My Non-Holiday Weekend

Bad news first – I’m currently at work. Good news next – I have a cleaner office then I think I ever have. I wasn’t going to work today. I was bound and determined to take today and tomorrow off… and I probably would’ve too except everyone else is working… AND… Eric needs a place in the office for a desk. Yep, that’s right, after months of working together Eric and I are taking our relationship to the next step and moving into the same office. I spent this morning taking all the junk out of my office and moving it to the attic. Then I moved around all the furniture (I now have a sweet sitting area) and made a large enough space for his desk. He will work in the corner with his desk up against the wall so we’ll never have to look at each other!

The rest of my weekend has been just as great (all kidding aside, I really enjoyed cleaning my office this morning and lugging all sorts of stuff around the church). I went for a hike in the near dark with Sanda (and stumbled upon some sort of strange ghost tour type thing), visited Georgie at It’s Your Festival, dropped one of my favourite kids off at camp, played a sweet game of scrabble, cooked (and eaten) some great food, and watched my new favourite movie (3 and a half times).

Friday night a bunch of us walked over to Blockbuster to rent Lars and the Real Girl. It quickly became my new favourite movie… or at least top two (Juno is still pretty high up there). It’s an interesting story with some hilarious moments and some great subtle truths spoken. It has its flaws, as one of my less-idealistic friends was quick to point out, but I quite enjoyed it… so much that I watched it again on Saturday… and Sunday afternoon… and evening. It’s definitely worth seeing.

As for the rest of this holiday weekend. I think we’re going to check out the fireworks they have at Bayfront every year for Canada Day. They’re supposed to be pretty good. There is also talk of us going cherry picking tomorrow morning. I don’t like cherries all that much but it might be fun to go and pick them… and then I can possible make cherry cheesecake. We also have mass amounts of strawberries at our house though, so perhaps I should make strawberry cheesecake instead… oh, the decisions! Happy Canada Day everyone!

7 Things I Love about Summer

1. Slushies – I am developing a serious addiction to these cold, sugary beverages.

2. Thunderstorms – We’ve been having some CRAZY storms this summer so far. Today’s involved mass amounts of hail that kept coming, then going, then coming some more.

3. No School – There are three more days until all the kids will be off for the summer. That should make the whole not going to school thing less of a problem!

4. Camp – I had a great talk with one of the guys I used to work at camp with on Friday. He’s heading back to camp for a couple of weeks to help our new leadership staff get things off the ground. It sounds like it should be a good summer.

5. Weddings – I went to a great one yesterday. My friend Steph got married and is now moving to the United States. The wedding really was a great affair. Aaron’s hair looked really good. The rain didn’t dampen the spirit and the sun came out as the bride walked down the aisle. In between the wedding and dinner we got to play picnic type games with some kids. There were jelly beans, bubbles and Jones Soda (Steph’s new last name is Jones) on the table. What can be better?

6. The Drive-in – I haven’t been yet… but hopefully sometime this weekend I’ll get out for a movie.

7. Hanging Clothes Outside – this is a joy that I have only recently rediscovered. The dryer at our house takes a longer than usual time to dry clothes, so putting them outside has been both useful and enjoyable.

The Misadventures Involving my Car

The exciting life of me… So, I’m driving to church this morning. I thought something felt a little funny while I was going down the mountain. I was driving faster than I normally do and braking didn’t seem to be slowing me down. I didn’t think too much of it until I made the turn by the railroad tracks at the bottom of the Charlton access. It felt pretty out of control. I went over the tracks, going about 50 km/hr and saw that there was a red light at Stinson/Wentworth. I put my brakes on to stop but my car didn’t stop. I went through the light at about 20 km/hr. At this point I’m certain there is something wrong. I have to push my brake really hard to make it do anything, and even then the engine is pulling against it so it won’t stop. I make sure my pedal isn’t stuck. I try my parking brake to see if the brakes are the problem, that doesn’t work. I put it in neutral and try things again, still nothing. I try pulling into a parking lot, but am not able to stop before I hit something, so I pull through and continue around the block looking for a place to park. This is difficult since I cannot park behind a car, for fear of hitting the car. So, I circle the block with my foot pressing hard on the brake until my car finally comes to a slow enough pace that I am able to use my brakes while the car is in neutral. I park my car in the same parking lot I had tried to park in before. I call people for advice… and a ride to church. Thankfully we have a mechanic in the church. He took a look at things and fixed the problem… apparently after my service last Monday a few things didn’t get re-attached properly so they became loose and came apart while I was driving. Great fun… I thought I would share.

