Too Much.

I'm sitting here with a feeling of unease. It has been there for a few months, but the last few weeks most prominently. It sometimes exhibits itself in my mood, sometimes in my stomach in the form of nausea; sometimes it's a feeling of frantic excitement; sometimes it shows up in my bowels, sometimes in a feeling of anxiety that sits in the back of my throat.

Shit. I wish I could shake it. 

We have talked and talked about living meaningfully. We have poured over our values, attempted to live them out in our moment to moment choices, our daily acts, our monthly budgeting, our yearly assessments of how we're doing. We have made choices and changes in our life to incorporate and inhabit them. We've purged loads of unnecessary "stuff", downsized and moved into a community-living setting, changed the way we shop and accumulate, worked to love and accept and follow the path our Faith is at peace with, explored plans of adventure! We have done a lot of good stuff, and I am quick to forget it all in the face of one of the areas that I am still failing miserably. 

I can't seem to trim down on my commitments. I am doing too much. I am trying to cram too much into my life and am suffering, and causing my family to suffer, because of it. 

15 minutes ago, I left my crying 7 year old, on her birthday, having just taken her out with Ryan to a fancy tea house, having just broke her heart at the words, "I have to go to the hospital. My client is going to have her baby soon." She hugged me and held tight, crying that she didn't want me to go.

I am lagging way behind where I wanted to be in my schooling. I've begun an online study program to become a childbirth educator, largely to be able to remain working in the birth world without having to rely on attending births as an income. I am not able to keep up, because, for pete's sake, I'm human and need to chill out a couple evenings a week.

I'm pushing hard with homeschool, and as always, have this voice in the back of my mind that says, "Work harder, challenge them more, do more planning, be more organized!" 

I'm trying, oh so hard, to navigate my way through the 3's for the third time, as my little one is full of tantrums, strong feelings, button pushing, and a desperate need to cling to me and kiss and hug me frequently throughout the day. I want to enjoy it. I want to love her affection, but I am exhausted in body and mind. I also suspect that her intensity may be connected to some kind of anxiety or unmet need. Attention? Affection from me? Lack of mother patience?

I'm a good friend, and want to continue to be one, but when I'm so behind on everything else, how can I manage to do friendship well? I meet and have coffee with another mom and wonder the whole time whether I should be spending time doing this....I'm wasting time aren't I? My rational, smart brain tells me that relationships are what life is about, while my frantic, anxious brain screams "INEFFICIENT USE OF TIME!"

The community we live in demands time, and work, and kindness and love, and compassion and understanding. These are all things I want to give, but I find myself empty of resources to give. 

And now I sit here, waiting for the call that will send me to the hospital to do a job I love (desperately) but that will keep me up all night, only to return home and take two or three days to recover from. I long for my daughter; to wipe her tears and snuggle up in bed with her and sleep just so. I worry she is growing up and I'm missing the good stuff because of my frantic brain. I worry about that with all of them. 

But in reality, if I can turn down the negative self-talk, the shame and guilt, the worry and anxiety, I know with the deepest calm that they are okay. I may not be perfect, and won't ever be. I may not be able to do it all, but my family loves me and I love them. They know it, and you know, we have it pretty good. 

But this day, this past 24 hours of worry and discussion with Ryan and talk about our own personal shame has set me on a new mission. This mission is to list all that I have on this overflowing plate of mine, to rank it in importance from most to least, and to see what I can, nay NEED to, cut out. Life is short, and there's only one chance to do it well, and here I am, right in the middle of it. So as soon as I get off this here computer, log out of the blog editor, and turn the computer to sleep mode, I will get a pen and paper and begin my new beginning. I will prioritize. I will make changes. I will tell anxiety and shame to take a hike and I will remember who I am. 

I am strong, smart and pretty darn hot. (Haha!) I am capable of a lot, but I have limits, and they need to be known and respected. I am good at a lot of things, but that doesn't mean I should do them all at once. I am excited about a lot, but that doesn't mean I need to jump aboard every ship that passes. Limits. Boundaries. Delving deeper into the things I actually have room for. That is what it's going to be. That, my friends, will be my new beginning.

