Go to bed.

My word for 2014 is discipline and it truly has been a guiding principle thus far. Rather than being a random word I chose out of the air or a New Year's resolution, it is something God had been impressing on me as an area He wants me to grow in. Self-discipline. Disciplining my schedule. Finishing. Following through on commitments. Not thinking about throwing in the towel.

HolyBelly Café, Paris.

If they fed me every morning, I would be a better woman.
3 months later I can still taste these sweet, tender pancakes.

One big area that needed discipline in my life was sleep. I am naturally a night-owl. I love to work in the wee hours, often that is when my writing flows. But when I go to sleep at midnight, am awakened at least once in the night by a child and definitively by 6:30, I am useless the next day. I prop myself up on a couple of espressos and slog on, but I feel like I have been hit by a truck, I am short-tempered and irritable with my children, and I am unmotivated in my work. As we looked a things in our daily lives that needed to improve, how to be more effective and productive, I realized getting to bed earlier would have a positive impact on everything else. Rather than working on improving in a whole bunch of ways, my aim has been primarily this one: 

Go to bed.

I listen to podcasts while doing housework or cooking if the kids are not at home, asleep or playing with their papa, and a recent practical talk for church planters encouraged me to actually put sleep in my calendar. So I do. I now have a set bedtime (allowing for a few exceptions). I have a pre-set alarm on my phone and get out of bed at the same time every day (the kids helped enormously to bring rhythm into our lives, as they, like the Dowager Countess of Grantham, do not observe weekends). Then I "wind the clock" back 8 hours from that wake-up time, and that is my bedtime. And, knowing I suddenly realize I should start laundry before bed and need time to wind my brain down before I can fall asleep, I try to start heading to bed half an hour before that. Simply writing out our daily schedule at the beginning of the year helped me enormously to always have the basic times in my head of when I should be doing what. I don't always hit the mark, I don't get angry or legalistic about it, but it's a helpful guideline.

Sleep. We need it. Our overtaxed brains need to rejuvenate to be at our best. Plan it in and then take care of the rest.

Leaving the Boat Behind

We're moving to Montreal this summer.

After a decade in Europe, 9 of those years in this city in Germany, we're packing up our two kids, a few suitcases and our lives and moving back to Quebec. My heart has always been there, he knew that when he married me. And we finally sensed it was time. That there is a small fishing boat leaving the shore and we are to step into it. We're both on board with this, with our whole hearts.

Most of the time.

Then, there are those moments while cooking dinner when I think how much easier it would be to just stay here. To keep my husband's secure job (which he loves) and our friends and our stuff and our life. There are moments of doubt. Moments when I am afraid. When I don't want to take my son away from his little friends and church community and all he knows (but will, after all, quickly forget at his age). When I want the clothes and nice furniture and a vacation and career advancement. The idols in my life of comfort and security loom large and it can be hard to throw them away. We like safety. We all prefer the known over the unknown. There are times like these, I won't lie.

We'd talked about it back when we met, and that first year and a half were so hard for me in Germany. Then came a time when I knew that Germany was where we needed to be, and for a few years my thoughts didn't even go to Quebec much. I knew I needed to put down roots here and live fully where I was in that moment. That if God wanted me there, he would bring it about in his timing, in his way.

Deliberating over the last year or so about whether or not we would go on this journey was exciting. Adventure! Faith! Brave dreams! Step out in trust!
But now that the boat is leaving the shore this ride is starting to feel a little bit choppy. This dory is looking rickety, and I hear some creaking and is that a bit of water seeping through a crack I see?

When my daughter wakes me in the wee hours, I remain awake even after she has gone back to sleep. I wrestle it out with the Author of our story, for hours. In the morning I journal and find peace. I smile at my phone when I see the verse of the day on the screen:

"My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you."

