the flip side...

I started working on Parliament Hill the week after 9/11. I was starting a new job in the one of the most heated environments in the country at the time and to say that anxiety lurked in every corner was certainly a bit of an understatement. Tension and sadness was every where. No one knew what to make of everything that had just happened and our world just looked different.

Being a political assistant, one of the components of my job was to take all of the constituent calls coming in for the Member of Parliament and doing so with an unbiased opinion or political position. My job was to sit in the one of the most emotional charged places while remaining in a nonpartisan position.

I know that this is going to come off sounding somewhat ridiculous for someone that spent nearly four years walking the halls of Parliament Hill…but I don’t actually care much for politics! While I understand, respect and appreciate its role, I also believe that our country holds itself to a certain societal standard that can withstand even the most tumultuous of political hurricanes.

This “at-an-arm’s-length-from-the-political-stratosphere” belief system does have a few exceptions though…and war is one of them…

I have a hard time with war. I have a hard time understanding war and I have a hard time believing in war. I know that there are reasons that are beyond my comprehension because as I’ve mentioned here before, history is always written by the winners; those who are left standing and can tell the story…usually while leaving the other side out. So I do understand that there are reasons beyond what I can see; rights, safety, responsibility to help those who can’t necessarily help themselves. But no matter how much I rationalize this in my head…all I can think about is the loss; the loss of innocence, the loss of life, the loss of decency. There is so much extraordinary loss…and that, in turn, becomes the other side of the story.

The week that I started my new job was that the same week that our Prime Minister at the time, Mr. Jean Chretien, declared that Canada would not be joining President Bush’s War on Terrorism. I’ve always been a big fan of Mr. Chretien but I’ve never been as proud of him as I was on that day!

Allow me to apologize now if I happen to offend of my U.S. readers (or Canadian readers for that matter) but I just need to say that for whatever impact President Bush may have had on my views regarding war, he lost me entirely when he stated that “you’re either with us or you’re against us”. No matter how strong the argument may be or how tragic the events leading up it; war is simply not black or white.

I can only speak for myself when I say that such a statement made me feel bullied. It made me feel like some big kid at school was trying to back me into a corner and threatening to steal my lunch money every day if I didn’t join the after school fight that was about to happen in the playground. And I’m not trying to imply that this war was or is a childish battle of kids fighting over sand in sandbox…I’m just trying to say that ultimatums aren’t often very effective…even when you are the biggest kid in school.

So allow me to backtrack once again to 2001, the week following Mr. Chretien’s statement. I was being riddled with phone calls in the office from constituents wanting to share their views regarding his decision. Some were angry, some were happy and others just sat on the phone and cried. It was a hard week. That Friday afternoon, around 4:15pm, a gentleman called to express his outrage at Mr. Chretien’s decision and how he should be forced to step down as Prime Minister because he’d become a disgrace to our country.

I had been taking in people’s emotions for two weeks now and I had been forced to politely sit there responding as though I was one of the few that had somehow been immunized from the effects of what was going on around me. This could only go on for so long. So after listening to him literally yell at me on the phone for twenty minutes, the nonpartisan, unbiased side of me began to fade away and the well bred debater in me began to emerge. We began to chat for a little while…we began to ask questions. We stopped being a constituent and a political office and started being two people facing the prospect of war. I asked him if he had any children…he said yes; a son and a daughter. I asked him if either of them were in the military; he said no. I asked him if he would still support this war to the same degree if either of them were going to be the ones to fight it; he was silent…and he was appalled.

I had apparently just flown the emotional equivalent of a terrorist piloted plane into his argument and now a different kind of war had begun.

He just hung up on me. No other words. No retaliation. He was just gone.

I didn’t ask him these questions to be rude or disrespectful; I asked them because I felt that it was too easy to see this battle as nothing more than a political statement when it is in fact a war that someone has to fight. And that someone might be somebody’s brother or sister; mother or father; wife or husband…but at the very least, that someone is always somebody’s child. And not all of those children are going to come home.

It’s easier to support a war when you know that you won’t be the one receiving a phone call in the middle of the night or holding the flag once draped over a casket. But that’s what war really is; when you peel away all of the political agendas, media frenzies, economic impacts and cloaks of good intention…you have somebody’s child. And that’s always what the real question should be; would you be willing to sacrifice your child to this cause…because that’s very well what you may end up doing?

I think that this is as good a time as any to mention that while I may not support the need to send people to war, I do recognize the choice that many people have made on their own to do so and I support their efforts in the midst of it. But even that hasn’t come without its own line of questioning. I fully acknowledge that past sacrifices were made for our present freedoms but I guess my ideals for the world just leave me in a position of wishing that we never had to sacrifice anyone to begin with. So it seems though, there will always be fights to be fought and battles to be won and now it’s our turn to bear the potential brunt of that sacrifice.

