Lael ArringtonMy Story – Lael Arrington

Smart, fun, generous…and difficult—my mom died a year ago today

admin — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 03:54:51 +0000

How God is way ahead of us and with us in the Valley of the Shadow

It’s been a year since I’ve regularly posted here. After Mom’s death I needed time to process. Grieve. Reflect. Rest. I didn’t intend to pull back this long. One thing that has drawn me back: I’ve wanted to tell the story of how amazingly God provided for us during her final three years fraught with vascular dementia.

I’ve also wanted to encourage others on an all-too-common yet nearly impossible journey. Nothing really prepares you for the unimaginable twists and turns of caring for someone who has always been so sharp and fiercely independent, who begins to need help doing her laundry, and even taking her medicines. Especially when they insist on remaining a thousand miles away.

Just when you’ve figured out how to respond to hallucinations or accusations of stealing, another unthinkable challenge comes up. But let me tell you how God shepherded us through the Valley of the Shadow…

The last 20 months have been a tale of two cities for us—”the best of times and the worst of times.”

“This book will make you feel better about your life”

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 23:51:56 +0000

I’ve been feeling a bit like a prisoner in my own home lately. And you? Tired of reading article..article…article…article…, I knew I needed a shot of bigger perspective.

So I picked up a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time–One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Written by Russian Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn and based on his own experience in the Gulag, Siberia’s network of “corrective labor camps,” I thought it might afford me a bit of a reality check on what it really means to feel like a prisoner.

And it has. But not by pounding me with horrific word pictures of torture, despair and madness.

Rather, with the artistry of understatement, irony and even wit, One Day, while written in big print and prison slang, offers great thoughts and deep meanings that gently percolate in my mind throughout the day–so different from the jangle of texts, Facebook posts and articles that leave us feeling over-stimulated and unfocused.

One Day is an easy read with a psychologically gripping ending I never saw coming. It makes me think. And give thanks.

Researching it a little more online, I discovered that when a movie based on the book was released in ’76, the narrator of the trailer hooked me with exactly what I was looking for: “This movie will make you feel better about your life.” So will the book. Much better.

Missing My Crowd, Unemployment: A Passion Week Lament and an Easter Challenge to Trust

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 14:22:30 +0000

from Robert Doares’ Immanuel: The Life of Christ

It just feels wrong to spend Palm Sunday and Easter at home. I wished I’d been on my way to church yesterday instead of listening to a sermon on line. I so missed seeing our kids waving palm branches. Singing praises and hosannas in a room full of voices blending so strongly that my own is submerged in a sea of praise.

My morning began with a silent reading about a day of praise. Jesus riding in, gently, peaceably down the Mount of Olives through the Beautiful gate and the streets of Jerusalem.

What was missing yesterday was the crowds.

Can you imagine lining up behind Jesus 6 ft. apart? Walking down the Mount of Olives in single file? It really puts a damper on the joy. Sucks all the energy out of the scene. We were meant to worship in crowds. Multitudes. Singing loudly to our God and king.

It was just not the same singing along with the TV. Or even with a few neighbors on our decks/balconies.

Want to watch women laughing, learning and cooking together?

admin — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 12:50:05 +0000

(the perfect primer for holiday cooking)

Take a peek at our Apples of Gold power point below. Based on the invitation (in Titus 2) for older women to mentor younger women in kindness, loving their husbands and children, hospitality and other big issues, we gathered for 7 weeks this fall for cooking lessons and Bible Study.

Liisa and Judi, our cooking mentors taught us how to make everything from pulled pork to cheesecake, how to choose olive oils and knives and whip up a perfect mug of frothy coffee. Then, after Bible study and discussion, they served up the yummy lunchtime results of their labors–the perfect setting for going deeper on our topics.

Eclipse Photojournal: Our trip through totality

admin — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 16:41:55 +0000

(with a little help from my friends)

Ours is truly a privileged planet. That’s what I was thinking Monday as the moon slid over the sun here in Columbia, South Carolina. Could it just be a co-incidence that…

…the moon perfectly, PERFECTLY blocks the sun’s fiery ball?

…the moon and sun are both perfect circles? (Some moons are shaped more like a potato)

…the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but that is perfectly offset by the fact it is 400x’s closer to Earth?

