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Lois Flowers

Narnia 2: The C.S. Lewis Quote that Changed My Life

by Lois Flowers April 21, 2015

by Lois Flowers

Have you ever read anything in a book, aside from the Bible, that changed your life? Or at least, completely altered your perspective on something in your life?

I have a feeling, if we were all together in a room, this question would generate some amazing discussion. Every person would have a different answer, and every answer would have a story behind it.

While you think about yours, let me share mine.

It has to do with the comparison trap—that all-to-common tendency to focus on other people and what they have that we lack, or the ease with which they seem to get what we want. This peace-robbing, contentment-stealing hazard has popped up here and there throughout my life, but it was especially pervasive when I was struggling with infertility.

It was often difficult to see pregnant women and babies, hear pregnancy announcements, listen to moms discuss all matters relating to childbirth, walk past the baby section at Wal-Mart or sit through child-dedication services at church without getting solidly stuck in the comparison trap.

For awhile, anyway.

Then I stumbled across something in my favorite book series that made me look at pregnant women differently. And, as Robert Frost so famously penned, that has made all the difference—with those comparisons as well as in other situations where this insidious hazard threatens to snag me.

The life-altering passage I’m talking about is from The Horse and His Boy. The third book in the Chronicles of Narnia, it which traces the adventures of a little orphan named Shasta, an aristocratic runaway named Aravis, and two talking horses as they attempt to travel back to Narnia.

I was reading the book with Randy, and we had come to the part where Shasta finally meets Aslan. Shasta encounters Aslan on a foggy mountain path, but because he can’t see the lion, he doesn’t know what he is. But when he feels Aslan’s warm breath on his hand and face, he relaxes a bit and begins to share his litany of sorrows.

He tells how he had been orphaned at a young age and raised by a stern fisherman. How he had then escaped. How he and his companions had been pursued by lions at least twice, and how one lion had actually gotten to Aravis and wounded her. He tells about all the other dangers they have faced on their journey to Narnia. And he also tells about their trek through the desert and how terribly hungry and thirsty and exhausted he is.

“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.

“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.

“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.

“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and—”

“There was only one: but he was swift of foot.”

“How do you know?”

“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”

“It was I.”

“But what for?”

“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your own story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

This conversation—especially the part about the lion pushing the boat—has taken on even greater meaning for me and Randy since we adopted Lilly and Molly. I simply cannot get through it without choking up.

But back in our pre-adoption days, it was the last two sentences that grabbed our attention and wouldn’t let go.

“I am telling you your own story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

That, right there, is the life-changing quote I told you about last week, the one that is displayed center stage above my kitchen sink.

When I read these 18 words to Randy, a huge light bulb went on in our minds. The message was clear: The things that happen in the lives of other people are part of “their story,” and it is neither our responsibility nor our business to know why God allows them to happen.

Ouch.

And yet, what a relief!

The pressure’s gone. I’m off the hook. I really can live my life and trust that God is directing my steps, without continually getting bent out of shape by comparing myself to someone else.

Of course, it takes a lot of discipline to do this. I basically have to mentally separate myself from what’s going on in other people’s lives and recognize that what is happening to them has nothing to do with me.

The fact that my friend, neighbor or the stranger at Target has a new job (or a fancy car, great health, a zillion blog followers, perfectly behaved children, no mortgage or whatever) and I don’t does not mean that she has God’s blessing on her life and I don’t. It simply means that God’s plan for her right now includes that thing, and His plan for me right now does not.

That’s her story, not mine.

It’s a mantra I repeat over and again when the comparison trip threatens, even now, about things that have nothing to do with babies or pregnancy.

I also find it helpful to remember that just because other people sometimes seem to get what I want so easily, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their lives are perfect. The truth is that we simply don’t see other people’s lives through their eyes; we only see them from the outside. There’s always more to any given situation than meets the eye, and when we compare ourselves to someone else without having all the facts, we’re only hurting ourselves.

That’s their story, not mine.

I’ll be honest. Thinking like this is much easier said than done. But I’ve found that when I’m able to do it, it’s a very effective way to stay (or get) out of the comparison trap.

It keeps me from becoming (or remaining) bitter, jealous, resentful or depressed when someone else has what I want. Even better, it enables me to be able to rejoice with those who rejoice—and truly mean it.

♥ Lois

A few more things: I can’t end this little Narnia series without telling my favorite anecdote about how this story has impacted my life, so check back next Tuesday for the conclusion.

Also, parts of this post have been adapted from my book, Infertility: Finding God’s Peace in the Journey (Harvest House, 2003), available here. The Narnia passage comes from The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis (HarperCollins Publishers, 1982).

