Author

Lois Flowers

“The Broken Way” Provides a Way Forward

by Lois Flowers January 17, 2017

by Lois Flowers

I wasn’t planning to use Ann Voskamp’s latest book as the basis for an Author Note (the closest thing to a book review that you’ll find on this blog). But when I finished reading and started looking at the bits and pieces that struck deep chords with me, I realized I wanted to share these meaningful parts with Ann—and with you. My prayer is that the lines from The Broken Way that are speaking to me also will encourage you today.

Dear Ann,

I first heard about The Broken Way several months before it was released. Having read One Thousand Gifts years earlier, I was curious to observe the natural progression that often occurs in an author’s writing between her first and second books. I was interested to learn more about someone who seems to guard her privacy very carefully. I was intrigued to see how you would approach a topic that resonates so strongly with me—how God redeems our brokenness.

January 17, 2017 30 comments

My One Word for 2017

by Lois Flowers January 10, 2017

by Lois Flowers

I knew what my OneWord for 2017 was going to be early last fall. I normally wouldn’t even think about such things until December, but when I started hearing a new song on the radio by a group called Jesus Culture, I just knew.

At the time, choosing this particular collection of letters as my word for the year didn’t make sense. It didn’t seem to fit me at all—quite the opposite, in fact. Honestly, I had no idea why it struck me so.

But it did.

You might think that, knowing the word so early, I would have written a blog post about it weeks before we said good-bye to 2016. Now that would be like me, to do something like that.

But again, no.

My lack of motivation may have been connected to the fall we had, which was full of events and developments—some expected, some not—that were taxing in all kinds of ways. Or maybe it had to do with the blogging tradition of recapping the previous year’s word before you talk about your new one.

In 2016, my word was “satisfied,” and it came with a daily commitment to pray Psalm 90:14: “Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love so that we may shout for joy and be glad all our days.”

I kept that pledge, mostly, but I don’t have much else to report about it. There were no big breakthroughs, no dramatic transformations or revelations regarding contentment or satisfaction. In fact, in some ways, I may have ended the year less satisfied than I began it.

That said, I believe God’s Word is powerful. I believe He is faithful to hear and answer our prayers. So I’m holding fast to my conviction that praying Psalm 90:14 (which I’m still doing this year, by the way) is accomplishing something, even if the results are mostly hidden right now.

I feel strongly about this because of what I’ve experienced with my word from 2015. That year, the word was “fruit,” and it also came with a daily charge—to pray for the fruit of the Spirit (from Galatians 5:22-23) to grow in the lives of everyone in my home.

Asking God to allow love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control to transform the hearts of my family members had a huge impact—on me. As I prayed for all of us, I realized my own desperate need for growth in each of these areas.

And, slowly but surely, it began to happen.

More than anything else, praying for the fruit of the Spirit has made me more aware of the opportunities I have to demonstrate these attributes (or not). Even when I make the wrong choice, as I often do, I’m much more cognizant of it, which—strangely enough—somehow makes me want to do better the next time.

But it wasn’t until this past November—after nearly two years of praying this way—that I caught a tangible glimpse of the powerful impact it was having in my life. Throughout my adult years, you see, I’ve typically been very anxious during presidential election seasons. This year, of all years, I would have expected more of the same.

That’s not what I experienced, however.

Instead of fear, I felt peace. I wasn’t apathetic or unconcerned, but I wasn’t obsessed or spun up either.

It was remarkable, maybe even miraculous. And there was nothing I could have done to accomplish it myself.

A few weeks after the election, I felt like I was one thread yank away from completely unraveling. (I’m a work in progress, obviously.) But during the weeks leading up to Election Day, the peace of God that transcends understanding was clearly at work in my mind and heart.

In the most circuitous way imaginable, this all leads to my OneWord for 2017.

The Jesus Culture song that caught my attention last fall describes God’s relentless pursuit of His children in terms of His “fierce” love for us. (If you’re not familiar with the song, you can find it here.)

Fierce is not an adjective I would ever attach to myself. But the idea that God’s love for me could be fierce made me start thinking that maybe my love for others could be fierce too. And if love can be fierce, why not patience, joy, gentleness and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit?

I’m not talking fierce in a Beyonce-Ronda Rousey-Bengal tiger sort of way. Rather, I see it as an attitude that is relentless. Deep. Intense. Determined. Intentional, fervent, unwavering. Exactly how I want to be when it comes to demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit to the people around me.

Fierce.

