Letter from your Father

For the longest time me and my friend Shirley had this whole play on words thing with her name...it started when our school choir sang the messiah one year and "Surely, Surely" became quite a hit...i sent her this a long time ago...took me a while to piece all the right verses together and make the most of her name as well...eventually i just added her name in places just to make it more personal to her...but tonight I dedicate it to those of us who are sad...hurt...and kind of overwhelmed with life...I know I get that way ALOT...so tonight...if there is anyone out there stuck in a viscious gong show of doubt wondering what could possibly happen next...well this is my little offering..

Shirley,
goodness and mercy will follow you...
For I, your Father God,
knit you together in your mother's womb
Your frame was not hidden from me.
When you were made in the secret place,
woven together in the depths of the earth.
When you were a child I loved you,
and out of Egypt I called you,
It was I, your Father,
who taught you to walk,
taking you by the arms.
I lead you with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love.

Every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from your Father of heavenly lights,
I do not change like shifting shadows.
All the days ordained for you
were written down before one of them came to be
Why would you ever question or wonder saying,
"God has lost track of me,
He doesn't care what happens to me?"
The God who created the cosmos,
stretched out the skies,
laid out the earth
and all that grows from it,
who breathes life into earths people
and makes them alive with His own life
I am God.

I have taken responsibility for you,
kept you safe,
you will dwell in your Father's house
forever, and ever...

Shirley,
you can say,
"As for me, I wait in hope for the Lord,
I wait for God my Saviour,
my Father will hear me."
The Lord, your Father,
has made proclamation
to the ends of the earth...
"Say to the daughter of Zion,
Is not Shirley my dear child
in whom I delight?
I still remember you,
I have great compassion for you.
I have made you beautiful,
I have set eternity in your heart.
You will be called,
'Sought After'
a mother,
Wake up, wake up, Daughter!
Wake up, wake up, and break into song."
and Shirley,
I am with you always
even to the very end of the age.

Ahasuerus

Speaking of names...
yes, it was in the conversation at one point...I came up with a name for my sister's 5th child...I don't officially know what the babe is...BUT when I went to visit her for my cousins wedding I went prepared...you see my sister has many boys and if this new babe is another boy THEN the name has to be spectacular, spectacular...of course, being the younger sister that I am I kindle offer my suggestions, my two cents as it were...although generally when this happens...my two cents gets stripped of it's value and i find myself becoming the butt of a family joke...like when I thought I was being innovative and imaginative asking my mum what kind of mansion/house/palace she would get in heaven? Her reply was that she was getting her own planet thank you very much! all the while looking at me like I was an idiot...with that, my two cents officially became worthless...and I never talk about heaven any more...or planets...even houses are a bit sad for me...

now there is a babe that needs a name...and with my intuitive skills, sisterly love and limited imagination I came up with a plan...you see my sister already has a prophet, a priestly offering, a warrior, and Simeon (who we can't figure out if he's the son of thunder from the 12 tribes, or if he is the patience Simeon who waited to see Jesus before he died)... he's working that out...meanwhile...my sister is having a child and I racked the bible and my brain to find a solution...a name please...and then, a brilliant light of genius struck an axon hillock somewhere and caused a chain reaction of neuronal messaging which filled my cortex with the name...Ahasuerus (picture lights flashing)...reasons for: my sister needs a king name...and I knew that David was too done...Solomon and Josiah too trendy with her friends right now...Manasseh too evil...Joash, bad nickname...Hezekiah, meh...but Ahasuerus or Xerxes, amazing (angels were singing somewhere)
I mean who has that name for one...it's a king name...in the bible...I safely tucked away my little name until I got to Three Hills to bring up the issue of what to name the little babe...but when I told her what I had come up with; without any hesitation she bluntly pointed out..."He was a pawn."
"but, but..." my mind was reeling
"He was just a pawn, he didn't actually do anything great at all." She reiterated...
worthless, no good two cents of mine...crushed...bowed...beated...I came home.

but as I think about it I still think that name has merit. yes, he was a pawn, a heathen, violent king who made rash decisions when he was drunk. this is not sounding good for my case but hang in...I understand that everybody wants their kid to be named after someone great, who did something extraordinary, almost like imparting some sort of power into your wee babe just by naming them...and you shall be Teresa, off to Calcutta to hold dying people...go...hummm...poor kid, a name and a calling on the first day...
so here's my argument...aren't we all pawns? aren't we all just heathen's ruling our little selves while God orchestrates an eternal purpose to our existence...we play our trumpet, toot our own horn...and God makes a movement out of it...Ahasuerus thought he was choosing a hot girl...but she brought a lot of baggage into that relationship...he got the whole Jewish nation...
I kinda like it cause I see grace in a clueless drunk being used to save others...not in his own merit...or of his own awareness...just because God can use pawns...he can use anyone...even ahasuerus...

