Glorybug's bit of electronic earth...

fiddleheads

2008-01-02T08:11:00.000-05:00

first is, of course, a human enfant; second, a baby from the animalia kingdom; but a very close third - i believe - is a fiddlehead. maybe it's just because i've been tending it for a year and have formed an attachment, but my fern at work has sprouted over seven tiny branches in the last two days and my heart is overjoyed! i watched them sleep this morning through teary eyes and couldn't get enough. they are so fresh, so little, so green and healthy and alive. they are like a life unfurling itself leaf by leaf. and they are a little bit furry which also gets me.

i can't help but love them. and i can't help but think what a fiddlehead i've been all my life: new and terribly fragile, timidly unrolling myself into another year, protected by the older leaves around me who have made it all the way into the sun. i wonder if God feels like i do this morning and if He watches us through teary eyes and revels in the tiny miracles slowly opening themselves up to Him.

sometimes the world is like this big old almost-dead fern that God hasn't given up on. so He repots it, and waters it, and mists it every few days and puts it in the window so that it can get enough light...and He does it all because He still loves to watch it grow and thrive and most of all because He's not done with it. He is not about to give up on the new lives He's dreamed up.

and so another year arrived yesturday and with it a whole bunch of fiddleheads. my goal this year is to continue to simplify my life (to which my boyfriend's father replied: "but you're not finished complicating it yet." an excellent point, i suppose). but what i mean to do is to ask God to keep stripping away my complexities and bringing me back to the real things, to love, to faith, to joy, to taking care. i want to make sure that as i unfurl i do so into the core of what He meant my life to be.

i wish you the merriest of new years

and oh i wish you could see my fiddleheads today.

on blaming

2007-12-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

i've been considering the tendency some of us have to blame ourselves instead of anyone else. personally, i made a career out of it at an early age, but by Grace it seems i'm now considering retirement.

i think i thought it a sort of virtue; that to take on the blame of someone else's fault must be a great sort of thing.

but i've come to realize it is my wicked little way out of forgiveness. it is miles easier to blame and berate myself as i deal with the consequences of a misdemeanor than to look my transgressor in the face and love him/her while bearing those consequences.

to forgive is to let go of any blaming. it is dealing with that crashing wave, caughing and spluttering and struggling to regain my footing without flipping the driver of the boat both of my birds. it is accepting what springs out of life's imperfections as life itself instead of a boulder in its way.

and if there's a boulder in my path that's because i'm meant to climb it.
and all that angry energy i'm trying to use up via self-blaming, i think that's there to get me over the rock.

the smell of snow

2007-11-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

i usually can smell snow about a month off. i'll start telling people mid-fall that snow is creeping up on us and to be ready for it.

today it snowed. it's snowed a few times over the last few weeks, but today was the first day in Toronto with plows and saltspreaders and teams of people shovelling until they're blue in the fingers.

tonight when i got home from class i had to give my gate's iced-over lock CPR again as i had just this morning. the process that usually takes the longest two minutes one can imagine, took about five minutes tonight: the unfreezing of the lock, the cracking of the ice that's coated the clasp, the manipulating of the metallic fitting that holds it all together.

about halfway through the process i caught the scent of the gorgeous snow that had caused me so much grief today; it smelled like my childhood. like a very specific moment in my childhood when i had run in to a lone kitten in the snow. it was dark outside and very cold but my mom was allergic to cats, so i couldn't take her in. instead i spent about an hour making her a little house into which she gladly nestled. i watched her for a while after that, basking in the glow of a fresh kitten snuggled in fresh snow. i watched and wished and don't remember feeling cold at all.

that memory brought me a little bit of warmth on a very cold tonight and i shook my head while chuckling at the fact that i get to do all this frozen gate stuff again in less than eight hours.

red wagon

2007-11-22T15:29:00.000-05:00

at times when i drag my flower cart around at work i feel just like little me with my red wagon. i saved up for that wagon and i loved it all the way through. once i had it i filled it with dolls and rocks, sticks, toads and bits of earth; all the sorts of important, magical ingredients for a good day when you're five. these days i fill my cart with plants, flower arrangements and vases that tip over, break into a million pieces and make me wonder where God is and why He didn't think it a priority to keep my arrangement upright.

when i go all the way up to the penthouse floor and stand underneath the warm air gusting from the heating duct, i feel good all over. it seems that everything is okay and how could it be anything but when my skin is so newly warmed by silken air that smells like propane.

tonight i'm going to buy a big, fancy, terribly expensive hot chocolate from Second Cup on my way to class, and i'm going to buy it on my visa because i am out of all other kinds of money. but a day full of blustery snow and freezing hands is best ended with hot chocolate if it's at all possible.

who Mondays belong to

2007-11-19T09:46:00.000-05:00

this morning i wrote to a friend that i love the course of a week. i am so grateful for the grace-filled mondays that lead us all the way to hopeful fridays. i do love it.

but sometimes when you're stuck smack dab in the middle of one of those mondays and your mood is just bad news and you'd rather be covered in the downy-brown warmth of your friendly comforter than working and trying to talk yourself down from an emotional cliff edge...in times like these mondays just feel like mondays.

but i remember what's worse than a hard day that you have to make good somehow: a good day that goes bad on you. like the friday when Christ should have had everything to look forward to but instead He was stripped of even another grace-filled monday.

He knows a hard day and He does not leave any of us alone to face one. Even the wimpy kind of hard days like the one I'm having; He is there. He is here.

He owns hard days.

He is worth...

2007-11-09T10:14:00.000-05:00

It's a friday, my favourite day I'd have to say because I have everything to look forward to: at least one morning to sleep in, church, friends and maybe a date with the dreamiest man alive. I'm at work and shouldn't be writing this but my heart is aching and the only remedy for it that I approve of right now is to send up some praise that is always due and never spent too frivilously.

So today at work what I have to say is that Jesus Christ is worth it all. All of it. The good things in life, He's worth those. He can have them. And the hard things, the tough days, the heart aches and broken bones...He's worth those too. I'll live them just so You can have them, Lord. The things You give, Father, You are worth them too. So take them...not that I won't receive them, but let me receive them with open hands so that You can do whatever You want with them and me. You can take them back if You need to for Your glory, and it will hurt, but they are Yours and only mine in that I am Yours too and You have put Your two things together: me and Your good things. You are worth it. You are worth it all.

That will be my song today through the tears that are falling from the sky, in the darkness of the day, in the glory of Your goodness, in the pain of my humanity: You are worth it! So HAVE it, Lord! Have all of it! Have me! Have all of me!

barefoot on bloor...

2007-07-12T20:59:00.000-04:00

sometimes life is like this: you're walking beside a busy street, feet sore for this and that reason, and your heart's reverb is in the same direction. things that matter are falling, shattering, or just plain walking away from you. you're missing them or at least thinking about them.

and then it starts to rain

i mean pour

so you walk for a bit more thinking it won't be so bad, you won't get so wet. but you get so wet. so up goes the umbrella-ella-ella eh eh eh, and down goes whatever was in your hands-ands-ands oh oh oh. slip slop slide, your feet wish-wash around in your flipflops. off go the flipflops.

the rain gets harder

you're drenched to the bone, umbrella down, flipflops off walking barefoot down bloor street and smiling wider than you've smiled in months because you realize that life is hard...and that's half the fun of it.

daisies

2007-06-01T22:41:00.000-04:00

You can probably tell, can't you...that I'm going through a difficult time. I've not been writing, singing, creating. Seems like my insides have drained out my toes, like water escaping from a tub. I am being an empty tub.

I ambled along the Lakeshore alone tonight...well alone and together. You know :) So glad of that. The bushes and flowers were beyond beautiful. As they say to do, I did: I stopped to smell them. But they did not have a scent.

What happens when you stop to smell the roses but the roses don't smell?
What do you do then?

Flowers give off scents to attract certain pollenators to them (like bees). Once they've been pollenated they discontinue their scented ways, then the flowers fall. The plant has been set up for another season of growth and new blooms, the flowers have done their jobs and can now rest up for next year. All we're left with is a big, healthy, green, non-smelly plant.

I saw some of my favourites, daisies, but picking them isn't allowed. So I walked on and about an hour later I was back at the daisies. I was crying by then, attempting to let out all this mysterious stress...and there were the daisies all lovely and happy and cared for. How I ached to put one in my hair. And then I stopped.

a daisy for me on the ground

Picking it up my tears changed their tone a bit. Joy began to stream gently down my cheeks: He remembered me. I walked on taking in the various versions of love all around me. There were friends chatting, lovers cuddling or walking hand in hand, families slowly keeping up with their toddlers...and there was me, just me, happy to be by myself and yet somehow sad to be the only one walking without an other. And then I stopped.

three more daisies friends for my other daisy on the ground

In awe of God's timing I walked on and cried for the reality of it all. Life is hard but it is also continually full of God's care, provision and goodness.

"If flowers have the finest clothes,

and birds they sing 'cause they have food

then how do I think that I'll escape Your care?

You're there."

sinking

2007-05-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

i've been like a girl at the helm of a slowly drifting boat. my eyes have been fixed on the water as i watch my dreams sink out of sight.

i do understand. i do know that flying against the Wind, His Wind, His will is never going to really work. at least it won't be much of a life if I fight against what He wants which is the only fullness there is for me or anyone else. but there are those times when He's not really blowing me too strongly in any direction, those days of soft breezes or still air. on those days i can be like the butterfly who grips onto a blade of grass fiercely while the wind tries to take her one way, but once the wind has subsided she springs from the blade and into the air and flies her darndest in the opposite direction.

when God isn't blowing me anywhere in particular, as far as i can tell, then sometimes i like to try going the other way. i look back and am attracted to the shiny things of old and for a while i might meander through the woods of yesturday, every step taking me a little farther off the path He's paved for me.

and if my feet don't dare to do it, sometimes my heart or mind will anyway. kindof an 'if you don't want to come FINE but i'm going back without you then' situation.

my eyes have been fixed, fixed, fixed on the water...

if we ask Him to do something, we must be prepared for Him to do it. i asked God to simplify me a long time ago...it seems He has been answering me for a few years and that He intends to keep it up for the rest of my life. so i mourn my dreams and my complexities while at the same time bask in God's gift to me: the falling away of my dreams and complexities.

not that dreams are bad (i think i know what you're thinking now). but my dreams must die to come to life. maybe everyone else's dreams don't work this way, but mine really really do. so now they are dying and i have been watching them go and wondering why they're going.

until today by the lake i saw that butterfly. and i met two small birds with soft, white underbellies and long pointy beaks that reminded me to look out past the sand into the water and the air. i fought the urge to be productive and took my time, the time i was given. i felt the sweet, warm air carress me and let the waves lapp at my toes. i let it all go, i tried to...i looked away from my sinking dreams and let Today speak to me.

it whispered Christ.

to live is Christ, to die is gain...may it be to me according to your word

the lessons

2007-04-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

while picking wayward trash from a twiggy spring garden I stumbled across the thought:

PROBABLY

THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS I WILL EVER LEARN

ARE LESSONS THAT I AM COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF LEARNING

OR OBLIVIOUS TO MY NEED OF LEARNING

I thought of this because I spend a great majority of my time in the midst of trials attempting to figure out why I'm experiencing them. The pain must have SOME sort of reason for itself. Often the only good I can figure out is that I am being taught a lesson I would never learn otherwise.

but sometimes there's no figuring out of pain's intentions. Sometimes all I have left to understand is that God is picking the wayward trash from my twiggy spring life and this is the feeling of heaven breaking into earth.

ghost story by Sting

2007-04-15T10:49:00.000-04:00

The earth upturned another wound, exposed to elements of life it stung a bit and bled impassioned tears. And after the aisle i was left in my old foolishness to sing:

I watch the Western sky, the sun is sinking
The geese are flying South it sets me thinking
I did not miss you much I did not suffer
What did not kill me just made me tougher

I feel the winter come his icy sinews
Now in the fire light the case continues
Another night in court the same old trial
The same old questions asked the same denial

The shadows closely run like jury members
I look for answers in the fire's embers
Why was I missing then that whole December
I give my usual line:I don't remember

Another winter comes his icy fingers creep
Into these bones of mine these memories never sleep
And all these differences a cloak I borrow
We kept our distances why should it follow
I must have loved you

What is the force that binds the stars
I wore this mask to hide my scars
What is the power that pulls the tide
I never could find a place to hide
What moves the Earth around the sun
What could I do but run and run and run
Afraid to love, afraid to fail
A mast without a sail

The moon's a fingernail and slowly sinking
Another day begins and now I'm thinking
That this indifference was my invention
When everything I did sought your attention
You were my compass star
You were my measure
You were a pirate's map
A buried treasure
If this was all correct
The last thing I'd expect
The prosecution rests
It's time that I confess:
I must have loved you

it is rare for me to have found a song that echos my own feelings exactly. it's a delight and a strange relief to me that i am not alone in my emotional insanity.

it will pass as it did before, this time maybe healing all the way through. and i'll be glad i pulled out my 'Brand New Day' CD from the back of the drawer and let myself cry when i felt Sting knew what i knew and what the other 'he' will never admit to because it was probably only ever true in my own desireous heart.

or maybe he'll admit it under broken stars in a time when all is so far under the bridge that only new things dare exist. some old things cannot stand simply because their ground is gone.

i do know that it's time i confess, i must have loved you...and it's okay.

black and white and red all over...

