Mourning to Morning

Here we are at the end of Passion Week on the eve of another Resurrection Sunday.  It's been strange to me to have a fairly normal life during this Easter season.  This is the first time in over 20 years that Passion week hasn't been the busiest and most stressful week of the year.  Since leaving my job in a church over 6 months ago, it's been a daily strangeness.  A world I knew so well is increasingly foreign to me as I embrace a new life outside of "church world".  To be honest, it hasn't been without an important and at times painful mourning period.

I'm sure you can agree that the human soul does not easily embrace loss regardless of what we've lost or how it's been lost to us.  We fight to keep what we've worked for, what we've been given, what we've found.  With a white-knuckled ferocity, we hold on; and when we lose, the emptiness can seem debilitating.  It's true whether the choice to let go was ours or not.

Loss is pain, and mourning is not limited to the process of physical death. We mourn the loss of a dream, the death of a hope, even the subtle shift of a life we imagined to one we didn't expect.  We grieve the affect of sin, the loss of innocence, the temporary triumph of evil.

But the resurrection changes everything.  In the midst of our loss, it brings us back to the absolute truth that mourning turns to morning, and death never has the final verdict.  At the darkest moment of their lives, the disciples and followers could not imagine the life that would come from their loss, but through them the message of Jesus proliferated throughout the world and history.  Jesus explained it this way when He said, "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24)

So what have you lost?  What are you grieving?  What died or is dying?  There is a life that can spring from its death.  There is a hope of receiving more than what you've lost.  There is hope that death won't have the final say.  You can grieve and feel everything you need to feel to get through what you're going through, but rest assured that life can raise out of your loss.

Sure... you could remain a seed, and have a safe and happy, and likely unproductive, life.  You could never experience loss or change, but you were made for more than that.  A Savior Who called you "mine" has more for you than that.  Whatever you've lost is making room for abundance.  We are believers in Jesus, children of the resurrection. Your mourning is likely turning to morning.  There is hope.  Embrace it.

Can You Be a Lynda See?

It's hard to forget the awkward first days of college.  After living a fairly sheltered life, I moved halfway across the country to go college in Florida.  It rained two straight weeks when I got there.  Even having my best friend from high school as a roommate could not assuage my homesickness.  All I wanted to do was go home and learn how to cut hair.  (makes me laugh a little to think about - thank God for unanswered prayer, right?)  

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to be or to study.  I started out with Youth Ministry, then Secondary Education in English and Music. Then in the second semester of freshman English comp, we had to find a paraphrase a Shakespearean sonnet.  And I recall how nervous I felt when Mrs. See passed out those papers and skipped me.  Everyone got their paper back but me.  She gave us an assignment to begin on  and came and sat at the desk in front of me, turned toward me and handed me my paper.

"Lisa, what's your major?" she asked.

Feeling the need to explain my ever-morphing educational goals, I gave her the rundown of majors past to present half hoping she'd tell me I'd finally landed on the right one.  

"That's good," she replied with an "I-guess-so" expression on her face, "but here's why I ask..." 

Gesturing to the paper she had just handed back to me she said, "this is beautiful."

And then the words that turned my life on a dime: "You might be a good teacher someday, but you are a writer.  You should think about that."

Believe me, I did.

I wonder if we fully understand the value of believing in someone, of encouraging their dreams, of identifying their potential and narrowing their focus.  At the time, any ability I had to write was such a seedling (I don't even think I got an A on that paper), but there was enough to it that a first year English teacher could scoop it out and plant it in more fertile soil.  

So who in your life needs to know they have potential?  Who needs the encouragement of someone seeing even the tiniest, undeveloped talent in them?  The world is full of people who will tell them why they can't, what's they're doing wrong, how they ought to be.  Be the one who sees what they already are, and help them become better at it.  

So, my faithful tribe, you have an assignment.  Prayerfully consider who needs this encouragement this week, and have the "I believe in you" conversation.  When you do, report back how it goes by leaving a comment.  You can be someone's Lynda See - go help them believe in themselves!

I Found Out Why

Mark Twain said that "the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.  And there's no formula or predetermined time frame for that process, and it IS a process. 

I was born on a snowy day in Missouri several undisclosed number of years ago. 

I found out why several undisclosed number of years after that - actually quite recently. 

I was born to be a writer.  That's what this blog and  www.LisaJCamp.com is for. I'm a writer.  Whether or not I ever hit the New York Times best sellers list, whether it's passive income or less,  a writer is who I am and who I choose to be. 

Some of you have been part of the embryonic days, the days at Tipitee's Cafe.  After 7 years of blogging, the café has closed.  Some of the posts that were there will be part of collections in the future, but with fresh perspective and presentation. 

Some of you have been part of the discovery, part of the falling away of the other identities I fought hard to keep.  Thank you for your patience and your unfounded faith in me. 

I'll write what I've always written - inspirational pieces to help you in your faith.  If you want to grow in your relationship with God, in your relationships with other people or if you just like a good story, you'll like what's coming. 

Great days are ahead... on the other side of mountains of hard work.  Thanks for joining me on the journey.

The Reinvention of Me

Sometimes, life goes exactly as planned.  That has never been my experience, but I'm sure it's true.  Somewhere, somehow for someone life must be according to their plan.  I need to believe this.  I'm just OCD enough to feel like I know where I'm going in this world.

If it's true that "man makes plans and God laughs", He might be red-faced, trying to catch His breath, with sore abs right about now at the everlasting chuckle I give Him in making plans for my life.  

So what are you going to do when you're single, over 40 and find yourself unemployed in an economy that made the Carter Administration sound like the "Good Old Days"?  You reinvent yourself.  Embrace this season of your life to appreciate all the friendships you've neglected, learn a new hobby, finish some projects, and contemplate what you really want to do and who you really want to be - who you're really meant to be.

So that's my plan... embrace the delicious ambiguity of my life right now and when the dust settles, see who it is who emerges from the rubble.  I think I like her already.