Category Archives: God

Be Me with My Peeps 

I love people.  

Always have.  

Always will. 

Them my peeps.  

I would not have survived the last sixteen months without.  

You know who you are! 

I was told that the hole my mom left in my life would never heal but that people would lean and the hole wouldn’t be so humongous.  

I agree with this analogy.  

Because of my peeps.  

The strange thing that happened on this journey the last sixteen months is that I also learned to be okay with myself.    

  

No more people pleasing.  

Be with people because it is pleasing.  

 Using my gifts.  

Being quiet when I need to.  

Saying ‘no’ and being okay.  

Letting go of relationships that are hurtful and judgemental.  

Allowing myself to feel.  

Allowing myself to be me.  

I am forever grateful for the gifts my mom has given me through her life and her death.  

I have never been so blessed in my entire life than I am right now!  

 

Be Making Your Heart Feel Good 

Picking up the big brothers after school, three year old OC makes a swift stop and exclaims, “That flower makes my heart feel good!”   

   Regular activities.  

Gifts from children.  

Kid eyes. 

Holy moments. 

Gratitude that I am a stay-at-home mom.  

Flowers that make a three year olds heart feel good.  

What do you see that makes your heart feel good? 

Be Having a Gas Pump Epiphany

I am standing at the gas pump.

Minding my own business.

Just hanging out.

Chilling.

Watching the numbers go up and up and up and…

Wham!

Epiphany time!

Yup, that’s how it rolls for me right now.

I realized that as the gas filled my tank that I had FAITH that this was gas pouring into my car.  I had FAITH that this was gas not some other liquid.  I TRUSTED the gas station.  I had FAITH that once my car was filled with this smelly, unseen liquid that my car would then convert it so that I could drive.  I TRUSTED the gas station and the drivers that brought the gas to the station AND I even trusted the people that put it in the tankers in the first place!   I TRUST and have FAITH that this whole process will work, even though I don’t UNDERSTAND even how my car works and why can’t I just put vegetable oil into my car?

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That is whole bunch of TRUST and FAITH in one simple act.

Gas.

Powerful.

Energy producing.

Faith.

Trust.

Understanding?

This time at the pump made me ponder my relationship with God.  I didn’t come to know God until university, until the age that I truly began to ponder life for myself, outside the safety of the house my parent’s created.  I came to seek this relationship on the university grounds.  I came to know this very personal God in my bedroom, in my childhood home.  I asked Him to show Himself to me.

He did.

Personally.

On my own.

He is my light.

My force.

He is my God, Saviour, Father…

Since then, every day I have FAITH that God will be with me and help me.  I have TRUST that He will work everything out for His good even when I don’t UNDERSTAND.

No longer do I seek to understand many things that I know I never will, but I TRUST and have FAITH.

This is enough.

What will you put your FAITH and TRUST in today?

Be Celebrating Your Mom’s Birthday 

Last year, it was lemon meringue cake, dinner as a family and sending balloons up to Nana in heaven.

This year, it is receiving a beautiful phone call from my mom’s friend’s Donna and Wendy, a morning text from Sexy Neck and a great friend in KCity plus I took an afternoon bike ride.  



It is tears.  

It is joy.  

It is shattering grief and living life all wrapped up in pieces of mom’s birth day.  

I don’t know how to do any of this!  

How does one celebrate a day that they’ve always celebrated with a woman that they love celebrating when that woman is no longer with you? 

So, I bike. 

I sit.  

I cry.  

I look at reminders, especially this one I created one month ago that reminds me of the great roots my parents gave me.  



The waves of grief no longer pushes me underwater until I can’t breathe, but I am still on the boat, rowing in this grief, learning about myself and filled with deep gratitude for how present, wonderful and loving my mom was.  

I wish I could get a piece of that back! 

Be Living with a Surplus

My previous post was me flat on my face again. I didn’t know why but the waves hit me hard and fast after my grandma’s death and subsequent interactions with others.

But the ‘hard’ things don’t push
me down for long anymore and I am grateful for the tremendous amount I am learning about myself.

I am also VERY grateful to those who walk with me, with their honest perspective, throughout these times. You know who YOU are my messengers, phone callers and texters from the last week.

As I reflect on the last few weeks, I realized it has been weeks of me being inundated by people who choose to live their lives from the perspective of a ‘deficit’.

Nothing is good enough.

No one can say the right thing, including me.

Even though they live in a first world country they are never ‘rich’ enough.

Everyone is either taking advantage of them or ripping them off.

