Daily Drama

I'm what is generally referred to as a drama queen. It's a fact, albeit one I do not own proudly. My spirit tells me that it is a bad, bad thing! I tamp down these tendencies for the greater good....of my marriage, my relationships with my sons...other people's sanity...you get the picture.

This status is rooted in a couple of personality traits I was, quite simply, born with! I am always bored. As in, ALL OF THE BLESSED TIME. The only time I am not bored is when my life is in danger. I wasn't bored when I went off-road with my family in a jeep on a steep mountain in Colorado. I was SCARED OUT OF MY MIND! I bailed out of the jeep at one point when the tires started slipping and we had what seemed to me to be a six-inch margin of error. I wasn't bored a few years later when I hopped out of an ATV in California and walked down a desert incline, sandals in hand. I was afraid to ride in the ATV for fear it would tip over, yet had no qualms about rattlesnakes. My kids shot video as they RODE down the little hill with their dad, laughing loudly. I did not care. BUT I WAS NOT BORED! This abnormally high propensity for boredom leads to my reading and relaying too many high-drama news stories (which I am sure leave people thinking, "Gosh, I didn't know that depressing thing. Thanks so much, Laurie") and talking about people when I should be quiet.

The second personality trait that gives rise to high crimes and misdemeanors in the drama department is my tendency to worry about those I love. I try to fix everything for my sons. Early in their lives, it became my personal mission to protect them from life. Turns out that was a bit of a tall order. I'll let you imagine how it went.

A lover of drama and hater of boredom, I am a sucker for all stories of God's miraculous intervention. That's not a bad thing, by the way. I will never tire of them. I will always be inspired by them. However, I have found, somewhere along way, that most of the work He does in our lives, while certainly dramatic, certainly sweeping, and definitely life-altering, is performed incrementally, in the quiet of our dutiful moments as much as in the ardor of our praise and prophecy chapters!

When I am slogging through a rainy day washing the 1,000th dish of the week, I am being improved upon by God. I'm learning to hold His hand. I'm identifying more closely with Him. I'm walking more deeply in his giant footsteps. He does go before me, after all. I am inhaling the truth that all that matters is my relationship with Him. I'm (hopefully) pushing the world further away. That's pretty dramatic, and I like it.

Perfectly Placed

Today when I was mowing my lawn in the 88-degree Tennessee humidity, I had a chilling thought. The grass wasn't all that tall. What if my husband had planned to skip a week? What if I was doing all of this in vain?

Never mind the fact that I don't like housework, and was hoping that mowing and cooking dinner would suffice for today. I was putting in some serious labor! When I finished, I was EXHAUSTED! The "what-if" overrode reason and I called to make SURE he had been planning to mow. I had to know my efforts were not in vain. They weren't.

What about you? Do you ever live an entire day, week, month or year wondering if how you lived it was in vain? I have. That's when I go back to basics. God made me to enjoy Him. He enjoys me when I am simply being myself! That's quite a concept. However, if you think about how it feels to watch one of your own children enjoying themselves or expressing their individuality, you'll see the truth in my statement. Sometimes we unintentionally fulfill something in someone else's life by simply being who we are. So freeing.

I'm not saying we shouldn't pray about and then plan meaningful work accordingly. Not at all. I'm simply saying that, sometimes, we may imagine we are far from the path marked out for us when we are actually deep in the grooves of God's carriage. After all, He always goes before us. Every day of our lives matters to Him and what matters to Him should matter to us. Even those days we spent relaxing or reading, He was at work in our lives. He was guiding us. Most importantly, He was loving us and we were loving Him.

Poured Out, Not Proud

This is a blog post designed SPECIFICALLY for people whose lives have turned out radically different from what they were expecting. This is for the mom who didn't plan to lose her child, the husband who never thought his wife would leave, the employee who didn't know her boss secretly despised her and certainly never saw the pink slip in the works, the man who thought the investment was sound, the woman who thought she was on top of her "social" drinking until the state took her children. It's dedicated to the law student who made the review and got the girl and was pitched out for cheating and then lost the girl. It's for all of you. You didn't see "life" in the trenches coming. Whether it was the extreme optimism of youth, or the mountain-moving faith of your forefathers, you DID NOT EXPECT WHAT YOU ARE LIVING THROUGH. This, my dear friends, is for you.

