Bees in My Bonnet

 We visited again with Shannon this morning. The weather is cool and perfect and drinking tea seems to fit the mood.  We said goodbye and made our way to Donaghadee to poke around this small town on the coast and visit the local graveyard. I was looking for relatives from long ago - last names of Walker, Allen, Hamilton, and even McDowell. I'm not sure those I found are related... I'll need to do some more digging. I haven't done much homework on the tracing-your-lineage thing. Someone did most of this for the Crutchfield side a while ago. I don't have much mapped out from my mom's side - the Walker, Allen side.  I started to wonder about those in the distant past of my family when reading the book 'Translating Your Past ' by Michelle Van Loon. I highly recommend this book! It made me think - who were these people? What were their values? What is my heritage?  Wandering around the harbour and town and talking to locals, I get a sense of tradition, value, his...

I notice there are lots of articles out there for parents to address how to raise a kid who has A.D.D. or is on the Autism spectrum. And for good reason! There are unique challenges and difficulties that arise in helping a child to grow whose brain wiring and personality are different than the norm. I get that. Mostly because I was  that child, and I have  that/those child(ren).  I used to write a lot as a child - sometimes inventing imaginative stories, sometimes just chronicling my life. It was a way I could cope with all the world around me. And I dreamed of being a writer someday - of putting my thoughts on paper and seeing them reflected back to me, and imagining others would read my words, and they would land in other hearts. Like an arrow going out from my inner life and landing in the soul of another. And as I grew and had my struggles, and faced my woes (I was a lamenting type of soul from very young, apparently), I made a sacred vow to myself. 'Never forget.' Ne...

  Sometimes I sit with the heaviness of the world, Or, it sits with me - I cannot tell Or be sure if I invite it, or it invites me. My eyes are open and I see My heart is open and it feels My mind is open and I comprehend Sorrows too great Soul-crushing agony Shame that beckons burial. A burial - closing of earth - over what has been lost; Needed ceremony to hallow and honour grief. Many burials are needed - some daily. I’ll wave goodbye to that loss, To that joy, to that which I knew That is no more. What cannot be grieved cannot be reborn. If I don’t sit in the solitary space, Give voice to my cry, give attention to my soul, I will miss the process of death turning To Resurrection.

  Click here for the previous Jenny Story: (8) Jenny Sarah likes to take me on outings. She is careful to make sure my hair is neatly braided and the lint-balls are picked off. I am becoming worn-in. I was only new for about a year before I got to be smoother and squishier. Sometimes we go to the refugee camps, sometimes to the Home of Loving Faithfulness. And sometimes just to the market.  The Home of Loving Faithfulness is a big house and Sarah will go with her parents to visit the children who live there. In Hong Kong sometimes a baby is born broken and the parents don't want the baby. Then there is nowhere for the baby to go, and one day some missionary women from England thought, 'These poor children need love and care. We'll begin a home for them to be taken care of and to show them that God cares about them.' And that's what they did. Sarah will bring me to all her friends there and let me sit on their laps and say hello.  Sarah lives in her imagination somet...

About 10 years ago I started this blog - mostly at the urging of people I was with who would tell me, 'You should write a book!'  I heard about what it takes to write a book and chickened out.  I couldn't handle that, I reasoned.  A blog would suffice.  And it did, and has - for me, if not for others.  Mostly people wanted to hear the story of how I met Sam, it being such a grand adventure and all.  I say that tongue firmly in cheek, because although it does rank up there as truly adventurous, it wasn't exactly all that grand.  I set out to write it all, and it came in bits and pieces, which is relevant to everything about me: I come in bits and pieces - sometimes overly large doses and sometimes small measured ones, if I'm careful to read my audience. And I never did quite finish writing it, which is also very indicative of the kind of person I am: always starting, rarely, if ever, finishing. So to all the pithy little encouraging sayings out there...

The Laugh-ers of heaven They are the laugh-ers Who populate the halls of heaven I only can picture in my Grief-tainted Remembrance Their laughter: Heads thrown back Eyes leaking tears of Hilarity Joke-cracking Wild, unrestrained Overflow I feel the echoing joyful blast - Peals of delight Crash into memory Like waves erasing lines on Sandy shores Smoothing churned up grooves and hastily constructed Palaces complete with Moats and barrier walls To be alive To breathe is to Laugh And I hear them from afar These laugh-ers of heaven: Dad, Kimberly, Ben - so many "I'm alive, more alive than you know or feel. My laughter only grows, It bellows Unleashes Resounds. Life is breath Breath is laughter" Whispers float disrupting Ponderings Sorrows Losses Sadness hangs heavy But the laugh-ers of heaven have the last word... Or the last laugh

