29 years ago today, on a cool but pleasant prairie day, my husband and I got married. It was a church wedding, relatively small and simple. I wore my mother’s wedding gown, the groom wore a new suit, and we each had two attendants (I had my best friend and my cousin, my husband had his best friend and his brother). Our fathers (both Baptist ministers) both took part in our ceremony and there were several other ministers in the congregation (so we were well and truly married). Lilacs from my mother’s garden and ivy from my aunt’s west coast garden, which she brought on the plane, were our flowers. We were surrounded by family and friends. After afternoon tea, served by the church ladies, we left for our honeymoon in the nearby national park. It was a beautiful time, full of joy, love, hope and promise.
Now, 2 kids, 4 homes, and several cars later, here we are, on a cool, grey, Maritime morning with not even the suggestion of a lilac in sight. We are older, hopefully a little bit wiser, have a few more pounds and lot of grey hair (or in my husband’s case, a lot less hair...) and we definitely have moved way beyond that first mad blush of romance. We have had disagreements, we have acted rashly, we have made some really bad choices. We have faced serious house problems, and the resulting financial issues, we have experienced major health challenges and death, and we have definitely had times when we weren’t feeling the love.
We have also raised two incredible children, and worked hard to create a home which is welcoming and comfortable. We’ve had amazing adventures (spending four months in Japan when the kids were younger is just one) and we have met so many incredible people who have become part of our extended “family.” We have experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat through our involvement with our university sports teams, and in other more personal experiences.
So what has brought us this far together along the road of marriage, when statistically half of all marriages end in divorce? Is it because of the centrality of faith in our lives? I know others whose faith is just as strong as ours who have been divorced. Is it because we have the perfect marriage, with just the right amount of give and take, and we’ve figured it all out? I think anyone who knows us would laugh at such a notion. (My husband and I certainly would, and our kids would blow a gasket). We definitely have our own interests and opinions, which are not always compatible, and our personalities often clash.
I don’t know why we’ve made it this far together. We are no longer the young, idealistic lovers we were then. We are no stronger or no wiser than many others who haven’t made it this far. Is it just a case of “there but for the grace of God”? I wonder, if we could have seen then how our life together would unfold, would we have made the same decision to walk down that aisle? Is our life together better or worse than we once imagined it would be? I don’t know. However, I do know that I can’t imagine having the adventures and facing the challenges that we have had with anyone else. And I know that whenever I have needed him, my husband has been there for me. He has been my strength, my source of comfort, my encourager, my shoulder to cry on.
There is a song by Dan Fogelberg from the 1980s called “Longer.” It is a love song, and part of it goes like this:
Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks
And the pages start to yellow
I'll be in love with you.
I love that image. Our book isn’t finished yet. The binding has started to crack, and the pages are not as pristine as they were 29 years ago. But there are a lot of empty pages left to fill, and I am looking forward to finishing the story together. The story thus far hasn’t always been happy or pleasant, and I am sure that we will face more challenging chapters in the years to come. But I am pretty confident that when the last word is written, it will be “love.” Happy anniversary, to my best friend, my confidant, my husband. Here’s to the book of our lives.
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Hello!
Hi there! Welcome to my blog. I am new at this, so bear with me as I experiment with this whole blogosphere thing.
I should introduce myself. I'm quickly approaching middle age, and I seem to spend a lot of my time these days thinking about life while I do mundane things like ironing, driving or washing dishes. I don't know if I have anything to say that's worth sharing, but you never know. At the very least, this experiment will give my family plenty of fodder for mockery at inopportune moments.
The first real thing you should know about me is that I love my family, deeply and passionately, and I am (so far) immensely proud of them. I have a husband and we have been married since 1985. We have two kids; a son who is almost 24 and a daughter who will be 20 this year. They're both pretty awesome kids, and I am quite sure they will figure prominently in some of my posts. Being a mum is by far the best and most rewarding thing I will ever do in my life. I'm sure there will be more on them later. I also have a Mom, who is one of my heroes in life, a Dad who died a couple of years ago and who I miss terribly, a brother who has a wife and two small boys, and some in-laws who I actually really like. Yes, I sincerely like my in-laws. I also have a fairly large extended family who all live on the other coast.
