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Lois Flowers

When a Change of Scenery is Just What You Need

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

Last year, we started planning a family vacation to Homer, Alaska, to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Randy spent the latter half of his childhood there, and, while we visited soon after we were married, we’ve not been back since.

We were excited about returning to one of the most beautiful places on earth, this time with our girls. Even so, I was more than a little anxious after he bought our plane tickets in February. What if my parents’ health plummeted right before we left? Or worse, what if one of them died while we were gone?

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Life Lessons from the Whole30

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

Life has been a whirl of planning, processing, organizing, grieving and traveling lately. While all that has been important, necessary and sometimes even fun, it hasn’t left much emotional energy for writing. Rather than go another week without a blog post, however, I decided to pull the last remaining piece from my reserve supply and share it with you today. 

Happily, it’s not about parents dying or hard seasons or anything of the sort. It’s about eating. And what can be learned when we remove entire food groups from our diet for a set amount of time. Bon appetit!

• • •

As trendy eating plans go, the Whole30 is pretty straightforward. Eliminate grains, legumes, dairy products, sugar, alcohol and preservatives from your diet for 30 days and voilà—you’ll feel better, sleep better, lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, solve dozens of other complex health problems and maybe even lose some weight.

Actually eating like this is not necessarily the panacea that some proponents make it out to be. But it does have its benefits—including recalibrating your digestive system and putting the kibosh on bad habits that have crept in over time—which is why Randy and I have taken this month-long food journey three times now.

We finished up our most recent round of the Whole30 in early March. This time, as with the other two, I was a bit anxious about ending it. I would compare it to how someone might feel upon leaving the safety and security of the hospital after an extended illness (or, as Randy prefers to look at it, when a person leaves prison after a long period of incarceration).

On one hand, you can’t wait to pour dairy creamer in your coffee and spread jam on your toast. But after a month of severely drawn food boundaries, you’re faced with so many choices again, and you wonder how long it will be before the good effects of the last 30 days will start to wear off.

The first time we did the Whole30, I began the month with all kinds of expectations of how much I would get done around the house over the next four weeks. While fighting off cravings for cheese and cookies, I figured I would distract myself by writing and cleaning out drawers and organizing all the things. Instead, I spent an inordinate amount of time chopping vegetables and searching for Whole30-approved recipes that didn’t require another trip to Whole Foods.

Not my finest Whole30 cuisine.

Each time since then, I prepared better beforehand, purchased more ready made products (without a trace of guilt) and spent less time chopping. We even made it through this last round without having to fall back on Chipolte for dinner because I burned the chicken strips I was trying to fry in coconut oil. (It’s nice to have Chipolte as an option just in case, but a Burrito Bowl without rice and sour cream just isn’t the same.)

After each previous round of the Whole30, I’ve intended to write a blog post about what I learned from it. What usually happens, though, is that once I push past my anxiety about eating normally, my attention moves on to more pressing matters and those lessons stay stuck in my notes file.

Not this last time. When I was going through all my blog notes files in late March, trying to figure out what was worth keeping and writing about, I kept coming back to this. I always find it interesting to read about other peoples’ experiences with such endeavors, even those I would never attempt myself. So here it is, at long last: What I learned from the Whole30.

• I didn’t like sweet potatoes before we started the Whole30, and I still don’t like them now. I roast them for Randy, and I’ve tried to enjoy them that way too—I really have. But my distain is life long, and it’s here to stay. (I feel the same about kale, by the way.)

• My writing tapers off to practically nothing when I’m on the Whole30. I originally anticipated that once I got used to this new way of eating, the creativity would kick in and my brain cells would start firing on overdrive. Never happened.

• Foods pretending to be other foods don’t fool me. For example, I like cauliflower and I like rice, but cauliflower masquerading as rice? I’d rather just go without until I can have my favorite Japanese sushi rice again.

