Looking for the Sunrise

So today was a big day. I got my hair cut... It could have been a bigger deal but I opted to keep the same style that I've had forever and just really shorten it up. Next time I'll do something crazy and express my mid life crisis in a hair cut ;) I had a job interview that I am fairly certain I bombed but I'm strangely ok with that. While it is a really great and interesting job, it may be more that I can handle right now. I might actually need a 'Walmart kind of job' to start this chapter of my life until I figure out what it really is that I want to do in life. Silly mid life crisis stuff, eh? I baked cookies for Brenna to take to school tomorrow and find myself wishing, not for the first time, that I could make a living baking and spreading love with cookies. It is my love language after all... ;) Going back a day or two I got the coolest gift from one of my best friends the other day. She just spent 7 weeks away in Spain walking the Camino. She brought ...

Random thoughts for this Monday morning I learned yesterday that another friend from the past has passed away. I used to call her QuinnChick when she lived with us when I was a teenager. She was a whole lot of trouble but we loved her. The circumstances of her death at age 45 are very sad and I will be praying for her family as they sort everything out. The Journey small group was good last night. I appreciate the discussion and openness we are developing. My favorite quote from this past week's homework is a simple sentence that totally captures my imagination. It comes from Eugene Peterson speaking of the Bible. "Story is the gospel way. Story isn't imposed on our lives; it invites us into its life. As we enter and imaginatively participate, we find ourselves in a more spacious, freer and more coherent world." The quote of the week that challenges me most is just 4 words. Credit to Chuck Swindoll... "Meditation is disciplined thought." I think we ...

I should really just give up on Challenges ;) This weekend has been a busy one as we are trying to get rid of some of the STUFF messing up our house and figure out ways to make our unique and honestly quite frustrating space work for us. You would think with 2000 square feet, we would have plenty of room but its 2000 square feet of awkward. We have discovered the key to making it all work is to take big spaces and make them small but that can be tricky at times and so we keep moving this here and that there trying to come up with something... anything that will work. And now it's time to clean out the corners, get rd of the clutter, let go of the junk... it's all so hard to do! Oh yeah and I want to chop my hair off... thoughts?? It's time for a change!

Here we go again only never on our own Last night I went to the planning meeting for Emily's high school graduation. Feels like I just did this... a year ago. Sigh. My girls have grown up so fast. I have to stop blinking... really. Anyway, grad meeting was the same but different. Mrs Holzer has retired and Mrs Fergason has stepped in to organize Grad. Change is, in this case, just change. Same information... different feel. It looks like there will be lots of parental and student involvement. Like her sister before her, Emily chose to be on the invitation/program committee. I will likely help with the Chem-free celebration as I decided to join the high school parents association. (sigh) Another huge difference last night was this... For Anna graduation was a culmination of the effort to get through school. She had to fight to find her place and she had to overcome a lot to get where she got to.. Emily though? It's different. This picture captures a lifetime of friendship...

This was the first weekend end in recent memory that I can recall not really having any plans at all, I was pretty much free to do as I pleased and so... On Friday I went and watched Brenna perform at the local United Way telethon and enjoyed it immensely Sat I didn't sleep in but I stayed in bed forever :). I went and got my nails done, enjoyed a burger for lunch and had coffee with a good friend. I kicked around all afternoon, getting groceries and just being out and about. I spent my evening running to Weyburn and back with Bobby to return the bus he drove that day. Sunday was a typical Sunday with Sunday School and church and then a blissful afternoon resting on the couch, snuggling with Bobby while we caught up on a few tv shows. Sunday night was pretty great as I began my own Journey of discovery. I have joined an intensive small group study called The Journey which is a discipleship group that will meet for the next 6-8 months. It requires a high level of commit...

I have to laugh at myself this morning as I realize that the blog I got my inspiration from to try 30 blogs in 30 days is far ahead of me in post counts and started long after! Nobody has ever said I'm consistent although I try to be and I am getting better except here in blog world :) It's been a long week so far, everyone seems just a bit off kilter which I suppose is normal when life is in a busy stressful season. We all long for a bit of rest and peace and just a few days to get caught up on stuff... not sure when that time will come as empty days on the calender seem to fill up quickly! We have started the slow process of reorganizing a few areas in our home... there will be lots of junk tossed in the next few weeks, things that came with the house but we never used, day care stuff that has long outlived its usefulness, appliances that no longer work. Trying to create cleaner spaces and a bit more simplicity. Time to tame the beast that is our clutter. Wish us well :) ...

