Lori Florida

The wind blew as we gathered around the graveside, and I watched this large, beautiful family say goodbye to their beloved grandmother. There was sadness and there were tears, but the most striking thing was the togetherness laced in, around, and among every emotion and experience of the day. Watching this family, buoyed by their togetherness, prompted a light bulb moment and sent my mind traveling back to my first wrestling match with a big  mom fear . “How can I possibly love my second baby as much as my first?” “Is there enough of me for both of them?” “Will having another baby rob the ones I already have of what they deserve?” I had heard it said that the best gift you can give your child is a sibling. My oldest was only nine months old when I found out number two was going to join our family sooner than my master plan called for. I felt I was just beginning to get my “mom sea legs” and being a mom to two was a bigger challenge than I could get my head around. Everything felt l...

My dad’s soul left for heaven four months, one day, and about fourteen hours ago and I haven’t dissolved into a pile of nothing yet. I’m more okay than my fear ever let me think was possible. I’ve weathered the scariest thing in my life and imagination better than I expected to because of the “ Lesson Learned ” God is teaching me right now. Lesson Learned: The security you found in your dad’s opinion of you was an important part of God’s plan, but not all of God’s plan. The things your dad gave you were a downpayment on the things God, your good Father is giving you now. Your dad carefully stewarded your self-worth and in ways invisible to you, has been carefully handing the baton back to God. More of how you see yourself is currently resting in how God sees you than you realized. This is why you are okay. God used one of my favorite Psalms to spell this out for me. God’s voice has been especially loud during miscarriages, disappointments, and fears through Psalm 103. I love that he br...

I had a recurring nightmare as a child. It woke me in the middle of the night and kept me awake worrying about whether it would fill my mind as soon as I closed my eyes. I thought I would outgrow it. I hoped my adult brain would be able to see things my child’s brain couldn’t and I would be free. Instead, a panicky fear of my Dad dying followed me into marriage and parenting. I’m 49 years old and until recently, the nightmare still showed up in various forms. This year my beloved Daddy died. I watched him take his last breath in front of me and imagined him arriving with the next in heaven. My whole life I’ve been clenched up around the fear that watching him die might break something inside of me and I couldn’t survive.  It didn’t happen. I’m more okay than I ever thought possible. My dad isn’t living anymore, he’s not here on earth for me to talk to or touch and I’m sitting upright and in my right mind. Today I’m amazed at my okayness. Finally being free of this fear I’ve lived ...

Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver, and the other is gold. Living in the parsonage next door to my church brought with it a fierce temptation to run for cover on Sunday mornings. At war with my longing for good friends was my compulsion to avoid awkward post-service conversations. I loved my friends; it was the process from acquaintance to bosom friend that killed me. Voices in my head told me the happy groups chatting in the foyer didn’t need one more person. But I was in a new place with new people as a mom of two preschoolers. To build a life here, I needed friends. God always knew I needed friends. The proof started before I was even born as my mom discovered one of her Lamaze classmates attended the same church she did. My first friendship was born before I was. Kim and I grew up together. She was the blond to my brunette, the laughter to my serious, and the active to my laid back. She provided an anchor of belonging to my little heart. I can’t remember my ele...

An unexpected reflection as I passed a store window or mirror used to clue me into some form of self-care that needed tightening up. Now a notification that I’ve been tagged in a friend’s online photo makes me throw out an old favorite sweatshirt or lean closer to the magnifying mirror with my tweezers. A non-curated view of myself encourages better self-care. The same thing can drive changes in my soul. Soul mirrors are harder to come by than physical reflections. Although the messages they hold are less obvious, they’re a precious treasure. After the initial uncomfortable flinch, if we learn to stay in the moment, the truth will emerge. When it does, we can become something new. Writing for the Glorious Table has been this type of soul mirror for me. I sent my first submission to our editor, Harmony, on July 31, 2015. It came back with much-needed red ink and kind but firm instruction. “Also,” she wrote, “you need to work on eliminating ellipses. I suggest looking at...

“When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters. When Serug had lived 30years, he became the father of Nahor. And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.”  Genesis 11:20-23 (NKJV) I bet you didn’t memorize these verses in Sunday School when you were growing up. If you’re like me, your eyes glazed over as you stumbled through them to finish your Read Through The Bible in a Year plan. Maybe you think of Ancestry.com commercials you’ve seen and wonder about your own lineage. Did the line of your nose come from a distant descendant from a foreign country? Was your outlook on life shaped little by little as it filtered down from a culture you’ve never directly experienced? And the most weighty question: what legacy am I crafting for the generations who follow? If each word of the Bible is truly God-breathed and useful in...

Someday I’ll be a white-haired lady talking with friends or gazing out a window alone with my thoughts. My conversation and thoughts are sure to center around moments when my life was busy with little people who called me Mom. Among the everyday moments, other memories will float to the surface and demand my attention above the rest. The highlights will be the clutch moments, the pivotal points in my children’s lives when a decision was made or a new ounce of courage was found. The moments I got to watch them  become . Those clutch moments are the same desires I dreamt about when my babies were growing inside me. My prayers were full of desire to be there when my kids needed me most. I was desperate to offer support and put the wind in their sails. The same moments I longed for at the beginning will be the exact ones sustaining me at the end. What I didn’t see coming were the tears. My early dreams and the memories real life has given me bear many similarit...