April 21, 2015 22 comments

Narnia Part 1: The Power of a Great Quote

by Lois Flowers April 14, 2015

by Lois Flowers

I love a good quote. When I find one I especially like, I add it to my email signature so observant readers can enjoy it, too. In recent months, I’ve closed out emails with the following thoughts:

“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” (Theodore Roethke)

“When one loves, one does not calculate.” (St. Terese de Lisieux)

These days, my signature line features a new quote, one that I don’t plan to replace anytime soon. It’s a statement by Francois Mauriac, a French Catholic writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952.

“If you would tell me the heart of a man,” he said, “tell me not what he reads but what he rereads.”

I ran across this quote in Light from Heaven, the ninth book in Jan Karon’s Mitford Years series. It immediately brought to mind another series that, if you believe Mauriac, reveals my heart like nothing else—the Chronicles of Narnia.

Have I reread these seven delightful children’s books by C.S. Lewis? Again and again. And mostly as an adult.

I think I read the series for the first time when I was about 13. I didn’t really get into fantasy or science fiction when I was a kid (I still don’t, actually), so Narnia—what with the traveling between worlds, talking animals, unicorns and such—didn’t make much of an impression on me.

I don’t remember what made me pick them up again later. At some point, I bought a nice boxed set of the series from the Crossings book club, and maybe I felt a little guilty just letting that purchase collect dust on a bookshelf.

Whatever the case, the next time I started reading about Narnia, I couldn’t stop. Since then, I’ve gone through the whole series four or five more times. A few years into our marriage, Randy and I read them together out loud. Once we had children, we read them out loud again—first to Lilly, then to both girls.

Our latest go round, which we finished up a few months ago, was for Molly. She was too little to remember much from the last time we read the books as a family, and I wanted to introduce her to all my friends from Narnia.

She resisted at first. She has books she likes and often doesn’t want to read anything else. But I insisted, and it wasn’t long before she was hooked.

She’d sit wide-eyed on the loveseat, leaning up against Randy as he read, hanging on every word. It was beautiful.

I haven’t read much else by C.S. Lewis. I’ve just recently finished The Screwtape Letters, and I’ve never cracked open Mere Christianity.

I don’t know what that says about me. I just know Narnia is where I like to go. Where I wish I could go, actually.

I love the allegory of it all, the story behind the story, the hints of higher truth and deeper meaning. I love all the characters—human and animal alike—but my favorite is Lucy, the youngest Pevensie child who discovered Narnia through the back of that famous wardrobe.

I grew up in Sunday school and church. I had no shortage of knowledge about the Bible, God and Jesus, but to tell you the truth, it was mostly intellectual.

Until I met Lucy, that is.

Watching her interact with the lion Aslan on the pages of these books somehow made Jesus real to me, emotionally. Not that that I imagine Him as a lion, but as I saw the tender and loving way Aslan responds to Lucy, I saw Jesus.

It changed me, deep down.

For our anniversary last year, Randy got me a sheet of Narnia quotations that can be used as wall art. I’m still contemplating where many of them should go, but we have put a few in prominent spots around our house.

Like this one, placed above two matching frames filled with pictures from our adoption trips to China:

“This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

And this one, above a long row of coat hooks in the mudroom:

“Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny.” (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

There’s also one in the kitchen—center stage above the sink—that encapsulates the most life-changing thing I’ve ever read in any book, besides the Bible.

Next week, I’ll write about that quote, the story that comes with it, and the difference it has made in my life.

In the meantime, do you have a favorite quote that you’d like to share? It doesn’t matter who said or wrote it: Dr. Seuss, Theodore Roosevelt, John Wayne, the Apostle Paul—anything goes. Just slip it into the comments section so the rest of us can enjoy it too.

And who knows? Maybe your quote will end up in my email signature some day.

♥ Lois

Photo credit:DG Jones via Compfight

April 14, 2015 22 comments

Author Notes: The Best Book I’ve Read In Years

by Lois Flowers April 7, 2015

by Lois Flowers

Everyone’s taste in reading material is different, so I would never insist that anyone rush out and buy a book just because I think it’s wonderful. I might come close, though, when a book REALLY touches me. If you want to read something that will make you laugh, cry, hurt AND understand, And Life Comes Back by Tricia Lott Williford is for you.

Dear Tricia,

When I first read And Life Comes Back: A Wife’s Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed last summer, I had no blog, nor any concrete plans to start one.

