When is a pot not so lucky?

I went to the PTA pot luck last week. I had wanted to take meatballs. Not just any meatballs but the super yummy scrumptious ones that I had had last Christmas at the old church. I emailed the lady for the recipe and of course she didn't respond. That made me mad and sad and frustrated. Mad enough to the point that I said "the heck with it! I'm tired of the usual stuff at pot lucks anyways, lets eat something good!" So I made Asian lettuce wraps and they were super, yummy, scrumptious!

I don't really know pot lucks from my childhood. My memory is that we didn't really have people over for dinner. We had company from out of town that would come and stay for a few days usually on their way to or from another destination. My Mom would labour for days over the feasts to serve them and I'll write more about that some time later. Instead of pot lucks we went "visiting." I would like to write more about "visiting" however I'm having a heck of a time finding stuff on the Internet about it. I'm just not using the right magical combination of words for the search engine. Then I tried searching for "calling". Which was even worse and then to complicate those matters I looked for "calling cards" and you can't even begin to imagine the chaos I found.

I guess that pot lucks entered my life when I joined a church. In the young adult glory days is was often my pots and everyone else was in luck! But I do remember going to a few full fledged adult ones at some grandparentish friends and discovering grandpa Jack's chicken wings. I also remember being at one the Christmas I came back from Korea having one of grandma Jean's homemade peanut butter chocolate cups in each hand just in case there wasn't any more and because I had been deprived of them for so long.

Ahhhhhhhhhh pot lucks I have known. Or, as some people call them "pot blessings" because in some churches the word "luck" just isn't done. In his super yummy, scrumptious blog "Stuff Christians Like" (that I just can't get enough of!) Jonathan Acuff says this: "Luck is a more accurate description of the food you'll find at church events, where everyone brings their own dish. They're not all blessings some of them are gross. Upon tasting them your mouth does not think to itself, 'I have just been blessed.' It might think, 'Wow! I have just been cursed.' And now you've got a "pot cursing" on your hands, which seems like something a drunk crock pot would start doing if you bumped into it and spilled it's drink at a nightclub." //stuffchristianslike.net/2009/04/515-taking-a-sympathy-scoop-from-the-dish-no-one-eats-at-the-pot-luck/

I remember my first pot luck somewhere in Illinois, I felt like I was back in Korea with a whole array of unfamiliar dishes that I needed Huggyband to interpret for me. That was also the first time I'd encountered Red Velvet cake AKA "stuck pig cake." In Indiana I was pregnant and craving comfort food but after the first spread of covered and smothered goo that made me feel sick I learned to bring a green salad with dressing on the side so I'd at least have something I wanted to eat. In his "Rules for Pot luck" (more like a survival guide), Jeffry P. Barnes writes 4) If you are lucky enough to see a relish tray with uncooked veggies, take them. Do not worry about others having enough. Your survival is important and you must be ruthless. http://recipes.stsams.org/recipes/rulesforpotlucks.html


Totally off topic here but I just discovered some of the very old Saturday morning PSA's on youtube. You know the ones that you're STILL singing the songs to? Here's "Don't drown your food." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfEG15CLTqo My Nana insisted that the only reason cooks put gravy on their food was to cover up the bad taste of their cooking. All I can say is that if I were going to cover up bad food, white gravy would not be what I would pick to do it with! Brown gravy on the other hand only goes to enhance the flavor of already yummy things like poutine.

Anyways.......... Pot lucks in the south were very adventuresome and required A LOT of interpretation. The good stuff was very, very good. Little Miss Teen used to look forward so much to Miss Shelby's broccoli, cheese cornbread that we affectionately began to call church pot lucks "feast days." Except for the bad the bad stuff........... I once heard a man scold his daughter for not eating anything and when I glanced over at her plate and saw all those boiled greens I honestly couldn't blame her! Our favorite, "not our favorite" dish was white bread and watermelon or pineapple sandwiches. They were just as they sound, white bread, a slice of pineapple or watermelon and a lot of mayo. As Barnes writes, 2) Avoid potato salad, or anything else with mayo in it unless you have seen it come out of the refrigerator. Avoid it totally during hot weather.


Honestly I've probably been the bringer of more pot curses as I have the recipient. I'm a great cook but sometimes accidents do happen. Like the time I dusted a cake with cornstarch instead of icing sugar. There was also the time I made a great spinach salad. I thought it was great, everyone else thought it was great, except for my best friend, who, not knowing that I had brought it, took a bite and pronounced "WHAT IS WITH THIS SPINACH SALAD IT'S HORRIBLE!" And sometimes I've brought the dish that nobody eats. Some friends of mine recently talked about what foods "go" at a pot luck and what foods don't. We agreed that elaborately decorated cakes don't. This I learned at Christmas after spending a lot of time on a cake that I took to a pot luck and then brought back untouched. Good for my family; bad for my ego. I've been told that very gracious kitchen ladies will do the kind if not Christian thing when they see this happen and very discreetly throw half of the dish in the trash so it looks like it's been eaten to preserve face. I've also been told that pies "go." This is probably because homemade pies are rare these days so people tend to snap them up when they can. I've seen great pies be snatched up even before they hit the bake sale table. I've also learned the hard way that the people of Ohio are gingersnap haters. Go figure! Go back to Stuff Christians Like to see what you should do if you are in fact the bringer of a pot curse.

One of the ways to take the "luck" out of potlucks is to have each dish designated. One of my friends got a note from the lady's guild at church telling her to bring cherries jubilee to the chicken dinner. Not only did she not know what chicken dinner they were talking about but she had NO clue what cherries jubilee was or how to make it! I'm also not a fan of the alphabetical divide. You know last names starting with A - G brings side dishes, H - R brings main course and the rest bring desserts. Well, I'm a W and like I said some days I'm in the mood to bring a salad. Or spicy Asian lettuce wraps that went over real well. It was a lucky pot luck day for sure.

And in case you're ever in need of something very yummy to take to a pot luck, here's the link http://www.grouprecipes.com/110886/asian-lettuce-wraps.html

Mother's Day

I had a beautiful and classic Mother's Day. Sunday school teachers helped the little boys make hand print crafts, I coerced Little Miss Teen into making a craft for me and I gave my Huggyband a list of ideas of things to shop (the fact that he left the list on the front seat of my van with the stuff he had bought crossed off is besides the point.) We dropped off a #1 Grandma mug at Grandmas (note to self; I think over 7 years of marriage I've given her 5 of these it must be my "go to" gift and I must remember to be more creative next year.) We took a road trip to get me my beloved Tim Horton's donuts and I didn't have to change any diapers. It was a happy Mother's Day indeed. I am blessed with 3 incredible children. Children I honestly didn't think I'd have. Since I'm an only child I thought for sure that I'd inherit my Mom's fertility problems; I didn't. I was afraid that I wouldn't know how to parent more than one child; somehow, I manage. They are the light of my life. They are what keep me going and I'll always be grateful for them.

Mother's Day is one of those fragile days; for some people it's good, for some people it's awful. Sometimes its both. Mixed emotions are common; tread lightly. It's like a flow chart; if YOUR mother is living (preferably close enough to celebrate with) and you have a great relationship or great memories of her then you're good. On this chart you get a free pass to the side that looks at YOU as a mother. But what if your mother isn't alive? What if the track you're going down is that of a loss daughter? I spent time on line yesterday with an old friend who lost her Mom in March. She was a great lady. Wise and talented.... She is missed. I spent time thinking about the family of the patient I lost last week as they met up with their first Mother's Day without her. I also spent time thinking about a few of my current patients families as they faced the reality that this would be their last Mother's Day with their Moms. My heart went out to them.

Obviously I identify with the daughters who have lost Moms. When Hope Edelman writes in her book "Motherless Daughters" that when her Mom died she "wanted to destroy every Hallmark Mother's Day card display" she saw; I say a big Amen. I've been there. Wishing I could just stay in bed and make the whole day go away. Wishing there was some way to teleport myself through certain months. I also remember purposely picking a fight with a young man on Mother's Day because he had in effect ran away from home. Cut his mother out of his life....... That was the first Mother's Day 2 little girls in my life had without their Mom and they didn't have a choice in it. I was angry, I was grieving and I let this young man know it in a very ungracious way.

The second side of the fictional flow chart is if you yourself are a Mom. I have been blessed with fertility and for that I am thankful. But we have friends who haven't. We have friends who are childless by choice and we have friends who feel that God simply hasn't called them to have children. Those friends are in the minority, because we have a lot of friends who want children but can't have them. Today there are 6.1 million woman in America with infertility problems. I can't begin to imagine how awful that must be. My husband can though. It took him and his late wife 12 years to conceive our Little Miss Teen. Yes, she was worth the wait, but it's not a wait he'd wish on anybody.

And then there is road number 3; loss Moms. It doesn't matter how old your child is when he or she passes the fact is that you're still a Mom and that child was still your child. 25% of American woman experience a miscarriage (a person's a person no matter how small) and 1 pregnancy in 80 results in a stillbirth. No; the euphemism "born sleeping" does not help me on that one. We lost baby Jonathan the week before Mother's Day 5 years ago. Talk about months you wish you could fast forward through.... I have a friend who lost a baby that was conceived in violence. She's still a Mom; she would have been a great, great Mom. I honor her. I wonder what Mother's Day feels like for her? I have a friend who's adopted daughter died within a week of her birth; yesterday was painful to her as well. She should have been receiving her first hand print card not grieving. And yesterday was my second Mom's (I have yet to find a way to distinguish my 2 mothers in writing so bear with me; she knows who she is!) without her son. I cried for her. I cried for him. Oh heck I cried for us all. Loss is unfair. Not being able to have kids is unfair. Loss is unfair... Children are fun. Motherhood is hard work.

How a cup of cold water helped me do the right thing and prove others wrong.