 I am reminded again that I really want his plans. That I really want the trust, the faith and the bold dreams. That his ways are always better, not always easier. I am thankful I get to be a part of his adventure. The wind is picking up and we're sensing that some of our plans and priorities might be shaken up, but after a few days' wrestling we're ready to be shaken. We're sensing that our rickety dory's going under.

That we might actually have to do what we said yes to and step out onto the water.

In Memorium: My Austrian Spiritual Father

We had slept in the parked car since about 3 a.m. I got our almost 3 year old son out of his car seat and let him snuggle on my lap so that I would have enough room behind me to recline my seat. My husband held our daughter in his arms to give her a break from her car seat, although he was unable to sleep sitting up in our tightly packed rental car. We'd decided to undertake the 8 hour drive from my parents' place in southwestern Ontario, Canada, to Montreal overnight so our kids would sleep through it, but stopped in the parking lot of an OnRoute rest stop to (try to) sleep for a few hours. At 6 we went inside for some breakfast, to freshen up and to enjoy the free WiFi. After getting our kids settled with juice and yogurt, my husband checked his phone. I was laughing at my son's excited antics when my husband nudged me, "Look at this." His voice broke.

A friend back home in Germany had alerted us to the sudden announcement on Tauernhof's Facebook page. Hans Peter Royer, the director of Tauernhof, an mountain retreat centre and Torchbearer's Bible School in Austria, had died suddenly in a tragic paragliding accident.

a snapshot of Hans Peter from the summer of 2007
when my husband & I returned to work as guides

We were shocked. He was only 52. He was an experienced mountain guide, often rescuing others. For a few moments I wondered if it had been some kind of sick joke, how could he have passed away in the same manner as his predecessor? My heart broke for his family, knowing his daughter Lisa, with whom I had hiked when she was 8 years old, had celebrated her wedding only a few weeks before.

We held it together so our kids would not notice our sadness. Back on the road, when they were sleeping again, we shed tears and reminisced about our times at Tauernhof, where we met at Fall School in 2004, and how Hans Peter had impacted the narrative of our lives.


I first went to Tauernhof in 2002 for a mountaineering program called Upward Bound. Those six weeks truly changed my life. Never had I understood or experienced the sweetness and beauty of Christian community like that before. We were often pushed to our physical limits, hiking with heavy packs for up to a week without having a shower, sleeping in a cave 1200 m under the Dachstein mountain in utter darkness at 0 degrees. We were challenged emotionally, putting up with teammates from all over the world of various ages, abilities and personalities, with whom we had to live, cook, and sleep in tents or mountain huts (note the aforementioned lack of showering). We were forced to work together to cross glaciers, literally shouldering each others' burdens when injuries or weakness brought some teammates to their breaking point. I remember fondly the morning we woke up to find our leaders had abandoned us in the night, and we were left to make our own way down the mountain, and then run a 12 km jaunt back to a warm shower and a real bed. My time at Tauernhof taught me that, by God's grace, I am capable of loving other people, even those whom at first impression I thought would drive me crazy, whom I judged and wrote off as uncool or too cool. That I can learn something from everyone.

entering the cave

In those six weeks I learned things that have shaped me continually since then, though I have to admit forgetting how profoundly my character, my outlook and beliefs, were formed in the Austrian Alps. Once we got back home to Germany a week ago, I spent a jet lagged night reading through my journal from that summer in 2002, my first time in Europe. My 20 year old musings are at times cute, painfully embarrassing (I was just getting to know myself), at times profound and still true. And such a reminder of God's faithfulness. Reading through this old journal reminded me that the roots of all the spiritual growth I have known as an adult go down to the cold mountain stream that runs through Schladming and the teachings of HP.

