Lisa notes

I hate fat pillows

By LisaNotes June 23, 2014 Book reviews, My stories 26 Comments

(…and other travel confessions)

I unpack much faster than I pack. Within 30 minutes of getting home Saturday, the truck was cleaned out and our suitcases were unloaded after a week of wandering around Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. I like coming home.

But I like most everything about traveling, too (except for the frantic clean-up the day before the trip so I can enjoy how clean the house is when I come home!).

And except for when I get this feeling, “We have no clue where we are, do we?” (as in, there really is NOT a Chick-Fil-A here, despite Ms. GiGi, our GPS, so confidently saying so).

And except when I start feeling grouchy around Day 5 because I’ve been completely surrounded by people for at least five days in a row.

And except for the hotel’s fat pillows. Who can sleep with a pillow eight inches tall? Let’s be real: Fluffy pillows are for looks, not sleep.

But I’m not complaining. That’s what the Hebrews did coming out of Egypt when reminiscing about onions over manna, not me. Right?

Well, maybe technically I don’t complain. I just start going silent or sighing or asking (again), “Now what’s the plan?”

So around Thursday of last week, after touring Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum that morning, and not finding that Chick-Fil-A as promised for lunch (I knew it wasn’t going to be in the middle of a neighborhood, crazy GPS), and before we went to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory that afternoon and back to Churchill Downs that night to watch the races, I started my “not-complaining.” Sigh.

It’s not how I grew up. Because we didn’t travel at all.

(Well, unless you count the four-hour station wagon ride from Alabama to Mississippi every few months to visit grandparents. And the once-in-a-lifetime trip we took to visit my uncle in Virginia when I was in middle school.)

Unlike this from Emily Wierenga:

. . . my parents didn’t raise us to believe in travel. But two out of three (we got the God and music part) aren’t bad, right? Daddy traveled in the Marines, then frequently on business with NASA later, and that was enough for him. Mama wasn’t one to venture out far without him (except to Mississippi), so we stayed home.

But I married a man who loves to go. So I’ve discovered I love it, too. While we were homeschooling our two daughters, we turned every trip into a field trip of adventure and education.

And no complaining.

But we’re empty-nesters. Now what? Now we set our own schedule and only pack snacks for me and I don’t have to chronicle each museum tour with reports and photos (although I’m still inclined that way).

And the no complaining rule?

Oh yeah. I don’t want to be a whiner; I want to be a worshiper. But without kids around to influence, I have to consciously remember to look for God for myself in the places and the people and even the circumstances wherever we go.

And he shows up in enthusiastic tour guides and thoroughbred horses and race car drivers.

And he especially shows up in the kindness of my husband who suggests by Thursday afternoon that we nix the races that night and instead kick back in the hotel with a pizza delivery from Papa John’s.

And I say okay.

Because to enjoy traveling, I need to work with how God designed my personality, not against it—alternate activity with rest, keep a hard-copy atlas for when GiGi loses her mind recalculating, recalculating, . . .

and from this trip forward, pack my own pillow.

* * *

Do you have any travel idiosyncrasies? Recommend a fun place to visit?

I’ve started reading (and loving!) Emily Wierenga’s newest book, Atlas Girl, a travel memoir about how God’s love pursues us everywhere we go, and always leads us back home. Emily is a passionate writer who makes you feel what she feels. You can read chapters 1 & 2 here, or buy the book here. All proceeds go to The Lulu Tree, a non-profit for helping moms and orphans in Uganda.

5 helps for memorizing Bible verses

By LisaNotes June 18, 2014 Memorization 31 Comments

Maybe you already memorize Bible verses. Maybe you’ve never tried. This isn’t a post about why you should or shouldn’t. It’s just about some ways you can.

1. PRACTICE WITH FIRST LETTERS

This helps in the early stages. Insert the verse you’re memorizing in the empty box on this site—“How to Memorize Verbatim Text”. Click “convert” to get the first letter of each word. Then by looking at the first letters only (you don’t have to memorize these), practice saying the verse. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can say the verse using only these letters.

For John 15, I’m reviewing only the previous week’s verses and the current week’s verses twice a day this way. I copied the letters into my Outlook calendar as a recurring appointment each morning and afternoon. Each review takes only about 30 seconds.

2. LEARN THE FIRST WORDS

A big stumbling block is the inability to recall the first word of each verse. Make special efforts to learn it solidly. Try highlighting the first word of each verse of a chapter or section you’re memorizing. Then look for loose patterns among those first words. With Isaiah 55, verses 8-10 all started with “For.” Even though I wasn’t consciously trying to memorize that, it helped push me from the end of one verse to the beginning of the next.

