The secret to living and loving well

hint: It has to do with your lens.

Her name was Sally and when she clasped both her soft old hands around mine and smiled at me I knew I wanted to know her secret. You could tell from her warm smile that she knew how to live and love well. Have you met someone like that? I can think of just a handful of people in my life that leave a mark like this. A mark that gives me hope I could possibly turn out to love life like they do.

I used to think the secret to living well was more about successes and the amount of quality stuff you owned. But the happiest people I’ve met have less stuff than I have now, and a many more of them have come through hard failures and struggles. I know now, it’s about your lens. It’s about a depth in your soul, it’s about seeing your world around you and seeing yourself through a filter that is not human nature.

What lens do you look through? And how does it affect the way you see your circumstances and the way you view yourself?

I’ve got to be honest with you. There have been days that I’m ashamed to reminisce. Days where I’ve selfishly snapped at everyone around me. I’ve said things that should never be said. Words I can’t take back. I may have caused scars. And there have been days where I have bullied myself into thinking that I’ll never be enough for anyone or anything. Scars on my own heart. I admit there have been days where I don’t want to get out of bed, and I carry this pity around with me thinking life stinks. Every little thing that goes wrong on days like this is another punch in the gut.

Do you ever have days like this?

What we mean when we say God is GOOD

By Julie Luse

You’ve heard it before: an enthusiastic proclamation out of the mouth of (I can only assume) a Christian — “God is good!”

For a long time, this phrase made me mad. It seemed so cliché. Or lighthearted. When I heard it, I would think “Well, of course God is good, but the situation you’re talking about was one of human merit not of God’s doing.”

Or how about when you hear “God is good” out of the mouth of someone who seems to have had a fairly easy life. Steady family, plenty of money, lucky in love and life. Never lost a job. Praised for little things accomplished in life. Always had what was needed growing up. Never battled death, chronic disease, depression, or abuse.

And like a cynic you ask yourself, “What would that guy say if his life was rocked like so many lives have been? Would he still say that ‘God is good’?”

How do we cling to God, when everything is pulling us apart?

By Julie Luse

When it rains, it pours?

I’ve said it so often lately that I am trying to convince my husband there has to be scripture based on it. This has to be a spiritual concept! I’ve sifted through the bible trying to make sense of these moments when everything comes closing in all at the same time, and before I can even get through the first few setbacks, another couple come piling on. And I have nothing else to say but “when it rains it pours.” I finally convinced myself that though I cannot find exact verses to back it up, the theme does exist in biblical history. I imagine Job might have said this to himself, or possibly Naomi. It isn’t a new concept.

So this past Sunday if you saw me lurking in the halls of LBC, I’m sorry. Yes, it was that bad. I couldn’t hide my frustration with life at the moment, and I may have snapped at my family and an innocent bystander…embarrassing! I was feeling overworked, underappreciated, and I was worried about finances, things breaking, accomplishing things, words that had been said to me and words I had said to myself. It was one of those days “when it rains it pours.”

Why progress doesn’t have to be perfect

By Julie Luse

One of my favorite flowers is the magnificent Orchid – even it’s name is exquisite. I buy them at Trader Joe’s because they beckon me with their unique color and shape and most of all, their ridiculously low price. $4.99 – heck yes. And it looks stunning on this old bookshelf in my living room by the window. But it’s beauty is fleeting. Eventually the leaves drop to the ground and I’m left with this long bent leafless stick – not very exquisite. I try to be okay with the stick for a couple days, but it looks dead to me, I can’t take it.

So I’ve developed a pattern – an addictive habit – if you will. Whenever my Orchid turns into a stick I throw it in the trash and I make a stop at Trader Joe’s to buy another brightly colored piece of sunshine. $4.99 – that’s cheaper than a decked out venti latte from Starbucks.

This last time I stopped at Trader Joe’s to pick up another one, the store clerk must have recognized my Orchid buying-killing-replacing habit because she took it upon herself to give me a little educational lesson right there in the checkout line.

“Did you know that when the leaves fall off they’re not dead?”

“ohhh, yes. I knew that.” I say fakely because I just can’t be exposed for this scandal.

“The leaves fall but it’s not dead, they will grow back eventually, some take up to 6 months to grow back.”

Evidently the store clerk had seen a lot of people doing what I was doing and she was worried that people were throwing these beautiful living plants in the trash. Hmmmm, she had every right to think that. Busted!

Are you feeling small today?

By Julie Luse

PHOTO CREDIT Saumil Shah creative commons

You know those days where you just feel like a nobody? When you get lost in the crowd? When you feel so small in this world? We all have them. We compare ourselves to the somebodies in our world, and we think about how easy or marvelous it is to be them and how hard and sometimes painful it is to be ourselves. We let toxic phrases leak into our vocabulary. Phrases like if only, of course they have it easy, why couldn’t that happen to me, life would be so easy if, yadda yadda. You get the picture.

I like to call these Nobody Days! And they need to be taken seriously because even the somebodies in this world have Nobody Days. And there’s a reason why.

We weren’t created to be somebodies. We were created to be beloved.