Merry Christmas!

I just took my first hour, probably in this whole Christmas season, to just rest a little and actually reflect on Christmas… oh Christmas… such a strange time of year. The festivities, all the food and wine, shopping, getting all dressed up, exchanging gifts, getting text messages from people you haven’t spoken to in a year. The joy and the pain… the happiness and loneliness… It’s weird.
I generally really like Christmas but the reality of it is that it’s a really hard time of year for most people (or maybe this year seems a little worse than most). At my aunts last night I spent some time with my cousins friend who recently separated from her husband, it’s her first time in 11 years not cooking Christmas dinner for the entire family- that’s hard. I had a good cry with my grandma this morning as it’s her first Christmas without my grandpa – ouch. It seems like the reality of our pain, loneliness or dysfunctional families really comes to light at Christmas.

I was just reminded in this hour that we celebrate Christmas today to rejoice in the fact that Jesus came to earth to give us abundant life… but for some people, today is one of the hardest days to remember that… interesting how that happens.

Unrelated to Christmas, I’ve been thinking about this passage all week. It’s Moses talking to God the way I think we often do and God reminded Moses that He has a plan and is on this journey with him… I think we could relate it to Christmas:

Moses said to God, "Look, you tell me, 'Lead this people,' but you don't let me know whom you're going to send with me. You tell me, 'I know you well and you are special to me.' If I am so special to you, let me in on your plans. That way, I will continue being special to you. Don't forget, this is your people, your responsibility." God said, "My presence will go with you. I'll see the journey to the end." (Ex 33:12-14)

So today, may you be reminded and blessed by the fact that God sent his son to join us on our journey. Even if this is a really crappy Christmas for you, God has a plan for your life. From what I’ve experienced, the more I’ve trusted him the more this has been the reality of my journey. I pray that you are truly blessed by Jesus as you remember Him today and commit to trusting Him on this journey.

How Things Change

I keep thinking of blog’s I want to write and just don’t do it… Maybe I’ll just write them all over Christmas with a little less of the ‘moment of inspiration’.

I’ve been thinking the past week or so about how things change. Last week I drove a good 17hrs to Huntsville and back, through the snow, to pick my grandma up. My grandpa died a little less than 6 months ago so this is my grandma’s first Christmas without him, it has been pretty difficult for her. I was thinking the night before I left about how less than 10 years ago my grandparents were driving to Montreal to pick me up and take me to camp or to my first year of college in Ontario… My grandparents were incredibly influential in my life and did a great job of taking good care of me while I was growing up. Now I’m going to pick my grandma up who doesn't drive alone in the snow anymore. Now, I’m taking care of her! How things change… I guess that’s the reality of growing up!

Seasons of Life....

I just sat on my bed and read the entire book of Ecclesiastes- what wisdom and perspective! I often read this book when I need a little more of that in my life…

About three and half years ago life was feeling pretty difficult so I started painting as therapy. It was new and fun… it helped. It has probably been almost two years since I last painted.. My last project was a series of the seasons as a reflection of Ecclesiastes 3:1-13. As I painted it I was reminded that life is all about going through seasons, ups and downs. It would be weird if it was always spring or fall and it would suck if winter lasted a whole year. And as much as I love summer, I probably appreciate it so much because winters in Montreal are sooo crappy (I need to start skiing again!). This is what Ecclesiastes says :

1 There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:

2-8 A right time for birth and another for death,

A right time to plant and another to reap,

A right time to kill and another to heal,

A right time to destroy and another to construct,

A right time to cry and another to laugh,

A right time to lament and another to cheer,

A right time to make love and another to abstain,

A right time to embrace and another to part,

A right time to search and another to count your losses,

A right time to hold on and another to let go,

A right time to rip out and another to mend,

A right time to shut up and another to speak up,

A right time to love and another to hate,

A right time to wage war and another to make peace.

9-13 But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I've had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he's left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he's coming or going. I've decided that there's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That's it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift.

Bottom line is that there is a time and season for everything and life won’t always be happy, mountain top experiences and it also wont always be difficult. A friend of mine who’s going through one of the most difficult seasons of his life wrote this in an email to me last week, “on the Mountain Tops we don't experience growth... in fact so true... most real mountains don't have much vegetation on them at the top..... but in the valleys where all the nutrients and water lies, is where the rich growth takes place..... so we don 't want to be in the valley... we want to be singing and laughing on the mountain tops BUT we don't grow unless we hit a valley........” That is wisdom from experience!

