Goodbye Dear Friends.

I have a confession. I am an unabashed tree-hugger. Love the trees. There is a very funny photo making the rounds of the internet right now of Jared Leto hugging a tree. It has been cut and pasted in many interesting and humerous ways including onto internet sensation Grumpy Cat. I can relate to that hug and the pleasure of offering it.

 There have been so many trees in my life that stand as landmarks. I remember sitting in the dirt under one of the great big maple trees on my street in Toronto. I would have been about 9 or 10 I guess. I used the maple keys to make the most beautiful and detailed  picture of a house (at least it was marvelously arty in my view). We had a pear tree in our backyard that attracted tons of yellow jackets every summer and I am sorry I didn't know enough to can the pears, they were delicious if you could dodge the bees.

When I was in my teens I worked at a summer camp, YMCA Camp Norval, outside Toronto. I loved being there, felt like being in the country and it was a big comfort to me to have friends and a place to go besides home. There was a huge maple tree by the pool that turned so brilliant in the fall it could hurt you.

We have a cottage and when I was a kid we would drive up, starting the May long weekend. The trees leaned out over the water and dropped their leaves into the lake all fall. On the weekend all of us kids wanted to go swimming but we were afraid of the gucky stuff. Our dock had two sides: the swimming side and the gucky side and you did not want to fall into the gucky side.It was soft and mushy under foot and loaded with such horrors as crayfish and leeches. Gluhhhhh!!! My dad bravely waded into the swimming side and kicked those leaves away so we had a sandy touch down every year. By the way; the water was freezing but we were going in no matter what, blue lips be damned.

At university in Peterborough (possibly one of the most lovely places in Ontario) I fell in love with a tree that was on the back road from my boyfriend's rural rental to the University. I can't remember what kind of tree it was but I used to treat it as a kind of touchstone, and when I went back years later it was on the list of things I looked up and reached out for.

I have climbed numerous trees, been lonely without trees in cities and always loved the way trees smell - pine trees at Lake O'Hara in the summer heat and the smell of damp leaves on the ground during trick or treating with my boy, been attracted to the patterns the leaves make on the grates around the trees in downtown Summerland and stood entranced while watching a Mountain Ash being stripped of berries by a flock Cedar Waxwings.

Currently I have three favorite trees. Outside my apartment window is a maple tree, red maple to be exact. It provides shade to my place all summer, the only shady upper apartment and in the spring I watch the Yellow Rumped Warblers migrate through the yard while picking food off the budding leaves. Robins often stop to squabble in the branches during mating season and the sparrow babies who are big enough to feed themselves play helpless while the harried parent searches for food to stuff them with. (They are pretty funny to watch as they flap their seemingly helpless wings and cry for mother. Fakers of the worst kind but too funny.) My other two faves are across the road on the edge of the neighbors property. They are tall and lean and I see them all the time used as windbreaks on farm acreages. Usually in a line marching up the driveway and protecting the house. Those two trees have starred in many of the photographs I have taken from my deck as has the aforementioned maple tree .

Yesterday a tree cutting company was cutting and shredding the shrub pines at the base of the neighbors trees. I briefly thought "Oh no, hope the big guys aren't coming down.' Sure as shootin' I heard the chain saw going this morning and by supper those two beautiful trees were chopped to their stumps. I feel like I have lost two dear and well loved friends.

Last year a couple bought a house on the route I take to work.One of the finest features of this unremarkable place was the row of lilacs that edged the property along the road. Came by one day on my way to work to see the new owner hacking them all down. I may have groaned or made a verbal complaint but it is their property do with as they like. All this destruction makes me so sad. Sad for myself, sad for the people who don't appreciate the beauty of the trees and sad for the world as more and more rain forest falls to capitalistic purpose and plants, animals and humans are threatened with extinction.

I wish I had a snappy round up for this blog but I don't. I am however reminded of the Lorax and his love of the trees and his warning..."Unless...

Goodbye dear friends, goodbye!!!!

I wonder if my faith will ever be an easy, accepting float down happy, hopeful channel. Right now I am feeling defeated by the lack of answers to my prayers. I have sort of stopped asking for myself but continue to pray for others. I am so tired and worn out.

I want tangible evidence that God is indeed love. I see people I love and care about struggling with all sorts of things - family, money, work, loss and I want answers.

When I ask God he says "My ways are higher." I tell him I want to know, I am feeling wobbly and unsure and why can't he just step in and rectify this or that situation and he says "My ways are higher."

