This is so you know you’re not alone. You, who wonder what went so wrong that you always feel one step off in a crowd, either moving too fast or pausing too long. There was no mistake, you are exactly who God meant you to be.
This is for the ones who never told anyone how many books they read that week, because no one wants to be labelled the geek. This is for those who’ve written miles and miles of ink, trying to making sense of the hidden, the abstract.
I see you, over there enraptured by the art that’s been made around you, simultaneously dying to create more and dreading making anything at all, because, how on earth could you ever REALLY create anything unique enough?
I hear those sobs caught on the Ikea lamp’s plight. Don’t pretend you didn’t weep years later at its triumph, either.
I, too, revel in the warm feel of a worn leather bag packed full of books or the paper or laptop you create worlds with. Crave the slow sink into the soft, deep chair that will hold you for hours while you lose yourself in thought or story. The warm mug close by that fits and feels like safety, even though we both know that’s ridiculous, but there it is.
The ridiculous is where I sometimes like to live for a few minutes, can you imagine? We can.
I listen when your eyes light up and you start then stop and trail off, either bouncing wildly ahead in conversation, or finally catching up and collecting thoughts to form that one, perfect string of words that now just empties onto air that’s moved on to the next thought, the next joke, the next concept. I stop and hold that idea longer, too.
You also build worlds? Full of emotions that don’t fit every day, beings that dance only in your mind on technicolour wings, epic tales we were supposed to leave behind when we picked up our diplomas and time sheets and bank statements.
Our eyes still light up at unicorns and dragon tales, we stop when the light hits a certain way so we don’t miss the sunbeams on our faces. We still see the stories we saw when we were young as magic, as hints of the real world, the deep behind the mundane. We notice all the hawks soaring outside our car windows.
We feel alone, yet are finding like Anne that “kindred spirits aren’t so rare as I once thought”. On our own in the wild we are never alone. There’s always a sympathetic tree within earshot.
You’re not alone, your soul is poetry, your hurt can turn into fearless love, your heart is never alone, and your feet always stand on holy ground, even when only you can see it. We are Lucy, glimpsing Aslan before the rest know to look for Him.
Knowing yourself, where you have come from, and what has shaped your character is essential to a healthy mental, emotional, and spiritual life. It is also gut-wrenching. It takes more time than you think, and much more effort and honesty than you’ll ever truly be comfortable with. And you can’t rush it.
It goes easier if your mind is wired to look at the same situation or memory from several different perspectives and hold them all lightly in your mind’s eye at one time, to let the truest one rise. To let God point out that the one way you WANT to remember a situation is probably not the whole story, and the way you think it happened is probably just the version that paints you in the most flattering lighting.
Almost a foot of snow fell today, this is our tiny bunkie in the woods showing off the drift.
Conversely, some memories that carry shame don’t tell the story of how you were manipulated there by someone else, and all you can remember is how YOU were culpable in that moment, without remembering how someone else was off to the side, either knowingly or unwittingly adding to the situation that blew up in your face, and you thought was all your fault.
For both these situations, there is grace in the arms of a Father who’s Son died so that our hearts could live freely and breathe lightly. He IS the abundant life He offers.
We can forgive and also let ourselves be forgiven. This makes heavy hearts light. I often find myself reliving past bad decisions, awkward or hurtful conversations, ridiculous mistakes, and wrapping myself in a straitjacket made up of past regrets, even if I’ve already dealt with them and given them to God. I keep trying to yank them back out of His hands. It’s a temptation especially now that I’m writing more, and delving down back into situations that I need healing in, and realizing how I need to see myself and my own weaknesses in truth. Thankfully, God’s good at sifting that out and making it clear. He says “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him…” (James 1:5, ESV) and then believe He has given it to us, and actually USE that wisdom. Furthermore, He’s the only one who can do it fully, honestly, and with grace and gentleness, so that what needs to be removed or rearranged isn’t ripped out of your heart, but surgically removed and your heart stitched back up to heal completely. The scar left? So we don’t forget the lesson and the growth.
