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To the Grads of 2020

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged #expectations, #gradduringcovid, #isaiah, #pandemicgrad, #tothegradsof2020 on June 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

What a year to graduate!

Last evening was the graduation ceremony of a number of pretty special grads (one, in particular … she knows who she is). There are many, similar, or quite different graduation experiences going on all around … all around the world.

You, grads 2020 have worked for years to get to this end of the road … except … no one told the end of a road was an overgrown trail through the bush!

“Expectations
are the root of all heartache”

And what were your expectations at the beginning of this final school year, grads? Adventurous school trips, field trips, retreats and over-nighters? A ceremony with your friends, family and fellow grads in an event center, a church, an auditorium, a gymnasium? An evening of formality … dressed to the nines, with a special someone at your side as you walk into a room decorated to take you away to a dreamland-like destination? How about group photos? Caps through in the air in unison? The dances? The many opportunities to gather …

all together, for one last time …

These were the September expectations …

and then, the pandemic …

Everything stopped.

School stopped.

Events cancelled.

Plans turned upside down.

Grad everything in question.

Initially, everyone hoped that this pandemic would end and things could go back to normal again, that graduation events would go as planned. But … pandemic comes from the Greek pandēmos meaning all people. Covid 19 has affected, infected our world, leaving a trail of disappointment and destruction in it’s wake … so long expectations of what was to be.

“Expectations
are the root of all heartache”

Those words are attributed to William Shakespeare, but … grads, have you ever heard Shakespeare speak so clearly? Those words are a translation of what he wrote in the play All’s Well That Ends Well … now there is a theme for grad 2020!

Did it end well? Did you walk a stage, in cap and gown? Did you get to share graduation with friends and family? Did you get to dress up? Did you find creative ways to take group pictures while respecting social distancing? Did you graduate?

The expectations you had were not met, the losses are very real and there is no way to make up for those losses. It is okay to mourn the expectations of what couldn’t be.

There is no way to to redo this ending. This ending, though, also marks a beginning. High school is completed (or will be in just days) and a door to your future awaits you.

As you walk through this next door I leave with you words from the book of Isaiah, to hear from God of his compassion and hope for your future, if you trust in him.

Comfort, comfort my people,
    says your God …
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:1, 28-31

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Above the Clouds

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged #abovetheclouds, #covid19, #fear, #pandemic, #theinvisiblecloud, #turnyoureyesuponjesus on June 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This season of our lives, this Covid pandemic, in so many ways is surreal. Many of us continue our work, school, lives as always, just at home. Yet, there is this invisible cloud called change and I wonder if it might be affecting us all, more than we are aware.

Our lives have changed, been altered by this pandemic that has touched every corner of the Earth.

Our work, school, places of worship and social lives have changed. How we shop, spend our time do recreation and entertainment has changed. Now, as summer is just around the corner, how we vacation has changed.

Graduations, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and so many other special events have changed.

Though things are ever so gradually opening up, officials are quick to remind us that we are not going back to what we knew to be ‘normal’ but we are moving towards a new normal …

and, well … we can’ see or envision what that looks like, because it is still enfolding. With this, even our ability to dream or foresee what the future looks like has changed.

There are those who are eager to leap into what is opening up, those that are more cautious, or even more fearful. Fear has been on the rise over these months … and it will destroy even more than Covid 19.

Change is hard. Change without knowledge of what is to come … that can be destructive.

My thoughts go back to this invisible cloud called change and I wonder if it might be affecting us all, more than we are aware.

“Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it there.” – Barbara Walters

I wonder if Barbara Walters knew something of that place above and beyond the clouds. I wonder if she understood that what was, what is beyond our troubles, is a place and a person to put our hope in, when the heaviness of life weighs us down.

Look up!

Turn your eyes toward Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face
And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace

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A Tale of Two Homes

Posted in life, tagged #alllivesmatter, #ataleoftwohomes, #blacklivesmatter, #equalgodgivenvalue, #helpthehurting, #helpthoseatrisk, #samebutdifferent, #samevalue on June 7, 2020| 6 Comments »

Almost two years ago we moved to our current home, a townhouse.

It was a bit of an adjustment, moving from a single family home, on acreage, to a townhouse on a busy road. The lack of privacy, the noise from the road, the sounds of people’s voices as they walk by, when the windows are opened, the absence of the sound of the coyotes calls in the quiet of the night.

