One Word 2018: Mystery Archives - Lisa notes

When the Bad Thing Does NOT Happen

LisaNotes — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 11:00:43 +0000

A Gun?

Last Thursday morning began as an ordinary day.

Jenna was driving to school on the same roads, past the same neighborhoods—some good, some bad—that were always part of her path.

Except this past Thursday. Someone unusual was on the path.

And he had a gun.

She heard two shots before she saw him. But were they really shots? Maybe instead it was a car backfiring?

Then she saw the man. He was hiding behind a brick mailbox in the wealthy neighborhood. He was firing his gun at a passing vehicle.

Mystery Wake-Ups

When something unusual happens, it grabs our attention. Our senses perk up. Our brain wants to make sense of any mystery.

I’m trying to stay awake to more of life’s mysteries.

I’m noticing mysteries in marriage differences,
mysteries embedded in fear,
mysteries hidden in prayer.

And mysteries deep inside mercy.

Last Thursday morning I was most keenly aware of the mystery of grace.

If the man had pointed his gun at Jenna’s car as she drove by that morning, her whole life would have changed in a split second. And my life. The life of her husband, her extended family, her friends—all changed.

E. J. Bradford, Jr.

Many people are forced to live with those split-second changes. Just ask the family of E.J. Bradford, Jr.

E.J., a 21-year-old African American man, was shot and killed by police on Thanksgiving night at Alabama’s largest shopping mall, the crowded Riverchase Galleria Mall, near Birmingham, AL. He was mistaken by police as the gunman who had just shot others in the mall.

E.J. Bradford, Jr and his mother, April Pipkins (Courtesy Benjamin Crump)

Instead of E.J.’s family celebrating Christmas together this month, they attended his funeral, their lives forever changed, forever pained.

We are forced to live with mystery. Why this person? Why not that person? Why this and not that?

We can’t answer these questions.

Our feeble explanations fall inadequate.

Notice the Absence

But when bad things don’t happen? Do we notice?

Let’s notice, too, when things don’t happen.

Notice when the car accident doesn’t happen.
Notice when the layoff skips over you.
Notice when the doctor doesn’t call with bad news.

Also on Jenna’s path Thursday morning was a police officer, two cars in front of her. He seemed in no particular hurry, not heading to any particular crime.

But upon seeing the man with the gun, the policeman immediately turned around and headed back toward the mailbox.

Police closed the road to further traffic. They arrested the man for shooting at passing vehicles. He was taken to the hospital for a cut on his arm and for a mental health evaluation.

photo credit: WHNT News 19

Jenna drove on.

She arrived safely at school that day, shaken, but unharmed. She could go about her normal routine. Spend it as an ordinary day.

So I could, too.

More things go right than go wrong. And we don’t notice.

When bad things could happen, but this time they didn’t, appreciate it.

Feel the relief.
Give the thanks.
Acknowledge the mystery.

Ordinary days are miracles, too.

* * *

Do you ever think about the what-if’s that could have happened but didn’t? Please share in the comments.

But Are You Different Enough?

LisaNotes — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 11:00:03 +0000

You’re probably quite different from your spouse. In more than one way.

But are you different enough?

Instead of viewing your relationship differences as negatives, what if you used them to your advantage?

Here are 5 ways to use personality differences to build up your relationships, not tear them down.

Read it all here:
“Are You Different Enough? 5 Ways to Use Differences in Your Relationship”

Your goal isn’t to become exactly alike, but to sharpen each other’s uniqueness.

* * *

I’m writing today at Beth Steffaniak‘s blog, Messy Marriage.

Will you join me there to see 5 ways we can use our differences?

You can find the whole series, “Lessons Learned in Marriage” at Beth’s blog.

Why, Why, Why – Day 4 of Handmade

LisaNotes — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 10:00:24 +0000

DAY 4, OCTOBER 4

Why

I want to know. I like to know why.

We think we know a lot of things.

But often those who think they know the most, actually know the least.

Keep Asking Why

So we must not stop asking why. Even when we don’t hear God answering.

Why? Because he is listening.

And in his own way, he is also always answering. Maybe we just aren’t ready to hear or understand yet.

As I’ve heard it said, the miracle of the burning bush wasn’t that God spoke through a bush. It’s that Moses heard him there.

Tweak Your Why

In the meantime, we might need to adjust our why to more productive questions.

But don’t abandon the question itself of why. It makes us dive deeper, swim underwater, get a new perspective.

Asking why expands our conversations instead of shutting them down.

And if there’s anything we need right now, it’s more grace to understand who we are, who God is, and why he has us right here, right now, in these circumstances.

