If you'll indulge me for one post, I'm going to be completely girly and vain. I LOVE my new hair colors. Yes, colors, plural. My hairstylist did a fantastic job, that was worth every penny of the rather pricy fee that I paid.
I now have what my dad referred to at dinner tonight as, "the tigress," while asking with some degree of incredulity, "is that red?"
And I love it! Blond and a deep coppery red streak my naturally brown hair and jump out to make something truly different and fun.
I love these moments when I feel really girly, and really good about my physical appearance. Just a minute ago I was wishing I knew some single guys, because tonight, I'd love to dress up and take my hair out for a spin. So, if you feel like going out tonight, give me a call!
Friday, June 16, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Thursday night musings
I have a job interview first thing tomorrow morning. At a laser eye surgery clinic. It would pay really well. In fact, enough that moving out of my parent's home would become a viable possibility. And I would have benefits. I'm praying that the interview goes well and that I get the job.
To those of you who were wondering how work went these last two days, given how difficult it was last week, it was like a polar opposite sort of situation. Yesterday was very smooth... I spent a lot of time working on projects by myself, and simply worshipping God, humming and whistling, and meditating on the words of the songs I was so happily humming and whistling. It was almost pleasant to be there. Today was not quite as smooth - but again, I was mostly on my own, or training a new girl. I really enjoyed working with her - she's definitely a people person which will fit well in our job - introducing herself left and right, not shy. We shared a one hour dinner break, and talked about our lives. We even talked about things like sex (I'm waiting for marriage, and she's living with her boyfriend of five years), and faith. Not your usual first day conversations, but she initiated, and I was comfortable answering. Faith came up somehow, and she asked what "religion" I was, and I answered, and she made a statement that surprised me a little. She said "I'm a very spiritual person." Huh. Cool. I'm praying that I'll get a job soon and won't work at The Bay with this girl that much longer, but I'm also asking God for opportunities to talk more deeply about spiritual things with her in the time that I remain at the job.
And with that I'm off to do a bit of reading and head for bed. Job interview in the morning, and then a hair appointment - I'm getting hilites and lowlites put in and I'm very excited!
To those of you who were wondering how work went these last two days, given how difficult it was last week, it was like a polar opposite sort of situation. Yesterday was very smooth... I spent a lot of time working on projects by myself, and simply worshipping God, humming and whistling, and meditating on the words of the songs I was so happily humming and whistling. It was almost pleasant to be there. Today was not quite as smooth - but again, I was mostly on my own, or training a new girl. I really enjoyed working with her - she's definitely a people person which will fit well in our job - introducing herself left and right, not shy. We shared a one hour dinner break, and talked about our lives. We even talked about things like sex (I'm waiting for marriage, and she's living with her boyfriend of five years), and faith. Not your usual first day conversations, but she initiated, and I was comfortable answering. Faith came up somehow, and she asked what "religion" I was, and I answered, and she made a statement that surprised me a little. She said "I'm a very spiritual person." Huh. Cool. I'm praying that I'll get a job soon and won't work at The Bay with this girl that much longer, but I'm also asking God for opportunities to talk more deeply about spiritual things with her in the time that I remain at the job.
And with that I'm off to do a bit of reading and head for bed. Job interview in the morning, and then a hair appointment - I'm getting hilites and lowlites put in and I'm very excited!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Untitled... because I can't think of a good title
I'm off to work in about an hour and a half. To be honest, I'm dreading it a little bit. I only work two shifts this week - today and tomorrow, but both are with my least favorite coworker.
But that's only part of why I'm dreading it. I'm dreading it because of the spiritual attack I faced in that place last week, and I'm wondering if I will continue to face it. When I spoke in earlier posts about the "heaviness" that settled over me as I entered the store, I was understating. I haven't felt that low, that worthless, that frustrated, exhausted and confused since the deepest parts of the depression from which God healed me. And when I would come out of the store and head home to regroup, it took quite a while for the residual effects to fall off.
And so, I'm going into these next two days with much prayer for my own protection, my ability to fight through the darkness. I'm planning to spend part of each of these shifts praying - whatever moments I can get alone, without things that need my entire concentration. And I'm asking God to make it smoother and easier, to guide my steps, to speak into my heart, to show me where He's working.
But that's only part of why I'm dreading it. I'm dreading it because of the spiritual attack I faced in that place last week, and I'm wondering if I will continue to face it. When I spoke in earlier posts about the "heaviness" that settled over me as I entered the store, I was understating. I haven't felt that low, that worthless, that frustrated, exhausted and confused since the deepest parts of the depression from which God healed me. And when I would come out of the store and head home to regroup, it took quite a while for the residual effects to fall off.
