I see what you did there..

So, I was having a shower the other day and I had an epiphany. This happens often I’m sure I’m not the only person to experience this. It’s really the only time I have quiet to myself. Showers are short, but really, all I need is ten minutes of silence to get my thoughts in order. It happens to you doesn’t it. Our best thoughts, realizations, comebacks, singing.. all happens in the shower.

I can’t fully remember how I got to the thought train I was on exactly, but what it lead me to was a greater understanding (specifically) of why Terrace. Why God sent me here. At least, this is how I see is right now.

I am fiercely connected to my family. I love them deeply and love to spend time with them. I have a very close friend that, honestly, if we lived in the same city, would probably see each other at least twice a week. Brad and I both have good friends spread across the western provinces, they are like my warm blanket. When we were looking at other church applications, for me, the biggest selling point wasn’t “what is this church doing?” it was “do we have friends/family there?” I was quite happy to apply if I had the security of a social establishment already set up for me.

It is a beautiful feeling when you can travel someplace and have a history waiting for you.

You know, shy, introverted me. It’s hard to put yourself out there time and time again. It’s terrifying for me to throw myself into an unknown. Into the lives of strangers, having no safety net of comfort in the physical presence of family and friends to go to anytime it gets too hard.

Obviously, I see now that I used my comfort of my friends to help me instead of going to God.

Before we decided to move to Terrace I knew one person that lived there and that was only because she came to see us while she was in town and we were considering the position. So, he sent me away, far away form my connections. I know there are people that have moved farther, but this for me is far. And the north is culturally different from the south. In very subtle ways it is a huge departure.

So, this is the primary reason..

God sent me to Terrace so I would learn to do a better job at leaning on him. Letting Him, not my family and friends be my comfort. I think I knew this from the beginning but, like an angry toddler, I threw my tantrum. 

“Ok God, I’ll do it, but I’m gonna let you know every chance I get that I’m not happy that you’ve taken away my blankie from me and sent me to the opposite side of the room.”

I’ve been smacked in the face with this many times these last two years; every time I watch my own kids lose their marbles over something and get angry at me. The moment I lay their circumstance over my own issues with God I look and feel like my child. I’m 39. I shouldn’t be acting like a three year old.

So, where am I now? One month into my monument building, trying to rebuild my relationship with God. Trying to claim his promises, grasping for threads of trust and it hits me like a tonne of bricks - for reals - that God never promised me a secure life living in the same city as my friends and family. I made that promise to myself and I hoped God would get on board.

Please tell me I’m not the only one. I can’t be the only person that has lived in this expectation.

Now I’m wishing I could take back two years to save myself hours of rants and tears and shouts and swearing. Save my marriage the stress it has endured, save my children from wondering what happened to their mommy who used to be so happy and quick to encourage.

Well, she’s coming back.. slowly she’s turning around.

My sweet boys, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation I pray you do the opposite of your mom and lean into the Lord and rejoice in the fact that he loves you and hold onto the gratitude of what he’s given you rather than scream about what he hasn’t. It is always sweeter to surrender to Jesus than to fight. 

can I get a witness..

Friday night we had the opportunity to celebrate a church that managed to survive 60 years, and this church has survived. It wasn’t a huge celebration. Sixty years is a big deal but January is a cold and snowy month up here and travel isn’t the easiest or cheapest. But, sixty years is sixty years and if it was a birthday or a wedding anniversary it would be celebrated for sure.

Celebrating a church birthday though, can be challenging and awkward and honestly, if you haven’t attended said church all your life or from it’s inception it can be a little..  meh.

Because most churches shift and change and so they should. I believe churches should reflect their community and communities are often shifting and changing demographically and culturally. And so, families come and go and a new person is left to look at pictures of people they don’t know. Grainy pictures, snapshots in sepia or black and white or faded colour. These days we see those textures on instagram edits. What we don’t see under those insta edits are beehives and horned rimmed glasses, ’56 Chevy’s, white, short sleeved button front shirts and neck ties on every man (and boy) or dresses on every woman (and girl). It can all feel so un-relatable or irrelevant to the new person, like they are looking at a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away..

