Learning Along The Way

Sunflower Life Lesson #1 –Desperate

By

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I showed you this picture yesterday.  I was struck by how desperate this sunflower was to point toward the sun.

 

This plant absolutely twisted its stem into a crook shape to face its head upward.  That took a lot of the plant’s energy.  But because it’s in a growing season, the plant didn’t even stop growing!

 

Are my daily time investments keeping my head upward?

 

I wonder…how desperate am I to point myself, to reorient my life, no matter what, toward the Son?

 

Do I hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God or am I just saying ‘I’ll get to that later when my to do list is complete’?

 

Some questions are rhetorical; asked for the sake of discussion without having or needing an answer.  Some questions are direct and in need of answering.

 

These questions need my attention.  They need your attention for your life, too.

 

How desperate are you?  Enough to change your whole life focus?

 

 

Resilient (or How Does My Garden Grow?)

By

I had the most amazing gardening experience ever!  If you’re not into gardening, that’s ok, it wasn’t super technical but there is a great story so bear with me.

 

A week ago our son graduated from Biola University.  We don’t live in the LA area so attending his graduation meant traveling down a day ahead.  Since we were going to be down there anyway we had made plans to be gone the whole long holiday weekend.

 

We left on Friday afternoon.  If you’re a mom you know how much preparation goes into getting ready to leave; for me it includes surveying the garden for potential issues that might need attending to before leaving.  All was in order so we were good to go.

 

It was a wonderful graduation; made this Momma very proud!  But I digress; the event is not the focus of the gardening experience!

 

After returning home four days later, I went out to survey the garden.  I found one of the giant sunflowers lying down in the middle of the cantaloupe and watermelon plants.  It hadn’t been uprooted so I knew I could stake it up and it would be okay.  That’s not the amazing part.  I’m getting there.

 

I wish I had thought to capture this with a photo.  While it was lying there on its side for 3 -4 days, the head of the sunflower, not yet in bloom, had turned itself upward toward the sun.  The stalk of the sunflower had to twist itself around in order to face upward.  When I staked the plant up it was crooked and the head was facing the wall behind the plant.  This would be a gardening experiment for sure.

One week later, this is what the plant looked like:

 

 

I have gleaned a lot of metaphors from this gardening experience.  As another experiment, I’d like to hear from you!

What life lessons do you recognize from my amazing gardening experience?

I’ll share mine tomorrow!

The Work of Training

By

Here you see the result of training.  Not the act of training, the result of it.

 

The person who did the training had tools, time and energy that had to be used to get to this point in the growing season.  It was a lot of work and will continue to be a lot of work.  Some days are more demanding than others, but truly, year round there is work that needs to be done to maintain healthy strong life in the vines.

 

I see all of life through the lens of a garden.  It’s just the way God’s made me.

 

What season is your life in right now?  A season of rest?  Of lying dormant with no evidence of life? An active season of preparation?  A season of waiting?  The thing about seasons: they change.  But do we?

 

Any season you find yourself has its joys and challenges.  That is what is consistently true of life.  The training and preparation we go through before we’re called upon to bear fruit is so important.  Summer is a season of balance: watering, weeding, dead heading, maintenance, and waiting for the plants to bear.  Some days it looks like nothing is happening.  But the efforts will pay off.

 

Reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word is much like the balance of gardening in the summer.  Sometimes no one sees or knows of your efforts but God Himself.

 

What are you in training for?   Does it frustrate you that no one sees your efforts?  Or are you like these vines, showing the evidence of training?

 

What if you’re not sure?  What if you’re feeling a longing to get busy and make a change in your life? Ready to get your hands dirty but don’t know what step to take?

Let’s talk! I’ll listen.

 

 

Weeding in the Garden

By

What is growing in the garden of your life that you’re not paying attention to?  We get busy with the day to day routines: cooking, cleaning, laundry, shuttling kids, changing diapers, cleaning messes, working outside the home, caring for aging parents, the list goes on.

