God Is Good

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, friends.  I don't even have a good excuse.  I've got a few post ideas rattling around my mind, but have not actually put pen to paper, or rather, fingers to keyboard.

God is good!  I say this on what should be a disappointing day.  We were supposed to move today.  I spent most of this week packing up, moving clothes, books, dishes, and subsequently unpacking them at the new house.  Gil was out of town until Thursday, so I took the opportunity to really make a huge mess dive into packing and get things done.  The hope was that today, we'd just have to move Gil's clothes and papers, as well as our couch, mattress and box spring, coffee table, and kitchen table.  Not so.  It turns out that UHaul completely messed up our order, and it being the last Saturday of the month, we were not able to find another cargo van.  Sigh...

BUT...  God is still good in this situation.  In fact, He is glorified in it.  Yesterday, instead of being in turmoil about the uncertainty (and I am a planner and very uncomfortable with uncertainty),  I spent a good time in prayer and asked for His hand in the situation.  Instead of being distressed about the delay, I was able to look at the blessings we have and remember that in a few years, this delay will be forgotten and it will seem like our time in this tiny condo was a small blip in our life together.  More than that, I was reminded of the bigger things to pray about:  character, submission, etc., rather than just focusing on, "God, this is what I want" kind of praying.  He is so good!

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

James 4:13-15

Weekends

...Or a lack thereof. Strangely enough, weekends have been one of the biggest adjustments in the transition to married life. I anticipated the on-call weekends being busy, and barely having the chance to see Gil, but I figured the “off” ones would be more, well, weekend-y. You see, as a bureaucrat working in Ottawa, my weeks generally went like this:

Monday – Go to work doped up on coffee, grumbling about the work week starting.

Tuesday to Thursday – Trek through the reeds, all the while counting down the days 'til the weekend.

Friday – Hot dog! Happy times are here again! Get through 8 hours of work and then the time is all mine!  (Okay, technically I know that it is God's time, but I still acted as though it was mine.)

Saturday to Sunday – Don't work. Ever.*

I don't think I realized until just now how much that cycle of building up to a weekend, then being disappointed at its brevity had made an imprint on me over five or so years. While I did like my job, I hung on to the guarantee that my weekends were for my own enjoyment, and also for getting all the stuff done that is put off when you are working full-time and busy with ministry and social activities during the week.

Even in the best of times, Gil has a tenuous grasp on weekends. He tends to spend a lot of Saturday catching up on sleep (something I am incapable of doing), and even when he's NOT on call, like last Saturday, he often goes in to check on patients. Even on Sundays, people call him to ask all kind of questions, and sometimes he is called in for urgent issues. To be honest, this was starting to bother me. Where was my weekend? I thought we were supposed to use these early months of our marriage to build memories and such. Now you're napping and I'm making Mandarin flashcards! Argh!

What I'm realizing more and more is that this is a problem of expectations. Namely, it is one thing for me to ask Gil to spend some time with me when he has days off, but it is another to ask him to ignore his needs to catch up on sleep as well as his work responsibilities. I certainly cannot expect him to know what I want to do and magically provide fun times just because he is not at work. If I continue to expect him to awake early-ish on Saturdays feeling well-rested and delighted to to go hit up museums or go furniture shopping, I will continue to be disappointed. Marriage is often about adjusting expectations to what God realistically has for us, so if weekends packed with crazy adventures are an idol based on a Hollywood movie, perhaps it is time to love the new normal and to settle in for the quieter joys of a Godly marriage.

Postlude: Interestingly, when this post was half-finished, I read this article, which really convicted me to examine my unrealistic expectations. I encourage you to go check it out!

*Okay, I'm slightly exaggerating. In truth, on many occasions I was on-call to go into work should a situation arise, but I never actually had to work.

Back Home

Hi friends!  I ended up taking a longer-than-anticipated hiatus, since as soon as I returned from road-tripping, I came down with a nasty cold.  It sometimes feels like over the past few months, I've been sick more than I've been healthy.  Ah well, the spring weather is here to stay so why let a cough get me down?