I don't want to try to tell Hans Peter's story here. I can't. Not only is it not mine to tell, hundreds of people knew him better than I did. HP's ministry, not only at Tauernhof but traveling and speaking all over the world, has touched tens of thousands of lives. But he is part of my story, for whom I will be forever grateful. His strong leadership, blunt manner and challenging messages called out to the best within me. He stirred up my desire to grow and change, he made me want to "live a life worthy of the calling you have received" in Christ Jesus. Many students seemed a little bit afraid of him, intimidated by his expertise in the mountains and straightforward Austrian ways. But I saw the twinkle in his eye, the sarcasm and fun behind his rather stoic exterior. I wrote in my journal back then, "If he wasn't so demanding, I wouldn't be confident enough to do all these things [in the mountains]. The staff are totally not about babying us, especially Hans Peter. He just presses on, you don't have a choice or time to think or worry, just go. It's so good, no time to fear." One of the strategies of the program was not to reveal much about what activities we would actually be doing in the course, in order to simulate real life (we do not truly know what the next day will hold), teaching us trust, spontaneity and shaking us out of our desire to control our lives and circumstances.

spot the hut we were headed for...

I remember a particularly painful day in the climbing garden by Hofpürglhütte. I was new to rock climbing, and trying to find my footing wearing big hiking boots on the slick rocks was proving nearly impossible. I was complaining to my belayer why it wasn't working and Hans Peter hollered from a nearby peak, "Don't argue, just climb!" Even after HP scurried over to try to help me, I failed to make it to the top of the route. I fought back hot stinging tears while others took their turns. I was embarrassed and felt terrible, being someone who had always put her self-esteem and value in what she could achieve. Later I wrote in my journal "HP had tried to help me and I felt like I had failed him." But with the encouragement of others and knowing I would only feel better if I got up and conquered something, I completed the Klettersteig and went on with the day, proud to have overcome failure and fear. I'll never forget his words, it meant a lot to me that he noticed me and pushed me to go beyond my comfort zone to achieve what I guess he somehow knew that I could. Others told me later they would have been embarrassed if he had hollered at them like that, or perhaps found him too challenging. But for me, I needed that and it stirred me up to want to achieve the potential he saw in me.

Another day in that same climbing garden, with Heli sitting in the top spot

"Don't argue, just climb" became my motto in the following years, as I tried to stop arguing with God about all the reasons why I can't or don't want to do things and instead get on with obeying him, stepping out in trust. I hadn't thought about that now in a few years, but HP's wisdom has proven timely again.

We were all impressed with the stoic confidence of his children in the mountains. Lisa who told me, "God gave us legs to use them" as she cheerily hiked about 10 hours uphill with us. Lukas as an 11-year-old, helping us slow, somewhat scared, 20-somethings through a wind tunnel in the cave which blew out our lights, telling us in a semi-bored sounding Austrian accent, "I am coming, give me your bag."

I remember him teaching on death in the context of Ecclesiastes, quoting Psalm 90:12 and Amos 4:12, telling us to be prepared for and comfortable with it. Hans Peter told us, "We aren't afraid of dying as much as dying without having really lived." I think everyone would agree, Hans Peter was a man who really lived. And he read us a quote which I took down in my journal, "I depart from this life like a little boy running home from school."

Hans Peter truly was a spiritual father to me, his teaching and timely guidance forever changed me and the course of my life. Tauernhof taught me to love the local church and directed the passion I had for Jesus. We loved you HP and grieve with your beautiful wife and children. Thank you Hannelore, Lukas, Lisa and Eva for sharing him with all of us. His legacy lives on in the thousands of lives he touched, and the millions of lives they will in turn reach.

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it."

2 Timothy 3:14

Baby jet lag

Baby jet lag has to be the worst kind of jet lag.

There is no reasoning with her. There is no keeping a baby up til an appropriate time to sleep...her head just nestles into my chest, no matter where, no matter when, no matter how bright or loud and she is asleep. This past week since we got home from visiting my family in Ontario and friends in Montreal has been rough: way too little sleep, mommy back to work, planning and enjoying our 3 year old man's birthday with a house full of friends, preparing for both kids to start Kindergarten and Krippe (day care in Germany for ages 1-3) in the coming weeks. My husband is now away for the weekend at an important family event 1000km away in Flensburg.