2007-04-05T11:03:00.000-04:00

This weekend holy blood mingles with the last snowfall as Easter dawns and Spring pushes itself up through half-frozen soil. Crocuses, tulips, hyacinths and lillies are beginning to stretch their green arms out from beneath winter covers, yawning with subtle whites, purples and golds. Soon the spring will really be here and the birds will match their harmonies to the trickling rivers of rain flowing to the lake. I can't wait.

I've been away from my blog for a while again. This Lent is proving to be monumental, changing me in real ways, deep work is being done and it's kept me quiet and still and low. On the pebbles of the River I've been lying looking up, watching the sunlight dance on top of the water and the current sweep life past me, over me. I know more now than ever before that life is simple and in God's hands. I know more now than ever before that I know very close to nothing and have so much more to experience before I really know.

but

his I know for certain

and it will sprout from me until the day I die

and move onward, upward into real life:

there is no need for stress,

only cause for peace

because it's our Father's intention to take us each somewhere,

someway that He alone knows.

I don't have to figure it out, I don't need a ten year plan. Goals and dreams are beautiful things that get me from today to tomorrow unstrayingly on the line that I have drawn from my understanding of how my life should go, but it is God who makes the road I walk on.

i may draw lines of intention

but

it is God who makes the road I walk on

I am a gardener. I till soil, add compost, pull weeds, plant flowers and tend tend tend...I help to nurture life in dead places. Mothers help bring new life into the world too, and they tend, as well as bakers who make tasty beauty from scratch, and receptionists who form lines of contact one person to another. We're all transferring life, nurturing life, growing, tending, breathing...we're all so simple. We're all made so simply and with purposes, certain ways about us that make us good for doing this and not so good for doing that.

It must be so obvious, what we're each meant to do - just like most important things in the world. The truth is the most prominent thing because it's the surface on which we all stand, no matter how we try to marr it with our fake, ugly paints and garish nonesensicles...we take it in through our noses and digest it with the enzymes in our stomachs. Our skin reacts to it, our moods swing along with its currents.

I don't want to come to a conclusion here...really I don't have to. The conclusion actually comes to me, rather it's the thing that keeps me alive allowing me to make my hilarious attempts at complicating it or putting it into words.

GOD.

there is no question that cannot be answered by this. By Him.

He moves the river, He is the Gardener, He is the answer to even the horrible questions of pain and deep misery and undeserved things. He's got something going on. To accomplish it involved killing His own Son. That's pretty horrible.

and into the black of us

came the red from Him

who seeks to make all things white,

alive and beautiful again.

I'm not sure what this Lent is doing with me...but I feel myself becoming simpler, as if some of my contrived complications have been stripped away. And I feel like it's the beginning of a life of taking-aways. Or maybe a halfway mark in a life that's been a continual stripping of needlessly piled-on things. Oh God, lighten my load until I trust enough to go forward with only my staff, cloak and sandals. You are the road I walk on and my very walk.

empty space

2007-03-17T10:29:00.000-04:00

my Mondays have been running into Sundays lately. I am beyond busy, but not the busy where you feel like you're constantly running to catch up to something. Instead my life is simply BURSTING with good things to do and to be!

Rock climbing is proving to be one of the most important things I've ever attempted to do. God is using it as an agent of change in my life. My roommate and I went one Saturday on a whim, she being terrified of heights, me needing some distraction from over-the-top emotions that were threatening to turn me into a leather-wearing, high-powered-weapon-wielding broken/jaded/angsty assassin. We took the three hour orientation and then spent a few hours climbing. By the end of the day Jenn asked me if we could take this seriously. I said 'LET'S!'

After climbing a few more times to make sure it wasn't infatuation-at-first-sight we fell hard into a love for the vertical and oddly angled. We bought our own harnesses and chalk bags and shoes and are now climbing two to three times a week. My terrified-of-ladders roommate is can now climb thirty foot falls in less than five minutes. She is amazing at belaying me and getting me down from the top of my own accomplishments.

There's a difficulty grading system in rock climbing that goes like this: 5.1 is the easiest (well it would be like a hike up a hill) and 5.10 is the trickiest at our gym (5.10+/-). When we started Jenn was doing up to 5.3, she now climbs 5.7. I, apparently being of monkey descent, am a natural climber (no kudos to myself, I was just an young tree climbing fanatic). I have worked my way up to 5.9s.

This summer is going to be one of change. I can't wait. If it's God's plan Jenn and I are going to learn to climb outdoors (that's part of why we are training so hard right now). I'm hoping to become certified in Kayaking, and we are planning already to go camping as many times as we can to practice our new skills.

I don't know why I haven't spent more time exploring outdoor education and adventure...it's in my blood. My parents put it there since from an early age they took me camping. Actually we LIVED in camp sights for a while when I was too little to even do what I love best: walk. Anyone who knows me knows that walking is my thing, probably actually the thing that brings me the most joy in life. Recently I've been starting to understand why (because I must always pick everything to pieces so I can 'understand' the why of it all, much to Sara's shegrin). Wide open spaces are my passion, I like to be in them and when none are to be found I like to climb into the ones in my heart. Walking creates space.

Why I like empty space so much is that a certain someone whom my heart desires more than anyone or anything else...He comes and fills them. If I have empty space around me, sure enough He will come and be my Surroundings. If I have space inside me, my Lord will come and fill me to overflowing. If I have space below me, say twenty-five feet below me with only one toe holding me up against a rock face and two fingers gripping to the wall, He will come and be the wind that urges me up the rest of the way.

I love how God who is in charge of keeping all the seemingly big-deal things going (like the spinning of the world and hearts beating) never hesitates to get involved in our 'little' things, the ones that keep our worlds spinning and our hearts beating.

2007-03-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

letting go...

2007-03-03T01:13:00.000-05:00

it's not something that happens in a moment of decision, at least not for me. It's not about knowing what I should do or understanding what the Truth of the situation is. Instead, letting go is a mysterious process that takes time and usually involves Hands that are far stronger than my own unprying my grasping fingers from the thing for which I've been reaching.

It's been less of a 'gimme gimme' situation this time and more of a 'i think that is intended for me, i'm pretty sure it's coming my way so i'm going to keep my hands open.' But still there is a needed moment where my hands need to drop, to stop expecting the thing to come when it's not coming.

I want to keep my hands open to receive, but i'm tired of sitting around waiting with hands upturned and eyes looking to the sky expectantly. Instead I want to run, to swing my arms around and dance in the breeze of my Master's sighs...all the while trusting that when He wants to put something into my hands, He'll let me know so that I can be ready to receive it.

Or maybe the thing never needs to be in my hands at all. I find most things in life far too big to hold on to anyway...

overwhelmed by You

i can't hold tightly enough

Your glory spread, my dream

Your dream revealed, my glory

holding not to even blessings from You

for we are both in Your hands held

for Your pleasure

for Your purpose

for Your plan

bigger dreams than i

and still i am welcomed in

overwhelmed by You

May 16 2003

amen

i will be that girl...

2007-02-14T14:14:00.000-05:00

i am in a field where watery green grass grows and dances in time with the soft summer breeze. my dress is short and white; ribbons fall from bodice to base, giggling and tickling my knees. i am in Love, i am in Joy, i am very very Alive, unconcerned about understanding, acting without hesitation according to the urges of my spirit.

my toes wade in the soft grass as i amble about the field. throwing my head back i take in the air, open to the sun and smile the ancient smile of Trust.

today is God's business

i am going to leave it be

and let it take me

i fall backward into Trust, understanding that the grass will soften my landing. to my every angle are flowers: simple white daisies, wild purple pansies, grinning yellow snapdragons and the occasional speckled field-orchid (a flower of my own imagining). the lids of my eyes snap shut with the speed of a butterfly's flitt still i see all that surrounds me without my eyes. wrapped in delight's perfection i lie face-up to the sky, my being gloriously aching.

my being gloriously aching, aching, aching

oh ache of my ache

please come for me soon...

they come, the hands of the One who loves me. reaching around the back of my chest they carry me supported into the blue above. i am lifted in quiet peace, my limbs listing back in the unquestioning state of a child. i will not fall, not out of these hands.

i become very aware of my freedom in the sky, my free space...where no resistance fights my heart or my body i soar with the currents of fresh air, i drift and circle in a dance with the Wind. there our shared smiles crescendo into fullbodied laughter.

all is well

all will be well

all

my toes mingle with the friendly blades of grass as i touch down on the ground once again. i am lighter than a feather; i am not as heavy as the stuff that allows a bird to glide upon the Wind, rather i am the weight of the secret things that ride deeply inside of molecules of air, seemingly unpurposed but really purposed with secret missions from the only One who knows. i land on land that barely feels me.

this is you, my dove

this is the girl i love, says the Bridegroom

be this girl

will you be this girl?

i meet His eyes, He holds my gaze. will you let that be simply what it is, Love? i am asked.

i reply with a gentle smile. my gaze is caught by a parade on the brown earth below: mice, shrew and voles dressed up in red marching-band hats with drums and cymbals and instruments galore trott by my bare feet. i let myself find deep delight in this...He is romancing me. He knows what i like.

a butterfly lands on my lips. a kiss, my darling, my delight.

one tumbling tear travels from my eye and lands on the wing of the butterfly. suddenly the earth erupts into song, each note articulated by flower, moth, butterfly, bird swirling all around me, both dressing and crowning me in life, love, truth.

the sun begins to set, and the amber-laced air urges my lungs to yawn. i lie down to rest in the grass. as i drift to sleep the One i love, the Christ comes and lies down with me, His arms surrounding my tiny life...and as we drift together into sleep the Father's hands reach down and cover us with a blanket of freshly-grown flowers.

mice and vole saunter over, take off their hats and snuggle down to sleep beside us.

and i am romanced.

happy Valentine's day

oh my! a tree!

2007-02-06T15:00:00.000-05:00

i walked to church this Sunday, big suprise, it's one of the greatest joys of my weeks not to mention my life. Walking to church *sigh*. i started walking with my friend Jann Arden singing in my ears (we most-often get along, Jann's heart and my own) but soon realized that she was far too loud for me to Hear. and i desperately needed to Hear.

so i turned off my bulky, old-fashioned discman (has anyone seen my dear little ipod?)and began my real journey. we communed, God and i, God coming close, me trying to let Him touch me, and then me making feable attempts to touch Him.

about a block away from church i experienced something drastically wierd and potently wonderful. the only way i can describe it is to say that

from the tiny seed of my dreams that had died a horrible death over 2006

there sprouted a tiny tree

which rapidly grew into a larger tree

stretching out from the centre of me

to my every extremity

i could actually feel the extending of its limbs into my own. it probably didn't feel like what it would really feel like for a plant to sprout inside of my body, but it felt like it should feel when God brings to life the core of a person that had been absent for a long time. i didn't know i had been absent from myself, but i had been!

so i sat down in church, all excited at the thought of leaves to come, and my mind went to Hosea 6. Lord, Hosea Six! You've worked it in me again. Oh my! So i randomly opened my Bible...it opened to Hosea Six. There was no bookmark, there was no fold in the page or any other reason, other than the nearness of God, for it to open to that passage. I almost wept for joy. He was near. You were near.

church happened and half way through the service was when i noticed that ronelle was back. i was lost somewhere, buried under some 'thing' while my dreams were buried and destroyed (for the Good). but on Sunday i was back.

and now i keep checking my tree because i know that first will come the buds, then the leaves, and after that the flowers...and then, then THEN COMES THE FRUIT!

and i can't WAIT to taste it!

hallelu

halle

hallelujah!

"Come let us return to the Lord;

for He has torn us, that He may heal us;

He has struck us down,

and He will bind us up.

After two days He will revive us;

on the third day He will raise us up,

that we may live before Him.

Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;

his going out is sure as the dawn;

He will come to us as the showers,

as the spring rains that water the earth."

(i'm counting on that)

Hosea 6.1-3

fruits and veggies...

2007-02-03T01:50:00.000-05:00

My friend Jenn-ifer and I both feel that this is going to be a year of 'fruit-bearing' for us. Last year was a year of deep tilling, of hard soil being turned up, weeds pulled, soil amended, pruining, shaping, training...this year we have the sense that we're going to experience some new growth. We always call them 'fruits,' these good things that come from hard times; right now though, I'm going through more hard times but feel that they are part of the produce, part of the good that was to come and now is coming. I hesitate to call these experiences fruit, they are not so pleasant to swallow but are very beneficial and needed. In fact, they are more like 'veggies.'

So far my year of new goods is yielding bountiful veggies, veggies that I will take in and digest, veggies that will make me more what I am, veggies that will strengthen me for the road ahead.

Yes, the road ahead that's lined with many sweet pear, apple and mango trees.

my glory and the lifter of my head

2007-01-30T21:40:00.000-05:00

'My glory and the lifter of my head.'

I walked into the middle of a field in High Park on my lunch break, and I cried tears of deep sorrow. I stood there in my inside shoes, snow covering my socks, not caring how cold my head or hands were...and I cried. "I love You, I love You, You are my only good" was all I could say.

