fufi

Names

2011-02-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

A friend recently searched Google for my blog. She entered "fufi" and learned that it is a term for female genitalia.

I am undone.

Clearly, I must change the name of my blog. I thought I was so clever, using an acronym for “further up and further in” hmm. It sounds suspicious now.

I was referring to life in God’s kingdom! You can see the quote from Narnia right under the title.

Ah well.

And if that weren’t enough, my husband is pretty adamant that I need to change the title of my book, too. It’s true. Search Google for Storybook Devotions, and bible story books come up. His thinking is that the title targets the wrong market. People with young children won’t want it, and older readers won’t find it. I think he is right.

So, I need two new names.

This time I will Google-test them first.

Gulp!

2011-01-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, I did it.

I posted the first 10 pages of my book on a new blog, called "Storybook Devotions".

Prompted by fear - not the most virtuous of motivators - because a friend recently gave me a copy of "66 Love Letters" by Larry Crabb. I've been desperately afraid someone else is going to publish a book too much like mine too soon, and mine will be old and obsolete years before I finish it.

And it does take a very long time to write. Of course, Abraham had to wait 20 years for Isaac, so I know time is less than pressing to God.

Anyway, I've been feeling it's "time" to give my project some air space, so this is it.

You can find the link in my profile, if you are interested.

Have a great 2011!

Pregnant

2009-08-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

I started a writing project this week.

I shouldn't advertise it. I should just quietly write until I have amassed enough momentum and - well - pages, to convince myself that this is a real project, that I will truly work on until it is finished.

It was the same when I was pregnant, some people wait to make it public until they are past the first trimester. This is wise, because the risk of miscarriage is greatest in the first trimester. If you haven't told the whole world you are pregnant, you won't have to give all the difficult explanations if you do miscarry.

But I told everyone right away. My thinking is, if I am going to go through a tragedy, I am not likely to suffer silently anyway - may as well let everyone in on it early so they can all follow along as the plot unfolds. Besides, I'm simply not mature enough to keep it to myself. I'm like a little kid who has to tell everyone on the street about her new dress - it is such breaking news.

So, I am pregnant: with a book. The big thing here is not that I might actually write a book, as in complete and bring it to publish, although that would be huge and is almost impossible for me to believe. The big thing is the process and how much, how very, very much I have experienced God in it.

A number of years ago I read a quote, which I will here probably mangle:

"Too many people die with their song still in them."

That idea (if not the exact words) hit home with me, because I have often felt that I have a 'song' in me that is yet unsung.

As I have written for two hours a day this past week, I have finally felt that I was singing. There has been a coming together of all the things that matter to me, with a strong sense of God's smile over it all, and a kind of encompassing satisfaction that I have rarely felt in my life.

This week it was easy to make the two hours every day, because my daughters were away at a summer arts program. Next week they are home, and the week after that homeschool begins again. As well, I know that the euphoria I feel now will dissipate, and the writing will bog down. It will be hard to keep believing that I am suppose to do this, that God wants me to and that it is not just silliness or selfishness, or dreams of grandiose.

So I hope, by telling everyone, that I will force myself to keep going - if only to save face. And I hope, by writing my experience of this past week, that I can come back to it as an Ebenezer of sorts to remind me how much God was in this at the start.

Because if I can just remember that God started it, I can relax and know that He will bring it to completion.

Being me

2009-06-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was out on the trail again, overlooking the valley - which is finally soft and green - and I was talking with God about this blog, telling Him how much I miss it, and how I feel happier when I am writing - more alive - more in touch with Him. As I stood there the wind blew strong against me, and I had a memory.

Years ago, I was reading "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire", by Jim Cymbala. I was sitting on our deck, with my back to the fence-rail. I was reading about people whose lives had been wonderfully changed by God's work, and I put down the book and just prayed, "God, I wish You would do that for me. I don't care whether you change my past, or heal my past, or what - but I wish You would heal me of the consequences of my past."

Now, you have to know that our deck backs right up against our neighbour's garage wall, so I had my back against a 5 foot high fence, behind which was a very small, grassy, corridor - maybe 4 feet wide - and behind that a full wall. And it was a still, breezeless day.

I prayed that prayer and suddenly a strong wind blew from behind me, I felt it blowing my hair forward and pushing against the back of my neck, and as I wondered about where such a wind could come from, it was as if I could see a dark mist coming out of me and swirling away in the wind. The wind carried it right away, and I knew that I had been healed.

Over the next days and weeks I could tell that there had truly been a change. Things that used to bother me were just no problem now. So much of my self-doubt and negative self-talk went away that day and never returned.

So, yesterday as I stood there on the ridge and felt the wind blowing strong against me, it reminded me of that day years ago. I realized that one reason I don't write in here - or anywhere - is that I listen to negative messages: I am too analytical, too obtuse, too complex, too self-absorbed, or else too fluffy, too inane, too ... foofee.
Another time I was denegrading myself for not keeping our yard prettier. I don't like gardening, and I was whining to some friends about how I almost dislike summer because I feel so guilty about not gardening. The man, Randy, look straight at me and said, "Lorrie, just let it go." I didn't even really understand what he was saying. He had to explain that I needed to let go of the guilt. It's okay to not like gardening, and my yard doesn't have to be pretty. Let it go.
Somehow, that freed me. I haven't worried about it since. I don't like gardening and it shows in my yard. I am okay with that.
I think God is showing me that now I need to let go of the negative messages about my writing and just be who I am. It's okay to be me, even if I am self-absorbed, overly analytical, or obtuse.
Who knows, maybe if I am honest, and just be who I am, God will change me, and we can all watch.

Thirst

2009-05-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

Jesus said, "If you are thirsty, come to me."

How can I get it so wrong? I fall into the trap of, "When I am good, I can go to Him."

I can't go now: tired and grumpy, whiney and lazy.

But isn't that what thirst is? Need?

It is exactly when I am all those negative things, and more, that I can run to Him for comfort and help. I meet the pre-requisite.

Winter and Spring?

2009-05-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

It was harder to see the green fuzz on the trees today, because clouds are blocking the sun, and there is snow falling.

