Baby Mania

It seems like so many of my friends from school are blogging about BABIES - either having them or wanting them. So, it seems like this would be good time and forum to announce that Paul and I are also expecting.

It would be a lie, of course. But a good time and place.

As long as I can remember, I haven't wanted to have kids. Part of it is probably being raised by a single mom --- no matter how much I would try to convince myself that a baby generally means a FATHER somewhere in the mix, my paradigm was always the sole responsibility for child and household fell to the mom by default. WAY too hard.

Part of it is probably my desire to feed hungry kids... other PEOPLE'S kids. How do you find time to do something like that when your OWN kid is always hungry?

And part of it is I'm just too selfish, I guess. I'm not ready to live totally for someone else just yet. Except Jesus, of course - and from day to day that can be iffy. Once I'm entirely sanctified, it'll be time for babies, I guess. How will THAT be for a testimony? :)

Cuter than your cat...daily.

(Title = snaps to my saucy roommate Sanda)

For those of you who now have to live with cats significantly less cute than mine with the full knowledge that cats as cute as mine are possessed by other more fortunate souls, my apologies.

Thanks to my roommate Selinda for taking so many pictures this weekend. You will see more!

Thoughts on MONEY

So if the love of money is the root of all evil, I may be more holy than I thought. Because I hate money. Of course, maybe if I HAD money, I might like it better. Unclear.

I do know that growing up poor didn't prepare me for being a poor adult. It's scary to think about living paycheck to paycheck and having NOTHING left after paying bills. But at the same time, I still have just enough, and I count that as a blessing from God, not only because it proves his provision, but because it helps Paul and I to be sensible in our spending... when we can keep the credit cards in our wallets, anyway.

Unnessessary spending is a big thing to me --- I have a real issue with buying things we don't need when there are people who don't have the things they need. But I often wish that it could be a TESTED ideal - that I could have some money to spare and have the opporunity to put my money where my heart is.

Then again, no opportunity = no chance of failure.

God bless Crystal

She's so tired from camping.

Illiteracy and me (Not to be mistaken for "BCO-Q, BCO-Me")

So I decided I'd spice up my blog a bit with some new formatting. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal - after all, I was writing JavaScript before most platforms supported it (snaps to the Ontario school system).

And so I open up the template and start reading through the code. Wow - #1 thing that is NOT like riding a bike: THIS. I'm not sure what I needed to make room for, but somewhere along the line JavaScript did NOT make the cut and got tossed out of my brain.

Also not making the cut (having discovered it recently):

1. The words to dcTalk's NuThang album
2. What my junior kindergarten teacher looked like
3. The name of my dog when I was a kid
4. Where I put my Happy Bunny bandana
5. My Stock XCHNG password
6. Which one of the Ro boys (Jamie or David) I was supposed to be spotting in gym class on the trampoline station... and who fell when I left my post to early.
7. The elaborate handshake my best friend Cressida and I spent hours perfecting in elementary school
8. Pretty much everything I memorized for tests in college

Oh. I just remembered the name of my dog.

Six things that are no fun without roommates

1. Watching Alias
2. Walkie talkies
3. Original Nintendo
4. Steamrolling
5. Tooney Tuesday (which should more accurately be called "2.49 + tax Tuesday)
6. Minesweeper flags

10 minutes of Christmas!

I like the snow... when I'm not driving in it, or having to shovel it, or when it isn't getting me cold or wet. And so yesterday's prelude to winter was good for about 10 minutes. (For the cold, wet and driving, not the shoveling.) And during the 10 minutes things were good, I thought of Christmas.

I like the Christmas season... when I don't have to hear Christmas music in the mall, or have to try to figure out how I'm going to afford to buy presents, or feel the need to rant on commercialization, or remember the good old days when Christmas meant a HOLIDAY instead of WAY more work (ah, the life of a pastor), or think about how many people will have to go without this season and the parents who will have to explain to their kids why Santa only brought them crappy gifts. And so yesterday's prelude to Christmas was good for about 10 minutes. Standing in the lightly falling snow (before the cold and wet set in, and before I had to get behind the wheel), breathing in the cool, crisp air, getting caught up in the anticipation of a season that is all about anticipation... I was at peace.

