path of peace.

i sat in my office this morning, completely unaware that not too close, but not too far away, children were running, screaming and dying as a man shot his way through their elementary school.

my heart breaks for the children who will have to deal with this trauma for years to come, for the families who have lost someone today and for the staff of the school. for everyone involved, the world has exposed itself as unstable and unsafe. and we all respond in different ways.

yet my heart also break for the person(s) involved in taking the lives of the adults and children. grace is meant for them, just as it is meant for the innocent child of the world. this is not something one wakes up and decides they "want" to do (though we cannot deny that they chose to). it is something that is produced when something is drastically wrong.

⁷⁶ And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
⁷⁷ to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,
⁷⁸ because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
⁷⁹ to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
-Luke 1:76-79

so it goes.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.

In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

shoes.

sometimes, a woman will compliment another woman on her new shoes.
sometimes, a woman will be very excited because the complimenting woman has nice shoes so it's like a compliment x2.
sometimes, that woman (who is me) will do a little fist pump to herself in the washroom mirror before realizing how totally ridiculous this is.

i got new shoes.

the power of the women's washroom.

i have been a youth leader at my church for 7 years now. that is a lot of years, given that i wasn't even sure that i liked teenagers when i started.

wednesday i had one of the hardest and best youth nights of those 7 years. i have been drained and tired and frustrated. i was in and out of the activities of the night because i couldn't stop crying. i ended up finding two of my girls in the downstairs women's washroom talking. i joined them. they asked me how i was and i couldn't answer. they asked me if i wanted a hug, and i nodded and then just cried.

what an experience, having two people that you take pride (too much often) in giving advice to and listening to become the ones comforting you.

the rest of my small group (5 girls that night in total) ended up joining us in the bathroom. there, we sat and talked for a full hour. one by one we shared, most of us cried. it was a holy moment to me. there was honesty and openness. it was VERY humbling for me to let them see me like that. but i do not want them to like me for the me that's totally fine all the time. in return for my trust, they gave me back love and affirmation.

i love being a youth leader. it is something that challenges me, energizes me, drains me and it has a lot of my heart in it. all of that is good.

thanktitude.

right now i am thankful for a lot.

in the last few weeks i have felt weighed down with the lack of sun as i try to get up in the mornings, the lack of sun during the days, and the quick decent of whatever sun we had in the evenings. i have been discouraged by depression surfacing as a result of the weather. i have been frustrated by having mice in our house and finding them extremely gross.

yet in the midst of all of this i cannot seem to stop thinking of all the wonderful things that shine light into the haze. it is a beautiful feeling to recognize how much more important these good things are when you feel you should not be feeling very nice at all.

i am thankful for andrew, who is patient and understanding and whose efforts to be there for me and be an awesome husband are evident in his success at doing so.

i am thankful for good friends who make me laugh really hard every time i am with them.

i am thankful for our lovely home (even with the mice) that is a place i love to be.

i am thankful for the "hey girl" ryan gosling birthday card i got that made me laugh so loudly it echoed through the office.

i am thankful for my family who is loving and supportive and so easy to love.

i am thankful for the sun showing itself this morning and shining into my car window and warming up my skin.

i am thankful for God's grace and patience as i try to listen to him.

i am thankful.

a moment to talk about video games...

i hate (a word i do not use often) the games call of duty and modern warfare.

i realized i hated them long before i ever knew why. i knew that there were some games that had violence that didn't bother me at all. it's not great, but it didn't seem as bad as those two.

folks, i've put my feelings (who are often much ahead of my mind) to words.

this year i decided that i was okay saying out loud that i'm a pacifist. it sums up what i believe about peace and violence. i have spent a lot of time developing my thoughts on pacifism since i said it outloud. when applying it to these video game thoughts and trying to figure out what it is about these games that makes me so angry (not a feeling i experience often), i discovered that the common denominator in the violence of those two video games that the others did not have is the recreation of real wars. i realized that what bothers me the most, right down to my core, is the idea that an entire (and extremely profitable) market can be created around the recreation of the horrible deaths of real people as a GAME. as entertainment.

think about it. war is something that haunts some veterans for life - veterans who are currently alive, that many of us know personally. war is something that caused adult men to run away from home to avoid. war is something that tears families apart. war is something that right now is penetrating the innocence of youth around the world and is forcing them to bend to it's will, while sacrificing their lives for no purpose but to hate and to harm. and we are okay making it a game.

is my logic that some fictional violence is more okay sound? probably not. i don't love it, but it just doesn't get me as profoundly furious as the idea of remaking the war experience for people to use as their (insert reason people play those games here).

sorry. just had to get that off my chest. 

the moments we share.

tonight i'm going to a wake. a good person died this week. if you read my last post, it's the same person. his name is jay. my heart is breaking for his wife of 3 years. 3 years? that's the next one for andrew and i. boy does that make you think.

