Busy week

This is going to be a crazy, busy and hopefully fun week, this week! I am feeling full of energy this morning as I think about all the things that I need to do to get  ready to move into our new home.

I have a long list of things I need to get done in the next couple of days. Isn’t it amazing that when you can see a clear purpose in front of you that your energy just rises and you know that you will be able to get it all done. I know that the dear one are called by God to be part of this church community and the wider community. I am feeling at peace and full of hope for a change. Going to hang on to this feeling for as long as I can.

So here we go a song to keep me pumped and to rejoice in this next step of my journey to health and solidifying our presence here in our new community.

Second Sunday of Lent

Another Sunday in Lent, another piece of music from Taize to enhance your sabbath time. Light a candle, sit back and pray as you are able. May today be a time for rest and reflection. I hope your Lenten journey is going well.

Happy Anniversary ……to me

It has been a year since I started this blog and this will be my 5oth post – not bad for the first year of writing so publicly and so personally. I want to thank all of you for hanging out here with me, reading the posts, for supporting me through prayer, conversation and affirmations – it has been an interesting year to say the least.

The joy out of this whole past year is that I survived, the dear one survived and in fact we are once again beginning to thrive. I feel in many ways that much of the past year was our time of wandering in the desert and feeling like we were in exile. I am thinking that I can say that our exile is over and that we have found a community that will be with us and that we will be with them. It is a great way to start the second year of my blogging career. I don’t know about you but I am looking forward to finding out what the next year has in store for me and for the dear one.

I am going to keep on writing and sharing with you all because you all deserve for having put up with me this last year. Let’s see what comes next!

 

Our new home

 

So here it is after months of waiting and searching and waiting and searching our new hone. It has been quite the saga but it is almost over. In a week the dear one and I take possession and will start turning it into our new home. I am excited, nervous and so looking forward to having our belongings back after 3 months without them.

Much happy dancing going on with us!

Some silliness because I am travelling and meeting

Because no ever expects me just to be silly especially during Lent!

Soup, sandwiches, Lent

I have been an active Anglican Christian since I was a teenager. In all of the parishes that I have been connected with food has been an important part of the ministry of outreach. They had meals to raise funds, share with each other, and be part of their community. There is however something special about soup, sandwiches and Lent. They seem to go hand in hand.

The new parish community that the dear one and I have been called to be a part of has been doing Lenten Lunches for the last 22 years – yes, you read that 22 years. They serve soup, sandwiches and squares for a small sum and one of the local clergy speaks at the end of the lunch. It has turned into a good way to have a Lenten study time, gathering of Christians from the different churches in the community, and remind the wider community that the church is present here. Over the 5 weeks of Lent they serve about 300 people a wonderful lunch of all you can eat homemade soup and sandwiches.

Food and eating it with others is such an important part of my Christian life. We joke in Anglican circles that the best thing we do after meeting together is eating together and often those two things go hand in hand. I am thankful for that because it seems to me that we are following Jesus’ example. There are more examples than I can count of Jesus eating with friends, Jesus providing food for his followers and of course the most important example of the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist. At the very heart of our faith is the breaking of bread and sharing that with each other. Sharing the bread of Christ with each other and sharing our faith with each other.

As I continue through Lent I am going to meet, eat and share with the followers of Jesus.

How about you what images say Lent to you more than others?

Discipline Wagon or how I fell off, dusted myself off and got back on again

It is no surprise that disciple and discipline have the same root and lead us in the same direction. I am a disciple of Jesus. I am on my journey learning how to be a better person and therefore a better Christian. Being a disciple takes discipline and I fell off the discipline wagon yesterday.

I was hoping and had shared with you good readers that I was going to do a daily posting through Lent and I made it through Sunday and then yesterday came. Bam, the dear one and I had a day off together and the post didn’t happen. Oh, I did choose a title and I did start to write something but it just didn’t flow and mostly I ignored it. By the time I went to bed last night I was feeling sorry for myself and disappointed that I had fallen off the discipline wagon.

The good thing is that I can get back with my discipline and here I am posting for all of you again.

My son in law is a blogger and a tri-athelete in training. One of things he often writes about is the need to be gentle with himself when he falls off his training schedule or discipline wagon, as I am starting to call it. He just gets going with his training plan again and remembers that each new day brings a new learning with it. So I am going to take his advice and be gentle with myself and remember the learning of falling off my discipline wagon.

One of the benefits of this fall is that I found my inspiration again and it gave me something to write about. Picture big smiley face here!

I am remembering that Jesus told us his disciples that we need to work at bringing about the reign of God. For me today that means working on some of mine own issues of discipline in hopes that I can show others by my example what it means to be a Christian.

What discipline wagons have you fallen off and how did you get back on again?

First Sunday of Lent

A little bit of music to lift up your Sunday. May your Lenten journey be worshipful and graceful through this next week.

My little, not so secret, secret

I worry, I worry a lot. I worry that we won’t get the house we want. I worry that we will be able to pay all of our bills. I worry that I won’t find another job that will let my creativity shine. I worry and I worry a lot. The dear one knows this, my children know this and many of my friends know this and now all of you know this. I worry.

It is not my best characteristic at all. I am not proud of how much worrying I do. This Lent I am trying to face this worry in the face and give it over to God. I need to find a way to decrease the anxiety that permeates much of my life.

When the anxiety and worry take over my life I begin to get all carpy with the dear one, I forget things I said I would do, and I sleep terribly. Yep worry sucks big time!

I am working on letting the worry go and having faith that it will all work out the way that it is supposed to do and that we will not be abandoned by God.  I am trying to remember to breathe before I blurt out my worry. I am trying to make space for healthy, positive thoughts and not let the negative, anxious thoughts take over. I am trying to give up worry for Lent as I know that it sucks away my spiritual health.

There you know my little, not so secret, secret. I am a worrier who needs to remember what her best friend told the dear one I should do years ago – Lighten Up!

What do you need to give up to make space for improved spiritual health?

Friendship

I am amazingly blessed with some very dear friends. I have friends from  high school, university, the different communities the dear one and I have lived in, and church friends from the work that I did for the church. These friends have sustained me with prayer, made me laugh, listened to my rants, read this blog, took me out for lunch, had me over for tea, and stood by  me when life was just crappy. I am so full of gratitude for these friends of mine.

I have a dream where I could gather my dear friends and have a wonderful weekend together where we drink wine, tell stories, laugh a lot and maybe even cry a few tears. I would love to introduce my friends to each other for I know, because I know them, that they would get along and enjoy each others company. For you see, all my friends live in different parts of the country and I am just starting to make new friends in the community that I am living in right now. It is one of the hazards of being married to a clergy person that you have friends scattered across the country.

When I was a young married person I found it really hard to make new friends. I am by nature mostly an introvert but being in an honorary church leadership role I had to learn that I needed to walk out of my comfort zone and reach out to those I thought might want to be a friend. Sometimes that has worked and sometimes that hasn’t worked.

Friendship in the church can be a tricky thing, particularly when your spouse is a clergy person. You have to discern if the person that you are becoming friends with is going to keep your confidence or if they are trying to get close to you because they want to get dirt on the minister (trust me this has happened to me). I have been fortunate however in finding true friends in the different communities and in  the different parishes that we have lived in.

This Lent I am giving thanks for these friends and for friendship in general. Not the sappy friendship that you see in greeting cards but the honest, always there, loving, challenging and delightful friendship – the kind that I have with my friends. So if you have been a friend of mine for decades (you know who you are), a friend of mine for a few years or a recent friend, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your presence in my life and I hope that I have added something to your lives as well.

Be well my friends and know that I will be thanking God for each one of you regularly.