Snow Day in July

Once again I have neglected my blog. It is never my intention but life gets busy or I get overwhelmed to the point where I don’t actually feel like writing about any of the things that are happening in my life. I strive to make this place more than just an overview of the exciting events on my life (although, for those who are wondering – Fraser Family Fun Day at the Falls was very enjoyable) and lately I just haven’t felt like I’ve really been in a good place to share what I’m learning or becoming. Today, however, I have succumbed to the guilt of knowing that there are millions of people all over the world who have no idea what is going on in my life… so here is an update.

I am stressed out about housing. We need to be out of our current house by the 1^st of September. We’ve been looking at places to rent for four months now and found nothing that I would consider actually living in. A couple of weeks ago we started looking at houses for sale. There are two couples who have indicated they would be interested in looking into buying a house for us to rent from them. This sounds great but feels six billion times more complicated then simply renting from Mr. Joe Toronto Slumlord. Honestly though my stress comes much more from not knowing what to pursue, than the basic fact that we don’t have a house. I am afraid that we will be so busy looking one way that we’ll miss what God is trying to provide.

Three Sundays from now I am preaching on community at church. I am fairly certain that I agreed to this ridiculous idea a good two or three months ago when I was fairly certain I knew most of what there was to know about the subject. Now I have no clue what I’m going to say… and I’m pretty sure getting up merely to announce that I have less of a clue than any other person in the congregation won’t go over that well. It’s interesting how God has completely challenged all of my ideas surrounding community over the last three months. Somewhere along the road of life we seem to have picked up the idea that community and sharing our lives with people is all roses and cupcakes and amazingness… but it is really, really hard. I am convinced that it is good though… I have been praying a lot lately that God will make me the kind of person who loves others, who perseveres when things get hard and a person who lives with integrity to the things God is teaching me.

I took a snow day today. Yes, it is July and no, there is not snow on the ground… but I decided I couldn’t go to work today. Originally I was supposed to be on vacation this week anyway but then things came up that made that impossible. I was already planning to take Friday off to get ready for our trip to the cottage this weekend. Last night, after having two consecutive crappy days at work in a row, I decided I needed a break. Everything looks better after some time away. I went to Wal-Mart with Danielle this morning, read my Bible, did some journaling and even got to have a great online conversation with a friend I haven’t talked to in awhile. All in all, it’s been a great day thus far… and it’s only mid-afternoon.

Swallowed by Summer

I will not lie. There is something about summer that completely consumes me. Perhaps it is that for most of my life summer has been a very separate portion of life… marking the end of one school year from the beginning of another. I realized this was still true for me this week when a friend asked me how I was and I couldn’t give him an answer, simply because I had been so consumed by everything that is going on this summer that I hadn’t really put any thought into the question. I will give the same excuse for not blogging in a while. It is difficult for me to stop and reflect long enough to write things down… but it’s a good discipline for me so I decided to make it a priority today.

The summer has been going well for the most part. I enjoy warm weather and the beautiful sunshine we’ve been experiencing. We’ve been keeping more than a little busy at the church. I’ve made four trips to and from the camp we send kids to already (but strangely only one stop at the dairy bar we pass on the way). We have an amazing and very gifted summer student working at the church which makes my life just so much less stressful. I love having the kids around… even if it means our work gets disrupted sometimes. I’ve also been able to do a couple of summer-y things like go strawberry picking, enjoy Canada Day fireworks and partake in at least one delicious picnic (never mind that all of those things happened on one day).

This week at the church we were running a week of day camp for our junior high students. We had about 12 kids over the week, 10 of whom came out each night. They are a really fun bunch of kids to be around. Each night I led team-building games, which was interesting and somewhat enjoyable. I really enjoy team-building games but I never like leading them because I compare myself to all of the great facilitators I have seen in the past. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, however, and hopefully they learned a few things about leading as part of a team. I also got to tell them a Bible story twice during the week. I have always enjoyed story-telling but, until I started working at the church, I didn’t understand quite how much I love it! I think the nights when I got to tell the story were my favourite. I also think that will be my job for a whole week of day camp… which is even more exciting.

This year for Leadership Camp we decided not to bring in outside speakers but to open the opportunity each night to talk about a topic that relates to Christian life. We talked about worship, prayer, Bible reading, communion and baptism. I was really impressed at the questions the kids were asking and the comments they were making. God is doing some really awesome stuff in these kids and it’s neat to watch. I had some amazing conversations with a couple of the girls about faith and trying to follow Jesus and baptism and how the Holy Spirit transforms us. It was a great week.

Other than that, I am still trying to attack my list of things I want to do this summer. There is this zoo not too far from here. I drive past the turn-off sign each time I shuttle kids to camp and I really want to go. I checked it out online today and it sounds pretty interesting. I’m hoping that it’ll be like The Pinery Zoo we went to growing up… a little bit sketchy but amazing all the same. We have also yet to check out the drive-in… there just hasn’t been anything we want to see. I am also still trying to figure out if I can be at camp for a week this summer. I love camp a lot and not being there during the summer still feels weird… the week I was going to take off just doesn’t work anymore so I’m currently trying to find another week I could take instead. We’ll see what happens.

That’s pretty much life. I decided yesterday that due to this summer completely consuming me thing it is likely that summer would be a bad time of the year for me to make any life-altering decisions… which probably puts summer weddings out… not that there are any marriage prospects in the near future anyway… much to the chagrin of the 5-year-old at church that keeps asking me why I’m not married yet (she’s kind of the resident flower girl for all weddings lately so I think she just wants to make sure she doesn’t miss the opportunity). Yep, so that was a paragraph about nothing. Danielle and I are going to Chapters tonight… I leave all my money at home, make a list of the books that look good and request them from the library because I’m cheap. I plan on greatly enjoying my evening.