• I could never do the Whole30 alone. With Randy on my team, quitting isn’t an option. We encourage each other to stick to the plan, even when all we want is a big handful of Doritos.

• Doing the Whole30 makes us linger around the supper table. Even without dessert (which we both love), Randy and I often sat there talking long after we were done with our meals. Maybe it’s because we simply don’t have the energy to get up, but it also might have something to do with the bonds that are strengthened when you do something like this together.

• I will never be a food photographer. I always think I’m going to share about our Whole30 journey on Instagram every day. But aside from a few posts here and there, I just can’t get into it. Most of my food pictures look sort of anemic, and plus, I prefer pics of flowers, old country churches and my children.

• You have to consider holidays when planning a Whole30. Last year, Mother’s Day fell in the middle of our 30 days. Our family’s observation of this special day usually includes eating at our favorite Mexican restaurant and drinking Sonic slushies while walking around the lake at the park. We skipped both last year, and Mother’s Day just wasn’t the same.

• When the Whole30 gets tough, avocados give me the will to keep going. So do pecans. And cilantro. And store-bought, Whole30-approved salad dressing.

• Food is comforting. I guess this is something I always knew, but it really hit home in February when I was craving chocolate cake and crusty bread. I was able to squash those cravings, but if we had been doing the Whole30 in January or December when my dad’s health declined so severely, I don’t know if I could have kept it up.

• Once a year is enough. Some people eat like this all the time due to food allergies or other dietary issues, and I’m all for that if it helps. But while I definitely eat differently than I used to in some ways, I can’t permanently eliminate entire food groups or categories from my diet.

That’s just me, though. What about you? If you’ve ever done the Whole30 or a similar eating plan, please share your experience in the comments.

♥ Lois

Foods pretending to be other foods don’t fool me. Share on X Food is comforting. Share on X

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Let’s Have Coffee, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.

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How My Dad Influenced My Life

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

May 28 was my dad’s 86th birthday. He had been on hospice for a few days, but he was awake and even mouthed along as we gathered in his room and sang Happy Birthday to him. Less than 18 hours later, he joined my mom in heaven, five weeks after she died on Good Friday.

At his funeral last week, I shared some thoughts about my dad and his influence in my life. Today, I’d love to share these same thoughts with you.

• • • 

My dad was hospitalized in January. He was in bad shape—his potassium was really low, he was severely dehydrated, he was basically skin and bones. I was there one day when the primary care doctor came by his room.

She saw him lying there, and I’m guessing she formed an impression about him based on what she saw. When she asked how he was doing, he said, “That depends on your nomenclature.”

I saw it in her face—she quickly realized that there was much more to the patient before her than she may have thought. I think that may have been the case a lot with my dad.

He drove old cars but had plenty of resources at the end of his life to care for both my mom and himself. He wrote both children’s stories and letters to the editor on controversial subjects. He enjoyed listening to hymns and the popular songs of his youth.

He earned a master’s degree from an Ivy League university but could teach Sunday school to kindergarteners and explain algebra word problems to his children in a way that we could understand. I still remember him teaching me how to understand physics by comparing electricity to water running through irrigation ditches.

And then there was the time my driver’s ed teacher was at his wit’s end trying to teach me to drive—so much so that he called my dad for help. I was so upset, but my dad was unruffled. He took me out to the country and made me get out of the family van to see that it was actually much farther from the shoulder than I thought. That was all I needed to start driving properly.

It was a matter of perspective that he helped me see. And this happened over and over in my life.

I remember sitting on the window seat in the family room at my childhood home right before I left for college. It was the first time I had ever been away from home, and I was scared to death. We talked about change, and he said he liked change, which was a foreign concept to me. Many years later, he clarified that he liked change when it was on his terms.

In our first few years of marriage, Randy and I were trying to decide how much to tithe—on the net or the gross. I asked my dad, hoping for some definitive answer, and all he said was, “It depends on how much you want God to bless you.”

