God's love

On my mind…

Written May 2019

I’m back at the library where I used to come and write while my oldest had academy one afternoon a week. Someone tried to blow it up in the fall in our privileged, white person town: no joke. It’s been closed while they worked on repairing the car parkade and cleaned each and every thing in the whole building. It feels shiny and new and people aren’t used to it being open again. The parkade is deserted and I have no problem finding a reading cubby where I open my computer and try to think of some words to write. I wonder how many people are scared it may happen again, even though the white male who brought the bomb died. I think it’s important for me to point that out because I know many people when they think of bombing think about minority immigrants. This man was no immigrant and he was no minority: he grew up around here, on a farm I think. Anger and hatred and lack of connection and empathy don’t often care where you grew up, in fact I would argue they are more prevalent in a privileged group who considers themselves to be persecuted.

I’m doing my morning pages in my journal still most days and most days those are all the words I have time to get down. Midlife is beautiful and glorious and also busy. We live somewhere where two incomes are certainly nice to have, if not almost necessary so I’m trying to cram as much paid work in as I can, while also homeschooling three kids, running another business and managing things like flooding basements, broken wells and getting groceries. I don’t work anywhere close to full time for pay - more like 1/5 time when things are really busy but all the work I do not for money, especially choosing to homeschool add up, especially with a husband who travels extensively for work.

Things that are on my mind right now are things I don’t really want to share about on the internet. What it’s like to have a house full of kids turning into teenagers, what it is like to raise a competitive athlete, how our life seems bananas but yet I cannot imagine it any other way. How to educate my kids for high school. How I don’t want my kids to be a part of teen cell phone culture and they aren’t but then also the effects of them not being a part of it. The positive and the negative. I’m wondering about how to raise younger siblings who feel just as accomplished (read loved) when your oldest is incredibly driven. On how this morning I found lily beetles for the first time in my yard and how climate change means two of my apple trees and my one plum didn’t get any blossoms on them at all. At how I feel sick at the amount of plastic we are throwing away yet I still really want to eat berries and go for a slurpee without having reusable cups on us. How girls are almost expected to post ridiculous photos of themselves online and how my middle dances with girls older than her and how I’m not sure how I feel about that these days. The difference between 11 and 13 can be extreme. How I feel guilt that some of my kids seem permanently altered by the fact that I had cancer during their childhood. If there is anything I can do about it. On my incredible sadness at seeing the actions of my sons black teammates being more likely to interpreted as aggressive or hostile or with intent than my white, blond, blue eyed son’s are and how I don’t know how to change it or the many other discriminations his minority teammates face that he doesn’t.

On my mind is how when the trees turn from all brown to the first tinges of chartruse green anything is possible. How growing flowers makes you feel like you are doing a tiny bit to save the world, even if logically it makes no sense. How at this point I am actively doing less to save the world than I have at any other point in my life and how just for now I am not trying to change that. Wondering if that makes me apathetic, privilidged or just in need of a bit of rest.

Letting go and making space

Last week was the second week of advent: peace.

It seems almost laughable these days and unfathomable for myself personally last week (grumpy, unsettled, out-of-sorts.) Who do I know who would claim they are experiencing peace? Tis the season, if you are a parent of watching our kiddos do all the things. Piano recitals, Christmas concerts, season wrap ups. What a joy it is to watch these people we are blessed to parent growing into who they are. Yet also what an overfull season of everything merry happening, leaving little space for quiet and contemplation, whether you have kids or not. No room to find this thing called peace. No one I know free from personal hardship of one form or another.

Secondly, the world is currently a bit of a dumpster fire. We are becoming further polarized, finding it hard to agree on much of anything in real life. Injustice is everywhere. Humanity can seem a hard race to be a member of if one only pays attention to the headlines instead of the faces of those around us.

Online it is easy to find agreement with all the people we ‘like’ to surround ourselves with who think the same way we do. We forget we are all people. Mind, body, soul. More in common than we think when we take ourselves out of the excessive news cycle and into conversations with each other.

I sign off of most of it - not wanting to be ill informed, not wanting to fail to recognize my privilege, not wanting to turn a blind eye to injustice in the world but also finding myself useless when information is just overflowing. No more room. I find myself turning back to a smaller focus ~ connecting with the people God has called me to love and learn from; which certainly is not the whole internet, my whole acquaintance group or even everyone I am related to.

I am slowly learning to do the part I am called to do and trust it is enough to bring about this much longed after peace on earth. I am slowly learning to let go of things I’m not called to.

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Letting go. There it is again. I’ve been hearing the words ‘let go’ whispered over and over for months now. I was puzzled, let go of what? I am tired of things being rooted out and let it slide by, too exhausted to get curious. Afraid of what getting curious might ask of me.

Because apparently I need to be hit over the head with something to pay attention (or possibly made mute like Zechariah) the words ‘let go’ were physically spoken to me, to my agitated spirit during this week of (non)peace just passed. I see this as either hilarious or as a deeply moving experience depending on my mood, but mostly both. I was getting a massage from a new therapist who I had only seen once before. I asked her a question about an especially tender spot and she replied with ‘You are holding on. What would it look like to let go?’

Let go of what? (She told me a few things). And why?

Strangely I am circled back to peace. I cry on the drive home. What does peace mean anyway? Inside contentment? Time to sit and be still? Having our needs met? Absence of violence? Who can define this promised peace?

I’m wondering if peace is possibly about listening. About obedience. About trust. Could peace be letting go of whatever needs to be let go of? Unreasonable expectations. Something that has overstayed it’s welcome. Control. A toxic person. Pretending to be okay. A season of life. A dream you had for someone other than yourself. Exhaustion. Responsibilities you don’t need to take on. What other people think about you. A substance. Fear.

How can there be room for peace if there is so much being hung onto ~ let go, let go.

Advent means peace has come despite my perceptions. Peace ~ the Prince of Peace has come despite my fear, despite my eyes that have trouble seeing, despite my limited imagination. I’m letting go - making room to receive this peace he left with us. I am making space in my soul to receive the good gifts advent promises us. Trying to be like Mary and saying yes to (only) what I am asked and becoming a place for peace to abide.