A couple weeks ago I went to my basement closet to retrieve the three ‘season’ paintings I did a couple years ago: winter, fall and spring (in that order). I didn’t feel ready to paint summer at the time and figured I would do it ‘when the time/season is right’… So, although I’m going to put my winter tires on my car tomorrow morning, this weekend I’m going to buy my canvas to paint summer- Life isn't 'perfect', but it’s time and a new season of life for me…

Adapting to my DREAMS

Yesterday I went on a long run and thought about my dreams. I often listen to Erwin McManus when I run and dream because he makes me feel like having dreams and following them is ok… or is actually what God calls us to…

Erwin just published a book called Wide Awake so he’s now speaking on each chapter. Yesterday’s podcast was on adapting, which is key to knowing how to live our lives to the fullest, be changed and bring about positive change in our world.

On April 1st, 2008 I turned 25 and I cried. Perhaps it was what some call the beginning of my quarter life crises. I was living alone and working a pretty good sales job, designing custom cabinetry. I guess I’ve always thought that if I wasn’t married and pregnant at 25 I would be living a little more like Mother Teresa. There were so many other things I wanted to do with my life, it bothered me that I was just doing what was comfortable and easy. I had just finished paying off my car and my mom and step-dad were happy to welcome me home, so that month I quit my job and moved home to pursue my dreams. Wow, it was HARD!! I didn’t know where to start so I just did. I had all kinds of ideas, failed at most of them but at least I was trying and working to figure it out. Most morning I woke up wondering, “What should I do today?”… Really, how do you just follow your dreams? What does that even look like?

My mom gave me until the end of October to either move all my furniture and stuff in to the house from the garage or move out again. A few days ago I moved everything in again, a humbling experience since I moved out when I was 17! But its right, it’s awesome, really! As crappy as this all sounds, I have recently just started to see the fruit of my willingness to adapt and change. I AM FOLLOWING MY DREAMS and love it!! I can honestly say that most days are still pretty hard, I’m learning a whole new way of life, but I feel like I’m actually living ‘wide awake’ and starting to understand my full potential, passions and what God created me to do in the world…

Below are some of the notes I later took from Erwin’s podcast (www.mosaic.org/podcast):

If you’re not willing to change yourself, you cannot bring change.

If you’re going to pursue a dream bigger than you, that dream will change your life and will change you.

Your real measure of character is your ability to adapt without losing your core.
Daniel went from a free man to a slave and had to relearn everything… he adapted
Joseph was sold by his brothers and needed to adapt, but never lost his core.
Esther was a prostitute living in terrible circumstances but she adapted to her environment, learned not only how to survive but how to thrive, and she rose to the top.
Moses adapted to many places and circumstances.
Abraham and Sarah were called to leave everything they knew to go to a land, people and world they couldn’t even imagine.

The language of the Bible is all about being willing to change.

The world doesn’t come at us the way we expect, things change, stability doesn’t always last, crappy things happens, the world flips upsides down… but if we don’t learn how to adapt and adjust we’ll feel like all our dreams could be lost in an instance. We NEED a solid core/foundation.

Do we embrace rigidity instead of adaptability- adaptability releases our abilities.

Flexibility (adaptability) is connected to the strength of our core. If you want to become more agile you need to become stronger. (Anyone who works out knows how true this is. I have an unusually long and weak core which has made training my whole body hard, to the point that I even got a hernia from lifting and working out. When my core is strong it’s wayyy easier to strength train and gain flexibility. I constantly need to be working at my core- physically and spiritually!!)

The strength of character actually gives us the capacity to adjust. When our core is weak everything becomes rigid and inflexible, which of course is why God wants to dig deep into our center to deal with our core, strengthen who we are… so we can face every challenge, every crises, every moment and know that you can see it through, with strength and flexibility. (not rigidity!)

We have to be willing to fail in the new, if we’re going to start to pursue new dreams.
How many of us make the choice to live the lesser life because it costs us less? There is a dream worth pursuing that could (and probably will) cost us everything… And it will fulfill you more than anything you could hold because this dream will actually holds you.

I’m learning that I’m not willing to live the lesser life because it’s easier. I would rather follow my dreams, even if it costs me everything.

The beautiful thing about Jesus is that when you open up your life to him he changes your heart (changes a heart of stone to a heart of flesh) and your dreams… He takes us up out of the fear of rigidity and complacency and living a life of comfort, safety, predictability, routine into a far better life.

Living in a world that I can’t control, I think, will awaken me to my dreams.

Mia Turns 4!!!

Today is Mia's 4th Birthday!! (Mia is Jess (my best friend) and Sean's daughter)

I still remember holding her when she was a little, baby new born- Time just flys!! She came to visit me at my apartment in Toronto 3.5 years ago, came all the way to Cambridge to watch me graduate from university (not that she remembers!)... I've loved having the opportunity of watching her grow up and be a part of her life. She's such a little bundle of joy and a girly princess!!

