Author

Lois Flowers

Loving Our Spiritual Siblings

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

When Molly was in fourth grade, I would go to her school once a week to have lunch with her. The friend she often chose to sit with us at the parent table—her best friend at the time—would often ask me the same question.

“Are Lilly and Molly sisters?”

Patiently I would explain that my daughters were born at different times and in different places in China, but they are sisters now. My words seemed to satisfy her, at least until the next time I came for lunch.

The fact of the matter is that Lilly and Molly are sisters because they have the same set of parents—me and Randy. They did nothing to become sisters. But because we adopted both of them, that’s what they are.

I don’t think about the fact that my daughters are adopted very often. This is the only path toward parenthood that I’ve experienced, and I can’t imagine my family any other way.

I know the scriptures contain weighty spiritual metaphors relating to adoption, but I don’t feel like I have any greater insight into how all that works because I am an adoptive mom. How God chooses and calls the children who end up in His family is largely a mystery to me.

I do know this, however. We are God’s children because He is our Father. Not because of anything we did or anything we brought to the relationship. He adopted us into His family because He loved us first.

Randy and I did a lot to get Lilly and Molly—filled out piles of paperwork, paid many fees, spent years waiting. But God did exponentially more to provide a way for us to become His children.

When we accept His free gift of salvation, available to us through Jesus’ death on the cross, we become part of His eternal family. But, like Lilly and Molly when they joined our family, we don’t get to choose our spiritual siblings.

My girls have always been close, but they go through their cantankerous phases. When they’re busy pushing each others buttons, getting annoyed at each other, or just not being very kind, I have a simple response.

“Be nice to each your sister,” I’ll say. “She’s the only one you have.”

Perhaps there’s a spiritual analogy here as well. We may prefer not to admit this, but as Christians, we sometimes go through phases where we don’t like each other very much. We may disagree with each other, annoy each other or judge each other unfairly.

We may be as different from our fellow believers as my daughters are from each other. We may think we have absolutely nothing in common (apart from the gift of grace we’ve all received), and maybe we are right.

But our heavenly Father still calls us to be patient with each other. To be kind to one another. To look out for each other’s best interests, even ahead of our own.

This is how people know we are His children—by the way we love our brothers and sisters.

♥ Lois

We are God’s children because He is our Father. Share on X God adopted us into His family because He loved us first. Share on X

 

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What I’m Grateful for this Mother’s Day

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

I’ve thought a lot about what I might want to say in a blog post the week before this particular Mother’s Day. If you’ve been following along here in recent months, you know that I’ve devoted a lot of words to what’s been going on with my mom these past months and how it has impacted my life and my heart.

While I’ve been writing about my mom, though, I’ve also been living my own life as a mom—in a year that held more changes for my girls than most in recent history.

When the academic year began, I was driving Lilly to ballet class nearly every day after school. Now she drives herself home from track practice after school.

Quitting dance was a huge decision for her, one that has allowed her to focus more on academics, spend more time with friends and be more active in her church youth group. And driving has opened up all kinds of freedom and opportunities, including a summer job (her first) that starts in a few weeks.

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Sailing Under Sealed Orders

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

When it comes to packing for vacations, my daughter Molly is planner. She makes multiple lists and checks them twice (sometimes more). She plans for every eventuality. If the other members of the family forget something, we automatically turn to her because we know she probably has exactly what we need in her suitcase.

While I have never listed individual pairs of socks on a packing list, I can relate to Molly’s penchant for planning. I like charts and spreadsheets. I like to be prepared, well in advance. As I wrote last week, I like to know what’s coming and what to expect.

This approach is helpful when it comes to getting ready for a big trip or some other expected life event. It certainly made life easier when we were putting together the paperwork for our international adoptions, not to mention each time we went to China to get our daughters.

The problem with this way of doing things, though, is that it can easily morph into rigidity and inflexibility. A person can get so used to having everything planned out that adjusting when those plans change suddenly is extremely stressful, maybe even impossible.

This was certainly true for me, until God accelerated His divine work of stretching in my life.

The last couple of years have been teaching me what it means to drop and roll—to drop what I’m doing and roll with whatever needs to happen next, that is. It hasn’t been easy, and I am still very much a work in progress. But I’ve started to become more comfortable with not knowing what’s around the next corner, to taking things as they come.

What’s happened around here—especially since last summer—reminds me of a military practice I heard of once called “sailing under sealed orders.”

Before leaving port, the captain of a ship is given an envelope that contains a specific set of latitude and longitude coordinates. The ship sails to this spot in the ocean, and then the captain radios the commander for the next set of coordinates. Neither he nor his crew has any idea where they are going; they simply follow orders from point to point until they reach their final destination.

Sound familiar? We might not be sailing Navy ships across a deep blue sea, but spiritually speaking, we’re definitely sailing under sealed orders. As much as we may like to plan the journey of our lives from start to finish—or at least from middle to old age, in my case—that job ultimately belongs to Someone else.

It’s true, what the Book of Proverbs says. “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps” (16:19), and, “We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall.” (16:33, NLT)

If you had told me a year ago what parts of my daily schedule would look like now, I would have scratched my head in bewilderment. It’s not that what I do every day is so bizarre or difficult; it’s not. It’s just very different than it used to be in some pretty significant ways—ways that I never could have predicted.

