At Out of the Ordinary today, I’m revisiting a post from my archives here…
How did we get here? Wasn’t it only yesterday that I was sending my oldest off to kindergarten, he and I both stoic, his younger brother the one in tears? I mean, I know that time flies and all that but who could know it flies so fast and so furiously?
See the rest of the post here.
I remembered her from a couple of weeks ago. As she walked toward the door, arms laden with the package of diapers I’d just given her, I asked her about her church. In their last visit she and her daughter told me they attended a local Hispanic church but I asked again in the hopes of beginning a gospel conversation.
Nearly all of our clients at the pregnancy center claim some sort of church affiliation. It’s a rare client indeed that will freely confess her unbelief. Probing more deeply into what she means both by church attendance and faith in Christ helps expose the true state of both.
So I asked about church and she responded with such emphatic affirmation that I asked directly: “So you’re a believer?” She responded with a great smile and a happy stream of Spanish. She gestured toward the ceiling and clutched her heart and concluded in halting, broken English, “Jesus is my life.”
Chill bumps erupted on my arms and tears sprang to my eyes. What a beautiful, humble testimony! “Mine too!” I exclaimed and we hugged. She pointed once again to heaven and joyously affirmed, “You…my sister in Christ.” Again, the big smile. Again, a hug. Again, a tear. Or maybe two.
We couldn’t be more different, she and I. Me comfortably ensconced in my middle class, affluent world with its first world “probz” and she needy, impoverished, a minority in a culture where she cannot even speak the language with any degree of fluency. As we hugged and shared smiles and tears, I saw the beautiful, precious, glorious reality of John’s vision in Revelation. Every tongue, every tribe, every nation, she and I, all before the throne of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The bond this precious woman of God and I share extends far beyond race, language, and socioeconomic barriers. Glory to God, Jesus has broken down the dividing wall! We are sisters, our hearts knit together by the blood of the Son of God who died to set us free. What glory. What grace.
I cannot tell you about this sweet client without tears coming to my eyes all over again. Her evident joy and her unwavering faith humble me. O, for faith to say “Jesus is my life” not only when I have everything but even when I have nothing. He is all in all, yes and amen.
Comments are closed but the conversation isn’t! Let me know what you think by emailing me at lisa {at} lisaspence {dot} com. You may also find me on Twitter and Facebook.
Sitting…on my back porch. I’ve been pretty much living out here, at least in my spare moments. It’s definitely porch season, the weather being so beautiful and not (yet) so very hot. The very best porch time is fall, of course, but I am a lot busier then so my porch time is more limited.
Drinking…coffee, black.
Enjoying…the slower summer pace although this week is proving to be quite busy.
Working…through Joy!, Keri Folmar’s study on Philippians and finding it both challenging and encouraging. A brief glance at the workbook may cause one to wonder how much writing of the study Keri really did as it is comprised primarily, almost exclusively, of questions. Let me tell you, asking good questions is no easy task and Keri asks really good questions, questions that probe and expose and point the student to the Scripture. I’m in week 2 and so far, really really good.
Learning…yet again the difficult truth that humility is often taught through humiliation and that’s all I want to say about that.
Celebrating…my expectant friend and her soon-to-arrive baby girl at a shower tonight. Baby showers are the most fun!
Grateful…for my church family. We are approaching the five year mark of our journey together. Five years! The Lord has been so good to us. We had a “family meeting” this past Sunday night, our version of the church business meeting, and as the church clerk made her report we applauded both before and after. I whispered to my husband that surely we were the only church to applaud the church clerk and he replied “it’s because we love each other.” And we do.
Walking…my dog Darcy as soon as I publish this post. She is currently barking at me, impatient to hit the streets I suppose!
Happy June, friends!