What Do You Think? – 3 Questions

Here are our three questions of the day:

(1) Why do you live where you do?

(2) Why are you with (or not) your husband/wife?

(3) What “why” would you like God to answer right now?

* * *

What are your answers? Please share in the comments.

My answers:

(1) Jeff and I like living in the same area as family and it’s basically where were grew up.

(2) I knew Jeff’s brother, and met Jeff through him. (And…God wanted me to really know the love of Jesus in the flesh, so he gave me Jeff.)

(3) Why don’t You intervene more directly when bad things happen?

More here:

Why Are You Still Here?
When my baby died, part of me wanted to die too. In times of pain we often wonder why we’re still here. But there are reasons.
Why Don’t You Ask?
4 reasons we don’t ask more questions. But should.
Why? The Practice of Purpose
Hank confused me. Here’s his story. And his purpose. And how the rest of us all still learning that loving is our purpose. We’re not done here yet.

Get the whole Handmade series here

There’s a Grace for That

LisaNotes — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 10:00:42 +0000

Apple makes us lots of promises.

Just take a bite. Whatever you need, there’s an app for that.

Want directions? There’s the Maps app.
Store your coupons? There’s the Wallet app.
A Bible reading plan? There’s the YouVersion app.
Need the forecast? There’s The Weather Channel app.

The fruit begs to gratify.

But we know better. Don’t we?

Apple can’t reach our deepest appetites. For satisfying relationships. For a life of significance. For a mission more meaningful than me.

Whatever we really need—direction, understanding, peace, joy—it’s God who has a grace for that. He alone is able to fully satisfy (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Need help with a problem child? There’s a grace for that.
Stuck in an unsatisfying job? There’s a grace for that.
Can’t break an addictive habit? There’s a grace for that.
Too much conflict with your partner? There’s a grace for that, too.

Whatever it, God has the power to either change the circumstance or change the other person or change us (Hebrews 4:16). That is his grace.

A year ago, could you have imagined the exact journey you are traveling this year? Would you have been overwhelmed if you’d foreseen each roadblock? Would it have been possible to stockpile every resource in advance that you were going to need?

Yet each step of our way, often only one step at a time, God has left us a gift—a gift of his grace—at the right place, in the right time, through the right person.

Grace is what he promises.
Grace is what we need.
Grace is what he gives.

“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”
John 1:16

* * *

What unexpected gift of grace have you already received this year? Please share in the comments.

revised from the archives

When You’re the Minority

LisaNotes — Wed, 29 Aug 2018 10:00:06 +0000

White Specks

Jeff and I looked around us that Sunday night. Where was our generation?

We were among the oldest in the room.

(It still feels like a new phenomenon to us, but more people are younger than us than are older than us. The median age in American is 37.8 years old.)

But we also were among the whitest. The comedy club was featuring Black Christian comedians this Sunday night (including KevOnStage, who is hilarious) and many (mainly younger) people were arriving to enjoy them.

Two nights later, we showed up at a community prayer vigil. While our age blended in easier, our color still did not.

There is comfort in being the majority. You don’t stand out. Eyes don’t turn your way.

But as the minority in a room, there can be discomfort. Like a white speck on black velvet, you might feel you should be picked off. Taken away for not fitting in.

Youngest, Oldest, Different

I was always the youngest in my class. My mom kicked me out of the house early; she sent me to first grade when I was 5 years old instead of waiting until 6. That meant I was always last to get my driver’s permit, last to get my driver’s license, last to be able to vote.

Now I’m on the other side. In my choir, I’m among the oldest. It sometimes feels awkward. I don’t want to stand out.

In some ways we are all a minority. There is no one else exactly like us. With our exact experiences. Our exact circle of friends. Our exact tendencies.

But in a practical context, majority/minority come in bigger groupings: race, gender, religion, etc.

Being a true minority in this country is a feeling I have not known.

(By 2045, statisticians predict America will become minority white: 49.9% white, 24.6% Hispanics, 13.1% blacks, 7.8% Asians, and 3.8% multiracial populations.

Already there are more nonwhite children than white children under the age of 10.)

I’ve lived most of my life as a member of a majority group. As a white, middle-class, cisgender, married American, I’ve grown accustomed to comfort. I can choose to be invisible in a crowd. Or if I prefer, I can use my voice and be heard.

Yet being in the majority can also be a detriment.

As the majority, we can be blind.

We can unconsciously (or consciously?) ignore the struggles of those around us.
We can lack compassion for those who haven’t been born with the advantages we take for granted.
We can use and misuse power over the marginalized without even realizing it.

