well, it's happened. someone is buying our house. their conditions lift on November 3rd, and they are set to take possession on November 20th. meaning, if all goes well, we will be in Saskatoon in 4 weeks.
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
I feel tongue-tied and inadequate as a writer to explain how I feel right now. the closest I can come is this: i feel like I have a multiple personality disorder. I am elated, I'm excited, I'm planning and dreaming and happy. I am sad, I am crying, I am missing my friends and family all ready. I am wanting to hold on to my moments and make them move in slow motion so that I can be beside that friend longer, in this space longer, and comfortable for longer. and then i'm laughing. and then i'm crying again. do you get the picture?
one of the many things that the journey of the last 6 months has taught me is the importance of church. now, i know I'm losing a few of you, but hear me out. there is something authentically beautiful and deeply meaningful about worshiping God WITH friends. with people who care about your issues, who have heard about your crap (and have prayed through the crap with you), who celebrate your successes. they're truly your friends, and you stand with them before God and move in the same direction and resonate with the same Spirit and feel convicted and moved and inspired together. I left church this morning having met with three such dear and beautiful friends feeling bereft. in all honesty, feeling scared at the amount of time it could take before I am surrounded again by a community of people who know me as I am, and who walk with me before God on a weekly basis.
I miss Parkside.
however, i have already met some incredibly amazing people in Saskatoon and I have hope.
I'm thinking i'll be a two-faced maniac for halloween. no costume necessary!
On Friday Scott and I spent the afternoon on a date in Fort Langley - Wendels for coffee and bookstore wandering, window shopping, a few minutes at the river...and we were heavy with the waiting - the indefinite waiting. another week had gone by with no interest in our home. we were quiet and sighing and sad. Friday night we got the call that there was a showing for noon saturday. I woke up Saturday morning with this feeling in my chest (you know that feeling?) of hope. hope. I said to God in the shower "I feel hope and I don't want to".
I've so wanted to walk through this transition well. To be solid in faith and trust. To be optimistic and real and honorable. Saturday morning was an alarm in my head: i don't want to feel hope. I could hear Jesus in the boat with his disciples, waves and wind lashing around them, shouting to be heard
"why are you afraid?!"
I had a great explanation why i was afraid, lots of reasons, lots of evidence, lots of 'what if's'.
and now here I sit on the other side of the storm, on the other side of hundreds of storms, and i think, "why do I let myself fear?" is it self-preservation? is it my harness in this "holy wild" of life with God?
well, that's idiotic. fear does not preserve or protect.
ah, when will I ever learn?
anyways, all that to say, I feel hope tonight, at least at this minute.
for all those of you here, i will miss you deeply. deeply deeply.
for all those of you there, i'm looking forward to the friends we will become.
About Me
- janet anderson
- I now live in Victoria, after a couple years on the North Shore of Vancouver, and a (too) brief time in the prairies. Working as an artist, mother and wife (not necessarily in that order), i am striving to live well, to find the truth of God in all things, and to pass on this truth to others.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
abiding
So, today (after singing quite loudly in the shower at 9am in an exercise of calming down my worries by worship) some hope! After our house has been on the market for 16 days we finally have our first viewing tomorrow. The house is what I have now termed "ship", which is short form for "ship-shape" (because who's got the time for the second syllable?) and I would be grateful if you'd pray with me that whoever comes here tomorrow would be "the ones", and fall head-over-heels for our little beautiful home.
this complete dependance on God business is no piece of cake. It's been a difficult week, trying to find my groove as the new bread winner in the family. Last night a dear friend (you know who you are!) gifted scott and i with a few hours out and we sat in a coffee shop and did what Walter Wangarin terms "the work of marriage" - in other words, we divided up the duties. i have kept bathrooms and grocery shopping but am thrilled to say that Scott has most of the rest! Now i have to do the work of not micro-managing. I feel you all out there feeling with me.
