Passing Cars: An Analogy for Life

Posted on January 25th, 2012

I guess I better start telling some stories… I’ve had this post brewing for years, but last weekend finally offered the perfect example:

We have to go up a couple gravel roads before we get to the paved roads that get us to Winnipeg for church. A few weeks ago on our way to church we quickly approached a car already on the gravel road. It wasn’t going super slow, but slow enough that we would’ve liked to pass. It quickly became apparent that the car wasn’t going to move over to let us by. I’ll be honest. We were a little frustrated. We got a bit closer to the car to see if they’d move over. Soon I realized that the driver of the car was probably a girl from the Bible Study we host every week. I mentioned it to Marc, “I bet that’s Hanne!” We were pretty sure it was, but it wasn’t until we got to the main highway and passed the car that we realized it was, indeed, Hanne!

It’s funny. At first when we saw how slow the car was going, we were annoyed. But when we realized it was Hanne, we weren’t anymore. Thoughts ran through my head. “It’s Hanne! She’s the sweetest, kindest girl. It’s okay that she’s driving cautiously (note the change from “slow” to “cautiously”). Of course, she’s driving slower on the gravel, she’s had her license less than five years!” My whole perception of the incident changed because I knew the girl behind the wheel.

Now, the thought that has been running through my head for the past few years waiting to be a blog post is that driving cars should be an analogy for the way life is. We so easily get annoyed at cars that go too slow, too fast, drive through stop signs, or have tail lights burnt out. We respond to what we see, but we don’t know the why of it. Is the car driving fast because the woman in the passenger’s seat is in labour? Is the car driving slowly because the person just had major surgery and every bump hurts? Maybe the driver of that car just received horrible news and was so distracted he missed the stop sign. So many reasons why they did what they did. So many reasons we will never know.

And aren’t we like that too? We might see someone blow up at their kid in Walmart or cry over the tiniest thing in a movie, and think, “Seriously?! Get it together!” But how can we say that? How can we say that until we know that person? And not just cursory information, either. Think about your friends, even. How much of their history do you really know? Do you know their family dynamics? The way they viewed themselves through different stages of their life? Their political or religious beliefs? What they brings them real joy and real pain? Why are they afraid of clowns and realtors?

There is always a reason why people respond as they do. Perhaps they are reminded of something horrible or delightful from their past — sometimes things are both horrible and delightful! We might want to suppress what we’re experiencing and so we put up a tough exterior. Often we don’t realize why we respond to situations as we do. Sometimes we just respond like jackasses because, well, we’re all jackasses about something. Usually because we don’t have compassion — because we aren’t willing to see the behaviour or struggle of another in ourselves.

But if we do, if we pull back the layers of who we are, open the car doors, air out the upholstery, clean off the windows, invite some travelers in… we will see others’ experiences and responses in our own. I really want to do an “objects in mirror are closer than they appear” analogy, but that seems just a bit too much…

It’s true though. The ways we act aren’t always that different. In fact they’re pretty close — maybe a bit (or a lot) more or less extreme. But it seems like there are a limited number of human emotions and responses which become extremely complicated because we’ve all gotten to them by different paths. Our stories have worked and weaved us in intricate ways to the moment we find ourselves in. We may not be touched by the same thing as our spouse (heck, I will never cry at the Survivor reunion episodes the way Marc does!). Neither will we always be irritated by the same things. But we need to acknowledge the fact that something in us elicits the joy or the irritation that we’re experiencing, and that happens to everyone.

So, though I may not have the responses of someone who has been abused, I cannot rightly judge that person because I do not know the many ways abuse has affected him or her. This is not to say that every response is the “right” response, but only that we should have grace for ourselves and for others. That we should be willing to get to know people and how they tick and why they tick and what ticks them off. And, since we can’t know everything about everyone, that we try to look for the human story in each of us. In the end, how we react — good or bad, right or wrong, appropriately or inappropriately — is just our way of managing in the present the very simple emotions that come with our very complicated histories.

Posted in Life & Faith | 2 Comments

Trippy

Posted on January 20th, 2012

Children's Museum Slide

Posted in Kids | 1 Comment

A New Direction

Posted on January 14th, 2012

At Christmas I started reading the book “Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying.” I was just twenty pages into it when I came to the realization that what I want to do with my counseling degree is work in palliative care. I’ve known for a long time that I would love to work with seniors. I have loved being with seniors my whole life and I love to hear the stories they have to tell. In terms of counseling, I’d ultimately like to help people look back over their lives and come to terms with their history, humanity, the way they’ve hurt and been hurt by others. But the book made me realize that maybe palliative care (rather than strictly seniors) is just the place for that, since resolution with life and death is so much a part of that process.

