Category Archives: Dealing with stuff

Not sure how my prayer life is to be – God moves into one’s very cells and still is beyond my understanding and greater than all I can know or experience.  Leaves me at the same time full of wonder, mystified and baffled.  How do I approach him and yet, how can I not?

At the same time as I live in a state of incomprehension there are times when I recognize God working and I see how he extends himself through me. 

Well, lots to sort out anyway.  If my limited mind can begin to comprehend…

Processing.  Sometimes too much to write down.

A lot of my thoughts are a bit much to just lay out here these days.  I suppose they will become clearer given some time and space and then you may be permitted a little peek inside my mind again.  But these days are full of thoughts and figuring things out – in between watching kids so my daughter can clean and organize for me and watching other grand kids so my daughter-in-law can golf and visiting with the other set of grand kids who are here for a couple of days.  Grandchildren are a wonderful distraction!

So, as I catch a few moments at home and at work, I’m processing some of the stuff going through my mind. 

That’s what’s going on around here these days.

Today we tackled the huge job of cleaning up the garage.  I think we have enough stuff in there to open a second Value Village.

One of the jobs I finally got around to was sorting through some of the stuff brought over here at least a year ago after my dad’s things were sorted out.  One of the things that came to me were the family treasures that dad kept.  Maybe my tendency to collect came from him.  He had saved all of the sympathy cards from when my mom passed away and a lot of other things that reminded me so much of both of them.

It’s been 33 years since mom died so suddenly on May 29th.  In one notebook Dad kept, he had written down all the details of how he had tried to contact me off in the interior of Zaire.  Numbers for contacts at the consulate and the missions office.  And my response that I could not come home – my passport was down in the visa office and not accessible to me for travel.  There was so much in that box that I had never seen.  I sort of wish that it had all been dragged out back 31 years ago when I had come home for the first time since mom’s death.  Maybe the mourning would have been more complete.  Maybe it never will be entirely.  I will never lose the connection I had with her as her daughter.  She is for me one of the saints that surrounds me with the whole horde of the faithful who have gone on before.

So, today I mourned a little.  Not in some psychologically sick sort of way that refuses to accept the facts of life and death.  But there was so much I missed by not being here at her death that creeps up on me in unexpected ways.  And so, I weep and I mourn. 

Then life goes on.

I have discovered that the very dark Dove chocolates are the perfect pick me up at the end of a long day.  They are too dark to pig out on.  They melt in my mouth.  One is enough – well, maybe two.

Tonight, I put one in my pocket(well, two actually) when I left on my bike ride.  I stopped and sat a bit by the river.  And ate those chocolates.  They are wrapped in their own special deep red foil wraps that have little sayings written inside.  Little bits of wisdom to savour with the chocolate.

One said, "Reread your old poems."

I think I shall do some of that.  My old poems were often conversations with God.  I need to revisit them maybe.

When there is a perceived threat to part of one’s body, how important that part suddenly becomes.  At least in how that part is perceived and no longer taken for granted. 

On Tuesday, I began to notice a tiny line like a stray hair that drifted across my left eye.  It wasn’t noticeable enough to impede my sight but was noticeable enough that I noticed it.  I tried to wipe away the hair or film on the surface of my eye but found no stray hair, no reason that I could tell for it being there.  No pain though.  So I kept on going not terribly alarmed. 

I don’t recall that I noticed it after work that evening.  But it was there again the next day at work.  I think it had to do with the light coloured walls in the office and the white page on the computer screen.  In a jumble of colours I did not notice it.  However since it seemed not to be a figment of my imagination, was something new and was not going away on its own, I called the ophthalmologist, who squeezed me into his schedule on Thursday afternoon.

So, yesterday, after attending Patrick’s convocation where he was granted his BA Honours, we headed back home so I could get to my appointment and so Leo could put in a few hours of work. 

My eyes were thoroughly checked and my hopes that this was just a floater and no retinal detachment were realized.  What a relief. 

A person gains a new appreciation for the sense that is threatened.  On Wednesday, I remember looking up at the soft white clouds in the sky thinking of how much I would miss seeing the world around me if my sight were to go.  How much I would miss reading.  How I would miss seeing people’s faces. 

I now live with a renewed sense of wonder at my sight and all that it brings into my life.  I guess it is good to be reminded of these things every now and then, even if it is scary to be brought to this point.