Author Archives: Lisa Lewton

Heavy Words & Little Ears

(Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash)

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday in a language of heavy words. In the Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal, we confess in words that would have done me in at an elementary-aged spelling bee, and might still give me trouble were it not for spell-check: self-indulgence, hypocrisy, exploitation of people, and self-examination.

The last phrase is both heavy and light all at once. When you look deeply at your own self, what do you find? I find all the heavy words at work. Am I self-indulgent? Let me think about it after I drink a third cup of coffee with a splash of cream. Hypocritical? Indeed. Do I exploit people when I buy cheap stuff on Amazon. Yikes. Let’s be done now.

Coupled with the heaviness of Lent’s language, however, is an airy lightness. Sure, you are bound to embody those words by nature of your humanity. They run in your blood and move to your heart. And yet, the 40 day self-examination moves us in a single direction: to Easter. Lent is a hard look at our own selves and a grateful look at what God has already done about it. You carry around heavy words and Jesus lifts them off your back. You are overwhelmed by your relationship with the aforementioned heavy words and Jesus erases them to scribble the one word “forgiven” all over you.

Lent gives us language to teach ourselves and our kids that the heavy words do not define us or own us. Jesus’ one word, however, does.

A question for littles

Forgiveness means there is nothing we can do to undo God’s love for us. It sticks to us like the stickiest glue ever invented. What sticky things can they find in the house? (For example: stickers, tape, the maple syrup on the kitchen table from breakfast.) Talk about God’s love as stickier than even that!

A question for former littles

Wonder together about self-indulgence. Be honest about what tempts you to self-indulge. (Hello, chocolate chip cookies.) What does it feel like when you self-indulge? Why is hard to be honest about it? How does Jesus’ word “forgiven” written all over you change how you feel about yourself?

A spiritual practice

Self-examination is indeed a heavy phrase. Let it also be a freeing phrase.

Sit still and scan your body from your toes to the top of your head. Remember God made your body out of love and in the image of God. Imagine examining your heart. What do you find there? Let your heart tell you. Take one deep breath and then another, as you say this prayer: “I am forgiven. Let my heart love my neighbor and myself.”

To Know and Be Known

(Photo by Gabby K on Pexels.com)

This is not a schmaltzy Valentine’s Day post, lest the photograph mislead you. Tomorrow is not my favorite day of the year, although I have found it to be a good excuse to buy my kids a new book and chocolate. The point of Valentine’s Day is to express our human love for one another, but with that comes heaps of opportunities for missed expectations (disappointment) which can lead to not loving moments on such a lovely day of the year. At least there is chocolate!

Because our staff is reading The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, I better understand my relationship with Valentine’s Day. Turns out, Valentine’s Day, it’s not you, it’s me! Have you heard of this tool to understand our personalities? The Enneagram, as Ian Morgan Cron, co-author of the book explains, is “a tool that awakens our compassion for people just as they are, not the people we wish they would become so our lives would become easier.”

Yikes. Have you ever wished someone would be different and therefore easier to love? Guilty. Have you crossed your fingers hoping someone you love might change as the years go by? Guilty. Learning my enneagram number taught me that although I am a unique human being created in the image of God like no other human being, I am also like many other human beings in the world. We are people who avoid Valentine’s Day because it can be accompanied by disappointment. When we encounter disappointment on Valentine’s Day, we distance from the very person who is trying to love us.

Like other people who identify as a 5 (The Observer), I prefer to think more than feel. I have to work hard to process my feelings. I like learning and listening as long as it isn’t small talk, and when someone says, “Tell me about yourself”, I wish I had an invisibility cloak. I will know a hundred things about a friend or conversation partner before they know 10 things about me. Anyone who identifies as a 5 would describe themselves similarly.

This new understanding of myself has been clarifying in a life-giving way, just in time for Valentine’s Day. I know myself more truly as a pastor, mom, wife and friend. Most importantly, I know to be more gentle on myself and others, especially on Feb. 14th. I am a 5, my husband is a 2, and that could lead to a whole series of blogposts.

For now, remember you are known by the Maker as your true, broken, messy self, which makes slightly more sense when you know your own true, broken, messy self.

A Morning Prayer in the Cold

(Photo Credit: Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash)

Yep, God, I know. You orchestrated another new day. The sky proclaims a new warm shade of pink and in North Dakota it is too crazy cold to see it without a window in between us.

