a new perspective

March 29^th  2011 Blog #29  Confessions and dreams of a middle age woman  

Dear Tania

It was nice to see you, Owen, Gideon and Hannah… and of course Kate.

It was a real tough week in many ways… very stretching--à mentally, emotionally and psychologically.. the reward though was closure. I came away with a renewed spirit and some definite closure in my life regarding many things..

One of the things that struck me is the relationship between the temporary and the permanent. We are so attracted to the temporary in terms of life, jobs, people etc. And yet we know as Christians that our life here on earth is temporary… yet when tragedy hits us we grieve so much for the temporary and it’s hard to appreciate the eternal at those moments. At least this is what I have seen and experienced. Though I must add that the eternal brings comfort when it comes to death. Knowing death is the gateway to the next life… the eternal life. In those moments of loss a resentment of the temporary has taken hold of me. A rejection of this time and all its heartache... focusing instead on the eternal.

So I came back to Edmonton with a fresh glimpse of myself and my surroundings. Because of many things… fair and mainly unfair, (fair is such a weak word to use) let’s just say because of life... I think to large part I had consigned myself not to appreciate the temporary and I think I (dare I say our family) had become transients on this journey called life. When things are taken, stolen, ripped away, or lost… we lose hope of life being anything more than what our experience has been. We lose the drive to do more, be more, try more because life has become one big disappointment rolled into another one.   

And so I decided that on some level I had to appreciate the temporary… the gift of life once again. Take simple pleasures where we can. Like the gift of colour. The manse is all white walls except for the dining room which is a murky brown… ugh! Once again, not being in our own home left me feeling… well … resigned to ‘no attachment’.. just accept and muster up gratitude...don’t put any $ into it.. I guess a ‘put up with attitude’. Sad eh. Shows my exhaustion with life!  Coming home I decided that instead of being satisfied with that I was going to make a few changes. Attach in the sense of ‘becoming alive’ again. So with my last $28 I decided to purchase a tin of paint. Hannah came with me and off to the paint store we went. We looked through all the colours and dreamed of all the possibilities. In the end we choose an odd colour called ‘Jamaican heat’ … kind of a salmon bownish/orange.. putting it on I thought perhaps a different colour would have been a better choice.. But now that’s it’s up I like it! My small wall when you walk in the door, I’ve decided to make a collection wall.

When I was a kid and went to my best friend’s house (Veronica) her parents had a giant cross on the wall. I fell in love with her parents and family that day as I saw them standing strong for something they really believed in. My love and respect for them has always remained. Recently a friend gave me a cross from a trip she went on to Mexico… so I decided that I am going to make it my ‘cross wall’. The idea I should say, was also inspired by another friend’s wall. So today I put on the second coat and will put up my small cross to mark a new beginning! An accepting of the temporary with an eye on the eternal, after all both were created by our father; and until he decides on my last breath… I have to live here. Live in the temporal with the passion and purpose I saw that day in my friend’s parents. Accepting there is purpose behind the temporal as well as the eternal. So I am choosing to let go of past disappointments and not let them dictate my future and for me, my cross wall with its beautiful colour will be my reminder!