Whatever He Says

I've often felt out of step with our time-pressured, outcome-measuring society, and never more than now.  I find myself at the end of cashier's lines, as the next person's items start piling up before I've packed and removed my bags. I feel slow as I put away my receipts, while quickly around me the world speeds on. Today I went through a Tim Horton's drive-through and the Tim's card I had loaded with $20 the week before, registered no cash, due to some kind of issue that I will resolve, but in the meantime I needed to pay for the tea I had ordered. After only a few seconds of searching, since I carry and use little cash anymore, the cashier waved me through without having to pay. I have a feeling that had to do with the fact that I was holding up the line behind me.  Later on I went to pick up some colour swatches from our local paint store as we are painting our kitchen and bathroom. I had a list of colour numbers, as I had done some homework on the st...

This Labour Day was as hot and sultry as high summer. But a row of yellow school buses,  shiny and clean, with  numbers prominently displayed on their front windows; stood on a nearby parking lot; their seats waiting to welcome a whole new season's batch of young students. They signaled the reality that no summer lasts forever. In the shade of a magnolia tree, I sat on our small north easterly deck, listening to the chatter of leaves in the soft breeze, and smiling at the irony that Labour Day, being a holiday, gave me permission to do nothing at all.  This morning I did it--nothing, that is. I simply leaned back into my bright blue resin Adirondack  chair and thought for a while, as the cars on the nearby highway zoomed by as in another world. For me, this Labour Day is the first in 41 years that doesn't precede a paid work day. I have the freedom to choose how I spend my time and haven't stopped thanking God for that privilege several times each day. The pa...

Mum often told me about the night that I was born. The tale had all the elements of a great story, with drama, tension, conflict: and since I was the happy ending, of course I loved it. I also liked the part about my being born exactly at midnight and Mum having the choice between May 31st or June 1st for my birthday. She chose June 1st. Maybe that's where it all began, my fuzzy relationship with time. I've often thought that I must have been born 5 minutes late because ever since I can remember, my internal clock seemed that much behind. Left to my natural bent, even though I think that I am planning to be on time, inevitably, like clockwork, I have rolled up to church, meetings, lunch dates with friends; for life; 5 minutes late. Consistently. And exactly. I am not proud of this bad habit but I used to rationalize that if punctuality is a continuum, then 5 minutes late is not horrible. I owned the trait as though it was part of me, like a cat whose whiskers had been trimm...

By Belinda Just in case anyone thinks I've vanished from the earth, no, I am still here. I have just been working hard at things other than writing since I got home from England. And hoping that all of the ideas dancing about in my brain don't vapourize the moment I sit down to write.  To show for my efforts at non-writing things I have six clean downstairs rooms and only two messy ones (this is a rare occurrence, I'm afraid.) Let's not talk about upstairs; but the ones below that are spotless look so beautiful that I am inspired to conquer the rest of the messy kingdom that is our home with the same zeal that overtook me when taking on the first ones. What came over me? You might well ask! Well, a couple of things: One of them was the fact that while we were away, we engaged the services of our daughter-in-law Sue, who is an incredibly good painter, to paint our massive entrance hallway and three of our rooms; more on that tomorrow, I hope. But, coming home to ...

Belinda This week has been an emotional roller coaster on many levels, including the grade 8 graduation of two granddaughters from two distinct school systems; one Christian, the other public. Our family is a patchwork quilt of colours that sometimes clash, but always belong together, no matter what. We have had painful differences, broken relationships, different paths chosen, but in the end we hang together because our individual relationships matter above all else.  I have done a lot of thinking this week about my mum's response to my announcement 44 years ago, at 18, that we were marrying a year later and leaving for a life 3,000 miles away.  Did it hurt her? Did it cost her? Did she lose years of intimate time together with us? The answer to all of those questions is obvious. And yet she never once focused on any of those things. It is only just now, when I am experiencing some of those feelings myself, that I'm thinking of how she must have felt.  Mum look...

By Belinda Susan brought the slim volume back from a conference after standing before a book display and praying for God to show her the book that was meant for me. When her eyes fell on the book,  Life by the Hour  by Tim Schroeder, she knew that was the one. I never give up trying to do better in stewarding the precious resource of time. Tim's book is in my bathroom, and I've been reading it in short snippets--more like "life in 5 minute increments" than the hour, but I have been enjoying the book and found so far that he has a refreshing perspective on  time. Then yesterday I got to the end of a chapter and a sentence struck me--hard, as such a practical word of wisdom that I wrote it into my day-timer. It felt like rocket fuel for my life, with the power to invigorate the minutes and hours of my day. It actually was the first in a list of points to think about, all of which were good. This is the sentence: "Is there anything in the activity of the ...