Your Essay...post 350...it's all you...

Unapolagetically you.
I need to begin with a small apology though. You see the first time I met you, well, I thought you were crazy. Literally, crazy. And so for a whole year and a half whenever I saw you I would smile apologetically, feeling slightly guilty for thinking you were crazy, hurrying to be on my way. Away from you.
And then there was this summer job. I don't know who it was, who thought of sticking two people together to clean toilets for 4 and a half months but whoever it was; I thank them. We started out as mutually happy to not know eachother students who happened to go to the same uni and eat in the same cafeteria...that was then...now you tell me when you cried through an episode of House. But I am skipping ahead...this summer 'I feel like' I met you for the first time...the first connection was music. You bring speakers wherever you go, I happen to like alot of the same genre's of music as you and both of us listen to music loud. But where i am the person to play loud music and scrub a bathroom floor...you are the person who puts on the music and scrubs the floor but also stops to dance...and dance, and dance...yup still dancing. Somehow all the work gets done, yet you manage to pack so much more into each moment.
And then there is your conducting...I don't know when it when from both of us singing to really just me being loud and singing at the top of my lungs during night shift...but it was the best game...i would start a song and then you would conduct me through it...for some reason I always felt like the walls of north campus castle would applaud us as we finished our last note.
Working 40 hours a week together all of a sudden turned into being friends, from world cup soccer to the few times I actually cooked and made you taste it. Then we got addicted to the same summer shows...so you think you can dance...who would have guessed...
You still say things like "madonna is my god." You still use your off-putting laughter to add flames to an already tense staff meeting when you feel like it; or diffuse a guests anxiety by being the best host ever...you still march to the beat of your own drum. And yes, you still refuse to apologize for anything. You are you, and although my first impression filled me with fear because how on earth can a crazy person be my friend...I found out that your kind of crazy makes the very best kind of friend. You are the most relationally based person i have ever met, and the way you interact with people is always inspiring to me...so i will miss you team dream inspiration...I would wish you all the best but i will see you tomorrow, so instead, don't forget your speakers...and hopefully House will be a happier episode so we don't have to listen to mellow music again like today...

thanks ben, for being my friend...and now I am going to go home and fart in a shoe box...

tail of a bridesmaid

this is # 6 for me...as in the 6th time I've been a bridesmaid. As the day drew closer I realized that it never really looses it's hypnotic power to make me a complete wreak, I have this ability to somehow do and say the most innocuous things that ruin the goodwill of either (or both) the bride or groom or just make it into the 'most memorably heinous bridesmaid speeches of all time' hall of fame. So I get nervous, anxious...because I am me and I am having to take myself to this wedding and behave. but in this case the wedding was perfect and I had so much fun-even with me there.

Paul-the groom-did a huge amount of the planning with Lexi-together-I watched them hash out detail after detail at the kitchen table...all that attention to the small things really made the day so effortless...I have never been in such a laid back bridal party before...

the dresses made me feel very beautiful and our little ring bearer dubbed the bridesmaids 'his girls' by the end of the day. He ate with his parents at the reception but told them he needed to take his dessert to the head table to be 'with his girls'...we needed him to liven things up:) he was a huge bright spot to our day:)

we bonded during pictures...I look like I have space ears...bahhhhh

the wedding ceremony was super solemn as the bride and groom exchanged vows to God and eachother till death takes them on a new journey...and then the reception was filled with a string quartet playing us into mellow oblivion with the mother-of-the brides cake taking us to new depths of chocolate addiction...this cake is her secret recipe of chocolate death that basically made me want to die right there on the reception floor except I couldn't cause then the dancing started and I found myself dancing like a queen for the next 3 hours-until they closed the hall actually-with friends and sometimes myself....but I can now rock the macerena and only need alittle help with YMCA...mine looks more like the YMSA...I developed some new-never-before seen dance moves as the night wore on...the hot oven...washing the hair...the dandruff shake...the bowling ball...the box...I found myself inspiring myself to new heights of dance so that at one point I felt like I actually had rhythm but I saw a picture of myself on the dance floor today and now realize that, that thought was a bit of a pipe dream...oh well...

