:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

There’s at least one sure way to have a crisis of faith: try to seek the Holy Spirit and come up empty. That’s how I lived for a while: asking God for the Holy Spirit and experiencing nothing.

The Holy Spirit presents the perfect storm for a Baptist like me. I learned about the Holy Spirit, but I only really knew how to “experience” the Bible. The more I studied the Bible, the more convinced I became that the Spirit could be manifested today.

Beyond what I learned, I started meeting Christians who had dramatic experiences of the Holy Spirit. Some healed others, some had prophetic words, some had experienced emotional healing, some had dreams and visions, and others spoke in tongues.

I knew these people. They were not deceptive. Something supernatural was happening, and it lined up with what I read in the Bible. That left me with a disturbing question:

Why am I not experiencing the Holy Spirit?

The Worst Charismatic Ever

I could figure that out biblically speaking: the Holy Spirit is essential for the Christian faith. It is quite another matter to figure out a place for the Spirit in our American evangelical churches who tend to emphasize strategic planning, Bible teaching, and a Spirit functioning in the background without necessarily being manifested in ways we can feel and observe.

The irony is that I was most resistant to the Holy Spirit when I was most concerned with following the Bible literally. You would think that I would have walked around putting my hands on sick people and praying for them to be healthy again.

Instead, I just prayed for wisdom or comfort or whatever.

Forget about healing the lame. My Christianity was lame. I wanted to follow Jesus, but I also didn’t know what to do about the Holy Spirit who figured so prominently in the New Testament. Where does someone begin with the Holy Spirit?

Why Won’t the Holy Spirit Come?

Good Baptist that I was, I determined to take the Bible “at its word.” I was going to ask God for the Holy Spirit. Over and over again people pray for the Holy Spirit and BOOM!

If the Bible was true, this had to work. Why would God let me doubt him?

At my best I was uninformed and inexperienced with the Holy Spirit. At my worst, I came dangerously close to completely losing my faith because I didn’t understand how the Holy Spirit works. I had this nagging suspicion over the years that acknowledging a bigger Holy Spirit suddenly made my faith a complicated mess.

I was completely right about something for once.

Once I let an authoritative Holy Spirit loose, I had so many questions and a pile of doubts and fears to sort through.

Every time I sat down to pray, I felt like my faith was being put to the test. God is supposed to show up if I have the Holy Spirit, so what does it mean if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up?

I expected to feel something. I’d seen people pray and have dramatic encounters with the Spirit, weeping or laughing. I’d seen people pass out. I saw marks that God was doing something.

When I prayed and asked for the Holy Spirit to come, I felt nothing.

When people say, “I just take God as his word about the Holy Spirit?” I want to ask, “But what exactly is God promising us? Should we always expect healings and miracles? If not, why not?”

How to Receive a Gift You’ve Already Been Given

The hardest part about going from non-charismatic to charismatic in my belief and practice was sorting out the place of the Spirit in my every day Christian practices, whether that was reading the Bible, praying quietly, or praying for someone.

For a season, I dreaded sitting down to pray since I feared I would not experience the presence of the Holy Spirit and spend the rest of my day questioning my faith and the existence of God.

I have very little patience for anyone who makes this Holy Spirit stuff sound simple. Some of us have really struggled with this while having the best intentions. I wanted to take it seriously, but I also didn’t know how it all worked.

As is often the case in Christianity, blueprints and expectations led me astray.

For instance, my father-in-law prayed for me once and said that he sensed the Holy Spirit coming to fill me up. I didn’t doubt him, but I also didn’t feel anything happen. I didn’t even say a single word in a tongue.

What gives?

I read about Lauren Winner asking God to give her the gift of tongues, and she prayed, “Tongues, tongues, tongues…” I could relate to that prayer.

After stumbling around with the Holy Spirit for a few years, I’ve learned that the manifestations or anything I feel is far from the point. Really, really far from the point in fact.

Waiting on God

We have an instant culture with fast food, high speed internet, 4G phones, instant dinners, and super highways that let us move at top speeds. You can’t turn the Holy Spirit into an instant spiritual fix. You don’t take the Holy Spirit with a glass of water and enjoy your afternoon after filling up.

I had to wait and persevere. I had to let others pray for me. I had to open myself up to however God wanted to speak to me or through me.