Baby up one night baking her brother's birthday cake
with Papa. Yup, you read that clock right.

I managed to get both kids to sleep before 9 p.m. tonight, the closest to normal this household has been for the past 8 nights. Jet lag, both the adult and baby versions, have kept me up much of the night this past week. It has sometimes felt unbearable, entertaining a child who is wide awake when the parents are just aching for sleep, but at times we have loved those sweet midnight hours, allowing for heart-to-heart talks in the quiet of moonlight and a nocturnal writing session to pour out the too busy thoughts.

We have big decisions ahead of us, ideas, passions, responsibilities, plans whirling in and out. Lying down next to my baby to keep her from crawling and practising her standing skills all night forces not only her but also me to breathe deeply. To still and calm our nervous muscles, our busy minds. Not to jump up and get on with to-dos and cleaning and emails. Waiting for her to calm, to breathe rhythmically. To pray for her in whispers, for all of us. Speak out truth and quiet the doubts and fears.

Sense of Space

"The sense of space might have triggered lighter emotions, less depressing thoughts, a sense of well-being."  Dionne Brand, What We All Long For (261)

Brand's novel refers to a downtown Toronto housing project lacking in any landscaping or foliage to ease weary urban eyes, what the sight of some flowers could have done to increase the sense of space the tightly-packed residents had. I find myself on the farm I grew up in in southwestern Ontario, Canada as I write these words. Surrounded by corn, soybeans, mown wheat fields, and no lack of native flora and fauna. Crickets and grasshoppers twirr in the humid night air. Earlier we were privy to a fantastic thunder and light show, the better part of an hour of torrential rain and skies repeatedly lit up like the day. It is 1:54 a.m. My late night imperative to write can not be blamed on jet lag. Our 6 hours ahead caused my little family to go to bed early and our bright-eyed baby to awaken us all at 4:30 a.m. for the first four days, eager to crawl and test her standing legs. But we've been in North America for over a week now, thus adjusted and truly I should be asleep. 

Yet I am awake and must write, writing has been pent up in my bones amidst days filled with children's games and squabbles, swimming pools and BBQs, steaks and corn on the cob. Traveling from one sibling's home to another, evenings after my generation's offspring are finally in bed spent catching up on two years of lives lived. We've been crossing borders; national, parental, traditional, faithful. How can four children of the same parents, living in one house on the same plot of land til their 18th birthdays, have developed so differently? We all share the Christian faith, a conviction of God as our Father, Jesus as our Saviour and the Holy Spirit as our Comforter and Empowerer. Yet we manifest quite a wide range of the expressions of that faith. This could lead to tensions and disputes, concerns and arguments, hurt feelings and misunderstandings. I want to choose to see this diversity as a beautiful, life-giving thing. There is space in this upside-down Kingdom for difference, for the beauty and complexity that we see embodied in each person, image-bearer of our beautifully complex, multi-faceted God.

Space, a sense of space in the family of Jesus-followers is what we all need. Space to be who we long to be, the deep calls out to deep inside us, to follow the nudges and Spirit whispers. Freedom from boxed in, pre-conceived ideas of who we ought to be, who others got used to perceiving us as, perhaps from what was inherited or passed down; free from labels, taunts, childhood insecurities.

A post card sent to my great-grandmother in 1906.

I love my family and am deeply grateful for them, for who they are, what they have given me and still give me. We have all settled geographically apart from one another, flung from west coast to middle America to Europe. The longer we live apart, the more we adapt to and are influenced by our cultures, be they national, church, political, or socio-demographic cultures. We find our place. The common bond of family runs deeper than this land on which we were raised, which our ancestors worked for inch by inch, struggling and straining to hold down the family farm, to keep the bank at bay. This hard-fought land may one day be sold to others, our generation having found our niches elsewhere. The family name may vanish and be forgotten from this farming community of which I, the youngest and last to go, have not been a part for almost 15 years now. But loss of land will not weaken the bond, will not change what makes us family, for better, for worse. Through email and Skype, rather than the leather post cards my great-grandmother received, we'll keep checking in, keep loving each other. 