"And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."
(Mat 10:42)

I did this the other day. I reached through a group of people to a grieving woman and offered her a bottle of water. I had the honour and privilege of sitting with her and her family as we waited for her mom to pass. And Mrs. D did pass. Gently, surrounded by her family, pastors, a hospice nurse and me the hospice volunteer. It was the first time I was at hospice working with a family while their loved one died. The loss of my first patient this time around. 14 years ago, 2000 miles and what seems like 5 zillion years ago I lost my first first aid patient on a highway. For a lot of obvious reasons this one was different. It was sad of course, but there was a sense of calmness and peace not anguish and great despair as I was expecting. Heaviness but no fear. I was ok with it. I know that because of my depression there's been a lot of question of if hospice; which everyone seems to think is a sad, sad place, is really the best choice for me? Won't it make me sadder? No, sadness isn't a part of my depression. As the rest of this article will show; doing good does ME good. I get more out of it than I put into it. Helping heals me.

So when I handed Mrs. D's daughter that bottle of water our eyes met and volumes of compassion, sympathy, empathy and grief passed between us. I knew that in that simple act I had made a difference to her; I had shown her Christ and we had both healed just a tiny bit.

I also knew that the pastors across town were wrong about me. Part of the "we're kicking you out of our church" conversation included a few lines about how I would never be allowed to minister in that church again. I've since learned that fear of the depressed person contaminating the flock is a common pastoral response to depression. The problem with that is that it works on the presumption that depression is some sort of chosen sin. And as someone said to me "if depression is sin then so are allergies." No go. Doesn't fly. As they say in the south "that dog don't hunt." As my friends and I were discussing today; sometimes proving people wrong is the best revenge. Or if not revenge then at least proving them wrong feels very, very satisfying.

On the way home from that conversation with the pastors I thought "waaaaaaaaaait a minute, they're saying God can't use me? but God used all sorts of broken people. Heck he even used a prostitute!" Yeah he did use a prostitute; her name was Rahab and her story is told in Joshua 2:1-21. This sermon http://www.mmcc.citymax.com/f/W3Healing_Rahab_ProstituteGodUsed.pdf by Pastor John Rayford of Mount Moriah Christian Church in Bloomington IL says that "your past does not determine your future and that God wants to use your brokenness to let others know that he is not through with you."

Some of this is more than knowing that even in my brokenness God can use me but also wanting to be used. It would be so easy not to. To say "why should I do nice things for people when people have been horrible to me?" The answer is simply: because it's good for you. As my grandmother would say: "when you feel bad do something good for someone else it will help you feel better."

In the 13th Century Francis Asisi wrote:
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I would add that it is in healing that we heal. In helping we are helped.

Oh Pastor F, who are you to deny me that healing? If you had truly wanted me to get better then you would have pushed me towards ministry not kept me away from it.
Proverbs 4:23 says "above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Normally I think of that verse as meaning that you're supposed to guard your heart from the dark stuff that could take root and take over. I've come to understand that it also means not letting your heart shrink. Like the Grinch, whose heart was 2 sizes too small seeing the good of others made his heart grow. Good works, volunteering, loving others as Christ loves them is sort of the armature that I stretch my heart over ensuring that it doesn't shrink. I've quoted the line in the Garth Brooks song before "I do this so the world will know that it will not change me."

Honestly, 8 months ago I didn't care if the world changed me; I didn't care about the size of my heart; I just didn't care what happened. And I've healed enough now that is does matter. For those of you familiar with spiritual warfare you'll see that for all we talk about the big spooky stuff; it comes down to offering a cup of water to a grieving daughter. Doing good when you're at your worst. Shining the light and confounding the darkness (my paraphrase of John1:5)

Rock, paper, scissors: wheel of wow!

Hip Hip Hooray today is Webkinz Day! Ok, I know what you're going to say. "Cass is this another one of your strange little holidays like Mother Goose Day (May 1) and Frog Jumping Jubilee Day (May 19th). What are you going to blog about next My Bucket's Got a Hole in it Day. No silly! this in an important holiday! Besides, Hole in the bucket day isn't until May 30th. (Strange little piece of family trivia here; when my daughter was a toddler she called her bottom her bucket. So having a hole in your bucket has a WHOLE different meaning to us!) Anyways......... Webkinz Day marks the anniversary (this year it's the 5th) of the day Ganz (a Canadian company) first released Webkinz. Now according to my thing only 11 of you are reading this and I'm guessing that Lisa L is probably the only one who has no earthly idea what a webkinz is. In short think of it as a Beanie Baby with an on line component.

I used to mock one of my friends who collected Beanie Baby's (One year for her birthday I glued a doll to a can of beans and added a lable that said "B"s Beanie Baby! She didn't laugh). A few years ago when my 10 year old daughter wanted a Webkinz I refused on the basis that she was much too old for a stuffed toy and computer game. Now here we are 3 years later, she has 7 of them and I have ummmmmmmmmmmmm? 12! But hopefully by Mother's Day (yeah a real, real holiday!) I'll have 15 so I can get my second super bed! So what happened? Peer pressure first of all. I "oh so helpful" ladies on my favorite parenting boards convinced me that not only did all of their kids have a few but they themselves played with them. So I caved. And then I thought it was kind of fun and started "babysitting" H's while she was at school. That was fine until we disagreed about what on line clothes to buy the little critter; custodial disputes if you will. Then I started giving her into trouble for not doing her daily Webkinz chores; I have a hard enough time getting her to do chores in real life never mind in Webkinz land but hey. So by then it was pretty obvious that I needed my own; dozen.

What's the appeal? Sometimes it's the thrill of the hunt. You need to find 36? gems to get your "legendary crown of wonder." It took me a looooong time of searching 6 virtual mines to find them all. Now I've got 2 crowns and am working on my 3rd. There's also virtual trading for stuff that's pretty cool. Right now I"m in it for the shopping experience. Every time I play my hippo/beaver/lamb/caterpillar/pink flamingo/dog/goat/dragon/turtle/elephant and frog earn money. Money that I spend furnishing my 23 room, 9 garden mansion. And like the front of my current notebook says "shopping (even the fake kind) is cheaper than a psychiatrist. I'll say! This being America even in real life I could either spend $20 at my favorite thrift shop and get a lot of therapy or I could spend $20 at the counsellors office and get 1 minute of therapy. My husband of course prefers that I get my thrills by clicking the "wheel of wow" that earns me $20 kinzcash that I put towards a navigation control center for my space room.

Before anyone mocks me I'd like to say 1 word: FARMVILLE: 80,085,797 monthly users!

And speaking of games that we mock I'll take "rock, paper, scissors" for 500 please Alex. Rock, paper, scissors is a kids game right? Silly North American of course it isn't. Turns out that RPS or rochambeau or kauwi-bauwi-bo as it's called has been around in Japan since the late 19th century. The first time I encountered it outside of my elementary school playground was on my first night in China. After an exhausting flight from Vancouver, being met at the airport by a big bird puppet (don't ask) and 40 degree C heat and 100% humidity, then being told that I was to live with 2 strange guys, I was taken to a street bar to meet some of the other teachers from my company. Sitting in a plastic lawn chair, drinking ice cold pineapple beer and practicing picking up peanuts with chop sticks I noticed something familiar about what the men at the next table were doing. "Are they...............?" "Yep" I was told by another teacher, "it's a drinking game here; actually it's an everything game here and it's huge." In my 2 years in Asia I would come to appreciate rock, paper, scissors as a great decision making tool. Have 2 students arguing over who's going to go first? Make them rock, paper scissor for it. It worked 100% of the time and was a binding agreement. It worked so well that foreigners would sometimes suggest amongst ourselves that the whole North/South Korea debate could be settled by one long rock, paper, scissors match. Winner takes the whole peninsula. WE ARE JOKING OF COURSE! Someone very close to me does a very dangerous job in that region. I'm all too aware of the political climate and cultural differences.

Turns out that rock, paper, scissors isn't only an Asian game or a kids game either. Turns out there is an actual United States Rock, Paper, Scissors league (no I"m not making this stuff up!). Check it out at http://www.usarps.com/ or http://roshamblog.wordpress.com/ Laugh all you want but they're competing for $25,000 college tuition. Yes, I do see that they are competing in bikinis and it has as much chance of being a credible sport as beach volleyball (which I don't mind, we used to play it not on the beach but in the actual river). But hey as one girl put it "I could make $25,000 just by putting my fist in the air." Hmmmmmm, where is my daughter who's going to college in 4 years? I bet if she started practising now......... As for me? I'm about to go see if it's time to spin the "wheel of yum!"

Picture of mortality

Flipping through countless Easter pictures of my friends kids on Facebook. Most of the pictures alike; kids searching for eggs, kids with Easter baskets, kids in new Easter outfits. Easter in North America. A random click on a cousin's profile and new pictures. More kids; his nieces along with their parents and grandparents in the traditional "group pose" on vacation in Hawaii. I don't flip through this picture though. I pause on it giving it both my attention and emotions. A mixture of shock, nostalgia and happiness. Maybe it's because I miss the people in the photo. Maybe it's because I'm caught off guard about how much the girls have grown. Maybe it catches my attention because I'm jealous. I would LOVE to vacation with 3 generations of family in Hawaii. Port Clinton in July of this year will just have to do eh Dad? But I'm sure that the photo catches my eye because I have a similar picture downstairs.

Later this summer I'm planning on doing some photojournaling. Preserving the stories behind some family photos. I have a how to book that encourages picking out the photos and spending some time with them. Putting them in a visible spot and really examining the details. So I've started with a random one taken 36 years ago at our summer cabin. It's my uncle, my mom, 2 older cousins and myself. Mom and Uncle T sit in those old aluminum framed lawn chairs with the webbing; the boys and I are in various states of play in front of them. The sun shines in their eyes. My mom is wearing a chenille bathing suit because it is after all 1974. A random picture of every day life, or at least life on vacation. Life on vacation tends to move itself in suspended animation yet go by all too fast. To the little girls in the Hawaii picture it's their Dad and his first Daddy when Daddy was about their age.

