Yesterday I posted some of the more relational things we are learning from crisis and grief. In case you need reminding, we are a mess of cluelessness – toddlers tripping and tumbling our way through this season. What I’m sharing is just stuff we’ve found to be helpful to us.
Today I wanted to share some of the hands-on stuff. In both posts it is super hard to limit the number (and I’d encourage you to add more in the comments), but here are three: Continue reading
We have an incredibly close family that has been referred to as the “Leave it to Beaver Cleavers”. You know – the all-American family who goes to church every Sunday, and takes family vacations. They love the boy scouts and the 4th of July, and the major drama is when the family dog gets hit by a car (but of course miraculously survives).
All that to say, we’re rookies at pain, and loss because, well, life has gone pretty well for us.
There are many, though, who will read this who have a Phd. in pain and suffering and have much to teach us, and I hope they’ll add their thoughts in the comments.
There are others who have a limited experience with grief, but who care deeply about their friends and want very much to minister to those in pain.
But whatever group you fall into, all of us, I think, want to get better at being companions who walk well with our brothers and sisters through the dark, confusing alleys of crisis.
Over the past 4 months, we had the remarkable privilege to sit with my little brother in hospital rooms, and care for him at home in hospice, and mourn when he took his last breath.
We experienced so many holy moments and such thoughtful care from the Body of Christ. Our extended family rallied as a team in ways that brings tears to my eyes as I think of the gift God has given us of each other.
Some of the things we learned ranged from the absurdly practical, to the nuances of EQ. I thought I’d share a few of them and encourage you to add your own in the comments. Today I’m going to start with the more relational, and tomorrow will go to the more practical: Continue reading
I’m tired.
Tired, as in go to bed an hour early and wake up an hour later than usual. Tired, as in afternoon “power nap” required.*
This seems really odd because it’s summertime and that’s usually the season of easy living and filling up, but this summer has been a bit different for us. Maybe for you too.
Whether it’s emotional, or physical strain, now, or mid-winter, we all go through seasons of tired and need to be gentle with ourselves and refuel. Can I get an “Amen”?
We need daily and weekly rhythms of filling so that we serve out of overflow but I believe we also need seasonal and yearly rhythms of filling too.
This brings us to my favorite week of the year.
Approximately Wednesday, August 5th to Wednesday, August 12th.
Every. Year.
This week, new ideas, stimulating conversations, prayer, laughter, music, sun, wind and waves win over everything else.
Every single year we have two back-to-back, inviolate commitments – the Global Leadership Summit and right afterwards, our staff family retreat on a lake in northern Minnesota.
The GLS brings together World Class Leaders to speak at a two day conference. It’s inspiring, challenging, encouraging, motivating. And this year our church is hosting as a satellite site so if you live in the Twin Cities and haven’t signed up yet, do it Here! (and if we haven’t met yet, come introduce yourself to me!).
Bill Hybels says, “As a leader, the best thing you bring to the table every day is a filled up bucket.”
When my bucket is empty…
So how do you fill up?
Think of some the different areas of your life – spiritual, physical, relational. What rhythms do you have that keep you replenished so that you don’t just deplete, deplete, deplete, and then madly try to fill up?
What’s one thing you can commit to today to allow God to fill up your bucket?
There are a million other filler-uppers. What favorites would you add in the comments?
*I love it that John Ortberg says, “Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap.”
I was sitting across from a friend, interviewing him for a little video resource when he said something that caught me off-guard and immediately brought tears of hurt and shame to my eyes.
It was like being stung by a bee when you’re cutting flowers.
I was upset, but more than that, I was upset with myself for being upset. I finished the interview and got in my car with John, silently reflecting on why and where the emotion had come from.
The answer was embarrassing. It was pride, pure and simple.
As I asked my friend a question on camera, he excitedly shared something he learned recently from a cool hipster pastor in our area. It is a spiritual practice I have written about a lot, and church leaders have found helpful since the 1500’s. But here, publicly, it was being attributed to the stupid hipster pastor.
I thought, “What about ME??? What about MY words, MY influence?”
And I felt small and overlooked and inconsequential. And so dang angry that I felt that way!
Have you ever felt dinged for not being acknowledged or overlooked for credit or affirmation you’d like to receive (in your secret heart of hearts)?
What do we do with All Of The Feelings?
What do we do with the ugly?
There is a verse that I think we often whoosh by, that came to mind as I drove away with John.
James 5:16 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. MSG
So I screwed up my courage (because truly I was so embarrassed that this mattered to me) and confessed to John what I was feeling.
It was so dang hard to be honest about this because I want to appear secure and confident and never petty. But there was this ugliness and when I confessed it, you know what? John wasn’t shocked, and he still loves me, and the power of the ding, like infection, seemed to drain out of me.
