Lisa notes

Did You Choose One Word for 2021? Linkup Coming April 21

By LisaNotes April 18, 2021 One Word Community No Comments

Did you choose One Word for 2021?
Do you still remember it?
Are you engaging with it?

Write a blog post giving us a quick update, or leave a comment here at the blog on Wednesday, April 21, for our linkup.

We gather on the 21st of each month during 2021 to share about our words.

If you’d like to receive a monthly email reminding you, along with a few suggestions on how to engage with your word, sign up here.

Now is always the right time to start focusing on your own One Word in 2021!

If you’re on Facebook, we also invite you to join our private One Word 2021 group.

Read more:

Am I Really Just Stupid?

By LisaNotes April 16, 2021 Encouragement, Uncertainty: My One Word 2021 24 Comments

I know we’re not supposed to use the s-word (stupid), at least not around small children. And we’re not to call other people the s-word either.

But what about ourselves?

Have you ever called yourself stupid?

When the Answers Don’t Come

“Am I really just stupid?”

I asked my husband Jeff this a few days ago about myself. More than once, actually. I needed an outside opinion about my intelligence lately, or lack of it, to be precise.

I had signed up as a volunteer partner in an online project. It was an area I thought I had some expertise in. I anticipated contributing to the task.

Until the assignments starting rolling in.

And I felt clueless. How could I perform the work if I couldn’t even understand the questions?

I wanted to panic. I googled; I watched tutorials; I asked around.

But the answers weren’t coming.

I wanted to tiptoe backwards out of the group, unnoticed, silently, to avoid looking stupid.

Stupidity Is My Hot Button

I hate feeling stupid.

No one likes the feeling, I suppose. But as an Enneagram Five, I’m particularly touchy about it. We Fives lean on our knowledge as a crutch to feel secure.

And my crutch was not only kicked away, I envisioned it landing in the dumpster.

Meanwhile, emails were piling up with unfulfilled assignments from the group. My inner ego was under threat.

I opened the next email. But it wasn’t from the group. It was from EnneaThought, a daily newsletter I subscribe to from the Enneagram Institute.

The email said,

“One of your sure-fire ‘hot buttons’ is having your competency questioned. How can you be less reactive to such challenges? Try keeping your cool and listening to the other person’s viewpoint.”

Why not try it? When you know you don’t know, what do you have to lose?

Pride.

This will feel painful, too.

Never Alone

So I resumed responding again to the group. I asked more questions. I confessed ignorance. I gave best-guesses.

I still felt limited…

Granted, I realize no single person is the repository of all knowledge on every topic. (But if possible, I’d love to try!) It’s expected that we can’t know everything. Even the top-notch expert and the simplest-minded child are closer than you think on the intelligence scale.

…but I knew I wasn’t empty.

I did know a few things. And when I prioritize what I want to know, I can learn even more things. Our competencies vary from person to person; it’s as it should be. We each decide what’s important to us and we work on that.

We eventually find out what we need to know, even if it’s not everything we want to know.

I still felt vulnerable…

Not knowing what we want to know can feel us leaving unprotected. As if things are spinning out of control, and we can do nothing to stop it.

…but I knew I was protected.

None of us are left totally alone to figure out life by ourselves.

We can use the intelligence we do have to ask others for help when we need it. (And thank you, Google.)

Welcome to the Human Race

Thinking we’re only stupid can be a trap, just like thinking we’re only smart.

The truth is: we’re all a little of both.

The stupidest thing is overestimating our smartness. It’s smarter to know we don’t know it all.

My online group project still hasn’t ended, but we’re closing in on a successful conclusion. I wasn’t able to help as much as I had anticipated.

But I learned a lot. About the project. And about myself.

I learned I’m safer (and smarter too) without that extra layer of pride that gloms to my character, making struggles stickier than they need to be. We all have pride to kill, and we’re better off with it dead than allowing it to keep rising up for one more breath.

I’m not there yet. I’m not smart enough to kill off pride altogether.

