Lisa notes

Don’t Compare Your Suffering
—Grace & Truth Linkup

By LisaNotes March 18, 2022 Grace & Truth Link-Up 20 Comments

You cut your finger.
I broke my arm (though not lately).
She has cancer of the bone.

Who should we comfort the most?

Our rational brain says the most comfort should be saved for the cancer patient. And yes, give it there!

But we’re not limited in who we give comfort to. And it’s not a contest anyway.

Give comfort to the one you’re with. Including yourself.

My problems seem large when I look at my happy neighbor. But if I looked deeper at her life, I’d see her own portion of suffering.

Yet when I look at Ukraine and other hot spots around the world where there is intense life-and-death scenarios, my problems seem miniscule in comparison.

While there is value in putting our problems in perspective, we don’t need to negate our situation just because it’s less painful than someone else’s (or overvalue it if it’s more painful).

Give your problems the attention they’re due. Feel your pain. Deal with your trauma.

It’s how you will heal, and can help others heal.

It’s not either your trauma or mine. It’s both/and.

God gives us enough compassion to go around for everyone. Let’s use it.

Featured Post

For our featured post this week, Shannon reminds us that when we write off our own suffering, (1) we invalidate our emotions, which is unhealthy, and (2) we can succumb to toxic positivity, which can cause even more suffering in the long run.

Read Shannon’s post in its entirety here, then link up your own posts below:

“Your Suffering is Valid, Even When Others Have it Worse”

Have you felt guilty about your own “small” angst this month in comparison to Ukraine and other trauma around the world? What has helped you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for sharing, Shannon! Here’s a button for your blog.

I’m linking at these blog parties

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

2. Comment on 1 or 2 other links. Grace & Truth linkup encourages community.

3. Every host features one entry from the previous week. To be featured, include this button or link back here on your post (mandatory to be featured, but not to participate).

We encourage you to follow our hosts on their blogs or social media.

MAREE DEE – Embracing the Unexpected
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LAUREN SPARKS
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LISA BURGESS – Lisa notes
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

TAMMY KENNINGTON – Restoring hope. Pursuing peace.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

Now Let’s Link Up!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My One Word Update for March

By LisaNotes March 16, 2022 Release: One Word 2022 12 Comments

Last month we had a 3-Part Sensory Challenge for our One Word. Below is how it worked for me with my word RELEASE.

Our next One Word linkup is March 22. Get your blog posts ready!

1. See It

I see my word every day sitting on my piano. My daughter Jenna created this sign with my word for me.

I also have kept My One Word Worksheet on my coffee table lately as I work through the 40-Day Lent Challenge from Lisa Hite. You can download her . She has lots of ideas for how to interact with your word.

2. Hear It

I’m still not exactly sure of which things God wants me to RELEASE this year. But this poem resonates with me on a deep level. Maybe not every line, but most of the lines. I first heard it a few years back, but it’s resurfaced for me this year. You can hear it read aloud here.

SHE LET GO
by Safire Rose

She let go.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear.
She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice.
She didn’t read a book on how to let go.
She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.
She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t call the prayer line.
She didn’t utter one word.
She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort.
There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

3. Touch It

Connecting my word with my body has been a little more difficult. But I’m attempting yoga this Lenten season as a way to appreciate God’s gift of the body, and also using it as a way to RELEASE. I’m currently on Day 9.

How are you connecting with your One Word? Seeing or hearing or touching it? Share in the comments.

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More Than a Label

By LisaNotes March 14, 2022 Discrimination, Encouragement 15 Comments

“Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.”
– Martina Navratilova

I see him in the corner, this scruffy man with long hair in his wheelchair. And I label him as “the man in the wheelchair.” I automatically have a stereotype to squeeze him into.

That’s how prejudices work. I have friends I introduce as “the sweet one” or “the sports fanatic” or “the health nut.”

But who wants to be a label, even if it’s a good one?

To be labeled “paraplegic” or “old” or “diabetic” or “smart” describes only one dimension of a complex human being.

I like how Jesus saw people as unique. Even in his healings, he didn’t use a one-size-fits-all approach.

He touched the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:30-31).
He touched the eyes of two blind men in Capernaum (Matthew 9:29-30).
He put his fingers in the deaf man’s ear in Decapolis and after spitting, touched his tongue (Mark 7:33).
He spit on the eyes of the blind man at Bethsaida (Mark 8:23).
He made mud for the blind man’s eyes in Jerusalem (John 9:6-7).
And he laid hands on many others.

I’m sure he would have seen the man in the wheelchair as much more than “the man in the wheelchair.”

I finally do, too. Once the gentleman starts talking and interacting with others around us, I see him as witty, as independent, as compassionate. There is no stereotype for people in wheelchairs any more than there is a stereotype for people out of them.

Typically when we try to overcome prejudice we look for similarities to help us shed the stereotypes.

But what if we do the opposite? What if we look for distinctions instead?

We all are distinct, but we are not our distinctions.

I want to notice the differences that make you uniquely you.

You are not a label. Neither am I.

We are more. Much more.