It's also been a difficult week dealing with anxiety. Selling our home has proved no easy matter, and i'm getting tired of hoping every time the phone rings that it's our real estate agent. ironic that i was in the shower when he finally did call this morning. I was singing that song
whom have I but you?
though the mountains fall into the sea
whom have I but you?
though my coloured dawn may turn to shades of gray
whom have I but you?
though my questions asked may never be resolved
whom have I but you?
do you know it? it helped.
my dear friend (you still know who you are) also gifted me with a massage this week. actually, it was technically termed a "release" of my gluteus maximus (why did they give it a technical name that screams "HUGE!"?) - which technically means her elbow was digging into my butt cheek. anyways, as we were talking, whenever the word "house" was said my whole body would instantly tense like a rock. it's amazing to me how you can work so hard to keep your thoughts and actions centered on trusting and hoping and resting in God, but the stress gets pushed into your body anyways. how do we stop this? how do we live lives that are truly totally abiding? i guess practice makes perfect, but i'm really hoping that this practice session is almost over!
thanks for all of your prayers for us, your words of affirmation and kindness when i meet you at the grocery store or in church lobbies, your continued interest in our lives and children's lives. i will definitely post if we sell the house in the next few days. and, hey, have i ever mentioned that i love comments? that i actually might check for comments numerous times a day like a total nerd? that my blog-savvy husband just showed me how to open up my comments so that anyone and everyone could write one to me?
just saying.
Psalm 127 has been medicine for my soul this week. go read it, and rest in God's love (as well as you can).
this complete dependance on God business is no piece of cake. It's been a difficult week, trying to find my groove as the new bread winner in the family. Last night a dear friend (you know who you are!) gifted scott and i with a few hours out and we sat in a coffee shop and did what Walter Wangarin terms "the work of marriage" - in other words, we divided up the duties. i have kept bathrooms and grocery shopping but am thrilled to say that Scott has most of the rest! Now i have to do the work of not micro-managing. I feel you all out there feeling with me.
It's also been a difficult week dealing with anxiety. Selling our home has proved no easy matter, and i'm getting tired of hoping every time the phone rings that it's our real estate agent. ironic that i was in the shower when he finally did call this morning. I was singing that song
whom have I but you?
though the mountains fall into the sea
whom have I but you?
though my coloured dawn may turn to shades of gray
whom have I but you?
though my questions asked may never be resolved
whom have I but you?
do you know it? it helped.
my dear friend (you still know who you are) also gifted me with a massage this week. actually, it was technically termed a "release" of my gluteus maximus (why did they give it a technical name that screams "HUGE!"?) - which technically means her elbow was digging into my butt cheek. anyways, as we were talking, whenever the word "house" was said my whole body would instantly tense like a rock. it's amazing to me how you can work so hard to keep your thoughts and actions centered on trusting and hoping and resting in God, but the stress gets pushed into your body anyways. how do we stop this? how do we live lives that are truly totally abiding? i guess practice makes perfect, but i'm really hoping that this practice session is almost over!
thanks for all of your prayers for us, your words of affirmation and kindness when i meet you at the grocery store or in church lobbies, your continued interest in our lives and children's lives. i will definitely post if we sell the house in the next few days. and, hey, have i ever mentioned that i love comments? that i actually might check for comments numerous times a day like a total nerd? that my blog-savvy husband just showed me how to open up my comments so that anyone and everyone could write one to me?
just saying.
Psalm 127 has been medicine for my soul this week. go read it, and rest in God's love (as well as you can).
Thursday, October 7, 2010
working and waiting
I spent most of yesterday working on a painting of my neighbours three daughters. she had this awesome idea of painting them with iconic halos on their heads as a birthday gift for her husband. i was only two happy to oblige. as i started drawing out the canvas i had this idea take shape that maybe, just maybe, i could do a better portrait of them than a stranger could because i know them. i know how Laura wants devil sticks for Christmas, and Eloise is allergic to apples and Charlotte hates (and i mean HATES) spiders...these were my utopic (is that a word?) thoughts as i drew.
and then i began to paint.
six hours later i called my friend and left this message on her answering machine:
"i have just painted a lovely girl, but sadly she doesn't seem to be your daughter. i don't know who she is, but she's definitely not Laura."
the force was not with me.
i woke up this morning, a little scared to enter the studio (a.k.a. basement corner) again. But things came easier, and then joyfully and then HALLELUJAH: charlotte was staring back at me. I talked to my mom and she said "i was praying for you".
what would your gut response be to that?
mine was to refrain from laughing, thinking "why would you pray for something as trivial as a painting?".
okay, i hear you all tsking, but seriously, with famine and genocide and legalized prostitution, why waste mental energy and spiritual connection on a painting?
later in the day i was reading Psalm 90:16,17
Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us,
yes, establish the work of our hands!
this is the work of my hands, the work that God has shown me to do, and gifted me (most days) for. So, pray for me and Eloise tomorrow. that her little cherub face would be established in the work of my hands.
and pray for this: that we sell our house.