And so, I'm going into these next two days with much prayer for my own protection, my ability to fight through the darkness. I'm planning to spend part of each of these shifts praying - whatever moments I can get alone, without things that need my entire concentration. And I'm asking God to make it smoother and easier, to guide my steps, to speak into my heart, to show me where He's working.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Front Step Reflections
Note: I wrote the following entry in my paper journal late last night, sitting on the front steps of my home, and scribbling away. I had felt drawn to be outside. Lately, the best times of communion with God at my home have nearly always been outside its walls in my front or back yard, with a book or a Bible or a journal or a pen. The weather here has been rainy, and I was uncertain that it would be warm enough for me to sit on our front steps and just think and write, but I was drawn to that place, to simply write, with no particular agenda or topic to discuss. And, you'll feel the shift partway through the entry as God begins to draw me into a place of memory and woundedness, confirming some things I had rediscovered the previous evening in conversation with a friend. This is perhaps the most blatantly honest and soul revealing thing I have penned in a long time, and I cannot take credit for it. I was simply drawn into it by a loving abba who realized it was long past time for these things to surface.
June 12, 2006 – At home, late evening
It’s a cool evening, after a rainy weekend, and I am sitting here on our front step in the gathering dusk, trying to jot down a few thoughts with no great purpose or depth. Just random observations about an evening that seemed to invite me outside to write.
I can hear the voices of some neighbourhood boys two houses up. They’re engaging in that oh-so-Canadian pastime of street hockey. Occasionally words are spoken, but all in all what I mostly hear is the dull clanking of their sticks against each other’s sticks, and against the asphalt street. Their running footsteps intensify occasionally, and the intensity of their game ebbs and flows. The concrete school across the street picks up and magnifies every sound of their game a hundred fold.
The yards are clothed in dusk, and aside from the hockey game, the streets are relatively quiet. An occasional car drives along the adjoining street, and every so often a bird sings to celebrate the end of the rainstorm.
A cyclist rides by, ringing her bell to alert the hockey players that she’s coming through, and I see the glow out of the corner of my eye as a light flips on in our house behind me.
The air smells fresh – that newly washed, after a rainstorm smell, slightly tinged with the aroma of the last lilacs of the season and the smoky scent of a distant fire.
The air echoes with the cry of “car” as two successive vehicles turn the corner onto our street, slowing as the hockey players make way.
The light in the house behind me has gone off again, and I am studying the shadows cast by the orange glow of the streetlight on the corner.
The air is cool and still. The smoky scent reminds me of childhood camping trips, of late evenings spent curled in lawn chairs in the gathering dark around a campfire as my dad played a guitar and softly sang old folk tunes. “Mr. Bojangles,” “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” “The Boxer,” “Annie’s Song,” and others. These are the soundtrack of my childhood, sung softly to a gently played guitar in my dad’s deep voice.
And suddenly I realize what this melancholy is that has driven me to sit here on our stone front steps and write. Last night I had a conversation with a friend. And he spoke truths that are breaking my heart. I made a decision that I will spend the next months working towards. I need to leave my parents’ home to be able to move deeper in my spiritual walk. I need to create distance to figure out how to move into new relationship with my family – relationship that will hopefully be healthier.
And I am sad at the thought of leaving the only home I’ve ever lived in. I’ve lived on this street I’m looking at tonight since my parents brought me home from the hospital nearly twenty-three years ago. And I’m afraid, a little.
There’s the other thing too. Sitting here, absorbing the evening and being transported back to all those evenings in the mountains as a child, I wonder how such love and such rejection can coexist in one relationship. For I have no doubt of the depth of my dad’s love for me. Although he rarely says it, it has been demonstrated in a thousand different ways over the years. And yet, we have no relationship.
I want so much for my daddy to be proud of me. To support the choices I’m making in life. To tell me that my choices have been wise, and that I have succeeded in following God’s call and my own dreams.
There are tears running down my cheeks now, and my eyes are burning as they pool. My body is trembling in the way it does when intense, unshed emotion is beginning to surface.
And tonight, I miss the little blond girl who wrapped herself in a blanket and curled so joyfully into a lawn chair, unencumbered by adult relationships and the tangled emotions that go with them, and simply looked with adoration as this daddy who she knew was perfect – a true dragon-slaying knight – and asked one more time for her favourite song, listening enraptured as he sang of the man who brought his wife “a daisy a day.”
And I wonder when he stopped slaying dragons and became instead the demanding taskmaster driving me to think about everything deeply. Challenging every thought and position I held. Questioning decisions and asking me to defend my choices. A strong moral force, but one I feared rather than desired.