*crunch crunch crunch* I heard tiny sounds coming from tiny feet fast approaching. I looked down at a squirrel who had come over to discover me. He purused me with his little black eyes, his face covered with the fluffy snow he'd been digging into snout-first. He made me laugh.

And the laughter opened my ears to The Voice:

"I love you, I love you, you are My only you."

you don't know me...

2007-01-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

but I love you.

Hilarious. I'm going to be blunt: I fall in love with men who don't know me.

yeah.

I know them, usually extremely well. By 'know' I mean that I know intimate details of their hearts, I know how they move and how their characteristics meld to form their beings, I know what they love and how they love and who they love...not me. And although I'm sure there is always more to know about a man, I do all I can to get to know them, REALLY know them. I ask because I want to know.

Is there seriously any gift more precious than being allowed to KNOW another?

I'm saying this laughingly although this morning I was saying it with tears in my throat and a tearing heart: Why don't men want to know me? Maybe they do. Maybe it's just that I am really hard to get to know. All my life I've been a person who loves to ask questions, to find out, to listen to stories, to know the details of another person's existance...but telling these things is not something I offer to do. I demand, it seems, to be asked. If I am not asked, I feel that the other person does not want to know. It's simply that.

I've tried offering information, but usually the response is minimal - probably because my offerings are REALLY strange, I am strange but I don't mind it, I like it about myself. To really feel good about something I've offered I need the other person to either question me further or to have an interested response. The world is not rife with interesting-responsed individuals (which does not ACTUALLY mean that people are not interested, I simply expect too much). While I - having a speaking deficiency and a listening proficiency - have spent my life cultivating responses that drive people to speak more, most people have been spending their time developing their story telling abilities. I love it, I treasure that about people, I love a great story. I think it's my turn to work on story-telling, but I really don't want to. I'd rather provide point-form answers to people's questions.

Gosh. No wonder men don't want to get to know me the way I want to get to know them, it must be difficult. I'm a tough nut to crack and I demand them actually interrupting my questions to them to ever allow them in.

And will I let them in? Probably not. I'm fiercely independent. I like to maintain management of my own emotions and thoughts, thank you very much. Did I ASK for your opinion?

If women are mysterious - which they are - I must be the only mystery that doesn't ask to be solved. I'm here, unwrapped, full of interesting and strange trifles to be had by the man who can somehow figure out the Egyptianesque pattern of right things to do, say and be to unlock the long tunnel leading to a room with a tiny window at the top of its vualted ceiling through which you can see the most minute glimmer of my heart.

Come on up, boy!

I am absolutely hilarious. Why don't men want to know me? Because most of them don't have that much energy!

I no longer blame them. I also no longer blame myself. Egyptians made there secret places to be entered by specific people...I admit that I am just such a secret place.

contractions...

2007-01-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

The past few months have been an extreme boot camp for my heart.

My heart is like any other muscle in my body, it contracts and it releases, each moment necessitating one action or the other. At the beginning of this struggle my heart was released, it was open, it allowed in, it felt, both let-out and absorbed; When the challenges came, it contracted, it shut, it gripped, it held together for dear life. There were times when the contractions of my heart were not healthy - they were self-preserving and manipulating to my spirit - and then there were times when they were good - they held tightly to hope in the right place, hope in Christ and trust in Him.

If there is one thing I can say about my recent experience of the open/closed heart thing it would be that the whole time, even when I was trustingly drenched in the peace of Christ, I was having to metaphorically pry my hands from off of the thing I wanted so badly. Even in my trust and faith the hands of my heart were grabbing at my desire, and I was gaining so much strength by pulling them away with the hands of my spirit and mind.

But my strength was waining, as it always does. I am a lot weaker than I like to admit.

In fact, I am extremely weak.

On my way home from work on Monday I was overcome with mysterious joy. I just started laughing and singing at the top of my lungs while I drove. And then it came to me: my hands were off the Thing, the It, the What I Want...and I wasn't the one who took them off! For the first time in about four months my mind, spirit and heart were unified, purified in peace and trust and rest. I knew the same things I did before, no new revelation, no new trust, no new faith or personal resolve...just by God's extravagant and mysterious mercy He worked in me to relax my desire to grab at my Thing.

My heart has been to boot camp. The contractions are real and something is about to be that wasn't before.

Maybe it already is.

what i learned from Fish...

2007-01-08T22:57:00.000-05:00

One office at my place of work is home to a fish named 'Fish.' He belongs to the City Manager's right hand man. Each morning when I go into that office to water the plants Fish greets me: he forsakes whatever business he has with the other side of his bowl and hurriedly swims over to whatever side I'm on. And he looks at me.

I say hello in response.

Fish has taught me that being friendly doesn't have to involve words.

this comforts me...sigh, smile, relax.

I'm okay. mmm

trust...

2007-01-05T10:47:00.000-05:00

trusting the Lord
means not only trusting Him to bring me good
but also believing that what He has brought me
is good
and living like it is.

amen

two thousand and seven years...

2007-01-02T15:35:00.000-05:00

The first two mornings of the two thousand and seventh year after Christ was born have been lovely. Golden streams of sunlight pouring out from behind heaven's curtains! Miles and miles of glory streaming through the sky, curling around the featherlight clouds and wrapping themselves like ribbons around my heart. Another new year: a gift beyond measure.

A fresh start. Hope renewed. Endless possibility.

2007 is like a newborn, a child brimming with possibility. WHO WILL I BE BY 2008? Where will I be? Where will WE be, all of us, this culture, Christ's body? Where will He be? Will He be here, like two-feet-on-our-soil HERE?

good morning, sunrise

i can't wait to meet the day

where will He take us

what will He say?

if i listen in the quiet of the morning hue

i can hear a choir of birds sing

'what will He do

what will He do

what will He do?!'

At church this past Sunday some friends shared where they wanted to be next year at this time. It made me think - as it was meant to - about where I want to be at the end of this new year. This is what my heart came up with:

by the end of 2007

if God still grants me life

I want to be fully

in Love.

>i don't mean with a man<

What I mean is that I want to be more able to give and to receive love.

I want to explore this city in which I live.

To work less (oh please please please)

To be back in school (hopefully U of T)

To have a schedule (yes how boring) of regular meditation on God

To practice yoga daily (to help my back)

and To dance as much as possible!

Setting out on this journey is thrilling right now. I know it will turn to sadness at times, just because everything in this world seems to...but that is more than alright because 'not all tears are evil' (as my friend reminded me, the words of Gandalf), but ALL can be used by God for His purposes. These dreams of mine need to live the full life cycle, the God-infused transforming life cycle of life, death and then more, better, bigger, realer life.

He will guide me up this mountain. I walk among the lillies and green grass now; ahead there are barren crags and dark, steep slopes. Rejoicing in this verdant space is my duty today; tomorrow I will walk the ground laid before me.

the Kingdom...

2007-01-01T19:18:00.000-05:00

It is coming...

There are moments when I think that this life is about me: that I need to figure out where God would have me go; that I need to weed out the sin in my life and fertilize the good; that I must come to know what is important to me and spend time with that; that I aught to be as loving as I can be because that is what pleases God. There are moments when I am right.

And then there are moments where I am righter: when I realize that if I let God in, if I let Him mess around with my priorities, if I LET Him have His way instead of standing up for what I consider to be my rights, if I let Him wound me...if, then He will come. He will move in. He will undo and redo. He will heal. He will touch and hold and fix and relax and take and give and move and steady. He will shake me up and calm me down. He will make good all of the bad. He will. He will. It is His will. And He will.

He will lead me where He would have me go; He will do the weeding and the fertilizing; He will give me the things that are important for me to spend time with when He wants me to spend time with them; He will help me love.

This is the Kingdom of God coming. This is God's silent, slow creep into this dark world that would have all light snuffed out. It's not through noisy revolutions with bombs or spears or guns or soldiers that He brings His Kingdom, no it's through His Spirit invading His people. The evidence of this is the little givings up of our rebel wills, the moments of pure let-go, days when we are so shaken to our core by the not-havings in our lives that we can honestly look at the sky and say to God, 'You are all I have.' Mornings when the air is golden with the fresh sun and we let ourselves rejoice because He's here and we know it.

Father, YOUR KINGDOM COME
in me
YOUR WILL BE DONE
in me
in me as it is in heaven!
so that it will come
on earth
on the whole earth
as it is in heaven.

And it will. It is coming, His Kingdom. It will spread from the tiny seeds of our hearts, planted in the earth, dying together in the suffering of Christ, and being brought to life again on that day when the heart of our hearts steps out of heaven and into His new Kingdom here. Yes, the one that has already been here for years with so few of us letting it be what it already is.

Not one suffering is pointless. Not one ache is unpurposed. Not one pure laugh is unproductive. He is building a kingdom, and He is using our hearts to do it.

I am...

2006-12-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.

'So do I,' said Gandalf,

' and so do all who live to see such times.

But that is not for them to decide.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

The Fellowship of the Rings

I believe we all have a ring to carry. Something that we must take to Mount Doom and throw into the fire. Something that must be destroyed so that something better can be. I've tried to think of what it could be, and thought of so many possibilities: it could be pride for one, greed for another, power for someone else. At the very bottom of the pile, on which every other ring sits, is in fact the very stuff that they are all made of - HUMAN WILL. That we would have it our way. That we would make it so. That we would be glorified.

Currently I'm innundating myself with the Lord of the Rings. This story has the power to remind me that life is still happening when I am convinced that it is somehow on pause. I'm sure that not every day of marching over mountains and eating buckets of lembas bread was exciting and adventurous for the hobbits. There were probably days when exhausted feet tramped for miles over flatlands without tree or hill in sight (oh there were, just read 'The Two Towers' if you doubt it). Just like the Israelites in the desert for forty years: life for them wasn't as glamourous as it sounds to me when I read the chapter in five minutes and reminisce about the symbology of the number forty.

Oh but I have a ring, a very dangerous ring tied around my neck and it is trying its best to own me. It would have me be a big deal. It would have me be a wife and a mother on its terms, in its time. It would have me lead worship the way it wants me to. It would make me a person who loves and is loved for the sake of glory. It would make me thin and beautiful beyond words by acts of control and contortion. It would have me die so that it could live instead. So that it could have the power and get as big as possible, and so its owner, its founder could use my empty shell for his own will.

There are times when I sit up at night and look at the ring, think of it, consider how great it would be to put it on and let it own me. How much easier life would be.

However.

The ring would have me DIE. The ring would enslave me to a LIE. The ring would try to make me what I'm not and fail because I will not ever be what I am not.

I am for Him.

He is Good.

He is True.

He is Real.

He would have me be what I am to glorious fullness.

He would fill my empty spots.

He would bring me home.

He would BE my home.

He loves.

He loves me.

God would have me do one thing alone with the ring: spend my life marching it through bogs and up hills and even through lovely places to the very top of Mount Doom. Then He would have me throw it in. God would have me throw my will into the fire that would destroy it completely.

You know, it's like a seed, my will, my little dreams.

I hang on to it,

'Isn't it so beautiful,

isn't it so precious

...

yes, it is precious, MY precious.'

The thing with seeds, though, is that all they do in your hands after a while is dry up and turn to dust and nothing comes of them. The magic of a seed is that it must die to live.

And so we throw the ring in the fire. It melts.
We bury the seed in the ground. It dies.
And then it lives.
What we end up with is something almost completely unlike the original seed simply because it's like five million times bigger and all that the seed was made of was filled in and brought to its fullness.

I can't mention seeds without also saying that they are not ready to be plants when we bury them in the earth. Every day they must receive from nature what they need to live. Without water, nutrients, sunshine and protection they die. They are useless by themselves.

I am a ring.

I am a seed.

I will die.

Then I will live.

THE joy of all desirings...

2006-12-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

Jesu, joy of man's desirings
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying round Thy throne.

Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings;
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.
Theirs is beauty’s fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom’s holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.
Johann Sabastian Bach

Joy, hmm.

I woke up this morning to discover I had cried so violently last night that the blood vessels in my eyelids had burst. Lovely.

I am undone...and I've never been so deeply in Joy. What is joy? I wonder that this morning, this beautiful morning with coffee and cat and hopes of skating with my Love in the early afternoon. Joy? Is joy a day off? No, I've had days off where joy seems far away and days at work where I've nearly flown away on joy. Neither is joy in happy things or even in friends or family or chocolate...joy is in God. Yes, well that's what we're told and that's what is true. But still, what IS joy?

It's not happiness, although it can feel happy. It's not contentment because contentment is a thing unto itself. Not peace because I truly think peace is a result of joy.

From what my tiny mind can deduce, I'm pretty sure that joy is the fullness of God. Not our awareness of His fullness, not even His fullness touching us intimately, personally...yes, I'm pretty convinced that joy stands on its own two feet. Joy is God's being. As long as God is, joy is. No matter what happens, no matter how we feel, no matter how close or far away God seems, joy is. That's why we can always have it: God always is. And His being is joy.

"Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth RECEIVE her peace!"

And because God is, we are to have joy and to receive peace. For God's being means that there is nothing for us but joy in Him and peace because He is the One who takes care of it all. We are His, He is ours.