I have one now (obviously), with a sorta-regular feature called Author Notes. And I have been planning to write an Author Note about your book ever since I wrote the first installment of this series last fall.

It hasn’t taken me this long to do this because I am the world’s biggest procrastinator (although arguments for that point could be made rather easily). It’s that your story, as told on your blog and in your book, is so vulnerable, so gut-wrenching AND so well-composed that whenever I think about writing to you, I struggle to put into words what I want to say. It’s impossible for me to do your book justice in one short letter.

Then I remember that the purpose of Author Notes is not to do books justice; it’s to tell authors how much their work means to me. And in the case of your book, that’s easy.

Quite simply, And Life Comes Back is the best book I’ve read in a very long time. I feel a little weird saying that, given the tender subject matter. On one hand, my heart breaks over how you lost your husband Robb suddenly after 10 years of marriage. On the other hand, I am grateful that you bravely plowed through the shock, despair and overwhelming sadness to write a book that surely will be a source of comfort and hope to other people who have lost loved ones for years to come.

And Life Comes Back shines on several different levels. From a writing standpoint, your voice drew me in and held my attention until the last page. You tell a dramatic story with surprisingly little drama. You don’t overuse adverbs or adjectives, nor do you employ confusing literary devices. You just write what happened—before, during and after Robb died in your arms that December morning more than four years ago—in a way that made me feel almost as if I were there too, watching it all unfold.

Your words are starkly transparent without being self-absorbed or whiny (though it would be perfectly understandable if you had been either). Your spiritual wrestling is blunt and honest, but never disrespectful. As your friend so aptly put it when you completed your rough draft, you truly are “the Queen of Nondenial.”

One of the most touching anecdotes in the book is when you tell about getting a tattoo on your first anniversary after Robb’s death, and the tattoo artist’s reaction to finding out you were a widow. You could have included his colorful language in its entirety; instead, you write what happened in such a way that conveys his “raw authenticity” without unnecessary shock value. That takes a certain maturity, a graciousness of character that you don’t always see in books like this.

The scenes you include from your marriage—the roller coaster of a “reentry” cycle you’d go through when Robb returned from business trips, the time when your “very conservative, private” husband showed the world how much he loved you by dancing in his underwear on your second honeymoon, how every day for two years you recorded things about Robb for which you were thankful—are poignant and intimate, but you never veer into too much information.

It’s as if you wrote every word with the knowledge that your two young sons would be reading your words one day and asking questions. As fellow writer-mom, I appreciate that very much.

I read on the treadmill, usually fiction. I made an exception with your book, and all I have to say is this: It is extremely difficult to run on the treadmill when you are gasping out sobs. Even now, as I’m re-reading sections to make sure I’ve remembered what you wrote correctly, I have to stop from time to time and swallow down the lump that threatens to take over my throat.

Your entire story moved me so much that I asked my husband—who much prefers books about Navy Seals and extreme wilderness survival experiences—to read it. It only took him about two days, and not just because he also has an extensive collection of 1980s contemporary Christian music CDs collecting dust in our basement. (You’ll know what I mean by that, and everyone else will just have to read the book to find out.)

And Life Comes Back could strike fear in the hearts of people like me who have not experienced such great personal trauma. But instead of dwelling on “What if this happens to me?”—a train of thought that is completely paralyzing and unproductive—I try to look at the ways your book has altered my perspective about life and death, love and marriage.

It opened my eyes to what the immediate and longer-term aftermath of this kind of loss is really like. That breaks my heart in so many ways, but it also helps me to be a more empathic friend. In addition, it makes me appreciate and cherish the life I have with my own husband and children. It reminds me to hold them closer, speak to them more kindly and enjoy who they are more fully—one day at a time.

At the risk of sounding flippant, I was almost disappointed when I turned the last page, because I didn’t want the book to end. I wanted to read more, to learn more, to understand more.

Tricia, I am so sorry that Robb died, when and how he did. For your sake, and the sake of your two boys, I wish none of it had happened.

It did, happen, though. And somehow, you’ve managed to open your heart to the world and spill out exactly what the subtitle promises: a story of love, loss and hope reclaimed.

“I have trudged ahead with my eyes open,” you write, “insistent that this wrenching pain would not be wasted.”

It hasn’t been wasted, Tricia. Not one single tear.

P.S. I’m linking up today with Leah Adams at the Loft.

April 7, 2015 20 comments

Song of the Month: “What the Lord Has Done in Me”

by Lois Flowers April 5, 2015

by Lois Flowers

Happy Easter, dear readers!