But still, I know spring is coming. Just not today, is all.

Winter and Spring

2009-05-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

I want to write a short post.

There.

Just kidding.

I want to write a short post, but actually say something. That's harder.

I ran this morning, before church. I haven't done that in a long time, partly because it has been dark outside. My dog and I ran 'the point trail', which is the local name for a trail that circles along the top of a very large flat hill, so as I run along it I can look down at various points into three different valleys or, three views of one large valley. One view has a river which is finally free of ice and running heavy and brown, the other view is mainly creek and highway, and my favorite view is all trees, mostly Aspen.

Last October the whole valley was a vibrant yellow and then the winter winds blew all the leaves away and left the too familiar naked, spikey tree skeletons, stoically standing their watch through the endless, dark months.

The winter winds also blew away most of our retirement wealth, and my father, and my husband's father. It was a long and deeply cold winter filled with debt, cancer and loss.

This morning as we ran, the sun shone down into the trees and I could see the sage green spring growth beginning. It was just a whisper of green, more a shadow than a real thing, and maybe someone less hungry would not even have seen it. But it is there.

It tells me that over the next two weeks spring will come, and winter will finally have to let go.

And it always will. No matter how long, how dark, how deep and cold is winter, it always has to give way to spring. Always.

And one day, the spring will be forever.

Small steps

2009-05-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in here for a very long time. I feel a bit sheepish. Whatever that means.

So I re-read "Crowds of Grass" (a post from January), and am freshly inspired.

For what it's worth, I haven't done much running, weightlifting, or housework either - just been feeling kind of unmotivated.

I've done alot of Sudoku though. There's something pretty satisfying about that, when the numbers all start to cascade and fall into place after long, patient figuring. I find it strangely comforting.

This morning I put my shoes on. Which means I intended to work today, and not just do sudoku. I went downstairs and did some weights. It felt so good, why do I stop? But I know why I stop. I stop because I have days when I have little or no energy and the mere idea of lifting a weight is too heavy to handle. So I don't.

I think it would be so much better if I did it anyway, if I said to myself, "Do it badly. Lift a 2lb weight and only do it 10 times." Instead I don't do it and then a kind of inertia sets in. The next day I don't want to either because I am still feeling icky, and besides, I didn't to it the day before. Then the days slide by and it's a week, or a month. Then I have to start all over again.

There are a number of things in life which, to do well, need to be done regularly. Lifting weights for three hours every once in a while would only cause strain or injury. It would not strengthen. Whereas lifting weights a few times a week, even poorly, would.

Housework is kind of like that, too. So is prayer, well, except that a long spell of prayer wouldn't cause strain or injury. But if it is not accompanied by regular, or constant prayer, it is of so much less value.

Other things that are better for being done often are: writing, and parenting.

So that's pretty much my life. Most of the things I really care about are things that require constant attention. I keep trying to schedule them all in, between homeschooling, church activity, time with my husband, and down time. Sometimes I don't do so well. I guess this past month has been a month of catching up on down time. Which is okay, I tell myself, and not at all related to list-making, quitting list-making, or passing or failing as a human being.

What I want to learn, though, is to give myself permission to do a thing poorly, if that is the best I can do for that day. I really believe that doing the thing at all is what encourages me to do it again the next day, and that doing it often is what causes me to get better at it.

I would love to leap over the mountains but if I simply cannot do it, then I would rather climb them by many small steps than stay forever in the valley.

No "To Do" list and what I am learning

2009-04-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

Easter is over and I am going to break my fast. I am going to start listing again – but quite differently than before.

I want to stop though, and write down some of what I have been learning through this odd exercise:

1. As Colleen predicted in her comments, the important and necessary things are getting done, usually when they need to, sometimes even earlier.

2. Because I can't write a thing down when I think of it, I often do something quite radical - I actually start it. This has resulted in less procrastination.

3. I find myself consulting with God more often, and He is a far gentler and more winsome task-master than I am.

4. So far I am finding that my energy levels more closely match the required volume of work at any given time.

5. I am learning to think through a day more carefully, and as Stephen Covey so famously says, "begin with the end in mind." This means things like getting started on dinner around lunchtime, and just generally doing the important stuff first. I am learning to allow the little stuff to be little stuff, and let it fall in wherever it most naturally fits.

And here is the very best one:

6. I am beginning to believe (or maybe beginning to begin to believe) that what needs to happen will, really and truly, happen: when it needs to.

What that is doing in me is very nice. I am feeling less driven, more peaceful.

I had no idea, when I started this, that it would so directly affect that root of drivenness in me. For years I have had a disquieting sense about the way I live my life: that I am missing something, getting it all wrong somehow.

I was a disorganized, scattered person growing up. Desiring to 'get my act together', I read many books about time management, discipline, and so on. I learned such useful tricks as: if it really needs to get done, put it last on your list, that way you know you have to keep moving through all the other items.

I learned how to ratchet up the pressure. Yes, those systems work, that is to say, they kept me running. And that is how I truly felt, like I was running from the start of the day to the glorious moment when I dropped, exhausted, into bed.

I'm not feeling that way lately. Yet, I am hardly less productive.

And I am happier.

Now I just need to keep on. There are voices on the edge of my mind warning me that this is a bubble that will soon burst. They mutter that this will only work for a short season, while I don't have too much going on. When life gets busier, and it will, I will have to return to the high pressured pace.

But that is dead wrong, because the thing about living high-pressure is that I start to choreograph my time without reference to God. It matters more that I accomplish certain things, than that I listen for Him. What I am trying to learn now, instead, is to cultivate peace, based on the truth that God cares more about my activity than I do, and all my goals are safe with Him. Yes, there may be times I will have to move quickly, there will be times when much needs doing in a short time, but it doesn't have to be without God.

That's the big deal. It doesn't have to be without God. I am not alone in this. I am not even in charge of it.

I am tempted to write: “He leads this dance.”

But I won’t. (Well I did, but only to say why I won’t. That doesn’t count does it?) Because honestly, it still doesn’t feel much like dancing. It feels better, but not that good yet.

