Holder of the Universe > Bugs of all kinds.

If there was ever a time when I deeply wished I lived close enough to my parents and was small enough to crawl into their bed after waking up from a nightmare, it was Wednesday morning.  In fact, exhausted and confused after waking from a short night of long dreams, I seriously considered slipping through Amber's open door and going back to sleep in her room while she studied.

It's been a challenging couple of weeks for me.

I came home from a beautiful vacation to a kitchen full of cockroaches.  We've been dealing with this for over a year - but it has never been as bad as it was when we got back from the airport. I'm not afraid of bugs.  I dont scream or squeal or squirm.  I usually just sigh and squish.  I'd hoped my week of rest would send me home refreshed and ready to get down to business.  Instead, I found myself frantically emptying a cupboard, chasing bugs while tears rolled down my cheeks.  I wanted to carry the peace that I'd been soaking in through the door and into my home.  But as I dropped my bags, all the things that have been making living here challenging just swirled into my face.  I desperately wanted to just leave.  I'm dealing with people and culture in a way that hurts me and seems so incredibly beyond my abilities, maturity, and emotional capacity.  We're dealing with a bug situation that seems hopeless.  And day by day, it seems like more and more things are tainting this community for me, and trying to pull me out of it.

In addition to coming home to a lot of bugs, I also came home needing to see a doctor. Hours at the clinic and pharmacy later, I was treating what was supposedly a skin infection.  Then later in the week, I waited hours to see another doctor who confirmed my suspicion (and fear) that it was actually shingles, and I'd been on the wrong medicine for four days. Nearly perfectly timed pain and exhaustion: November in University.

November is at that wonderful climax which signals there is an end in sight - but an enormous mountain of work to climb through to get there, and I'm at the steepest part.  But I had to miss GYG this week.  And no matter how many times people tell me that it's ok to take time off once in a while, or everyone needs a break... that is a commitment that I've made with my whole heart, and it hurts to not be there because I'm overwhelmed by other parts of my life.

God
is
Good.

Feeling weak and small, I sat on the floor at the back of church one Saturday night, comforted by the warmth and rhythm of community praising Him.

Feeling hopeless and alone, I've been surprised and encouraged by hugs, words, emails, texts, phone calls, and letters which have reminded me that God is for me: not only is He so high above all these things I'm struggling with, but He is with me in them, and has surrounded me with people who pray for and listen to me.  I can't describe how much my heart and head have been lifted by the love of people around me - and even people from back home who suddenly felt the need to get in touch.

It's been hard for me to adjust to how early it gets dark now.  And there have been days when I've been scared for the Winter ahead.

But even the darkness is washed away when the light comes.  And the light that I'm in love with, filled with, and surrounded with is one that just keeps shining brighter and brighter.

I love waking up to the sunrise.  Light filling my room, and warming my face, I realize no matter what goes on, I'm held by the one who put the stars in place.

And I dont think anything could ever compare to His arms, which hold me, comfort me, protect me, defend me and lead me.

From a while back!

Today, driving around in Halifax I saw a sign that said "It's summer! Come in and celebrate!"  While the leaves are all off the trees, and the mountain of school work I should be tackling right now may be hints that it is infact Fall, here's a little hint of Summer that I found in my drafts.  I'm not sure how it didn't get posted when it was written....but here it is.
Written in early August.

It was a dark and stormy night, and I sat in a circle with my church family, holding an old song book, listening to the accompanyment of an accoustic guitar, worshiping God.

It was a dark and stormy night, and we were the only ones around on a small bit of land between two lakes.  Lightening flashed, lighting up the night, and thunder boomed, rumbling around us, and it wasn'tthe best kind of feeling small.  

Sometime's my heart feels like a dark and stormy place.  And I'm sure the people around me agree.  There are moments and seasons when the fog, rain, dirt and grime of battling emotions and whatever else is going on in there get a little out of control, and the boat starts to rock on the waves, and it's hard to navigate or know what's going on, or focus on anything other than the darkness and the wetness and the coldness, and the bitterness that is hurled towards the weatherman, the mailman, the human...

God.

It's a good thing I love the rain, and I'm mesmerized by lightening, and I can't comprehend thunder.  Because we experienced quite a bit of it.  My years of Girl Guides and camping in the rain were mocking me as we struggled to put up a tent we'd never put up before, and as I considered the extra tarp I'd left in the car, and the rope I'd said I didn't need.

Even when packing light, there are some things that shouldn't be left behind.

But just before Amber, Carla, and I crawled into our soaking wet tent, pitched in a no camping zone on the side of the portage, still half an hour away from our intended camp site for the night, the rain stopped, and the clouds were the warmest, most beautiful grey I can fathom, and the stars were shining. Bright.

Clear.

I have beheld your power and your glory.

Sometimes the clouds have been there so long that your eyes ajust and you forget that the world is actually brighter, that the sky is actully clearer, that the sun is actually warmer, that the night is actually blacker.  But There is always such clarity after a storm. When the rain finally stops, you can breathe clearer and see clearer and be clearer. 