Break the Bubble

If we’re not the minority, let’s pop our bubbles of sameness and notice those around us. See the colors. Celebrate the differences. Use our privilege for others’ advantage. Demystify the other by becoming the other.

And if we are the minority, let’s continue to share our stories. Be ourselves. Speak out.

It’s how we grow more alike, more in knowledge of each other. We’ll also grow more in compassion. In kindness. In grace.

The more we learn how to love, the more people we’ll discover to love.

On both our night at the comedy club and our night at the prayer vigil, Jeff and I listened and learned and broadened our perspective.

But we also laughed and talked and prayed. As one community. We saw friends we already knew, and met new friends.

Comfort is overrated. Color is different, but love is the same.

* * *

How often are you the minority in the room? Please share in the comments.

Do You Have to Know?

LisaNotes — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 10:00:23 +0000

Do you like to know? Do you want to be right? Do you want to feel sure?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I want to know that what I believe is 100% right and true and confirmable.

But it’s not.

Excuse my repetitiveness, but it’s my year of paying attention to Mystery.

In May, I recommended on my blog The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our Correct Beliefs (and I took 9 pages of notes from it).
In June, I posted about The Sin of Certainty on Instagram.
And now in July, I’m bringing up again The Sin of Certainty.

Because the desire to know doesn’t go away. And the quest for certainty can morph into an idol.

Thinking we have to have all the answers is unrealistic. We all have to live with levels of uncertainty. About our lives, about ourselves, and even about our God.

We can’t know it all. Because God hasn’t revealed all of it. And we couldn’t understand if it he did.

Peter Enns says,

“The deeper problem here is the unspoken need for our thinking about God to be right in order to have a joyful, freeing, healing, and meaningful faith. The problem is trusting our beliefs rather than trusting God.”

I have to swap knowing for trusting.

Not trusting my beliefs. But trusting God.

“Maybe knowing, as I had been taught to know, is overrated. Knowing like that doesn’t last. Knowing has its place, definitely, but not at the center of faith. And then for me, the bottom line: I can choose to trust God with childlike trust regardless of how certain I might feel.”

So here we wait. With imperfect knowledge. Imperfect understanding.

And we become okay with that.

We still strive to learn and know and understand.

But we don’t bet our lives on our own understanding. We throw ourselves on God’s mercy instead. His mercy with our errors and misunderstandings.

“When we learn that it is okay to let go of the need to be right—that God is not going to pounce on us from behind the corner and give us a whipping but actually welcomes this step of faith—only then will the debilitating stress of holding on to correct thinking begin to fade.”

We don’t have to know. But we definitely benefit by trusting.

Trust God, not our version of God.
Trust Truth will be revealed as we need it.
Trust the process will unfold as he plans it.

Take one step at a time. One situation at a time. One breath at a time.

A greater faith in God, not in my ideas about God, remains a mystery.

But what it unveils is a grace even greater.

* * *

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

When You Are Confused, Is God?

LisaNotes — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 10:05:23 +0000

Things happen we don’t understand. We get confused. We get anxious.

What happens to our faith in these moments?

Sometimes we run from God. We don’t see Him coming to our rescue. So we get impatient and go outside the boundaries for help.

Or maybe we freeze up. If God isn’t giving us a clear answer, we become paralyzed into inaction. We want total clarity before we make any move at all.

But there is a third approach.

Read it all here – “When You Just Don’t Get It“

* * *

I’m writing today at Do Not Depart. Will you join me there?

“When You Just Don’t Get It”

Don’t Be Afraid to Be Afraid

LisaNotes — Wed, 09 May 2018 10:00:54 +0000

Afraid of Fear

He knows it’s a dangerous task. Only his daughter can do it. She’s scared. And he can’t do it for her.

“Don’t be afraid to be afraid. We will try to have courage for you.”

The daughter is Meg Murry from the novel, A Wrinkle in Time. Speaking is her dad, Mr. Murray. Only Meg can return to the planet Camazotz and through love, bring back her brother Charles Wallace.

Don’t we want to avoid fear? Maybe we can embrace fun fear (roller coaster rides or mystery movies). But not real fear.

Security or Fear?

Given the choice between security or fear, I’ll naturally choose security.

But God doesn’t always give us the choice between security or fear. Nor is security always the choice he wants us to take anyway.

Sometimes we have to do scary things.

In the Afterword of A Wrinkle in Time, 50^thAnniversary Edition, author Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, comments on the book and her grandmother:

“But a planet can also become dark because of ‘too strong a desire for security…the greatest evil there is.’”

I don’t know that it’s the greatest evil, but an unhealthy desire for security is often our idol, a toxic poison that stunts our growth.