Many of us did what we thought was best and right for a long period of time and we reaped ashes in certain corridors. That feels particularly harsh. What it did for me was to plunge me into condemnation for the many areas I did fail. I didn't pray enough. I wasn't careful enough with my mouth. I wasn't in church enough. I wasn't, didn't, couldn't, and should have a million times over. I rode that train to the end of the line. The conductor actually said "You have to get off here. It's the end of the line." I stayed on the train, eating my Oreos and shaking my head "no." The train de-materialized (because it was the literal end of the line), and I found myself overeating in a grassy field. I was still clinging (through my food addiction) to the should-haves. I was punishing me. Acceptance was far, far away. It shimmered in the distance like a giant, oily vat of sorrow. It should have looked like the promised land, but I wasn't illuminated yet.

What I am going to say next may, at first blush, look exactly like defeatism. Like I have given up on seeing the goodness of the Lord "in the land of the living," (what King David prayed for). It's not. I do expect to see His goodness, because He is the giver of ALL good gifts. All of them. He delights in answering prayer, and I will  never stop praying about all of the issues and people in my life that are close to my heart. I'll never stop believing. I want to die with the prayer of faith on my lips and I most assuredly DO believe that we have not, quite often, because we ask not. I also believe that we FREQUENTLY give up just before our breakthrough. We let down our corner of the prayer parachute. However, there is a place in the life of a Christian for the beautiful healing pool of acceptance. We have to understand that there is only so much that we can do, and the rest must be left up to the Lord and to the will of others who, though we love them, must make the choice for Christ on their own. Entirely on their own. The choice for Christ involves more than salvation. It involves the daily decision to turn the life and will entirely over to Him for HIS purposes. That's a personal interaction with a living God. Three's a crowd. I can offer my heartfelt intercession, but that's all.

I was so deeply concerned with what others thought of me for so very long that I could not even attend church routinely. I never knew what to do, honestly. I couldn't hide my brokenness, so I hid my whole self. I crumbled further under the weight of isolation. Today I find that pride will smother all growth and life in Jesus. Sure, there are religious people and even entire churches who are to be avoided. They will smother and kill the spirit of a person through judgment and condemnation. They will "should" a person into emotional oblivion. On the whole, however, church is the hospital for the broken. The devil knows that. He will keep us away from other Christians at all costs. It's a special mission of his. I'm committed to church (Christian fellowship) now. Absolutely committed.

Here's today's punchline: I've decided not to live my life in search of  admiration and acceptance. Circumstances have forced me to this crossroads, and I'm glad they did. Instead, I want to live poured out. Just like those colorful stones on the floor of Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park that I waited months to see, my life will be a profusion of colors tumbled across the floor of this world in service to heal and love others. 

Perfectly Broken

I was headed to the mailbox this afternoon and I spied the perfect tiny egg in the photo above nestled in the pine straw in front of my house. My heart sank. I assumed the little life inside was lost since the egg was no longer in a nest to be warmed by a mother bird's soft feathers. Then I turned the egg over with my foot and my hopes rose. It was just half of an egg. The bird inside had emerged and the shell was no longer needed! I now wrapped my mind around the idea of a strong, determined life, beak open, receiving food from his mother and growing stronger daily.

Sometimes life looks horribly bleak. All of our senses tell us our dreams are dead. That there is no resurrecting them, no feeling the joy they once held in our imaginations. Sometimes if seems as if the sun will never, ever shine again. We look around (or open social media) and it seems that the sun IS shining quite heartily on everyone else. Everyone we have ever known seems to have won the lottery of life and we are left with ashes.

It's at this point that we have a choice. We can dump said ashes on our heads and sit in a heap. Or...we can hold our hands out to God and let Him raise us. He'll clean the ashes from our hands and give us brand new dreams. He'll draw new, beautiful pictures across the windows of our imaginations, allowing us to hope for things we never thought possible before. He can bring our joy back. He can bring our own personal shine back.

God is a restorer of broken people. 

