Tuesday Night

Tuesday night ritual - watching the Rick Mercer Report together.

Scholastic Book Fair

Cleaning up a week-long book fair.  The book fair was fun;  the cleaning up a necessary part.

The Country Quills

The writing group I've been a part of for one year, where the oldest member is 95 and the youngest is 15, and everyone gets their say and their amber glass goblet!

My Alma Mater

Last day of Derek's Career Trek at my alma mater.  Beginning of a new year for me.

End of an Era

I have decided that my blog, Along the Way, will cease in its current format.

I am intending to begin a photo-a-day format for my blog beginning at the end of February. 

However, in honor of the end of an era, so to speak, and just because I have always wanted to be a published author (even if it is only self-published), I have turned my blog posts into a book which is almost ready for printing.  Now, my family will be obliged to accept copies of this book, whether they want one or not, but beyond that, if anyone else is interested in a copy, please let me know so I can order a sufficient number of books.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my thoughts and musings and for the encouragement I have received from so many of you over the years.

With deep gratitude,

Donna

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