Category Archives: Day to Day

Actually 57 years ago today, a bit before this picture was taken, I was born.  I think this picture was taken sometime in the late spring or early summer back in 1949.  I was born in Saskatoon and this picture was taken on my grandparent’s farm north of Prince Albert, I think.  My dad was a student in Saskatoon at the time, at Luther Seminary, I believe.  I am in my mom’s arms, my dad is holding my brother who was just a year old. 

I have been celebrating this birthday since Friday when Leo took me out for supper at Amy’s.  Over the weekend we have done various family things, including the dinner with my aunt on Sunday.  Tonight Sara “cooked” supper.  She ordered Chinese food from Star House.  That is her idea of cooking.  Funny, my boys can all cook.  My girls are best at take out food.  Anyway, we had fun and the food was great.

Some of my special gifts – several books: The Renovare Study Bible, The Genesee Diary by Nouwen and a gift certificate for another book.  Also Iona’s Open Sky CD, chocolate and some ear rings.  And a beautiful  photo of an Orchis rotundifolia (round leaved orchid) from Alberta by Michelle.  I even got a slobbery kiss from my grandson.  A good day except that I ate too much good stuff.

Yesterday it snowed most of the day.  They say that we could get more snow still, but today has been precipitationless pretty much.  Randall has been lamenting the snow and Lauralea has been shovelling far too much.  Since my son’s business usually does the snow clearing, I had a brilliant idea.  I would do Lauralea a favor and ask my son (the one that hung around at my house  yesterday, snowbound – not the one who owns the business) to take the bobcat for a little detour by the Friesen’s when he cleared the church lot.  He went by the church lot and found it has been cleared already – some generous person with large equipment? had gotten there first.  So he got ready to drive the bobcat by the Friesen house. 

On the way the bobcat caught on fire.  No idea what did it but it went up in smoke.  Firetrucks and all!  Toast.  Now dead.

Sorry Lauralea.  I tried. 

A snowblower is rising towards the top of my list of things I would like for Christmas.  A nice one with an electric start.  Not too heavy since in all likelihood it is me that will be pushing it.

We have had enough snow for now. 

Second rescue – we took my aunt out of the hospital for a trip to church.  This is the first time out since she broke her hip.  She is doing remarkably well in physical healing.  She was able to manage in her walker quite well although linoleum floors are easier than even short pile carpet.  Mentally she has lost some ground.  She is not as oriented to place and time as she was before going into hospital.  But she has no trouble remembering the people around her that love her so much.  She had a good time at church.  After, we took her for lunch and fed her non-hospital food.  I think we gave her a good work-out.  She went back to the hospital and was ready for a nap.

That was fun!

Kieran stayed with us from Friday to yesterday.  He is such a good little guy.  maybe his parents should give lessons on how to parent – or maybe they just lucked out.  I can’t remember his dad being so good as a two year old.

Saturday I took him grocery shopping with me.  I figured he is still too little to insist on me getting a lot of junk food.  We didn’t do too badly.  he has definate ideas on what kind of yogurt he wants.  The roar kind.  That took me a few minutes!  But then I saw the lion picture on the little mini yogurts and did the right thing.

His last night with us was the toughest.  He was coming down with a cold and kept waking up crying – every 30 minutes or less fro about 10:30 till 2 am.  Best way to keep the noise levels down was to lie down beside him and give him lots to drink.  The floor is hard!  In the morning work.  Sedation morning.  I do not desire to have any more children – ever. 

Grandchildren however will always be welcome to sleep over.  I can always make it through a night or two.  You, who are parents of young children having to be up at night, have my greatest respect.  I guess I did it too when my kids were young – and I was too.

We have a young guy, Eric, staying with us for a couple of days.  He is travelling with the Wycliff drama team.  Last night we were getting to know him a bit.  Tonight at 7 they put on their presentation at Gateway Covenant, our church.  I’ve been to their dramas before and they are good.

