To do

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 MSG

I just love this.

It's the answer, isn't it? To all the striving and arguing over what Christianity ought to look like. I think it must make our Father especially weary when we tell each other what to do instead of worrying about the logs in our own eyes first.

Trust steadily in God.

Hope unswervingly.

Love extravagantly.

It's what we can focus on when the world seems entirely upside down. When we're in the middle of a pandemic. When all around us are filled with fear. When the horrors of war rage on. When a contractor rips us off and we live in a construction site for years. When illness settles in. This is our permanent to-do list.

I feel like I'm pretty good at trusting in God. Am determined to love extravagantly. But I struggle to hope unswervingly. 

This is why I need to read other writers, listen to other speakers, talk with my brothers and sisters. What I lack, you kindle in me. Where I falter, you hold me up.

You point me to hope.

To trust.

To love.

And to wake up tomorrow and do it again.

Xo.

Wild Geese that Fly with the Moon on the Wing

Tonight I was walking Eevee and the sky was a delight. Sparkling and flooded with light from a full moon, Orion swathed in a sash of jet smoke, the big dipper scooping up some distant magic.

Wild geese were honking their noisy reunions, wings awhirr as they swooped in to land on the half-melted river. Walking over the bridge, I could see them from above with the moon on the wing, and I felt a little heart leap of understanding just why Maria called it one of her favourite things.

 Just when we had almost reached home, a new sound hit my ears - the silvery trumpet of swans. Eevee and I ran down to the water in hopes of seeing them but they weren't in sight - maybe they had only flown over or maybe they had landed around the bend.

I tried to capture the night with my camera but no luck. It was oxygen just to be out in it, free, with birds coming home at the cusp of spring.

I'm not a dog person

I'm not a dog person at all. 

I think all dogs are just too ... doggish.  They shed and eat stinky food and drool and poop and bark and whine and - I mean, they just exist, doggily. 

You can see it's not dogs' fault - they're just not my cup of tea.

But our kids are dog people, and we're trying to raise them to be compassionate, so when our friend found a little puppy abandoned in a cardboard box on the side of the highway, in the rain ... weellllllllll ... we said yes and adopted Eevee. 

I have reluctantly come to the realization that I enjoy walking her every night.

I have reluctantly come to the realization that I enjoy her ecstatic morning snuggles (even though they give me hives - ugh - yes, hives). 

And last week, we discovered a cut in the bottom of her right front food pad. It looked like maybe a split from walking on too much salt. We kept her walking to a minimum for a few days, and for a week I've been rubbing coconut oil on it to clean it and help it heal quickly. And she loves this. She licks all over my hands (yummy), and when I'm done she stretches out her toes like they're finally comfortable, exactly the way I stretch after I rub lotion on my feet before bed.

And I have reluctantly come to the realization that I enjoy taking care of her. I look forward to rubbing the oil on her dry foot pads and seeing her relief.

Reluctant because I don't really want another body to take care of (we already have a lot of those). Reluctant because I don't want more chores in the day (we already have a lot of those). Reluctant because of my allergies (I already have a lot of those).

And yet ... I love knowing she's more comfortable, or more happy, or more safe, because of something I can do. And the more I take care of her, the more I love her. The more I do for her, the more I care about her. 

There's alchemy in the world yet.

I'm not a dog person - but -

Foodcycler Diary

We signed up to be part of a countertop composter pilot project in our town. 

We purchased a Foodcycler at a very reduced price in exchange for keeping a 12-week record of our usage. This will help the town calculate the overall waste reduction that could be had, and the impact it could have on garbage pickup, methane gas release, and landfill use.

We were so excited to receive our Foodcycler and start composting! In the first day we ran 3 cycles. I knew it was coming, so I had kept a few containers of food in the fridge that I normally would have scraped into the trash. We also have a big family, so I expected our usage to be higher than the predicted once-daily cycle.

We eagerly loaded it up and took a picture and then read the instructions lol - it was too full and we had to dump a bunch of the food scraps out and save them for the next load. 

We're saving the resultant compost and will add it to our soil once the snow melts. It is very cool to see the different type of dirt that is created by the different food scraps.

So far I think we have composted the following kitchen scraps:

Lettuce

Peppers

Coffee grounds

Apples

A lime

Orange peels

Banana peels

Leftover chicken

A few pierogies

1 napkin

Grape stems

Egg shells

A few bread crusts

Dry dog food

There is a filter that absorbs odours, and I didn't notice any food smells during the processing except for the dog food when there was a significant amount of it in the foodcycler. I won't put that in the machine again simply because of the smell.