Comments are closed but the conversation isn’t! Let me know what you think by emailing me at lisa {at} lisaspence {dot} com. You may also find me on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m not certain when I first crossed virtual paths with Gloria Furman. However, I do know when our real paths crossed and that was at The Gospel Coalition’s Women’s Conference last summer. Prior to the conference she and I exchanged a few emails brainstorming about the possibility of a blogger get together, and get together we did along with maybe 15-20 other bloggers in what seemed to be the wee hours of the morning on the second or third day of the conference. It was great fun to finally chat with her in person after knowing her via her blog and tweets.
Gloria is as humble and genuine as she appears onscreen. She is passionate about writing and about the gospel; thus her efforts to combine the two are infused with God-exalting joy. When she speaks of treasuring the gospel in her home it is no mere intellectual exercise nor only the premise of a book instructing one to go and do likewise. It is real and the reader senses this as she is confronted by Gloria’s humility and the gospel’s glory.
I am speaking, of course, of Gloria’s (first) book Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home. From the publisher’s description:
Sometimes life feels a lot like a burden—day-in and day-out its the same chores and tasks, challenges and discouragements, anxieties and responsibilities. Dust bunnies show up on the stairwell, social commitments clutter the calendar, and our families demand daily attention and care. At times, just catching our breath seems like an impossible feat.
So where is God in all of this? Does he care about the way we unload the dishwasher or balance the budget? Do the little things like changing diapers or cooking meals make a difference? And how can we use our spheres of influence for God’s glory and our joy?
Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a working woman splitting time between the office and home, Gloria Furman—writer, pastor’s wife, cross-cultural worker, and mom—encourages us to see the reality of God’s grace in all of life, especially those areas that often appear to be boring and unimportant. Using personal examples and insightful stories, her richly theological reflections help us experience the gospel’s extraordinary power to transform our ordinary lives.
As I read, I found this description to be spot on. Encourages us to see the reality of God’s grace in all of life, check. Richly theological reflections, check. Helps us experience the gospel’s extraordinary power to transform our ordinary lives, check.
Perhaps you find the “home” focus to be a slightly off-putting. If I’m honest, I was too, just a little. I am a homemaker, don’t get me wrong, and I certainly need gospel-hope and gospel-cheerfulness in my homemaking vocation, yes and amen. I suppose I assumed, and wrongly so I was happy to find, this might be another one of *those* homemaking type books that do little to encourage what with its lists of organizational tips and such. I also wondered, since I am, you know, an old-er woman and Gloria younger, would I find it a little out of touch in relation to my current stage of life?
Well, not only was Glimpses of Grace relevant to me and my life as I know it now, but it totally got in my business and I mean that in the best possible way. Rather than a discussion of the home, it is instead a discussion of the homemaker, more specifically the homemaker’s heart before the Lord regardless of where she works, in the home or at the office. Treating subjects like hospitality and loneliness and pain and contentment, and all with truth and grace, Gloria consistently points the reader to the good news that Jesus saves sinners, sinful homemakers included. I saw myself in its pages and at one point I sent Gloria message asking “How did you know?!?!”
Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home is an encouraging book that I highly recommend. I loved it. I loved Gloria’s honesty and her joyful testimony of the Lord’s sustaining grace. I loved its rich theological foundation. I was humbled as I saw once again the glorious grace of my good God in the midst of the mundane of my life and I rejoiced in Him. I am confident that no matter your stage or age in life, you will find much to encourage and edify as you too catch glimpses of grace in the ordinary.
In conjunction with the release of Glimpses of Grace, Crossway Books is offering the following promotion you’ll want to take advantage of…
Purchase a copy of Glimpses of Grace from your favorite local or online retailer from June 3-7 and receive a free copy of the ebook as well as one of Gloria’s favorite resources—the ESV Study Bible Online (ESVBible.org Web App & Ebook)!
To redeem your free extras, simply scan and email your receipt to glimpses@crossway.org before 11:59am on Friday, June 7.*
*Any receipts that are not legible, not included, or believed to be fraudulent will be disqualified. Limited to one promotion per person.
I’d like to thank Gloria and Crossway Books for providing me a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
Comments are closed but the conversation isn’t! Let me know what you think by emailing me: lisa {at} lisaspence {dot} com. You may also find me on Twitter and Facebook.