Last week it was like my eyes were finally opened, the clouds, which I'd decided were never leaving, parted, and it was such a tantalizing delicous beautiful kind of scary freshness. 

I love that I am not the holder together of all things - that's Christ.  Christ who is fully God and fully human. God who hurled the stars into place, is entirely sure and entirely in control of where the lightening hits, and when the rain falls.  God who titled the earth, his creation, at just the right angle for life, is also so active in me.    And so as I've struggled and prayed and wondered, he's been there the entire time.  And when he opens the door, even a tiny crack, just enough for me to look through, it's incredible.

I've been praying about the future.  I've been wondering about my role as a woman in the church.  I've been questioning what I should do with my life after one more year of school is done.  And here's what I've discovered about finding my way.

The more dependent, reliant, and trusting I am, the more He opens my eyes, and the way becomes clear.  And so it's more like I just get to sit here, a few unconnected puzzle pieces, and choose to slide around in His fingers properly when he puts me into the right place, rather than trying to wiggle myself in to wherever I see myself belonging. 

I feel like I'm on vacation!

I watch a man, at home in rubber boots, plaid shirt, fleece vest and ball cap as he walks towards an old rusted mailbox.  The Canada Post logo stands out against the old forest green.  Rust, pours over the top and down the sides as though an anointment of age; a distinct marking of time and endurance. 

I’ve seen the newer, sleeker, grey and brown boxes around this quant, autumn town in Nova Scotia too.  I doubt that this box receives the flurry of communication it once did.  If a mailbox were personified, I wonder if it would feel tainted or replaced, or if it would bask in the light of the glorious good ol’ days.  Compartments are now filled with colour evidence of deeply planted capitalism, consumerism; greedy-senseless-needy-ism.  The romantic, elegant ebony curves of cursive, hand written stories poured out on a page of heart and life and history faded into rigid light rows, right to left lines of the typewriter, and then to the stark, Times New Roman, digital life.  And while to me, fingertips tapping on the black keys of my now aging Macbook, a typewritten letter seems deliciously retro, I wonder if there is less heart to paper flow, when words are split into individual characters, and each line is paused and pierced by sound and and forced motion back to the left.

I’ve realized lately that sometimes I don’t make connections.  For example, I just realized the beautiful play on words of “Whit’s End,” home of the incredible imagination station in the stories and radio life of Adventures in Odyssey.  I’m too used to trying to think faster, but in a way that causes me to break my words – thoughts, memories, emotions, lessons – into choppy letters and uniform words.  So life is processed in quick jerky movements as I watch words appear on the page, and try to transfer information as fast as possible. 

That’s why, caught up in the slowness of pressing richly coloured oil to paper, or as my paintbrush slowly straitens, vibrant pigments sailing from brain to brush to canvass, I’m in love.  I’m in love with the moment, at once cozy and invigorating, where my heart and my mind and my body are connected, the rigidness is gone and I just soak. Beauty. 

We spent the day watching incredibly beautiful icy blue waves of Peggy’s Cove roll majestically across endless water, then crashing mightily into massive rocks, slow, fluid movement suddenly leaping into the air, as millions of drops of salty cold sea flew into the sky.   I confess that last time I was on the East Coast, it was beautiful….but I didn’t find it stunning.  But yesterday, I could have sat on those rocks, small in the immenseness of creation, smiling and mesmerized by clouds and waves until my hair turned gray, and my face, thick with salt from the sea, was sweetened by wrinkles – the paint of love and joy and peace.

As I lay in bed, talking to Amber for long enough that I’m sure I’ll be ready for a twelve hour nap by four o clock this afternoon, the image of waves was woven through the thicket of thought and conversation.  Maybe my brain doesn’t connect the dots fast enough, but my heart is connected to my Saviour.  And what’s beautiful about the realization that I’m going in circles, creeping forward and then almost pushing myself back to the starting point, is that the story He’s writing in the process is the kind of story I want to tell with my words and clothes and eyes – endlessly.   I think I’m getting over being run by fear, and it creeps back.  I think I’m getting over pride and perfectionism, and it pours out of my eyes in tears that make my cheeks red and itchy.  And I realize, that all of these things that make my heart seem black and dark in the middle of the night, are small.  He is washing me, making me, teaching me, leading me, painting me, molding me; writing me.

And I just get to laugh, watch the waves, be amazed,

And be His.

Cream in my coffee.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend asked me how I'm doing with my crazy life this semester.  I shrugged, not sure how else to describe it.  When he told me I didn't look tired, I laughed.  I felt tired.  "Maybe you've just never seen me when I'm not tired," I joke, with an air of seriousness that is a bit alarming.

Yesterday, I realized that he was right.  I didn't look tired then.   But by nine in the morning,  I looked at my face in the mirror, and saw tired.   I arrive at my home on the fourth floor of the library early. The lights turn on, waking up to my movement as I walk between the shelves, taking the longest possible route too my "favourite" desk.  It's the right shape, one of only a few on this floor that allow me to glance out the window, and there is an outlet ( a rare commodity in our aging library).  I like to look at old, dusty books on my way to my spot.  Classics that I've never read, and maybe never will, but even just from their smelling, fading threaded covers, I have some level of appreciation for them.

