Grace

Observation #9: We all need grace - perhaps the area we need it most is in being able to extend it to others... because that's often the hardest part.

I am quoting a piece written by Rick Tobias, CEO of Yonge Street Mission, where I work. It is a privilege to work under his leadership, and I'm sure you'll be able to understand why after you read the prayer below.

Prayer by Rick Tobias

Grace. God, grant us grace;
enough that we can see the beauty and value in individuals, even when their outward appearance obscures it completely; enough to see their honour, however deeply hidden and to grant respect, even when we think it is undeserved.
Help me to recognize the wounds and understand the shame that lies behind each act of rejection and moment of repulsive behaviour. Grant me grace to believe that most of us are doing the best we can in the midst of our personal brokenness.

Grace. God grant grace to a dad who cannot love; to a man crushed by the weight of his own neglected childhood and facing a son who spends his wealth and spits his name. Grace to a parent who gives up, and who drugs the pain by choosing vacation over children. Grace when the weight of failing, and of being failed, overwhelms. Grace to dads and grace to moms who, having no grace left to give, receive little in return.

Grace. God grant grace to the caregivers who over-spend every loving emotion, and who, finding themselves empty and void, act out love through sheer strength of will and commitment to justice. Grace to all, who having poured out their lives into others, discover that love is not all you need, and who live to see those in their care self-destruct. Grace to those who so freely give themselves to others yet sometimes forget to grace their selves.

Grace. God grant grace to me, when there is no place in my heart for a wounded child; when my life is so consumed with me and mine that I have little love to give. Grace to me when I pretend not to see, or turn away in fear from the ugly, untidy, or strange. Grace to me when I am so absorbed in my own life that I forget to be grace to others.

God, grant us grace. Enough for all we have experienced, and all that we have become, and enough to be all that you desire.

"Smile Like You Mean It" - The Killers

Observation #8: When jumping up and down at a rock concert, make sure all pockets are zipped, bags are securely closed and shoelaces are tied.

...'cuz if you don't, you might lose your cell phone, like me.

Thank God for kind strangers who will return your phone to a lost & found so that you don't have to spend more money buying a phone to fulfill the stupid phone contract you're locked down to (cell phone companies are evil). So long story short, I have my phone back! Thank you random stranger!

The Killers were great! They are awesome performers and their music is very easy to rock to, even if you're not a rocker. I most certainly am not one, but had tons of fun anyways. I knew about 2/3 of the songs they played - maybe even less than that - but the ones I did know were fun to pretend to sing along to. Haha... I'm lame, I know.

My favorite part was:

When a ton of confetti blasted at the climax of their second-to-last song. That's the confetti on the ground.

Kevin and I were with great company too so we had fun. The only not fun part was having to stand for the full 3 hours, 'cuz we got floor tickets. Super duper close to the stage but no chairs to sit on.




Thank you to K for making all the cool concerts happen. :)

all i wanna do is nothing...

Image credits: www.aestheticapparatus.com

Observation #7: Laziness is like a slippery slope.

My aptitude for lazing about has been mounting and mounting the last few weeks. Despite the fact that I have lots on my to-do list, I find myself wanting to just youtube/couch-potato my day away. And it only seems to get worse as I get nice and comfortable in the feeling of un-productiveness. Which is not very me, if you know me. Getting my wisdom teeth extracted tomorrow will only enable my laziness for the next 5 days (5 day weekend, woohoo!). Hopefully I'll snap out of it after Labour Day. Yay for human labour.

F-R-E-E

Observation #6: Free stuff rocks...

Who says nothing in life is free?

A few days ago, I was sitting in a Panera Bread cafe, right around my house, enjoying the free wifi. It was great because I had a couple hours to kill and a bunch of free online episodes of Project Runway Canada to watch. By the way, that show is pretty cool. It's amazing what talents human beings possess.

Iman the supermodel: "Make an evening gown out of post-its!"
Designers: "OKAY!"

Anyways, going back to the free stuff, I guess it can be argued that the wifi is calculated into the not-terribly-cheap soup & sandwich combo I got (their sweet corn soup is so good though!), but then again there are lots of not-so-terribly cheap restaurants without free wifi. So I readily buy into the notion of free-ness, though I may be being duped.

What else in my life is free?

• Well of course, God's love for me. The best free thing there is out there.
  