My brother-in-law was shipped off to Afghanistan on Monday to spend nine months fighting in a place that keeps sending our men and women home in wooden boxes. He’s going to fly our soldiers around because they keep getting killed by roadside bombs. And while I’m beyond proud of him for what he’s willing to do for his country, I don’t enjoy listening to my six year niece on the phone talking about how her daddy has to go away for a long time; or watching my sister-in-law become a single parent for close to a year; or hearing his mother’s teary-eyed account of saying goodbye to her oldest son; or holding my breath every time the news comes on. I don’t enjoy experiencing first hand what it’s like when somebody’s child goes to war because as I once heard said a long time ago; War is not about who’s right…it’s about who’s left.

Come home soon Jeff…and come home safely…

a word to the young...

This could quite possibly be the very best thing that I've ever seen...!!!!

pick your poison...

So I’ve concluded that I have a love-hate relationship with my mind. The mind really is a beautiful thing to waste but it’s also a very complicated entity and, in my humble opinion, more than what many of us are capable of dealing with. It’s like any wide open space that isn’t used to our presence…nature always wins in the end.

I’ve been blessed with a very creative mind. It enables me to see the world in a very unique and intricate way. I am moved by colour and balance and harmony. I forever see the world through poetic eyes that may never fully understand the inner workings of tax returns or computer software! And I’m okay with that. My mind is romantic and whimsical and never gets enough of wishing that it could fly.

My mind however, can also become a very dark place. While I don’t think that it’s in its nature to be there, it has been known to drift…to wander…to venture to other side of the mountain that is engulfed with shadows. And sometimes, once it gets there, it doesn’t always know how to find its way back. My mind’s curiosity over such places has dwindled significantly over the past years (thankfully!) but in the rare occasions when it just can’t help itself…it becomes scary. I think that everyone’s been afraid of the dark at some point throughout their life but I find that the ghosts in your mind are exponentially worse than the ghosts in the closet.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a very self-aware person, or at least tried to be. Ever since I was a little girl, I would ask myself why I did things a certain way or why I felt the way I did about various things. It takes a lot of energy to be “in your mind” that much and there were times when I wished that I had just let myself be a kid instead of trying to pick apart all the connections that made up who I was as a person, albeit little one at the time.

As I got older, this became a bit more of a problem because with age comes presumed wisdom and with that presumed wisdom comes the courage to go further. And when you travel to very dark places, it can often be hard to tell what is real and what is merely a shadow lingering in the night. You get confused, disoriented and before you know it, you can’t even remember how you got to there in the first place. Grounding yourself matters…having a compass or something to guide you back is necessary when you’ve roamed too far away from home. Unfortunately for me and my restless mind, I don’t care much for maps!

I used to think that it was necessary for me to be able to take these mental trips without getting lost. I somehow felt that it was essential to prove to myself that I could get there and back and still be the same person. Only now am I starting to learn that it’s not such a bad thing to stick close to home. Light is a good thing. Knowing where you’re going is a good thing. Leaving a trail of Hershey kisses behind you is a good thing. But deliberately throwing yourself to the lions just to see if you can get out with all of your limbs is not really a good thing. In fact, it’s a silly thing. I would never recommend it to my husband or my soon-to-be son or anyone else that I loved. In fact, I would probably smack them upside the head and ask them how they ended up losing all of their marbles!

It is hard though. I almost have to wonder if some of us are just born with an intrinsic need to push our emotional stability in ways that are not always healthy. For me, it’s been labeled as generalized anxiety, for others its obsessive compulsive disorder or perfectionism; the need to please or self-criticism. Choose your weapon…pick your poison, but for all of us, it’s a place in our mind that most people don’t go to…and I wish I could be more like “most people”. I wish I could see the shadows without having to see what hides amongst them. I wish I could look at unchartered territory without feeling the need to see where it goes. I wish I could free myself from the suffering that comes with confusing what’s real with what isn’t.

I wish I could understand that, for me, the real cancer isn’t a tumor…it’s a lifetime spent being afraid of one.

this too, is God...

Ugh…I just love Thanksgiving and I can’t believe that it’s come and gone again already! This year, for reasons that are above and beyond obvious, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards the relative stability that our life is experiencing at this moment!! Most people don’t deem “boring” as a good thing but I will happily take it any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

One of the highlights of my weekend (amongst many) was a very long overdue visit with one of my most favourite people in the entire world. We both drove in to downtown yesterday morning for what was intended to be a brief coffee date but ended up being over three hours (and a landslide of lattés!) of much needed catching up. We had both recently experienced a rather tumultuous turn of events with certain people in our lives and were now coping with the fallout and disappointment of realizing that some relationships are simply not what you thought they were. Over the course of our discussion though, we also came to realize that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; that amongst the rather spontaneous splash of drama that suddenly descends upon your life, there also lies a discreet reminder of all the things that truly do matter in life…and an endless banter back and forth about who did what and when is certainly not one of them!