My friend Staci and I have joked a little between ourselves about pulling posts out of our draft folder. After she and I both experienced semi-success with a couple such posts (success for me being, of course, a relative term), I suggested “Draft Pile Monday” or some other such meme. After further thought, we both admitted that most of our drafts are such for good reason.
However, today’s post comes to you from the draft pile. Why it has languished there I’m not certain though there is a sentence or two that could probably use some reworking (hello, compulsive self-editor who will never die). Since I am publishing the post as-is, I’ve kept those sentences as they are and “last night” is obviously not, you know, last night (let’s hear it for truth in blogging)…
We have a swing on the front porch. When the boys were little and the days long, I would sometimes ease my way out the front door–stealthily! silently!–to the swing and the dark of the night and the quiet and the stillness and the alone-ness. I would sit (alone) in the peace of the evening and think, swing and just be, mentally and emotionally resting from the demands of the day.
Inevitably my escape was short-lived and I would finally be found. I never minded, not at all, not when a small head would peek out the door and squeal in his discovery and run to join me on the swing and we would laugh and talk and be and sometimes even sing.
Then again, I never minded a few more minutes’ alone either.
Last night I sat out on the back porch in the dark, coffee and smartphone in hand. Dogs barked, cars pulled in and out of driveways, doors opened and shut, and I scrolled through the various social media feeds on my phone.
After I finally exhausted all that social media had to offer, such as it was, I lay my phone aside, the tiny illumination it offered thus extinguished, the dark and pleasant peace of the evening surrounding me. As I listened to the night sounds I thanked the Lord for the blessings big and small He has granted to me by the sheer goodness of His grace. I asked for wisdom and provision in this current crazy, complicated, and confusing stage of life. My mind wandered over the various obligations and activities that require my attention.
Mostly I just was.
Soon enough the door opened and my escape, such as it was, such as it usually is, was short-lived. I was joined by some of those who I love very much and I didn’t mind, not at all. We laughed and talked and enjoyed just being and then, finally, went inside as the day drew to a close.
The Lord is good. His mercies are new every morning…and every evening.
When I was waxing nostalgic over old school blogging last week, I neglected to mention one very prevalent aspect of blogging back in the good ol’ days: we were militant about protecting our true identities. No one used their real names, and if we did we only used our first name. We didn’t dare mention our kids by name and rarely did we post pictures of them. Certainly we never mentioned where we lived.
I read a post back then by one of the top women bloggers at the time warning of the dangers of posting pictures on your blog. I suppose this was well before the popularity of mommy and photography blogs. It wasn’t our modern day allegiance to the right to privacy that motivated our use of pseudonyms, we feared the nameless someone with nefarious intentions who was somewhere out there on the internet ready to do harm to us or our kids.
I remember setting up my blog and brainstorming possible names and corresponding url’s. “lisaspence” was available then through the site I was using but, as I said, I feared the exposure of my true identity. So I became “Lisa writes…” and in fact it was many years before I changed my domain and began posting under my real name. My Twitter username is still “lisa_writes”.
What changed? I’m no sociologist but it seems that along came the social media explosion with Facebook and Twitter taking over our online interactions and suddenly we realized we could be online as our real selves and it was okay. Not only was it okay but, as I mentioned in that earlier post, broadcasting who you really were became critical for the branding of your site, nay your very selves.
It seems to me the pendulum has now swung from paranoia to the extreme opposite. Where we once hesitated in posting anything remotely personal, now everything is public. Our conversations, our criticisms, our complaints, our confessionals–it’s all out there for all the world to see. Sometimes, when I read a Facebook status report or a tweet that reveals (what I hope is) more than the author intends, I wonder: must everything be public?
It’s a good question and, just keepin’ it real, it didn’t exactly originate with me. My friend Kim ruminated on this topic on her site, articulating some of my same reservations with the overexposure of ourselves online.