It seems to bring together all of the things I’ve been interested in my life. I was almost morbidly interested in death as a teenager. Later in high school I became really interested in history, pursuing that degree in university, and always thinking about how pertinent the past is to our present life. Early into university, I took a philosophy class and decided to do a second major in philosophy. I’d never thought of philosophy before (I almost didn’t even take the Philosophy 100 class!), but in an instant I realized that ethics, existentialism, metaphysics, etc were just the formal names for my everyday thought processes all along! When I had kids I became obsessed with childbirth (even wanted to become a doula for a while), and I every time I went into a hospital I’d become really excited but never knew why. Then out of the blue in early 2009, the idea came to me that I could be a counsellor. Once again, I’d never thought of it before, but it seemed to perfectly fit my interests and giftings.

Which brings me to the early pages of the book:

As nurses who care for the dying, we see ourselves as the counterparts of birthing coaches or midwives, who assist in bringing life from the womb into the world. At the other end of life, we help to ease the transition from life through death to whatever exists beyond.

Do you see the fit? There’s something that happens in dying that connects us more closely to our history, to our philosophy and spirituality, to our relationships and our psychology. I mean, we should live connected to these things anyway, but it becomes essential as death approaches.

I’ve had the privilege of being near as three very important people in my life passed away in the past few years, each time I was aware of the process of “letting go” when we die, and each time I wondered what it must be like to give over your life — to know that “this was who I was, there is no more to tell, every thing I did or did not do has been done” and let it go. There is something so beautiful, and so human in that process. And I would like to be a part of it however I can.

There’s a quote that I love from Bridges of Madison County:

What becomes more and more important is to be known – known for all that you were during this brief stay. How sad it seems to me, to leave this earth without those you love the most ever really knowing who you were.

So, “stories to tell” is the new mantra of the blog. We’ve worked through the fact that crying children on a boat on the ocean “is life”, and now we embrace that life, and tell the stories of our human experience. I love that picture of two year-old Olivia with my grandpa taken a few months before he died. And I think that’s what life should look like, bending low, taking the time, and telling the stories of the generations — to not be afraid of who we are and to simultaneously embrace and let go of our humanity as we live life, so it’s not so difficult in the end.

There you go. Enough deep thoughts for tonight.

Posted in Blog, Life & Faith, Memories, Ministry | 5 Comments

Beds and Dirt and the Body of Christ

Posted on January 14th, 2012

A bit of a rough day in these parts, today. The kids had a sleepover last night and they are being total bears today because of it. I guess it’s been a long week for all of us, getting back into scheduled, school life. There’s been crankiness all around. And when these days happen, I find myself longing for some sort of camaraderie in my misery. The Vanderlifestyle is unique here on campus. There are no other familes where both parents are in school. There are no families with three kids in our kids’ age group. I often have people come up to me and say, “I don’t know how you guys are doing it!” whether it be in terms of school or the kids or finances.

The things is, some days feel like a breeze. (There are some great perks to the “student lifestyle,” after all.)  Some days we push through. And some days feel exhausting and brutal and like there’s no one who “gets it.” But, there’s this nagging feeling in me that says “I’ve made the bed of student-mothership, so I must lie in it.” And I assume that a lot of people think that about me.  I often think it about myself. But I also long for someone to say, “It sounds like you’re getting overwhelmed. How can I help out?” And then when that doesn’t happen (if I’m being brutally honest), I get bitter that that doesn’t get said.

Where does that phrase fit in the Body of Christ, anyway? What does it mean to live as Christ’s Body? What does it mean to live in community? It means that we share the load, as Sam Gamgee would say. We help when there is a need. But does it matter where that need came from? Do we only help when that need came from an external source? What about when a need arises from a person’s choice? Does it make a difference if that choice was wise or foolish?

Sometimes I think we live as if it does matter. And probably sometimes it does matter. There’s a fine line between being bailed out of a/every poor decision and knowing that someone is there for you in the consequences of those poor decisions. That’s my first point: do we set conditions on our care of others?

My second point is that, as a Body, we all notice different things. I am very aware of the needs women have when they bring home babies. And I want to make them food and send them encouraging emails and babysit their kids and hold their babies for them when they’re out. Because I remember how the smallest things could turn my day around.

But that’s a very niche market– the new mom, isn’t it? Every group of people, every age, every demographic has needs.  And we all notice different ones. It could be because of our past experiences or our interests. So when I get annoyed because only a few people recognize how hard life can be in the Vandertrailer some days, I need to remember that those people probably notice different kinds of needs. Or those people have their own needs that they need to look after at the moment.

