Monthly Archives: May 2005

I knew there was a reason I didn’t turn on the sprinklers last night.  This morning I awoke to the sound of rain and to the freshness of the smell of rain on the earth.  It is such a clean smell.

This morning was spent working on sedated children – the few that came.  And they were pretty good for the most part.  Only one screamer and even he was not bad and did not lie on the floor of the waiting room crying afterwards.

With the rain falling and me with a cold coming on, this is just the kind of day I would like to stay at home for the afternoon curled up under a blanket with a good book.  It is the kind of day I enjoy if it happens during my vacation when I can indulge myself and feel no urgent deadlines tugging at my attention. 

But, even if I wish, I have to go back to work.  Sometimes a career is a veritable slave driver!  But come to think of it – a mother’s job is never done and that is what I would default to.  I guess work and obligations will always be a part of life. Just to keep the right balance!

This whole weekend has been rather busy.  Yesterday getting the prayer room ready took longer than I thought.  But it is the kind of doing that I find enjoyable.  And now the room is ready and will be a blessing to all of us.  I spent some time there this afternoon.  There are two windows with no window coverings.  Maybe we should fix some kind of Roman blinds if people wish to dim the room in the middle of the day.  Today, I was glad of the sunshine coming in and as I looked out over this part of the city, I watched the birds fly up to the ledge of the roof.  They may be building nests there somewhere – I don’t suppose the folks that look after the building would appreciate that – but I enjoyed watching them.

I like having that space set apart for prayer.  A few years ago, there is no way that I would have gotten excited about spending substantial periods of time talking to God.  The thought of round the clock vigils were, I thought, a wonderful idea for the otherworldly saints who didn’t have real jobs that gave them enough to do.  Now the time I spend in prayer goes too fast.  The hour in the morning is gone and work starts too soon.  I don’t know but it might have been the fact I met God when I was really desperate for his help and found him to be approachable and the most caring friend to talk to.  And a bonus – he could change things over which I had no control.  And he could change me and wanted to.

Tonight I got together with my friends again.  We are still working through Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel .  And we will finish it someday, even if it is hard to get together over the summer.  We talked about fear tonight.  Perfect love drives fear away.  We shared some of the things which still make us afraid.  For myself, I am slowly learning to trust God with things.  Sometimes we learn best by being taken to the limits of our competence so that we are forced to trust.  And as we learn to trust we learn to relax a bit because we find out that our Father is real; he does love us and will not let us go through the hard stuff alone.  I guess if we had no struggles we would not be challenged to let our trust grow.

All of us women have children that we love and are concerned about.  So we care for each other and encourage one another to learn this hard stuff about trusting God.  These women have been a gift of God to me.  They have been my images of Jesus, have given human skin to his arms holding me, have walked and talked to me bringing his words of encouragement over the past few months.

Our group has fluctuated in size and tonight was enlarged by one.  That is also a very good thing – to welcome another to the party.

I am home for the weekend with few other demands on my time than:
– grocery shopping.  Have’t done a real shopping trip in too long.  I end up hurriedly shopping for milk and bread and stuff too many evenings if I don’t do a major shop once a week.
– finish setting up the prayer room.  This is fun but I have quite a few things left to do.  And it is spring clean up day at the church too.
– spend a bit of time working in my back yard.  It is still too cold at night to plant anything but I would like to be ready to plant when the weather gets warm.  Summer comes so quickly here that if the weather is rainy on the weekend when I am able to work in the yard I can miss planting season altogether.  This summer I want to get the yard looking sort of good.

That is probably enough for the day.  If I have extra time there is always laundry and housework.  Yuck!!

Getting up early lets me have some quiet time and gets my day off to a good start.  And getting up early lets me see some interesting things early in the morning – deer running by, flocks of geese lifting off the river.  The day can start out with a beautiful sunrise and an hour later, when everyone else is getting up, be clouded over and gloomy. 

But today?  If I had slept in for half an hour longer, I would have missed the sight of snow on the roof.

I know it is Saskatchewan and it can snow anytime.  Just the same it was 21 C yesterday. 

The picture uploads seem to have a glitch.  Have to go to work but I will reload them later.

Update – loaded the pictures by ftping them.  Some glitch in the prairie fusion uploader?  Likely I am doing some little thing wrong but I don’t know what it is.  Anyway – see below for the pictures.

I have never been to a wedding before where in order to entice the bride and groom to display their kissing skills, one had to swallow a goldfish live.  But Hey – it was their wedding and they are kind of crazy! 

The mother of the groom did it.  But the mother of the bride(my sister) would not meet her challenge.  I think she said something to the effect of – “We can see them kiss some other time.  There is no way I’m doing that!”

So it was a fairly unique wedding in some ways! 

We had fun.  Lots of relatives and visiting and cousins having fun. 

And this one is especially for her dad. 

Today felt like spring.  It was warm and the sun was shining.  The trees are budding out although it is still too early for leaves.  And the days are getting so long.  Almost 9 now and the sky is light still.  Golfing has begun so in the house the TV is silent.  This is my favorite time of year.  The mosquitos are just beginning to show themselves so it is nice to sit outside almost bug free. 

I went for a walk along the river tonight and then just sat for awhile on the riverbank.  Just watching the water; listening to the geese; watching the sunset and the three brilliant white jet streams streaking across the pink orange of the sky.

I’m glad nature is so beautiful.  It helps me hold on to the fact that there is more order and normalcy in my world than I think some days.  Maybe not in the little world of me but out in God’s big universe.  Some days life seems pretty confusing for me and my own reactions seem off kilter.  I react in ways I least want to.  There seem to be too many days when it seems like God has so much work to do on changing me to any sort of likeness of himself.  

It’s a good thing this relationship with him doesn’t depend on my efforts.