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Highway to the … Comfort Zone?

Oct9

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes without heavy editing on a one-word prompt. Today’s prompt is “comfortable.” Let’s see how it goes.

When our daughter was little, she said to us one time, “Why do we even have a comfort zone if we’re just supposed to get out of it?”

What a great question! I like to be comfortable. I don’t like sleeping in places that have strange smells or are dirty (besides camping, but that’s a whole other discussion). I like to feel cozy and have a nice view and have things around me I love.

Like my family.

Recently, said daughter, our youngest child, moved out. I don’t like hearing the empty echo of her room now devoid of all her stuff. I haven’t yet cried because we’ve been busy helping her settle in (and she is close by and will come for family dinner once a week), but this event has brought up the dichotomy between being comfortable and spreading your wings.

Fledging is supposed to happen, both for birds and for children. Unless there are extenuating circumstances of disabilites and the like, we want our kids to find their own way in the world. Not that they are all alone in the process, but that they establish their independence and learn how they want to be in their own space.

I’ve been so thankful for the soft (dare I say comfortable?) landing spot God has given my daughter. She found a great fulltime job just a few months after graduating from college, and now she’s got a living situation in a house with three other women that she already immensely enjoys. She’s right across the street from her office, and she’s 15 minutes away from us.

I never gave a thought to how my mom felt when I moved out of my parents’ house. If she were still alive today, I would apologize profusely for not considering how my move affected her. It was an exciting time of new beginnings for me 40 years ago, and it’s a new beginning for my daughter today.

Fly, precious little birdie. You’re going to be just fine.

Decision Fatigue is a Real Thing

May1

This post is part of the 5-minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes on a one-word prompt and see what happens. No heavy editing, just writing. You can see all the posts from this week on the link up. Here’s what I came up with today with the prompt “decision.”

We have had so many decisions to make over the past, well, year probably. Just about a year ago we had to make the heartbreaking decision to release our beloved kitty Stella to cross the rainbow bridge. We also have her twin sister, Luna, and it tore us apart to watch Stella fail very quickly in just under a week.

But our latest round of decisions was so much harder. Every day there seemed to be some life-altering choice that needed to be made regarding my mother-in-law’s hospital stay. First, should she even go to the hospital? Then came the harder decisions of what kind of treatment would be best? What about rehab? What place? Is she actually getting better? What happens if she is able to go home? And then, when things went further downhill, the questions became Would she want to be on a ventilator? How long do we let this go on?

Ultimately, the hardest decision was to stop all treatment when the future would look like her being hooked up to machines.

And then, just four days after her passing peacefully in the night, my sister-in-law had a heart attack. The decisions her sons had to make for their 63-year-old mom, who previously had been healthy except for some painful foot issues, wrecked us. The ultimate decision to stop life support after learning her brain damage was massive and irreversible left everyone completely drained.

And then we had to plan their service. A myriad more decisions laid in front of us.

Decision fatigue may not be a clinical diagnosis, but those of us who have experienced it know the emotional and physical effects it can have. As we turn the page into a new month, now six weeks removed from our loved ones actual deaths, we focus on rest. There are still some decisions to be made regarding probate and all that, but we’re all together. We can lean on each other and share the load.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2, ESV)

Run for the Hills!

Sep15

This post is part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes on a one-word prompt with no heavy editing. Today’s prompt is “escape.”

In a few days my family is escaping still-hot Orlando and heading to the mountains of North Carolina. My daughter’s golden birthday (turning 21 on the 21st) became a good excuse to get away as just the 5 of us. It’s been a long time since that’s happened. The last time we all went anywhere together for a few days was my 60th birthday, almost 2 years ago. But we had my eldest’s son and my husband’s mother with us that time.

Our little family’s first trip to North Carolina in 2003. Dad is taking the picture.

This time, it’s just us.

None of my kids are married, and my son shares custody of our grandson, so it was fairly easy to make arrangements to go. A couple of missed shifts at work will be a bit of a financial hit, but both my working sons didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

The last time we went on a trip together was around the country in 2012.

Every once in a while, you just need an escape. If you have the financial means—and we’re very grateful we do at this point in our lives—getting away can be soul-saving.