Our container of dirte (*not your ordinary dirt lol) is rapidly filling up! This is the compost produced from 5 buckets full of kitchen scraps.

 

You can see the lime peel and orange peel in this shot. They're thin and crisp but still have their citrusy scents.

Anyway, I know this is probably exciting only to me, but I wanted to have a record of it for my own interest :).  Our Foodcycler is happily humming away on its third bucket of the day.

Armour

*tw: depression, self-harm, suicide

Over Christmas, I encountered a bully. He bullied me in person, and then online. He published a video about me, and then made two more. (I would link to them, but honestly, he loves getting lots of views and I would rather not feed his ego. I haven't even watched the second two videos because I don't want his numbers to increase.)

I was totally shaken, and I cried for days. How could this person do this to me? Why would he hurt someone he doesn't even know? 

My mental health was struggling, and I was tempted with suicidal thoughts. I even found myself experiencing self-harm (which brought so much relief, because the physical pain temporarily blotted out the emotional pain. This surprised me, because before this I had never understood self-harm. If you want to talk to me more about it, please reach out.). 

I could not understand this great agony I was experiencing. Why did the criticisms pierce? Why did the flood of online hatred go so deeply into my soul? 

Everyone kept telling me to let it go, but I didn't know how. How do you just not feel what you feel? How do you let things go when they have lodged into the core of you like an arrow with barbs?

Loving friends prayed for me. I received kind and supportive texts and messages, and people I don't even know thanked me for standing up to this bully. But the love and warmth fell off me like water off a duck's back.  None of it sank in. Nothing touched the stabbing pain.

And then one night I asked Patrick to look at the latest videos, because I wanted to know the worst. He read the title of one to me, and I burst into tears and ran out of the room. Patrick was baffled. Truly baffled. "This guy is nobody to you. How can his opinions hurt you?" he asked.
And I lay in the dark thinking about that. "Doesn't meanness hurt everybody?" I thought.
But no, it doesn't; not to this extent. I think meanness hurts everyone, but not like this.
So what is happening, I asked God, why does this hurt so much and why do I feel so alone?

And he showed me an unexpected truth.

My armour is on backwards.

When people say nice things about me, loving things, kind things, I put up my hand like a stop sign. "No, no," I say, quite literally, "Not so." And I stop them from coming in. My armour deflects them. They bounce off of me and roll away.

But when people say mean things about me, hateful things, unkind things, they slide right in. They slip through like arrows through mesh, slice into my skin and lodge in my heart. "You're right," I whisper, and I don't even raise a hand against them, "this is true."

My armour is on backward. I have a hard shell preventing the outpouring of love from coming in, but only a strip of mesh against the arrows of hate.

So I started trying to put it on the right way. I determined to try to let the love in, and say a firm No to meanness.

And I was startled by how often love comes to me. How often kindness is directed toward me; thoughtfulness and warmth. 

I couldn't start my van that first particularly cold day, so we took taxis to school. Mid-afternoon, two friends texted and one friend popped into the classroom to offer rides home and make sure we weren't stranded. "Let the love in," God whispered, and I experienced a paradigm shift as I realized these kindnesses weren't offered out of obligation or dull duty, but out of love.  Right there in the classroom, my heart swam and my eyes pricked with tears as I chose - maybe for the first time ever - to receive love as love, and to welcome it in.

My friends.

I have run into my bully a few more times. I have had opportunity to practice saying a mental "No," to the hatred and lies he spews. I have been able to let his meanness roll off of my heart and not let it lodge.

But I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the thousands of opportunities I have had to put down my armour and let love in. Kindness rains down, love and joy pour in. Taking it at face value and letting it in is almost painful in its sweetness. People say and do kind things all the time. I can't believe how much I resisted it before, how little I valued it and how fiercely determined I was to not let it in. And it's everywhere.

I still find myself automatically deflecting sometimes. "You look lovely," my friend might say, and I say "no no, YOU look lovey." But I've been learning to back up and shimmy out of the armour, saying "I mean, thank you!" And then, in my heart, letting that warmth right in, right in to the place where I store what other people think of me, and what I think of me.

