Oh My Word

My sweet boy turns three this week.  On Saturday night he was celebrated with friends and family, a smallish gathering of our favourites.  He opened three really great gifts.  One of them was for me.

Technically, I think it was for him. But I can tell you that all the goodness of it was for me.

A small bench, painted red and blue and a nice vanilla colour. Legs, bracing and top, all attached with screws. Four knobs attached with wing nuts. And a small basket of extra bits and two Allen keys.  Boy bliss.  Nate grabbed a "screwdriver" and started taking that thing apart. And I had a little cry.

A few weeks earlier I had posted on facebook that my boy had taken some unsupervised playtime and used it to take out any and all screws he could find in his bedroom, including those holding together his bookshelf and bunkbed ladder.

Over those same few weeks, I have been blogging out my wrestle to be Occupied and transformed in the hopes of being part of a transformation somehow. I have written about giving what we have to give to those who need what we have. I have written about receiving what is given.  I have written about needing less and giving to people, not causes and paying cash and being producers instead of consumers.  I have ached to be changed in the hopes of somehow, at the same time, seeing hope for Real Change.

Right there, wrapped in purple and white tissue paper, was my heart's hope.  I didn't know that's what I needed, but it was given by the one who had it to give and who knew to give it.  I felt loved. And Loved.

The perfect gift.

It got me thinking about gifts over the subsequent days that have passed.  And how I can't figure out how the gifts fit into Christmas and how irksome it is that presents just have to wreck Christmas every year.

And then today in the kitchen, I was innocently making coffee and finding myself getting kind of excited about Christmas.  Kind of feeling a hint of Christmas Spirit and that nauseous-making anticipation that always lingers at the edges of December for me. Kind of looking forward to Christmas morning and wondering if there would be another Perfect Gift.

And then it hit me, in that "I can't believe I'm being this trite and embarrassingly sappy, but holy shit, this is true!" kind of way: Jesus is the Perfect Gift and he's coming! Again! This year, this miracle happens again! We get Jesus! And it makes me so... happy!  Oh my word. I'm actually kind of embarrassed and typing fast to make this end quickly, but there it is: I'm finally getting the part where the excitement I've been feeling all these years, the hope that this will be the year, the anticipation that the Perfect Gift is coming.... all of that is about WAITING FOR JESUS!!!! I can't even tell you how good news this is to me! Jesus came! Jesus is coming! Hope is here! The Good News shows up! I got Jesus!  We all did, do, will!! Oh my.

It made me giggle a bit because I don't really think of myself as a particularly I-Love-Jesus-So-Much kind of person. I actually probably wouldn't have put Jesus on any kind of list of gifts I'd like to receive.  Or maybe I just put Jesus in the socks and underwear category: sure, throw 'em in the stocking and call 'em a gift, but we all know they're just filler. And yet here I am, for the first time (can this be?!) realizing that Jesus is in fact the huge, Oh-No-They-Didn't-Yes-They-Did gift that you kind of keep your eyes on all morning, hoping that it is, but fearing that it isn't and that finding out that Yes! it is!

Jesus is that gift for me this year!!

I am floored.

And then came this: I don't need to feel badly about the presents things anymore, about my kids getting excited about Christmas because they're going to get so many presents, some wanted, some not-so-much. Because that hopefulness, that belly full of hope - all of that points to Great News that we have already received the Perfect Gift and the receiving of it is so, so good. Maybe one day they'll have this moment too, when they look at God with slightly different eyes, full of wonder that God knew this! this! this was what I've been needing all along.

Receiving the perfect gift is unusually wonderful.  I'm thankful for the bench that was so perfectly given, and that pointed the way to this Knowing that indeed, I Am Known.

May you know that too. Whoever you are.

When Love Shows Up

When a person is trudging through mud, day after day, a person gets tired.  When a person is trudging through mud, and falls into the deep part and gets mud up their nose, it's so awful that when they are finally back up and trudging through mud again, they forget that trudging through mud is tiring, so thankful are they to have finally blown all the mud out of their nose. But a few miles later, they're exhausted, and faltering and it dawns on them, This Is Mud. And I'm Still Trudging.

And then they cry. A lot.

And then they get a note from a friend that says "You're doing great in that mud. Keep going."  And another friend says, "That mud is worthwhile mud. Keep going."  And another friend sends stickers and says, "Sticker charts aren't dumb at all. Keep going.*" 

And in one day, a person trudging through mud remembers that the journey is not unseen, is not for naught, is not without its rewards and that maybe even Jesus is watching.  And that person trudges on, deeply grateful to be so well-loved.

*A person trudging through mud might decide that a sticker chart is the only motivation they need to stop throwing mud at the people trudging through mud beside them, an action that probably makes falling into the deep part and getting mud up the nose a lot more likely.

Love is What You Bring With You

I have been trying to decide what to do with my life.  Again.

For a while, I was considering the Dream That Could Not Be Named, but as a decision became required, it became clear that there was no Yes for this dream yet.  Maybe it even became clear that the dream wasn't actually The Dream after all.

So this got me thinking about how maybe I ought to give some space and time to looking a bit more carefully at the dream and making sure I understood exactly where I was being called by said Dream.  Maybe I had almost shown up at the wrong location...

Within days of the deadline passing for What I Thought Might Be The Dream, I found myself mid-femur deep in my Occupy Me obsession and I now find myself wondering if perhaps I've arrived at the right house. 

Last night in our sweet small group, as we read 1 John (Lord, why is the Bible such a mess? who can follow that thing?), I heard over and over that love is where we should be and what we should be doing.  And one thing that is new for me is that my new "passion" (I just can't do it yet...) fills me with some kind of Love-Like experience.  I can't quite explain it, but as I think about how hard it is to make a change or two that might hint at the Kingdom coming, The Will being done on earth as it is in Heaven, I find myself full of love for me and for every other person I know who thinks it's probably just too hard, but wants to try to anyway.  And then I think I might even love God and want to talk more to the Creator of all things and the bringer of the Kingdom who may or may not be hanging out in this house where I think The Dream might live.

It's a new and surprising turn of events, but it is lovely and good and I'm going to try to live in it.  And keep trying to remember to pack a bit more Love in my bag everytime I visit The Dream.  Because I think that's the point, no matter what happens to the dream.  That we just keep adding a bit more love.

Oh Snap.

I think I accidently got a passion.

I don't know what happened, but suddenly I have all this energy for an idea and I keep thinking about it and I actually took steps to make it happen.

I hardly even know myself.  Where is my apathy? my too-tired? my cynical regret?

Not sure but alas, I'm going to act like the passion's permanent until it burns itself out.

Visit my current passion here:  Occupy Me.

Evidence

Oddly, when the guy who wrote Galatians was listing the fruits of the spirit, he left out wine.  Or more accurately, empty bottles of wine.  Weird.

Weird because tonight after everyone had gone home, all that remained of my bible study was an empty bottle of wine and a picked-at crust of bread.  A few lip-marked glasses and some unused tea cups. And yet, surely the spirit was here.  That was the Spirit, wasn't it?

