Crying over...lost bread? Hope for when every day life seems too crazy to handle.

I had a very weird day today. I don't know if it is because I am a teeny tiny bit sick or because I have been having a teeny bit of trouble sleeping lately, or if it just had to do with a long confusing day of broken dryers, confusing bus schedules, and sad books being read for school, or if there is a bigger issue at play. Whatever the cause. I found myself, late this afternoon, standing in the middle of the kitchen and crying about bread. Bread! Isn't that the silliest thing to cry about?

See, what happened is that I finally decided that I might be feeling the way I felt because I was hungry so I went to make a sandwich and couldn't find my bread. It shouldn't have been a big deal, in fact it should have even been funny. It turns out one of my house mates had accidently taken my bread thinking it was theirs and they were more than happy to give it back.

However, sometimes I just get so mentally or emotionally tired I feel totally incapable of figuring out life, even of figuring out something super simple like finding a lost loaf of bread.

I was thinking about it and came to the conclusion that I cannot possibly be the only one who cries about simple things like missing bread.

If you cry over lost bread too, I just wanted to share something with you.

Today I texted someone I have known my whole life whose birthday is coming up in about a week asking what she would like me to get her for a gift. I've always been the one who doesn't know what I want. She always used to know, but she texted me back that she doesn't want anything. She told me she has everything in the world that she wants or needs.

I was blown away. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that peace and joy were old wives tales. I have been trying like crazy to believe they are real, but sometimes it is easy to get to a place where I loose sight of what is important and what I really believe is true and what I believe are lies that I shouldn't listen to. Sometimes it is really easy to get lost in the throws of a confusing moment and feel too weak to bother, but I really and truly don't think this has to be the end.

I believe that there is something we can all put our hope in that won't disappoint.

I would like to leave you with one last thought: it is a process.

A friend of mine talked about processes the other day and I thought to myself "oh yeah right I forgot, things take time." My whole life I've been trying to do or say or understand the thing that will make everything better. I keep forgetting that it is a process and I get really ashamed when a bump comes along in my road and I find myself standing in the kitchen crying about bread. I get angry with myself because I think that I should have it all figured out and that I should have finally found peace and joy and hope. I worry that maybe I'm just a liar and that I was wrong or that what I hope in and believe in is all lies. The other possibility may be that it is ok to sometimes find yourself unable to deal with everyday life. The other possibility may be that I'm not alone. Maybe there are people all over the world who cry about bread. Maybe getting to the place where you can laugh over lost bread is a slow journey, and maybe it is one we don't have to go on alone.

My Grandmother's Legacy: The VMS Clan as a Metaphor for the Body of Christ

My grandmother died almost two weeks ago. I have been meaning to write something about it for the longest time because that is how I figure things out and I like sharing my process with other people in case they are going through the same sorts of life times, but I couldn't put any of my thoughts or feelings into written words. I kept trying but it wasn't working. Then the other day I was thinking about life and something came to me: families. This is the thing I ranted to my mother about most during our late night talks after the death of my grandmother who was her mother. I talked about how it felt right that all of her brothers and sisters and even a lot of my cousins were gathering together. I went to so many campfires and things. There was a lot of laughter. It was fun to all be together. Maybe that sounds inappropriate, but it felt right. I felt like we were honouring my grandmother. I feel like we are her legacy: the thing she is leaving behind. Now someone in my family said that my grandmother was a ordinary woman following an extraordinary God. That is true and I know that is how my grandmother would like us to remember her. She wouldn't want us to say a lot of fancy words about what she did on this earth, but yet there is something to be said for the family that she and my grandpa (who died before I was born) created together by the grace of God. It isn't so much like something showing off how awesome she was though. I think it is something that shows off how awesome God is. I was thinking about it when I was talking to my mum...about how the VMS clan is an example of the body of Christ. We always help each other, but in our own little way. Some people give rides, others fix houses, others baby sit children or pets, and others give hug. We all do what we can and it is never a direct exchange like "I'll watch your dog if you drive me to school." Life just kind of happens and we don't keep track of what favours are given to who or by who. I just always know that my mom's family is there if I need them. I hope they think of me as someone who is there for them if they need me. It is a spider web of good deeds, and that is stronger than a direct back and forth exchange.

All of that was just muddled up in my head and heart, but earlier this week I was thinking about what I am going to do with my life. The thought crossed my mind: what if I fall in love, get married, and have kids. Would that make me boring if my adventure stopped and I stopped travelling and gave up academic learning and my husband and I just worked, bought a house, raised kids, made dinner, cleaned, and paid bills. Are people who do that just selfishly channeling all of their awesomeness back into their own family and just living to continue living instead of trying to make a difference in the world? Is making a strong family making a difference in the world?

Then it hit me. My mom's family is like a metaphor for or an example of the body of Christ. Being in a family is loving your neighbour. It is what the Christian life is all about.

Maybe God didn't call us to love strangers in some mechanical "I'm purposefully trying to make the world a better place" kind of way. Maybe it is supposed to be more natural.