Yesterday we had a very fun party with a bunch of her little friends during the day and then a 'parenting' party at night. Jess and Sean are wonderful parents. Cheers to another great year!!

The Secret Life of Bees

I saw the Secret Life of Bees last week with Rosanna and Lisa and cried a good 10 times. Some movies just do that to me, it's weird. There were many great parts in the movie, but the sister, May, challenged me to think a little deeper the most. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book and plan to, you probably wont want to read further, this might just ruin it for you...

In the movie/book the sister May has a twin sister, June, who we never meet because she died. What you immediately see about May's character is how effected she still is by the death of her sister. Because she had experienced such pain in her life she is soooo sensitive to everyone elses pain- to the point that the family comes together to build a 'wailing wall' for her, like in Israel, where she could go and mourn/pray when she's overcome by pain. There are many times in the movie where she hears about or remembers something sad, starts to cry and excuses herself to 'the wall'. Now she was like REALLLLY sensitive to pain, but what if we were a little more like May?

All that to say, I think in life we handle pain one of two ways: we either harder ourselves to cope or allow it to change us and make us far more compassionate toward others. I think we're growing up in a culture that is teaching us to harden ourselves, fight for our rights, 'be strong', independent, and we're more often turning to some really crappy coping mechanisms to deal with pain: drugs, meaningless sex, alcohol abuse, porn...

Toward the end of the movie something pretty tragic happens. May couldn't handle the pain of the tragedy so she killed herself. It was a pretty sad moment in the movie but powerful and challenged me. Obviously we shouldn't all kill ourselves thinking about all the pain in the world, like May did, but what if we just died to ourselves, our own selfish ambition, just a little to make someone else's life a lot better. What if you could use the pain you've experienced and the empathy and compassion you've developed to change someone else's life? Through this movie and May's life I was reminded of the way I want to live. I NEVER want to harden myself to the point that I don't feel the pain of others with them...

Deeper Spirituality: The One Hour Challenge

I just created this facebook group, so I thought I would add it to my blog too!

Deeper Spirituality:

The One Hour Challenge

For the past little while I’ve been feeling this tug toward a deeper spirituality. I was driving home from Toronto on Thanksgiving weekend and had an idea… I had just had a great conversation with a friend about this ‘season of prayer’ we find ourselves moving into and then promised each other we would continue to earnestly pray. I thought driving home, “how could I discipline myself to actually really pray, a lot?”

Then I had this idea, ‘The One Hour Challenge’, to pray for at least an hour a day. It has been great and now I want to share the challenge with you.

BUT FIRST, LET ME LIBERATE YOU-

I think we’ve (our Christian culture) turned prayer into something pretty boring and hard to do. The challenge is NOT to sit on your couch or your knee’s for an hour everyday trying to focus long and hard enough to have some kind of conversation with God, unless that is how you most experience God of course…

Find the places in your life where you most experience God and just go there, purposefully. I think that’s where we best honor/worship God. I know God wants to be part of every area of my life, but for me, I most experience and can best worship God when I run, write, hang out in nature (by a lake), paint, serve the poor, go on long drives (in no traffic) and in those last 10 minutes of body flow (like yoga) class when the teacher tells us to relax and be still. Where do you most find God in your life?

So I invite you to join me in this and share your stories with this group!!

For more on ‘Creative Prayer’, watch the video I have posted on my facebook page…

Daria

Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul. ~ Hannah More

In worship, God imparts himself to us. ~ C.S.Lewis

The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity...if we want to see might wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God's standing challenge, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and might things which thou knowest not. ~ J. Hudson Taylor

CANCER-FREE!!!

I’m feeling such relief!! I’m starting Monday morning off on a great note. I just left the plastic surgeons office and found out that I’m cancer free!! I can also workout and shower again!! Yeahh!!

To put this into context for you, incase you have no idea what I’m talking about, in mid-September a pathologist report of a mole I had removed came back saying it ‘could’ be early-melanoma. I really didn’t phase me when I found out, I text messaged my mom, sister and best friend to tell them the news and just carried on with my day. I think they were more surprised than me. I then called a friend back and told him like it was nothing, like I had the flu or something. That night I went home and started to research melanoma and that was when I realized that this could have been a bigger deal… Apparently I’m really not that invincible.

Melanoma is the most serious and dangerous form of skin cancer. There are around 160,000 new cases of melanoma a year and around 48,000 of those people die from it. The good thing is that early-melanoma is very treatable, but if you catch it late it could very easily kill you. Thank God we caught it when we did! I read about what it could have been had I waited- wow- scary!

