YAY ME!

I just finished my last macroeconomics assignment! Just in time, as I commented the other day on Ashlin's "output" of artwork the other day. (Toddlers must PRODUCE!)

I am taking the next four days off school work totally. My exam will be Jan. 7 (HELP!)

Now on to getting Conor to eat solids and Ashlin completely toilet trained. And fun.

Feeling mellow. Just finished reading the book ghosts, an Adrian Plass novel. Great book, but one that left me feeling kind of raw and weepy at the end. That’s okay. It feels good to feel. I haven’t had much time for emotions of any kind in the last four months. Well, maybe stress. Is stress an emotion? Or is it in part the suppression of emotions?
I have been through a lot of Christian sentimentalism in my life. One can hardly avoid it at Bible camps, youth retreats and a Christian college experience, not to mention charismatic churches. More recently, I’ve eschewed that a lot more the last few years, tiring of the on-fire-for-a-week-afterwards followed by the inevitable crash.
But more than that, sometimes the gatherings of emotions just don’t seem right. This book put it so well when the narrator described…"my habit of hanging about on the edge of things, waiting to see if the truth will end up inside or outside the circles that nervous Christians like us seem obliged to form all the time."
However, despite my response of trying to avoid emotionalism, there are times in my life when I find myself suddenly raw and vulnerable, like one time when I was at house group around age 24 and started bawling for reasons I knew not.
I’m thinking I’m in one of these times again. Tears are coming to my eyes frequently. I am moody and thoughtful. But I am also finding some joy. To feel one set of emotions I have to be willing to feel the other, too. I could be skeptical of myself and choose to believe this is just student Christmas break letdown. But I don’t think it is. It feels like God is here, right beside me. It feels like he’s giving something to me that I’ve needed for awhile. It feels like he wants me to understand Christ’s coming in a new way. Christ invaded our reality, raw, unpretentious. What a beautiful, horrid story. For with the birth of John as messenger came the fact that he was beheaded on the whim of a ruler’s jealous wife. With the promise of a King came the slaughter of innocents. With the birth of a saviour came the death of a sacrifice.
His birth is not just about gifts from wise men and celebration of angels. It is completely linked with darkness, because he came to dispel the darkness. We need to know the darkness before we can truly appreciate the light. I want to embrace this wholeness.

It's nice not to care

Today was my day of pretty much not caring. I finished a quiz. That was all I set out to do.
Went to the Centre for the Christmas program practice. Didn't wear make-up. Didn't care.
Kids - let them watch videos and play computer games as much as they wanted. Didn't care.
Meals - toast, salad, omelette. Whatever didn't require more than 10 minutes of effort. Didn't care.
Housework - naaaah.
Music - played Xmas songs with the kids. Didn't care that my ability to sight read has gone to pot since playing by ear or chords is now virtually all I do.
Diapers - well, yeah, I did change diapers. That would be just too gross to not care about.
It was a really great day. I think I'll not care more often.

It's confirmed

My mom in law has lung cancer. She will go into surgery next month and have part of her lung removed. Her lung capacity was tested. She is at 45% of a non-smoker her age.

For the next month I'm going to feel like going up to every smoker I see, shake them and scream, "What the #$%&* are you doing?! Do you want to end your life early?!?! Do you want to leave your children and grandchildren who love you before it's time to go?!?!?" Stupid kids smoking outside of high schools, thinking that they're invincible, only to lose throats, lungs and lives later on.

I love my MIL. They've been wonderfull to me, to us.

I hope I hope I hope....

Today I heard that there are several jobs that will open up in April, one of which sounds like it would be perfect for me. April is when I graduate. I had a dream a while back that I went from practicum one week to being an employee the following Monday. Is it all coming together? I hope so! I love it where I am. Please pray.

Today

Here's a link to a government report.

It's mine. I was the lead writer. Not the only writer, but I wrote much of the report and was part of editing the entire thing.

Other updates:
Conor's eyes seem to be fine. Hopefully they will learn to work together better. We were advised to give it 6 months. If it's worse, then bring him back.

I had my evaluation and it was very complimentary. While the evaluation instructions say that at the end of the 2nd practicum (and I'm at the end of my 1st) the student should be at the level of a beginning practitioner. My field ed. supervisor said I am presently at the level of someone who has been practicing several years. While one would hope I picked up something that would show after many years in Social Services, this is a policy placement, not frontline practice, so to me that was very affirming to know I am indeed, getting it.

I am officially on Christmas break. Which means nothing as I have to do my distance ed. courses and there's still a couple of work things I am doing for good reasons. Hope I do get to spend a bit more time with Rob and the kids than is usual these days. At the very least, I don't need to pump breastmilk. YAY!

I'm getting it

Wow!
I had my pre-evaluation meeting today (the one with my field supervisor before the one with my faculty liason).
She encouraged me to think through my values and beliefs, to think through what is the "line in the sand" that I won't cross.
She talked about having beliefs and being careful not to get put in a situation where you have to cross your boundaries or leave.
Her example: she is pro-life. So is the other person who co-supervises. I had an inkling that #1 may be PL, but I was totally surprised that #2 is (she's agnostic).
Suddenly I don't feel so alone.
God seems to be answering my question - how do I be who I am in gov't?

I'm pro-life (Don't hurt me)

The other day I was feeling especially bothered by the politically correct atmosphere at work, close on the heels of one co-worker’s rant about how "anti-choice" people should behave. I was praying to God about my passion for the unborn. I feel like I have to shut up there or risk losing a career. I feel God wants me there, yet to be there I have to zip it. I don’t think God put this passion in me for no reason. But where is it to be directed? I don’t want to say nothing. Nor do I want to return to the unthinking zeal of my youth where I blah blah blah all the time in a thoughtless manner.
Met up with someone whom I know through CPC, mainly. Her work is related to where I work and we ended up talking for a long time about our fear and frustrations. That alone was such a blessing, just to talk to someone who understands. We hatched a plan of starting an email group of others like us, working in the social service sector and feeling oppressed at times.While we were talking, I felt like I heard the HS say to look at how Jesus related to women. So I went through Matthew, to start and just looked at time he spent interacting with women. I read about the Canaanite woman - the one where Jesus said it's not right to take the children's bread and give it to their dogs. I ended up with a totally new understanding.
Jesus gave up his Godness to take human form. He had to discern His father's voice as we do - although he was better at it, I'm sure. Still, I have the sense that at the beginning of that interaction, he was not yet sure of the Father's leading. In other places where people were being pushed away from Jesus or rebuked (the children, the woman who anointed him) he had a very swift reaction - No! Here, he doesn't say yes or no. Just says that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. Almost like he's thinking it through - this is what I'm supposed to do, and it doesn't fit with this situation.
So he engages her. Explains to her why he can't help. And in her reply, he seems to get what the Father is doing. God seems to speak to him in the act of engaging.
What do I get from this? Just that I don't have all the answers now, but God will speak to me as I engage. I have a mandate from God that in some ways seems at odds with where he is leading me. It is as I walk it out that I will know what to say, when to say it.