And good night.

Life Lived Well

There will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears

And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears

Get over your hill and see what you find there

With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair

                                                                                                         - Mumford & Sons

Some really hard news came this week. Our friend, Ken, lovingly known to many by his Vine name, "Kwrkey", was told that his body was likely too overwhelmed with cancer to overcome it. After months and months of brutal chemo, surgery and radiation, plus a very difficult few months of just not recovering well from all of the trauma the treatment put his body through, he was given this news. 

There are times in life when we rank people. You know what I mean. You hear of a murder in the news of some gang member - targeted attack - victim was known to police, had a record. You don't feel too horrible, right? It's hard to admit, but you feel like perhaps, if you delved deep enough into your inner mind, the world might now have one less difficult person in it. Right? And then you hear of a young girl in a war zone getting shot and killed in the line of fire, or a young mother being killed in a car accident, leaving behind her children. Doesn't that hurt? Doesn't it make your insides ache?

Of course, we can't actually rank people like this. It's not right. It's not fair. Every person is precious. Each person has their own set of circumstances. Maybe that targeted victim was the son of a prostitute who just couldn't give him a healthy childhood, causing him to turn to unhealthy habits, unsafe people for security. Maybe that young mother was abusive towards her children, or had a drug habit that was causing her children to grow up in neglect.

The fact is, we don't know peoples' stories. We don't know where they've come from, or how they've carved out their life and ways. We can't judge them, nor can we rank them.

I don't know Ken's story. Not the full story, at least. We know snippets. We know much more about the past few years of his story than anything else. We know that he met Julie a couple years ago and the two of them are beautiful together. They are a pair of light-shedding givers and you can't know them without loving them. 

They both have stories, including previous marriages, kids they love, pain in their past. They both love music, and each other, and being goofy, and bringing people together, and making others feel good (no, great), and sharing life and laughs and music with anyone they find who will share it with them.

When we happened upon this funny little app a couple years ago, an app called Vine, we never imagined the way it would change our lives. That sounds weird. It still sounds weird to me, but it's true. If you're not familiar with it, it's an app in which you create an account and then record 6-second long videos, and once you post them on your feed, they loop. They repeat over and over and over. This may sound bizarre, but it makes for a really interesting artistic medium. The crazy thing about Vine that sets it apart from other kinds of social media is that it causes, almost by accident, real life connections between people. Really. It does. For some reason, the fact that people are taking video of themselves talking, making jokes, dancing, singing, doing silly things, causes others to get a more clear picture of who they are, which causes them to respond with the same kind of authenticity. There's a lot of vulnerability, and you feel as if you're kind of connecting with people on a really special level. (Of course, it's possible to just be a spectator, as with any social media, but if you really engage, you reap the benefits.) When we were first experiencing the world of Vine, we would see people post vines saying they loved their "vine friends" and that their life was "so different" now because of Vine. I was very skeptical. It was an APP, people. It wasn't REAL. These weren't REAL RELATIONSHIPS. It was a little mini screen and these people were just on a screen.

Then one day, Ryan found this goofy guy named Ken on Vine, and we started up a little back and forth Vine friendship.

He was pretty great, and we quickly got to know his girlfriend, Julie as well.



We had some pretty funny times with them on vine, going back and forth with goofy messages and song-collabs (the Vine term for doing music together on vine....) and many other random and fun things. Then we said to each other, how about a trip down to visit them in Oregon? And the adventure began...

 We had an amazing trip, and got to experience what they were like in real, non-screen life!
(Hint: They really WERE real!) They weren't just real, they were truly lovely people. Lovely, loving, lively, likeable, and all the other L words you can think of (the good ones at least). Really though, we got such a keen sense that they were community builders, carers of people, and people who were really out to make the world a better place for everyone in it. It was, to say the very least, inspiring!



Ken ended up making this goofy Vine after our first day together. It made us giggle.