Then the world and the work and the remembering started again (not to mention that the snow eventually became freezing rain and the roads became a bit treacherous), and life went on.

I'm looking forward to more 10 minute moments, and praying that the "peace on earth" that Christ came here to bring will infuse its way into me. But I think it's okay that in my heart I'm really feeling: COME LORD JESUS... AGAIN.

She's HOME!

I had just prepared a perfectly lovely post about how wonderful my cat is doing and the advantages of her surgery... but then she stretched out onto the keyboard and managed to delete all my efforts, just as I was ready to post.

A summary:

She's recovering well and doesn't hate us at all! Usually she gets in trouble 3 million times a day for clawing us, but that problem is no more. Now she can play and love and not have to wonder why we're so opposed to it. She took a pill this morning like a little trooper.

She slept in our room all night for the first time that I can remember --- usually we have to shut her out at some point because she goes under the covers and uses random parts of my body as a scratching post. Last night the only time I woke up was to the feeling of soft paws kneeding my stomach and Emma's purr-motor blaring. Both soothed me back to sleep.

That wasn't nearly as eloquent or interesting as my original post. But she's SO cute when she sits on my lap WITH the lap top and watches me work! :)

She's okay!

When I called yesterday, the vet said Emma did "just fine" :) We pick her up this afternoon!

So for all of you who had your fingers crossed that she would DIE, so far, I'm sorry. :)

A knife through the heart

If you have a cat, you may understand what I'm referring to when I speak of the noise that cats make when put in the car. For some reason, it never seems to come out of them at any other time, no matter the circumstance. But put a cat in a car and suddenly there is this wailing, howling, ungodly SOUND that is enough to jar anyone's nerves.

We took our dear Emma to the vet this morning for shots, spaying, declawing and deworming, and got to enjoy a good 20 minutes of that awful NOISE that no matter what we did we couldn't comfort out of her. Once she got there the noise stopped, but I still felt like the worst parent ever. She was nervous, she was hungry and thirsty (but I couldn't feed her this morning because the vet said not to), and she didn't understand why we were leaving her. She was so miserable, and we couldn't even explain that we were coming back!

The vet, however, is anything BUT miserable, if the price tag of this little visit is any indication. We recieved a quote over the phone that was HIGH, but somewhat doable (if we don't eat or heat our appartment for the rest of our lives...). But when we got there, the lady kept saying, "Such and such is extra, but we really recommend it." What was clear, though, was that she was really saying, "You don't have to do these extra things if you're horrible people who hate your cat." And, of course, it's 7:45 in the morning, so we're not thinking straight enough to consider the pros and cons when we're exhausted out of our heads and Paul needs to get out of there so he's not late for school.

My final thought as we walked out of the office --- This cat had better live a good many years, or I'm going to be VERY mad.

They said I could call at 1 p.m. and check on how things went. I'll update you all when I know more.

On Being Appreciated

In every organization you work with, you will encounter those who in your mind's eye have claws and fangs. If you're blessed with it, though, you might also encounter the nicest, sweetest people you could imagine that you just want to hug all the time.

For as hard as my job is, there's a lot of people I want to hug. And do.

Last night for Pastor Appreciation Day they held a pantry shower for Pastor Eric's family and Paul and I. Our cupboards are now stocked and overflowing, and beyond milk and eggs we probably won't have to go grocery shopping for a very long time. Even if we do, we also received over $100 of gift cards for groceries, so we're well covered. It was a very cool thing for the church to do and such a blessing going into the Christmas season --- one financial worry taken away.

