joy in new things to say, a new focus

Hey - I felt inspired to write from time to time again for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com....so this is what came out...had to be genuine, and didn't want a me focus unless it was really gritty...not too chatty...yet this seems a little heavy...what comes next time may be lighter...I'm not real heavy these days..there's a sort of evening process going on...a settling...but I have an ever deepening focus on my sweet Lord and what He wants to say to me...so that is what I want to share, when I feel right about it...here it is, for now:

Me Too


The words jump off the page. But, hey, I've read this passage countless times. Why now? Why me? Am I all that bad?

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brother, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. James 3: 9 - 12

The memory comes that in the past I have always told myself upon reading this that it doesn't apply to me, that I am not one of those people who curses others, one of those bad people. Or at least that I'm not ALL bad.

But today, with my heart open to God in fresh ways, I stop, and listen, unafraid and ready to hear. Somehow I know I can face this in myself, at last, and in the moment of confession, find forgiveness. I trust my heavenly Father enough to know He loves me so much, and He just wants to do more refining. I instinctively feel that He is saying to look beyond the hyperbole that Jesus so frequently used, the exaggeration, and to see that even if my "tree" or "spring" is not all bad because of the bad that I do, that He needs me to see the destructive effect of what I sometimes do, and the potential for it to become much worse.

Yes, He knows I really mean it when I praise Him, when I lead in our worship team and belt out the songs I love. He knows I really do trust Him and seek to honour Him in my life and choices. He takes me seriously, and He knows I take Him that way too. But because He is my father, and He wants to bring me closer, move me further, grow me up even more, He has to touch that spot, and today He's done it and I didn't say ouch.

So I reflect, how do I curse? What have I done that merits that description? Ah, it is my critical spirit, that lurks behind my thoughts and comments. I don't always say things out loud now. But in the past I did. I often had to qualify praise for others, bring them down in some way in the eyes of others. Maybe it was only to close friends. But the bent was still there.

I remember that weird dream a few months ago. I was shown a funny little man, almost like a mischievous leprechaun, with an orange turtleneck shirt and funny brown tights, a jaunty cap, a jutting chin and a sharp nose. "His name is Legalism", the voice in the dream said. This was in the context of all of us in the dream being shown the evil parts of ourselves.

Again, I had been struck with the word. I am not one to think of myself as legalistic. Heaven forbid!!! I'm all out for a generous way of relating to God, while obeying His requirements, but not holding people's toes to the fire about rules and appearances. But again, I was open to see what God was saying. Again I had identified my critical spirit as the culprit.

Okay, so it runs in the family. I come by it honestly. In fact, that was the major thing I found fault with in my mother!!! How typical. My critical spirit was critical of her critical spirit. And I listened to her tongue qualify the faults of others, while to the world she presented that wonderful sweet spirit. Hmm...something hit home again.

Thank you, Lord, for Your gracious lesson again. Thanks for letting me find it in Your Word, and not have it come through the rebuke of friend or foe. Thanks for making me ready to hear and see, and ready to change. Help me, Lord, to leave the judgments of others to You, and just be the one to praise and bless.

joy in moving on, in changing pace and letting go

Unexpectedly I have come to the end of this blog writing for now. I will write one when I have a website for my life coaching, but the story I share here for the blog www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com tells how I felt sure it was time to stop and give myself more brain space and time for my studies and future business. It is an education to me even in the way God led me to this decision. But I feel confident about it, and ready to let go. When I have my new blog on my new website, I will post a link to it here. Other than that, as far as I know, I won't be writing anymore on this blog. It has been a good season, and although there have been few comments on this site, those on the other blog have enriched my life and encouraged my writing immensely. Now I need to write more specifically for a life coaching audience, and for my studies. I am somehow tired of being more random about my writing....so it is good to move on, and keep growing into new challenges. Here's the story:

Change of Season - Change of Pace

by Meg

I returned to Ontario to the signs of late fall and approaching winter. I got my snow tires put on and speculated about the days to come. I don't mind the rain, and the cozy feeling inside the house. It is home. All the time we were away in British Columbia I dreamed of home, our house by the river, our quieter pace. The hustle and bustle of so many places out there was a lot to contend with; I noticed how much it affected our friends. There were precious quiet moments - a walk on the beach, or by a rushing stream with salmon leaping and spawning. And most of our friends have quiet hearts in the midst of hectic lives. As I have, or seek to have.

Yet the addictive tendency to busyness is inside of me despite my quiet home and town. My whirling brain often doesn't allow me to settle at night. My plans for the future collide with each other as each day's demands compete. Reality checks come in various ways.