I think, though, that I might be in the dance studio.

No Steps and Very Quiet Music

2009-03-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

I'm quitting my 'to-do' list, cold turkey.

Since I wrote that last blog, I felt uncomfortable even making a list, so I haven't. This is not a commitment, mind you, I may make a list tomorrow. "One day at a time", as they say in AA, and 'take it easy'. These are excellent slogans.

The goal here is to try to live closer to God, which, of course, is always the goal. The idea behind this particular exercise is to force me to consult God the way I consult my to-do list. Every time I finish a project and have a choice about what to do next, instead of going to my list, I ask God - what should I do next? What would You like to do next?

I am finding it very stressful: like dancing with no steps and very quiet music.

Things I want to happen every day are not happening, important things, like decluttering. I am trying to convince myself that it is okay, if it needs to happen God will make sure it happens, but I dunno. He might not care enough about decluttering.

I keep having this feeling that I am missing stuff, or wasting time. The grand orchestra of God has not flooded my life yet. Instead is a panicky screech of uselessness: of failure.

I've read that fasting from food is a quick way to find out what drives me. I think for me fasting from 'productivity' is quicker. Old feelings are creeping in. I don't like them.

Okay, the whole idea was to measure success differently. I need to refocus. Success is not being able to recite everything I did. Success is learning to live in step with Jesus, in all my ordinary activity, learning to hear Him better, see Him better: in my house, in my time, in my body, in my relationships. If at the end of the day today I can honestly say that I did experience Him more, heard His music a bit more loudly, danced with Him a few more steps, then I will call today a success.

I need to trust that God actually cares about my family: what we eat, where we live, how we spend our days. He cares about decluttering - not too much, not too little. I need to learn to listen. He cares about these things, and will take care of them, but He is probably also doing something bigger, so sometimes my little things may get missed and I have to trust that He knows what He is doing.

In case anyone is still reading this, I hope you understand that I am not saying list-making is evil. It is only that I sense God is asking me to take a break for awhile, and learn something new. That's all. No moral lesson here. No generalizing. No judgment.

I'm just trying to hear the music of God above the clamour of my own insecurity.

Gritty Steps and Dancing

2009-03-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

What is a dance without music? It is a series of steps, performed by grit.

I have a 'to-do' list which bullies me. It forces me into measuring the success or failure of my days by how many items on the list I accomplish. My whole life becomes reduced to how many things I do each day - a series of steps.

I have a sense that this is not what God intends for me. I think He wants me to dance. I think He wants to add the music that will transform my gritty steps into something beautiful.

A couple of years ago I discovered the joy of running to music. I received an MP3 player for my birthday and suddenly my runs turned into something altogether different than they had been. I got faster. I could go farther. Sometimes, when no one is around, I sashay. The music turned running into a kind of dance, it set the pace and lended me energy I had not had before. It makes me smile as I run. Something about moving to music fills me with joy.

I want my whole life to be like that. Not literally like that, of course, but somehow I want to learn to hear God's music and let it set the pace of my days, let it turn my to-do steps into a dance so exquisite that people can see God in it. I want, at the end of the day, to measure its success or failure not by how many items on my list were accomplished, but by how much I was able to hear and move in time to the music of God.

Can I do it? Can I turn housework, homeschooling, paperwork, exercise, parenting, and all the ordinary stuff of my ordinary life into a dance? What I am really asking is, will God do it? Will He dance with me through these things? Is that what He wants? I really think it is.

The Rest of God

2009-03-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Jesus knew how to rest. He knew exactly how to rest. He was able to sleep in the boat while the storm raged and his disciples panicked. He unerringly discerned what to do about the Sabbath, how to honour it without allowing it to be religious. He knew how to balance the strenuous work of His ministry against the rest in the Father which fuelled the work.

He was able to rest, well ... excellently, because He had an excellent knowledge of the Father. He knew who the Father was and what He was doing, and from that knowledge came a deep, deep trust.

I think if I knew God the way Jesus knew God I would be able to rest, too. It would be easy because I would know how much more real the power of God is than anything that looks powerful here. I would know the utter goodness of God’s motives and plans and the absolute certainty of their happening. I would know that nothing here is able to stand against what God, in love, has purposed for me.

How do I learn all that? How do I get to know God like Jesus did? I think the first step is simple. I remind myself that Jesus is not just a historical figure, but a living person. I remind myself that He has said He will live in me if I stay in Him, and I merely ask Him, “Lord, teach me what You know about the Father, so that I can rest in Him the same way that You did while You were here. I want to have the same thoughts about God that You have, so that I can live as You did.”

The next step is simple, too: do it again. In fact, keep asking Him until He shows me what to do next. Then do it. Then ask again.

I think that’s how to stay in Jesus: ask, listen, act, then ask again. I suspect that’s how He stayed in God, but He did it so constantly that it became not a series of steps but a state of being: a way of living that He wants to share with us.

And I think that as we ask for and learn about this way of living, we will enter the rest of God, from which comes all good things.

More on Rest

2009-03-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

I wrote yesterday about why rest is such a big deal to God and concluded that, for one thing, He wants us to have better lives. Today I want to explore further.

The other thing about rest is that it is, I believe, an activity of faith. I cannot rest if I am worried or afraid. This brings us deeper into rest. Now we are not talking about merely sitting with our feet up, we are talking about inner rest.

To truly rest, to relax way down into my soul, I must genuinely believe that Someone I trust completely has absolute control over everything which concerns me.

I cannot control and rest at the same time.

Unless I am very good at controlling. We can all think of someone – real or fictional – who has control over many things, but seems nevertheless to have a deep inner peace that speaks of restfulness. These people might not even be believers. Their rest is rooted in their confidence that they can handle whatever might arise.

Like the captain of the Titanic.

The rest may be genuine, but it is not permanent, and the more a person learns about God the more it becomes clear that the only rest which truly works, in the sense of refreshing and revitalizing a life, is that which is firmly rooted in Him.

I want that. I want the rest God wants for me: the rest which actually makes my life bigger and more invincible. I want the rest that comes, not from being on a safe ship, but from being part of the ocean.

