I wrote something last February about what it means to be a real writer. That piece— “The Road to Real is Paved with Brokenness”—garnered quite a discussion in these parts, and also uncorked something in me that has been bubbling just under the surface ever since.
I had every intention of using those words as a springboard to sharing more of my writing story in the coming months. I even stated as much in the post.
I’m a bit late with the Song of the Month for October.
Honestly, I’ve been wrestling with whether I should even be doing this anymore. Sure, I love music, and these songs I share with you every four weeks or so are ones that resonate deeply with me.
But I’ve been trying to simplify a few areas of my life, and as silly as it might sound, this little blog feature is one that keeps lingering on the chopping block.
What would life be like if we hadn’t moved to Kansas 10 years ago?
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.
When we adopted Lilly—14 years ago last week—she was 9 months old and weighed about 17 pounds.
That 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.
Amid the excitement and stress of becoming parents halfway across the globe, I sometimes worried about my ability to care for her when we returned home.
What am I going to do when Randy goes back to work and I have to take Lilly somewhere, I asked myself. How am I going to carry her around when I can hardly hold her now?
What happened, of course, was that the more I carried her, the stronger I got. And as she grew, so did my strength.
Three years later, we returned to China to adopt Molly. Though older than Lilly had been by four months, she also weighed 17 pounds. But because we were used to picking up 4-year-old Lilly, who was small by American standards but made up of solid muscle, little Molly seemed as light as a feather.
I’ve been thinking about this lately as I navigate circumstances in my life that are requiring a bit more emotional and mental energy than usual. When I was a new mom, 17 pounds was almost more than I could manage, while carrying the same weight three years later—in the same unfamiliar setting, no less—was pretty easy.
In the same way, it occurs to me that different seasons of life weigh differently than others. Some are heavier, some are lighter. That’s just the way it is.
It might be that the difference lies in the actual weight, or burden, that we’re carrying. A 100-pound load is tougher to lug around than one that weighs 25 pounds, after all. It doesn’t matter if the burden is internal or caused by situations outside our control—heavy is heavy, regardless of the source.
Our preparedness or current state of mind also plays a role. When we adopted Molly, she seemed light to me, even though she weighed exactly the same as Lilly when we got her. But I was different. I was stronger, a bit more experienced and confident in my ability to be her mama. It was just easier.
Sometimes, it’s the gravity of the season we’re in that can make it seem like we are walking around with a ton of bricks on our chest. Certain phases in our live simply hold more significance than others—there’s more at stake and more rides on the outcome.
External circumstances affect the weight of a season too. A level path doesn’t require as much energy as a steep incline, and it’s much easier to carry that 100-pound burden when it’s 50 degrees outside than it is when the thermometer reaches 95 in the shade. In the same way, what’s going on around us can sometimes make what’s happening within us all the more difficult.
My reality right now, and probably yours too, is this: I’m dealing with different seasons of life simultaneously.
Some are heavy; others are light. When the weight of a heavy piece overwhelms me, I’m often at a loss for what to do. I want an answer, a solution, a three-step plan for how to make the burden lighter—or better yet, disappear.
But life doesn’t work like that. There are no bows, no pat answers, no quick fixes. As helpful as they can be, there are no Bible studies or books that can fast-forward us through the weightier times.
But there is truth. There are promises to cling to, if we chose to do so.
Scripture encourages us to cast our every care on the same sovereign God who hung the stars in the sky and orchestrates the four seasons. Nothing is too big or too small for His loving attention.
When we walk through the fire, the desert, the deep waters, the rocky mountains—He is with us.
No matter the season, He knows what we need. He knows what our loved ones need. And He will provide exactly that.
Wisdom for the wondering. Love for the lonely. Comfort for the grieving. Water for the thirsty. Boldness for the timid. Peace for the anxious. Rest for the weary.
And, yes, strength for the weak.
♥ Lois
Just 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
I’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.