As I look ahead to a year that promises to be challenging—perhaps even transformative—for my family, I’m starting to get a feel for why God may have impressed this word on my heart last fall. I don’t know exactly what the future holds, but I know how I need to conduct myself on the way there.

♥ Lois

January 10, 2017 36 comments

What’s Making My “Heart Squeeze” Today

by Lois Flowers January 3, 2017

by Lois Flowers

When I’m reading books, I notice words that authors repeat frequently.

Years ago, for example, I read a volume of inspirational romance novellas from the Crossings Book Club. I don’t recall any of the authors, I just remember that a character in one of them “sniffed appreciatively” at least three or four times.

January 3, 2017 43 comments

Do You Need to Give Yourself Grace This Christmas?

by Lois Flowers December 20, 2016

by Lois Flowers

I’m giving myself grace this Christmas.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a weird holiday season for me. There have been moments of gentle peace followed by periods of high stress intermingled with extreme busyness and even quiet sadness.

I could point to several things and say, “We could have done that differently, or not at all.” But some lessons are only learned by doing. And now we know.

Grace.

December 20, 2016 24 comments

When You Can’t Bear to Wait Another Minute

by Lois Flowers December 13, 2016

by Lois Flowers

When I’ve been waiting for something for a really long time, I sometimes reach a point where I don’t think I can wait one more second.

I felt this way near the end of our wait to adopt our older daughter Lilly. We had already experienced three challenging years of infertility, followed by about 20 months of waiting for our international adoption to be completed.

We knew some people who had sent their paperwork to China around the same time we had sent ours, and we were all expecting to get our referrals near the end of July.

I had done OK with the wait thus far—managing my expectations and holding fast to my belief that God was in control—but by the time that summer rolled around, I was tired. I was stressed and irritable and sick of the whole thing.

I desperately needed to get away somewhere, and I remember begging Randy to plan what I called a “whisk” weekend for us. I didn’t want to know anything about it until he showed up at home on Friday afternoon and whisked me away to some relaxing resort for the weekend.

At one point, I got really mad at him because it didn’t seem like he was doing anything about my request. He actually did have something all planned and reservations made, but then his much-loved grandmother died and we had to cancel our plans and go to North Dakota for the funeral instead.

The whole time we were in North Dakota, I kept waiting for the phone call that said we had gotten our referral, but it never came. When we returned home and discovered that the other families had gotten theirs that month but we had not, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I just knew our papers were gathering dust on top of some grungy filing cabinet in some bureaucrat’s office in China, completely forgotten by everyone.

I remember letting loose in my prayer journal, basically having a fit on God about the whole situation.

In today’s teenage-girl vernacular, I was so done.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but my little tirade actually calmed me down and brought me back to the conclusion that God was still in control. It helped reassure me that we would eventually get our baby, even though I remained convinced that it was taking WAY too long.

The thing is, God made me, so he knows my physical weaknesses. He understands my limitations and my finite comprehension of what’s going on around me and in me.

He knew how I felt when we didn’t get our adoption referral that July and I started to despair that I would NEVER become a mother. He knows how you feel when you don’t think you can take another minute of waiting for whatever it is you’re waiting for.

When we have fits on God—our longsuffering and patient heavenly Father—I don’t think it frustrates Him like the tantrum of a child might frustrate a human parent. As Psalm 103:14 says, He “knows how we are formed and remembers that we are dust.”

He gets it, in other words.

And in His grace and mercy, He has compassion on us when the waiting room gets to be almost more than we think we can stand.

If you’re there now this Advent season, don’t be afraid to tell God exactly how you feel. Dump out all your emotions on paper (or in Microsoft Word, if that works better for you). Let it all out in a prayer to Him, and see what happens.

If you’re anything like me, the worries, the fears, the bad feelings will eventually subside. Your spirit will settle down and your faith will grow stronger. And when you’re done, you’ll get up and do the very thing you said you couldn’t do—continue waiting.

P.S. Linking up this week with Kelly Balarie at Purposeful Faith, Jennifer Dukes Lee at #TellHisStory, Holley Gerth at Coffee for Your Heart, Crystal Storms at #HeartEncouragementThursday, Crystal Twaddell at FreshMarketFriday and Dawn Klinge at Grace & Truth.

December 13, 2016 26 comments

What I Learned This Fall

by Lois Flowers December 6, 2016

by Lois Flowers

It seems a bit strange to write about fall now that the house is decorated for the holidays and Christmas music is blaring from the living room stereo 24/7. But technically, it is still fall. And, as is always the case when I start evaluating the past three months, it seems I learned more than I thought during this season of brilliant colors and too-high temperatures.

