Oh I do love this song…
Update on my sister July 6, 2009
It’s been over a month since Kell’s car accident, and every Saturday since her operation I’ve promised myself, “this will be Correspondence Saturday! Today I’ll sit down and respond to the many phone calls, emails, texts, and Facebook messages.’ And then each Saturday comes to an end and I haven’t written a single word of thanks.
Part of it is that I feel like I used all my words up during her two-week hospital stay. Koodo says my airtime for that two weeks was over 800 minutes (with per-second billing), and over 1000 text messages were sent and received. It’s just one indication of what I think is the greater ‘problem’: there are just so many of you!
My gosh, there has been such an outpouring of love and support, it would take forever to thank you enough. So, I’m humbled to know that it’s okay that I’ve been a bit incommunicado lately.
Kelly is doing… well. I hesitate to say that simply because she still has a long journey ahead, but at the same time, she WILL make a full recovery, which is more than any of us had expected during the first few hours when we didn’t even know if she was alive or not.
I look at the footage of her being airlifted, I see the car, and I think how is my sister sill alive? It’s nothing short of a miracle in my mind.
Not sure how I managed to drive to the hospital, but I do remember calling a couple friends asking them to get people praying. As I found out later, Kell made it onto the church prayer list, as well as several Canada-wide prayer chains.
I believe so strongly in the power of prayer; I’ve seen people healed in profound ways as a result of prayer before, and I am honoured to know that so many people went to Him on Kell’s behalf… and on my own behalf, too, I know.
So many of you have asked me what you could do. Well, you did exactly what you needed to do. Gandhi puts it beautifully:
Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
Yes, prayer is a powerful instrument of action. Prayer is the act of worshipping and appealing to the only Being who has any control in a situation that seems so out of control. I believe that as humans we have been given free will, and with that comes choice. I also believe that God honours our choices–which results in a lot of bad, but also a lot of good.
So, when we choose to pray to Him, He honours that choice and that prayer. Whether He says yes or no is up to His perfect wisdom and discernment regarding a world that once was perfect and will again be perfect but for now is not perfect. Nonetheless, I attribute much of my sister’s healing to the prayers that you chose to pray for her, and I am so grateful to those of you who said ‘yes’ to a call to powerful action.
You’re the best!
Hot drinks always! July 5, 2009
Girlie finger sandwiches, delicious tea, real china, splendid company.
Mmm hmm, afternoon tea is exactly what I was looking for today!
Bubba is dead! July 3, 2009
Not to make light of the deaths of the King of Pop and the Queen of the Pinup, but did you know that Thursday, June 25 was also the day the King of Dangerous Driving finally went to that junkyard in the sky?
That’s right. Bubba, my “zero to sixty in two minutes”, kind of sort of sometimes but not really ever reliable ‘94 Mercury Topaz kicked the bucket.
We’ve been through a lot together in our six years together:
- A couple of road trips what we certainly should NOT have taken together if safety were a concern
- Power steering failing on a busy Burnaby street
- Alternator going and all power failing while trying to merge onto Highway 99
- Countless overheating and stalls, often in dangerous situations
- Being broken into (HAHA! FOOLS!!!)
- Being rear-ended by a T-Bird
- Using up every single BCCA call we are allotted per year… EVERY year (not even joking)
- Rusting, leaking, moulding trunk
- 1 speeding ticket (I had thought that Speeding Bubba was an oxymoron, but apparently the cop disagreed)
- Brakes failing on Oak Street
Wow. I gotta admit, it’s nice to feel SAFE when I drive now, but looking back at all of this, I wonder if I’ll miss the thrill of putting my life in actual danger every time I get behind the wheel.
So, here’s to you, Bubba. We had a love/hate relationship but I will look back fondly at the times when you got me from Point A to Point B, and the many, many times you didn’t. I know you did the best you could, old buddy.
PS – Still trying to come up with a name for the new car. Suggestions welcome.
