14 November 2013 Eyes Bright Again

Eyes Bright Again

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I pulled out a celebrity-gossip magazine that happened to be in my seat pocket on a flight to Denver. You know the type: oh-my-gosh,  The Perfect Little Black Dress of the Season—or—Three  Ways Your Partner Might Be Secretly Cheating! These kinds of articles seem to be the grist of today’s Western culture.

By the time the plane landed, I was made to feel thoroughly undersexed, unsophisticated, and deserving of costly beauty products. The underlying message? —If you aren’t really working on being one of the beautiful people, you’ll end up alone.

Modern culture promises us the moon with superlatives: perfect skin in three applications or idyllic sleep with the right kind of mattress. We hope to find ecstasy in a perfume, identity in an expensive car, and attitude in owning the latest gadget. These things make us feel more attractive, momentarily. We turn a head or two.

But attention doesn’t satisfy, because it only parades as love. Many sacred hours are wasted with this kind of distraction. It’s a pretext, a facade, masking our fundamental need for relationship.

Loneliness seems like life’s albatross. We are required to hold all relationships loosely. Beloved grandparents and parents fade in their vitality and pass away. Colleges and careers take us away from extended family. We lose our original sense of community, the familiarity of a hometown. Marriage has empty spaces with its own unique set of vulnerabilities. Children grow up and find their own lives, as they should. Even lifelong friendships can change overtime or be lost unexpectedly. Single, divorced, or widowed people may think loneliness is their singular struggle, but the experience is common to most everyone I know.

Through good times and hard seasons, loneliness still hovers. We seek out a diary, a dog, or an online friend, looking for solace in some kind of connection.

But down deep, the connection we really need is with God…Continue reading

Filed Under: 2013, Character of God, Experiencing God, Family, Hearing God's Voice, loneliness, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , ,
7 November 2013 To Live Anyway

To Live Anyway

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What if someone rewrote the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the point-of-view of the grandmother? Or how about the wolf? Might be a very different tale.

God is sometimes known to orchestrate those kinds of shifts—putting us in someone else’s head—through a movie, a book, or even a conversation.

In 1998, two movies released within four months of each other, and both deeply impacted me.

The first one, Hope Floats, is a romantic drama about an unassuming housewife named Birdee, whose life completely crumbles when her husband reveals his infidelity in a very public way. Humiliated, she returns to her mother’s home to figure out her life in the aftermath.

The second movie, One True Thing, is a story of a young career woman named Ellen, who goes back to her childhood home to care for her dying mother. Ellen idealizes her father, a celebrated novelist and professor. Yet, she barely conceals her distain for her mother, regarding her as a shallow, ditzy, homemaker. Over the course of Ellen’s stay, she begins to reassess her view of her parents. Her admiration flips to her mother, as she realizes what her father has become. The reversal turns into a crisis for her, because she is also losing her mother to cancer.

Both Birdee and Ellen reel under the pain of broken dreams. Life turned out so different than they thought. The truth is, you can’t be human very long without experiencing some kind of heartache. I felt their strong inner conflicts. My own losses surfaced, and I wept bitterly.

Several years later, both movies were on the same TV channel back-to-back one afternoon. Was it odd, or was it God?

I decided to watch them again. However, this time something remarkable happened…Continue reading

Filed Under: 2013, Barriers, Experiencing God, Family, Hearing God's Voice, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
31 October 2013 Letters to Myself

Letters to Myself

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It was as if a ten-year-old had slipped into the classroom. She sounded joyful, but had to pause. Deep breaths, long exhales…and then tears.

“You love the sea. You love finding things on the beach, the smell of oil on tugboats, the wheelhouse, watching your Dad work, navigating. You love everything about boats—the engines, hull, decks, galley, cabins, crew, & more. You love sailboats. You love going on trips on the sea. The sea is in your blood.”

Her voice was childlike, but also insistent.

“Remember when you used to play 4-square, baseball, basketball, imaginary games, space adventures, games in the field, fish, build forts, talk about God with friends, sit in the trees, search for pretty rocks?”

She spoke as if she knew her very well. 

“You know everyone’s name in the church. You talk with people others ignore. You know that everyone is special and somehow others have forgotten this. You connect people with others. You know about people because you ask questions. You include people. You like to play board games and other games with family and friends. You feel what others feel. You don’t always know what’s going on or why someone feels good, bad, depressed, etc. But, you can feel it.”

Her words came from that “knowing” place, deep inside. The same way God knows things about us.

“Your soft heart sees what others sometimes ignore. You see the loneliness in older couples that have lost their families or spouses. You see the person who’s ignored. You also see the details that are overlooked. You see when people are overlooked. You see others grow old and wonder where they went off track in life. You see many people lose a sense of wonder, curiosity, friendliness, and imagination. Keep these things in your heart, even when you grow old.”

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

These excerpts came from a letter written by my friend, Julie Lanaker. It’s part of a creative writing project I’m teaching at Journey Church called, “Letters to Myself.” Basically you write two letters–and thenContinue reading

Filed Under: 2013, Destiny, Dreams, Experiencing God, God's design, Hearing God's Voice, Purpose Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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