I won't lie - I am not altogether clear on the answer. I would like it to have been the Spirit.  Jesus even. Hell, I'd even take the Father, up close and personal if that's on offer. But for sure, at least one tine of the Trinity would be nice.  The promise is that when a few of us get together - us being Jesus-inviters - Jesus shows up too.  Except that he's awfully quiet and sounds a lot like my own preferences and loud thinking most times.

I think I said somewhere before that my surest knowing that what I'm hearing is God's whisper is when what I'm hearing is New and Good News.  New Good News.  New Good News that leaves me wanting to love people.  I don't think I said that part before but since we're here, let's add that part too. 

And tonight, there was not a lot new.  No GOOD NEWS!  Just the familiar... oh yeah, that is good news. Could be the Spirit, could be last night's talk radio.  Whatever it was, I remained unmoved in my unlove of a few, and my piss-poor love of the many.

Regardless though, we sat together and broke bread and poured wine and confessed sin and received forgiveness and read the Word and remembered together that there is Light in all this Darkness and maybe even remembered that the Darkness does not overcome the Light.  Or at least were willing to hope so. At the end of it all, all that remained was the bottle poured out.

And that will have to be my evidence for now.

F*ck Me

Tonight is my 20th Grad Reunion and I have woken up this morning with a giant Nobody Likes Me growing right in the middle of my brain.

I had felt it coming on the last few days, but I'm not a teenager anymore and know these things are easily treated with a little healthy self-talk, some affirming connections and of course, gratitude.  I applied all three liberally and went to bed last night still feeling a bit off, but certain that sleep and a new day would bring restored peace.

Wrong-O Buck-O.

It's worse than ever. I'm pretty sure the friends I spent the evening with only invited me because they had to - they've started running together every Monday morning which is obviously their way of slowing easing me out of the circle. It goes without saying that if we were truly friends they would know never to mention running to me...  No friends (and by "no friends", I mean "neither of the two I took the time to call and whom I would enjoy") can meet me early tonight to make me feel better about showing up at all because one is driving from White Rock after spending the day in Richmond and the other has to pick her husband up from work downtown before running to Lions Bay and back - likely stories both.  Probably they're going to a cool kids party first that I wasn't invited to...

The thing is, I know I'm mostly being ridiculous.  But there is the small part of me that is crying on the couch while I type this that isn't sure this is ridiculous at all.  That part of me is feeling lonely, and fairly convinced that living with my flaws on the outside as often as I do has been a terrible mistake. 

To be sure, I don't think that keeping all those flaws tucked away on the inside (as I assume those other un-flawed-looking people must do, assured as I am that all of humanity is flawed) is a wise or prudent thing to do, and in my case, probably not even possible.  And yet, there are days when knowing that all my flaws are so well-known by so many is just too hard to live with - I prefer the version of my life where everyone around me is astounded by my awesomeness and yet loves being around me because I'm so frikkin' humble about said awesomeness.

Oh well.  Chances are this will clear up in a few days and in the meantime, I'm just going to have to take a few extra minutes tonight to cover up the Nobody Likes Me with some of my better I'm Good! Concealer and hope for the best.  I'll let you know how it goes.

The Way You Should Go

And by "you", of course, I mean Me.

At some point a person might start to believe there is just One Way To Go.  That person might spend some (or most) of his or her youth trying to "discern" That Way, might think that if they were to pray long enough, or fast often enough, or just have really kick-ass morning devotions enough, or hell, even move far away enough to serve the poor enough, that The Way might make itself known.

Eventually, if Grace and Mercy show up as they are wont to do, that person will figure out that when Jesus said that thing about being The Way, that was kind of all there was to it.  The rest is details.

Sadly, that same person might, from time to time, forget that part.

That person might start reading great writers, or watching great lives, or hearing great words and might start to wonder if maybe there isn't a better way to do The Way than the way they're doing it. They might start to add several ways to the way they've been doing things to make their own way look a little more Right Way. But if they do that for too long that they eventually find themselves sure that there is No Way At All.

But there is A Way and I think I'm glad that this person remembered that fixing their eyes on The Way is the best way.

Maybe my only way.

What's On The Flip Side?

Our car got creamed yesterday.  Just sitting there, minding its own business in front of the barber shop, and BOOM! smush-a-rama.  The back quarter of it is really, really wrecked.  Happily SJ and the boy were tucked inside of said barber shop and were able to watch it all happen from a distance. Happier still, two very credible, We're Friends With Police People types also witnessed it all and took down the license plate number of the very large truck that kept on driving.

It looks pretty terrible. It's probably going to be a huge hassle to repair, if it even can be repaired.  And yet both Scott and I found ourselves very at rest with the whole thing.  Like we could just check one more box off the List of Shit We'll Deal With In 2011.  Almost a relief, really.  There aren't that many days left in the year relatively speaking - surely we're almost done?

What I find odd is the space between this Life That Is Actually Happening and the Life That I Think Should Start Soon.  I could actually be convinced that the Car Smush is just a twist in plot of a movie playing on TV, while my real car is just fine in that other life I'm meant to be living.  I realize typing this, that this may reveal a bit more of my crazy than is wise.

A friend asked if this introspection is typical of the "new year" that is September and indeed it is.  Every summer we find ourselves in moments where we taste rest and contentment.  We begin wonder if we ought to be doing something differently more often to live in that rest and contentment more full time.  And every September, the lastest version of Same Old Same Old starts up again with all its familiar sore spots and resentments and boredoms and vanities and we realize, This Is It.  Again.

Tips?

Quit It!

These Simple Mom people are killing me. I may have to quit them soon.

This morning's post was about - well, I don't even know what it was about. I just know that reading it left me feeling like shit.

The difficulty is that it isn't the kind of bad feeling where I'm annoyed because the content is so terribly wrong or the writing is so heart-breakingly poor. It's the kind of bad feeling where I find myself wondering if I'm on the entirely wrong road. The kind where I start to think maybe God is in heaven looking at the map, then looking back at me, and wondering if maybe he overestimated me afterall: "Seriously? She thought that was north?"

To be honest, I mostly don't think that God works this way.  I think God has read most of the same parenting books I have and really tries to use positive messaging to nudge us about.  Shame and fear, as God well knows after all those debacles of the Old Testament, aren't effective in moving people in they way they should go.  But are low-grade nausea and a hunger to do something different on the list too?

I don't know.  I do know this - I'm not settled these days and it's not clear to me where settledness lies.  Reading other people's journeys makes me itchier still to get moving, but alas, it's my own journey I must take. I wonder if there's a back up copy of the map God's looking at that I could borrow...

Justice Pesto

I blame Heidi.

First she wondered if I had spent any time cruising Simple Mom.  Then she posted a picture of her award-winning jam.

In the last four weeks I have started moisturizing with coconut oil, cleansing with combinations of olive, almond and castor oils, exfoliating with lemons and sugar, masking in egg yolks and yogurt and washing all of us with Dr. Bronner's Castille Soap.  I figure I've cut our chemical lode in half and our cleaning/soaping/face restoration budget by two-thirds. My skin is happy, and now I have something to do with the egg yolks left-over from pavlova making.

