wifercize wednesday: double time

The question remains: what will I do with my time after next Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.?  (Not that I'm counting the seven days, two hours, and thirty-eight minutes until then.)

As with most of my dramatic decisions, no matter how spontaneous they appear, I put a ridiculous amount of time, energy and contemplation into resigning from my job.  Keep in mind I have been a faithful soldier in the army of corporate administration for a decade.  I can answer phones, coordinate schedules, book appointments, edit correspondence, order supplies, photocopy files, file photocopies, and Brother P-Touch™ label like a champion.  Sometime simultaneously.

Once I'm off the grid, however, where will I find definition?  CBC radio recently reported on the influx of baby boomers hitting retirement age.  The first wave of them have celebrated their 65th birthday but many are loathe to leave their places of employment: for 20, 30, sometimes 40 years they have defined themselves through career.  Once they're out the door, they face the question that a job has answered for them for more than half their life - what do I do?

Practically, I've worked out that I'll be pastoring part-time with Catch the Fire (Andrew and I have been pastoring youth and young adults for seven and four years, respectively) while Andrew continues to teach high school at YDSB.  But that won't define me.

I hope that the tension between who I am and what I do will dissolve and blend in wonderfully nebulous titles: wife, mother, pastor, sister, writer, daughter, homemaker, friend.  I hope that I will live up to these titles in ways I previously have not.  I hope to diffuse the arguments such as:

"Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive."  (Marya Mannes)

And I hope to do this by way of example.  I might be frustrated and challenged along the way, I may end up Brother P-Touch™ labeling everything in sight for an afternoon out of habit, I may find myself fearing my self-imposed retirement, but I also may discover that who I am and what I do are not mutually exclusive but mutually comprehensive.

mama monday: margin

I'm not sure where or when it became cool to answer "Tired" to the question "How are you?".  I don't know what I ever gained by quoting a 60 hour work week.  I've lost track of how many times I've used the word "busy" in the last five years or so, or have apologized for it.  Somewhere along the way, preoccupation became the new peacefulness.

Someone sent me Rick Warren's post on margin, called Build a Buffer Around Your Schedule.  In it, he ends by saying:

You don’t have to live on overload. You don’t have to live in survival mode. Begin today to build a buffer around your schedule. Then enjoy the benefits of margin -- and see what God does next!

Which sounded all well and good, but surely that was advice for really busy people.  The workaholics, glued to their PDAs, marching their power suits in and out of meetings, guzzling their caffeine, missing their kids' sports games and recitals...the bad guys who occasionally turn into good guys by the end of a movie through epiphany or catastrophe or comedy.  THEY needed margin.

It could have been trying for a family, it could have been my overall grumpiness and irritation, it could have been that, in a daze, I once took transit all the way home and was walking down my street when I received a text message from a friend cheerfully telling me that she had secured a table by the restaurant window for the dinner that I had forgot I was having with her that night (sorry, Amy!), but somewhere along the line I noticed: I had lost my margin.  And I wanted it back.

So I put in my two-week notice at work.

Join me in counting down the days!  To spend the time, download and listen to this excellent series on margin from Liquid Church.  I've only listened to the first three podcasts...because I've been busy.

mama monday: change the world

I've made a shortlist of the worst things (that I can think of) to wait for:

1. Waiting for a method of public transportation, outside, when the weather resembles Voldemort's return to power.
2. Waiting for your turn at a government subsidized office when turns depend on complex letter/number system, like Bingo, and the letter/number system does not progress alphabetically nor chronologically.
3. Waiting in line at an amusement park for a ride that your peer group chose by democratic vote, wherein you were of the minority group, in the blistering sun, having eaten very little.

Waiting to get pregnant (to be pregnant? to turn pregnant?  to pregnacize?) is definitely up there and follows a strict mathematical increase of vexation whereby the axes are represented by "amount of time you are not pregnant" and "amount of time you've been thinking about being pregnant, including contemplations about, dreams about, poetry about, and blog postings about".

Unlike other experiences in waiting, however, I find that this one is difficult to explain.  In fact, other than disappointment, the waiting period is generally pleasant: life is good, I have a fantabulous husband who loves me to bits and makes me laugh, friends surround and support me, an amazing extended family, a great house, and many aspirations for the future.  Compared to examples 1, 2, and 3 above, the actual waiting process involved with parenthood is benign.  A baby would only be the addition to an already agreeable existence.

Simplistic, maybe, but also true.  So why not focus on what we have instead of what we're missing?

When Baby Gaz makes his/her debut and makes us parents in the process, will he/she want to hear that we were excitedly planning for his/her arrival while making the most out of every opportunity?  Or will he/she have an image of Mom and Dad weeping and complaining their way through the months before he/she was born?  I don't want whining to be a family trait.

Jon, new dad, wrote this in his blog just before the birth of his son, Noah:

...many of the characteristics, habits, mannerisms, modes of speech, and even culture that my son will learn are already in me.  The lifestyle of fatherhood began long, long ago (not too long ago, I’m only 25 here!) and continues to grow and deepen as I do. What I’m getting at is the effect my life has on my son’s life even before he is born.

I want to live life now in a way that positively affects my family to come.  If I want them to live in a world with less hatred, I'm going to start loving people more.  If I want them to live in a world of possibilities, I'm going to stop limiting myself.  If I want them to live in a world of hope, I'm going to cultivate it so they'll have a harvest of it when they're born.