I am in the spiritually challenged slow group when it comes to learning this stuff, but there are three practices I keep coming back to when ugly emotions threaten to derail me: Continue reading
This is the last post in our “Road Trip” series of the summer. I’m sorry I’ve been less consistent than I planned. Thanks for your grace! I’d love to hear about your summer road trips – physical, or spiritual – and what you’ve learned!
A few weeks ago I sat in seat 19C waiting to take off when the pilot came on over the P.A.
He said, “For those of you on the left side of the plane, if you’ve looked out your window you may have noticed part of the wing is missing. Don’t worry. we know about it.”
What the what??
“We’ve made adjustments.” he added, seemingly as an afterthought.
Well okey dokey then! I’m putting my life in your hands Mr. Voice on the P.A., but if you – a person I’ve never met before in my entire life, a person whose age, credentials, and performance record are unknown to me, says you’ve “made adjustments” for the absence of a major part of equipment that is necessary to get us off the ground and safely to our destination, I’ll just trust you. No sweat.
You can’t make this stuff up.
This experience on a plane (yes, we took off and landed without incident) made me think of Paul’s experience on a “road trip” that is actually a “boat trip”.
In Acts 27, Luke writes of being taken with Paul by boat as a prisoner, to Rome. They get behind on their schedule and winter is coming. Paul warns the guy in charge, that they shouldn’t continue because the weather will be disastrous, but his captors ignore him and they sail.
13-15 When a gentle southerly breeze came up, they weighed anchor, thinking it would be smooth sailing. But they were no sooner out to sea than a gale-force wind, the infamous nor’easter, struck. They lost all control of the ship. It was a cork in the storm…
18-20 Next day, out on the high seas again and badly damaged now by the storm, we dumped the cargo overboard. The third day the sailors lightened the ship further by throwing off all the tackle and provisions. It had been many days since we had seen either sun or stars. Wind and waves were battering us unmercifully, and we lost all hope of rescue.
I know this feeling of losing “all control of the ship”.
I felt out of control on the plane.
I felt out of control when our daughter got sick in the slums of Nairobi, thousands of miles away from us.
I felt out of control when I was told I couldn’t have a job I wanted.
I felt out of control when my brother died.
You? Where do you feel out of control? In what area of life have you “lost all hope of rescue”?
21-22 With our appetite for both food and life long gone, Paul took his place in our midst and said, “Friends, you really should have listened to me back in Crete (Read: “I told you so”). We could have avoided all this trouble and trial. But there’s no need to dwell on that now. From now on, things are looking up! I can assure you that there’ll not be a single drowning among us, although I can’t say as much for the ship—the ship itself is doomed.
23-26 “Last night God’s angel stood at my side, an angel of this God I serve, saying to me, ‘Don’t give up, Paul. You’re going to stand before Caesar yet—and everyone sailing with you is also going to make it.’ So, dear friends, take heart. I believe God will do exactly what he told me. But we’re going to shipwreck on some island or other.”
I love the phrase “stood at my side” because it reminds me that we have a 360 degree God. He goes behind, before, and beside us! He’s not limited by time or space. (Ps. 139:5)
And the bottom line? God doesn’t need a boat to rescue you. He walked on water. If your hope is in the boat, when the boat goes down, your hope goes down.
On my trip, my hope couldn’t be in our defective plane. Instead I had to trust the pilot, and well…God.
Our hope isn’t in the boat. Our hope is in the One who made the wind and the waves.
The storm continues, but…
33-34 With dawn about to break, Paul called everyone together and proposed breakfast: “This is the fourteenth day we’ve gone without food. None of us has felt like eating! But I urge you to eat something now. You’ll need strength for the rescue ahead. You’re going to come out of this without even a scratch!”
35-38 He broke the bread, gave thanks to God, passed it around, and they all ate heartily—276 of us, all told! With the meal finished and everyone full, the ship was further lightened by dumping the grain overboard…
44 Everyone made it to shore safely.
Do I want to do my best to make sure my boat is strong and safe? Absolutely. That’s just wise and responsible. But what are the signs that I’m trusting the boat more than the Maker?
So, this morning I’m delighted to be put in my place as a passenger, remembering what God asked Job:
Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place? Job 38:12
Nope. But I’m trying to trust the One who does.
Have you had an experience of God reassuring you when you felt overwhelmed by the storms battering you and out of control?
I’m trying to get my feet back on the ground after a stretching season, so today, a re-post from 4 years ago.
I ran into a 23-year-old friend the other day and asked how she was doing. “Being in your twenties is…awkward!” she answered. “All these questions about what you’re going to do with your life…who you’ll be, where you’ll go…what to say ‘yes’ to.”
That same day I had coffee with a fifty-something friend who said her son is wrestling with some of the same unsettledness, and she herself is in a time of transition that has raised questions about God’s direction. She said, “I thought by this age I’d have it figured out and be cruising along!”