But, that is not truth

The celebration dinner was mostly people that are currently attending. We all contributed to the meal and one of the original (charter) members gave us the low down on some of the church history. This was her space, this was her testimony to faith. A group of people, all related, that grew up at Zion, sang an old hymn - in German - because that is part of the history. And I didn’t understand a word and it was beautiful.

Old voices, shaky but strong. Young voices strong but unsure, singing a witness song in a shared language, but a language that is known better by some than others. And the beautiful glory is that this is our faith, right? This is our shared heritage is it not? It doesn't matter when a church first began, whether it started it’s first sermon in German or Chinese or Swahili or Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew. None of that matters when we are all part of the bigger church. We are all part of the redemption story. Whether you were there at the beginning, middle or end you were.. are.. have been placed by God.

Your story, your redemption song is no less important than Paul’s or Peter’s or Martin Luther or C.S. Lewis or St. Francis or Mary Magdalene. This is called being part of the family of God.

It is beautiful and complicating and challenging and sanctifying and we can’t deny the history; knowing that the people before us helped to lay the foundation for us to build on and we continue the build by putting our parts on for the next people. Our job, as with the ones before us is to make sure the cornerstone stays in plays and is the constant in the building up of the church. HE is in all of it.

He is the person who built the pews, he’s in the nursery, the board room and the kitchen that has cooked 230,142 meals. He is in the families and the people that have come and gone and the ones that have been there from the beginning and persevered through the struggles to see the church rise and fall, and rise again. He is in the homeless that come by for soup on Thursday and he is in the memory of all we love that have passed form this time to eternity. He is in the moms that battle with their kids to just sit still and be quiet for one moment and the pastor that labours over every word he will share that Sunday morning. He is in the people that just can’t make it every Sunday and the person that is there without fail every Sunday and is doing all the things. 

He is woven through the whole church by the people of the church and when we focus on that truth there is no long long ago. It all becomes glorious and beautiful and eternal. The reality is we are all part of the same heritage, we all have the same inheritance. 

Never before has the phrase “great cloud of witnesses” beard such weight.

To the glory of God the Father, Jesus the Saviour and the Holy Spirit our guide

no years..

So, I’ve noticed that we tend to come to the end of the year, any year, celebrating

“Yes! - We’ve survived another year!”

A year of traffic jams and online rants, a year of hospital visits and awkward family gatherings. A year of not making the team or not getting that job. A year of feeling left out or of fighting cancer. For some it’s been a year of not enough, even though you probably still have more than most  people in the world. Maybe it’s been a year of fighting with your spouse or, fighting with yourself.

Whatever your year held for you that made you glad it’s over, I want to remind you - as I was reminded earlier today - that God doesn’t run in years, He runs in the eternity and there is no calendar that measures that. And the world runs in brokenness, and there is no glue that man makes that can fix that.

Last December, just a month ago, Brad happened upon a young man and bought him lunch. During lunch he discovered that this young man had a job at a local restaurant but it was only part time and so, he was living in his truck. Take a breath mom’s and dad’s and imagine your child living out of their car. I’m sure some of you don’t have to imagine. When I do, it catches my breath.

Just renting up here is prohibitive for many people, Terrace has far more homeless than you would expect.

Well, this young man (a kid really, someone’s baby) filled his tummy with that lunch and went on his way. I was quietly, deeply proud of Brad for just being who he is, and our Christmas went by without much more thought of it.

A few days after Christmas someone drove through the mall. Literally, drove in one door, through the mall and out through the other door. Later I discovered from a mall employee that the person was homeless and did it to get arrested so they could spend the night in a warm jail. Someone’s baby, breaking the law so they could just be warm for crying out loud.

People were calling him crazy

Really?

Crazy?

I suppose living on the streets would make you crazy.

I suppose we could all do a little more checking our privilege and counting what we have instead..

Wanting to be warm is not crazy

Today Brad messaged me..

 And my heart breaks..

Because we are all connected.

Because we have family that are not well, and we have friends asking for prayer for their family, and we have friends asking for prayer for their ministry and we have friends that are so broken in the darkness they can’t find the light and I am now in tears because we are all connected dammit. We are all part of God. 

You. Me. We, are no more removed from that homeless person who’s brain has been wrecked by meth than you are from your cousin, your teacher, your teammate, your self.

