Beauty for Ashes

Maybe it’s just me, but in my experience beauty goes hand in hand with pain. You can’t have one without the other.

Today I'm sharing a story of how God created beauty from ashes:

"Three years ago we bought our son an adorable little t-shirt: “Big Brother Team Captain”, it said. He wore it to Grandma and Grandpa’s house that evening – he was so excited to share the big secret he had been keeping.

My husband’s parents were ecstatic – they had been waiting for a second grandchild since the day our son was born!

Then I started bleeding.  Just a little spotting, at first.

Then more ... "

Read the rest at Anchored Voices.

The List

I was always a serious child. I liked rules, I liked routines, and I liked lists.

Maybe that’s why the youth retreat I attended when I was fifteen had such an enormous impact on my life.

I remember sitting in the dark conference room, squirming in my chair as the speaker talked about one of my least favourite topics: Boys.   I was a late bloomer when it came to boys. Horses were much more interesting!

Nevertheless, I began paying attention when she started talking about a list. She explained that when she was in high school she had created a list of the qualities she was looking for in a boyfriend. If a boy didn’t possess all the qualities on her list, she wasn’t interested. We were given pen and paper and directed to create lists of our own. According to the speaker that weekend, if The Boy didn’t meet all the requirements on The List, he wasn’t the one God had chosen for us.

It seemed simple enough.

Lists were my thing, so I wholeheartedly embraced the project!

At first my list was very specific and looked something like this:

1. Must love horses.
2. Must love animals.
3. Must be older than me.
4. Must be smart.
5. Must have brown hair and brown eyes.
6. Must have a good sense of humor (but not a crude sense of humor).
7. Must be anti-drinking/smoking.
8. Must meet and be approved by my grandmother.

My list changed as I got older and actually began to develop relationships with the opposite sex. (At first I wasn’t sure if changing my list was allowed but decided it was when I realized there weren’t any boys in my entire town that fit all of my requirements!)

The List changed even more as I began to date real boys instead of fictional ones. (SPOILER ALERT FOR MY CHURCH GIRLS: TODD SPENCER ISN’T REAL!)

Items on my list that I once thought were deal breakers no longer were. I began to value traits like loyalty more than appearance and being treated with respect was more important than an undying devotion to my pet cat.

By the time I graduated from university The List had changed from that The Boy had to be to what he couldn’t be:

1. Bearded.  By that point in my dating career I had firmly established that I did not like beards – or facial hair of any sort. It was prickly and scratchy and my hair got stuck to it like Velcro, never mind that kissing a man with a beard was sometimes downright painful, and I was always picking hairs out of my mouth that were not my own.
2. Anything but a New Brunswick boy. I was a maritimer and I wanted to stay that way.
3. A pastor. I grew up in the church. I wanted nothing of the politics and nothing of the drama.

When I moved to Alberta after university I wasn’t looking for love. I wasn’t looking for any sort of romantic relationship at all, to tell you the truth. My plan was to go to school, learn what I needed to learn, and go back to New Brunswick to start a youth ranch. Boys didn’t factor into the equation at all.

Especially not Alberta boys.

Then I met Nathan and I forgot all about The List.

He was everything I didn’t want:

1. David Crowder’s doppelgänger (proof here and here.) My husband has more hair on his face than our dog does on her entire body.
2. An Alberta boy – and not just that, a complete city slicker who had never seen a live chicken – in real life – until he visited New Brunswick with me when he was 25.
3. A pastor in every sense of the word except official job title. Nathan graduated from Bible College and worked in full-time ministry, then decided he preferred volunteer ministry positions instead of paid ones. He leads small groups, teaches Sunday School and Wee College, leads worship on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings as well as at retreats and conferences, is involved in prison ministry – the list goes on!

What I thought I wanted wasn’t what God knew I needed. That silly list seems insignificant now, after ten years together. If I could write a new list and send it to my younger self, these are the qualities I would put on it:

1. Passion for God and things of God.
2. Love for family.
3. Patience.

Nathan meets all of those requirements easily!

He’s devoted to God and his family and he has more patience than anybody I have ever met! Who else would calmly pull over on the side of a busy highway to console his sobbing, hormonal, pregnant wife and pray for a dead coyote’s grieving family?

For the past ten years he’s been my rock.

He’s my support, he’s my encourager, he’s my inspiration.

He’s my love.