Thinking about all this in light of what and how I want to write, I could feel the struggle in my soul of “Why even figure out an audience? Anything you’ll say is just going to be second hand information that you won’t say as eloquently as the first person who said it, anyway.” followed closely by, “You can’t possibly think, in the MULTITUDE of women writing, that you have anything that would stand out or speak to anyone as anything but white noise,” and it’s easy to forget that even though I’m looking at my areas of growth and journey right now in light of what kind of audience that could serve, I really am not going to be writing JUST for them… if I’m not writing to step up into my own soul and also to lean into the arms of Jesus, then I’ve lost the plot. If I look at the waves, or even the other disciples surrounding me, I’ll sink like a stone and be useful to no one.
So I will keep going. I won’t stop writing publicly. I won’t stumble over the vast array of information that tells me that if I pursue writing seriously, a lot of it will be out of my control and throw me into work that is NOT writing… I will take ONE step at a time. I won’t worry about what my scribbling will look like in a year, a season, or even a week. I won’t worry about if I should switch my web hosting or blogging platform in this moment. I will just write the next blog post. I will craft the next Instagram post. I will think about what God is whispering to me through his Word and through the Holy Spirit and through people beside me.
Eventually I will find the right tune, the right note, and someone, somewhere, will respond to what I’m playing in a way they couldn’t to anything anyone else was saying. My melody will find sympathetic resonance with someone else’s thoughts and start them humming, too.
Looking backward once in awhile is a good way to appreciate the intricate and quirky ways God has worked. The more I write for this blog, the more I’m realizing a bit of a theme of intentionally remembering what God has done emerging. There is weighty value in being intentional in marking the small and big ways He’s set milestones in our lives and made things happen for or through us.
I just joined hope*writers this weekend after being on the fence and not knowing if it was my “next right thing” (apologies to Emily P. Freeman who also happens to be a co-founder). Joining and finding out where I fit on my journey as a new writer, I notice one of the first steps is figuring out who your audience is, and also what you want to convey to them. I keep seeing this theme of marking moments and setting up ways to remember them so I don’t forget how good God is, and how good He is to me in particular. So just throwing this out there, I might start writing with this in mind on purpose! Slowly but surely finding my way…
I was looking back at this year and a bit today from a literary standpoint and noticing that more than any other time in my life, I have interacted with and noticed more the authors that God has placed in my life as influences, whether through their books or blogs or social media. I’ve met two of my favourites, and been able to sit under the voice of another in the front row for an afternoon, and had small but unexpected interactions with a few more on social media. Before I even had the desire to start writing again, this was all starting and God was leading me to notice more HOW my favourite books were being written, and why, and to get to know the stories of the authors themselves. This year gave me a new interest into why someone sits down to write a book. I’ve thought a lot about what makes an author, and why I’ve always felt that something need to be achieved before calling oneself a writer, in any scope. More importantly, I’ve learned how to let that preconceived notion go so I could move forward into what I believe God is calling me to.
Last year, I read one hundred books. This year the goal is the same (I just finished #66). The genres vary, although I favour some more than others, but now I don’t just read for fun or to be informed, I read to immerse myself in the people behind the books, to figure out the why and how, not just the final product. I sat and listened to Louise Penny, one of Canada’s best authors, on Saturday, with rapt attention. (Now I am kicking myself for not having the presence of mind to take notes, but I was so excited to hear what she was saying and enjoy it, I was completely distracted from any practical thought.) There is no coincidence that the day after I made the plunge to join hope*writers, only a few weeks after deciding to intentionally pursue this writing life, however it may end up looking, that I listened to her say in person that at the age of eight, she promised herself to one day write a book. Then proceeded to develop a phobia of writing, and not sit down to write until she was in her forties. If you’ve read any of her 15+ books, you’ll know she hit the ground running and HOW. It spoke directly to what I had been struggling with, that while I’d written and vastly enjoyed writing all through my school age years until finishing high school, I’d not written much since then besides sporadic prayer journals and letters. God graciously gave me a hint that I, too, could still start this “late in the game” and use my experience and slant to write something worth reading.