Of all the pictures I have to work with I think I chose this one to start photo journaling with because I see just a glimpse of my cousins and myself as we are now in our parents. Like a reflection in shard of mirror. Not in how we physically look like them, but how we are becoming them. Or are they becoming us? Whatever it is for a fleeting second I'm reminded of their humanness. Maybe it's just because they're dead that I usually only think of them as parents. But in this hot summer day picture I'm reminded that they were real people. Parenting was one of their many roles. But in addition to that they were real people. My Mom was a woman who had sex, who missed her Mom and may or may not have loved shopping. (Part of the "deal" of losing a parent at a young age is that you don't get to learn any of these things about them.) As John McCrae said in "Flanders Fields" We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved... Soldiers, my parents, my hospice patients, my homeless brother; all human; all loved and were loved. Easy to forget, good reminder.

The other reason I chose this picture is because my mom and my uncle are dead. They have been for 15 and 28 years. Cancer took them both. But of course they didn't know that back in 1974 and that's what scares and fascinates me. They had no idea what the future would hold. Susan Sontag said “To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.”

Their vulnerability scares me because I can relate to it. How many random pictures do I have that some day my kids will look back on and say "that was before............" "If only we had known then what we know now........." Yes I know that all of this should make me vow to live every day to the fullest. All the great country music song stuff like "Live like you were dying." And some day it will. But for now it freaks me out a bit. Honestly I'm afraid of dying young and leaving my kids behind. I know they'll be ok if that should happen. I'm proof of that; I have cousins who are proof of it, I have a step daughter and I'm still in contact with the children of 2 precious friends who died waaaaaaay too young. Knowing that death at a young age can and does happen makes me confront my own mortality. If it could happen to them it could happen to me. “Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense of our doom. As long as they are around, we can avoid the fact of our mortality; we can still be innocent children.” Jane Howard.

And what if I don't die young? What if I DON'T share the same fate as my mom and uncle? What if I get old? Without a picture of my own mom at 70 then I'll be honest and admit that getting older without her as a road map kind of scares me. As the class of 1990 approaches our "cough" 20th reunion there's a new question on the horizon for the first time; aging. There's a line in another song that says "I still remember when 30 was old." Heck I do too! And honestly I think that 40 is old. But it's gaining on me. I looked up an ailment the other day on line that basically said "well, that's what happens as you approach middle age." MIDDLE AGE? MIDDLE AGE?! Maybe it's my work with hospice that's making me think "when I get old, when I prepare to die I'll do....." How did that question get in my head? It's sort of like 10 years ago going to an endless string of friends weddings and thinking "when I get married I'll............" Or making a birth plan for having babies; this is what I want this is what I don't want.

I've mentioned before "The American Book of Living and Dying" by Groves and Klauser who maintains that the dying are teachers. I'm not at the point with my hospice work or patients where I can say that I've really learned cues on how to live and die well. Yeah obviously I've picked up the belief that hospice is the only way to go, that I want a Do Not Resuscitate order, I want to take my own quilts in and a moving picture frame. But other than that not much yet. Maybe I've been too busy learning the ropes to take the time to be observant but it will come I'm sure. For now the knowledge that I'm mortal and that everyone is human is a start. Loved and were loved..........

Things that go bump and "choo choo" in the night

Every job has it benefits. No not that type of benefits, I mean the perks; the cool stuff. Having a husband who works for an auto repair place we save a lot of money on vehicle maintenance. When I was a child my mom worked for a movie theatre and I got into all movies for free. There's an old family story about how during the war in Scotland my grandma was able to trade away her candy rations for other things because she had a relative who managed a Cadbury plant (By the way, Cadbury's European branch is waaaaaay better than their North American one. But it's recently been sold to Kraft so it doesn't matter. I've read a complaint that said "the same people who make maccaroni and cheese are going to take over cream eggs and flake bars? Are you serious?). My parents volunteer for a thrift shop. The benefit to this is that they get first pick of a lot of "good" stuff. Good in this case refers to Archie comics (yes they still make them), funny hats for our dress up trunk and "the clock."

My Mom picked up a train clock for my boys. Not just any train clock but one that makes LOUD train noises every hour on the hour. It's fun, it's whimsical, I like it. Except for when I'm trying to sleep or hear something. We're having a family dispute about where to put it.

The train reminds me of other odd sound effects I've known. Ok, so I have little boys; I hear A LOT of odd sound effects. But some are more odd or interesting than others.
Everyone has storys of dying toy battery noises. The ones that seem to self activate in the middle of the night. In our house a frantic search to "shut that thing up" usually leads us to a pile of unpacked boxes and random guessing about what one the toy is in. New houses bring their own random noises that you need to find the source of. We traced the last round of flap, thud to the dryer vent being slammed closed in the wind. One time the offender was the neighbors cat that sounded like a crying infant.

Cars make strange noises. My husband the mechanic can diagnose a problem within a few seconds of hearing a sound. Even on cars that we pass on the street. Not all noises are that easy though. Like the time the "seatbelt is not hooked up" alarm went off in our car during a veeeeeery long road trip. It was a blizzard, we were all tense and tired and nothing we could do would shut it up. At least it could have had the decency to be in tune with the Christmas music.

Some sounds need explanations. Like the time my Mom sent a talking doll to a cousin in Australia. Every time you turned the box over the doll cried "Mama!" We had to explain this to the postman.

The postman had to explain something to us once. We lived in a rural area where the local post office was on the main floor of a neighbors house. We got a call one Saturday morning not long before Christmas saying that we needed to come and pick up the mail NOW! I tried to remind them that they weren't open on Saturdays but they told me that in this case they'd open! When I got there the post man made his way to a heavy peice of furnitiure; like a bookcase with a counter, ladden with packages, I had no idea what was going on. What type of package could we be getting? I was very excited as I scanned the piles trying to guess. Our mail wasn't ON the counter, our mail was UNDER that counter. The postman heaved up on one corner and pulled out an envelope that filled the room with noise. It was a musical Christmas card that had become stuck in the on position. The only way to silence it was to put it under something very heavy. I put it in the trunk of my car and laughed all the way home. My Mom was the nostalgic type who never threw out cards not even malfunctioning ones. I'm pretty sure that it came to rest in a desk drawer and for years afterwards we always knew when someone had been in that drawer by the sound of the card.

Korea was full of strange noises. They would probably have been less strange if I had spoken the language but I didn't so until I got used to them I spent most of my time in a state of alarm. The problem is that somehow Koreans have figured out that using a microphone and an amplifier are a great way to market stuff. In the middle of a grocery store you'll find a man with a mic encouraging you to buy produce. (Apparently that's an idea that has caught on here because there's a local grocery store that has sound effects throughout. There's a recording of seagull sounds in the fish department and you can hear chickens as you pick out eggs. Without prewarning this is very stressfull for people with anxiety disorders!) Anyways I hated it........ And if that wasn't bad enough they took the show to the road. Trucks would roll through my neighborhood in the evening with a man and his microphone encouraging me to buy tofu, or socks or whatever. Think of it as the icecream man on steroids selling tofu. There were common noises too that were far too loud. Grandmas chopping vegetables at 6:00 AM. Some combination of their knives and cutting boards made the noise echo throughout the building. Kids with squeakers in their plastic sandles, thumping down the stairs.

Not all the noises were unpleasant though. Walking home in the middle of the afternoon I passed a ground floor appartment and heard music. The tune was familiar but the words weren't. I stood outside the window and hummed along until I found the words. Ahhhhhh a hymm. And the other words were probably prayers. I had stumbled across a ladies bible study. Some noises, like the clock are joyfull (just not at 3:00 AM!)

Marshmallows I have known

I'm not a huge fan of Rachel Ray's. I find her kind of fluffy and I don't happen to have on hand any ingredients for her so called "quick" meals. Besides, she's not a fan of slow cookers because they're too slow. Anybody whos isn't a friend of slow cookers is not a friend of mine! And what's with the "Yum -Oh!" stuff? But I did pick up one her her magazines in the world's best thrift shop for a quarter just for grins. It had the most incredible recipe for toasted marshmallow milkshakes. Probably one of the best milkshakes I've ever had. Little Miss Teen loved it and begged to make another batch right then and there (because 13 year olds live by the creed of "if one is good more is better.") The boys didn't dislike them they just didn't appreciate them as much as we did. What's the scripture about "don't cast your pearls before swine?" http://www.rachaelraymag.com/search/marshmallow%20milkshake?searchSource=hdrbox-Recipes

I love good milkshakes. Thick and preferably fruit flavored. The ones of my childhood were made from fresh raspberries from our own bushes and honey. Toffs is a local dairy that makes great ones. I really like ice cream and should probably give it it's own blog entry sometime.

I'm sort of neutral about marshmallows. I like them well enough, not well enough to eat raw and plain as a snack like my family does. My Huggyband loves them and also used to love to play a game called "chubby bunny" (seeing who can stuff the most marshmallows in their mouth at once) with his youth group. I can't stand Peeps and I don't like marshmallow filled chocolate stuff. But the kids sure do. I guess I'd say that I prefer them in baked goods. If I can find my moms recipe for marshmallow chocolate/marshmallow butterscotch cookies I'll post them. I don't know that I've ever eaten marshmallow cream. Americans seem to be hung up on something called "Fluff." http://www.marshmallowfluff.com/pages/homepage.html. Apparently it's like marshmallow cream only better? I think I've seen it in grocery stores here. Fluffernutter sandwiches fluff + peanut butter seem to be some sort of American icon/staple/delicacy. You can make it at home but it sounds complicated and involves raw egg whites in case you're squeamish about that sort of thing. http://www.grouprecipes.com/58165/home-made-marshmallow-fluff.html There's also something called "Amish peanut butter" that involves peanut butter, marshmallow cream and corn syrup. I love that stuff but it's really sweet so a little bit goes a long way. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amish-Peanut-Butter/Detail.aspx

My best marshmallow story is of planting them on bushes in Korea so my friends 4 year old daughter could pick them. We had the day off for some obscure Korean holiday (perhaps election day? On election day there everybody gets the day off. And they have city, province and national elections all in the same year, all 1 month apart from each other) and we were bored and broke. I must have just read this story by Nancy Sweetland http://www.janice142.com/JoyPage/Marshmallows.htm about planting marshmallows on bushes for her kids to pick (well where do you think they come from???) and was inspired to try it myself. STOP NOW, FOLLOW THE LINK AND READ THAT STORY! So I did. I grabbed a bag of marshmallows and staked out a corner of a local park. Of course the Koreans thought I was crazy but what else is new? Young M probably thought that everything else was odd in Korea, why not this? So at the appointed time young M and her Mom came along and picked a bucket full of marshmallows that we then took back to my apartment and put in hot chocolate. I also seem to remember listening to an impromptu saxophone concert in the park that day. Very cool.