So although I’ve swallowed more beard and moustache hairs than I can count, dip my toes in the Atlantic ocean every five years instead of every weekend, and have fed my children cheerios in the church coffee shop on more Sundays (and Thursdays, and Saturdays) than I ever would have imagined – I’m happy. I’m more than happy. God has done abundantly more than I ever could have asked, or even thought to ask! - in giving me my husband.

Happy birthday, Nathan!

New Year, New Perspective

For ten years I’ve blamed Bible College for my lost passion when it comes to reading the Bible.

If you’ve ever been to Bible College, maybe you can relate. In those days I read with a purpose: I read to prove something, for debates, to win arguments. I searched for obscure Scripture references to support an opinion I had already formed.

I knew the Bible. Sword drills were my jam. I had memorized large chunks of Scripture that I could recite when I wanted to impress someone with my vast theological knowledge.

When I finished Bible College I worked with youth. I had good marks so I thought I was ready to handle anything they threw at me.   I searched the Bible for answers to their questions: “What makes Christianity better than other religions?” “Why is God the only way?” “Is homosexuality a sin?” “Why did my mom die?” I read the Bible for them, to answer their questions and help with their struggles – but not my own.

I knew the Bible, but my spirit was parched.

Then I became a mother and the kids became my excuse. With work, diaper changes, dayhome drop-offs and pick-ups and scrambling to keep the household running, Sure, I could quote Scripture to my children when I needed to, but I didn’t have time to read the Bible for anything more than the occasional Bible story when I remembered to do family devotions.

It wasn’t until my six-year-old innocently asked me one night before bed, “Mommy, why do we read the Bible?” that I realized that I was completely missing the point. I don’t have a specific purpose in mind when I spend time with my son, I do it because I love him. I love being with him, talking to him, learning about him and from him. He’s not an obligation, he’s not something to check off a list every day.

If something is really important, we don’t find the time, we make the time.

It wasn’t Bible College’s fault, it was mine.

I wasn’t reading. I wasn’t searching, I wasn’t showing up each day with the expectation that God would reveal Himself, His truth, to me – not for grades, or to win an argument, or to have something to share when it was my turn to lead a group devotion, but because He loves me.

I’ve done Bible reading plans in the past – chronological, historical, from beginning to end. This year I’m reading just to read, with no real plan and no goal in mind other than to get to know Jesus better. Not as an acquaintance, but as a Father and a creator and a friend. My perspective on reading the Bible has changed from being something to cross off my to-do list each day to something I look forward to each and every morning when I wake up.

Lord, I don't want to go through the motions anymore.  The Bible says that You make all things new - so please, make my heart new.  Make my mind new.  Make my life new!  Proverbs 8:17 says "I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me."  I'm seeking, Lord.  I want to desire You more than anything else.  Renew  my passion for You and for Your Word!

Home

Last month I went home to New Brunswick for a visit.

I use the term “home” loosely, because even though I grew up there, I couldn’t leave fast enough.

Home was a small town in the middle of nowhere with one grocery store, three stop signs, eight churches, and 918 people. I ducked behind the newspaper office on my walk home from school because my grandma worked in the front office and I knew if she saw me she’d call me in to fix my hair, usually with a paperclip. Most days I would be stopped two or three times by kind neighbours asking me if I wanted a ride up the hill. I usually declined – not because I was afraid of being abducted, but because I genuinely liked the walk.

Everybody knew everybody and the biggest news day of the entire year was when the ice broke up in the spring and started moving beneath our famous covered bridge.   Would it or wouldn’t it knock out a pillar? The tough kids hung out and smoked in the library parking lot on main street in clear view of anybody who walked by, and although I think my cousin once streaked through the courtyard after dark, they never did anything really bad.

My sisters and I played outside in the fields and forest behind our house without a care in the world until darkness fell and my mother called us in for dinner.

But home isn’t home anymore after 15 years away.

It’s still a small town, but now there are two grocery stores, countless stop signs, and even more churches. The newspaper office was torn down years ago to make room for a parking lot, and the beautiful, hundred-plus-year-old heritage houses that stood next to it are slated for the same fate later this fall.

The town has been in the news more often in recent years for break-ins, beatings, and occasionally worse. The library parking lot isn’t the main hangout anymore, since the youth have become interested in things a bit more severe than cigarettes. The inside of our famous kissing bridge is covered with vulgar graffiti in place of love notes signed by tourists.

