Category: Uncategorized (Page 63 of 81)

What Do You Do New Year’s Eve Morning?

December 31, 2012 /

New Year’s Eve morning is a quiet one at Starbucks.  We’re reading backwards.

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Every year, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s day, my husband John and I make a practice of reading back over our journals from the past year.  As we do we try to pay attention to themes that God might be impressing on us.  We look for holy moments of His faithfulness to be thankful for, and answered prayer.  We try to read between the lines for blind spots we may be missing.

This is kind of like doing a yearly Examen.  Looking for the activity of God.  I’ve shared before that I’m spiritually ADD.  If I don’t make a discipline of paying attention, I’m like the spacey traveler who perpetually makes a wrong turn and all of a sudden looks around wondering how they got where they are.

A couple of weeks ago I heard about a study that was done on 300 of history’s greatest minds from a wide variety of disciplines.  The researcher, Catherine Cox, found one common theme among them.  They all kept a journal of one kind or another!

Yeah, I know, I’ve written before about how journaling isn’t for everyone, but today, at this dividing line between old and new, maybe consider looking back over 2012 and…

Identify three experiences or choices that have been life-giving this past year…where you have seen the activity of God.

And three places where perhaps you’ve neglected to seek God’s direction, forgiveness, or the power to reconcile.

Sharing these with someone else may make it more meaningful.  For me, I’m noticing the “with God” life this past year most clearly in places where I’ve stepped out, responding to invitations in new areas I would never would have dreamed up on my own (like in the areas of advocacy and reconciliation – so outside my comfort zone!).   I’d love to hear what you see as you look back over the year!

How to Build an Airplane

December 28, 2012 /

I have a friend who is building an airplane.  Seriously.  Not a model.  A real, live, take-off-and-land-in-a-different-state airplane.

She sent pictures in her Christmas letter and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  It makes me think of those pictures you see of Rosie the Riveter from World War 2 posters.

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Well, I’d like to build an “airplane” this New Year.  Sound impossible?  Yep, sounds that way to me too.

I love big hairy audacious goals.  I love the idea of going after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.  I don’t want to let fear dictate my decisions.  I want to take a flying leap of faith.  But that doesn’t mean flying blind.

So I’ve been thinking my New Year’s resolutions and about what Gayle is doing to reach her remarkable goal.

She has a team.  She’s not doing it alone.  She has professionals coaching, guiding directing her.  Her family members are putting in hours of work by her side also.  So ask yourself, “Who’s on my team?  Who are the people who can advise me, give feedback, teach me?” and then go ask them for help!

She has a plan.  And the plan isn’t just “build a plane today”.  Ask, “What are the smaller steps that are going to help me reach this big goal?  How can I break an airplane down into parts?”

If your goal is to lose weight, what are the daily habits that are going to set you up for success?  If your goal is to write a book, how many words are you going to discipline yourself to write each day?

She has a work ethic. Gayle’s plane is being built in a hangar in Oregon and she’s required to put in a certain number of hours of work over a year’s time.  This is not a Bewitched-twitch-your-nose-and-get-it-done kind of deal.

What are the excuses that keep you from setting the alarm an hour early?  I love what Jon Acuff writes…”Sucker punch Monday morning and start your day before fear has a chance to find you.”

Another friend of mine likes to say, “Work like it depends on you.  Pray like it depends on God.”  Building a plane may not sound like a very “spiritual” endeavor, but how sad if we leave God out of any equation.  And how exciting if we set kingdom goals that we can see clearly will honor God, feed the hungry, encourage the brokenhearted, bring justice…

So anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about this morning.  What airplane are you hoping to build in the New Year?  Or what airplane are you afraid to tackle?

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One More Gift…or Two

December 27, 2012 /

At our house the carols have been sung, candles lighted, cookies eaten, snuggling done by the fireplace.  The tree has been given multiple compliments so that it feels secure in its loveliness, and bags of festive crumpled wrapping paper and shiny bows carted out to the trash.

Yes, the gifts have been opened and oohed and aahed over, but there are a few more…A couple I didn’t get delivered to friends and tennis coaches, and Christmas cards still to mail.  Maggie’s fiance, Austin arrives today and his gifts are still waiting under the Christmas tree.

All this gifting focus has prompted me to think about several other gifts that are there every day, but may sit around un-given or unopened in the new year.

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Squashed

December 24, 2012 /

I’m really am a Christmas girl.  I love it all.  Well, almost all.  The snow and twinkle lights and candles and cookie-baking.

But Christmas also means more people.  Family and guests visiting, more traffic in parking lots, more people at parties.  And I’m an extrovert, so that’s ok except that when people are extra busy they’re stressed and not the best version of themselves so it’s easy to get squashed in the crush of “me” and “my” and “this is what I want”.

Basically we’re all a pretty opinionated and selfish lot.