By Belinda After three busy days it was Thursday before I found myself at my office this week. Opening my door on its quietness had the feel of entering a sanctuary, an island of peace in a wild ocean of work. I unzipped the briefcase, unpacked and plugged in my laptop and mentally rehearsed the list of issues that I needed to follow up on and soon I was making the first phone call of the day. At the other end of the phone was a colleague at our corporate office--the person to help me with one item. I can tell when someone is trying hard to be patient. I imagined that I was just one of many people calling to work out the many issues she had on the go that day. In fact her whole job is dealing with people like me who come to her with paperwork completed "creatively," rarely correctly, by our staff and their doctors.   After I hung up the phone, with several file folders open on my desk by this point, I checked my email. My in-box had escaped my control during th...

By Belinda I picked up an audio book from the library a couple of weeks ago: The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945  by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns. Since I started listening to it, it has held me in its grip. I was born 5 years after the end of World War 2, but it affected my life because it touched and changed my parents' lives so deeply. I don't think I'll ever stop trying to understand what it was like for them. I'm not sure why it's so important to me--it was, after all, 70 years ago when it all began. I just know that it is; although the more I learn about war the more questions I have to which there seem to be no answers. The book follows the lives of several ordinary Americans through those years. Their experiences are pieced together through journals and letters, one of them the diary of a young American girl in the Philippines who spent the war in a Japanese internment camp. Courtships were whirlwind and...

By Belinda Sunday: glorious; blue skies and sunshine and just a hint of fall crispness in the air. The house full of the delicious aromas of an autumn feast: turkey; stuffing; squash; corn; peas; mashed potatoes; cranberry sauce; apple pies. The table loaded bountifully for a big family dinner; fourteen of us, aged from four to eighty one. Six year old William begged for a visit to the park after dinner. Now, there are only so many visits to the park in a lifetime and I would never turn one down lightly, but I said that we'd see, "after dinner."  Fourteen around the table is no light feat after all. By the end of the meal, I confess, that had William forgotten, I would not have reminded him.  I felt like it was time for a nap. But I knew that it was only a matter of time before he would return! Sure enough, "after dinner," when the dishes were just about done; like a tax collector chasing down an overd...

By Belinda I don't think that I will ever stop pondering time. I am fascinated with its perception and passage; measuring and musing about it, and trying to harness and hold something as slippery as a pile of colourful silk scarves in a summer sidewalk sale. For all its futility, it keeps my mind occupied pleasantly and is something I like to think about. I shared with some friends recently the mixed blessing of being a "here--now" type of person. The blessing is being able to intensely appreciate the moment you are in; the down side is being slow to move on to "next" and getting stuck sometimes in the fascinating occupation of the "now." I have "next" people in my family. Paul naturally gears up for whatever is "next;" and very early on, I have to say. He is always ready to leave a full ten minutes before he has to, so intent on "next" is he. I, on the other hand, happily absorbed in ...

Thinking through my life--I seem to spend a lot of time doing that lately. It's a luxury that comes with age. There were times in my life when all I could do was put my head down and keep running. I had children to clothe; laundry to do; meals to cook; floors to scrub and a million other things that had to be done. Now there is more discretion. There is choice! Daughter-in-law Sue came back tonight to do more painting. Tall, and string bean skinny, she walked in wearing her painting gear, still managing to look beautiful with her dark hair and striking eyes that are blue, gray or green, depending on the light. She quickly trod on thin ice though, when she said, "Now I know for sure that you guys are old. This is the second night I've found you eating dinner on TV trays in front of the TV." We felt compelled to point out that tonight the TV wasn't on and that the reason we were eating on TV trays was because we liked it and we can! I said, "Just wait until you...

By Belinda Short post, dear readers, for reasons that will become obvious. I'm here at the end of a 12 hour day that's not done yet and I'm wondering how to fly straight and true. Last night our son called and when I told him I'd just got home and he began... He began repeating my own words back to me; the words I'd said to him just weeks ago, when worried about him and his work load, I had urged him to take care. He had said to me then, "But Mom, I come by it honestly. You and Dad both struggle with this." And I had said to him, "No Peter, I don't do that anymore. I have learned that I need to hold firm to the line, and you must too, because we love you and care." So Peter took delight last night in laughing at me, and teasing; catching me out, he thought. I said, "Oh, stop it, here's your dad, you called for him didn't you?" But it's not so easy to stem the tide. The tide of meetings and paper and deadlines and follow ...

One hazard of writing a devotional blog, is that it is soooo easy to find yourself feeling like a hypocrite of the highest order! Take yesterday's post for instance; "Passionate Emotion" was the topic for our writers group, which met last night. I was "inspired" to make the subject fit the blog post, so that I wouldn't have a post to write at 10.00 p.m. when I got home. But the ring of truth was slightly missing. I noticed that when I pushed the Publish button, and I pushed it anyway. I had ended the post by writing what I thought I should. It bore no resemblance to what I actually did. I apologise for that to you, dear reader. "I’m there, in that good place; and I am waiting; waiting for God." Yes, that is what I wrote; but I wasn't. At all. I forgot that I was writing about me and began writing In Theory. I woke up in this morning and stepped into the stream of the day flowing fast, past my bed. I instantly became a piece of flotsam, bobbi...