This all came back to me tonight when I was visiting friends from my church I haven't seen all summer. It felt like I was coming home to a family and I was reminded of a thought I'd had: families don't have to be biological. You can adopt your family or be adopted into a family. Your friends, classmates, or coworkers can become your family. Sometimes I feel like wherever I go I'm making new family members, and maybe that is the point. Maybe life is about going out and making a family. I'm finding people to love sure, but we are not perfect love machines we need the strong supportive spider web of family to love us as we love them so we can love them. And the best kind of families, I like to think, are like my family, they are the ones that always have room to expand to add new people. Growing up, when my clan got together for thanksgiving there were always friends of family, but we treated them like family. People in my family got there by a whole variety of ways, but I care about them all the same. So I suggest you find a family, create a family, and grow grow grow it. Because for me that just might be the only way I know to live.

Self Forgivness: My new life goal.

I hate to sound like an over dramatic old lady, but sometimes I just get really overwhelmed by how quickly life goes by. I am about to begin my final year of my university undergrad. The last few years of my life have been eventful. I have enjoyed them. I have made a lot of awesome memories and a lot of awesome friends. I am not really saddened by the ends of these times because, as cliché as it sounds, I know that every end is a new beginning and I'm excited for whatever the future holds. What saddens me about this end is the heavy weight of guilt and regret. This is a feeling I have carried with me for a long time. I have suffered these feelings in regards to not only my young adult years, but also my teenage years and my childhood. I have been plagued for a long time by every good thing I didn't do and every bad thing I shouldn't have done. In every moment I am plagued by who I am and who I am not and these feelings have a tendency to choke me and keep me from living the moment to the fullest. Then I am plagued with regret because I think I could have done a better job at work or school or had more fun if I had been less distracted by self hatred. It is a complex but vicious circle.

As a Christian I believe that Jesus's death forgives all of the bad things I do and yet I also believe that Jesus shows us, out of love, the best way to live ant that someone truly living under his forgiveness will be learning to walk in his footsteps, so - to be honest - in many ways my faith has increased my guilt where it is supposed to free me from condemnation.

I am coming out of a tough summer. I have been working at a camp and feel really discouraged and sad all summer because I have been focussing on my weaknesses as usual. I've been negative around my fellow staff when I should have been encouraging them and I've been too tired emotionally to really do my job right and this has just added to my self hatred. As the summer comes to an end I am left with a choice. I can go into my last year of university full of regret because of how I have spent my summer and just keep the cycle going, or I can end the cycle here and now with forgiveness.

 I can worry till I am blue in the face about how Christianity really works and whether or not I am really saved, forgiven, and loved, whether or not I really  believe in Jesus, and whether or not I am being sanctified or I can just choose to live like I have been forgiven and forgive myself.

In the words of John Green, I truly believe that forgiveness is the only way out of the labyrinth of suffering.

I know a lot of people who believe that focussing on forgiveness can cause complacency where people just do whatever they want to because they are forgiven but I'm going to experiment this year. I don't think that will happen with me because I am already tough on myself making sure I am responsible, and I think  forging will just inspire me to forgive others. At any rate, being really tough on myself, trying to figure everything out, and focusing on my failures have not been working in my life. They have not been making me a happier, wiser, or more loving person. I have reached a point in my life where I can't take things being the same anymore. I don't want to live a life of guilt and condemnation. I am choosing to forgive myself.

This is my goal for the new school year. You are welcome to join me if you like, or you are welcome to think that I'm foolish, but this is what I'm doing. I still need to come up with a specific plan of how I can make this work, but I'm starting right here and now by forgiving myself for the mistakes I've made this summer. This has been as summer for learning and I was still able to do ok despite my dark mindset, and Jesus died for these mistakes too, so I'm choosing to forgive myself and learn from my mistakes.  

Dear little man

Dear Leonard James Allen Hannah, (Woe boy, that’s a mouthful!)

                Welcome to the world little man, and oh what a world it is. My hope for you is that you will always have a smile on your face, food and water in your belly, clothes to wear on your body, a roof over your head, and someone who loves you at your side. However, I’ve been around long enough to know that life doesn’t always go the way we would like it to. One thing I want you to know that I think you can understand - even though you are a baby and cannot yet read, write, or talk – is the concept of family. You can’t even say dada yet, but I bet you feel safe with your mum, dad, grandparents, etc. I bet you can recognise the faces and voices of your family. It is my greatest hope that you would count me as one of the people you can feel safe with. Here is the thing little man. I am far away right now and I don’t know when or if I’ll ever be chilling in the same end of the universe as you, but I will always come if you need me. I will always love you. Even if you cry every time I come near and never decide to love me back and even if you grow out of your good looks into an ugly alien, I will always love you. Like I said before, “welcome to the world little man, and oh what a world it is.” It isn’t always pretty, it doesn’t always make sense. It is my hope that you will find not just joy but also truth. Unfortunately I don’t feel capable of giving you wisdom. I don’t know for sure what the truth is. I can only tell you what I believe. I don’t know how to be joyful. I can only give you love little man, that is all I have. That is why, of all the things I could tell you about, I chose family. I am your family little man. I’m here for you.