I am notorious for caring too much. Ever since I was a little girl, it’s always mattered too much to me what other people think. In the last few years though, I have realized what a completely useless worry this had been and how much of my energy was being wasted caring about people who simply didn’t care about me. I do still find myself being blind sighted a lot of the time with such incidents though and that alone tends to take my breath away. I was still recovering from the blow to the stomach when I met up with my dear friend. In fact, it had been weighing on my mind for most of the weekend. But this morning, I woke up feeling like an entirely different person…a lighter person, a happier person…a person who had been looking at things in all the wrong light!!

When my friend and I began talking about our situations more, we both found that we were focusing too much on the negative; on the hurt, on the retaliation, on all the things that didn’t go right. All the while, we were overlooking the quiet blessing that also came with it all. The reality of our combined situations was the same; we had both been trying to rescue relationships that didn’t want to be saved…chasing people that didn’t want to be caught. We were devoting time, energy and emotion to people that didn’t hold us in the same regard. We were trying to communicate with someone that didn’t want to be spoken to and most ridiculous of all is that we were doing all of this while our actual friends stood by watching, like parents just waiting for the boy band hype to pass!!! This realization pounced on us part way through our coffee date and just like that, we suddenly felt like we had just come across our ex-boyfriends on the street while having had the very best hair day one could possibly ask for!!!! Brilliant!

Of course, it’s never easy to part ways with anyone…especially in a hurtful manner but its life. You simply can’t control other people’s moods, reactions or insecurities. Half of how a relationship will turn out (or half of how a relationship will end!) is dependent on where the other person is in their life. You can throw all your weapons down or you can throw them all at the other person and it still doesn’t change the fact that everyone has their own share of accountability to carry in this world.

But in the end, what does this all mean? It means that this too, is God. It means that with the loss of one relationship (that really wasn’t that good for me to begin with) I am freed to devote my time to the amazing people in my life that don’t actually need to be caught. I am reminded to take my eyes off the one that didn’t work and refocus on the ones that do. I am humbled to what friendship really means in this day and age and I intend to play my part in continuing to make them sincere. I am encouraged to walk away from all things unhappy, unkind and unhealthy because I can only be me…imperfections and all.

Mostly though, it means that this past Thanksgiving, I wasn’t just thankful for the relationships that mean the world to me…but I was also thankful for the relationships that didn’t manage to make it that far because in the end, they provide the perfect opportunity to remember and appreciate the ones that do.

{Oh…it also means that there are very few problems in life that Starbucks can’t fix!! But we already knew that!}

baby steps...

When I was growing up, I certainly didn’t always know that I wanted to have children. So many of the girls that I went to high school with had very long term plans that always included getting married and having a family. This often made me feel like I was missing the “maternal gene” because at sixteen, the thought of having children seemed like a lifetime away and at that time (and teenagers are notorious for lack of foresight!), I didn’t necessarily want to have children. I had a hard enough time taking care of myself none the less an entire other human being. I think that most of my family members wouldn’t hesitate to say that, while I may not have thought so at the time, I most definitely had plans for a family. What they never seemed to realize though was that liking children and wanting children are too very different things.

It really wasn’t until I met Steve that I started to feel like I might want a family of my own. There was just something about falling so desperately in love that made me want even more of him…another piece of him to bring into and share with the world. It was always really important to us though, as a couple, to ensure that we enjoyed some time together, being married, before we handed our lives over to a whole new responsibility. We wanted to travel, to have careers, to build roots, to get to know each other and get to know ourselves better. We wanted to get better at being married before we made the leap towards being parents.

So now we’ve done it! We’ve spent four years enjoying a life completely indulgent in each other; we’ve travelled to Hawaii, Australia and Europe. We’ve built our house. We’ve accepted jobs and turned down jobs. We’ve gotten exponentially better at being a team. And yesterday afternoon, we found out that we’re going to have a son!

In approximately four and half months, our little man is going to enter the world and nothing will ever be the same again! We will no longer just be “Gen and Steve” or “husband and wife” anymore…we will be parents and our identities will forever be intertwined in this little baby boy. And I couldn’t be more excited about it!

Of course, the thought did cross my mind that even now, after thirty years, men are still a total and complete mystery to me…so how the heck am I ever going to raise one?!?! But on the other hand...perhaps I just need to accept that it simply may be my lot in life to be surrounded by handsome men!!!

hiding out...