Learning to sit and wait without expectation has helped me take some positive steps with the Holy Spirit. Rather than focusing on what I expected to happen or what God’s inaction meant about my faith, I finally hit a place where I just waited to see what God would do.

In other words, I don’t ask God for something big unless I feel peace about making that request. I don’t know how the mechanics of this work or if there are any rules. I just know that prayer isn’t this big grab bag that we can access any old time. Prayer is about getting on the same page with God, waiting for his prompting, and then moving in the direction he leads with enough faith to believe he can accomplish something in or through you if he gave you the prompting in the first place.

I get nauseous when people challenge me to do big things for God or to take big risks. Small or big risks are not about faith unless God gives you the vision. Christian obedience isn’t about making a great plan and following through. I had to listen and hear God before I could take a step forward.

If I just waited with hands open, believing that God could show up if he so pleased, I could receive either a word or silence.

For all of the times in the Bible that we see God show up, there are plenty more that pass by unnoticed where God doesn’t give any messages or do anything of note. This is how we ended up with Psalms of lament.

Once I started to open myself up to the Spirit’s voice without asking for something specific, I started to hear things.

Spiritual Warfare is Weird but Real

Any time I explain the Holy Spirit to someone who doesn’t have a grid for it, I have a hard time putting my finger on what exactly I hear or how I know I’ve heard the Spirit. More often than not, I get a sense that something is true and that I need to pray it or act on it.

Most of the time, there’s a result of some sort that confirms I’d heard correctly.

In praying for myself and others, the Holy Spirit sometimes gives me a specific thing to pray about. On one occasion I was praying about our marriage, and the Holy Spirit spoke right to my laziness.

That doesn’t happen all of the time, and honestly, I don’t make it happen. I just wait for it. Sometimes it comes after a lot of waiting and sometimes it comes before I’ve even started to pray and sometimes, many times, I don’t hear anything.

Perhaps the most startling thing I’ve heard is to pray about spiritual battles. In other words, I hear that I need to pray against a spirit of some sort in a person’s life. I’ll bet that may either alarm or bother some folks. Do we really have demons trying to make us sin?

The answer I’ve found is this: sometimes.

I’ve received the profound sense that I needed to pray for certain couples “right now.” It is awkward and a bit strange, but if I listen to that urge, God brings up something that I need to pray about.

I can’t explain this. I just know that sometimes there are evil forces in this world trying to undo relationships and health. Other times sin in a person’s life is more of a personal choice. We can’t blame everything on evil spirits, but they’re out there.

Can You Receive the Spirit?

If this strikes you as both appealing and frightening, you’re in good company. There are some times when I sit down to pray, and I struggle with “relaxing” in God’s presence. I want something to happen!

The Holy Spirit isn’t about proving something to ourselves, others, or God. You can’t make God do anything, but you can enter God’s presence with open hands.

The best advice I can give someone about the Holy Spirit is to seek out someone who can provide support and guidance. The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to you, but it’s not easily received because we have so much junk in our lives that distracts us and makes it hard to connect with God.

Over the years I’ve learned what it feels like to have a quiet Spirit before God. That doesn’t mean I’m better at quieting my spirit necessarily. It just means I can spot a manic mind much easier and at least work on stilling myself before God.

The Spirit is a gift for me and for you. The Spirit helps us enjoy the peace and joy of God’s Kingdom today.

The Spirit will dramatically change our lives and put us in tune with God in new ways. The Spirit is even worth having a crisis of faith.

Today is part two in our series on Christian myths about world religions by my friend Derek Cooper:

In my recently published book, Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths, I discuss the six major non-Christian “stories” of the world. As I teach these different religions in classrooms and churches and discuss them with friends and neighbors, I have consistently uncovered several myths many Christians believe about each of these religions, including Christianity.

In the first post of this series, I wrote about the false notion that Christianity is the only religion with a Savior. We saw how Hinduism and Buddhism, among others, demonstrate this to be a myth.

In this post, I will discuss another myth many people believe about world religions: Hindus believe in many gods. According to many calculations I have seen, there are 330 million Hindu gods. This clearly gives the impression that Hinduism affirms many deities! Yet the truth is that Hindus are more monistic (believing that all existence comes from one God) than they are pantheistic (believing that there are many gods).

A few years ago, I distinctly remember having a conversation with a group of Hindu believers at a Hindu temple when I asked how many gods there are. Without blinking, they responded in unity: “We believe in one God!”