I've got a few posts in the works, but here are some brief updates:

1)  Road tripping was amazing!  I have a fantastic time touring two wonderful cities, and was happy to spend good quality time with my friend Joy.  It was also great coming home to Gil as it was quickly apparent that even though he'd been super busy and barely emailed me all week, he really had missed me. 

2)  I've spent a lot of time with family over the past week.  My step-mom was in town to see my nephew Avery, and it was fun to have some time with her and with both my brothers and my sister-in-law last week.  The proximity to family is really the second best thing about being back in Toronto (after being with my husband, of course!), especially as I get to see Avery grow and change. 

3)  We *think* we have a moving date.  I don't want to say much for fear of jinxing it, but it looks like we will be in the new house in the next couple of weeks.  Now to get packing!

4)  For a while, I've been contemplating starting a new blog on my language learning experiences, both to document some of my progress and to help others who are attempting to learn a new language.  I've lately come across some similar blogs, and am encouraged to start my own, so when it's up and running, please feel free to check it out!

Hitting the Road

Hi friends!


I'll be on hiatus for the next week or so.  In just a few hours, I'll be off to Ottawa, where I will meet up with my excellent friend Joy, and then we are hopping in the car to go here:

We'll spend a few days staying with my friends in Brooklyn, and then we will make our way to Washington, DC, and then back home over the weekend.  Did I mention that I'm super-excited??

Desert

I've been wandering around the desert lately. I didn't realize it until I had a bit of a meltdown over the weekend, but here I am. I came from someplace where I was settled; it wasn't perfect, but it was what I knew. I am going somewhere, but I don't know in what direction. I feel like God is taking me on a journey, like there will be something bigger made out of this life, but I have no idea what. I have skills, I am educated, I had a career that I liked and a church I served in, and now it seems like I am just wandering around metaphorically, unsure where this will all end up. I do not regret the choice I made to come to Toronto because I love my husband, but he is gone for long hours and I have a lot of time alone to wonder what on earth I am doing here. I found myself crying out, “Why did you bring me here, Lord?”

This month I have been reading the book of Exodus. To be honest, after the Ten Commandments, I find the book pretty boring; I'm not very visual, so it is hard to get through the description of the breastplate of the High Priest, etc. This time around, however, I am really trying to take something out of each chapter. Today's reading was from Exodus 29, about the consecration of the High Priest. Lots of rams being slaughtered, and all that fun stuff. Suddenly, something hit me: These people are in the desert. They left their homes behind, and presumably their flocks too (since there isn't really any grass to feed them in the desert). They are eating manna every day, and heading towards an unknown and scary place. Now God is telling them: “So, you're going to have this high priest outfitted in this awesome outfit, and to consecrate him you are going to sacrifice a whole bunch of rams, lambs, and maybe some bulls as well.” They are probably thinking, “God, are you crazy? We don't have any rams! We left them behind. If we did, we wouldn't be eating all this manna. Hello?!” I don't they could even fathom the fact that they would one day have enough of everything to allow for the whole sacrificial system to be in place... but God had promised them the Land of Milk and Honey, and eventually He delivered.

So all that to say, please pray for me. I think I'm in the desert. I don't know whether my next steps will lead to a new career, to further education, to starting our family, or to some place even more unknown. I just don't want to get so caught up in the frustration that I build my own golden calf of expectations and start worshiping that instead.  And if you are in the desert, please let me know how I can pray for you too.  :-)

PS  The day after I wrote this, fully half of my pastor's sermon was on "waiting on the Spirit".  Wow, God, guess I needed that exhortation!

Some Things I'm Excited About

Since my last post was a little negative, I thought I would brighten things up today.  That is especially needed since it's COLD!  We were mega-spoiled by 20+ degree weather earlier this month, so now anything close to zero seems unbearable.  (It doesn't help that our building cranked up the fans during the warm weather, and has not bothered turning them off.) 

