Author: Laura Crosby (Page 41 of 54)

Soul Food from a Full Week

September 18, 2015 /

It’s been a full week. In the best sense of the word.

It’s been full of moments when God just seems so present, and people are authentic, and joy is in the air like the woodsmoke from Autumn fires. Out of that fullness I want to share a few morsels of soul food that have been life-giving.

The other day when I wrote about Holy Drones, I referred to the (almost impossible for me) practice of being still before the Lord. Just silent and still…to become aware of His loving presence, closer than our breath.  I thought I’d share an app that has helped me. Note: you can set the amount of time for silence and I set mine for 3 minutes. That’s truly the most I can manage. I’m clearly not a natural contemplative!

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I love, love, love good stories like this especially when it is men stepping up!

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And lastly, some hospitality inspiration…

We went to a couples wedding shower this weekend and I absolutely LOVED this is idea! The Bible was given to the couple at the end of the party, full of love.

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Then Wednesday night I had a bunch of young women over for a get-together and I was blown away by their vulnerability and present-ness. I made a little favor for them to take with them because I really wanted these young women who are in a stressful season of life to feel special.

However, 2 DISCLAIMERS regarding the following idea:

  1. I TOTALLY stole the idea from my friend, Mo, and tweaked it a bit for my get-together. She did something like this for a wedding shower with “She picked him.” on the tag instead. Thanks, Mo!
  2.  I like doing this, and in my season I have more margin, BUT making this kind of crafty gifty thing isn’t for everyone or for every season and THAT’S OK! We all have different gifts (My house was dusty and weeds have overtaken my gardens). More important to be present and welcoming than have a gift! Also, I did homemade caramel, but you could do store-bought if you want to make it easier. IMG_1568IMG_1563

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What about you? Any soul food to share with the rest of us? What inspired you this week?

3 Times Not to Let it Go

September 16, 2015 /

The other day John was acting…you know…clueless and insensitive as men do sometimes. (Women never do that, right?)

Anyway, it was late and I was going up to bed. But my feelings were hurt.

Now at this point I had a decision to make. Was this a minor thing that could be blanketed in grace and forgotten, or was it something that would affect our relationship going forward if I didn’t address it?

Whether it’s in a marriage or friendship or work relationship, I think we face this tension often.

  • You have a friend who arranges to meet at you 6:00 and calls to cancel at 5:58.
  • You come downstairs feeling pretty good and your husband (thinking he’s paying you a compliment) says “Honey you look autumnal!” (I happen to have some first-had experience with this one. Men, let me just warn you, don’t do it. Your wife will hear, “You look like a pumpkin!”)
  • You’re struggling with infertility and have a friend who is constantly complaining about her kids.
  • An acquaintance moans to you about her weight when she clearly weighs a number you haven’t seen on the scale since you were 13.

Proverbs 19:11 says:

‘Good sense makes a man restrain his anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression or an offense’.

When we’re dinged, our go-to is supposed to be grace, right? We’re forgiven, so we need to be forgiving. Let it go. Let it goooooo.

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But there are times when we need to be brave and talk out the offense with the offender.

I can think of 3 times that we shouldn’t let an offense slide: Continue reading

Holy Drones

September 14, 2015 /

One of my closest friends who, like me, is sure she would make a great CIA operative, is paranoid about drones. She is suspicious that foreign governments are spying on her. So for her birthday last week John and I decided to have a little fun.

We have a friend who just happens to have a drone and lives two blocks away from the birthday girl.  So we deployed the drone while our friends were outside playing a birthday game of basketball (you know…like you do when you’re a 56 year old woman…).IMG_1532

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Anyway, this is a long way around to saying, it got me to thinking about all the holy “drones” that we’re oblivious to. Not drones in a sneaky spyish way, but the unseen forces of God that fight for us.

I was reminded of this too back in July.

One day, as my brother David was in the hospital hovering between life and Life, our friend, Lee, who was miraculously healed of Pancreatic cancer, sat by David’s bedside alone.