Rest

2009-03-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Why do you suppose God makes such a big deal out of resting? For He does, make no mistake. It is right at the start of the Bible, “God blessed the seventh day and called it holy.” Why? Because in it, He rested. The command is among His top ten, “Take a day of rest: you, all your family, servants, even animals.” Everyone and everything is to take one full day a week. There is more. He wanted the land, the promised land where He lovingly brought His chosen people, to have a rest every seven years. For one whole year nothing was to be planted or harvested in all the land. Every fifty years the land was to get a two year break.

Why such emphasis on resting? Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

I have a guess.

I think He wants us to rest because rest refreshes, energizes, and helps us toward the abundant life He wants for us. The land would actually produce more if it was allowed to lay fallow every seven years. Don’t you find it easier to be the person you want to be when you are not tired? Easier to be kind, patient, and brave? Easier to make good decisions, to do the right thing, instead of just the easy thing? Don’t you even feel happier, generally, when you are rested? Problems don’t seem as overwhelming, life seems more inviting.

I propose that God wants all that for us. I propose that He never intended that we should drag ourselves, exhausted, from one task to another in a blur of weariness that paints our whole world grey. I think I’m on pretty safe ground in this proposal, because He actually commands rest for us.

Of course I know that there are seasons of genuine suffering, where true rest is elusive, and I believe God uses those in other ways to deepen our faith and dependency on Him. But what He desires to give us under ordinary circumstances is a life that sparkles, and rest is the polish that brings out the sparkle.

There is more, but my 15 minutes is up, again.

Habits

2009-03-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

"It's all about habits," she muttered, bending over the keyboard while the timer ticked off 15 minutes. Habits are actually what drive us, you know. We may think we are driven by values, dreams, money, or any other good, indifferent or evil thing, but what we do is actually more determined by our habits than anything.

We all know this, though maybe not consciously. Just remember a time you determined to make some sort of change in your life: you would diet, or exercise, or share your faith more regularly, or keep your house cleaner, yell at your kids less, whatever. What kept you from success? Habits. We are creatures of a great many habits: habits of diet, sleep, activity patterns, even - especially - thought. Our habits will either bring us down or make us.

So it's no good deciding to make any changes at all, unless we are willing to confront this issue of habit. I will not write regularly in this blog unless I make it a habit. It has to become something I do almost automatically. Something I actually feel uncomfortable about if I don't do it. It would be easier if I chose a certain cluster of other activities to tie it to, so that they would trigger the sense of habit that would bring me to this page, and make me write.

To help create the habit, I think I need to keep my time to 15 minutes (thanks again, Flylady). After all, if I can't say it in 15 minutes, it's probably not clear enough in my mind anyway.

Maybe shorter posts are more attractive, too. Who has time to read pages and pages of musing?

Well, my 15 minutes are up.

How Many Times?

2009-02-23T07:18:00.001-08:00

I wonder how many trips back to Jesus the disciples had to make as they distributed the bread and fish to a crowd of thousands. It would be fun to watch a computer chart that showed one circuit after another as they handed out the food, then circled back to Jesus for more, over and over and over again. Mark 6:41 says Jesus "kept giving the bread to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people'.

So why do I keep acting as though it is enough to go to Him once in the morning and that will suffice for the day? What would have happened if Peter had handed out the first batch of food and then sat down and said, "There, I knew it wasn't enough?" People would have gone hungry, and Peter would have missed a miracle.

Of course, I could structure my life so that I am never in a remote place with a crowd of hungry people. I could arrange things so that once a day with Jesus is enough, you know, if the expectations are kept nice and low.

The only problem with that idea is that Jesus led the disciples to that remote place with the huge, needy crowd and He has a way of doing that, bringing us who follow Him to places of great need. He does this because He wants to meet great needs, and He wants us to experience Him as The-One-Who-Meets-Great-Need. So, the only way, really, to arrange my life so I don't need much of Jesus is to stop following Him.

Does this mean that if I find I don't need much of Him, it may be because I have already stopped following?

How do I start again?

The same way Peter needed to, by going back to Jesus for more bread.

He keeps giving.

Let God be God

2009-02-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

My husband thinks it would be helpful to others if a person could write about how they process difficult things in the light of their faith in God, while they are actually going through the difficult things: not after.

This means he thinks I should still be blogging, and I should figure out a way to do it without being hypocritical. I think I can do that. I'm not sure I can do it without whining, and I hate it when I whine. But I'll try.

I am in a place of fear and helplessness. Something frightening is coming our way, financially. We are doing all we can to stop it, or divert it, but we have very little power. All we can do is wait. There are other areas of our lives where we are waiting, too. This seems to be a time where big things are swirling around us and the danger of being hit is real, and our hands are tied.

Now for the disclaimers: I know most of the people who read this blog love me, and so let me hasten to add that we are a long way from true hardship, many of you have probably seen worse. Also, I am aware that this is a time of genuine economic suffering for many, many people. Maybe that's why I believe, with my husband, that it might be helpful to learn how to talk it through in ways that draw us closer to God.

I wanted to write "God-who-made-this-mess," or "God-who-brought-us-here," but my new-found theology of 'God can't stop the rain' prohibits me. He didn't put us here. We did. He can't stop all the big, swirling, frightening things because He is doing something even bigger, and it needs us to be able to make our own messes. So it's no good being mad at Him, which I do a lot, no good sulking, or trying to manipulate Him. No, all that is left is to whine. After all, we are helpless. Helpless people whine.

This is my whine: I hate the not-being-able-to-do-anything. We need our house to sell. Can't make someone buy it. Can't make the future of this town look more promising, can't raise the price of coal. Can't just 'find' $120 grand to pay all the mortgage and debt we've accumulated. And on other fronts: can't make our parents' pain go away, can't give our kids the lives we wish they had, and can’t make other people do what we want. Can't undo decisions we made in the past that have hurt us. Can't. Can't. Can't.

There, I feel better. These past few days I've known I was slipping. I have lost interest in things that normally matter: cooking for my family, keeping the house nice, exercising, even writing in here. My quiet times have been dry.