There is nothing else.

nothing :)

ps. that's a random photo of me stoking a fire this summer. I kindof feel like I'm spending today stoking a Fire too.

open

2006-12-14T08:53:00.000-05:00

I'm standing in between the doors of my heart, arms pushing pushing pushing, keeping the doors from closing...ding ding ding, 'Let's just have this over with!' they cry. Still I'm standing in the doorway with my arms holding, head heavily hanging in exhaustion, keeping the doors open.

That's how the last twelve days have been for me, but Saturday evening was entirely different. While walking home from a lovely Christmas party God blew into me, His strength throwing open every door that I would shut. I was completely exposed and He did deep work. The next two days my heart starting ding'ing again, but the prayers of faithful friends were heard and answered.

So now I am sitting in the lotus position on hard, dry earth. Eyes closed, big smile, breathing, being, waiting. Christ's peace flows through me now as water through a river; If the Source stops pouring out I will be as dry as the ground. There is no holding place for this peace, only empty space through which it may flow. It seems that I've been emptied and all my doors have been thrown open so that He can flow freely through to whatever end He has in mind.

Beside me there is a veil softly blowing in the breeze of the Spirit of God. I feel it more than see it. Just beyond the veil is the Next. It is my task right now to sit in the gentle breeze letting the river of His peace wash through me, and to wait wait wait for the call that will beckon me through the veil into the Next.

doors of my heart
don't close again
it is so important
that you are open
to Him

impetuity...

2006-12-05T14:42:00.000-05:00

a more apt conjugation of 'impetuous' than 'impetuousness,' I think. :)

This post is about impetuity, my recent impetuity.

Last week at Living Room I began weeping unstoppably in worship. It wasn't a beautiful moment where I felt God touching me, instead it felt horrible. I felt like a rotten apple, something that just needed to get out of the way, something that once had the potential to be good but because it let go of the tree all it was good for now was feeding the pigs. I looked around, there are no pigs here, i should go.

I ran to the washroom and wept alone. But my friends found me and comforted me and prayed for me. The feeling wasn't self-hatred. In fact I don't know what the feeling was, but it hurt and it made me very small (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

On Saturday the cat was in pain so I held her for a bit. She kept meowing in a way that sounding like little 'ow's. 'oooooow, oooooow' said Oreo. I prayed for her and held her and she relaxed into my arms belly up, like a human baby. I began to weep, unstoppably, but as quietly as I could as not to disturb her slumber.

Today on the way home from work I did a little tiny eensie weensie thing: an older lady looked frightened when crossing the street and I asked her if she wanted my help. She said she didn't need my help, I probably embarrassed her more than anything else. I walked away and felt that same prick deep deep inside my heart: I stopped myself just before weeping again.

There is something going on. Something in the dark, sometimes scary places of me. I think that Jesus has opened a door that I attempted to shut up a long time ago. Maybe He wanted to work on me gently, because He knows how weak I am, so it took Him a while to pry out the nails I had hammered into the doorframe. Once He got inside that secret room He melted the ice gently as to avoid frostbite that might lead to amputation (how fond I seem to be of emotional amputation - you shouldn't feel that anymore, nelle, cut it off cut it off!).

I think He's in the room now, touching things and bringing them to life - more life than ever. Things are beginning to move around and breathe and dance in a place that had not known any motion for a while. Maybe I weep because I don't understand. Maybe because it hurts.

I certainly do not understand.

don't worry...

2006-12-02T17:08:00.000-05:00

it's not what you think; a tressle of baryard mice did NOT kidnap me to teach me their secret cheers. In fact nothing as stupendous, serendipitous or adventursome as that has kept me from blogging. I'm just tired out, that's it. I'm tired out but having fun and being taught stuff and being energetic when I'm not being exhausted. Life is full of good things.

I've also not been considering as much as I usually do, which tends to leave me uninspired to write or to think outloud. Thus what follows are random thoughts I've had recently:

There's an ancient nelle-ism that goes like this: To dance is to smile with your whole body. I still mean that, and I am finding my body needs to smile more and more often these days. There's something about dance that ties ronelle together...no, it doesn't tie me together, instead it unfolds each part of who I am so that I am exposed. In a good way. Revealed. Unhidden. And oh so healthy!

I used to walk to my car from City Hall and wonder if I could survive running in such heat...now I chant 'i will make it to my car alive, i will make it to my car alive' as the cold wind blows through my multi-layered clothing.

Time to go, exhaustion like this doesn't come around every day. Just on weekends, thank God.

mmmm...

2006-11-16T15:59:00.000-05:00

i feel good. really good. deep down to the end of my toes good!

THANK YOU, Jesus!

My new job at Starbucks is wonderful. At my gardening job i've been planting tulips all week and watching Christmas come to be through decorations. Bulbs - plant bulbs - are so funny to me...i really feel quite sneaky when i'm planting them. No one else knows they are there after i cover them up with fresh earth and they cozy down to sleep for the winter. It's only in spring when the bulbs sprout gloriously green leaves that crescendo into bursts of colour that everyone else discovers my secrets. i love that i am 'in the know.' i love being sneaky.

My life feels a bit like a winter crocus right now, the kind that starts to sprout greenery about this time. Those years of working in retail have paid off: my new job making coffee is the first job i've entered into feeling not only that i will eventually be able to do it well but that i actually really WANT to do it and do it well. i get to stay through the winter with my gardening job, which means that i GET TO SHOVEL SNOW AND BLOW SNOW AND CARE FOR POINSETTAS AND LISTEN TO CAROLLERS IN THE LOBBY OF CITY HALL! i get to stay because they need me, they know what it's like having help and not having help and they practically begged the management so that i could stay.

i am being so blessed right now because of all the effort and training and chances and trust and love that others have given me. i am like a bulb that has hibernated long enough and is slowly coming to bloom. Not fully open yet, but budding quietly, waiting for the right time to explode into a new fullness of life, a new celebration of God, a new expression of Love.

i feel alive and it's because of you, and them and most of all, because of Him.

oh! i remember...

2006-11-11T11:22:00.000-05:00

Note: the following is a direct quotation from the book 'Sophia House' by Michael D. O'brien.

It shouldn't ruin the story if you're reading or thinking of reading it.

But please be careful just in case it does make the story less of a mystery to you.

***

David went on. "If a person does not have another with whom he can speak in this manner, then he is condemned to stare at his own reflection."
"So, is this wrong? Should we not know ourselves?"
"Can you know yourself, really, in a reflection? A reflection is an inverted image, and flat. May I put it another way, Pan Tarnowski? We tend to experience the self as the centre of all existence. Thus, I risk turning everything and everyone around me - oh, you see, I said around me, as if all that is not me merely revolves about me...I run the risk of turning everything around me into the less real. And if I do that, then I too become less real - no, I should say that I experience less of my genuine reality, though I might feel more real by this obsession with the self...in reality, other people are as real as me, yet I do not experience them this way."
"But that is life, is it not?"
"That is damaged life."
"If what you say is true, then all human existence is damaged..."
"So, how are we to move beyond the prison of mirrors in which we see only our distorted reflections? How are we to move beyond our solar system of the self and join in the great dance of the universe?"
"How? I do not know for certain. But a first step may be..."
David waited for Pawel to complete the thought. The latter lowered his gaze and stared at the floor for a time, grasping for an elusive answer to the boy's question.
"I suppose one practices putting the other ahead of the self," he murmured without looking up.

***

i think i forgot for a while. Well i remembered in my head, but forgot in my heart that i exist only for my Creator and His people-creations. Thinking about myself, trying to grow, to know myself, to understand what it is i am called to, all these turned into sides of a box that i was tenderly placing myself in. At every angle all i could see was ronelle, and as soon as i saw her i could see all her deficiencies: things she should be that she isn't, things she desires but does not have. While i sat in the box of Me and meditated on My walls, they grew taller and taller until i was left at the bottom of a big hole. My little box of self-contemplation had made itself into a deep, empty well; i was at the very bottom of it and the light was very far away because i had pushed it there.

But God sent me this little passage in the wonderful writings of O'brien, and i remembered: it's okay for me to be about other people. It's okay for me to give myself away for them and not worry about making sure my life stays 'on schedule.' I am cared for by Bigger Hands. He will give me love and He will enable me to receive this love.

All melted down: I DON'T HAVE TO FIGURE MY LIFE OUT,

IT'S ALREADY BEEN FIGURED OUT BY THE ONE WHO MADE ME WITH A PURPOSE IN MIND.

Even my deficiencies, even those, He will use and fill and make good.

This is what God loves to do:

take little ones and make them glorious all by Himself.

Looking at myself is important, and I feel as one of my dear friends Kim writes, as if 'God pushed me through a wormhole.' This painful, sad season has been so healing, i understand myself better, i know more of my weaknesses, i am more aware; but now that i am through the 'wormhole' i feel so good. As if my lungs have been opened again, so i can breathe and live and be and most of all, so i can love.

Romans Twelve...

2006-10-30T21:12:00.000-05:00

I appeal to you therefore, brothers,

by the mercies of God,

to present your bodies as a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God,

which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,

that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and acceptable and perfect.

...

I love that it is not my job to transform my mind but to BE transformed by the renewing of my mind. I am to participate in this transformation by presenting myself to God on the altar; that's it. Really. Giving myself to His will and way...by doing this, by laying myself on the altar of worship and love, I am submitting to His moulding. And He will make me pure, He will make me one: mind, body, and spirit all aimed in one direction - from Him, through Him, to Him (as the majestic and stunning chapter 11.36 says).

As I crossed the street to work the other day I tried to control my own thinking. I was feeling negatively about myself even in the midst of enjoying the brisk morning. The feeling of 'taking control of my thoughts' was like shoving a box through a mail slot: it was going to work but it wasn't going to be easy. I am beginning to understand that rather than attempting to fake congruency in myself, God's way is to transform my box-y thoughts into perfect mail-slot-shaped thoughts, right thoughts, good thoughts, true thoughts. I have a sneaking suspision that He will do this by transforming what is inside of and behind those thoughts...by convincing me of the Truth - the BIG Truth and how I somehow fit into it - He will give me thoughts that renew my mind daily rather than tear me down.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you

not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,

but to think with sober judgement,

each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as one body we have many members,

and the members do not all have the same function,

so we, though many, are one body in Christ,

and individually members one of another.

...

Humility, I would like some more of this please. I'm reading a book in which one of the main characters is a young boy rich in wisdom and yet he is so happily aware that he's really just another person. He knows that he has a great ability to reason and understand, but he doesn't take that to mean he is more important than the next man. He believes and acts like everyone has a place and a purpose; he knows he is only one - but one for surely - of those people. He says that 'No man is complete within himself.' I could use more purity in my humility. Humility without self-effacement, humility inside of Love.

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

To Christ be the glory both now and forever.

Amen

Church...

2006-10-22T23:34:00.000-04:00

Nothing inside or outside of me wanted to go to church tonight. I fought it out the door, into the subway, on to the subway car, off of the subway car, through the doors of the church and even into the pew...but the moment the lights went out and music started to play all my resistance faded. He was there. HE was there! And I got to be near Him! I mean, He's at home too and on the subway but somehow when we are all there at church looking at Him together, oh He's there! And He touches even though we're unbelieving of His willingness to come that close to us little dirty things.

He did. He touched me. And I will never be the same again. Not after He has touched me even for a little bit. He changes me every time He comes near.

Jesus is good. I'm convinced...again.

Nunny...

2006-10-14T14:44:00.000-04:00

My mom and I lost track of one another in a mall once. She panicked and called out to me, 'Nunny? Nunny!' a combination of 'honey' and 'nelle.'

It's been a thing for me for a long time: am I meant to be a nun or something like one? I certainly don't have the heart of Mother Teresa, or even the most average of nuns, but there's hope for that with God involved in my upbringing. My friends always laugh at me because I am to them one of the 'most romantic people' they've ever met, 'how could you ever be single for life?' they question.

My argument is this: 1) I thrive on solitude, 2) I am enraptured in my Heavenly Lover and want to be moreso 3) would it really benefit someone else to live with ME as their helper? 4) I become so easily wrapped up in the present situation that I tend to lose focus on the future or things/people outside of my immediates, so wouldn't it be better for me to deprive myself of immediate contact with others so that I would more easily remember everyone else? Regardless of whether or not my argument is a load of hooey, it's all boiled down to my not taking the idea of marriage for granted. To me it is a very LARGE decision...I suppose it is to everyone. But to me it's not an issue of who and when rather a question of if at all.

Just in case I've made you wonder no one is asking me to marry them. *smile* I've simply been considering the concept of marriage lately and my possible involvement in it. Ultimately the question will really come into play if God sends someone to me who wants to marry me. For now I consider these things: marriage is the decision to put someone else before yourself for the rest of their life, to share everything with them, to work at enjoying them above everyone else but the Trinity (really, I think this is part of the deal), and to let them love and care for you back. I think that last one dwarfs me the most...let someone else take care of me? Are you kidding? Do you KNOW how fiercely independent I am?

I think what might happen - what often happens - is that other people think like this too...and then they meet a person who when they are with them it is as if they are alone, only better. Who to love them is to somehow love yourself as well...
when you sit next to me
it is as when the Lord comes close
He is in you
and our silences
infrequent but occurring
enwrap me with your presence
oh how i love you;
there couldn't be another
with whom i'd echo love so well

maybe this is true. maybe even for me.

lost the plot?