 I'm like GOD!!!!!! come on, I need this to stay on course in my walk with you, I feel like giving up, and he says "My ways are higher".

COME ON. NOW. PLEASE.  I DON'T UNDERSTAND, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IF YOU LOVE US AND HAVE PLANS TO PROSPER US AND NOT HARM US.  He says, " I have a plan." I say well let's have it, what is it? and he says "I can't talk about it right now."

I'm like, WHAT????, then I realize his ways are higher. My needs and solutions are earthly. What I think I need and what God thinks I need are so different at times. I can trust him, I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins and I believe more than ever that Satan would love to see me give up.

Sometimes faith is really hard. I want my family and friends and acquaintances to be safe and happy an prosperous. I want people to stop abusing each other., I want people to stop abusing animals. I want my leg to stop hurting but nothing seems to be changing in these areas.

God uses everything, nothing goes to waste. Even the most painful, ugly stuff gets put to use somewhere.

 Oh God, I hope so. My heart feels so broken right now. Show me how to use all this. Guide me through it. Show me, us your love and grace. I'm here God. I'm afraid God. Don't leave me God. I need you. Protect my friends and family. Shelter us, comfort us, love us, forgive us.

God??? Just a little message on the bathroom mirror would be so helpful.

Then I hear, "Keep praying."

If pain is indeed the great renovator then I expect God uses it judiciously and with great wisdom to get our attention, draw us near and teach us how much he loves us.  Case in point:

I decided to start to really focus on getting rid of my debt (financial). I don't have a lot but enough that it annoys me on a monthly basis and, it was getting to a buy food or pay bills kind of situation. I found a promising ad in the local paper and took on two cleaning jobs. In making the decision I never once included God, invited God, consulted God. I was gonna do this, period. Now if God wanted to get behind me and support me he was more than welcome but this is how it was going to be.

Well, my loving Father, who thankfully, knows me so well and loves me so much had other plans. Into my second week I pulled a groin muscle. Man alive, I had pain before my hip replacements but not as acute or intense as this. Stubborn or stupid, I just kept on cleaning and doing my other job. The first two weeks I walked (I can't believe I did this) to and from all my jobs, some nights and days bawling like crazy with pain. One night I was facing down the hill just before my place and prayed " God, anyone who comes along and offers me a ride from here on in I am always going to say yes. Please send somebody". A car went by, slowed down and reversed. It was a musician from my churches Gospel group who had seen me hobbling around at work while they entertained that very day. He and his wife picked me up and drove me right to my door. Best part was declaring God to them as an a answer to prayer. Another time, a young girl I didn't know but who had seen me crutching (yep finally pulled out the sticks) around town offered me a lift. Many friends and acquaintances stopped too and I am grateful to everyone of you.

I still had the attitude that God should get on board with me, even as I called cried out to him in pain while cleaning. Then I got mad at him. Didn't he know how hard I was trying? Couldn't he see the good in what I was doing? I mean I could start to tithe once the debt was erased!!! Then I expanded my grievances to include things that were none of my business but I tied them to my own sense of being forsaken.

When I finally got to the part where it goes "What kind of God...?" I stumbled on a video by some of the Seattle Seahawk that stopped me in my tracks. Basically I remember two things. 1. Some things are out of our control. 2. His ways are higher. They quoted from 2 Corinthians :7 and Psalm 119.
I opened my Bible and my attitude changed. I want to be very clear : my attitude changed, Not God's. I had tried to find ways to get him to do what I wanted, what I thought was right, but no dice. His ways are higher.

Here's what I take from all of this. First of all, everything and I mean everything in my life goes through the filter of God's wisdom and love first. Any thing I want or need goes through Him. Second I learned that God can and does use pain for higher purpose. It sucks, totally, but when I am not listening drastic measures are in order (which is true for all of us). Third God never said he didn't want me to clean/pay off debt/move forward, He wants me to invite him to join me. Weird but nine weeks (yes I am that stubborn) later I opened the Bible and started to pray for everything and everyone and I had my first crutch free week. Also had my first deep, refreshing sleep last night. Coincidence? I think not. Fourth and very significantly, even in the midst of the misery I create God sends help in the form of friends and strangers. Even to an ungrateful, willful wretch like me he doesn't want me to do all by myself.

 I  am humbled and I am so loved. Thank you God for all of it, every bump and bruise that is used to bring me closer. Thank you for your blessings, for friends and strangers, for all of it. I am so grateful!