I believe that what I need to do is accept. There is much I do not like, much I cannot do, and things I am wishing for that may or may not happen - and it is right here that God wants to meet me. It is here that He wants me to trust Him. It is no good waiting until the house sells, if the house sells. No good waiting until we 'just get through' these days. I need to turn to Him here and cry on His shoulder, and ask for the help I need to pick up my load today and live in a way that pleases Him. I need to confess my anger, my sense of not being treated as I deserve. I need to admit that He is allowed to do, or not do, whatever He wants with my life, because He is God and I am not.

Maybe a helpless person can do something other than whine. Maybe they can admit their helplessness, and go get help from Someone who loves them.

"Those who come to Him must believe that He is, and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him."

He is, and He rewards.

Let it be enough.

Can't Stop the Rain

2009-02-11T08:11:00.000-08:00

"I can't stop the rain
from falling down on you again.
I can't stop the rain
but I will hold you till it goes away."

Those are lyrics from a Third Day song that I have loved. But the song has confused me. Who? Who can't stop the rain? Is it God saying He can't stop the rain? But that is ridiculous, because of course He can. So it must be something one person is singing to another. So I thought. This, paradoxically, made the song less appealing to me.

One August day, not last summer but before, a highschool kid in our church was idly strumming the notes to that song on his guitar, after the church service. I noted the song and commented to him that it was a favourite of mine. His too, he said.

The next weekend his father died in a paragliding accident.

I always remember Cal playing that song the week before his dad died.

I've been thinking a lot about suffering, lately. A few months ago I watched my dad die of cancer, now my husband's dad is facing the same thing. Our mothers are suffering. I listened to a radio magazine hosted by Steve Bell about suffering, stories of people who have trusted God and yet gone through terrible things. One woman claims that God does not spare His children any of the feelings associated with suffering. It bothers me that she says that.

I know wiser souls than mine have wrestled with this for millennia, but it's my turn now. A friend recently told me I was a strong Calvinist, because I was saying that I believe God is in every circumstance. If suffering comes it is because He has, if not actually created it, at least deliberately allowed it when He could have not. He could have intervened. He could have stopped the rain.

After all, there is nothing He can't do, right?

Wrong. Just now I have realized that there is one thing God cannot do. He cannot go against His own perfect will.

When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, He said something very significant to Peter. "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"

God had a perfect plan. It was wonderful. He could not go against it. Jesus had to go through the pain and the suffering in order to fulfill God's purposes, and He knew that in the end He would be more than joyful.

For some reason that only God knows, suffering is actually a necessary part of our journey to Heaven. This is His plan. It has a glorious end - the best. There is no better way. So He cannot go against His own perfect plan. He cannot intervene to spare us and thus circumvent His own purposes.

Turns out He really can't stop the rain.

Think I'm going to go listen to that song again.

Sabbath

2009-02-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

"Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God." Ex. 20:8-9 NLT

Thank you, God! After yesterday's foray into my basement chaos I am grateful for a day when I am allowed to put my feet up. A whole day I can just focus on 'lamp-tending'.

The human animal needs times of rest. I remember reading a story about a man visiting some fishing boats along the shore of a developing country and seeing a boy lying on the beach, reclining like a king, obviously enjoying himself. The man asked the boy what he was doing and the boy said he was done fishing for the day and now he was just sitting back.

"But you have more hours left, you should go get another catch," the man urged.
"Why?" asked the boy.
"So you can make more money"
"What for?"
"So you can buy another boat and make still more money"
"Why?"
"So eventually you can have a whole fleet of boats, and hire others to work for you so you can sit back and enjoy."
"But that's just what I am doing!"

The trick is to learn to be like the boy. Enjoy the rest as God gives it, without worrying about whether we are 'doing enough', 'making enough' or moving ahead as we should be.

So every week God gives us a day to pretend we are kings and queens. Live as though we already had a fleet of workers, as though we already had all the wealth we will ever want, and just rest in the enjoyment of all the good ways God has blessed us. Allow Him to kindle our hearts. Deliberately thank Him for what is good in our lives.

Oh, and a quick word here: not everyone rests the same way. For some, rest is a game of something, for others it may be a party, or a movie. I think the trick is to find what gives you joy and refreshes you, always with the one check that you have to be able, in it, to regularly pause inwardly and thank God for it. And it must be different than what we do the other six days. It is a cop out to say ‘work gives me rest’.

Of course, God has a secret plan in all this. He knows that if we do this, if we rest in a deliberate way, with the added element of dedicating it to Him and thanking Him, then we will actually be training ourselves for the other six days. It is like a spiritual workout of the best kind, preparing our hearts to be rooted in Him all week.

So, let's actually try it. Awkward as it may seem if we are unpractised at it, let's find at least five minutes sometime before this Sabbath is ended and tell God we want to dedicate the day to Him and learn to enjoy rest with Him. Ask Him to show us how to do it, and expect Him to.

I would love to hear some stories from you about what God does.

Overspiritualizing God

2009-02-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

I've had joy for the past two days. Somehow, writing about it has driven it home for me. God is here, now, standing ready for all my needs, delighting in me.

Just now, though, I seem to have lost it. I have a huge job ahead of me that I truly hate. My basement is barely liveable due to an accumulation of stuff ranging from furniture to books to empty boxes. I am a devoted follower of Flylady, and know the best way for people like me to deal with this is a little at a time. "You can do anything for 15 minutes", is the Flylady mantra, and she is right. But I feel depressed nonetheless.

I am bringing this up in an effort to be honest and to process with you how to get from here back to the place of joy where I know God wants me.

You see, it really is not about the mess, the stuff, or the job. It is about the way I feel about myself in it. I feel like a loser. I feel like all I want to do is go find a rock and crawl under it. Maybe curl up on my bed with a Maeve Binchy novel. That would be more comfortable. I dread doing the job because I know I will get bogged down and depressed, unable to make the right decisions and deal in an effective way with everything.

I think I have a tendency to overspiritualized God. Yes. That is what I said. You can read it again if you like, here: I think I have a tendency to overspiritualize God.