2006-10-14T02:05:00.000-04:00

There are moments that catch my breath. They're seconds, really, usually a matter of one two thr...and then back to the regular old breathing. For those few breathless seconds, though, I am ecstatic. I feel my throat tighten the way it does right before a really good cry comes. My eyes get glassy, I stop moving or at least I feel like I'm floating, flying, being lifted high high higher still. Up and up to the Real Place where only True Things are visible...where no lies conquer my eyes and no sleep ever causes them to close. I am, for a brief moment, aware of how close He is.

It's usually beauty that causes this reaction in me: Leaves letting go of branches and jumping to the ground, snow playing with the October air, a grown-up man stooping down so he can speak eye to eye with a little man, the smell of wood giving up to flame. There are so many moments like these. Too many to write out. But they are written into my story. On the pages where nothing much is happening, oh those are the pages where everything real is truly being accomplished! The plotless page is pregnant with purpose.

I think they are my favourite pages, the ones that seem to exist only for the sake of existing...

an autumn sigh...

2006-10-08T23:50:00.000-04:00

fresh fall day

apples do delicious

i'm not sure if i should eat them

of if they should eat me

couples hold hands

to keep them warm

i walk by myself

but my hands are not cold

they're held too

but not my hands alone

for He who warms me encompasses my being

not just beside me

but behind - before

over - under - inside

propelling - preparing - protecting

supporting - filling

looked at with love

enjoyed

completely known am i

oh blue sky, sing to my Love

for He is fairer than this day

and His love is more desirable

than all warmth

the gifts i give...

2006-10-07T09:08:00.000-04:00

i saw the most adorable gift today from a child to their adult. It was an average-looking grey rock with multicoloured puffballs and glitter glued to it. I grinned thinking how much is this silly creation like the gifts i give God?

A scene: There I am in the craftroom of my life. I take a minute in one of my small hands and a bottle of white glue in the other. The glue pours out over the minute too big to fit into my paw. On the table infront of me there's a rough version of Kindness drawn with a crayon and oversized features. I smile and glue 'Kindness' to the minute. Laughing, I get up from my chair and trot over to my Father. I present my craft to Him, 'It's for You!' The little Kindness nearly falls from the Moment - I didn't wait for the glue to dry, a frequent mistake of mine. Abba looks at my gift and then at me; His smile destroys all of my inadequacies. Setting the gift on His mantle He reaches down and lifts me up to His lap. With a kiss on my head He says 'I love you, my little Nelle. You've done well and I'm very pleased with you.'

My gifts to God are very much like puffball and glitter-covered gray rocks: frail attempts at something good to please my Father.

My gifts to YOU, dear friend, are like that too. I'm no Picasso, I'm just learning to work with what I've got. Thank you for accepting what I give. Thank you for giving what you are and what you have. My heart is full of the breathtaking artwork of my friends.

Jesus Christ the apple tree

2006-10-03T21:01:00.000-04:00

i believe, at this time, i am meant to consider Jesus Christ as an apple tree. It hit me from out of the blue: One week i sang a spontaneous spiritual song with the words 'Come rest with Me underneath this apple tree' and i thought it odd. Maybe the words came to me because they rhymed, i reasoned to myself. Soon after that a friend mentioned the allegory offhandedly in conversation...Jesus Christ the apple tree. That very week at church a lovely voice sang the old spiritual song...'Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.' It was familiar to me but i didn't understand why. Where does that allegory come from? i really began to wonder. Do they even HAVE apple trees in Palestine?

So i looked it up: search keyword 'apple tree' from Genesis to Revelation. i found one verse in - where else? - but the Song of Solomon! The woman speaks to her lover there saying 'Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. In his shade i took great delight and sat down, and his fruit was sweet to my taste' (SoS 2.3). i understand this to mean that her lover is most fruitful among men. A tree bearing fruit in the middle of a forest full of non-fruit-bearing trees. He provides comforting/protecting shade and satisfying/sustaining nourishment for her. He is the exact provision she needs and not only that, he is also perfect delight to her.

I get it now. Jesus Christ is very much like an apple tree...

The tree of life my soul hath seen laden with fruit and always green

The trees of nature fruitless be compared with Christ the apple tree

His beauty doth all things excel by faith I know but ne'er can tell

The glory which I now can see in Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought and pleasure dearly I have bought

I missed of all but now I see 'tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil here I will sit and rest a while

Under the shadow I will be of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit does make my soul to thrive it keeps my dying faith alive

Which makes my soul in haste to be with Jesus Christ the apple tree.

AUTHOR ENGLISH AND UNKNOWN

melancholy meandering...

2006-10-01T13:57:00.000-04:00

oftentimes i feel sad, a seemingly paradoxical statement from a girl who is known to tend toward delirious happiness. This blog, actually, is proof that i am really not 'always happy.' It must be funny for you to read in the context of me. Maybe not. Maybe. It's funny for me to read in the context of me sometimes.

i leave places and people sometimes feeling sad, lonely, hurt, achingly dissappointed regarding something. the wierdest thing is that they are usually people and places i love! so i run down my list of optional 'things that are wrong with me' because i know that nothing is wrong with them - certainment, non! usually i come to the conclusion that i am still really broken and in desperate need of healing, i need to stop comparing myself, i need to be satisfied that i am God's masterpiece though still longing healthily to be made more like Christ.

i guess that's true.

but last night i realized something new (an epipheny, Shell): i think i am just like this. i know that i am very much a 'melancholy' personality, yet for some reason i expect myself to walk away from meaningful situations untouched. i will always be touched, i ALWAYS am. always made aware of my brokenness, always aching to see the brokeness of others fixed...just ACHING for the hurts, the beauties, the love, the hate to be touched all over by Christ; somehow noticing that they do have His precious fingerprints on them. i usually leave desperate to write or dance or sing - to create something that speaks of the unseen that the feelings of my feelings have been privy to.

still all this time i've thought there was something wrong with me. i'm beginning to see that this is one of the things that is most right with me.

and it makes me laugh.

His thorns, His cross...

2006-10-01T02:02:00.000-04:00

Trimming the rose bushes has to be the most hated job of all gardeners I know. All summer the crew I worked with hated it, I hate it, my boss even hates it. So much trouble for so little beauty we think.

The roses rip your hands, arms and sometimes legs, stomach, face. There is something so awful about a rose bite: it is to me the sorest of the 'little pains' (ie papercuts, slivers, scrapes etc). I think it's the way that they not only cut into you but rip out of your skin because of their hooked shape. The job itself is long and tedious...you watch the clock and it barely moves (3 mins feels like 30, it seems).

When I'm trimming the roses I remember Christ's cross. Particularly His thorns - the crown of agony placed upon His battered head. Some roses hit me in the face on Friday, I winced, What must it have been like to have these pushed into your scalp? Eyes rolling back into the head is all I can think of. Excruciating.

And then the cross. Christ asks us to carry our crosses...I've been wondering lately What counts as a cross? The cross He hung on was a painful act of love, a giving of all of Himself for all of us, it was a willing sacrifice and it was hard. This is where discussions of 'carrying the cross' usually seem to go, but as I read the passages this time I realized something: Christ called His followers to cross-bearing BEFORE He went to the cross!

*gasp*

So how would those people have heard the words, 'anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me' (Matthew 10.38)? As far as I understand it they would have known a cross as an instrument of punishment and torture and shame and death. It held no glamour to them, just humiliation and pain. People went to the cross when they had done something that those in authority/the general public did not agree with. They took up their crosses and then they died. Jesus calls us to death of our old selves...as in THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO BE A CHRISTIAN but to DIE and then to FOLLOW CHRIST. Die to our priorities, preferences, dreams and follow Him for His sake. Nothing glamourous. Actually quite bloody, embarrassing, gruesome, sore...

Back to my question, what counts as a cross? I guess our crosses will look different, but they will be situations in which we will have the opportunity to either stand up for our 'rights' or go to the Garden crying, 'Your will not my own, Father!' Like Him I must be willing to be alone, very alone, on a dark hill, in pain wondering 'why have even You forsaken me, my God?' I guess what He's really asking us to do is be willing to put in all of our effort for what seems to us as so little beauty.

shards...

2006-09-29T06:01:00.000-04:00

...If I say, 'I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,' then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and i am weary of holding it in; i cannot endure it.
Jeremiah 20.9

I feel like a dam burst through: all that was holding back, all the inside longing to come outside set loose by a little rip in a tiny seam. A very small pain, a good ache really, God used it to tear me open. And now a great river of peace flows into the centre of me. Not a placid river, no a river charging, hurling itself forward, pushing everything that hinders out of the way...a river both flowing from and to my Love, our God.

There's a statue on the Lakeshore that i've grown to really appreciate. It seems to be a statue of shards and up through the middle of the shards shoots a fountain of water (do you know the one I'm thinking of?). I feel like that. Like something strong has happened to me, through me, inside of me and it has broken through the glass that usually covers over the depths of ronelle. I'm left exposed and alive, set free to BE - passionately.

I am very grateful.

the Ache of my ache...

2006-09-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

i understand God best as my Lover (though He is so much more: Father, Friend, Lord, Brother etc). Today i realized why that is...it's the ache of love that i feel when i am closest to Him. the ache that won't go away until i am finally in His arms and we are free to love one another. the ache that pulls me Home by my heartstrings.

oh Ache of my ache
oh Ache of my ache
oh Ache of my ache
won't You come for me
please

visualizing the Truth...

2006-09-23T10:47:00.000-04:00

I was anxious on Wednesday. Terribly anxious. Thinking about a million little pieces of my life and what people need and trying to pray for them but getting all caught up in my seeming inability to let the needs go. So finally i sat down and asked God to unpry my hands...I put on 'Secret Pint' by Sigur Ros (amazing) and asked for help to calm down and be free. I was given an image - i'm not sure how much of it was directly from my Father but the image is true and helpful, so even if it was self-contrived, it was blessed by His presence and Spirit...

I am flying quickly over blue water (my favourite visualization!) around and around in a large circle. I am circling something...it is like a round mountain in the middle of the ocean; a mountainous waterfall! There is not one part of the thing that does not have water pouring from it. The water comes from the very centre of the mountain, it pours out evenly at each angle. I fly, I flip, I dance through the air alone. I can feel my worries still dangling from me but I am free. Then He comes, a man who begins to fly with me. He takes my hands and twirls me around, throws me higher into the air, draws me close to Himself. It is Christ...we fly around in a way that I could not on my own, I am freer than before. I know that I am loved deeply and dearly. Jesus flies with me to right above the centre of the mountain, and then He takes me down to where the Fountain is...the Spring from where all this Living Water is coming! We are underwater and I am being stripped of all my worries, all that hinders is being thrown off and torn away. He is helping me get out of the anxiety i wear. And then the fire comes, amidst the water! Bubbles of fire! I am purified, burnt and healed at the same time! With one mighty jump we are up and out and high in the air again! And we begin to dance and fly like there is no tomorrow! Only today only now only us! I am free and alive and unhindered. He is close and in love and caring for me. We are having fun.

Then Jesus leaves me to fly alone like this. But I am not alone circling the Father's love; no never. I am His workmanship and I carry His love with me as His love carries me. Together I am lost in the whisper of His Word. Oddly enough He didn't 'say' a thing to me.

I open my eyes. My break is over. All I see is puddles that I will step in and soak my boots. But I know what's really going on...I know it.

'For My people have committed two evils:

They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,

to hew for themselves cisterns,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.'

Jeremiah 2.13

nice and sports

2006-09-21T00:51:00.000-04:00

it's funny, the word 'nice.' to me it is the equivalent of processed cheese: something reminiscent of what it really is but made more convenient and less likely to go bad. it's half-cheese, almost-cheese, was-cheese-at-one-point. ineffectual, good filler, palatable because it almost doesn't taste like anything at all.

sports: i used to think they were just ridiculous. i tried very hard to respect people's love of them, but just didn't get it. recently i've been admiring the way sports bring people together and make them smile. it's noble, the fight for a common cause. i like how happy sports make some people, i like that people rally together to play or to cheer. definitely not ridiculous.

hope is where you are, my love; and that's not very far, my love. God to us, us to God.

this has been a random blogging.

a little tale...

2006-09-19T21:36:00.000-04:00

all day long thoughts rush through my head...fresh thoughts to me, fun thoughts, good thoughts (i think). 'i should blog these!' i wish. once i get home the thoughts are stale and tired and over. i hope a little of their zest remains and maybe i just can't taste it anymore. here's hoping:

sometimes i like to narrate my life as i experience it. i walk around doing normal things and thinking thoughts like...

quickly the girl prepares for ballet class. 'i have to pee,' she feels. she does and then dresses in her outfit: leotard, dancing shorts - 'am i really that fat?'- shirt, pants, sweatshirt, shoes, purse, go. 'i'll have to go again before i dance.' out front door, pay for tokens then down the stairs to wait for train. get on train, catch glimpse of self reflected - 'am i really that thin?' - read book...she gets lost, deep and far in the story playing out in black ink on white page. get off this train and onto that. one stop - 'not enough!' - exit train, face buried in book. step step step, look up as if coming up from the depths for to gasp air. a gentleman is watching the girl walk and read and walk...his grin is large. he wants to laugh. she takes the stairs, face still in book; another onlooker smiles as she checks her balance. done the page, she puts her book away. a few more blocks until she gets to the dance studio - the place from which 'they' stole her bike. 'perhaps they will have returned it!' but it is not there. up the stairs she climbs to class, 'oh class dear class of mine. gosh,' she has to pee again.

do you ever do this?
night, loved one.

who is sufficient?