And frankly, with all that love in there, there's not a lot of room for unkindness to stay. It has a harder time getting in. Even when I forget to put my armour up against the meanness, there's still a little extra resistance before it stabs my heart, a little breathing room for me to decide what I want to do with it.

I've raised my kids to know they're the bosses of their bodies and they have the right to decide if they assent to being touched or not: their consent matters. 

I never realized this applies to hearts too. 

I can say yes. I can say no. I don't have to take everything that's flung at me. I can adjust my armour.

It's blowing my mind.

I just wanted to share in case you, too, need to reconsider your heart's armour. Maybe you need permission and understanding, like I did, to say no to hatred and to affirm the love you're given - and to discover with joy that love is truly all around you.

xo.

 

and He gave us each other

You know how you've read some Bible stories what seems like a million times, and you already know everything about them but then God surprises you with something new in them anyway?

I was reading the story of the Prodigal Son and kind of put my brain on autopilot, because I know it inside out.

I used to hear it a lot, and I always thought what a total shame it was that the younger son took his share of the Dad's money and wasted it. So ungrateful, and so unfair. I felt a kinship with the sulky older son - that's definitely who I'd be in the story: jealous of the one who'd made off with a big chunk of my dad's wealth and lived it up and then came home and was welcomed with fancy clothes and a feast.

But like he often does, in spite of my assurance that I already know this story, God showed me something new this time around.

As a reader, I was always really taken with the greedy son who took his dad's money and ran away. But within the story, the people who are concerned with the money?

The prodigal son.
His friends.
The elder son.

The people who aren't concerned with the money?

The father.

He never brings it up. He isn't concerned with it. When the son leaves, he doesn't keep watch with hope for the return of his fortune.  When the son comes back, he doesn't ask him what he's done with the money, hoping there might be some left.

The important thing, again and again and again, is people. Connection. Togetherness.  His heart longs after his sons; he cares about both his runaway son and his jealous son. These are the ones he loves, they are the treasure of his heart.

And he loves them so much. He wants to celebrate the younger son's return, but not alone. He goes to the elder son and begs him to come join them in celebrating. Begs him. He needs both of his sons for his joy to be complete.

One of my friends reached out to me lately to ask me about counseling and to confess that she feels like a bit of a failure to need help.

Do I understand? Hoo boy, do I ever.

Like Luisa in Encanto, I feel like I have to be strong and not let anything fall and never let anyone down and hold it all together.  I feel like a person should be able to handle their life on their own and not need anyone else.  <-- this, of course, is false.

In the garden of Eden, before any snake and sin made their appearance and broke us, God said it wasn't good for man to be alone. So He made him a helper. Then He put them in the garden to take care of it.

Creation needed care. The perfect first man needed - listen to that, needed! - help.

We were not made for self-sufficiency.

Not made for it.

It's a fuel that doesn't work in this engine.

We were not designed to meet all of our own needs, nor the needs of our lives - and God did not tell us to come to Him for all of those needs either.

They need a helper, He said - and He gave us each other. (!!!)

I act like both sons all the time. If I just have enough money, I think, I can handle this life and be on my own.

or , in the mode of the other son - 

Somebody wasn't there for me, why should I be there for them? If they cared, they'd reach out. I don't need them.

But self-sufficiency is a lie. There's no such thing. That's not how we were built.

We were built to need - to NEED - and God saw what he had made, and God called it good.

We need each other. We need brothers and sisters, we need sons and daughters and parents and friends and we need counselors and doctors and neighbours and coworkers.  We need help and direction and we need support and understanding and we need love. Needing each other isn't a sign of brokenness or sinfulness or weakness.

Needing each other is how we were made. It's the mode of our existence, and it's what the father's heart knew: we are each other's true treasure.

We need help ... and for this, He gave us each other.

One Winter's Night

Patrick went to bed two hours ago. 

I stayed up to take the dog for a walk before bed, but she was sleeping so warm and rumbly against my legs - she purrs, or something like it - that I almost fell asleep myself. At last I peeled my face off the cushion and she lifted her head, floppy ears perked. When she heard my jacket rustle off its hook, she flashed to the door and wriggled and wraggled - her body awake before she was even aware, I think.

The night was fresh and inviting - still too cold to comfortably yawn in, I realized with a shudder - but warming up after a few weeks of bone-snapping freeze.

Late summer nights, I like walking on sidewalks. Streetlights and porch lights feel familiar and safe as I stride in and out of my own shadow.

