Sabbath, City Thoughts,

I love Sunday, and do you know why?  No, it's not because of church or brunch...it's because Sunday is the one day of the week when my children are allowed to play video games, and they are silent.  It's so silent in my house right now, while we wait for David to finish recording and uploading his sermon.  Then we drive to a nearby church that offers a parking lot service, and we sit in our car and listen.  And afterwards we let the dog run wild in the field.  

Sunday isn't my sabbath day of rest, I'm afraid.  Never has been.  If you work 40+ hours a week and DON'T have a wife at home to do all the home stuff, then you come home and collapse in exhaustion and then the days you do things are Saturday and Sunday.  That's just reality.  It was a bit easier when I was a student, because there were often long gaps in between classes when one could run to the grocery store, or do a load of laundry.  But, of course, now I'm at home with three children and I'm homeschooling them, and going to school myself, and all the other things.  So, no, Sunday isn't restful.  It's a workday - a day when my husband is off to church to work, and a day when I am herding people through reality.  

But that's okay!  While I think the concept of Sabbath is critically important, I also think the idea of everyone sitting silently in a front parlour as a family is incredibly outdated.  The video games give ME a sabbath from listening to people clamour for my attention and services.  Here I am, in silence.  I will take my sabbaths as a dozen little moments of peace throughout the week.

The harder side

In the midst of all this busying back and forth, I am covering a hole.  I'm hurt.  I'm hurt by the way this ministry is ending, by how relationships are ending, by how so much of this is wrapping up in totally unpleasant and unforseen ways.  I'm hurt by the church.  I'm hurt by people.  I'm hurt by other ministers.  I'm hurt.

Maybe that doesn't shock you, or maybe it does - that someone can love God and not feel happy about all his little children.  Expectations are...a real drag, guys.  They really, truly are.  They make you feel like you're entitled to all sorts of things that you really are not entitled to.  Especially in ministry.  Especially there.  

Here's the thing - LOVE IS TRICKY.  It's hard to love people on your own.  It's HARD to do that.  Sometimes you really UNLOVE those people.  No love, 0%, do NOT recommend!  And that's why the love cannot ultimately come from you; it must come from somewhere else.  If it came from me, there would be about 3cm of love and then you'd hit cement.  I am not a loving individual; my default is "Kids!  Listen, we're crossing the street because there's some Jehovah's Witnesses coming towards us and they're holding pamphlets.  Everyone GO!"  The loving you see in me, that's not me, that's God.  

And I'm holding on to the hope that he can keep loving through me for the next several weeks because I am OUT of those 3cm, folks.  I'm out.  I'm tired of...all of the things.  I want to open my mouth and have God give me words that will encourage and uplift, and instead I'm holding my teeth tightly together so that I don't say what I'm thinking.  I worry the words will start to drip out the edges, start to divert themselves to my eyes, my ears - just run out of my body in fits and starts, dripping on the carpet as I walk.  That would not be good.  That would not be a nice ending.  The words are not nice words.

God is the well of stillness, the lack of chaos.  If I am to make it through this move, it will be by His strength alone.

April 8 - Moving Update

 We're up to...hold on, let me count again just to make sure...

44 packed boxes!  

So the packing thing is always okay for me, honestly.  I mean, you gets the boxes, you puts the things in the boxes.  It's not difficult.  We're doing fairly well on that front.

The decluttering is a bit less comfortable, but I'm trying.  I've found a home for a few things - it's just a question of actually having the things OUT of the house, because people say they want stuff, but do they really??  This is a returning issue for me.  Also I have no memory left so no, I'm probably actually NOT going to remember to bring it to you.  Sigh.  Prolly not.

I've been calling various health providers today.  Make sure everyone has a dental checkup before we move and our insurance kicks off.  Found out that we can't have eye exams until July, and we move in June, so that's dumb but okay, our eyes were fine whenever we last had them checked so I assume they'll be fine until we can get a new optometrist.  Have scheduled a time to go in and get the last pair of insurance-covered frames for my glasses that have been glued back together one too many times.  

Also called the junk removal guy who brings things to the dump for a fee.  Because do I ever have things to bring to the dump, friends.  Oh, do I ever.  Someone would like my raised garden beds AND the dirt in them, which...fantastic.  Come and get those suckers.  Called the vet to make sure animals will have rabies shots and such before we go.  Northern and Southern Ontario have different animal health concerns, apparently - protection against ticks and heartworm, specificially.

This week is all about finishing school for the grown ups.  I'm on the home stretch of this trade publishing in Canada course, and as soon as I'm done I'm taking a break until September, so we can get settled.  David has a final volunteering session at the food bank, and then a final reflection paper to write, and then all of his requirements for this degree on his end have been fulfilled.

