Author: Laura Crosby (Page 53 of 54)

What Does Thanksgiving Look Like From Where Someone Else is Sitting?

November 10, 2014 /

I got home from Zambia Friday afternoon, so happy to be back in my cozy home with a soft bed.

When I left, the trees were painted glorious and Halloween was immanent.

When I returned the trees were sad and bare, the sky gray, and Thanksgiving almost upon us.

The night I got home, I went to my gratitude journal which I hadn’t taken with me. I brought it up to date, adding the following to my list of things I’m thankful for:

  • Real toilets you can sit down on (as opposed to a hole in the ground)
  • Air conditioning (when it’s 97 degrees) and heat (when it’s 29 degrees and snowing, like this morning)
  • Good roads, traffic lights, and traffic laws that are (basically) adhered to (and a car to drive)
  • Dependable electricity that doesn’t capriciously shut off (I heard a story on MPR yesterday on what happens in the developing world when electricity goes off in the middle of an operation in a hospital.  Not good.)
  • WiFi
  • Fresh fruits and vegetables that are safe to eat
  • Clean, unlimited water I can drink safely out of a faucet in my home

These are NOT things that my friends in the slum in Lusaka could list, and yet last Sunday they spent an entire hour in praise and worship for the God who they know who is faithful and sufficient.

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(You can’t see it, but the line for water from the pump curves around to the right of the picture for a long way.  They could have used signs like at Disney World – 30 minutes from this point…)

You know that verse, “From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.”? Well, it seems like they take it seriously!  Go figure!  And this is not just lip service, but sincere praise with song and dance.

Contrast this with yesterday at my home church where we sang a couple of praise songs, and tossed up a couple of prayers like we were tossing candy off a parade float.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate God, but maybe that’s it.  We appreciate Him without truly acknowledging Him as the source of all that we have and are.  We just live without awareness.

We think of people in the developing world as “disadvantaged”, but maybe it’s really we who need that label.  Our abundance in the United States may be one of the things hindering a more intimate relationship with God.  Wasn’t control and desire for autonomy the root of Adam and Eve’s sin?  The more we have, the more we can live with the illusion of independence, right?  Why would we need God?

This is not to shame anyone, but a desire to live fully alive to God… A reminder to look around at all the things we take for granted and praise God that He has graciously given us all that we have.

What do you overlook that you’re thankful for today?

Not Taylor Swift

November 6, 2014 /

This morning you will wake up to tweets about “postpartum Taylor Swift disorder” and news about how Kim Kardashian is the hottest mom on the planet.

I want to tell you about someone you won’t see in your Facebook newsfeed, or on the Today Show.

This is one of my new friends who lives in a slum in Lusaka, Zambia.  Her name is Faith and she wears it well.

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Her husband is a pastor. She helps him with the ministry, and cares for six children.  And so that they can make ends meet, she raises chickens in her house.

200 chickens inside her house.  Because she can’t afford to build an outdoor coop. Continue reading

The Little Thing You’re Doing…Does it Matter?

November 2, 2014 /

I’m in Lusaka, Zambia.  It is 97 degrees and instead of red leaves falling off  the trees there are flamboyant red flowers. photo-9

We were checked for Ebola at the airport (even though it is nowhere near).  photo-10

And I ate fried caterpillars.

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And this morning I preached at a church in a slum that is vibrant with praise, singing and dancing.

Sound exciting and exotic?  Well maybe, but… Continue reading

Encouragement for Your Hard Race

October 27, 2014 /

photo-6It was a perfect day. 65 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The blue above contrasted with the cornucopia of color, vibrant energy, and thousands of people around me on the National Mall in Washington D.C.  From the air I imagine it looked like a very busy colony of colorful ants.  I was at mile 11 on the Marine Corps Marathon route that our daughter Katy was running.

Although she’s run many half-marathons in different states, this was her first full and training for it had been difficult (What an understatement – like ANYONE training for a marathon has it easy!).

