack(what?) at a 100% level, but God extended this grace to him, too! As the song below plays, let’s consider asking God where WE (not our spouses) consistently trip up in our marriages.
And let’s reach out to receive Jesus’ hand of forgiveness to wash our lives so we each can smell a bit sweeter to our partner.
Blogpost Footnotes
* Or destroy. Results not guaranteed.
This post is part of our Say-It-Again On Friday series, where we say it again, on Fridays!
Should we call all our homeschooling friends and organize (another) hockey party on the free outdoor ice rink?
Do I give them as much “independent work” as I can and try to tackle the mess of stuff in the basement, the pile that seems to have acquired a life of its own and that roars at me as I pass like a Yeti in the basement?
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide behind the fun. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that our home is so disorganized that we can no longer find pencils to do our math. Or that no one cares. “I like using a green pencil crayon for math, Mommy!” she asserts.
She is not trying to make me feel better. She is genuinely happy. Her needs are met.
And mine?
“I’m not worried about the kids,” my husband would assert. “I’m worried about you.”
So I offer you tea and a listening ear, dear homeschooling Mom and Dad, and ask:
And then your tears, and your head in hands, and I put my arm around you to comfort you.
Husbands, put on a helmet first and then TRY asking your wives if PMS is real.
You know the answer, or you will find out soon enough.
Similarly, the homeschooling in February blues is real.
I want to propose (shout out to Mystie Winckler for the essence of this paragraph’s wisdom!) that the path we walk through the regular monthly cycling of our emotions gives us a hint for how we walk through the annual cycling of our feelings during the homeschooling year.
And February is hard.
Now, I know that you don’t have time for a dissertation. Your child is pulling your arm already, something is burning on the stove, and you have dog vomit to clean up, but you need some help. Now.
Don’t quit homeschooling in February.
If you take the advice of the sentence above, then go! Go and get through the day! Well done, Mom and Dad!
If you have another 5 minutes, here is an explanation for the statement above.
When sailors would navigate using the stars, how would they do it? They would choose their course on a cloudless, moonlit night. “I am heading north-east,” they would assert, and set their hearts and sails in that direction.
On a cloudy night, when the stars were invisible, and they didn’t know which way to go, what did they do?
They kept sailing in the same direction.
February, head in our hands month, is a cloudy night, desolation.
Ignatius describes desolation as “. . . darkness of soul, . . . the unquiet of different agitations and temptations, . . . when one finds oneself . . . as if separated from his Creator and Lord.” . . .
Ignatius warns us that someone in desolation should never change an important decision . . . made when they were in a state of consolation.
I was pretty sure 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 call which was a bit embarrassing after the fact. But I’ve done more embarrassing things in good health.
My husband brought me coffee each morning. My daughters brought me tea. All in all, it wasn’t the end of the world.
But I’m on day twenty-nine today of near constant bed rest. The allure has lost its charm.
I was struggling to hang onto my mood today, meaning I was trying to kick a foul mood and find some fruits of the spirit somewhere, but I was coming up empty-handed again.
A friend texted me “How are you?”
I shut off the phone and rolled over. Where do I begin? I’m trying to hold onto a positive attitude.
Don’t shut her out, I felt God whisper.
I answered her text.
Be honest, I felt him whisper again.
She phoned later that night. And again, despite my foul mood, I felt God prompting me to pick up the phone, to say something.
I answered the phone and chatted imbecilely about happy things in our life – toilet training our new rabbit, our daughter home from university this week.
And when we got to the subject of my back I tried to keep up a brave front for a while. No one likes a bother. We all have stuff we walk through, after all.
But I was surprised when I felt emotional as I babbled my feelings to her. I’ve seen her tears before so it was safe for her to see mine. So I let them flow a little. And I learned a bit more about myself, about the lessons I’m learning on this journey of suffering. Here are a few:
1. It’s fear again that’s robbing my joy. I couldn’t figure out why the first week of bed rest was not too bad but today with a regression of symptoms was so upsetting. Yes. It’s because fear has shown itself again, reared its ugly head again, gnawing away at the courage in my heart. What if I get worse? Fear. And fear fed by my unfiltered thoughts grew bigger, overpowering my peace.
2. I was also afraid I wasn’t doing enough. Apparently, this is the a very common fear most humans feel, I recently learned*. What if I should be taking one healthcare provider’s advice and not the other’s, or vice versa? What if I try to get up and move around too much or too little? Fear. Fear that I am not walking the tight-rope of expectations for a temperamental back that randomly punishes me no matter what I do.
3. The remedy to fear? Repentance. I actually feel powerful when I repent of fear, ironically. Try saying this: God I’m sorry for being fearful of something way far out in my future when you promised me only enough grace for today. Jesus, I’m sorry for thinking that I’m going to pull myself up by the bootstraps and fix this back problem when I can’t even see my own back, never mind have any idea what knots my back nerves and muscles inside have gotten themselves into. Forgive me for thinking, again, that I will save me. Instead, guide me and whisper to me, and help me to learn from you how much rest and movement my body needs to heal.
And so the phone call ended.
My situation hasn’t changed but my heart of a lion was feeling stronger. I could sense it beating within me again. Whatever I go through You will strengthen me. Whatever difficulty I face You are there with me. When I go through the valley, You comfort me.
As you listen to this song, try repenting of your fear, repenting of your self-sufficiency, and thanking God for the glimmers of hope in your life. Then ask Holy Spirit how to have enough strength to face today. What do you hear Him whisper?
Restoring Life 