It is a new, freeze-your-nose-hairs cold day and I am not excited to venture out the door. It is cozy to stay in the proximity of a warm bed. Even to glance at it once in a while tricks me into believing it is possible to avoid the exposure of the cold.

If I do that, I would miss taking my kids to school and seeing them flow into the steady stream of classmates and school staff, including superhero crossing guards who chose to leave their cozy homes to keep my kiddo safe. I would miss working in an office with people I appreciate, doing work I do believe matters in the world. I would miss listening to stories of people who need to remember Christ meets them in the dark places of life. I would miss wondering whether I am ever doing another, forgiving myself for my failures, and learning how to be still in the presence of You.

Okay God, I’ll bundle up and venture out the door again. I’ll risk frozen nose hairs and I’ll risk entering into the steady stream of the cold day where I will get some things right and other things wrong. Being human is a constant exercise in the exposure of who we really are and what we truly can and cannot do. These bodies in all their limitations do not always feel so cozy.

So please, God, bundle me up in your mercy. May the frosty air I breathe give new life of a new day so that I might bundle up my neighbor with mercy, too.

How to Match Socks

Every sock has a match. Except for the ones that get lost. Except for the ones I’m certain were in the pile when I put them in the washer and didn’t come out when I took them out of the dryer. Where the heck did those socks go? How did they get lost? How can a sock run away? Honestly. I have enough trouble keeping track of my schedule, what groceries we need, my hard working husband, my busy kids, and my dog who also steals socks, but not those socks.

How does a perplexed woman match socks when some of the missing matches are lost?

How does a perplexed woman match what she’d like to do with the amount of time she has when so much time is lost scrolling Instagram (here’s looking at you, Lisa) or doing chores that belong to other people in my house or worrying whether I am enough of a mom/wife/daughter/pastor/neighbor/friend/human.

How do you match socks?

Sometimes, perhaps, you just don’t. You put one with the other and if they both fit on a foot, they match! You live your life and be gentle when you’ve lost time. And wearing whatever socks happen to fit your feet, you stop searching for what you’ve lost.

The Jesus I Follow and Hashtags to Avoid

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When writing Instagram posts, I have learned to be skeptical of hashtags with Jesus’ name. This is how it goes.

My Instagram post is about Jesus’ mercy. But #JesusMercy is overwhelmed by creepy Jesus images.

#Jesus isn’t so bad…as long as you are convinced men have the most authority in the pulpit. (Example: a bazillion pictures of a man preaching. #Jesus)

#JesusLovesYou is a library of Christian platitudes. (“God has a plan.” #JesusLovesYou)

#JesusAndCoffee is the perfect blend if you are looking for posts from Jesus’ cheer team. (“It’s Friday, don’t forget to be fabulous!” #JesusAndCoffee)

This is not the Jesus I follow. He cares not that I am fabulous nor that I know the most platitudes. (Someone please initiate #JesusPlatitudes.) I chose the hashtag #SpiritualLonging for at least two reasons to tell you about the Jesus I follow:

  1. Jesus hashtags often present a shallow Jesus. Any hashtag that inspires you to be your best, fabulous self is leaving out your primary call to serve your neighbor. We do not serve our neighbor out of our best selves, but out of our broken selves. Only because Jesus became broken, and I am as broken and my life is as messy as yours can we together follow the Savior who makes us whole. He does not tell us to get fabulous and take away the mess of our lives. He entered the mess, died for you, and lived to tell about it.
  2. An important distinction in any proclamation of Jesus is this: Don’t tell me what Jesus does, instead let me see it, feel it, taste it, yearn for it. The only difference between a good sermon and a bad sermon is whether those words tell you about Jesus, or give you Jesus. Do the words point to Jesus, or do the words put Jesus in your heart, your mouth, and your bones? That is the Jesus for whom I long and the Jesus whom I follow. You cannot receive that proclamation via Instagram posts. You need a preacher, so a church community becomes helpful. (“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” Romans 10:14.

There is no room in #SpiritualLonging for only one gender and sexual orientation of preachers, or Christian platitudes, or a fabulous you. Instead, we are filled with longing in a world that is not yet as it should be for our neighbor. And in our brokenness, we are washed in the promise that we are all on the way, and you are beloved, just as you are. #BeYourBestForJesus

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

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You, Beloved One of God, are a library of stories.