I settle in, once in a while hearing the movements of the other two people, also enjoying the morning solitude of this place.

My face feels warm.  My skin feels heavy, like it's pulling my eyes down.  My eyes feel sticky, glassy, and even the world in front of me looks tired as it's revealed through my glazed vision.

I take a sip of coffee.  The same coffee I promised myself I'd never drink, and was so convinced that even University wouldn't make me indulge in.  I know it doesn't wake me up at all, but I cling to the hope that it might.  I limit myself, fighting cravings for it.  If I've admitted defeat in the not-drinking-it battle, I'm definitely not going to be one of those girls that needs her  coffee every morning.
Today I give in.  And I enjoy the smell of it, it smells awake.  Yes, I like coffee.  But some mornings, it's like drinking a bear hug.  It's cozy and warm and lovely, it gets you going, and maybe even smiling...and as wonderful as it is, sometimes it's not so enjoyable.  I remember feeling crushed in my dad's arms...but I'd never say no to another, no matter how much it hurt my ribs.  The coffee seems to poison the back of my throat, and I can taste it all day.  Sometimes I think this makes me even more tired.

Two hours later, I get up to walk around, and realize that the library has filled without me noticing.  I'm glad I noticed the vibrant red popping out of little maple leaves this morning.  I'm glad that as I waited at the bus stop with other early risers, coffee tumblers in hand, eyes just as glazed as mine searching for  the bus to take us downtown, I could each person's breath, as my own disappeared in front of me.

I didn't notice the library waking up, and I didn't really notice myself waking up either.  Or maybe not waking up, but puttering along, brain fooled by the sun into energy.  It's October.  The leaves are changing colour.  The day gone by, I sit on a patch of grass outside the church sanctuary.  The bottom of my shoes, the bottom of my laptop, and the sweater I'm sitting on painted by the earth beneath me.
With all the midterms, assignments, thanksgiving preparations, ministry meetings, and the excitement of having our apartment sprayed for bugs once again...I'm so thankful for the peace of the cooling air this evening, the joy that will come as my voice blends with the voices of some youth who I cherish, singing Praise to the one who holds all things together.

And even if it takes a coffee to get me out of my cozy bed in the morning, I love the place He has me in.  Especially when there's cream: a thick, smooth, and swirling light in the darkness.

My my, how time flies

Under the geometric, dome window that gives light to this beautiful old building, I hear the timeless steps of heels on stairs, and glance around at the updates which try to disguise themselves in the art and architecture of Tabaret Hall.  I'm on the top floor, it's still early for the university, and those who are up and running, coffee-filled and faces-washed, are in class.  I glance at the fluorescent lights, inside old-looking sconces that may once have held candles, and the industrial looking doorways set to open or close at the push of a button, to make the building more fire safe.  I try to imagine away the institution, and feel this building, and the ideas and thought and learning that has gone on here for decades.
Four years ago I was struck by the strength of the columns and steps leading into Tabaret.  The moulding and the colours, the high ceilings, the real, old, loved and faded wooden hand rails on top of curled, iron spindles. If the rail didn't shake so much when I put my hand on it, I would have found a moment to slide down one.

Sinking into what may likely be my last year of University, I have a kind of anxious nostaligia about this place.  Once in a while, I consider what life would have been like if I stuck my toes into the mud here, and got more involved.  And as I start to realize, for the first time, the immense knowledge of my professors, and seem to be genuinely, deeply interested in the kind of dust-blowing, clue-hunting, tongue-deciphering discoveries of my teachers, I find myself enjoying learning again.  Once in a while, the thought occurs to me that either I should have waited three years before coming to University, or that I should go on to furthers studies after, and perhaps I'll have the kind of university experience that I remember teachers and my parent's friends telling me about.  For years "grown ups" have been telling me that if I'm not loving university, I'm not in the right program.  But as my professors translate for me from Polish or Vietnamese to English, and I listen to their voices bouncing back and forth from language to language, explaining history in a way that is actually soul-gripping,  I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place.  Do I have a taste of "you dont know what you've got 'til it's gone?" Or maybe I've just caught the tantalizing whiff of new adventures and new challenges that come when I'm out of the bounds of school. I walk around this place like I'm wearing heels: feeling confident and powerful; experienced, but young and maybe like I'm trying a little.  But inside the shoes are feet - still treading forward, but sometimes questioning both the steps taken and the direction I'm walking, and sometimes wobbling a little.

I guess that's normal when you play follow the leader. And I guess that's what I've been doing all this time.  Feet in the shoes He's given me, hands in His.
Im growing up to like being a child.


 

Don't clam up.

I love this child deeply.  As deep as his huge, dark brown eyes reach into me, and then probably some more.  I actually can't imagine feeling deeper about a child than I feel about him sometimes...which makes me wonder how powerfully strong my love will be for a child of my own one day.  But, for the moment I'm in right now, this is as much emotion as I can understand.

My little four year old friend, teaches me Dari and promises to buy a car for me to drive him around in, as he tells me he's taken my kilis and thrown them in the garbage.  How will I get into my home? How will I get into my work? Good thing his smile tells the truth.