Such was what happened last week when I wasn't able to post on Saturday. I had been praying about whether or not I should continue to write my posts. Not because I don't love writing. And not because they take a lot of time to write. But they occupy brain space during the week: mulling over what would be relevant to say, wondering about what is really appropriate to share from my own life's experiences, past and present. By the time Friday evening came I had been planning to write and knew basically what I wanted to say. I had had internet access all week at moments in the places we were staying. Friday night's venue had been fine for that before. Then I discovered Thursday night that there was a new password for it. I got that Friday morning and got on fine - I fully expected to be able to get on later when we came home tired from our long day of driving and visiting.

For several hours I battled the system gaining an inch and losing it again, slipping in and out of access to the browser but never getting into this site. What was God saying? Eventually I had to let go, let the dreaded thing happen - I would not be able to fulfill my commitment to a Saturday morning post. By the time I got access in a restaurant mid morning B.C. time on Saturday Belinda had already posted on my behalf.

My reflection upon it all reached the conclusion that I really need that bit of brain space for my main focus. That I need to give up this opportunity to have more available energy and thought for the major plans God is calling me to. I realized, sadly, that it is time to say goodbye for now.

I told Belinda that when my life coaching business website is up and running, sometime in the new year, that I will have a blog on that, an opportunity to reflect in a way that has a devotional flavour and yet fits with the world of Christian life coaching, that world of purpose and passion, focus and faith. I asked if I might have a link to that blog on this site and she said that would be great.

A few days after that decision I saw the leaping, spawning, dying salmon. It was an amazing sight, so unexpected on that last day of our busy "holiday". I have pondered upon it as another sign...these salmon live out their life cycle and make some final courageous leaps upstream before they spawn their eggs and then die. It is as if my decision not to write these posts anymore is like those dying salmon...I have been swimming upstream for a long time, I have made some major leaps to bring about a new phase of my life, I have already deposited my spawn, sown my seeds, laid my eggs for this new season of my life. But if I am to go forward into it, I need to let that old part of me die, as the new part is being prepared for birth, in a new form.

So here I am. I am moving into a new season, changing my pace. I am letting go and moving on. It is bittersweet. This has been a precious time in my life. Writing these posts has been healing and strengthening. Getting feedback on how they have touched others has been affirming and deeply encouraging. But that is not enough to keep me in this "space". I have to embrace new things and to do that I have to let go of some former things. Thank you, dear readers, for sharing this space with me - for reading and commenting, for inviting me into your lives through your time and focus. May the Lord continue to bless us all as we trust Him for future days and ways. Bye for now.

joy in new food for thought and pilgrimage

When this is published I will be having Thanksgiving weekend with relatives on their farm and enjoying one of their own turkeys for the special meal...how appropriate. But I wrote the blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com a few days before, when we were at a camp we knew long ago. I have to get my secure wireless connections when I can...and I appreciate that learning for my journey too, that planning ahead and preparing for the future, while resting in the day...

Here it is:

Food for Thought and Pilgrimage

I knew this trip would be a pilgrimage...not just a visit with my daughter, old friends and a few relatives, seeing old and new places. I knew there would be lots of opportunities for reflection on life, ministry, calling, past, present and future. And there would be lots of food.. at chain restaurants in the middle of big cities,at Irish pubs with singers, at a bistro with a roaring fire in a rainstorm, in the modest homes of friends on missionary support, or in more elaborate homes with hillside or oceanfront views owned by friends very blessed financially. Each of them living out their Christian lives with many blessings and many trials, each of them with their own reflections on ministry, service, vocation, God's leadings, each of them with their own stories of moving around from one place to another or staying put for many many years.

Take today for instance. We are experiencing gorgeous early fall weather on an island off Vancouver Island, the sun blazing in the window as I write in the home of the camp cooks at a wonderful Christian camp which has flourished for more than fifty years. My husband built their first rowboats in his first summer in Canada in the 50's. The founders of the camp still live here in their 90's, setting up the camp after spending years living in a boat called the GoForth and journeying up and down the B.C. Coast spreading the gospel. They have spent their lives on this coast and in this camp. We had lunch with other camp staff who have been planted here for many many years also, never, as the husband said, having been told by God to go elsewhere. Our hosts, on the other hand, have moved every few years, blessing various ministries with their cooking expertise. Their daughter came out with us to Uganda in her mid teens to help us homeschool our daughters, and had what she called a "pivotal" time with us there.