BCOQ Assembly 2008

Wow! I am exhausted. I have slept less in the last three days than I have in a long time. I have just arrived home from BCOQ Annual Assembly, kind of like the annual meeting of the entire denomination. There is so much I want to share… partially just so I can get my thoughts straight on everything.

I really believe that God is preparing to do a new thing in children’s and youth ministry at Wentworth. This is both exciting and terrifying. It’s exciting because new things tend to be exciting and part of me knows that some of the stuff we have been doing isn’t working anymore… it’s fulfilled its objective and needs new life. It’s terrifying because I am just now beginning to feel like I’m able to handle the old things God was/is doing. I have realized over the last month that I love control. It’s comforting to feel like you can manage things… and slightly unnerving to surrender that control. Allowing God to do a new thing means surrendering control and believing God: believing that He is in control, that He cares about ‘my’ kids and that He cares about me; believing that He is good and will do good things.

Typing it out now, I realize that is kind of a theme in many areas of my life. I’ve felt the same need to control and protect what is happening in this community we are trying to build. We are far from perfect and often hit against each other in ways that cause conflict and strife. When this happens I tend to go into damage control mode, doing everything I can think of to make sure we don’t just fall apart. I realized last week that I have been trying so hard to protect an image of something that I’m missing out on what God has for us in the conflict. I really believe that God is calling me forward, deeper into the Matrix, to see what this new thing is. Again, it’s exciting but SO scary. This is unfamiliar territory. I’ve never been here before. It’s funny… sometimes I think that radical decisions are something we make once, when we decide to follow Jesus. I’m being reminded again and again that being a radical follower of Christ is a daily decision; a daily call away from the status-quo.

Another thing I am being convinced of is that God is way more interested in who we are than what we do. We talk about a call to ministry when really the call is simply to become the person that God has made you to be. One of the things the speaker said this weekend that really stuck with me was “Be who you are. If you don’t, we’ll miss you because you’re the only you we’ve got”. God’s call is to become, to allow Him to transform us and not simply to do.

I was also reminded this weekend that I do not change people. I feel guilty when the people I’m working with don’t show the transformation people expect. The Vice-Principal at the local school once said to Robin “Great you know them, now can you fix them?” God reminded me this weekend that He’s the one that fixes people and that, while I do have a responsibility to make myself available for Him, I should not feel guilty for other people’s actions.

So, that’s my post-Assembly report. God is at work in some crazy ways. I would appreciate your prayers that I have the courage to follow Him, to answer the invitation to go deeper. I’ll keep you posted on the journey.

Home Alone

As I write, a large portion of my friends are piling into a pick-up truck and traveling to Delhi (Ontario, not India) for an evening of fun around the fire with our good friend Steph… it will be the last time they see her before she gets married and moves to the US. There will be hamburgers, asparagus (my new favourite food) on the BBQ and s’mores. Memories will likely be made that will last a lifetime… and I’m sitting at home.

Wow! How about that for emotional angst? Perhaps I should take up writing teenage biographies! There may just be a drama queen in me yet. You may be asking what it is that is keeping me in my house on this beautiful evening, when I so clearly would like to be crammed in the back seat of a pick-up truck driving toward hours of fun. Tomorrow is the KidsFest Run and Read 5K Run in Toronto… we leave Hamilton at 7:00 a.m. The kids have been working so hard each Tuesday after-school and they are excited to participate in a ‘real’ race. Some of them should do well too, they’re pretty fast! I tend to run with the slower children and am not entirely sure what to expect tomorrow, seeing that they will likely want to run faster than normal (darn prizes) and I may not be able to keep up. Whether I keep up or not, it will make for a loooooong day. We leave Hamilton at 7:00 and get back between 3:30 and 4:00. I need to be in bed by 10:00, and that was not happening if I decided to celebrate the beginning of summer by making the pilgrimage to Delhi… even if Danielle promised they ‘won’t be late’.