2006-09-18T21:18:00.000-04:00

' But thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? ' 2 Corinthians 2.14-16

i awoke to an email from another friend i'd hurt. upon arriving at work i found that i had let someone down, had failed to do my job in one regard. memories of all my shortcomings came flooding to my mind and oozed their way into my heart. i ached with a searing hatred for myself...i hadn't felt such hatred in a long time.

God has been healing me from self-hatred for a few years; His work is so beautiful to me, too beautiful for words or even movement to express. i need Him so much, and He has given me more than i could ever ask for. He knows me, there is no doubt of that.

today when the hatred came, i didn't know what to do with my old companion. i just let him say what he wanted to, and i believed every word of it. until...until i grew even outwardly sad and mopey and began to think, 'kay, this might just teach me something.' i asked myself why i usually smile. 'my King,' was the answer. so i asked myself why i usually smile when i'm feeling good and not when i'm feeling gloomy. 'pride' was my answer. i stopped moving: P-R-I-D-E. when no one is angry with me, when i have done my job well, when i have run and prayed, loved my friends and cleaned the house i feel good about myself: i have done well. when i have failed at any of these things or anything else, i realize that i am NOT PERFECT. kay, but really...news flash to self: RONELLE IS NEVER PERFECT! all is grace. all joy is grace. all good is grace.

all that i ever do that is not bad i owe to Christ who makes me whole and who stirs my soul in His direction - the good. and when does He stop this work? NEVER EVER EVER NEVER NO! so when am i being used for good - when i am doing well or when i fall short as hell? ALL THE TIME. because of Christ's work in me, His life in me, i have reason to smile ALL THE TIME. joy is mine all the time. thank You, Jesus who never gives up on the silliest of sillies.

'such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God...' 2 Cor 3.4

hehehe, i'm not enough! hallelujah, He is more than enough!

discombobulation and hoppiness...

2006-09-16T02:38:00.000-04:00

there are few things that delight me more than driving home - westward on the Gardener Expressway - late at night. i see the buildings tall and aglow in green light, i feel the warm golden hummm of the streetlights, i smell the scent of a dream come true: i live in downtown Toronto. why i want to live here i don't know at all...i just know that i ought to and am meant to and because of God's kindness i do.

this week has not been easy. i have been told to my face that i am flaky, received word that someone i love thinks i don't love them, broke out in zits, had an acquaintance say that i don't trust God - that i'm full of fear and hypocrisy (which to a degree and in a direction is true), because of poor budgeting i ran out of money, and to top all that off my bike was stolen.

this week has been glorious! i was greeted by the second-floor staff at work by a unanimous: 'Giggles! it's you!', laughed with a friend, caught up with another friend, made some really yummy stew, was drawn into deep prayer by God's Spirit, became fully entrenched (in a healthy way) in my book, heard some fantastic music (Colin Munroe rocks!) and was given a glimpse into some of what God wants to teach me in the next few months.

today, Friday of this very full week, i am very tired. i feel full and empty all at once. i think of this summer and how my brain seems to have been on strike on many occassions and realize with a smile that, yes, i AM a flake. and sometimes and somepeople i don't love well enough - i know, i try, God is improving me slowly. found a cheque i had forgotten to cash, am learning to give my fears to my Father, like walking more than biking anyways, and hey -ZITS HAPPEN!

you know, i think all of these freaky happenings are part of the dreams coming true. somehow my zits make the lights warmer on the buildings, my shortcomings make it more obvious to me that the good things of life are pure gift. haha...and i have to laugh because each and every good is also pure suprise in this wonky world we call our home away from Home.

sweetness in the sky...

2006-09-09T10:22:00.000-04:00

this is a sugar glider. she is a miracle of God. she jumps off a branch and flies through the air to another one. she can do this because she has very flappy arms that serve as the perfect little set of gliding utensils. i am sure she smiles often and maybe even giggles. i am grateful for her. :) very! but i've never met her...alas. *sigh* life is full of sad things like this.

if i were Catholic i would think it an omen or at least a good sign that three dandelion-wishes flew right into me on Friday. i would also add to that the joy of seeing over twenty butterflies on my run yesturday (17k, can you believe it? can i?). i am not Catholic though sometimes i seem it. something i really love about the way Catholics understand God is that they are unafraid of the mystical...at least braver and more willing to acknowledge otherly things than most Protestants. that's why you rarely hear of a Baptist or Pentecostal sighting of Mary Magdelene, or Anglican priests carrying around bits of wood believed to be part of the True Cross of Christ. i am growing to believe that not all of these sort of things are hogwash. symbols can be helpful. plus i think that God is willing to involve and reveal Himself in ways that we connect with. maybe they are silly, but who has ever fully understood the foolishness of God? and still His foolishness is beyond our wisdom.

no i'm not going to make a pilgrimage to view the next weeping statue, but i am going to think it's cool that someone out there actually believes that water blessed by a priest has power in it. why wouldn't it?! God chose to use the waters at Bethesda to heal people by sending a ministering angel to add the power of God to it (John 5). Jesus called His disciples to be ministers like that angel, and gave them 'authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness' (Matthew 10). we who follow Christ are now called Priests of God and there has always been power from God in the blessing of a priest (1 Peter 2.9). after all, that's why priests exist...they bridge the gap between God and man. at this point in history the ultimate priest has permanently bridged that great gap for us: Christ of Nazareth, on the cross, died, was buried and in three days rose again and was taken up into glory to be with His Father. this is the Protestant's and the Catholic's common ground. this is the ground that matters. it is the rock we stand on together. though we may see the workings out of our faith differently, the vital thing is that we acknowledge Jesus as the one and only Lord and proclaim His victory over sin and death. He is of the Trinity, the Three in One, ever always in communion, Father with Son with Holy Spirit.

holy water is hard to believe. in fact it's improbable. perhaps a bit ridiculous and over-the-top. but then again, may i ask your opinion of a sugar glider?

i love you.

ps. i am pretty certain that God was actually speaking to me through the wishes and the butterflies yesturday. i had done something that hurt Him and was feeling very sad about it. i was trying to forgive myself and had asked for His forgiveness (which of course was given immediately and without question - glory be to His Grace!) but i just couldn't kick the feeling: would He still like me? i also had a nagging sense that a friend who my sin involved would never have me until i had mastered the problem. then i saw the butterflies...over and over again butterflies. what my mom always said about the little flitters flew through my mind again and again: "butterflies are a sign of love, darling; one landed on my belly while you were still forming." love and love and love. and i knew that He still loved me and that my friend would still love me even though i am not perfect. He makes wishes come to us in His perfect timing and we don't need to do anything but accept them with open hands and be grateful.

happy wedding Rachel and Gabriel!

2006-09-05T05:51:00.000-04:00

On Saturday September 2nd Rachel and Gabriel officially began their life together. It was a blessing to witness their commitments to love and care for one another. They have been so patient for God's will in their lives and now so much that they've been waiting for has arrived. Praise the King for this good thing!

My friend Jenn-ifer came to the wedding with me (she's here for a few more weeks and then she's off to the UK). I was very grateful for her company: thanks, Jenn. We went dancing afterward until 1.30am! Crazy fun.

Matthew, my old dear friend, walked back into my life for a few brief moments of glory on Monday. He's been gone for roughly six years and i don't know how it happened but he and i got in contact and went out for dinner. i miss him! i remember him. being with him made me think not only of my past but of my present...updating him as to where i've been and what i've done with the past six years was a big something for me. i am so content with my life, not in a complacent way, i just feel that i am right where God wants me for whatever reason. i'm learning more and more to trust Him with my days and directions. somehow when i convey this to other people i loose some of my gusto re: trust, waiting, and joy in the immediate. i start to judge myself. i wonder: they've accomplished so much, what have i done? i'm practically in the same place i was six years ago.

oh but i'm not. God has moved me. i am more His, more me, more alive and free. i'm growing into His thing. and really that's all that matters. i'm learning to love, i'm loving...that's all that matters. i trust. i trust. i trust.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today,

that i have set before you life and death,

the blessing and the curse.

So choose life in order that you may live,

you and your descendants,

by loving the Lord your God,

by obeying His voice,

and by holding fast to Him;

for this is your life and the length of your days.

Deuteronomy 30.19-20

days of dreams and laughter...

2006-09-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

"Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you."
Psalm 116.7

when i was little my mom used to read to me from a book entitled 'Days of Dreams and Laughter.' i can't think of a better way to sum up what this summer has been to me...there have been so many days of dreams and laughter. i feel like a child.

in reality i feel like a child and an expectant mother all at once. the gardening crew i worked with this summer was nothing short of magical, beautiful and hilarious beyond words. we loved each other through the good, the bad and the ugly; then we'd laugh about it to ensure that we were being really honest [truly, at the bottom of every tragedy there seems to be some ironic little something to laugh at. i believe it's a grace that there is.]. and so i found myself utterly in love with these girls, they became better than silence to me. Friday was my first day without them and i felt like crying, i missed them so badly...but i felt something else as well. there was a sensation in the deep part of me, a feeling that something had been growing without my noticing this summer and now it's about to be born or to blossom. all this time i've been thinking that i half ignored my relationship with God (i've really struggled to read the Bible during the last few months) and yet He is still doing major work in and through me. Jesus, you are the most faithful of loves!

this summer was a coming-alive time for me. i am more myself than ever before, more free, more less. By divine providence i got to record a CD! i learned to flirt and then that it's really really not my thing. i developed new friendships and killer calouses on my guitar-playing fingers. i became a good runner. i hung out with a lot of old friends and look forward to seeing those i haven't yet gotten together with.

i can tell that something will be birthed this fall. whatever it is, it's in the final stages of pre-development...almost ready to enter the world. and i'm hungry for the Word, so hungry. after all, i am eating for two. ;)

Maxine Bertha Emerick

2006-08-31T00:50:00.000-04:00

Long love, lying love

now you are my dying love

between us both adoration and plause

grace and caring without pause

But your care was the bigger, Love

you grew me from a baby dove

taught me to sing and fly and chirp

changed my diaper, helped me burp

And now you're lying silently

with needy eyes looking up at me

i help you eat between your sleep

i'm the one tip-toing as to not make a peep

i can see that this beautiful, aged dove

has completed her lessons on flying above

as you wait for the send off know that i'm near

to watch you smile after shedding a tear

You have loved me before i knew what love was

and i can never forget your existance because

everything that i do you taught me to

and all that i am is an echo of you

My grandmother passed away exactly a year from yesturday. i just want to honour her by remembering her to you. this is the poem i wrote for her during her last few days. I am so sure that she is having the greatest time ever dancing and singing in heaven with the Trinity!

While with me here my grandmother was the silliest, most caring, gentle, animal-loving person ever. She and i would laugh and laugh and laugh in the back seat of the van while my parents drove us around like two little girls. She always had an ear to listen and really hear, and she would pray for you until something happened. I loved her most for her spirit...she was broken so many times but always let God put her back together as He saw fit. When she smiled the world would burst into song.

I am so grateful for my grandmother. I miss her but am so glad that she finally knows the extent of how wanted, loved and cherished she is.

feel it coming...

2006-08-28T21:23:00.000-04:00

the fall? i can smell it and see it and feel it in the air. the light is changing too, it's becoming darker earlier in the day. i am discovering new running spots because the Lakeshore is becoming less and less appealing as the weather 'declines.' for me, though, it's not a decline as much as a glorious transformation from gulping in sweaty mug-air to breathing in silky, amber-laced oxygen. i really feel that the air glows goldenly in autumn.

so much to say, so many stories today...i suppose i should report on our two days in the recording studio this weekend. they were SCRUMTRILLESCENT, in the words of my hero M. Ferrell. we had so much fun. there was laughing and smiling and singing and musicing and recording, and all of it was held together by the oh-so-near peace of Christ. God really made the experience lovely for us by just being there. two highlights: 1) something about the studio caused Jonathan and me to pee about once an hour (no exaggeration! we think perhaps it was nerves?? or an overawareness of discomfort of any kind? or maybe something to do with not sweating as much as we normally do) and 2) there was one lonely fly who landed on each of the musicians at very crucial moments during recording. ONE fly took on the whole room and therefore the whole project! soooooo funny.

Thank you forever to Myke, Elliot, Brian, Garrett, Chuck, Jenn and Jonathan for your involvement. Thank you all for your prayers and excitement...they have been my drive. This project is yours too.

stories from today: if ever you want to attract people of any kind - be it old men, women, children, attractive guys, nuns - just put on an uncomfortable safety vest and a yellow hard-hat that makes your head look at least 3 inches taller than it is. it always does the trick for us at City Hall. we get the hoots and hollers but we also get the happy hellos from kindly gentlemen and ladies who delight to tell us of their gardens. today i met three people, Edward, Trudi and Alex.

Edward is jolly and thin and tall and about seventy something. he likes to talk about animals in his yard, at least he did today.

Trudi beams 'welcome home' through her tiny, also seventy-year-old frame. her nose is perfect: bulbous and grandmotherish. she has a garden.

