Share Four Somethings: April 2023

Inside: Three helpful talks about anxiety, a day of mother-daughter feels, the quest for bifocal contacts, and a Christmas cactus that finally bloomed. ~

Last week, I went to our local Fed-Ex office to mail my daughter Lilly’s visa application for her upcoming semester abroad. Later that afternoon, Molly and I met with her best friend and her mother to plan the girls’ high-school grad party.

This also happened to be the day my own mom died, four years earlier.

Plenty of mother-daughter feels, for sure.

I’m excited for my girls. I also miss my mom.

It’s the circle of life, one that countless daughters who are also mothers have experienced.

Visiting my mom at the nursing home on Easter in 2018.

My mom was always happy to see me. And I’m always happy to see my daughters.

Perhaps that’s why, despite some wonky days along the way, I’ve been feeling abundantly grateful in April. It’s gone by in a flash, as the months seem to be doing with increasing urgency these days.

Which means it’s time to link up with Jennifer for another Share Four Somethings, starting with …

Something Loved

My Christmas cactus hasn’t bloomed for several years. Most recently, because it wasn’t in direct sunlight. It grew plenty of leaves, but no flowers.

It used to be such a prolific bloomer, which made its ongoing lack of buds even more discouraging.

A few months ago, I moved the plant back to its original home by our southern-facing wall of floor-length windows. I figured I’d have to wait until next winter for results, so you can imagine my surprise when it produced a single flower, right before Easter.

I was overjoyed, to put it mildly. I took pictures (see top of post) and sent texts about it.

Who knew a single bloom could produce such a reaction? (Besides my family, of course.)

Something Read

In recent months, I’ve been on a quest for bifocal contacts. My optometrist fitted me for one type, then another. Apparently, I’m quite persnickety about my vision, because neither worked for me.

Finally, we decided to try using my regular prescription for my dominant eye and a contact with a reading-vision overlay for the other eye.

According to my doctor, about half the population can adjust to this kind of correction and the other half can’t. Given my previous failed attempts, I was certain I would fall into the latter category.

I mentally prepared myself to accept a future of putting on and taking off reading glasses constantly. (Just the thought of eye surgery gives me the heebie-jeebies, in case you were wondering about that.)

I went to the eye doctor for one last fitting. Lo and behold, the contacts worked. Not perfectly, but well enough.

I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t a bifocal contacts failure after all.

Since then, looking at small words has taken on whole new level of enjoyment. I can read restaurant menus. The amount of sodium in a can of cream of mushroom soup. My daughter’s phone when she shows me a funny meme. The notes I’m taking in church. Recipe books with tiny ingredient lists.

I can glance down and actually see what I’m looking at, without flapping around for my reading glasses. I had no idea I was missing so much.

Something Learned

The desire for life to have a fast-forward button may never go away. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to anxiety over the what-ifs or frustration when we can’t see what’s ahead.

Rather, we have a wonderful, ongoing opportunity to take deep breaths, to cast our cares upon Jesus, to try to trust Him moment by moment.

This is a big part of what it means to walk by faith. I don’t know about you, but it’s also a shift I need to make over and over again.

I don’t always like it. I’d rather be able to stand still and enjoy a quiet season or run like the wind, straight into a glorious, predictable future.

But God knows what I need. He knows what you need. And He will see us through.

Something Heard

Speaking of anxiety, Louie Giglio recently preached a short series on the topic that was so good I listened to it twice. You can find it on the Passion City Church Podcast on Spotify, as well as on the church’s website.

I could share quotes, but I hope simply providing links to Giglio’s three talks from “Putting an X through Anxiety” will prompt you to check out the series. (If you do, let me know what you think.) Here they are:

• Breathing Out the Weight of Depression

• Finding Up When Anxiety Weighs You Down

• The Best Thing to do with Your Anxiety

• • •

And now for my favorite part of these monthly posts—hearing from you. How has your April been? Please let us know what you’ve been reading, learning or loving lately.

♥ Lois

P.S. I’m linking up this week with sharefoursomethings, #tellhisstory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee and Grace & Truth.