Now, I quite love our home. I love how every square foot is so well utilized, I love my more modern kitchen, the spacious shower in the master bath, how perfectly our basement family room is for watching movies, how close we are to everything we could need.

Our home is lovely to us … just like our neighbors. They moved into their townhouse a year after us. Like ours, theirs is an end unit. Like us, they have made it their own … painted walls, planted flowers … it is a shelter from the elements, a place of refuge. Their home is like ours in so many ways, except that our homes are reversed … basically theirs is the mirror image of ours … exactly the same features and value, just opposite.

If I was cooking dinner and saw smoke coming from my side window, I would stop what I was doing. I would run outside to see where the smoke was coming from. If, when I got outside, I saw flames coming from my neighbor’s home, I would call 911, I would bang on their door to make sure they were not in the house, I would scream “fire” to alert other neighbors.

I would not be occupied about what color to paint my bathroom, or if I should replace the carpet on the stairs with carpet or wood, nor would I stop to change the lightbulb on the outdoor light fixture. Because, in that moment, if my neighbor’s house was on fire, their home would need the attention.

So, moral of the story …

Yes, ALL lives matter, in that they all have equal, God-given value, but when a specific group is at risk, well that’s where our attention should be.

#blacklivesmatter

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The Fair Have Not Been

Posted in Grief, life, WONDER, tagged #blacklivesmatter, #georgefloyd, #oppression, #thefairhavenotbeen, #weepingmaylastforthenight, #whiteelephantintheroom on June 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

No words.

Just sadness.

No response.

Just heaviness.

No answers.

Just … lament.

God, I know you are there, I know that you are faithful and true and trustworthy.

I know that you have been with all of humanity since before time began. That you are in us, that you have shaped us and molded us in the inmost place. I know that when you look on all that you have created, you say, with parental pride, “it is good” … every one of us.

But I ache.

For humanity does not treat each other as good, with grace. Your creation has demeaned, devalued and degraded some in society, to the point of death.

I … I am called fair, for my skin is pale, but those who are called this fair … have not been. We have been anything but fair. What can I say or do to help those who have been subjugated by the fair … like me.

Like Moses in Egypt, like Tubman in her Underground Railroad, like King in DC, the heart cry of “Set My People Free” … free from discrimination, free from threat of harm, free from the looks, free to do and to have as the fair people do … has interrupted our our lives. The volume of the protesters could not speak as loudly to our hearts as the whisper,

I can’t breathe …

God, those words, that scene … it destroyed a part of us all … red and yellow, black and white … (Jesus loves the little children of the world).

Can I still sing those words? Not that you love the children, but naming four (inexact) colors? God, I don’t know the rules … I don’t know the words to say, I don’t know how to be the support and hands and feet of you and I just want to say,

I am with you.
I am so sorry for the hatred.
I am so sorry for the pain and struggle and fear that you live with,

simply because those of us who are fair … are anything but.

This week has been significant, Lord. The white elephant in the room of humanity has been seen. People have raised their voices, told their stories, demanded change from leaders, from … the fair who are not. Social media has been full of #BlackOutTuesday, #blacklivesmatter, lists of organizations and businesses to support (or to avoid), lists of how those of us who are fair might help, support … be fair.

But, some of it, Lord, is contradictory. One person posts this, another posts the opposite. One posts the blacked out screen, another says #BlackLivesMatter matters more.

God, I want to be the help, the change the arm around the shoulders of others. I want the people who I love, who are not as ‘fair’ as me, to know that I weep with them, that I don’t see their color so much as the life within them (is that okay to say?) and …

I hope they don’t see mine.

For, God, the fair have not been.

O Lord my God, I cried out to You,
and you healed me our world.
Psalm 30:2

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Not Today Satan

Posted in Faith, life, WONDER, tagged #anger, #discouragement, #fear, #howfirmafoundation, #nottodaysatan, #satan on June 2, 2020| 1 Comment »

Ever been mad? Like so upset and angered that your heart was beating so violently that you could feel your entire body vibrate?

My grandmother, in times like that, would have said that she was so angry she could spit.

We have all had such an experience of emotion. We have all been, at some point, angry enough to spit.