But as far as I'm concerned the best way to eat marshmallows is roasted! Roasting involves fire and fire stresses me out. I'm all for candle light church services as long as I don't have to hold the candle. I'd prefer to light birthday candles at the table rather than to walk into a room with them. I'm thrilled that they now make battery operated tea lights. I don't like fire, (I'm surprisingly ok with fireplace fires. And yes I do watch the fireplace channel on TV, in fact I bought a DVD of it! I have great memories of watching it with some friends, all curled up under blankets on a cold winters night. Now my kids request that I put it in) And I DO love campfires.

My first campfires were at our family cabin. The cabin is a sacred place to me. In my head it becomes so magical and mystical that some days I forget that it actually exists. It's been 10 years since I've been back but occasionally I'll catch glimpses of it in the photos of family members still enjoying it and I remember that it's real. It's still there the problem is that I'm not and that kind of makes me sad. That's what memories are for. An oh the memories we made! Canoeing the lake, catching turtles, growing up. Campfires....

My second best memory of campfires is of camping as a young adult. And oh how we did camp! I was blessed to be a part of an amazing young adults group. We spent a lot of our summers camping. Memories of those camping trips probably need there own blog entry. Just like my friendships, memories of those trips have gotten sweeter and more precious over time. There was the time we went camping in the rain and it turned out to be one of the very best trips. I was baptized on that trip. You will never convince me that a church baptism is anywhere near as fun as one outside. But at least church baptisms are warmer. The problem with summers in BC is that there is just a short time when the water in lakes and rivers warms up to an enjoyable temperature. The first weekend in July up at Wells Gray is NOT one of those times! I remember the total chaos and disorganization of just getting there. Figuring out when and where we were going (5 zillion lakes in BC and my youth pastor always picked the ones farthest from Kamloops.) packing (it was my job to pack the duct tape, lawn chair and the food that most of the others didn't plan), getting lost.......... We'd get there and there would be a scramble to build an elaborate tarp system over the camp. For some reason this always involved someone climbing a tree.......... And then we'd hike. Hiking with my young adults group is another story for another day (a horror story that is!). After that there would be the mandatory burned dinner and finally (probably after another forced 10 km march) we would settle down to a campfire and some of the best worship music I've ever heard. Just as I'm convinced that indoor baptisms aren't as fun as ones outdoors (because I was baptized on one of those trips, in a freezing cold lake in early July. Brrrrr!) I'm secretly convinced that worship music sounds better outdoors as well. Besides, with indoor worship you can't really have s'mores, and roasted marshmallows, s'mores, great worship and even better friends all kind of go together. Thanks for the memories gang! Oh and here's what we discovered: s'mores are much easier to make if you make them with Nutella!

Marshmallows and memories; pretty sweet!

Jesus woud make a milkshake

I started volunteering for a local hospice last week. As far as picking an organization to volunteer with goes, it was a pretty obvious choice because like I said my family has been involved with them for the last 15 years. In terms of "why now?" it was also pretty obvious. At the turn of the year I realized that I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack or complication of serving at my church. I am all about practical ministry. I believe 100% in the power of prayer but I also believe in the old adage of "preach the gospel at all times; use words when necessary." The church we were at made that hard. There were few opportunities to love on people in a practical manner and what there was required training and long term time commitments. Mind you hospice does too. I went through a 6 week course and will do another 5 week one as soon as it's offered. I also had a criminal record check. But that was it, no committees, no selection process; just go and care for people.

So last Saturday I had my first volunteer shift at the hospice wing of a local hospital. As it was my first shift I got to shadow a couple of experienced volunteers. The first lady was an about to retire kindergarten teacher. I gave her my Easter Bunny purse. I had picked it up the day before at my favorite thrift shop for $1.79 knowing that hospice people would love it and also knowing that if anybody admired it I would give it to them (not the first time I've done that.) Sure enough the teacher admired it and I gave it to her, shuffling the stuff that was in it to a zip lock bag. She laughed and told me about the time when a fellow teacher admired her Valentine's Day skirt and asked to borrow it. The teacher took it off and gave it to her at the end of the day. She wore her under slip and raincoat home.

The second volunteer I shadowed was probably one of the kindest people I've met in a long time. She just loved on the patients. Love oozed from her. One of the patients was a grandpa and at some point in our shift one of his daughters and granddaughters, and family dog came for a visit. Yes pets of all sorts are welcome in hospice. The workers even find loving homes for them once their owners pass. The grand daughter was about 12 maybe? Too old for the toy room down the hall. She was bored, as I'm sure most people visiting hospice, or even hospital patients are. After you've given the latest news there really isn't much to say or do. Now I'm reading "The American Book of Living and Dying" which I'm sure will argue that there's lots to do with the dying; they are teachers after all. But for the most part.......... Basically you're waiting. In hospitals you're waiting for the patient to get better and get out of there. In hospices you're waiting for the end of life to come. Waiting is exhausting. Mentally and physically taxing.

The volunteer I was with offered to make the girl a milkshake. A small well stocked kitchen with ice cream and a blender would make it possible. The little girl shyly refused but it's a gesture that I don't think I'll ever forget. Love is making a child a milkshake while she sits by her grandfather's bedside. There are no rules, no policy's and procedures, no permission needed. Just love on a child who's probably feeling out of place and scared. Just love.

It reminded me of "the" Tony Campolo story. You know the one where he threw a birthday party for a hooker? Don't know it? You're amongst the few then. Seems back in the day I had a pastor that must have been especially fond of Compolo because twice over the course of a few years he told the birthday party for a hooker story. After hearing him tell it the second time I left for a youth conference where Tony Campolo just happened to be speaking. And what story do you suppose he told? Yep, the birthday party for a hooker story.

So the story goes like this. Tony, who's a well known (especially to pastors from Saskatchewan) Christian speaker found himself at a divey restaurant in Honolulu at 3:30 in the morning one day. In walks a bunch of hookers and he here's one named Agnes (I'll pause while some of you smile at that because I AM NOT making that up) say that it's her birthday the next day. Well Tony decided right then and there to throw her a birthday party the next day. Sure enough he shows up with cake and streamers the whole bit. The hooker is of course moved and Tony of course prays for her.

When he's finished, Harry (the restaurant owner) leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?"

In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."

Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."
http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Bible/Agnes.htm

I've been through a lot lately. Stuff that makes me question God, his wisdom, his character. But one thing I do know is that if Jesus were here he'd throw a birthday party for a hooker and make a 12 year old a chocolate milk shake.

Keeping your boots on

I read an interesting article in January's Popular Mechanics. Yes I read Popular Mechanics, my Dad sends that McClain's and Chatelaine in and I read all 3 of them cover to cover. You know you're getting old when you read McClain's.

Anyways the article was titled "The Deadly Season" by Michael Finkel and was about ski patrolers setting off preventative avalanches. Ski patrolers......... smile.......... Even though I lived at the base of Sun Peaks (Todd Mountain back in the day) for years and years I've never actually skied. But I'm smiling because I've known a lot of ski patrolers. And mine rescuers and firefighters, and ambulance attendants and industrial first aiders. All incredible people doing an incredibly hard job. Hard and sometimes dangerous. All industries have workplace loss;."In 2008, 1036 workplace deaths were recorded in Canada down from 1055 the previous year. This represents more than 2 deaths every single day. Another 942, 478 were injured or became ill." http://www.ccohs.ca/events/mourning/ America lost 5, 071 the same year. http://www.bls.gov/iif/ Sad, sad, sad. The CCOHS site has a great article about International Day of mourning.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh but the rescuers. The ones who put their life on the line to save others. I had the privileged of walking amongst them for many years. I taught first aid, I did first aid and was involved in competitions. Rescue training is an on going thing. It's a lot of long hard hours, sacrifice and self discipline. Check out this article for what I'm sure will tell a story many of my friends can relate to. http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/06/05/BeAParamedic/index.html?commentsfilter=0 The average career span for a paramedic in Los Angeles is 8 years. http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-california-metro-areas/341705-1.html That's life for the professionals, I've probably met more volunteer rescuers than I have professionals. And it's risky. The first thing we're taught is to ensure no danger to others or ourselves. I ran many a drill where there was a hidden hazard and I was cautioned not to enter the scene until it was secure. "Nothing like becoming a victim yourself and needing to be rescued" I was always told. But it happens. Statistics were surprisingly hard to come up with but here's what I found: Between 1992 and 1997, the study finds 114 EMTs and paramedics were killed on the job, more than half of them in ambulance crashes. That's an estimated 12.7 fatalities per 100,000 EMS workers, making it close to the death rates for police (14.2) and firefighters (16.5) in the same time period, the study says. And it's more than twice the national average for all workers (5.0). http://www.emsedsem.org/Prior%20Articles/EMS_Fatalities%20from%20JEMS.pdf

And that's just the day to day rescues never mind the catastrophes. We lost 343 firefighters and paramedics plus 23 police officers on 9/11. Someday I'll tell you about where I was on that horrible day. But because I was soooooo far removed from the crisis it took me days, possibly weeks to realize that being part of the family of emergency responders I had lost brothers and sisters.