This morning we meandered our way to the wharf and considered taking a rowboat out on the very breezy water, and thought better of it. Then the sailing director came down to prepare the four Catalinas for the campers who had just arrived. We had a lovely chat with him instead, hearing how God opened the doors for him and his wife to leave their ministry as worship leaders and pastors in a church where they were burning out. We reflected on balance in ministry, self care, and being led of the Spirit into ways of service where we can work with teams and not wear ourselves out doing too much.

I reflect on the motel room excellent wireless connection the Lord provided for me two days ago to take my Life Coaching online exam, which I had been too busy to finish studying for before we left on this trip. I muse about His constant provision and protection over me and all His children, and yet I long to be able to get on with new work and ministry and not keep having so many lessons of trust and patience to learn. I champ at the bit to know how the future will look, how I will combine my coaching with my counselling studies, and my dreams of ministry and creative ventures. It might seem I am still the driven person I have often been.

I go now, however, to read a novel on the porch in the sun, to bless God for His constant faithfulness to me again and again, and to put my trust in His timing and leading for yet another day, another journey, another phase of life. I look forward to Thanksgiving with our only B.C. family on their turkey farm and another look at life through the eyes of others. There are many reality tests on this trip, and all of them call me to reflect, to observe, to share and to trust, to forgive myself and others, and to move ahead in trust. This is my daily bread today, my food for thought and pilgimage.

joy in points of connection

I am sitting right now in my daughter's room in her apartment style residence in B.C. It is a beautiful fall day...we have just come across on the ferry from the mainland...it's surreal to see my daughter in her new space, her new home, her new life...it's a very good life, with God's leading all the way, His protection and His provision. But it's weird for me all the same...Empty nest syndrome I guess...letting go. I've been so blase about it all...now the reality is hitting me. But it's great to be here, and she is the biggest connection for us out here...long may it last...our connecting across the miles, as with so many friends whom I'm meeting and writing about in my post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com today:


Points of Connection

Connecting has been the order of the days on this 27 day trip in B.C.. Before we left we had lined up lots of connections - lunch and dinner arrangements, places to stay, people to see, all to reconnect with the people we knew in days gone by. Now, a week into our trip, I am reflecting upon the underlying themes of this journey, this kind of pilgrimage. God always has so much to teach us as we connect, because it's really all about connecting more deeply with ourselves and with Him, as well as with others.

Indeed that is what it's been - the physical ways of connecting and making arrangements have just been metaphors for connecting in other ways. Conversations for me have focused in on the deepest level - how are these friends growing older? What is most important to them now? What visions inform their lives? How do they interact with those that inspire mine? How do they live out their Christian faith in context of various churches and denominations?

A common theme has been, not unexpectedly, that these friends, like we, are often dissatisfied with many versions of Christian fellowship. They, like we, will not settle for "rules" that seem superfluous or even alien to true Christian realities - levels of church politics, status or elitism. Not surprisingly these are continuing versions of what connected us in the first place. And of course the ones who have remained friends, or have become better friends now, are those who share a certain distaste for anything phony, legalistic or pretentious.

Most of all what unites us is a delight in each others' company, a warmth of acceptance and sharing of our humanity. For me this is a special delight, not only with these friends but with my daughter who is the biggest reason for this whole trip.

Each day has brought more depth and points of connection. Today we spent with a friend and her husband, a friend with whom I shared deeply over the years over a decade ago. It was as if the years had rolled away and we were back at her table affirming each other and bringing our gifts of discernment to bear on each others' lives. Only this time it was even better. All that has happened to each of us has only deepened our friendship, left on the shelf for years.

How could I expect anything else from my precious friend, and my precious Father? He is the author of these relationships, the keeper of our lives, the planner of the future. We walk in His grace and favour, and He, on our journeys, makes the points of connection.

joy in celebrating God's goodness to me

When you read this I will be in British Columbia, on the third day into our nostalgic trip, and our visit with our daughter newly settled out there. As I prepared the post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com ahead of time, the theme that emerged is one that has been springing up more and more from within me these last few weeks. I found it came out so smoothly with this song attached to it, as its true voice of what I feel so truly and deeply at this time in my life. Here is the post:

Lord, You've Been Good to Me

My mind whirls as I remember the way this trip came to be. It was born as a simple dream to see our daughter settled into her new home in the province of her birth, British Columbia. A dream to spend Thanksgiving with her so she can bear our Christmas love to her sibling, our other precious child, far across the ocean in New Zealand. But God had much more to the dream than even I could plan - a gathering in and celebration of our life from before Uganda, a first holiday for me, a first flight for me, a first reconnection for me, for almost ten years. Each detail has come to fruition almost as soon as it was conceived. Every person we have contacted to see has been able and eager to see us. Our itinerary reads like a bus tour with each day carefully and delightfully planned. The only difference is that we are the bus drivers, in our rented Honda Civic. My conclusion: this trip is totally a God-thing.