I want to make my children proud.

---

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

(Mahatma Ghandi)

"Once you bring life into this world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world." (Elie Weisel)

I'm starting with the man in the mirror

I'm asking him to change his ways

And no message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make that change

(Michael Jackson, Man In The Mirror)

foto friday: pieces of me

On Canada Day last week our good friends, Jon and Melissa, traded a one-bedroom apartment in Little Portugal above a bar for a two-bedroom apartment in High Park with open lawns.  Mostly because of this.  What I love about the situation is that she can now paint and decorate to her heart's content.  Which she's doing wildly right now due to what I believe to be the "nesting phase".

And if that's calm, easy going, laissez-faire Melissa in the "nesting phase" then we're in for a reorganization of the city of Toronto when I get pregnant.

I love moving.  Not just moving myself (which is grand), but even moving other people.  I'm the person who doesn't have to organize their sock drawer when you ask for help on moving day.  It must be my latent wanderlust.

While the boys lifted heavy objects and made grunting sounds, Melissa and a I began a systematic cleanse of each room as they were emptied.  Dust, sweep, mop, done.  As I swept the floor of their living room I accumulated a few piles of what most people would consider to be junk.  But these piles made me smile.

If you know Melissa, you'd see her represented in that pile the way I did.  I found guitar picks.  I found peacock feathers from her wedding decor.  I found empty tealight moulds.  I found pine needles from their oversized Christmas tree.  I found sequins.  I found beads.

I started to think about all the piles of junk in my life that I've wanted cleaned up.  Old relationships, errors in judgment, disappointments, heated arguments...  In my rush to have God make like it never happened I often don't take time to realize that he's not a fraction as upset as I am.  Even in the piles of junk, he's smiling at the pieces of me that are represented in that mistake, that stall, that entanglement, that frustration.  The pieces of me he made.  The pieces of me he loves.

"so let go, jump in
oh well, whatcha waiting for
it's alright
'cause there's beauty in the breakdown"

Let Go, Frou Frou

10 in 10

At the church that I pastor we've been doing a series entitled "Change & Growth". It's been a time of transition for us as a congregation (new name, now new location) so the theme has come in handy.

My question for myself, you, God, the universe in general, is: do we ever stop being in the season of transition? Even as Andrew and I grew accustomed to marriage, our in-laws, our new house, our new pets, our jobs, etc. there were other areas taking their turn at the Wheel of Fortune.

A new haircut, a birthday, traveling...even the seasons keep us actively adjusting to change. Today, for example, I left the house sweating (a friend, without exaggeration, tweeted this about Toronto's recent heat wave) and had to buy a cardigan at lunch because I'm shivering at the office.

I guess that's why Jesus called the Holy Spirit "The Comforter" and didn't promise us constant comfort.

During the whirlwind that was the time leading up to my 30th birthday and afterward, I failed to post a finale for my 30 Before 30 countdown. I think the first thing I decided to do in my 30s is NOT MAKE LISTS OF MORE THAN TEN ITEMS.

So I came up with a new list: 10 In 10. In the next decade I aim to:

1. Become a mother.
2. Have three books published.
3. Read all of C.S. Lewis' works.
4. Travel to Italy.
5. Move to High Park.
   
6. Take vocal lessons.
   
7. See everyone in our small group happily married.
   
8. To collaborate with Andrew on a CD.
   
9. Sharpen my prophetic gift.
   
10. GET MY DRIVER'S LICENSE.
    

What about you? Are you coming up to (or have you just achieved) a milestone in your life? What are the goals you've set to keep you moving forward?

A man thirty years old, I said to myself,
should have his field of life all ploughed, and his planting well done;
for after that it is summer time.
- Lew Wallace Everything

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.
- Georges Clemenceau

At twenty years of age, the will reigns;
at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
- Benjamin Franklin

friday foto: moving day

My Facebook tagline is "Mild-mannered receptionist by day..." which helps describe the half-office, half-ministry life I lead. My 9-to-5 helps me live my 5-to-9 (and weekends) since we all need to pay the automobills. One of my homes is the one I own with Husband, and the other is the one I spend 40 hours a week parked at: the front desk of an advertising agency (yes, yes, like Mad Men, but not in the 50s and with less smoking and drinking...well, less smoking anyway).

Over the two years that I've worked here, I've done everything from decorating it to making it a safe haven, and today I packed it up. We're moving all employees to our second floor suite which means bidding my workplace a fond adieu.

I. Love. Packing. The only thing I love better than packing is UNpacking, which I believe is a throwback to all the moving I did as a child. I have lived in 12 places and attended 8 schools from pre-kindergarten to O.A.C. so, to me, change is thrilling and creative and refreshing. And packing means change.

I recently read this in Mark Driscoll's book "Confessions of a Reformission Rev." and it reminded me of how much and why I love change:

On that day I had only a few appointments, with lengthy breaks in between. I decided to walk down to the deli a few blocks away and get a Reuben sandwich on sourdough bread and some fresh air. On the way back, I walked barefoot and remember thinking that these simple pleasures had made the day one of the most relaxign and satisfying days I ever had. But by the time I walked back to the church, I realized that I was already getting bored. There was no dragon to slay, no hill to charge, no battle to fight, and no foe to conquer.

Next week: pictures of my new reception desk on the third floor!