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A Salvage Mission

December 21, 2012 /

I love, love, love Christmas cards with the beautiful scenes of pristine snow and a lovely stable and winsome sheep.  I love to imagine the cleaned up version of Christmas.  Like I prefer the cleaned up version of me.

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I’d prefer not to face the reality of Christmas that involved manure and labor pains, sweat and body odor and afterbirth.  Jesus didn’t come into a Christmas card, but into a sin-filled dump.

We are fragile and broken and God comes into the junkyard of our lives not with a bulldozer, but with loving hands that sift through our shattered pieces and gently put us back together, better than new.

Recently I read this quote from The Drama of Scripture by Bartholomew and Goheen:

When his good creation was fouled by human rebellion, God immediately set out on a salvage mission.

He had created it, and it thus belonged to him by right. Now he would redeem it, buy it back for himself, so that it might be restored to what he had always intended it to be.”

I love the image of God’s “salvage mission”.

And then I saw this Youtube video that seemed to be a beautiful picture of people literally living out that phrase.

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Star-gazing

December 19, 2012 /

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him.” Mt. 2:2

This fall John preached a sermon in which he asked the congregation to close their eyes and point to the direction they thought was north.  This is a picture of what happened.

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Although many got it right, there were also those who’d be in trouble if they were a migrating goose.  One of the challenges of the with-God life is keeping our bearings.  Aligning ourselves with God’s true north.

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Christmas Funeral

December 17, 2012 /

Dear Friends,                                                                                                                            I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, planning to post it today.                                             And then the Connecticut shooting happened.                                                                     And we’re reeling, wailing, mourning, grasping for answers and comfort.  No words are adequate.  So I want to be clear that this post is not in response to recent events, but nevertheless, I pray may be some small encouragement.

Here’s the thing.  I hate funerals.  I avoid them like a cat avoids water.  I really don’t like them.

I know they’re important and showing up to grieve with the family is good, but still…I’m just being honest.

Friday I had to go to a funeral.  The son of some friends of ours was killed riding his bicycle.  We love them and our kids grew up together.  It was just a freak accident, as they say.

Corey was a troubled young man who struggled with mental illness all his life, and so, in a sense, his death was a relief from his torment, an escape to peace with Jesus who he had claimed as his Savior.

Still…Both John and I had a hard time getting through the service.

As the words of Mark Shultz’s song “He’s My Son” bounced off the windows of our beautiful sanctuary decorated with greens and twinkle lights for Advent, we thought of our own girls, our own prayers, our attempts to protect them, our parenting mistakes…

I’m down on my knees again, tonight.  I’m hoping this prayer will turn out right…

Can you hear me?  Can you see him?  Please don’t leave him.  He’s my son.

How do you make sense of it all?  How do you survive the death of one of your babies?

I just don’t know.

But here was the biggest thing about Friday and that funeral...  In the midst of that tremendous, palpable pain at church, there was also an overwhelming sense of ….Emmanuel.

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Pregnant, part 3

December 14, 2012 /

This week I’m thinking about Mary and three spiritual practices that may help us prepare for Christmas.  You can read the first in the series here  and here if you want.

I’m not good at the practice of silence and solitude.  I like chatter and hustle and bustle because they feel productive.

Silence and solitude, at least from a distance, seem well, lonely and unconstructive. Like  waiting for a bus you’re not sure is coming.

However, though it’s not my go-to mode, over the years I’ve grudgingly come to experience great value in the discipline of being alone and quiet with God.

When I look at the account of the first Christmas, it’s not that there wasn’t chaos, confusion, and noise.  “The little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes”??  Are you kidding?

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Pregnant, part 2

December 12, 2012 /

This week I’m thinking about Mary and three spiritual practices that may help us prepare for Christmas.  You can read the first in the series here if you want.

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As I write this I’m in a lovely setting, looking out over our snowy Minnesota – an outward picture of peace and calm that is definitely not what I’m feeling inside.  In my fingers and toes and stomach is… fear – that indefinable tingly, insufficient, I can’t get it done emotion.  I need to do, to create, to produce and I don’t have it in me.  I’m not enough.

Is that feeling more common at Christmas than at other times of the year?

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Pregnant, part 1

December 10, 2012 /

Good morning!

As we move closer to Christmas it’s easy to let the busyness of preparation hijack my attention and ability to be present to God, so I thought I’d share posts this week that will each focus on a different spiritual practice that might be helpful.  It’s important for me as a spiritual ADD girl for sure, and I hope helpful for you too.

peace,                                                                                                                            Laura

I love Mary (as in mother of Jesus Mary).  Which is a little weird cuz I really bristle at some of what sometimes feels like the overboard Catholic put-her-on-a-pedestal-next-to-Jesus stuff.

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She’s no shiny white above-the-fray-bullet-proof other-worldly woman.

But still.  I think she’s amazing and I’m fascinated with her.

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