Colinism

I love to take small moments and see the beauty in the world around me.

The other day I was waiting for Colin to finish at cubs, and he was dragging his feet.  When James finally texted me through a friend to ask where I was, I insisted Colin get a move on.  As I dragged him out of the building, I was caught between rushing to pick up James and the kids and being stopped in my tracks at the breathtaking shade of blue in the evening sky, just before all the light disappeared.  The sky was actually glowing.

"Colin, let's go NOW.  Hurry and get in the car.  But first notice how amazing that shade of blue is in the sky!"

As we darted through the parking lot, we kept our eyes fixed on the liquid blue that blanketed the world beneath.  We leapt in the car and I continued my lecture.

"Colin, you are going to have to apologize to your Dad for keeping him waiting."
"Yes, but if I had come when you first asked," Colin replied, "We would have missed that amazing sky."

Touche.

Canada Reads

This week I've been listening in to the radio program "Canada Reads" on CBC radio.  (I love CBC.  I definitely consider our public broadcaster a national treasure.)  For five days, five panelists debate the merits of five Canadian books, and eliminate one each day until only one remains as "the book that Canadians should read this year."

Particularly interesting is this year's theme: one book to break barriers.  Books this year are all dealing with fringe themes, like immigration, religious extremism, a gay teen, aging, and racism towards First Nations people.  So thematically the debates are interesting on their own. I also like that they touch on the art and craft of writing itself, examining the merits of the book as a work of art.

But more than all this, however, I am enjoying the art of debate.  The debaters are understand the form of a debate, directly answering questions posed, and waiting patiently to rebut.  The moderator is respected and keeps the conversation on point.  Debaters are defending their own book choice, but also are able to graciously concede the strengths of books other than their own.  When negative points must be made, they are made with tact and from a well-thought out standpoint, without any feeling of attack.

I have a deep love of good conversation and a well-constructed debate.  So few people understand the different between debate and argument.  Too often I think I'm in a debate, then the other person seems to either a) feel personally attacked by a point against their position or b) continuously return back to points already made.  It's frustrating to listen, watch, or participate in a debate when the other person doesn't understand the art form.  Which is why I'm so enjoying the Canada Reads debates this year.  Plus, I've been introduced to a handful of new books and authors I'm excited to delve into (Canadian authors are among my favourite in the world.  Our library tags the spines of books with common genres like mystery, religious, and Canadian, and I will often simply choose books from the shelf because of that little red maple leaf.)

Colinism and Calebite

Today, my two oldest boys, had their very first fight.

I've been saying over the past year or so, as I observe their relationship, that they are more like best friends than brothers.  (Until today) I could not remember a single time when they fought or teased like most brothers.  They are the same size, and Caleb has always pushed himself to be at Colin's level in almost every area.  The result has been that they have found playmates rather than annoyances in each other.

Today, however, something was off.  It began with a wonderful hockey creation built by the two of them: a hockey rink complete with arena and players on the ice.  The detail was incredible and I noted that I would like to take a picture.  Colin asked if we could submit the photo to the Lego contest, to which I agreed.

Then the floodworks opened.  Caleb was excited to be a part of it.  Colin insisted his brother's participation was so limited it didn't count.  So Caleb decided to take apart any piece he had built.  Both boys were quickly in tears, sobbing about the injustice and so genuinely sad I was surprised by the emotion.

Caleb fled to his bedroom.  Colin fled outside.

After ten minutes, I went looking after the two of them.  I found Caleb flung across his bed, sobbing into his pillow.  I found Colin outside shovelling snow off the back deck with a determined face.  Another ten minutes passed and I checked in on Caleb to find him staring sadly out the bedroom window at his brother, who was still shovelling.

I was struck by the fight, and once again, how it was more like how best friends fight than brothers.  With siblings, the fight usually descends into name calling, teasing, destroying toys, or even shove or two.  But with friends, it's the self-imposed separation that feels tortuous.

Within the hour I found the two of them together again, united in a game of mini sticks.  "Did you make up?" I asked and their happy reply was "of course!"

And once again their best friend relationship is restored.  They shared novels back and forth, worked together to clear the back deck (for ball hockey), and shared in Colin's successes on his soccer team (when my mom called, Caleb's only news was a play by play of Colin's previous game and goals.)  How wonderful these two have each other.

Spiritual leadership

I find myself in numerous positions of spiritual leadership this year.  If you had asked me as a confident teenager I would have said that I relished leadership positions, but in the last ten years I have realized that I much prefer being a little worker bee.  Mostly this is because I like getting a task and then going back to my little corner to complete said task.

This year I have found a new hardship to leadership - the task of standing strong for others.  Each week requires me to reach into my own spiritual reserve and mentor others who are brand new in their faith, or perhaps even still seeking for something.  Even more than that, I have found myself as a mother mentor, a good 6 or 7 years ahead of most of the women in my study group, and just on par with the others.

I find myself craving sage words of advice and experience from one who has gone before me.  This year I have suddenly realized that I lack such a mentor for myself in my own journey.  I am not one to step out of a comfortable circle, which makes it hard for me to make new friends.  Usually I can only manage to get at ease with someone who has quite a bit in common with me.  Otherwise I can spend most of the time in utter silence, desperate to come up with something to say.  this girl doesn't do small talk.

I have one friend who is five years ahead, and who just happens to have a carbon copy of my family (children, ages, sex, birth order, and even personalities of each one, plus each of us as a couple are uncannily alike.)  But she in a busy stage of life herself and still without enough distance from those young years to garner enough perspective.