“Then how,” I rejoined, “are there so many different gods in Hinduism?”

Again in unity, they replied: “There is one supreme God that cannot be fully known or understood. The gods we talk about on earth and give devotion to are simply manifestations of that one supreme God.”

This gets to the core of a common misconception about Hinduism. Although there are countless “gods”—whether Shiva or Vishnu or Ganesha or Parvati or Hanuman—they are commonly understood by Hindus to be representations of (the) God, whom or which we cannot fathom. This is why one Hindu can worship Shiva, while another worships Kali or Ganesha. Although each person seems to be worshiping different gods, the person is really only worshiping the one God who is manifest through Shiva or Kali or whomever.

How do you decide which “god” to worship? It depends. Some people worship specific gods due to the town or village in which they live or due to their family or place within society.

More pragmatically, some worship a particular god because of that god’s association with something specific. I once had a conversation with a Hindu priest about this very topic. He said that perhaps the most popular deity in his temple was the goddess Lakshmi. I asked him why, and he was quick to reply: “Because most of the people in our temple would like more money, so it’s natural to worship her, who has cascades of gold coins rushing down from her hands!”

In the temple he presided over, he said, it is not that some people prefer Shiva or some people prefer Vishnu—two of the most common gods in the Hindu pantheon. Instead, people worship this or that manifestation of god based on present circumstance. Are you about to go on a business trip? Then ask Ganesha for guidance, the divine incarnation of venture and journey. Are you in need of money? Then ask Lakshmi!

Although Hinduism thinks very differently than Christianity in many ways, the two religions align in their common conviction that only one God exists who can be manifested in different ways. While for Christians this means that God reveals himself most fully through Jesus Christ, for Hindus God reveals himself in countless ways through divine incarnations and other living beings.

So, the next time you see a picture or statue of a Hindu god, it’s best to begin thinking of this or that as one representation of (the) God, commonly called Brahman, rather than a distinct entity that is separate from other Hindu gods. For, as we have discussed, the actual picture or statue is the equivalent of a drop of water coming from the one eternal ocean (God).

In the final post of this series, I will discuss one common myth about Islam.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Dr. Derek Cooper is assistant professor of biblical studies and historical theology at Biblical Seminary, where he also serves as the associate director of the Doctor of Ministry program. Derek’s most recent book, which was written for classroom use, church groups, and for lay readers, is titled Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths. His faculty page can be found here.

My good friend Derek Cooper is a professor at Biblical Seminary and has just released a new book about Christianity and World Religions. I’ve had a chance to preview some of the chapters, and I was so impressed by all that I learned, I asked Derek to write a 3-part series covering three myths Christians have about world religions. Today is part one:

In my recently published book, Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths, I discuss the six major non-Christian stories of the world. As I teach these different religions in classrooms and churches and discuss them with friends and neighbors, I have consistently uncovered several myths Christians believe about each of these religions, including Christianity. In this and my next couple of blog posts, I will concentrate on three common myths about different world religions.

The first myth concerns Christianity. The myth goes something like this: Christianity is the only religion with a Savior. I consistently hear Christians say that Christianity is the only faith where God comes to humankind in contrast to every other religion of the world where humans are trying to go to God. Yet the truth is that many world religions, including religions that were dominant when Christianity emerged as well as contemporary religions such as Shia Islam, assume a Savior figure.

According to Hinduism, for instance, Vishnu, the God who preserves the world, regularly visits humankind to maintain order and peace. When the world is particularly in straits, Vishnu incarnates himself to save the righteous. In the fourth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most beloved of the Hindu religious scriptures, the God Vishnu, who has incarnated himself as Lord Krishna, speaks with a valiant human warrior named Arjuna:

Whenever spirituality decays and materialism is rampant…I (re-) incarnate Myself. I am reborn from age to age to save the righteous, destroy the wicked, and establish the kingdom of God. The one who realizes this divine truth concerning my incarnation and sacrifice is not born again [in this life], but when he leaves his body, he becomes one with Me.

As these verses state, the God Vishnu incarnated himself as Krishna in order to save righteous, punish the wicked, and establish God’s kingdom. This is an example of one of Vishnu’s avatars, a Hindu word that can be translated as “incarnation,” “manifestation,” or “revelation.” There is no precise agreement on how many avatars Vishnu has had, but according to one long tradition, Vishnu’s incarnation as Krishna was his eighth of ten incarnations.

