Tomorrow lent begins and while it isn’t traditionally practiced in my denomination, I pay attention to, and follow the Christian calendar. I think there is a lot to be said for the rhythms and disciplines that keep your head above water when you start to sink. When you can no longer tread the depths and need assistance with the buoyancy of your faith. When you don’t know what to pray, sometimes a book of prayers works. Pray the psalms when you can’t find your words.

That is what lent is for me. It is the season in which I ask myself, what is it that is keeping me afloat? I challenge myself to remove anything that could become my first or only and ask ‘how am I facing up to this life’?

Recently I have been thinking of all the ways I cover for God. All the ways I tread water with dying-flesh strength instead of floating on the generous gift of His spirit. There are so many ways I seek the applause of man instead of the clear and succinct well done.

Whenever it is that I start to tread water in my very own strength, when I start to believe that I am really nailing this life, whenever I achieve some success, without warning my insecurity rises up. Whenever I attempt to build my reputation I disintegrate. I can only really thrive when I am under the thumb of God. The truth of it is I am entirely too small to be the centre of my own universe, I create a black hole, collapse in on myself. Keep back or I will take you with me.

For me, this lent, is not about removal but renewal. This Lent it will be about all the ways I am taking my life, my pain and my pride to Christ. I will crucify it with Him and for me the only way to do that is pen and ink.

So for lent…join me here

Before I moved to the woods, I believed bald eagles to be noble fisherman, mighty hunters. I had only ever witnessed them darting from trees over Shuswap lake, pulling out salmon, congregations of them at the river head waiting for the spawn; Sitting like royalty on the edge of the Kettle River, curved beak pointed toward us, keen eyes watching us cooley as we floated by.

Now though…Now I see them mostly sitting at ‘road kill corner’, the place on Highway 33 where the wildlife dies. We most often see the dead white tail deer, though once there was a small black bear, an elk, more. And now we see the eagles there too. The animals cross over there, from the good eating on Black Knight mountain on down to Mission Creek for water. Eagles have become, much less the noble creatures I once believed them to be. Now they sit and attack the vultures, get chased by the murder of crows who make this home. Watching an eagle rip into a deer carcass has changed the image for me.

Why does he eat maggots? Does he not know he is the top of his food chain? The mightiest in his family? How did he forget?

He chooses what is easy…that is all. Don’t you?

Don’t you, so often, choose what is right in front of you, the path of least resistance? Don’t you, sometimes, choose just what gets you by instead of what raises you up? How often do you revert to your base instincts?

How often do we let our fear rule when Christ should?

How often are you picking off of dry bones when you should be sitting down to a feast?

These days, I can barely read the news, so many giving way to the worst of themselves…letting fear rule. It was no mistake that we are told to ‘fear not’ more than we are told anything else. This world can be/is always a scary place. We were never told it wasn’t. We are asked to be brave anyways. To let love rule.

Rise up. Rise up and be a force of Love to this desperate world. Rise up and join the prince of peace. Rise up and care for the widows and orphans. Rise up and do the thing you were made to do.

Please don’t settle for a life of fear…

You are called to be so much more than a scavenger.

Wage Peace – Micah Bournes from World Relief on Vimeo.

We are called to be the peacemakers. Not the peace wishers or the peace dreamers. Makers.

Tell me ways that you see yourself in this light? What are the things we can do in our every days that bring peace? #wagepeace

The snow fell yesterday. You can drive 8 minutes down the road and the white hills turn to green. But here the wind is blowing and the ice is staying. Winter has come. I know my place. My place is here on this hill, with the children who are so full up with life it leaks from their mouths in exuberant bursts. There is no stopping it. They are carbonated like their daddy. Bursting. The snow means they go back outside. The pop of energy echoes in the snow of Sun Valley.

Last weekend I preached a woman’s retreat like a bonefide lady. Like a maybe, someday, almost,  preacher. I felt the ragged edges but I felt alive in the tightly woven midpoints. I want to stay there. God keep me from my own periphery. You know I am at risk to disintegrate when I live in the pulled threads. The “more” than I am called to.

I have more than a couple of opportunities these days. There are a number of things I could do and one could say I am spread more than a little bit thin. It is currently more difficult then ever for me to say yes to the things that matter most.