I am a book hoarder, and any efforts to counter this seem to be in vain.  This past summer, I tried to make a serious attempt to get rid of books that I was unlikely to ever read again.  I forced myself to actually read the books I had bought on sale ages ago, so that I could decide whether I really wanted them.  Shortly thereafter, my best friends threw me a bridal shower and instructed all my guests to give me a book!  So, I guess all that purging was to make room for the new books, right?  Anyway, here are some more new books that I am really excited about, and why:

1)  I am excited for my new kitchen  It actually allows for more than one person to stand in it.  It has more than one cupboard, and space in the drawers for our cutlery.  I really looking forward to baking there, so I bought the Joy the Baker Cookbook.  If you don't know about Joy, you should.  This is her blog.  Every recipe that I've tried has been fantastic.

2)  I am excited for summer vacation!  We are just in the process of finalizing details to go to Gdansk, Poland this summer.  I have a lifelong interest in Central and Eastern European culture and history, so I am so looking forward to this trip.  I also thought I could use some basic Polish skills, so I bought this book.  Now to tackle the pronunciation of words like "wszystko" (everything) and "przepraszam" (excuse me).  Really, this is just feeding into the obsessions with a) books; and b) language learning aids.

3)  I am excited about my Chinese lessons!  For the first couple of months, we were focused on pronunciation and vocabulary, but now I've started learning to read and write.  It's hard... but it's worth it.  Last week at Bible study, I noticed one woman had a dual-language English-Chinese Bible, so I asked her where she bought it.  This week, she brought a new Bible for me!  She said she had some extras at home and was happy to hear I was learning Chinese.  I find it easiest to practice reading when I'm already familiar with the text.

4)  I am excited to spend some time with Gil this weekend!  After the craziness of the last few weeks, I told him that we have to go out and have some fun this weekend.  We are not sure yet what we'll do, but we really need some time to build into our marriage.

5)  I am excited for road tripping with a good friend next week!  But more on that later.  :-)

So now it's your turn:  What are you excited about??

Sometimes It's Hard

 I really struggled with writing this post. I don't want this blog to be a place where I complain. My heart is to be honest about what is going on in my life and how God is changing me through this marriage, but not to use the blog as an outlet for all my rants and complaints. On the other hand, there is a reality that I deal with daily and I want to be open about it and not paint my life as sunshine and roses (along with the occasional nasty flu).

These past few weeks have been really rough. For some reason, Gil ended up being on call for THREE full weekends. This means he has not had a day off since February. He has missed the past few weeks of 20+ degree weather. He has not been able to help me move boxes and clear out the things I had stored at my mom's house. Sometimes when he is on call during the week, he does not come home until late (like 9:30/10:00) and last Friday he worked until midnight. Basically, I've barely seen him, and he's been exhausted.

I try to take all of this in stride, but sometimes it's just hard. I get lonely. I feel sad going to church alone when I hardly know anyone there. Our weekends get extra confused because when Gil is home, he sleeps at weird times so I end up going out so as not to make noise. (This should be better in the new house because we will have more space, whereas right now any where in the apartment is within earshot). I feel like major decisions get put on hold.

Still, during weeks like this, I try to remember the goodness of God. There are still moments when Gil comes home and we can spend a few hours together that are worth all the craziness. I think about how God has prepared us for each other. When I was single, I worried about being “too independent” for my future husband. Everything I had gone through had made me pretty self-reliant. Now I am SO thankful for that. I would be drowning here in Toronto if I didn't already have my own interests to pursue. I am so glad that I learned the life skills to take care of all the little details while Gil is working (like banking, setting up the utilities for the house, etc.). I am happy that God made me and shaped me knowing what Gil would need, and what I would need in our marriage.

I am also reminded that God does not want me to gloss over the hard moments and pretend they are easy. He calls on us to cry out to Him, to cast our cares on Him, and to let Him meet our needs.

When I said, "My foot is slipping," your love, O LORD, supported me.

Psalm 94:18