24 hours earlier I had had dinner with a thirty-something friend who said, “My life looks a lot different now than I thought it would.”
Each person’s situation was different, but there was a common theme. If I were God (a job that’s apparently already taken) I’d give detailed instructions like:
“Susan, I want you to move to 673 Elm St., Provo Utah, join the Church-of-People-on-the-Right-Track, take the job with State Farm, (not General Mills), and order the tomato soup at Panera for lunch.”
And sometimes in the Bible God does that, like when God gives Ananias specific instructions (Acts 9:11) to go to the house of Judas on the street called Straight, (Love it!), but often it’s a bit fuzzier, like in Acts 15:28 where Paul writes, “It seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit…”
When I’m in seasons of discernment and transition, the three words that I feel like God often whispers to me are “Open your hands”
That’s just me. What has been helpful to you when making life decisions? What have you sensed God whispering to you?
This is not a blog meant to be about me, or my family. It contains a lot of personal stories, but my prayer is that by the end of each post you feel that it’s about all of us and God and His everyday grace. I’ve written a lot lately about my brother’s fight with cancer in the hopes that some will gain encouragement or insight from our experience. I won’t write much more about this, but thought I’d share with you what I said at David’s memorial service. We are so grateful for the love, support, and prayers from family and friends.
Until I was 11 years old and David was 9, Cris 7, we lived in a house on Highland in Glen Ellyn. I had my own room, but David and Cris shared a room next to mine. Every night we would all be put to bed at the same time and after the lights were out, I’d hear the voices of my brothers coming from David and Cris’ room.
David would say: Hey Cris?
Cris would respond: Yeah?
David would say: Just wanted to know if you were awake.
Then silence for a minute and Cris would say: Hey David?
David would reply: Yeah?
Cris would say: Just wanted to know if you were awake.
This would go back and forth until one of them was too tired and fell asleep.
Today, in one sense David has been the one to fall asleep, but in another he is more awake and alive than he has ever been.
And this is what he wanted us to know.
The chapter of his life with cancer was filled with pain and prayer and hope and questions, but mostly, the refrain, “God is the Author of my story and He is good. I trust Him no matter what.”
As wonderful as my brother was, he was far from perfect (after all, I told you before that he pulled out my Mousey Moo’s tail when I was 8, and for that I think he should have to pay), but he was forgiven for that and everything else, and lived a vibrant life seeking to honor God.
He would want me to tell you, that if you don’t know it yet, this same Life can be yours if you just turn to Jesus and say “I’m sorry for the many ways I’ve messed up. Please forgive me and be the Author of my story. I just want to be a supporting character and let you be the Writer.”
You may think, “Why would I want an Author who let such a great supporting character like David die?” and I’m with you. Continue reading
Several years ago, my cell phone rang while John and I were out on a Saturday night date. Maggie, driving home to MN from Colorado, was on the other end of the line.
“Mom, I think I took a detour and I’m in the wrong state. Can you talk me in?”
Note, that was “wrong STATE”, not “wrong road” or “wrong town”. She had gotten WAY off track before asking for help and being willing to turn around.
This was before the days of the nice British woman with the soothing voice on your GPS saying “Recalculating…Make a U-turn at the next available intersection. Return to route.”
We all take wrong turns and get off-course. Sometimes those wrong turns have huge consequences that leave us wandering in the wilderness for a season. Other times, we do a course correction and get back on track quickly, thankful for grace and the company of other lost-and-found companions along the way.
Peter took a detour that he thought was fatal, but he was wrong.
Failure is never fatal in the economy of God.
When Jesus was in his darkest moments, when He most needed a friend, Peter bailed on Him. This disciple who was a close friend, acted like an enemy. He took a detour from faithfulness, and went the road of self-preservation.
In saving himself, he lost himself, as is always the case.
In shame, he ran and “hid” in his old self – fishing for fish. But…
There is no detour you can take where God can’t find and restore you.
Jesus meets Peter where he is (John 21) and He asks a simple question, “Do you love me?”
Jesus reaches out and says, “Recalculate your route. Come back with me. It’s ok. I’ll show you the way.”
My brother, David, who I’ve written about here, crossed the finish line of faith on Saturday and is now face to face with Jesus. He was a remarkable, godly man. He was also broken and he messed up like all of us (after all, he did pull off the tail to my stuffed mouse when we were kids!) But what he wanted more than anything was for everyone to know that through Jesus, God is the God of bazillionty chances. He desires to be the leader and forgiver of our life if we just turn to him.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
Where has a detour taken you today or in the past?
There’s always a way back. If you’ve taken a detour, what’s the first step you need to take to get back on track?