Afterwards, Lee journaled about her experience and graciously shared the thoughts she had written about her time with David. Continue reading

Soul Food When all the News Seems Bad

September 11, 2015 /

Most mornings John says I’m annoyingly Tigger-like, bounding out of bed excited to seize the day. Many days recently though, I really just want to be more possum than Tigger and burrow into the soft comfiness of down pillows and warm blankets, keeping my eyes closed to the news of bad guys, hard hearts, pictures of desperate refugees fleeing Syria and the lifeless body of a precious little boy on a beach in Turkey.

Instead, today, I want to join people around the world who are choosing life. I want to say, “We see you. You are not alone and we’re going to do our best to help.”

First, what others are doing – where we can see God’s fingerprints – and then what we can do.

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World Vision is doing more than any other humanitarian organization on the ground to help Syrian refugees. Take a look at some good news and then donate here as a way of choosing life today.

And lastly, we serve a God who always makes room at the table. You can help by signing this petition to make room for those in need.

This was part of my reading yesterday. Sometimes God is about as subtle as a mack truck, eh? 🙂

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5 Things to Consider When Telling Someone About Their Blind Spots

September 9, 2015 /

Monday I posted about blind spots, feedback, and the cones in our tree we may be missing.

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It’s really hard to be a good receiver of feedback, but I think we also need to be good givers of feedback.

  • When we give feedback we’re essentially saying that someone else is worth investing in.  They have potential. I care enough about you to tell you about this cone in your tree.
  • When we give feedback we envision a better future for the person.  We give them the tools to grow. Here’s how you might get rid of that cone.
  • When we give feedback we give people perspective. We help them zoom out to see this was just one game, or one talk, or one project that’s part of the bigger picture of who they are becoming. That cone doesn’t have to hold you back forever.

How do we do that well, though? I’m no expert, but I was thinking of this in the context of some young women I mentor. It’s more an art than a science, but it seems there are several things to be aware of. Continue reading

Is There a Safety Cone in Your Tree?

September 7, 2015 /

The other day a friend and I were walking around Lake Harriet and all of a sudden I stopped. Something weird caught my eye. Something was not quite right.

I looked up, and this is what I saw.FullSizeRender-32

So many questions!

Who? Why? How come?

And did anyone else notice, or just walk by, oblivious?

It made me think of a talk at the Global Leadership Summit and wonder how many cones are in my tree that I’m unaware of. Continue reading

Soul Food For When Loss Threatens to Overwhelm & You Want to Hold onto Summer

September 4, 2015 /

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a tough week here. A bunch of loss and a boatload of things coming to an end as the season changes. I keep thinking of that commercial with the fair rides slowly grinding to a halt and the lights going out. I see the leaves starting to turn and I want to say “NOOOOOOOO!! Stop the madness!”

I’ve needed to remind myself this week…

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Anyway, this Friday I thought I’d start by sharing some literal food first, and then we’ll move to the spiritual and emotional.

  1. My friend Heather is a health coach. She brought this delicious appetizer spread to a cookout recently. Because it’s from her, I’m sure it must include magical anti-aging properties and a cure for cancer. I don’t know the name of it, but let’s call it Heather’s Hodgepodge.

All you do is go to Trader Joe’s and buy:

1 container of lentils from the refrigerator section

1 container of bruschetta

1 container of feta cheese

IMG_1413Mix them all together and serve with crackers (Gluten free of whatever!). I don’t even like lentils and I’m not crazy about feta, but I wanted to wrap my arms around this nectar of the gods and eat. the. whole. thing. Amazing!

2. Under the category of Stone Soup type recipes I thought I’d share this salad I created last week out of necessity because I didn’t have all the ingredients for any one recipe and my small group was coming over. It was delicious if I do say so myself 🙂  – fresh and healthy. Never mind that it was kind of an “accident”. I think I’m going to call it Laura’s Salad of Awesomeness 🙂 Because it was an “accident” you can play with amounts.