You are mine, he says.  And the extent to which he means it breaks my heart.  You are my friend only.  No my sisters' , no my brothers.'  Mine.  What is that? he says, pointing at the knotted pink, green, and black anklet another child made for me.  I don't like it.  Take it off. And he tries, with his little fingers, to untie it.  And then he pulls until he is amazed by the white mark it leaves on my skin, and is distracted.

I tell him that I like it, and I wear things that I choose to wear.  I am free. I tell him that I am friends with all of his family; that I think it's important to be friends with everyone.  And I pray that  Canada will teach him to not own a woman's body in this way.  I pray that he will learn to respect all people.  I pray that he will learn not to hit me when I don't let him have his way.  I pray that he won't hit anyone by the time his fists actually hurt when they meet you.

But then he places the brilliant white clam shells I brought him from BC over his ears, and his face lights up, and he can hear it.  He leans into my face, cracks the shell a bit away from his ear so that I can hear it too.

But as I share a meal with his family, as they break their fast for the day, it's not the smooth, gentle ocean, but the stormy crashing waves that echo across my heart, as the brother, today the head of the family while their father is at work, gets angry at his older sister for not cooking bringe, delicious, long white rice that I can't quite figure out how it tastes so good, or where it comes from.  She's cooked seven dishes, including special bread cooked in a 500 degree oven with the door slightly open, in an unairconditioned apartment on a 30 degree day.  She's cooked for hours, surrounded by the rich aromas of her creation, weak from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. I think of the wishing I've once or twice caught in her eyes, as I explain how I live with my friends, and what kind of man I might marry.  I hear the submission in her voice to her younger brother as she promises to cook rice for him the next day. 

I pray.  So, deeply thankful that I am so abundantly free.  I pray, but my words can only reach so far.  It's almost overwhelming.  I clam up.

In my weakness, the Spirit intercedes for me, with groanings too deep for words.  And so I feel this pictures, yearnings, confusion, sorrow, and joy lifted from me, and light fills me.

I cup my hands around the shell, held between our heads.  He turns, almost exasperated at this point, after trying and trying everything he can think of to make me hear it.  Hear it???? He asks, desperately.

Yeah.  I hear it.

I hear love.  

And in my ears, that sounds like the ocean.

Light Hearted.

Yesterday I could tell there was a new crescent moon, by the circle of quiet, sedated men and children sitting in the shade, waiting in the final moments before dusk.  I knew its shape by the delicious scents freely seeping through my open window on the warm summer night as I lay awake, too late, thinking.

I yearn to understand hearts.  What makes them beat? What makes them grow? What makes them break? How do they heal? How are they satisfied?  I think about atriums and ventricles and muscles, and oxygen and arteries and veins and lungs and I'm so amazed by the Creator.  I heard that our blood has the same salt content as the ocean.  And I love the flowing, rushing, constant, life sustaining, natural cycle happening in us all the time.  It's a constant creation where every particle works together, dies, and is replaced.  It's a constant purification as our muscles and brain are satisfied by this perfect, pure, invisible, always moving, essential essence, and the unclean, death, waste, is whisked away and breathed out.   It's a constant river of life, put in us by a detailed, perfect creator, twisting and turning but always RUSHING through our bodies, never ceasing until the day that we see Him, face to face.  I'm amazed by the harmony of us, how even the smallest cell is purposefully created, and how in every way I am coated, inside and out in the indescribably immaculate, decadent fingerprints of my Creator.  He made me in His image; a work of art that moves and breathes down to the smallest cell.  He holds my heart, gently, firmly, protecting me.  He is the breath of life that makes it beat.  He knows and understands the deepest pain that I could ever encounter.  He is the one true healer; above time, above circumstance, awesome in power; forever.

I walked, in the early morning, through a field of waste high, dry grass, stepping on hard ground, avoiding thistles.  I felt the stark, crisp, blades against my bare arms and legs. They seem to stand strong, but they sway in the wind and crumple under even slight pressure.  Thinking about the last time I was here is kind of painful.  The field was covered in snow...still crunchy, still dead, still beautiful.  The river rushing down over rocks is still a sign of life in both the present and my memory's form of this place.  The water.  It all comes back to the water for me.  I walk through the field memorizing Psalm 63... and praying for more of God, and less of me.  For more of the freedom I taste and long for in Him.  For freedom from the bondage of pain and sin in my heart.  For freedom from the fears and questions about the future.  For strength to surrender that beating, cracked but fearfully and wonderfully made heart inside of me...that I would be fully satisfied, as with the richest of foods, in Him.

The sun beats down, even in the morning.  It's hot and like the ground around me, I feel parched.  I long for a sip of the rushing river that I can hear above the crickets around me. And I pray for those around the world who are fasting.  I pray that in their hunger, exhaustion, and thirst, that they would experience Christ.  The thing with hearts is that the physical is not eternal.  But it's a matter of life and death.  It's a matter of freedom or slavery.  It's a matter of Heaven or Hell.  It's a matter of today and tomorrow.