A leather post card my great-grandmother received 1906

We do not have to think, act, decide, spend money, believe, play or work the same to be family. We do not have to be uniform to belong to this great, colourful, eclectic family of God, but if we give each other a sense of space to be who we are our lungs with fill, our chests will rise and we'll be able to fling our arms back in the warm summer rain, inhale the lush moist night, find our footsteps, and dance. 

On Paternity Leave and Nighttime Soul-Searching

The first bird chirps at 4:16 a.m.

By 4:29 there is a whole conversation twittering forth the dawn. 

I lay awake even after my baby has gone back to sleep, her angel breath faintly puffing in and out, barely brushing against the skin on the back of my hand.

My soul is awake and thinking.

---------

Does everyone do their soul-searching at night? I'm a night person. Getting up in the mornings has always been a struggle. My mother often came to the stairs at the foot of my bed, leading up from the basement bedroom I shared with my sister Jennifer, and banged on the wall calling, "Christina, time to get up! Push yourself!" Ughhh. I still react negatively to any use of the phrase "push yourself." I can picture it very vividly, hear her voice and see that dreaded wall-smacking hand. Now, my husband is always up before me (he leaves for work at 7 a.m.), he grinds the beans and brews the espresso, foams the milk by hand and makes me a great cappuccino every morning. And now, too, he often has to call "Christina, time to get up!" a couple of times as I try to deny reality and soak up every last minute of sleep. Our son imitates him, his little voice nagging urgently, "Christina!!" It is a cross between hilarious and eerily similar to my mother's voice, and I actually pop up like a pop-tart whenever it gets that point. Ahh, mornings. I have fantasies about getting up early, going for a run, enjoying the dawn and reading my Bible. Maybe even before the kids wake up. Some mothers do this. They shower and pack lunches and prepare everything, and then they wake their kids up. My kids have always, from day one until now, always woken me up. They are currently bright-of-eye-and-bushy-of-tail at 6 a.m. (The baby goes back to sleep around 8:30 for her first of two naps. I do not have that luxury, my girl!) 

So I am not a morning person. I have tried. I have accepted the fact that my mind and body function better in the late evenings. German schools start early compared to Canadian ones (my childhood school started at 9, maybe 8:45 in high school), classes begin at 7:30, or 7:50 at the latest. I'm hoping we change countries before my kids start school. (I am not really joking.)

Even before I had kids, I always worked in the evenings, got a second wind after 9 p.m. and usually get my best ideas between then and 2 a.m. The wee hours are my hours. Anyone with young children can testify to how precious those evening hours are, after the little ones are tucked away. This week I have been home alone with my two beauties for 4 nights and 3 of those bedtimes were really rough. We just moved them into one bedroom last weekend, so there has been a lot to adjust to RE bedtime rituals. The first night with the two of them together was The Worst Night Ever, with them so excited to see each other they kept waking each other up. The night featured, among other entertainment, our almost 3 year old son suddenly playing memory on the floor at 3 a.m., holding up the vegetable cards and proudly teaching his sister "Kohl-rab-i" while I whisper frantically "What are you doing, it's the middle of the night!!".

This was September 15, 2012, 4 days after our daughter was born, her first time outside in our backyard (she was born at home). Just found this on my computer and couldn't resist...hilarious!

