Category Archives: God’s plans for us

Common Sense

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I can’t qualify as a fan of Dr. Phil, but both times I’ve heard him, he was fascinating. He’s got the ability to quickly analyze a handful of disjointed circumstances and pinpoint a problem with an accurate bottom line. His remedies land on the side of common sense, and they solve problems.

In dealing with the tensions of modern life, whether financial, relational or circumstantial, he recommends following a bit of advice his father gave him. “Spend 5% of your time deciding if you got a good or bad deal, and 95% of your time deciding what you’re going to do about it.”

I lost my husband and became a widow. As that heartbreak unfolded (and for months afterwards), I couldn’t think of anything else, dwelling on the disaster 95% of the time, analyzing the “bad deal.” As for any effort spent on what I was going to do about it, not even 5%.

Eventually, though, those percentages have to move in the other direction as Dr. Phil says, or heavy grieving can become a permanent place to live. I knew I didn’t want that.

Slowly but surely, because of God’s involvement, the balance began tipping in a healthy direction. It has helped to look for positives, and I don’t mean advantages to my husband’s death (because there are precious few). But because God pours good things into our lives every day, there are many blessings to be named.

Dr. Phil’s recommended 5%-95% ratio can be applied to any crisis we encounter. After a time of laser-focus on the problem, we need to shift our thinking toward solutions, setting aside the “if only’s” and coming up with a few “can do’s.”

My former pastor, Colin Smith, says that when we’re in the depths of despair, who we are and who God is intersect. “The depths is where our most holy moments occur,” he says, explaining how we gain an understanding of the profound when we’re bottomed out.

But how does God expect us to rise from those depths, to crawl from a 95% focus on the bad deal we’ve had to 95% on what we’re going to do about it? It’s because we’ve bumped into, or intersected with God. We’ve bonded with him at our lowest point, which is exactly where he empowers us to move away from it.

He wants us to reach for new beginnings. Something positive has ended, yes, but God is an unlimited resource for new starts that will lead to more good. We can’t see them yet, but we can make plans to move away from what we know to be sad toward what we know will be good, weighting the percentage toward what God-and-I-together are going to do about it.

And that’s just common sense.

“There is a time for everything… a time to tear and a time to mend.” (Ecclesiastes 3:7a)

Who am I?

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Marriage is biblically described as two-becoming-one. A simple visual might be a husband and wife sharing one umbrella, huddled close, clutching the handle together. The two are together inside the one.

Widowhood is a loss of that oneness, which necessitates standing alone beneath the umbrella. That has a familiar feel to it, since independence was the starting point for all of us, but standing alone in widowhood, our umbrella isn’t as straight as it used to be. It flops side-to-side, and after managing it alone for a while, it gets very heavy.

Those of us who were married for decades find ourselves wondering what’s going to happen next. Some hurry into a second marriage, feeling lonely and uncomfortable with the mantle of singleness. Others try to turn back the clock hoping to remake youth’s decisions: a new job, new hairdo, new wardrobe.

A few risk their savings on precarious ventures in a quest for the money husbands once provided. A small number hurt so badly they burrow into widowhood as a permanent identity.

When I became a widow, wise advisers told me not to make any changes for a year. “Don’t move back to Chicago. Don’t give away Nate’s clothes. Don’t join anything. Don’t quit anything. Don’t even rearrange your furniture.”

But we widows find ourselves yearning for a revised life-purpose while still in that recommended holding pattern of preventing change. Eventually, though, the “don’ts” must morph into “do’s”. Although earthly life ended for our men when they died, it didn’t end for us, and none of us should be fooled into thinking we can stay in a partnership that is no more.

As always, we should ask God what to do next. He has a fresh start ready for each of us, a positive purpose for our remaining years, something separate from our marriages. Half-plus-half made one marriage whole, but we’re now half minus half, which is not a marriage at all. None of us wants to continue as half-a-person.

Opening ourselves to a fresh start might seem scary because we love the familiar, but our familiar is gone. Even as I work at writing a book for the first time, I fight nervousness, because the process is unknown and untried. But God brought the opportunity after I asked “what’s next?”, so with confidence in him, I started.

None of us will ever stop missing our other halves. No new beginning can delete what we had, but living inside old memories means missing out on God’s next. Willingly walking with him into the worrisome unknown might even find us closing our umbrellas, because one day we’re going to realize the sun is out, and it’s shining brighter than ever.

“I have a lot more to tell you, things you never knew existed. This is new, brand-new, something you’d never guess or dream up. When you hear this you won’t be able to say, ‘I knew that all along.’ “ (Isaiah 48:6,7, The Message)

 

Fast Friends for the Long Haul

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Like many women, I have a number of friends from long ago, relationships that are tried and true. Our one-on-one’s have stood the test of time and will last, we are sure, until death do us part.

I’ve spent the last couple of days with one of these gems, my friend Lynn. We first met as pre-teens at Moody Church during the Eisenhower years. By 1959 we were bonded in a way that has lasted through 52 years.

Lynn and I acted goofy in the early days. For example, we tried smoking when we found a package of Cools under a park bush. After running home for matches, we went back to the park, hid behind a hedge and lit up, swallowing the smoke as if it was a cool drink. It didn’t have much appeal.

We blistered our skin under a sun lamp, trying to get a winter tan. We drenched our hair with peroxide in an effort to go blond. We pulled bad-mannered pranks at the church camp.

But we did good things together, too. We learned to knit and turned out sweaters, hats, mittens and scarves. We supported each other through multiple boyfriends and ended up engaged within a year of each other. We married 9 months apart and were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. Our husbands became good friends and were in the Army at the same time, though Don rose much higher in the ranks. We became grandmas the same year, and this week we enjoyed being together again… as always.

Life has become more tenuous these days. While Nate was struggling with cancer, Don was battling the aftereffects of a stroke. Rough knocks have gradually changed us, and we talked about how different our perspectives are these days compared to “before”, touching on each decade of our friendship.

We’ve accepted the difficult truth that God sends upsetting experiences our way for our ultimate good. His timing is significant, and he delivers crises based on what we can handle and no more. He has us on his mind continually and stays close through every decade. He’s loves us when we act goofy and forgives when we offend him.

In other words, he’s the perfect Friend.

Lynn and I thoughtlessly set God aside as teens. But this Friend, ever-patient, preserved us through those rocky years and waited for us to turn full-face toward him. Difficulties were part of the reason we did.

Today we howled with laughter in a read-aloud session of our high school letters, but the very best part of these two days has been our conversations about the Lord, his Word and his work in our lives.

When our years conclude as Nate’s have, one-on-one friendship with God will be all that counts.

“Since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.” (Romans 5:10)