But winter nights, full of snow and starlight, pull me to the river. The river trail, which melts into blackness on summer nights, gleams in the snow and welcomes me in come winter.

So Eevee and I walked to the trail. The sky overhead was a deep navy, full of bold stars. The river, though -

That ordinary tideless river? 

Tonight she was lit with magic.

A warm bed of fog lay all along her, misty and frosty and murky. Streetlights from the far side swam through the grey, long fingers of orange sliced by shadows. The trail was crushed with snowmobile tracks and squirrel prints and paw prints and boot prints, with one lonely set of footprints winding over the riverbank and straight across the frozen water to the other side of town.

The deep and sparkling sky atop the cloudy river was one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen. It felt like an upside down night - shouldn't the river sparkle? And the sky be filled with clouds? But here we were in the middle of magic.

We ran straight through it.

Oh yes.

Cracking atop a thick bed of well-pressed snow, we ran through the woods, the little bridge, the tunnel.

The sleepy, chubby, middle-aged mama wearing pyjamas, bare feet stuffed into her husband's skiddoo boots? She was gone and there was just a girl with her foxhound, running beside a river full of clouds with stars in her hair.

In a few minutes I will tuck the dog in and kiss the kids while they sleep, brush my teeth and climb into bed. I will snuggle my cold toes up to Patrick's warm legs and in the morning I might forget, but

For five minutes tonight, I ran through glory.

Amen.

Nice Ice for Sale (10¢ a pail)

I took my best girls out for a skate. When we had had enough of moving, we laid down on the ice and listened to the birds sing. 

The ice was thick and sturdy and cold.

It felt like peace.

A winter walk with Eevee

On Boxing Day night I took Eevee for a walk. I'd had a hard few days - being beaten down and bullied over and over again in front of my coworkers and town. So many people piled on. So few stood up for me. I needed to get out and clear my head. Depression was pulling me under.

On Christmas Eve, we had a freezing rain storm. A fat sheet of ice covered a small layer of snow, and it hasn't melted yet. Roads are mostly clear, main sidewalks are clear, but walking trails are treacherous.

It was early evening, when we typically see tons of people out walking their dogs, and the occasional car goes by.  Last night I didn't see one. Not a person, not a dog, not a car. It was silent and still.

So we walked freely down the middle of the road.

Eevee was ecstatic to be ranging further than the kids normally take her. She tugged at the leash as I clomped along in Patrick's old skidoo boots. My jacket is broken - I can't do up the zipper - but even wide open it kept me warm enough against the cold. I don't like wearing headphones at night, but a comedian played on the phone in my pocket.

Where the road and walking trail almost meet, there is a picnic table under a tree. Since the night was wide and empty, I sat down at the picnic table and unclipped Eevee from her leash. 

She didn't notice for a bit. She snuffled the ground under the table and licked my hand. Her tail wagged and she lunged for it, and then realized she wasn't pulling against the leash. She looked at me, double checking that it was okay, and then bounded into the bare shrubs. Her whole body was wagging in delight while she snuffled after moles and inhaled all the stories of the day.

I laid down on the table and looked up through the tangle of branches. 

The sky was full of clouds, a dull velvet grey, and the bare arms of the tree criss-crossed against it.

At first it felt strange, lying down in public; vulnerable and weird. But it was not very public, I comforted myself, and if anyone came along I would surely hear their steps crunching through that ice. 

So I surrendered to the beauty and just enjoyed the strange loveliness. The quiet, the cool. The bounding, leaping delight of the dog off her leash. The comedian in my pocket bringing rumbles of laughter from the far side of sadness.

When the podcast finished, I sat up and called Eevee, and she came quickly, romping around me in delight. I didn't bother putting her leash on, since she was behaving so well. As we walked home, she lagged behind me sometimes, a hound dog with her nose to the ground and haunches in the air, intent on unraveling intriguing scents that wove under trees and branches. She raced ahead of me too - ears and tongue streaming out behind her as she flew down the glassy path, a quick flash of sheer delight pelting past me in the grey dark. 

There was something so satisfying in seeing her enjoy her freedom, getting a glimpse of her being her truest, gladdest self.  

I don't know how to unleash myself from sadness. 

Meds help.

Counseling helps.

Prayer helps.

Laughter helps.