I had gotten her split time at 6 miles and she was on pace.  I peered over heads and around little kids as the runners kept streaming past me by the side of the road.  I kept craning my neck, looking so hard for the bright teal t-shirt I knew she was wearing.  I felt overcome with emotion –  hopes and dreams for, and pride in this precious daughter of mine.

I anxiously kept scanning the crowds of runners and praying for Katy, like the father of the prodigal son, willing him to come into view from afar off.photo-4

Is this a tiny bit of what our Heavenly Father feels as He watches us running our race of faith?  Is He picking us out of the crowd, fully aware of the miles when it’s going to be harder to keep putting one foot in front of another?   Continue reading

That Wedding When I was Tempted to go all Norma Rae

October 22, 2014 /

A few weeks ago my husband John had to restrain me from totally losing it and making a scene at a wedding.  I was FURIOUS.  Fist-clenching, face-scrunching, steam coming out my ears furious.

“Why?”, you ask.  “What could possibly provoke near violence at a wedding?” Continue reading

Dear Magpie and Other 20-something Friends

October 15, 2014 /

Today is our youngest daughter, Maggie’s 27th birthday.

Maggie is the shiny one who has friends all over the world; some she just hasn’t met yet.  She’s the one “car dances” and who keeps us laughing at ourselves and playing games and celebrating life with hoopla. She’s passionate about injustice, and traditions, and a good glass of wine.

For her on her birthday I want to shout “Huzzah!” and give her this sign I saw yesterday that said:

Always keep your beautiful imagination & exquisite humor.

I want to send a plane full of peanut butter M&M’s to scatter around her town so she’ll find them everywhere – nuggets of grace.

I want to go with her on fun new adventures to quirky spots like we’ve done in the past.

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And I want to remind her of what I wrote her two years ago because it still holds true – what I would say to her and to my own 27 year old self…

Dear Magpie,

Don’t let this discourage you, but the older you get the more you’ll know how much you don’t know…how little you’re sure of.  That’s ok though because it will help you to ask good questions, listen hard, and strain to hear God’s voice through His Word and others.

And as you do, you can remain certain of at least these three things.

1.  You really do matter.  The world is big and you’re so small, but even your little choices make a difference.   Don’t ever “despise the day of small things” done with great love.  Remember the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can set in motion a chain of events that will lead to a hurricane somewhere else? Flap your wings.  You matter.

2.  Everything really will be ok.  You’ve made mistakes before and you’ll make them again, and some days you’ll be sure the sky is falling, but the longer you live the more you will remember that the One who hung the stars is still on duty, holding them in place.

You’ll experience His mercies, new every morning.  Again and again.  Ever faithful.  He really does cause all things to work together for good, even when that’s painful.  And He really can redeem anything.  Anything.

3.  You are not alone.  Even when you feel most alone.  When someone has hurt you or betrayed you or you’ve lost something.  No, no one has lived your story, but others have had chapters with similar themes of loss or fear or conflict or joy, and God has given them to you as companions, as well as Himself.  He’s the sure thing. You are beloved.

Sweetie, anyone can write these words, but you will have to live them into your bones.  I know that you will.  You will stretch and ask and risk and hope and pray.

And you will run your race “not somehow, but triumphantly“.  Surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” cheering you on.  With Daddy and me in the front row.

Happy Birthday Magpie.

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One Reason You Shouldn’t Memorize Scripture

October 13, 2014 /

So, the other day I posted on Longings, Set-backs, and 3 Keys to Small Victories.  It was about goals and next steps and cheerleaders, but mostly it was about perseverance.

Perseverance is an ugly word in my vocabulary because it involves another “p word” I hate – patience.  Perseverance and patience are both “growing edges” in my life.  That’s the nice way of saying I stink at both, and God has His work cut out for Him.