This morning I read in Matthew Jesus' parables about the kingdom of heaven being like two things: one was ten virgins going to meet the bridegroom and some had enough oil in their lamps and others did not; the other was three servants given money to invest while the owner went away on a long trip.

I relate easily to the virgins and the oil. In that story God is represented by a bridegroom, a lover, a rescuer. The job of those who wait is to be ready spiritually, to have a constant supply of fresh oil, which represents the Spirit. I like that.

The second story is much more practical. God is a man of business. The job of those who wait is to be industrious, to work at the job they are given with the intent of succeeding. It is not enough to languish, watching only our lamps to ensure they don't go out. We are called to work, to be productive, with the clear understanding that it is for the Master, not us.

I love how excellently God teaches us. He knows there are both kinds of people: those who are outward focused and need to be reminded to tend their lamps, and those who are inward focused and need to be reminded to do their jobs. While I believe the greater problem in church culture generally is that of too much work and not enough lamp tending, I have to admit that my personal problem is just the opposite. And what I am finding is that when I neglect my job, as I have done, my lamp starts to dim, and my supply of oil runs low.

Which is quite wonderful.

It's wonderful because it means that God cares about my house and with it all my negative feelings. He won't let me go on until I deal with it. He is rolling up His sleeves and saying, "Well Lorrie, let's get to it."

And that picture: God standing waiting for me in my family room, has actually restored my joy. I want to get up now and start this job. I think doing it with Him can be - maybe - enjoyable.

Still on Joy

2009-02-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

I read an article by William Young, author of The Shack. It was about how he entered a new relationship with joy by letting go of what he called "future tripping", worrying about things that could happen. He learned that the only way to know joy as a constant experience, was to stop projecting himself into some imagined future disaster, or difficulty, and live in the moment. It is in the present moment that we can experience joy, and no-where else, because God is only in the present moment.

I had that thought before I ever read his article. It was my thought first. He just got published before me.

Okay, the truth is, I hadn't thought about it so much in terms of joy being only in the present moment, but I have often pondered the idea that God is only in the present. More accurately, I am only in the present. It is only right now that I have any power to do anything: to express my person hood, to think, to speak, to feel, to act. I cannot do any of these things yesterday, or tomorrow. Both yesterday and tomorrow exist only as thoughts in my mind. Today, this moment, is the only place in which I can truly live and move and have my being. And, in a strange sense, this moment is always, because I am always in this moment.

I believe that is what eternity is, being fully present in a never ending moment. But that is just too abstract.

Here's the thing: because it is only now that I can actually do anything, God meets me now. God is not interested in some yesterday that is gone, or some tomorrow that may never come. He is vitally, intensely, electrifyingly interested in me right this instant, as I sit here in my housecoat typing this post. He wants to relate with me here, now. If I choose to wait until 'later' to actually relate with Him - pray, praise, thank, obey something I sense He wants me to - then I am effectively saying 'no'. Because 'later' is not accessible to me, 'now' is, and 'now' I am not doing it.

I've always wondered whether I could communicate this idea with any clarity. Feel free to let me know whether I am succeeding.

I believe the greatest challenge, and most worthy goal of the Christian must be this business of learning to relate with God in the always present now of our existence. So, as I write this, I pause and say - in my mind, lest my kids hear and think Mom's lost it - "Wow, thank You God, that You care so much about me that you are interested in me even as I sit here typing this. Please help me say things that are truly helpful in bringing others to a greater awareness of You." Or something like that. And I practice cultivating a constant awareness that He is lovingly present with me, available for my every need, never more than a thought away.

And as I do, I feel a strange surging in my soul. It is joy.

Joy

2009-02-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Francis of Assisi, there's a guy I don't like. Born to a wealthy family some centuries ago, he gave away everything he owned to live a life of poverty and homelessness for the sake of Jesus Christ.

It gets worse. I'm sure you've heard before the conversation he had with his friend one day while they walked. They were discussing joy, and Francis quizzed the friend, socratically, about the nature of joy.

"What is pure joy?" he asked.

I’m doing this from memory, and I can’t remember the exact flow of the conversation, but it ends with Francis telling his friend that pure joy would be to arrive at their destination wet, cold and hungry and be turned away, and spat on, and still respond with patience, peace and love. That would be pure joy.

Whatever.

Another adventure I have had with joy started with Mike Mason’s book, Champaign for the Soul. In this book he journals a 90 day experiment in living joyfully. It is a great read especially if, like me, you are not a joyful person by nature.

While reading that book, and after, I began to try a similar sort of experiment, although I was not so disciplined at it. It devolved into something I thought about quite often. Once I was talking with God about joy, and it seemed to me that He was asking me if I would like some, much like a mother says, “Would you like some soup?” At this point in my life things were not going well in some significant areas: I was hurting for my kids, and there were things I wanted that I wasn’t getting. I realized, with some shock, that no, I didn’t actually want any joy right now, thank you.

It seemed to me that, at that moment, I had to choose between having joy or insisting on having things my way. I had always thought that they were the same thing. For God to separate them and offer me joy without giving me what I wanted made me see that it wasn’t actually joy I was after, but life-on-my-terms. Honestly, I wasn’t interested in being joyful while not getting what I wanted. It seemed like some kind of subversive trick on God’s part to make me submit, and accept the circumstances He allowed into my life. You see, to be joyful would be like saying, “It’s okay, God. You can do whatever You like in my life. I’m done fighting against it, and against You. I trust You and Your goodness so completely that I am joyful even here, even now.”

Well. Who wants to say that?

Francis did. I am finally beginning to understand what he meant. He meant, not so much that it would be great to suffer miserably, but rather that it would be great to have a joy so deep and so strong that no amount of suffering could dim it. Yes.

I am beginning to suspect that God offers me joy constantly.

Why I Love My One Year Bible

2009-01-31T11:07:00.000-08:00

I love my One Year Bible.

I am now in my 21st month of reading it (I started in April, 2007) and hope that I will just keep reading it every year for the rest of my life.