Musique Du Jour: Doves – Caught By the River May 12, 2009
I’m going to see them next week, and I’m very excited! It’s hard to pick one song that represents their sound, because their material is quite diverse. But, Caught By the River is my favorite Doves song TODAY, so here ya go 
.
On direction (or lack thereof) May 11, 2009
I was poking around on here a few days ago, for the first time in months. I’ll tell you–there might not even be one of “you” anymore–what brings me back in a moment, but anyway, I found the post below, something I had written almost a year ago and the timing could not have been more perfect.
What brings me back is a lot of… well, I don’t know if I want to call it soul-searching, but a lot of trying to figure out what my “ant thing” is, or at least something along those lines. (Read the post below if you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say “ant thing.”) So often when I end up in career conversations with people whom I love, I ask them, “What makes you feel alive?” or “What do you feel like you’ve been built to do?” And if they tell me, I respond by advising them to do just that. The advice is not so easy, however, when turned inwards. Are you kidding? That’s scary? What if people judge me? Reject me? Or [gasp] don’t LIKE me???????
Paulo Coelho, whom I affectionately (and jokingly) refer to as my distinguished Brazilian boyfriend*, talks a lot about the notion of the Personal Legend. He writes, “When you desire your Personal Legend, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” There’s a lot out there these days about manifesting your own destiny; i.e., if you truly believe it will happen, it WILL happen. I think people tend to read Coelho–er, my boyfriend–’s words and think them to mean that if we can only set our minds to it, we can make it happen. But, I don’t think this is what he’s talking about at all.
I believe the Personal Legend is that thing or set of things that is so intrinsically part of who each of us is. It’s what we are here to do, to learn, to achieve, it’s the journey we are to take, all that stuff. And while I certainly believe in free choice, I also believe that we have certain skills, personalities, strengths and limitations, and those largely dictate what we are built to do. Not what we necessarily choose to do, mind you (see “choice, free”) but nonetheless what we’ve been designed to do. And I don’t think that means we can’t be good at things that we haven’t been “built” to do. What I DO think it means, though, is that it will never feel quite the same as how it feels when you experience the peace, joy, fear, thrill, exhilaration, and expectancy of your Personal Legend.
Makes me wonder if those people who are absolutely miserable while chasing their dreams are chasing the wrong dreams altogether, if the universe is conspiring to not help them achieve those dreams because it knows (God knows) that it would lead to disaster.
It makes perfect sense to me that desiring my Personal Legend–that is, aligning ourselves with God’s beautiful and unique plan for me–would feel as though the whole universe has got my back (yo). I don’t for one second think that a life spent pursuing the Personal Legend is a life free of strife or struggle, but in the midst of all the crap, there is still something that feels so right about it, that you know you’re at least heading in the right direction. Something in your soul cries “YES” even though you are wondering what the heck you’re doing on this road, or desperate to exit stage left.
For me it’s become a process of elimination. I know what makes me feel alive, and conversely, what makes me feel dead. I think the Spirit of God has a lot of refining to do with me before I even have eyes to see specifically what it is I’m looking at, let alone gather the courage to go after it. But one of the things that keeps coming back to me is this: I love to write. I love everything from telling the story to creating a grammatically beautiful sentence. Heck, I even like the physical act of scraping my pen across a page.
Is it my ant thing? Will I glorify God by doing it? Maybe (I hope so!). I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but there’s always going to be a change that I’m wrong. So while my last few attempts to maintain a blog have been for entertainment purposes (I know, how silly!), this time around, I’m making a commitment to myself, and to what just might be my Personal Legend. I need the practice. I think we generally hold that we need at least 10,000 hours of practice, and I assume our Personal Legends aren’t exempt from this. Sweet. If I’m right, I’ve now only got 9,999.5 hours to go!
*I love him. Love, love, love, love, love. Normal people have the hots for Brad Pitt. I have the hots for old Brazilian men.