But yes I must. And no…well it is time to learn. Here is what I know today:

• I am called to free Joel to do whatever ministry he is called to. Free him. Did you hear that? He is released by me, for his very best of work. I will stand beside him in that call. Make him more free, stronger, by any stretch or means I can.
• I am to know Jesus. Deep and true. And not to waiver on my task.
• My work is about advocating for healthy and whole communities…to work for the safety and wholeness of young people.
• My work is to mother from my deepest healing…never, ever from my weeping wounds…never my greatest fears.
• My job is to write it all down…

We were warned…weren’t we? Our purpose might be pushed from central just a little when we are family zoned. Please do not let it get out to the thread bare edges. The life’s work may be pushed a little, but we can find our way to the margins, the dawn breaking, the night shadow. Don’t forget to draw firm lines…oh please don’t forget. We need to see your masterpiece. Say no to the other things, the things that you are not made for, the things that drain you, the things that anybody else can do.

Please say yes to the 18 inches around you. Take the step that you need to to claim the space of your sacred yes. And don’t be afraid to say your no.

Today I stayed in bed till 10 am, went downstairs made pancakes, held both the small people in my arms and napped while they watched a movie and then promptly went back to my bed with my third cup of coffee. I also had a bubble bath at some point. So you know…my life is rough.

I started a second job a month ago so while my time is actually manageable my brain is spread a fair bit thinner then perhaps it should be. Our community, our family, has been under pressure and to be honest I am out of the fog but am still needing to nestle in, read, stare at walls. It has been…All the people. All the time.

My new job has to do with youth mental health and not to be a pessimist but with a youth pastor father and a youth mental health advocate mother it is almost assured that our children will be raging, strained teenagers. Here is my plea: Joel and I both just believe in building community that will help to catch your kids if they start to fall. We trust you to do the same. How about we just show up for each other ok?

O spent the day building Rube Goldberg machines with dominoes and marble runs. There was a dog treat dispenser and a book closer (important for a son like mine ;-). He called me seventy-seven times to come watch and of course I did (though my book was great and my bed was soft)…watching their passions emerge is the greatest honour of my life. Last night O played his first basketball game and I got so close to the edge of my seat that I actually fell off. Turns out it was a stage and I fell onto the court. Bless. So thankful my son is not yet the raging teen he just might be.

Elvis Costello said his grandmother (while tremendously ill with Alzheimer’s disease) had moments of terrifying lucidity. I have finally had those again lately. Do you know those? The moments of profound and intense and terrifying lucidity. I am certain you feel it too. When, just for a moment, the world of life and death and real and true hits you right between the eyes. The instance when you see another parent with your identical parenting style and it terrifies you. The moment when you watch a women in her older adulthood still so bound by fear and insecurity that she can’t choose her own life. Can’t listen to the call of God.
It beckons us doesn’t us? The moments when we just can’t ignore the nudges and inklings and can no longer eclipse the truest of the trues.

If I were a writer I might have called it writers block but I think of it more as spiritual dementia, profound aphasia that I am finally overcoming. I feel myself waking up, able to speak…watch out world.

Today the children dug into my hope chest, which at this point in life is actually a time capsule. I held my high school diploma and E found a cheap ring Joel gave me as a joke in high school. O found my basketball jacket and various sports medals. I found my poetry and small books I had bound when I was seven. These words have always been my way. Broken and terrible, weird and intangible.

I am too busy for this blog.

I am going to do it anyway.

Well hello. Are you still there?

I am and I’ve missed you.

If you want to know the truth, here it is- my emotions have been a bit too raw to stand up and say ‘this I know’ even though I do.

This summer  set me on the edge of life and death and forced me to peak over. I knew what the bottom held but still, I didn’t want anyone to go over. We miss them don’t we?

I guess you can know, I stopped at traffic lights and cried sometimes. I had to stop reading the news. There are things we cannot understand, answers we don’t get to know.

I’ve healed now enough not to weep at the kind words of a friend or even the commercials on TV. I don’t blog when the wounds are raw. I want to show you all my scars well healed, the strength in my spirit healed flesh.

So here, this is the truth I know for sure:

Life can be just so painful. Hope does not disappoint and we are never alone…not once.