Category: Life

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Learning to welcome life’s interruptions

coffee-conversations
Source

I was restless the other day. I needed a change of scenery to help me adjust to the slower pace of life. I picked the only place to go in this small town: Tim Horton’s. Have you noticed they have a different culture than Starbucks? People go to be social, and in the middle of the afternoon (like it was for me) it was mostly seniors. I felt self-conscious as I opened my laptop; I may be the only person ever to have opened a laptop in this place. I should not have been surprised that an old man sat beside me and struck up a conversation. I smiled and responded and went back to my reading. He said something else, I half-reluctantly replied. The conversation ebbed and flowed like so many coffee conversations I’ve had before with the older crowd in Tim Horton’s.

Since my work wasn’t pressing, I decided to shift my attention to him. I was, after all, the one breaking the cultural norm by trying to ignore people. We chatted about cell phones, computers and the rapidly changing world around us. I discovered he lived alone in an apartment. His wife, in a nursing home for five years. She’s his second wife. The first died in 1992. The second has dementia. She doesn’t even recognize him anymore.
“It’s hard to visit her,” he confessed. I wasn’t sure how to respond how he invited me into his life. I didn’t even know his name.

“They don’t talk about this part of marriage when you do the vows, eh?” I said.

“No,” he shook his head, “they don’t. I don’t figure they’re doing much to try and fix Alzheimer’s these days.”

“Oh I think they are. It’s a lot of work, though,” I responded.
”Really? You think?” he was surprised and hopeful. “They’re doing music therapy with her now. It might be working.”

The subject shifted to her kids who live in BC and his kids who live in town. He shared about visiting Montreal and traveling the continent in their motorhome together. He finished his coffee, his cue to leave. Gathering his things and rising laboriously, he wished me a good life and said goodbye.

He came in looking for coffee and conversation, I for a change of scenery. It appears he got what he was looking for. I got a lot more.

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I want to hear from you!

Every so often someone will tell me that they read my blog and love it or they were talking about it with their friend who also reads it. For the record, I will be weird about it if you tell me in person that you like my blog. At a recent family picknick a few cousins-in-law told me they liked my blog (hi Tena and Laura!) and I was super awkward. I just don’t know what to say. I think I just need to start practicing saying “Thank you” so that when I clam up next time I can at least be robotically polite.

Anyways.

I’d really like some feedback as to why you read my blog. It takes 3 minutes. Would you fill it out for me? (If you can’t see it below, click here).

 

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Slow down, grow up

slow-down

This week things are slow. My stamina in running is growing, but my foot muscle pain prevents me from running as long as I’d like. I can only run for about 15 minutes before my feet hurt enough to make me think it’s smart to stop. So that’s not going how I’d like it to.

Yesterday I read a bunch about the health benefits of fermented foods on our stomachs and digestion. I read this article that mentioned wheat intolerant people (in some cases) being able to eat rich sourdough breads. It can help my digestion and cost a fraction of all my other flours do? I decided to try it, so now I’m on day two of growing my own sourdough starter. The whole process is going to take about a week for just the starter and then the bread will take a good while to make too. Apparently, the longer the bread “prooves”, the more likely the cultures will eat the gluten out of the bread. Or something sciencey.

So far this month, I’ve slowed down a lot. Enjoying the pace of the (start of the summer). Reading, swimming, trying to run, baking, when I’m not working.

Usually, I’m all about fast, but for some reason I’m getting used to this slow persistent nurturing thing. That’s probably a good thing, right?

Also: I’m going to name my sourdough starter “monster.” Comment away with your name suggestions!

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For my Poppy

dad-jess

I have two significant memories of my dad when I was really young, probably  4 or 5. One was a hot summer day in Saskatoon and the boys were all out in the back yard working on my mom’s extensive garden. My older dad peeled off his shirt, my older brother peeled off his shirt and my toddler brother was just in his diaper anyways. I was left the only shirted person there and I started to do the same when my older brother said, “NO! You can’t take off your shirt, you’re a girl!”

I didn’t even understand how those two things were at all related. It was hot out. I looked at my dad, “Dad? Can I take off my shirt?” and he replied “Go ask your mother.”

I learned how to deflect tricky parenting situations from him. Actually, my mom was pretty good at it, too.

There were a few things my dad taught me about consistency. He came home from work every day at 5:30 and we ate supper more or less right away. He would walk in the door and whistle (twice high, then lower) to let us know he was home. This whistle eventually evolved to him just calling out “foo foo” because this was easier than whistling I guess. (Few things in our family stayed one way ever, we had this always evolving language based on English what French my parents remembered from High School/Dutch/our childish misunderstandings of what the words actually were.). Every morning when I was young enough to wake up at 6AM, I would find my dad stretched out on the couch with a Bible in his lap. He would get up at 5:30 every morning to read the Bible and pray. As a very little girl when I watched him do that with probably more consistency than I saw him do anything else, I learned two very important things:

1) When my daddy says he’ll pray for me I know he will, and I know he will even when he doesn’t tell me he will.

2) Our children watch us and pick up on our habits whether we intend for them to or not.

dad-jess-wedding

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To the things that scare us into inaction

keep calm

“Do not fear what is frightening.”

I’ve been thinking about this statement a lot this past week. It comes from a passage in the Bible the encourages women to trust God. What I deeply appreciate about this sentence is that it doesn’t say “don’t fear because it’s not all that bad” or “you’ll be fine so stop being afraid.” It acknowledges that sometimes things are legitimately frightening and that a decently normal response would be to be afraid.

Sometimes good things are frightening. Things like:

  • giving your spouse the blessing to make a financially risky business decision, one that you know also know will breathe life into their weary soul.
  • going back to school for something you love at the cost of a big fat student loan you’re not sure you’ll actually succeed at it.
  • getting married or having kids.
  • signing your fat self up for your first marathon and going public with the news.

In most cases, the reason to fear real and palatable but somehow we need to move past the actual fearing and lean into the fact that maybe we’re meant to move forward on This Scary Thing if we’ve come this far and we should just trust God who knows all and is perfect.

So I made this print as a reminder to myself to not let fear rule my heart.