I remember after the house we moved into when Olivia was four weeks old flooded when she was six weeks old, we had a pile of dirt in our driveway for three months that summer as we tried to fix the slope problem that had caused the flooding. We had many friends and family who helped us through it all. But our neighbours never once came and offered a hand. One day (after the pile being there for three months) as Marc and I were shoveling wheelbarrows full of dirt, with Olivia in her car seat and two and four year old Luke and Madeline playing on the pile, our neighbour pulled up into his driveway which was right next to where we were, drove into his garage, and shut the door. Now, he could have had a busy day, he could have somewhere to be that night… I should not judge him. But in that moment I thought, “Take the damn shovel for ten minutes and help us out! You have no idea how much ten minutes would mean to us! It might not make a dent in the pile. But it would make a big dent in us!”

When we live as the Body of Christ we need to live open lives. We need to live so that our needs and vulnerabilities are not hidden from others. But we should not live in bitterness when those needs overwhelm us. We are not in a competition for the “most needs” or the “busiest life”. In fact, in the midst of being open about our needs, we need to make space (actual physical space and the space of finding time) to help others in their needs.

I think if we start shoveling each others’ dirt a little bit each day or each week, we will find that life in community is much better than life in isolation — those shovels and piles of dirt that drag us down, are actually the things that lift us up.

Posted in Faith, Life & Faith, Memories, Ministry, School | 3 Comments

Jumping Back In

Posted on January 9th, 2012

We’ve been home for a good 38 hours now. My mom told me not to get myself too busy right away. But that’s really hard when there are so many things I want to get at!

This morning Marc and I started working out together. Really. We’re going to do it. Regularly. For a month. Really. And then he can decide if he wants to join the gym. I know if we do a bit, we’ll see a big change. And it was kind of fun too. When we were doing the jog warm-up, I jogged over and kissed him. He slapped me hard on the butt to get me to do my high knees higher.

Then there’s the unpacking from 16 days away. All those clothes and things to put away when we were already busting out of this trailer! I put the kids clothes away. Will shortly go and put our clothes away — somehow. (I really miss having dressers! But you should see my efficient use of closet space and those metal organizing squares!)

I want to declutter all of the piles of stuff in the house. And they are EVERYWHERE! I think I will just make a big pile on a blanket in the living room today. Go through it with the kids tonight. Done (-ish).

I’m cooking two whole chickens for supper — and trying to have the self-control NOT to invite people over. Because we had supper at a friend’s house last night and then had seven people over to our place after the kids were in bed! I don’t want my head to explode from too much on our social schedule.

So, I will have self control with that (maybe). And I will also increase control of the meals in this house. We’re going to use up all the meat in the deep freeze and my stock-pile of groceries. This will save money on groceries. I will also meal-plan and do one new recipe a week. I’ve already got four printed off. And I will stop myself from buying the ingredients for all of them tomorrow when I go shopping. Because I will only do one (maybe two…) new recipes a week. This week it will be Elaine’s Asian Peanut Noodle Dish, since I can use up the chickens I’m cooking today with that recipe, and chicken vegetable soup, and pizza, plus freeze a bunch, and NEXT week make Chicken Bacon Wild Rice Soup.

Okay. So I’ve got exercise covered. Check. Household maintenance going. Check. Meals. Check. Friends. Check. The kids’ activities should be a bit more settled down. Check. Then there’s that little thing of me taking two classes this semester. I think I will be able to successfully check that one off too, in four months. I switched classes so they’ll be a bit lighter, which will help, since in four to six months we will be packing for a move to who knows where!

Life is good. Jumping back in? Check. At a pace that my mother will almost approve of…

Posted in Family, Life, School | 3 Comments

A Prayer At Close of Day: After Being Out of the Trailer for 2 Weeks

Posted on January 7th, 2012

Dear Lord,
Now, as I muster up the courage, to lay me down to sleep,
To close my eyes and ignore the movements I think I see on the floor,
To close my ears from the teeny squeaky, rustling sounds I think I hear,
To close my mouth, for I am a mouth breather,
For who knows what could crawl up onto my bed tonight.
You saw the little mouse that got the trap snap in our floor vent,
And you were there when the other mouse somehow dropped dead
On the Lego Village on our living room floor.
And you know when we shut off our bodies to the wilds of this trailer,
What skulks around in the darkness as we sleep.
Grant us peace. Give us courage.
And please don’t let any vermin poop on my pillow, or in my hand, or in my mouth tonight.
For I am trying my best not to be truly afraid.
In Your Name,
Amen.