congrats to the happy couple Paul and Alexandria Eikleboom, may God blees you and keep you, may His face shine upon you, and give you peace...

thank-you so very much for letting me be a part of something as God honoring and also fun as your wedding...

when good girls go wrong...

the bachelorette was a pottery class and then dinner. You would think that there would be no possible way of turning this into a sketchy bachelorette...after all the mother of the bride and groom were invited as well as the grandmother of the bride...however, after the pottery class, and dinner, and dessert...after the grandmother and mother's all left to sleep off the massive amount of food consumed...we, the 'young' ones still felt that there could be more out there for us to enjoy together...we were having fun and full of suger so after much deliberation...

"We should watch a movie?" Rachel said...

Brilliant. Everyone thought that would be a marvelous idea and off we went to go rent a movie. Then there was the complicated task of selecting a movie to watch for a bride who never watches movies. Brainless chick flicks...out. Sexually explicit comedies...out. Action...out. Adventure...hummmm. Drama...no tears please...and then there was a modern rendition of Rembrants life...the groom is dutch...rembrant is dutch...painting is classical and something our bride could get really excited about...so, rembrants life it is...

hurray, hurray...we happily troup back to the residences to claim the lounge and watch our find...

We get comfortable as the credits open and then...a naked man...WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

screaming and averting of heads and screaming ensue...gingerly, we all start laughing and wondering what kind of movie we picked out...then the friend who didn't come to the movie rental palce and met us back at res has to be the one to tell us, "Well, I was wondering why you guys would pick out a movie rated 18A."

Shocked silence.

thankfully, the bride gently lead us to give up on salvaging Rembrant to play good old fashioned games...together...

lesson: never send a happy bridal party to pick out an intellectually stimulating, non-crying, non-chick-flick, unique film...because they might surprise you with what they come back with.

The Return of Pie

Long ago...but not so long ago we can't remember...back when daughters were trained up by their mother's to cook each dish to perfection, there was a girl. As she grew the lessons she learned, she diligently took with her. Her understanding and knowledge making her more becoming. As she moved on to a family of her own she found herself takling new challenges but with her mother's wisdom and example she never found a situation she couldn't conquer until there was pie. With fond memories she could recall her mother nimbly rolling out the crust into a perfect circle and wrapping it around the rolling pin to gently place it into the pie plate; but reality found her rolling out dough that wouldn't stay together. It was a constant battle to simply get the dough rolled out, placing it in the pie plate without having it tear and fall apart only brought frustration and pain. Batch after batch was throw out, and finally, at her wits end, girl vowed to never make pie again.
Some years went by, and one day Girl was over at Friend's house and Friend was making pie. In amazement Girl watched as Friend rolled out a delicate crust and then placed it in the plate. The small tears and holes were gently patched up by Friend and then covered in fruit. Girl had a moment. Her whole world shook with this new revelation; Pie Patching...
"I can do that." Girl said to herself. However, when she went home the revelation was lost in daily chores and care for her family. Every now and then she would think, "One day, one day I will try pie again." But now was never the time.
Until this thursday, when the saskatoon berries, a rainy summer day, and her courage beckoned her to try a pie. Her efforts were not in vain, Girl not only succeeded with her pie, she made blogging headlines. To family and friends who tasted her pie, the sky became a shade brighter, the grass greaner and the streets cleaner. Like billowing white sheets hanging out to dry on a perfect summer's day, or the smell of the ocean; it was alittle piece of heaven with Girl and her return to pie.


this post dedicated to auntie Sylvia...Girl you rocked that Pie...thanks so much for inviting me to share it!

Three's a charm...

My family is cursed...yup. Long ago, when it became fashionable to have an outdoor wedding, God looked down at the Cornie Enns clan and said...

"You shall not wed on grass, for I will bring down rain upon the place of wedding you shall have, until say your vows you will be with roof overhead because of the rain you will flee the wide open spaces of sky and tree."