And so we headed home, and returned to the Vine friendship, inviting and urging them to come visit us next! How fun! And so life carried on as usual for a while.



The following year, we had the chance to go to DisneyLand! And guess who we met up with there??? You bet! A lovely few hours and a nice lunch together with our Vine buddies in the happiest place on Earth.  Can't you tell I'm happy? :)



It wasn't too long after this meet up that the news came of Ken's diagnosis and upcoming treatment. What a hard and horrible thing. Through the months that followed, we witnessed him going through chemo over Vine and Facebook, as well as through The Good Men Project, a blog where he had a space to write about his experience. We ached for him, Julie and their teenaged kids. What a lot to grapple with. Chemo, surgery, radiation, it went on and on, and we listened, prayed, hoped.

Then this recent news came, and we cried, and talked, and prayed, and cried. How could the world allow a guy like THIS to go? I started ranking people. Why Ken? Why someone who was a light-shiner in this world?

But sometimes "why" isn't really helpful, or the right thing to ask. I'm not sure what is. What I hope for now, and pray for him, Julie, their kids and family, is for peace. For good, loving time together at home. For calm and courage to face the future without Ken's presence. For Ken's peace to be a blanket over and around him, to carry him towards the end of his life here and that which lies beyond. We pray this daily, hourly, momentarily. And what more can be said or done? Love is what it comes down to in the end, isn't it?

Love, hope, faith. Ken has done so much good here, and now he will get to leave and enter a more beautiful experience that the rest of us will all have to wait for.

May you feel deep peace and love as you enjoy your closest people, Ken. And may you not feel pain, but have a comfortable many months ahead as you all prepare for the change to come. We look forward to Julie's continued updates on how things are going for you all and will continue to journey with you until we can't any longer.

We love you, and look forward to hanging out when we join you on the other side of the river.

With love,
Laura, Ryan, and the girls.

A bit hard. A bit sweet.

I'm here. In our new office. Having meant to sit down and do some studying for a program I've just registered in. I'm not doing it. 

Our office is pretty much set up. So is the rest of the house. Sure, there are bits and pieces that still feel kind of unsettled, but for the most part, our house is as it will be for a long time.

The office is full of white desk space, mason jars of pencils, markers, scissors, pencil crayons. The computer sits boldly on the desktop. The files that we had stuffed for years into an old decrepit filing cabinet have been sorted and placed into a new, fully functional one. The closet is full of homeschool resources, craft supplies, instruments, cleaning supplies, batteries, cables and cords. The piano sits happily against one wall. Chalkboards line the desktop, awaiting each weekday morning's plan scribbled in fancy writing. Alphabet banners line the wall up high.

It looks pretty good. It looks like a nice home. It feels set up and pretty and nearly complete. But it has yet to feel like HOME. 

I had a bit of a cry today. (Okay, there may have been some big ugly sobs in there.) I was feeling lost and disoriented. I miss our friends from our little city by the sea. I miss our church community, which we are still a part of but which feels much further away now. I miss the ocean. I miss our dear ex-next door neighbours. I miss our street. Our house. Our clerk at the grocery store. Our mail carrier. I miss the streets that were so familiar. I miss the farms we often visited with people we love living on them. I miss spending time chatting, picking up milk and cheese, spontaneously having tea, seeing the girls poke at the chickens, keep their distance from the cows, and wander through the orchard. I miss often staying longer than we intended. I miss the feeling of HOME.

I guess this is to be expected. A change so big as a move had to have a big impact. I suppose it's okay that it will take time to adjust to this new city. 

I was babbling to God at one point in my breakdown and had to say out loud some of the positives of this place. Here they are, in no particular order.

- This co-housing community and all the people here. They are really great. I mean it. Good people. Fun and loving and totally weird. Just like us.

- The beautiful natural beauty that is practically outside our door. We could bike to the forest. We can hop in the van and drive for 3 minutes and reach the river. Loads of parkland that has trails and beautiful scenery. 

- The proximity to my sister and her family, who we love and get to see so much more often now.