The kicker is going to be whether or not I let God dictate where it goes. Reading “Saturate” by Jeff Vanderstelt, (church-wide reading assigned by our pastor, and rightly so, as it explores vital, empowering concepts in the believer’s life) I realize that I can create a lot in my own strength, but it’s going to cause me burn out and frustration just doing what I want on my own, rather than to ask God what he’s created me for, and let Him speak and create through me, using the strengths and weaknesses He built into me anyway so that I could tell a unique story and show things from a perspective no one else is going to. It’s an intrinsic part of sanctification, which is a big word for just letting God change us from the inside out until we can love and live perfectly like His Son. Ultimately, what He can create using me as a brush or a pen is going to be infinitely more powerful, beautiful, and relatable than me trying to strike out on my own and try to do something just to satisfy myself or make ME look good. There’s more glory in using a broken pen to write a symphony than there is using a high tech computer to write an ad jingle.
My sister in law, Danielle, who also happens to be one of my very best friends, taught me a new word today: Tsundoku, which is apparently Japanese for “acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them.” This is completely accurate of my life. It reminded me that I have some reading to do…
(Extra points to whoever knows what the title is quoting… WITHOUT asking the internet!)
I thought I’d share for posterity my list of books I’ve read so far this year, (I love lists!) , the books I’m currently at some point in the midst of, and my TBR pile for the near future (my actual TBR pile of physical books is over eight feet tall now… not including books on my Kobo!) which also includes the remnant of the stack of books I MEANT to finish over the summer. The summer stack was going well, but then a whole whack of my library holds came in at once, a few people lent me books, and I just generally went “SQUIRREL!” and read something else, so most are still on my list. I must say I didn’t read anything I didn’t at least enjoy. Life is too short to finish books I can’t stand, and I’m only listing books I finished anyway, because anything else is cheating!
I had a surprising number of re-reads this year, actually, although it’s like comfort food to me to re-read good books… I must say I just finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone via AUDIOBOOK and I enjoyed it even more than I had when reading it on paper the first time around, and I think I remembered more of the story, also. OH and the cover that doesn’t have any text is the Bible… every few years I read through it cover to cover, this was read through #3, and it took almost three years! And for some reason, The Middle Matters and The Next Right Thing are listed twice in the “read” section (they were worth reading twice, but I haven’t yet!)
Without further eloquence (another obscure reference, anyone?)…
1. BOOKS I’M CURRENTLY IN THE MIDST OF READING (Yes, it’s a lot to be reading at once, I like choice, don’t judge…): • Seamless Bible Study (Angie Smith) • We Saved You A Seat (Lisa-Jo Baker) • Saturate (Jeff Vanderstelt) (reading this as a church family!) • The Fringe Hours (Jessica Turner) • Love & Freindship (Jane Austen) • The Wind In The Willows (Kenneth Grahame) • The Cat Who Went Bananas (Lilian Jackson Braun) • A Circle of Quiet (Madeleine L’Engle) • Stretched Too Thin (Jessica Turner)
2. TBR Pile from Summer/For My Reading Challenge For The Rest of the Year • Paris: A Love Story (Kati Marton) • Simply Jesus (N. T. Wright) • Switch On Your Brain (Leaf) • Told You So (Kristen Heitzmann) • Jame’s Herriot’s Dog Stories • The Story Girl (L. M. Montgomery) • Dining With Joy (Rachel Hauck) • None Like Him (Jen Wilkin) • 100 Days to Brave (Annie F. Downs) • Kilmeny of the Orchard (L. M. Montgomery) • The Golden Road (L. M. Montgomery) • Courting Morrow Little (Laura Frantz) • Start With Your People (Brian Dixon) • The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden) …. plus about a million more!
3. My READ THIS YEAR list so far (the goal is 100 by December 31st) (This list/reading challenge is also found on Goodreads here….)
