How Did This Happen?

Two days from now, I will be all dressed up and heading over to the church to witness my little brother marry the woman he loves.  I am excited beyond words.  It's been a hectic few days with a cousin's wedding last Sunday and my dad and step-mom staying at our house this week, and it's easy to get so caught up with the busy-ness that I lose sight of this momentous occasion.

How is it possible that my baby brother is about to be married?  Sure, I have friends who are younger than him and some of them already have children, but in my mind, those friends are responsible adults whereas my brother is still five years old.  As Elizabeth Bennett once said, "In cases such as these, a good memory is unpardonable."

Is this chubby little guy ready to get married??

In all seriousness, I would appreciate your prayers this weekend.  There has been some family drama, so please pray for peace and love to blanket this event and for grudges to be let go.  I pray that my brother and his lovely wife-to-be will enter into marriage with hearts full of love, joy, and commitment to a life spent together.

“Haven’t you read,” Jesus replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

 Matthew 19:4-6

Handywoman

Today has been a day of home-making.  Perhaps it is a touch of nesting/panic because my parents will be staying with us for a couple of days next week, but I have finally been motivated to set up our guest room.  This morning, I vacuumed and put together some used side tables to use for bedside tables.  This afternoon, I hung up pictures.  In the meantime, I have been busy using backing soda to deodorize the carpet in our basement rec room, and disconnecting our not-so-functional washing machine in anticipation of a new one arriving this evening.

All of this makes me feel a little proud and powerful.  I've said before that I have never felt very qualified to be a home maker.  I don't have a lot of skills in that department, and to be honest, I never cared that much to learn them.  Obviously, I had sufficient cooking and laundry skills to keep me alive and dressed over the past decade, and that sufficed.  One thing I've learned, however, is that no matter what you learned growing up, running your own home will always be a learning curve; even if your parents taught you everything they knew, you will someday find there are gaps in your knowledge or skills you'd never considered mastering.  The nice thing is knowing that it's never too late to learn a new skill. Trust me, if I can learn to be reasonably handy, anyone can!

I've hesitated to put up pictures of the new house because I'm not much of a photographer and my decorating talents are decidedly limited, but over the coming months as the home comes together, I'll try to post a few to keep y'all in the loop.

Settling In

Hi friends!  After a few heavier posts, I thought it might be time for a brief update on how our lives are going and how we are getting settled.  I'll post some photos of the new house at some point, but for now there are a few areas that need to be organized, so that'll have to wait.

First of all, we LOVE the new place.  Or at least, I love it and Gil seems happy here (he is generally a mellow personality and probably wouldn't use the word love unless referring to me or perhaps to the Liverpool Football Club).  While my husband works so much that he doesn't have much time to enjoy having a yard thus far, I am loving the fact that I can sit out on the porch to read. 

I'd have to say, though, that living in a house has been a humbling experience for me.  Gil and I are realizing how much we don't know.  We've both been grown-ups for a long time, but have lived primarily in apartments and condos, so are just beginning to realize we need help.  We do not know how to operate our gas lawn mower.  I don't know how to take care of a garden or even how to start one.  It's pretty embarrassing to have someone say, "You do know that you have to water your grass, right?"  (Except that today it is pouring, so nature's taking care of that for us!) 

It is also humbling to have to take things slowly.  I have moved many times, and I generally like to get everything set up ASAP.  With this home, I'm realizing that I need to take my time and be sure about where things will look, rather than just jumping in.  I am setting up a home, rather than a temporary lodging.  Fortunately, we like the paint colours that the vendors used, because we don't know much about painting either!

In sum, we are thankful to God for providing this home, and thankful for the learning opportunities that have come with it.  And even though the house isn't photo-ready, here's one picture of our peonies that bloomed last week:

Those Were the Best Days of My Life?

New Year's Day chez nous

Welcome to 2012! Gil and I spent a quiet New Year's Eve watching hockey by ourselves. My husband has been struggling with a flare up of tendonitis in his ankle, so on New Year's Day we just went to church and spent the afternoon at home, him reading and me tackling the Globe and Mail's massive holiday crossword puzzle. At some point, a song came on the radio that brought back a ton of memories and made me think about how many changes I've gone through in the last ten years or so, and that was the inspiration for this post.

It was August, 2001, and I was at a friend's cottage for a last few days together before I was to leave for a study-abroad year in Germany. We decided to break out her family's 8-track tape player and had a mini dance party to the Bryan Adams song “Summer of '69”. I was having a great time until I was suddenly struck by a sudden sense of gravity. I turned to my friends and said, “Wait a minute. What if these ARE the best days of my life, and it's all downhill from here?”

It seems a bit silly in hindsight, but in those days, I was often concerned about missing opportunities. Popular culture screamed that life is only fun when you're young, so you ought to be partying hard to enjoy every minute of it. When I was in my last year of high school, a slightly older acquaintance warned me that everything was downhill after EIGHTEEN. (Seriously? I think even my worst times as an adult have been better than the awkwardness and self-doubt of the early teenage years.) In university, I felt almost a sense of obligation to be having a wild time, even while I was also stressed about good grades, finances, and the other issues you juggle as an emerging adult. In addition to all the other pressures, how was I to ensure that I made the most of the “best days of my life”?

Those words would come back to me again and again while I was abroad, in part due to the immense popularity that Bryan Adams enjoyed in Germany at that time. “Summer of '69” was frequently played when we would go out dancing. At the end of the year, when my friends and I made up our own yearbook to commemorate our time together, I listed it as my “song to sum up the year,” noting that 2001-02 had really been the “best days of my life”. Of course, the unanswered question still remained: If these are the best days, is the best that the future can hold still second rate?

The change from singleness from married life has in some ways been part of a bigger transition that has been going on in my life since my mid-twenties. I don't know whether to call it a move to adulthood or domesticity, or something else, but basically I have been less and less tempted to go OUT to seek fun (not just partying, but whirlwind trips, concerts, frequent dinner outings, etc.), and more satisfied with the simpler pleasures of home, or the homes of good friends. Part of that came with permanent employment, as well as the realization that going out in Ottawa costs a whole lot more than the student scene in Kingston. Another part of this transition was being more satisfied with who I am: When I was 19 and 20, a lot of going out revolved around having the stories to tell afterward. (“Crazy time last night! I can't believe what Y was doing!”) You just had to be there... otherwise you were missing out, and I was never sure that I would fit in if I wasn't there for all those experiences.* Today, I worry less about these things because I am more confident in myself and my friendships.

All the same, I was still very busy in my pre-married life. Maybe I wasn't going out to parties all the time, but there was Bible study, youth group, soccer, coffee with so-and-so, etc., etc. Marriage has slowed me down a lot, partly because I'm in a new city without all the church commitments, but also because my husband is more of a homebody and we find joy in just being together. And yet, what my 20-year-old self didn't understand was that this life is not really better or worse, but just good in a different way. Part of maturing in life (and in faith) is understanding that great truth that there is a time for every season. Even when I look back at the hardest times, the ones that would never be counted among “the best”, I can be thankful for what God taught me and how I grew. Even though I know that this stage quiet of domesticity that we are now in will not last, I trust that the next stage, and the ones after that, will also bring their own joys. My hope is that when I look back at my life, I will never be able to choose the “best” because I will have enjoyed them all for what they gave.

* I don't mean to imply that my friends somehow made me feel this way. My own issues were to blame.