"We had high hopes for you" and other difficult things about being family

I love my extended family. Families share so many values, traditions and memories. Families believe in you and have high hopes for you.

Which is why I sometimes feel like wearing a high hope-proof vest.

To brutally misquote Isaiah 55:8: Your hopes are not my hopes and your ways are not my ways, saith Angeline.

My mom's siblings are an academic bunch: psychologist, author/life coach, social worker, corporate lawyer, businessman, programmer. (As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are their incomes higher than mine.) From the time I was knee high to a microfiche, I was told the virtues of marrying late and getting a Masters and a high paying, prestigious career in an academic profession. (Plumbers make good money but that doesn't count. Which is okay, because I'd make a terrible plumber.)

Masters degree - check. Academic career - check. Prestigious - well, my articles have been read by thousands across the country and two have earned awards (see Disabilities and Simplicity links to read the award-winning stories). High paying - not so much. And you can't get married much younger than 21, can you? (I mean legally.)

So at family gatherings as I field the questions: "Why aren't you writing for more publications? Why are you teaching only one class?" I sense a disappointment. Dashed hopes. (When I start talking about drying the dishes by hand their eyes really start to tear up.) I imagine I can hear the unasked questions: "Why is she wasting her education?" "Why isn't she more motivated?"

"Why isn't she like us?"

A few years ago I was more motivated. And miserable. I felt like I had to prove myself to the world by publishing more, winning more, earning more. More, more, more.

No more. I'm at peace with myself and what I do. I write and teach because I enjoy it. I also bake pies and scrub shower tiles because I enjoy it. And I walk kids home for lunch through the park and chat with them about airships and pirates, mermaids and heaven, because I really, really enjoy it!

To take Isaiah 55 in context, God's ways are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth; meaning we're all on the same earth, equal before him and equally below him. I may not have fully lived up to my family's hopes and values, but I am learning to listen to God's way for my life.

I don't want to be like the man Walker Percy was describing when he said, "He got all 'A's' and flunked life." (Which is why I intentionally got some B's in college to make time for important things like donut runs and toilet papering the dean's office. Oh ya, and wooing T. with my feminine charms and working car.)

A few verses down in Isaiah 55 God promises, "You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." Finding and giving joy is becoming the guiding principle in my life. Not resume-building.

Now if you'll excuse me I have pies to make. Maybe I'll even set one aside in the freezer for the next family gathering.

'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far

Yesterday G. got lost in Zellers. Or, more accurately, I lost her; she was enjoying a rare moment of retail independence in the clothing department. My request for assistance precipitated a "code yellow" and the "perimeter was sealed" while my wandering shopper was hunted down by a red-vested army of shelf stockers, customer service reps, cooks, managers and clerks.

I have to admit I'm feeling a little lost these days.

My youngest is starting grade 1 in a few days. For the past 3 years I've been working hard as a writer to build a reputation and connections. I've sacrificed some time with K. and G. while they were preschoolers to ensure I'd be able to support them once they were older. The idea was that once my kids were both in school full time I would be poised to jump even deeper into the opportunities I had fostered.

Instead I'm letting go of my daughter and my job.

Our buzzword at the office is teamwork: "This organization is the sum of its parts." I guess this part didn't add up to the right sum anymore, so they saw a need to subtract the part-time writer and add in a full-time something-else.

Since I got the news I've been working from home or away on holidays. This week I tried going into the office. I cried for 3 straight hours at my desk. I had to relocate and finish my shift at my "other office" (Starbucks).

I'm wandering lost and so far no knights in shining Zeller's uniforms have come to my rescue.

Get over it, right? It's "just a job." If anyone should know jobs don't last forever it's me. (My husband and I seem to be drawn towards companies secretly on the verge of restructuring!)

But it's not just a job. Every staff meeting we're told, "You've been called here by God. Together we have the opportunity to transform the world." I have my own set of mini-miracles of how God led me here. It's hard to believe I was only supposed to be part of world-transformation for such a short time. I sure don't feel God leading me away. Being let-go is hard. Letting go is harder.

My kids are at a church day camp this week. (It's their fifth VBS this summer. K.'s so full of Bible stories he's started preaching to his bean plant. "It won't live long, you know mom, so it needs to hear the good news before it's too late.") The singing is always the best part of VBS and this week they learned a jazzed up version of "Amazing Grace."