There was such a time that is still restlessly settled in my mind. I remember the feeling that my heart might just beat right out of my chest. I remember the pounding of emotion and blood flow in my head. I remember the combination of anger and sadness and despair and defeat.

I remember the words of the text that sent me reeling … words that communicated

one step forward, two (dozen) steps back.

History invades the present, darkness falls on rising sun, temporarily eclipsing the light.

The inky intent of sinful man is always to blot out the light.

I was searching, seeking for light … as if crawling in desperation for understanding of the whys, for hope to come from the shadows.

what more can he say,
than to you he hath said,
to you who for refuge,
to Jesus have fled

The words stopped my obsessing, my perseverating over the ache in my gut, my heart. What song were those words from? Why did it enter my conscious?

How Firm a Foundation … words penned over two hundred and thirty years ago … words and a message with lasting power. As I read them I was reminded that my physical and emotional shaking were not more than skin deep … for my foundation is deeper still, firm in the care of my Savior.

Then, the words of the prophet Nahum (1:7):

“The Lord is good, He is a fortress in time of distress, and He protects those who seek refuge in him.”

Reminders of my firm foundation, the fortress around me, the prayers of those who are faithful …

the anger fading with the rising light of Christ’s love and promise.

Not today Satan.

“That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”

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“Responsibility is the Ability to Respond”

Posted in Grief, life, WONDER, tagged #breathofgod, #godformed, #iamresponsible, #murder, #responsibilityistheabilitytorespond, #weareallprejudice, Icantbreathe on May 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

When I read those words, above, in Dr. Steve Rose blog, they resonated in a way that made me think I would need them in the days to come. This week they surfaced in my mind as I read the posts on social media and in the news.

We who can respond are responsible for our actions, or our inactions. As long as I have breath, I am responsible to respond, to speak, to write, to work to change my world, through changing myself.

I am responsible to get to the bottom of my sin, my actions and beliefs … in the light of Truth … the Truth.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:13-16)

The Psalms declares our earliest beginnings … we are the handiwork of the very Creator of everything. This is true for us all … male or female, Jew or Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or atheist, red or yellow or black or white. Whatever difference or division or thing that may separate us as the human race, all were created by God and for him (Colossians 1:16).

Behold, all souls are mine. (Ezekiel 18:4)

No other human possesses or controls another’s soul. It has been, it is and it will forever be under the ownership of it’s Creator … we may deny him our soul, but it cannot be snatched by any other.

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)

Dirt … that is what we are made of, dirt of the Earth. We are humans, from the humus, the soil to be worked, to produce good fruit.

This is what God the Lord says—the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it … (Isaiah 42:5)

The Creator of the heavens … who gives breath to its people, and life … that is what makes the dirt organic, full of life … it is the very breath of God.

Breath, breathing … to be able to breath is the gift of life, through the giver of all life, for all lives.

Who should take that breath away? Not I.

We who can respond are responsible for our actions, or our inactions. As long as I have breath, I am responsible to respond, to speak, to write, to work to change my world, through changing myself.

“If violence is absolutized, we only find ways of hurting, we find very few ways of solving problems,” Ravi Zacharias

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Working Myself Out of a Job

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged #educationalassistants, #grad2020, #graduates, #onlineeducation, #workingmyselfoutofajob, ealife on May 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »

A profound sense of sadness filled me as the conference ended.

Conferences are the Zoom meetings of my workday. Averaging almost an hour each, I sit and assist students through their schoolwork, their frustrations with technology (can I get an amen?!), hear about their future plans, their younger siblings, their lives.

Conferences have become the conduit of education in this season of Covid 19.

But this conference … this one was different.

Just a week ago I had been frustrated with online learning, the conferences, the hours beyond the timesheet and feeling the struggle of trying to assist students without the advantage of body and facial language to enlighten me where their words were not. I was just so done with it.

But as that week wore on, my attitude of frustration and negativity did too.

At the end of the week, wanting to update to my supervisor about the successes of a couple of students, I kept going. I listed each student and was able to put to words their strengths … either academic, personality or character. As I finished the email, I realized how truly blessed I am to be privileged to walk through this season of high school, of online schooling with them.