Second, I am proud to be a Canadian, and I love Canadian history. My husband, who studied British history in a previous life, says that "Canadian" and "history" do not belong in the same sentence; I, however, am continually amazed at how interesting our history as a nation is. I have lived on the East Coast for the past 20 years, but I grew up in the West, and it astounds me to consider that when the Prairies were being settled, Atlantic Canada already had generations of settlement under its belt. I'm also pretty sure that some of my posts will be historical in nature. Or maybe that should be "hysterical..." I feel that I know a lot about Canada, because I have lived in every province from New Brunswick to British Columbia at least once. I've spent a lot of time in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, which is almost as good as living there. I am longing to visit Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Northern territories, which I have never done. I consider myself to be a prairie person, although I haven't lived there for many years, but it is where I did a lot of my growing up, and when I'm homesick, it's usually for the prairies. I’ve moved so much, though, that sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it takes me a minute to remember where I am living. I'm proud of my heritage (Mennonite on my father's side, British via Jamaica on my mother's side with a long line of Baptist ministers in there), and I have done a fair bit of research on my family's history, particularly on my dad's side.
Third, I am a huge football fan. Let me be clear: I mean Canadian football. The Canadian Football League, the one with the bigger field, bigger ball, and 3 downs. I don't enjoy NFL football, or European football particularly, although I do enjoy cheering on our local university soccer teams on occasion. I am a fan of my local university football team, and have attended almost every one of their games with my son since he was 7 or so. Those of you who knew me when I was growing up will be a bit puzzled, and might even have had to re-read the first sentence of this paragraph a few times, because until I was an adult, I was an avid (some might say rabid) hockey fan. Hockey Night in Canada was sacred time in our house, almost as sacred as church time (my dad was a Baptist minister), and at one point, I ate, drank, breathed and dreamed about hockey. I never played, but I loved the game. Until I married my husband and moved to southern Ontario, where the only game in town was the Toronto Maple Leafs. And they were pretty bad, especially compared to the Gretzky era of the Edmonton Oilers that I spent my teenage years watching. So I stopped watching hockey and started watching football. Since we moved away from southern Ontario and the Leafs, I have started watching NHL hockey again, and I even won the annual family hockey pool in 2011. I also have become a big fan of women’s hockey, and I enjoy watching all the university sports that our local university offers. I like watching many sports, but I am not very athletic myself.
Fourth, I am interested in social justice issues, like poverty, equality, education, and health care, both on local and global levels. These issues occupy my thoughts frequently, and there are certain issues within the larger ones that particularly absorb me, such as the reality of Canada’s First Nations. I have done some reading and researching about things like the Millennium Development Goals, and I admire groups such as the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, the Mennonite Central Committee, and Free the Children who try to make the world a more level playing field.
Fifth, I like a lot of other things, like reading, snowshoeing, knitting and other kinds of crafts, cooking, baking, snuggling babies and small children, and listening to music. I'm not particularly technologically inclined, but I have an iPod, and on my iPod, there is a fairly eclectic range of music, including Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen, Kate Rusby, classical music, Steve Bell, Hedley, Avicii, Ella Fitzgerald, Eva Cassidy, and many others. The only music I generally don't like is country music and technocrap. My idea of a perfect day when the kids were little was a snow day vacation from school, all of us curled up on the sofa watching a movie together, or gathered around the kitchen table creating something.
Last, but definitely not least, I think it is important to say that I am a Christian. Sometimes I don't act like a Christian, and a lot of times I don't think Christian thoughts, but at the root of it, my faith is part of who I am, what I'm passionate about, and most of the time, how I act (or at least, how I want to act). That doesn't mean that my posts will be religious or spiritual or even particularly deep, but I hope that what I believe will be reflected in what and how I write. Having said that, I am just a little bit opinionated, so I am sure there will be times when what I write will be at odds with what I actually believe. I hope I don't offend anyone too terribly.
A friend posted a quotation on Facebook the other day that pretty much sums up where I am in my life at the moment:
My to-do list for today:
- Count my blessings
- Practice kindness
- Let go of what I can't control
- Listen to my heart
- Be productive yet calm
- Just breathe
Till next time! Thanks for visiting!
I should introduce myself. I'm quickly approaching middle age, and I seem to spend a lot of my time these days thinking about life while I do mundane things like ironing, driving or washing dishes. I don't know if I have anything to say that's worth sharing, but you never know. At the very least, this experiment will give my family plenty of fodder for mockery at inopportune moments.