However, getting in touch with my inner hippie (hippy? really? spelling is an odd game sometimes) did not stop at homemade deoderant (coconut oil, cornstarch and baking soda).  It moved into the kitchen.  First I tried home-made yogurt in the crockpot (going to try making vanilla next time and I'm accepting tips on how to make it thicker).  Next I started making granola.

And then I decided to make the pesto.

This year we planted five basil plants.  Our north-west bed just loves to grow tomatoes and basil and who am I to stop it? The field of green goodness looks quite You're Such A Good Gardner all summer and I do enjoy tossing some fresh basil onto pizzas and into dips now and again.  But come early September, that basil needs to be harvested and in my mind there is no higher purpose for basil than pesto.  So I grab the neighbour's food processor and a swack of pine nuts, my Costco-sized jar of minced garlic and a block of parmesan and I pesto.

Pestoing requires picking basil.  A lot of basil.  For the first 6 or 7 minutes of basil picking, I'm quite zen about the whole thing.  I delight in the sweet smell, the buzz of bees in the buds, the abundance of it all.  Somewhere around the 8 minutes mark, I consider complaining.  It's getting boring, and none of the leaves look good any more.  And is this basil kind of bitter? Quickly, I drag my broken mind back to the delight of toiling on my own land and try to focus on the softly bending tendrils of green. At minute 8 and a half, I'm back to wondering why our beds are so low, and how I'll ever get the green out from under my fingernails. Around minute 9, I remind myself that for so many, this is the work that feeds families and that it is honourable work and that I could busy my brain praying for the migrant farmers who suffer such terrible injustice picking the food I underpay for...  but then at minute 10, my prayer is cut-off by my own voice yelling at the boy, "For f*ck's sake!! Why would you throw dirt into my bowl of basil!!! I didn't want to have to wash and dry this!!"*

At minute 10 and a half, the husband suggests maybe I have enough basil.

In I go with my easily-16-cups of basil.  I whir, I grate, I salt, I season.... I gently spoon my vibrant green sauce into my boiled and readied jars.  All four of them.  All four half-pint jars. 

Yep - 4 cups of pesto.

Good people would share.  Actually, I did share one jar with the neighbour who shared her food processor. But the other three jars? In *my* freezer. For *my* chicken/halibut/noodles.

I'm not sure this is the outcome those wonderful SimpleMom people intend when they encourage us to live more simply.  I'm almost certain this wasn't what Heidi intended when she innocently photographed her raspberry jam.  But on the other hand, I do kind of like remembering every time we break into our $15 dollar jar of pesto, that nothing is as simple as I would like it to be and that we do really have an abundance of many things, not just basil, and that when the abundance is condensed, it may seem too small. 

But it's not. It's more than enough.  Again.


*I figure it's been growing in my organic garden all summer. I know it's not sprayed and washing and drying takes SOOOOooo long. Besides, it's just us eating it and I can assure you, we've eaten far worse than unwashed organic basil.

Best. So?

I am really trying to remember that people are doing their best.

I mean, except for me.  For the most part, I'd say I'm doing about 78% of my best.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but I figure it averages out to a mid-B grade.

But everyone else out there - the ones doing it wrong, doing it slowly, doing it backwards, doing it gratingly poorly - they're really doing their best I think.  And if they're not doing their best, they're probably not sub-performing just to wreck my day.  Probably they're just over-tired or underpaid or recently off the phone with a life partner who chose the wrong bread.

Maybe one or two are out to get me.

But most of the world? Just doing their best.

Too bad this doesn't make me any less annoyed with them all.

God and the Cops Need Better PR

Last week, a family in Sparwood, BC woke up and soon realized that one of their eight children was missing. Within hours, the police had issued an Amber Alert announcing young Kienan's absence and the likelihood that he was with a bad guy.  A bad guy with a history of creating lairs set up for doing grievous harm to young children and even trying to take them from their homes from time to time.  Finally, this broken man had succeeded and was gone with the Hebert's three-year-old.  It was the description of this boy last being seen with three blankets in Scooby-Doo boxers that broke me.

The siren whine of the Amber Alert that played every 20 minutes or so on the radio stations I listen to was my call to prayer.  A wordless moan in the direction of the heavens that I hope was heard as "FOR GOD'S SAKE! DO SOMETHING!"  We knew the dark things that lurked in the bad guy's heart and we knew that little boy didn't talk and we surely knew he was afraid and wanted him mum and wanted to be home and WHY WASN'T GOD DOING SOMETHING?!

At 3am Sunday morning, sweet Kienan was found in his living room.  The bad guy had phoned the police and told them he'd be there. The police guy said later that morning that this was "unprecedented" and a "small miracle".  A day or so later, the bad guy was captured by the good guys in the woods of Alberta, hanging out in a cabin at a Bible Camp.

Radio talk show hosts and I have this in common: despite the amazingness of all that happened - the boy being returned whole, the bad guy being caught, all those "small miracles" - we are not satisfied.

If radio folk are to be believed (and possibly the TV and newspaper and internet people too - I just haven't looked), the police still screwed this up.  Despite doing things in such a way that the child is home and the bad guy is in jail, the police are still wrong.  Questions and second guessing abounds and there is certainty that it could have and should have been done better.  That it was resolved in less than a week matters not. Those cops suck and probably suck on purpose.  Because they're jerks.  I'm pretty sure that's what we're meant to believe.


If I am to be believed, God was silent. Absent. Worse than useless.  I could live with the Bad Thing Happening (I think that was almost all I wrote about all spring, my okayness with Bad and Hard), but I could not live with the Bad Thing Happening To That Boy.  While I, in most things, truly, in my heart, believe that the promise is not of Protection but of Presence, in this case, Presence was inadequate. I needed Protection for this boy and God was clearly witholding it.  And I said so outloud.  Internet outloud that is.  And people were confused and wondered how I could possibly be irked with God when there were so many other better bad guys out there to blame.


The radio people and I share this dilemma.  Before then end of the story is known, our fears are winning and we lose sight of what is Good. In fairness, the story has often ended badly and our fears are not unfounded:  sadly several police officers have made terrible mistakes here in BC in the last years, and sadly, it would seem that God doesn't always return children to their mothers.  Our expectation that our fears would be realized again was not silly.  But it was not fair or right.


Because now that the end is known, this time, the police did do it right.  They really, truly did.  I'm not altogether clear what better outcome could be expected.  And if you're a person who prayed, then surely you're believing that God did it right too. God answered all those prayers.


But just like the radio people just can't cut those cops any slack, I just can't give God the credit on this one.  I just can't find space to say God acted on our requests. 


Because if God saved Kienan, then how do I keep on loving a God who doesn't save them all?

My tandemness with the radio people ends here.  I don't suppose any of them are freaking out about their entire life's foundation.


The only okay part is that my mystery basket appears to be big enough to hold this one too.  I can find a way to Praise Him Still, despite not understanding how the fuck this all works.  But it's a tough one and I can tell it's going to haunt me for a while.


Thank God Kienan's home.  I do.

Next

I want this post to be wry and funny, but it won't be.  Not that it will be bleak - I don't think it will be - but I think I don't have more than the basics in me tonight.

And the basics are, my girl is all grown. Okay, well not grown.  But growin'. She preschooled today and in so doing, waved a fond farewell to her Early Years with just us J's and entered into her School Years where there will be teachers and friends and little girls who cry because "she doesn't speak English the same way we do."  I'm not even sure what that means.