To an outsider – which is what I felt like, after 15 years away! – my hometown felt like a fallen down ghost town.

My trip last month was my first solo trip back east since Nathan and I started dating, and interestingly enough, it was also the first time I caught myself hesitating before I referred to New Brunswick as home.

See, for the past decade I’ve made my home in Edmonton with Nathan. He certainly considers Edmonton “home”: It’s where he grew up, and most of his family still lives here.   I don’t think I’ll ever consider myself a big city girl, but I’m comfortable here. We live on the outskirts of the city: A ten minute drive in one direction can take us to the downtown core while a five minute drive in the other direction can take me to wheat fields, corn fields, and the barn! I love having choices and easy access to good schools, great hospitals, and all the shopping – but still, Edmonton doesn’t feel like home.

It’s strange, really. When I’m here I long for there, but when I’m there I can’t wait to come back here …

I’ve struggled with the concept of “home” for years.  Whenever somebody asks me where I’m from I still say “New Brunswick” – even though I've now lived in Alberta for more than a third of my life. At what point does this become home?

Last month I came to the conclusion that maybe it never will.

Maybe it’s not supposed to.

* * *

While I was on my trip I realized that I need to hold on my idea of home loosely – not only because of the inevitable way places change over time, but because this isn’t my home. Hebrews 13:14 says that “This world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.” (NLT). I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty confident that doesn’t mean a physical home! I like the way Eugene Peterson phrased it in the Message: “He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.” (2 Corinthians 5)

I love New Brunswick and I love Alberta – but neither of them are my true home. I need to focus less on where my home is - and more on the people around me. I am where I am for a reason, and there’s more to it than buying a comfortable couch and painting the walls a nice, neutral shade of gray.

Amy

"Do you see her?  That girl, the one with the long blonde hair in a ponytail?  That's who I am.  That's what I look like."  I was playing pretend with my sister, and of course I wanted to look different.  Short and thin with mousey brown hair and enormous pink glasses wasn't who I wanted to be - in real life, or pretend.  Most days I wanted to be tall, thin, and blonde, with my hair pulled back into a bouncy ponytail or a long braid.  Sometimes I would even go the extra mile and put a pair of pantyhose on my head to get the desired effect of long hair!

For whatever reason, I thought that if I looked different, I was different.  As silly as it sounds, pantyhose on my head made me stand taller, be more bold, and act more confident.  When the game ended I went back to being regular old Holly, shy and quiet, afraid of making mistakes.

Not a lot has changed since those days.

Some days I'm happy with who I am:  A wife and mother, writer and business owner.  I have a loving husband and two amazing children. I'm happy with who I am and who where I am.

But then I see Amy, and nothing in my world seems good enough.

I'm not good enough.

* * *

See, Amy is everything I'm not.

She has three children under the age of five, but somehow she never looks less than amazing.  Her Pinterest boards are full of hairstyles and outfit combinations she clearly has the time to try.  Her girls are always dressed beautifully – and fashionably! - with their soft, untangled curls pulled back into perfect, complicated braids.  Her son doesn’t have any unruly cowlicks or dirt under his fingernails. Her children are always spotless and unwrinkled, and they are unfailingly polite.

Amy is never harried, never frantic, and never out of breath.

She's a stay at home mom just like me, but she runs a direct from home sales business that makes enough money for her and her husband to escape on tropical vacations a couple of times each year.

And she homeschools.

* * *

On the outside, Amy looks like she has it all, and she has it all together - but does she really?

Do any of us?  

Or are we all just wearing pantyhose on our heads, trying to be something we're not?

* * *

Sometimes I think that if I could be anyone in the entire world, I would be Amy.

But God didn't make me Amy, he made me me.

Sometimes I wonder why he made me the way he did. Why do I have to be so short? Why doesn’t my hair cooperate when I try anything other than a simple ponytail? Why can’t I be more stylish? More outgoing? More easygoing? More confident?

Why can’t I be anybody but me? 

Then I remember that God made “all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13, NLT) He made me short and thin, he made my mousey brown hair, he made the eyes that require enormous glasses. He created me, he knows me – and all of my insecurities.

I am a daughter of the King, and that is enough.

I am enough.

And so are you.

Faith and Hockey Sticks

Two years ago my husband and I signed our son up for skating lessons.  He’s been dreaming about playing hockey since he was old enough to walk.  He was born in Oil Country, he bleeds copper and blue – heck, he even eats dinner sitting below a framed photo of his dad with Ryan Smyth!