And this is why I'm so desperate for heart conversations.  I care about hearts.  And I long to understand more than anatomy and biology but to understand emotion, longing, feeling, dreaming, spirituality.  I want to know in the sense of understand and experience this level of God's creation, that I may be an instrument of Him.  That I may be His hands and His feet and His voice and His light bringing glory to His name with every beat of my heart.

Please pray for freedom.  Pray that we would see scarves held in hands, blowing, dancing colourful flags of surrender in the wind, and hair caught in the breeze as a testament to freedom, satisfaction, purification, and sanctification as hearts are given to Christ.  Pray that we would see hands lifted in prayer, heads facing the Son.

Pray that we would fast as He would choose...(Isaiah 58) to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.  To share bread with the hungry, bring homeless into our houses, to cover the naked, and not hide ourselves from our own flesh.

I want to walk in the light.  Heart on my sleeve - exposed, yet clothed in the righteousness of Christ.  Seen, but protected by his mighty hands.  Working, and resting, in His time, for His glory.

She helped me see Aurora.

       There's a spiralling, massive tower of very large, beautitfully-white canvasses in the entrance of the art store near my house.  The first time I saw it, I'm pretty sure my jaw actually dropped.  Something about it that just screams be creative, be creative.  It's a little voice that's been crying with the little bit of force it has left, and almost in hopelessness inside of me.  Let it out.  Let it out in rivers of emotional colours that dance and run and stop abruptly.  Let it out in the pounding of thick, bold oils that smell like release and like reminders and like reinventing and like re-establishing the flow of thought and curiosity.  Let it out in rhythmic tapping of keys, words from that bit of soul that is a wild valley of flowers, each stunning in it's own unique texture and form, swaying in the wind, breathing in the sun and exhaling life to us...and despite the joy of setting free and generating ideas and sharing my thoughts and heart and life, art has been one of those things that I love to do and would love to do more...and don't seem to find the time for lately...until I heard about Kathryn's letter.
        Not too long ago, she used to sit behind me in church.  Some days, I would sit beside her, and listen to stories about her grandchildren, and Holland, and her family in Calgary.  She'd tell me about her deceased husband, and how she used to have tea and play cards.  And she'd always ask about school, about my family in BC, about the youth, about my roommates.  I loved her warm blue eyes, and her hands, and her rings.  Truth be told, I think when I saw her I felt the warmth that my younger self did around Abbie at Knox, and I felt safe.  I think that we all need older, wiser women in our lives who can teach us to love brightly, hug completely, and listen with emotion in our eyes.
     On Saturday I was celebrating a sweet sixteen with a friend from church.  Sparkles and colours and music and dancing and tons of tulle later, I know that what I'm going to remember is not the feeling of chaperoning, and is not how beautiful it was to watch my friend and her mom dance their hearts out together, or to watch her unsure self, beautiful in a floor length ball gown, look up to her dad and wrap her arms around him.  It's not the glitter, the presents, the cake, the laughing...but a simple conversation about the letter.
      We visited her about a month before she died, he said, after asking and hearing my name.  She took out a letter, and was so touched by it that she asked us to read it so we could share it too.  She was really moved by it.  She was touched by it.  She enjoyed it.  She smiled. She smiled that loving, living, genuine, complete smile that feels like it touches you.
      There are lots of things I hope for when I write.  I hope that my words will preserve memories of beautiful moments, like sharing wine and chocolate on a bedroom floor and talking about how we've been changed by God this year, hearing the music of my neighbours' kids playing together with all the instruments they can find in our living room, or lying in our bunk beds in the dark, talking and laughing until we fall asleep.  I hope that as I'm writing, I'll experience God as I stop and breathe and reflect on my days.  But really, I love the power of words. I love the depth of soul they hold, and the ability they have to bridge generations and geography.  I love that as my hands wrote my heart and sealed it to give to a friend, she smiled, felt my love, and held it dearly.
      I draw and paint and write and sing because it helps me connect my eyes, my heart, my hands, and my mind.  Being creative makes me smile as I dwell on the creativity of my Saviour.  And every time I do it and every time I think that thought I'm more amazed.  I have this need inside me to share the eyes He has given me, and to see him shine in the colour I see dancing, even in these black, digital words.  I'm encouraged by it, and hope to encourage others through it.
      Here's hoping I'll see and feel and try to experience this aurora more often.

This is what my stream of consciousness looks like today.

Last night when I came out of Metro, the sky was the perfect colour of blue.  It was the kind of blue that is at the same time relaxing and exhilarating and it's like the stars and silver crescent moon are smiling so wide it hurts because they know they look so good standing with that dark cerulean.  It was the kind of moment where the two just stare each other in the eye, smiling, and everyone who witnesses it tingles with that ooey-gooey lovely feeling, recognizing something that is all at once destiny and poetry and I just want to fall on the ground because this Creator blows my mind.

