Full and Complete Stop

It's not always glamourous to learn life lessons, much less to have an audience during the process. It's especially humbling when you put your audience in grave physical danger in the course of your education – and then report on it in a public forum.

Wednesdays after school in our house are a little bit crazy. As soon as the kids get home, they have to grab a snack and head to piano lessons. It would be less crazy if they didn't come home and grab a snack and just went directly to piano lessons, but then we'd get to piano too early and the kids would be hungry and grumpy by the time we were through with piano and home for supper.

This particular Wednesday also involved Christmas play practice at church for the kids, conveniently located in the next town over, same as piano lessons. Except I momentarily forgot about it and then ended up hustling the kids out the door in a frenzy to get to piano and play practice.

We have to cross the railroad tracks between our house and the highway. This we do multiple times a week. Our rural railroad crossing even has a stop sign, installed several years ago after the number of fatalities involving trains became too much of a pattern.

I (almost) always stop at the stop sign. And I always look both ways for the train. Around the same time they installed the stop sign, they also cut down a section of our neighbour's bush to assist me in that activity.

So, here's the thing: we were in a rush, I had some ice inconveniently located on my windshield, and while I have winter tires on my vehicle, the road right in front of the train tracks is always slipperier than the rest of the road because it's sheltered.

I came up to the train tracks, slowing down with the intention to stop – and roll on through immediately. There's not usually a train there. And I didn't take as much time to check as I should have and there was that ice in the way, so when I did look and see that there was indeed a train coming, I hit the brakes. But with the slippery road, I realized the nose of my vehicle would be only feet away from the train by the time I finally stopped. So I headed off the road, towards the ditch trusting the increased friction to stop the vehicle sooner or at least give us more time with travelling a slightly different angle. Our chances of survival tipping in the ditch were greater than getting acquainted with the wheels of the train. All this very rationally thought out in milliseconds while the conductor leaned on the horn and then glared at me panting, eyes bulging, in our weird angle off the road.

It was a long train, two or three minutes to pass. Long enough to do some serious pondering and give my oldest son a mild sense of vertigo, he being closest to the ditch and most aware of the tilt of the van.

I was deeply grateful we were all alive, safe and sound, no tipping or crashing today.

On the way home, I came to a full and complete stop – with the intention to stop – before proceeding over the tracks. Of course, I did my motherly duty and admonished my kids (none of whom are of driving age) to remember this and always stop at stop signs, especially this one. They say, as you know, that accidents are most likely to occur within three miles of one's home.

Thanks for the demonstration, Mom.

But it got me thinking about stopping and waiting in other parts of life. Sometimes we come across other signs in our lives that tell us we need to stop. Maybe our bodies give us signs – shin splits telling us to stop running on concrete (or so I've heard!), or pressure in the chest telling us to ease up on the stress. Maybe people in our lives let us know we need to stop some destructive behaviour. Sometimes we ignore the signs or stop with the intention to keep right on going and we either meet with disaster, or perhaps, if we're lucky, only a brush with disaster – this time.

I wonder if that's what the season of Advent is for. A sign for us to stop and wait and ponder the import of the coming event – Christmas, the introduction to the Savior of the world. We're tempted to rush on through – we have places to go, things to do, people to see – on a collision course with burn out, or perhaps worse, indifference.

Perhaps Advent is the time to reassess our needs, our “driving” skills and habits, time to take a refresher course in being aware and mindful of how God works in the world and in our lives. And why.

Could you imagine? The four weeks before Christmas being a time to come to a full and complete stop spiritually, a time to wait patiently yet eagerly for the gift of life and love you are deeply grateful for?

For God so loved the world

that He gave his one and only son

that whoever believes in him

will not perish

but have eternal life.

John 3:16

November Love

I had just stepped outside on Sunday afternoon and was gazing up at the sky that was clear for the first time in eleven days when my oldest son came bounding up behind me. I could hear his long legs leaping, could feel the joy radiating from his presence.

“Were you trying to sneak up on me?” I joked, not sure how so much happiness could be sneaky.

“No,” he responded, spray paint can in hand. “Do you want to see my latest painting project?”

“Yes, I do,” I said immediately. Here was my big, 13-year-old boy, still eager to show his mom what he was up to. My heart swelled. How could I refuse such an invitation? I followed him to behind the newly deposited wood pile to the open space on the cement pad that used to be an old barn. Leaning up against some lumber, he had his snowboard, his most recent canvas. He had spray painted it black.

“See?” he said, and then went on to explain his next steps: how he was going to spray it yellow next by standing far away so it just got little drops of yellow and then move closer as he sprayed closer to the bottom of the board so that would look like light from a city dissipating into the night sky and turning into stars closer to the top of the board and then he would paint a cityscape at the bottom by hand with grey paint. He had it all planned out.