But even with all of these, I still feel leashed and chained, held back and unable to follow the scents of gladness and realness that flicker and beckon out of reach.

I let her stay off leash the whole way home.

Still

People can be awful.

Jesus still came.

Immanuel, God with us.

 

Merry Christmas, friends. xo.

Cold and tired and ready for bed

I'm cold, and tired, and ready for bed.

But I wanted to remind my heart one more time: 

Jesus came right into this.

He knew what it was to feel cold, and tired, and ready for bed.

He knows.

He feels.

He is not far off, he is not untouched by the sorrows we carry. They come to bed with us, they wake up with us, and He knows.

Sweet dreams, friends. xo

A New Feast

What do you usually eat for Christmas?

Growing up, we usually had the traditional midday dinner of turkey, potatoes (sometimes scallion champ, if we were lucky), stuffing, veggies, and gravy. Dessert was more flexible (perhaps a glorious pavlova topped with canned mandarin slices?), and there was almost always a tin of Quality Street and a bag of chicken bones that hit the table when the games came out. (Nova Scotians, please stop hoarding all the chicken bones. I can't buy them here and it hurts.)  When night fell, a snacky serve-yourself supper would appear  (I say appear because I was a kid, and didn't have to do any of the work!) - the turkey, again, and assorted cheese and crackers (bacon dippers and swiss cheese crackers were my faves), Clementines and a big bowl of nuts in shells, topped with a few nutcrackers (which did double duty in summertime as lobster shell crackers). There might be a box of Pot of Golds, a tray of Toffifee, a bag of saltwater taffy and definitely a giant tin of popcorn in three flavours (butter, cheddar, and caramel) and of course, there would be Liquorice Allsorts and After Eights.

(Apparently I can't write a nostalgic post about food without a million asides, but here's one more - is the giant popcorn tin an east coast thing, or a long-ago thing? Either way, I can't find them here - people keep directing me to Kernels, which isn't at all the same thing. I'm so curious.)

And mashed inextricably in with memories of the food of Christmases past are memories of all the people who were there. Aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, games and stories and laughter and singing.

As a parent, of course, Christmas dinner is an entirely different kettle of fish. Making a meal, hosting festivities, repeating traditions that evoke memories - the weight lies differently. If nobody wants to cook a turkey, does the holiday sparkle a little less? I mean - is it the actual menu that makes Christmas magic? 

I think no. I think - I think that traditions are great until they become constraints.

When Jesus came, he upended empty traditions. He criticized people for keeping outward traditions that missed the heart of the scriptures. Praying in public, but no inner communing with God. Tithing obsessively, but ignoring the poor. Giving to God, and ignoring family members in need. Traditions that don't serve us aren't of any value.

A friend of mine was so disappointed last year. She worked herself to the point of exhaustion preparing a traditional Christmas feast all by herself, and her family ate it but they weren't excited about it. "It's not the same without everyone here," her son said. "This is company food." And of course, with covid restrictions in place, they didn't have a big family gathering. 

And they're keeping it small again this year, so she asked everyone in her household for one suggestion. They each had to tell her one food that makes them feel happy and celebrate-y. Her husband asked for chicken wings, her daughter asked for nuggets, her son asked for soft pretzels, and my friend wanted cranberry sauce. So their Christmas dinner is centering around those things this year, and she was surprised by how much joy it was giving her to plan a feast specifically for the people who would be there, even though it wasn't the feast they'd usually enjoy. 

As a mom, my favourite Christmas dinner ever was the year we ate grilled cheese with a side of storebought stuffing. We ate by candlelight and there were no complaints, nothing left on the side of plates, no sad kids. No high expectations and disappointments, no kitchen full of dishes to wash, no leftovers for days. It was just genuinely happy and good. This year we're having chicken pot pie. We might still have a side of stuffing, and we'll definitely have a plate of sliced veggies, and probably a side of fruit salad. I'm going to make cranberry salsa and we'll eat it with nachos for supper. And there will be chocolates and games and Clementines. And my five favourite people will be there.

I hope your Christmas is full of the traditions that send your heart straight to God.

I hope your quiet moments are rich with joy and the knowledge that you are loved by no less than God himself. 

I hope your bellies are full and your hearts overflow.  

I hope the traditions you keep comfort you and give you peace. 

And I hope you are free from the ones that don't.

God bless you, friends.

xo.

 

Chicken Bones
image taken from ganongchocolatier.shop