We’ve been dealing with a lot of loss the past several years. From my father-in-law’s sudden passing 2 years ago, to close friends moving far away, to the sudden resignation of our lead pastor that threw our beloved church into turmoil, to many little stressors in between, we’ve been wrecked.

The mountains are calling, and we must go.

 I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:1-2 (ESV)

Quick to Listen

Jun2

This post is part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes on a one-word prompt and see what happens. Today’s prompt is “quick.”

 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires
(James 1:19-20, NIV).

We all want to be heard. That’s a very common and universal human trait. But sometimes, putting words out there can be scary. There are many times when I will type out a comment on someone’s post online and then backspace, backspace, backspace. I just know that what I said will cause someone to say something in return that is unkind.

I don’t need that kind of negativity. Better that I leave my thoughts unsaid online.

When Jesus’ brother James wrote his letter to the scattered tribes, he wrote to them about their behavior. He wrote about not just hearing the word, but doing it.

He wrote about being humble.

Photo by Tomas Anunziata on Pexels.com

I am often guilty of not being an active listener—listening carefully, asking questions, not just waiting for my chance to give my opinion. That’s not humility. That’s thinking that what I have to say is more important.

It’s like when I’m driving down a road with a double yellow line and someone decides to pass me going way over the speed limit.

They certainly weren’t caring about me or anyone else on the road. They were self-important and just wanted to get where they were going more quickly.

I am determined to not be that kind of driver in conversations, just running over people’s words to get where I want the conversation to go.

Quick to listen. Slow to speak.

Cast Your Cares

Mar5

This post is a part of the 5-minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes on a one-word prompt and see what happens. No heavy editing allowed. As today’s word is “carry,” I thought it would be appropriate to share an excerpt from my recently published book, Cast Your Cares: A 40-Day Journey to Find Rest for Your Soul, which released on March 8. This excerpt is from chapter 2, “The Practice of Casting Your Cares.”

Trying to cast your cares on God is like playing with a boomerang. You throw it as hard as you can only to have it come right back to you. That’s the object with a boomerang, but it’s frustrating when this happens with our cares and concerns. We want to throw them to God, and we don’t want them back.

First Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Just cast all the things you are worried about onto the strong shoulders of the almighty God. Sounds peaceful, relieving, and restful, doesn’t it? But what does it look like? How do we practice casting our cares on him?

When we give something over to someone else to take care of, we are saying that we give over control, that this is theirs now. Our cares are gone. Off our shoulders. There’s a prayer called the Serenity Prayer that asks God to grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change (to cast our cares on him), the courage to change the things we can (to do what we can to address the cares), and the wisdom to
know the difference.

It’s often this last part that causes the majority of our trouble. But we worry less when we seek God’s help, asking for his wisdom to reveal what we might do to change or accept the situation.

So when your teenager keeps making bad decisions, you pray and ask God to help you release that child to him. And when the desire overwhelms you to constantly check where they are, or to worry about who they’re with, or to question them when they get home, you take a deep breath and release that worry. They are in God’s hands. Ask God to give you wisdom for how to respond to your child. Ask that he bring friends into your teen’s life who will influence them to make better choices, who will build them up rather than tear them down. You might have to do this over and over again, but keep turning your worry over to God. As you do, his peace will fill your heart.

Or maybe you’re concerned about an aging parent’s health. Perhaps you see them struggling with memory issues or the ability to take care of themselves. Even as you might make decisions to get them the care they need, you find yourself burdened by the load of your care. And so you pray and give that care into the hands of not only your heavenly Father but also their heavenly Father. Each time the knot of
worry pulls tightly on your stomach, take a deep breath and remind yourself of how much their heavenly Father cares for them. The burden is not yours to carry.

Quite frankly, we can’t take care of everything by ourselves. We were never meant to do that. Instead, our loving God desires us to come to him with all our shattered dreams, disillusionment, dashed hopes, and fears. He waits for us.

Remember that what feels like such turmoil within you doesn’t even stir the waters of God’s great love for you. Your anxieties don’t faze him.

Because God is so big and so powerful, those concerns aren’t too heavy for him. Let God have them because he cares for you. Remember, he knows the future, including your future, and his plans for you are good. Cast those cares.

Excerpted from Cast Your Cares: A 40-Day Journey to Find Rest for Your Soul (Zondervan, 2022)