And I stood there, admiring his black snowboard, admiring the creative energy bursting out of him, thankful to share this moment with him.

 Later that evening, after a delicious supper made by my husband, consumed around a fire on that surprisingly warm November evening, I listened to my second son singing at the top of his lungs about being “on top of the world” while standing at the top of a mostly fallen-down tree. I watched my daughter take a long stick from the fire, move into the darkness, and make the glowing embers on the end of the stick dance and swirl along to her own movements. And I felt filled to overflowing with unadulterated love, love with no expectations, only gratitude. 

Later, I wondered does God ever feel that way about me? Christians often talk about God's unconditional love, but I guess I would have to admit that it often seems to me that the love they talk about is a love SO THAT.... God loves us SO THAT we can share His love with others, SO THAT we can serve or reach more people, SO THAT we will be saved from ourselves or destruction, SO THAT His investment in the relationship won't be wasted. Does God ever love me simply because He loves me? For my own benefit? Because He's interested in what I'm doing and wants to be in my life? Because He thinks I'm a pretty awesome person that He knows? Or are there ulterior motives to God's love, like invisible strings-attached love, all the better to make you feel guilty with, my dear?

When I think about the love I have for my children, I would acknowledge that love is a mixed bag of goods. I do hope that my love for my children will help them to be better people, will help them to have a greater capacity to serve others, will keep them from getting into difficult and destructive situations, but those are not my motivating factors for loving them; they are hopefully positive by-products of a loving relationship. I love them because I love them – they are my children, they've been with me all their lives, they are my most important contribution to the universe and they belong to me while at the same time being very much their own independent beings. I love them because I want to, because it gives me great pleasure and because they thrive with love in their lives. And I am a mortal and flawed human. Do I have expectations of my kids? Yes. Do I sometimes make my kids feel guilty? Yes. But do I love them simply because they're pretty awesome people that I know and I'm thrilled they're in my life? Absolutely!

Is it possible that God feels that way about me, but more and better because He's God?

That might open up a whole lot of freedom and possibility in my life.

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love.

Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.

This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement:

In this world we are like Jesus.

There is no fear in love.

But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.

The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:16 - 19

Before They Call

In every family, there are stories which define its character. Some of these stories get told and retold and enter the realm of legend.  This is a story my Dad told at our most recent family gathering. We children have heard this story many times over our lives, but it was new for the grandchildren. It is a story of faith in a good God, a story that, had the outcome been different, there might not have been a family to retell it to.

The day had dawned grey and cold over the rocks and lakes and pines. The low-hanging clouds forewarned of a coming storm. It was early November, 1971. Fires were already crackling in stoves all over the village of Pauinguassi as Vic and Norma began their day in their log cabin. It had only been a few short weeks since they brought their baby daughter home from the hospital but things were beginning to fall into a routine with their first child.

Pauingassi is a small fly-in First Nations community located on Fishing Lake in eastern Manitoba, 280 km northeast of Winnipeg, close to the Ontario border. Vic and Norma had moved there in 1970 shortly after their marriage to work with Native Ministries to serve the people in the community. At that time, the isolated community, reachable only by plane or boat, had a store, a church and a school but did not yet have a nursing station or telephones. The nearest nursing station was located in Little Grand Rapids, 24 km away across lakes. The only mode of communication with other communities was two-way radio.

It didn't take Norma long into the morning to realize that something was amiss. Postpartum bleeding had been tapering off, but this morning had brought about a new, heavy, terrifying surge. Something was not right. She alerted Vic to the concerning situation then headed back to bed, trying to lie as still as possible, hoping things would correct themselves shortly. It soon became apparent that the bleeding wasn't going to stop on its own. Fear began to creep in. As the morning wore on, Norma began to feel emotionless and numb towards the danger she was in.

Victor, on the other hand, was feeling strong emotions. His own mother had died from postpartum hemorrhaging shortly after his own birth only 28 years earlier. He did not want to see his wife succumb to the same fate. This drove him to action.

As soon as the seriousness of the situation was evident, Vic attempted to contact the nursing station in Little Grand Rapids on his radio. All he got was static – the dismal weather and low clouds were interfering with reception. His own small plane was at Red Lake having the summer pontoons taken off to be replaced with winter landing skis, or else he would have flown Norma out of Pauingassi himself. Early to mid November was when the weather typically shifted and the lakes began freezing over, creating difficult conditions for any plane to land, where the water was neither completely liquid for landing with pontoons nor hard and thick enough ice to land on with skis. He tried the two-way radio again, getting only static. He tried contacting Pine Falls – still only static. He tried to keep his panic at bay, but the situation was becoming dire. The day was wearing on, the bleeding was not abating, the weather was worsening, and still he could not get through to anyone for help. What more could he do?