Butter Side Down

I am having a 'Butter Side Down" day.  What I mean is that everything I get involved in or touch: just like the toast at the beginning of what is shaping up to be a particularly trying day, goes on the floor 'butter side down'. There's a 50/50 chance of a different outcome but there it is. 

These are the days when you lose control of your tooth brush and it ends up in the toilet, or the coffee is magically drawn to your clean shirt. Every one's nightmare scenario on this sort of day involves traffic jams and slow drivers. Heck let's face it: you really are the only one on the road with enough sense and courtesy to be driving anyway. Right? Photocopiers self destruct, lunch line-ups are long and the counter person tells you after you have waited and ordered they don't take Interac. I think you all get the point.

These days often appear out of nowhere, no rhyme or reason. Along they come and how you deal with it is as much about the kind of day it all turns into as it is about your character. I admit to being, in the past, a real freak outer gal. Zippers could make me apoplectic. I lacked the self discipline to reel it in and would eventually fall into a primo hissy fit, with tears and recriminations and a huge emotional hangover fueled by guilt and shame.

I have been very blessed to have been forgiven so often because there was a lot of wreckage in my path. I never meant to hurt any one's feelings or embarrass them or myself it just sort of snowballed and seemed to overwhelming to stop.

So today was just such a day. I was ticked off about having to go for an inconvenient lab test yesterday and still swimming in the chemical soup of hormones and wacked out neurons this morning. I could feel myself getting wound up. Losing patience, feeling an inappropriate sense self importance ( I mean, come on, don't they know who I am??).

Then I remembered that I was in charge of this stuff. I choose how it all shakes out. I don't want to be the uncontrolled, unhappy person I was before. I want to be gracious and kind and patient and helpful. I want the qualities that the Lord gave me in the Holy Spirit to be what goes ahead of me. Not my ego, pride, self centeredness or even my fragility.
So...deep breath, slower steps, smile and things turn around. Thank you Lord. I apologized to someone who was not sure how to take my behavior (even though it was sort of meant to be a joke it had a TONE).
Their loving heart put us together in a hug and forgiveness reigned.

God has opened my eyes to what I could be, gave me the Holy Spirit to make it happen and leads me as soon as I hold out my hand and ask for help. God is good!!!

I am impatient

I have something shameful to confess: I am impatient.. I am awful when I have to wait in lineups at the bank, or if I am inconvenienced say by water shutoffs related to roadwork or being in a car line up waiting to be flagged through.

A young guy came to the door yesterday who is working with a road crew down the street. He was handing out notices of water shutoffs and when I opened the door he looked startled. Why? Well the other day when his crew hit a gas line and had to detour those of us who were on foot and driving around it (for our own safety I might add)  I was half a block from home and had to turn around and walk a longer route. I told him "You guys suck!!".  Sheesh!! What a bag eh? I wanted to tell him "It's okay kiddo, I don't really bite"

Shameful to make someone else feel bad because I cannot get a grip on my sinful nature. I just read that one of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It establishes itself and takes a toll on you and anyone around you. How can I expect to be of service to anyone when I'm governed by sin?

The good news is that God forgives. I can go to him after another 'little flare up' and asked to be forgiven. The thing is though, if I don't change my behavior then the sin remains. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

So today, after snarking at the person answering the phone in the public works office regarding a 2 hour power outage I called back and apologized. She was gracious and friendly and I am grateful that she was.

Wouldn't it be horrible to walk around in your life with people startled by you all the time?  I hope I never accept sin. I hope my conscience drives me nuts and that God leans on me to change as much as is needed because I do want to be told in heaven "Well done good and faithful servant", and there is no room for sin in that statement.

I am gloriously, wondrously drunk on spring sunshine and the smell of fresh cut grass. I understand completely why Snoopy throws his head back and flings his arms out and just dances with joy. Everything just feels so alive at this time of year. Tulips are sticking their noses up about three inches to test the air, crocuses are acting like blinking neon lights advertising "This way to spring". People are out in droves, all smiley and smug because they think that they are the only ones who know it is finally spring.
I noticed the robins were back early this year and sure enough in the early morning you can hear the boys caroling for the girls. They aren't above a few late evening catcalls either. Salmo, the cat downstairs, caught his first mouse of the season. I still have my blue spray bottle to discourage him from trying to catch the birds. He doesn't eat them, just scares them to death. Stinker!! He sees me holding the spray bottle and goes the other direction, it has a pretty good stream and I am a dead accurate shot. I can usually land one good spritz up his tail feathers and that is enough to keep him on his best behavior for awhile.
All this happiness and notation of the world around me remind me of that song "This is the Day the Lord has Made" (May not be called this but that is how I remember it anyway.) It's kind of like Christmas without the winter boots. I feel cheery and friendly and want to reach out to people. I just assume everyone wants to see the birds and flowers and blue sky and so I happily chat them up and point it all out while passing them on the street. I feel renewed and refreshed and I hope that you all do too. It is such a great time of year.
Cheers
Jane

I Love My Dog, and Probably Yours Too.