Another example of a God incarnating himself and saving humankind appears in Buddhism. In Mahayana Buddhism, the largest of the two major Buddhist denominations, practitioners revere a Savior figure called the Bodhisattva (“enlightened being”). Bodhisattvas are Buddhas in the making, who have made a vow to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of all others. In one Buddhist religious writing called the Shurangama Sutra the Buddha encourages all holy men to deny nirvana in order to save all other beings: “I [Buddha] urge all saints and holy men to choose to be reborn in order to deliver all living beings.”

As this brief passage illustrates, these Bodhisattvas—whether Siddhartha Gautama or the Dalai Lama—travel to earth in order to save people from the constant cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. These Bodhisattvas have made a vow that their life mission is not complete until all living beings have been liberated.

As Christians, we need not fear the similarities between the Christian faith and other religions. As one ancient Christian expression goes, “All truth is God’s truth.” The notion that God saves people is apparently a common belief throughout the world, which does negate or call into question the Christian belief that Jesus is the Savior of the world.

Rather than fearing this commonality, we should allow it to be a bridge from which we more naturally share our faith in Jesus with Hindus or Buddhists, for instance, who already believe—perhaps because God intended it—in a Savior figure. After all, when God became a man, he not only did so at a particular time and in a particular place, but he did so in a way that was understandable to the many cultures and religions at the time.

In the next blog post, I will discuss one common myth about Hinduism. You will not want to miss it!

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Dr. Derek Cooper is assistant professor of biblical studies and historical theology at Biblical Seminary, where he also serves as the associate director of the Doctor of Ministry program. Derek’s most recent book, which was written for classroom use, church groups, and for lay readers, is titled Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths. His faculty page can be found here.

[Derek conveniently left out the fact that he co-authored a book with me titled Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus, but I guess he’s too ashamed to admit that now! Ha!]

Today’s book picks are by Leigh Kramer.

One of the things I love most in this world is being asked for book recommendations. I am a well established book nerd. I could talk for hours about books and reading habits and even the publishing industry.

Imagine my joy, then, when Ed asked me to recommend Christian nonfiction. Imagine my conundrum when he limited me to only three. Three books?! After much hemming and hawing, gazing reflectively upon my bookshelves, flipping through a stack of contenders, I have indeed narrowed it down to three. Ish.

The following books spoke to me in a way I particularly needed when I read them. There have been many others but these are my go-to’s.

A Sacred Thirst (M. Craig Barnes)

My friend Mike told me about this book on a cold winter day in 2005. We were tucked in the corner of a friend’s house and he’d asked about my unending job search after graduating with my MSW seven months prior. I was not handling this well, to put it kindly. Not only did Mike tell me I needed to read this book, he dropped it off a few days later.

A Sacred Thirst aptly depicted my dark night of the soul and showed me I was not alone. I was surprised by how much it resonated, even more so by how it offered healing. Over the years, I’ve turned to a passage in chapter 14 more times than I can remember. It’s become a well-worn friend, speaking of hope while waiting, joy in sorrow. This is the book I buy for friends going through times of transition, who feel burned out, or who simply need to meet God again.

Surprised by Oxford (Carolyn Weber)

I expected to like Weber’s memoir of her first academic year at Oxford and subsequent conversion to Christianity. What I did not expect is how she would come to feel like a kindred spirit. The book is part love letter to Oxford, part book nerd’s dream with its literary references, and part road to faith. Then woven around and between it all is her friendship (with promise?) with a certain fellow.

She asks excellent questions about God and faith. One need not divorce faith from intellect, a truth very evident in these pages. Weber’s words were poetry for my soul and I was quite sad to finish it. I read this last winter; I’m not sure why but this lovely memoir is especially suited to chilly months.

Bittersweet (Shauna Niequist)

With her richly written essays, Niequist has become a favorite author of mine. I give away copies of her books to just about everyone I know. She has a way of writing about her experience while tapping into deeper, often universal emotions. Bittersweet, the practice of recognizing we need both the bitter and the sweet, relates to those of us who have grieved for any number of reasons. 

Niequest reminds us while we wouldn’t want to repeat difficult circumstances, we can see how God uses them, if we let Him. I won’t say anything more because I have such an intimate reaction to her books. But I will say this: I cannot wait for her forthcoming work Bread & Wine.