i wasn't extremely close to jay, but knew him well enough to mourn the loss of his life. i value people a great deal. time passes between friendships but i usually remember the person with the fondness of when i last spent time with them. i love a lot more than the world around me realizes, i think. moving on. big or small, we share memories and life moments with other people. it's strange to me when those people just cease to be alive.

warning: repeated story (kind of). one time jay and i watched "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" together. let's just make one thing clear - i'm the worst person to watch the chronicles of narnia with. i've read them all at least 20 times each and love them to bits. i also vocally criticize what movies to do my precious books, much to the dismay of those trying to enjoy it. well, that time i met my match and we had the best (most annoying to others) time analyzing everything we liked and disliked.

after the wake i'm going to meet up with family at a baseball game. talk about contrast. but maybe it might be just a little more meaningful, to have time with andrew and his (our) family and share some laughs, and hopefully eat a snowcone.

here's to each moment we share with others. let them be remembered.

thoughts on what we think we have.

sometimes i think that i have problems. then i read about a friend (that i got to know when he moved into a house that i hung out at a lot and have not really kept up with much since) who has been given 6 weeks to live. i read about this on his wife's blog and that's when i realize that 99% of the time that i use the word "problem" it's really not the right word at all.


so i'm sitting here thinking about the legacies we leave behind. even as someone who is far removed from this friend's life at this point, i have good and clear memories. like how i've never enjoyed watching "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" so much as when i watched it with him, because we could talk all day long about the differences between the movie and the book and analyze it without anyone complaining about how annoying that is (because face it, if it's not you in that conversation it's extremely irritating). or how i played settlers of catan with him and another roommate of that household while drinking tea. simple memories that have stuck with me.

so what am i making my life worth? what memories will i leave? i expect that i will be thinking long into the night tonight.

day and night, dark and light.

today at work we had two people from the Congo come for meetings. during the lunch hour they shared in the board room about the situation in the Congo and their work as part of the church.

i know that my heart is easily moved, but it amazed me still that hearing stories second hand almost brought me to tears. to hear of gang rapes, non-selective violence and devastating corruption was overwhelming. our world is so sick.

things like this often tempt me into feeling like there's nothing i can do and that hope is impossible to find. but the paradox is that based on my claim to be following Jesus as well as the practical reality that if we all give up then things will never get better, this hopelessness cannot take root.

sometimes i have really prideful moments when i think i'm making such a good impact in the world, and then i hear about this and i'm put in my place with a startling force. this is not to say that i think my impact is nothing, but it is certainly not all i could be doing and certainly not something to brag about.

my thoughts are jumbled. in summary, i would like to more clearly figure out my role in the world and fully live out my potential to be a light rather than a shadow.

ray bradbury

They have not seen the stars,
Not one, not one
Of all the creatures on this world
In all the ages since the sands
First touched the wind,
Not one, not one,
No beast of all the beasts has stood
On meadowland or plain or hill
And known the thrill of looking at those fires.
Our soul admires what they,
Oh, they, have never known.
Five billion years have flown
In turnings of the spheres,
But not once in all those years
Has lion, dog, or bird that sweeps the air
Looked there, oh, look. Looked there.
Ah, God, the stars. Oh, look, there!

It is as if all time had never been,
Nor Universe or Sun or Moon
Or simple morning light.
Those beasts, their tragedy was mute and blind,
And so remains. Our sight?
Yes, ours? to know now what we are.

But think of it, then choose. Now, which?
Born to raw Earth, inhabiting a scene,
And all of it no sooner viewed, erased,
As if these miracles had never been?
Vast circlings of sounding fire and frost,
And all when focused, what? as quickly lost?

Or us, in fragile flesh, with God's new eyes
That lift and comprehend and search the skies?
We watch the seasons drifting in the lunar tide
And know the years, remembering what's died.

--
Ray Bradbury

short lists.

there are two big things i was really hoping for this week and both of them fell through. hope is such a funny thing because it can leave room for us to set up our own harm, or it can leave room for wonderful things to inspire us and keep us going. this i know and have known for a long time.

aside from that, i have re-discovered that family and friends are really good things. it's nice that when you explain that you just got news that made you feel extremely deflated, that someone will walk over to your apartment with a tray of cookies (and by tray, i literally mean the baking sheet... they were THAT fresh) and enjoy tea with you while you debrief. or that your mom will tell you the most mom like thing and you know she's a touch bias but it still feels really nice to hear that she, if not others, is so completely in your corner. or when your super awesome husband buys you something he knows you want and hands it to you saying "happy bad day" and the gift + the ridiculous statement makes you laugh again.

these are really good things.

lastly... here, enjoy this photo.