More important than the gifts and the "party", though, was that people went out of their way to remind me in a sincere and thoughtful manner that there are those beyond the few detractors that DO love me and want me to stay around here for a good long time. Not that I'm one to need the pats on the back, because I'm really not; as a general rule, I know if I'm doing a good job. I know if there's areas that need improvement. I don't need to hear it from others to feel good (or bad) about myself. But lately (well, since I arrived at this church) the enemy has really been plaguing me by encouraging me to take things personally, to take things to heart as though every voiced unmet expectation or unguarded expression was meant to tear my insides out and feed them to the lions.

It's so great to work under a senior pastor with clear expectations, who is also clear in communicating to others that I am doing everything that he is asking me to do. But it's also great to know that while there are those who can express disapproval because I'm not fulfilling THEIR agendas, there are also those here who love me not just because I'm doing what I've been asked or doing my best, but those who I know would love me even if I blew it.

In any other setting, I don't think I would care. But when Jesus got ahold of me and started softening my heart towards the church again, I guess I started to expect more and better. I guess there's a lot of unmet expectations going around.

But these loving people I spoke of give me hope for the body of Christ, because God is love, and they have shown that love to me at a time when my spirit has nearly starved for it. Thank God there is always hope when people are really yielded to HIS will and HIS way above their own.

Of Past Pedestals

you were jesus to me
distant and regal
real and holy
bold and charming
bright and knowing
jesus
until you said my name

Thoughts on "Sundays"

Here is what I have learned over this past year of ministry about SUNDAYS: they are always coming. Even on Monday, you can always know that Sunday is only days away. As my senior pastor would say, "Sundays come with astounding regularity."

And so on a week like this when I'm faced with a holiday (Remembrance Day on Friday is a day off work for me), I just want to cry. A part of my brain says, "You need the break". My senior pastor says, "You WILL take a break." But Sunday is still coming. To take any time "off" just means cramming the same amount of work into a shorter period of time.

I don't know how pastors do it every week for so many years. I mean, there's a lot of performance-oriented events that come with the same kind of regularity, but you would assume that the stresses of putting out the daily news or live TV programming or other such things would be somewhat carried by having adequate people-power to make it happen.

Not so in most churches. In a small church like mine, it's easy to get caught in the Sunday-Cycle. In order to lighten the load of TASKS and free yourself up to LEAD, you need to put the time into building teams. But you don't have enough time to do it well (or at all), because Sunday is coming, and all the tasks that need to be done with it. If Sunday wasn't coming, I would have time to mentor and teach and train and be a better administrator.

I suppose that being at big churches with big staffs and good systems in place carry their own challenges. But it must be incredible to be able to LEAD rather than slave away at TASKS in those environments. To actually be able to "train people for the work of the ministry" rather than DO the ministry to keep the people from reacting badly.

People don't often understand why I loved working at Payless so much. Here's the reason: You go to work, you sell shoes. If there's a holiday, I'm not sitting home stressing about the shoes I could have been selling. I just sell shoes the next day. And when you go home, you don't have to think about the shoes or your customers or whatever. The man who bought that pair of loafers two days ago isn't going to be calling you during your date night with your husband to complain about such-and-such or use you as a phone directory. And if someone returns a pair of shoes, it's not a personal affront to you, and no one's going to make it that.

But I love the Church. I love what it stands for, I love the potential it has, I love the community it provides and the haven it offers. I love its mission.
In essense, I love the ideal church. And my heart breaks for the ACTUAL church.

The church is not SUNDAY. The church is the body of Christ charged to be His hands and feet and voice and heart in this hurting and dark world. My head says, "Is this what Jesus died for?" My spirit say, "Forgive us, Father, for we don't know what we're doing."

Remnants of another point on the journey

TRUST
Today I see the coming storm
as though it were the very first
Understanding only that I covered
but not trusting the rain to understand, too.

You say "I made the rain, just as I made you."
(When did You forget how to comfort?)
"Look what became of me," I answer.
And I prepare to get wet.