So now I'm on the lookout for a mentor for myself, someone to sit with me, share with me, and help me fill up so that I can pour out into those women I am leading.

Do Your Time

"Why are middle school girls skipping the awkward stage and going straight to pretty?  No, no, you get to wear braces and blue eye shadow.  Do your time."

I chuckled a good while at that quote online today.  I sat firmly in those awkward middle school years for far too long, with wild red hair that wouldn't be tamed and a bright red pimple that stubbornly stayed on my chin far too long and teeth that actually begged for braces and a the terrible luck to be stuck in the transition from 80s to 90s fashion (which I still find awkward in its current revival.)  I laughed because I have made this same comment more than once lately as I watch the children under my care at church turn 12 and suddenly blossom overnight into pretty teenagers and I wonder why I didn't have such fortune.

But this little nugget has a deeper and sometimes sadder truth to it also.  Last week I sat in prayer with a young mother whose second baby was only two weeks old, and she wept at the sense of failure that overwhelmed her because her toddler was running rampant and her baby wasn't sleeping and why-oh-why-couldn't-she-get-it-together?  This morning I sent out a message to her again and I could hear the tears again in her reply that this morning was no better than yesterday or the day before or the day before that.

I offered some comfort, and yet knew that my experience could not reach through to her.  Experience must be earned through experience.  This is a gentler way of saying that we all must "do our time."  I cried every day the first year of Caleb's life.  I remember well the wave of utter exhaustion that held me under.  I turned to hear from friends who had already passed through this stage and somehow still couldn't pull myself out with their sage words of advice.  I realize now that although I could receive their love and comfort, there was no way for me to figure it all out other than simply putting another foot forward.

Similarly, I hear friends of teenagers weep as their hearts break for their children, and I naively look on and try to understand and file away parenting wins so that my own travels through teenagehood will not be so painful.  And yet there is an echo in my mind: "do your time."  I will never truly understand until I am walking in those very footsteps.  And then, as now, any attempt I make to capture any wisdom garnered and pass it on to those whom I mentor will ultimately be in vain.

Life is about passing from one stage to the next.  We "do our time" in each one and emerge on the other side victorious, only to be on the edge of the next stage.  Not every stage is hard and painful, for this is a life to have joy.  But even those moments of pure, unadulterated joy cannot be adequately expressed.  It is for all this that we have come to walk this mortal life.

Candlelight

A beautiful metaphor was captured the other day by a friend.  An image of each of us standing as candles, our gathered flames illuminating the world around us.  Each, on our own, lights but a small circle, but standing shoulder to shoulder the fiery glow creates a powerful brightness.  In such proximity, even a candle that goes out can be relit by the nearness to other flames.  And, in speaking of light, our tiny flame in nothing in relation to the great light that is the sun (Son.)

Every word was laced with beauty and truth.  My mind wandered through the essay and nodded at this thought, that idea.  But when it closed, my mind had not finished wandering.  It was guided on in the metaphor as it pulled the images into my own life, for this day, this moment, this year.  Once again, the future was vaguely opened for me.

This year you will not stand on a dais of candles, each shimmering light dancing in unison.  This year you will stand alone and learn the coldness of human life and the dreariness of the world.  But you will not shiver; nor will you feel the loneliness.  No, this year you will learn what it is to stand in the Great Light, to be lit day in and day out by your proximity to the Son.  You will see that your little light, when held up to the sun, is nothing but a vain effort.  You will work tirelessly to be a light to others, to stand on a hill and not hide behind the bushes, but it will not be your tiny flame they see.  For what candle can hope to light anything around it under the warmth of a brilliant summer sun?  And if your light flickers, it will never go out if you stay close to the powerful source of all light.

Dream a little dream

After being unsettled this week, I thought I'd jot down some of the little dreams that are circling in my head.

Traveling and learning with my children.  I so want to combine my love of homeschooling, which I have yet to do, with my love of traveling.  But more so, I want to expose my children to things beyond our little town.  I want to give them a passion for the people and places of the world.

In order to do this, we need to have work that allows us the freedom to travel for extended periods at a time (one to three months, likely.)  This definitely means a change from where we are now, running a business that requires day to day management.  That might also mean choosing to supply teach rather than take my own full time classroom.  It also means helping my husband in his own change of careers to something that allows him to work from anywhere he can plug in a computer.

Getting a masters degree.  There has always been a small part of me that leaped when I heard someone talk of getting a masters or doctorate degree.  While formal schooling is not my goal, learning from brilliant minds is.  I had a professor in university who taught film theory and film history, and she spoke from the depths of her experience as part of the underground film movement in communist Russia.  She did not teach from textbooks but from life itself.  I want to sit at the feet of minds like that, soak it in, and engage with it back and forth.

Write.  I'm frustrated that I don't know what it is I'm to write yet.  I have so many passionate projects in my mind, on my computer, falling from my fingers onto the keys, and yet I have not pursued anything. In the meantime I write and write and write away, anxious to have more direction about where this is all heading.

Music.  I am fulfilling a dream as I learn the violin right now.  But I haven't yet found my place among fellow musicians.  I yearn for a small group that gathers regularly (monthly? bi-weekly?) and simply pours their hearts out together in creating and performing.  We all have busy lives, but it is something I would make time for, if only I could find others with a similar passion.

Deliberate mothering.  I feel like like I've been hanging on to the edge for too long.  I sigh a little every time I write this because I feel like it never changes.  But one of these days I'll be a little more on top of life.  Specifically in teaching my kids, taking them outdoors, and in food preparation (especially for Juliette.)