I love it for a number of reasons:

1. It eliminates the need to try to figure out what to read next. Every day God has a special feast already set out for me.

2. It is a great combination of Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. I love that mixture. I have done other read-throughs and found that without a mix of Old and New I can get very bogged down. This way the less-than-gripping parts can be balanced out by the more-gripping parts. The only thing I would change is I would have the gospels spread out over a year, or done twice, rather than Psalms - just my personal preference.

3. There is no bouncing around from forward to backward, or little parts of scripture here and there - it is the whole deal from start to finish, a coherent picture.

4. Because I don't choose what to read each day, I find that God speaks to me in surprising ways. Today, it is no secret I have not been in a very good space, still stressing over our financial losses and wondering how many years it will take us to recover from this one disastrous car deal, and I read Exodus 12. God is speaking to the Israelites while they are still slaves in Egypt. He is explaining, in great detail, how they are to celebrate this day in the future. The thing that jumps out at me is that, so far, there is nothing about this day that marks it as worth celebrating. They are still slaves. I’m thinking they must be wondering what God is talking about. God plans to take them out within 24 hours. He knows it, but they don’t. They’re just hearing about it now for the first time. For God, it is already a done deal. It is so sure and certain that He is already planning how they will celebrate it forever after. But they haven’t left yet. I love that about God. He is not bound by what is. He can change everything in a heartbeat. What is $19,000 to Him? Not a big deal. No more than disentangling 1.2 million people from slavery to the most powerful nation on earth, in a single night.

I realize this is not an argument for the One Year Bible specifically, only for a systematic, disciplined intake of God’s truth. I just find that the One Year Bible is an excellent tool for me to practice that systematic, disciplined intake. If I hadn’t been reading it today, I might have tried to find something specific about money, or comfort – and of course God is very gracious and I may have found something – but I have experienced over and over the power of bringing my time-bound, confused thoughts to God’s eternal word, at the place I am already reading, and had Him point out connections and truths to me I would never have found otherwise.

5. Finally, I know this is a long post, we absolutely must fill our minds with large amounts of scripture if we are to move on in discipleship with Jesus and lead significant lives. There is no other way than by having the very landscape of our thought life completely demolished and remade by God’s thoughts.

So yes, it can be done through other means, but this post is about why I love the One Year Bible. And that is it. In an easy, accessible format it gives me the whole word of God, a feast every morning.

Poor Me

2009-01-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a very bad day. We own a car for which we have paid thousands of dollars, literally, in repair bills, so we are now invested way beyond anything we could hope to recover by selling it. My sweetie was driving the car to a conference in Edmonton, and was over three hours out when the thing just died. BCAA came to the rescue and towed it to the nearest city, back nearly an hour over ground he had covered.

What to do? There he sits with his passenger - a woman from our church - in Grand Prairie, AB., still four hours from the conference, nearly three hours from home, and no vehicle. He phoned me.

After much frenzy, my daughters and I were packed to go to Edmonton. The plan was to pick up hubby and passenger, have them drop us off at my mom’s, conveniently located just outside of Edmonton, and then he would have the truck for the weekend. This would be good for husband, passenger, and mom – who had wanted us to come this weekend anyway, but for my girls and me it was not good, at all.

Three unhappy ladies drove the winter roads over the mountain pass on the way to be heroes, and when we had got over two hours out my youngest daughter said, “Why didn’t Daddy just rent a car?” Why indeed. I phoned him. He rented a car. So we turned around and drove home, over the winter roads, through the mountain pass, in the dark. We never even saw him.

Then the highway between Grande Prairie and Edmonton was closed due to ice, so sweetie and company had to wait an extra hour or so. What should have been an eight hour trip for them grew to over 17 hours, and what should have been a quiet evening watching “Enchanted” for us turned into a stressful five hour drive, for nothing, really. And now the car is going to cost still more money.

I wrote that story this morning, and have spent all day trying to come up with a satisfactory spiritual moral from it. Now my head is bleary and still no moral. The spiritual formation books I read talk about having our very character and personality changed by the grace of God as we seek more of Him through spiritual disciplines. Clearly, I need some disciplines to help me take unpleasant surprises with better grace, because I was some grouchy yesterday, and still feeling sorry for myself today.

I hate that car, and I think hatred is wrong, even if the object of it is inanimate.

So here’s the moral: I desperately need God’s grace, which is good, because God loves to lavish His grace on desperate people like me. I’m at the perfect place for God to work.

Crowds of grass

2009-01-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

I am having a hard time making myself write here. No, I have a hard time making myself write, period. Which would be fine, except that I think God wants me to write. I think writing is good for me. I even think my writing can sometimes be good for others, judging from what I've been told, unless all those people lied. So why is it so hard for me to do? Often, I want to write very much, but it gets put at the bottom of my oh-so-practical to-do list. By the time I get to it I am tired and would rather watch a movie, or go to bed.

There are a few reasons I don't write. One is that writing feels like a luxury to me, something to do after all the important work is done. It would be wrong to write in the middle of a messy home, or with dinner ignored, or before I have run, done laundry, grocery shopped... you get the picture. There is no tangible benefit to anyone by my writing, so why bother? I could make the same argument for running, but that is one I've been working on for over 20 years, so I am more or less at peace with it. I run. That's all. I don't have to justify it. Maybe the benefit is more tangible: I stay thin and fit. Beside that, running is usually fun. Whereas writing can be much more difficult.

Which leads to another reason I don't write: fear that I won't be any good. No-one will read me. I will be wasting my time. There was a time I thought I was pretty good at writing. When I read what I wrote many people responded positively. But in the past 10 years I mostly get blank stares. Which is disheartening. To say the least.

Recently, a serendipitous clustering of circumstances led me to think that blogging would be just the thing for me, but the clarity I thought I had seems to be dissipating. Turns out blogging is another word for writing, with the added pressure of needing to do it often.

So what? Do I quit? Tell myself, once again, that this is not the time of my life to embark on my writing journey? Wait till my kids are still older? Must they be completely gone? Will the perfect moment ever come for me to dig in and say, "I will do this"?