The funny thing is that I was a terrible first aider, I lacked maturity, thoroughness and competitiveness but I learned a lot. I've always said that one of the reasons I flourished in Asia was because of my first aid training. No it wasn't the actual skills of how to strap someone to a spine board that I used but the problem solving skills were invaluable. Living overseas is a constant stream of problems to be solved and I used everything I knew about thinking on my feet. And I had great, great teachers. Like any job I might have struggled with some of the personalities of my co-workers but never their integrity. My memory is filled with great colorful characters who knew how to lift a car off a patient and soothe a child's scraped knee. All in a days work. I learned sportsmanship and compassion but most of all I learned team work. I haven't done first aid in probably 10 years. I'm guessing that my first competition was in 1996 but I am still close friends with every person on that team and all the teams after it. They are my go to people. The ones I feel safe with. On the other hand I've lived in 3 states other than this one in the last 7 years and I'm only friends with a few people in all of those moves. Heck I've been in 2 churches in the last 3 years and I'm not still friends with ANY of the of the people there! Maybe that has to do with the amount of trust you put in people. Or the trust you HAVE to put in your co-workers when your working together under less than ideal circumstances. Maybe it has to do with the type of people the industry attracts. I don't know, but I know that I miss it.

The Popular Mechanics article attests to the closeness of ski patrolers. It talks about the atmosphere in the patrol locker room in Big Sky resort in Montana at the end of the day: "Beers are distributed as the afternoon wanes, but no one pops the top, or starts to change out of uniform, until the last of the on-duty patrolers enter the locker room. That's a strict patroler tradition, I'm told. They won't even take their boots off until everyone is safely home."

Dang I envy that! In my craving for a society or a group of friends that looks out for each other, not relaxing until everyone is safe and accounted for means a lot to me. Actually a metaphor for the church reaching the lost as well. To care about each other enough to want everyone to be safe and not to relax until they are. If your boots are on it means that you're prepared to go back out if needed. Here's to the rescuers. And here's to keeping your boots on.
　
　

Panties for Passover

Memories of Easter.

First there were Easter baskets hidden in the dishwasher. The Easter Bunny a.k.a worlds best dad used to come up with great hiding places and the dishwasher was one of the most memorable. Unlike my kids I only got candy in my basket, although I do remember a large, inflatable pink bunny. Now, what goes in baskets and how big to make them is a surprisingly controversial topic amongst my friends. The "no candy" camp prefers mainly toys, the "it's not a big deal" camp prefers mainly candy no toys. I've been stashing bits and pieces of things since Boxing Day sales, not that I mind candy, we have plenty of that too, it's just that I'm creative and like gift giving occasions. And I'm a great shopper as well so I really enjoy it.

Speaking of gift giving occasions, I've had to create my own. I have no idea if Passover is a gift giving occasion or not but come next Tuesday in my house it's going to be "Panties for Passover." See, my Huggyband's birthday is in December and somehow as a child he was traumatized by combined birthday/Christmas presents and worse yet underwear and socks as presents. So he's pretty adamant that underclothes of any variety don't count as gifts. I'm not. I'm practical. And since I can't give them as Christmas or birthday presents I've had to come up with creative reasons to give them, hence "Socks for Hanukkah" and "Panties for Passover." What that means is that last Hanukkah everyone in my family got a new package of socks lovingly wrapped in blue tissue paper. Fortunately they all laughed. Now here we are at Easter and since I can't stuff underwear in baskets I'm just borrowing Passover as an excuse to give it to them.

But meanwhile back to the past. Easters as a kid where pretty routine, baskets, frilly dresses, church and a ham dinner. No family nearby meant that it was usually just the 3 of us and that was fine. Everything is fine when there are chocolate eggs and trifle involved. When I was 7 I think we billeted hockey players for an annual international tournament. Billeting is a Canadian thing. Americans, at least my husband, have never heard of the word or the concept. Anyways, it means to put someone up for a night or so. What the kids would call "couch surfing" now. Good excuse to show some hospitality.

That hockey tournament would wind it's way back in to my life in the mid 90s. St. John's was responsible for providing first aid coverage at every single one of those hockey games throughout the entire tournament. Hockey in Kamloops in the spring; freezing cold arenas, early mornings, lots of coffee, lots of injuries, great people. One year in particular stands out. The nephew of a beloved "may as well be" uncle was coming from Saskatchewan to play in the tourney. The uncle and his family were coming in to town for it as well so it only made sense that I offer to do coverage for that particular team so that I could be of service and hang out with the family. The problem was that I had never met this hockey playing "may as well be"cousin or his dad. My plan for the very first morning was to scan the crowd for the man who looked the most like my uncle, introduce myself to him and we'd be all set. Well, as an only child there's some things I'll never be able to figure out, such as how siblings can look and act so different from each other. None of the parents of the Saskatchewan team looked anything like my uncle. My Uncle is a small guy and all of these men were big. My second choice was to talk to the friendliest looking parent and get them to point me in the right direction. Well the second choice turned out to be the right choice because when I told the friendly looking man who I was and why I was looking for Mr. G he laughed and said "Cass I AM Mr. G! You're uncle is my brother!' Laughter all around, soon my uncle and his family joined us and we were on our way to the next game. Turns out that the hockey playing cousin was playing with a broken arm and really shouldn't have been playing but it was a good opportunity for scouts to see him. It was also a good opportunity for the other teams to take advantage of his injury. We all watched him be cross checked into the boards and watched as a ref DIDN'T watch. My Uncle's family is French Canadian; they're all fluent in it including a young cousin in French immersion. When A was cross checked both his Dad and Uncle let forth a stream of curses in French and started yelling at the ref in French. My youngest cousin was standing in front of me and I clamped my hands over her ears to protect them. Good times, good times.

Easter would get even better when I discovered God and the amazing play that helped me find him. Tell you what? Let me work privately at the memories of Alive Again for a while and then I'll share them. Stay tuned!

3rd floor please

The 37 1/2 year old version of me got on an elevator and pressed the button for the third floor today. It was only my second time on in In Patient Unit at the hospice; but it for sure won't be my last time. Today I sat down with a volunteer co-ordinator to discuss my areas of interest in volunteering with hospice and as soon as the paper work comes back I can start. In the mirror of the elevator I caught a glimpse of the 22 year old me, who all those years ago also punched an upward number and headed to a hospice office.

At the time I was on my way to what I know would call an anticipatory grief counsellor. My mom had just been diagnosed with cancer and she was dying fast. It has been said that you don't find hospice, hospice finds you. You could say the same thing about death; nobody goes looking for it, it finds you. Death had made it's customary appearances in my childhood. Lurking in the corners as it often does not really affecting you but just letting you know that it's there. There was the death of a distant grandma, then 2 uncles in the same year none of who's funerals I went to. When I was 16 a favorite friend committed suicide; death rode up boldly to center stage of my life. It was a collective experience, I can't remember the death of M without talking about it in terms of "we." We standing for all my classmates. We lost a friend. And like the rabbits in Watership Down we clung to each other in fear of death personified like they did in fear of The Black Rabbit of Inle. Then as quickly as he had come death slipped away again. His shadow wouldn't sneak up on me until late college.

It was the equivalent of the literary device called foreshadowing; something happened that would give clues about what was to happen. We were doing group presentations for a geography class I think. It was the morning of the presentation and one of my friends in my group didn't show up. It was looooooong before the age of texting and we had no idea where she was. I was frustrated and disappointed. A week later she returned and told us that her Mom had died rather unexpectedly. "Mom's die?" how sad. It was so sad that I went home that night and discussed with my Mom how sad it would be for her to die. A few months later my Mom WAS dead. A few years later my Dad would marry that same friend from college's aunt and we would become step cousins. Foreshadowing........

In my head there's a line or memory of demarcation. A memory that stands as the last normal, stable thing before the world crashed around me. I wonder if every crisis has that? Has the "one moment we were doing X and then the phone rang" moment. One moment I was trying to shut the morning news off and then........... One moment I was arguing with my husband and then.............. One moment we were laughing in the rain and then................ Yeah, the major stuff comes with those moments. So one moment I was registering for summer school at college. Listening to Garth Brook's "Ain't Goin' Down "Til The Sun Comes Up" on a yellow Sony walkman and the next moment my Mom was being diagnosed with cancer and told that she only had 2 months to live.

I was an only child, and while we didn't have a diagnosis then it's clear to me now that I had depression back then. In a move that would change the course of all of our lives my Dad got me an appointment counsellor. Death had found my family. He had us in his cross hairs. Hospice also found us. One of those organizations that you have no idea even exist until you need them and then you're sure glad they're there. 5 years ago my oldest son was medi-vaced to a hospital in another state upon his birth. Ronald McDonald House stepped in and gave us a place to stay. That's another organization that you don't know anything about until you need to.
I don't remember the counsellors name and only some of what we talked about but I remember feeling very relieved when I left one of our sessions. You know how in the movies families gather at the deathbed of a loved one and everyone is happy and close? Here's something you don't see in the movies; sometimes families argue all through a death. Arguments so big doors are slammed. Sometimes old sins are dragged out. Sometimes scape goats are created. Sometimes families fall apart and people leave. My family was one of those. I was the grieving person who wanted to talk about it. Who wanted to know exactly how long my mom had and how the death would happen. I dared to imagine that my life would continue without my Mom and that thought scared me. Yes I was self centered, yes some nights I was more concerned about what I was going to wear to a party than my moms health but that was ok. Hospice told me so. Hospice told me that it was ok to grieve the way I was grieving and that talking about death didn't make it happen. When my Mom died 9 weeks after diagnosis a hospice volunteer met me at the house and she was the only person I let into my room that night. Hospice pulled me through.

Shortly after that my Dad joined the board of directors at hospice. They went on to build a 12 bed free standing hospice house. Both my parents volunteer there regularly as well as for their thrift shop and in other areas. A year ago a childhood friend of mine came to live out his last days in "the house" as we call it. Honestly, that caught me a little off guard. While I know that Vancouver has a children's hospice called Canuck Place, I still equate hospice, or maybe just long term dying with the old. C wasn't old. He couldn't be, his birthday is the day before mine. In my head the house was built so that people like my mom wouldn't have to die in a hospital nor a living room. It wasn't built for extraordinary young men. But I'm sure glad it was there. Last week a friends mom died. She was an amazing lady and although I'm sad that she died I'm thrilled that she died in hospice. It seemed a fitting and dignified end to a life well lead. I miss you Jaquie.........