- The central-seeming location we are in now. Previously it took us an hour to get into the main city. Now it's 1/2 an hour. That includes Ryan's commute. Excellent.

See? Looking at the positives helps! I am feeling better already!

Okay, so the reality is that this is very up and down. I have all but lost sight of why the hell we did this. And then Ryan reminds me that he wants us to have our values displayed visually in the house and I thank God again for how there seems to be an ebb and flow to our ups and downs, and how when I'm down, Ryan seems to be up, and when Ryan's down, I seem to be up. Merciful.

And this is today. I am tempted to go out and mingle with some of our new people right now, but I think I'll get back to what I was setting out to do when I sat down here. STUDY. Bring it on.

A little bit of crazy to keep it real.

We had a date night recently. Went for a walk. This is the result. Us crazy kids.

What if?

In the business world, in order to experience success, organizations spend countless hours focussing on a very specific task. This task sets the pace for the ethos and drive of a business and those who do it well see their employees united and content, their businesses thrive.

This task? Defining the organization's values.

It's a theme with us, right? Yeah! And it's time we take it to a whole new level.

Organizations put huge effort into choosing their values, wordsmithing them to just the right lilt and tone, and rolling them out to the employees. The process is invaluable. It's great for business. Why? Because it helps create a clear direction resulting in a much better atmosphere for employees.

Let's sit with this idea here for a minute (while I clean up the wine I just dribbled all over my shirt...) and think about something else. Why do we leave it all at work and trash it when we enter our home lives?

What would happen if we transferred these ethos-improving, atmosphere-augmenting, direction-building ideas from a business setting to a HOME?

I mean, it's not that we don't have values as individuals and families already. We do, buried deep under our decisions and lifestyle. Sometimes they even creep onto our walls in cute and nerdy plaques hung above our kitchen sinks. "Your mother doesn't live here. Put away your dishes." "Eat, Laugh, Love." "Home is where the heart is." Admit it. You've got one or two. Yes!! Haha! I can hear you laughing! 

But really, these things don't define our life direction, do they? (I hope not!) Why is it that when it's business time, direction and values make perfect sense, but when we live our out-of-work lives (which we, ahem, value more, generally speaking) we seem to go from whim to whim without a glance deep into ourselves in order to examine what drives our direction?

I mean, what would it be like if in our home we had actual values stated, displayed, referred to at each turn of our journey? What if we displayed them on the wall just like a business would, to keep ourselves and those who live with us remembering what the core of our life direction is? What if?

Okay, let's cut to the chase.

What if...

...we put business-quality effort and energy into choosing values for our families?
 
...rather than relying on a 'general feeling' of what we value as a family, we carefully chose specific ones and started to evaluate our decisions and the way we live using them as a framework?
 
...we had those values hanging up on our wall next to our kitchen table?

How would that impact the decisions we make? How would that impact our kids? Their sense of belonging? How would it equip them to make their own decisions? Would it help us all get moving in the same direction?

I think it would.

Instinctively I think we all have a general sense of what our personal values are. But, we, after having gone through the process of selecting and writing them out, and trying to consider them in every decision we make, can assure you...

...it is hard work... 

...but it is so worth it!

Processing the Change

Woooooaaaaah time flies my friends! This has been one crazy month!

It has, in fact, been a month and a week since we moved in to this co-housing community and we are really enjoying it! Life is full and hectic and wonderful and there is space where I didn't expect it and busyness where I didn't expect it.

After three weeks of "limbo" between homes during which we went on a mini road trip, stayed with the grandparents, and lived in an RV, we were spent and so ready to move in. It was a sad goodbye to our little city by the sea and all the dear people we love and leave there. (Okay, it's only a 25 minute drive from our new place...sheesh!) It was sad because we had put down deep roots there. Our children had grown so much! Heck, we went from a family of four to a family of five! It felt significant. And so for three weeks we felt like we were mourning the loss of the home we loved and hadn't yet been able to celebrate the entry into a new community with new neighbours.

It was far more difficult than we had anticipated!