I get to be their peace in the pandemic storm, their sounding board, their cheerleader, advocate, prod and even their academic support (that’s what I actually get paid to do 😉 ). This position is a privilege and I had (for a moment) forgotten that fact.

Then, yesterday happened …

A student (who I have worked alongside of for three years) requested a conference to discuss his research paper. I had been assisting him with it since online schooling began in early April (weeks before it was assigned, as he was determined to do well on it) … almost daily. He wanted to share his final mark, what the teacher said. Then we discussed his future plans, teachers who had impacted him and I was able to encourage him that he would do just great, not just in school, but in relationships … for he does not allow his weaknesses and struggles to define him.

Eventually our conference ended … and the profound sadness fell on me …

for there will be no academic need of another conference, his biggest academic mountain has been climbed, he reached the summit and in a few weeks he will graduate … he no longer needs my (our) help … my job is done.

Once again, worked myself out of a job.

I am sad that our season has come to an end, but so proud of who he has become and how well he will do in his future.

And this is our job, as an educational assistant, to help them through their schooling struggles so that they can move on in independence and under their own strength.

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How to Pray

Posted in Faith, life, Walking with God, WONDER, tagged #bringingrequeststogod, #changemyheart, #havefaith, #howtopray, #jesusasmediator, #theonlywiseone on May 19, 2020| 1 Comment »

Do you know how to pray? Where does faith come in? What about doubt? Is it okay to pray for miracles?

When I encounter someone with a prayer request, I immediately offer to pray, then, when I begin to actually speak to God, when I enter consciously into his presence … I stutter with my words.

Perhaps it is because, in coming to him, I recognize how much I need him, how great he is, this one to whom I bow my head.

I have a friend who is struggling in a marriage of abuses and unresolved traumas of the past. When I pray for her, I long for marital healing, for a rebuilding of this broken relationship, for miracles.

Yet, I also have a friend who never received such miracles. Recently we re-connected and she caught me up on the end of that marriage. She said, of the separation, the struggles with that marriage, it is exceedingly more wholesome than the way it was. No miracles, no reconciliation … yet she now has peace.

My brother is now undergoing treatments for cancer. The prognosis with treatment is good … the effects of the treatments are horrific. When I pray for him, I long for miraculous healing, that the effects of the treatments would not cause the damage and pain anticipated.

How are we to pray? What do we say, what do we not say? Are miracles on the table? How about … selfish requests? Do I have enough faith? What about my doubts? Does God alter what the natural world, his plans because we pray?

do you know how to pray?

The Bible has a number of recommendations:

ask and be thankful (Philippians 4:6)
confess your sins, pray for each other (James 5:16)
God will hear our prayers (Jeremiah 29:12)
pray so you’re not tempted (Matthew 26:41)
call on his name and be saved (Acts 2:21)
forgive others (Mark 11:25)
pray in secret (Matthew 6:6)
confess sins (1 John 1:9)
devote yourself to prayer (Colossians 4:2)
be faithful in prayer (Romans 12:12)
believe and don’t doubt (James 1:6)
with confidence (Hebrews 4:16)
pray without ceasing, rejoice, give thanks (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Then we get thrown off by verses of such black-and-white absolutism …

“I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13).

So … we ask and God gives?

Well … yes … and no.

It is blind hope to read this verse and see only the part we want … I will do whatever you ask in my name. What follows is really the main point … so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You see we do not pray to God, except that it comes through his Son. It is the blood of Jesus that has made us right with God, therefore it is through him that God hears our prayers.

Lovely, isn’t it?

Sure it is, until we pause to think about what we are praying for and through whom our prayers pass.

Ellicott’s Commentary speaks to this verse in a reckoning manner :

“The prayer of Gethsemane—“If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done,” should teach what prayer in the name and spirit of Christ means. We commonly attach to our prayers, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We do not always bear in mind that this implies an absolute self-sacrifice, and is a prayer that our very prayers may not be answered except in so far as they are in accordance with the divine will.

When I think about prayer, really think about it, I come to one conclusion … I pray because it is the only ‘help’ I know. There is nothing I can do to change circumstances.

So I offer up my requests, in faith, along with my praise and thanks, trusting the only wise one will either change the circumstances I pray, or that he will change my heart to be more like his own.

