One of the fun things about being a parent of a newly independent driver is getting texts like this in the morning: “Got to school, almost ran over a girl who wasn’t watching where she was going but we both lived. (laughing/crying emoji, praise-hands emoji)”
I know. This is how they learn.
Driving alone, near-misses, maybe even some actual bumps and scrapes here and there. Eventually—hopefully—defensive driving becomes second nature.
The transition from summer to fall seems to take an awfully long time around here. The kids go back to school in mid August, which totally makes it seem like the new season is upon us. But then the thermometer keeps climbing back up over 90 with a frustrating degree of regularity, which makes it seem like summer is never going to end.
(Can you guess which one of the four seasons is not my favorite?)
Even though it officially won’t be fall for another couple of weeks, it is time for my quarterly list of seasonal learnings. So here we go:
• Sometimes, you just have to pack up and go to Iowa. (Or wherever it is that refreshes your spirit and rejuvenates your soul.)
As I shared here and here, before, the girls and I have been trekking north to visit my college roommate Rachel and her family every summer for several years. This year, Lilly’s first real job promised to keep her very busy and I wasn’t sure if our annual trip to the farm was going to happen.
Rachel understood when I emailed her about this disappointing possibility, but she also added this: “I know you personally need the rest and relaxation of Iowa, so I hope we can get it on the schedule.”
Even so, as the summer wore on, I pretty much resigned myself to not going. Then, happily, a hole opened in our calendar that looked a lot like Iowa.
We spent the early part of August in the Hawkeye State, first among the cornfields at Rachel’s farm and then at my younger sister’s historic home about an hour from Des Moines.
Turns out, Rachel was right. I did need the rest and relaxation of Iowa, much more than I previously realized.
• Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
Due to the extreme heat and lack of rain we experienced in June and July, my flowerbeds have really struggled this summer. Perennials that normally grow so much they have to be cut back at least once or twice have sort of just languished, and some have even died out completely.
I walk around the perimeter of my yard and can’t help but feel a bit discouraged. Where I would normally see bushy plants, I see stunted growth. Where there would normally be plants overlapping and growing into each other, I see a lot more mulch-covered ground.
And yet, when I share my feelings with Randy, his answer surprises me.
“Your gardens have never looked better,” he says.
And though I can’t see it, I know he means it.
• If your word for the year is bold, there’s really no way you can justify buying boring frames when you get your first pair of bifocals.
I know—I packed a whole lot of information into that sentence. I’ll let you sort it all out, read between the lines, whatever you want. I will post a picture, though. Not everyone goes for bling on their eyewear, but I think my new frames are pretty awesome.
• Hummingbirds are nature’s tiny joy machines.
We have a feeder on our back deck, right where we can see it from our dining room table. When we first put it out—following the first hummingbird sighting we’ve had in several years—we couldn’t wait for our first little visitor to appear.
It’s been several weeks, and the fascination still hasn’t worn off. Whenever one of us catches a glimpse of fluttering wings in our peripheral vision, conversation around the table stops for a minute and we just sit there and watch nature unfold.
• When people inspire us, we need to tell them.
Last week, Lilly ran her first cross-country race. It was hot and she was nervous. But she finished strong and improved her time over her earlier runs.
I was proud of her because I’m her mom and I’ve always loved to watch her run, but also because running two miles in front of an audience is not something I could ever do.
The next morning on the treadmill, I got to the point where I just wanted to quit. I had been sick earlier in the week and missed a few days of exercise, which always sets me back.
But every time I thought about stopping before my time goal, I thought of Lilly running her race. If she can run for two miles, surely I can run for two more minutes, I instructed myself.
So I kept going. Afterwards, I told her. “You inspired me to keep going, even though I really wanted to stop,” I said.
Seeing her face light up when she heard my words made me realize yet again the power of encouragement. It really is a gift that never stops giving.
There’s my list. Now what did you learn this summer?
