Summer Drive

The helmet didn't fit.
I cinched the strap so tight I couldn't swallow, but that didn't matter much.
There was a bad, black brute of a motorcycle beneath me, the man of my dreams pinched tightly between my knees and the freshly paved highway rushing swiftly by. A summer drive. Strictly for pleasure.
The distant fear that the loose helmet would be impotent to protect did nothing to dampen the joy of it all...the life in the surging wind and the roaring engine.
Can't swallow? Spit.
Sitting on a bench just off the highway we licked heaping ice-cream cones. $1.50 for a week's ration of sweet strawberry cream that the sun licked faster than me. I let the sticky runoff roll down the cone and pool on the ground.
On the ride home bugs rushed to their deaths against my jeans, my face, between my fingers, the sticky guts surprisingly cool on such a hot day. I smiled up to the sky, warmed by the blazing sun, kissed by the hot wind. I sucked in as much as I could. I'll need this memory when the days get shorter and the wind stops kissing and starts biting.

test- one- two

ehhem.
Excuse me.
I feel somewhat conspicuous showing up here after all this time. Am I alone again in cyber space?
It feels quiet.
Just me tonight and my laptop. Cheese-bun, check. Ooooh, glass of Cabernet, check. And a wonderful, secret, miracle.
I just couldn't keep it to myself.

The Lord can do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it. That (*snap*) fast. If he wants to. Which after all the waiting and the silence and the sadness, he did. Today he wanted to bring the Kingdom to my little corner of the planet. Because he loves me. And all of us.

So the story goes something like this.

Once upon a time a good man with a messy life died. He had four kids he loved very much with two separate women who did not feel similarly about each other. The kids loved their dad, each other and their respective mothers. Upon his death shit got messy. Some kids felt they were left out. Some kids were trying to do the best they could do and ended up hurting other kids. It was messy. Pretty soon no one was speaking to each other. Somewhere in the mess everyone began to suspect the definition of family had changed.

Until today.

It started out a little jerky, a touch awkward. The sun was still warm and the breeze (with that promise of coming fall) smelled like blooming flowers and warm grass. But my littlest bro and I joined the throngs of teenagers at the mini-golf place close to his house. We played 18 holes (3 of them twice) of mini golf together like siblings who love each other. Which we are. Our other two brothers were no yet able to join us. But they'll come around. When the time is right, when they least expect, God will break their hearts too.

Highlight of the evening:
Me: Okay J, good to see you.
Him: Hey, I thought my name was Fat Tony (smiles)
Me: Oh yeah. I guess I said if I ever stopped calling you that it was because you were getting fat!
Him: You said you'd call me Slim Jim if I got fat.
Me: Oh yeah, well, Fat Tony it is.
Him: Yeah. Ok. See ya.

Riding my bike home tonight I just knew that I had two fathers in heaven smiling down on me.

Thanks for giving me my brother back.
(One down...three to go.)

Valentine's

It’s amazing how the sun’s rays can feel as satisfying as a long, wet kiss; it’s warmth as comforting as a familiar embrace. The day is unfolding like a delicately wrapped gift; every hour pulls back a corner of tissue from this hidden gem.

I’m endeavoring to look as elegant as I feel by perching a poppy-red, wide-brimmed hat on my head. Go figure. My head is too big. I wonder if I inherited the immense Carroll head as God’s idea of an obvious metaphor. Today I don’t even mind if he is mocking me. I feel his love everywhere. I see it in my best-friend’s belly bobbing in the water, ripe with my unborn niece. I see it in my mom’s dark skin, gleaming in the hot afternoon sun. I see it dancing in the hem of my aunt’s wrap as she sits elegant and demure in the shade of the umbrella.