The children's schooling is not really critical to finish at any particular time, but I am trying to wrap up all the odds and ends of books that we've started, just so we can finish our series and pack them away.  

We'd hoped to do a run down to Ottawa with a few dozen boxes in the van, but then the provincial lock down happened, so now we're not going anywhere for four weeks.  This means we've got boxes slowly engulfing our house and no where to put them, which is...fun. 

And there we go, plodding ever onward.

The Door Within Trilogy (Spoilers Included)

 I give you...The Door Within Trilogy by Wayne Thomas Batson!

While not marketed as a 'Christian' story, the Door Within by Batson is so heavily saturated with Christian symbolism that it falls into the same fiction category as Narnia or the Wilderking books.  I do think that someone could read it without noticing the faith aspects, of course.  There's no mention of Christ, no specifically Christian language used or anything like that, but the story has such a strong Christian flow to it that if you are at all familiar with Christianity, you will probably see it.

In this first book we are introduced to Aiden, who finds a set of scrolls in his Grandfather's basement and makes a decision to believe the story written in them.  It's a story about a king, Eliam (El-I-Am, yes.  Brush up on your Hebrew, friends!) who rules over the kingdom of Alleble with his twelve trusted knights.  He writes all of history into a magical book locked in a tower where he stores all knowledge.  Then he's betrayed by one of his knights, the evil Paragor who is overcome by his lust for power.  Paragor kills the king, and also kills a whole bunch of innocents, but King Eliam rises from the dead and Paragor is thrust into the wilds of the world, where he attempts to take over other kingdoms by pandering to the greed of their citizens.

Aiden shows this story to his father, who says something along the lines of 'oh, yeah I saw those scrolls in a bookstore once.  They're just one of those joke fantasy type things.  No one really believes them'.  Aiden can't shake the feeling that his father is wrong, however, and so he also shows them to his Grandfather, and HE says he also believes in Alleble and King Eliam, and that Aiden should make up his own mind, but that that scrolls speak the truth.  Aiden decides he also believes in the scrolls, and is taken away from Earth to the kingdom of Alleble.

Up to this point, the story is a little dry, to be honest.  Aiden is a very mopey, timid sort of boy and everyone around him seems sort of meh.  Nothing to write home about.  However, when Aiden gets swept to Alleble, I started to get drawn into the novel a lot more.  Here's where it could have gone down a very heavy handed religous path, and I was worried that would be the case, but actually I think Batson wove a very original and compelling narrative!

When Aiden arrives in Alleble, we learn that it is a kind of mirror world to Earth, and that all of the human-like creatures there are called Glimpses, and each Glimpse has a human counterpart.  This actually comes into play later when Aiden meets someone in Alleble who he knows from Earth.  Aiden is drafted into the king's twelve knights, and sent off on a quest to help bring a neighbouring kingdom under the protection of King Eliam, rather than Paragor.

There's a little bit of romance, sort of.  One of the knights is a girl named Gwenne and she and Aiden hold hands and once she kisses him on the cheek.  There is quite a bit of violence, on par with Wingfeather.  Some beloved characters die.  There isn't any questionable language.

You could just end with this book, which I actually like in a trilogy.  Sometimes you've visited an author's mind and it was fine and everything but you don't know that you're invested enough in the story to go through multiple more books in order to figure out how everything ends.  But in this case I think we WILL read the next two books, because I'm curious to see how the story arc ultimately ends.  At the conclusion of The Door Within, Aiden returns to Earth with the thought that he would not be allowed to return to the land of the Glimpses until he died and met them in the Land Beyond...

Hmmm....

Here are the next two books!

Book Review - Ghosts of Greenglass House (spoilers included)

Ghosts of Greenglass House is the second book in the Greenglass House series by Kate Milford.  We really liked Greenglass House, although you can read here about how I was not a fan of the ending, which was weak and also very strange.  Will the sequel be as strong as the first....?

So, Milford has set this story a year after the first book.  We learn that Meddy disappeared after the Christmas mysteries of the previous year, and hasn't yet returned.  Milo, meanwhile, is struggling more with his biological lineage.  While I don't have any personal experience with adoption, I really appreciated how the author handled it here in the story and I think it was very balanced.  She did rely, as in the last book, on convenient situations, but not As Much, or at least As Noticeably, as before.