And so my dragon-slayer was gone, and my mom became my rock, my confidant, at times the only friend that a socially awkward, deep-thinking, old-for-her-years adolescent had.
And that, too, had its own set of pitfalls. I clung to her, needed her desperately at a time when her own wounds were all she could manage. And so I began to bear those wounds as well. I am afraid of strange men, of physical contact with men because my mother was assaulted as a child, and my dragon-slaying knight stopped holding me as I grew older.
And today, when I no longer need my mom in the way I did at thirteen, or sixteen, or even eighteen, today she has found much of her own healing, she is stronger and wants to be involved in my life in much the way she was when I was thirteen and brought every thought, need or decision to her ears. She seeks to be involved in aspects of my life that are not hers to be part of.
The hockey game has finally wound down for the evening, and silence is descending on our street. The remaining light is quickly fading, and my emotions are still raw, but exhausted for this evening. The tears have dried on my cheeks and I am left with very little. I will leave this home as soon as it becomes financially possible.
And I wonder this, as I prepare to re-enter my home. When will the healing come that has been spoken over my relationship with my dad in particular? When will it come? And what will it look like? I had hoped to leave home with this area of my life resolved – on a happy note with adult relationship with my parents and siblings. And yet, it seems that I will leave with this bittersweet lack of resolution.
I’m excited for the new things that I believe God is drawing me out of this home to pursue. And yet, as I begin to prepare myself to leave, I know I am leaving wounded, with regrets that will not be satisfied…
And as I prepare to leave, I continue to beg God to raise up spiritual parents and mentors and friends in my life, to place them in my pathway as I journey.
June 12, 2006 – At home, late evening
It’s a cool evening, after a rainy weekend, and I am sitting here on our front step in the gathering dusk, trying to jot down a few thoughts with no great purpose or depth. Just random observations about an evening that seemed to invite me outside to write.
I can hear the voices of some neighbourhood boys two houses up. They’re engaging in that oh-so-Canadian pastime of street hockey. Occasionally words are spoken, but all in all what I mostly hear is the dull clanking of their sticks against each other’s sticks, and against the asphalt street. Their running footsteps intensify occasionally, and the intensity of their game ebbs and flows. The concrete school across the street picks up and magnifies every sound of their game a hundred fold.
The yards are clothed in dusk, and aside from the hockey game, the streets are relatively quiet. An occasional car drives along the adjoining street, and every so often a bird sings to celebrate the end of the rainstorm.
A cyclist rides by, ringing her bell to alert the hockey players that she’s coming through, and I see the glow out of the corner of my eye as a light flips on in our house behind me.
The air smells fresh – that newly washed, after a rainstorm smell, slightly tinged with the aroma of the last lilacs of the season and the smoky scent of a distant fire.
The air echoes with the cry of “car” as two successive vehicles turn the corner onto our street, slowing as the hockey players make way.
The light in the house behind me has gone off again, and I am studying the shadows cast by the orange glow of the streetlight on the corner.
The air is cool and still. The smoky scent reminds me of childhood camping trips, of late evenings spent curled in lawn chairs in the gathering dark around a campfire as my dad played a guitar and softly sang old folk tunes. “Mr. Bojangles,” “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” “The Boxer,” “Annie’s Song,” and others. These are the soundtrack of my childhood, sung softly to a gently played guitar in my dad’s deep voice.
And suddenly I realize what this melancholy is that has driven me to sit here on our stone front steps and write. Last night I had a conversation with a friend. And he spoke truths that are breaking my heart. I made a decision that I will spend the next months working towards. I need to leave my parents’ home to be able to move deeper in my spiritual walk. I need to create distance to figure out how to move into new relationship with my family – relationship that will hopefully be healthier.
And I am sad at the thought of leaving the only home I’ve ever lived in. I’ve lived on this street I’m looking at tonight since my parents brought me home from the hospital nearly twenty-three years ago. And I’m afraid, a little.
There’s the other thing too. Sitting here, absorbing the evening and being transported back to all those evenings in the mountains as a child, I wonder how such love and such rejection can coexist in one relationship. For I have no doubt of the depth of my dad’s love for me. Although he rarely says it, it has been demonstrated in a thousand different ways over the years. And yet, we have no relationship.
I want so much for my daddy to be proud of me. To support the choices I’m making in life. To tell me that my choices have been wise, and that I have succeeded in following God’s call and my own dreams.
There are tears running down my cheeks now, and my eyes are burning as they pool. My body is trembling in the way it does when intense, unshed emotion is beginning to surface.