I just got back from house and dog sitting for friends. It has been 5 years since my darling Tucker died and it has taken me this long to come to grips with it and to even consider the possibility of another dog. While at Rose and Don's I let the dogs sleep with me in the giant bed. They have 2 Chihuahua's (Santana and Freddie), a wire haired dacshund (Jeffery) and Goliath, the giant black lab (who I call Golly and thinks he is a poodle). It is a process getting into bed, some want lifting in and the rest can do it themselves. Golly is huge so doesn't often get in the bed. He puts his head on the bed next to your pillow and thumps his tail. Eventually, as the ear scratching goes on he slides his upper half up onto the blankets to have his underarms rubbed. When I was there he was amazed and a little confused to discover that his hind end, almost by itself, had arrived on the bed and he was suddenly all in. He wasn't sure if he was being naughty and I didn't have the heart to propel him onto the floor.

The little ones do their own special dance before getting settled. The Chihuahua's tend to walk across the top of my head as I am lying on the pillow (ouch you're on my hair) and Freddie likes to scale me like a mountain goat and gaze into my eyes while I scratch his tummy. Eventually I get fed up and push him off and he flips the blanket with his nose and gets under. He likes to be as close to my head as possible. Santana likes to be under the covers too. Jeffery likes to play a bit before retiring so we have a little "I'm gonna getcha" before he settles down on top of the sheets. Interesting to note that all the little ones sleep on the same side, whether Golly is there or not.

Once they were all asleep I had the most overwhelming sense of melancholy listening to them snore and whiffle and twitch. For ten years that was my lullaby and I had forgotten how dear it is to me. I had to race Tucker to the bed and get under the covers because he would jump up and if I wasn't under the sheets he hogged the bed. He had a really remarkable way of spreading himself out so that eventually I was sleeping on the thinnest edge of bed while he happily snored away. He would squeeze me out from the covers like toothpaste coming out of the tube. I had also forgotten about the acrobatic sleep positions I adopted to work myself around Tucker so I could get comfortable.

He loved to have his tummy and armpits rubbed. He would lie on his back and I would lightly tickle him. He would half smile and doze: and like my father watching TV with his eyes closed, could tell when I was about to switch things up and would open his eyes and beat his tail against the floor. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like coming home to a dog that is glad to see you. I don't know if dogs grieve but I know they wait with heavy hearts. Always, the sad face at the top of the stairs when I left for work and the joyous reunion upon my return. I challenge a man to make me feel so wanted and loved.

He was my Tucky Duck, Tutter Turtin, mommy's pwecious (yeah I know ew!!!), chubby bubby and any number of monikers as they occurred. We walked in Dale Meadows almost every day no matter the weather and had some astonishing interactions with birds, coyotes and came close to a skunk once. He was never a swimmer but he liked to wade in the creek so on hot days we would wander over after supper and he would blissfully wander up and down the creek bed, having a little drink and cooling off. He was never one for the heat.

After he died I couldn't bear to go in the meadow and didn't for about 3 years. When I finally went back I was surprised to see some of the landmarks had changed but the stand of trembling aspen endured as did a dwindling hay bale about 4 years old. The creek was overgrown and a subdivision backed on to it complete with a new footbridge. The old willow had been chainsawed out but the landscape was pretty much unchanged.

I had forgotten how the seasons turned in the meadow. You could tell what was coming weather wise by the temperature, the birds and the trees. The wind would start at one end and you could see it coming for a half mile as the grass waved it along. In the fall and winter the dry grasses hissed like snakes against the gray fence posts and the leaves on the aspens softly rattled and trembled in the summer and fall. There was a gorgeous little hollow under the aspens. You had to cross a plank to get to it and it was sheltered and quiet and unseen. Once while making my way across Tucker bumped me and I ended up with one leg in the creek bed mud and the other on the plank. I am not strong enough to pull myself up so ended up flinging myself, rear end first, onto the muddy bank.

