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Lois Flowers

What if We Make the Wrong Move?

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

What would life be like if we hadn’t moved to Kansas 10 years ago?

chess-1

This isn’t a question I ponder much. I’m typically not overly sentimental or prone toward melancholy. I make plenty of mistakes, but I don’t second guess big decisions very often.

I like to move on, already.

Last week, though, when I was poking around on Twitter, I started seeing people we used to know when we lived in Arkansas. I might be able to chalk it up to my already cloudy mood, but seeing all those names and faces sent me down a trail I usually try to avoid.

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Hope for the Heavy Seasons

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

When we adopted Lilly—14 years ago last week—she was 9 months old and weighed about 17 pounds.

lois-randy-lilly-chinaThat might not seem like much, but she was a chunk of a little girl—so much so that people we met in elevators and restaurants in China often mistook her for a 2-year-old.

I had worked on my cardiovascular fitness in the months leading up to our adoption trip, and my regular runs on the treadmill prepared me to traverse the Great Wall with relative ease. My upper body strength, however, was a different story entirely.

My arms and back were so weak that I could hold Lilly for only a few minutes at a time before passing her off to Randy. As a result, when we were out and about in China, she spent most of her time chewing on the strap of the Snugli that held her close to his chest.

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When Someone Says, “This is Awkward”

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

awkwardJust recently, I had a couple of conversations that included someone expressing to me, “This is awkward.”

In each case, I understood why these friends felt that twinge of discomfort. But each time, my internal reaction was the same.

Please, don’t feel awkward. That’s just life.  It’s totally OK.

I admit. Not feeling awkward in conversation might come a little more naturally to me because I grew up in a large, half-Italian family where our energetic dinner-time conversations were as likely to be about periods and medical procedures as they were about politics and who had to mow which part of the lawn next.

Plus, I wrote a whole book about infertility and regularly mention my own early menopause on this blog. So yeah, I’ve had a little practice overcoming the tendency to feel awkward about certain topics.

I do get it, though. I married someone whose childhood dinner times were much quieter than mine, and I have since figured out that ours were probably the exception, rather than the rule.

I realize, too, that many times, feelings of awkwardness flow out of a desire not to hurt feelings or step on toes. That is, they are simply a byproduct of being considerate.

They also might come from a place of being burned once too many times—after awhile, maybe bridging the awkward gap just becomes too risky or painful.

Here’s the thing, though.

While I understand that certain topics are hard to bring up, especially out of the blue, I would hate for feelings of awkwardness to keep anyone from telling me something I need to know or from getting the encouragement or help she might need from me.

I want to be a safe place, an awkward-free zone, an unoffendable listener—no matter the subject matter.

I have been wildly fortunate (and I don’t use that phrase loosely) to have had women in my life, at almost every stage, who have been this for me. Some of them have been close friends and mentors. Others were more like passers-by—there for an occasional transparent conversation, and then gone again.

Either way, they shared freely from their own lives as they spoke truth into mine. And no topic was off limits.

It’s probably impossible to make the awkward feelings go away completely. It’s not like we can magically set people at ease by wearing signs that say, “You can tell me anything and I will listen carefully and empathetically, without taking offense or expressing shock, disgust or impatience.”

Maybe it’s not even possible to be this kind of listener 100 percent of the time. I, for one, have a long way to travel before I reach that goal.

I do believe, though, that ready smiles, warm hugs, a healthy ability to laugh at ourselves, and space in our schedules for conversation over coffee goes a long way toward helping people feel comfortable around us, especially when they want to bring up a topic that might feel uncomfortable to them.

Like periods or politics.

♥ Lois

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When the Response You Want Hasn’t Come Yet

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

When the response you want hasn't come yetI’ve been thinking about crickets lately.

Not the black, six-legged, insect kind. The kind that show up when you pour out your heart to someone and get nothing in response.

Crickets.

They say silence is deafening, and sometimes, I think they are right. In this case, crickets are louder than cicadas on a humid August evening in Kansas.

Louder, and often more hurtful.

It doesn’t matter if we are communicating via text, email, phone call or even hand-written letter. When we share something important, we want a reply, and we want it now. We want the information, affirmation or confirmation we think our words warrant.

But when all we get is nothing, it’s easy to take it personally, isn’t it?

Someone very wise once told me that, when facing a lack of information, people tend to fill in the blanks with stories of their own—usually of the worst-case-scenario variety.

He was on to something, I think.

There’s always a slim chance that I actually have offended the person I am waiting on. Maybe I said the wrong thing and didn’t realize it. Maybe my carefully worded email rubbed my friend the wrong way. Maybe the last time I saw her, I looked at her funny and it hurt her feelings.

Most of the time, though, it’s nothing even remotely so nefarious.

I know this because for a long time, I was on the other end of the cricket spectrum.

For more years that I care to remember—starting some time after we uprooted ourselves from our comfortable life in Northwest Arkansas and moved back home to Kansas—I didn’t stay in touch much.

I often let emails from friends go unanswered for so long it was pointless to answer at all; the thought of writing back simply wore me out. I stayed away from Facebook and other forms of social media because I had no energy to craft any kind of written response about anything.

I just couldn’t do it.

This happened during those wilderness years I’ve written about here, here and here—that long season when changes in my life and body forced me to focus mostly on my family’s critical needs and put the rest on hold for a while.

Now that I’m on the other side of the wilderness, this blog has given me a chance to reconnect with some of those long-distance friends, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

But the main point of my cricket-spectrum story is this: There might be a good reason why you haven’t heard back from someone to whom you’ve poured out your heart.

While it’s possible the person you’re waiting on is just a big jerk, maybe she is still processing the information you gave her.

Maybe she is waiting on other information before she can give you an answer.

Maybe she doesn’t realize what a huge deal it was for you to share whatever it was that you told her.

Maybe your struggle seems small in relation to what she is facing right now, so she doesn’t think it metes much response.

Maybe she is busy, preoccupied or overwhelmed.

In other words, in all likelihood, her lack of a reply probably has nothing at all to do with you or her feelings about you.

There’s no way to know, of course. So rather than get all spun up while you’re waiting, you might want to try what I’m learning to do myself these days.

Give the person you’re waiting on one of the greatest non-material gifts anyone could ever receive—the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t default to thinking the worst—of someone else or of yourself. Focus on what you know to be true—what God says about you, your abilities and your position in His family—not on why the person you’re waiting on hasn’t responded yet.

And if you’re hoping for a specific outcome, pray for God’s will to be done, not yours. If there’s a better waiting-room strategy than that, I can’t think of it.

♥ Lois

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

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Song of the Month: “King of the World”

by Lois Flowers
by Lois Flowers

SOM header

It’s the first day of September, and all is well. At least, it is in my little corner of the world.

My girls are adjusting nicely to their new schools and schedules. I’ve adjusted to not having them around all day, and to the much-faster pace of life after 3 p.m.

Life is good.

But then again, it is September, and in a few months, it will be November. And I don’t even have to bring up certain dates and national happenings to remind us that good and well can turn into bad and scary in the blink of an eye.

That might be why Natalie Grant’s “King of the World” is really resonating with me right now. Here it is, the Song of the Month for September.

Lois Flowers

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