We've Moved!

I'm happy to announce that we are *finally* in our new home!  I'll post pictures at some point when things are more organized, but so far I am enjoying the chance to get things set up at my own pace.  The move went great:  No injuries and no arguments, both by the grace of God.

After living in such a small space, being in a house is a bit of an adjustment.  Gil and I find ourselves frequently calling out, "Where are you?" as we are not used to losing sight of one another.  It is also lovely to hear birds outside and see the green of trees through the windows.  In short, life is great and we are very happy.

Since I'm a little nuts, I ran my 10K race with my mom on Sunday morning.  Yes, that would be less than 24 hours since we had begun the move.  It went well and I was happy with my time, and more than that, I got to share the experience with my wonderful mom on Mother's Day!  Now I'm giving my body a few days vacation. 

Thanks to all who prayed for us during this process, and for everyone who offered us assistance.  We appreciate it and we feel very blessed!

The View From Here

Well, friends, it looks like we are moving into the new house in just a few days.  I say "looks like", because we've had a lot of bumps on this road so far, and I don't think I'll believe it's real until that morning when we finally wake up in our new bedroom.

Yesterday, I was reminded to practice an attitude of gratefulness, even through difficult or stressful situations.  I've been trying to look around and note the blessings in my life.  Here are some things for which I am grateful today:

1)  I am grateful for the way God has been with me through the waiting period.  If you had told me back in January that we would still not be moved in by now, I would likely have burst into tears, but God has really taught me about patience and submission in the past few months.  The lessons have not always been enjoyable, but I am certain that one day I will look back at our first few months of marriage and be amazed at how much growth happened in a short time.

2)  I am grateful for this newlywed stage.  I was frankly a bit terrified of moving in together.  I kept hearing people say that the first year of marriage was so difficult; I had images of Gil and me tearing each other's heads off all the time.  In fact, although we have had arguments, the transition to marriage has been  quite an easy one, and I am accepting that as a gift from God, as I'm sure we will face trials at some point in the future.  Six months into our marriage, I can say that Gil has truly been a rock for me as I've gone through so many big changes at once.

3)  I am grateful for spring!  The other day, I dragged myself out to run before breakfast.  It was a battle to get outside, and a battle to go through with the route I had mapped out.  I was so blessed through the experience, because I ended up turning onto a new (to me) street and it was lined trees that had beautiful magenta blossoms.  It smelled *amazing*.  What a gift for a Monday morning!  Yesterday, I picked up my bicycle from being tuned up, and am looking forward to enjoying this season with bike rides and time spent in our new backyard.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Expectations and Doing Hard Things

A couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity of my husband being out of town to go to Ottawa and visit with some friends. I was also looking forward to attending my (beloved) former church... and I was not disappointed. The teaching that weekend was really challenging and relevant to where I have been at recently. The sermon talked about finding lasting satisfaction in God. Our pastor mentioned some surprising statistics, noting that in surveys on happiness, Canadians and Americans rated fairly low levels of happiness and satisfaction. In fact, Americans were even surpassed by countries with much lower standards of living, such as Nigeria and Afghanistan! With everything that we have in this society, we are not happy, and I wonder how much this is related to our expectations about life. We expect a life of comfort, one in which our work and home lives are meaningful, and we obsess over the many options and choices we have. Instead of making us happy, we are miserable because we feel like things could be better than they are. The pastor also noted that Christians who look for happiness in external things, even good ones like work and family, will be especially miserable. Our spirits know that we could be experiencing deep satisfaction in God, yet we are disappointed because our spouses, our families, our jobs, etc., cannot provide as deep a satisfaction.

This gave me some food for thought, and while I was pondering it, I decided to attend the Sunday school class with the youth group that I used to serve with. The awesome youth pastor PJ was in the middle of a series of Sundays on Alex and Brett Harris's book Do Hard Things. I don't know if I expected to be impacted much by the talk, because the book is written for teenagers, but PJ gave me a lot to think about.

I haven't actually read Do Hard Things, but the basic premise of the book is that our society has really low expectations of teenagers, basically assuming they will spend 10+ years being lazy and irresponsible before settling into adulthood. (Obviously, there are families in which this is not the case, but this is the general view presented in the media for sure.) Alex and Brett Harris argue that teenagers need something to strive for, and that they are at a place in their lives where they are able to take chances, to throw themselves into causes, and to do hard things. It's not about doing things just because they are hard, but to seek the tasks God would have for them and then do them; to make a difference. In so doing, they will have to fight against the expectations of their elders, their peers, and even themselves that they should be focusing on their own enjoyment for this period in their lives.*

I'm (obviously) not a teenager any more, but this talk really impacted me. I started thinking about the expectations society has for me at this point in my life. It didn't seem like they were particularly high either: get a decent job, focus on my new home, take some vacations, have kids in a couple of years. These are good things, but it seems like the expectation is to be always wanting more. People expect us to upgrade our home every so often, to get new cars every few years, to focus on comfort and on materialism. Not only that, but it seems that no matter what we have, it is totally normal to whine about it: Complain about how kids don't obey and their extra-curriculars are expensive, about things our spouses say or do, about the costs of living and the upkeep of a house, about how tired we are from working/raising kids/taking vacations. We live in a culture where the overall expectation is to be unsatisfied and self-centred! I don't think very many people outside the church would expect me to throw myself into meaningful service, or to continue to practice a frugal lifestyle, or to try to find real satisfaction in God and in extending grace rather than complaining. Thinking this through really encouraged me to keep asking myself, “What does God expect of me? Am I more concerned about God's expectations for my life, or society's? What expectations have I internalized rather than taking a good look about whether they are in fact distractions?”

PJ also stressed that if we are not spending time with God and trying to live out His commands, we should not expect to know what hard things He has for us. That really hit me hard. As I mentioned in a previous post, I feel a bit like I'm in the desert lately, knowing that there is something ahead for me, but unsure what that is. In truth, I have not been spending nearly enough time in prayer and reflection. How can I expect God to reveal open doors if I don't even have my eyes open?

As a reaction to this, I decided to do a (not so) Hard Thing. I took a good look at how much time I spend online. I'll often start reading sites, blogs, etc., in the morning, and end up spending ages online. Then I'll do it again in the afternoon. Since I'm at home a lot, the internet can eat up so much of my time, and honestly my time with God gets postponed. Sooooo, I'm not ready to quit the internet altogether, but I've started a new rule: I have to do my Bible reading and prayer time first, and for the month of May, I will limit myself to half an hour in the morning, and another 15 minutes in the evening. (This will not include checking my email as I get it on my smart phone, or any things that arise out of necessity, such as checking my bank balance or finding an address on a map.) I'm really hoping this will cause me to focus my time on God, as well as on other tasks that are getting pushed aside. I want to be accountable in this task, so if you do see me or talk to me, please feel free to ask how it's going. I'll try to post a few updates on this blog as the month goes on.

What about you? What expectations do you feel society has for you? Are you challenging them?

*As I noted, I have not actually read the book, so if you have, please let me know if there are some inaccuracies in this description.

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??