Confessions of a Hungry Introvert

Tuesday morning and it's quiet.

 

  The children have all gone to school after a four day weekend celebrating the new king's birthday.  That means that my first four days here have been abundant with voices and laughter and reading and worship and eating birthday cake and otherwise loving and being loved.

Over. The. Top.

I am overwhelmed.

Every time I come I learn new things about me.  I know.  I come to teach.  Bible stories and ESL are part of what I do when I come.  And so far that's going well (thank you Ann and Jill for helping to get all those ideas and papers and trinkets ready for the miracles lessons).

 But every time, I am more the student than the teacher.  True fact.

And right now my lessons are layered on top of what I've been learning already in these past two months away from my community of faith.

I hesitate to even mention this again, because I think I've done so in the last five blog posts running, or something like that, and I risk rolling the eyes of my readers.  But honestly, as I sit here in the quiet of a Tuesday morning, this whole need-of-people thing is what continues to surprise the introvert in me.

I am an introvert, somewhat to the extreme, in that I would say that I get my batteries recharged by being alone.  And solitude and silence are gifts to my soul.  And in all my ministry years, past, present and on into the future, my greatest challenge has always been and will always be how to balance this out.  Because....people.

These past weeks away from people I have experienced a beautiful, wretched need that, to be honest, normally I do not.  It's intense and real and uncomfortable and pressing me in ways wonderful and true.  I need my peeps.  I do.

Being here now, and the way this is filling me up, well frankly, sometimes it makes it hard to breathe.

Oh my!

How astonishing delightful it is to sit in the circle and sing together songs I am increasingly able to understand (thanks here to Esther's song book) in the mornings and evenings. 

How simply, deeply good it feels to be surrounded by sweet faces at the tables under the dining shelter, eating birthday cake (thanks here to Deborah and Lawee and David for being born in July) and having nothing else to be doing than just sitting and enjoying the looks on their faces as they devour the very special treat.

How comforting to my away-from soul to sit together for meals (something that's happening more and more as in the beginning I was more usually on my own to eat) and have long, unhurried conversation (which, again, I am increasingly more able to understand), about life and ministry and dreams for the future.  And this with the added bonus of sensing that, while we will always miss Bee, something of the dreadful long night of grieving has passed and joy dominates this place again.

And I am greedy for it all.  The being-with thing. 

Oh my people!  Here and at home!  How I need you!  Desperately, wretchedly, deeply simply, shockingly.

It's an interesting place for an introvert to be.  But it makes sense.  The theology of it is brilliant.  How better to prove that God intended us to do life in family, in community, with each other, than to take an introvert away from it for a while and see what it does to her soul?


I feel a self-induced research paper coming on (she said, robbing the moment of any poetry).  Only my fellow student-geek friends will understand this, I know.  But it makes me want to go looking for how I may have missed some nuances in my Bible before this, even having preached on it so many times before.

Tuesday morning and it's quiet.  And that's okay.  For now.  By four I'll be ready to greet them again.  We've got some serious reading to do if we're going to get this book club thing done before I leave.

My Life In Triplicate

I have three toothbrushes. 

I don’t mean all three in one bathroom, but three different toothbrushes in three very different bathrooms.  Like, permanently.

Same is true for shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hair dryers and other sundry personal items. 

Three!

What’s it called in geometry when there are three overlapping circles and it creates that space in the middle?  Had to look it up, and one very scientific paper describes it as a ‘circular triangle’, or the ‘intersect’ of overlapping circles as in a Venn diagram.  Which is way more math than I’m used to handling, except that it does pretty much describe where my toothbrushes live.

I notice this especially in times like right now, when I’m at my house, simultaneously unpacking from the cottage and packing for Thailand.  Three worlds literally colliding in the hallways, and on the spare beds and sprawled out on the pool table.  I don’t like the mess but I do love the richness of my ‘circular triangle’ intersecting Venn diagram life.  It’s like having a 3D life, vibrant and contoured and pulling me into adventure and depth and  wonder. 

Like living life in triplicate.

 

Deeply at home on Blythwood Road in Waterloo.

Deeply at home on the Freddy Channel in Cognashene.

Deeply at home at Hot Springs in Thailand.

Very.  Deeply.  Home.

Times three.

How did this homebody find a home in so many places? 

How did this control freak release enough order to manage the mess? 

How did such an ordinary little girl end up with such an extraordinary 3D, life-in-triplicate story?

Photo Credit: Dave Driver

‘Circular triangles’ make sense for a Trinity that loves that way.   Being drawn in gently, fiercely because of daring to say yes to a Presence vibrant and contoured and pulling me into adventure and depth and wonder.  Saying yes and yes again until all the floating circles come together for a place astonishing enough to hold three toothbrushes and three homes for my heart.

In the name of the Father,

Son

and Holy Spirit.