♥ Lois
When people inspire us, we need to tell them. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Emily Freeman, Let’s Have Coffee, Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.
Last week, my blogger friend Linda took the concept of a birthday list to a whole new level.
Instead of sharing a collection of items she would love to receive from her family and friends when she turned 63, she perused her blog archives and came up with, as she described them, “63 random quotes from the past five years”—all of which contain the words “love” or “I love …” in some form or fashion.
It was my daughter Molly’s favorite joke when she was small.
“Knock, knock,” she’d say.
“Who’s there?” we’d answer.
“I am,” she’d reply.
“I am who?” we’d respond.
“You don’t know who you are?” she’d ask, throwing her head back and laughing heartily at the ridiculousness of this thought.
Our family has had a lot of fun with this silly question over the years. But last fall, it become more than the punch line of a knock-knock joke for me.
I’ve loved my role as a stay-at-home mom, but I always figured I’d ramp my freelance writing and editing work back up as my girls grew older and more independent. As time has gone by, however, I haven’t put a whole lot of effort into those plans.
Around Thanksgiving, though, after Lilly decided to quit ballet and my long-time job of shuttling her to dance class most days after school ended, I really started wondering what I’m going to do next. And in the process of wondering that, I also started questioning—perhaps for the first time in my adult life—who I am.
Maybe you can relate. You devote a huge portion of your energy—and possibly most of your waking minutes in those early years—to taking care of your children: feeding them, helping them with homework, driving them places, praying for them, worrying about them, trying to teach them every last one of the life and relational skills they’ll need to function as responsible human beings.
Then they reach middle school or high school and suddenly it seems as if they don’t need you anymore.
They do still need you, of course—just not as often, or as regularly, or in all the same ways. Their neediest phases, which often arrive without warning, are intense. But then they sort of dissipate, and life goes on until the next “crisis” happens.
This season of life, I’m learning, requires a different sort of mothering. It takes much more emotional energy, but not necessarily as much time.
What to do with those “extra” hours is, of course, what started this whole internal conversation in the first place. But, to repeat the punchline from Molly’s joke, it’s hard to know what to do next if you don’t know who you are.
Layer on all the complexities that come from being smack-dab in the middle of the Sandwich Generation, and this is where I’ve found myself these last many months—picking my way through some kind of midlife identity crisis that I was totally not expecting.
I’m a fairly confident person, secure in what I’m good at and also OK with what I’m not. But as I thought about projects I’ve put off and talents I’ve neglected, the doubts started creeping in.
What if I can’t do this anymore? What if it’s too late for me to make a difference with my writing? What if I don’t have anything left to say? What if I don’t even want to anymore?
The questions didn’t stop there, however. As I’ve thought about how my girls, now 13 and 16, have grown and changed, I can’t help but wonder what I could or should have done differently when they were smaller. I think about what our relationships will look like going forward. I lament all the time I’ve wasted.
Thankfully, what I’m finding is that these issues (and many more that I haven’t even mentioned) have a way of settling themselves out. It takes time, certainly. It might require counseling, or at least a few older friends who are wise, empathetic and willing to listen.
But midlife crises don’t last forever. We can choose to stay stuck in guilt, confusion and regret, or we can look ahead with a fresh appreciation of the preciousness of time and a renewed urgency about callings that are still there, waiting for us to answer them.
I’d love to end this post with an uplifting conclusion, to confidently echo Julian of Norwich’s reassurance that “all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
I’m not there yet, but I’m closer to being there than I’ve been in many months. If you find yourself at some point along a similar path, here are some realizations that have helped me so far.
• We’re not alone in this.
Last February, at a church conference designed for women from all generations, Lilly and I sat at a table with some of her friends and their mothers. When the questions I had been pondering came up in conversation with these women, they both knew exactly what I meant when I talked about not knowing who I was in this season of life.
It was a relief just to talk about it with someone who understood.