We figured it was time.

Topher was ecstatic!  Never mind that he was enrolled in beginner figure skating – he was convinced he had been drafted to the Oilers!

But skating wasn’t as easy as Topher thought it would be.  It’s one thing to zip up and down the hallway with a plastic hockey stick and entirely another to do the real thing!

In his first lesson the coaches taught the kids how to fall down and how to get back up, first on mats and then on the ice.  Topher was a pro … until he stepped onto the ice.   He did exactly what his coaches told him:  get on your hands and knees, wag your tail like a dog, get one foot up, brace one hand on your knee and use the other to push off on the ice and stand up.

But Topher couldn’t do it.

Not in the first lesson, or the second, or the third.  Eventually one of his coaches would help him to his feet so he could participate in the other activities, but Topher was so afraid to fall that he would barely move. Then one of the other kids would accidentally bump into him and knock him over, and he would be back to Square 1, shaking his little bum in the middle of the rink.

Halfway through his fourth lesson I was starting to wonder how much patience his teachers had.  Would they recommend remedial beginner skating lessons?

Join me at Anchored Voices to read the rest!

When Dreams Change

“Well?” he said, waiting for an answer. “What are you going to do?”

We were sitting in his office – him, leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk, me, in the swivel chair across from him with my feet tucked beneath me, spinning myself around and around and around as I tried to make a decision.

I had been planning the cross-country move for more than a decade. I attended university after high school like my parents wanted, even earning a “sensible degree” in economics – but my passion had always been horses. The deal was that if I graduated from university, my parents would support me in whatever I chose to do next, even if that meant moving 3000 miles away to study horses at the best school of its kind in the country.

Hours earlier I had received a letter from that school informing me that I had been wait listed. They allowed ten students into the English Horsemanship program and I was unlucky number eleven. I had flown across the country a month before to tour the school and perform a riding test. I made one mistake – picking up the wrong canter lead and not correcting it quickly enough – and I was done. “You’re welcome to try again next year!” the letter said.

What was I going to do? 

I shared the answer (and the rest of this post!)  at Anchored Voices earlier this month.  I hope you'll join me there!

Life and Love

Last month my husband was part of a stealth operation. One of his friends wanted to propose to his longtime girlfriend and asked Nathan to provide the music. He chose a specific song – “Wanted”, by country singer Hunter Hayes. Nathan smirked the first time he heard it. “Seriously? Barf!” were his exact words.

We hung out the night before the proposal, three married couples and the dating one. All of the married couples split up on the couches, leaving one single beanbag chair for the lovebirds. “You guys sit there,” we joked. “You still like each other!”

The next afternoon Nathan covered himself in bug spray and hid in the bushes next to a walking trail. As the couple approached, he started to sing: “You know I’d fall apart without you. I don’t know how you do what you do. ‘Cause everything that don’t make sense about me makes sense when I’m with you …”

She said yes.

* * *

Nathan and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary last week. The proposal reminded me of us at the beginning of our relationship. We were constantly touching, arms around each other, holding hands. I remember one camping trip where friends bet us we couldn’t complete a mountain hike holding hands – and we won!

Life looks different now. After being pulled this way and that by kids all day, with a clingy toddler in my arms, Nathan’s lucky if he gets any greeting when he gets home from work, never mind a hug or a kiss.

Love looks different now too. We don’t have the time or the energy or the money to go on extravagant (or frequent!) dates, so we collapse on the couch after the kids are in bed and my work is done for the day. We hold hands in the grocery store parking lot instead of on mountain trails. We may not snuggle at friends’ houses, but we have more than eight years’ worth of inside jokes and communicate better with each other than with anyone else. Though we still haven’t managed to successfully escape a Breakout room …

Most days aren’t filled with the freshness and passion that mark a new relationship. We’re more comfortable. We’re established in who we are as a couple. We celebrated our first anniversary with a romantic weekend getaway; we celebrated our eighth anniversary with burgers and an hour and a half of uninterrupted Pokemon hunting.

Sometimes, I will admit, I miss the newness. I miss the romance of it all. My husband is certainly more practical than he is romantic – he’s the man who catches our kids’ puke in his hands on airplanes, not the one who painstakingly crafts 1000 origami paper cranes and gifts me his wish.