But, there is a silver lining to this curse,because today...under gray,rainy skies with condensation spilling from full clouds...Kathryn married Aaron at her outdoor location... in an open gazebo, with all the guests crowded into the gazebo with them. For about 5 minutes everyone sat in their lawn chairs, but into the 3rd verse of to God be the glory we all raced for the gazebo and finished the rest of the ceremony standing around the bride and groom, as happy as larks...there were no tears only reminders from some of the well wishers that "I hear it's good luck to have rain on your wedding day!" And so, although the rain did come, the show went on. And all of us there became closer-if only for a few moments-because of it...

even though their vows didn't say, in rain or in shine...they can already say..."I do."

Congrats to the happy couple...simply fabulous...Two years almost after Grandma died another much loved grand-daughter happily married, I just felt grandma's heart bursting with happiness from heaven...

$#!+ in the shower...

Started work having to ask for days off to figure out my registration for school, all the while thinking...I am going to be homeless in a little over two weeks and I have burned my last bridge for any other options other than staying in Winnipeg for the time being...I am wondering if I will get into classes. how things are going to get worked out. In a state of anxiety, looking for the nearest table to hide under.

and then I started work...

my brain could not get out of panic 'my-life-is-a-black-hole-of-i-don't-know-ness' and i am expected to calmly clean and prepare rooms for inspection...I fought for my favorite job, I won. We cleaned the kitchen floor, for some reason this calms me...the repetitive motion of sweeping and moping kept the panic at bay...

then we did laundry for a few hours just to gain a little more perspective...

I really thought I was handling things well, I was trying not to be emotionally deranged and give in to the selfish desire to curl up, cry, stomp, scream it out girl.

And then I started the bathrooms. The kids trooped in early and although i never usually talk to any of the guests here I asked them if it would be okay if I cleaned the bathroom...they gave me a horrified look and told me that I didn't need to do it. They told me their counsellors would make them clean it up...I shook my head and calmly told them, "No, I am the cleaning lady, I clean bathrooms...is it okay if you use the other washrooms while I clean this one?"
Once again I was given looks of shock and shame..."You don't want to clean the middle one. We are being punished for what happened."
I am totally clueless...
Then the story gets ugly...someone put poop in the shower, deliberately placing it on a ledge and the whole basketball camp is being punished cause no one is fessing up.
I laugh. Really...poop?...in the shower?
I look. Sure enough. poop. in the shower.
I cleaned. I didn't really mind that much. Poop is poop, whether in a toilet or on the floor or in the shower...but then I started thinking about whoever did it. To the motivation or reasoning behind that kind of prank. That's when everything started falling apart...my handhold grasp on peace turned into a jackknife dive off the precipice of emotional stability...I thought about a kid who's wasting their life pooping in someone else's shower and for some reason it just ripped my heart out. What makes a kid try that hard to capture attention. Or is it just a kid who is losing the line between funny and grotesque...or the ridiculous and the debased...it seemed funny in the kids head, just the whole working out didn't turn out so good...

I kept thinking about that kid...

thinking, turned into freaking out, turned into crying, turned into thinking, turned into singing, turned into euphoria (endorphins from crying), turned into thinking, turned into some more singing, turned into mellow, turned into a blob....

but there is still a kid...

poor kid...

i wish i could tell that kid...don't waste your life planning how to shock people with your shit...even if it is shock worthy...as much as it's the crazy everyone grow ears to hear or stare at, in the end it's just a gong show that some crazy emotionally deranged person gets paid to clean up...it's just furtive looks and endless questioning that only goes as far as the nearest garbage can...it will never make you feel any better because of it.

Super Anamolecules...

Lately the world has been scared over the fact that an overuse of antibiotics has created super bugs...bacteria is becoming resistant to treatment and we are susceptable to new strains of old diseases...this is bad...the world health organization is being kept on it's toes by the tiniest of micro-organisisms because they are developing the ability to fight our atomic weapons of war...antibiotics...

but in my family we are not strangers to super pests...in fact we have believed in them for I don't know how long...my whole life anyway...because you never know what they are capable of...take for instance the super rat that lives with my parents...for weeks this evolved rat has been eluding their attempts to destroy and obliterate it from existance. It didn't fall for the peanut butter on a spring-trap or the sticky board, they couldn't even figure out how it came in...sneaky little devil...but there was continued evidence of it's infiltration into their home...the missing bagels, the wholes in cloth items, and most amazing of all, the unscrewed peanut butter lid...yes, now rats are learning to unsqrew lids from jars...this pest brought my Dad no end of frustration...as for my mother, ideas for trying new methods for killing this rat were drying up...but then one day they saw it while they were in the kitchen...they dropped everything and started chasing this little rodent around trying to kill it...mums chasing it while dad tried to corner Mr. Rat. I can just hear them..it's making me laugh...but then it ran out onto the ledge of the window and Dad, with his lightning fast reflexes shut that window, while mums ran around madly shutting other window's...they live on the 11th story of an apartment building...that rat had nowhere to go but down, but...it still has Dad wondering...what if?...what if that rat learned to fly?...