When I’d ask him about the end times—about this or that theory of eschatology—he’d tell me what he thought, add that the Bible wasn’t definitive about it, and then conclude by saying, “The one thing I do know is that Jesus is coming back, and we need to be ready.”

And he really lived his life like that.

During a season when my world started turning dark for days at a time each month, I had another enlightening conversation with my dad. When you are going through something that you know is not going to last forever, he said, you have to put yourself on autopilot. Just do what you need to do and remember it will get better eventually.

When my girls were younger, I would come to him for advice about everything from improving messy handwriting to how were they were going to survive in this world that they were growing up in. “She’s gonna be all right,” he’d say. “She’s gonna be all right.”

My dad didn’t talk about himself much, but he was a wonderful listener. That’s probably one of the things that I loved the most about him. I felt like he really knew me, and perhaps that’s because he really listened.

It’s no secret that my dad was stubborn and would hold fast to opinions that sometimes drove us crazy. When we got frustrated at his lack of hearing ability, for example, he would say, “I can hear, I just can’t make out what they’re saying.”

And then there was the season when he was falling a lot—at a wedding, a church picnic, smack into the church front door. It was OK, though, because, as he would often say, “I know how to fall.”

All this aside, another one of the things I appreciated most about my dad was his sense of humor. He loved to laugh and didn’t take himself very seriously. Maybe that’s why he never held a grudge. He never took things personally. He never made things personal, either, even when he disagreed with you.

There are many ways I hope to emulate my dad, but these practices are all close to the top of the list.

During the last two years, I would drop by the nursing home almost every day—to visit my mom when my dad was also there visiting her, and then these last six months when my dad lived there too. I learned so much from watching him interact with all the people there. He learned their names and always wanted to know where they were from.

He never judged people on appearances, and he treated everyone with the same gracious kindness. As my mom’s Alzheimer’s became more advanced, his affection for her was steadfast. No matter who was around, he greeted her with a kiss on the lips every time he came. He spent hours sitting with her on the loveseat in her room, just being together.

When my mom was in critical condition in the burn unit at a Kansas City hospital two summers ago, the social worker would come in to talk about living wills or the doctor would share some discouraging prognosis. I heard my dad say several times, “I don’t know how you feel about these things, but we’re Christians, and we don’t believe that death is the end.”

He did it in such a gentle, unassuming way. By the time it was my turn to be in his seat, hearing sad news about either one of my parents or making end-of-life decisions for them, it just seemed natural to share what we believed about God’s sovereignty and timing, about how I was certain they would be going to heaven, about the assurance I had that I would see them again.

I wouldn’t have been able to speak like that had I not listened as my dad did it so many times before me.

There are so many other things I wish I could tell you about my dad and how much he means to me and my family. But I’ll just share one more thing.

My dad played football in high school and always enjoyed watching the Kansas City Chiefs. I remember when Joe Montana and Marcus Allen joined the Chiefs in 1993. My dad was convinced that, while the quarterback got all the hype, it was really the running back who made the biggest difference.

When Marcus Allen got the ball, spotted a hole in the defensive line and broke through for a big gain, my dad would throw back his head in laughter, point at the TV and exclaim excitedly, “Look at him go, look at him go!”

I don’t know how heaven works, how the great cloud of witnesses is set up. But I like to imagine my dad coming upon some kind of porthole to earth, maybe with my mom or his father, just in time to see one of us—a grandchild, a friend, one of his children—doing something noteworthy—taking a courageous stand, winning an actual race, making a good decision, achieving an important goal.

I imagine him grabbing my mom’s arm, throwing his head back in laughter, pointing at the scene before him and exclaiming, “Look at her go, look at her go!”

We won’t hear it again on this side of eternity, but I can’t wait to hear that laugh when I see him again in heaven.

♥ Lois

I heard my dad say several times, ‘I don’t know how you feel about these things, but we’re Christians, and we don’t believe that death is the end.’ Share on X

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Let’s Have Coffee, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.