This has been a great week… don’t buy the teen angst bit at the beginning, I’m not really that emotional. The weather has been a tad bit cold but today is gorgeous. As soon as I left my house this morning I was reminded of those June and July mornings at camp where I’m covered with sweat by 9:00 a.m. It feels good to be sticky again

The highlight of the week was definitely the veggies. We bought shares in this local organic farm for the summer so each week we get to pick up a box of delicious fresh veggies. There was a great assortment of treats in our box this week… only one of which I couldn’t identify. I ate asparagus for the first time in my life and was pleasantly surprised to find that it can be added to the small list of veggies I actually like. We also got lots of rhubarb, which Danielle used to make rhubarb crisp… delightful! I am already looking forward to what will come next week.

That’s pretty much life right now… this run tomorrow and then coming home and crashing, or finishing up work for Sunday morning. Next week is the big annual meeting of the BCOQ, which I will be attending. I will attempt to remember to update people on how this 5K goes tomorrow… and whether I make it to the finish line or not.

There’s Peace in Surrender

It’s been a good week. A lot of not good stuff has happened… but somehow, at the end of it I am still able to proclaim God’s goodness. We found out this week that the house we’d been waiting for has been sold. It is great news for the owner but super crappy news for us. We had been holding out hope that we’d be able to move in the next two weeks – but clearly that is not going to happen. We were all pretty upset when we found out. It’s often difficult for me to understand why things don’t work out… and I tend to get easily frustrated with disappointment. Tuesday evening was tough… Struggling to figure out what God is up to and why His plan is clearly so different from my own. We felt defeated and were ready to give up… we were not an overly hopeful or happy bunch but things have gotten better since then. I truly believe that God has something for us in this experience. It has been so clear this week that He is writing His own story… and that we need to be willing participants in that story. So, sometime this week, I gave in and surrendered (again) to playing that role. Thursday evening we went out for coffee and shared our frustrations but we also talked about ways we can start practicing community together now. We came up with some exciting things… like early morning prayer which, note to self, starts tomorrow. We’d love your prayers while we continue to look for a house. Apparently we are still learning to trust and wait patiently and that is rarely comfortable.

I think the thing that got me through this week was that I was in school. I took the week off in order to take a course from McMaster Divinity College. The class was on The Art of Biblical Narrative and we studied the book of Judges. I really enjoyed it. It allowed me to be in scripture for 6 hours everyday, and I learned a lot from the Israelites as I experienced my own disappointments. I could say a lot about the week and what I learned but I’m tired and don’t feel like typing all of it. If you’re really interested you can email me and I’ll fill you in.

Friday night I watched Gone Baby Gone with Casey Affleck. It was quite interesting, with many fascinating social messages. It caused some interesting discussion in our house following the movie. It was especially interesting after reading Judges all week and re-hearing “and everyone did what was right in their own eyes” over and over again. It’s worth sitting through the swearing and violence (although I would recommend closing your eyes at points) to get the larger message of the movie.

The week was topped off with an extremely busy Saturday. I went from a women’s breakfast at the church to a family trip through IKEA with my aunt and sister. I spent part of the afternoon working on Sunday school lessons for this morning then went to the boys’ house to play with their neighbours. We ended up taking them to WingFest for the night which was fun but exhausting. I had some delicious wings from some random place in the city that I already forget the name of (so, apparently the advertising feature was not so successful) and walked through a great little art exhibit. I bought a picture that was taken downtown in Gore Park and then we watched some pretty decent fireworks.

I’ve spent most of the day, today, trying to stay awake. I was up way too late both Friday and Saturday and didn’t really have any chance to stop and rest this weekend. So, I am currently making plans to head to bed with a good book in the next half hour… I’ll pull the curtains down, put earplugs in and pretend it’s midnight.