Scott is in the process of being hired by Ebenezer Baptist Church (no laughing at the name!) in Saskatoon (no laughing at that either!! I already feel protective...). We want to move there ASAP, and there's a house there we'd love to buy, BUT, we have to sell ours.
selling a house is a crazy business. it's so passive. you lay the sale of your most valuable material possession in the hands of strangers, and pay them extravagantly for their work, which frankly you experience very little of, and then you wait. and wait.
no viewings. no offers.
we had people come in the open house last weekend, but nothing since.
my house looks wicked awesome and i have this notion that if I could just talk with someone even vaguely interested about moving into this neighbourhood I could sell it no problem. but i can't talk. as far as I know I can't even meet them.
the waiting game is completely a trust game for me.
I read this the other night:
It's almost as if God forms a parenthesis in time and a parenthesis in space around us. He is hovering all around you all the time. *
What an incredible thought, that God is circling me, my physical body, but also my time. "you hem me in, behind and before...Psalm 139". It is a great comfort in these days. When I was younger I used to resist trusting God, feeling that if i allowed myself to be in a place of vulnerability (which is truly every breath, but anyways) God would use the chance to "teach me a lesson". I heard the pattern of those thoughts returning recently. that God would probably wait until the very last second to sell our house to "teach me" about faith...which puts God back in the position of manipulating ruler rather than good King. So, I'm training my mind to view my situation through this lens: fundamentally God is Good, and does all things for my good. not to teach me lessons, although I'm sure that's a part of it. But because He loves me, and is working in the parenthesis around me because He loves me.
amen?
may God establish the work (nursing, scrubbing, stirring, confronting, time-outing, driving, knitting) of your hands.
*(Mark Batterson - In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day)
and then i began to paint.
six hours later i called my friend and left this message on her answering machine:
"i have just painted a lovely girl, but sadly she doesn't seem to be your daughter. i don't know who she is, but she's definitely not Laura."
the force was not with me.
i woke up this morning, a little scared to enter the studio (a.k.a. basement corner) again. But things came easier, and then joyfully and then HALLELUJAH: charlotte was staring back at me. I talked to my mom and she said "i was praying for you".
what would your gut response be to that?
mine was to refrain from laughing, thinking "why would you pray for something as trivial as a painting?".
okay, i hear you all tsking, but seriously, with famine and genocide and legalized prostitution, why waste mental energy and spiritual connection on a painting?
later in the day i was reading Psalm 90:16,17
Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us,
yes, establish the work of our hands!
this is the work of my hands, the work that God has shown me to do, and gifted me (most days) for. So, pray for me and Eloise tomorrow. that her little cherub face would be established in the work of my hands.
and pray for this: that we sell our house.
Scott is in the process of being hired by Ebenezer Baptist Church (no laughing at the name!) in Saskatoon (no laughing at that either!! I already feel protective...). We want to move there ASAP, and there's a house there we'd love to buy, BUT, we have to sell ours.
selling a house is a crazy business. it's so passive. you lay the sale of your most valuable material possession in the hands of strangers, and pay them extravagantly for their work, which frankly you experience very little of, and then you wait. and wait.
no viewings. no offers.
we had people come in the open house last weekend, but nothing since.
my house looks wicked awesome and i have this notion that if I could just talk with someone even vaguely interested about moving into this neighbourhood I could sell it no problem. but i can't talk. as far as I know I can't even meet them.
the waiting game is completely a trust game for me.
I read this the other night:
It's almost as if God forms a parenthesis in time and a parenthesis in space around us. He is hovering all around you all the time. *
What an incredible thought, that God is circling me, my physical body, but also my time. "you hem me in, behind and before...Psalm 139". It is a great comfort in these days. When I was younger I used to resist trusting God, feeling that if i allowed myself to be in a place of vulnerability (which is truly every breath, but anyways) God would use the chance to "teach me a lesson". I heard the pattern of those thoughts returning recently. that God would probably wait until the very last second to sell our house to "teach me" about faith...which puts God back in the position of manipulating ruler rather than good King. So, I'm training my mind to view my situation through this lens: fundamentally God is Good, and does all things for my good. not to teach me lessons, although I'm sure that's a part of it. But because He loves me, and is working in the parenthesis around me because He loves me.
amen?
may God establish the work (nursing, scrubbing, stirring, confronting, time-outing, driving, knitting) of your hands.
*(Mark Batterson - In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day)
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