About nine years ago I was training for my first mountain run. It was a half marathon, farther than I had ever run in my life and over a mountain, too. I remember once I was struggling to get up a very long hill and there was tall, gold, wild grass growing beside the road. I zoned in on it - it was just the grass, my screaming legs, and the endless hill. The grass was blowing and bobbing in a breeze that I could not feel, and I decided that it was waving at me. I imagined that grass as a crowd of people cheering me on, "Go, Lorrie." Silly, but it got me over the hill. Since then, grass crowds have cheered me over many difficult hills. They are a stand-in for the real thing. Nothing beats a flesh and blood crowd of people screaming encouragement at me at the end of a gruelling run, even writing about it brings tears to my eyes. I have now finished eight half-marathon mountain runs, and one marathon, and I cannot overstate the value of the folks standing on the sides, cheering me on. But you know, during the long, lonely training runs, grass is a good substitute for a crowd.

I am good at pretending, is my point. So I am going to pretend again. I am pretty sure no-one reads this yet. It is like throwing words into a vacuum. But I am going to pretend that people are reading, people like me, who need a crowd to cheer them on. People who have something they want to do, but it takes courage and discipline that they don't think they have. To these people I say this: I'm not going to quit. I'm going to keep writing because I believe God has put a writer in me who needs room to grow. Maybe there is someone God has put inside you who is clamouring to grow, but you have held back for all the reasons I have, and more.

Let's believe that God wants the same good things for us that we long for ourselves. Let's believe that if God has given us a dream to sing a certain kind of song, it's because He wants to use that song to illustrate something of His kingdom that nothing else can. Let's start singing, and not worry about whether we will be perfect or not, whether we will finish strong, whether we will hit all the right notes. Let's trust that God wants to transform our stumbling efforts into the stuff of our dreams.

Can you hear the grass cheering?

Why fufi?

2009-01-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

Fufi is an acronym for “Further up and further in”. In The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, there is a wonderful scene at the end, where all our favourite characters have arrived in Aslan’s country, which represents Heaven. They have recognized that it is really their own beloved Narnia, all freshly turned out. It is brighter, bigger and more breathtakingly real than before. They have this exuberant sense that they are suppose to move deeper and deeper into this wonderful place, which means climbing higher and higher. As they ascend cliffs and waterfalls without breaking a sweat they are filled with wonder and joy and keep calling to one another, “Further up and further in!”

For me, it is a call that we can answer even while we live here, in the ‘old Narnia’. God’s kingdom is a real thing, accessible to us in many ways while we live on earth. His call to us is to energetically seek it, to really learn how to lay hold of all His goodness and power, to deliberately live our lives in ways that enable us to hear and see God more and more. He wants us to, in the words of Dallas Willard, “...dearly love and constantly delight in [our] Heavenly Father, made real to [us] in Jesus, and become quite certain that there is no ‘catch’, no limit to the goodness of His intentions, or to His power to carry them out.” (from the Divine Conspiracy, pg. 321).

So my desire with this blog is to help myself and, hopefully, others learn to think about our ordinary lives in ways that move us further up and further in to all the goodness God has for us.

Oh yes, the fact that the acronym works out to say ‘foofee’ also helps me not take myself too seriously, a necessary caution.

God answers

2009-01-18T08:35:00.000-08:00

God is so ... sweet. Yesterday I whined because I am not as good as JoeAnne Ballard (that's the woman in Memphis), and today I get this from Henri Nouwen's daily reflections.

"Be Yourself
Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.Visit HenriNouwen.org for more inspiration!"

How much more specifically can God reassure me that my life can matter, too? And that it does matter - to Him.

My small soul

2009-01-17T12:28:00.000-08:00

Okay. I will say something for 15 minutes. No one reads this anyway. Maybe this will be my most personal blog, invisible, and used primarily for forcing myself to actually write.

I read an article in Christianity Today about a woman in Memphis who has fostered 75 children, founded 11 churches and a huge non-profit organization which provides everything from food to scholorships for poor people in Memphis. Stories like that make me feel that I have a tiny soul. Yes, this woman is older than I am, but I could start now and work my heart out and still not catch up to her in my lifetime. My daily to-do list features such kingdom advancing items as: make pizza, do 30 minutes on the eliptical trainer, cut my husband's hair, change sheets... Sometimes I will add: call mom, or spend time with kids, and to be fair it sometimes includes church related activities as well, like prepare to lead worship this Sunday. Still, it pales in comparason to fostering 75 kids and feeding thousands.

I know. I know. I know. It is not about what you accomplish in life. God will not necessarily be more pleased with this woman than with me just because of what we each accomplished. I could accomplish nothing more than what I have, but live a life bathed in the presence of God, moving according to His promptings, praising Him, loving Him, and by my very existance call others to do the same and that would please Him just as much as fostering 75 kids. But I don't do it, and I have a feeling she does. And that is the problem.

How can such a big God fit into such a small life as mine? How can I become bigger? More generous? Less afraid? What disciplines would help prepare me for more of God's activity and perspective?

I believe writing this blog is one, for more reasons than I care to list. Primarily, it forces me to believe that God will yet use me to draw others closer to Him, farther up and farther into His kingdom. That is what I want.

who i am

2009-01-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

In today's reading in the One Year Bible, Jesus speaks forgiveness to a man paralyzed and lying on a mat. He then speaks words of healing and the man gets up, takes his mat and walks out. After that Jesus walks by Matthew, tax collector sitting at his hated booth, and says, "Follow me, be my disciple". Later, Jesus rebukes Pharisees who criticize Him for feasting and partying with Matthew's friends, 'scum'. Jesus tells the Pharisees they lack understanding, because they lack compassion.

I am the sinner on the mat, who can't walk. I am Matthew, stuck in a meaningless life. I need Jesus to speak words of cleansing and healing. I need Him to call me to something greater than this booth. But wait, I need more. I am the Pharisee, too often calling for judgement rather than mercy. I need Jesus to show me my own heart, and speak the words of correction that will draw me closer to Him. I need His compassion.

Jesus enjoys generously meeting all my needs, this is His nature.