red runs my heart

Warming: This could be a long one. Long time no write.

The idea of community is very foreign to some but with experience in community (not a weird naked-loving one by the way), I am keen on it for it’s many facets. Truthfully I feel part of the Television community on some nights. I feel drawn into their stories and often am provoked in my thoughts or moved in my emotions when their ‘unreal’ situations are happening. Funny. True.

I am driven crazy by it too but that is family aye. Community is family. Life in community (church I’m talking) has it’s ups and downs because people are human and we all do dumb stuff. As I write this I’ve been aware that mostly I am totally in love with the Church but am also challenged by the attitudes in our hearts that come to the surface when we rub shoulders with others. (photo is a recent get-together of wonder-woman friends, spectacular fun!)

I was feeling rather stretched in my mind as to what my future held, not necessarily because I was on my own, but that definitely made it feel more tricky if I thought about it for too long! I’d just started working for a few hours a week and that was great but after that came a few more job offers and opportunities. Opportunities to do some things which made me feel excited! Feeling like I could give up the kidswork I was doing at church voluntarily, to do other stuff. Then a dear friend reminded me of what I was good at, what I was passionate about and how that passion had excited her to come and work with me to reach out to kids.

“The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work that you most need to do and the word most needs to have done…. Thus, the place God calls you is the place your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Frederick Buechner

Another friend agreed with my ‘silly’ idea of trying to help other mums and dads who found themselves on their own with their children. Sometimes a simple word from another, can help direct the course of your life I guess! I am constantly aware of how good this community thing is. It is a challenge too but a worthwhile one.

We’ve been fortunate enough to stumble across the Anne of Green Gables series. I was flooded with memories of it – her being called Carrots, the delicious Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, her bosom buddy Dianna and her outrageous approach to being herself. What a great example of someone who was so comfy in her own skin, even though she is a fictional character. We’ve just started the littlest house on the praire – oh how delicious. I’m so glad I’ve got girls I can re-watch those priceless movies with (or girls I can make watch the things I want to!).

The girls had different understandings of what a bossom buddy (Anne of Green G) was – k (the 7 year old) seemed to get it straight away and listed a few of her dearest friends. L just kept looking at my chest, giggling. Kindred Spirits.

One of my bosom buddies text me the other night to see if I wanted to see her latest purchases on skype. It was like a teenage expose of her new clothes and trendy hand-bag. She was elated and did cute wee curtsies at me, prancing around her kitchen infront of the small camera. I loved it.

I had decided that this year was the year of the high-heel. I have one pair and my mind had thought that maybe now that I was getting older, my shoes could be even more mature. The year of the heals is going to be fabulous. Some years it’s just the year of “Oh my goodness I have no clothes” but I wasn’t feeling that. I experimented a bit with scarves last year so maybe that was last years ‘thing’. Anyway another bosom buddy gave me a generous gift to go towards a pair of heels.

On the whole ‘being just 3’ situation, we are doing well. Mostly we are walking along the road of our life, routines and all, and doing well. I am aware that grief is a part of my process more than the girls and I have to be aware of the simple fact that I am grieving the loss of something rather big. But I can say we are laughing, enjoying others, loving life and growing together in all of that. Are there moments of complete ahhhhhhh? Yes. But we sort out and keep walking. It’s colder now and I’m not enjoying that. I realize that with every change of season in the natural, I always feel so umprepared. I am in my summer wardrobe, not ready for merino wool again, but so glad I have it (thank you glassons for reasonably priced merino!).

We’ve had some cool surprises along the way recently. Letter-box gifts of money and presents. Lunches being shouted, coffees being given. In those small or big moments, I have very glad and grateful.

Joan D Chittister, ‘Scarred by Struggle, transformed by hope’.

Struggle is not one thing; it is many things. It’s not simply an event, a happening, a disappointment. It’s all the internal processes that accompany a blow to the psyche so momentous, so sudden, so unexpected, so unwanted that there is no way whatsoever to prepare for its coming.

Struggle forces us to confront our illusions both about the world and ourselves.

Hope is greater than faith because hope not only believes in the presence of the God of Eternity. Hope believes, as well, in the God of Time who companions us now and waits for us in a beneficent future as we discover in struggle all the layers of life within us that go basically unseasoned in times of plenty but wax in times of lean.

It is the gift of new life in disguise. A hard gift, perhaps. A strong gift, indeed. But a gift without which we run the risk of going to our graves only half alive.

12^th century Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi

I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow

And called out,

“It tastes sweet, does it not?”

“You’ve caught me,” Grief answered,

“And you’ve ruined my business.

How can I sell sorrow

When you know it’s a blessing?”

There is beauty in the dark valleys of life. It is called hope. Helen Keller, “The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”