We are all broken, and we can’t fix our own broken-ness and we can’t fix others but we can share the love of the one who can, the one who is not bound by time, the one who died as much for you as for the person flipping you the bird in the merge lane. Just as much for you as for your teacher that won’t give you an inch, or the pastor you think has it all wrong. He died for your cross fit trainer, and the abortion Doctor. He died for the Roman guards that hammered the nails. 

I can’t even..

Once for all, people. Once for ALL

Time to drop your shit and pick up the cross, and when you see someone who just can’t, you ask them if they need help. You love them with Christ. 

He was someone’s baby too once..

Some Sundays..

Yesterday was Sunday, and sometimes I don’t like Sundays. I don’t like what Sundays require, I don’t like what they imply. Yesterday I was getting ready for my Sunday and part of that process for yesterday was writing in my journal..

“I don’t want to do today”

we had church in the morning and plans with friends for the afternoon and I didn’t want to do any of it

“Lord, help me have a good day”

I used to love Sundays, they were my favourite day of the week. When I was a kid I didn’t think much about Sundays. When I was a teenager I did not like Sundays. And then In my early adulthood I liked Sundays again, and now.. some Sundays.. I just don’t want to do. 

I haven’t fully pegged, why this is. I can’t decide if it’s because I’m a tired mama of three boys, or if it’s because I’m a homesick lower mainland girl, or if it’s ministry burnout or if it’s because being married to the pastor means I have to be there. I don’t get a choice in the matter. Or maybe it’s all those things.

Sometimes I want to just hide under the covers. I get to church and visit with all the lovely, dear people and I sit down waiting for the service to start and I’m already giving the boys “the eye” and I sigh a deep sigh and try not to cry and say a little prayer to check my attitude but sometimes the spirit of “meh” holds on with wolverine claws. And if it’s Sunday where only 20 people come, it can feel defeating, even thought you know Jesus died as much for the whole world as he did for one person.

I think there is a strange psychology between the “have to” and the “hold to”. When I am told I have to do something, it is often the last thing I want to do. But if I decided that there is something I want to “hold to” then, very little gets in the way of me holding to it.

It has been many years since I have “held to” church. I know that comes from wounds still healing. I am continuing to work out those things. It hasn’t made the impact through my week like it used to, and it has become one more thing to trudge through as I struggle parenting the boys behaviour. 

But then, there are some Sundays where I am happy to go, happy to see everyone, looking forward to singing the songs, watching the boys participate, discovering what God has laid on Brad’s heart for the church. I walk through the doors that Iain makes a point of holding open for me every Sunday. I give him a kiss and thank him for waiting for me. I say good morning to everyone, I breathe a sigh of peace that the boys feel welcome. I feel chuffed as I watch Brad schmooze with the people and lead pastor this church, and say a prayer for him as he takes care of that last detail. 

Some Sundays start out “meh” and end with an “amen” because God does amazing things if we let him. And that was my yesterday. Church was hard, but it got better and the afternoon was wonderful. Lunch with friends and sledding on a local hill. Smiles all around and a visit to hold to the heart for when the lonely winds blow. 

“Lord, help me have a good day” 

..and he did.

Some Sundays I wish weren’t

and some Sundays I’m glad are

and I’m praying for more “hold to” and to let go of the rest of the “have to”

#monument366

I have decided to try my hand at a 365 project, and actually, 2016 is a leap year so it will be a 366 project. If you are not familiar with the 365 project it usually refers to taking a picture a day and documenting it with some sort of caption or meme. You do this for the whole year. I tried to do this back in 2014 and got as far as the middle of February. I’m hoping to make it to the end of the year this time. 

I will post these pics on Facebook or instagram or my blog but not all three at the same time, I don’t want you to get sick of me. There are various reasons why one would choose to do a picture a day project, for me the reason is to come alongside and give support to my word for 2016, my desire to rebuild my connection to the Lord. 

I promise none of them will be staged or of a looking down angle at my feet on the ground. I will be using the hashtag to keep them easy to find. And also if you want to join in the monument building you can add the hashtag to your pictures, or you can just ignore it altogether. I won’t be offended. I’m doing it this way so that it will force me to keep going with it. I can’t hide from it if you all know about it. 

366 pictures..