How wonderful is it that the Song of the Month for April lands on this glorious day? Before I unveil this month’s video, may I suggest that you to go back and watch the very first Song of the Month I posted last November? Your day will be richer for it, I’m sure.

As I thought about a song for today, my heart kept returning to my years of singing in the choir at our former church in Arkansas. That time of my life was marked by lots of waiting, and our Wednesday night choir practices and Sunday mornings up in the choir loft were a consistent source of comfort and encouragement.

To me, nothing says Easter like a song sung by a large church choir, and Hillsong’s “What the Lord Has Done in Me” is one of my all-time favorites.

April 5, 2015 0 comments

What Brought Comfort In the Wilderness

by Lois Flowers March 31, 2015

by Lois Flowers

Awhile back, I told you about my desire to be braver in my writing. I had barely put the finishing touches on that post when I received an email from my pastor asking me to speak in church about a time in my life when God came close.

My first thought (once I got over some initial resistance to the whole idea) was to share something sort of “devotionally.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had just been given an opportunity to practice being more transparent and vulnerable—not just in my writing, but out loud.

Can I just pause right here and say that is NOT what I had in mind when I wrote that post? But I couldn’t escape the timing. God had opened the door, and I had to go through it.

Here’s an edited version of what I shared in church a few weeks ago.

• • • • •

When my daughter Lilly turned three, she began having terrible fits, particularly upon rousing from her long afternoon naps. She’d wake up yelling, crying and sometimes even throwing herself down the hallway.

Nothing I tried helped her snap out of these episodes, so I finally decided she just needed to work through them herself.

I told her I’d be in the living room when she was ready to come to me. Then I sat there and waited as the drama continued, sometimes for 20 minutes or more.

She’d eventually make her way to the living room, and then to where I was, and then to my lap, where I just held her as she cried herself over it.

This was tough. I often wanted to jump out the window to escape the noise. But no matter what Lilly did or said, it didn’t change my love for her one bit. She was acting in accordance with her maturity level—and, I realized later, probably her need for a large afternoon snack—and as much as it frustrated me at times, as her mom, I understood that.

This reminds me of Psalm 103:13-14, which says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.”

Thankfully, Lilly outgrew her after-nap fits. And in the coming years, I was the one who began to experience firsthand what a difference it can make to understand that God knows how we are formed and remembers that we are dust.

As you may know, infertility led us to adopt Lilly and her younger sister, an obvious case of good coming from bad. God answered our prayers for a family in a wonderful way, but the mess inside of me did not go away when I became a mother.

It got worse.

Over the course of several years, out-of-whack hormones took me on a roller-coaster ride of emotional and mental symptoms. Sometimes, I was perfectly fine. But other times I was anxious. Depressed. Irritable. I had difficulty seeing things as they really were. I was exhausted and overwhelmed—a lot.

All these symptoms were internal. They weren’t necessarily obvious to anyone else, besides those in my house. As far as external circumstances were concerned, there were lots of happy times, many good memories. My family was an anchor.

But there was also a lot of change. Big change.

Logistically, practically everything about where we lived and what I was doing had changed since the days when I would wait for Lilly to arrive in the living room. And many of these things didn’t just change once!

Change is not my favorite under ideal circumstances, and the internal struggles didn’t help at all.

I didn’t always handle things well. I didn’t always respond well to those I love the most.

I’m not making excuses. I was responsible for my reactions and actions, but during that season of my life, I was powerless to eliminate the problem.

I think of this time as my “long drought of the soul.”

During those years, I found hope in the Psalm I mentioned earlier. The fact of the matter is that God made me so He knows my physical weaknesses. He also understands my limitations and my finite understanding of what’s going on around me and in me.

Yes, He wants me to trust Him completely. And yes, He’s saddened when I don’t. But in His grace and mercy, my heavenly Father has compassion on me when I start acting like a spiritual preschooler. Or when the circumstances of my life get to be almost more than I think I can stand.

Knowing that gave me comfort.

Through these years, I prayed a lot. I have files and files where I poured out my heart to God on the computer. Despite the dryness, despite my inability to write much of anything else, I kept up the discipline of prayer. Going through the motions is not a negative thing—sometimes it’s the only thing.

I prayed often to be healed. That God would take away this thorn in my flesh. Balance things inside. Jesus had done it for the woman who touched the hem of His garment; He could do it for me.

But He didn’t. At least not then or in that way. He did something else.

He drew me close.

I don’t think He allowed me to struggle because He wanted to see how tough or self reliant I am.

Because I’m not. I’m weak. I’m nothing. I’m dust.