This whole experience has shown me that we’re not invincible. I always think that, ‘it won’t happen to me’, and I find that to be a pretty common thought of our culture. The crazy thing though is that it does happen to us, cancer could happen to anyone and we’ve all been affected by it in some way or another.

The past 6 weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster for me. Some days I’ve been scared, I’ve felt humbled, had peace… and then I’ve wondered, “is this peace or do I just think I’m invincible, should I be worried?” Two weeks ago I had a larger chunk of my skin removed and to be honest, most days I’ve felt more annoyed and inconvenienced than I’ve felt thankful for catching this as early as we did. I had to wrap myself up in a garbage bag just to shower cause I couldn’t get the stitches wet, I couldn’t workout, I could barely even bend over- Just getting in and out of my car was hard. And then I think what if they didn’t get it all?? Bigger surgery!! God, please make this it!!! I’m soooo thankful that the doctor told me this morning that this is it, I’m done! I'm free of cancer!!! I’ll be huffing and puffing at the gym again tomorrow!!

Ohh, and don’t forget, WEAR SUNSCREAN!!! :)

Marriage...

Yesterday Jess and Stephan got married and it was a lovely day indeed. Everything was so well organized, creatively done and simply beautiful. Jess, was one stunning bride! I love weddings; there is something so beautiful about love and committing your life to someone before God and a ton of people. It’s sacred and amazing; I never fail to cry when I see such love at a wedding.
As I was watching Jess and Stephan so in love with each other, something different hit me yesterday. The past little while I’ve been hearing more and more stories of divorce and rocky, bad relationships, which I guess has made me re-think the meaning of love and what it will be like for me one day. To think, at one point these people were in love, like Jess and Stephan, and some even committed themselves in marriage before God and their family and friends and now, someone in the relationship, has given up on that

love. Not fair and sooo sad!!! I can’t even imagine the pain- I don’t want to. At least 50% of marriages end in divorce, even in the ‘religious’ circles, and especially in Quebec people often don’t even get married anymore… It’s not worth the risk and complications.
I wonder how and if things can change in our culture.
I pray that Jess and Stephan are that change. I think they can be.
I hope I will be one day too.

Remembering the Past- Cambridge

I arrived in Cambridge yesterday for an Ontario 24-7 gathering and oh, the memories! The 7hr drive was long but nice; I just hate the Toronto traffic- I am glad I don’t have to deal with that everyday! I had my trusty travel companions to keep me awake on the car ride: Old school Mariah, Jason Upton, Erwin McManus and Leona Lewis. I moved to Cambridge about 4 years ago for the last semester of my undergrad. I worked at Montana’s, worked out and swam at the YMCA, and did an internship at one of the churches. I drove around Cambridge to kill some time before the conference and remembered those days and places.

The craziest thing was going to visit Heritage (my old school) today. It’s unbelievable how going back to an old place can bring back such memories. I’ve never really experienced anything like that until today. Looking back I could honestly say that was one of the hardest years of my life. I moved there with a completely shattered heart, fresh out of a 2 year relationship with the man I thought I would marry. I lived in a basement apartment with 2 girls who were planning their weddings for the month after graduation and I had the only room with no window. I was taking 6 classes, doing 20 internship hours a week and waitressed 4-5 days a week. Those were some dark, dark nights and I was doing everything I could to not think about how crappy life was.

As I look back (they do say hindsight is 20/20), I’m pretty thankful for that year. I think of how far I’ve come since those days and feel so thankful for the way I’ve grown into who I am today. I truly do believe that God could take our brokenness or shattered dreams and make something beautiful out of it… I was reminded of how true that is today. I think our dreams often get shattered because there is something better out there for us that we probably can’t even fathom yet. There is so much we have to learn through those hard experiences, constant tears and sleepless nights- no matter what the situation is. Four years later I’m thanking God for shattering my dreams to give me the life I have today.

This was some truth that got me through:
"I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work."
God's Decree.
"For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don't go back until they've watered the earth, Doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, So will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They'll do the work I sent them to do, they'll complete the assignment I gave them.
Isaiah 55:8-11

Finally! After years of thinking about it, I have now entered the wonderful world of blogging!!

I love to journal and do it often but no one ever sees my crazy thoughts (I hope!). This blog will be like my journal but for you to read.... all about how I'm living, learning and dreaming... so stay tuned. I will also probably write about the things that impassion me. Last year I wrote an article on the sex industry and people encouraged me to write more, so I'll try.

Small disclaimer before I begin- I cheated my way through high school and I think I only read my first book in college. I often get my work edited because although my thoughts might be good, I don't have a way with words like all those smart people do... so this is me, raw and unedited.

Enjoy!