A thankful heart does not always come easy. Thankfulness in times of pain and struggle can be difficult. When I began to make thankfulness a practice in my life. I don't think I knew how hard it would be sometimes to find the joy in the everyday. I don't always succeed but what I can say is this. A truly thankful heart holds little room for bitterness, anxiety and other negative emotion. At least this is my experience, I  sure there are thankful folks out there who struggle all the time with fighting off the darkness in their life. What I am trying to say is that thankfulness is a journey though those things and can be a great antidote. This year I decided my word was celebration, this was to be a year of celebration and largely it has been. Today as Canada celebrates my favourite Sunday, Thanksgiving, I find my heart battling the idea of celebrating. I so want to focus on all that isn't instead of all that is. I sad and workings way through loss and transition and it...

As I lay here at 5am in my sister's living room waiting for the alarm to go off at 6, I am well I'm not sure... I don't really know how to feel about this day ahead, my emotions are still 'asleep' How do I say good bye to a friend I haven't spent enough time with to really know but still feel like one of the best parts of me has been ripped out of my beating heart? The confusion is overwhelming at this early morning hour... Today will be a hard day, a day where quite likely I won't know where I fit or belong. A misfit from the past in a group of people hurting in the present. It will be odd and painful. What will I say to Julie? What will I say to anyone? I don't know, what words can possibly hold healing in this moment? No words exist for this day yet. I know they will come but for now I am going to just be in this moment alone and grieve my friend.

Random thoughts This blog post challenge is all of a sudden radically different than I had envisioned... the 30 days thing is out and I stopped posting scripture awhile ago. None was intentional but I think I'll keep plodding on and see how long it takes to get to 30 posts :) IPhone updates are a certified pain I have decided, Anna updated her phone and is now synced to her dad's so getting all his text messages and he is getting all of hers... hope they can figure it out and soon. (figured and fixed before I could even finish this post!) I'm not a fan of grief... not sure anyone is. I particularly hate how incapable it makes me of dealing with frustration and how quickly I get upset with the smallest of things... blah And of course my family bears the brunt of it. I also hadn't realized deep grief could have such a physical component. Never has my back been so sore and tight. A visit with my chiropractor and an evening with a heating pad and muscle relaxers helped...

There are moments in your life that you will never forget, moments that stay with you, haunt you even. Yesterday morning at 8:14 I answered my phone and heard a tired sad voice that I did not recognize. “Susanna? This is Julie Younglove.” Not a voice I expected to hear and I knew the news would not be good but to hear that my childhood best friend had passed away was nowhere in the ballpark of my thoughts. Me and Troy just chillin' :) Troy was just 5 weeks older than me, our mothers’ friendship so close that the first stop after leaving the hospital when I was born was to show me off to Aunt Gerry and introduce me to Troy Boy. Our frienship was just meant to be and of course the family joke was that we would grow up and get married. ;) Pretty sure we all agree it's a good thing we didn't :) I don’t remember life without the Youngloves. In a time when we moved constantly, the Younglove house was a constant. We went there for visits at least a couple of times...

What's that saying about the one constant in our lives being change? I don't know the quote but I know there is truth in it. To be moving forward requires change and so while I don't exactly like change, I have come to embrace it as a sign of growth and moving ahead. My days as a childcare provider are numbered. Last spring I made the difficult decision that it was time to start phasing out of this long lasting phase of my life. I started childcare way back in 1992, shortly after I graduated from highschool. At that point I couldn't handle the stress of a 'real' job and so I became a nanny. I worked with little TJ and Zoe at first. TJ's mom and I ended up not being a good fit and so I took care of Zoe at her house and somehow talked Marlene into letting me bring somebody else's kid to her house too so I could make a bit more money. Enter my Master Zach, my 25 pound 6 month old sumo baby. I loved those two kids. It was a great year of my life. Once Bobb...