2025…WORDS TO LIVE BY

January 1, 2025 / joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

I am sitting at the dining table eating left over Chinese food, thinking about the year past and the year ahead.

2024 was a hard year. I don’t think I have really stopped to meditate on just how hard it was. I certainly haven’t allowed myself to feel the hardness. It was a year of death and a year of sickness for our family. It was a year that brought earth shaking change to our lives, identities and ministries. We are not the same people we were at the end of 2023.

Last night we celebrated the New Year as a family at The Vicarage.

New Year’s Eve was our gift exchange this year. I got designer coffee! My son Joe got tools. The kids got play dough and toys. The ladies got winter clothing. James got a book he had been wanting to read. It was a good night topped off by our traditional meal…. Chinese food

It was also a game night.

To say I am not a good game player is an understatement, but other members of the family are. It was a quiet and comforting way to spend the last day of this very difficult year.

Today I am catching up on chores, and putting Christmas away. As I write this note between loads of laundry I am thinking about what the Lord has already told us about 2025.

My personal words for the year are: PRACTICE THE PRESENCE…

AND ENGAGE IN THE PROCESS

Here are some other things we have learned about 2025 from the last few months of 2024.

Amanda has heard- Focus and Watch. 1 Peter 5:8 State alert for your great enemy the Devil stalks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Focus on the right thing not similar distractions because there will be good things and God things. See the potential particularly in our children. Don’t overlook the small things in life or neglect the potential of small things. Watch is the word, Gregorio. Its definition is- Keeping your eyes on the truth.

Photo by Bogdan Diricu0103 on Pexels.com

Melanie has heard-We are to be beacons of light. We have been preparing to maintain our light in the hour that is coming.

James has heard- We are children of THE KING. The time has come to act like it. We are an already not yet people. We have the victory but we now have to posses this in the Spirit. We need to use our spiritual authority.

Joe has heard-Go! Luke Chapter 10… “Pray the Lord of the harvest that he would send for the laborers into the vineyard…. Go I am sending you.”

Kristine has heard-Dwell! Dwell in the presence of the Lord and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Claim the victory. Psalm 139 teaches us that God is all knowing.He knows every detail of our lives and even when we don’t see it, He is working in our lives. We need to remember that He knows the end of our stories and the progress of the journey.

Yesterday my sister and I were on Messenger talking and this prophetic word came –

And this is what the Lord says, open your eyes, I am bringing you into a spacious place. This is the culmination of over a half a century of My work. I have hidden this from the enemy as I have hidden this from you, but this is about neither of you and both of you. The enemy can see the size and shape of this thing, but even he does not know what it is any more than you know what it is. you were chosen for this. your family was chosen for this. You each have your part to play. I have prepared you. I have called you by name. Now prepare yourselves. Gird yourselves and answer me like a human, where were you when I laid the foundations of the storehouses of the snow?

As I embrace this first day of 2025. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt….this is going to be a year for the memory books.

NEW KEYS, NEW TIMES, UNEXPECTEDLY WEIRD

November 5, 2024November 5, 2024 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

My son and daughter-in-law signed on a new condo yesterday. They got the keys to their new home today. That’s where they are right now, beginning the cleaning process before the big move in. Amanda is at the church preparing youth group. It is quiet.

I do love quiet.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I have to admit, though, as I sit in this, there is a part of me that has become very unfamiliar with the silence, at least during this part of the day. It feels like there should be pots banging in the kitchen. The smell of Philippine spices should be wafting up into my nose making my mouth water. The TV should be blaring “Mickey Mouse Club House”. My son should be snoring in my recliner after a long day’s work at the middle school. I feel like I should be contending with several distractions to my concentration as I write this . Not having all that is kind of a…. distraction.

Now that is unexpectedly weird

I know that what I am feeling is just the shifting feeling of another change coming in a season of changes. When Joe, Kristine and Sevii moved in, Mom was still alive. Brenda was home for a big part of their time here with me. The house was bustling. Now Mom is gone, Brenda is back in The Netherlands and by next week it will just be me and Amanda in the house. I think the quiet is going to be a truly new atmosphere and I know I will enjoy it….once I get used to it.