By the middle of the afternoon, Vic came to accept that he would not be able to contact anyone by radio. Norma was lying pale and still in the bed. Vic knelt down beside the bed and began to pray aloud, pleading with God to save his wife, to send help, to bring about a miracle. Mid-sentence, he heard the faint rumble of an engine. A plane! It must be landing, or it wouldn't be here in this storm. He jumped up, not waiting to finish the prayer. Grabbing his coat on the way out, he ran half a mile to the store. Hurriedly, he gasped out the situation and his request to the pilot: please, would he please take Norma to Pine Falls, to the hospital?

The pilot, Jim Campbell, agreed, but indicated that he would be leaving immediately while he could still get out. By this time, the weather was terrible. Snow had begun to fly, the clouds were ominously dark and the sun had set, leaving little time and light to take off and fly in these adverse conditions. Vic ran back home through the howling wind, bundled up Norma and the baby and took them by boat down to the loading dock. As soon as they were buckled into the four-seater Cessna 180 plane, Vic untied the plane from the dock, pushed it off and the engine roared to life and took off into darkening sky.

To the west the storm morphed into white-out conditions over Lake Winnipeg where there were few landmarks to guide their way. Jim, a veteran bush pilot, was was clearly anxious on this ill-advised flight, pulling his toque down over his brow and then pushing it back repeatedly. Norma, however, sat beside him with her precious cargo, calm and completely at peace, full of trust that God had already answered their prayers and would bring them to safety.

By the time they reached Pine Falls, the storm had calmed enough for them to land safely. The wife of the air service director, a nurse, drove Norma, weakened from loss of blood, to the hospital where she was cared for.

Some time later when Norma and the baby were healthy and at home again, Vic ran into Jim. Vic asked him why he had flown into Pauingassi on that fateful afternoon. Jim said he didn't know. He had been leaving Little Grand Rapids to head back to Pine Falls but for some reason he had decided, despite the inclement weather, to head back to Pauingassi first. He had left Little Grand 15 minutes before Vic even uttered his prayer.

Before they call I will answer;

while they are still speaking I will hear.

Isaiah 65:24

Faith in the Fog

Confession: I ran out of gas.

In the middle of nowhere.

At midnight.

Three events coincided on the same evening to bring about this condition: we were invited over for coffee at some friends, my daughter was at a sleepover at a different friend's, and the van was running low on gas.

When we got home from a pleasant visit late in the evening, there was a message on the phone from the supervising mom that a certain girl was having some difficulties sleeping over after all and would I please call as soon as I got in. This I only mention to explain how and why I ended up on a dark highway in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, without gas.

Of course I went to get my daughter, despite its being late at night. When I got into the van, I remembered how low it was on gas. Unfortunately, the local gas station closes at 9:00 PM and it was much later than that. Our jerry cans also happened to be empty. I asked my husband if I should just take the truck. He said no, you could go pretty far on empty.

So away I went into the dark, foggy night to collect my daughter. Sometimes the fog was so thick I could hardly see right in front of me. “Would you say this weather is dodgy or sketchy?” queried my son, who had come along for the ride. I hoped I would be able to see the road to turn off the highway. I did manage to find the right road though I was doubtful it was the correct one until the very minute I turned into their driveway.

I collected my tired, disappointed daughter and headed back. About halfway home, the van began to slow of its own volition. I headed to the side of the road and coasted to a stop. “What's wrong?” asked my son.

Out of gas. You can't go forever on empty.

  

Thank goodness for cell phones.

My husband, who answered on the first ring as if he were waiting for this call, asked where we were. I couldn't really tell because of the fog. He figured he'd find us somewhere on the road.

My knight in shining armour arrived in due time. He hooked up the tow rope, and told my son to get on the cell phone so there would be constant communication between the truck and the van, between rescuer and rescuee.

I have never yet developed an enjoyment of being towed. I try to avoid it, generally speaking, not being a huge fan of the absence of control and the unpredictability. But we went, truck pulling van, my husband coaching me via my son on the cell phone. Of course, the first thing to be done was to get off the top of the hill. Getting towed downhill is not fun. Getting towed downhill in the dark and fog with a clouded windshield where the only thing to be seen is flashing hazard lights is even less than not fun. I tried very hard not to clutch the steering wheel too hard or press the brakes too furiously. I made a conscious effort to lean back instead of forward. I listened: when to brake, when especially not to brake. And I talked. I asked if I could brake now and I called when we became detached and I pleaded not to go so fast. And I tried to trust the wisdom and encouragement of my rescuer.