This week away in Arizona feels like a divine appointment. Beautiful women, food, weather, music. But then, so did my long weekend in Calgary/Edmonton a few weeks ago. I feel like the Holy Spirit has revealed something to me through my wise friend Laura, and now I am walking through all of life with a new sense of purpose. With new eyes to see. Today I see his love in the green glint of the pool water, in the sharp edges of the cacti lining the scenery, in the dry colors of the desert.

Am I thinking about Shane? Of course I am thinking about Shane. I always think about Shane. I love that guy! I want to memorize the exact contours and details of his face and then burn them onto the backs of my retinas so that in these times, so far away from him, I need only close my eyes to see him.

Am I thinking about marrying him and what our own particular version of Happily-Ever-After-Save-Inevitable-Glitches will look like? Of course I’m thinking about it. But not because it’s Valentine’s! Please Lord strike me dead with a lightening bolt if my idea of love and romance becomes relegated to foil wrapped chocolates and red roses. No. I’m dreaming about this because I’m dreaming about love today. And all kinds of love.

And all kinds of love eventually point me back to their source. God. Who binds us in love to one another to help with the process of living life and surviving life. I don’t even know where to start except to say that God has rocked my understanding of him again. Just as I was getting confident I knew something of his nature, WHAM! Back to the beginning. Starting over. Picking up the pieces of my broken image, trying to figure out which fragments still fit.

Is he a God of love and grace? Heck yes he is. But is he a God of judgment and holiness? Hmmmm, unfortunately I think he might be. It’s been liberating to discover that God is actually pretty confident and wise so I don’t necessarily need to approve of all of his characteristics for them to be good and true. He is who he is. Like it, or, in some terribly misguided cases, leave it. The scary side of him, somehow, does not negate the good.

I think it’s interesting that in my new revelation of God and his character (brought on by some fiery sermons on Revelations!) I have also been given new eyes for Song of Songs and this picture of God as passionate lover.

Weird! How does this fit? The God of judgment and the God of passion. I don’t get it! But I know one thing, I suddenly feel more interested in a holy life. It’s been a weird shift from my trucker persona (ie. drinking, swearing, not giving a #$%^) to this feeling of wanting to be found blameless. Not to seem or appear differently, but to honor my Holy God.

In a very naïve comparison, it’s a similar motivation when I dress up for a date. Or when I make a beautiful supper. Or when I use my manners with someone’s Grandma. There is something about carefully considering the way I behave that can honor the people around me. Suddenly I’m less interested in testing what I can get away with (everything! God paid for it all!) and much more interested in how his power and love have transformed me into his righteousness. How because of his love, I have been made holy and blameless in his sight. Wow. Some love goggles! I am the righteousness of God?

No wonder my head won’t fit in this elegant hat.

Lala Gahle

“Lala gahle,” she told me.
Tears sprung to my eyes in the pitch black of her basement bedroom.
“Lala gahle,” I said, trying not to let my voice crack, wondering why the wish, sleep well, sounds so much more beautiful in SiSwati.

I decided on Wednesday to leave town. Thursday after work I was on my way. It was only somewhere between Saskatoon and Lloyd that I realized I had an itinerary of Hands at Work people to see. Kristal. Dayla. Laura. Lacey. Maybe Dave and Marilyn?

Suddenly I am wondering if my subconscious has ambushed me.

My heart is breaking in little ways today. There is something under all of this that I cannot discern. What am I looking for? And what exactly is it that I am worried I won’t find?

Kristal welcomed me like a proper African: into her home and life exactly as it lay before my arrival. She assumed, rightly, that I would rather sleep in her bed than on the couch. It was right to share her bed last night. It made think of Danny sleeping with a man his own age named Decorate. And I giggled. Then the thought to Shane sleeping beside a man, a pastor, named Blessings. Yes, the Africans have a different way of welcoming. All the way to the bedroom, under the sheets.

I’m missing that proximity of community. I’m missing people in my bed.

I’m asking tough questions, questions everyone asks like: What the H am I doing with my life? Where the H am I supposed to be? Why are there so many “good” ideas and no real certainty?