I am not one who pines for babies and wants Just One More.  We have Just Enough and have known so since the surprising conception of our second. I am not a natural, easy parent to non-speakers who require near-non-stop care and attention.  I am far too aware of my own self and my own needs to be able to live easily with those newly-heres who come with so many of their own relentless needs.  I think it unlikely that I will report to anyone that these were The Best Years Of Our Lives.

That said, it is not without sadness that I leave these years behind. 

And I think that's all I have to say about this.  But now it's said.  Onwards and upwards.

Maybe

Maybe I'll be starting up a regular blog schedule again.

Maybe I'll forgive God for letting me get all messed up by the Kienan Hebert kidnapping and the implications for a person who prays.

Maybe I'll get over not being allowed to take water through an airport screening because of the industry of fear that grew up in the aftermath of events of September 11th, 2001.

Maybe I'll decide whether or not this year is the year I go well beyond what is comfortable.

Maybe I'll wake up un-anxious about taking TBird to preschool tomorrow.

Maybe I'll find in my a graciousness for those flawed souls I have been asked to love but with whom I feel too comfortable only being impatient and judgey.

Maybe.

God Is a Terrible Mother

Oddly, I've found myself reading the prophets of late.  Amos, Hosea, and hilariously, Jonah.  Jonah made me laugh out loud.  Poor, poor Jonah.

What strikes me now is what struck me the last time I checked in with ancient Israel's finest:  God is a pansy.  But now with the deeper wisdom that comes with parenting small people (and surely it does bring deeper wisdom, right? there is *some* upside to this journey, isn't there?), I see that it isn't so much a character failing as a Parenting Fail.

There are several thousand books on parenting.  I will save you some time and sum them all up.  Granted I have not read each of them, but I am certain that each, at some point along the way, will say some version of this:  The only thing that matters is that you're consistent.  It doesn't actually matter which philosophy or technique espoused in any given tome - what matters is that you apply said philosophy or technique universally so that your children know what to expect.  Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Consistently.

In fairness, I'm not sure how many parenting books were around for the Creator so maybe (S)He didn't know.  But a quick read of the prophets reveals quite conclusively that The Lord is Not Consistent.  Most certainly, The Lord has not figured out the other cornerstone of parenting, Following Through.

If I had a nickel for every time I AM says "I am done with you! For real! Done! If you don't clean this place up I'm smiting the lot of you!" I'd buy a new couch.  And if I got another nickel for every time that same I AM says, "Okay, well, maybe a few of you can stay. You are my favourites after all, and I love you guys...", I'd get the loveseat and ottoman too.

It is no surprise to any of us who have bothered to actually read about how to raise children that Israel is still in therapy.

Jonah, having survived the old fish ride finally passes along God's famous, "I'm serious this time" to the people in Ninevah and no sooner are the words out his mouth and there goes Ninevah weeping and fasting and promising never to do it again.  And of course, instead of following through, Jehovah relents again and after a bit of a hissy fit and a dying vine or two, Jonah says (this is the part that made me laugh), "I'm so angry at you I could die!"

I know, right?

Now it's possible that this isn't the lesson intended for us in all these prophets' stories.  And while I have enjoyed my initial, not-so-serious-take on it all, in my deepest (or at least deeper) heart, I am relieved.  So very relieved.  Because I know the rules, I know the standard.  And I know I'm not going to make it.  But it looks like maybe even before the whole Jesus Fixes It All part, even in those first stories, even then, God is a God who really is slow to anger and rich in love who has compassion on all that (s)he has made.

And maybe I need that more than consistency and following through.

Or maybe that is Consistent and Following Through.

Wherein I Submit My Writing

Sarah The Writer sent me a link to a request for submissions on NPR's website.  I am not sure that I this CBC-listenting Canadian is even eligible, but I sure enjoyed the opportunity to write for a deadline on an assigned topic.  What follows is my submission, now submitted to the cadre of readers who kindly encourage my ongoing attempts at writing. 

Thank you Sarah.

A.

The question: Has parenthood changed you? Was there a moment or incident that sparked the realization? Tell us about it.

I wasn't a bad person.

I mean, I wasn't criminally bad. Maybe more Square-Girl-In-A-Big-City bad. Certainly nothing requiring the involvement of police or the producers of "Intervention". 

And yet. And yet I entered motherhood sure that the journey would be my making. I was counting on birthing babies and simultaneously birthing my own New and Improved Me.  A Me that would be sweetly gentle, prone to acts of selfless goodwill who reveled in surprising joy.

I'm not aware of an exact moment when I realized it had not happened. Perhaps it was the night (is 3am night or morning?) I stood over my wailing seven-week old and hurled obscenities that would make a trucker blush, urging her to please-god-stop-crying.  Maybe it was the one of the afternoons I realized that my toddlers had a closer relationship with Cesar Millan than was probably wise, and then next realized it was a small price to pay for an hour of uninterrupted email reading.  It may have been the time I ate six chocolate cookies at once so that I wouldn’t have to share Every. Freaking. Thing.

The details are fuzzy, but the truth made itself all too clear: I was still a Not-So-Great person.  Parenthood hadn't changed me at all.

However, I am surrounded by kind people who love me and who love our small people who have pointed out that while I am still Just Me, I am a lot more of Just Me than I was when I started.  Certainly I am More Angry, More Impatient, More Tired than I ever was prior to my babes' arrivals.  But happily I have moments when I can see that I am also More Loving, More At Rest, More Generous and sometimes even More Forgiving - of myself and of my people.  My not-so-greats remain not-so-great and sometimes even worse than they ever were, but my goods… my goods are so greatly improved, so deeply wonderful, if I may say so.  My only hope is that my children will grow up able to remember most clearly the Good Good and somehow forgive the Terrible Awfulness that appears to be inevitable.

Oh that I had been changed into a kinder, gentler person. The world would have rejoiced, it is sure. Instead the world must content itself A Little Bit More of a Lot Of The Same.  As must I, I guess.

I Don't Know

I went on a date a week or two ago.  My friend Laura took me to a play.  I didn't want any weirdness afterward or anything, so I paid my own way but she did all the date-making part: chose the play, chose a great restaurant, served me wine as she toured me around her sweet home.  She's a good date.

We saw "The Great Divorce" at Pacific Theatre.  I bet it's a really good production.  If I had the ability to turn off my cynicism, I'd probably find a way to enter into the beauty and art of it all and truly enjoy these things.  Sadly my brain takes about seventy-two minutes to power down, leaving only four to six minutes to engage properly in the thing.

That said, the story is a powerful one and was powerfully executed.  In it, each character is asked to give up The One Thing they're clinging to so that they can enter the Great Communion in Heaven.  And of course, most of them can not.  They absolutely can not give up That One Thing.

As we left, I said to Laura that I guess one upside to not really having a passion (can't find the link, but truly, it's a memorable post - if you remember when I wrote it, can you remind me please?) is that there is very little that I hold on to, so I'm probably a sure thing for Heaven if Mr. Lewis actually knew that of which he wrote.

