Lisa notes

On the Blog—March 2022

By LisaNotes March 31, 2022 Archives No Comments

Here are brief summaries and links to posts on the blog, Lisa notes, in March 2022.

6 Books I Recommend—March 2022 (3/30)
Here are 6 books I recommend from what I finished reading in March 2022.
This Is One Mistake I Won’t Make Again (3/28)
There are enough hard things in the world without making the same mistakes again and again. This mistake I will learn from.
Share Four Somethings—March 2022 (3/25)
I’m sharing four somethings for March 2022. Here is something loved, something gleaned, something braved, and something achieved.
3 More Ideas to Try with Your One Word—Join Our March One Word Linkup (3/22)
Here are three unique ideas to try with your One Word. Join us for our March 2022 One Word Linkup.
Don’t Look Away. These 5 things will happen to you too. (3/21)
These 5 things will happen to you too. Stop denying death. Don’t look away.
Don’t Compare Your Suffering (3/18)
It’s not either your trauma or mine. It’s both/and. Don’t compare your suffering. God gives enough compassion to go around.
My One Word Update for March (3/16)
Here’s my One Word update for March on RELEASE and the 3-part sensory challenge. You can try it too.
More Than a Label (3/14)
To overcome prejudice, we often look for similarities to shed the stereotypes. What if we look for distinctions instead? We are more than a label.
Are You Giving Up Something for Lent? Or Adding Something In? (3/11)
Whether you’re giving something up for Lent or adding something in (or neither), create an intention to live more aware of the love of God.
How Are We Treating Our Women? (3/9)
How are we treating our women? Learning to treat each other well is the greatest calling for each of us.
Watching for Breath (3/7)
I take another breath, too. Maybe some things don’t change after all.
Celebrate the Small Victories (3/4)
Read Lynn’s post on celebrating the small victories as she works with her One Word INTENTIONAL this year.
How the Brain Grieves (3/2)
Review of the excellent new book The Grieving Brain by Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD.

See previous months’ archives here

6 Books I Recommend—March 2022

By LisaNotes March 30, 2022 Books I Recommend 26 Comments

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty—and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.
– Doris Lessing

Here are 6 books I recommend from what I finished reading in March.

[See previously recommended books here]

Nonfiction

1. Permission to Feel
Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive
by Marc Brackett

Do we undervalue and disrespect our emotions? Often, yes. This book teaches us how to better understand our emotions and use them properly. Our emotional intelligence is often woefully lacking and it causes great harm in the world. Excellent book!

“Research showed that emotions give purpose, priority, and focus to our thinking. They tell us what to do with the knowledge that our senses deliver. They motivate us to act.”

2. The Expectation Effect
How Your Mindset Can Change Your World
by David Robson

Another great book. We may intuitively know this, but this book uses science to sort it out: What we think will happen often changes what does happen. Whether regarding medicine, exercise, old age, etc., our expectations can influence outcomes to some degree. Each chapter focuses on a different category and what we can realistically change through adjusting our expectations.

“What we feel and think will determine what we experience, which will in turn influence what we feel and what we think, in a never-ending cycle.”

3. Love Letters to God
Deeper Intimacy through Written Prayer
by Lynn Morrissey

Many of you know this author Lynn Morrissey through the beautiful and insightful comments she leaves on our blogs. I was blessed to be gifted a copy of this beautiful book she wrote a few years ago. Her testimony of God’s faithfulness through her practice of prayer-journaling is encouraging me to continue my own “sacred writings” to God. Thank you, Lynn!

“Written prayer is the key to my consistent conversation with the Lover of my soul. It is an intimacy that I can enjoy anytime, anyplace. I simply open my journal, lift my pen, and pour out my heart.”

4. 37 Motivational and Life-Changing Lessons from Thich Nhat Hanh
by Christine Jay

This very short book (26 pages) contains snippets of peaceful wisdom from the recently-departed global spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on January 22, 2022.

“I asked myself what is not wrong and I longed to work on the things that are not wrong at that time. Within myself there were precious elements like joy and gratefulness.”

Fiction

5. The Five Wounds
by Kirstin Valdez Quade

This won’t make a top 10 list for me, but it’s an interesting story about a young unwed mother, Angel, in New Mexico and her divorced parents and dying grandmother. I finished it two weeks ago, but the characters and their story still live in my head.

6. The Book of Form and Emptiness
by Ruth Ozeki

This novel is also a bit quirky, but interesting. After the death of his musician father, teenager Benny Oh begins hearing disturbing voices from inanimate objects around him. It doesn’t help that his mother Annabelle is a hoarder and has lots of things. (You’ll find shadowing in this book of Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.)

Reading Now

The Power of Regret
How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
by Daniel H. Pink
Love People Use Things
Because the Opposite Never Works
by Joshua Fields Millburn
Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old
by Steven Petrow
Self-Compassion
The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
by Kristin Neff
Good Enough
40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection
by Kate Bowler
Flygirl
by Sherri L. Smith

What good book are YOU reading this month? Please share in the comments.