But at least I’m more aware of it this month than I was a month ago.

Am I still stupid?

Yes and no. Just like all of us.

But if I’m smart, I’ll keeping sailing in the same boat with my fellow humans anyway. We’re all floating on a sea of mercy.

Both are smart places to be.

Do you ever feel stupid? How do you deal with it? I’m still grappling with my One Word for 2021, Uncertainty. Share your thoughts in the comments.

If Jesus Is the Way, It’s Good to Be a Roadie

By LisaNotes April 15, 2021 Encouragement, Guest posts No Comments

We left our hotel in plenty of time to get to our friend’s wedding last Saturday.

But our GPS sent us to a strip mall, not a beach resort.

Were we lost?

If Christianity was once called the Way (literally, the Road), its followers were the first roadies.

See why it’s good to be a roadie (and if we finally found the wedding venue on time!).

Read it all here.

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

Surprise, Surprise! I Was Caught by One

By LisaNotes April 12, 2021 Encouragement 42 Comments

Know What to Expect

She is following me.

I take a right into my bedroom. She does, too. I walk into my bathroom. She toddles behind me.

I’m not surprised. When her parents are here, she’s all about holding on to mom and dad.

But they aren’t here this weekend. And when she stays with us, I’m her person. I like that. I’ve come to expect it.

I open the top drawer in my bathroom and pull out the toothpaste. As I brush my teeth, she watches me. But only for a few seconds.

She has other plans.

Unbeknownst to Me

She pulls on the bottom drawer in the bathroom, the one she can reach. It opens easily for her. I keep extras there: emery boards, dental floss, bobby pins.

But what she pulls out is not what I keep there.

Her hands go directly for the two items that don’t belong. A plastic white puzzle piece and a plastic blue puzzle piece.

She grabs them from the drawer, turns around, and walks out. She got what she came for.

I’m left alone to laugh and laugh. She had placed those puzzles pieces there another day, unbeknownst to me.

But she hadn’t forgotten she’d put them there. She remembered.

She has surprised me.

Be Surprised

She’ll continue to surprise me.

If she can surprise me at sixteen-months-old, when I think my youngest granddaughter is predictable, how much more will she surprise me at ten years old? At seventeen? At twenty-four, if I’m still around, Lord willing?

Everyone contains surprises. Just when we think we have someone figured out, they’ll do something unexpected.

And we’ll be surprised.

I love delightful surprises. They come when we least expect them. They sometimes come through coincidences or through nature or through a toddling little grandchild.

And sometimes we ourselves are the surprise.

I want to remain open for surprises.

How will you be surprised today? It’s impossible to know.

How often are you caught by surprise? When’s the last time you surprised yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related Reading:

How Do You Survive an Empty Nest?
—Grace & Truth Linkup

By LisaNotes April 9, 2021 Grace & Truth Link-Up 23 Comments

My Nest Felt Full

My nest felt so full back then.

When my daughters were little, were underneath my feet all day, asking for goldfish crackers or fighting for their turn at games on our single desktop computer, it seemed this stage of life would last forever.

It was bittersweet as they aged out of it. First, my oldest, Morgan, moved out and left for college. I was sad. Her empty room mirrored my empty heart.

In no time, the baby, Jenna, also graduated from school. And from home.

It was only Jeff and I left.

Empty Nest Syndrome

How did we arrive at this station so soon?

Wasn’t it supposed to take eons before we had an empty nest?

Studies say that almost 25% of empty nesters develop Empty Nest Syndrome. It’s a season of mourning the loss of no children in the house, of changing roles from parent to…whatever comes next.

Nine years have passed since my nest emptied out. Another blink of an eye. While I was fortunate not to suffer long from Empty Nest Syndrome, I know many who have. It can be a difficult transition.

What are we to do with ourselves when the kids are gone, when our nest gets empty?

Leaving Home

What we did next wasn’t what I expected . . .

When our kids left home, Jeff and I left home, too.

We hit the road.