That said, who knows what tomorrow brings? I am learning to hold the future loosely and that is another weirdly unexpected thing for me. But we can talk more about that another day.

HAS ANYTHING WEIRDLY UNEXPECTED HAPPENED TO YOU LATELY?

FEELING LIKE AN ELDER

May 22, 2024May 22, 2024 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

I remember the first time I felt like an adult. I was thirty-five. I was married and had three teen-agers, but it was the first time I actually felt like I had moved from childhood into adulthood. I couldn’t find a rhyme or reason for why my mindset suddenly changed back then. Honestly, until I suddenly felt like an adult I didn’t know I didn’t feel like an adult. For the most part I was acting like and adult. I was paying bills. I owned a house. I was working hard. But not until I was thirty-five did I realize I had the position of an adult… the authority of an adult. It was the first time I felt like I was ready to take on life. The first time I felt like I could take on life and life didn’t just have to happen to me.

Something is changing again. It is just as strange and unexpected this time as it was when I was thirty five. This time I am moving from adulthood into feelings of being an elder.

Maybe it is my mother’s passing, maybe it is that I am entering my fourth year as a lead pastor, maybe it’s that all my grandchildren are now talking and the last of them is potty training, maybe it’s that the children of the children I had in nursery Sunday School are now getting ready to graduate, maybe it’s a lot of things, but I am beginning to feel old. I am feeling these days like an elder.

I guess I am one. There is more snow on the chimney now than soot. I feel it in my bones. I feel it in my energy level. I feel it like a new power in my soul. There is weakness in it…and strength.

I am feeling my age in ways I was told to expect (but refused to accept). I can’t seem to do what I once did as easily as I once did it. I feel weaker, but I also feel a new kind of strength, an assurance, a wisdom, a grace I have not had before that makes me feel that I can do just about anything. I just have to begin learning how to do it differently and maybe a little more slowly.

So how about it? What advice would you give to this new old guy?

THE TRANSITION WITH GRIEF TO THE NEXT IDENTITY

May 10, 2024 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

I started this blog yesterday. It was originally called “So Here It Is Thursday…”. I began by talking about how I felt so ashamed for not reaching my goal of writing on “Notes From the Vicarage” daily since my mother’s passing. I listed my excuses and then laid out four steps I was going to take to correct the issue I have been having with writing.

It was a pretty good blog about how to prioritize writing….or really anything important.

I didn’t get to post that blog because I had a coaching session with my life coach that began just before I could hit publish. Now having had the night to sit and think on it I am glad I didn’t publish it.

I do believe there are habits I need to develop and tweak to become more effective, for sure, but I realized as I was thinking about my writing problem that this is more than a habits issue. It’s a grief issue and an issue of transition.

Life has changed for me in a big way, and I am not intentionally clocking that most days. I was Mom’s primary caregiver for the last decade of her life. Her needs factored into everything I did, including ministering and writing.I didn’t choose it. Caregiving became part of how I identified myself as a human being. It became a part of my fingerprint.

…and now I realize I need to give myself a hot minute to figure out how everything in life works without Mom to consider. Before I didn’t write daily because I was busy helping Mom and ministering. Time was not on my side. Now, as I approach the computer I wonder “What do I have to write about?”

I know it is not true, but it feels like the interesting parts of my life are over. That right there, is the power of sneaky grief. I have seen it in others and now here it is manifesting on the inside of me. It is strange. It doesn’t feel like sadness. It’s not anger. It’s not denial. It’s certainly not acceptance. It feels like….hesitancy. It’s like that moment when I was a little child meeting someone new, and all I could do was hide behind my mother’s skirt and suck my thumb. But this time the person I am meeting is…me!

Networking

May 28, 2020May 28, 2020 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

Notes From the Vicarage

A minister's family living in a micro forest garden

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