• Parking at work. Parking for free in downtown Toronto certainly is a big deal. Too bad I'm not a morning person and therefore don't trust myself on most days to not fall asleep in rush hour traffic.
• Graphic design stuff my sister does for me (check out www.syoondesign.com). I didn't have to pay for my wedding invitations, this blog design, any other design-related thing ever. :)
• Friendships. I have some AMAZING friends that God has blessed me with, and as far as I'm concerned, I've never paid for them. Sure, you have to invest money and time and heart, but I think given the return, it's almost as good as free!
• Inspiration on the web. For someone like me who is into the arts & craft world (though have little time to actually make anything lately), the world wide web has inspiration galore. Lots of stuff I've bookmarked to try to make later... As an experienced friend has told me before, I apparently just have to wait to get pregnant and I'll have lots of time to do this stuff. There's a good reason to get pregnant... haha.
  
• Blogging! Although, I just listened to a comical debate on CBC radio about whether or not blogging benefits the world or harms it (freedom of speech and opinion vs. forum for hate crimes, cyber bullying and just "do you really think people care?"). Where do I stand on the debate? Mmm.. well I am blogging as we speak, aren't I? But it's true that there are many people out there that take advantage of the anonymity and little accountability there is in the "blogosphere" (I learned that word from the radio today).
• Stuff at the library! Again, I understand that our tax dollars are paying for all of our library services, but very few people take advantage of what their tax dollars are paying for and instead pay for books at retail price and borrow movies from Blockbuster, where they could get that stuff free. I have to confess that Kevin and I have been loyally visiting Blockbuster as well, 'cuz the Mississauga library sucks. I miss Richmond Hill...

Okay, so there's more stuff out there, but this has gotten quite lengthy already. If anyone out there wants to comment on other free stuff the world should take advantage of, please share. :) I'm gonna go heat up the lasagna my mother-in-law made me (free) for lunch now. Ciao!

Hosting a dinner party

Observation #4: Hosting a dinner party as a married person in your own home feels very different from hosting a dinner party as an unmarried person in your parents' home.

Okay, so maybe this will sound like common sense to most people, but I was a little surprised myself last night at how much I felt like my mom (or at least what I imagined she felt like) when preparing for friends to come over. My friends jokingly teased me saying "you're an old married woman now!" but really, that's how it kinda felt.

The maximum seating capacity at our little kitchen table is 6, so Kevin and I are only able to invite 4 other friends at a time (unless we just make it a big messy party and people eat everywhere and anywhere around the house) so we opted to make our first dinner party a couples' things. (To my single friends that I love, Kevin and I will soon invite you over too to a decent meal! I promise!) The Hans and soon-to-be Kims came over for some shabu shabu and mochi ice cream and yellow watermelon (what a surprise!), and overall I think it was a success.

Going back to what I was talking about earlier, I guess being a host in your own home brings about a different sense of pressure to treat your guests well and for your home to feel warm and welcoming. And then there's the fact that in all the previous house parties at my old house (even if it was my friends and not my parents'), my sister did most of the cooking... It was the first time I really cooked for my friends, although even this time, more than half of the real cooking was done by my husband (thank you again, honey!). Also, shabu shabu requires more prep than actual flavour-making and cooking. So it was a great option for my first dinner party.

We shared lots of laughter, so much so that the tension in our cheekbones from laughing so long and hard reminded us of our wedding day when we had a smile plastered on our faces all day long. It was a great night. :)

...But at the end of the night after Kevin and I sent the happy couples on their way home and finished washing the dishes, we realized one dinner party a month should be just about right. Haha.

we all need each other

Observation #2: The rich and poor need each other.

I'm reading "The Twenty-Piece Shuffle" by Greg Paul right now. Greg Paul is the founder and director of Sanctuary Ministries, which "prioritizes welcoming and caring for people living on the fringes of society" (says the blurb on the back), specifically those living in Toronto. I visited Sanctuary's drop-in once and it was definitely a learning experience. There are lots of differences between the drop-in I work in at the Yonge Street Mission and Sanctuary, though I do believe that the heart behind why we do what we do is the same -- because we recognize God's calling to all His people to live out His kingdom right here and right now. His kingdom includes the sharing of life between rich and poor, the haves and have-nots, and the sharing of the gospel includes not just preaching a prayer but actually doing life together. I can readily admit that I am still far from "doing life together" in its most real and practical sense with the people that I meet at the Mission. There's still a large and safe distance I keep with the "community members" that I "serve". It's an issue that we at the Mission talk about a lot, but I think we have still a ways to go.