"I once was lost but now I'm found."

This morning I realized it's not: "I once was lost but now I've found my way." I've lost the perfect job, I've lost my "babies," but God's not expecting me to find anything.

He's found me. And he's never letting me go.

To dream the impossible dream

I have no imagination. That may sound strange considering the fact that I'm a writer, musician, dancer, teacher and mother. How can I do all that without imagining?

I create out of what's there. If it's not there, I can't make it up. I dance the steps I'm shown, I sing the notes on the page, I rearrange the statements from an interview into a meaningful story.

I guess I'm more of a sculptor than an painter. Give me a blank page and it stays blank. Give me a chunk of words and I'll chip away the garbage until the beauty underneath shines through.

My dream is to write a novel. I've been working on it for the past year and I'm not so proud to announce I have....one page. Not necessarily the first page. (It is a very good page though!!)

The thing that's blocking me is that I can't seem to make up things about my characters. Even if I could, it feels like lying. So everything about them and everything they do is from either my life or someone close to me. (Right now the guy is sort of a combination of Tony, my dad, and Ray Goertzen, if you can imagine that! Short, furry, and loves airplanes.)

If I haven't experienced it myself then I can't imagine it happening at all. Which means I'm giving away a lot more of my secrets than I'd like through these characters! How do other people feel deep down about God, sex, death or their own elbows in their most honest moments? I don't know!

So either I need to get comfortable with telling the world my secret fantasies and insecurities or I need to learn to lie. Or God needs to infuse me with a serious dose of imagination. He created an entire universe no one else had ever thought of before, so maybe he could show me how to create a story world from nothing too?

Or maybe I should just stick to writing truth. The truth that I know. Like "How to be your best unemployed self" or "10 things, I hate, about commas" or a commentary on the "Intertextuality of Ezekiel." Informative (for the 1% of the population who would care) but not very inspiring.

No, I have a need to create. A God-given need to lead people towards beauty: the beauty of a Creator who "can do more than anything I can ask or imagine."

Imagine that.

When all hope was lost

Biking around the neighbourhood feels very different this summer.

And not just because I finally have a bike with working breaks, a kickstand that reaches the ground, and more than one gear. I have a very sweet husband, who values me, and my ability to stop before the parked cars, enough to surprise me for our 14th anniversary.

This summer I don't cry every time I go by the school playground.

Before you google "new antidepressant meds" allow me to explain. In May 2007 we found out the school board wanted to close my kids' elementary school, around the block from my house, due to low enrollment. So last June my full time job was ringing doorbells, doing surveys, handing out fliers, calling the division office regarding services and funding policies for small schools, researching the history of the building and its founder, and writing speeches.

And chastising the apathetic parents on the playground. You know, the kind that say, "Oh, we can't make a difference anyway." Or "My kid's going to junior high next year so it doesn't affect me."

When the kids were let out last June, we only knew we had a year-long fight on our hands, with no hope in sight. It was a bunch of zealous soccer moms and dads against the elected pocketbooks.

The suits had already made up their minds. The suits controlled the media. And despite our brilliant presentations, the suits voted to put our school up for review for closure.

Every time I rode by the empty playground and saw the vertical garden the students had just painted, poles full of jellyfish, flowers, fruit and butterflies, I cried. I wept when I imagined the new playground equipment torn down and the playing field sprouting condominiums. Or the building where K. learned to write his name turned into a military base, or a meat packing plant. (Nothing says "happy family neighbourhood" like raw pork and tanks.)

The school board's final vote to close the school was scheduled for the beginning of June. "All through the school year," one staff told me, "not a day goes by when the topic of closure doesn't come up." Like a cloud over our heads. Why plan and dream? Why create and improve when someone is going to tear it all down?

Enter Education Minister Peter Bjornson. Out of the clear blue this June, he passes a bill in legislature placing a moratorium on school closures in Manitoba. Done.

When we heard the bill had passed I heard a parent say, "A week ago it seemed so hopeless, and now it's all turned around. I don't believe in God, but this almost made me wonder..."

I'd have to agree. To step in and save us when all hope was lost and all our efforts had failed sounds very God-like.

I'd like to think rescuing beautiful, safe places where children are loved was on the divine to-do list for 2008.

Race you to the swings!