Lori Florida

If you start looking for hacks to make your life simpler and happier in the wrong places, you will accomplish the exact opposite of what you hope. You will spin out on solutions to problems you don’t have. You will waste energy trying to feel good about accomplishments that don’t matter to you. You’ll quit because it didn’t work. Shortcuts are good for two things: finishing faster or having more fun.   When we drive from Grand Rapids to Chicago for a fun weekend in the city we usually want to get there as quickly as possible so the fun can begin. Extra time spent wandering through Gary, Indiana in the car isn’t tempting when deep dish pizza and a show are waiting for us in Chicago. We want to shave time off the trip any way we can. We’re looking for a time-saving shortcut, an efficiency hack.  You can only find a shortcut to an actual destination. Until we’ve set a course to Chicago, there’s no way to find a quicker path. Before I know I want to have a garden, it’s silly to fi...

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...

Stacy the guinea pig had lived a long, happy life. I, however, felt terrible. My husband and son were adventuring in Canada while I held down the fort at home. Not twenty-four hours into my solo parenting time, I began to feel the telltale signs of strep throat. You can only “mom” so well from the couch, which narrowed my goal to basic survival. We were getting by on Pop-Tarts, PBS Kids, and amoxicillin when my daughter’s loud question woke me. “Why is Stacy so stiff?” My eyes popped open, and I was suddenly wide awake. The guinea pig was in her outstretched hands, inches from my face. Its arms were outstretched, too, in the final pose of obvious death. My daughter was four. I was sick, and Scott was off the grid in the Canadian wilderness. This was not the moment I had scripted for a serious discussion about death. We found a Stacy-sized shoe box and then realized we faced a conundrum: burying her. She belonged to my son, who was gone, and it didn’t seem right to bury her witho...

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...

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...

If you're stuck in preschool land you may not have listened to anything more current than "The Wheels on the Bus" lately, but if you also have teenagers you've probably found yourself humming about wishing you could be like the cool kids courtesy of Echosmith.  Radio stations are giving it lots of playtime because everyone remembers that feeling from their school days. Adults might even secretly admit to themselves that they still feel the pull toward wishing they were cooler, especially Moms. And especially near the days of the Halloween pressure-cooker. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here are the lyrics of the beginning of the song. She sees them walking in a straight line, that's not really her style. And they all got the same heartbeat, but hers is falling behind. Nothing in this world could ever bring them down. Yeah, they're invincible, and she's just in the background. And she says, "I wish that I could be lik...

The avalanche is coming.  There have been tremors all summer but once the calendar turns to August I hear the warning rumbles up close.  Moms  everywhere are sensing it and finding themselves turning to their husbands with the call to "brace yourself!" on their lips! I knew the kids kept growing over the summer months....can't escape it when you're the focus of weekly back to back height comparisons.  The summer inches get mercifully masked in sunshine, shorts, flip flops and the casual life of "nobody cares what you look like anyways when you're tan!" And then. One of my sweet, taller children spoke the dreaded words in July.  I shushed her of course, and guided her back to her swimsuit in a feeble attempt to protect the summer magic.  It's undeniable now.  The avalanche is upon us.  Nobody has jeans that fit....and I can clearly hear the ticking countdown to the first day of school. Back to school shopping will soon commence...and the av...

I'm not totally sure what's burning yet, but something is.  I can smell it in the wind, it's making my throat scratchy.  Our house is surrounded by woods, tall trees that attract wild turkey, deer and opossums o'plenty.  Our back yard also attracts the neighbor's run away Eskimo dog.  I think he thinks our dog is cute.  I know when there's a presence in our woods.  I know, because she knows, Moxie our dog.  Her body language changes....ears perk up, tail stiffens, and she gets that far-away focused look in her eyes.  Well,  there's a rustling in the forest, friends.  I know something's out there, smokin'....just haven't been able to stare it straight in the face yet. I spent Sunday nauseous, physically nauseous people.  I was sick to my stomach all day because of what I've been reading.  My heart's churning and my head's on overdrive.  I feel something coming, sense the winds of God moving, fanning this fire He's st...