Alex is fun and twelve. she enjoys riding her bike and talking to strange girls dressed in construction garb.

i had a chat with these three once and then walked by Alex again later. she was with two boys who asked about me...'who is that, Alex?'
'oh she's a construction worker,' said the girl.
'wow, she must be really good at digging holes!' said a boy.
'i'd like that job, you get to do all sorts of different things,' said another boy.

earlier i ran into a man who works inside City Hall. he told me the most unbelieveable and yet true story of how he shared dinner with two friends and two ghosts one day. incredible.

i was having one of those brave-enough-to-look-random-people-in-the-eyes-and-smile-largely kindof days...so i did. a few smiled back. that always makes my life.

all of this means something to me. i get it a little more now: the chance to love is everywhere - so do it. you understand this much more readily than i.

i am learning to let myself learn to love. i am letting myself learn to share. i am enjoying it. i am enjoying you. i miss you.

laf lof lif - a little motto. you have to say it to get it, i think...it's just better than spelling them the everyone-does-it way. more fun i think.

closing ponderance: i am taking ballet classes with my friend Galen in the fall. that means i have to wear a 'leotard' which looks like a cotton, one-piece bathing suit. i am nervous for that but...

oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

how unsearchable are His judgements and unfathomable His ways

for who has known the mind of the Lord

or who became His counsellor?

or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again?

for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

to Him be the glory forever.

amen.

romans 11.33-36

wrinkles in my soup...

2006-08-25T00:02:00.000-04:00

i am getting wrinkles. it's actually happening. that makes me laugh. i'm totally going to be one of those old ladies with wrinkles and laugh lines all over my face. i don't mind, though - my grandmother was one of those old ladies, and i really would consider it an honour to be anything the same as her.

my grandmother hated her wrinkles. *laf* i loved them. it's probably different when they're yours.

this has been a great week of intense preparation. we're recording the cd this weekend and i'm so excited to get into the studio. i've never had that experience before...i don't deserve it, but i'll take it for sure! my very dream is that everything that goes on would somehow - some magical how - make God very happy. maybe even make Him laugh big belly laughs. that would be awesome.

blessings and blessings and belly laughs to you

the beat of a drum...

2006-08-23T00:14:00.000-04:00

it's funny what birds consider to be emergencies...like my running by. scamper scamper scamper, 'AHHHHH, head for the hills, trouble is coming!' i wonder if they're always stressed out by these common occurances. maybe their days consist of way too many life-and-death senarios.

yesturday at work i felt glum. probably left-over feelings from my strange weekend. so i was picking up branches that my manager was trimming from our trees when i heard a beating...the beating of an real animal-hide-covered djembe. upon looking over the fence i saw a small man with barely any hair left and tape-wrapped fingers banging on the magical instrument. my heart stopped, did a little skip and then started again, only this time it began to beat in rhythm with the drum. suddenly my game of pick-up-sticks was transformed into an adventure. i was a woman of the wilderness, clearing the woods, making a space in which to start my new life. i was encouraged and the rest of the day flew by.

*it's wonderful how one person's action can change the course of another person's day or even life in the long run.*

thank you, random drumming man.

i was thinking about my mom today, how perfect she is for me as a mother. i was laughing as her quirks popped into my head. oh how i love this woman who raised me, who put up with me and who still loves me after all that. i will write more about her later.

yesturday my dad stopped by work just to give me a hug. i liked it. :) he's my very favourite out of all the ice-cream flavours.

goodnight dear friend, it's far too late for me to be conscious.

15k, a crash and some loneliness...

2006-08-19T20:18:00.000-04:00

'You light my lamp; the Lord my God illumintes my darkness,
for by You i can run upon a troop;
and by my God i can leap over a wall.'
Psalm 18.28-29

on thursday i ran 15k for the first time: 1.5 hours. it began with my not wanting to run at all, led to my doing some hill training and then ending in my running both my old 5k and my new 7k routes. i just felt like running, i wasn't really tired once i hit my stride. i learned two things: 1) doing things when you don't want to do them can really pay off, 2) God's really trained my body this summer to be a good runner! i still don't have a competetive spirit, though, which will make maranthons or triathalons a challenge. but a lot of people start out by 'just wanting to finish' a marathon. and then they become marathon freaks.

i can only hope. *laf*

friday night i went to support my friend as she got her belly button pierced! i'm so proud of you, Colleen! it looks awesome, and yes it's in the right place. then i went shopping for a wedding shower gift for my friend Rachel and her fiance Gabriel (amazing name, amazing man). i also found new shoes (so cute) and ending the evening in a private film viewing. usually i love this sort of thing; the solitude, oh the glorious solitude. last night, though, i found myself missing people. i wasn't at all happy to be alone, i wanted to have a close friend to laugh with and just breathe with. i pushed through the feeling, though, knowing that, for one, no one would be available on a friday night at the last minute, and two, i needed some time alone. i still felt lonely by the end of the evening, but the movie was good and i got my shopping done. i'm trying to figure out if this is a sign that something in me has changed, that i have grown to be used to people always being around, or that i was just feeling lonely last night.

on the way home i got into my first car accident. as far as i remember it i was turning left off of Queen onto Lansdowne and another car was turning right. as the light turned red the other car slowed, i thought to let me turn safely and get out of the way of traffic, but as i turned left the car turning right smashed into the rear right side of my car. kapow. it was a gentle old man who felt the need to assure me that it was totally my fault but that he was okay. it was really surreal because it was such a gentle crash. it seemed that he almost intentionally drove into my car. his car was fine, thank You Lord, but mine has a big shameful dent on the back of it. we'll see what comes of my trying to fix it or driving around with it (as a lot of people do).

a mammoth victory, an unusual feeling, an embarassing event...this morning they leave me in a gloomy mood. i am determined, though, to climb out of it via the Spirit of God acting in me through Scripture, yoga and some good old music practicing. please pray with me that He lifts my spirit.

'but as for me i will watch expectantly for the Lord;
i will wait for the God of my salvation.
my God will hear me.
do not rejoice over me, o my enemy.
though i fall i will rise
though i dwell in darkness the Lord will be my light.'
Micah 7.7-8
amen

isn't it romantic...

2006-08-09T23:52:00.000-04:00

you'd think being single that my life would lack romance. To the contrary, my friend, my life is brimming with it!:

ever walked through a pretty grocery store alone at night? there is this feeling of stillness, settledness and provision that takes my breath away. that's part of the reason that it used to be my number one Friday night activity!

my drive home from work at night is spectacular. if i come home late the lights of the City twinkle and glow as the moon soars into the dark expanse of the sky. tonight there was a gigantic harvest moon that nearly stopped my heart with its reflected glory.

need i mention the green of grass set against brown of dirt and blue of sky? w.o.w.

birds.

trees.

people
forests
art
buildings
sailboats!
air
music
water
the lakeshore
walking
feet...

and a million other little things that capture my attention and remind me that the world is God's love poured out. He's romancing us, calling us back to Himself, reminding us of what's really going on...

my favourite thing about the book 'Til We Have Faces' by C.S. Lewis is Psyche's ache for the mountain, her true home although she's never really been there. it tells my spirit that the ache in me is not in vain: it's guiding me home. My longing is for something real.

" I have always - at least, ever since I can remember - had a kind of longing for death...It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine...where you couldn't see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come!' Part One, Chapter Seven Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

flirting...

2006-08-08T22:53:00.000-04:00

ever since acquiring my little tattoo i've felt a certain boldness regarding the approach of males. i don't know what it is about having ink scratched into your skin that makes you relax a bit and reach out, but i know whatever it is, it works. at least it begins to start a work of bravado...but after the initial tattoo-jolt the rest is left up to my brain, spirit and body to accomplish.

flirting: a way in this world. i didn't know! the way i grew up it was the biggest deal in the world if a boy flirted with you...it was like, 'wow, he must really like me.' i have learned over this summer that sometimes men just flirt for fun. my initial reaction to this revelation was that it was cruel. then i learned something else: flirting is fun. *hehe*

to a certain extent, where what you are doing is appreciating someone else (often jokingly) without commitment it's fun and fine in my opinion. the kind of flirting that leads on and then drops off is mean, i feel. so is the kind with a selfish or evil goal in mind. but gently poking at someone's quirks and foibles, with their glad approval, can be a very freeing experience. in fact it can be a really good experience for the part of both the flirter and the flirtee. in many ways the flirting of random men this summer has made me aware that they think i'm actually pretty, that i'm not as contained in the little box of 'what i'm used to' as i think i am, and that anything can happen at any time.

i look forward to meeting new people now. each new acquaintance is a chance to appreciate and to be appreciated.

truth: i am absolutely no good at flirting anywhere but in my head
*laugh* i'm learning to do so with care...but not too much care ;)

open hands...

2006-08-07T11:05:00.000-04:00

Sometimes my heart kicks hard against Your will

and my feet run quick the other way

still at times i think You don't know my pain

i'd rather do it myself than trust Your way again but...

all things considered You're good

all things considered i'm Yours

all of the hidden dreams in me

and all the things that are afraid in me

i let them go, i let them out, i set them free

because it's in my hands that they're hiding and...

all things considered You're good

all things considered i'm Yours

*i am fully aware and content that i am Yours to do whatever You want with*

In recent days I've been aching to move and mold my life. I see myself as a lump of clay that's being brought to the right consistency so that when the time is right the Potter can make what He wants of me. So here I sit, full of both the potential to be a pitcher for water or a spitoon, waiting for God to make it so. And I wait with hope as He dreams.

I've said for the past few years that if I were to die TODAY I would know that my purpose had been accomplished. Really, my life is a dream come true! Every time the sun rises or I come home to my cute apartment or work up to my elbows in soil at work I remember how dreamy my everyday life is. It seems every new day another wish is granted. But seemingly ungranted remain my two absolute priorities: one) to be so near to God and love Him the way He wants to be loved by me by my becoming fully myself, and two) helping others to be near to God and to love Him the way He wants to be loved by them by them becoming fully themselves. I LONG to do those things. Ponderently I admit that the Holy Spirit is already accomplishing these things in a through me, I can even see it sometimes...but at times I just want to know what logistical steps I should take to make these things more the practicalities of my day. Maybe that's just it...maybe they will always be things I don't do intentionally but that are done through me by He who accomplishes.

For today, though, I have learned a small collection of things about myself:

1) i want to receive with open hands that which God wants to put in them - this would be instead of grabbing for things or waiting to catch something that just falls out of the pockets of the Almighty

2) i am pretty darn sure that i should switch universities so that i don't have to pay a fee per course that makes my stomach twitch ($999 per course = gross)

3) one day i would like to own a little sailboat that i could sail around in

I'll trust for now.

Congratulations Jenn-ifer!

2006-08-07T09:51:00.000-04:00

my dear friend Jenn just told me she's moving to the UK to help people. She recently graduated Laurentian University with a BA in Social Work and now she's going to use her knowledge and love to work with people in England. I couldn't be prouder of her for trusting God to take her to the right place! He will, he will.

This past weekend we made our yearly trek to Wasaga Beach where we walked and ate and swam and got burned. Braver than ever, this time we were clad in bikinis. It felt so great to have the sun, wind and water right against my belly! Seriously, a very freeing experience. As was tumbling, handstanding, floating and laughing our heads off in the deep waters of Wasaga! An attractive lifeguard approached us on his seadoo, great big smile on face, to make sure we were ok and to warn us not to go any farther out.

As we did last year, we swam out and kissed a buoy (sounds funnier when you say it rather than read it: 'Ronelle kissed a buoy.' 'FINALLY!' exclaim the masses!). That's pretty much all I have to say about that...other than that I saw a young, beautiful Indian woman swim out and do the same. It made me laugh. I think her reasons were different...she was just glad to finally make it to her goal.

Since this would be the last time we'd be seeing one another in a long while we decided to make a weekend of it. Jenn came to Toronto with me, we got all gussied up and went out to a posh white-couch-and-candle bar where we ordered martinis at $13 a glass! I am fairly convinced that one could peel the paint off of a lighthouse with that stuff. Pleh. As we sipped our drinks and gushed over the AMAZING washrooms we were approached by a well-dressed man who wanted to take us dancing with his friends. In the end we went it alone, heading to the club district - a place I only ever walk through to get home from the Paramount - to dance the night away. Finding endless lines and hefty cover charges we ended up standing confusedly on the corner of Queen and Peter. A man named Samuel who was confused about my butt - black bum, white girl? - introduced himself and asked if he could help us find a good club. Eventually we found one and danced the night away.

3am - after walking all the way up my street barefoot...water, bed, sleep.

Sunday we walked around Harbourfront enjoying the music and nursing our burns. I rescued a canoe paddle from a life of endless drifting around Lake Ontario...I rowed us around the boardwalk for a while, but then we decided to get rid of the paddle and just let the current take us.

Church was so good, at least for me. More about that later.