The highway between Lloyd and Edmonton is beautiful today. The sun rose behind me like a bright, pink kiss and the snow reflected her love with sparkling enthusiasm. I am on a strange adventure. Here. Tomorrow. Life. Forever. Who knows where this path goes?

oops...

Dreams float around like butterflies on this warm, winter day. Feels like Spring. Feels like Hope.

My web browser is open to a Google search for au pair positions in France.
My latte is steaming over the brim of my coffee cup.
My imagination is darting between Europe and Africa; solo adventure and romance; today, tomorrow and yesterday.

I’m not sure what happened today.

Well, number one, Carissa finally came home. She has a way of stirring me up. She draws something out of me that I never knew was there. She’s like a clown that keeps pulling scarves out of her sleeve. Bunnies from under hats. (But her hair is better, and her feet are tiny). Only it’s mysteries from my soul that keep surfacing in our little, innocent chats.

The point is, I thought I was going to Africa with Shane. That was my plan until breakfast this morning. Somewhere between the coffee and the eggs a new dream crept in. A new vision of life with my guitar and my notebook and the magic of Paris. Somehow independence and adventure took hold of that part of me that refuses to go down quietly into the status quo.

I know. How do you go from Zambia to France? How do I get from mud hut to corner café? I don’t know. I know. I don’t know.

But what if this is the moment? What if marriage and babies are right around the corner? What if this is my last chance to follow my own dream on an adventure with my own self for company?

Do I even want to admit this to the rest of you?

Post. Don’t post.

Post.

meaningless

The demure sky held a party this morning. He stood silently behind the festivity: cotton candy clouds exploded like slow motion fireworks around a tangerine sun. The giant orange in the sky stood proudly at the center of the carnival of colour. Winter has been ruling with a tyranny of oppression, dark, low stratus drizzling rain and frigid cold. Until this morning when life burst through the frozen layer of death to make a statement.

It was lost on me.

Everything is meaningless.

I can’t help but feeling like rolling my eyes at Solomon when he says it.
I’m not sure how he managed to earn "wisest man" award for that one.
But sometimes I can't help thinking he's on to something.
At least it feels like it.

Just a chasing after the wind.

It’s not like I’ve forgotten.

Less than a year later and that wound still surges and festers below a thin covering of flesh. I cannot forget its there. I don’t want to. Somehow the wound feels like the only real connection to the man. But how can that be true? The man did not remind me of a wound. The man was not a throbbing pain in my heart.

Christmas came and went without a single tear. I’m not sure how that was possible. My only explanation is the absurdity of the holiday: a brightly lit, finely decorated harlot selling gluttony and guilt. We bought it from this two-bit hooker and then wondered why the days after feel like hangover instead of holiday glow. We’ve been duped.

Fortunately, unfortunately, the distraction offered me respite from the tiring work of grieving. I suppose you cannot escape that fat bastard Grief. He struts in whenever the door’s left unlocked, cracks a beer from the fridge, spreads out on the living room sofa and refuses to leave until he’s had his way with you. Now that the company’s gone and the parties are over, I discover him among the discarded gift-wrap and food debris, waiting for me.

I sit down on the couch beside him and pat his leg. I’ve almost missed him. Ever since Joy showed up in her big summer hat, Giref has kept his distance. She’s using the spare room and I suppose he felt like too much of a slob in his sweats on the couch. But he’s back, and Joy is still fast asleep in the other room. We stare silently out the big bay window which is obscured by the unlit Christmas tree. Our breath mimics the fat, white flakes as they hypnotically, silently, slip through the air. There’s really nothing to say.

Today is my dad’s 56th birthday. Or I suppose would have been, were he still alive. This is still the 56th anniversary of his birth. He just isn’t here to celebrate it with us. Surprisingly, unsurprisingly, I’m not really in the party spirit. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Grief on my couch this morning. It just might have been nice if he’d brought a fruit basket or something.