Sailing under sealed orders is no longer military theory to me; it’s become real life. And what I’m learning, as I go from one set of coordinates to another, is that God is faithful. He is infinitely trustworthy. He has a plan—for me, for my loved ones, for the world—that is far more intricate and complex than my little brain could ever comprehend.

Even when I think I’m acting in the best interests of others, my plans are often self motivated and self serving. But God’s plans are perfect. If they were not, they would contradict His very character. Every piece fits together. Every hurt, every pain, every delay and every setback has a place and a purpose.

He doesn’t require that we understand all this, as if that were even humanly possible. He simply asks that we trust Him for the next step.

♥ Lois

What I’m learning, as I go from one set of coordinates to another, is that God is faithful. Share on X God’s plans are perfect. If they were not, they would contradict His very character. Share on X

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Coffee for Your Heart, Chasing Community, Faith on Fire, Fresh Market Friday, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.

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Made to Brave the Unknown (A Guest Post)

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

I never read a novel from front to back. I usually skim the ending first, and then, as I’m going along in the book, I often flip to later chapters so I can see how the situation I’m currently reading about is going to turn out.

This drives my loved ones crazy, but I just want to know what to expect. Good or bad, I like to know how things are going to turn out.

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When God Gives You a Chance to Love Better

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016 (although in retrospect, we can see she had likely been on that path for at least a couple of years).

That summer, she broke her wrist very badly, which really accelerated her decline. Then last June, a bad fall in the shower landed her in the hospital, then rehab, then long-term care.

When I got behind the podium to speak at my church’s Christmas Tea a few months ago, it would have made sense for me to elaborate on how God has answered our prayers for healing, and all the many ways He has made His presence known to our family this past year.

Instead, I felt compelled to talk about the miracle God did in my own heart before my mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis was even confirmed to us. As I wrote last week, the topic didn’t address the tea’s “Home for Christmas” theme exactly how I had envisioned, and not everything I said portrayed me in the best of lights.

But none of that mattered. I knew this was what I had to share.

• • • 

I’ve always had a good relationship with my mom. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t strained—it was fine.

In the 12 years we’ve lived fairly close to my parents, though, I didn’t spend as much time with her as I could or should have. I used to get irritated or frustrated with her about petty things. I didn’t always set a good example for my girls when it came to adult mother-daughter relationships.

In recent years, my interactions with her were marred by a lack of understanding about what was happening to her as well as my long-time expectations of how I wanted her to respond to me and listen to me.

I don’t think this is uncommon among mothers and daughters. I see now that my mom loved me well in ways I either didn’t appreciate or had no feel for at the time.

Even so, after she broke her wrist and her decline became more noticeable, all these thoughts and feelings began to weigh heavily on me. Guilt, regret and anxiety about what was happening to her piled up. I felt helpless and didn’t know how to fix any of it.

The tipping point came around Thanksgiving of that year. As I read Ann Voskamp’s book The Broken Way, lines like this jumped off the pages and landed straight in my heart:

• “The best way to say you love is always time. The best time to love is always now.”

• “This is what dying to live means: You love as much as you are willing to be inconvenienced.”

• “Sometimes it helps in the moment to think: people aren’t being difficult—they are having difficulty.”

I felt something shift in me as I processed these words. It was as if all my expectations of how I wanted my mom to love me simply evaporated, and I just decided I was going to do my best to show love to her.

I can’t explain how this happened, and I can’t take one ounce of credit for it. All I can say is this: When God breaks a chain, it’s a gift of pure grace.

I realize that the healing or restoration of relationships often requires time, forgiveness and maybe even counseling. But I don’t think we have to wait for all this to learn to love differently.

Maybe, instead of clinging to our expectations of how we want the people in our lives to interact with us, we can look around and truly see those people—even the difficult ones—and do our best to make them feel loved and valued.

Sometimes, you don’t know how much someone loves you until all your expectations of what that love should look like are gone. But even if that doesn’t happen, unconditional love (as 1 Corinthians 12:31 describes it) is always the better way.

When I was putting these thoughts on paper in preparation for my talk, I frequently felt totally inadequate and unqualified to share what I felt I was supposed to say. The last thing I wanted to do was put anyone on a guilt trip or fill people with more regret than they already had.

Instead, I somehow wanted to communicate that what God gave me that Thanksgiving Day—and what He offers to us today—is simply this: the opportunity for a fresh start.

We can’t revise the past. We can’t get back any time we’ve wasted. We can’t undo anything that’s been done. We can’t make anyone act a certain way. We can’t fix anyone or bring anyone back.

What we can do, though, is make the most of the time we have now. To repeat Ann Voskamp: “The best way to say you love is always time. The best time to love is always now.”

God is in the business of changing hearts, there’s no doubt about that. But when you let go of your expectations of how you want other people to love you, there’s always the possibility that the heart that changes might not be your loved one’s.

It might be yours.

• • • 

Next week, I’ll explain what happened next, and how God gave us precious opportunities to spend time with my mom during her last few weeks living at home. I hope you come back to read the rest of this story. And if you have a sister or friend who might be encouraged by this post, I’d love for you to share it with her too.

♥ Lois

When God breaks a chain, it’s a gift of pure grace. Share on X Sometimes, you don't know how much someone loves you until all your expectations of what that love should look like are gone. Share on X

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Coffee for Your Heart, Chasing Community, Faith on Fire, Fresh Market Friday, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.

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