I'm listening to this song that I found when trying to find another song I'm so captivated by all the sounds...and I am so interested in music - what inspires it? What does it mean? How did all these sounds get discovered?   Why are we scared of it, in love with it, angered by it, moved by it, changed by it? How is it such an experience to make and manipulate and create and combine and discover and dance with what is all at once harmony and cacophony. And I feel like we only half experience it.  If you could see all these waves, if they were colour, if you could see and smell and feel and taste them like the ocean waves, how beautiful would that be? Imagine!!!

I think the same way that we forget how to solve math problems, or how to conjugate verbs, or the words to an old favourite song, we so often forget things when we don't practice them.  And I think that so often are out of practice imagining.  Even when I think I'm imagining things - it's usually imagining the future, or imagining experiences that are still within the constraints of how the world actually seems to be.  And I kind of miss imagining I'm a dragon living in a floating castle and talking a secret language with creatures that my friends and I made up.

I want to imagine more than solutions for problems, or answers to questions, or my life worked out the way I want it to.   I want to imagine more than just while dreaming.

I was made in the image of God who created and creates.  And I wonder, when I think about the sky, and art, and words, and music, and life and the world, what can be seen in creation.  I wonder what there is to know through creativity, and what there is to feel when creating and experiencing the art of others.

Leap FROG.

I love that moment, when you jump into something and realize there is no turning back.  The moment between jumping and plunging beneath ice-cold water.  The moment between thinking a thought and opening your mouth and words coming out.  The moment between making a chord and strumming loud and hard.  I love it because it's a kind of tantalizing rush of adrenaline and oxygen expressed in fear-conquering, trust-building, heart-shaping experience.  I love it because of the growth I see in seconds of stomping on silly things that have been holding me back for so long.  I love it because I realize that in my small, weak, scared, broken, lie-beleiving self is a Spirit of power, truth, and strength. I love it because the freedom that comes when the chains of fear fall to the ground is so beautiful.  It's like putting on a pair of new glasses on a sunny Spring day, and realizing how clear and sharp and bright the world is.  It's like wearing a flowing dress and running through a field in bare feet.  It's like doing somersaults twisting and twirling around under clean river water that tastes and smells and feels delicious and pure.

This weekend I found sanctuary in a camp in a forest beside a lake in Quebec, with 20 youth and leaders from Grace. And as I reflect on our talks about identity, I realize how much of my life I've spent in an identity crisis - I want to be perfect, I want to be fun, I want to be skinny, I want to be accepted, I want to be the best student, I want to be good at everything I do, I want to know all the answers, I want everyone to love me, I want to make a difference, I want to succeed....  And I realize how much of my  life has been spent wrapped up in lies about myself, and desperate, frantic, ridiculous attempts to be someone and something I'm not.

I remember going fishing with my mom and brother.  Tim and I would get the line all tangled so often that my mom would spend the whole time patiently untying the transparent threads.  It seemed to take so long!  What an experience to realize that I am at the centre of a giant, messy knot of lies.  I have to sit still like the little girl waiting for mom to untie my matted hair.  I have to move as I'm called to move and wait as I'm called to wait.  God is slowly unwinding the mess I've made.  It's scary taking steps out of the cocoon I've hidden myself in.  And I'm in process of continual metamorphosis.  I've spent years trying to get myself out.  Trying trying trying trying.  Even trying things that scare me.  Even doing the motions that might match some of what is going on right now.  But I can't do it myself.  I'm so thankful for the patient, wise, careful leading of my Creator.    I'm so thankful that He searches and knows my heart, that He holds, shields, and provides for me.

Jon used an analogy of boiling frogs this weekend.  If you put a frog in boiling water - it will jump out immediately.  But if you put it in cool water, and slowly raise the temperature, he just sits there.  And as one of the youth famously quoted at the end of the weekend - I'm learning frogs can be boiled in a good way.  I am changed and influenced by my surroundings - and that is a long and slow process.  Me giving up my pride and being willing to be open, honest, weak, and imperfect is a slow process.  It's a process that involves leaps of faith.

We jumped through a hole in the ice into the freezing lake.  And it was so refreshing. It was so exhilarating.  It was so worth the initial pain of walking on the slushy frozen surface to meet the cool waters.  As I'm taking leaps of faith - even little ones, like playing the guitar during worship, or speaking French with francophones, I need to leap like a frog.  Not the little green creature that may have appeared everywhere I went as a preteen.  Growing takes leaps of faith in which I FROG.  Fully. Rely. On. God.

God who gives me identity.  God who gifts me uniquely.  God who loves me despite all that I do.

Hello World.  My name is Jennifer Emery. I am intimately known and loved by the God who created me, and calls me his child.  I am walking down a winding path hand in hand with my saviour, Jesus Christ.  In Him, I'm breaking away from fear.

And it feels...
Like rain boots in the muddy creek between blackberries and alder trees, trying to catch a frog.

East Hastings.

When I look at the photo I took there, I smell that man's breath, and feel my heart race as suddenly suddenly his breath is on my cheek and his voice is in my ear and I'm awakened by his words.

We had walked out of Community, a vintage thrift store, in a sun shower.  The rain silently ended, and we stared in wonder down an alleyway to the brightest, biggest rainbow I have ever seen.  The sky at the end of the road was flooded in vibrant colour, washing over the garbage and power lines and drab.  My fingers fumble trying to find the right setting to capture the thick bands of light.