Thanks for taking a literary tour of my last magical weekend for a long time with Jenn-ifer. She will be off at the end of the month. The first photo is of the beginning of our beach day, and this one below is after sun, sand and laughter. Go easy on us, we were tired...

ba doop ba doo

2006-08-03T23:14:00.000-04:00

I haven't had a lot of time to think, lately. Been rushing around trying to keep up with my life, speeding like a train. If I were to take a minute to consider, though, I think I'd ponder how much I'm missing by trying not to miss anything. I worry sometimes that I've missed an opportunity. I wonder if I had gone to that show would I have been asked to play somewhere, or if I had spoken to that person longer would I have a new friend? Wonder often, worry infrequently... that's the way it usually works for me. Worry never gets me anywhere, wonder on the other hand makes me a little bit braver the next time.

All I know is that today I'm glad it rained, that I got to see Lindsay and that He kept me.
I like kiwi birds so much.

Something more...

2006-07-08T01:21:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been thinking about romance again...the human kind. Honestly I've been wondering if it'll ever happen to me, kindof feeling sorry for myself all that silly nonesense that is actually not silly nonesense at all because it matters to us as humans; it's simply a built-in desire. You know I've learned so much over the years about how singleness is a treasure, Jesus is my lover, how God has CHOSEN this for me right now, and how He can do whatever He wants with me. I've grown very aware and content in these truths, they've helped me to live romantically now instead of waiting for someone to bring romance to me. The King is a wooer, and His love is better than life absolutely!

Tonight I realized something new to me...not new as in I haven't thought it or heard it before, but new in the way that I finally accept it to be a truth as well. What I now know in my heart is that there is so much other than romantic love to live for and to focus on and to want. This world is full of needs and pain and emptiness and misdirection...why not think about that for a while? Why not get involved in what Jesus is doing and what He was doing instead of just distracting myself? Why not use the gift of my life to better someone else's? The answer to all these questions for me has been 'because I don't want to miss out on my romance.' Right now I can't think of a better romance than being swept up into the strikingly real will of God and carried away with my King, Master and Saviour by my side.

Really, this is life. He is life. And He is romance beyond my furthest imaginings. I want to be willing to follow Him to the ends of the earth, even if my (possible) future earthly-husband is on the other side of the planet. No more holding back just in case the man of my dreams comes along. If he's out there I'm sure he'll bump into me at the right time. For now I'm longing to live even deeper in God's dream...oh I pray that I won't ever wake up from it.

2006-06-08T23:35:00.000-04:00

expensive steps...

2005-11-08T22:17:00.000-05:00

I know I go on and on about this...but I was walking to school tonight and as I stepped my mind clung to the truth that with each step I was spending a bit of my life. And that sent my mind into a spiral of applications: With each word, I am spending my life; with each feeling, mood and thought I am spending my life; with each accusation or prideful glance I am spending my life; with each act of service I am spending my life; with each bite of food I am spending my life; with each friend ignored I am spending my life; with each love embraced I am spending my life.

This leads me to ask myself: HOW am I spending my life?

On the way home

2005-10-02T22:16:00.000-04:00

Well I was homing from Church tonight, walking for a bit, looking up at big buildings. Some memorable sights were an oriental couple in their forties, the man wearing a '#1 DAD!' shirt, a stubborn bulldog who actually put his two legs out infront of himself and braced against the pull of his owner for no apparent reason, a lovely homeless lady named Florence and another mysterious drumming circle that I never could quite see (I secretly hold to the idea that God just gets a bunch of angels together to drum me along in life sometimes when I'm feeling droopy).

The impulse to blog came early in my trek: I was looking up at tall buildings and asking God to help me lose sight of myself altogether again. And then I said to Him, 'but I know those buildings aren't You, they just remind me of You.' And THAT made me recall a conversation with my friend Becca to whom I was saying that nature teaches me about God. This week I was rereading 'The Four Loves' by CS Lewis for the kajilienth time (the author love of my life!) and he was talking about how 'nature lovers' often build doctrines based on botany and ecology and so forth...he was warning against that, reminding that nature is just a pale reflection, and a rippled one at that, of God's splendour. And I was like, 'YEAH.'

So I guess that what nature does is remind me of God...it draws my attention to the way He works, to how strong and in control He is, to His beauty. And not just natural things obviously, because buildings draw my eyes and heart upwards as well. I guess it's just life...yes, sometimes every single day is just a big 'hello, I'm here and my eyes are on you,' from our Maker. Everything is a pointer a reminder that He's there. Even funny oriental couples, stubborn dogs, random people we meet and angelic drumming circles.

It all points to He who alone is the POINT of it all!

He carried it...

2005-09-29T22:15:00.000-04:00

I remember pushing stray shopping carts back to the grocery store when I was a teenager. Here and there I would discover them and be moved to return them to their rightful place. My memory was jogged today by the icky experience I had of entering a smelly, empty washroom, using it and then leaving...but not before another lady walked through the door and was taken aback by the smell. I felt so ashamed, so embarrassed...I wanted so much to look her straight in the eyes and say 'It wasn't me!!!' This reminded me of shopping carts because I always felt that way as I was pushing one back to its home: 'I wasn't the one who did this, who disobeyed, who put this where it doesn't belong!' People would look at me and even if they weren't accusing me of anything I still felt very ashamed and wanted so much to tell them that it wasn't my shame I was carrying.

" But HE was pierced for OUR transgressions, HE was crushed for OUR iniquities; the punishment that brought US peace was upon HIM, and by HIS wounds WE are healed." Isaiah 53.5 NIV

" Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12.2 NIV
Jesus didn't say the sort of things I wanted to. He didn't cry out to His accusers, 'This is not MY fault! I wasn't the one who did this!' He just took it. Even while they beat Him harshly and nailed Him to a cross where He knew He would suffer not only pain but a deep agony of shame that wasn't His own. He carried it. Our shame on His back...and He just let whoever was watching believe what they would. What mattered to Him was what was being accomplished.

I could bare a little more shame for others...especially since mine is off of my hands.

leaf blowing

2005-09-22T22:14:00.000-04:00

Hush
dry leaves echo their Master's whisper:
'Settle down, it's time to sleep.'
Summer minuet
turns to autumn adage

This is the first day of autumn, my favourite season of them all! It's also my roommate's birthday: YEAY JEN! Today was the first time this year that I had to blow leaves off of the pathway at work. Two years ago I did this same job and it seems that I thought the same thoughts that today I did think. *laugh* So I've got this crazy-heavy really noisy machine strapped to my back; it whirrs and vroooooooooooooooooms as strong air shoots out a cylindrical tube that I hold in my right hand. The leaves lie hither and thither on the ground infront of me and it's my job to get them from where they are to over there on that spot on the grass. Sometimes I try to blow them against the wind...and they will NOT go. I blow them and WHOOSH they are up in the air, circling over my head, then all around me and then right back down to the ground where they first whooshed from.

Blowing leaves against the wind has always and still today reminded me of the way I sometimes try to go against the will of the Lord. 'But I want things to go THIS way,' I say with all my might as I try to blow my sails in the opposite direction of His Wind. I don't get anywhere other than frustrated and maybe moving a bit more slowly in the Good Direction, daudling in the way I should go.

But OH the magic that happens when I turn around and blow along with the wind! The leaves sweep gently and quickly across and just above the ground until they are exactly where they were meant to be. And I relax because I don't have to fight anymore. I can just join in on what God is already doing and rest in the Truth that He will get us all to the right place on time.

oh God my heart is fixed!

2005-09-19T22:14:00.000-04:00

On my bike ride home tonight I took Bloor St...something about the buildings called me out of the depths of my soul and into the heights of God's vibrancy! I've always come to life when looking up at things. Oh especially up tall trees!

CS Lewis once wrote: 'The real test of being in the presence of God is either that you forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself all together.'

Tonight I looked up, just straight up into His grandness and lost myself. THANK GOODNESS because I was pretty much drowing in myself until then. It's wonderful how God can fix us on Him through everyday things. Absolutely WONDERFUL!!

trapped

2005-09-19T22:12:00.000-04:00

The theme that seems to run through many of my friends' lives and my own is a feeling of being 'trapped.' I was speaking to one of my dear friends yesturday who was telling me about the decisions she is having to make now for the next year of her life. She is both thrilled to be moving forward and anxious to stay back. It's obvious to me that she is ready to move forward, and she knows it as well, but she is scared.

Another friend of mine constantly speaks of having no place, having no passions. She wants to be herself but doesn't know who she really is. She needs to take a risk and try something new. So do I. We also need to slow down and listen to our hearts; what DO I WANT to do? What stirs my soul? Gets me excited?

How can we not be frightened? One of my favourite songs has the chorus, 'Why does the past always seem safer? Maybe because at least we know we made it. And why do we worry about the future when everyday will come just the way the Lord ordained it.' We all long for comfort, to belong in a place, to stay...to be at home. But I think there comes a time when we are called to make our own homes. God calls us to step out into His place for us and to trust that He will give us the ability to be the people He has made us to be.

As children we acted like children, as adults we must leave those ways behind us and be adults. Why? Because that's part of who we've been made to be! "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things' (1 Cor 13.11). Good grief there are so many 'grown up' things that I simply do not want to do and really am horrible at. Those are the things God wants me to do, because He's made me ready to do them. All I need to do is step out in trust and let myself look and feel ridiculous for a while. Because really, I'm not going to get any better at them by sitting around busying myself with the things I'm already good at. It's time for me to move forward.

when God's answer is 'hurt'

2005-09-17T22:11:00.000-04:00

ouch.

How am I supposed to respond when I ask God to comfort me and His answer is, 'No my Love, I want you to feel this. I want it to rip you open. It has to.' I can gather all the 'strength' I have inside of me and resist the pain, kindof brace myself for the impact...but we all know that bracing yourself only hurts more once the impact occurs. I can look away, be hurt and try desperately to pretend that everything is ok...but lying to yourself only results in callouses being built up in places where the wound has not been cleaned out. Healing will take much longer and will be agonizing (as the scabs will have to be taken off eventually to remove the infection) if I go this route.

The other option is to let Him tear me. To know the wound, to let Him get in to where He can only get by inflicting pain. So I will try very hard not to pretend that it feels good, that I have never been happier...but I'll let go and let Him have His way. Surely enough He will get in there, get His hands on whatever needs to be brought out of death into life, sterilize the wound and then heal it in His time.

Sometimes I run from situations to control them...so that I can be in control of how I feel about them. I'd rather cause myself pain than have someone hurt me. At least, then, I can blame myself and 'get over' my sadness. If someone else hurts me I have to deal with forgiveness and allowing myself to feel about it. I don't want to run anymore. I want to allow myself to feel.

You who know me so well are probably laughing at the intensity of this little blog message...because you know 'how I am.' Admittedly, you do. I get BIG about things...I feel things deeply, in the toes. *laugh* I wanted to write this, though, because it was just such a revelation to me. When I hurt I cry for comfort...I should also cry for His will and work to be done in me for His pleasure and glory. Jesus, be with me in this. He's got stuff going on inside of us that is far beyond what any of us will understand while living, I'm sure of it. My grandmother knows now. Someday I will too.

*Nothing's ever wasted for You make all things good
Nothing left untasted will be missed if we live like
You're the way, You're the truth, You are life...*

dream dream dream

2005-09-16T22:10:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been feeling free to dream. Many years have passed by without my dreaming, but instead accepting what I was given and learning to enjoy it fully and without any 'if only's. I think it was because I was afraid to want, afraid that none of my longings would ever be fulfilled or even worse that the things I desired were wrong for me to want.

The other night my friend asked me what she should do in a certain situation. I thought and prayed about it for a day because I had NO idea what to say...then I responded to her, first not knowing what to say. Once I admitted that I didn't know what she should do specifically, something urged me to tell her to follow her dream for the situation. You see, her heart was stirred by something and she wanted to know whether or not to go for it. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what exactly she should do about it, but I felt very concerned that she needed to pursue the situation.

That night before I fell asleep God met me and told me that the message I had sent my friend was for me as well. I need to WANT things and to pursue them. He urged me to let myself dream and hope for things...because that's how He leads. He stirs up desires in us and then frees us to pursue them. If we are asking His guidance in life and seeking to be wise then we can trust that He will lead us, right? And how does He do so? Yes by opening up doors and by speaking through others and His Word, but ultimately I believe God tells us which way to go by giving us the urge to go in a certain direction!

My Father has led me down many roads of desire, I admit, even though I wrote that I've been afraid to dream. He still gave me dreams and many times I have listened to them. He has NEVER failed me in them. Often they have taken me to places I did not expect, and even moreso have they failed to take me to certain hoped-for destinations. Though He may have walked me past where I wanted to go He has always taken me someplace FAR better. We can trust Him. I can trust Him.

May God sweep you to a place far beyond your wildest dreams but right in the MIDDLE of His

Canada Day startup

2005-07-01T15:48:00.000-04:00

Oh goodness...well it's Canada Day, and as is the norm for me on civic holidays I've spent far too much time indoors on MSN. But I thought I'd start up a blog since I usually come home from work with a head STUFFED full of stories of dogs with pom-pom tails that wave as if in the hands of overly-excited and underly-dressed cheerleaders, fun older Scottish men and metaphysical joy bubbles. On the off chance that someone is actually reading this: hello. On the on chance that no one is reading this: hello to myself. This post is hopefully the most boring one that will ever appear on my blog.

Happy birthday, blog. I love you already (wow, I'll probably feel this way about my children. Well, maybe there will be a slight variance in my feelings. We'll see. Maybe. If I ever have children.)