But I love him more because of the life we’ve created together. He’s the one who proposed on bended knee on a dock while wearing rollerblades, and he’s the one who stops at the store on his way home from work almost every single day because I’m missing one ingredient for the dinner I’ve already started to make.

Our marriage isn’t glamorous. Romantic getaways are few and far between at this stage of life. Instead we sway together, dancing in the kitchen while the sink fills with bubbles and our children try to sandwich themselves between us.

And I wouldn’t give up these everyday moments for all the romance in the world.

Missing My Mom

A month after graduation, I packed my bags. I was allowed one suitcase and two carry-ons so I boxed everything else up, carefully winding tape around and around half a dozen boxes. I was looking forward to the cross-country move. Growing up in a small town, the goal had always been the same: Get out.  

And at first, I didn’t look back. Of course I missed my family and my friends, but I was looking to the future instead of the past. My eyes were set on the life I wanted to build for myself, not on the lives I had left behind.

Since then I have missed countless events:

Birthdays and Christmases.

Taco Fridays and pizza Mondays.

My maternal grandmother’s last months and weeks and days.

I missed her funeral ...

And I missed visiting my mom in the hospital when she was there for an extended stay shortly after our wedding.

She has missed out too:

On my relationship with Nathan.

On the births of her grandchildren.

On birthdays and Christmases, concerts and celebrations.

She’s seen her grandchildren grow up on Facebook instead of in person, and only knows them through Skype.

* * *

Today is my mom’s birthday.

I’m missing it – but more than the party and cake and balloons and candles –

I’m missing her.

Changing Direction

Three months ago I made a commitment to write consistently.

Then I learned to crochet.

It's a fantastic hobby, and I can argue that it's useful.  I can make things!  I can sell things!  I can be productive!

But then I remember that God doesn't ask for productivity.  He asks for obedience.

* * * 

In case you hadn't noticed, I haven't been blogging lately.

It's not because I haven't had things to write about, it's because I've been struggling with how to write about things.

It's my latest avoidance tactic, I suppose.

See, I've always been a bit of a perfectionist.  When I do something, I like to do it well - and naturally, that extends to blogging.  I haven't been working since last fall so I've had lots of time to read and research, trying to learn what makes a blog "successful".

There are lots of opinions out there, but most of what I've read points to four key ingredients:

1. Find your voice.
2. Find your niche.
3. Write for your audience.
4. Be consistent.

It seems simple enough.

But then I started to wonder how to measure "success".   Was I successful when I doubled my traffic?  Tripled it?  When my twitter or instagram followers reached a specific number?  When I started making money from my blog?

The more articles I read, the more overwhelmed I became.  There are so many rules!  It was enough to turn me off blogging for awhile.

Truth be told, it doesn't take much to turn me off writing for awhile ...

We're busy with renovating.

I'm working again.

I'm tired.

My brain is fried.

I'm out of ideas.

I don't know where to begin ...

* * * 

I've been reading the story of Moses in Exodus lately.

"Master, please, I don't talk well.  I've never been good with words, neither before nor after You spoke to me ..."

God's response?  "Who do you think made the human mouth?  And who makes some mute, some deaf, some sighted, some blind?  Isn't it I, God?  So get going.  I'll be right there with you - with your mouth!  I'll be right there to teach you what to say."  (Exodus 4:10-12, MSG).

Moses hesitated, begging God to send someone else.

He made excuses, just like I do.

I need to be brave.

* * * 

1. I'm overwhelmed by the rules of "proper blogging" - so I'm just going to break them.  I've spent so much time reading other blogs, trying to uncover their secrets to success, that I lost my voice.  Hence the four month hiatus.  How can I find my voice when my head is full of everybody else's?
2. I've never been able to pinpoint a real "niche" - and I think that's okay.  I don't need a "niche", I need direction - and I have that now.  Whether or not I have courage is a post for another day!
3. I've never had a huge audience - and I'm okay with that.  Numbers don't matter.  Jesus only had twelve followers, after all!
4. I struggle with consistency.  I'm not in a season of life where I can guarantee a new post at a certain time on a specific day of the week - but I'm going to try to drop into this space more regularly!  If I disappear again, feel free to e-mail me.  I need the accountability!

* * * 

As for where to begin -

"Wherever you are is a good and important place.  Start there."  (Gary Morland)

So I will.

Thanks for sticking with me while my blog changes direction!