I can't see the rainbow in the picture.  The sky looks grey, the buildings look run down, the road looks plain.

But I'm standing there, the sun behind me, the rain in front of me, and the light dances on the raindrops and glorious, intense beams fill the air.  At some point I knew something about refraction and prisms and angles.

We keep walking, and soon find ourselves on East Hastings.  A man dumps a white grocery bag of cell phones onto the street, as a women explains the kind she needs. I feel my hand holding tightly clutching my purse.  I try to look at the ground after I catch myself searching for a face that seems "normal."  I judge so quickly.  I don't know the stories behind the sullen eyes and protruding cheek bones and unkept hair.  Who am I to say what is a normal face and a normal smell and a normal life?

I cling to my possessions, as if the poverty and brokenness around me is some kind of contagious disease threatening my life.  Here I am  in my fitted purple fitted coat that makes me feel like a sophisticated city girl, and my imported scarf wrapped just-so around my neck.  Here I am, my eyes painted with black liner and mascara - bright, and young, and lively, and beautiful.  Here I am, my hands doused in scented lotion - soft and gentle.  And even I know the words I'm dancing around.

(I'm picturing the part in the movie, Annie, where Mrs. Hannigan is preparing to bathe in gin.)

Oh yeah.  That's me, the one that claims to crave realness. See me over there, driving daddy's car, swiping my VISA and showing my friends the wonderful, homey, lovely West Coast?  And yeah, that's me and my shiny motivations to do shiny things and be a shiny person.  And I choke as my hypocrisy and flesh and sin slap me in the face.  Conviction cuts through the mud on my eyes and the junk in my mind and the noise in my ears, and I hear my footsteps again.  And I hear human beings - beautiful, beloved creation talking about the glorious rainbow I had just tried to capture in a photo.

This promise can't be kept in materialism.  It's not that kind of tangible.  But it's the kind that changes lives and heals the broken hearted and loves the poor.  And it's acted tangibly in genuine prayer, and genuine commitment to listen to and do the things that God whispers in my ear.

The sin in my life is as hurtful, is as dangerous, is as disgusting, is as horrible, is as much against the law as everything that I was judging.

And clean? Clean is not St. Ives face wash and Tide detergent and Bounce dryer sheets. Clean is recognizing the dirt that I sometimes drench myself in, and confessing it, and being washed by the blood of Christ, who took the punishment and paid the price for me. Clean is true, humble, honest repentance, turning from the darkness and walking in the light.

I didn't deserve that man's warning to put my camera away.  And in the drab of that photo, I see see the hopelessness of my sin.  And in the memory of that rainbow - I pray earnestly for East Hastings.  And I thank God earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit, opening my eyes to real brokenness.

My hand came up off my purse, and my eyes came up off the ground, and I experienced God on East Hastings.  God loving and working in lives in "Canada's Poorest Postal Code," and God loving and working my my own life.

An update...slightly jet-lagged.

I wonder if the emotions in airports are the same as they may have been at old train stations or sea ports in the past.   I picture the hugs and waves and tears and smiles.  I think of the excitement, fear, curiosity, adventure of going to a new place, or starting a new life, or going back to a place of memory.  Would the horns and steam engines, waves, or tracks have added something that can’t be found in airports? Would the smell of salt and seaweed or coal, or just a crowded place have made it different?  

I’m on a bumpy plane right now, 27 000 feet over British Columbia, 187 km away from landing in Victoria.  Every once and a while I hear the muffled laugh or murmur of my friends sitting five rows behind me.  I sit with quiet strangers, and it between bouts of sleep, I realize how much reality seems distant or unreal; dream like. 

While I may not be as outwardly excited by airplanes as someone else I know, they still amaze me.  How can I stand up, walk around, or sit in a hard seat on an object that is floating in the air? And it’s beautiful to stare out at the sky, and see Orion face to face with me, standing above city lights below.  

And if I put the whole idea of being in the sky out of my head, I still can’t believe I’m even “here.”  Here as in almost back on Vancouver Island.  Here as in almost in my hometown again.   I feel like I just got back to Ottawa!  And could it really be true that two of my closest friends are here with me?

The world gets smaller as bridges are built between the two  homes of my heart; old and new.  I’m nervous,  but so excited to be exploring the coast with Amber and Carla.  We have lots of ridiculous, ambitions plans.

 …The turbulance makes me think that the sky has rumbly tumblies in it’s belly, like Winnie the Pooh…

It's like when sour milk spoils, the bitter becoming sweet.

At the pirate fair my grandparents used to take me to, there was a roller coaster for kids.  The train was shaped like a dragon, head to tail.  I can't really remember my first time on it.  I think my memories of it aren't really my own.  They are formed form an older pair of eyes, seeing younger children in excited terror letting go of mom and dad, stepping into the dragon's head, gripping tight and staring at their parents.

And I'd like to imagine that little girl, hair knotted and tied carelessly into a pony tail, and that boy with a crooked, artistic DIY haircut as a younger Jen and Tim, and we look back at mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa in black and white striped shirts, and the bar clicks as it is locked down on us, and the ride jerks as the dragon flies up.