Read Luke 15. List all the things you note about God’s character regarding those who get lost.
What has your experience been with detours and getting back on track?
My sister-in-law, Susan is a strong and courageous woman of faith. She read this and asked me to post it in the hopes that it might encourage, comfort, or inspire others. We know that many are walking hard roads with challenges we can’t imagine.
It’s a glorious summer morning as I sit on my brother’s front porch in a wicker rocker. Birds are chattering about new-day things. A bunny is nibbling breakfast in the front yard near the hydrangea and today’s paper waits in the driveway to be picked up. A jogger and a dog-walker pass by.
As a friend says, “This is the Lifiest time of year.”
People open junk mail, play a set of tennis, watch a friend’s wedding video on Facebook, water gardens, laugh at jokes, cut the lawn.
Inside the house my brother dances back and forth with one foot in heaven and one still on earth.
This feels surreal. It can’t be happening. Life and death, and life and Life.
Things beginning, things ending. Things growing, things dying.
I stare at the pictures rotating through my screen-saver. Photos of us in foreign countries – with kids thirsty for clean water in Africa, with survivors of a tsunami in Sri Lanka, with Palestinians in a refugee camp longing for home – the World outside our world.
Every day, people trying to choose Life.
This is a week when, in some ways life is on hold and we’re just waiting; day to day, minute to minute.
We’re simultaneously holding our breath and trying to breathe.
But in other ways everything is so…normal. We do all the regular stuff and wonder, “How? How can we do life while David seems to be moving towards death?”
I wake up off and on throughout the nights and pray, “God help. Hold. Heal.”
We say “Prayer changes things”, but what we really hope is that prayer will just change “THINGS” and not change US.
This time God seems to want to change us – to make us “Lifier” people with an ear to heaven and an eye on eternity. Continue reading
Dear Baby David,
I keep thinking of that time a few years ago when we all were gathered at the Lake House for Memorial Day weekend.
It was the same as every year – too many kids and dogs to count. Card games, and tubing, and Dad threading gooey worms on fishing hooks, and sitting at the long harvest table on the porch in soggy swim suits for lunch.
Memorial Day is notoriously a little early to be swimming in Wisconsin, but still, we launched the boat and plunged into the water as always. We’re a “Choose-life-no-matter-what” kind of family.
It was cool and cloudy and super windy that year, but you kept trying to convince me to go sailing with you on our little Sunfish. “Come on, Laura! It will be great! Me and you!” I can hear you as clear as if you were saying it to me today.
Finally I relented and we took off, you at the rudder (because I don’t actually know how to sail) and me along for the ride. Aunts and Uncles, grandparents and kids and dogs watched from the shallows as the wind immediately whipped up and started speeding us across the lake.
I’d say it was approximately 10 seconds before I watched helplessly as you fell off the back and I was on my own, speeding away.
I can picture you treading water and laughing so hard, like such a brother.
Everyone on shore was yelling instructions as I got further away from land, and some scrambled to jump in the ski boat and rescue me.
David, I keep thinking of this, because I feel like you’re slipping off the back of the boat again. And I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to sail on without you.
I hate it that cancer is eating away at your strong body. I hate it that you’re suffering. Maybe it’s time to let go of life, in order to embrace Life, but oh it’s so sad to watch you slip away.
We know that God can calm the wind and waves as He has before, but so far He’s chosen not to. So far.
And saying “this is hard” is like saying a heart surgery without anesthesia is hard.
We hurl confused, grieving, tearful words at God in our weakest moments these days, but we trust Him too. We don’t understand, but we choose to continue to believe He is good, because we have had a lifetime of sailing with Him.
You’ve held tight to the rudder, Baby David. You’ve fought the wind and waves courageously, but it’s ok. You can let go now if you want.
When you go I will miss you so much. Words can’t express…But even now I can picture Jesus and Grams and Gramps waiting for you on the other side. You and Gramps will talk trains and Mr. Punnymoon. And I know you’ll be waiting for me too, with that mischievous grin and twinkle in your eye, ready to go sailing with me again.
I love you,
Your head cheerleader
I’m sharing this publicly with Susan’s permission because I want readers to know what a difference faith in Jesus Christ makes. He is everything.
We are so, so blessed to have a family and heritage of believers to walk through this dark time together. We don’t have pat answers. We aren’t always happy-clappy. We’re impatient, and selfish and quirky just like all families. But we do not grieve as those without hope. (1 Thes. 4:13)
Tuesday night, David was moved home to hospice care. His wife Susan was on the phone with my mom telling her that the oncologist had said David was the most courageous patient he had ever had, with such a positive attitude. David was awake and overheard her. In a moment of semi-lucidity he said, “Oh, but did we remember to tell him it’s just because of Jesus, Susan?”
“Yes, Dave, we did. We did.” she said.
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