More Are With Us

Good morning. I've clung to a broken mast through some wild, rough seas, just like the rest of you. I've had unmet expectation and profound disappointment. Lately I've walked through some bewildering pain. Mind-bending heartache. The kind that unseats you when you're doing something as mundane as walking to the mailbox. Makes you want to throw up or sit on the curb and catch your breath. Yes, that kind of pain. The kind of ache and loss that makes you look up to heaven and say "God, I thought I was different. I thought this was for other folks." I guess I should title this post "When You Find Out You ARE the Other Folks."

Sometimes, in the midst of these horrible battles/struggles/storms, going to the grocery store is painful. Everything reminds you of what you've lost/are facing. Everyone seems to have what you lack. You feel entirely alone in your grief. You might be ordering deli meat and the voices from hell that dog you continually will say "This is your lot. You will hurt forever. The light and strength of joy will never shine on you again" And it certainly does feel that way. Those voices are mighty convincing.Everyone looks extremely happy and well-adjusted to the person who is debilitated by powerful disappointment, fear and raw grief.

Today, however, something felt different for me. I awoke to a beautiful spring morning and my heart was encouraged. I have hope in a way that is only God-given. Not only do I know that HE can change my circumstances, I can see the myriad ways He is blessing me every single day. I can feel and taste his goodness in the simplest of pleasures and know that He is with me every single step of every single moment. I can park my mind on the positive today, give my heart a rest from the difficult circumstances I face. Somehow I am back to knowing that, even though this life is only the beginning of our existence, that we are here to choose Christ and glorify Him, that our true home is in heaven and that is where perfection exists and sorrow is excluded, the details of our lives here DO matter to God. He did NOT create us for continual defeat and degradation. He DOES hear and answer prayer. My circumstances DO matter to God. On Sunday, God used a Moody radio show to bring the passage of scripture in 2 Kings to my attention. Ezekiel's servant's heart was filled with fear because he awoke to a city surrounded by enemy troops. Ezekiel immediately reassured his servant that "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them (Holy Bible, New International Version)." Then Ezekiel prayed that the servant's spiritual eyes would be opened. God allowed the servant to see "the hills full of horses and chariots of fire."

That's my prayer for you today. May you see the mighty angelic forces working in your behalf because, my friends, God is with you.

No "Easter-Lite" for me!

My prayer today was simple: "Help me to give all of myself to you, Lord. Please give me the desire and the strength to do so." I have loved ones I am praying this for, so it hit me that I might want the same for myself.

I want to want what God does. Truth is, I don't. But I want to. I guess this is a great first step!

Easter weekend is beginning on a gloriously sunny, temperate note here in East Tennessee. It's one of those "good-to-be-alive" days. And it's Good Friday.

Today I remember the terrible price Christ paid on that cross, the place where he was temporarily forsaken by God so that I would never be. I'm so thankful to Him. I'm reminded not to brag about anything by the example he set when he humbled himself so much, the very God of the Universe, becoming a human being and subjecting himself to human authority, rejection, humiliation, torture and death so that I could live forever. I pray that, no matter how hard society (through the pervasive spirit of the antichrist) tries to rub out the truth of the death and resurrection of Christ and exactly all that it purchased for me, I will never waver in my belief and in my appreciation. In my reverence. My awe.

I pray that I will never take Easter lightly. It is a high holy day for believers. It is, possibly, the most forceful day in our spiritual heritage.

But A Shadow

It's interesting to look around at a world that is in vivid, living, breathing, pulsing color, and see a place that you firmly believe is only a shadow of the world that is to come (Col. 2:17). A faded, cursed version of heaven, which will be everything we love here on steroids. There will be no death in heaven. No drought-induced dead boughs like the ones on the bottom of the evergreens in my backyard. The scene above would, for example, be unspoiled by the dead tree trunk that lops in it half in the photo I took last weekend at Frozen Head State Park here in Tennessee. I won't be the mass of creaky, nearly 49-year-old limbs that I was as I scaled the rocks to the left of the scene, either.