I arrived home last night feeling like I had survived the emotional equivalent of a severe gang beating! The day was treacherous and tumultuous and come the end of the work day, I began to have some serious doubts about the current state of humanity.

When our car rolled into the driveway at home, Steve asked if was capable of being left alone with my thoughts long enough for him to go for a quick run. Out in the world, that’s a tall order but in the comforts of our home, I figured I could manage! So while he went out the door to sweat out his toxins from the day, I resorted to our soaker tub in an attempt to drown mine.

I dimmed the lights, turned on some jazz and was determined to salvage what was left of this day. Mere minutes later, Tugger found a spot on the edge of the tub where he could also indulge in the quiet time and dangle his paws in the water. As the stress and anxiety of the day began to leave my body, I put one hand on my rapidly growing belly and began to explain to our baby why home is truly the safest and most wonderful place on earth…

The longer I sat in the nice warm water, accompanied by our feline, the more I realized how much these walls protected us; the moment we walk through our doors, we become sheltered from the unpredictability of what can be a very unforgiving world.

I wanted our little one to know that the 1,700 square feet that we call home is where we can always curl up under our perfect down blanket and take a much needed nap; where the words of our favourite authors can be found in any corner; where our memories and dreams are framed on all the walls; where our fireplace can warm our cold toes and fingers; where loving words from our family and friends can always be seen in the beautiful cards that they send; where it’s perfectly acceptable to have ice cream for dinner; where the family dress code is fleece and wool socks; where our perfect feline is always happy to keep us company; where we need not answer the phone or check our emails; where chores can always be put off for another day in exchange for a good movie instead; and, just when we think it can’t possibly get any better, the most wonderful sound in the world fills the halls as Steve returns home from his run.

So Little One, the moral of this story is that home is not only our castle but it is, by far, the most wonderful and safest place in the world because at home…we are always loved. And no amount of meanness in the world can ever trump that!

guard your heart...

We continued to study Proverbs at church this past weekend.

“Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life”

I’ve never really read Proverbs before but I am finding that I just love it. It’s eloquent and beautiful and so simple in nature.

We discussed well-being this week and how guarding your heart, the very essence and core of your being, is the key to wholeness. Of course, by “heart”, it implies your soul and spirit far more than it implies your physical beating heart but just to be safe, they encourage that as well!!!

Studying Proverbs has really given me the desire to weed out the negative in my life. I’d like to think that our life is surrounded by a lot of very positive and loving influences and, for the most part, it is. But if you take a closer look at anything, you’ll start to notice the little things; the things that often fall between the cracks or the habits that often get overlooked. I’ve been trying to take the time lately to not only notice these things but also give myself permission to be very honest about them as well (the significantly more challenging of the two tasks!).

The result has been an autumn purging of sorts. I’ve decided to dust off corners of my life the same way we do the basement! This has included evaluating certain beliefs, behaviours and, in some cases, relationships that may no longer be very healthy for me; relationships that seems to be taking a lot more than they are giving. It’s not easy being on the other end of a purge. I know because I’ve been there myself but in retrospect, I can also vouch for the fact that once the initial blow to the gut was over, it was the best thing for me as well because prior to that…I simply wasn’t brave enough to do it myself.

The bottom line though is that everyone deserves to be happy in their relationships, regardless of their nature. We all deserve to feel accepted, understood and in the midst of a dynamic that encourages us to be the very best version of ourselves as opposed to feeling threatened. Upon further reflection, I came to realize that not all of my relationships were like this nor were they ever going to be, for either party…and so we make decisions accordingly, for the best interest of everyone.

I’ve also noticed that “guarding my heart” also included guarding my blog! I’ve realized that some people actually come here with no genuine interest in my words or my life but rather, to simply stay connected in a way that seeks out the negativity. People that I no longer share my day to day life with come here in hopes of seeing sadness and despair in my life (and if it’s not there, they try to add to it themselves) and that, by all means, does nothing to nurture anyone’s well-being. I’ve always trusted the motives of others and assumed that if they came here, it was for nothing more than the best of intentions. I know now that this isn’t always true (that’s the being honest part!). They know who they are and I know who they are and yet, cyberspace seems to give just the right amount of perceived anonymity to make the release of their toxic energy more acceptable.

So I’m choosing to take the first step in protecting my blog the same way I am determined to protect my heart. I’m not sure if the simple step will work but I have to believe in the goodness of humanity enough to believe that not every element of our lives need to be password protected.

So here we go! I’m quite certain that it’s not what Proverbs had in mind when it said “guard your heart” but I’m pretty sure that the writer of Proverbs didn’t have to deal with the information super highway either!