Bonus: Traveling Mercies (Anne Lamott)

Some might say Lamott isn’t a real Christian or that her memoir isn’t Christian nonfiction. I disagree. Lamott’s “outside the box” faith was a revelation to me the first time I read Traveling Mercies. Her unorthodox life leads to a so-called unorthodox faith and yet I learned so much from her prayers and insights. We couldn’t be more different and yet she had some of the same questions and doubts I did. This is one for the seekers, the question-askers, and the believers.

(Affiliate links included in this post.)

Visit Leigh’s blog.

Today’s guest post is by Christie Purifoy, who blogs at There Is a River:

I consume books as regularly as food and water, but, with the exception of memoir, my track record with Christian nonfiction is not so good. I tend to buy them in a fit of optimism only to abandon them well before the last page. Too many seem embarrassed by their status as books. It is almost as if a book is bitter medicine that must be coated with sugary anecdotes, simplistic language, and easily-digestible chapters. These three are different (and there isn’t a memoir among them!).

1.  A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller

I promise that no one will ever pull this off your shelf and say, “Oooh, what’s this about?” The nondescript cover (crashing ocean waves: haven’t we seen that before?) and cheesy diagrams made me wonder if this was someone’s sermon power-point padded into a book. It isn’t.

This book is the fruit of a long acquaintance with suffering. Suffering has humbled Miller. It has also given him a lifetime’s worth of practical wisdom on the subject of prayer. There is nothing revolutionary here. The language never stuns me with its eloquence. Yet, my copy is overwhelmed with ball-point stars and underscores.

2. Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul by Mark Buchanan

Before I read this book, I imagined that talk of the seasons of spiritual life was merely a helpful metaphor. Read this book and you’ll discover just how far off the mark I was. Like Miller’s, this book did not emerge from a catchy gimmick but from the long contemplation of life’s devastating joy and pain.

3. The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers

Once upon a time, I wrote a doctoral dissertation on British literature of the 1930s. I also love detective fiction. So, I’m especially embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize that the essays of Dorothy Sayers belong on my bookshelf next to C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton. I may be cheating a bit with this third recommendation, but her nonfiction work can be hard to find. Scour your local used bookstore and grab anything you see. The Mind of the Maker is in my hands right now, but you might also look for The Whimsical Christian.

Visit Christie’s blog.

My two-day giveaway for Creating Space begins today. So below you’ll find the link to Creating Space, some details about it, and an additional eBook you can download.

Today and tomorrow, you can download my Creating Space for free.

Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity is a brief manifesto that will encourage everyone to put their creative gifts into practice. Creativity isn’t a mistake. It can serve as a holy discontent that may lead us to some of our most meaningful creations.

“This book is a much-needed resource for anyone who has lost the artist within due to the hurriedness of life.”
- Ben Arment, Founder of STORY

Creativity is a gift everyone has been given to share, but doubt, discouragement, and distractions hinder the ability of many to pursue their creative passions. Whether you doodle, sing in the shower, knit scarves, or scribble poems, Creating Space will encourage you to make space in your life in order to fulfill your creative calling, using your gifts to their fullest extent.

DOWNLOAD CREATING SPACE TODAY FOR FREE!

If You Share Creating Space Today…

Why share the Creating Space offer today via Twitter, Facebook, or email?

If you share Creating Space with your friends and colleagues, you can also download a free eBook with both new content and edited content from my popular blog series: “How to Become a Better Faith Blogger.” The eBook, Become a Better Faith Blogger, is a series of blogging tips based on lessons from my favorite bloggers.

The download is 100% honor system. Link to Creating Space, and you can download Become a Better Faith Blogger.

This eBook provides tips for keeping up with your blog and concrete ideas that you can use tomorrow, while also introducing readers to some of the most innovative writers.

Download Become A Better Faith Blogger Now!

Is Creativity Worth Fighting For?

One of my most important insights over the past three years of writing full time is that pursuing a creative calling and nurturing creative gifts will be time-consuming, inefficient, and sometimes painful.

It’s hard to write three drafts of a book chapter before it’s finally ready to ship.

It’s inefficient to write pages of ideas when you can only use two or three of them.

It’s hard to read a critical review or to watch someone hardly take notice of your work.

