Lisa notes

Are You Going Back to Church?

By LisaNotes May 21, 2021 Church, Grace & Truth Link-Up 22 Comments

Online Church

Since March 2020, I haven’t been inside the building where my church meets.

For a short period, they closed down. But sooner rather than later, they opened back up.

But I wasn’t comfortable returning. It didn’t feel safe. While some covid precautions were taken, they didn’t meet the CDC guidelines. Too many virus outbreaks occurred.

So I watched from home. And that was good.

Until it wasn’t. I’d occasionally switch to another church’s online service that I liked even better. And over time, I switched to a third church’s online service in another state that I preferred best of all, where I saw Jesus most of all.

But now it’s decision time.

Go or No Go?

Jeff and I are both fully vaccinated now. The CDC has given us the scientific green light to return to in-person services.

Yet I’m still hanging back.

Why?

I’m disappointed by the way many churches mishandled pandemic protocols.
I’m discouraged by the lack of concern they showed for each others’ health.
I’m uncomfortable with the extreme sides taken by the people on the pew that feels disrespectful to Christ’s message of unity and love.

How can I go back to that?

One step at a time.

My Steps

First, I need to do a heart cleanse.

God knows my heart better than I do, so I need his Spirit to show me what attitudes I need to release, what forgiveness I need to offer, what grudges I need to repent of.

Then second, I need to clear my head of biases.

I’m old enough to understand that no church is perfect because no people are perfect. My expectations need to be realigned with what’s reasonable, not with what’s ideal.

And third, I need to make a move.

It can be a temporary move. My initial decision doesn’t have to be a permanent one; it just needs to be a forward one. It may take trial and error to find the best place we need to be. Maybe it’s where we left off. Maybe it’s not.

But I won’t know if I don’t go and see.

God Can Be Trusted

It’s a new season and we’ve been changed by this past year’s experience.

Faith has shifted for many.

by David Hayward

But God is still trustworthy.

We can still place our confidence in him, even while we regain our footing on which people to trust, even which church to trust. God’s perpetual love for us as individuals and as a group remains steady.

God still has my trust.

Now Let’s Link Up!

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Click here to enter

One Word 2021 Linkup—May
—3 Challenges to Take with Your One Word

By LisaNotes May 20, 2021 One Word Community 14 Comments

This is our May linkup for your One Word 2021!

Leave us a comment about your word.

Then add links below to your blog posts, images, quotes, etc., about your one word.

3 Challenges for Your One Word

Here are three challenges to keep you moving forward with your word.

1. MAKE A MIND MAP

See Jean Wise’s example here on how to create a mind map with your One Word.

2. TRY ONE WORD JOURNALING FOR A MONTH

Jean also points us to Emily Freeman’s podcast episode, “How to Journal Using One Word.” Try writing a few lines about your word every day for a month.

3. SHARE WITH THE WORLD

Share a photo or a quote or a blog post about your word either in person or online.

This linkup will remain open from May 20 – May 31.

The next One Word linkup will be June 21.

If you’d like to receive a monthly email for suggestions about your word, sign up here.

You can also join our One Word 2021 Facebook group here for more interaction.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Now let’s link up!

I Need a Nudge

By LisaNotes May 19, 2021 Encouragement 41 Comments

The scissors are in my hand. I’m on our deck, looking at my schefflera houseplant.

I need to make a pruning decision. But it feels so final to make an actual cut.

I’ve been waiting for consistently warmer weather at night before I moved the schefflera houseplant outside. It thrived outside last summer, especially after I pruned it to a better shape. It looked better than it ever had.

The forecast this week is finally staying far above the 40s. It’s safe.

My husband Jeff brings the plant outside Sunday morning for me. He’s done his part. Now I need to do mine. Make the cut.

But I can’t do it.

I can get near the end, but I can’t make the cut.

I call for Jeff to come back. I need a nudge.

I need a closer.

A closer is someone who can finish the deal, lock up the shop at night, pitch the final inning to win the game.

Jeff is my closer.

Tell me it’s a good thing to cut the plant.

It’s a good thing.

Tell me this will make it even prettier.

It will.

Tell me this branch needs to go.

It needs it.

I take my scissors and make the cut. First one, then another. And another.

That’s enough for today.

I thank Jeff and send him back to whatever he was doing.