I didn't forget about this exercise.  I merely lacked the wherewithall to catch a few uninterrupted moments at the computer.  So I have many more than 30 specific entries to tabulate here...to transfer from handwriting to computer writing.  Thank you for your patience. So, when I use the term 'today' you may need to realize that that was many days ago...and I am just now able to put it down here. Today I am thankful for: Kaluvi's Chicken Okay, now I am sure you are wondering who Kaluvi (said, "Kah-Loo-Vee") is and what's going on with her chicken. I'm so glad you asked.  Kaluvi is the woman I met in Zambia about 12 years ago.  She was the house-keeper/helper for Sam's family.  I don't know her well, or hardly at all.  What I do know is she is a local Zambian woman who lives in a village hut with various family nearby.  We would consider her poor perhaps because of different standards of living and wage-earning.  I consider her quit...

Bananas. It seems a crime to run out of them at our house.  The perfect on-the-go snack - all-natural packaging, densely caloric.  And when you get too many and they start to ripen, and friends are about to come over and you need to whip out a cake in no time...bananas to the rescue. And when your kids need extra calories to pack on them for school lunches...bananas. And when you can't think of anything to eat - grab a banana.  Or make banana bread. I'm glad God invented the humble banana, and that people in their creativity invented banana recipes.  Food is interesting - we share recipes and forever link it to a person.  Every time I make banana bread I think of Robyn, who gave me the recipe.  And I have some recipes that are hand-written by faithful friends - seeing Becky's handwriting on my Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe always reminds me of the days in her kitchen when she was whipping up a batch and serving them warm and gooey fresh from the...

Today I am thankful for my husband, Sam. As I was reflecting on this post, I thought to myself, "Yeah, that's so generic...everyone is grateful for their husband, more or less."  And well they should be, I suppose (depending). But so what it's predictable and typical.  I'm still grateful for him.  I don't know that anyone else could've married me - seen all my weaknesses and failures and tough it out, work together, grow in acceptance and love and continue to honour the commitment of marriage.  Now, lest you think I am unreasonably self-deprecating...I am aware I have a few strengths too.  Just many of my strengths aren't super applicable to house-keeping and parenting (some surely are - but a hot-temper is a liability in the parenting department I daresay).  And I know I am a free-spirit and poetic, mystical, easy-going and not a control-freak (see - there are a few strengths).  But to marry an engineer, who doesn't typically revel in the fre...

One day the Streammaker decided a certain mountain needed a stream.  He opened up the heavens, poured down the rain and soon enough a great torrent was rushing down the mountain.  As it was a new stream, things were not as they should be, as far as streams go, that is.  The water was dark and murky.  The stones were very sharp.  Big clumps of earth and mud and roots and grass got in the way of things.  No matter.  The Streammaker knew how to make His stream, so He did. At first it was very exciting.  The stream was exuberant at all the new adventures and discoveries to be made.  Each day he welcomed the sunshine with glad splashes and a happy rush - the flow itself disbursed its own joy of simply being, of moving, of reflecting and of singing. But as the new stream needed to be settled, some things were rather disturbing.  Once in a while, a big clump of leaves and dirt would dislodge and go tumbling away.  The stream felt he w...

So lately Timothy has taken to wearing a penguin outfit.  You know - the plush, zip up costume generally sold in the month of October.  He discovered it during our unpacking recently and put it on and has barely taken it off for the last few days (except when I've made him).  I wonder if it has some kind of sensory effect - the tightness of it - the thickness - the warmth and the novelty.  Either way it has made for some entertaining moments over here at the Logan residence. He also loves mowing the lawn.  Even if it doesn't need to be mowed, I will start it up for him and send him off.  In the fall it is raking leaves he loves and in the winter, shovelling snow.  (Neighbours: keep this in mind - when we run out of snow to shovel come by and see if he'll jump at the chance to shovel your driveway!) This past week he was in his penguin outfit and wanted to mow the lawn.  Why not?  Who else in our neighbourhood has a giant penguin mowing t...

This was me ten years ago today. After having Caleb and seeing how delightful a child he was, and how wonderful it was to be a Mommy, when he was about 10 months old we thought, 'One is good.  Two must be better!'  And soon after that we took the pregnancy test and it was positive! When Caleb turned 1 and began walking we suddenly realized what we had done.  How on earth would we manage two  mobile creatures?  How would I get through morning sickness while chasing a toddler?  I still don't have an answer for that.  But we did.  Somehow. (It was such a blessing that Caleb was so content to sit and look at books on his own - sometimes for more than an hour!) Sure enough that summer Sam had a business trip to Hong Kong and China.  I got to tag along - with 1 yr. old Caleb in tow.  I don't remember much from that trip other than the nostalgia and longing I had to be back there.  I remember throwing up in a taxi.  It w...