I’m in a brain funk this morning. I’m sitting in The Hub, the casual meeting space our church rents in the local plaza for various events or “drop in” library, etc. I have a magazine to finish designing, a newspaper edition to start on, a blog post to write (oh look, one thing off the list!), Bible study homework to do, a ladies study group prayer email to send out, and a few other things all yammering for attention. So at least if you’re reading this, the blog post is DOWN.
I have discovered over the past few years that I can go through seasons where I can take on a lot of other people’s emotions and drama and handle it and be helpful. The older I get, though, the more intentional I have to be about processing it and releasing it so it doesn’t continue to add to my mental load (thank you, Jessica Turner for elaborating on that phrase in Stretched Too Thin, which I’m currently enjoying). This past week and a bit I’ve been heavy with many friends going through stressful seasons, hard decisions to make, massive health issues, serious relationship hurdles, my own husband with a heavy work stress load at the moment, and our kids just learning how to deal with their own emotions and function at school as civilized human beings. As well as sorting through my own worries and anxieties and “taking (them) captive” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
In the past, I’d try to make my mind just go quiet. Zone out and distract, rather than process and resolve. Netflix binge more than usual. I’m finding writing changes that and is now creating healthy ways for me to at least start my mind in untangling the messes of reactions, theories, conversations that won’t even happen except in my own mind, emotions, and experiences. Today I tried to decide which of the topics I’ve been ruminating on to tackle in this post, and I wasn’t having writer’s block so much as I was just having BRAIN block. I didn’t want to “go there” and rehash things to figure them out. Clearly I still am not ready, as I’m writing ABOUT not wanting to write instead of just doing it. (How meta of me.)
So I’m going to intentionally clear some of my “mental load” and the deadlines glowering over in the corner by working on my design tasks for awhile. When something that’s nagging at me or causing fear pops up and tries to distract me, I’ll hand it to God, and leave it for now. And focus on one task that is urgent that I can cross off the list and release some of my mind/stress load. Just identifying that I’m not feeling up to processing what I’m carrying gives me the start of relief, because I know I can hand the worry of it to the Lord and then all I’m dealing with is how I feel about what is going on, and decide if and when I’m being called to just pray, or to put feet to pavement, too, and do or say something about it. Also, when I don’t even know WHAT to pray for in a situation, I know that the Spirit is sifting through the emotions and the internal mess, knowing the ENTIRE story of what is going on, and translating it to a Father who cares infinitely more than I do, and is absolutely equipped to answer appropriately. (Romans 8:26)
There’s a reason this hymn has stuck around, as it’s altogether true and vitally important:
Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer.
This is going to be short, but I wanted to quickly update that not only were we the rowdy table again at the wedding, we had been EARMARKED as the rowdy table, and the father of the groom (who also happens to be my boss at the newspaper) and I got chatting at the wedding and he said that it was deliberate so that all the craziness got contained to just one table. Yusssss, we have solidified our reputation as the fun ones. We did have fun.
We took over Inglewood and had appies at Salt & Pepper, then moved on to coffee at Rosso’s, en masse (nothing more intimidating than a group of fifteen plus well dressed 20 and 30 somethings sauntering down the sidewalk.)
At the laid back reception, we possibly hit a few people with corks (possibly our pastor) on purpose (they retaliated in kind), laughed a fair bit, celebrated our wonderful friends who were getting hitched, and the girls even managed to get me on the dance floor (which is a rare occurrence indeed, as when I dance I look like a spider dropped down the back of my dress while I was having a slow seizure. It’s just not visually appealing. Luckily, almost a good 40% of the guests were under the age of 13, so we were at least in good company with our volume and maturity levels.
Also quickly, if you had an issue with the email yesterday having a blank space where a blog post should have been, it has been fixed on the website, no idea what happened, it HAD been there… glitch in the Matrix. More later today or tomorrow, have a great Monday! (It may actually be one of my fave week days, don’t unfollow me…)
My brother and I can’t be trusted at weddings. Even our own. We have a lot of the same friends, so between them all getting married and wanting us there, and family weddings, we’ve managed to end up being the goofy, loud, hilarious table that you are simultaneously embarrassed for yet also really kind of want to be sitting at because obviously we are the most fun people there.
