I want to write more on here, I really do.

But for the last few months I’ve been snagged by all the little issues that writing about my life in on public place bring.

Especially since my job encompasses about 85% of my life right now. Actually make that 90%.

I am learning everyday.

If there is one thing that this last year has taught me it is how full of mess and failing and general not-awesomeness, I really am.

Last winter when I was up here I felt it. I always knew “experiences” are supposed to change you. And often we picture that change as hard and uncomfortable, maybe, but very grand and something that is really nice to say and makes a great Facebook status. “I’ve been so stretched and changed!”

Those first few months I found out what it really feels like. I haven’t been stretched and changed. I had my insides, my preconceived notions of myself, who I thought I was, kinda ripped out, shown to the world, and picked apart into little pieces. Granted, they don’t stay like that. Eventually everything fits back together again, but the shape is always different.

Grand could be a giant pink balloon that’s lost all its helium. Finally you just stomp on it and throw it out.

I am learning.

Learning how to relax. How to lean into it all, and not fight it.
Learning when to take breaks.
Learning that God doesn’t love me more or less for what I do.
Learning when to say yes and when to say no and when to say, “Maybe next week”
Learning how its okay to say I’m lonely some days.
Learning how to embrace the life I am experiencing while grieving parts of life I am missing.
Learning to let a bad day be a bad day and not beat my heart up over it.

And the best part of it is that God and these dear wonderful people of Slate still love me and give me cookies and have me over for tea, even when I mess up.

Well, God doesn’t give me cookies or tea….. (wait, hold on, actually, I guess He does. Hello Esta. Yes, that’s right He does. Thanks God for tea and for the cookies at the police station.)

Hahaha. See, I AM STILL LEARNING!

(sheesh, Esta)

I don’t ever want to forget.

Never let me forget how you have made my life and called it good. Never let me look back and say you didn’t care–because you do. Or say you never blessed me–because you did.

Snow squeaking, lungs on fire, with sunshine splashing across white, making it flash.

Gray hair falling over her face as she leans on the table, steadying herself, stretching to see over the piece of cardboard curtain. “It was just like God threw a thousand diamonds across the lake yesterday.” Yes. Yes. Just like that.

Medications and laughter and Glen at the coffee table, poking his head in my office to tease me. Those blasted combinations on the filing cabinet that always get stuck.

Lost lab coolers and broken fax machines that never get fixed. Housemates that change every 5 weeks. Pregnancy tests and blood work.

Chopping wood with my red axe.

Kneeling over the fish net, one hand pinching between the eyes, the other with the silver nail, pushing the nylon away from the scales without tearing.

I build an alter with all of it.

But it’s not just those things that I want to remember and never forget.

Let me remember the late nights. The cancelled planes. The aching heart moments. The moments when I have to say no and the phone clicks down hard.

I know I will want to remember those too some day.

I will want to remember how I didn’t know what I was doing or what was the best thing to say. I will remember how sometimes I felt so frustrated because I felt helpless to change things. I will remember how some days I did the wrong thing and some days I did exactly what I should have.

And when I remember it all let me never say it was not good.

Love your very own,

Esta

Only, that is frightful honesty.
All the rest of the week
I think it’s accidental, you and I,
missing each other
two blocks apart.

This picture was taken this summer on a canoe trip that left us lost for an entire day, going over all the wrong portages and paddling the wrong creeks in the hot sun. 

Life Lesson of 2011 Meets Picture. Sometimes I need aesthetics like I need salt and vinegar chips on a road trip.

 I don’t quote Jack Kerouac lightly, like one would Abraham Lincoln or Mother Teresa.

It’s safe to quote good people—people who made the world better.

Jack was not really one of those.  

Still, there are parts of his words that will always hold me—lost, mad, and drunk though he was.

This liking of too many things, I know that one the best.

It feels like many people can focus their passion on a few things and achieve excellence—the musicians, the painters, the physics majors, the athletes, the quilters, the bakers, the DIY renaissance women, the writers,

the encouragers, the exhorters, the teachers, the prophets, and the servants.

Then there are us who spread ourselves thin, trying to touch and feel everything, and end up tasting much, but mastering little.

 Most of my girlhood I wildly pursued one new interest after another.

I was often the first to start a new hobby. My friends would catch the excitement and eventually join. I was always the first to drop it for something else. Everyone else would be still carefully perfecting whatever accomplishment it was, while I was already off, jumping onto another unknown world, with many half mastered skills hanging on for dear life.

Now that I’m older I’ve often longingly wished I had one thing I was really good at instead of this long list of things I’ve thoroughly enjoyed but never fully mastered.

But it was always like that, me forever chasing new things.

 Wanting to try everything. Wanting to be everything. Wanting to go everywhere. 

Not ever wanting to get stuck in any box ever, ever, ever, please Lord.

With no neat package on life and with my ragged, often doubt-filled faith being stretched and prodded by my ever seeking mind.

I love so many things in life. I love so much of the gospel. Yet I have so little nothing that is mastered or that flows prettily.

I feel Jack’s confusion.

So there is no completion. Not even on the unfinished scrapbook from grade 10. Only a thousand falling stars with me reaching out to touch them all.