Share in the comments.

revised from the archives

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Are You Giving Up Something for Lent? Or Adding Something In?
—Grace & Truth Linkup

By LisaNotes March 11, 2022 Grace & Truth Link-Up, Spiritual disciplines 7 Comments

While my own church has never fully participated in Lenten practices, I still like to honor Lent on my own. Jeff and I visited a neighborhood church on Ash Wednesday to begin the Lenten season this year.

Sometimes for Lent I give something up.

But other years I like to add something in.

Are you doing anything differently during the 40 days of Lent this year leading up to Easter Sunday on April 17?

For our featured post this week, Sarah Howley shares four practices you could try for Lent. (And even though Lent has already begun, you can still jump in.)

We’re likely all familiar with three of the practices she mentions:

Lament
Fasting
Prayer

But what intrigues me the most about Sarah’s list is this fourth practice:

Integrate

“Rather than abstaining during Lent, there are also those who choose to add to their lives at lent.”

If you’re reading a Lenten devotional or Bible plan during this time, you’re integrating.

For 2022 I’m using Kate Bowler’s Lenten devotional, “A Good Enough Lent: A 40-Day Companion to Read, Reflect, and Pray,” alongside her book, Good Enough. (You can sign up for Kate’s emails and free reflection guide here, if you’re interested.)

But I’m also adding in a yoga journey with Adriene. During these 40 days of Lent, I want to be more aware of the body God gave me. I’m adding in this healthy practice to better appreciate this gift of my flesh from God and be more grateful to God for it.

Yet I’m also aware of this: Even if we are adding in something extra during Lent, we are also giving something up. Maybe it’s sacrificing a chunk of time for a yoga practice or giving up your regular reading for a Lenten reading.

The point of Lent is to focus our minds more on the final days of Jesus’s life, his death, and his resurrection. It’s to reveal our own need for change and ultimate celebration of victory in Christ. It’s to draw us closer to Jesus and his love for us, and in turn to spread more love to others.

So whether you take something away or add something in—or do neither (that’s okay, too!)—during Lent, creating an intention to live more aware of the love of God is always a worthy practice.

Read all of Sarah’s post here, then add your own links below.

Four Biblical Practices for Lent

Are you doing anything special for Lent? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for sharing, Sarah! Here’s a button for your blog.

I’m linking at these blog parties

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

2. Comment on 1 or 2 other links. Grace & Truth linkup encourages community.

3. Every host features one entry from the previous week. To be featured, include this button or link back here on your post (mandatory to be featured, but not to participate).

We encourage you to follow our hosts on their blogs or social media.

MAREE DEE – Embracing the Unexpected
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LAUREN SPARKS
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LISA BURGESS – Lisa notes
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

TAMMY KENNINGTON – Restoring hope. Pursuing peace.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

Now Let’s Link Up!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

How Are We Treating Our Women?

By LisaNotes March 9, 2022 Book reviews, Encouragement 10 Comments

International Women’s Day 2022 was this past Tuesday, March 8. It’s a day to applaud the achievements of women around the world.

So…how are we treating our women? Ourselves?

Frank Schaeffer writes,

“If you want to imagine a face that goes with the words ‘the most marginalized persecuted people on our planet,’ the face is that of a young girl. That face represents tens of millions of people.

Whatever happens to her is the destiny of our species. So goes women’s rights, so goes the species. So goes women’s rights, so goes the well-being of us all.

And it seems to me that all other justice issues, race issues, economic issues, and happiness issues come down to this: How do we treat women?”

Also in his book Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Schaeffer says that laying down the burden of male supremacy was such a relief.

During the pandemic, Schaeffer and his wife Genie began taking care of their grandchildren while their children worked. And he found that “I was happy—in fact, insanely happy—at being stuck at home with my wife and three youngest grandchildren.” He left behind and began to heal from much of his domineering qualities that had been trained into him as a male.

“It is how we treat people that is our true legacy, not job title, money, or fame. It turns out that taking time to do something with my [grandchildren] was more important to the future of the world (as it were) than most of the ‘big important things’ I was trying to do.”

Learning to treat each other well is the greatest calling for each of us. As God loves us, we’re to love each other.

Boys, men, and just as much, girls and women.

Share in the comments.

My thanks to NetGalley + HCI Books for
the review copy of Fall in Love, Have Children

Watching for Breath

By LisaNotes March 7, 2022 Encouragement 17 Comments

Henry has been asleep in the baby crib for 30 minutes already. The house is quiet for his morning nap.

I crack open the bedroom door, just wide enough to gaze at his 9-month-old body, all curled up in a ball.

I watch silently at the door.

Henry is Jenna’s son, my baby’s baby. But shouldn’t it still be Jenna, my little girl, in that same crib? It was only days ago, wasn’t it?

I do the math. It’s actually been over 9,000 days since Jenna last slept in the crib.

Life never stands still. Each day brings change. Change. Change. The changes never stop coming, day after day after day.

I remember peeking in to watch Jenna sleep, too, when she was a baby. And Morgan before her.

But this morning as I babysit my grandson, I catch my breath for a split second as I realize what I’m doing: I’m watching for Henry’s little chest to heave up and down, just a smidgen, as assurance of his breathing on my watch, just as I used to watch my own little girls when they were sleeping babies.

Whew. Henry takes another breath. Of course he does.

I close the door. I take another breath, too.

I feel reassured.

Maybe some things don’t change after all.

Did you watch your babies breathing, too? Share in the comments.

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