More books I recommend

This Is One Mistake I Won’t Make Again

By LisaNotes March 28, 2022 Encouragement, Grandparenting 35 Comments

We are sitting on the bedroom floor, Henry and I, the bedroom his Aunt Morgan grew up in. I have a book in my hand, a fun one. I’m excited to read it to him. He likes to turn the pages in the books we read together. When he’s happy, I’m happy.

We get to the page with the wild boar.

But uh-oh. Henry responds in a way I don’t expect.

I’ve always loved reading books from the time I was a child. When my own daughters were children, we read lots and lots and lots of books together. Now that we have grandchildren, I’ve already spent hours of enjoyment reading books with them.

I keep our favorite pop-up books on a high shelf that the littlest fingers can’t reach on their own. These are the special books. These are the ones we only share together.

The book I’m reading this morning with my grandson Henry has been one of my favorites. Each page is split. The top half of each page is the top half of an animal’s face and the bottom half is is the bottom half of its face. You can turn the tops and bottoms together to see the traditional animal, or mix and match to get wacky combinations.

Henry and I are doing it the traditional way. We see the owl who says hoot-hoot and flies around in the dark. We see the rabbit who likes to much carrots and hops and jumps in the grass.

And then we turn to the animal that digs up roots and snorts and grunts in the forest: the wild boar.

That’s when it happens.

Henry screws up his little face and lets out a wail. His eyes are terrified and his voice matches. A real tear rolls down his chubby cheek. This page has scared him.

I made him cry.

I feel like crying, too. I don’t want to make him sad. It’s the opposite of who I want to be in his life.

But now that I think about it, none of the grandkids have responded to this book with joy. What feels like a fun book to me has seemed like a disturbing book to them.

I put the book back on the top shelf. We won’t look at this page again. Maybe not even look at this book ever again.

There are enough scary things in life as it is. I don’t want to voluntarily create another one.

I know I can’t protect my grandchildren from all the hard things in life, just like I couldn’t protect my own children from them.

But I don’t have to unnecessarily create hard things.

Even unintentionally though, I know I’ll make many mistakes as a grandparent, just as I made many mistakes as a parent.

But when possible, I want to learn from them and not repeat the same mistakes again and again, like the mistake I made with this book.

Today forward, I’ll learn from this mistake.

At least in this book, we won’t turn to the wild boar again.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

sharing at these linkups

Share Four Somethings—March 2022

By LisaNotes March 25, 2022 Life updates 42 Comments

Near the end of each month I share four somethings with others at Heather’s.

The four categories are:

something loved,
something gleaned,
something braved, and
something achieved.

‘~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Something Loved

FOLLOWING YOUR ONE WORD JOURNEY TOO

I’ve been keeping a One Word habit on my own for several years. But the past two years I’ve seen what it feels like to keep up with others’ words, too, in closer community. And I love it.

I’m challenged by the dedication of others to live out their word. They inspire me to keep going when I think my word RELEASE is too hard and I want to give up on it.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Something Gleaned

BOOK SUMMARIES

I’ve resisted reading book summaries for years (because of pride? rule-following?). When I heard of services like Blinkist, I recoiled. Why cheat and read a summary of a book when I *should* read the whole book?

But I’ve humbled myself this year and discovered the joy of summaries.

It started when I couldn’t find the whole book at my library or online, but I could find the summary. I read one summary and discovered how quick it was to get the main insights of a book in a tenth of the time (or less).

I’m currently reading the summary of Dan Pink’s The Power of Regret. I will still read the whole book when it becomes available at my library (my estimated wait time is 10 weeks), but I’m getting to enjoying the highlights right now.

Sometimes a summary inspires me to locate the the whole book and read it all. But other times? I find it’s enough to read someone else’s bullet points and be done with it. Gleaning from others’ summaries isn’t cheating; it’s just helpful.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Something Braved

SEEING ALL THE DOCTORS

Jeff is now just a few months away from retirement. For the most part, that’s great news. But for health insurance? It makes me nervous. We’ve always had insurance through his employer, but after his retirement, we’ll have to get it elsewhere. And I know that will be pricey.

So to make the most of his company insurance while we have it, I’ve been squeezing in all the yucky medical appointments now: colonoscopy, mammogram, gynecology, dermatology, blood work, etc.

I also need to go get new glasses while we have good vision insurance. Even that takes courage for me. There are too many choices. I have trouble deciding which frames I want to live with for the next few years.

But compared to the others, the eye doctor may be the easiest of all.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Something Achieved

REVISITING MY NOTES

Well, I haven’t fully achieved this yet. But I’ve begun. So that’s something.

I’ve been reading stacks of books the past few months to help me with a loss I’m grieving.

I’ve sped from one book to the next, taking notes from each book on what helps, and living it out as best I can on the fly.