And so all these years and all these states later my work with hospice begins. I hope that one day years from now someone will say of my bereavement counselling that "she got me through." Comforting from where you have been comforted right? Giving back.......... It's going to be hard I'm sure; but worth it. My current work with doing began today by getting back into an elevator.

Another blog about bacon

Another blog about bacon? "But Cass you haven't written about bacon before" you say. No, I haven't but the whole dang world has!

Here's how we got started on the topic; I was cleaning! That in itself is a miracle. Lately I seem to be on some sort of spring cleaning fling thing. Not exactly cleaning with cleaning stuff more like sorting. It's fair enough to say that lately I've derived a lot of pleasure from sorting out stuff like drawers and boxes. It's probably symbolic of an inner need to get rid of what I don't need any more and keep the stuff that matters in my new mental world order. Sooooooooo........... I was cleaning out a drawer and came across a bunch of page a day calendars that I had picked up in late January of last year for a dollar each. One was an "fascinating web site a day" calendar. I had intended to actually check each recommended site out every day, but then as we all know life happens. So the other day I pulled off all the pages of the sites that looked interesting and have been going through them; I'll give you the highlights later. That brought me to this site: http://www.thinkgeek.com/
it has a lot of cool, geekish stuff that I'll also review later. But what caught my eye first was the staggering array of bacon products.

Ladies and gentlemen may I present to you bacon salt: makes everything from vegetables to ice cream taste like bacon. I'd use it on popcorn or I could just buy the bacon flavored popcorn and save myself the trouble of shaking. There's a bacon flavored mayonnaise that I would definitely go for, but I would think twice about bacon flavored gum balls, breath mints and lip gloss. Bacon flavored jelly beans intrigue me.

I'd heard that bacon was a big deal but I'd never really thought about how big of a deal it was. I mean I like bacon a lot. I don't like cooking it so I always use the pre cooked stuff but that's ok. Last year I was at a party and the discussion turned to how bacon makes everything taste better. Want proof? Type the word "bacon" into this site http://www.grouprecipes.com/
and you'll come up with 1206 recipes including one for "pig candy" (sugar and spice coated bacon) that I'd like to try some day. . DON'T do as I did and just type the word "bacon" into a search engine or you'll come up with a lot of uninteresting references to Sir Frances Bacon and other guys with the unfortunate last name. Do feel free to stop at any site offering mention of Kevin Bacon. (Yes by the way I am secretly thrilled that Little Miss Teen has discovered the original Footloose movie; as opposed to the remake due out this year, which gives me an excuse to watch Mr. Bacon). If you want writings about bacon the food not the man, check out the blogosphere. There I found http://www.baconfreak.com/
it has bacon band aids, bacon flavored toothpicks, bacon scented air fresheners, and something called "man bait" maple bacon flavored lollipops. Can't decide on what to eat? Check out their bacon of the month club and of course a whole swack of recipes. Want more? http://www.baconunwrapped.com/
boasts a bacon rap song courtesy of youtube. The fine folks at http://www.iheartbacon.com/
review all things bacon including bacon peanut brittle which does sound yummy to me. There's another bacon themed blog at http://baconbaconblog.com/wordpress/tag/bacon
and over at http://baconshow.blogspot.com/
they are apparently producing "one bacon recipe per day, every day, forever." To think that Stephanie O'Dea thought she had a hard time coming up with 365 crock pot recipes.

Speaking of Steph I'll leave you with one of my favorite bacon recipes from her site: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/06/crockpot-bacon-and-cheese-chicken.html

Taking another stab at trapping a leprechaun and maybe some luck

And sooooooooooooooooo we move on......................

I remember last St. Patrick's Day. I made a Reuben sandwich thingy that the adults liked but the kids didn't. The washing machine had broken down because I had kept overloading it but we found a great repair guy to come out. We tried to catch a leprechaun in a homemade trap using Lucky Charms cereal as the bait. We didn't get him but he left us gold chocolate coins instead.
And now here we are a year later. Where we are is about as far from last year as Ireland is from Egypt. Years ago, maybe just before I found my Huggyband I was in a ladies bible study and the question arose about whether or not we truly wanted to know the future. The older ladies insisted that they were glad they hadn't known their destinations before they had started down some roads. But me? I insisted that I did want to know the future because all I wanted to know at the time was if I'd ever get married and have kids. As if just having or knowing that would make everything ok. Well............ having them doesn't make everything ok it's a whole new ball game. A year ago would I have wanted to know the truth about what was to come? Absolutely not. In the words of Jack Nicholson "you can't handle the truth." It's been a very, very, long year as if the leprechaun who visited brought us bad luck, cursed us even with the horrible, awful year. But here we are again, safe and sound for now, we're not in a worse place just a different place and the journey to get here was hard. Planning another leprechaun trap this time using duck tape. And once again I'm planning a corned beef meal that I'm sure nobody will eat. As I prepare that meal I sift through the memories of the last year; again trying not to waste the pain and see the lessons.

One of the lessons I've been thinking about is the difference between rescuing and protecting. Somebody told me a few months ago that he wasn't going to rescue me and that shame on me for always wanting to be rescued. I'm not so sure I see what's wrong with rescuing. If I force myself to see the other side then I see that maybe a small amount of struggle is allowable? unavoidable? That's where the lessons are learned? It doesn't excuse others from inaction though. If you're not going to or just can't RESCUE somebody then you must at least PROTECT them. In hospice training I learned to protect the dying. Some patients in hospice care have Do Not Resuscitate orders, which basically means just to let nature take it's course when the heart stops. For many, many reasons I won't do CPR; a skill I once used to teach. I can't rescue my patients from the dying process but I can protect them. Protect them from things like bed sores and minor infections and visits by nosy neighbors.

I think of how that applies to my own depression. Last summer when the suicidal pull was at its worst I couldn't be rescued. Nobody could make the decision to live for me; that push and pull was all my own; nobody else was responsible for it. But when my struggle with depression became public and others judged and said damaging stuff and then left I sure would have liked to have been protected. When your self loathing takes you to suicide then you need to be protected from yourself (yes I know I should have been hospitalized) but no one can do that for you. There does need to be people who will protect you from others.

When we were grieving the loss of our first son we needed to be protected; we needed somebody to run interference for us. Not to rescue us from the pain of grief but to protect us while we healed up a bit.

And then I think how that applies to how we treat others in general. What if we all just tried to protect each other? Look out for? Defend? Cover each others backs? Guard them from the rough things in life while they deal with their own stuff? Because in the end aren't we all dealing with stuff? Aren't we all just a little fragile, in danger of being hurt? And wouldn't we all benefit from people making sure that we don't feel any more pain than necessary?

Not such a golden moment

Something happened this weekend. Who am I kidding? A lot happened this weekend, especially on Sunday and especially in Vancouver. Hockey gold! It was a day to remember! Unfortunately for me living on the other side of the other country it was also a day to remember but for much different reasons. . Unfortunately I missed the game. Being the good Canadian that I am I skipped hockey to go on a peacekeeping mission. As sure as i was that Canada would win gold that night, I was equally sure that I would step out of a meeting victorious. Reconciled. Restored. It wasn't that I wanted to win and I wanted the other side to loose, I thought for sure we'd all win. I thought we'd talk, we'd hug, we'd move on.
　
Well it's a good thing Canada won or the night would have been a total waste. I took a risk. Those who love me warned me that it could go horribly wrong, that it could do more harm than good. They were right, I left more wounded than when I arrived. I left the meeting in darkness and despair with the chorus of Brad Paisley's "What if she's an angel?" running through my head.

What if she's an angel sent here from heaven
And she's making certain that you're doing your best
To take the time to help one another
Brother are you going to pass that test
You can go on with your day to day
Trying to forget what you saw in her face
Knowing deep down it could have been her saving grace
What if she's an angel

Do I think I'm an angel? GOOD GRIEF NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I think that God used me Sunday night (and the 7 months before it) to show a certain group of people where they need to learn compassion? Absolutely.

It got me thinking about the angels in my life that have been brought to show me my weaknesses. Jesus said "whatever you do for the least of these you do for me." How have I responded to the least of these? Have they come to test compassion and love? Are they God with skin on? Waiting to see how I'll react and fill their needs? It's the other side of what we normally think of the people who help us being angels or Jesus with skin on........ I'm afraid if that's the case then I've failed a lot of tests. Good thing God has compassion on me....

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given is not to waste pain. There's a German saying about paying the teachers toll. The teachers toll is the pain or experience involved in learning a lesson. I sure hope that the size of the lesson is supposed to be relative to the toll paid because I paid a lot. Last night in a hospice training session we talked about not asking "why me?" But instead, "if it has to be me what can I learn?" So what have I learned from the past 7 months of pain? Too much to write about. One of the things is learning from others mistakes. I was just going to quote a line in the following poem but it's just waaaaaaaay too good not to share the whole thing:

The Women On My Journey
Rev. Melissa M. Bowers
To the women on my journey
Who showed me the ways to go and ways not to go,
Whose strength and compassion held up a torch of light
and beckoned me to follow,
Whose weakness and ignorance darkened the path and encouraged me
to turn another way.
To the women on my journey
Who showed me how to love and how not to live,
Whose grace, success and gratitude lifted me into the fullness
of surrender to God,
Whose bitterness, envy and wasted gifts warned me away
from the emptiness of self-will
To the women on my journey
Who showed me what I am and what I am not,
Whose love, encouragement and confidence held me tenderly
and nudged me gently,
Whose judgement, disappointment and lack of faith called me
to deeper levels of commitment and resolve.
To the women on my journey who taught me love
by means of both darkness and light.
To these women I say bless you and thank you from the
depths of my heart,for I have been healed and set free
through your joy and through your sacrifice.
　
I know never to say never. My friends and I joke that we did our best parenting BEFORE we became parents. It sounds harsh to say that I would never treat anybody the way I was treated. So let me put it in the form of a prayer.