We made it home.

We even managed to coast to a stop on the other side of a puddle in our driveway instead of right in the middle of it. My son noted that an hour had passed since we had picked up his sister, taking about 45 minutes to travel three miles.

My relief at being home was great, greater than if I hadn't run out of gas.

Even while I was in the midst of my white-knuckled, murky drive home, I could see parallels in the rest of life. Each of us sometimes ends up stranded at a spot in life, unable to proceed on our own. Life can be murky and the way ahead unclear. But we have a Saviour in front of us, leading the way. We can't see where we're going, but He can. Sometimes we may feel like He's leading too fast, and we slam on the brakes, and other times too slowly, and we try to pass Him. But always there is a line of communication available for us to be encouraged and coached and for us to make our requests and feelings known. These are times for us to exercise trust in our Saviour's wisdom and ability to see and know what's coming, that He will prepare us for what lies ahead, and that He will get us safely to wherever it is that we're supposed to be going.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths for his name's sake.

Psalm 23:1 - 3

Ten Steps to a Memorable Family Vacation

1. Hit the “Reset” button.

Our family vacation this year was not far away or extravagant – just a weekend away in our tent trailer. My husband figured since we have only taken the tent trailer one place in two years that we should maybe go somewhere closer by just to be safe. I figured since we had been to all the places closer by in the last two years we should go somewhere a little farther away. We went a little farther away. To Kenora, ON. Which is about four hours away.

All was well until about three hours down the road when the trailer started to vibrate suspiciously, even considering Manitoba's bumpy highway. So we pulled over onto a side road, far from any civilization, to see what was the matter. Just the tent trailer tire, shredded to bits from going from complete disuse to overuse in a very short time. Evidently, my husband knew what he was talking about.

What could have turned into an embarrassing “I-told-you-so” moment happily turned into a “reset-button-pressing” moment for my husband (an unscheduled event triggering a switch from work to vacation) and an exciting learning adventure for my middle son who helped change the tire. (Fortunately we had a spare!) 

 

2. Commit experiences to memory.

To cut down on space-hogging items on this camping trip, I decided to leave my camera at home and just use the camera on my smart phone to capture memories. I discovered on the morning after we arrived that, as my husband will tell you is frustratingly common, I had not charged my phone recently enough and it was now dead. No more photos for me. Normally being the family photographer, I found it surprisingly freeing to simply have to experience the moments without trying to take pictures.

3. Slow down.

While one can sit quietly and listen to leaves rustling in the breeze, or sit by a fire and tell stories, or look up at the stars while at home, there is definitely something special about doing it while on holiday.

4. Learn something.

Kenora is not like a prairie town, nicely laid out on a grid, and is frankly rather confusing to get around in. However, as we were randomly driving up and down streets, not quite sure where exactly we were going or how to get there, we chanced across a little art gallery/shop where the resident artist had just opened a new exhibit. It was a table laid out for a banquet for a meeting of animal minds. She had animal skulls which she had embellished with metal work set around the table. What was surprising to learn was how small animal skulls are – wolf, bear, beaver, etc. The adult lynx skull was only slightly larger than the jack rabbit's skull. The moose skull, on the other hand, was plain enormous.

5. Spend some money.

Apparently in Kenora, a family consists of two adults and two kids, so we had to pay extra to bring our third kid (the middle one) along on a cruise on the MS Kenora. That's where we got to pay money to take a trip around Lake of the Woods to see how people with a really lot of money spend it (private islands, sail boats, tennis courts over the water, yachts) and enjoy a whole lot of free natural beauty.

6. Redevelop an appreciation for your loved ones.

There's a beach in Kenora that has this floating walkway across the entrance of a small bay. When some of my kids saw others jumping off this walkway into the water, they decided they needed to try it too. Of course, they couldn't do this alone, so I jumped in too. It was very refreshing, but what made me nervous was that there was no indication as to how deep the water was.

The two kids who were jumping wanted me to count how many seconds it took from the time they hit the water until the time their heads popped out of the water. It was consistently four seconds. Four very long seconds. It doesn't matter that my kids just came off two weeks of swimming lessons and can all swim better than I. It's a mother's prerogative to be nervous with her kids in the water.

Then my middle son gets it in his head that he really wants to see how deep the water is. So he does a “pencil dive” to help him go deeper. Mother is sitting on the dock counting. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – where is he? - 6 – 7 – finally his head pops up, still without having touched the bottom of the lake. Okay! Enough of that game! Out of the water, kids! Time to go have supper!