Tuck was overweight and completely and dangerously indulged with people food. He was a notorious table beggar, a mama's boy to the hilt (would not walk with my landlady, who he had known all his life. Just dragged her back to the house), even when he got out of the yard never wandered far from his dinner plate and shed like crazy (all black clothing was removed at the door lest his blond hair get all over it and he was terribly car sick (some gruesome car rides with him slavering and whining in the back seat were had just to go down to the beach). He upchucked on the Boyyo on the way home from the SPCA.

I didn't find out about dog love until late in life. Did you know that dogs sigh? Did you know they bow to you (front end down) when they are inviting you to play? These were all the wonderful things I discovered with Tucker. The best and most important things I gained were the unconditional love of a creature who adored me. He was so easy to please, uncomplicated and giving. I got so much from our relationship and I challenge anyone who has not loved a dog to say they aren't family.

Tucker got sick slowly and I think he eventually had cancer, lymphoma, judging by his swollen face, lethargy and depression. Late in his life as an only dog a dominant wiener dog with issues arrived and Tuck took that hard too. He wasn't the pushy type and Jordie bullied him some and forced his way into our interactions and it hurt Tuck. He couldn't grasp that our love had changed and he moped and sighed a lot. The day he died, I got up and found him with a swollen face. He hadn't been eating or drinking and could barely make it half a block on a walk. I took him to the vet and we agreed that without expensive intervention (I had just been laid off) his life was coming to an end. We decided to put him to sleep. I can barely type this I am crying so hard. I couldn't stop sobbing and while I sat on the floor crying he came over to comfort me.
We laid him down and I lay down beside him and then he died. I went home with his collar.

I have never experienced anything that painful. I felt completely broken. Who do you share the depth of that sadness with? I called my Dad, he and Mom had four dogs. he was sympathetic but then I had to go home without Tucker. I had to put away his dishes and toys and blankets. The next few weeks were torture. I didn't want to go home. Didn't want to go to bed. Didn't want anything but Tucker to tell you the truth.

I still miss him more than I can say. He was a wonderful dog and companion. He filled a void in my heart and life at a time when nothing other than divine intervention could explain his arrival. I am told dogs don't have souls and thus don't go to heaven but this is something me and the church are going to have to disagree on. Tucker had a soul as surely as I do and I don't want to go to any heaven that doesn't have him there waiting for me.

He forgave my tempers, my slacking on walks, late meals and even our 6 week sojourn to Ontario the summer before he died. He loved me and more importantly let me love him with no complications or questions. He gave my day to day life a richness and depth I never would have had otherwise. He brought me friends and neighbours and challenges and hope, especially hope when I needed it most.

I have been really blessed since having raised Tuck to know lots of dogs. It's a bit of an addiction really, the need to have your fingers in the hair of a dogs neck or scratch their ears. My friend Buster, who was a squat little brown and white creature who prayed before he ate, Rookie the wild, who, when taken off leash at the meadow tore across it and out of site like a kid released for summer vacation, Duchess the Newfoundlander who lovingly strolled over and leaned against you full weight while you scratched at the top of her tail and Pip, who at seventeen waddles along at just about the right pace for me and my arthfitic hip to keep up.

There were all the fostered puppies from the SPCA that my landlady and I raised until adoption. We fed them pablum, scrubbed their stiff little pablum collars after meals, cleaned up after them, answered their cries in the middle of the night, chased them around the garden and used them to teach the neighbourhood kids about picking them up and loving them. Happy me to sit with a palm full of puppy at the end of the day and rock them to sleep. So wonderful.

I could go on forever but my advice in closing is get a dog. Go to the SPCA, Humane Society or pound and get your dog love going. There are so many dogs out there waiting for homes and I tell you the rewards are more than worth it. I say this with all sincerity that having a dog has been the second best thing that has happened to me in my life (Boyyo comes first).

I think I might be ready for another dog now. I know what I want in one and God knows what I need so I await divine intervention to deliver me a new love. I have been spoiled by Tucker and I am glad to have been. No one has ever loved me like this. I really look forward to the new character and insights. I look forward to a hairy back pressed up against me in the bed, walking at a leisurely pace, revisiting the seasons and tickling those underarms. I'm not set on a breed or size or gender just so long as there is love. Lots and lots of love.
See you next time
Cheers
Jane