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Choices

Posted in life, Walking with God, WONDER, tagged #choices, #chooseforyourselves, #choosethisday, #humanschoose, #thestoneillcryout, #whowillyouserve on May 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

As I sit in my big comfy chair, my dog is at my feet scratching at his paws. He does this every time he comes home from the groomer. They feel different, irritating him so he scratches.

Everything he does is based on intuition, habit, response. I can take him to a trainer (it’s high on my to do list when Covid restrictions are lifted) and learn how to teach him new behavioral habits, but what he learns is rote … it is mechanical learning accomplished by repetition.

My dog does not have the capacity to choose to change his behaviors.

That choosing is something that is specific to humans. Certainly we can also benefit from rote training, in memorizing facts or processes, or in creating new muscle memory in areas such as physical rehabilitation or creating new pathways for better emotional health.

But we humans have at our disposal a most powerful ability in being able to make choices at will.

When we are hungry, we choose to eat, choose what to eat, choose how much to eat. When we are upset with another person, we choose how to respond to our feelings, how to respond to that person. When someone makes a mistake we have the power to respond with grace or with revenge.

At the end of the book (and life) of Joshua, he (Joshua) speaks to the people, challenging them with the story of their history and offering to make a covenant (agreement or vow between they and God) with them. He challenges them with a question,

“choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve?” (v. 15)

I love how poet Mary Oliver has asked a similar question, “tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

It is a question asked of us all, every day of our lives.

Years ago I found a beautiful keepsake on a beach. A shell, fixed hard and fast to a rock, as if clinging to a life source. It reminds me to choose to be attached to the rock, which is Christ.

It is a question of what we will choose … either we answer it with the God of creation, we answer it with myself, or we remain silent … but the rocks will testify to our unspoken choice.

“For the stone shall cry out of the wall,
and the beam out of the timber
shall answer it.”
Habakkuk 2:11

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Gentle Leadership

Posted in women, WONDER, tagged #covid19, #drbonniehenry, #femaleleaders, #gentleleadership, #noshame, #peaceinthetimeofcovic, #thefacts on May 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

When the impact of a pandemic began to touch our lives, in British Columbia, when restrictions began to be put into place, when we all became home bound the message began …

be calm, be kind, be safe

That has been the consistent message from the PHO (Public Health Officer), Dr. Bonnie Henry, in her (almost) daily press conferences, where she updates the province on the the spread and treatment of Covid 19. But the numbers aren’t all that she has communicated.

She has also shared, what comes across as most genuine sorrow for the loved ones of those who have died.

When an outbreak in the community has occurred (at a seniors care home, a prison, a packaging plant, etc.) she presents that information with clarity, sensitivity and a lack of panic. When PPE (personal protective equipment) was needed, she would share what was being done. When reporters seemed to ask questions to initiate scandal, she, gently, confidently pointed out what was known, rather that what was suspected.

Each day there has been a message of the facts …

… reminds me of a song from the Anne of Green Gables musical, in which Anne is telling of what she imagines her upbringing might have been, in a most fanciful way. The women around her, Mrs Spencer, Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs Blewett, sing out their response of “the facts, the facts, the facts … the plain, simple, homely, unembroidered facts” to her.

Which brings me to the other part of Dr. Bonnie’s press conferences that (personally) blesses my east coaster heart. She grew up in Prince Edward Island and each day I hear her island of origin in her breathy speech, the way she sometimes says about (aboat), the elongation of her vowels.

Mostly, though, what I hear is the style of leadership that we rarely get treated to and which exudes through her every word. She is a quiet, confident, shamelessly unshaming, facts-first, sensitive, human leader. She has created confidence in the people of this province, at a time when fear, speculation and panic could have taken over.

When I have heard the health authorities of other provinces and countries speak, I have realized what a gem of a leader we have here. She has not encouraged us to keep an eye on our neighbors for wrongdoing, but for care, kindness. She has not focused on the minority who break the rules, but reminded us that we do not always know the whole story, that the majority of people are following the rules. She has reminded us that it is we who bend the curve, not the heavy hand of rules and laws.

She has empowered us in this fight against Covid 19.

When our lives begin to slowly open to our ‘new’ normal, I pray a cure, a vaccine is found. But I also pray that Dr. Bonnie’s style of leadership becomes a new norm as well.

A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 15:1

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