* not with ink

This morning I got up and cleaned up a dog-made mess in the living room, then walked the dogs and cleaned their bowls, and fed the dogs, and took a deep breath. Now, there are muesli scones in the oven (recipe below). The pups are lounging, the husband is sleeping in (it's his day off). While I wait for the scones to finish, I'm reading a research report out of the University of Notre Dame. It's for my job, but it's more than just work. It's relevant to the application I'm working on this week for a PhD program... And it's relevant to my daily life. The report is on " Flourishing in Ministry " and the factors associated with well-being for pastors working in a variety of church-based roles. I'm working part-time in a church this year, and my husband works in a church all the time, but even beyond that - there are some good reminders/insights for all of us who value well-being (which I think, hopefully, is all of us). -- Here's wha...

5 Rules for Being a (North) American Adult (paraphrased from a lecture by Anne Lamott, whose priest friend shared them with her many years ago) 1. Have it all together. 2. If you don't have it all together, fix whatever is broken in you so that you do have it all together. 3. If you can't fix whatever's broken, pretend that you have. 4. If you can't pretend to be fixed, don't show up - it's a bit embarrassing to the rest of us. 5. If you do decide to show up broken, at least have the decency to be ashamed of yourself. -- We are encultured towards self-loathing and self-avoidance.  Be perfect. Do it all, do it right.  If you can't be better, pretend you are. Don't look any deeper. Keep busy. Keep your chin up. Keep up appearances. It takes so much energy. It takes too much energy. -- What would happen if I just loved myself? is the question I have been asking since my last post.   It's the question I ...

Some sins are more comfortable than others. (More comfortable to confess, at least.) William Carlos Williams’ poem, “This Is Just to Say,” is a quintessentially endearing confession: I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold It’s not that hard to confess eating the plums. We sheepishly shrug our shoulders, offer a hug or a kiss, buy a few more plums for tomorrow, and move on. But it’s harder to confess the sins on my heart this week. Sins that are not only my own, but make others culpable too. Sins rooted in arrogance and self-centredness (okay, all sins are rooted there), sins that categorically look down on other people simply because they are not like me. I need to confess these sins because I don’t entirely know what to do with them. I need to confess these sins because they are almost ever-present in my life. I need to confess these sins because ev...

This post has been ten years in the making. It started when I graduated from my undergrad degree, and created this blog. I had just accepted my first full-time job. I was getting ready to move across the country. I bought my first cell phone. Twitter didn't exist. Facebook was just a baby. Now here I am, in 2016, about to graduate from my Masters degree. In the intervening decade, I have: Moved across the country, and then moved back east, to the largest city in our nation.  Held four different jobs - ministry, nanny, small business, college office.  Freelanced as a photographer, and as an editor/writer. Traveled to six different countries- three each in Europe and Africa. Lived in five different homes (#6 is two weeks away!).  Dated five men, and been on many other dates. Been a bridesmaid six times.  Celebrated other weddings, births, and joys.  Walked with loved ones through illness (physical and mental), death, infidelity, and other hear...

Earlier this month, I found an unpublished blog draft that is one line long. It reads: I give up my right to understanding . I don't know why I wrote it. I don't know what prompted it, or what it was that I thought I deserved to understand. But it struck me as still profoundly applicable to my life today. I want to understand everything. If it doesn't make sense, I don't accept it. If I can't wrap my head around it, I'm not okay with it. But what if. What if I gave up the assumption that I need to understand everything? What does it mean to trust something (or someone) I don't understand? What does it look like to stop demanding that explanations must fit my brain's way of working? --- Marriage is teaching me a bit about this. I'm often confused by this other person, the way they do things, their logic for decision-making, their assumptions and presuppositions. Sometimes, trying to understand him goes a long way in bridging whateve...

Throughout this series, I've been thinking about my friends who feel their families are in some way "incomplete." That is, the family they long for or once had or almost had is not their current reality. There's a loss, a lack, an absence that stays with them. This is true for almost all of us, in one way or another. Maybe an adult parent or sibling has died. Maybe there is estrangement that can't be overcome. Maybe we've experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, or very early death. Maybe a divorce, or a widowing. Maybe there is simply the lack of a partner. We live in a world of loss, imperfection, and incompletion. We long for what we do not have. We grieve what we once held. This is not something we can remedy. But it is something we can give space for, something we can recognize and maybe assume, and treat gently.  -- I've loved the conversations that I have had both on and offline because of this series. Thank you all, once again, for particip...

When I wrote about the possibility of infertility, many of you said I was courageous for sharing my story. I'm grateful, and, as always, encouraged by your responses and kind words. But can I be honest? This topic is way more scary to me. It's scary because my fertility is something I have no control over - there is no shame for me in that, no regrets or if-onlys. But my choices about career-building are exactly that - choices. I have agency in these decisions, and that agency opens me up to errors, fear, judgment, and so much more. And where I stand - not quite a year into marriage, with two terms left in my masters degree, it's all a tangled bundle of thoughts and feelings and desires and uncertainty, and internal pressure, and offhand comments, and impossibility. It's impossible to do it perfectly. It's impossible to have everything I want. It's impossible to defend my decisions to the world. This creates a great deal of inner turmoil for me...