Greg Paul and the team at Sanctuary continue to challenge themselves and others in doing life much more authentically, and Greg wrote this book to remind us all that we shouldn't do things for the poor because they're the ones that need the help, but because we also need the help. Through a series of real narratives of people he's journeyed with (including people from the streets and people from nice fancy houses) he tells us how "the addiction to numb a troubled spirit is not confined to the streets". In other words, many of us who "have" are in many ways just as (or even moreso) lost and needy of God's grace and it is in God's clever and paraxodical ways that he made it so that His grace can be recieved through us sharing with those we think have nothing to give us -- the poor, homeless, smelly, messed up people. I have definitely experienced this firsthand in many moments at my work at the Mission.

Read the book! I definitely recommend it to everyone. You can borrow it from me if you'd like.

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Observation #3: I need my new parents.

This past weekend, I went to Pittsburg with my husband and parents-in-law. It was our first family trip together and I must say that it went wonderfully. I got to hang out with both of them much more than I had before (usually our time together is a meal or two together) and we had lots more conversation.

I knew this before but felt even more strongly this weekend how blessed I am to have in-laws like I do. They are extremely generous to us and I can tell they want to get to know me as much as I want to get to know them. I can sense that their steady presence in our lives will be so important as Kevin and I continue to build our family. We need our parents! Hopefully we will be able to be as much of a blessing back to them as they are to us...

Oh, and Pittsburg was cooler than I expected too. :) Go Steelers, go!

inspirations galore

So a few days ago, I went to watch "Julie and Julia" at the movie theatre by myself. I left work a couple hours early because there wasn't too much work to do and the weather was hot and my coworkers seemed to want to play hooky as well.









It was about 3:00 and I had some time to kill before my dinner date with my favorite girls (see picture, minus michelle who is soaking up the sun in cancun, and add on a year of aging and different hairstyles to each of us) so I decided to do one of my all-time favorite past times, which is watching a movie by my solitary self. I'll maybe blog about that another day.

I'd give the movie 4 stars out of 5 for entertainment value, the ability to make me want to call my husband as soon as I got out to tell him I love him, and wit. It wasn't the most exciting story out there, but it did also inspire me a lot. Not that I now want to be the author of a famous blog-turned published book writer-turned character of a movie, but I do now want to write a better blog.

And I think for a good blog, you have to have somewhat of a purpose or a meaningful format that is uniquely yours. I can do the whole random rant thing for my own journaling pleasure, but maybe I can go just beyond that a bit.

SO.

The running format my blogs will now take are... logged observations that I make about the world around me. This is, of course, maybe just a slightly different name to what I would be doing all along anyways, but in my mind at least, it's a bit more purposeful. Random, but purposeful. And as I said in the first entry, I'll try to make observations about the greater world around me, as well as things I learn about myself, my work, God, etc. Expand my yooniverse. So, here goes.

Observation #1: Sometimes if a plot is good enough, the writing can suck and the book will still make it.
I'm talking about a particular book that I'm reading at the moment, though now that I think about it, a prime example of this would be Korean dramas. Korean dramas, more often than not, do the cheeziest and unoriginal delivery (usually because of bad acting) of a story, but because the plot itself somehow draws you in to make you wonder how the story will continue, you put up with all the rest. I'm reading The Friday Night Knitting Club right now, which apparently is pretty popular lately. I'm about 3/4 done. From the very first few pages I read up until where I am now, I couldn't shake off the feeling that the writing was done by a newbie. That is actually not true, according to the blurb on the author, but I don't know, that's how I felt about her writing. (Oh my, I'm being pretty mean right now. But this is just my amateur opinion and I'm sure many will disagree with me.) You know what it is though? I think her writing kind of makes me think that if I wrote a book, that's what I'd sound like. It's not BAD writing, but it sounds a bit forced. Like I'm trying hard to write a book well. Which is what it would sound like if I tried to write a book now.

Anyways, the point of my observation is that the plot is interesting enough that I keep wanting to read it. There is some foreshadowing that makes me look forward to finding out if my premonitions are correct, and little twists and turns that take the story somewhere I didn't expect at all. But there is that little voice in my head that keeps saying "this feels like when you're watching a movie and the actor acts like he's acting."

So I guess a good book is one that has either a good plot or good writing style.
A great book is one that has both.