Our girls were a bit sceptical about having a house guest that we did not know.  But Eric is young and “cool” enough, and only a year out of high school, that once they met him they were really OK with having him here.  I am not sure if they get all his language.  Oh they understand it in some ways when he uses phrases like “spreading the Gospel” when he describes what he has been doing.  But we do not normally talk like that in our ordinary conversation. A fair number of “christianese” expressions were used in his speaking about his aims in life.  I imagine in time that he will learn to express what his aims in life are without resorting to Christian phrases.

We were sharing with him some of our experiences as missionaries in the Congo.  He asked if our work was mainly concerned with physical healing or if we also did spiritual work.  Our reply, “How can you separate the two?  You cannot disembody the souls of people.”  This is a question asked fairly often of people involved in medical or other technical work in missions.  I think it shows a lack of understanding of God’s creation.  He created us as humans and breathed into us his spirit, and he said his creation was good.  So I don’t think we should try and dissect out the spiritual from the lives we live or the work we do and try to grow just that part of our lives – like growing something in a lab petrie dish outside of the body. 

I think he will learn; I hope so.  He will need to use everything about himself for God if he really wants to serve him.  And God has given him a heart for missions so I guess God will take care of his education.  Maybe we are part of it.

So, here I am complaining about the blah, blah – the little petty unimportant routines that make up my life. 

And then I see God.  Not so much that anything major happened to open my eyes.  It was just little things that added up.

Today talking after church – It seems that I am not alone in feeling like this.  And we begin talking and in the act of talking something clicks.  This is just life.  God wants me to be faithful to him in all that I do.  In fact that is much more difficult than in performing some heroic act from time to time. 

So help me to do that with joy, for you God.

Dinner is being cooked and my call phone rings.  I am needed by a woman who broke off a new crown on her front tooth.  So I set up a time to see her.  2:30 this afternoon.  I just returned so it was a bit more than a quick fix.  The tooth had been treated with a root canal in the past.  Now it had broken off.  Fixing it meant a post and fitting the crown to a post as best I could and giving her advice about what her options were. 

While we were waiting for the cement to harden, my patient began to talk.  Life has been tough for her over the past few months.  She too has recently lost her father.  She has had unusual workplace stress that has thrown her life into chaos.  And now her teeth falling apart.  Most of my time with her was spent listening. 

This patient was a reminder to me that God has blessed me with things to do for him.  Well, maybe more than a subtle reminder. 

God, you are so gentle. 
When I doubt and complain 
You hear me.
You understand me,
You know my need to feel needed,
To be worthwhile,
To be significant.
Maybe someday I will be strong
But I did need that gentle reminder today
That I am your much loved child,
That you have work for me to do.
Thank you, My Beloved Father.

There are times when it so hard to plod through life, wanting more.  I am impatient.  I am tired.  Life has just thrown a lot of things my way over the past year and I think I am getting tired of the incessant burden of everything.  

I believe that God created me to live, to enjoy the life he has given me.  And I have every reason to enjoy it.  I don’t lack for much that I need materially.  I have great friends.  I have a family that loves me – even if they are also the cause of much worry as well.  I just also have this sort of driven nature that wants to see results.  So, I look for signs of growth in myself, I expect my kids to show signs of maturity, I search for positive signs that things are improving.  And I don’t see them really. 

I wonder if God us to go through these dry sorts of times so that he can do something deep inside us where we can’t see; can’t even detect his workings.  I like to think he is still around. 

Actually, I have experienced enough of his goodness that it doesn’t make sense to doubt him.  But it is very hard to just relax, just live and let him do whatever it is that he is doing.  I wish for times of solitude and quiet so I might hear him, but there hasn’t been much of that lately.

It is also a hard time to blog.  My daily routines of life just seem kind of blah.  And writing about it seems just like writing about it is a bit like saying blah, blah, blah, blah…

The lack of wisdom of children amazes me sometimes. 

