Share Four Somethings: October 2023

Inside:  A blog anniversary, a sad-but-hopeful book, what to remember when the answer is no, and what I did with my funeral dress. ~

In the blur that was September, I completely missed my blog anniversary.

Nine years doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles of other milestone dates, but it can still be noteworthy. At times, remarkably so.

For example, in our ninth year of marriage, Randy and I adopted our first child. I could write an entire book’s worth of blog posts about how that event, along with the subsequent addition of daughter No. 2 three years later, changed our lives for good.

The ninth anniversary of this blog doesn’t come close to all that in terms of significance. But when something has been an important part of your life for that long, it’s still helpful to pause for a moment and reflect on it.

How We Got Here

Several years after entering the blogosphere with a space called “Waxing Gibbous,” I transitioned to a tagline of “Strength for Today • Hope for Tomorrow.” The change came the year after my parents died, when I was looking for ways to be more intentional about encouraging readers to persevere in their own lives and faith.

That remains my passion today. And I’m so grateful to all of you who have followed along, for however long you’ve been here.

By the way, if you visit occasionally from blog linkups or other places, I would love for you to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing. Look for the heading “Follow Blog Via Email” on the sidebar, enter your address and follow the instructions in the email you receive.

Now that we’ve looked back nine years, it’s time review the last several weeks with the latest installment of Share Four Somethings. Starting with …

• Something Loved

I love it when I have the opportunity to meet blogger friends in person. On our way to North Dakota in September, Randy and I stopped to say hi to Trudy Den Hoed, who has been a huge encouragement to me for many years. We initially met up with Trudy and her husband on an earlier trip north, and it was good to see them again.

Later in the month, I had the joy of meeting Natalie Ogbourne for the first time. I think I first connected with Natalie in my comment section, then later reached out to her on Instagram for some advice when my family and I were planning our first trip to Yellowstone National Park. (Her Instagram name is “Your Yellowstone Guide,” if that tells you anything about her knowledge and enthusiasm about this incredible place.)

I was traveling through her vicinity last month, and we got together in Pella, Iowa, for coffee and a lovely conversation. It’s always fun when you look down at your watch, realize you’ve been talking for 1 1/2 hours and wish it wasn’t time for you to get back on the road.

• Something Read

It’s been a while since I shared quotes from a book that was especially meaningful to me. This month, I have several from Hope Is the First Dose: A Treatment Plan for Recovering from Trauma, Tragedy, and Other Massive Things by Lee Warren.

Warren is a neurosurgeon and former combat surgeon in Iraq. He’s written about those facets of his life in other books, but in this one, he focuses primarily on the tragic loss of his nineteen-year-old son.  It’s a profoundly sad story, but I appreciated Warren’s insights about grief, loss and recovering from traumatic events. Here’s what he has to say about …

The importance of remembering:

“There’s a huge amount of power in memory: not in going back and looking at all the mistakes, all the fear and shame, but in remembering the fact that whatever you felt in times past, somehow God got you through it. He made it possible for you to survive it.”

What feelings can lead to:

“Feelings are not facts but rather neurochemical events that can be challenged,” Warren writes. “But left unchecked they reliably produce a set of thoughts and behaviors that we program into our muscle memory over time: When I feel this, I think that, eat this, drink that, buy this, do that, say this, call that person, blame this person, etc. Thoughts become things.”

Physical and emotional rehab, and deciding not to participate in our own demise:

“We must believe that the pain of moving forward will produce improvement and healing, while the slow failure of staying put will lead only to more, and eventually inescapable, agony.”

and

“We cannot wait to be pain-free before we decide to fight for life again, because life is never pain-free, and some things never stop hurting.”

• Something Learned

No is an answer.

I didn’t really learn this, but I was reminded of it.

Truth is, doors sometimes remain shut when we knock. If we are holding our desires loosely and trying to trust God with every outcome, the sting of no is tempered by the truth that He knows what is best for us.

In other words, if the answer we were hoping for didn’t come, it’s not part of His loving plan. No matter how disappointing it is in the moment.

• Something Shared

In a post called Grief Notes, my friend Linda wrote about losing eight loved ones in eight years, and what allowed her to “experience grace toward [herself] in the immensity of it all.”

Her words about how God has healed her heart prompted me to share a recent example of how I’ve seen that in my own life. Here’s what I wrote in my comment to her:

“Just last week, I pulled out the black dress I’ve only ever worn to my parents’ funerals to see if it would work for a fundraising banquet for a local crisis pregnancy center. It was perfect. No lingering sadness, just the thought that my parents would have supported the cause too if they were still here. Wearing the dress again felt like a kind of redemption, if that makes any sense.”

What I didn’t mention was that, while I happily wore the dress, I decided to donate my funeral shoes. They hurt my feet and I never really liked them anyway.

The moral of the story? As we heal from our grief, we get to decide what to bring with us into a more joyful future and what we’d rather let go of for good.

• • •

Now it’s your turn. Have you celebrated any significant “off-year” anniversaries in your life? Read any good books lately? Learned or relearned any lessons? Please share in the comments, or tell us a different way you’ve seen God working in your life lately.

♥ Lois

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

Fall photo by Esther Ware.