Tending to the garden of our hearts takes time, energy and focus, all tools you may feel you don’t have in your garden tote.  In different seasons the weeds grow more rampantly than others.  When I have allowed the weeds to go, the work to remove them is overwhelming.  When I have been too busy to be consistent in tending the garden, it shows.

What to do to get back a tended, well watered garden (think life)?

1. Start weeding.

What’s there that isn’t helpful?  What’s getting in the way, crowding out the good things you want to see in the garden of your life?  Get rid of whatever that is for you.

2. Ask for help.

Weeding takes a practiced eye; knowing what is a weed and what is a good plant can be confusing if you’re not used to the practice of tending the garden.  You might need a mentor, a seasoned gardener, to help you recognize what doesn’t belong.

3. Adjust your priorities

Everything cannot have #1 priority.  Really hard for an over-achiever to hear, I know!  Learning to know the difference between what things are ‘have tos’ and what things are ‘want tos’ also takes practice.  In different seasons your time must be spent in particular ways and in other seasons you’ll find there is more discretionary time.  But the fact remains, a little regular attention to the garden is the better practice than only one day a week or once a month!

Start.

Who knows, once you get in there you may discover the Master Gardener has planted something in your life that you weren’t aware of!

Do or Be? That is the Quest

By

Do. Be.  An apparent contrast in terms; but is it?

 

I have spent a majority of life in the doing arena.  Get good grades.  Do your best.

Striving for approval, recognition, acceptance.  Our culture places value on achievement.  We are trained up to fit in, act right, look a certain way, have an acceptable spouse with an acceptable career; live in a particular place, drive acceptable cars.  The list goes on.

 

None of these things or goals are necessarily bad unless the motive behind the goal is bad.  Bad motives?  What would those be?  The interpretation of motives depends on your worldview.  By what measuring stick do you compare yourself?

 

With the measuring stick of the world, the list above will be evaluated by what is the biggest and best.  Who determines what is best?  Your peers?  The advertising agencies?  The opinions of your family and friends?  The measuring stick fluctuates with the popular influence of culture.  When have you arrived?  When can you simply relax and enjoy life?  How much is enough?

 

What if you wanted to change the stick, which measures you?

 

Unfortunately many who choose to walk along the Way as a Christ follower bring with them the measuring stick of the world and apply it to how they’re doing as a Christian.  Suddenly without recognizing it, the life of faith takes on the life of the works focused world and relationship with God is sacrificed on the altar of performance: serving on committees, teaching Sunday school, leading a small group, helping with AWANA.  Again, none of these activities is bad unless the motive for doing them is.

 

What if there is a different way?  A way of living simply; a way of enjoying just being without striving for…whatever?  Do or Be. Now that is the Quest.

 

There is a different Way.

 

Slow down.  Get off the merry go round.  Spend time alone with the Lord, in silence.  Write in a journal.  Sit still outdoors.

Listen to the birds.  Focus on one sight or sound.

 

Be still and know…

 

Why Not Laugh?

By

I posted this picture on facebook today. My dear friend Sue gave me this sign for Christmas the year my mother died.  It is a huge visual reminder for me on a daily basis.  I would go so far as to say it has helped me heal.

 

What is it about a good laugh that feels, well, so good?

 

According to research there are so many reasons why laughter is good for us!  Here is a link to a great article telling of all the many benefits of laughter:

 

If you don’t hop over there, here are some quick benefits of Laughter:

 

helps your physical self by

strengthens our immune system

helps lower negative affects of stress

 

helps your emotional self by

easing stress levels

changing your mood

 

helps your social self by

strengthening relationships

building resilience

 

This article also gives some suggestions for ways to bring more laughter into your days.

 

My personal favorite has been to laugh at myself and invite others to join in.  Just last night we were watching our favorite baseball team on tv.  There was a camera shot of a couple of fans and one had made a sign, which read: Hit the ball here!  The person had cut a hole out of the sign and had slipped their arm through and then put on their baseball glove.  No big humor here.  Except that when I first saw the man standing there with his gloved hand through the sign I wondered to myself

“How did he get that glove through that small hole?”