But then my neighbours had a Strawberry Fast.  And God did that thing that God does where the miraculous is provided and the faithful are encouraged and my love and I got to hear about it over the fence, one of the better ways to hear about what God is up to I think.

So then at dinner, my love says what my love says, which is if God gets to get credit for all the Goodness, why isn't God getting blamed for the shitstorms.  And then I say what I say, which is that it's all mystery and that the miracle of the Strawberry Fast isn't All Of Who God Is any more than the shitstorm is All Of Who God Is: both are just hints at all of who God May Be.

And I was pretty sure I was right.  Maybe sure enough that if someone asked me to give up believing that I was right about it, I might be tempted to say "no thanks" to Heaven even.

And then I thought of the other thing I might need to hold on to.  The part where it doesn't matter if I'm right at all.  That Grace and Mercy are going to show up no matter what I do or think or say or believe. If I have to get it right, I'm not sure I can do it.

In Hebrews, the person who wrote it (it turns out no one knows! a mystery in the book all about mystery! I love this too much...) writes at the beginning of Chapter 11, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."  My date Laura apparently also dates one of my secret crushes, Sarah, who preached all about this verse a while back, and left me thinking this new thing about it.  This new thing where the point is that we're only sure that we're hoping and only certain that there are things we can not see.

We're only sure that we're hoping.

We're only certain there are things we can not see.

This is my faith.  This might be My True One Thing.

The God Whisperer

I may or may not have addicted my child to Cesar Millan.  I'm not sure if a person can actually addict another person to another thing, but if it can be done, I have succeeded beyond what I might have dared hope for had I known to hope for it.

Cesar (I'm sure we'd be on a first-name basis) is the Dog Whisperer.  He uses his energy and understanding of dogs to rehabilitate them and then uses his saucy mexican accent and disarming (newly-veneered in Season 3 I think) smile to train the dog's people to stop being morons.  It is quite remarkable and TBird and I tune in almost every day while I fold laundry and the boy sleeps.

Cesar has taught me almost every new thing I've thought about parenting in the last year. Mostly the parts where what we give is generally what we get back and where what we think is going to happen is most often what ends up happening.  Choosing to be Calm and Assertive like that wiley dog whisperer is almost always my best choice when managing small brains in small people hell-bent on freaking the fuck out.  What? Oh right. Less swearing.  I mean, small people busy being wholly themselves.

Yesterday, a poor woman described how her Great Dane had nearly killed her.  They had been walking on a trail along a precipice and her dog saw another dog ahead.  Obviously not-yet-whispered, her dog lunged after the interloper and the owner described how she had to decide about whether to let the dog go and perhaps witness its tumbling into eternity, or hold on but risk her own demise. 

Cesar smiled and nodded through the story and then said (insert saucy mexican accent here): "But the dog did not ask you to be afraid.  The dog does not say 'now I will make you angry' or 'now I want you to fear'.  The dog just was a dog. You chose the fear."

Now had it been me tethered to a Great Dane on a ledge, I'd probably have had some words for Mr. Millan and his 'you chose fear' mumbo-jumbo.  But it wasn't me there - I was tucked on the couch with my awesome four-year-old pondering as ever why life is so difficult. 

And what I ended up hearing instead is something like, Quit choosing the fear.  Quit choosing the angry. Life is not asking you to choose those things. Life is just being Life.  Choose more Life.

So now I'm reading "One Thousand Gifts" because Heidi asked me to, and I'm wondering if maybe this season is going to bring a few more opportunities to choose Less Fear, Less Anger, Less Less.  I wonder if that's what was being whispered.  I tried it out tonight and it was kind of spooky.  I tried giving less anger away and ended up with more peace.  Go figure.

I wonder if the Lord has a Mexican accent?

Sins of The Mother

You may recall a post a couple of months ago in which I wallowed in the lunacy of parenting - to what end do we toil, I wondered.  Actually, I think I couldn't get past "what's the point", but I was distracted by the pain of the task and thus, eloquence suffered.

My sweet mum sent me what is probably the loveliest email a mother could send a daughter being a mother.  It is lovely in too many ways - full of love and encouragement for me; full of faith and rest in the same God I love; full of Certain Doubt, my favourite way of talking and thinking; and of course, full of the beauty of writing by a fellow Writer.

At our mum's group this week we explored a question asked by a previous guest who wondered what parts of our childhood we planned to include in our children's childhoods, and what parts we thought were best left behind.  And as you'll soon read, the question brought me back to that email from mum.

My own answer is unformed in most ways.  I was unusually well-parented by thoughtful, mindful parents who worked hard at the process.  But as mum says, children know there are edges to their parents' faithfulness, and most of us are some combination of sad, angry and resentful that those edges exist.  Because of course, our hearts are built for heaven's edgeless love and anything less is just a loss, a reminder that this earth is not at all as it is in heaven.

But knowing now my own edged self, and knowing how hopeless I feel knowing my own small people will wonder why I couldn't just Try A Little Bit Harder to love better, I find myself looking at my own mum and dad's edges and finally feeling willing to forgive them their humanity and revel more intensely in the wide fields that remain their devoted Love and Faithfulness to me and my siblings.  I do so knowing how deeply I'll crave my own daughter's forgiveness but also knowing that it must be done if I want to forgive myself for not being the mother I had planned to be.

In my family, there are no deep wounds to fester or linger: there are only the petty demands of an eternally four-year-old daughter who wants More! More! More! So perhaps these words are too glib and not fair to those who's parents' edeges made for a very small patch of Love and Faitfulness in which to grow up.  But such is not my lot, and so I speak only for my own self and wonder if perhaps some of this is true for another.

Now follows that email, only edited to keep some of my mother's more enthusiastic encouragement of this heart for my own self.  May those who read find some rest in this as I did.

Dear A,

I can't bring myself to post my comments on your blog site because it's too public, but I had to put words on a couple of inner responses to your words from the perspective of the other end of this parenting thing, wondering as I type if it would have made any difference to me had I heard them from my mother...?  She of course was culturally unable to articulate her experience of parenting -- that was a luxury she would have loved if she'd been equipped to think that way, but her generation was in a whole other place.  So I never once heard her thoughts on any of this.

My thoughts in no particular order: 

My mother and father were raised by parents who according to Mum and Dad, were over-strict, over-controlling and mean-spirited.  With the possible exception for Mum's father, who was apparently perfect and did no wrong...  Fortunately for him, he died young.  But I would believe that they all, God love them, did their very best (I really do believe this) with what they had available inside themselves at the time, and tried to raise kids that would have a better life than they did, be better people than they were.

Then my parents raised Joan and I, doing their best with us too, a 'best' which I happened to think as I got older, sucked a lot of the time, and was pathetic and inadequate and deeply flawed way too often.   At some points in my life, I thought their style of non-tolerance and rigidity bordered on negligent and cruel, and that I would be scarred by it forever.   Nonetheless, I eventually recognized that they gave the best they could give, given their personal place in history, culture, in their particular families,  and with their own limitations.   It has become clearer and clearer over the years however, that they did indeed love us well and thoroughly and were always faithful to us.