But it’s become a lot. So I’m methodically re-reading just those notes this month to reabsorb the best of the best ideas from the books for my healing and growth. And attempting to find a way to incorporate them into my daily life on a regular basis instead of just hit and miss.

It includes learning to NOT apologize for how sad I feel about my loss. As one book says:

“It’s strange that when someone gets really sad and starts crying about something, we say they ‘went to pieces.’ That seems backwards. Crying means we’re connected with our pain, rather than cut off from it. When we cry, we’re whole in the sense that we’re connected with ourselves, including the part of us that hurts.”

This project of re-reading and working all the notes may be too much. But I’m trusting that I’ll stop if it’s not helpful after all.

What have you been up to this month? What are you looking forward to in the next month? Share your thoughts in the comments.

3 More Ideas to Try with Your One Word—Join Our March One Word Linkup

By LisaNotes March 22, 2022 One Word Community 14 Comments

Share Your One Word Update

Link your blog post below about your One Word or share an update about your One Word in the comments.

3 More Ideas for Your One Word

Are you trying any of the 40 One Word challenges for Lent from our fellow One Worder Lisa Hite? She shared this wonderful challenge with us, and you can . Follow along with Lent if you’d like, or just spread and adapt the ideas all year round.

Here are 3 ideas from Lisa Hite’s list that you can try in the next 30 days.

1. FORTUNE COOKIE

If you were to crack open a fortune cookie, what fortune might you see with your One Word? Practice writing a fortune cookie message with your word and see where it takes you.

2. PERFECT WORD DAY

Try this journaling practice. Write a description of your perfect day living with your One Word.

3. GIVE IT AWAY

If you could gift your word to someone, who would you give it to? Why would you choose that person?

This linkup will remain open through Thursday, March 31.

The next One Word linkup will open on Friday, April 22 (every One Word linkup in 2022 will be on the 22nd).

Leave a comment here about your One Word.

Link Up About Your One Word!

Don’t Look Away. These 5 things will happen to you too.

By LisaNotes March 21, 2022 Encouragement, Now, Release: One Word 2022 45 Comments

Seeing the Decline

I didn’t know if I’d get to see Bill at the hospital last Monday.

I went to see my friend Kay as she sat with her dad, Bill. She and I visited outside his room.

Then her dad needed something. Kay invited me inside his room, too. And I got to see Bill.

I saw how much he’d declined since I’d seen him a year ago at the baby shower for his granddaughter and great-grandson-to-be. Even then he looked more frail than the time before.

But on Monday, I sensed that aging and illness were piling up too quickly for him to fend off.

By Wednesday, I got the word . . . Bill died.

Death by Surprise

I was shocked.

But why does news of a death still take us by surprise? Still take away our own breath, even when we expected it?

We know every one of us will die one day. It’s inevitable. Something will happen and we’ll either stop breathing immediately or within days, months, years.

Yet we don’t want to think about death. It makes us sad.

But what if by looking away from death, we ultimately create more sadness?

5 Things for Everybody

The Buddhist tradition offers Five Remembrances that awaken us from denial and help us appreciate life more fully. They are compatible with Christian faith as well, along with other world philosophies too.

Here are five things that happen to all of us. The Five Remembrances are:

1. I am subject to aging. There is no way to avoid aging.

2. I am subject to ill health. There is no way to avoid illness.

3. I am going to die. There is no way to avoid death.

4. Everyone and everything that I love will change, and I will be separated from them.

5. My only true possessions are my actions, and I cannot escape their consequences.

At first glance, these five feel too negative. Who wants to think about these things?

But thinking about these things isn’t our real problem. The real problem arises when we try to never think about these things.

Pretending we’ll never die can be quite a burden.

Freedom is not found in denial or avoidance or distraction. Rather than depressing us, accepting these five things can help us live fuller lives now. It can help us prioritize being loving people.

I don’t want to take life for granted. Even in hard seasons, I want to stay awake.

By remembering that life is full of change, I want to feel more appreciative of the good things I have now, to think more clearly about how things will change again, and to respond more kindly to those I’m here with.

Accept Death to Appreciate Life

We attended Bill’s funeral yesterday.

As we gathered with other friends and his family who loved him well, I was reminded of these Five Remembrances.

1. Bill aged. I am aging, too. So are you.

2. Bill got sick. I get sick, too. So do you.

3. Bill died. I will die, too. So will you.

4. Everything in Bill’s life has changed. Everything changes daily in my life, too. So in your life.

5. Memories of Bill’s actions will remain. My actions will live on, too. So will yours.

While it might be comforting to think more about what’s next in the afterlife, to stay fixated on the future where problems cease and tears fade, I also don’t need to look away from what is happening here, now, to keep it all in perspective.

My human nature longs to cling to and freeze time, yet my spiritual nature reminds me that holding things loosely is the better way.

By releasing my tight grip on denying death, I open more space for appreciating life.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

These are some of my thoughts with my One Word 2022 RELEASE.

I’m sharing at these linkups