This post has taken me longer to write than I expected. I started, but it very quickly became a rant. It rambled; it griped; it wasn't something I was proud of. So I scrapped it and waited a few days, and here's what I've got now: I don't have a recipe for building the perfect family. I don't believe in how-to guides for life, or one-size-fits-all solutions. I'm quite opposed to the idea that such a thing could or  should  be possible. There are simply too many variables. There are too many stories. It's as simple as that. Build your family in the way that makes sense, fits your life. Invest in them. Love them. I know many of you are doing this, in a myriad of ways.... So. Based on the overwhelming kind response to my last post, and this firm belief that sharing our stories is one of the best ways we can help each other learn, I'd like to invite you to send me your stories around family, family-building, child-bearing, not-child-bearing, o...

This is my story. From the time I was hardly more than a toddler, I knew I wanted to be a mother. I have loved babies (and kids) for as long as I can remember. Having babies of my own was always an assumption in my life. Until I hit 25. And was still unmarried. And I started thinking that maybe I would never be in a stable, long-term relationship. And then there was another factor. The biological one. A friend of mine had stopped getting her period a few years earlier; when she finally went to the doctor, she discovered she was in danger of developing osteoporosis. When I heard her story, I grimaced internally. My own period had been on the decline over the past few years; I'd never been "regular" and by 25, I was maybe getting it twice a year. To be honest, I didn't mind too much. It's not like anyone I know enjoys  having their period. In the back of my mind had been the fear of infertility, but it seemed so remote, so far off. I hadn't thought about...

In the fall of 2006, I moved to Vancouver. My first weekend there, I made an IKEA run with a friend to purchase furniture for my tiny new bedroom, as one does. We were walking out of the store, pushing a trolley with a stack of boxes, when my phone rang. It was my older brother and his wife, calling to tell me that they were pregnant. I remember being so  excited, but also very aware that the distance between Vancouver and Ontario was significant enough that I wasn't going to be present for most of the milestones this would lead to. I wondered how to involve myself from far away. I started realizing that it's my responsibility to contribute to these relationships, that I needed to be intentional in what I wanted to build. This phone call kick-started a change in how I think about family. It was the first moment that I realized being an adult  in the family is completely different than being a kid. (this post, I realize, is less of a woman's issue and more of a grown-u...

Y'all know I'm not afraid to open up the big ol' taboo box and pick a topic and then wave around a brightly lit flag that says, "OVER HERE! LOOK OVER HERE AT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT." I've done it before. And I want to do it again. -- It's the start of August, and the closest I have to vacation time this year, so I think it's time for some straight talk about big things, thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for awhile, questions that keep me up at night, and dilemmas that, quite frankly, need more attention. Let's get real. Let's talk about some lady things. Now before you men run off and say, "OH, OKAY, SEE YOU LATER," I'd like to ask you to stick around . Because all men have women in their families, and likely have lady-friends, and lady-colleagues, and other kinds of relationships that involve ladies, whether professional or personal. And  I (almost) guarantee you that these posts will help you und...

For the majority of Christians around the world, it is now Lent - a season observed as we approach Easter. Though Lent has been a part of the Christian calendar for over a thousand years, it is a relatively new practice for me. So when I was asked to preach on Ash Wednesday, I was both excited and a bit nervous. On Ash Wednesday, many Christians are marked with ashes on their foreheads, and the words, "Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return," are spoken over them.    Encouraging, right?    Here's what I shared - drawing on the texts of Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 , Psalm 103:8-18 , Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 , and Psalm 51 . I went to university in my hometown, and though I lived on my own, I often borrowed my parents’ vehicle. On one particular occasion,  I borrowed it to renew my passport in a nearby town. My roommate went with me, and we had a great drive - until we got to the parking lot. It was tiny, and I was driving an 8 passenger Safari van. But I ...

In the fall, I preached for the first time at an actual church, with a hundred listeners, a microphone, and fancy robes.  Of course, the passages I was assigned to tackle (I had my choice of 3) were all about the end of the world as we know it. Not generally a popular topic, certainly a controversial one, and quite honestly, a rather stressful one for me on the occasion of my first sermon.  Two months later, I feel okay about it... I have a tiny bit of experience under my belt, a whole lot of encouragement from my community, and a renewed sense of my love for discussing the big ideas and questions of life.  So I wanted to share this sermon (and maybe some of the others I've given since) with you all.  If you are not a church person and you're still reading, first of all - I commend you. And secondly, I'd particularly love to hear your thoughts! I know there can be a lot of church-speak, and strange ideas, but I am keen to make the strangeness of the Ch...

I think the time has come for white men and women to reflect critically and honestly on how their whiteness makes them different. How their whiteness accords them privilege and access to resources that they withhold from those who are "not their kind." How their whiteness has been made the unacknowledged norm of what it means to be human. How their whiteness has brought hardship and misery to millions. - Asian-American theologian Gayle Yee. Mea culpa.   I try to avoid being publicly political, but the past few weeks have been beyond outrageous when it comes to race relations, crime, and oppression of non-caucasians. I didn't feel like I had much of anything to add to the conversation, as a caucasian Canadian female - we need to hear voices from within marginalized communities. At the same time, silence leaves me seated on the side of the oppressors, the majority who are not aware of the roles we often complicitly play in maintaining the unhealthy status-quos. ...