Posted in Family, Life, School | 1 Comment

New Year

Posted on January 2nd, 2012

Do I dare use the word “tremendous” when describing this Christmas holiday? Nothing that spectular has gone on, but what has been happening is a whole lot of rest and de-stressing, and it has been wonderful. Yes, I still dream about mice almost every night and stand in awe of the people in my family who can see a small brown crumb on the table and aren’t conditioned to wonder if it’s a mouse poop… but over and above everything there has been rest. And that is just what we needed.

The kids are enjoying having more space to play, sledding with their cousins, and playing on the Wii that we bought them on New Year’s Eve. (Yes. After two years of using our credit card points to buy printer toner at Future Shop — we used them to buy Esso gas cards when we lived in a town with an Esso — we decided to get something unnecessary!)

Marc and I enjoyed a free night away at a hotel in Saskatoon (it pays to do hotel surveys, especially when service is sub-par!), a lot of bookstore browsing, a lot of good deals on books (11 books for $45 at McNally!) and clothes and movies (first four seasons of 30 Rock for $34!), a few movies at the theatre, and lots of chances to sit and relax. (Marc, of course, still has three papers to complete for a course from last semester, but he’s working on that in the mornings and even that seems to be a bit more relaxed.)

It’s just been very nice to get a break. And I find myself looking forward to this our last semester at Prov with excitement. While it will be hard to leave our community and the good, good friends we’ve made, I’m excited about where we will go next. I’m excited that I can use up my grocery stock-pile over the next 4 to 6 months and save tonnes on groceries! I’m looking forward to going through our stuff, packing, and buying furniture after we got rid of well over half of our stuff before the move. And I’m very excited to think that any house will be bigger and better than what we have now! Amazing, really!

I guess I’m just looking at the year ahead with hope and happiness. And I know part of the reason is that we’ve had this wonderful rest at the end of the year.

Posted in Family, Life | 4 Comments

Christmas 2011

Posted on December 25th, 2011

We are at my parents’ house again this Christmas and enjoying ourselves very much. Yesterday the whole family got together and celebrated the way we would on Christmas Day on Christmas Eve. Today was a bit quieter, with my brother and has family with my sister-in-law’s family. It’s been a good day. After the long drive to get here, we were all pretty tired. (Even missed the Gateway Christmas Eve concert because the kids were wiped out!) So, today was a relaxing day. The kids opened their presents from us and played with them. I had a nice nap. Stayed in my pyjamas until suppertime. Really, there didn’t seem much point in getting out of my pyjamas. (And the kids were quite annoyed when I told them they had to get dressed for Christmas dinner.) But, since we missed getting dressed up last night, we had to do it today. They’re already back in their pyjamas, an hour after supper. And I’m heading back into mine as soon as I finish this post. It’s been a good Christmas, and we are glad to have a bit of an extended holiday this year. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that 2012 will bring many good things. Merry Christmas!
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Posted in Family | 4 Comments

How the Grinch Stole Christmas Concert

Posted on December 21st, 2011

Neither of these pictures are the greatest (my neighbour got a good one that I’ll get from her one day), but what can I say? The boy rocks a bow-tie something fierce. (And his mother (who cannot sew) managed, just barely, to make a Dr. Suess-type hat from an old toque and craft supplies, which all fell off or flopped down, but at least I tried.)
L xmax concert 2011
l xmas concert 2011b

Only one more Christmas concert to go! Olivia’s preschool program is in the morning and then four hours later we hit the road for Saskatchewan. Happy Christmas holidays everyone!

Update: Here’s the one my neighbour got!
l xmas concert 2011 small

Posted in Kids | 2 Comments

I Don’t Want to Forget This

Posted on December 20th, 2011

Standing in my doorway my friend, in her white winter coat with the black night behind her, shivers in the cold and says, “You are a treasure, and that’s the pill you need to swallow.”

You are a treasure. You are a treasure. You are a treasure.

Hmmm…

I realized a few months ago that something happened to me when I got to about grade 5. It was in that grade that I began to feel like no one wanted to be friends with me. I guess I just started to look at myself differently. And it was all so natural and intuitive… “no one wants to be friends with me, because I’m not…”

Fill in that blank with just about anything. Pretty enough. Cool enough. Nice enough. Maybe not smart enough, because I knew I was smart. But whoever wanted to be friends with someone because they’re smart, anyway?