We drove back and forth to visit our daughters (although we tried not doing it TOO much, for their sake).
I traveled with Jeff on his business trips.
I took short trips with girlfriends.

Yet we always returned home. Happily.

Even though the nest contained less people in it, it was still our nest. Still our homebase. Still our refuge.

Is “Empty” the Right Word?

Much, much, much has happened between the beginning days of our empty nest and now. Some hard, but mostly good.

I’ve discovered “empty nest” may be a misnomer.

Yes, most of the time it is just Jeff and I in it.

But in actuality, just because less people live here full time doesn’t mean the nest is empty.

Even an empty nest can be full.

It’s full of memories, yes. And still full of love.

But occasionally, it’s even full of people. Even more people than in the past. A weekend ago every bed was taken, including the toddler bed and the crib.

Because our daughters flew the coop years ago, they fly back in now with company. They bring husbands with them. They bring children. They bring friends.

We’ve survived the empty nest by taking on new roles of mother-in-law and father-in-law, of Granna and Gramps.

We’ve moved into new ministries, traveled to new spaces, explored new aspects of our own relationship with each other, with ourselves, and with God.

Nests Evolve

Has it been easy transitions? Definitely not. Change is hard for me, even when it’s a good change. And harder when it’s a bad change.

There are still days when I look back and wonder: Where has that young mother gone? How did I turn into this middle-aged woman living with a middle-aged man, just two of us in this house?

But no nest is meant to last forever, unchanged, whether full or empty.

New nests are built, fill up, then empty out.

And life with its purpose moves on.

I want to stay flexible to move with it, empty of regrets but full of hope, for wherever God takes me next.

Now Let’s Link Up!

Do you have an empty nest? How does it feel? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Racism Hurts Everybody, Not Just Its Victims
—Book Review of "The Sum of Us"

By LisaNotes April 7, 2021 Book reviews, Discrimination 6 Comments

Rather than have Blacks swim in their public swimming pool, the city of Montgomery, WV, hired city contractors to pour cement into the pool over 50 years ago.

Racism is costly to everyone. Not only to the people on the receiving end of it. It’s also costly to those on the giving side; they just don’t always recognize the price they pay to cause harm.

“Did white people win? No, for the most part they lost right along with the rest of us. Racism got in the way of all of us having nice things.”
– Heather McGhee

The Sum of Us is a detailed look at how racism costs everyone, and includes the fuller story about the public swimming pools.

“Public goods, in other words, are only for the public we perceive to be good.”

The author Heather McGhee digs down to the core of our public problems, and finds racism there.

If you’re into data, McGhee offers plenty of it in The Sum of Us. But she also provides individual stories of people she met who are living through these issues.

“Some white people even believe that Black people get to go to college for free—when the reality is, Black students on average wind up paying more for college through interest-bearing student loans over their lifetimes because they don’t have the passed-down wealth that even poorer white students often have. And in selective college admissions, any given white person is far more likely to be competing with another white person than with one of the underrepresented people of color in the applicant pool.”

McGhee says on our self-destructive path of racism, we take down both people of color and white people, too.

“The narrative that white people should see the well-being of people of color as a threat to their own is one of the most powerful subterranean stories in America. Until we destroy the idea, opponents of progress can always unearth it and use it to block any collective action that benefits us all.”

And when we cooperate instead?

McGhee says,

“The civil rights victories that were so bitterly opposed in the South ended up being a boon for the region, resulting in stronger local economies and more investments in infrastructure and education. The old zero-sum paradigm is not just counterproductive; it’s a lie.”

What’s the alternative to a zero-sum game? The Solidarity Dividend. It’s McGhee’s label for the gains we all reap when we unite, instead of divide.

The Sum of Us shows us we’re not in competition against each other. Your wins don’t come at my expense, nor vice versa. We’re all in this together.

“We are so much more when the ‘We’ in ‘We the People’ is not some of us, but all of us. We are greater than, and greater for, the sum of us.”

Share your thoughts in the comments.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random
House for the review copy of this book