This is where Scripture comes in. I’ve been trying to memorize a passage on patience and perseverance.

I think I’ve mentioned Scripture Typer before.  It’s a great Scripture memory app.  Lately I’ve been using it to help me memorize James 1:1-5.  Actually “lately” might be stretching it.  I’ve been working on it lately, but also for a looooong time.  Don’t mock, you mockers.

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In case you haven’t memorized this one, here it is:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.  If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

Anyway, I’ve really been getting in the groove…my little fingers scurrying across the keys, typing THE WORDS, faster, faster, faster.

So today I’m blitzing along, trying to check “MEMORIZE SCRIPTURE” off my To-do list so I can get back to all the maddening REAL stuff I’m trying to persevere and power through.

Then Bam!  The Holy Spirit clonks me on the head. Continue reading

Why I Cry in Church

October 10, 2014 /

I cried in church again last week.

This happens often.

It wasn’t the sermon or the prayers or the music.  It rarely is.

It was the people.

Yeah, I know the church can be a dangerous place, a wounding place, a shaming place.  And it has been that, at times, in my life.

But also, at its best, the church is a place where the broken gather to be made whole again.  A place where we pick each other up, and forgive each other, and point each other back towards Jesus.

And so, last week I cried in church.  For the church at her best.  For the people in my faith community who pick each other up and point each other back.

It was the person who has been angry and critical, and wrote a mean email, walking forward with me to receive communion.  Together we were lifted up and turned around.

It was looking across the sanctuary and seeing the high powered executive who gave it all up to head a non-profit and help pick up the down and out in our city.

It was the bitter woman whose husband left her, and the person with the brain tumor both bravely coming back to Jesus and His community. Just showing up all vulnerable and needy and having folks enfold them with hugs and prayers.

It was seeing the man out of work, again, and the one with a job, reaching to help lift him up.

It was the toddler in the Great Room after the service who toddled the wrong way – separated from her parents but lifted and turned around – returned by a “stranger” who was really family just because we’re in this together.

The lifting, the encouraging, the helping to go in the right direction – this is a picture of the church at her best.

And then later I saw this and I thought how similar it is to what moved me to tears at church.

Today I pray each of you reading this has a faith community where you can see the goodness of God – a place where He uses all of us to help lift each other, and gently turn us around, like a mama caring for her toddler.

When You Don’t Have the Gift of Mercy

October 7, 2014 /

So, something you might need to know about me: I was born with a mercy handicap.  

Actually, we say that everyone in our family seems to be deficient in the mercy department.  When it was gift receiving time we got ones like “charging the hill” and “being really loud” and “often wrong, but never uncertain.”

Yesterday there was more evidence of the deficiency in my life.

Daughter Maggie who’s in grad school at Berkley has won all kinds of honors and scholarships.  She’s been chosen for organizations with names that sound like Most Brilliant World Dominators of Tomorrow and stuff like that.  But recently there was a big scholarship that she applied for.  Big, as in she and Austin could probably retire on the amount of money they were going to give her.  And she thought maybe she had it.  But then she didn’t.

Enter Mercy Mom! (Maggie is my ICE – “In Case of Emergency” fyi).  My response to her news is in the blue. Continue reading

An Autumnal Sabbath

October 5, 2014 /

Since Sunday is kind of a “work day” for us, Saturday is often our Sabbath day.  Mark Buchanan in his book, The Rest of God, writes:

“Cease from what is necessary. Embrace that which gives life.  Those two things, taken together, make up Sabbath’s golden rule….Sabbath imparts the rest of God – actual physical, mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of God – the things of God’s nature and presence we miss in our busyness.”

For you, Sabbath may include a run (a big “WOOHOO!” for those running the TC marathon today!), a bike ride, a game of Monopoly, or a meal with a friend, but yesterday was a particularly delightful Sabbath day for us (note John’s caveat at the end of this post), so I thought I’d share some of it with you… Continue reading

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