We did go back the next day and jumped from a different spot and he was eventually able to touch the bottom in less than seven seconds and he even swam from the walkway back to the beach, which made me about as proud as I was nervous.

7. Buy a souvenir.

Sunday morning. My husband was putting new tires on our trailer, purchased at Kenora's Canadian Tire, while the kids and I wandered downtown looking in shops. First stop: Zen Den. We were the only ones in the shop and had been there barely a minute when the peace and harmony was shattered by a clatter and a crash. There was my middle son, bending over to retrieve two parts of a one-part dragon sword he had been looking at. This was very distressing for him and he decided to limit the number of souvenirs purchased by exiting the store. The rest of us finished browsing before I bought the offending item. When he realized where his father was, apparently not having paid sufficient attention to our morning conversations, he was even more distressed that he was obliged to be on a disastrous shopping spree when he could have been changing tires with dad. No one seems to want to claim the dragon sword.

 

8. Play a game.

After such a challenging morning, a tasty meal out was in order. Whether they were short-staffed in the kitchen or the fact that it was our server's first day on the job, we waited about an hour for our food to come. Fortunately, the restaurant had a collection of games for patrons in this very situation. So we played a couple of rounds of “Guess Who?” to pass the time out on the patio. And the food, when it came, was delicious.

9. Follow tradition.

What better way to end a family vacation than to follow a family tradition of stopping for ice cream? And what better place to stop than Ko's Ice Cream in Headingly, MB where their single scoop is worth about three?

10. End dramatically.

Despite having only been gone two days, everyone was happy to be home. Oh! There's our house! Here are our (multitudinous) cats! Let's go in!

Skeleton keys were cutting edge technology at some point in history. The skeleton key for our century old house decided that is no longer the case. And my husband had left the only key to the other door on his key ring, which was inside the house. We should maybe look into getting other keys cut.

So it's raining. It's late. We're tired. And it's time for one last adventure! There are other perks, besides skeleton keys which don't open doors, to century old homes that helped us resolve our situation, which shall remain secret. Middle son is again the hero of our story! We all made it in out of the rain and had a supper of taco chips, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, half melted cheese and crumbled cookies.

Glad to be home!

Gold Star or Serious Demerit?

Last week, on a whim, I took my kids to a music concert that was being held at our local community hall. I saw the poster in the afternoon and ten minutes before the show was about to start, decided we'd go. So I told the kids to get ready to come to this thing with me. The concert was fine but was not really the main event of this story – it was simply the setting.

Of course, when you send your kids to get ready to go in ten minutes, even when you only live two minutes away from the hall, you are guaranteed to be some of the last people there. And we were. We ended up in the second last row of the hall, seated behind two rows only partly filled, but mostly with a group of about eight junior high boys. I'm guessing their ages because I didn't really know any of them. I recognized one boy from the hazy, distant past and another boy looked vaguely familiar but I wouldn't have been able to say who he belonged to or what his name was. Regardless, the boys clearly all knew each other, and I was guessing, judging from the general crowd, that they went to the same church together.

These boys were very well behaved for the first part of the show, respectfully listening and engaged. But by about halfway through they began to get restless. To ease the tension, they somehow, without any obvious discussion, decided that the best thing to do was to bug one of their buddies. So his hat would get stolen and hidden, he would be tapped on the shoulder or poked from behind, some little fabric ball would either be tossed at him or kept from him, whichever he didn't want. “All in good fun.” No one was getting hurt, they were quiet, they were in the back with only three or four other parties, so very few people were being distracted, maybe only me.

But there is nothing that arouses strong negative feelings in me more than one person being picked on by a crowd. The kid was with his buddies and in a public space, so he couldn't get angry at them, but he also clearly wasn't having as much fun as the rest of them were. I tell my kids that when everyone's having fun except one, then it isn't fun – it's mean. And I also have a tendency to side with the underdog, so when the kid in front of me started kicking his buddy in the backside from behind, I could barely contain myself. He kept this up for awhile while I tried to talk myself out of getting involved. I wasn't his mother or aunt or grandma; I wasn't his teacher or youth leader or pastor. I was a complete stranger with no “right” to reprimand him. But I couldn't squelch my strong sense of “responsibility” to protect a weaker child from the group.

So I did it.

I pulled up my chair and hissed “Stop!” in the kicker's ear.

My heart pounded furiously in my chest, from righteous indignation or shock at my own action, I couldn't tell. The kicking quit immediately and the two rows in front of me were quiet for the rest of the show. I saw them outside later, and the whole group, all eight of them, seemed to be in fine spirits, so no obvious damage done.