Everyone has heard me whine about how busy I am - and how pressured I get at work. Truth is, much of the reason for my busyness is my woefully inefficient use of time. There is so much more I want to do! So much more I could do, if only I could organize myself better - in every area of my life: time, money, tidyness. This is no small problem. It is something that has plagued me my whole life long. Recently, when it became more and more of a struggle at work, I decided that, instead of giving into my fear of being "found out" and running away from it (as if I was the only one that could see it!) I would fight the urge to try to hide my weakness. I knew that the answer to much prayer on this matter was that God would help me find a way to stop moving those ever larger piles of unorganized paper from my desk and into boxes where they were out of sight at least, if not out of mind. I determined to face the problem head on, look my weakness straight in the eye, and conquer it. My ...

Belinda, Making Room is beautiful. In this world where we create such busy lives for ourselves; where sometimes the lines cross between what He lays on our plates and what we take on; in this life in North America, in this decade--there's so much at the "all-you-can-eat" buffet. It's hard to make healthy choices...it's hard to find those nutritious, healthy foods...it's hard to have the self-control to know when to stop. Just like in life....so many choices...some healthy and wise...some empty of eternal value...feels good but of no merit in His Kingdom. It's hard to make room sometimes when our plates are already full....when we don't know what to let go of...when we're addicted to being "stuffed" and we don't even know that we've lived here so long...Oh Belinda,I pray that you...that I, that others would know how to make room...that there would be room simply because our schedules aren't so full...wearying, keeping us busy, ...

Philippians 1:9 (New International Version) 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, This morning I spent some time reflecting--and even praying--about the year gone by and the year ahead. And I discovered that in doing so, it was a lot of my own wishes that crept into the picture and I truly didn't give God a lot of room to speak into my life. I do remember whispering, as I prayed, "There are no sacred cows, God," but I don't think it really got from my head to my heart, because as I picked up my pen, I wrote too easily and with too many assumptions about what is good and right and God's will in my life. I found though, that as I stayed with God, that I began to get a different idea on what it truly means to pray this kind of prayer. I realize that I tend to start each year as if with my toe on the starting line in a race; waiting for the sound of the pistol to send me running toward my many goals. But w...

Philippians 3:10-12 (New International Version) 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. 12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. As I crossed the borderland from night to day, from sleep to waking, the sound of the wind greeted my consciousness: blowing around the house; buffeting it, wind fingers prying at tiny gaps to rattle doors, rushing around the still sleeping village and the dark snow covered fields. Later in the morning, I talked to my brother Robert, in England, and he told me that there too, it was a very windy day. I felt then as if it must be the same wind rushing around that tiny village and that the world was very small after all. I love the wind. When I'm in, the sound of the wind outside onl...

It's the end of a busy day and I am spent. It's good to sit quietly, enjoying the gentle ticking of the wall clock and the hum of my laptop. In the background the indefinable sounds of a TV program filter in from the next room. The fragrance of my pomegranate candle fills the room. Susan, who gave it to me last Christmas, hinted last week that the plastic that still surrounded the candle was supposed to come off. I thought it was meant to hold it in shape. She took matters into her own hands on Tuesday and removed it anyway, saying that leaving it on was like leaving the plastic covering on a new couch and she couldn't stand it any more. Suddenly the perfume was more distinct; she must have been right. The Christmas tree has not come down from the attic yet, but any day now it will and I think I'm ready to "take it on." It's time to surrender to the season! On Thursday one big Christmas thing was done--picking up the chocolate letters from the Dutch store....

By~Ellen Fox Hi Belinda, I'm with you - you know my carefully crafted schedule that took weeks (6 of them working a minimum of 1 hr. a day) - also very colourful? Well, it bleeds every day. No-where on the schedule does it say, "Eight year old boy drops 1-litre-bottle of olive oil (brand new of course) on the floor" - Clean up time - 1 hr. and 5 min. plus a whole bolt of paper towels. Did I mention that this occurred at 7:00 a.m.? No-where does it say "six year old daughter lets neighbour's cat in house - 5 children chase cat - it hides (wouldn't you?)" - Cat exit time 25 min. Chewing gum caught in hair - had to Google what to do with that - then tried all mentioned remedies - finally after 45 min. , I cut the rest out. This isn't to mention - twins playing in toilet - all garbage contents, toilet paper roll, and my current book for assessment, Charlotte Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" at the bottom of toilet bowl, totally soaked. I've...

Proverbs 3:26 New Living Translation The Lord is your security. He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap. Last night I couldn't sleep. I hate lying awake in bed, so I got up, got out my laptop and made an Excel time sheet with 7 days, onto which I laid blocks of colour representing the time spent on various parts of my life. I realize that this might sound like an insane thing to do at 1.00 a.m.--or maybe at any time of the day. Welcome to my insanity--ha ha ha! The colours represented parts that are either necessary, important priorities, or voluntary preferences and sorting my life out into these "blocks," helped me see whether I am trying to do the impossible in my typical everyday life. The good news is that no, I'm not--as long as everything goes according to plan. :) I do know that nothing ever does of course, but it gave me peace of mind to go through this exercise. It also gave me hope. This had been on my mind, which might have contributed to my lac...