I don’t know why I went through that wilderness. But I believe there was a reason for it. It would go against God’s character for it to be otherwise.

I’m not a perfect parent, by any stretch. But I would never intentionally inflict pain on my children or make them struggle just for the sake of doing it.

Neither would God, who IS the perfect, loving parent, ever jerk His children around just for the fun of it or just to torture them. Everything He does, everything He allows, has a point. It may not be obvious at the time, or ever, but it has a point.

My journey, however much my faith has grown over the past few years, rests solidly on that truth.

In hindsight, now that my struggles are much less, I can see the value of what I went through. When I felt all alone, like I was going crazy, like I was the only one my age to ever experience this, God became enough.

He always had been enough. Through this, I started to understand that for myself.

P.S. I’m linking up today with Holley Gerth at Coffee for Your Heart, Jennifer Dukes Lee at #TellHisStory and Angela Parlin at #RaRaLinkup.

March 31, 2015 10 comments

How Marriage is Like a Three-legged Race

by Lois Flowers March 24, 2015

by Lois Flowers

This week, we reach a couple of significant milestones at the Flowers house: six months of blogging and 21 years of marriage.

In the grand scheme of life, one of these obviously is more noteworthy than the other. But before I talk about the truly important one, let me just say how thankful I am for you, the readers of this blog. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this journey last fall, and it’s been much more fun, challenging and rewarding than I ever imagined.

If you’ve been reading Waxing Gibbous for awhile and haven’t subscribed yet, I invite you to do just that. Simply enter your email address on the right sidebar (where it says “Follow Blog Via Email”) and click the “Follow” button. After you do that, these posts will start sliding quietly into your inbox about once a week.

Also, if something you read here strikes a chord with you, please feel free to post it on Facebook, Twitter or wherever else you hang out online. Thanks in advance for that.

Now, as grateful as I am for the people who read my blog, I am exponentially more thankful for Randy—and not just because of his technical expertise in launching Waxing Gibbous for me six months ago. In honor of our 21 years of wedded togetherness, I’ll round out this post with two bits of advice, a realization and an analogy about marriage.

Two bits of advice

I remember one thing and one thing only from our pre-marital counseling. “When you want your husband to do something,” the pastor said, “ask him once and then leave it up to the Holy Spirit.”

That’s great advice, and very hard to follow (for me, anyway). But after all these years, I’m still trying.

A dear friend and mentor once shared another piece bit of wisdom that I’ve never forgotten: When it comes to venting and processing, tell your husband 25 percent and share the rest with God.

My friend didn’t mean we should stuff our feelings or intentionally keep things from our spouses. She did mean that much of what we might want to say to them—off the cuff or in the heat of the moment—is better left spoken only to God. I’m still working on this, too, but it definitely helps when I remember to do it.

A realization

Something happens in your heart and mind when you realize one of the most meaningful ways your husband has shown you love in the last few years has been in the way he has helped your octogenarian parents … kindly, without complaining, time and time again. By caring for them, he is loving me, and I love him for it.

An analogy

There’s no end to the figurative language that people use to describe marriage. A quick internet search reveals that, depending on how you look at it, marriage is akin to: building a fire in the rain, two boards leaning on one another, constructing a house, a car without a warranty (which requires both partners to do most of the work themselves), a triangle or growing a temperamental plant.

I could go on and on (and include a lot more internet-generated snark) if I wanted to. But Randy thought of another analogy that I actually like much better (and not just because it involves the only grade-school field day event I was ever good at).

At this stage of our lives, marriage is like a three-legged race. When everything is in sync and working properly, it’s like a smoothly operating machine. But the rhythm that sometimes looks so effortless can get out of whack quickly, especially when there are significant differences in height and speed between the partners. It’s easy to trip and fall, to get tangled up. It takes effort to get upright and find that perfect pace again. And as much as you’d like it to be, the effort isn’t always equal. Sometimes, one half struggles so much that the other has to hoist her up somehow and carry her for awhile.

So what does it take for a three-legged race (and marriage) partnership to work? I’ve narrowed it down to four common factors: 1. Connection material that is secure and stable. 2. A commitment to stick together, no matter what. 3. Always going in the same direction. 4. A sense of humor.

Randy is seven inches taller than me. Our personalities, though similar in some ways, are also quite opposite. We have different ways of processing, different ways of handling stress, different ways of getting things done.

And yet, after 21 years, we’re still connected. We still fit. We’re still in this together.

Let the race continue.

♥ Lois

Photo credit: CRW_8529.CRW via photopin cc

March 24, 2015 11 comments