There was the time David managed to knock over a significantly full water glass and baptize our entire table. Then the time our friends had old fashioned soda bottles as beverages and David made a row of them with differing amounts of water in each and played rock ballads on them (think Miss Congeniality talent), then proceeded to break the top of one clean off (no jagged edges, just a smooth, cut, beheaded soda bottle) trying to open it without a bottle opener.
More recently, I managed to make my husband roll his eyes at me as our good friends from church and I, who were at separate tables, kept tossing larger and larger items at each other’s heads throughout the reception, trying to be as casual and low key about it as possible (and of course never during speeches or any time when our attention should be elsewhere, we aren’t COMPLETE savages). It descended into chucking pinecones (not loudly or obviously enough to disturb anyone but those who had the misfortune to sit very near us, but still…) and since the same whole crew will be in attendance today, we will probably find even more creative ways to be subtly obnoxious. Heaven help our table mates.
I do love weddings, despite the necessary application of eye shadow and spanx. There’s something about witnessing the fresh start of a couple so full of hope, and so surrounded by cheerleaders for this new venture. Of recognizing these moments as holy ground that God is exuberant about and revels in seeing. Of course we all think of our own marriages in that moment, mine will be fifteen years old this October, and our own journeys.
It makes us stop and think about where we have come from and where we are headed in a way that we don’t often intentionally do in our relationships save for these special occasions. It’s yet another way to pull out those “Ebenezer stones” that are visual reminders of things we are supposed to remember, for our good and for the good of others.
So I’m looking forward to tearing up, laughing, and getting all sentimental and reminiscent today. And also to perfecting my ninja ice cube tossing moves.
I’m probably the only one still interested in this whole story at this point, but I’m recording it for posterity and because I firmly believe we need “Ebenezer stones” in our lives to remind us of what we have lived and how God has shown up for us, as I know at least for myself, we “forget the things we should remember, and remember the things we should forget” as one author put it recently.
The exact order of events in my mind is hazy, but I distinctly remember writing the house owner’s a note to send with our first offer the night before, explaining a bit of our journey and why we believed God had led us to their house. Not knowing if they’d just think we were crazy, but knowing this was one way we could bring God into the conversation and give Him any credit due. Long story short, they agreed to an offer that was significantly lower than asking but suited them still and was low enough that we didn’t feel tight chests whenever we thought about monthly payments. We didn’t think it’d be possible, but impossible is exactly when God shows up and (pardon the irreverence) says, “hold my beer.”
We received a lovely note back after all the paperwork had settled from the wife, explaining that the same morning she got the note from us, she was praying for a nice young family to come and buy the house, that would appreciate it and care for it like they had, and that our note had just made her feel so at ease! God was all over this. I now sit in the same spot overlooking the pond that she had occupied on the deck when I take my coffee outside in the mornings, carrying on the tradition!
We asked if we could do another walk through before we left for Ontario, to take photos and some measurements for furniture and practical things like that, and they agreed. THIS time, the small red shed next to the house was unlocked (they’d just forgotten the day before, as it’s a shed, it wasn’t a big deal for us to see inside at the time) so we clambered up the wood steps to see the loft. There was a desk sitting in almost the middle of the room. It was like Indiana Jones coming upon the statue minutes before he has to roll a giant ball of stone, because there, in a single shaft of light that just so happened to be shining squarely on the desk at that moment, was Bible. Cue all the neon signs and “COULD I MAKE THIS ANY MORE CLEAR” from on high.
We made it home to Ontario, and the packing started in earnest. We had our marching orders and our answers, and two months later we packed up the kids and the cat, some of my and Andrews siblings came along for the ride, and headed (some across country with a trailer that made it solely because guardian angels were holding up the axles, some with a cat as a carry-on on an airplane) for our new home in the hills.