He covers me in homes.

Rounding the Point

These past six weeks have provided the opportunity for some serious kayak therapy. 

It didn’t start as therapy.  It started as a challenge to myself to see how many times I could make my way around the entire island this season.   A friend threw out the random number of nine back at the first part of June.  Except for a few stints at home and my upcoming trip to Thailand, I am mostly at the cottage this year all the way through to the beginning of September, and, since I’m already at seven, I’m confident I will surpass this and be setting a new goal even by the end of this week.

Our island is large enough to appear as a small dot on a map of Ontario.  It takes me just a little over an hour to paddle around it, although the gradual increase of my skill is shaving off a few minutes every time, depending on the chop that day.  Mostly I choose times when the water is flat.  And I think that’s where the therapy kicks in.

Being out in the kayak is all things fresh and bright and creation-connective for me.  Water meets sky meets tree line.   Sun all wonderful and warm, with the air wild and worry free.  Riding lower than even in the canoe, I feel more intimacy with the water itself, my two-ended paddle offering its respect with each dip and pull.  My body seems fully engaged and deeply relaxed at the same time, legs and back braced, shoulders and arms in rhythm with the elements.  I breathe with it.  I pray with it.

For every trip around there’s this spot I mark in my mind.  It’s the rocky point that defines half way.  It takes me from the more sheltered, soul-filling waters between islands along the channels, out into the open for a stretch across, before turning back into a bay that takes me the rest of the way, again in waters calm and still and healing.   From this spot on, to turn back makes no sense.  I will have to paddle just as many strokes to get home, either way.    

So at this point, each time, I leave where I’ve come from in order to arrive where I started; home again.

These past six weeks have been uniquely difficult for me, emotionally.  I have let go of one of my life’s best gifts – all planned and properly accomplished, but painfully released just the same.   There’s this rather amazing community of faith I once pastored.  I love that community more than I can articulate.  But I have stepped away, and for a necessary six month period, am separated from so much that my soul has thrived on for over twenty years.   And while this new thing I’m doing also includes pursuing deep passions, there has been, continues to be a shocking depth of grief.  And disorientation.  And fear.

What have I done?

But out in the kayak He speaks. 

Morning sun in full glory this day, only nature sounds the praise.  Rounding the point in rhythm with creation, the Creator reminds me to receive.   Receive the enviable gift of all this time to rest in this sacred space.  Receive the lavish healing of impossible-to-avoid ministry wounds.  Receive the reward of passion-driven work yet to do.

 To paddle back the way I came makes no sense.   I will get home again if I just keep going. 

I am comforted by the invitation to return to my community of faith in due time.  There will be a sense that when that time comes I will feel gloriously at home again, without question. 

But there’s another sense of home in this for me; that understanding that I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, being who I was created to be.  That’s where I feel I’ve rounded the point.  That’s where this journey is taking me.

With these next five days ahead blocked off for some uninterrupted writing, planning and prayer – another good gift to receive right now – I anticipate His presence and persistent love to pull me further.

And I’ll let you know when I reach nine times around.

New goal? 

Fifteen. 

Another random number,

but something to inspire me forward.

Of Skipping Stones and Generations

There’s a technique to it, this essential cottage skill. 

It’s in the wrist and how you hold the stone.

 And there’s finding the right stone in the first place,

flat and right-sized and resting with just the right weight in your hand. 

And there’s practice. 

The repetition and willingness to accept failure,

toss after toss, until –

There!!  Yes!!  A satisfying sequence of touches dance across the surface of the water

before the stone disappears forever.

Zachary is excited when it first happens for him, standing with arms high in victory, squealing in just-turned-nine delight.

My gentle Grampa Robinson taught me how to skip stones.

Unhurried, patient, in tones that calm the easily frustrated child on his lap.

A safe soul to make mistakes with. 

I remember this as I notice my hand against Zachary’s,

cupping together to demonstrate the angles and finger positions,

his new and swim-clean child hand,

my spotted and veined gramma hand

together mastering this essential cottage skill. 

It evokes the memory, likely more than 50 years stored in my story,

opening now in this moment of wondering if

Zachary will teach this one day too

passing it on to another grandchild on a sunny summer’s day. 

I remember learning to skip stones with Grampa.

I remember feeling safe to fail.

Selah

There’s a presence to it, this essential leaving of legacy.

It’s in the time and giving in to the rhythm of the time

And time and time and a half again

At child’s pace,

Directing and being directed by curiosity

And wonder

And spirit and Spirit

Like a generational dialogue

Declaring what’s essential

And being safe.

And real.

Since my youth O God, you have taught me

And to this day I declare your marvellous deeds

Even when I am old and grey do not forsake me my God,

Till I declare your power to the next generation

Your mighty acts to all who are to come.

Psalm 71:17-18