To the Neighbour With the Dilapidated House

There is a certain route we always take on foot, because it leads us to several important places.....the swimming pool, the library, the mall, the grocery store, and Nanny's house for Sunday dinner. For years there has been a house we walk by, and it is utterly dilapidated. The paint has peeled off, the shutters are falling off, the fence has boards missing, and through the windows you can see shabby curtains hanging by a thread. To make it worse, there are 2 cars in the back driveway, without licence plates, and sitting on flat tires. 

I never felt disgusted or appalled by the people that owned that home, but I did wonder what was wrong that so much was going wrong, and it was more out of a sick curiosity than a sense of sympathy...certainly not empathy.

We have come through a hard winter. Our children have been sick lots, we are piecing together income, and things (actual physical things) in our life sort of seem to be falling apart! The faux leather chairs are peeling, there is a dent in the side of our van from someones runaway Costco cart, that silly patch of lawn that keeps dying no matter how much we love it is even more dead, the paint is peeling on the outside of our home, tea towels are stained and shabby looking. I truly could go on, it has felt like a perfect storm, and the reality is that we don't have the resources now to replace or fix things! We are not hard off by any stretch, but the extra that it takes to replace and repair isn't there for now. And nothing is necessarily wrong with us that things are going slightly sideways, it is just how it is for now, despite our efforts for otherwise and because of certain things we've prioritized.

And as my sweet skipping son and I were strolling past the dilapidated house a few days ago I felt such love for those people and their story. They have a story...a sacred story, maybe a tragic story, possibly a story with many triumphs also. Perhaps they are trying hard, perhaps they have given up and sit drinking their morning coffee looking out the shabby blinds and not even noticing them anymore. Then I think of us....I cringe over our peeling chairs if we have invited someone over, but during our family dinners when our little loves are sitting on them, we notice our little loves and not the silly peeling chairs. And we delight in them, and we smile. 

And so I know that everything happens for a reason and truly to every thing there is a season. Maybe some have seasons of suffering or hardship that last many years, our season has been short so far, but I see the Divine Refiner working His fire on my soul, softening it, reshaping it, even allowing it to be tired and weary. Because out of that tired and weary comes a heart more able to see others and their story, truly see with the eyes of the soul and a tender glance. 

Maybe we will have a chance to run in to these people on one our walks, and maybe we can offer them a friendly and even empathetic greeting of hello and how are you. May it be so!

Choosing Love, Embracing Suffering, and Joy's Victories

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” - CS Lewis

A few weeks ago I was at the park with our children on a warm and glorious day. We played and played! I remember thinking, as we played, how happy I was and how in love I was with them, my blond darlings. We were going up and down the slides over and over, with Judah on my lap and Liliana holding my hand, and time was running away from us as we were lost in fun. At one point I laughed and in that moment I seemed to remember what laughing, really laughing from my soul, felt like.

Such a happy day!

I've been wondering for a while if I should share some of the sufferings I've experienced after Judah's birth. I've decided to because when I think about it, it seems as though it is unfair to share the good moments without sharing the hard ones. Perhaps it sets people up to have unrealistic expectations from their own lives. And so I share my simple story. The beautiful thing is that all of the little chapters that are making up the story of my life teach me over and over what love really is.

Judah's birth was absolutely beautiful. Peaceful, holy, happy, and surrounded by love. However, as any of you who have been reading for a while know, very quickly things started to feel hard. The inevitable baby blues a few weeks after baby stretched out, and I was so sad. Now, in context I didn't allow my self time to be in bed and recover like I should have, and on top of it we were dealing with some relatively intense financial and business realities. 

Perhaps it was mild postpartum depression, but really the only way to describe it was that in my very soul there seemed to be a fog of sadness that permeated my days and nights and was a lens through which everything was filtered. It wasn't terrible, by any means, but I felt confused that the intense joy I had being a mama and a wife seemed to just disappear over night. I looked at my children and loved them with every fibre of my being, but still I just coped. I was, in every sense, surviving and not thriving. I had an intense fear of becoming pregnant again, I didn't want to socialize,  I was distracted and distant from Joe, and every little thing made me feel anxious and worried.

Now, the beautiful thing about having two little lives and one big life that depend on you in a constant way is that there is no time to wallow. I look back at pictures and I remember how sad I felt but I don't look it! To learn to be present, to the best of my ability, and with a smile was a gift. Still, in retrospect now that I can compare how I feel with how I felt then, it seems as though it was an out of body experience. Today, here I am, in my body and present. What a difference!

What is the lesson in all of this? There are many and I think that I will process this experience for a long time....almost 16 months of sadness. It seems silly to say when I think of the deeply suffering world around us, and here I am in this beautiful life, with suffering that was very real. But so it was.

The first lesson for me, which I've mentioned before, is to have a big, soft, tender heart of mercy towards those I encounter daily. Who am I to judge why they behave the way they do, why they struggle when it seems they have no reason to, why they act angry or distant? Certainly I've been guilty in the past of a prideful naivety that assumed I had the answers and therefore things went right for me. Not so. I am humbled to say that I have no answers, and without Grace I am so very weak. May I walk through my days with eyes that see the beauty of a soul before anything else.

The second lesson is that really loving opens you up to really hurting. Of course, I knew this in my head but to live it moves such a truth down to my heart. I have seen so many stories lately of stillborn babies, unexpected passing of young husbands, cancer battles for mothers. It is so easy to be exposed to the suffering and think that it is senseless.....but upon following the stories beautiful legacies of love are seen to unfold. The truth is that when we choose to love, not the feel-good-love but the love that opts to remain when the feelings go, we choose to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to experience pain. It may be small daily pains, it may be one tragic pain, it may be a small season of pain, or a long marathon of pain....but to choose to really love is to make your heart fibres so exposed that they will most likely be singed, burned, stretched, weathered, and worn. Yet we also know for certain that ultimately joy is victorious and there are always moments of respite for a heart that has been weathered in the storms of Love's sufferings.

It feels risky to love so deeply that you will certainly be hurt. Yet, while the days are long the years are oh so short and then, before we know it, sometimes sooner than we ever guessed, it is over. 

My prayers for you, that you may always opt for love and that even in your sufferings joy may always triumph.

xoxo