But I am now stepping aside from these folks living with deficits because I know this doesn’t work for my life.

Time is precious.

Days are short.

Houses and money will come and go.

Time, I ain’t getting back.

The gift my mom (and dad) have always given me is living a life of surplus.

We had enough, even when my dad started his own business and the money wasn’t flowing. My parents were frugal and saved, and also generous and grateful.

They always donated their money and helped people out financially. They didn’t wait until such and such happened, they just did it.

Mom volunteered her time, was the family organizer and poured into all her relationships.

She had enough.

She was enough.

I need to remember I can ‘be enough’, but definitely NOT to everyone.

Seek those living in surplus.

See what you can accomplish together.

Give freely.

Be enough.

Hugs from the hill:

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Be Using Words as Weapons

Heat comes over my body by the words said to me.

The slice me.

Dice me.

Cut me up.

For many weeks now I have chosen to be quieter in my life.

Be still.

Use less words.

But this change makes people uncomfortable.

The one who had the words of many, now has words of few?

The change from many to few words was swift, like a swipe of a sword.

It started three and a half weeks ago…

I shared an idea, just a fun, easygoing idea with someone close, but often my ideas are questioned.

I still try to share.

Call me an optimist or perhaps even crazy.

Sometimes my explanations must be Russian due to the confusion. (I don’t even speak Russian!)

Why can’t ideas be encouraged, valued, and built up?

Why do they need to be questioned until nothing is left and all excitement is gone?

Next, I found out that my grandma died by a forwarded emailed from my mom’s sister, that I haven’t heard from since my mom died. This Aunt I spent EVERY Christmas, Easter and summer vacation with growing up! We lived in the same town.

She said my email didn’t work.

The same one that I have had since email was invented.

And then, I heard from a friend going through a very stressful time. Their body was exhausted, they felt their life was a disaster. They were overwhelmed with overwhelming life.

I told them my latest mistake and I shared a funny story but they said they didn’t need that. They told me just to pray.

Lastly, I tried to help someone out. I did something they asked me to do. I did what they were suppose to do. And all I heard were complaints about their health, their money, their stuff.

They didn’t once use the words, “thank you”.

We are thoughtless in our words that cut like a sword.

In our Western comfy world, our words are weapons.

They belittle instead of build up.

They chastise instead of praise.

They truly cut me up.

Broken.

Torn.

No words can diffuse this pain.

Off for a run!

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Be Wondering About Air

As I watched my littlest one fly through the air on the chairlift, I thought of air, the importance of breathe and God’s Holy Spirit.

This is how my mind works these days, simple moments become incredible moments.

I can be sitting watching my boys play with Lego and I feel love and warmth pour over me like a dousing of water over my head.

I may be listening to a woman speak about her health struggles and I want to bawl my eyes out with sadness.

Often, I see women with their moms and I want to lie flat on the ground, humbled by what I have lost and amazed at how present my mom was in our lives.

Today, I come back to air.

To my breathe.

To God’s Holy Spirit.

I will seek with my whole heart the significance of breathe.

2015/01/img_8099.pngAnd I will breathe.

Deeply.

Full of gratitude.

I love this journey.

Life.

Alive.

Air.

Breathe.

Breath.

Life-giving Holy Spirit.

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Be Having a Snowy Epiphany

More snow than in over seventy years.

First ‘snow’ day school closures in over forty years.

Days of snow falling.

Big thick snowy flakes pouring from the sky.

Great memories with friends and the three brothers playing together.

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Hours upon hours of creativity and outside snow time.

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/home/wpcom/public_html/wp-content/blogs.dir/491/14178302/files/2015/01/img_7953.jpgIt has been a monumental Epiphany.

Nope, no epiphany for me today.

Another kind of Epiphany.

We are celebrating the twelfth day after Christmas that symbolizes the three wise men arriving from the East to worship the newborn King, Jesus.

Here’s the boys Epiphany play:

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The wise men have spent the last weeks traveling from a faraway box land arriving in our bookshelf stable in Bethlehem.

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We created three ice candles and placed them in our front yard, which is coincidently (or not) to the East of our home. We didn’t realize this was the East until JC pointed it out.

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Sexy Neck read about the three Wise Men and we eventually talked about how we both came to know God personally in a private manner.

My beginnings with God began, coincidently, with a writing journal in my bedroom and for Sexy Neck, he came to know God through snow. Another coincidence?  Hmmmm….

It was a privilege to celebrate Epiphany today and it is an even larger privilege to know a personal God where snow is the gift of “Epiphany”.

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