Lisa notes

Need Help Making a Decision? Try 10/10/10

By LisaNotes August 22, 2016 Miscellaneous 21 Comments

What decision do you need to make?

We’re constantly deciding something.

With my daughter getting married in a few weeks, we’ve been faced with many decisions. Who to invite, what gifts to buy, what to wear (I still don’t know that one!).

Whether your decision today is large or small, here’s a process that can help. (I originally posted about it here. It helped me decide “yes” to Guatemala.)

I found it in Chip and Dan Heath’s book Decisive, which was one of my 10 favorite books in 2014. The Heaths adapted the concept from Suzy Welch’s book, 10-10-10.

Decision making-10-10-10

10/10/10

It’s about perspective. By prayerfully asking yourself these three questions, you both narrow and broaden the time frame that your decision sits in.

• 10 Minutes

First, ask yourself:

How will I feel about this 10 minutes from now?

• 10 Months

Second, ask:

What about 10 months from now?

• 10 Years

And third:

How will I feel 10 years from now?

When I think about buying my mother-of-the-bride attire, the next 10 minutes aren’t critical. However, I can use the next ten minutes to set a plan and a deadline for getting my outfit together (shop on Saturday; buy something by September 5).

In 10 months, the wedding will still be a recent memory and I’ll likely still be looking at photos, but the pressure of the decision will be nonexistent.

And in 10 years? I doubt I’ll care at all which dress I picked out. (I’ll just be thinking how much younger I looked in 2016 than I do in 2026.)

In the short term, buying a dress is a hassle to someone like me who hates to shop. But in the grand scheme of things, I can see that this choice isn’t a life or death decision.

Putting it into the 10/10/10 scheme helps me see that the important thing in 10 years will be celebrating Jenna and Trey’s 10-year anniversary of a God-honoring marriage.

* * *

UPDATE: I found a dress! My daughters went shopping with me Saturday and we found something I liked in the first store. #happymom

Let me know if you try 10/10/10 for one of your decisions. Please share in the comments.

Hit the Pause Button

By LisaNotes August 18, 2016 Grace, Welcome 8 Comments

hit-the-pause-button

First comes the cut.

I had a small spot removed from my foot two weeks ago. In the moment, it was mildly painful.

Next comes the healing.

The injury ends; the healing begins. The doctor bandaged the spot, gave me medicine, and advised me to keep the wound covered for ten days so it could heal with no irritation or infection.

So I hit the pause button.

Pause is a quiet place.

It’s that space where you’re still too hurt to run back into life full-force. You slow down (or totally stop) for breathing room, to respect the injury, and to allow a decent head start toward recovery.

Where are you bleeding? Have you been cut by a sharp word or attitude or behavior from someone else? Or maybe your own?

Does your wound need space to heal?

Jesus invites us to pause.
There is healing in the pause.
There is grace in the pause.

In the pause, we quietly open our awareness to the Lord’s presence. To his good plan for our future. To his loving embrace of our pain.

Our pause may be only ten minutes here and there. It may be longer as our situation allows. But the Lord awaits us in it.

The pause may not eliminate our pain or restore us to complete healing (yet). But Jesus fills our empty places with grace. With love. His love.

He’s the One who not only wants our recovery the most, but who also has the most power to transform our brokenness into a sacred scar of beauty.

My foot is almost totally healed now. I still wear a band-aid but I won’t much longer.

When we’re willing to pause, his grace expands the healing.

* * *

Do you have a wound that needs healing? How do you hit the pause button? Please share in the comments.

Calm & Stillness is August’s theme for my One Word 2016: Welcome. 

revised from the archives

You Remember What You See – I Can’t Forget This

By LisaNotes August 16, 2016 My stories 22 Comments

Or, What I Can’t Get Off My Mind

remember-what-you-see

Sometimes you see something you can’t shake.

I can’t shake what I saw last week. 

It was Monday morning, 9 a.m. I drive down my street to go grocery shopping. A half a mile from my house is an empty lot. A slightly overgrown field.

In this empty lot on that morning is a fire. A small pile of something in flames.

We’ve been in a drought. I wonder, Where is the person who should be guarding this fire?

A small car is parked on the curb by the empty lot. But no person is near it either.

I drive on. I buy bananas, pancake syrup, cheddar cheese, Lean Pockets.

I drive back home. It’s now 9:45 a.m.

I pass the fire again in my neighborhood.

  • It still burns.
  • Still small.
  • Still no one is watching it.

Here’s what I didn’t know.

But now that I do know this—what I was actually seeing—I’ll never forget it.

A neighbor directly across the field is also watching the fire. Around 10 a.m., she sends her husband over to check it out.

Call 911! That’s the message he returns with.

What is burning?

I hate to tell you.

It’s a person.

A very depressed man got up last Monday morning and decides this is it. His last day.

He drives across the street from his neighborhood to ours, 100 yards away. To this empty lot he sees every day. Around 7:45 a.m, we guess.

  • He parks his car on the curb.
  • He douses himself with gasoline.
  • He strikes his lighter.

There’s much more to this story. I’m sure of it.

But I don’t know it.

What I know is sadness. I pray. For his friends. His family. His dog that I used to see him walk.

I’ll never forget him. Because I saw him.

Even when I didn’t know it was him.

What we see, we remember.

What will we see today?

Among everything else, Lord, let it be you. Let us see you. Please, you.

* * *

What have you seen that you can’t shake? How have you seen God? Please share in the comments.

Be This Nurse to Whom?

By LisaNotes August 15, 2016 Book quotes, Compassion 17 Comments

be-kind-teacup

Can we be this nurse?

I read this story by Thomas Keating in Awakenings a few years ago. It touched me then. It touches me now. (Italics and breaks are mine.)

Here is a true story about a psychiatric nurse who was told the lurid history of a certain patient who had just entered the hospital.

This man had committed a terrible crime. It was so terrible that he never wanted it known.

He had completed his long prison sentence and had come to the hospital in a dying condition. He could not believe that God could forgive his crime; hence, he resisted any form of reconciliation.

The chaplain tried to persuade him to trust God. He refused. Any thought of reconciliation awakened his self-hatred.

It was more painful for him to think of forgiveness than to feel his self-hatred.

The psychiatric nurse showed him every courtesy. She tucked him in at night, provided him with little favors like flowers, remembered his birthday, asked about his family, and wrote him notes on her day off. Because his illness was prolonged, she developed a friendship with him.

Near the end, his closest friend came to see him and urged him to be reconciled with God. “Please don’t mention it!” the dying man pleaded. “God couldn’t possibly forgive me for what I have done.”

His friend kept urging, “God is good! He loves you. You can trust him.”

But nothing he said could penetrate the sick man’s defenses.

Finally the friend said in desperation, “Think how much love the nurse shows you. Couldn’t God do the same?”

The sick man acknowledged how grateful he was to the nurse who had shown him so much love, but he added, “If she knew what I have done, she too would reject me.”

His friend replied, “I must make a confession to you. When you first entered the hospital, I confided to her the entire story of your crime in every detail.”

The dying man looked at him in stunned astonishment. His defenses dissolved and his eyes filled with tears.

“If she could love me,” he murmured, “knowing all that I have done, it must be true. God too can love me.”
– Thomas Keating

When it’s unimaginable to accept God’s love directly, can we accept it from other people first?

Once we accept it for ourselves, we have it to give to others.

We can be the nurse to someone else.
For the love of God.
By the grace of God.

* * *

Who has been the nurse in your life? Who can you be the nurse to? Please share in the comments.