When I realized how ridiculous my first thought was I laughed out loud at my silliness.  That laugh led to my true confession to my family which in turn triggered their own laughter.  It was a great moment of the power of sharing a laugh.

 

Another benefit of laughing at oneself is humility.  You can’t think you’re all that and a bag of potato chips when you stop taking yourself too seriously.  They’re mutually exclusive.

 

Better health, better relationships, happy life.  Who wouldn’t want to laugh?

 

What do you do to help build laughter into your days?

 

After the Fact

By

Mother’s Day has been hard for me.  My mother passed away five years ago this June 26.  But Mother’s Day was hard before she was gone.

 

On her deathbed she blessed my sons, she thanked my husband for his parenting and love.  She spent time alone with my dad and with my brother. And for me?  Not a word. An angry glare in silence.  A glare I had seen many times in my life.  I met that look with the same little girl hopefulness: “ I love you Mom.”  On her deathbed, she turned her face away from me and muttered, “I love you too”.

 

What would possess a mother to reject her child time and again all the way to the end?

 

A lifetime of hurts.  A lifetime of longing for affection and acceptance.  A heart that yearned for simple gentleness that was not given.  That was her legacy to me.

 

In these years of healing since her passing, I have learned I have much for which to thank my mother.

 

She taught me to be introspective.

 

She taught me to be resilient.

 

She modeled a strong exterior and how to be a hard-working woman.

 

She showed me how to suck it up when life was tough.

 

She also taught me what kind of mother I wanted to be.

 

Since her passing I have leaned hard upon the Lord as I learned to trust Him rather than seek my mother’s approval.  In place of performance I receive grace.  I am accepted, as is, no performance necessary.   These are Truths that I have Known in my head but now Know and Experience in my heart as well.

 

I didn’t realize how desperately I was seeking after the wrong acceptance, conditional acceptance.  All the while God was patiently waiting to remind me that He already accepted me and took care of the needed performance on the Cross of Christ.  I’m forgiven and accepted because Jesus was rejected and condemned.  What an exchange!

 

Now that Mother’s Day is past these reflections may seem a little after the fact, but even today I recognized again how deep these wounds go and how God’s love is deeper still.  My prayer is all will come to know how deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure.

A Glimpse of Childhood

By

 

This is one of those books.  Read it again!  Again?  Again!

Max was their alter ego I think.  We would roar! And gnash!  And roll our eyes along with the Wild Things.

Seeing the cover makes me smile.

Pretend play and acting out characters in books were a part of childhood.

Sweet memories indeed.

When the movie trailer came out both my adult sons were excited to see it; we planned to go together.  One thing or another got in the way of us going to the theater; I haven’t ever seen the movie and I’m not sure they have either.  Somehow a movie version might steal or change the memory of this book.

Thank you Maurice Sendak for your willingness to step outside the box of conventional children’s books.

This book will forever be a glimpse of childhood for my sons and a very sweet set of memories for this Momma.

 

The Value of a Journal

By

I know we are uniquely wired so what is burning for me today may not even cause a spark of recognition for you.  But I can’t help myself; I have to talk about how amazing it is to capture life in a journal.

 

The other day I was going through bookshelves for donations in my never – ending effort to lighten the load of stuff; I picked up a journal of mine from two years ago. I began to thumb through some of the entries and I ended up sitting down on the floor amazed by the goodness of God.  As I read, I revisited quotes I had captured from books I’d been reading at the time, snippets of Scripture, reflections on my days and prayers I had offered.  It was in those prayers I was struck by the beauty of making time to journal; I was able to see the changes that God alone has wrought in me.  Many of the struggles I was walking through then have been resolved; not all in the ways I had prayed but in God’s perfect way and timing.

 

My thoughts would have slipped away, the story of my life gone without notice, had I not practiced the discipline of journaling.