Then Dad and I raised you three, determined to correct the direction and misdirection of our childhoods, and raise children who would know they were always loved and even adored and respected, who would be listened to and raised to think for themselves (not brick wall children or jellyfish children) and who would be able to resist peer pressure and be respectful and relational and in touch with their feelings, etc. etc.  They would be raised with real Christian faith available to them always, and not the rote religion that we remembered.  As parents, we would be knowable and not aloof, and our children would be safe within the bounds of our family at least.  It was a great plan.  And God bless us, we did the best we could too, within the restrictions, limits and incompetencies of our own dear and earnest selves.  We always knew there were likely to be a few small failings, but we would trust those to God, who would no doubt work them out for you all so they would do no great harm...  Somehow all would be well.  I think your sainted father was always surer of this than I was...

So now here you are, with your own set of goals and longings for your children and yourselves, for parenting well and loving well and somehow trying to live in faith and with good humour, and each day paying willingly for the cost of that terrible tension.  You too are doing the best you can as a mother, knowing that some days that includes not wanting to have to do anything whatsoever with your children and frankly not giving a rip, which is included in 'doing the best you can' on any given bad day.  Scott is doing the same -- he can't help himself.  He is doing the best he can, given all the stories and family realities he carries and lives within the limits of.

And here and there, now and then, you find yourself wondering what the point of it all is -- what a fine and right question to keep coming back to, in my estimation.  Is it to produce a certain kind of grown-up person out of these little people??  Is it to be more real and authentic and faithful family/mother than you find easy to actually pull off consistently??  Is it to live happily and freely together, knowing God's ways are deeply mysterious and therefore knowing you must not be carrying weights you shouldn't be carrying and in fact cannot carry??  What is the point??

The previous generations sure as heck didn't get any of those things right -- barely any of it.  They occasionally might have brushed against some part of some of it -- my parents provided me with enormous and unshakable security in some areas, and it's killed me ever since not to have that anymore -- I always miss it.  But they fell short so substantially in so many other areas...

So apparently,  each generation must begin again, from scratch, determined to love well and pay the prices involved in that loving, and do better than they remember was done for them.  And surprisingly, each generation does.  It improves richly and deeply and uniquely the way their children are loved, and carried, and let go of.  And I believe this is true.  It truly is an improvement, a movement toward the Better.  The part that is so undermining and flummoxing, is that each generation fails in new ways too.  Parents surprise themselves -- shock themselves -- when they realize (or not...) that they completely were unable to do X the way it needed to be done.  They really were victorious in areas B, F, and M.  But X...  oh, and apparently not so good on Q....  Rats.  Forgot to worry about that -- thought we had that one under control... Damn.

So you're on to something important, in my estimation.  The faithfulness word that your friend spoke was directly from that wiley Jesus, at least in terms of my understanding of how the whole Immanuel business sometimes works.  Just as you suspected.  The hard part to swallow for me is the difference between God's faithfulness and ours.  His is unfailing faithfulness, full of understanding and knowledge and wisdom and justice and is really, really funny at times.  He never stops being faithful to us, as we are this very moment, in love.  Which is a bit of trick, being as we cannot quite comprehend how he could or why he would be 'faithful' to such a group of undesirable, pathetic losers.  But somehow, our faith tells us, our stories tell us, he is.  He knows the true extent of our unfaithfulnesses and un-love, and nonetheless, never wavers or withdraws or recoils or rolls his eyes.  (Well, maybe that last one...)

Our faithfulness to our children and to each other however, has its limits.  It has edges.  We do not intend it to be, and hardly recognize when it has wavered or wobbled, but it does.  Our children notice this.  They remember it.  It is only human faithfulness after all, which Jesus seemingly doesn't mind.  Or change.  These limits and edges very effectively reveal how desperately poor we are, how 'not quite' we are, and that is the mysterious good thing -- that is the main thing, in my theology at least.  That at the end of each day, and of each life, of each encounter or bad conversation, we would realize both our poverty and our richness, and see more accurately where each one lies.  We don't overcome most of our well-intentioned but  poor faithlessness, and neither does Heaven overcome it for us.  It just lets it be, and then the Spirit and Creator of all Life reveals it to us, a little bit at a time.  Not to depress and discourage us (which it usually does...) but simply to reveal the Truth, and then to swoop in with the Good News, that the Sisters are here!  Grace and Mercy are at hand, right in the middle of this latest darkness.  Oh, blessed relief.

We still keep trying to be faithful, to ourselves and each and to God, but I think we should never for one moment believe that we are there.  We are as close to there as we can get at this very moment, and likely our parents and their parents were as close to it as they could get.  Here we all are however, starting each day from scratch, learning the extent of our need and our own deep longing to love well and live well, and our deep need to be loved in ways that no-one seems to be able or willing to provide.  No wonder we get tired.

But the Presence provides at least some of us with occasional perspective and more tolerable still, a sense of the absurd.  Our own absurdity and funniness and the relief that follows that clarity, and those are the moments in which we most easily learn to recognize the presence of Jesus, who has been likely laughing a tiny touch longer than the rest of us... Or groaning.  Or rocking, with his head in his hands, in shared agony, the dog bowl of gin close at hand...

So in closing, if God Is With Us, remember that that means also that God Has Been With You All Along, and ergo, that God Will Never Fail To Be With You, No Matter What.  To me that's the good news about God's mysterious faithfulness -- it has always been present with me, it is in this very moment, and it always will be.  And that is what I believe deeply for you and Scott and T. and Nate, and Katie and Jared, and Andrew, and for Dad -- as we all are, in this very place, Immanuel.  Fancy that.

God always does speak in Good News -- feel free to remind me of that, and I will remind you too.  If it ain't Good News, take a second look at the source -- may not be Heaven.

I love you.  I love what you write.  Forgive the length of this but I couldn't help myself.
M.

Forgiven.

Dear Kate M., I'm Sorry

I blame the Canucks.

Probably every bad mood in VanCity can be explained by the last two hockey games "played" by the Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup Finals.  They actually had a psychologist on the news tonight talking about how the city is responding to the highs and lows of the playoffs.  Happily I was very comforted by the clip of Trevor Linden telling us all to calm down.

It's too bad I didn't see the clip earlier in the day:  I might have been less angry about Kate Middleton's wedding. And maybe whole life. 

I accidentally read the Us Magazine special wedding edition while getting a pedicure. I was feeling pretty good about my special treat until I saw Princess Kate's diamond drop earrings with her family's new emblem (the acorn) hanging in the middle.  She got earrings AND a new family emblem? Fuck me.  I mean what good is a pedicure if you don't even have a frikkin family coat of arms, never mind diamond earrings*?!

Well, you can imagine how the rest of the day went.  It didn't take long to inventory all my deficits compared to the incomparable Duchess of Cambridge - my husband, while a hero, is not a Search and Rescue Helicopter Pilot; we do not live in a quaint Welsh town with an ice cream truck run by the mayor**; I don't have embossed stationary; and I definitely do not have a personal stylist. 

The only obvious answer was to hate her.  Which I did for several hours until Trevor Linden intervened.

Now I just feel silly.  I mean, my husband is after all, a hero.  He's employed and he loves his children which heroic most days.  I live in a neighbourhood with good friends and good people on every side. I have a really nice fountain pen my dad gave me, and the means to buy embossed stationary any day I want.  And while I don't have a personal stylist... well, actually, that one is just going to have to remain a thorn in my side.