Dear God, let me recognize the angels you send into my life. And to treat them as if they were in fact you. To understand that hurting people hurt people and that you came for them. Help me to see past the anger to the pain and know that you're big enough to handle it. Only the hands strong enough to be nailed to the cross are strong enough to handle the weight of the world. You are not scared or threatened by anger; you don't see it or the pain that causes it as sin. You came for the sick not the healthy, the sinner not the saved. You, and me as your servant came to meet people where they're at, in all the mud and the muck that isn't of their own making even if I think it is. Besides, you'll help them clean up and you'll love them until they are. Help me to remember that Jesus had friends in messy low places, and if I want to be more like him I'd better start relating more to those low places than to clean high churches. A ship is safe in the harbour but that's not what ships are for. As a former missionary I always took the command to go into the world to mean to go overseas. Today I understand that the world may be waiting for me at the home of a divorced friend.

God help me to do more sacred listening than compulsive fixing. There's healing in listening. In all situations you would be there listening, understanding, knowing. True pull up a chair and turn off your cell phone listening. There's healing in crying with someone. Nobody should cry alone, emotions are a gift from you and they are not to be feared or shamed away. Help me to preach the gospel at all times but use words when necessary. Sometimes people need a slice of pizza more than they need a quote from proverbs. God let the gospel I preach be that of unconditional love. Help me to remember that you love the sinner but hate the sin and that it's not always my job to point our the sin but it is always, always my job to love. Help me to remember the words of 1 Corinthians 13 that tell us what love is and not remember what love is not. Forgive me Lord of all the things that I have done in what I called love.

More later. For now I'm off to reconcile with some angels.

Diary of a snow day: 5:00 PM

Still snowing.

Had a nap with the boys and that helped. Not having to worry about dinner helps as well.

Watched Ellen today. She had an old lady on the phone who said that sometimes going out isn't worth the effort of putting your bra on. I can soooooooo relate. In fact I've decided I'm not going to wear a bra past the age of 65. Some days I'd like to push that number up to 40. My 69 year old mother in law fell shaving her legs in the shower. That made me decide that I'm not going to shave mine past the age of 50.

I'm choosing to do something hard tommorrow. Hard and risky. May be the right thing though. Or else it's going to be an epic fail.................... Trying to gather up the courage to do it. Hope that the weather co-operates. I had to do something similarly hard back at American Thanksgiving and I prayed for a snowstorm that didn't come. Here it is. God answers prayers, just 3 months late!

Diary of a snow day: noon

Well........... things are better than I thought they would be at this point. A great morning snuggle with Little BunnyFooFoo improved my mood. Little Miss Teen is in the best mood she's been in for a few days and that helps. I got the basement cleaned and that helps too.

Field trip was cancelled. If I can't have fun then I guess it makes me feel better that nobody is having fun. No fun for us tonight as game night has been cancelled as well. That leaves me with just our share of the potluck for dinner. Huggyband is going to pick up fried chicken to go with it.

Nap time for the boys, some down time for me. Maybe a little webkinz? Should start Nanimo bars.

Diary of a snow day 7:30 AM

It's a snow day. I've said before that the whole concept is a little foreign to me because back home we would have gone to school in this but apparently it's a big storm since all the schools this side of the state are closed. And I'm mad!

First of all Little Miss Teen has the day off for an in service so she would have been home anyways. But we're not supposed to be home today.

My depression is having a pretty severe flair these days. Some days I don't want to get out of my pjs and leave the house. Other days I'm desperate to do go somewhere, anywhere! Can you guess what kind of day today is regardless of the weather?

We are supposed to travel to a city an hour away for a field trip to a police station. Please God let this be the only time I see my boys in the back of a police car. Then run some errands like getting Little Miss Teens bangs cut. It sounds like a small thing but when you have depression small things ARE big things! Besides I've been trying for weeks to get them done and haven't found the time. Don't suggest that I do them myself because I always cut them too short. And, I was supposed to have a lunch date with a friend. I've been trying to set up this lunch date for the past 6 weeks and I'm desperate for adult conversation so this just isn't good.

The house is half clean. Well...... maybe only a third. If I were in a glass half full mood I would say that being stuck at home today gives me more time to clean. Right now my thought is that having everyone at home means I'm going to have to work hard to make sure they don't mess up the clean areas. You want something to stay clean leave the house.

More guilt. I think if I was a good mom I'd do creative things with my kids on snow days or every day for that matter. I'd make cookies and pull out the art supplies. Honestly my goal for the day is to keep everyone from killing each other and the house standing. I'll employ whatever means necessary including let them have the TV all day (so what else is new) and early nap times. Popcorn is my go to snack on days like this.

The good news is that in anticipation of this storm Huggyband stopped and picked up diapers and a few things for lunch so I don't have to go out today. The other good news is that the church 5 minutes down the road is having family game night. It's a straight shot down the highway so I don't see why we couldn't make it. If they cancel I will cry because that's what I was planning on doing for dinner.

Stay tuned!

Loving unconditionally in a disposable society

More about moving on.

More about letting things go too easily. And more wondering if that scares me. What are the costs? What does that say about us as a society? Who suffers when we give up on things?

We're having company on Sunday and I'm on a cleaning kick. It's a rare thing so just go with it. I decided to wash the shower curtain liner. Sometimes I have washed them and other times I have bought new. This time I saw an article in a magazine about how you just soak it in the washing machine with some vinegar, wash as usual and away you go. Yes! Away you go to Walmart to buy a new one because that one somehow dissolved in the washing machine!

The decision about whether to fix something myself or buy a new one is usually pretty hard for me and for the most part decisions just aren't. I think because decisions like that involve money and guilt both of which I'm bad at. For the most part I'm cheap; cheap is trendy now so that's good. And it's real good because as a one income family we have to be cheap. So with the shower curtain it made sense to try to wash it myself rather than buy a new one. But then there's the time factor and time really is money. Ok, so the shower curtain sat in the machine for a couple of hours and it didn't really cost me much time so it's a bad example. But last year when we moved we bought new burner pans rather than clean them ourselves time was money because we were short on time and those suckers were black. Cheapo replacement pans were cheap. This week I've thrown away 3 pairs of Mr. Moose's jeans because they had holes in the knees. I'm sure that fixing them with an iron on patch would only have taken a few minutes, unless you count the time it would have taken me to find the ironing board...... I don't think my boys have ever seen me iron and wouldn't know what to do with an ironing board unless it was to use as a surf board and slide down the stairs. The guilt comes in when I start to think that if I were a good mommy I would patch those jeans. My Huggyband would disagree with that one because he views anything homemade as being of less quality, so to keep his pride in tact he would have thrown them out too. Thanks to the world's best thrift shop, kids clothes are cheap and easily replaceable so tossing the jeans was a fairly easy thing. Replacing the shower curtain became a necessity. For the most part given the choice between cleaning and fixing or replacing we almost always choose the later. Unless of course it's computers or cars because my Huggyband is gifted with them and for that I am grateful.

Everybody has their own decision making process about what gets fixed and what gets tossed. I remember a lady who scandalized the parenting boards that I read by admitting that she'd rather throw out leftover dinner, Tupperware and all, if it got nasty in the fridge rather than empty it and wash it. The more I think about it the more I think that we place pride and value on fixing something and not to do so brings guilt. I'm becoming less and less tolerant of guilt but I'm about to show you that some things shouldn't be given up on or thrown away.
The shower curtain is an example of life in a disposable society. Turns out that most products these days aren't meant to last. The example given in this article http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/07/disposablesociety.asp
is of stait razors and disposable diapers. They were built to last and you bought them once and used them forever. No need for upgrades. Goods that last benefit the consumer but are bad for the companies that made them. What you are supposed to do now is have is products that come with planned obsolescence. Stuff that either constantly wears out like ink cartridges or stuff that constantly has new and improved styles like video games and cell phones.

The problem with stuff that doesn't last is that replacing it is a nuisance. In my house anything that requires batteries falls into that category. It should be easy to have as stockpile of them or to get the rechargeable ones but it isn't. Same with the ink cartridges and water filters and a whole bunch of things that are cluttering my junk drawer because I don't have the time and energy to find replacement parts. Maybe that's the key, maybe it's just easier to buy a whole new thing rather than replace the parts.

Besides, some of the new stuff just doesn't work as well as the old. I have a friend who recently bought a fancy dancy new washer and dryer that apparently doesn't get things nearly as clean as the trusty, rusty Maytag of days gone by. I have another friend who came and drooled over my 20 year old microwave that still works. It's huge and not energy efficient but J tells me to enjoy it while I can because the new ones don't work as well. Do we long for things like that? Buy it once and you've got it for life?

Or are we as a society more like my sister in law who constantly upgrades her cell phone for the latest and greatest design. If it's broken or she's just bored with it out it goes. Advertising has taught her that new is good and old isn't. Our values have taught her that forward motion is a good thing. We wouldn't want to stay still would we? What are you still doing with that old thing? You want to be cool don't you? In our house I recycle what I can and donate what I can't but the truth is that the minute something starts to not perform well for me (like the can opener which I'm sure was an easy fix), out it goes. And that kind of scares me. Now I'm going to make this huge leap and connect my can opener to relationships, and I'll ask you to leap with me.
I guess what I'm wondering and fearing is if the whole "consumerism" thing goes for relationships as well? Do we throw them away and move on to something better a little too easily? Are we afraid of the time and work involved in fixing them? Do we think it's our right and for the better if we move onward and upward? If I gave up on the burner pans and can opener easily without any work to repair them then have I done that with relationships?

I almost gave up on my marriage this summer when it got hard. Was I thinking that I could just throw it away because it wasn't working well for me? Was I thinking that the idea of being single seemed more stylish and appealing and new? I was thinking that my marriage wasn't filling my needs. I didn't want to fix it. I wanted to throw it away. Commitment. Good old fashioned stick-to-itness. If I give up on the can opener I can always get a new one. If I give up on my marriage..................

