Laura Crosby

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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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Hungry for More Than Christmas Cookies

December 5, 2012 /

Today I was supposed to go to Weight Watchers.  Instead I made Christmas cookies.

And by that I mean I made Jeans Bars, so named because they’re guaranteed to make your jeans tight.  Yeah.  I know, I know…

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But, it got me to thinking about the food I need far more than Christmas cookies.

And the God who has given to all of us who are hungry and thirsty for that “more”…

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Two Words Preventing Peace

December 3, 2012 /

The other day I was wrestling (and by that I mean full body Hulk Hogan throw-down wrestling) with the tangled Christmas lights outside by the prickly pokey evergreens in front of our house.  My hands numb, my nose drippy.

And under my frosty breath I muttered “He never helps with this.  If any decorating is going to get done it has to be me.  Always me doing all the work to make us Christmas-ready.”

I know.  My problems are so real!

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An Advent Sunday Morning

December 2, 2012 /

As I write this it is the first Sunday morning of Advent.  It’s foggy and ugly outside my Starbucks window, but I live in Minnesota so I know snow is right around the corner which makes me so happy.

I’m an early morning person, but I know many are just now lumbering, hustling, shivering, or springing out of bed.  Some to get kids dressed and combed.  Some, bumping around a dark empty house or apartment alone.  Getting ready for worship.

Some will be driving to church with an attitude of habitual going-through-the-motions resignation.

But for me…and for most I think, there is always a glimmer of expectation.  As small as a twinkle light, but it’s there for sure.  A tiny bit of hope that we’ll meet God in that worship space and hear a whisper from Him.

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Christmas Lists

November 30, 2012 /

I love making lists.

And I’ve been making a lot of them lately.

To-do lists, grocery lists, lists of goals, and especially Christmas lists of gifts, and party planning, and elf-like stuff.

I think one reason we make lists is because we like the illusion of control it gives us.  It says “I have a plan!”  We get to check things off, accomplish things (and yes, I’ve been known to do something and then add it to my list so I could check it off).

But sometimes those lists are the very thing that threaten to leave us clutching a bottle of Advil, wondering “How in the world did I get in this mess and how many days til January 2nd?”

And then I imagine Jesus saying, “Come to Me all who are weary with Christmas and give me your lists.”

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On Mary and Getting Ready

November 28, 2012 /

It’s coming on christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace.

Joni Mitchell’s been singing those lyrics in my brain today.

It’s coming on Christmas…

and we’re in “getting ready mode”.

John’s been gone at meetings in Houston so I’ve been using the time to get the house ready for Christmas.

And, as I wrote last week, our daughter Maggie got engaged and would like an early summer wedding, so we’re getting ready for that which means constant g-chats and texts with the girls in D.C., and phone calls to check dates with…well, everyone.

And then over the weekend the “to do’s” of Christmas hit me.  You know, like when you’ve noticed that it started snowing but then you don’t look outside for awhile and when you look again you can’t believe how it’s piled up.  There’s a lot that I’ve promised to do that has snuck up on me like a silent snow drift.

And I’m grateful for a full life, but I need to get ready for all of it.

This morning, in between doing all this getting ready stuff there were several distinct moments of silence and solitude when it felt like God said, “Hold it.  Shhhh.  I’m here.”

And in those moments I wondered what getting ready for Christmas really looks like.

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On Being Full and Being Empty

November 26, 2012 /

I feel full.  Stuffed, in fact.

As I write this it’s the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. and I’m in a Starbucks in a suburb of Chicago where all my extended family live.  Christmas music is on in the background and Katy and John are heading over to join me so all is right in my world.

I am full of of turkey and laughter, and hugs and stories retold again and again around the long dinner table.  And prayers.

In our family we are blessed.

Thanksgiving is about fullness…reflecting on the fullness of the past year and filling up with more of God’s goodness echoing from the voices and reflected in the eyes of ones who love us and love Jesus.

But life seems to be a process of both filling and emptying.

We are emptied.

Depleted from discouragement, draining relationships, and days that seem to require the patience and strength of a super-hero.  Fatigued with fear of failure or future or just busyness.

And we are filled.

With whispers of His Word, and glimpses of His beauty and love and faithfulness in the ordinary moments of life.

The “Jesusy answer” may seem pat and tired, and hard to understand…mysterious in a way that makes us resist it.  And incomplete this side of heaven.  Our cups get bumped and jostled and tipped over and the only One who can do a real filling is Jesus.

This year, there was a change in our Thanksgiving traditions.  We needed a time of filling.  For the first time ever, there were no games on “the” day.  Instead of Charades or Pictionary or Nertz, there was a time of anointing and prayer and scripture shower for our dear friend Lee who is fighting for her life with Pancreatic cancer.

I heard someone this week use the phrase

“the place where our theology intersects with our biography.”

And I thought, “That’s it!  That’s what we’re experiencing.”

And it is really hard.

As this disease depletes her body, God provides His Body to refill.

The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. Eph. 1:23

We don’t understand, and we’d much rather “do” something that feels more problem-solving, but God says anoint.  God says pray.  Wait.  Trust.  Bow.

He emptied Himself to that we might be filled.  Again and again.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people,  to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Eph. 3:16-21

What about you?  Are you full or empty today?

What relationships, experiences, or practices does God use to fill you?

Looking at the World Through a Different Lens

November 23, 2012 /

Happy day-after-Thanksgiving in the U.S.!  Whether you’re braving the crowds to shop today, or watching football games still in an after-turkey stupor, or in another part of the world where it’s not the “day-after-Thanksgiving” I hope you enjoy this video my friend Devon shared with me.

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