 I love Easter because it occurs in spring, the time of abounding newness after the dead doldrums of winter. What happened on the first Easter is so pivotal to the life and vitality of heaven. I wouldn't be looking forward to the country that will not fade if not for the resurrection of Christ. If God had not brought Christ forth from the tomb with the same power that pulses through my spirit as I type these words, I would have no hope of that glorious tomorrow when I will run through fields of flowers, not a loose petal among them. I would not have the light of my grandfather's smile to look forward to. I would not have the undying joy of seeing Jesus face-to-face, the very author and finisher of my faith (Hebrews 12:2). I would have absolutely nothing. Everything in this life is fading. Everything in the life to come is coming into clearer focus for me as the years roll onward, picking up speed, it seems, like a boulder forcefully pushed  downhill.

Dead religion takes the joy and beauty out of everything, even the message of the resurrection, and shrouds us all in duty and hollow, self-serving sacrifice.  Don't let it. The resurrection was an act of love. It was the detailed plan of a gracious heavenly Father who doesn't forget a single one of us. I was browsing a home decor store yesterday. My mood was lifted because there were so many pretty things. Why did that occur? Because we were made for beauty and the joy associated with it. Enjoy it here on earth, praise God for it, but remember, it's all a shadow of what is to come.

Addicted to Peace

A brisk spring day always gets my adrenaline pumping. Well, that and the large Chick Fil-A coffee on the table beside me. They're working in tandem this morning. When I feel good, have energy and know that I'll be able to accomplish some things throughout the day, my mood is considerably brighter. I suspect that's the case with you, too.

It's fun to be optimistic. I think we can become as addicted to optimism as we have been addicted to negativity, doom-and-gloom thinking and anxiety. It's a matter of putting the Holy Spirit at the doorway to our minds. Think of a burly doorman at an elite social club. "Credentials? I'm sorry, you're not on the list." This person wouldn't care what ruse you tried to pull. You're not on the list, you're not coming in. The Holy Spirit knows what thoughts will lead you to your purpose in Christ, and which ones will knock you off of the wagon. He knows you better than you know yourself, and even better than Satan, who has watched you for weaknesses your entire life. He "gets" you.

Okay, you say, I'll do it. Where do I begin? How do I hire the Holy Spirit? Well, first you must accept Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life and acknowledge that you are a sinner and that you need and accept the sacrifice He made for your sins when He died on the cross. All of a sudden, the Holy Spirit is alive inside of you. But you must take this one step further. You must actively pray to God all day long, asking Him to direct your thoughts, to keep life-giving, peace-filling thoughts flowing through your mind. It's also a good practice to put scriptures that apply to your challenges on notecards and carry them with you, praying them back to God throughout the day. Be aware of what you are thinking about. Continually ask God to take your mind and make it holy. To guide you continually.

Lastly, allow the Holy Spirit to guide you away from articles, websites, books, television shows and PEOPLE who fill your mind with things that are contrary to the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Be zealous about your mind! What you think about becomes what you do! It can lead you into greater fellowship with Christ, or it can lead you into sin. Bottom line!

Second Corinthians 10:5 says "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (Holy Bible, New International Version, emphasis mine.)

The EXCEEDINGLY good news is that we are not to try to do this on our own! The Holy Spirit is our blessed helper. Call on the Lord when your mind becomes confused, fearful, or riddled with sinful thoughts. Simply ask him to set it in order in a manner which is holy and pleasing to him. He will do it!

Hang Onto Your Freedom....You Were Born To It!

I chose the photo for today's post very thoughtfully. I took the picture at sunset on Siesta Key back in January. There is nothing more freeing than a walk on the beach! If you look very closely you can make out a bird flying in the foreground of the vast expanse of sky. He or she is most free! Just enjoying their time in the sky.

We talk a lot about freedom. People have died for it on many a battlefield. Countless books have been written on the subject, both political and spiritual. The mental health industry (and yes, it IS an industry. If you don't believe me, take a gander at what your insurance company pays your psychiatrist.) has churned out enough material on freedom from emotional and mental bondage to fill many, many football stadiums end to end. And yet most people are still wearing chains of one ilk or the other.