Added to the new sleeping arrangement (which is getting there and will be advantageous in the end), their Papa is away, something our family has rarely experienced. I have several friends whose husband's are often away for work, either several nights a week or for a week or so at a time. My husband's job as a teacher allows us a lot of stability; we hadn't been separated overnight for 16 months. We have never both been away from our kids for a night, ever. Papa is the one currently at home on paternity leave with our kids day-in-and-day-out as I have the opportunity to fill in as Assistant Professor for the Summer Semester (which runs from April-September in Germany) in our department of North American studies, so me being home with the kids for several days AND solo parenting took some adjustment, and was a bit rocky all around. These past 4 months have been amazingly harmonious and fun for all of us with Papa at home, free from his usually very heavy workload. I have loved teaching (two undergraduate seminars in Canadian literature) and having time to work on my own doctoral research, totally set free and supported by my husband. Academia allows me extremely flexible working hours; I am home to help get the kids ready in the mornings (once I do get out of bed...) and can be there when I need to be, enabling me to keep breastfeeding 4x per day, give or take. I have loved the intellectual stimulation of being back at uni full time, and not having to take the kids to daycare or be ruled by certain pick-up and drop-off times. If I do need to be at the uni all day, my husband just brings them by my office for a quick feed/visit at midday. We've all loved the change of pace; he's had much more time to reflect, read and think "outside the box" now that he's not preparing lessons for school 3-4 nights a week. He has also done 90% of the housework in this time, all of the grocery shopping and most of the cooking (mind you, he did not take over breastfeeding or night wakings, as he just biologically can't wake up at night and I do as soon as my kids whimper. Nor can he breastfeed.) So I forgot what it feels like to have to clean up after 3 meals and two snacks a day - on the table, under the table, sweep sweep wipe wipe... A self-feeding 10 month old could make the hardiest homemaker break down in tears, and a hardy homemaker I am not.

Yesterday, after my dear friend Nicole helped me take the kids to the beach and get them ready for bed she let herself out at 8 p.m. while I put the finishing touches on a hopefully peaceful bedtime. I fell asleep in bed beside my son at 20:15. I sacrificed my precious evening hours for some much-needed sleep, a really hard thing to do but occasionally necessary. I left the dirty dishes on the table, the laundry undone, the Bible & blogs & articles unread and I slept. It was good for the body and soul and helped today run much more smoothly. 

And now it's 23:50...

Disclaimer: that intro was something I jotted down a month ago. This past week I was too dead-tired to lie awake in the night or do much soul/mind searching. Paternity leave, I wish you would never end!

Of mixed media and dreams remembered and a seat at a feasting table

I saw it on the shelf while doing crunches on the living room carpet. 

I had just come in from a Sunday-night run - my best yet since giving birth to our second child about 9 months ago, spurred on by the need to outrun the mosquitoes dive-bombing into my flailing arms and legs. If you're like me you need some motivation to pick up the pace, and preserving my lifeblood is motivation enough for me.

Also if you're like me, you don't notice the things on your walls/shelves/tables much after they have been there for a week or so. It all just blends in, looks OK (or not), gathers dust and eventually gets boring. It takes a friend with an eye for design or a move or a fit of cleaning (those do come on me once in awhile) to get me thinking about moving furniture or decorative things around. 

My gaze fell on this little mixed-media piece of artwork on our shelf . Anyone who has been to one of our homes over the past six years has seen it. I do not claim to be a fine artist; I always floundered terribly in art class. (Except for my grade 9 art teacher Mr. Debakker who tried to convince me I can do art. He was one of those unconventional, earring-wearing, smoking-during-the-break, soccer-coaching teachers who "got" you. The kind you see in movies standing on desks and taking time for the kid whom no one else sees potential in.) My sister Nancy is an amazing artist (and a lefty, of course). When we visited her in Vancouver over Christmas back in 2007 she tried to gently nudge along the quivering sapling of my creativity by spending an evening creating a mixed media canvas with me. It was somewhere between really fun and pulling teeth. A little of both.

I was a kid with a big imagination (we spent 80% of our childhood dressed up in "olden-days" clothes, shawls, bonnets and long skirts my mom had sewn; I often wished I had been born circa 1816) who loved to write. I wrote reams and reams of stories throughout my childhood, some of which I find to be pretty good when I dig through my old boxes at my parents' farm. But I was always somewhat terrifed of art class. I spoke the words "I can't do it" or "I am not good at art" over my life for as long as I can remember. I shoved my creativity in a box. When I left home at 18 for university, I got too busy with assignments, piles of reading for classes and stalking boys around RJ and Burwash Dining Hall. I stopped writing stories. An angst-filled journal (or ten), but no more "creative writing."