So, with delight I prepared the final details of packing. By the time you read this we will be two days into our visits, already seasoned travellers again, picking up on expertise born of routine travels as missionaries for almost a decade, a decade ago. My heart will be even more overflowing with gratitude for God's faithfulness and graciousness to us and me through all our lives. I look forward to sharing stories of our visits with many old friends, and opportunities to remember special moments of the early days of our children's lives. I have no doubt that they will shine with the luminiscence of God's overshadowing mercy and protection and provision.

There seems no other song more fitting to share with you at this time, one that we have sung recently in our worship times at church, and one that has run through my mind, and out my mouth many many times in these weeks: Graham Kendrick's "Lord, You've Been Good to Me". I have been able to find a section of it on You Tube performed by Graham and his band, but I wouldn't want you to miss out on all the words. Here are both, to bless you as they bless me:


Lord you've been good to me
All my life, all my life
Your loving kindness never fails
I will remember
All you have done
Bring from my heart
Thanksgiving songs

New every morning is your love
Filled with compassion from above
Grace and forgiveness full and free
Lord you've been good to me

So may each breath I take
Be for you Lord, only you
Giving you back the life I owe
Love so amazing
Mercy so free
Lord you've been good
So good to me

Copyright © 2001 Graham Kendrick
Administered by Make Way Music,
www.grahamkendrick.co.uk

joy in loving the land

Today I am at a seminary retreat in a lovely setting. I wrote this post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com as a follow up to last week's. It has been healing for me to write them, and to see what I end up saying.

Loving the Land

by Meg







Last Saturday I reflected upon the impact of selling our family cottage. I spoke of the liberation from the weight of memories, of the heaviness of family system "rules", however unspoken, and the connection of those with a physical place, the family cottage that had been part of my life from its beginning. Writing that story was liberating, and in doing so I was reminded again of the importance also of celebrating all that was wonderful and good in that place and those memories. I said I would share what I had written in the summer of 2008, when selling the cottage was not really in our thinking. I reread these words and they bring alive again what I truly feel. I am grateful to have them to share now, in this season of letting go of the physical symbol of that part of my family heritage. ......

I lay this morning on the cottage living room floor on the mattress from the uncomfortable sofa bed moved up from my mother's apartment last year when her cancer got the better of her interesting life in Windsor. I mused upon the cedar beams and the pine boards of the cathedral ceiling Dad and she envisioned and built in 1969.

I recalled the many evenings of square dancing and sparkling fires, slide shows and card games, with several generations present. Almost forty years later I celebrate the way my parents put their vision into a building, now labelled a knockdown cottage. I mused also upon the recognition in my spirit that these parents, so different from me in so many ways, like me needed a vision to keep them going. Like we all do. They needed to create a world that represented their love of nature, their desire for company and fellowship, their appreciation of simplicity and beauty. The openness of the big windows on three sides, and the huge totally screened porch spelled out their desire for connection with the land and world of Muskoka. Lying in the lovely early morning sunshine on Canada Day, 2008, I celebrated these dear Canadians, my parents, Dorothy and Cyril, in this year of my mother's death a few months ago, almost 95, twenty years after my father's death, and I remembered their vision and the heritage they have given me, in this cottage, and in my life, as I set aside the stories of tension and misunderstanding I also carried within my being. I rejoiced, and found new joysprings in these stories in the beams above me, in the windows around me, in the trees and lake that beckoned to me, that they and I loved together for all those years. This is a deep part of my Canadian heritage, these parents who in their own way were Canadian pioneers and settlers, like so many people I know and love in this part of Canada that has now become my permanent home...Muskoka, land of those who love the land.