But then moving day came, and over the next few days we got all the stuff that we had in storage, and at the grandparents' house, and at our (previous) next door neighbour's house, and unpacked it all. Then re-arranged. Then re-arranged again. It's tricky business trying to fit one house's stuff into a completely different house!

A beautiful thing we discovered almost immediately about co-housing is that our girls had so much freedom! The building is secure and so they could run out of our unit and play with the community kids in the atrium, or run to the common house play-room and zoom around on the many roll toys and bikes laying around. They were crazy happy! In fact, we would wake up in the morning and they'd be in our bed asking "can we go out and play?" before we even got out of bed. It has certainly made the transition easier on us all that they are so happy.

They have their moments - we all do - of feeling sad and missing our old neighbourhood and people, but the richness we gain from living here is incredible! Good and bittersweet it is.

I think in the excitement and stress of moving though, if I'm honest, I've had a hard time really keeping focussed on our values. I feel like I've lost touch somewhat with what on earth we were doing, and why. And how does co-housing fit in again? And what are we doing here? And what now?

It's kind of hard to be honest like this, because this whole thing has been something we've so openly projected. There's a VISION, and a REASON, and we're HEADED IN A DIRECTION. The funny thing is, our direction has changed as we've been at different points of having to wait and be patient.

Aaaaah life!

I'm getting it back though. I'm remembering. This post is part of that. Meeting new friends and explaining the journey is good. It helps me to remember that this step is a part of a whole. I think of where we were, and the questions we had about feeling restless and wondering where that came from. I think of how we went through that process of honing our values, then holding them up to our life, analyzing what matched and what needed to be turfed. We then put our house on the market and waited, and waited, and waited, and well, waited some more. While we waited, our strong plans softened, and we allowed new ideas to seep in through the cracks. We felt led to hold our plans with a much looser, much more open hand, in order to let go of some of those "non-negotiables" that we were so sure of. It was so very orchestrated. We then caught wind of co-housing and were intrigued, and then tested the waters and were fascinated. In such a short amount of time we had peace and assurance that it was right for us, and not long after that had that reaffirmed as we amazingly GOT the place. And then, what peace there was in knowing our home would sell, in spite of the months on the market with an average of 6 (or so) showings a week. We had this eerie peace that said, "You know your path, now trust." And sell it did. Just in time for it all to work out.

And now here we are, having been through what feels like a crazy spin cycle in the washing machine and we've come out on the other side quite wonderfully happy!

We really are still settling in. I feel like the dust is starting to settle and things are starting to take some shape as to how our days are rolling. The girls seem to have remembered themselves and their usual manners (which they certainly lost for a few weeks there!), and are helping out around the house as I ask them to and as we try and sort out details like where the board games will go, and where we'll keep the extra blankets. All these minute details add up to SO MUCH TIME, but it's all good. It's good.

It's good.

Thanks for letting me process and remember, friends. Peace to you.

Right here. Right now.

We've been here for 8 days now and there have been so many good things and so much adjustment at the same time. When you're tired and weary from weeks on the go and a big move-in and are struggling to get a good night's sleep, it's really easy to focus on the hard parts, to not absorb the good around you, even when the good is sooooo good. 

It has been a pretty quiet week actually. There are two "wings", or atriums as they're called here, that go off from the common house in this place, and we have about 10 or so units in our atrium. Of these 10, there are a number of people who are either out of town or ones who keep to themselves for different reasons. There are some, however, who are around and who we've met and chatted with. We've sat out in a little nook filled with cozy chairs and sofas in the common space just outside our unit in the evening and had neighbours come and join us, chatting late into the night (whispering when the quiet hour arrived). We've propped our door open and had people poke their heads in to say hi, give us bits of info, ask us how we're doing. We've seen our girls run off into the common house with other kids (or in search of other kids) and not seen them for long periods of time, knowing they're safe (the building is locked) and having loads of fun with their new friends (and possibly getting into mischief with said new friends....hmmm). We've had good moments.