I didn't trust my own ability to create something as we stared at the blank canvas. So Nan lovingly gave my a few tips and starting points, helped me craft some ideas about what is important to me. I was pretty pleased with how the mixed media canvas turned out (hence bringing it back in my suitcase over the 8000+ kilometres that separate us). For the uninitiated, mixed media combines things like paint, gesso, scraps of paper, ink. My sister's trademark is coffee grounds. Yes, there are some coffee grounds there too, to the absolute delight and fascination of my husband. 

On the canvas are a few words: "to write" scrawled in my own penmanship and the imprint of the word "open". There is a bright, yellow object which was supposed to represent hope, the reawakening of dreams after a very dark period of depression that clouded my first year and a half in Germany. I was open for new experiences, I was hoping to renew my love of writing creatively. There are also fragments of text from some old German book my sister had (from who knows where). I identified with the language of my newly adopted country and of my husband, and thus painstakingly cut out a few words from various pages with an exacto knife. Put together they read "eine Frau und ein Baby" "Das ist das Allerschönste auf Erden" [a woman and a baby...that is the most beautiful thing on earth]. And farther to the right "Ich bin froh... daß ich...Bücher schreibe." [I am happy that I write books]

Looking up at this personal piece of artwork while sweating through my crunches, I couldn't help but smile. Smile with thankfulness because all the dreams of that young woman back in 2007 are coming true. That girl seems so much younger, less experienced, less sure of who she is and what she wants. I am 31 now and I am happy to be, chuis bien dans ma peau as we say in Québec [I feel good in my skin]. My thirties have proven, so far, to be calmer and more confident after all the drama of my 20s. 

Back then, the idea of having a child was slowly growing on me, I was becoming "open" for it. Now I have two gorgeous children who make my life so much richer. Holding my babes in my arms, smelling his hair or kissing her bald baby head - it truly is the most beautiful thing.

In 2007 I had no idea where to go career-wise. I was teaching ESL to get by while my husband was in university. Since then I have stumbled into a career as an academic - and I love it. I get to read books for a living and write about them; study, research, teach, and learn. And I am starting to write again (beyond the Ph.D. thesis and sundry academic papers). 

My pastor asked me to help gather the writers within our church. Giving me her encouragement and a platform, a field in which to fertilize the seedling of my creative talent.  A big, open, expansive field in the sunshine where all kinds of seeds can be planted, where all of our sprouts can grow up together into an abundant crop. Every day I am discovering another hidden poet or journaller among us; the chef who writes poetry on his breaks, the teenage-girl who writes the beautiful letters. They're all welcome in this field. We can pull out the weeds around each other, make way for the healing rains and let the wind of creativity shake our branches. As our roots plunge down deeper and our stems get stronger, we'll start to bear fruit. And we'll fill a feasting table with the fruits of our creativity, right in the middle of this field, a heavy-laden table for others to sit down and partake.

The wee hours

Often, for me, the wee hours are the productive hours. 

The midnight grove where thoughts, inspiration and clarity crop up like so much dense foliage, hosta and lily of the valley, green and verdant, crowding in on each other in the cool damp shade of night. My soul is awake with possibilities, all synapses firing, shooting stars across the projection space of my mind. I should be in bed; I should be "getting enough sleep." But when the babes finally lie still, their heavy little chests rising and falling in the innocence of sleep, their fluttering hands quieted and chattering lips silenced, I revel in the quiet. I cannot succumb to sleep when there is so much to THINK, to write, to create. So I tiptoe to my desk in the darkness, sit under the 3/4 moon keeping me company through the skylight. 

And I write.