When you’re memorizing several verses in a row, little things can give you a huge boost forward.

3. DRAW IT UP

Make a cartoon sketch to capture the flow of the verse, using whatever images help you best remember the words (sometimes the crazier, the better). You don’t have to draw out every word, but at least hit the main nouns and verbs.

I don’t do this with every verse, but it definitely helps burn a verse in my memory when I do it with hard ones.

4. MAP IT OUT

Hard-core memorizers of random strings of numbers and cards use a map method [read Joshua Foer’s book, Moonwalking with Einstein]. It should work even easier when memorizing connected things. Here’s how I used a mental map to memorize Isaiah 55.

Isa 55:1 – “Come, everyone who thirsts” (Start at my kitchen sink)
Isa 55:2—“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread” (Go left to the pantry where I keep bread)
Isa 55:3—“Incline your ear” (Keep going left to hear the ice maker—it’s a stretch, I know)

And so on with each verse, one step at a time around my kitchen. 13 verses, 13 sequential stopping points. With John 15, I’m mentally starting at my bedroom door with verses 1 and 2, working through dresser drawers, windows, wall pictures, etc., with subsequent verses.

5. DISSECT IT

If word etymology interests you, look up each main word in its original Greek or Hebrew to uncover a fuller meaning. (I use e-Sword.net which makes it super easy and it’s free.) Better understanding the original intent makes it stickier in your memory. I only spend a few minutes at the beginning of the week doing this, but it goes a long way in comprehending and remembering the text.

Also try reading your verse in different translations, looking up what others say in commentaries, cross-referencing key words to other passages, etc. Your memory verse can be a great study opportunity.

And finally:

Don’t do every thing every day! You’ll give up after the first week. [Read “5 reasons to not give up”] Just a few minutes per day of concentrated effort can take you farther than you imagine.

Because in the end, it’s your relationship with God that matters the most, not how many words you’ve memorized.

Embedding his words in your head is worthless if they don’t do something to your heart.

Like any other spiritual discipline, memorizing scripture is only one means to this beautiful end: discovering how much God loves you and loving him back because of it.

* * *

Please share your own practical tips about memorizing scripture.

Are you good enough to witness?

By LisaNotes June 16, 2014 Grace 22 Comments

I hate when I have a fight with Jeff. It takes a lot to get us to the point of intense argument. But we can get there.

We got there again not long ago. Why? I don’t even remember now.

What I do remember is feeling discouraged that I still get into fights at all.

Shouldn’t I know better by now?
Shouldn’t I be so transformed into the image of Christ that I can let go of ego?
Shouldn’t I have matured enough by this age to bypass heated disagreements and use loving words instead?

I guess not. Sigh.

I want God to change me faster. I could do more, be more, love better if he’d just finish up the job.

Wouldn’t I be a better advertisement for Jesus if I could get it all together?

Then I remember: I am not the point. I am only the pointer.

It’s not about me being a finished product. It’s about the perfect One I’m pointing to. It’s about Jesus. About how good he is, not how good (or bad) I am.

Granted, we do want to show he makes a difference in our lives. That life is better because he’s in it. That we’ve hurt less people and loved a lot more because we have his Spirit in us.

But even then, the evidence isn’t in how perfectly (or not) we love, but in how loving he is to work through us anyway, to love us anyway, right in the midst of our imperfections. That takes some strong power!

Don’t wait until you’re transformed into Ms. Perfect Christian who never argues with her husband or totally controls her junk food intake or answers the phone no matter who is calling before you think you can testify to how great Jesus is.

Sometimes the best witness is the one who has had a terrible day (week? year?) yet still knows they’re loved. And still wants to love others anyway. Not from their own abilities, but because the King of Love himself keeps washing grace over them daily.

It’s not about your perfection; it’s about Christ’s.

And that’s good news no matter who it’s coming from.
Even from someone as imperfect as me.

* * *

Your thoughts?

Hmm, obviously this is a theme I have to remind myself about often . . . Related posts here:

Is your “to-do” list holy?

By LisaNotes June 12, 2014 Encouragement, Guest posts 3 Comments

Do you have a to-do list today?

Mine is usually an intricately scheduled plan. And rarely (maybe never?) goes as ordered.

But as believers, do our to-do lists look any different than anybody else’s? Maybe not on the surface, but here’s where there might be a difference. . . .

Read the rest here

* * *

I’m writing today at Do Not Depart for our #Holiness series.

