Waiting

is hard.
I look forward to seeing how God's promises are fulfilled
in the next weeks and months.

all pictures from these two wonderful photographers:
www.flikr.com/kurlvink and www.flickr.com/shereen84

...

So I thought I'd pop in here and say hi... I'm sitting on my couch waiting for time to pass so that I can go to work. Somehow, I managed to get ready in less than the usual time, so my coffee and I are just chillin'...

Some pics

Woops... I forgot to post some pictures. But here are some from this past weekend. More camping, another wedding, and the Devonian Botanic Gardens..

I love seeing my shadow in the summer. I took this picture after a particularly long week of miserable weather - rain and wind for days in a row. The sun was so refreshing!



This is me, my parents and my brother on the Suspension Bridge in Drumheller...


Outdoor flowers at De's wedding... Her mom is such an amazing gardener!




Believe it or not, this is actually from a cactus...


That'll be all for now...

Vacations are little reset buttons in my soul...

I've decided that vacations (even short ones) are little presents that God gives us so we don't all up and actually go insane, rocking in the corner and pulling out our hair. At the end of a very very long week, I managed to swing some time off to go camping with my family. After about an hour of driving and 10 minutes by the fire roasting marshmallows, life had calmed down, and the freak-outs from the week were (nearly) forgotten. By the end of the weekend, I was almost ready to join the world of child-care workers again.

Pics to come...

Elk Island National Park

Spring.... in June

Spring is a wonderful thing.
Painted toenails and sunshine, bright yellow dandelions,
clothespins and freshly washed towels smelling like sun,
apple blossoms...

yes, spring is good. Even late.
in June.

Um, oops.

So I had to get back into blogger for a course that I'm doing right now, and I was somewhat surprised to see that it's been almost a year since I posted anything up here. I'm not sure if this is on purpose or not, but...

here.

How good it is to be where God wants you to be...

I've been thinking about this a lot this weekend -- I got back from Thailand on Saturday, and jet-lag always does funny things to my head. I miss it there, but I know that I need to be here right now.
It's hard, because sometimes, this country seems like it does things backwards: we seem to care more about work and production than we do about people and relationships. We're anal about not wasting time, yet we never seem to have enough of it.

It seems strange to me that my two worlds can co-exist, or that they exist simultaneously. And I slip out of one world into the other.

Maybe that's what it's like to go from Narnia to England and back again.

But I know that this is where I need to be, and it feels good to be where God wants me.

feels like home to me

There's a Norah Jones song that came out several years ago called "the prettiest thing"
the lyrics follow, because they've been in my head for an entire week...

the prettiest thing
I ever did see
Was lightning from the top of a cloud
Moving through the dark a million miles an hour
With somewhere to be

So why does it seem
Like a picture
Hanging up on someone else's wall
Lately I just haven't been myself at all
It's heavy on my mind

I'm dreamin' again
Like I've always been
And way down low
I still know

The prettiest thing
I ever did see
Was dusty as the handle on the door
Rusty as a nail stuck in the old pine floor
Looks like home to me

Now I'm dreamin' again
Like I've always been
And way down low
I'm thinkin' of the prettiest thing

It's funny to me -- how this strange place in the middle of Nonthaburi, Thailand, called GES in English, and Satit Christian Wittaya in thai, with its funny quirks, its disorganization, its horrible smells, and its backwards culture, feels like home.

De and I got home late last night, and the taxi driver was very confused when we asked him to drop us off at the side of the dark road, until we pointed to the Thai sign on the fence. And it's one of those things: it feels like home to me. In all honesty, I don't know why I love this place so much, but I do.
I love the way it makes me uncomfortably hot. I love eating from vendors on the street, and smelling the delicious food. I love the stories of students, and the craziness that goes along with the administrators here -- inexplicably building new buildings, and taking on more than they can feasibly handle...

And yet, none of that explains why I love this place so much. It's filled with great memories, and hard memories at the same time. I was down at the Post Cafe this afternoon, with my journal, and as I sat down with my milkshake (which was more like icecream with a straw), all those memories came flooding back to me: the feelings of wishing I was home, the frustration of being left out of family events, the stress of being a teacher -- it all came back.
And still, I love this place.

As the plane touched down on the tarmac, I could help but feel like I was back at home. Maybe now I have two homes, and the pull to Canada is greater.

Strange how it happens, and there's no explaination, but it feels like home to me...

The end of a time

I'm feeling particularly introspective today, which has inspired my sudden urge to blog again. It's either that, or the fact that shortly, I will be heading off to Thailand for a "vacation" in Nonthaburi. What a fantastic place for a vacation: concrete, pollution, nasty soi-dogs, deafeningly loud motorbikes....
And I'm SO excited!

Spring has sprung here at the U, and with it comes all the wonderfulness of the end of classes... All the bright green flyers advertising beer gardens, the chalk letters on the sidewalks, the glazed, frantic looks of students as they shuffle to classes in their sweats and Ugg boots. (Those are still WRONG, by the way. I still don't like them).

In my boredom (as I wait for someone to email me back), I've been struck by the irreversible changes in my life lately. The changes in relationships (for better or for worse) that are taking place, and are about to take place.