The danger of carrying out so much of our interaction in the public square is, obviously, that sometimes we say too much. Our lack of discretion can not only lead to inappropriate revelations about ourselves but also to cliques and division and the sorts of brouhahas that seem to overtake Christian media on any given day or week. I know for me personally social media can at times depress. Not just because of all the arguing, all the time arguing, but because sometimes, and only some times, I feel like I’m on the outside looking in while all the cool kids exchange links and tags and emoticons. It’s the horror of middle school all over again! There are, of course, more complicating factors to my pervasive insecurity that your Facebook statuses but, still, it’s something to think about as we consider how much we say online and why we say it.
I understand that social media is, by its very nature, media and thus public. I’m not advocating Luddism but I am asking that we think about where is the line may be and when is it crossed. In Kim’s post she offers some advice for engaging online with wisdom and discretion, well worth your time to read. I find asking myself why I am sharing this post–or that status or this tweet–to be a beneficial practice. Am I angry? Wanting to impress? Showing off? I don’t deny the element of self promotion that is inherent in anything we do via social media so I try to ask: why exactly is it I am clamoring for attention? These are genuine temptations and ones we would do well to guard against.
Another good question: is social media the best platform for what I want to say? For instance if I am thanking someone for a gift, why tag them on Facebook? Why not a handwritten note or a personal email (which need not necessarily be a contradiction in terms)?
Must everything be public?
Again, let me reiterate: I am not calling for the end of social media. I am advocating wisdom and discretion and evaluation. The conversations I have online have proven not only thought provoking and challenging but also fun. I enjoy our interactions and I look forward to many more on any of the platforms whereby our virtual paths may cross.
In order to hopefully foster more personal interaction, I’m going to attempt something different here at the blog: I’m closing comments. I know that seems counterintuitive! I still welcome comments and conversation and I’d love for you to respond to this post and any other by contacting me via email, lisa {at} lisaspence {dot} com. You may also shoot me a Facebook message or Twitter DM. In other words, let me know what you think! I hope that an email exchange, for example, may prove more edifying than a comment box. Like I said, it’s an experiment and we will see how it works out…
I’m not sure how many years ago my mom began what has become a Memorial Day institution. For at least ten years, maybe more, our family and the families of my dad’s three sisters all convene at my parents’ home the Saturday afternoon before the Monday holiday. My parents have a screened-in house we call the “pond house” and we gather there for BBQ and hamburgers and hot dogs and my Aunt Gloria’s fried pies, yes and amen.
There is a pond, hence the “pond house” designation, and when there is water (not always a given in south Alabama) the kids swim and take a turn with the pedal boat. My dad also constructs a giant homemade slip-n-slide with several yards of black plastic, a couple of sprinklers, and enough liquid soap to insure the slip portion of the slide. There is usually a baseball game going on in the front yard and the evening concludes with roasting marshmallows and eating s’mores. This year my son brought his banjo so we enjoyed a little picking and grinning as the sun settled.
It’s great fun. I am reminded every year of the bond of family and I am grateful for it. It’s the only time of year the extended family as a whole is together. Those who live close see each other often and that is awesome. A few of us, me and my family included, live away so we are glad for these May get-togethers whereby we can catch up and exclaim how grown all the children are becoming. Of course we ourselves are getting older too but we don’t like to go there.
Family. Faith. Freedom. I think on these things each Memorial Day and I am humbled and thankful for the Lord’s gracious gift of each.
I’m writing over at Out of the Ordinary today about theology and the non-intellectual (which would be me)…
I’m no intellectual. Several weeks ago a couple of friends on Twitter were bemoaning the anti-intellectualism that is seemingly prevalent among evangelical women. I had to Google anti-intellectualism, thus proving their point. And mine. The truth of the matter is, if it weren’t for Google I wouldn’t understand about half of what you people talk about. I’m serious.
Yet, I’ll confess freely and often: I love theology. This passion for the study of God (“theology”) has been tepid, or even nonexistent, in years past. In other words, you’d be more apt to find me poring over the Pottery Barn catalog than the Word of God much less any of the theological tomes that now clutter my bookshelves. My love for theology has been a journey, one I stumbled upon by accident. It found me when I wasn’t even looking.