The thing is, some days, not even gratitude makes being me feel any better.  Some days I just want to be anyone else.  Well, mostly just someone who has a coat of arms and a royal allowance.  For now I'll just have to settle for being someone who's sorry she sent so much bad energy to Anglesey.

*In the spirit of full disclosure, I was promised diamond earrings if I completed a fitness program with some friends.  I quit, and now don't have earrings. So I guess that one's my fault.

** I wonder if any parents in Anglesey tell their children that when the ice cream truck plays music, it means it's out of ice cream.  Because that remains one of my favourite parenting moments of all time.

Four

Today is the fourth anniversary of Talia's arrival. 

I don't remember being this weepy and moved when she turned three.  Although I also don't remember thinking it would be wise to host four little girls for an hour or two in the morning and then feed them all kinds of sugar and fruit and then try to live with them, or at least one of them, for the rest of the day.

But four.  Four. Four!

My first thoughts on this were, "I'd thought I'd be better at this by now."  But then I realized that actually I'm much more at rest in this mothering gig than I was in the first few months and early years.  I trust me a lot more now.  And I know her a lot better.  And we're a good twosome, we two.  She is funny, and wise, and well-spoken, and kind.  So kind.  She is quick to laugh and jump in laps.  She plays and plays and can't wait for school to start next year so that she can play there too.  She has a firm sense of style that is surprising in it's unwavering constancy.  Her hair is Everyone-Comment-On-It-Blond, and her eyes the colour of the ocean.  She loves her Daddy, and needs her Mummy and this seems exactly as it ought to be.

Five years ago, she was a distant dream, a threatened impossibility.  She was all that we were hoping for, but not sure we were allowed to ask for.  She was an acute heartache in her absence and we wondered about wondering about her at all. 

Four years ago, she was flesh-and-blood Love Come Near.  Karen's answered prayer.  She came and brought us our own family that is just now starting to ease into itself.  She transformed my husband into a father, his very best self.  She transformed me into ... this.  All Of This. 

My deep gratitude remains, and overwhelms me on days like today.  When life is so full of Hard, it is so good to remember that My God is So Good.  My God chose this one to be ours, to be our family-maker.  On days like today, I even remember that I don't have to worry about her at all, because she is so loved by the Heavens and because her days are already known and numbered by the Maker of All Things. We just get to live nearby and watch her become all of who she is.  On nights like tonight, that just seems extra wonderful.  And maybe even possible.

Four. 

The New Gratitude and Abundance

Last year my friend Brooke gave me a really wonderful gift, a marker for a year of remembering how much we've been given and how deeply thankful I am for all of it.  I wear it still, but I'm thinking of retiring it for a season. 

Not so much because I am any less thankful, or any less abundanted (is there a spiritual gift of word making-up-ing? cause I think I got it....), but because I am quite certain this season is bringing new learning that may require new reminders. 

The necklace I wear right now has a truth built into its construction, with Gratitude and Abundance on either side of each other.  I like seeing the one and remembering the other is right behind it. If I set this one down, it will be to pick up another duality that I think I'm naming Giving Up and Acceptance. Not giving up like quitting, and not acceptance like tolerance.  If there was an image for this one, it would be an open hand that is Giving Up what was being held, and Accepting what is being offered.  Giving up Knowing and Telling and Leading and maybe accepting Quiet and Peace and Not-Sureness.

This isn't a new image for me, this open hand, nor is it new thinking about what good living with the Spirit is like: I feel like I'm re-reading an old favourite book.  Kind of like when I re-read "To Kill A Mockingbird" last year.  I kept remembering how it goes as I flipped each page, although it had been all but forgotten up until that very moment.  And in that fresh new old memory, there was a new depth to the story, a new richness that comes with my more lived self doing the reading.  And this time around with the open hand, it's a similar experience - the Giving Up is deeper and the Accepting all the richer for it, and yet familiar all at the same time. 

So I'm going to keep my eyes open for a new marker.  Maybe not one to replace Gratitude and Abundance, but one to add to it. 

I Think Maybe Everyone Else Knew This Already

That boy I married fell down the stairs this morning. It started off HOLY F*CK and has ended with Are You Kidding? We've just added it to the list of reasons 2011 ought not to be repeated.

We got to spend some time in the ER, with side trips to x-ray and CT (which I will now always affectionately call Land of Pantless Men) and of course see first hand that life is full of Hard for many, and as Hard as this morning was for us, it was Harder Still for several others that passed through my line of sight.

So then we got to talking about degrees of suffering and all those things one talks about having averted the Worst Case while still living in the Pretty Shitty Case.  And as often happens, that boy wondered about why we believe in a God that can't do better than suffering.  And by 'we', well of course, that means me, since I do faith for our family the way he does car care and the recycling.

Anyway, I found myself saying that at least there was no false promise of no suffering in the Christian faith. That every religion was just an attempt by humanity to explain why life sucks and to make it less so.  And as I said, I kind of realized that was probably true.  Right? Isn't that what every belief system is: an effort to make sense of the inevitable painfulness of being?

I think maybe that could be true.  Which makes me a bit more commited to my own little way of understanding the Creator as the promise of presence in the face of All That Should Not Be.  Because the alternatives are things like Try Harder And It Won't Be So Hard, and Too Bad You Suck, Good Luck Out There, and Maybe Next Time Around It Won't Be So Bad.

I mostly just wish that things weren't so hard these days.  We could do with less suffering, and certainly most of the world could too. But barring the end of difficult, I'll take presence. 

Always Presence.

The End

For reasons both obvious and not-so-obvious to me, I've been a bit obsessive lately with the question, What is the point?  Probably a bit about life in general, but a lot about parenting in particular. In the last 24 hours it has begun to bubble over.

First, my Writer Friend wrote a blog post about the wisdom (or not) of letting kids have a vote in this life. It touched a nerve in my Am I Getting This All Wrong joint. I think I want to be authoritative as a parent, except when I want my kids to know their voice matters and has a place in this world.  I think I want to teach and guide my children to be contributing, thoughtful, rule-respecting members of society, except when I want my kids to be true to themselves and blaze their own trail and be the change they want to be in the world and all that hoohah (is my bias showing?). The difficulty is that I can't look back and see a generation that got it right, so it seems predetermined that we'll be failing too, no matter which course we choose.

With that bleakness lurking in my heart, I joined our mom's group this morning and listened to a woman share her story of parenting pain and hurt.  Her daughter is now 23, and they have lived together a lifetime of Not Ideal and What The F*ck.  And yet.  And yet there was beauty and goodness in the mess of it - the daughter penning an essay in her GED class about her adopted self being "the gift they didn't give back".  Good gravy. So broody, dark-hearted one that I am, my question for Bev was this:  After 23 years of all this pain and heartache with no "success" to point to (yet), what would you say the point of all this parenting is for all of us just at the beginning?

She said 'faithfulness'.  I think it was a pretty good answer.

But of course, it wasn't enough answer for me, so I've had to dwell on it all afternoon, and now ignore my own children so that I can write it out.

