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...