Still

This is the 5 minute Friday challenge from Gypsy Mama. 5 minutes if unedited writing on the topic, "Still".

I have been reflecting lately on the speed of my life. I have been reading a book called "in Praise Of Slow", despite my desire to speed read it, at the suggestion of one reviewer I have read it one chapter a day. It talks about the general speed of life, and how we are wired for speed in this age.

I find myself saying to children often, "hurry up!" Last night I read one chapter about how Germans have a name for how each person has their own time "ein giest" literally "own time". Sophia is our kid who especially takes her time to do just about everything and it regularly drives Wade and I a little crazy. But last night I considered perhaps she just has a differemt natural rhythm than we do.

I also thought about how I used to have a slower rhythm when I was a kid, and how adulthood take it out of you. I tried this morning to just be still. The children were playing in the garden. I sat on the deck. I had coffee. Then I began to play with my phone. I stopped. I noticed how all of them were on the rocker swing, just swinging lazily. It was then I realized that only a fool would sit up on a deck watching all that beauty go by without her, and I joined them on the swing.

But they are not still. They jumped up, began to perform a show, then ask for things, and meals, and attention and wisdom and clean clothes and many, many other things. So how can provide for them what they desire and require, and yet stay still, stay slow?

(This is the tension of today, which I am trying to live without feeling tension. I am trying to feel the peace of being still and KNOWING He is God, which is connected to lack of worry, and gratefulness and contentment.)

Words in brackets typed after 5 minute timer rang.






craps

Hundreds of Houses

It's been 9 weeks since we left California, and I didn't realize that all this time of traveling would feel like one, big long transition. We have a house waiting for us in Vancouver August 10, but we have three more places to stay (including this one) before we get there. We have visited and visited and visited people, too many in fact - not one person I would have wanted to leave out, just - we've done too much.

We arrived at this quiet house by a tiny lake on Vancouver Island a couple of days ago and we have been trying to rest and for the most part we have done well. The weather since we have arrived back in Canada has been mostly cold and grey, which, considering it is "summer" has been a struggle, but I am choosing to put my faith in August and September, who always come through for me on this grey wet coast, but damn, it has been hard to leave the sun. It makes me want to put my head through a window some days.

I have also been doing a dance with reflection. When I have a quiet moment alone I seem to have a habit of usually evaluating the past or planning for the future. I struggle often with simply resting in the "now", and usually have a degree of guilt at the lack of silent, focused time with God. Yet I have been challenged in that this week by a meditation I read in the Mosaic bible, a gift from our friends Jamie and Kim. I am trying this week in my quiet moments to resist any feeling of guilt that I should be writing in my journal profound thoughts of reflection, or seeking a new word from God. I am very much enjoying reading a great book called "French Women Don't Get Fat." and spending time with just us.

I have been trying to figure out what I want to do in the few quiet moments to myself (vacation with 3 small kids is still life with 3 small kids) and trying to listen to my body and spirit. I been fighting the temptation to be discouraged at how our busy schedule and the terrible weather have limited me in the amount I have been running. I'm believing that running and fitness is something I now own, and it is not so elusive that it will escape again. Pax and I did run and walk (well, he sat in the stroller:) 5K around the lake yesterday, and it felt great, and it also felt OK that I didn't want to go today and the sun came out for a while, and it really helped.

I also haven't needed to sit and write in my journal because coming back to Canada and visiting with so many people has caused us to tell our story over and over again. Yet with a few wonderful exceptions of people who want to know every detail, I find that there is a need in me to make our story short and sweet and in a neat bundle that simply says "We're okay - see how good we are? Look how great we are!" Which is not untrue. We are, in fact, pretty good. But I felt better in California. We were settled there and the sun shone nearly every day, and we were really, really in love with our friends there. Coming back to Canada is hard work. And I don't want to say that to anyone in person because I love them, and I want them to be happy and not cause anyone any pain. The truth is we are doing the very best we can, but we're just guessing as to how to do life as much as the next family.

I recently had a visit with a friend who grew up in YWAM who said she had a list in her head of "The Things I Promised Myself I Would Never Do To My Kids." I asked her what was on the list and then Pax fell and broke his arm. So, needless to say, I never heard the list. Wade says not to ask again, that it would not be helpful to know, and that we are Sophia and Eleanor and Pax's parents, that we ultimately do know what's best for them, and the best we can do for them is to obey God as best we understand. Yet I wonder how they will reflect on their lives when they're older and in my worst moments I think "How can we know?" What random moment of the day could be defining for them, will shape them for better or worse, or just flutter in to oblivion. That would be the case no matter what our lifestyle I suppose, yet this life of late brings all too much reflection at times, I fear.

Sophia said today that if she wrote a book like our friend Heidi, she wouldn't call it "Home Keeps Moving" she would call her book, "Hundreds of Houses." We moved into this house this week and it is huge and beautiful. Sophia came to me and said, "I love this house. When I am here, I feel like I have a regular life." And I breathed a small sigh of relief. Within an hour Eleanor came to me and said, "This house is way to big for our small family." So... really it's such a crap shoot. I have no idea what's going to work and what's not. All I know is that tonight at dinner our small family sat in this big house and laughed over stupid jokes we made up about tree houses and having rapper names (2Kron) and pretending to have the super power to roast marshmallows with our eyes. Even Pax tried it, he was hilarious. It is a good life with this small family in this big house by this small lake. Selah.

Home

I have thought and thought and thought about writing on this blog. I love this blog. Somehow it became a giant task. I wish for it to return to it being a joyous chronicle of my life as a Mum. The computer, email, blogging, anything but a facebook lurk has seemed overwhelming in the past year. But the spell has been broken.

This is the first time I am taking a challenge put down by The Gypsy Mama to write for 5 minutes straight without stopping on a topic. The topic is: Home.

Here goes:

Home is funny thing these days. My friend Heidi wrote a book last year about her life growing up between 3 cultures called ”Home Keeps Moving” and this year I know what she means. Almost a year ago now, July 1, 2010, our family was evicted by our landlord of 11 years. We had 2 months to move out, and what came next was a big surprise. A massive, gut wrenching feeling, KNOWING in the spirit that we were not get another home in the city. It was palpable. it was nauseating, and it was just there. Obey that knowing, or be disobeying God, and in that case, why don’t I just put my three small kids out in the traffic? Follow God’s leading as best we knew how, or... what? Or nothing.

So we put everything in storage and we just waited... we healed and rested and worked a little and waited in other people’s homes, empty vacation homes - and after 2 months we had friends who invited us to come and work and wait down in Southern California. So we went for a planned 3 weeks and stayed 7 months. And we just came back to Canada last week. And it feels a little like home, but Cali felt like home too. And Vancouver, which was home, doesn't feel like home waiting for us any more, just friends there feel like pieces of home waiting for us.

We have moved about 30 times in the last 9 months. Our children are 6, 4 years and 22 months old. I know I am a home maker and yet I have been without a home of my own for nearly a year now... and I have learned how to make home with no house. I have learned people are more generous than they can ever imagine. I have learned that we, as a family are home for each other like nothing else can ever be. And I have learned that when I feel all torn in pieces because I feel like a bit of me is in one place and a bit of me is in another, that when I return to those places and people that each and every one can feel a bit like home, and that the possibility of a piece of new home is just around the bend too.