That is the struggle that every creative person faces. Artists, designers, writers, and anyone else who creates something will have to fight against the difficulties of cultivating a creative gift.

One of my goals in Creating Space is to convince readers that while the work of creativity is painful and inefficient, it’s always worth it in the end. When we make something that is meaningful or beautiful for someone else, we’re creating a kind of value that defies measurement.

The process of developing your creative talents is demanding, but the investment you’re making will last a lifetime and hopefully beyond.

Update: The free download for Creating Space seems to be scheduled for tomorrow and Wednesday. I apologize for the glitch and am working on getting it fixed today.

Today and tomorrow, you can download my new eBook for free.

Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity is a brief manifesto that will encourage everyone to put their creative gifts into practice. Creativity isn’t a mistake. It can serve as a holy discontent that may lead us to some of our most meaningful creations.

“This book is a much-needed resource for anyone who has lost the artist within due to the hurriedness of life.”
- Ben Arment, Founder of STORY

Creativity is a gift everyone has been given to share, but doubt, discouragement, and distractions hinder the ability of many to pursue their creative passions. Whether you doodle, sing in the shower, knit scarves, or scribble poems, Creating Space will encourage you to make space in your life in order to fulfill your creative calling, using your gifts to their fullest extent.

DOWNLOAD CREATING SPACE TODAY FOR FREE!

If You Share Creating Space Today…

Why share the Creating Space offer today via Twitter, Facebook, or email?

If you share Creating Space with your friends and colleagues, you can also download a free eBook with both new content and edited content from my popular blog series: “How to Become a Better Faith Blogger.” The eBook, Become a Better Faith Blogger, is a series of blogging tips based on lessons from my favorite bloggers.

The download is 100% honor system. Link to Creating Space, and you can download Become a Better Faith Blogger.

This eBook provides tips for keeping up with your blog and concrete ideas that you can use tomorrow, while also introducing readers to some of the most innovative writers.

Download Become A Better Faith Blogger Now!

Why Creating Space?

There are plenty of reasons why I wrote Creating Space, but one of the most important reasons had to do with the guilt many of us feel about our creativity.

“Don’t you have more important things to do?”

As a Christian who feels stuck between the evangelical right’s pull toward evangelism and the evangelical left’s pull toward social justice work, creativity is relegated to the few artists who never seemed to grow up.

Are creative people immature? Selfish? Undisciplined?

Whether or not you self-identify as a “creative,” the truth is that you have some kind of creative gift or calling that you need to tap into. Your creativity can become a critically important part of your life. You just need to learn how to cultivate it. THAT is what Creating Space sets out to do.

I wrote the following post on Thanksgiving morning, but am posting it a day late due to some blog trouble:

This year is our first Thanksgiving away from family. It’s hard and lonely and strange.

I see status updates of people traveling to be with family or sharing pictures of family, and it drives home the fact that we’re just here doing our thing. However, I also have the sense that our thing right now is the almighty baby routine, and sticking with it is essential right now for our sanity.

It seems like a fair trade: no family for Thanksgiving, but we get more time to work on a sustainable sleep routine.

A friend told us that all of our lives would revolve around THE NAP in Ethan’s early years.

This feels right and sad at the same time. It marks a change in life’s season into both the joys of parenthood and the limitations it inevitably brings. Life is full of these trade offs, limitations, and shifting seasons.

There’s no way to freeze time, to keep things just as they are. And even if we could, that’s no way to live. We take these losses and gains together.

So while I miss seeing our family over the holiday and feel like we’re being cheated out of a relaxing long weekend away, we’ve also been spared a grueling road trip with a baby who still hasn’t figured out napping and is far from sleeping through the night.

Tonight, we’ll most likely wearily lug Ethan upstairs with our stomachs full of turkey and stuffing. We’ll give him his bath, read him a book, and sing him a song before rocking him to sleep. He’ll drift to sleep in his own crib with his bunny lovey by his side and a fan whirring with background noise nearby.

We’ll settle onto our respect couches to read and maybe enjoy a New Castle Brown Ale. And though the house will be strangely silent, missing the chatter of our family, that silence also means that our baby is sleeping soundly. And that is something I’m grateful for right now.

So here’s the thing about me and humor.

Sometimes I can switch it on and everything is a punch line.

Sometimes I try to switch it on, it shorts out, and nothing I say is funny.

