Lori Florida

We ate steak at the fanciest place in town, me and my sister, our husbands, and our parents. Around the table, we joined Mom’s reminiscing. We retold our favorite stories of family vacations and holidays. We revealed some silly childhood secrets. And we listened to Mom’s stories from fifty years she and Dad spent together. One of our favorite stories is of the birthday Mom expected a diamond ring but went home from their swanky dinner with a shiny new set of hot rollers. Whenever Mom tells that story, instead of making fun of Dad for his slow-moving ways, she praises his serious, methodical decision making. She points to it as proof of his dependability. My mom told stories. I told stories. My sister told stories. Even our husbands had memories to share. We retold some of the stories Dad put on paper in his journal for us. The thing we missed most was Dad’s voice in the storytelling. Rather than telling the stories himself, he locked eyes on the teller and responded, “By golly, that ha...

My friend discovered a nest in a tree next to her driveway, and she watched it all summer. It was perfectly hidden behind a few branches but easily seen when you knew which ones to pull back. Each time my friend bent one of those branches, she witnessed a new stage of development happening right on cue. Tiny eggs nestled in a warm, safe spot. Momma bird brought food to her pink babies. Fully feathered babies chirped and bounced inside the nest. One day I was with her as she made her daily nest check. She pulled back a branch, but she didn’t lean in as I expected. Instead, she jumped back in surprise as a baby bird took its maiden voyage inches from her face! She turned to me with wonder in her words. “I can’t believe it! These birds have never flown before!” With her next breath, she told me how she was sure they were ready. I said those words a week later as we loaded my twin daughters’ belongings into our van bound for their freshman year college dorm: “I know they’re ready, bu...

There was a woman who spent her life hiding. She hid in her home; she hid in bravado; she hid in toxic relationships. The day Jesus went after her, she was hiding in plain sight. I wish I knew her name and could invite her to coffee. I want to hear more about the conversation she had with Jesus beside the well in Samaria. It must have been a doozy, because it sent her off into public with a loud message. Something profound changed in her heart, making her a person who wasn’t afraid to be seen and heard.  She suddenly spoke words with power. John 4: 39-42  tells what happened next: Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe  just because  of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and ...

I fight the urge to hyperventilate as we get close to the trailhead. I wish the cause was adrenaline and excitement, but that’s not the problem. Self-recrimination runs wild.  How could I do this to myself again? What was I thinking when I said another yes to this kind of trip? Did I forget that I’m not in my twenties anymore?  I take deep breaths and force a tremulous smile as we disembark from the van and I’m quickly thrust into the role of experienced, calm hiker with our group. I zip my comfortable flip-flops into my pack with my other thirty pounds of essential supplies, slather myself with 100 percent Deet, and lace up my hikers. There’s no turning back now. The only question is how much happiness I’ll be able to wrestle out of the climb. The first section is always the hardest , I tell myself.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking one more step and then one more. The hot sandy trail leads through streams and slowly slants uphill, becoming ro...

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...

Murphy’s Law would say everything goes wrong as you’re trying to get your family out the door for church. People wake up late, and they wake up grumpy. The baby poops through his diaper onto your pants just as we are walking out the door. Big homework projects due on Monday are suddenly “remembered.” I’ve actually arrived at church with a barefoot kid. More than once. Apparently hopping into the car in a warm attached garage makes my kids forget shoes are necessary in the winter. Sunday mornings are often hard, yet despite all the forces of nature that work against us and the Sunday morning trauma we’ve endured, regular church attendance is a family priority. For us it’s a clear case of the benefits outweighing the costs. In the heat of the moment, when baby poop is running down your leg and the toddler can’t find his shoes, you need to have conviction and purpose to keep going. You need to be convinced that giving your kids a church family is something you can’t afford to ...

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...

“ I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” ( John 16:33 ESV ) We all love a good police drama. My favorite episodes are when they call in a guy (or woman) to defuse a bomb or talk down a hostage taker. One guy steps forward, close to danger, willing to defy great odds. He knows he has expertise and preparation the rest of the world doesn’t have to offer. The expert has high-level training and has honed his skill through hours of practice. He has learned to mitigate the effects of stress on his body. He uses deep breathing to slow his heart rate and steady his hand. Good sleep and healthy living are serious issues to him, knowing he could get a call at any moment. Why is he this extreme? What has made him willing to sacrifice time and pleasure to prepare with unusual skills? He knows he’s on call and that his phone will ring when disaster strikes. He ...

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...

Twenty years ago, when I imagined myself mid-life, I curated a mental list of the things I imagined myself doing. I expected my forties to be busy, bustling with action. I hoped for a full family life and strength to check boxes on important lists all day long. I hoped to maintain a sense of style that didn’t embarrass my daughters but stayed unique. I wanted my forty-something self to be doing things that felt satisfying. Here I am at forty-six, and it’s almost exactly as I expected. It seems to be the sweet spot of both strength and perspective. A peak from which I can see how far I’ve come and am starting to turn my face toward new vistas. Thinking about the future is quite different than in my twenties. Then, life seemed limitless, but now it’s easier to see  time’s constraints . I used to think I wanted to age like Sophia Loren. She’s stylish and drop-dead gorgeous; she doesn’t try to be any age but the one she is. She gives off an air of embracing the best pieces ...

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...

The radio deejay warned us to use headlights. Dense fog threatened to slow the morning commute and cause accidents. I felt no fear, but I still used my lights, and I counted on other drivers to do the same. I needed them to be visible as I turned onto a busy road and could see only a few feet in front of my vehicle. My heart thumped as I pressed the gas pedal, hoping no surprise would appear out of the mist. Even our familiar path felt strange and different in the fog. I drove with an extra dose of awareness. That morning drive was easy compared to the days when fog seems to fill my whole life. I hate those days. Indecision paralyzes me. My stomach feels sour, and all I can think about is how easy and straightforward other peoples’ lives look. I want to bury my head in the pillows, refusing to move until the fog lifts. Even then, I know the only way out of this life fog is walking to the edge of it, one tiny step at a time. Read more at The Glorious Table! Enter your ...

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...

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...

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Christmas trees were huge, all lined up close together with their branches touching each other. And she was just a tiny thing, barely able to walk!” The Christmas season isn’t complete without my mom beginning one of her favorite stories with these words. The fear in my gut as she tells it must be a phantom feeling born of the forty-plus times I’ve heard the story. Nonetheless, it takes me right back to those pokey branches separating me from the safety of my mom. The only way back to her was through those branches. I froze. Fear blocked my way as surely as the tree. My eyes were screwed shut, so I didn’t know Mom had turned to face me until she spoke. Instead of scooping me up in a rescue, she knelt down and called to me. Her voice encouraged me to venture straight into what made my toddler mind scream, “Danger!” and became louder than the f...

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...

“Hearts don’t break around here.” ~Ed Sheeran, singer/songwriter During spring break I was poolside, soaking in the sun and feeling happy to have a good pair of sunglasses and an engaging book. Sunny music interwove itself with my good feelings, courtesy of my daughter’s newly created spring break playlist. The songs ebbed and flowed around me, largely unnoticed until a certain lyric emerged out of the fluff. The singer crooned, “Hearts don’t break around here,” and I had an epiphany. That’s what I want! When people look at me, I want them to see kindness swirling about me like Pig-Pen’s dirt cloud from the cartoon “Peanuts.” I want my heart to create a force field of safety that protects the hearts of anyone who gets close to me. I want to be a giant, walking source of comfort and healing. I want kindness and care to radiate from me like a soothing balm. I think it’s clear that being a “hearts don’t break around here” person is also what God wants for me. His Word encoura...

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...