While we were preparing to move, I had had a chance to share this story at our church’s ladies tea time, and I realized that while some might call all this serendipitous, we knew better. God had used a still, small, constant voice to get us to where we needed to be, to change our hearts so we were ready for this gigantic life event, and to make all the external pieces fit so everything worked out in exactly the right way and time. He’d even sent a moose messenger, our “Serendipimoose” as I’d tongue in cheek call it. So it became my new design moniker, to remind me of how and why I could do what I do and of the road we’d taken to get there. And now, I’ll have also to spell it for people for the rest of my life. Worth it.
I can’t say that after the “moose of promise” I slept like a baby, but I did rest grinning, knowing we were in the right place to be looking for a property. We got up and had a lovely breakfast made by our hosts on our back deck watching the deer have breakfast in the mist on the lawn. We went into town and met Deb our agent, and away we went to the properties on our list. Two we couldn’t go through, and the rest, while all having their charms, felt like strangers. Like someone else’s home. Like a badly tailored, ill-fitting yet beautiful suit. The one house that, from the photos, we thought would be the winner, presented more problems than we were willing or able to take on. That’s where I almost tripped over doubt again. Deep breath, eyes on God.
The second last house on our list was the glimpse of yellow we’d seen after the moose the night before. We drove down the driveway and I had to grab the dashboard. I couldn’t even see the house yet but I had those tingles again… I knew in my bones this was it. I said nothing. I said nothing when we pulled up to this quiet, bright house with the dormer windows and covered wrap-around porch that I’d laughingly said I wouldn’t buy a house without, thinking what a silly requirement, of COURSE I wouldn’t actually make that a deal breaker.
Andrew and Deb got out and casually chatted about the property and stats and figures (how did they not feel that this was holy ground?) while I stood looking up at the trees that I already knew were going to be friends. We were standing in the midst of a hundred year old growth, Deb said, as I took in the silence and green. I slipped beside the house to the back and gasped as I found myself in front of a small, wild pond surrounded by giant firs. That’s when I got emotional.
I came back up the hill, almost afraid to go inside now, in case I found out I hated it or it wouldn’t work for what we needed, dreading looking at the numbers because I already knew it was above our level of responsible spending. Andrew was telling Deb about the moose from yesterday, and she replied, as if this was a normal occurrence, “Oh yes, there are a few that live in the neighbourhood, you’ll see them a lot.” Our southern Ontario minds were so not ready for this glorious info.
We walked into the front entryway/dining room, and my eyes rested on the familiar… an antique Singer sewing machine used as a hall table… only the exact same one in the same spot and purpose as one in our front entryway back in Ontario. The kitchen was bright, and, our agent said, custom built and designed for the wife, who was shorter than me. This kitchen was built with tiny in mind.
Andrew is a Tim Horton’s guy and I am a Starbucks mug girl, a carryover from my barista days and I’ve collected over forty five of the “city” mugs from all over the world. I looked up, the open shelves are FULL of mugs… Starbucks and Tim Hortons. The pantry? Ground coffee exactly like our pantry at home. We walked through the house, naming each room for what we would do with it. There were enough for every need, an office for Andrew, an office/studio for me, rooms for the kids, a large basement for guests and a play room. Andrew opened the garage door and nearly died… enough room for a workshop AND both cars, and they nicely showed off the parking space with their truck… a make and model Andrew aimed to one day own and have a need for on a small acreage like this.
I went into “Andrew’s” office to inspect the bookshelf, as we’d seen what looked like an Emmy award sitting on it, and I was curious as to what category it was for. Gobsmacked, I grabbed Drew to see for himself that this Emmy was for the technical broadcast side of things, the exact same Emmy his department had won a few years before! The owner was in his industry! We later found out that they have overlapping colleagues and friends. (They now meet for monthly breakfasts with two other colleagues from Calgary in the industry. Totally normal.)
We just kept looking at each other and going oh no this is home. Deb asked if we wanted to go see the next house, and we both, wanting to act like adults, said yes, let’s finish the list… full well knowing we’d be somehow, some way, buying this place.