“For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the LORD, and there is no other,” (Isaiah 45:18).

I was thinking, He formed it so that we would have a front row seat to see his glory on display like this.

Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist we interviewed for our radio program and co-author of the book Privileged Planet, said he studied all 65 moons in our solar system.

A Window on the World of C.S. Lewis

admin — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 11:50:28 +0000

Photo journal of his places and spaces in Oxford and Cambridge

Just returned from Oxford where part of the delight was seeing where C. S. Lewis lived, worked and loved. In spite of his superior skills in reasoning, writing and history, Lewis struggled to gain entrance to the great Oxford University. He was pitiful at math.

The central Oxford landmark, The Radcliffe Camera (left, 1749, part of the Bodleian Library), and All Souls College (right).

Two Reasons We’re Celebrating Forty Years Together

admin — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 12:57:35 +0000

June 25, 1977

We were young and deeply in love. Making big promises we had no idea what it would take to keep. Maybe that is part of God’s grace. We don’t know what we don’t know. But before long we began to get an idea.

Jack and I share so much. We are both strong personalities. (“This will not be a boring marriage,” said our pre-marriage counselor-pastor.) We are both thinkers. I love discussing books, movies and ideas, talking theology and politics with him. We both enjoy travel adventures together, and back when I could ski we delighted in riding the lifts and swooshing down the mountains together.

But in other ways we were so very different.

If I Ran the Zoo: A Visit To Noah’s Ark Encounter

admin — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 12:50:03 +0000

On our way up I-75 into northern Kentucky I found myself thinking about a Facebook friend, a Christian and a movie critic who works in Hollywood. Heading into a newly released faith-based film, she’ll post a little movie-critic prayer, “Dear Lord, please help it not be cheesy.” We were on the first leg of my Mom’s bucket list trip, headed to the Ark Encounter, a theme park with a Biblically scaled ark.

I’m happy to report this ark is not cheesy. From the outside it’s too big to be cheesy. It looks…epic.

And a little too gleaming?

God told Noah to build the original out of wood and cover it with pitch inside and out. I doubt it looked as impressive as the 300-cubit, three-keeled, silver-timbered ship perched in the Kentucky hills.

A Vacation Opportunity to Love God with All Your Heart and Mind

admin — Thu, 04 May 2017 12:55:30 +0000

Join me at The C.S. Lewis Foundation’s Oxbridge Summer Institute 2017

punting on the river Cam in Cambridge

Some vacations recharge us with rest and recreation. Some with natural beauty. And if, like me, you love to learn, some vacations renew our souls with a feast of iron-sharpening-iron teaching and discussion.

Maybe you could join me this summer in England for a week (or two) in the company of kindred spirits who delight in Lewis and treasure both his intellect and imagination. Oxford. Cambridge. Days of speakers and panels. Nights of music, dance and drama. And it only happens once every three years. Even if not, I hope you’ll enjoy these pictures.

From the time I first heard of it, Oxbridge went on my bucket list. (Is it a bonafide “list” if you only ever had one item on it?) In 2008 my sweet Mom gifted me with a trip to the Cambridge week, where these pictures were taken. This summer I’m deeply honored to be invited back as a speaker at the Oxford week. Other speakers will include Larry Crabb and Joseph LaConte. Info here.

4 Ways Lent Can Give You Far More than You Give Up

admin — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 18:31:51 +0000

Growing up, my church didn’t celebrate Lent. But years ago I caught the vision from a friend and I’ve come to value it. Here are four ways Lent can deepen our life with Christ and enrich our celebration of Easter.

Except for my Catholic neighbor getting her forehead smudged on Ash Wednesdays, Lent wasn’t even on my radar. We didn’t celebrate Palm Sunday. Or Good Friday. Much less 40 days of fasting, sacrifice and repentance. But I’ve learned we have so much to gain from observing Lent.

If your church doesn’t observe it, you can embrace it in your own way, just as the church developed its own way over the years, stretching its observance from two to three days to three weeks to 40 days. It doesn’t matter how long we engage with it, the important thing is that, in honor of his inestimable sacrifice for us, we embrace a season of sacrifice of our own for the Lord Jesus.