You are a story of courage and loss. A story of hope and despair. A story of dumb things you did when you were young. You are a story of passion, of adventure, and hope.

I wonder, however, what story you tell about yourself. Several times I have encountered research about the difference between the ways men and women tell their own stories. Men often identity success in their stories while women do not. Women, I’m sorry to say, can be poor storytellers. I know that is true of myself. I’ll look back on the day and the headline will sting with words I’d like to take back and things I would do differently. My story is shaped by my own mistakes, fears, and insecurity.

How do you tell your own library of stories? Can you look back on the past few days and see the light of Christ that beamed in you? The way you were the hands of Christ for someone else? The words you spoke that were shaped by your deepest prayers?

Investigate the story you tell about yourself, you who are made in the image of God. Remember God made all kinds of cool things in the creation story, but only when God made human beings did God say, “Wow, that is good. That is very good.”

God did not call you perfect and has never instructed you to be perfect. Instead, you are very good because God has made you very good. All other stories are in the shadow of the story of the God who made you very good and calls you very good.

Might that be the story you tell about yourself today?

The Stowaways in My Backseat

Karis’ dolls named Grace, America, and Canada properly buckled up

One day when I parked my car at church after dropping kiddos off at school, I discovered these three stowaway passengers. Was it momentarily creepy, you ask? Why yes it was. Only momentarily. They are well-behaved and do not mind subzero temperatures while waiting for hours in the car for Karis.

Like I have done for eight years, Karis had made sure her dolls were snuggled into their seatbelts. Day after day kids watch and learn whether we are in our car, house, neighborhood, church, grocery store, or anywhere else. When I visit with parents whose child will soon be baptized, I love to remind them they are their child’s most prominent teachers about God. Again when a couple is preparing for marriage, I say a similar thing. You know what you know about marriage based on what you learned from your parents (or other adults who raised them) about relationships growing up. For good and for worse, kids learn what they know primarily from parents.

Karis buckled her dolls seatbelts. She also grows impatient all of a sudden. She wants to do things right and likes to help people. When her feelings get hurt she shrinks inward. All that she learned from me.

What is your kiddo or grandkiddo learning from you? You might ask them. I like to ask my kids once in a while, “What’s it like to have me as a mom?” Like any performance review, I often hear things I’d rather be oblivious to, but I truly need to know. Those truths are edifying, even if they are hard to swallow.

If you are unsure about asking your kids such a vulnerable question, you can also watch the backseat of your car to see who is lurking there.

The Mom Drama of Kids and Video Games

(A rare moment of all three Lewtons playing a game together.)

It might be best if we kept this under wraps, but one of my favorite Sega Genesis games (circa 1995) was Mortal Kombat. Girls are stereotypically often more dexterous than boys, which is the only logical reason I can come up with that I would “Finish Him!” more often than the boys who gamed much more than I ever did.

Sonic the Hedgehog was more enjoyable (and less gory), along with Ren and Stimpy (happy, happy, joy, joy). While I did not spend most of my time with any of these characters within the orange shag-carpeted walls of our basement growing up, I did spend some.

Video games have become a million times cooler with realistic sound and visual effects and the ability to play with friends from their own homes (a great perk during a pandemic). Even so, for years I didn’t want my kids to be gamers. Why was that? Is it a Midwestern mindset that sitting down and looking at a screen to play a game is somehow bad? Where did that come from? How many wonderful people play Candy Crush? I played Mortal Kombat and I didn’t want my kids to play Mario Carts? Being a parent is a constant exercise in self-reflection.

Ours was the house without a gaming console until I changed my mind. Sometimes my kids play video games. We have regular conversations to determine how much is appropriate and how to self-regulate. Both are important life skills. How do we understand moderation and practice it? Again, questions applicable throughout our entire lives.

Most importantly, the video game self-reflection and conversations have taught me never to identify my kid (or someone else’s) based on what they do or do not do. Kids are not “gamers”, they are kids who play video games. If we see a kid as a “gamer”, we see only a part of his or her whole self. Parents carry the power to shroud a kid in shame by narrowing their kid down to what they do or do not do. And, parents carry the responsibility to tell kids the story of who they truly are: beloved by God, made in God’s image, already forgiven, bearers of Christ’s light.