Countless other women have faced this, figured it out somehow and gone on to lead fulfilling lives for however long they have left. We will too.
• Midlife identity crises are not without purpose.
We may not be able to see it all clearly right now. But I believe that God uses these periods of sometimes-uncomfortable reflecting to clarify what He wants us to do—and, more importantly, who He wants us to be—going forward.
• Despite the uncertainty, this is a good season.
It’s wonderful to watch our children in the process of becoming who they are, to catch glimpses and sometimes full-on pictures of how God has wired them. Their lives stretch ahead of them, full of unknowns and exciting possibilities.
In many ways, though, so do ours. And I can’t wait to see what happens next—for all of us.
♥ Lois
Countless other women have faced this, figured it out somehow and gone on to lead fulfilling lives. We will too. Share on XThe imagery is in our songs and catch phrases, this idea of being “on fire” for God. I don’t know when it first became popular in Christian circles—maybe during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s, maybe some other time.
Intertwining fire with faith not a new idea, of course. The disciples on the road to Emmaus said they felt their “hearts burning” as Jesus explained the scriptures to them (Luke 24:32). When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, tongues of fire rested on the disciples (Acts 2:2-4).
The Bible also speaks often of the “refiner’s fire”—the work of God that tests and shapes our faith and character. And God Himself is described as “a consuming fire” in Hebrews 12:29.
Even so, none of these have to do with that passionate, “on-fire” feeling frequently associated with youth camps and mountaintop experiences. I’m not denying such feelings exist—they’re real, valid and sometimes life-changing. But because they’re not necessarily sustainable, not having them can often be a source of guilt.
Don’t get me wrong: Heart-felt devotion to Jesus is important. Revelation 3:16 talks about the danger of letting our faith becoming lukewarm, rather than being hot or cold. And Romans 12:11-12 gives us some pretty detailed instructions about how to avoid this condition: “Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive. Serve the Lord. When you hope, be joyful. When you suffer, be patient. When you pray, be faithful.” (NIRV)
Unfortunately, what is sometimes overlooked in conversations about having fires in our hearts—or, as other translations put it, being “fervent in spirit”—is that there is no one-size-fits all approach to this. So many things factor into the equation of how we worship, how we speak and write about our faith, how we serve, how we read the Bible and how we relate to God individually.
Upbringing, personality and season of life all play a role, some larger than others.
For example, although I get pretty excited about certain topics, activities and people, I don’t know that I’ve ever used the words on fire to describe myself—about anything, really. It’s just not how I’m wired.
I’m usually OK with this, but sometimes my perspective needs a little tweaking. During one of those seasons in the wilderness when the best I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, I came to a simple realization: A lack of spiritual energy doesn’t mean you’re dead. It might just mean you’re tired.
Feelings come and feelings go, don’t they? We may feel like we’re “on fire” for God today; we may not tomorrow.
What matters most—when we’re slogging through a long drought of the soul or enjoying an amazingly fruitful season—is that we’re working on our relationship with God just like we work on any other relationship that is important to us—with consistency, purpose and diligence.
As Eugene Peterson explains in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, this process is what results in deeper intimacy with God:
“We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it,” he writes. “But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.”
It’s counterintuitive, for sure. But it is worth the effort—especially over the long haul.
♥ Lois
A lack of spiritual energy doesn’t mean you’re dead. It might just mean you’re tired. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Let’s Have Coffee, Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.
We’ve had a bit of a break this past week, but overall, it’s been unseasonably hot and dry around here this summer. This is typical Kansas weather for July and early August. But when the temperatures soar, the grass goes dormant and the rain clouds disappear in June, it can be downright discouraging.
That’s why an unexpected rainstorm that blew in a couple weekends ago was such a relief, physically and emotionally. You don’t realize how parched you are from the oppressive heat and lack of moisture in the air until the heavens open and dump out an inch of rain on a Saturday afternoon.