In this novel, we're back in Greenglass House, and it is Christmas, and yet again we've got a bunch of unwelcome strangers stuck in the house to Milo's chagrin.  I would have liked a little bit of a change up with that - but I'm not a fan of formulaic sequels.  Meddy appears and she and Milo repeat the same sort of role-playing magic game that they did last year.  Wait...things are hidden in the same places.  It's all about the same theivery and sneakery...

This is the same book, isn't it.  Sigh.

I mean, if you enjoyed Greenglass House, you'll probably enjoy Ghosts, because it's essentially the same story.  On the other hand, in a lot of ways it is a paler reflection of the first book.  We're expected to already know a lot of background - who Meddy is, what game they played last year, etc.  For that reason, I'd say that to get much out of this story you would need to read the previous novel.

Other oddities...

When we read Greenglass House I immediately felt like I HAD to know where this place was supposed to be.  I fell down several rabbit holes trying to figure it out, and had pretty much decided that it had to be a generic north-eastern seaboard in the Americas.  Then along comes Ghosts - and there's a scene in the story where one thief is defacing an American coin and is told that it's illegal to do so.  She responds by saying it isn't illegal if it's foreign currency.

Gah!  Where is this story SET THEN??  I decided it must be Cornwall then.  Somewhere with a heavy history of smuggling, but with the correct weather patterns for the story.  But then...there's another part that comes along where it seems to imply that this is not in Great Britain.  I'm annoyed.  I'm unreasonably annoyed that I can't do a tonne of research and read a whole bunch of things related to the geographical area in which this story is set.  Grrr.  

The move

Perhaps 8 years ago, on this blog, I announced that we would be taking on the challenge of our very first church ministry.  We moved from a small town in New Brunswick, Canada, to a miniscule village in northern Ontario.  Looking back, I can see the hand of God on what we did, but that doesn't make the struggles any easier.

We've spent eight years here, now, and it is time to move on again.

David has suffered burn-out, I have fought against an anxiety disorder, we have lost friends, said goodbye to family, and faced prejudice.  But we've also had some amazing, wonderful moments.  We've met beautiful people and watched them develop in their faith.  We welcomed our third child to the family, and more recently, a dog.  David has finished his distance education courses and been ordained, and this spring will see him finally graduated with a degree in pastoral ministry.  I've returned to school.  We've gotten better at what we do and seen results that lifted our hearts.

We never intended to retire in this village. This was never meant to be the 'last stop'.  In fact, if I'm being honest, I thought it wouldn't even be a place we stayed for more than a few years.  But God had other plans, and we've tried to be obedient, and so here we are many more years past the point at which I'd  imagined we'd be gone to other pastures.

In some ways I'm excited to see what comes next, but of course the last time we moved it was with a four year old and a two year old.  Now it will be with an eleven, nine, and seven year old.  It's challenging to explain all of this to the children, and we've already had a few teary episodes.  The two healthy cats we stuffed into carriers and carted along with us have become one frail 17 year old cat and a giant standard poodle - not the more straightforward of combinations.  We've never been big 'stuff' collectors, and the parsonage is quite small, but we still have the detritus of five people and eight years to sift through.  It's all the normal stuff of moving, but we haven't done it before so the newness is a bit intimidating.

We're being asked the same (occasionally hysterical) questions over and over again, so I thought I might try to answer some of them here.

1) Where are you going????

Well, the short answer is: we don't know.  David will be applying to various positions as they come up, or we might be appointed somewhere, but there's no indication where that might be at this point.  We'll be staying in Ontario, and if we have a church it will be further south (I can say with certainly because there are really only a few churches in the denomination geographically north of us!).

2) And...if he DOESN'T get a church????

Ah, that's where things get interesting.  While we hope that he does, obviously, God might not have that in the plan for the next stage, and that's fine, too.  If he isn't hired at a church then our next step will be to move 'home', which for us means where we grew up - Ottawa.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, we know the city, and the children know the city.  Familiarity is going to be a comfort in the midst of turmoil.  Second, all of our immediate family, with the exception of my parents, live in Ottawa.  Having people around to lend a listening ear or to spend time with is going to soothe our anxiety - especially for the children.  It is also in the 'hub' of the denomination for this province, which means that any meetings, interviews, etc. will be much more easily accessed from our home base.

3)  Where will you live and what will you do to make money???

Like most of the questions we're getting, the answers to these ones depends mightily on where we're living.  If we move without a church, then we will put our belongings into storage and 'camp out' with my mother in law.  This would be a very short-term solution; perhaps on the order of a few months.  During that time David and/or I would likely get a job, or each get jobs, preferably in a field we at least liked, and we would move into a house or apartment as soon as we could, and settle in to wait.

4)  Will the children still be homeschooled????