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,”  begins the author of Proverbs.  It seems the basis of all wisdom stems from this.

Oh how I wish that this foundation was solid in my children’s lives. 

It seems very difficult to help children understand this till a lot of stuff is messed up and they are in a desperate state, having done irreversible things that they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.  So with wisdom comes the ability to see the end results of the actions we take.  Mothers can see this.  But maybe we got here by making many of the same mistakes.

God protect my children.  Become real to them so they can begin the journey to wisdom.

There is something special about getting away for a weekend.  

Visiting one of my sisters makes it doubly good. 

It only took us about 4 hours to get down to Moose Jaw and we decided to take the longer way through Saskatoon just in case the roads were bad, since the highway is divided from Saskatoon on.  And since the road was good, I had Sara drive down as far as Chamberlain, where we left the #2 for the rest of the trip to Moose Jaw.  I read a bit but mostly slept. 

In Chamberlain we stopped to pick up a sub.  The poor guy running the sub shop was all alone but, boy, did he do a good and efficient job.  It was worth a tip which he didn’t quite know what to do with till he realized that I said to keep the change, it would be a tip.  Saskatchewan people can be a bit stingy on tipping.  It is not expected at fast food places.  No one working there would dare to ask – not like in Quebec as we rudely found out a few years ago on a visit there.

So tomorrow – in to Regina to my continuing ed course.  I should meet up with a friend who used to live in PA and was one of my assistants.  I am almost certain she will be at the course. 

And then I will return to Moose jaw and dine in some pleasant place with my good friend, Lauralea.  She is here really relaxing at the Spa, one of the local attractions.

So I guess visiting with my sister and her family and spending time with a few friends make this weekend more than doubly good.

I seem to have got a “code in my node”.  All day today my nose was sneezing and  dripping.  There is nothing like wearing a mask when one has a cold.  It does catch the drips, I guess. 

I am thankful to the good people who invented concoctions of ibuprofen and pseudofed.  Saves the day.  Today the medications just about kept up with the cold – but not quite.  I get a fairly good buzz from the pseudofed.  In fact it makes my heart do funny flip floppy stuff.  So I was counting the hours since the last dose to make sure I didn’t overdo it.  I guess it would look bad to have your dentist keel over while working!

So now for my night-time dose of Neocitran.  Oh that lovely antihistamine induced sleep.  The thing I hate most is a nose so stuffed that I am forced to breathe through my mouth.  I’m really hoping today was the worst of this present illness. 

Wendy tagged me.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1.  Chambermaid (cleaning hotel rooms)- yuk!
2.  Anatomy Disection Preparer
3.  Summer student – subject in Kinesiology experiments
4.  Dentist

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1.  Steel Magnolias
2.  Lord of the Rings
3.  Rainman
4. Bruce Almighty

Four places I’ve lived:

1.  Hillsview, OR
2.  Brussels, Belgium
3.  Karawa, Dem. Rep. of  Congo
4.  Prince Albert, SK

Four TV shows I love:
1.  24
2.  The Simpsons
3.  The Passionate Eye
4.  Just for Laughs

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1.  Lake Kwada
2.  Kenya – Masai Mara and Diani Beach
3.  A cruise down the Mexican Riviera
4.  The Churchill River from Missinipi to Pelican Narrows by canoe

Four of my favorite dishes:
1.  Anything seafood
2.  Jambalaya
3.  Pizza
4.  A good medium rare steak

Four sites I visit daily:

1.  jordoncooper.com
2.  randallfriesen.com
3.  lauralea.ca
4.  The Eagle & Child

Four places I would rather be right now:
1.  On a beach beside a warm ocean
2.  Curled up on my couch in front of a fire with a book
3.  Back in Africa
4.  Having a visit with a good friend

Four bloggers I am tagging
1.  Lauralea
2.  Dixie
3.  Gavin
4.  Gloria