Be Celebrating Eight 

The snowman birthday – eight.  

8

We celebrated our oldest’s birth day a few weeks ago as a family.  JC joined me on an early morning bike ride.   We ate our son’s foods of choice.  We went swimming and opened gifts.   

     

   

         

I am so grateful to be this eight years olds mom.  

It is pure joy to see his sensitive heart that he wears on his shoulders.  

It is profound to watch my first born forge his own path with no one ‘ahead’ of him.  

It is amazing to watch him develop and grow.  

Happy snowman birthday.  

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 Savouring Sunsets 

Spring break. 

Done.  

Sunsets savoured.  

Tasted.  

Touched.  

Danced through.  

Played under.  

Sunsets. 

I first began my love affair with sunsets as an university student.  I moved from the mountains to the prairies to go to school and watching the sun slip off the earth mesmerized me.  

Captured.  

Stopped in my tracks.  

My propulsion moving me endlessly forward was halted.  

Breath taken. 

By brilliant colours.  

Chasing the sun setting.  

The sun has shown me its incredible force.  

Bringing light.  

Hope for a new day.  

A peaceful ending to moments made.  

Creating warmth.  

Thank you God for the sun and sunsets. 

We now have three boys who savour sunsets.  

Here they are enjoying a stopped moment savouring the sunset on our last day of spring break holidays.

Did anyone notice the sunrise shot I threw in?  Tee hee, cheeky monkey I am!

Lastly, I have been cleaning out old junk/treasures and I can across this poem I wrote in grade seven: 

I love how God weaves together themes for me.  

Be Getting Hammered on your Holidays 

Hammered had a different connotations in my twenties and thirties.  Now that I am forty, being hammered has entailed waves and a flu virus. 

Last year, Sexy Neck received the gift of a pair of ripped shorts courtesy of the waves in Waimea Bay.  

Today, Waimea Bay gave Sexy Neck the gift of a shirt and face full of sand.  

Here are Papa and Sexy-Neck surveying the surf pre-hammering. 



Before. 



And after.  (He is happy the waves didn’t take his sun glasses!)

The wee boys had an incredible morning of boogie boarding.   I guess it is easier to ride a board then stand in a wave. 





Even OC got into the waves, but I only managed thus post-water shot. 



We are recovering from getting hammered with the flu this week.  

Fever.  

Chills.  

Cough.  

Running noses.

Sleepless nights.  

And this is the only hammering we hope to have during this spring break.  

Riding the waves.  

In the water.  

In life.  

Recovering from illness.  

Rejoicing in health. 

Good. 

Bad. 

Sand up your shorts. 

Sun on your face. 

Getting hammered.  

"Be a human BEING, not a human doing!"