After seeing all the properties, we went back into town to Creekers Bistro for some lunch. We told Deb that the yellow house with the Four Acre Wood sign above the door was the one we’d be putting an offer in on. We explained our financial worries and we arrived at an offer that made sense. Deb submitted it to the owner’s lawyer over peanut chicken wraps and coffee. She couldn’t believe we were putting an offer in on a house after four hours of hunting, she said, with slightly wild eyes, that she’d never had this happen before with clients, usually it was weeks to decide… We were getting good at giving real estate agents heart attacks at this point.
We went back to our cozy little nook in West Bragg to wait to see what the owners would say, praying like crazy that God would move the way He needed to and we wouldn’t force anything that He wasn’t in for.
A lot of you know the story behind Serendipimoose and why I chose that name for my creative pursuits (first at serendipimoose.com where my design work lives), but I though it would be a good idea to retell it here for anyone who doesn’t know where the heck this ridiculous moniker came from.
It all started with a Tempest. Not the storm, my best friend, Laura Tempest. She moved to Alberta many years ago, and I’ve tried to make it a habit to come fly out and visit her for a few days at least once a year for, oh probably over ten years now. Every time I came out here it was like my soul relaxed. The closer we’d get to the mountains on our touristy treks (bless her, we must have driven to Banff every other trip) I’d get giddy and feel like part of me was home. In early 2017, I was out for a visit and was chatting with my husband on the phone and just said flippantly “I could SO live out here”. We were in the midst of beginning to think about moving closer to his job in Burlington, ON, as his current hour-plus commute along the QEW highway (think Mad Max but with more road rage and accidents) between our home in Vineland and the office was wearing heavily on him and meant that he was really only home to eat and sleep.
We didn’t want to leave our church family, that I’d grown up with and that Andrew had embraced when we were dating. We didn’t want to leave our actual family, or our semi-rural neighbourhood. But we knew God was making us restless for a reason, as I’m not one to not be content where I am and make it work. But all the properties we wanted (more than three bedrooms, a few acres of actual land) were well out of our price range, and the only properties in our range were condos or massive fix-er-uppers with no land, smack dab in cities. We are not city people.
So while we were on the phone a nation apart, he said “Well, start looking for houses, why not?” I stopped in my tracks and got that flutter. The one that says your origin story is starting. That this is not just a normal conversation.
I got home and we started praying and talking about what the next steps would look like. This is pre-Emily P. Freeman’s Next Right Thing, but we just decided “Ok, we are just going to do whatever God tells us to do next and not think about the step after that. Just one thing at a time, do our research, seek good counsel, and leave the unknowns and the uncontrollables to God.” With a six year old and a three year old, and a job I loved at a local paint your own pottery place, my mind was already quite full but I knew this wasn’t something we could ignore and live without exploring.
We talked to some people we trust. We pitched our infant idea to trusted older friends. We basically looked at a map of Alberta and decided that I was not moving unless I was living near mountains and I mean NEAR mountains, and Drew was pretty open to anything as long as we had a bit of land and it was within an hour of the Calgary airport for his work trips. We literally picked a town off Google maps based on airport proximity and topography (“does that look like a mountain?”) and started lurking property listings. We called the first real estate agent who had advertised a listing we liked, had a phone interview with her, decided we liked the cut of her jib, and away we went.
The big giant was Andrew’s job. “Hey so I’m just going to work solely remotely from home and move 2,000-plus kilometers away from the office” is not something you normally want to throw at your boss. Andrew met with the owner of the company and told him what we had in mind. His boss, and I still tear up thinking about it, said “Andrew, you’ve been here over twelve years and we know we can absolutely trust you. If you say this is what you need, we will make it work, you do what you need to do.” This was a gracious, encouraging, MASSIVE green light. No one else in this company had ever done this before, we were breaking new ground. The day he was at his meeting, I was at work. The pottery item I was fixing lettering on that day? Happened to be a mug with “love you to the mountains and back” on it.