  • 1/2 cup cooked quinoa (cuz that’s all I had – you could use a cup if you want)
  • about 3 ears fresh corn off the cob
  • 1/2 red onion finely diced
  • about a cup of those sweet cherry tomatoes halved (I had Nature Sweet Cherubs)
  • 1 15 oz. can black beans rinsed
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
  • frozen cooked jumbo shrimp cut into half inch pieces (I had bags of shrimp I had gotten on sale in the freezer, but you can omit this if you just want to use this as a side dish and not a dinner salad)

Dressing: 1/4 cup olive oil, juice of one lemon (1/4 c.), 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. black pepper, 1/2 t. garlic powder, 1/2 t. cumin, 1 t. honey. Again, I give you full permission to play with these amounts. I did. You’re welcome.

I added a little garlic salt to the salad just because who doesn’t love more garlic, right?  Also, I like dressing it early to let it soak up the flavor.

The moral of this story? Lack may lead to innovation may lead to deliciousness!

3. Next… A little spiritual soul food.

So many people around me are in pits of disappointment, despair, or darkness. This message by Max Lucado from last year, guest preaching at NCC, is called You’re Gonna Get Through This (I think it’s hysterical that I can identify my friend, Heather’s laugh throughout this recording 🙂 ). This is so encouraging!  If you really can’t listen the whole thing, watch from 24 minutes on.

One of my favorite lines is “Don’t equate the presence of God with a good mood.”

4. Lastly, a little mojo picker-upper.  A book to make you laugh and say, “Oh, you too?”  I just finished reading For the Love by Jen Hatmaker.  You may remember my small group got started around Jen’s book, 7, so she has a good track record in these parts.

In her new book she is funny, and feisty, sarcastic and self-deprecating as we’ve come to expect. The book isn’t so much overtly about grace as it is a series of essays on all things of interest to Jen in which the aroma of grace permeates like popcorn at the movies. It ranges from the fun and frivolous (like Fashion Concerns) to the pointed and important (Dear Church and Dear Christians). And it has a few recipes I can’t wait to try, so there’s that!

A couple of favorite quotes:

  • “If you can make a pot of chili and use a cell phone, then you can create community.”
  •  “Anytime the rich and poor combine, we should listen to whoever has the least power.”

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What about you? What soul food are you feasting on this week?

Is the Story You’re Telling Yourself True?

September 2, 2015 /

Confession: I haven’t been a raving Brené Brown fan. I like Brené Brown’s material on vulnerability, but I don’t love it. It hasn’t been revolutionary for me, probably because I’m too open as it is. I don’t need any encouragement in that area.

However, last month at the Global Leadership Summit, she spoke and I wished so much that John had been sitting next to me so I could elbow him about every other word she said. (Never mind that he would have been elbowing me too.) The material, from her new book Rising Strong, was painfully relevant.

According to her, “Our brain is wired to make up a story to explain every difficult human interaction—whether it’s true or not. That story helps us interpret the discomfort by protecting our ego and self-image.” Continue reading

When You Pray and it Doesn’t “Work”

August 31, 2015 /

For 6 months I got used to waking in the middle of the night, prompted to pray for my brother, who was fighting cancer. I prayed with many others for healing. I prayed specifically, passionately and with complete faith in God’s power.

He died July 18th.

You’ve had a similar experience? Yeah, I thought so.

These days I can get downright snippy with God. Now I wake in the night, or my mind turns to Him through the day and I sometimes think, “Why bother? Why talk to God about the lesser things when He did not seem to care enough to fix this great big thing?”IMG_1403

Of course I know some of the “right” theological answers to this question.

Yes, David was ultimately healed and is alive and whole and free of pain with Jesus.

Yes, we live in a broken world and illness and death are a consequence of the fall…God is sovereign…Our minds are too small to grasp His grander plans…He will cause ALL things to work together for good to those who love Him…He is more concerned about our character than our comfort… Blah blah blah…

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Sometimes when you FEEL in the “depths of despair” as Anne of Green Gables would say, you don’t care about the words.

But I keep praying. I keep talking to God and I’ll tell you why.

I keep praying for the same reason a child keeps talking to her parents after she hasn’t gotten her way.

There’s something deep inside me that still knows that God loves me and I am drawn to Him.

There is something in me that knows there is something bigger going on.