I’d love for you to join me there and share what works (and doesn’t work) with your to-do list.

Need perspective? Try 10/10/10

By LisaNotes June 11, 2014 Miscellaneous 26 Comments

Whether you’re deciding what to cook for dinner or when to plan a beach trip or should you buy a new car, there are processes to help you. I’ve been reading several in Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s book Decisive.

One strategy they recommend is: Attain some distance before deciding. (It’s the “A” of their WRAP strategy.) Don’t base your decision on short-term emotions only (well, maybe on supper plans you can; time does matter there).

How? Use 10/10/10.

It’s three questions you ask yourself (and it’s also a book by Suzy Welch, its inventor). It puts your decision in three different time frames:

How will I feel about it 10 minutes from now?
How about 10 months from now?
How about 10 years from now?

I’m currently trying to decide about a mission trip this fall to Guatemala.

In the heat of the moment, if I say, “Yes!” I’ll be excited, but also a little anxious about details to work through.
In ten months from now, if I decided yes to go, I’ll have had a new experience with God that I’ll still be working through and some new friends as well. If I decided not to go, no change except more money in the bank.
And ten years from now? It’ll either be a memory of something I recommend (or not!), or I won’t even remember it was an option.

I have more prayer and conversations ahead before I make a final decision, but this framework of putting things into perspective does help.

* * *

What helps you make decisions? Have you tried this approach before? I’d love to hear.

God is present now

By LisaNotes June 9, 2014 Book reviews, Spiritual disciplines 40 Comments

Who’s the person you enjoy hanging out with the most? The one who makes you feel happiest? Most loved?

If you had Jesus here in the flesh, think it’d be him? The one who is all love. All light. All life.

But he’s not here in the flesh. Can we still enjoy his presence now?

Yes. I believe it’s his presence we crave, even when we don’t know it. And it’s in his presence we’re most loved, even though we can’t see him.

“Just the privilege of fellowship with God is infinitely more than any thing that God could give. When he gives himself he is giving more than anything else in the universe.”
– Frank Laubach

But how can we tap into that fellowship with God, especially in the everyday moments?

It’s a concept that’s intrigued me for years. I’m not alone in this quest. Not now. Not ever. Whether straight from scripture, from a monk in the 1600s, from a missionary in 1930, or from a friend in 2014, there’s much to learn about being more mindful of God in the now, of intentionally grasping God’s hand in this moment, in this thing.

I find motivation every few years when I reread Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God. And now I’m finding it also in finally reading Frank Laubach’s Letters by a Modern Mystic.

Here’s how Laubach explains it in Letters by a Modern Mystic.

“Perhaps a man who has been an ordained minister since 1914 ought to be ashamed to confess that he never before felt the joy of complete, hourly, minute by minute – now what shall I call it? – more than surrender. I had that before.

More than listening to God. I tried that before.

I cannot find the word that will mean to you or to me what I am now experiencing. It is a will act. I compel my mind to open straight out toward God. I wait and listen with determined sensitiveness.

I fix my attention there, and sometimes it requires a long time early in the morning to attain that mental state. I determine not to get out of bed until that mind set, that concentration upon God, is settled.”

Easy to do?
Absolutely not.

“I have undertaken something which, at my age at least, is hard, harder than I had anticipated. But I resolve not to give up the effort.

Yet strain does not seem to do good. At this moment I feel something ‘let go’ inside, and lo, God is here! It is a heart melting ‘here-ness,’ a lovely whispering of father to child, and the reason I did not have it before, was because I failed to let go.”

But worth attempting anyway?
Most definitely.

“The most important discovery of my whole life is that one can take a little rough cabin and transform it into a palace just by flooding it with thoughts of God.”

It’s not a method, a formula, a procedure.
It’s an attitude, a belief, an intention.

Enjoying God’s presence is knowing that in this hour, this situation, this relationship, we are never alone.

“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”
Psalm 139:9-10

We sang this song yesterday morning among my church. The words are true:

“There’s nothing worth more
That will ever come close
No thing can compare
You’re our living hope
Your Presence, Lord”
– Jesus Culture

May you live more aware that God is present now.
Fill up this hour with God.
This is eternity.

* * *

How do YOU remember to be more aware of God’s presence? Please share your ideas in the comments.

“How I wish, wish, wish that a dozen or more persons who are trying the experiment of holding God endlessly in mind would all write their experiences so that each would know what the other was finding as a result! The results, I think, would astound the world.”
– Frank Laubach

[On the lighter side, here’s a cute cartoon I had to pin on Pinterest last night about Jesus being present.]