My sister is getting married. My cousins and friends are all pregnant. (Ok, not all of them, but there are no less than 6 who are, or who have just given birth...). I've had some interesting and hard conversations with friends. I've watched 5 sets of friends begin marriages this year.

Sometimes in life, I think we tend to ignore the permanence of our decisions until we realize we can't go back. Yet, other times, we avoid certain decisions because we're afraid of the future.

As school wraps up for another semester, and I begin a brand new summer, complete with its own challenges, I want to trust God, making decisions based on what HE knows is best for my life, rather than on my hesitance to try new things, or exuberance/impatience for the future.

May you also do the same.

Spring!

I was at home this weekend, and there were tiny buds on my mom's apple trees. It reminded me that spring WILL come, and God will not let it be winter forever.

I'm so glad!

Happy New Year! etc.

I hope your Christmas and New Year's was as wonderful as mine...

And voila! More excuses.

Another Christmas.
I love Christmas, and I'm glad for the joy it brings, and the good times with family. I was at the Christmas Eve service at church tonight, and it was wonderful! Candles, songs, and cookies in the foyer.... We opened gifts today, and it was fun to see a good gift received.

School wrapped up for me in a whirlwind of activity -- Preschool Christmas Crafts at Heartland, 2 days of exams, watching the Nutcracker Ballet, and going to Michael W Smith...

In all this, though, I've had trouble resting.

I don't mean dozing on the couch, or watching tv.

I mean resting. Really resting.
Resting in the silence and the presence of God, and being still before him.

I use so many excuses: it's so hard when classes are wrapping up -- all the papers and assignments. It's so hard during exams, there's so much studying and not enough time. It's so hard when you're working two jobs.

It's so hard during Christmas because all the family is around, and there's so much action.

It's so hard.

blah blah blah.
It's basically just an excuse. I was struck today how I want to "rest" and "take a break" from the stuff I usually do, but I rarely deliberately take the time for the rest that will heal me on the inside. Ironically, I find that when I take time away from my day to spend with God, suddenly, there seems to be more time for other things.

This dichotomy has got me to thinking:
I don't think we're made for frantic activity.

I've been reading through John lately, and Jesus was really deliberate about people, and doing the will of his father, which at times, required that he take time away and hide himself from his disciples, and pray.

My prayer for you and I over the Christmas season is that we'd take time for the things that matter. For people.
and for God.

and that we'd take time for the rest that matters.
Cheers!

Merry Christmas

let us, therefore, subsist on TUMS

So, in the last 3 days, I've completed a group presentation and two term papers. One of which I'm proofreading now. (two hours before class -- don't ask how late I stayed up to finish it...)

For some reason, this time around, staying up late and being stressed has given me a need for TUMS.

and so, I'm enjoying my mint flavoured TUMS.

which sounds strange.
except that when I was small, my Grandma used to let me eat TUMS like candy.
I've developed quite an affinity for them.

so, let us, therefore, subsist on tums.

and pretentious words. (I've been trying to use as many as I could.)

Incidentally, today's word of the day (according to dictionary.com) is tarraddidle, which can be defined as pretentious nonsense.
which may apply to today's posting...

draw your own conclusions.

The Grinch

I was walking through the snow this morning, watching a little boy run around wearing swishy nylon snowplants, and this song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! kept running through my head.

In honor of it (almost) being Christmas, and in honor of the snow, and the gloriousness of Dr Seuss's The Grinch, here it is:


Welcome Christmas

Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
Come this way!

Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
Christmas Day.

Welcome, Welcome
Fah who rah-moose
Welcome, Welcome
Dah who dah-moose

Christmas day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp
Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!

Welcome Christmas
Welcome, welcome Christmas
Bring your cheer

dang

it's cold!

the smell of winter approaching

Today is such a "classic" November day.

I'm sitting at home, watching it snow, and listening to the guys cut up deer in the porch. They're laughing and chatting, and stuffing sausage. They're still wearing camo & green and they smell like hunting. They've singlehandedly downed 3 pots of coffee, and are working on a fourth.

It brings back so many memories of being a child, and running through my grandparents' basement while my mom and my aunt wrapped meat in brown butcher paper. My grandpa used to be in charge of sausage making -- he'd mix pounds and pounds of meat on a big white table covered in plastic, adding spices and tasting the raw meat until it was right. He used to dangerously stuff his hand into the grinder to feed more meat down into the sausage casing, and my dad would come down the stairs with plastic spatulas so that he wouldn't accidentally get his fingers caught. (I think he did, one day.)

Ah, yes. What a day. Meat into hamburger, into roasts, into sausage, into packages of stew meat.

It smells like the coming of winter. Pre-winter has a smell. (I don't know if you knew that already.) It's different than the smell of cold. Pre-winter involves the cold smell of living in the country - the dead smell of leaves & the smell of truck exhaust. It also smells like gun powder and raw meat.

(wow. I think that makes me a hick.
anyway.)

The porch smells good to me. It smells like good times, and family.
And the coming of winter.

this is me

taking back what I said about greenery.

not so sure about this "greenery"

I'm not so sure I like this "greenery", but it's a work in progress.

We'll see what happens here in the next little bit.

yikes

this is my 75th attempt to kickstart this blog again....

It's just something that gets ignored.

maybe it's time for a change.