That was all I needed. Someone to gently push me to do what I already knew I needed to do. To help me finish the job.

I’m grateful for the closers in my life. For those who either step in and take over when I’m too tired to finish, or else who can encourage me to wrap things up myself.

We’re not meant to go this alone.

Thank God we don’t have to.

Do you have a closer in your life? Share in the comments.

Has Your Life Returned to Normal Yet? Is This Now Normal?

By LisaNotes May 17, 2021 My stories, Uncertainty: My One Word 2021 33 Comments

We all wonder: when will life return to normal again?

I turn off the ignition. I stay in my car. No other cars are here yet. But it’s only 4:20 p.m. I’m still 10 minutes early.

I’ll wait.

This is a big moment.

After a year of uncertainty about what to do and what not to do, this is the first of my pre-covid life volunteer opportunities that is opening back up. I wasn’t sure I would return to it when it did reopen. But now that teaching English-as-a-Second-Language has become available again, I’m saying yes.

And I’m excited about it.

Earlier in the day I reviewed my ESL workbook. I opened the Google Translate app again on my phone. I looked over the list of my students from late 2019. I wonder which ones will return to learn more English after a year of no classes?

4:25 p.m. Still no one. I check the door even though there are no cars. Maybe someone was dropped off and is inside. But no, the door is locked and the lights are out.

4:30 p.m. Now I’m officially worried. Did I get the date wrong? The time?

Or am I still trapped in the uncertainty of the pandemic?

In 2020 we all felt large and small moments when our life flipped from certainty to uncertainty. And this is continuing to happen in the first half of 2021.

But slowly, surely, with each new CDC update, we’re finding encouragement.

We’re starting to turn again from uncertainty to certainty.

This ESL opportunity has been one such moment.

But now this specific moment? No one is coming today. I’m certain.

4:35 p.m. I text the class leaders. I’ll stay until 4:40 unless I hear something first.

Ding!

The response says,

“I’m so sorry! J must have forgotten to tell you that there weren’t enough students willing to return yet. We’ll try again in the fall!”

I take a minute to collect myself. I’m disappointed. I’d gotten excited for nothing. This has been a false start.

It’s still not my time to step back into normalcy.

But normalcy will keep creeping back in anyway, maybe at times when I can see it, but more likely when I’m not looking so hard for it.

I text my reply,

“No problem. These things happen. Just keep me posted.”

I crank my car and enter the afternoon traffic. I’m going back home.

Normalcy isn’t beginning today. But at least I got in a test run.‘

Or maybe now this is normal.

Has your life returned to “normal” yet, whatever that is? Is uncertainty now normal? Has it always been? Share in the comments.

UNCERTAINTY is my One Word for 2021. The One Word ‘21 Linkup will be open on May 21 for you to add your own posts, updating us on your one word.

Read more here about Uncertainty:

Help Wanted—Can We Admit It?
—Grace & Truth Linkup

By LisaNotes May 14, 2021 Grace & Truth Link-Up 6 Comments

The Bike Idea

We are sitting in Valerie’s driveway on a hot Alabama morning. Valerie is my next-door neighbor. I am around 7 years old; she is 6. We’re deciding what to play next.

Valerie suggests we ride bikes.

My heart pounds.

I’ve watched other people ride bikes. My older siblings ride bikes. Valerie rides a bike.

But I don’t know how to ride a bike. I don’t dare admit to Valerie—a friend younger than me—that I can’t ride a bike. By this age I know I should know how. I feel embarrassment. I feel fear. I feel shame.

Because I’ve never ridden a bike.

My Do or Die Moment

Valerie pulls her bike out of the garage. She rolls me her sister’s bike. She gets on her bike first and takes off.

I grab hold of the handlebars of the bike. I throw one leg over the seat, balance myself, both feet still steady on the ground.

This is my do or die moment. How hard can the fall be?

I put my left foot on one pedal, then my right foot on the other. And off I go. I’m a little wobbly. But I stay upright. I ride down Valerie’s sideway, into the grass. I haven’t fallen yet.

I’m doing it. I’m riding a bike. For the very first time.

Can Valerie tell I’m a newbie? If she notices, she doesn’t mention it. I follow her around the yard, just two neighbors riding bikes together.

I feel like a normal kid.