So, did I do the right thing? Was I demonstrating compassion or simply my need for control and order? Is it right to get involved when you have no prior relationship? I was so distracted by this event that I walked out of the hall without greeting the three ladies seated near me, whom I knew and had prior relationships with. (I'm sorry Angela, Melony and Gertrude.) Wouldn't greeting them have been a more positive demonstration of concern and compassion than hissing in some strange kid's ear?

Almost a week has gone by and I still can't decide if I deserve a gold star or a serious demerit. Or both. For some people, this would be all in a day's work and wouldn't phase them a bit, but I'm wondering if this is how I deal with people generally in my life – hissing at strangers instead of “hello-ing” at neighbours. Is that the kind of person I want to be?

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved,

clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,

humility, gentleness and patience.

Col. 3:12

Accidental Tourist

A few weeks ago, when it was so bitterly cold outside, a lovely grey cat showed up on our doorstop. It was quite young, barely a year old, I would guess, and had a white chest. The kids dubbed him “Beard-o” on account of his chest, but it makes me think “weirdo” every time I hear them call him that.

Very quickly, it became evident that Beard-o was an indoor cat. He would dash inside every opportunity he got and when he did manage to get inside, he clearly knew how to behave. He was calm, padding around the allowed areas, he knew how to “play” with pieces of paper or whatever he found on the floor, he was comfortable and knew how the system worked. He was happy inside.

This is in direct opposition to our regular yard cats. We have more of them than absolutely necessary, but though they are all well-fed and taken care of, they live outside in a straw bale house. When they accidentally end up in the house, they are skittish and a race is on to catch them and throw them out before they skitter away and hide in some dark hole where you can't find them and then they skulk around whining to get out. 

 

I am the reason we don't have indoor cats. In my opinion, cats have two fatal flaws that prevent them from living inside my house. Flaw number one: they scratch on furniture – the couch and living room rugs in particular. Flaw number two: they shed. Our cats never quite get around to displaying the second flaw as they get tossed out as soon as number one is displayed, but I know about it from hearsay. Beard-o learned this early on in his stay at our place. He is reluctantly welcomed by Headmistress until he inevitably participates in some common cat-like activity, such as scratching or jumping up. Out he goes!

Beard-o showed up at our place uninvited and made himself as much at home as he possibly could, obliged as he was to live outside with the other yard cats and our old dog, making only periodic forays into the house. Beard-o is by no means the first stray cat that has wandered into our yard. We live a mile from town and have a number of reasonably close country neighbours and a number of female felines. However, most tomcats, prone as they are to wandering, eventually will leave and head back home. Beard-o did not. I often wondered why not. He clearly was used to living a more posh lifestyle than what he was compelled to adopt at our house. He was clearly loved and well-taken-care of. Why did he not go home? It couldn't be that far away. Why had he left his home in the first place? My husband's speculation was that he had travelled unexpectedly to our home from my place of work in town while warming himself in the engine of my van.

And then a curious thing happened. After a few weeks of having him around, he just disappeared. We were hoping he had had the good sense to go home and had not succumbed to the wilds of winter weather or larger animals. We all kind of missed him.

After about a week of his absence, my husband and kids made a visit to some people we see weekly in Portage. As they got out of the van, they saw a cat that looked suspiciously like Beard-o. When they went in, they asked their hosts whether they had recently acquired a cat. Turns out the cat had been hanging around their house for a week but they surely did not want it. They hadn't fed it at all in the hopes that it would go home. At the end of the evening, Beard-o got a ride back to our place – on the inside of the van this time.

So he's back here, getting fed and watered, with limited visitation rights. He's doing his best to win us over (he has not scratched the couch or living room rug once since his return). Evidently, he has a tendency to travel. Evidently, he has the good sense not to move around too much en route. And yet the question remains, why does he not have the good sense to return home?

As I was pondering this, I realized that he could have travelled really from anywhere. I had been assuming he was from Austin, but we could have inadvertently picked him up in Portage, or MacGregor, or possibly even farther afield. Maybe Beard-o has no idea where he is or even where he's from and so he's making the best of where he is.

I guess I've felt rather like that this last year. Uncomfortable with where I am as a person. My problem is that I can't decide if I should, like Beard-o, make the best of where I am, or if I should have the good sense to go “home”. Only I'm not quite sure where “home” is anymore. Or whether the place I thought was home isn't home anymore and I need to hitch a ride to somewhere else. This is all, of course, figuratively speaking. I'm not intending to physically move. I am grateful for my physical home and family that are stable constants in my shifting life, who allow me to come inside!

And then, last night, I came across this passage:

People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more.

How gracious [God] will be when you cry for help!