We started meeting with realtors, listed the house, and started cleaning, staging, sorting, packing, and online house hunting. This was all in February 2017. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Laura had gotten herself affianced and the wedding was set for Mother’s Day weekend in May. We decided that since we were going to be out there for the wedding anyway, we might as well multitask and buy a house the same weekend. As one does.
So now we had a deadline. We sat down with the realtor selling our house and told her our tentative plan. Put the house on the market the week before we left for the wedding, and trust it would sell before we left so we knew what our budget would be when we looked at houses there. I think we took a few years off her life. However, the housing market in our area was insane (at that point, police were doing crowd control at some open houses not twenty minutes from us because of the insanely buyer-friendly market, and were selling for WELL over asking price in hours in some areas) so we knew we weren’t too much off the mark.
We were down to where God was either going to show up, or show us in a very devastating fashion that this was not where He was actually leading.
Up to this point we were still kind of looking at each other and going “are we nuts? Is this idea really from God or have we just made this up in some crazy frenzy?” I hate change. I abhor it. Even good change. My life from childhood on has been full of major, massive, life changes that I’d grown to dread. Uncertainty is my kryptonite. So the peace I had about this complete upheaval was nothing short of holy and NOT of me. We checked ourselves at each step. We evaluated our motives. We prayed. We asked people. And while there were good questions raised, there was nothing that stopped us in our tracks or scared us.
May arrived. Our house listed on a Thursday, it sold the following Tuesday before the wedding weekend, for just a squeak under asking. Grandparents took kids for a wonderful weekend without Mom and Dad to cramp their style. Andrew and I packed our wedding gear, and our gnome, Albert, and our squeaky new house budget stats, and hit the airport. After a wonderful weekend being a bridesmaid with friends that have been family really, for my entire life, we packed up and drove through the mountains from Caroline up to Nordegg and down the Icefields to Banff and on to Bragg Creek (not seeing a moose the entire six hour trip, mind you.)
Albert, our gnome far from home, made at the Crock A Doodle studio I was working at in Grimsby
We drove through town and stopped at the Heart of Bragg Creek coffee shop to Facetime the kids and re-caffeinate, then found our Air BnB and decided to take the list of properties our realtor had sent us that she was showing us the next day, Monday, and do some drive bys. We started out, drove by a few places that didn’t really sing to us at all, and Andrew was now clearly on edge. “What if this is not where we are supposed to be? How could we possibly have picked the right town the way we did? Maybe we should be looking more south or closer to Calgary…” This was the moment the first doubt sank in.
We were driving in West Bragg, and my mind was now racing at Andrew’s fears. “God, if this is where you have led us, if we haven’t misinterpreted what we thought was your voice, we just need a nudge. We know we don’t trust as much as we should, but we desperately want to do what you want us to, and we want your will in this. We haven’t seen a moose this ENTIRE trip, and I know by now, we should have. Maybe, just send us some encouragement. Just something to let us know we are right where you want us.”
We turned onto the next road. We started driving. There is a flash beside Andrew’s side of the car. Oh look, a moose. OH LOOK, A MOOSE!!! Cue me instantly bursting into tears next to a bewildered husband who has no idea what I’ve just prayed, and wonders why the sight of a moose is making me weep. He pulls over, I start laughing while crying (not at all terrifying) and grab my camera and we get out and enjoy this lovely creature casually sauntering across the roadway. I am grinning like a fiend at this point and explain to Drew why this animal is wreaking such emotion from me. He just smiles, shakes his head, knowing that once I’ve caught a God-incidence (no coincidence here), he’s along for the ride.
The moose in question!
We proceed on about a kilometer down the road to the next house on the list. Looking from the road all we can see is a curving driveway down into tall firs, and a splash of yellow and white. It’s the house that’s a bit out of our price range anyway, and we are just going to see it because I think it’s interesting and why not.
We ended our day with a fantastic dinner at the Bavarian back in the hamlet (my Mother’s Day date!) and then settle down back at the Air BnB to try and get some rest before the house hunting begins in earnest Monday morning.