 

I call it a discipline because I really believe that anything we don’t do automatically, like breathe and have a heart beat, is up to us to form as habits.  The time of day you eat, what you eat, when you sleep, how you practice self-care, whether or not you regularly do anything, are all up for grabs without habits.

 

The habit of jotting down thoughts or author’s quotes or passages of Scripture that speak to me has had the effect of slowing me down, pausing to reflect, deepening me in ways I would never have planned.  Looking back on what I heard from God’s Word, capturing what I ask for in my life or for others has produced my personal Old Testament.  I can read and remember what God has done and can tell others, testify, of the goodness of God.

 

I haven’t always been really pretty in my writing in these journals.  I have given myself permission to write freely, authentically, so grammar, spelling and editing are out the window.  But something else has emerged through my freedom of expression; I have been raw and transparent without editing too.  Freeing myself from conventions has given my voice room to speak out my thoughts and heart hurts, giving voice to my prayers that I can say God has blessed.

 

I am not religious about journaling.  I don’t journal every day.  Some journals I haven’t filled.  I started journaling in high school through the genre of poetry; I didn’t want what I was talking about to be translated by an uninvited reader!  So my early journals really reflect my bondage even through expression.  Over the years as God has freed me and I am continuing to learn to walk in that abundant freedom, my journals reflect those changes.  It is glorious to see evidence of God at work!

 

What are your thoughts about journaling?  If you’ve not developed this habit, “it’s never too late to be what you might have been” to quote George Eliot.

 

What’s keeping you?

 

 

An Answer

By

There is something soothing about rain.  It might be the fact we haven’t had enough rain this year.  Maybe it’s soothing to me as a hobbyist gardener.  Whatever the reason, I love to hear the rain fall.

Rain is renewing.  It rinses the leaves. It cleans the air.  In San Luis Obispo, it’s FREE irrigation!

Of course too much of a good thing is still too much.  Sometimes an abundance of a good thing like rain can be dangerous.  Thankfully we’re not there yet.

What we do with an abundance of good things?  The abundance may not come in the form of rain; it might take the form of an unplanned addition to your family or a financial windfall, or too many lemons on your tree for you to make use of.

If my mind is set on the things above then what to do with abundance will take on different form than if my mind is set on the things of this world.  I mentioned that I have been mulling over a question for several days and that tumbling, rolling thoughts have bumped up against a false narrative that I have believed for a long time.  What’s a false narrative?

I first learned the idea from the Apprentice Series.  The author, James Bryan Smith, introduces the concept in The Good and Beautiful God.  “We are creatures who live by our stories” A false narrative is a story we have believed that is not true.  Lies we believe come in many forms; interior transformation takes place when we replace false narratives with the True narratives of Jesus.  I have loved reading through, talking through and walking through the transformation process with others.  That is real community: people willing to risk being vulnerable with others and do the messy work of really relating.  But I digress…

The false narrative that I saw through the tumbling question was simply this: my stuff is my own.  If I really look at the difference the Resurrection makes I see the places in my heart that I have clung to stubbornly like a petulant child grabbing a cherished toy and turning away with a loud ‘No!’  I have believed that stuff is important to show a level of achievement, a statement of ‘I have arrived’.

The Resurrection is a demonstration of new life, of ‘other world’ life, where the focus is not on self but on the Giver of life and every good gift that is given.  Whatever the gift is, the Kingdom perspective is the gift is meant as a blessing to be shared, a way to be a blessing to someone else.  Jesus going to the Cross, taking on my penalty so that I am free of the guilt of my sin, giving me new life through His sacrifice is the best good and perfect gift!  Receiving the Gift is the beginning point in the process of spiritual transformation.  My mind can be made new, my false narratives can become new true narratives day by day.  That is good news!

So I am beginning to see my abundant stuff differently.  Considering what and how to share with others.  Awareness is the first step to change.  My awareness of the false narrative that my stuff is my own is the first step to change; what I do next will be a part of the ongoing process of being Lisa in whom Christ dwells.

What have you been recognizing within yourself?  What change are you considering?

Follow Me…

Categories