Recently a group of friends gave up on me when being my friend required a lot of work. Giving up on and giving away are the same things. Just as walking away and getting rid are the same things. I was abandoned and not for the first time in my life. I'm sure as I move into the area of bereavement counselling I'll discover proof of what I already suspect; that grief, whether from death of a loved one or divorce brings on the loss of not only the loved one but of friends as well. Unconditional love: loving when something requires you to work. Not just work but to work hard, to sweat or even to sacrifice. Unconditional love; loving someone when they're at their worst. When they hurt you, when they need you. Shower curtains are disposable relationships aren't.

Standing firm in a forward moving society

Yeah I know I said I'd write more about fear today but I'm really feeling compelled to write about faith which is the opposite of fear. Besides, there's really only a couple of poems that I want to share with you about moving past the fear and taking the risk. I'll get to them..............

The other side of fear is faith. Despite my relationship with Christ, I honestly don't have a lot of faith. Sometimes I panic in a crisis and fear the worst. Sometimes I don't and I am very calm. Today I realized I may have more faith than what I think. Yeah it's the church situation again. I refuse to give up and believe that it's truly over. In fact on Saturday I'm going to go to a healing service at the very church that exiled me. Yes I do think that the Pastors are going to poop a brick when they see me but....... And yes I do know that I'm crazy for wanting to go but as usual my craziness got me thinking. I got to thinking about the whole concept of moving on. We prize ourselves on it. It's one of our values. Even the gospels speak about shaking the dust off your feet and moving on if things don't work out however they also talk about standing firm. Forward motion is good. Katrina Onstad in the January issue of Chatelaine says: "Movement-forward, onward, upward - is the guiding principal of the New World. In jobs, real estate and our personal lives, movement is success ands stasis is failure. There's no better balm for "He dumped me" than 'You've moved on.'" I wholeheartedly agree. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 2 dozen country songs that talk about getting over it and moving on. Housing shows with titles like "Property Ladder" indicate that upward motion is the only way. My 20 year high school reunion is this summer. I know that if I go I'll be expected to talk about where I've gone in life. It's not where you've been but where you're going that counts right? Movement is desired but only at a set pace. You don't want to be accused of running away from things and you also don't want to seem too transient. Commitment is a desired trait as well. Boy do we ever send conflicting messages to ourselves.

What if moving on is overrated? What if moving on can be hurtful? At least being forced to move on before you're ready? I know that happens with grief. I was forced to move on after the death of baby Jonathan long before I was ready. The result of not dealing with it in my own time line was that it messed me up for later. It was part of the gunk I dealt with last summer. 10 years ago someone I loved was murdered. It was summer. In January of the next year I cried in public over it and while I'm sure some people were sympathetic what I remember most about that day is the person who asked me why I still wasn't over it. Over it? It's been 10 years and I STILL cry in public! I am STILL not over it. Yeah I know the point is to move on past the pain but sometimes I need to confront the pain in order to heal. Sometimes it's ok to stay where you are until you're ready and you are the only person who knows when the time is right. Your experiences your timeline.

I think of one of my aunts who has lived in the same house for about 40 years. She also worked at the same job from the day she graduated high school until the day she retired. No upward movement there. No bigger and better house. No long resume. Instead she and her family built stability. A house that is full of memories and a strong, strong family. Honestly I envy her. I would trade our gypsy lifestyle in a minute for an address people could write in their books in ink.

And what about the times when moving on isn't the right thing to do at all? What about the times when it's best not to move but to stand? That's where faith comes in right? I believe our church issues will be solved even though there's no shred of evidence to support that right now. But I guess I have faith. I have a friend whose wife left him about a year ago. Last time I looked he was still wearing his wedding ring. That inspires me. He still believes. I think of all the people who have sat by the bedside of a loved one, hours and hours after the doctors have said that there is no hope, or even suggested it's time to stop life support. The people who pray and wait and believe. They sacrifice hours and meals maybe even their own health and jobs. They know that behind their backs others are whispering about them; about their weakness not to let go or that they're in denial. That they need to move on; it's for the best. But still they believe. It's not time to move on yet. They have faith. And then one day the loved one moves, the monitors flicker and a miracle happens. I'm sure that history or even modern society is filled with stories like that that I would love to hear more about. Not just to get me through this current crisis but to build my own faith with.

What about the families of people who are missing or abducted or who just leave by choice? Don't they hold out hope? Don't they refuse to move on? Jaycee Duggard was gone for 18 years, Elizabeth Smart for 9 months. Physically their families moved on but what if they had quit believing? Restoration, reconciliation. It's hard to believe that you're ever going to be reconciled with somebody who has hurt you. It's hard to be the only one in the whole wide world who's believing in something. But as Garth Brooks said: "As long as one heart still holds on then hope is never really gone." Hold on. Stand firm.

Taking the risk and feeling for those who don't

So when I think about non conformity and rebellion I also think about risk. For both non conformity and rebellion are risky. When I was in junior high I had an amazing drama teacher who told us to "take a risk." It was a good lesson. Good words to have running through your head for 20 plus years. Dare to lead. It turns out that she was on to something. A quick search of "risk taking" leads to all sorts of life coaching sites that point out the amazing things that happen when we take risks. Check out this list from Lance Armstrong's Livestrong site http://www.livestrong.com/article/14727-becoming-a-risk-taker/
　
* To laugh is to risk appearing the fool;* To weep is to risk appearing sentimental;* To reach out for another is to risk involvement;* To expose feelings is to risk exposing true self;* To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss;* To love is to risk not being loved in return;* To live is to risk dying;* To hope is to risk despair;* To try is to risk failure;* But risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing;* The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing;* He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love and live;* Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave and has forfeited freedom'* Only a person who risks is free.

To even use the word "risk" seems.......... well............ummmmmmmm? Risky! Risk comes in 2 types: the risk that involves physical harm and negative stuff like "at risk behaviors" and "at risk youth" (In all my naivete I'm still not sure I know what they're at risk of?) and the risk that leads to good stuff like leadership and adventure and confidence and courage.

My Dad was in the occupational health and safety industry. Playing spot the safety hazards was one of my favorite childhood games. "Accidents don't happen they're caused" and "no stupid human tricks" were popular sayings around my house. Sayings that for the most part I followed. Except for the time I tore around a rice paddy on the back of a motor bike without a helmet. We didn't get the H1N1 vaccine and we don't own hand sanitizer. Risky I know.......... Although I kind of think that the risk of disapproval from other moms is bigger than the risk of viruses. So as far as the physical goes I would say that we as a family don't tend to take risks. No bungee jumping for us. Although I will admit that the zip line over Robson Street in Vancouver looks like a lot of fun!

Do I take social and personal risks? Yooooooooou betcha. All the time. I took a risk when I married a man I had known for 4 months and had met in person only once. One of my aunts was sure that I was marrying an axe murderer. But my Mom had taken a similar risk and she and my dad had been married for 30 years at the time of her death; I guess it gave me the confidence to think that if it worked for her it could work for me. On the other hand nothing prevents you from taking a risk faster than having a bad experience. Past history of taking risks determines future willingness to take more. Like all things you learn from your success and failures. You probably learn more from the failures than successes.

Risks are often blocked by the thought of "what if.............?" The decision to get pregnant again after the loss of baby Jonathan involved the question of "what if it happens again?" And it did happen again. Seven months after losing Johnathan we lost baby Noel. The decision to have another child after that was "what if it happens again?" times five billion. The result of the decision to take the risk anyways turns 3 tomorrow. It was a good risk. So was getting married to the "axe murderer." The axe murder's usual response to "what if?" is "what if Barbie had a hand grenade?" He means that we can't possibly answer all the "what ifs" in the world. Just move on and do it anyways.
　
The decision to move to Georgia came with the obligatory "what if we don't like it?" . We had hoped that we would, and hope is definitely one of the things that encourages people to take risks, but in the end we didn't like Georgia at all (that's not the ENTIRE truth but go with it for now and I'll tell you the story sometime) When my Huggyband lost his job we were relieved to have a reason to move on. We took a risk, it didn't work out as we had hoped but we met some great people along the way and ate a lot of fried chicken and I got to wear flip flops clear through to November. Our curiosity about what it would be like to live there is satisfied. Now we know. Like the Garth Brooks song "How you ever gonna know" says:


How you ever gonna know
What it's like to live there
How you ever gonna know victory
How you ever gonna know
What it's like when dreams become reality
How you ever gonna know
How it feels to hold her
How you ever gonna know
What it's like to dance
How you ever gonna know
If you never take a chance

That's not the only Garth Brooks song that talks about risk. Check this lyric out from "Standing outside the fire."

Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire.

Sometimes playing with fire gets you burned. What if the "what ifs" come true? What if my marriage hadn't worked out? What if we had lost yet another baby? Would the risks have been worth it? I guess so, I don't know...........

What I've learned in the course of writing today's blog is that initially I thought I was 100% in favor of taking risks. Truth be told I'm only about 98% in favor of them. I tell Little Miss Teen all the time to "just do it." Take the risk who cares what others think? Yes the risks may not work out but that's ok, how bad can it be?

I've learned in the last couple of months, and maybe for the first time in my life, that it can be bad. Sometimes you DO get hurt when you take a risk. I guess that's why it's called a risk not a certainty or guarantee. Apparently we took a risk getting involved in the last church we were at, who knew that joining a group of fellow believers could be risky? I'm learning that all relationships involve the risk of getting hurt. In the end things didn't work and it was messy and painful. Do I think it was a bad risk? I don't know. Give me some more time and I'll be able to see all the good stuff that came out of it. There's another great line in a song about "farther along we'll know more about it. " Does this apparent failure prevent me from wanting to take the risk of joining another church, building relationships and possibly getting hurt again? Just a little. Give me while to heal and develop trust again. Deep down inside I know that taking risks is worth it. So while I started today's blog entry ready to slam all of those people who don't take risks, when I think about it and search my heart I feel compassion. Tomorrow I'll write about fear and how fear of something prevents you from doing stuff. In the meantime I know that taking risks is worth it. I look at these amazing quotes and I understand it.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." — Robert Frost

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." — Robert F. Kennedy

"Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first."
— Frederick Wilcox

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."
— T.S. Eliot