With love from far away,

Auntie Riss

What is love?

I have struggled for a long time with the concept of love. Not romantic love just plain old straight up love for all others. I have written about this before on this blog, most notably here: http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2013/02/what-is-love-anyways-how-at-21-i-am.html.  What is it, I wonder, and why or how do we do it? I realised this summer that I used to think it was an emotion. I talk about that in the other blog, how I believed that we love people when we see something good in them that we enjoy which inspires us to want to care for these people. I talked about how God loved us by dying for us when we were still His enemies and how I wanted to be able to love other people even when they didn't deserve it. To be honest I don't struggle to love people very often. It isn't because I have a good perspective of love or because I am awesome or anything. It is actually because I still cling to the view that love is a reaction to the good in people. I always try to see the good in others, this helps me to forgive the bed in them. I have difficulty accepting love from others because I don't see anything good in myself. I figure that people don't actually love me but acting like it is something they do out of a sense of duty. I have always thought this most about Christians because, like I talk about in my other blog a little bit, the Bible encourages us to love like Christ did. However I was talking with a friend today and I think I finally figured it out. Love isn't a reaction to the good in others and it isn't something you just do out of duty. It clicked when my friend talked about the baby my sister is pregnant with right now. "Are you going to love your nephew?" he asked me. "Yes," I answered. "Why?" He asked. "Because he is my family," I said and then he said the obvious "In Jesus we are all family." I have heard this a lot but it never really clicked. I still don't really understand how people can love me when I don't deserve it, but I have decided to let them. I have decided to believe them instead of feeling guilty about it, worrying that they are soon going to stop loving me when they find out what I'm really like, or thinking that they are just pretending to love me because they have to because if they really can love an unlovable person like me that isn't a sad or robotic thing, it is a beautiful thing that the world needs more of and maybe I should even encourage it.

Poetic Musings

I am sitting on the wooden bench again. I'm watching grass dance with wind. I'm zoning out and I've got my headphones on, but the laughter still comes whistling in. A line comes through the music and it is the question of my heart, "maybe, just maybe, I've come home." I have been so many places, met so many faces, and gotten so close to love, yet there is always a but. There is always a sort of darkness in my mind that just tries and tries to stomp out the light. I close my eyes and all these places dance on by. I'm remembering all the times of this here life. When I look backwards like this it seems so beautiful. I always see the sunshine, the smiles, and the laughter. I can feel the warmth and the love and I miss those times that have passed me by now, but if I could really enter those moments I'd be back in the darkness for most of it. If I could go back I'd be lonely even when people are around, because I rarely believe it when they say they love me. Now I am not there I am here and there are worries and fears there are trials and even a few tears on the seams of my heart but there is wind and rain and sun and this love that is always here waiting for me to believe it and receive it. What will I do? Will I embrace the moment? Will I love where I am and live in this moment with joy in my heart. Will I be thankful for the poetry of a cricket orchestra? Will I sing the song and dance the dance and shine the light I was born into the earth to bring?

Pondering out Loud

I wonder what it would look like if the core of our beings could be written in words. I would love for all the tangle of thoughts, actions, needs, and speech to be written down clear for my eyes to see. What are we really at our essence? Are we just a living thing? Are we just a collection of Protons and Neutrons making atoms making molecules making bone, muscle, organs, and flesh? And what is the point of this complex thing that we are? Are we just eating and sleeping to stay alive so we can do it all over again? What about our brains? Our brains can feel emotions, they can choose to like or to dislike, and they can busy themselves all day with questions or worry. What is the point to all this activity? It confuses, confuses, confuses. There is a darkness falling like smoke because of the tangle of thoughts and feelings as all within my brain mixes with all that is in yours. There are so many lines and levels. This life is so complex I loose track of what I feel, of what I want, and of the reasons why. What is it all for?

I believe we are here. We cannot change that unless we end our lives but there is so much that we could try to enjoy, so much that we could be thankful for, so much that we could do to make the world a better place. Perhaps we just need to choose to seize the day?

If we choose to seize every moment are we living just to enjoy life because we have it so why not? Is that all there is to it?

I believe something must have happened for us to be here. Something must have caused us to exist. I believe this something or someone is so great and powerful that it is beyond my comprehension but I believe it is still active and I call it God.

I believe we were created out of love and out of love we have been sustained and saved. It is because of love that we remain and can be freed from our stains.

And here we are in the middle of the confusing life I was talking about and we need to be thankful we are clean and we need to love back because we have been loved. We were made from love to love and out of love we have been healed on the inside.

When there are so many clichés why are the answers not satisfying?

When it is possible to keep it simple why does my brain overload with all the complexities?

There has been a gnawing within me for mostly all my life and I'm wondering what do I want? What will satisfy?

If I have food and water, warmth, protection, fun, and love (though I've never learned to believe it). What more do I need?

All the thinking, the desiring and the questioning, is it worth it? Is this a waste of time, is the answer much more simple than it seems?