We’ll start off with this family picture, taken by my younger sister on my parents’ back deck. Besides screaming “fall,” it reminds me of Thanksgiving Day—the first in many years that someone else did most of the cooking (thanks, sis) and I got to sit around all morning and finish reading two overdue library books.

The lesson in all this: Sometimes, it’s good to ask others to do something that you normally do (and it’s a huge blessing when they happily agree to do it).

• • •

My new love language is effort. I know it’s not one of author Gary Chapman’s famous five, but it really is a thing for me. My birthday was on an unseasonably warm Saturday in early November. I spent most of the day outside, building a stepping stone path around the side of my house. Meantime, all kinds of surprises were under way in the house. Like the Happy Birthday banner, made out of recycled blueprints, that stretched from one end of the balcony overlooking our living room to the other end.

Each letter was surrounded by adjectives that started with the same letter (such as “Bomb” for B and “Iffy” for I). I don’t use this word lightly, but it really was amazing. Besides bringing fresh meaning to the phrase “go big or go home,” it warmed my heart to think of all the time, care and thesaurus usage my girls put into making the display. Yep, for me, effort equals love.

• • •

While the girls were making homemade cards (my absolute favorite) and the fabulous banner, Randy was decorating my birthday cake. (I should pause here and mention that before I got married, the three big items on my husband list were that he had to be a Christian, he had to be taller than me, and he had to be able to fix things. The fact that I got a man who also knows how to decorate cakes has been an unexpected and tasty bonus.)

Anyway, Randy tried something new this year—big flowers on top of a layer of chocolate frosting, on top of a devil’s food base. The cake was beautiful. Even after 22 years of marriage, he still surprises me with his creativity. But I also learned something that day: It IS possible to have too much frosting.

• • •

One of the highlights of November for me was meeting a World War II veteran at Kohl’s on Veteran’s Day. As his hat proudly stated, he served from 1941 to 1945, starting out in Africa, then moving throughout Europe as the war unfolded. I thanked him for his service, and he told me he didn’t regret a bit of it.

The store was crowded, it was past lunchtime, and I was a bit distracted, so we spoke only briefly. As I got into my van, though, I was almost moved to tears when I considered all he had surely experienced and witnessed as part of the Greatest Generation. I wished I had thought to inquire about his age and perhaps ask for his perspective on the election just past. I resolved that, the next time I have an opportunity to engage in a conversation like this, I would ask more questions and listen more carefully. I missed my chance that day, but I won’t make that mistake again.

• • •

When you care for someone I love—in tangible, practical ways—I feel cared for too. There’s more I could say about this, but it’s not my story to tell right now. So I’ll leave it at that.

• • •

When one of my favorite authors shares her story of faith and heartbreak on Focus on the Family, how can I not tell you about it? I first wrote about Tricia Lott Williford when I did this Author Note about her book And Life Comes Back: A Wife’s Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed. To this day, it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. You can hear her Focus interview here. Even during this busy holiday season, it’s well worth the time investment. (But be sure to have tissues handy.)

• • •

One of the best parts of my Faith, Fear & the Life of a Writer series has been the comment section. Seriously, I’ve learned much and been encouraged more by interacting with readers (perhaps even you) about light and airy topics such as pride, working through fear and how to be more transparent in writing. So you can imagine how delighted I was when my friend Bethany took my post “24 Ways to Keep Your Writing Real” and turned it into an amazing graphic, which I’m now sharing with you here: 24-ways-to-keep-your-writing-real (Stay tuned for more of the writing series after the holidays.)

• • •

Classical music is my happy place. OK, so music isn’t really a place. And I only listen to this genre when I drive to pick up Lilly from her ballet class on Wednesday evenings. But no matter what my day has been like, the moment I hear Bach, Beethoven or Mozart drifting from my van stereo, the stress just melts away.

• • •

Nov. 15 is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. I didn’t learn this until that afternoon, when I received the daily homework email from Molly’s social studies teacher. (Besides informing parents about assignments and such, Dr. M keeps us posted about all the “holidays” that apparently litter every day of the year.) I wouldn’t have paid attention to this particular observance if not for the fact that, earlier that very day, I had helped my 83-year-old dad clean out and organize his freezer. “What happened, I believe, is called serendipity,” he said when I told him.

That’s it for me. What did you learn this fall?

♥ Lois

December 6, 2016 32 comments