My kids are just like their mother: flawed, fully freed and forgiven by Jesus, and forever learning. (Unlike me, they are not triumphant Mortal Kombat players, but that’s only between you and me.)

Easier Not To Have Them, Better If You Do

(Credit: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash)

I know only part of the truth about me. I need others to help me know the rest.

I know part of the truth about myself, so I need you to help me know more truth about myself. I know part of the truth about the congregation I serve and I need others to uncover other truths I do not know or see (or that I ignore). I know part of the truth about my relationships with my kids, spouse, and family. I need them to help me understand the whole truth.

We walk around knowing only part of what is true. Only conversation brings out the truth.

I challenge you to think more deeply about your conversations this week, including conversations you have with yourself and with others. I’ve been inspired by Susan Scott’s book “Fierce Conversation: Achieving Success in Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time”.

Scott shares her revelation that conversations do not shape a relationship, but conversations are in fact the relationship. One conversation at a time, we see beyond our own perception of what is true about ourselves and others. You can guess by her title she suggests bold, honest, curious conversation. It has made me wonder how many truth-provoking conversations I actually have with staff, congregation members and myself. It is so much easier to err on the side of nice. Not only is it easier, in the Midwest polite conversation is culturally expected.

Today, what conversation needs to happen to let the truth be free? What honest words would bring growth to your own self or a relationship? What is keeping you from speaking those honest words? If we fear the relationship will be damaged, Scott suggests chances are it is already slowly happening. Truth is oxygen to a relationship. Too much of it all at once is dangerous, but a steady stream is life-giving.

In honor of a famous truth-teller who honestly proclaimed his dream, today is an appropriate day to imagine a world full of truth, one conversation at a time.

Book Review: “I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness”

One of our most grievous faults in this season of the world is our generalizations of people. Any sentence containing “those people” kind of words should alert us (as speaker or hearer) to our own sin (mine included) of separating humans based on our own criterion.

“Those Black Lives Matter people”, “those Pro-Trump people”, “those racist people”, “those white supremacists”, “those families”, “those non-maskers”, “those liberals”. (If this does not sound familiar to you, perhaps you substitute the word “people” with more colorful words.

This language can be a drug that distracts us from reality. “Those people” language falsely assures us that we belong to a people that is not “those people”. “My people” are not “those people”, the drug convinces you to believe.

In the past few years with the help of courageous authors, the lines of separation I had previously drawn between people has blurred. I’m not sure sure anymore which people are those people.

I think it started with “Between the World and Me”, by Ta Nehisi-Coates. This book is a letter written from father to son. It is famous and wise and heart-breaking. But I think the book that most profoundly created the blur was written by a woman named Patricia Williams, entitled “Rabbit: A Memoir”. (The Kindle edition is $2.99 for a limited time.) I listened to the audiobook. If you like audiobooks, it is a good read. The author grew up in Atlanta and experienced what is a normal life for many black and brown girls. While I was playing baseball with neighborhood boys at 12, she was having her first baby and her mom was too drugged up to care. Her story is devastating, but because she is a comedian, she has you laughing to crying before you even knew what happened. I could wish I hadn’t read it and didn’t know how awful life is at this very moment for so many young girls, but I did read and now I know. And the line is blurry.

The book I most recently read and loved that persists in wiping out the line of separation between people is Austin Channing Brown’s “I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness”. Channing Brown is about the same age as me, also raising kids, married, working, trying to make sense of the world and each person’s place in it and how we will leave it for future generations. My story is nothing like hers, which is why I need to hear what she has to say. I need a teacher who speaks from the edges into the comfortable middle where I live.

It is the Christian way to be wary of comfort. If we are comfortable with life, relationships, work, our faith practices, our prayers, watch out. Look around. Chances are, whenever we are comfortable, we begin to understand our own way of life as the ideal way of life. Our home, our routine, our neighborhood, our beliefs all become the right way to do things.

When I picture Jesus in the first century, I imagine him walking around edges, not in the middle. The edges of town, the edges of relationships, the edges of the synagogue and proclaiming the best news to the people outside the edges, on the other side of the blurry line (God willing the line remains blurry as opposed to rock solid).

Among Channing Brown’s wise words are these words about comfort: “Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It’s not a comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sins of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation? It’s haunting. But it’s also holy.”

The world is not yet as it should be. We have not arrived, but are always on the way. We know this to be true as long as the grievous phrase “those people” remains in our vocabulary.