And tonight, I miss the little blond girl who wrapped herself in a blanket and curled so joyfully into a lawn chair, unencumbered by adult relationships and the tangled emotions that go with them, and simply looked with adoration as this daddy who she knew was perfect – a true dragon-slaying knight – and asked one more time for her favourite song, listening enraptured as he sang of the man who brought his wife “a daisy a day.”
And I wonder when he stopped slaying dragons and became instead the demanding taskmaster driving me to think about everything deeply. Challenging every thought and position I held. Questioning decisions and asking me to defend my choices. A strong moral force, but one I feared rather than desired.
And so my dragon-slayer was gone, and my mom became my rock, my confidant, at times the only friend that a socially awkward, deep-thinking, old-for-her-years adolescent had.
And that, too, had its own set of pitfalls. I clung to her, needed her desperately at a time when her own wounds were all she could manage. And so I began to bear those wounds as well. I am afraid of strange men, of physical contact with men because my mother was assaulted as a child, and my dragon-slaying knight stopped holding me as I grew older.
And today, when I no longer need my mom in the way I did at thirteen, or sixteen, or even eighteen, today she has found much of her own healing, she is stronger and wants to be involved in my life in much the way she was when I was thirteen and brought every thought, need or decision to her ears. She seeks to be involved in aspects of my life that are not hers to be part of.
The hockey game has finally wound down for the evening, and silence is descending on our street. The remaining light is quickly fading, and my emotions are still raw, but exhausted for this evening. The tears have dried on my cheeks and I am left with very little. I will leave this home as soon as it becomes financially possible.
And I wonder this, as I prepare to re-enter my home. When will the healing come that has been spoken over my relationship with my dad in particular? When will it come? And what will it look like? I had hoped to leave home with this area of my life resolved – on a happy note with adult relationship with my parents and siblings. And yet, it seems that I will leave with this bittersweet lack of resolution.
I’m excited for the new things that I believe God is drawing me out of this home to pursue. And yet, as I begin to prepare myself to leave, I know I am leaving wounded, with regrets that will not be satisfied…
And as I prepare to leave, I continue to beg God to raise up spiritual parents and mentors and friends in my life, to place them in my pathway as I journey.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Monday
Not a lot to tell you today. I continue in the vein of waiting. I made a decision last night that I will begin to act on quietly over the next while. Someday soon I'll tell you what it is, and why I made it.
Today I don't work, and I'm grateful. So I'm doing cleaning, and reading, and watching a movie or two in my basement. Oh, and dinner with a friend, to hear a God story from last week that I've been waiting to have time to sit down with her and hear.
This prayer was in my email this morning from the Moravians:
God, we are sinful and broken people, imperfect jars of clay, yet you have filled us to overflowing with your holy presence. Tune us to your will, Lord, so that through even our lives your perfect love might shine forth. Amen.
And this passage caught me last night at church (which incidentally was also full of my river/water/fire themes from the week):
When the poor and needy search for water and there is none, and their tongues are parched from thirst, then I, the Lord, will answer them. I, the God of Israel, will never abandon them. I will open up rivers for them on the high plateaus. I will give them fountains of water in the valleys. I will fill the desert with pools of water. Rivers fed by springs will flow across the parched ground. I will plant trees in the barren desert - cedar, acacia, myrtle, olive, cypress, fir, and pine. I am doing this so all who see this miracle will understand what it means - that it is the Lord who has done this, the Holy One of Israel who created it. (Isaiah 41:17-20)
Today I don't work, and I'm grateful. So I'm doing cleaning, and reading, and watching a movie or two in my basement. Oh, and dinner with a friend, to hear a God story from last week that I've been waiting to have time to sit down with her and hear.
This prayer was in my email this morning from the Moravians:
God, we are sinful and broken people, imperfect jars of clay, yet you have filled us to overflowing with your holy presence. Tune us to your will, Lord, so that through even our lives your perfect love might shine forth. Amen.
And this passage caught me last night at church (which incidentally was also full of my river/water/fire themes from the week):
When the poor and needy search for water and there is none, and their tongues are parched from thirst, then I, the Lord, will answer them. I, the God of Israel, will never abandon them. I will open up rivers for them on the high plateaus. I will give them fountains of water in the valleys. I will fill the desert with pools of water. Rivers fed by springs will flow across the parched ground. I will plant trees in the barren desert - cedar, acacia, myrtle, olive, cypress, fir, and pine. I am doing this so all who see this miracle will understand what it means - that it is the Lord who has done this, the Holy One of Israel who created it. (Isaiah 41:17-20)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