Prayer doesn’t “work” in the way we’d like it to. It doesn’t “work” as in we pray to get what we want. We pray to get what God wants.

I think we make the mistake of seeing prayer as transactional, when it’s primarily relational.

I still don’t know what to do with those verses that exhort us to ask and receive, be the widow badgering the judge, have faith to move mountains, but I can get on-board with this thought from Tim Keller.

We can be sure our prayers are answered precisely in the way we would want them to be answered if we knew everything God knows. Tim Keller

Prayer makes more sense to me when I envision myself in a boat tethered to the shore (God) and prayer is the process by which I pull myself to it/Him – pull my will in line with His.

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Still, I often feel tossed around by the huge waves of confusion. I squint to even see the shore, desperately trying to hold on to the rope that tethers me to to Truth. I have been reading Philip Yancey’s book on prayer and find I’m in good company.

“The only final solution to unanswered prayer is Paul’s explanation to the Corinthians: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’ No human being, no matter how wise or how spiritual, can interpret the ways of God, explaining why one miracle and not another, why an apparent intervention here and not there. Along with the apostle Paul, we can only wait, and trust.” Philip Yancey

What has your experience been with understanding prayer?

Linking up today at…

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Soul Food for Those Who are Grieving

August 28, 2015 /

I wrote last week that one of my deepest desires for this space is that it would delight and refresh your soul. I want there to be laughter and fun and creativity mixed in with some of the more intense stuff of life. My hope is that “Soul Food” posts will provide some ideas and resources that you’ll look forward to like a kid looks forward to a day at the State Fair.

Recently I read a great business article  that brought to mind all the creative ways that people ministered to us around my brother’s death.

I’ve written about relational and practical stuff, and we have treasured every note that was written to us, but this is different.

Today I want to share some of the creative ways people used their spiritual gifts, talents, and resources to minister to us in the hopes it may inspire us as we minister to others.

  • In the midst of the emotional roller coaster ride with David towards eternal life, we had friends who one day said, “Are you free for dinner? Come out on our boat with us and let us care for you and you just breathe.”

They gave us hugs and listening ears and dinner and beauty. We cruised on Lake Minnetonka and ate and talked and relaxed, and it was a gift.

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  • One day I received an email from a friend who lives in Australia. She is a talented photographer and gardener. Her note said “Come, let’s take a virtual walk in my garden together and soak up God’s goodness.” She attached a power point with photos and thoughts as if we were walking through her garden together! You can take a look at part of it here: Winter pruned 1
  • Two friends made CD’s – mixes of songs they felt would be comforting during this hard season. For Susan and David there were many trips to and from the hospital in Chicago when these provided a strengthening sound track. This song, Nearness, on one of the CD’s was sung at David’s memorial service. If you’re having a hard day, this is for you.

There were also really meaningful gifts after David died in addition to people who blew us away by contributing in his honor. We were surprised by how moving these gifts were.

  • Like I said, there have been many kind gifts, but I want to mention one – a family sent us a delightful memorial wind chime with a quote on it. It is a beautiful, meaningful reminder whenever the wind blows.
  • While I was still in Chicago with family, a friend dropped off 5 dinners to our home in Minneapolis that she had made and frozen for us. Yes, of course I have time to make dinner (I don’t have kids at home and it wasn’t my husband that died), but what I’ve discovered is how exhausted you are after a crisis, or in a season of grief and how nice it is NOT TO HAVE TO THINK about dinner.
  • My small group, who had been part of an indefatigable prayer team for David, created one of the most meaningful gifts. They wrote verses that we had clung to during David’s cancer and notes of encouragement on a hurricane with a candle. We’ve talked often about how God’s light shines through the broken places in our lives and the gold lines represent those places of healing.

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  • I was moved to tears when I opened a card the other day and a friend in MN had laminated the newspaper obituary of my brother (which I helped write, but had not seen). She said she thought I might want to keep it in my Bible.

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All of these gifts were creative, thoughtful and personal. They communicated care and a desire to remember with us someone we loved.

Are there some additional ways people have ministered to you when you have been grieving?

 

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