As soon as he hears, he will answer you.

Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,

your teachers will be hidden no more; with your eyes you will see them.

Whether you turn to the right or the left,

your ears will hear a voice behind you saying,

“This is the way; walk in it.”

Isaiah 30:19 - 21

It at once gave me hope – there's a teacher on the horizon, to give me direction – and apprehension – I've heard that adversity and affliction are good teachers, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm eager to sign up for their classes.

While we're both here for now, I guess we'll see where Beard-o and I finally end up.

*** If anyone recognizes this cat and would like to reclaim him, please let us know. ***

English Classes

Ngam* and I exchanged amused glances as my sons reached for yet another spring roll.

This was the third English language class for my husband and me, but the first for the kids. Previously, the kids had all stayed home with the oldest acting as babysitter. This week, a confluence of events compelled the kids to come to our language class despite their general desires. They could either stay home and miss out on going out for supper with their Uncle or they could go out for supper with him and come along to language classes. Even for the oldest who has been waiting for an opportunity to stay home alone, making the decision was a fairly brief struggle.

Through a church connection, my husband had come into this voluntary position of English teacher. He had wheedled me into coming the first time, believing that if he could get me there once, I would want to keep coming of my own volition after that. He was right.

Though we only drive half an hour down the road, it is a little bit like entering a different world. Our students are all immigrants from Thailand or Laos. They do understand some English but mostly they communicate with each other in Thai. The first time we were there, they were all awaiting us, sitting on the floor or low stools. My husband and I were the only ones sitting on any of the three couches in the room. The next time we sat on the floor too. I wondered on the way home whether we had committed a social or cultural faux-pas in doing so. They never said so we came back the next week.

Each week we try to help this group expand their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation of English words and struggle to explain the ridiculous intricacies of English grammar. Each week, I marvel at the bravery of anyone who attempts to learn English as an additional language. It is truly craziness – and this coming from a person who loves words and has a penchant for correct grammar.

In return, this small group of people expands our world. They grow our empathy for people who have a different life experience than ours, they share the difficulties and humour of learning a new language – there is a lot of laughter that goes on in these classes, and they feed us interesting food. Last week they gave us tamarinds and sticky rice to try. There were fresh and dried tamarinds. Neither my husband nor I had ever eaten, or even seen these before and the group seemed to derive a certain amount of pleasure from watching us try to figure out how to gracefully eat them and dispose of the seeds that we were explicitly told not to eat.

My favourite part of the class, however, happens close to the end. This is when they teach us a word or phrase in Thai. I love when the tables are turned and the students become the teachers and the teachers become the students. When who is in their element and who is tentative about their pronunciation switches. I love being able to practice my newly acquired Thai greeting with these people in church or when we arrive at or leave language classes. I can feel all my synapses zinging with information as they form new pathways in my brain. I love this learning.

This is what the kids discovered this week. They hadn't really wanted to come. They had brought a tablet along to watch a movie while the class was going on, but space limitations required that they stay in the room and be quiet. And so they listened and learned and ate delicious spring rolls. They even practised saying thank you and good bye in Thai.

On the way home, the boys enthused about their new experience (the youngest fell right to sleep). They remarked on how interesting the whole evening was, on what they had learned and on how surprised they were at how difficult a language English is for non-native speakers.

“It was really interesting,” said our second boy, “but I was kind of shaking the whole time. Why is that?” A lengthy explanation from his mother ensued of how the excitement and tension of new and unusual learning experiences can cause physical reactions.

I asked the oldest if he figured he had had a better time here at language class than if he had stayed at home by himself. “Probably,” he conceded. This warmed my mother- and teacher- heart. And was a good reminder for me. Sometimes it is the very things you wouldn't have chosen to do are the things that teach you the most valuable lessons: empathy, compassion, connection, delight in the sharing of human experience. Now if only all such lessons were as pleasant as a warm, home-made spring roll!

I am the Lord your God

who brought you up out of Egypt.

Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.

Psalm 81:10

*Name changed to protect the innocent.  Means pretty/beautiful in Thai, according to the Internet.

Food for Thought

During the last week of 2014 I went out to eat three times. This is a rarity for me and each meal gave me food for thought.

The first meal I was invited to via Facebook, the great beacon of reconnection. There were a couple of old classmates of mine who were “coming home” for Christmas and thought it would be fun to get together to mark the year of our 40^th birthdays. I had missed out on my class's ten year reunion and there was a part of me that really wanted to go to this gathering. However, being who I am, there was also a part of me that didn't want to go to this lunch: I had already been to numerous gatherings over the holidays, I could really use some quiet time by myself, I didn't know who was all going to be there, etc., etc.. Plus gravity has been tugging at my face this year. Maybe I should just stay home.