That continued from grade 5 through grade 8. I just felt alone all the time. I wasn’t friends with the girl I’d been best friends with since I was two. I couldn’t tell you why. I’m starting to wonder now if I just pulled away from her because I thought she didn’t want to be friends anymore. (Maybe she stopped being friend because I pulled away?!)

There was a glitch in the system in grade 8 and 9 when I somehow got in with the really popular, pretty girls. I don’t know how it happened, but that was fun. I mean, I felt completely inadequate compared to them, but it was nice to have friends again.

But that’s the age when kids start partying, and party they did. And I was really uncomfortable with that, so I stopped hanging out with them. I’m not sure if they really noticed, because we moved onto high school the next year.

High school. The biggest high school in the province. Great if you have no friends, because no one will notice that you’re all alone. Not so great if you have no friends, because no one will notice that you’re alone.

Grade 10 was the worst. I mean, I legitimately looked horrible. (Everyone gets their bangs cut horribly once in life, and the summer going into grade 10 was that time for me.) I didn’t care about myself, so I didn’t take care of myself. I rushed from class to class mostly with my head down. Went home every lunch hour so I wouldn’t have to go through the awkward bit of finding someone to sit with in the cafeteria. The lowest point was when I took driver training: it started 20 minutes after the lunch bell rang and I got my dad to come pick me up and drive me home, so I could eat for 10 minutes and go back for driver training. All so I wouldn’t have to sit alone.

Not that I would’ve had to sit alone. Because I knew people. All sorts of people. I could talk to cool people and “uncool” people. I could make people laugh. But I just felt like I didn’t have a friend friend — not someone who I could count on to sit with me at lunch, or someone who’d call to hang out.

So I started going to youth group, and I got more involved with worship team. I did well at church. I fit in with the seniors, and the adults, and even some of the youth kids. But still, not a real peer. Not that year, anyway.

Grade 11 was better. And by grade 12, I had some close friends and for the most part felt better about myself. Although, I was still floored when a boy liked me that year. A real boy! Liked me! Even after that, eight months into university when Marc and I started dating and he obviously really liked me (of his own volition!), it took quite a bit of convincing on his part to prove to me that he really did like me. He proved it to me. But did I really believe it?

I did start to believe it with him. I believed that he actually liked me and he actually thought I was beautiful and he wasn’t just saying those things because he was in my family or something. It was Marc who first changed my perspective about myself.

But it still creeps into everything. I have made leaps and bounds in my perception of myself. But I still think there is this underlying theme of “you’re not good enough”; “you’re not … fill in that blank again…” Sometimes it’s subtle: like I’m confident writing counseling papers here at seminary, but when it comes to counseling people I, literally, crap my pants from fear and self-doubt. I still don’t do things because I’m afraid of how I physically look or how my kids will behave. I often go to bed at night feeling hopeless about how I’ve behaved that day.

But my good, good friend told me tonight that I’m a treasure. Marc said, “Dixie knows that. She can rationalize that all day. But she needs more — she needs some kind of emotional or spiritual… something.”

And, it’s true. I know it. I know God created me and that I don’t have to be perfect. I know that. But there is something in me that undergirds all of that rational thinking. And, stopping to think about it for a minute… I think the word would be “displeasure.” There has been something in me, from the age of ten onward, that has been saying “I am not…”

And I would like it to go away now. I don’t quite know how to go about doing that. And I don’t know if that change in thinking will manifest itself in different actions for me or simply different self-talk. (Come to think of it, I think I spent four months talking to my counselor about this very thing early this year!) What if I just stopped the negative self-talk, or at least ignored it?

And, heaven forbid, what if I started positive self-talk? My friend said repeatedly that I am a treasure. Always a treasure. A treasure when I’m yelling at my kids, puking on the toilet, feeling like total crap. A treasure. Not that I’m perfect. Not at all. But that I am a treasure just as I am.

There is something good in me. And that good should be the substance of me, instead of the displeasure.

Even more so, that’s always been the case.

So I think it would be useful for me to go back to my 10 year old self and tell skinny Dixie with the big bangs and tie-dyed over-sized t-shirt that “You are a treasure.” And that part of you that’s telling you that no one wants to be your friend? That is a lie. People want to be your friend. And if they don’t. They should. You are a treasure.

Fast forward six months from now. Super-insecure Dixie, wife of the new pastor at “____ Church”? You are a treasure, even if everyone thinks you’re a total nut job.

I need to tell myself that. Knock it into my head and into my heart until it really sticks.

I don’t want to forget the words of truth my friend spoke to me tonight: I am a treasure.

Posted in Life & Faith, Memories | 8 Comments