I’m a self-described stumbling theologian, meaning that I never set out to become a student of doctrine nor even a teacher of the Scriptures. Talk of this theological truth or that doctrinal interpretation bored me and seemed, frankly, rather irrelevant (see “anti-intellectual”, above). I remember years ago chatting on the phone with a long distance friend and the subject of Calvinism entering our conversation. In what context I don’t exactly remember; she was a seminary student at the time so maybe she broached the subject. At any rate I remember saying “I just don’t see how it matters, really. What’s the big deal?”
How little did I know.
Read the rest of my post here.
After yesterday’s post lamenting the loss of old school blogging, I now offer a post that I may have previously hesitated to publish because, well, its subject seems a little silly but, then again, I’m free, right? So in the interest of blog fun I give you my ode to the library which I’ve chosen to subtitle…
Some of my happiest memories of growing up–and I have many–include our trips to the local library. I can still recall the smell, the hushed quiet, the wide staircase, the eager anticipation that greeted me upon entering the glass doors. I can see Buffy the bookworm performing at the summer reading program and I can feel the weight of my library card in my hand, my name proudly printed on the front in my stilted first grade script.
With this card I was allowed the privilege of checking out a maximum of six books. Thus, six titles at a time, I made my way through the many adventures of Nancy Drew and Sue Barton, as well as Cherry Ames and Encyclopedia Brown and Penny and Tippy Parrish and all of Beverly Cleary’s protagonists from Ramona to Henry to Ellen Tebbits.
I loved wandering the aisles, perusing the book jackets, flipping through pages. A happy memory, as I said, not an exuberant happy but a kind of slow, peaceful, luxuriant happy. The words, the stories, the books that awaited my discovery, these and the anticipation thereof were a source of delight to me, bibliophile that I was (am).
As I grew older our library trips grew less frequent. I have no library related memories of high school or even college (other than those late night pre-exam cram sessions during which I would often sequester myself in a corner cubicle of the library until closing time). My slow meander through the library aisles wouldn’t resume until I was a young adult.
Once married, I couldn’t wait to get my new driver’s license. Correct identification with a new name is cool and all that but I was the more eager to have that correct identification in order to get my library card. I became once again a regular patron, this time of the small branch library near our first apartment. At each subsequent move my first priorities always included obtaining a library card.
As the children came along, one right after the other, I would navigate the stroller among the bookcases, then a stroller and a toddler alongside, then a preschooler and toddler and stroller, then…
A funny story we like to tell on my youngest: when he, my baby, was a toddler, I would have to make a circutious route for our errand running in order to avoid driving past the library unless, of course, we planned on stopping. If he saw the building and we did not pull in he would cry and cry and cry, a library induced tantrum as it were.
We had our habit: upstairs first to the children’s books. Each boy would have a totebag to fill with his chosen books. Once everyone had browsed and chosen to his heart’s content, we would go downstairs. There they would sit, looking at their books on the sofa in the adult fiction section while I browsed and chose to my heart’s content. That image of them, my four boys, my babies, eagerly “reading” their books, patiently waiting on their mother, this is another happy memory among many happy memories.
Well, as these things generally go, the boys grew and we got busy and now we rarely go to the library, and not at all as a family. A couple of my guys are still voracious readers and nearly always have a book on hand, usually from their school’s library. I continue to be a loyal patron, but, for whatever reason, my visits are not nearly as frequent as in years past. Thanks to the wonder of technology, nowadays I can browse and search for books on my laptop and know exactly which titles are ready and available for check out before I even darken the doors. This streamlines the process, saves me time, and helps me choose books I am confident I will enjoy.
But sometimes I still, occasionally, go to the library without a list, with no agenda but to walk the aisles, browse the titles, peruse the book jackets, and flip through pages. All these words, these stories, these books ready and waiting to be discovered–this makes me happy. Still.