When I related the morning's story to Scott, what struck me was that there was no Moral to the Story or Tidy Life Lesson to pass along.  There was just the loveliness of making space for a woman to tell her story and hear outloud her own life one more time, so as better to maybe remember bits and pieces of God's own faithfulness to her that in turn is now her faithfulness to her daughter.

And then I thought, well maybe the point of this life for each of us is to live a story (and hopefully tell it a few times) that reminds us of that same thing -  God is faithful.

And then I thought, I wonder if I would parent differently if all I thought I had to remember was that the point is God is Faithful.  Or my more usual, God is With Me.  I wonder if I would work so hard at getting parenting right if I started living in the part where God is okay with the Wrong because it shows off God's Right so much better.

And then I remembered the only part of the Westminster Catechism that I know:  What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Enjoy.  Enjoy!

If this is true, then every time Bev tells her story and reminds herself and those of us listening that God has been faithful, that she has been faithful, she glorifies God.  And then her only job is enjoy God forever!

So this week I'm going to try to wear my Glorifying God Glasses and try if I can see my life - and several lives around me - a bit differently.  What if my story isn't about how I raise Amazing Kids Who Grow Up To Do Amazing Things, but about how I was faithful to them remembering that God was being faithful to me?  and then what if seeing things that way made it way easier to enjoy God forever?

You know what I love about my life of faith? That God always talks in Good News.  If the voice I hear makes it sounds like life is going to be harder and suckier, it's probably my own dark heart whispering to me; however, if it lightens my load and gives me hope for tomorrow and arrives as Good News, maybe it's that wiley Jesus telling me something Heavenly.

So Bev, thanks for the Good News. I'm off to enjoy God forever and try not to worry about the rest so much. At least until the hockey game starts.

Agreeing With Me

This week I took a class on Roberts' Rules of Order.  Mostly as a favour to the other people on the committee I'm on.  It turns out there really are ways to do things like run meetings that are Helpful and Better than me just doing what I want.  I know, I was shocked too.

Also in this class was a fellow citizen who chairs another committee that I'm not on.  He seemed smart and clever enough.  He was wearing an engineers' ring, you know the one they all wear on their pinky? The secret engineering code ring that tells all the other Oddly-Good-At-Math folk out there that they too are Oddly Good At Math.

Of course I had to start musing.  It occured to me that really and truly, the only reason for the ring is to establish solidarity with other ring wearers.  Not unlike gold cross necklaces on women everywhere or those little fish bumpery-sticker things.  Or the Darwin fish for that matter.  All over the place, little hints of clubdom, of groups to belong to.

And then I remembered writing about being pretty hopeful that heaven would be full of Belonging here.  So I went back and read what I wrote and was heartened to know that it was still true.

So now I am thinking about how I can give out Belonging to others because maybe that's a bit of making earth as it is in Heaven.  I don't think I'll be very good at it, but I think it's something I might be willing to learn how to do.  At the very least, I want to get really good at doing it for my kids.  I want our family to be the place they're sure they belong. It's difficult on a day when I've whispered in my daughter's ear as she screamed her way through the park, "You've ruined this whole day!"  But here's hoping that grace prevails and she mostly remembers the part where our home is her Home.  Always.


I'm really glad there's that verse in the bible that says something like Nothing's impossible with God.  Or is that an inspirational poster with a kitten and ball of wool on it ...

Where I Pretend I Was Interviewed

One thing I like is Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project.  She is not only interesting, but also a Writer, so a pleasure to read.

She does regular Happiness Interviews with people and then posts them on facebook and everytime I read one, I think of my own set of answers.  Today I wrote them down. And since blogging is painfully difficult these days, this seems like a good cheating post.  And so follows my interview with Gretchen Rubin, kind of:

Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Alison: Right now, my Giada smile: a big fake smile that always makes me laugh. It goes with the sound, "ting!"

What's something you know now about happiness that you didn't know when you were 18 years old?
Happiness isn't the point. Probably goodness is. But happiness is still on the list.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Wallowing. Living longer in the hard parts than is actually necessary.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you've found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to "Be Gretchen.") Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
"All events are neutral." That's a famous person whom I refuse to name because it will make me look Oprah-y.  "It's either a good time or a good story." That's me. Both remind me that I get to be in charge of the filter.

If you're feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a "comfort food," do you have a comfort activity? (mine is reading children's books).
I wish I had one. I could use one right now. I like facebook a lot...

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
The happiest people I know also seem to be some of the dimmer people I know. Or at least, least reflective people I know. I wonder if they're onto something and if knowing less and reflecting less would increase happiness. Then I wonder how happy I want to be.


Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy - if so,why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
One time when I was in my mid-20s, I remember saying outloud, "this is as good as it gets" and being truly happy. My espoused values and my real life really, truly matched.  And I had enough money.  It was a sweet moment.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Working on happiness is in the same category as reducing fine lines and wrinkles for me. I want to do both but feel silly and superficial doing it. That said, I keep buying cheap night creams and fantasizing about someone buying the Almost a Facelift Supercream for me one day.  And I get the HP facebook feed and do my fake Giada smile from time to time.


Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn't - or vice versa?
I thought doing the right thing would make me happy. It turned out doing the right thing was difficult and the effort required to do said thing eclipsed any possible happiness. But it also turned out that doing the right thing was more required than me being happy and that was okay. Maybe even Good.  And somewhere, deep down, Good makes me Happy.

I hope everyone will consider doing their own interview and maybe even posting it in the comments, if not right online in a facebook note, or in your own blog.  This was a good excercise and given my universalism, you know if it was good for me it must be good for you.

You Know What's Stupid?

Other people, that's what.

Oh, and me.

I got in another FB fight this week with some yahoo-kooky-lefty-commie-pinko-Christian type.  You know the kind - God cares about the poor, so we should too...? Yeah, I know.  We don't even disagree. All that much. But in his defence of the poor he was just kind of, I don't know, assholey.  And so of course instead of just skipping right to Bejewelled Blitz, I had to interfere in his little verbal fist-fight with a Right Wing Whacko and point out that probably God cared less about the American worker than about Christians being kind to each other.

Well, YKLCPC-type decided to continue ranting and point out that I was not only wrong but also Canadian and should just take my health care and go home.  Did I stay out of it at that point? No, because I'm a moron. I told him he hurt my feelings, and that maybe it's a bit gross to consider the American worker "the poor" in a global sense.  He responded that I was "insensitive".  And wrong.

So screw you wacko - I've got a BLOG!

Petty? yes.  Right? probably not. So bothered? for shizzle.

I hate it when people disagree with me, especially about Kingdom shit. Because while I don't think any of our theology matters all that much and that it makes God kind of chuckle when we act like it does, it's all mystery, we see through a glass darkly and all that -- while I am aware of all that, in my secret heart of hearts, I am pretty sure God thinks I'm right. About all of it. 

Oh dear.

And this is why I need salvation.  Because my heart's desire is not that I agree with the Lord, but that the Lord agree with me. If that isn't the definition of sin, I don't know what is.  And so I go back to my prayer that I came up with somewhere back there in Advent: "Lord, make me willing."  That's all I've got. 

Well, that and the hope that YKLCPC-type gets a message from the Lord that he's an asshole.