Judging by the frequency with which we are asked this, everyone is mightily concerned about it.  The answer is: I can't see why not.  We chose to homeschool because we believed it was the best education we could offer our children, and we still believe that, so...*shrug* I suppose if that changes, then we'll look at other options.  As it stands, yes, to the best of our knowledge, all three little weirdos will continue to be homeschooled.

5) Now that Amy is going back to school, is SHE going to be working, TOO????

It's possible!  We're keeping our options open.  Maybe we'll end up as a SAHD homeschooling the children while mom goes to work style of family.  I don't know, but it's possible!

6) Variations on HOW WILL YOU DO THIS???

The same way anyone does anything, I guess - one step at a time.  We'll declutter and pack up our things and load them on a truck.  We'll call on the help of friends, and we'll probably overspend on storage, and we'll hug a lot and reassure the children that the world is not coming to an end.  We'll cry, and we'll eat a lot of bread products, and we'll worry.  And it will be okay in the end.  

Well, that's all the news there is right now on this particular topic, so...there you go.  The end of an era.

School Update

 I'm supposed to be studying right now, but, well...

here we are.

Let's talk about school stuff.  I'm five-ish months into going back to university for a post-degree professional certificate in publishing.  Everything about this has been a challenge, and also completely different than it was the first time I did it - single, childless, and living in a dorm I did not have to clean or cook in.  In a lot of ways this time around has been easier.  Or, maybe easier is the wrong word.  It's more like getting onto a bike again after, say, 50 years of not riding a bike.  It was, and is, not smooth riding.  BUT it isn't like starting at square one, either.

The first thing I had to learn how to do, besides the weeks it took me to figure out how to register and pay for the actual course (this was...not intuitive) was to navigate an entirely on-line learning environment.  Not fun, do not recommend.

I wouldn't have previously said I was a Luddite but this Brightspace program was a p.i.t.a.  The first course I registered for was a sort of 'grammar refresher'.  Essentially you were supposed to take an online test to figure out how advanced your grammatical skills were, and if you got below a certain amount they 'highly recommended' that you take this refresher course first.  Friends, I couldn't even finish the test.  Assuming that that likely meant I was a moron and should begin with the remedial program, I registered there.  I was a little surprised; I mean, I do have a degree in English, and English is my mother tongue, and I do homeschool my children, and I have read thousands of books, and I did go through Khan Academy's grammar course Just To Make Sure.  But alright, online test!  You're the boss!

The first class was a disaster.

I can't even tell you what went wrong, frankly.  I did all the required readings, I posted all of the required postings, I studied and made notes, I asked lots of questions, and I was certain I understood what was going on, but every test score was mediocre.  It was very disheartening!  A few times in the course I emailed my prof to ask if there was something else I could be doing, maybe some key I was missing here, but there was nothing.  So, I just stumbled along and eventually finished it and took my Christmas break.

Which was like a month long!  Holy cow, were breaks always this long???  I was bored stiff.  Man, my last class was something like the 12th of December, and then my first class in the new term was the EIGHTEENTH of January.  I'm sorry, but that's insanity.  C'mon.  No one needs over a month off when you've only been going to school for three and a half months and there was a long weekend in there aaaaaaand a reading week.  

Anyway, after all that nonsense I went ahead and registered for class #2 - which is a sort of trade publishing market overview.  I'm starting week four of that, and so far I can't tell you if I'm doing any better than I did in my previous course because again...I thought I was doing okay there, too.  But I will tentatively say I appear to not have made any glaring public errors or, like, emailed anyone a picture of my toe, so things are good!  I'll know better how well I'm doing when I take my first quiz at the end of this week.

I told myself that if I was going to pay such gaspingly large amounts of money and spend such obscenely large amounts of time working, then I was going to squeeze this certificate for every last drop.  And that I think I've succeeded with.  There's an online job/internship posting board, and if I think there's any chance at all that I could apply for something that gets posted, then I do it.  I don't even care - I'm getting my name out.  The school was offering free career counselling, so fantastic, I signed up.  Yes, I DO want to get emails about continuing education students' associations!  Thanks!

But probably the most successful venture has been joining the school magazine.  In fact, I even have an article being published, which I will talk about in a later post.  It's all been very...eye-opening.  I feel very old a lot of the time, let me tell you.  Another student writer did an article about the fall of Youtube and I was like...Youtube is uncool?  What?  Also then I went on Youtube to look up TikTok videos because I'll be d*mned if I'm signing up for TikTok, and did you know that teenagers dye their hair half one colour and half another?  And I thought the peace sign whilst sticking your tongue out looked stupid.  Man I'm old.