Tigist invited me into her home in Ethiopia because I was—and still am—her  American sister/sponsor . When my heart was stirred toward orphan prevention, my girlfriends joined me, we pooled our money, and I earned the opportunity to be Tigist’s honored guest. The inequities of our lives churned inside me during our visit. Our two birthplaces make our realities wildly different. Her entire home is the size of my master bathroom. I have access to medical specialists, while her community has one doctor per 33,333 people. My hard work has the power to significantly change my situation. Her hard work, day in and day out, barely keeps malnutrition at bay. Trying to make sense of these disparities has been an open, working file in my mind since the day I met Tigist. I need to understand how God is working and what he expects from me. The privilege of my birthplace is a sacred offering I have to give to the world. Wrestling with these questions has caused unexpected certitudes t...

I think I was born loving shoes. In a box somewhere in the attic, I have a pair of white leather baby shoes with my name in gold-leaf on the soles. My habit throughout childhood was to go to sleep with new shoes placed in their box, the lid off, by my bed so that they would be the first thing my blurry eyes would see in the morning. I had a growth spurt during middle school, a few short months after my mom bought me exactly the pair of Nikes I wanted. My shoes were still sparkling white when my toes started complaining. My flabbergasted mom took me shoe shopping again—back to the same store, back to the same Nikes with a purple swish. I loved those shoes—both pairs! This shoe love made my decision to walk out of a shoe store without a purchase this summer feel crazy. We were shopping for hiking shoes for our adventure into the Wyoming Rocky Mountains. Because we would be carrying all our belongings in backpacks for a week, our feet would be our most important piece of equ...

I love old books. Maybe it’s the smell of history that rolls out with the crackly pages. Maybe it’s the tone of authority old-fashioned English gives to the words. Maybe it’s knowing the words are the only remaining living parts of the author. Certainly it’s the look and feel of a proper cloth binding. Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret  is a skinny red book that grabbed my attention for all those reasons. It was printed by China Inland Mission in 1935 and bears the name of its previous owner in flowy script. It was written by Taylor’s son and daughter-in-law, who followed him as missionaries to China. To this day members of the Taylor family are continuing the work Hudson began in China. During his fifty-one years there, he recruited eight hundred missionaries to join him. They went to China trusting God to meet their physical needs without any fundraising. Hudson used unconventional means to gain entry into the hearts of the people. He adopted Chinese dress and many other...

The stakes were high, and I was a novice. Choosing my firstborn’s school put my beloved son at the mercy of my meager mom skills, and I was desperate to get this right. I couldn’t sleep. Fear had me wrapped in knots. I was afraid of events that hadn’t happened, yet they were haunting me like ghosts. I was afraid my son would: not be academically challenged not be emotionally safe face peer pressure he wasn’t ready for leave “the bubble” and see darkness in the world not leave “the bubble” and have no impact on the darkness leave “the bubble” too soon or too early have needs that would change after I chose a school have brothers and sisters whose needs would be different from his Being a mom is a serious endeavor. The development of an entire human being is placed in our care. Studies say their little brains are wet cement and will bear hardened imprints of our choices. This weight hangs on our shoulders every day as we wipe noses and mix macaroni and cheese. The fear...

The problem with crying for days is it tires me out—mind, body, and soul. Coherent thought drains away. Gumption to struggle through is gone. Finding my tears can’t change the outcome is a shock, my mind numb to what’s next. The only reality seems to be the ugly pit of feelings I find myself in, slack and spent. That’s when my tears change from the salt of sadness into the fire of anger. When I think I’ve cried all there is to cry and yet more tears flow over my raw, cracked skin, something boils up inside. I’m mad. Mad, mad, mad! My heart cries, “Unfair!” and demands to know if God sees me. The list of credits I’ve logged to my account through obedience, walking hard roads, and following calls is held up in my shaking fist as proof I don’t deserve this. I don’t want it, and I’m screaming in frustration at my inability to bend God to my will. Suddenly yesterday’s truth of comfort, that everything comes from God’s hand, feels like a sharp prod pushing me into a dark and scary p...

The house is quiet and all I can think about is how crazy I am about you guys and how much I want to be better for you. Being your mom is, hands down, the thing about my life that makes me feel the most like I'm working hand in hand with God to do something massively important. It is my life's work and my life's love. Belonging to you is something I always dreamed of. Funny thing, I'm finding today that there are more things I'm wondering about and feeling uncertain about than ever before.  Part of that is the change and shift that comes with new roles, ages and stages, needs changing - just life. Part of it is also my age and experience. Twenty one years of being a mom hasn't taken me to a spot where I feel certain that I have it all figured out. Instead it's highlighted how many things I still have to learn. Today I'm ok with the uncertainty and the shifting and I hope you are too. We've got a couple solid rocks to stand on that will hold ...

I didn’t rush out and buy a red convertible, so my mid-life crisis wasn’t obvious. The tipping point was sending my youngest off to full-day kindergarten two years ago. I drove home that morning without a preschooler in tow for the first time in twenty years. The empty car was filled with my racing thoughts. The plan I put in motion during college was to get a teaching degree (check), put my career on hold to stay home with my babies (check), and then head back to the classroom full time. That day in the car, my pencil was poised to make the third checkmark on my plan, but suddenly, I wasn’t sure I still wanted number three to be on the list. The responsible planner in me (I’m a typical firstborn) recoiled at the possibility that I might consider “wasting” my degree by not making it a career. But there was something in my spirit I couldn’t ignore... I'm over at The Glorious Table today - please click HERE join us to continue reading!  Enter your email address: Deli...