There's a reason for that. For so many people, bondage is what feels normal. Once they begin to get a little bit free, panic overwhelms them and they scurry back into their chains. Let's use one of my lifetime struggles as an example. If you are carrying a load of depression on your back and Jesus lifts that load, just plain takes it from you, you are infused with joy, which brings strength and vitality. The world is now your oyster, and there are many opportunities for  you to succeed and to enjoy life to the fullest. The world is now very large, and fraught with many possibilities. Frightened and disoriented by the magnitude of it all, you scurry to and fro until you have found your former depressive mantle and shrugged that two-ton bad boy back on. You're miserable again, but it's a familiar miserable.

This phenomenon may be, in part, why God says in Galations 5:1, "It is FOR FREEDOM that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (Holy Bible, New International Version, emphasis mine.) He was up in heaven watching folks take up their chains again and again. He is saying here that he set us free for us to, oh, I don't know, REMAIN FREE, maybe? This signifies a choice in the matter.

I am not against self-help books, though some will, in fact, lead you astray. Those that introduce any spirituality apart from Jesus Christ are dangerous and will leave your spirit more scrambled than the eggs you had this morning. Run like the wind from them. The best way to remain free is to wash your mind in the Word of God every single day. Every. Single. Day. As you go through your day, recite to yourself specific scriptures that relate to your struggles and cry out to God at times of temptation. These methods work, and work well WHEN APPLIED CONSISTENTLY. Surround yourself with godly people. They will help you on to your goal of spiritual growth. Stay focused on what Jesus is doing (reigning supreme over your circumstances, fighting your battles, empowering you and crowning you with favor) and replace every negative thought the devil sends your way with five thanks you's to Jesus for all of the above!

Be free in Christ and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, stay there!!!!

The Dark Side of Facebook

It's still dark outside, and I can hear the birds of morning. Well, they are the same birds that either chirped or sat quietly through the night, but it feels more poetic to call them the "birds of morning." There, I was just excruciatingly transparent. Writers write, and we try to inject art into the everyday. It's what we do.

It's a changing day in what's left of my life. I made a quality-of-life decision recently that I have made in the past, but without lasting success. Here's hopin' (raises coffee mug) that this last week or so's resolve holds. I feel led by God to carry it to completion. To hold onto my freedom, as I see it.

I decided to quit Facebook. Oh, I still have a profile. I still check in every morning. But the one hour or less I spend each morning represents nothing to the hours and hours I was logging before. I still have a tenuous hold on the FB hobby groups that I camped in every single day (and they are all good). 

What I discovered about FB through my enslavement to it, was that it has a patently dark side. It's a lure, designed by brilliant marketers, that captivates and locks down the lonely, the isolated, the insecure. I'm all of the above at any given point. I lived for the chat box. I spent hours talking to people who, should they meet me in person, might thoroughly detest me. I gave them huge hunks of my precious time. Not all of my chat buddies fall into this camp, but many do, I am sure.

I've read several articles about the positives of leaving Facebook in the last couple of weeks. It's been interesting to hear others talk about the struggles they faced while on the site (jealousy, time wasting, etc.). I'm a highly sensitive person, so I was being hurt pretty much around the clock. IN. CYBERSPACE. There's plenty to hurt me in real life. Why, oh why, was I messing around with holographic hurt?

I'm a compulsive communicator. Facebook became my heroine. It was a thoroughly narcissistic outlet for me, as I love a good sarcastic quip like a monkey loves bananas. I was born to need praise like fish need water. It's crazy and it's sinful and it was a life-draining source of spiritual conflict for me, this obsession with "likes."

I've discovered you can "leave" something that has a hold on you by simply minimizing its presence in your life. The lack of time spent makes Goliath an ant in terms of influence. To be perfectly honest, I felt God asking me to make this decision. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I still want to be in touch with all of the wonderful friends I have on my profile. I just don't want to be hooked to all that is Facebook by the intravenous drip that I had before. I've yanked the needle out!

From the End Comes a Beginning

I think sometimes the end of one's rope can signal a glorious beginning! I'm not talking about tying a knot and hanging on, that mantra found on posters with cute kittens and the like. Not at all. If I got to the end of myself and I simply tied a knot and hung on, then I'd be stuck with me, my stagnation and all that I had to offer at the point of the knot. So to me, getting to the end of one's proverbial rope should, rather, be a letting go and a free-fall into God's arms.