Is that okay?

What does that give you to offer?

I haven’t figured that out yet.

*photo credit

Today I offer you a tiny handful. My favorites, not choosen because they are terribly good, but because each of them makes me sigh a little and all hold threads of why I truly love this life.

From the Front Yard in Fall

From the Front Yard in Winter 

Every Morning Smiles

Out the Livingroom Window

Little Matty saying “Kokum”

Home

I’m not a sun tanning, flip-flops with a cup of iced lemonade, fun in the sun, let’s just have a party here and play beach volley ball for the rest of the day type of person.

I’m a cold beach person.

I like my life the best when the icy spray whips a bit hard on the cheeks and you have to pull on a sweater and wear sturdy shoes because the rocks are sharp.

It is then I feel the most alive.

I like my ocean mixed with a little wildness. Actually, a lot of wildness.

And I like my life the exact same way.

I never want to get to the place were my biggest worry is what I’m going to make for Sunday potluck or if the scrapbook party I planned on Thursday is too much on the schedule, you know, with prayer meeting and getting spring cleaning done.

I never want my life to be totally comfortable.

I want more. I want more like the gospel is more of men in ragged clothes than starched collars and more of camels going through needles than systematic theology.

I want wind that is bigger than little me and great blue waves that I can barely stand up against and grey mist that reminds me I can’t do life on my own and sharp rocks that show where I am walking is where most people decided to take the detour.

It is then when I feel most alive.

I want to live a cold ocean life wherever I am. 

Yes, the 2000 dollar car repair bill bites the cheeks and the lack of sleep whips at the body and the cold, the real winter cold, is finally making my teeth chatter when I step outside. Yes, I feel like I am very little and very underqualified for almost everything I am doing.

30 hours of being a bona fide prison guard in one weekend is a little new for a 21-year old menno chick.

 Running around all week straddling nurse, medical driver, receptionist, babysitter, and wood-chopper leaves aching, swollen feet by friday night.

And I have another 12 hour night shift just starting. This time as a security guard at the clinic.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I am standing in a wild ocean life because it is then I feel the most alive.

What makes you feel more alive than anything else?

It was on the last drive back from a weekend road trip.

There were three of us and for a girl who drives thousands of miles alone, I was soaking it in.

It was late and there had been only miles Canadian bush for the last long while as we talked, and the darkness pushed in on the headlights. Suddenly the temperature gauge shot up to red and we pulled up along the narrow shoulder, me inwardly groaning at yet another car problem.

Because of previous vehicle issues that trip, I knew that we needed to wait until the car cooled down enough that I could add coolant to the radiator, since for various reasons too complicated for here, it was disappearing rather unnaturally.

So we waited in the dark, Teresa, Paula and I, with our red emergency lights flashing slow across the empty road. We talked and talked and it wasn’t anything about the newest trend in skirts. I know I’ll always remember sitting in the inky darkness, feeling my eyes mist, realizing how deep our stories run.

One semi roared past and that was all, besides the empty asphalt and inky pines.

After about 30 minutes I though the engine was probably cool enough and grabbed my jug of antifreeze. The weeds were high alongside the ditch and everything was silence and very black.

“I’m going to get out. I’m going to face my fear” Paula said, opening the door and coming out with me. Her voice was as determined as it was brave and I was so thankful for someone standing beside me.

I leaned under the hood, fiddling with the radiator cap, folding up a sweater around it so it wouldn’t scald me if the pressure was still high. My back was turned from the road, as I pulled this and wiggled that.

Paula stood in the headlights, watching me.

The breeze was cool on my hands and softly rustled the brush in the ditch below. I was just about to open the cap, leaning far to one side in case it shot hot liquid, when Paula’s voice shouted fear.

“Get in the car! Get in the CAR! GET IN THE CAR NOW!”

I didn’t turn around. Her voice sounded like coagulated terror and I lunged for the door. My skirt got caught in the weeks and my mind raced, wondering when I would feel something grab me from the darkness. I fell into the car and slammed the door, heart leaping against my rib cage.“What is it?”

She pointed through the slit bellow the raised hood.

There, on the road, behind where we had just been standing, were three wolves.

They had slipped up without a sound and stood there, eyes glinting in the darkness.

I’ve never seen wolves in the wild. I never care to see them that close again. Even now, I get shivers just writing it.

Finally, after staring us down, they slunk off and we, still shaken, tried to decide what to do. The car was still out of coolant, the hood was still up, and the jug of antifreeze was still sitting where I left it.

It was very very very scary.

I for one, was very glad Paula warrior-faced the darkness and saved my rear end from getting chomped on.

The End.

Photo credit

Complications that are frustrating, but nevertheless have hints of Divine Intervention.

I should be up there by the beginning of next week.

While I am living up there I will not be giving specific updates on here. Due to the size of the community and the field I am in a blog is simply not the place for that. I will continue to post, but nothing too specific about daily events and occurrences. For that type of update, email me and I will put you on a group email.

For now, I am relaxing and soaking in my last quiet moments before the ride begins. Like I said, Divine Intervention.

And, every evening, this is my soul food.