My shame crisis is averted another day, hidden beneath a veil of fakery. But on this day, I pulled it off. Courage beat shame. This time.

Help Wanted

I’ve since ridden bicycles many, many miles for lots and lots of fun. I carry a scar on my left knee to document a wreck. I have memories of multiple rips in bell-bottom jeans that got caught in the chains.

But the memory of that first ride still haunts me. What kept me from admitting to Valerie that this would be my first day to ride a bike?

I was only a kid, of course. But even as an adult, it’s often still hard to admit I don’t know how to do something if I don’t have to.

I ask God often to slay my pride, to help me be humble, to give me courage to live wide open.

To live with more vulnerability and less shame.

And when I need help? May I admit it. It’s not too hard to do.

Now Let’s Link Up!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A New Resource to Help Men Better Understand Women

By LisaNotes May 12, 2021 Book reviews 11 Comments

Does this happen to you, too? You’re reading along in a good book, and the author mentions another book that also sounds promising. So you read that book. It’s good, too, and it leads you to another book. On and on.

The opposite happened when I read this book, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended, by Sheila Wray Gregoire with Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach and Joanna Sawatsky.

This is a very good book about sex in Christian marriages. It mentions several books NOT to read, books that have gained great popularity in the Christian community, much to its demise, several of which I’ve read myself or have heard recommended, and I don’t want to read again.

The author of The Great Sex Rescue did an extensive survey of Christian women to see which teachings in the popular books were helpful and which were harmful to relationships.

Harmful teachings included viewing sexual intimacy as primarily a physical release for husbands only. Wives in these books were taught they were to be sexually available only for their husbands’ pleasure, not also for their own pleasure (that’s just icing on the cake).

Gregoire says,

“In reading all of these bestselling Christian sex and marriage books, we found ourselves dumbfounded by how little is being asked of men.”

And if the wives didn’t totally cooperate when their husbands wanted them? Many of these books insinuate that the wives are guilty of running their men into the arms of other women or into pornography.

Why do these teachings become popular? One reason might be that:

“Sex has been taught primarily through a male lens, mostly by male authors and by male speakers at marriage conferences. Women’s experiences have been largely overlooked or ignored, while women are seen as tools to help men get what they want. That’s not Christian. That’s not of Jesus.”

But not all the books and teachings they researched were harmful. On the contrary, helpful teachings they found in Christian literature included framing intimate relationships as mutual and equally beneficial to both partners, both for physical pleasure and for emotional connectivity.

The positive books included this message:

“Sex is about both of you. Both of you should give and receive; both of you should feel loved and cherished.”

The bottom line of The Great Sex Rescue is that the best relationships involve mutuality in the bedroom, contrary to what Christian women are often taught in many of our most popular marriage books.

Gregoire speaks plainly and boldly in her message to the Christian community.

“What we’re saying in this book is that women do understand men. We know men need sex. Yelling louder about that won’t help. What we need now is for men to understand women. If men understood women’s need for intimacy and women’s need to experience pleasure, and if churches started talking about mutuality, we would awaken women’s libido and sexual response.”

The author invites the church to keep asking questions. To keep listening. To keep refining and creating more healthy resources for marital satisfaction for both partners.

If you want to see the books Gregoire does and doesn’t recommend without first reading The Great Sex Rescue (although I highly recommend you read it!), you can get an email copy of her scorecard by subscribing to her newsletter. The books she reviews (some good, some bad) include: Love & Respect; For Women Only; His Needs, Her Needs; Sacred Marriage; and more.

My thanks to NetGalley and Baker Books
for the review copy of this book

Lisa notes

on Life and Love

Are You Going Back to Church?

Online Church

Go or No Go?

My Steps

God Can Be Trusted

Featured Post

“Getting It Backwards”

Now Let’s Link Up!

One Word 2021 Linkup—May
—3 Challenges to Take with Your One Word

3 Challenges for Your One Word

Now let’s link up!

I Need a Nudge

Has Your Life Returned to Normal Yet? Is This Now Normal?

Help Wanted—Can We Admit It?
—Grace & Truth Linkup

The Bike Idea

My Do or Die Moment

Help Wanted

Featured Post

“Memory—Your Secret Super-Power”

Now Let’s Link Up!

A New Resource to Help Men Better Understand Women