Sometimes days have ridiculous highs and lows. And sometimes it's hard to keep seeing the incredibly bright blue sky and the unbelievably bright, perfect shimmering snow throughout the day.  It's like that moment on the swing, when you're at the top and you can see that little bit of the neighbourhood that you just can't see from the ground, but you have to keep pumping hard and fast for those moments where you see it.   Up and down and up and down I was swinging through my morning trying to get everything I needed to brave the beautiful biting cold on the way to church.  I was swinging through church and I was swinging through cooking brunch and I was swinging through my conversations and then I came home, and jumped off the swing, and landed in those wood chips that are beautiful sienna brown, and smell delicious, but give awful slivers that sting and are stuck in your hands for so, so long.

And something slithers over the hugs and smiles and stories and warmth of singing praise to my Saviour.  And these bricks are unbearable, tumbling down and building all these walls that seem unbreakable.  And it's like they've made this fence that fights back authenticity and fosters this fake, hushed, ugly, heart wrenching, fearsome...thing...that masks the most loving faces, and just, hurts.

I want to fight the extreme with the extreme.  I step into the snow on the balcony, bare feet, bare arms, and I just want to have tears to freeze to my face.  Or I would just like to run outside and scream 

because I see the hearts around me and I know the faith around me and it seems like everywhere I go these walls are coming up and I really just am craving an authenticity in which we all just cut the crap and be the broken  faulty creations that we are and in which we allow our strengths to be strengths and we acknowledge our weakness as weakness and we cry out for help when we need it and we're humble enough to be genuine in gratitude and we shed the thick skin we've created to hide a shame which we should have shaken and we just be who we really are. 

 Completely. 

And please can I just know your heart?

I was dreading our community prayer time tonight.  I was dreading this room of people praying surrounded by this unspoken unseen thing that I was feeling.  I wouldn't even say I was doubting - I was full out believing that tonight was going to be fruitless, that it was going to be so surface level that any change would be environmental - the sun warms the top foot of water, it ripples, the wind makes little waves, a fish jumps and sinks back down.

The dragon, with a smiling face and happy green and yellow body rolls gently up and gently down around an oval track.  And slowly the two little kids in the front let their grip disappear and they giggle as they raise their arms up and wiggle their fingers and feel them being moved by the air as they glide around the track.

Prayer tonight was beautiful.  It was authentic, pure, community in communion with God.  There were moments tonight that I've been praying for and dreaming of for months.  And joy was heavy in the room. And I could feel God in the room, like the child feeling the air through her fingers. The room was ...full... and the air was sweet to breathe and no number of words in any language can even begin to describe it.   My sorrow was turned into joy, and once again I was surprised by God working so POWERFULLY.

I'm lying in bed, eating a piece of incredibly dark chocolate.  I used to hate the bitterness.  I actually would have squirmed and scrunched my face up and spat it out not too long ago.  I smile as I savour it.  I love how live changes day to day.   I love how God works in such unexpected, undeserved, and unimaginable ways.

I knelt on the hard floor, my hair falling in my face, my whole body smiling and basking in the warmth and saturated with immense joy.  The God who holds the universe, dwelling in my living room.

The air is always there.  It's always life sustaining.  It's always moving.
Sometimes, you can touch and taste and smell and see and hear it.

Can you hear the sound?

This morning, coat buttoned up, hat damp on my head, cheeks burning slightly, I came in the door, smiling.  Do you have something to tell me? Asks Carla.

No.

But I love the snowy-icy-pellety things that are falling from the sky.  They make this magical beautiful sparkling tingling sound.  And the ground is so bright.  And the sound is so beautiful.  And I almost wish that my rational self was not telling me that standing outside in this weather is not a good plan.

But the sound...I actually can't get past it.  It's like thousands of little tiny oddly shaped bells ringing , or itsy-bitsy glass bubbles shattering.  It's like walking through a fantasy land, and really I just want to lie flat on the ground and press my face as close to the sound as possible, and listen to it dancing in my ears. It's like an incredibly delicate, curious song that I can only hear a little piece of, and I smile, in love with the piece I can hear and in complete wonder as I try to imagine what it would be like to hear it all.

I love the sensory phenomena of creation around me. In BC a week ago, smelling the pouring rain and touching towering trees, hundreds of years old, their bark softened by the water but rough and strong, protecting and providing like callused hands.  The river rushing behind me, rain drops being caught in the gentle forest floor, I stopped in awe of  tiny moss florets, each having caught droplets of water, light shining on them in just the right way so that it looked like the ground was sprinkled with amber crystals.
So big, and yet so, so immaculately detailed.

And that leads me to time.  To plans that I can't possibly understand.  To reflecting and rejoicing and pondering and pleading and imagining and inspiring and wishing and waiting and, pause...

It's 2012.

And not that I have any major New Year's Resolutions...only to grow and shine and discover and teach and love.  I'm hungry for challenge - for challenge that shapes me day by day, and brings me more and more into the light of my saviour.