There have also been hard ones. I'm trying to recuperate from the move and the stress it has put on my body and for the past few days have been experiencing low blood pressure and faintness. I hope to see this pass as I get more sleep and gain more of a sense of normal. We've both had times of needing to close the door and the blinds and shut ourselves into our cave, trying to gain a sense of it being a safe hiding place when we're feeling "homesick" for our city by the sea, or our friends back where we came from, or from the overwhelm of a huge change. I've escaped to my bedroom which feels like a gentle and peaceful sanctuary on the upper floor, away from the door and the people outside, away from the noise and the overwhelm. 

There are gifts though. We are seeing them already. This God we have been following is already doing such good. We see His presence in the people who care so well for each other, and now for us. We see His presence in the small things like the way that I feel when I walk into my room - that it's a safe haven - that I feel that He is there and comforting. We see Him in the gift this community is. We see Him in the UTTERLY RANDOM way that Pito happened to meet a little boy on her walkie talkie the other day, who lives in the next subdivision, who happens to also be 6, who happens to homeschool, who happens to go to church in the area, who happened to drive by with his family today while we waited outside for them, in the pouring rain, just to wave and meet this new family that may very well become friends. We see God everywhere. In the rain and the peace that I felt as I walked to the compost this afternoon. In the tangible taste of Him I sense on my early morning walks. In the music Ryan and I play and sing in the evenings. He is here and He is good, and He has brought us here. May he have much good work for us to do.

Tonight there was a "welcome feast" for us and some other new people in the community. It was a potluck and everyone was to bring something except us newbies. :) We were SO well fed! Wow! And so many people came out! It was a gift to be able to see so many in one place, to chat with new friends and to witness our new community in action. What lovely, warm, welcoming and caring people! Really! This is what they DO. They care for one another. They live in community because they don't want to be alone and isolated. They want to know their neighbours. Co-housing is revolutionary and completely ordinary all at once. In our culture, we can so easily be isolated in our homes. We drive into our garages and can choose whether or not to engage with those around us, and how much to invite them into our lives. Townhouse complexes have the potential for more connection simply because there are shared walls, but even then, garages hide the people so often. Everything is set up to be private and isolated. Co-housing, in this sense, is really wild! I mean, to live in a building that deliberately doesn't have garages, where you need to enter your unit by passing through the common space where your neighbours are often around; it stands in contrast. (There's a joke we keep hearing that it takes an hour to take your garbage out here....because you meet so many neighbours along the way!) At the same time, I feel that co-housing is really not that strange or different. It's kind of like a townhouse complex, but we've put a glass roof over the "street" between the units, and the "clubhouse" happens to be attached to the "street". I don't know, there's something pretty....normal about seeing and knowing our neighbours.

I should be clear here too, that isolation is a lifestyle choice. Yes, many homes are set up in a way that encourages it, encourages constant privacy, isolation, living independent from the people around you, but even in that environment one can choose to build community around them. That is what we did back in our city by the sea. Remember our next door neighbours? We miss them dreadfully! I wish we could transplant them to this place, add them to the community, keep them close. My sister and her family are another example of living against the isolation factor. They know their neighbours. They get into their neighbour's lives. They share time and coffee and meals and conversations with them. 

But back to this place. I bet you'd like to see what it actually looks like, eh? Yeah? Wanna? Okay, here you go. xoxo Until next time.

 The South Atrium, where we live. This is a picture of the "street" between the units, covered in glass so as to allow daylight to enter, but not precipitation! At the very end are the glass doors into the common house.

The view from the atrium into our front window.

Our front door!

Our new home! That door goes out into the atrium.

 Looking in from the back deck.

 Our bedroom sanctuary. See what I mean? Peaceful. I just want to climb into bed and...zzzzzzz.

 Hard at work making pizza dough, with little Pony peeking over the edge of the counter.

From the kitchen sink, looking out to the atrium. 

 This was posted for a day or two before the welcome dinner.

The common house, taken from the front doors. 

The common house dining room. 

A nice place in the common house to sit and play piano late at night. 

(I just tested it out. Yup, it's nice.)