I'm there today, and I like it. I did NOT like it when I got up this morning. But here in my den, the gathering gloom of an overcast late afternoon seeping through the windows, I like it. My hot tea in hand, my dog by my side, my resolve is cast again. Its a fabulous resolve. I am a writer and I don't get paid much, often nothing, for the words, thoughts, observations and creativity that pour out of me. Sometimes I cast about for a hook to hang these gifts upon and end up pushing them under the bed instead. That's rather stupid. The end result is the "bed" of my desires becomes bowed in the middle and I can't rest on it anymore. The desires don't rest, either. They fester.

I'm so glad my uncle posted something to my FB that indicated, in so many words, that being published does not make one a writer. Writing does. Here I am, writing. Being me. No one can stop that. 

Back to the knot, or lack thereof, as is the case here. I worry, fret, enjoy a bath of inadequacy, and then I plunge. If you've ever tried to work as a writer then you have been rejected. I have very little stomach for that, and yet, here I go again, planning a full week of casting my net, of making inquiries, of working on my new website about life in the Smokies, of looking into contests and working on a novel and some poetry. Here I go. Look out week!I'm going to chew you up and spit you out in tiny pieces of productivity! 

The Beautiful Parts of a Glorious Whole

This past weekend I was in Florida, walking the beaches of Siesta Key and Venice Beach, thrilling to the sound of the waves and the beauty of the vast expanse of ocean meeting a sky filled with dramatically elongated clouds. Being the scavenger that I am, I could not help but keep my eyes down at the plethora of shells that crunched beneath my feet. I only brought five or so home for one simple reason. Most were shattered. The tantalizing part of the whole search was the fact that there were large pieces of very unique and stunning shells. I saw several sizable hunks of large sand dollars. I saw busted up conch shells, ridged pieces of heaven-knows-what, shiny bits of other things I couldn't identify. It was maddening. On and on it went down the beach. The old cliche returned to mind about God using shattered things. I thought about how, if I wanted to, I could take hundreds of these bits and glue them together to make a gorgeous picture frame. None was complete alone, but together they would be absolutely stunning. 

The same principle holds true with our lives. We might think the terrible storms that break us down are simply destructive. They are, however, quite constructive. The humbler we are, the closer we are to God and His purposes for our lives. Broken people are beautifully useful in the kingdom of heaven if they allow God to put them back together in the manner of His choosing.

The broken shell principle played out in another capacity when my son and I were walking on the beach at sunset, taking lots of photos. We came upon a woman holding another woman's head in her lap. We asked if anything was wrong. The upright woman said she thought the lady had had a stroke and that an ambulance was on the way. The other woman lay apparently unconscious at first glance. Then I saw her eyes flutter. I asked if she could talk and the woman helping her said that she could not. I asked if there was anything I could do. She said she did not think so. "I can't leave you alone here," I said, and proceeded to stand impotently by. I said a silent prayer for healing. "Do you know her name," I asked. The kneeling woman said she did not, and asked if I could try and find it in the woman's phone. I quickly passed this task off to my son, who did find it. 

I just stood there, not wanting to intrude but desperately wishing there was something I could do. At some point a very kind man in his sixties asked if we had help on the way. When we assured him that we did, he kneeled in the sand and took the stricken woman by the hand. Now there were two complete strangers murmuring comfort and holding both of her hands. I leaned in and asked her if she felt better and she looked at me and seemed to nod, though she was still unable to speak. The woman who had discovered her called a relative on the woman's contacts list and explained what was happening. The paramedics came and I took my jacket off of her legs and got out of the way. We quickly left the scene but the woman's face stayed in my mind the rest of the evening.

Just like the pieces of gorgeous shells strewn on the beach that night that, glued together would make a beautiful whole, several of us surrounded the stricken woman to form a lovely circle of concern. She did not know any of us and some of us (like me) had a tiny part, but we all together touched her in her moment of need, right down to the tiny boy (about four years old) who came running forward to tell us with great import that "the police are here."  We've all got a beautiful part to play in life. One day at a time.