leaks

i know that Tolstoy is famous.  i know that many people give him acclaim for his writing skills.  but still, this passage was surprising:

however painful the mother's fear....the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys.  these joys were so small that they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only griefs, only sand;  but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.

yes, i'm reading Anna Karenina, and i confess that i'm reading it because i want to watch the upcoming movie with insight.  and it's great.  and it's long.  but worth it when you come across little gems like the sentences above. 

i've seen a lot of gold this week.  my husband is (finally!) on holidays and i definitely love being a mom more when there's a father around.  we spent the last 5 days at pike lake, staying at a friends cabin.  it was all a cabin should be - a little leaky, filled with windows and yellow walls, clean enough for comfort, relaxed enough that you're not reaching for the broom every day.  a large wrap around deck leading you down to the lake, Adirondack chair and canoe.  sounds dreamy right?  it was. 

and the golden moments were many - my husband cannon balling off the dock to the squeals of my kids, my daughter finding an injured dragon fly and carrying it around on her shoulder for the rest of the day, a local beaver that swam over to visit us, my little boy jumping in the lake with his favourite flowered floaty around his waist. 

but lest you think there were no sandy times, the toilet was broken and i couldn't sit on it.  thank God i've been working out regularly or i don't think my squats would have held out.  and thank God for coffee.  coffee keeps things moving quickly, and every second counts when squatting over a foot-high trailer toilet.

on a perfectly un-related note, i was visiting a church tonight that reminded me of parkside.  small, quirky, relational, raw, simplistic and relaxed.  it was lovely, and during worship God gave me a picture of myself.  i feel keenly aware of my flaws lately, the cracks and holes that exist in this molded creation that is janet.  i was praying, asking that God would fill me with His mercy and use me to extend it to others.  and i saw this hole-riddled shell, leaking out what God puts in.  without our imperfections we would be oblivious to the gift that grace is.  God uses our frailty to wake us up to His perfection, and to equip up with empathy for the frail beside us - our sisters and husbands and kids and friends... my holes are the means of God's mercy leaking out to others.

so, leaky toilets and leaky lives.  thankfully i don't have to do penance with squats.