The granddaughter follows with this:

“Meg resists her father’s analysis. What’s wrong with wanting to be safe? Mr. Murry insists that ‘lust for security’ forces false choices and a panicked search for safety and conformity.

“This reminded me that my grandmother would get very annoyed when anyone would talk about ‘the power of love.’ Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.”

Do It Afraid

If you’ve read A Wrinkle in Time, you know that Meg does return to Camazotz. Even with fear. But armed with love.

God knows we have dangerous tasks, too. Some of which only his daughters can do. Even if we’re scared. And he can’t do them for us.

God doesn’t want us to live in fear. He sends us this message over and again, “Do not be afraid.”

But until we outgrow our fear, I also think God tells us the same words that Mr. Murry told Meg:

“Don’t be afraid to be afraid. We will have courage for you.”

God holds courage for us, when we don’t feel big enough to contain it ourselves. It’s a mystery we can’t explain. It comes from his love.

To love is to walk into the unknown.
To love is to defy daring.
To love is to not be afraid to be afraid.

Perhaps the courage to love is the greatest mystery—and miracle—of all.

* * *

I’ve been re-reading A Wrinkle in Time before I see the (relatively) new movie. Have you read the book? Seen the movie? Please share in the comments.

Mystery is my One Word for 2018. Read more mysterious things here.

What Dates You? Let People Define the Times

LisaNotes — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 17:01:47 +0000

So much has changed.

I was looking through old photos for a #ThrowbackThursday Instagram post. (Check out this #SpringPhotoADayChallenge; it’s not too late to join in. My posts are here.)

I came across this picture from 2010.

I do still wear the shirt.

But the laptop has since died and been replaced.
The glasses became too weak and had to become stronger.
The Kindle beside me stopped working and got upgraded to a Paperwhite.

And the house? It was where I grew up until I got married and left home in the 1980s.

But in March 2010, we were back spending lots of time sitting on that couch across from Mama. Daddy had just died a month earlier on Valentine’s Day 2010.

Mama’s Alzheimer’s was picking up speed after Daddy’s death. We siblings and spouses and grandkids were taking turns staying with her.

It was a hard season. But one I don’t want to forget.

Some seasons seem to move so slowly. Yet looking back, they rushed by.

While we don’t want to get stuck in time, sometimes we also don’t want to move forward.

We don’t want to forget the people we once lived with.
The experiences we shared.
The graces God brought us.

But it is safe to release the past. Because the past has done its work. We won’t forget it.

Who we once were has become part of who we are now.

Maybe our hairstyles change and our clothing modernizes and our technologies update. But the people we once knew? They stick.

Who we were with then? They’re also part of who we are now. They’re embedded in us.

We can’t explain how. But we don’t have to. It’s a mystery for God to understand.

Today is my dad’s birthday. If cancer hadn’t overtaken his body (or something else by now), he would have been 81 years old. We likely would have sat across from him today on that same couch in the same living room. I miss him and my mom.

But because I’m still here, a piece of them is still here, too.

God wove our paths together when I was conceived. And our paths stay forever braided together, whether here or there, even while I live attentive in the present, and grow forward into the future.

Our dates and times remain preserved in God’s hands.

* * *

Who are you missing? Do you still feel their presence with you? It’s a mystery. Please share in the comments.

I Can Do It Myself—But Should I?

LisaNotes — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 10:00:04 +0000

The ladies at Manna House had cooked and boxed the meals already. They were ready to be delivered. I had a shopping cart of 50 of them to load into the back of my car Wednesday afternoon. It rarely takes long. I can do it alone if no one is around to help.

I used to think being self-sufficient was the nice thing. Do it myself. Don’t let anyone help. It might inconvenience them.

But if someone asks if I need help, I’ve discovered a better answer than my typical “No thanks—I can do it myself.”

When three young volunteers asked if they could help me Wednesday, I gave the better answer.

I’m learning now to say, “Yes, thank you! I’d appreciate your help.”

It seems the greater gift. Because it’s not only about me.

I asked the three men where they were from. One was from Oregon. Another from Arizona. And the third from Mexico.

And yet they all ended up as friends and co-workers in Alabama, volunteering at Manna House, loading the car of a native Alabamian so I could carry the food to others.

I could have loaded my car just fine without their help.

But I would have missed out on their joy of friendship. And they would have missed out on the blessing of helping another.

Saying “Yes, I’d love your help” was a gift all the way around. I’m glad I’m learning to unwrap it.

* * *

Do you overvalue self-sufficiency too? How do you break yourself of the “I can do it myself” habit? Please share in the comments.