Sometimes I can’t think of single thing to say.

Humor is a bit of a mystery to me. I still don’t quite understand how to say, much less write, funny things on a consistent basis. I can rarely figure out a rhyme or reason for my humor highs and lows.

I once heard Matthew Paul Turner share in an interview that most of his humorous writing comes in the second and third drafts of his books—and if you haven’t read Hear No Evil, pick up a copy today.

However, I learned something else that’s really important about humor from my blogger friend Tamara, who writes at Tamara Out Loud: self-deprecating humor at our own expense is freeing for writers, connects with readers, and has the potential to be really, really funny.

Think of most comedy acts. Aren’t they generally poking fun at themselves.

How about 30 Rock? Good heavens, so many jokes take shots at Tina Fey’s body, let alone the strange food cravings of her character.

Tamara is a blogger who hits all of the right notes in her posts when you calls in the funny. She has a way of not only writing about potentially absurd situations: she pokes fun at herself along the way.

Have you ever heard of a pole-dancing VBS turtle? No? Well then, Tamara can fill you in on one of the strangest days any mother of four has had.

And here’s the thing about humor writing, if you’re anything like me, you want to appear intelligent, together, and reasonable. I want to share the best of my ideas and the best of myself. However, if I want to write something funny, I often have to let go of that façade.

What happens when we let others see us at our most cringe-worthy, most embarrassed, and most vulnerable?

What if we make the punch line about ourselves and let down our guard a little?

Perhaps someone will take a shot at us, but more often than not, we’ll find out that people can really relate to us. And if we can make them laugh in the process, we just may find a golden moment to share something important with others.

Best yet, a little self-deprecating humor helps us step into our own skin and live in it a little. We’ll realize that we’re just as messed up as anyone else and that perhaps the best thing we can do is own up to our foolishness and frailty for the sake of a laugh.

When we stop taking ourselves quite so seriously for a moment, we have a chance to tap into something every blogger seeks: honesty. Tamara is among the best at this, especially when she’s wearing a VBS turtle costume.

Read Tamara Lunardo’s post: Adventures in Vacation Bible School and Pole Dancing

In 2011, I felt prompted to focus on the word “redemptive” for my blogging and writing work. I’d spent plenty of time picking apart what I was against, but it’s far more difficult to build something, to explain what I’m for, and to live it with integrity.

I’ve watched my friends with toddlers.

It takes a few seconds to trash a room. Putting it all back together is far more challenging.

I wanted to be one of the people who learned how to articulate what he’s for rather than for being witty and sarcastic when destroying the supposedly flawed beliefs of another person.

One of the ways I’ve tried to reform my ways is to write what I’m for rather than what I’m against. Even if I’m clearly responding to something controversial, I make a point of only describing what I believe. This has helped remove me from reactionary, angry blog fights where everyone is trying to act more indignant than the last person at the latest flap.

I don’t know how successful I’ve been, but if anything, I have a much better sense of what I believe and my blood pressure has to be a bit lower.

There is one writer who has modeled this approach and who is both an extremely talented writer and someone who disagrees with me on quite a few things. If you made a checklist of what I believe, I’m sure blogger Lore Ferguson would skip over a few boxes, but even when she’s writing about sensitive issues, she is particularly talented at presenting her perspective with grace and integrity.

She doesn’t call people out. She doesn’t hit you over the head with her words. She remembers that there are people on both sides of our divides, and that sometimes there are more than two sides.

I think it’s particularly important to single out a blogger I sometimes disagree with for this blogging tip. I never have a problem reading Lore’s blog. There is trust, hope, and kindness in her writing. She’s not out to justify herself by tearing others down.

The greatest thing we can do with our blogs is to point others to what is beautiful and true. If we spend our time ripping apart what we dislike or hate, we’ll burn brightly and intensely for a few moments, but we’ll have nothing of lasting value to offer.

If I’m ever tempted to hammer out an angry, condemning, reactionary blog post about the latest vitriol from some pastor or blogger or whoever, I think of how Lore writes (Gary Bettman is my one exception, not even Lore can save him from my rage).

Read Lore’s post where she shares her process for addressing controversial topics: Swimming in the Shallow Waters.

“Diving into the wreck, using words to find purpose, to find my way, to see the damage and the treasure—this is why I write. This is why I have always written.”

Read more…