At the bus stop… May 9, 2009
“Hi again,” I say, smiling as I take my place on his left.
“Good morning. Is it a good morning for you?”
“It is indeed!”
We both look up the street expectantly, though each of us knows we have a few minutes yet.
A few moments later: “Do you speak French?”
“Nah,” I reply, ”I used to when I was in high school.”
“Well you know, they say if you don’t use it you lose it! I was just noticing your bag.” It’s from Chapters, and it has French on one side, English on the other. I spin it around in my hand so he can read it in English. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
I smile sheepishly at him; even I know it’s a bit hokey. “It was on sale, and it was the right size,” I explain to him.
“Did you know the seed for a Redwood is the exact same size as the seed of a Bonsai?”
“No, actually, I did not know that…”
“Yeah, there’s something that goes on after the seed starts to sprout, something about the root configuration, and that’s what dictates such a difference in size.”
“Isn’t it crazy the way the things in our world work sometimes? It just blows my mind. My roommate and I were watching Planet Earth, and some of the stuff you see… just incredible.”
“It really is. I find the human aspect of that show very interesting as well, how civilizations interact and all that.”
“I haven’t actually seen any human activity in the series yet… except for the special features when they show the guy sitting in a lean-to for 15 days straight waiting for a Bird of Paradise to impress his Bird of Paradise lady friend.”
“Now what possesses people to do stuff like that?” he asks me. “Sit in a lean-to for 15 days to see a bird dance… Like Mount Everest. Why do people climb Mount Everest? Just to say they’ve done it?”
I think on this for a moment and am about to say something when he continues.
“I guess it’s like that movie, Chariots of Fire.”
“I haven’t seen it, actually…”
“Ian Charleson’s character, he basically says, ‘I was put on this earth to run fast; when I run fast, I bring glory to God.’”
I cock my head to the side and look at him as I nod slowly.
“I guess,” he continues, “some people are put on this earth to climb Mount Everest, and because they do what they were put here to do, it brings glory to Him. Or even ants, doing what they do as ants, that brings glory to the God who created them.”
As always, a brilliant early morning interaction is interrupted by the arrival of the 345, and we say goodbye for another day.
Musique Du Jour: Elbow – New Born March 15, 2009
This song reminds me of Australia, even though they’re English. There was this shop in Sydney called Dirt Cheap CDs, and they had… well, dirt cheap CDs. In Australia, discs tend to cost about $25-30 AUD, but these were $10, new (mass imports / factory outlet I think is how they did it). It was brilliant! Anyhoo, this track is from one of the many CDs that I picked up whilst Down Under. Guy Garvey has such a pretty voice.
Will you pray for little John? March 1, 2009
I came across the story of this family at Stuff Christians Like. Mary Elizabeth and Meade’s twin boys, Warren and John, began having seizures several hours after birth on January 21. Little Warren went home to the King after a tough two-and-a-half week battle, and though John has stabilized a bit, they still do not know what is causing the seizures, and there is still an urgent need for prayer.
Read their story, and please join me in praying for this young family.
Musique Du Jour: Howie Day – Bunnies (live) February 28, 2009
Howie Day has a new song out so I thought this might be good timing, especially since this song just popped up on shuffle.
Here’s the thing about Howie Day. His singles are good. I enjoy Perfect Time of Day, Brace Yourself, She Says. They’re fun pop songs.
BUT. Howie Day is unfortunately one of those (many) artist whose best work is not all that well-known, unless you’re already a fan and you go looking for it. I’ve seen him live three times, and he’s a phenomenal musician, but again, I don’t think that’s really showcased in what we hear on the radio.
Take a listen to Bunnies, and keep in mind that this is a one-man show, from start to finish. Just Howie, his guitar, a mic, and 14 or so pedals. If you like it I would definitely recommend the Madrigals EP / DVD. The DVD is outstanding.