Perhaps three or four of the ten of you who read this blog with any degree of regularity will understand when I say I miss the good ol’ days of blogging, you know, back when we traded awards and buttons and memes and participated in weekly carnivals. Maybe my inner cynic is showing but blogging seemed funner then, easier somehow. There were no rules or best practices to follow and certainly no blog experts or or consultants or books or conferences or lists of ranks (yes, there really are all of those things in abundance).
We all just blogged our blogs apart from any blogger guilt.
Blogger guilt? Yes, it’s real, at least for this blogger, and yes, you’re right, it’s dumb. But like most guilt it isn’t something I necessarily choose. Rather, somewhere, at some point, I learned the rules, such as they are, and now I find it difficult to escape their tyranny. What rules, you ask? Well, to begin with, it’s links everyone is after, thus branding oneself and building a tribe of followers who aid in the promotion of that brand become critical in order to generate the much sought after linkage and resulting traffic. Branding involves developing your content niche in addition to the advantageous and deliberate use of social media to promote your site.
In that same pursuit of links and traffic there is an unspoken quid pro quo: someone likes and comments and retweets and you respond in kind. Eventually we are all liking and linking and retweeting the same stuff but that doesn’t really matter, at least not in the jockeying for social media attention.
In terms of content, a quick survey will indicate the successful and popular blogger either writes the kinds of posts that are a cross between an op-ed and a doctoral thesis or she will craft posts full of beautiful imagery and heavily emotive language expressed in a succession of one sentence paragraphs.
Or she will be funny.
And, if you’re counting, that’s three strikes against this particular blogger (me).
Additionally, today’s popular blogger is helped if she has someone or a set of someones with which she disagrees. To that end, she herself must hold her convictions firmly and without equivocation, thus being fully prepared to defend her position stridently and passionately. There is no room for wondering or waffling because, well, there are other bloggers also looking for someone to disagree with and chances are it might be you. When the critics come, it’s a no holds barred kind of game so it’s best to be ready or be careful.
Ok, ok, so maybe there aren’t really a set of blogger rules and perhaps I’m engaging in a fair amount of snark. Exaggeration aside, please hear me clearly: there is nothing wrong with any or all of the above pursuits, excepting, obviously, the excessive employment of disagreement and criticism. Some of you are actively building your brand for the advancement of the kingdom and I applaud your efforts. May the Lord grant you great blogging influence so that you may declare to many the excellencies of His goodness and grace.
When it comes to me, however, I am not this sort of blogger. And, dumb or not, I feel strangely guilty about that.
I say it’s a strange guilt because, hello, blogging is a hobby and, as I just admitted, there aren’t really any rules. Many of the rules that feel like rules are not rules at all. For example, there is nothing inherently rule-keeping or rule-breaking about commenting (or not) on someone’s post or only blogging once in a blue moon or writing about nothing but real life wholly apart from a single opinion or footnote or quote. Also, I don’t have to chime in on every blogger brouhaha nor express an opinion on the hype and hysteria sweeping the internet on a given day.
There are no rules. I am free. I can write what I write and you can read if you want.
I know this truth seems painfully, blatantly obvious to nearly all of you still reading (anyone? anyone?). Obvious, yes, of course it is, but it is nonetheless profoundly freeing to me. There are no rules by which I must perform or else. I will write what I write when I feel like writing it. Doing so may not score me many links or increase my traffic or build my tribe but I will know the freedom and joy of doing something I love for the sole purpose of loving it.
My corner of the blogging world is small indeed, my traffic nearly negligible, my writing ordinary and undisciplined at best. These things, while true, matter little, really, if I am true to my aim here at the blog: to write because I enjoy it and because I have something I want to say: Jesus saved me and I love Him and I want you to love Him too.
Like me, do you miss the good ol’ days of blogging? What do you miss the most? Do you agree with my list of unspoken blogging rules that aren’t really rules but sometimes feel like rules? Any other rule breakers out there? What helps you maintain a sense of freedom and joy in your blogging?