The first real thing you should know about me is that I love my family, deeply and passionately, and I am (so far) immensely proud of them. I have a husband and we have been married since 1985. We have two kids; a son who is almost 24 and a daughter who will be 20 this year. They're both pretty awesome kids, and I am quite sure they will figure prominently in some of my posts. Being a mum is by far the best and most rewarding thing I will ever do in my life. I'm sure there will be more on them later. I also have a Mom, who is one of my heroes in life, a Dad who died a couple of years ago and who I miss terribly, a brother who has a wife and two small boys, and some in-laws who I actually really like. Yes, I sincerely like my in-laws. I also have a fairly large extended family who all live on the other coast.
Second, I am proud to be a Canadian, and I love Canadian history. My husband, who studied British history in a previous life, says that "Canadian" and "history" do not belong in the same sentence; I, however, am continually amazed at how interesting our history as a nation is. I have lived on the East Coast for the past 20 years, but I grew up in the West, and it astounds me to consider that when the Prairies were being settled, Atlantic Canada already had generations of settlement under its belt. I'm also pretty sure that some of my posts will be historical in nature. Or maybe that should be "hysterical..." I feel that I know a lot about Canada, because I have lived in every province from New Brunswick to British Columbia at least once. I've spent a lot of time in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, which is almost as good as living there. I am longing to visit Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Northern territories, which I have never done. I consider myself to be a prairie person, although I haven't lived there for many years, but it is where I did a lot of my growing up, and when I'm homesick, it's usually for the prairies. I’ve moved so much, though, that sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it takes me a minute to remember where I am living. I'm proud of my heritage (Mennonite on my father's side, British via Jamaica on my mother's side with a long line of Baptist ministers in there), and I have done a fair bit of research on my family's history, particularly on my dad's side.
Third, I am a huge football fan. Let me be clear: I mean Canadian football. The Canadian Football League, the one with the bigger field, bigger ball, and 3 downs. I don't enjoy NFL football, or European football particularly, although I do enjoy cheering on our local university soccer teams on occasion. I am a fan of my local university football team, and have attended almost every one of their games with my son since he was 7 or so. Those of you who knew me when I was growing up will be a bit puzzled, and might even have had to re-read the first sentence of this paragraph a few times, because until I was an adult, I was an avid (some might say rabid) hockey fan. Hockey Night in Canada was sacred time in our house, almost as sacred as church time (my dad was a Baptist minister), and at one point, I ate, drank, breathed and dreamed about hockey. I never played, but I loved the game. Until I married my husband and moved to southern Ontario, where the only game in town was the Toronto Maple Leafs. And they were pretty bad, especially compared to the Gretzky era of the Edmonton Oilers that I spent my teenage years watching. So I stopped watching hockey and started watching football. Since we moved away from southern Ontario and the Leafs, I have started watching NHL hockey again, and I even won the annual family hockey pool in 2011. I also have become a big fan of women’s hockey, and I enjoy watching all the university sports that our local university offers. I like watching many sports, but I am not very athletic myself.
Fourth, I am interested in social justice issues, like poverty, equality, education, and health care, both on local and global levels. These issues occupy my thoughts frequently, and there are certain issues within the larger ones that particularly absorb me, such as the reality of Canada’s First Nations. I have done some reading and researching about things like the Millennium Development Goals, and I admire groups such as the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, the Mennonite Central Committee, and Free the Children who try to make the world a more level playing field.
Fifth, I like a lot of other things, like reading, snowshoeing, knitting and other kinds of crafts, cooking, baking, snuggling babies and small children, and listening to music. I'm not particularly technologically inclined, but I have an iPod, and on my iPod, there is a fairly eclectic range of music, including Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen, Kate Rusby, classical music, Steve Bell, Hedley, Avicii, Ella Fitzgerald, Eva Cassidy, and many others. The only music I generally don't like is country music and technocrap. My idea of a perfect day when the kids were little was a snow day vacation from school, all of us curled up on the sofa watching a movie together, or gathered around the kitchen table creating something.
Last, but definitely not least, I think it is important to say that I am a Christian. Sometimes I don't act like a Christian, and a lot of times I don't think Christian thoughts, but at the root of it, my faith is part of who I am, what I'm passionate about, and most of the time, how I act (or at least, how I want to act). That doesn't mean that my posts will be religious or spiritual or even particularly deep, but I hope that what I believe will be reflected in what and how I write. Having said that, I am just a little bit opinionated, so I am sure there will be times when what I write will be at odds with what I actually believe. I hope I don't offend anyone too terribly.
A friend posted a quotation on Facebook the other day that pretty much sums up where I am in my life at the moment:
My to-do list for today:
- Count my blessings
- Practice kindness
- Let go of what I can't control
- Listen to my heart
- Be productive yet calm
- Just breathe
Till next time! Thanks for visiting!
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