My understanding of God is that he has put us here to love the land, as well as to love people. He doesn't want us to love it more than we love Him,or people, but I do believe He has so much to teach us through His creation, and through the simplicity and richness of living life in deep connection with the land. Just as loving people teaches us so much about Him, and certainly about the nature of love, so loving the land has innumerable lessons. Perhaps our family cottage was the first place where I really learned to love the soil beneath my feet, the stones glistening under the water, the loons calling at night, the sunset saying "Good night", the sunrise saying "Good morning". I have relearned these love lessons again and again, as I have been privileged to live for short or longer times in northern Alberta,Scotland, Jamaica, British Columbia and Uganda, and to visit England,Wales,Israel, Egypt, the beautiful maritime provinces and to drive west through the Rockies. I live them here each day, in my home on the river in a Muskoka town. God calls me through every leaf and breeze, as through each person I meet. My prayer now is that I will always remember to hear His voice through each new encounter with land and person, and through the heritage of memory of family and land shared with them.

joy in liberation from the weight of memory

Here is today's post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Already our blog manager, Belinda, has commented on it, and on the liberation from memory that comes from writing. I so appreciate that comment, and also look forward to sharing from my own archives next Saturday the blog post I wrote here about our family cottage heritage when I first began this blog. Stay tuned.


The Weight of Memory: Reflections on Selling the Family Cottage

We glanced up at the window across the street from the lawyer's office as we exited after signing off on the sale of the cottage that had been in our family since the mid-1940s. "Isn't it interesting that the lawyer's office is right under Mum's old window?" I said to my sister as we got into the car. "It sort of underlines the heaviness of this whole thing, doesn't it?"

She agreed, as we drove away reflecting again on the various stages we had gone through this year and a half since our aged mother died beside that very window, in the seniors' home we had brought her to so that we could be there for her in her last days of terminal cancer. The precious year we had with her before her death was unforgettable. We could not forget either the conversations we had with her about the cottage, the assumptions we had made that we would do all in our power to keep the cottage, preserve it for the future generations.

Yet now we had made this decision, made it in peace and prayer, and the sale had gone smoothly and been a win win for all concerned. The intolerable burden of responsibility had been lifted off our shoulders, and we had given the next generation of family time to realize that what we would have kept alive if we could have afforded it was really only a dream, a version of unreality that we did not want to promote, even a snare and a delusion to bind them into future conflicts, both inner and outer. We did not want to wish on them the carrying of a dream that would turn into a heavy load. Let alone the work and worry.

For me, as I walked up and down the hill at the cottage many times these past few years, I realized more and more that selling it meant saying goodbye to my family system in a way that was very liberating. For our cottage was not just a building and a dock on a lake - it had been part of a network of relatives' cottages, a community that had been both comforting and confining, and, ultimately, a constantly bittersweet place of many melancholy memories. Our cottage experience had bound us into obligations and rituals that often snared and obliged us and taught us the tyranny of family rules that had nothing to do with God's plans for families and their blessings upon the children.

Even the good memories kept me haunted and held, weighed down and reflective. Instead of just enjoying the outdoors and the beauties of nature I was confronted always with scenes from the past...and the ones I treasured most were the most distant...yet even they were full of sadness, the sadness that lay about our extended family like a cloak, the sadness that was sewn into the fabric of our beings from such an early age that it seemed normal.

Now we are free from the physical reminder of all of this...now we just remember, and have more choice, perhaps, about how and what we remember. 'Sometimes the weight of memory is just too much', I had said to myself a few weeks ago. 'Sometimes we need to be free from a place that binds us too closely to those memories.'

I reflect upon how my mother would see things from a heavenly perspective, liberated herself from the family rules, from the obligations that overshadowed so much of her own life. She had also been a sensible person who was willing to encourage others to move on, to make new choices. I cannot help but feel that just as we were free to make this decision because of her death, that she also would be with us in spirit in this choice, that she would not want us to feel guilty or that we had let her down. She might even have said something like I said to myself, knowing what she had learned in her own life but probably could not articulate while she was alive: that we should not live our lives held down or back by the weight of memory.

A Postscript: I would not want you to think I have undervalued the family legacy here. It was a joy to discover what I did share as we left, and will continue to share. I wrote a letter to the new owners and left it with a copy of the booklet my father had written, with my editorial help, of the history of our cottage community, from its earliest connections to the whole history of Muskoka pioneers. I also told them about how my father had made various items of furniture we left in the cottage, and how my mother had made the curtains and bedspreads we left for them too. There were many treasures we took with us, but we left those, and several paintings with interesting connections to our parents. It was a joy to tell these stories, and our agent said it touched him so, and felt we would be welcome visitors to the new owners. With our children we also took many photos of loved places, to keep forever as reminders of all that we loved the best.

Next Saturday I will share the post I wrote on my own personal blog over a year ago, about the great things of that family legacy at the cottage and how I saw them in their best light. That will be a liberating thing for me, now free from the physical burden, to share those good reflections and memories, and choose what I wish to preserve for posterity myself.