Fun-raiser...

Tonight's the big night.
Will it be raining cash at the "Louise goes to Africa fun-raiser party"? Despite all of my trepidations in earlier posts, it would now seem that the startling $10,000 I had to come up with has shrunk substantially to a mere $4,450... less than half! And I haven't even had a fundraiser yet!
That means that I need to stop worrying and start having some faith.
Ring those phones Saskatoon.

Cherish

I just watched a video of a little girl called Cherish.
She's sitting on my lap as all the little kids at Kids Club sing "this little light of mine". It makes me wonder whether my light is in fact shining when I watch a thing like that, especially in light of Cherish's recent death.
How can this be? How can little girls die; little girls who sit on laps and clap hands and sing songs. How can this be?
And who am I that I get to know her, hold her, kiss her cheeks in this short time called her life? Who am I that I get to go on singing, not even taking the words very seriously.
I don't understand this life of endless privilege while abother baby girl, Tatiyana's cousin just died of whopping cough ten blocks from my house. How can this be?
I'm gonna let it shine, I guess...

...while stuck at school during P/T interviews...

Life is at an uncomfortable level of familiarity and absurdity these days. Mundane and redundant, yet oddly unfamiliar. I sit in my "new classroom" surrounded by students and teachers whom I see daily, but whom I find myself not knowing and barely caring for. I am in a state of love-paralysis, comatose to the very fluid that fuels my existence.
At the same time, new life is springing out of every crack of predictability and I find myself in a strange garden with a familiar groundwork. Like Kids club where for 5 years worth of Mondays my life has lived out the same routine. Snack. Craft. Game. Lesson. Kids. Mess. Noise. Hope. Despair. Joy. Pain. Fatigue. Until just this week as new potential blossoms with new leadership from Angie. Suddenly Kids Club is not about me, and I discover that I am on my out, and life surges forward.
Having said all of this, I am rested and snug in a safe bed of the very love I find myself unable to dole out with the generous heapings I would want. I find myself protected and propelled by the love shining from the faces that surround me in life. And not only faces shining, but hearts beating and eyes blinking back tears and arms reaching to embrace and hands holding out gifts and legs marching firmly beside and backs bearing the heavy load. And this is how we know what love is: people laying down their lives for each other, for me. Loving me. Holding me. Sending me. Believing in me. I am deliriously and undeservingly lavished with more promise and more future than ever before.
I felt last weekend like my whole church accepted and affirmed me.
I feel this week like my friends have emerged, in matching T-shirts and with banners to declare that they love and support me enough to send me on my way to Africa.
I feel like the God who has been hiding behind a distant cloud has emerged as the beautiful mother who would kiss my cheeks and really love me until I feel good enough to be loved.
And the voice of "reason" the voice of "truth" the voice of "reality" is telling me this is all too pathetic. But I don't care. If needing to feel loved is pathetic, then there's enough room for that adjective along all the others that describe me amid the deep, high, wide, endless love my mother and father have unleashed.

count your blessings, will I ever learn?

The snow settled in today, quietly.
One minute there's just a glistening ice covering the city, the next, a blanket of snow. It's like a big cover up. I hear the Geese protesting this forced exit from outside my bedroom window. They're not alone in their frustration. But mostly, for me anyway, it just feels like this snow triggers a fear of what's to come rather than an actual acceptance of the miracle of today.

All in all, the day, the snow, it still shakes down to a win.

I was a cow to a few students today. I have a cold that finally settled into my snot ducts. I did not finish anything I intended to finish. BUT I sent an email asking the people I love for their help on my journey to Africa and already a dozen people have cheerfully responded. I got to work on a sermon today with a guy who's taking the time to show me the ropes and this is changing my life. I reconciled to my best friend after an ugly theological debate over chocolate stout. I am staying in my bed tomorrow; which is a blessing disguised as illness so I'll count it on the pro side.
I guess I feel loved if I only think about this moment and block out the frightening images that threatening me from the past and the future.

Out of the mysterious anonymous

So, I've been thinking a lot lately.
I mean, I think a lot at the best of times, but my efforts and thoughts have been concentrated on the prodigious tumult that my ego and identity have found themselves struggling to endure. I affectionately refer to this as "The Sh!t Storm". (The exclamation mark in lieu if "i" is my way of apologizing for the crass nature of this term, but no other word will suffice)
Self doubt and insecurity have executed a successful coup and I am now the POW and silent bystander of the bloody battle between Who-I-thin-I-am and Who-i-actually-am. And to be fair, I'm not sure Who-I-am as i (whoever that is?) watch the struggle unfold.
I know this sounds dramatic, but I feel like I am literally dying. Something is dying.
So if you made it this far without puking on yourself or rolling your eyes, thank you. I realize I need the odd sympathetic heart on this long and confusing journey into the unknown.
So the thought I wish to explore with you seems to have fittingly come from someone as unfamiliar to me as I am to myself; he/she calls him/herself Anonymous. (If this were a movie, it could even be that "anonymous" is actually my own subconscious. In this case, I tend to believe he/she is not. But maybe I'm going crazy?!)
I am actually referring to whoever it was that commented on my last post.
Anonymous writes (and I am poorly paraphrasing):
"Drop the p."

It turns out "t" and "p" might just be prefixes for the root after which I have set my life course.
Simple.
The clearest.
Preacher- p. Teacher- t. Reacher.

I love it. A Reacher.

There's no stigma, no preconceived ideas, no fanfare. Just this blessed little picture of one hand, heart in it, palm up, reaching out of my own dark corner of anonymity and into yours. Trusting, that by the grace of God that small token will give us both a sense of where we stand. Perhaps it will even offer a truth about who we are. But even if that who does not become clear, then at the very least we will know that who, both reaching and receiving, is loved.
For a moment the battle between "i" and "I" is quelled.

Pride leads to conflict; those who take advice are wise. Proverbs 13:10