I didn't decide till the morning of the get-together whether I would go. And then our van had winter trouble on the way to church. Maybe I should just enjoy a quiet afternoon at home after all. But no, now that I had decided, I didn't want to change my mind.

A solution was found and my family dropped me off at the door to the restaurant.

First I had to go to the restroom to wash my hands – and surreptitiously walk by the window so I could see who was there. It didn't help much; all I could see were the backs of heads and a man I didn't recognize.

So gathering up my courage, in I walked. And I was delighted that the first person I saw was my good friend Sharon, who was one of the organizers of this event, whom I hadn't seen in 22 years, but with whom I had been good friends in high school. She looked exactly the same as she had in high school, only better. I sat down beside her, greeting my other classmates, most of whom live around here and I see periodically, and Cathy, the other organizer whom I also hadn't seen in 22 years. Everyone looked exactly the same as they did in high school – I would have recognized each of them in a crowd - except for the one lone male who braved an hour with a bunch of middle aged women whom I struggled the entire time to reconcile, fairly unsuccessfully, with the friend I had hung out with in high school.

It was a good time. I was very glad I had gone and caught up on my classmates' lives instead of on a bit of sleep. It struck me how very much the same we all were and yet how different we were from 22 years ago. How we take our essential selves along wherever and for however long, and yet there is always the hope or perhaps the guarantee of change. Some of the people had experienced change they would have preferred not to have, some had created their own magnificent change, and yet each person remained ultimately themselves. It was good motivation to become the best version of myself. As Elizabeth Gilbert says in her book Eat, Pray, Love, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”

A couple days later, I was dining at the Deer + Almond restaurant in Winnipeg. Once a year, I end up in a restaurant I would not commonly frequent. There is an annual event in our family called The Sibling Supper. My husband, his two sisters, and their attending partners get together sometime around Christmas when the cosmopolitan sister is home from world travels or life in the big city to go to a restaurant of a particular nature, chosen by the couple who lives in Winnipeg. We have been doing this for almost ten years.

The thing to realize about me is that I am a very cautious eater. I like comfort food, I like “normal” food, and while I am not a vegetarian by any stretch, I am nervous around meat. I definitely don't like too much (if any) fat, I don't like unidentifiable meat, I don't like meat that deviates too far from the tried and true three (chicken, beef and maybe pork).

This makes me an anomaly in this group of people.

The cosmopolitan sister, of course, likes to try new food. My husband looks forward to this event every year as it's one of very few opportunities he has to go to an experimental restaurant with other people who get excited about trying unusual foods. For him, this is The Social Event of the Year. And there's my brother-in-law. He is as un-cautious about food as I am cautious about it. He loves fat; the more the merrier. (Every time our family butchers, he's there throwing extra fat into the ground meat as fast as I'm scooping it out. It usually balances out in the end.) He seems to love every and any kind of meat from any part of the animal. The more experimental the food, the better.

I always go to the Sibling Supper. I wouldn't think of not going. But I'm always nervous. What will I be obliged to eat this year? I have eaten many things I would never have dreamed of at these events: sushi (though not the raw meat ones; I have to draw the line somewhere), chicken livers, bone marrow, calamari, to name a few. Though perhaps “eaten” is too strong a word. “Tasted” might be more appropriate.

This year, however, proved to be different. For the last several years, we have gone to restaurants that serve tapas, which is essentially a variety of different plates with a little food for a fairly large sum of money which everyone shares. This year was the same. And so the food was ordered.

The food came. And it was good. And my brother-in-law and I both enjoyed the food! I even felt full at the end of the meal! I tried rabbit this year.

There again, the hope for change and yet also the essential self remaining. I am sorry for my husband that I am not a very experimental eater, and I probably won't rush out and catch a rabbit to eat, which was actually pretty good, but with continued exposure and a little more relaxed nature, even I can grow accustomed to trying new things on occasion.

Then, one day into the new year, I went grocery shopping. I ended up being in town over lunch, so I stopped in McDonald's to grab a bite to eat. I had a coupon. I ate with myself and the Winnipeg Sun. There are people whom I dined with earlier that week who would refuse to darken the door of said restaurant, but I don't mind. It always makes me feel like a kid: would mom and dad take us out for lunch or would we have to go home and eat fried eggs and toast? A discussion would ensue in Low German to determine our destiny for the day. What a treat to have them say yes to McDonald's. It still feels like a treat to me. Silly, perhaps, and not very nutritious, but still. There I am dragging my essential self even to McDonald's, enjoying my own company and my own comfortable food.

Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Matthew 6:10 - 12