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Remembering My Mom on Her Birthday

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

Today is my mom’s birthday. Had she not died on Good Friday, she would have been 87.

It’s interesting, how losing a loved one makes you more aware of death in the news. Peter Mayhew, the actor best known for portraying Chewbacca in the Star Wars film series, passed away April 30. Warren Wiersbe, described by Christianity Today as “preachers’ favorite Bible Commentator,” died two days later.

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God’s Timeline Didn’t Match Ours

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

I was walking into Aldi the Thursday before Good Friday when a car entered the parking lot and paused next to me.

The driver—whom I immediately recognized as my mom’s long-time friend Barbara—rolled down her window and called out, “Lois, how are your parents?”

I grimaced.

Just the day before, I had signed hospice paperwork for my mom. Her health had declined steeply during the last several weeks, to the point where she was no longer able to swallow. I had taken her to see the birds in the nursing-home aviary on Tuesday, but she had since become unresponsive.

Needless to say, I had no idea how to answer Barbara’s question.

She quickly read my reaction. “Wait for me inside,” she said and drove off to park.

I got my cart, pushed it into the store and stopped a few feet from the door. This wasn’t the first time I had run into Barbara at Aldi, but it had been a while. She didn’t know that my dad had joined my mom in long-term care several months ago, or about the roller-coaster ride that his health had been since then.

When she got into the store, we stood there by the goldfish crackers and talked for 15 or 20 minutes. I caught her up on what had been going on with both of my parents, and she poured love and wisdom into this hurting daughter as only a woman who has trusted God through her own great loss can do.

She spoke of her cherished friendship with my mom, and of what she learned after her husband died unexpectedly when they were in Hawaii celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. She talked about feeling guilty because he died while they were snorkeling—an activity she enjoyed but he did not—and how her understanding of God’s sovereignty helped her during that dark season.

She quoted a verse I have long held dear, reminding me of the comforting truth that “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:16)

Her words ministered peace to my sad and confused heart. I thought of them—and her—often in the days ahead.

Looking back, it was no coincidence I ran into her that day. It was a gift of grace from a loving heavenly Father.

Later that afternoon, the hospice nurse called to update me on my mom’s condition. She might have until Easter, maybe longer, the nurse told me.

The next morning, another nurse called to tell me my mom was in “the active stages of dying,” a process that could take up to eight days. At 8:25 that same night, my mom took her final breath.

Two of my sisters and my dad were with her when she entered eternity. Randy and I had attended a Good Friday service at a nearby church that evening. We had planned to stop by to see them afterwards. If she had hung on for five more minutes, we would have been there too.

My mom was strong, a survivor. After the accident in 2017 that resulted in her moving to long-term care, and following the stroke she suffered on New Year’s Day 2018, medical professionals used words like “miraculous” and “really remarkable healing” when they spoke about her recoveries.

She was a testament to God’s healing power, for sure.

She seemed healthy and robust last December, even as my dad had begun struggling through one health crisis after another. We all fully expected her to outlive him, by many years even.

But God’s timeline for her life didn’t match ours.

In the end, she was like a runner nobody even knew was in the race—much less considered a contender—who snuck past all the frontrunners and made it into heaven first. It makes me smile when I think of it now—she finished well, way ahead of our schedule but right on time for her.

Later that night, after Randy had gone home to tell our girls and the hospice workers had prayed with us and told us what would happen next, I went to my mom’s bedside and touched her briefly on the shoulder.

At the time, I couldn’t comprehend what the next few weeks would be like—how intense my exhaustion would be, how beautiful the funeral would be, how difficult it would be to see my dad struggling, how hard it would be to identify and articulate what I was feeling.

All I knew was one thing, which I told her right before I left the room that night.

“I’ll see you later, Mom.”

♥ Lois

We all expected my mom to outlive my dad. But God’s timeline for her life didn’t match ours. Share on X

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Let’s Have Coffee, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.

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