and then there is cricky...a few weeks ago my roomates and I started noticing a chirping sound from behind our fridge...everyonce in a while it would chirp like mad and then nothing...Samara love dthe idea of a pet and bequeathed this random cricket with the name "cricky"...and once you give an animal a name an emotional attachment starts...this is bad...because we had never actually seen cricky, he could be this massive ugly cricket-not like anything out of a cartoon at all-but something heinous and dirty...and sometimes when cricky would get really loud at night, when it was dark, I would start thinking...what if it's not a cricket at all, what if it's a bear posing as a cricket? (this is totally not as absurd as it sounds since our campus buildings are bordered by forest and we see deer and squirels all the time...) what if it was a snake with a cricket in it's mouth? I have seen that with snakes and frogs before...the frog is singing his death song from the snakes mouth...and then...no more...
so finally, during the daytime, i moved the fridge...I wanted to see cricky...be it snake or bear...cricky, cricky, here I come...I found nothing. Also the chirping stopped for a bit too...weird.
Then we had a dinner party where we told everyone about the mysterious cricky... and like good hosts we let them try and find cricky too...that fridge was pulled all the way out...it was rocked back and forth, we practically shook it like a rattle trying to see cricky...no cricky...then one of the guests amazed us by questioning if cricky even existed to begin with...'cricky' a product of our imagination? how proposterous, we heard him after all...of course cricky is...is...alive? what else sounds like a cricket and stops when you shake it...our guest thought it might be the fridge...our fridge...your killing me...our fridge sounds like a cricket...what is that...he told the maintenance crew about our squeaking fridge and one day we walked into our apartment and noticed something...well, we actually noticed the lack of something...no chirping...cricky was no more...

and thats why the world should be afraid of little bugs...because they are so stinkin, crazy...I mean, if they can fly and turn into fridges...whats next...be afraid...be very, very afraid...

Mornings at my house...

Lexi gets up...at 6:30am...

I stumble out of bed at 7 am...put on hot water, ready the french press and pour milk in my coffee cup.

no words are spoken...

Lexi is reading her bible...I go and shower...come out and sit staring like a zombie

"I just found out there were unicorns in the bible!" Lexi

"Oh"...my articulate reply

more silence...

Stef's alarm goes off...she comes out to the living area..."Good morning" she mumbles...

"Good morning" Lexi and I reply (note I did use correct grammar here instead of saying me and Lexi. )

"Did I wake you up last nite?" Stef asks me

"No, I just couldn't sleep at all..." I reply...then belatedly add "Did I keep you up at all last nite?" it is very hard for me to remember to be polite in the morning.

"Not at all, I was just worried I was waking you up cause I couldn't sleep past 4:30 this morning." Stef

"That's weird, cause I was up earlier than normal this morning too." Lexi pops her head out of her Bible to say...

"Really?" Stef and I (yet again with that grammar)

We all ponder this for a moment...

"It must have been full moon or something." Lexi says as she is the only one sufficiently awake and in possession of her mental faculties to actually come up with a reason for this conundrum of sleeplessness.

"Yeah." Stef and I agree.

Stef flops onto the couch...

"Lexi found unicorns in the Bible today." I offer this up as my only intellectual moment so far today...

"Really? Unicorns in the Bible?" Stef is animated and waking up much quicker than I am...

"Yeah." lexi laughs

"what version of the bible are you reading? where in the bible is there unicorns? I want to find unicorns in the bible!!" Stef jumps off the couch and grabs her bible to find some unicorns...

"probably in Gob." I am trying to be funny too early in the morning...i pick up my bible too...not to be left out of this search...

"I have the King James and there are references in Job, and Isaiah..." Lexi

silence while Stef and I find the verses...

"...and the wild ox..." Stef reads from Job...

"yeah, mine says that too..."

"Really? what about Isaiah?" Lexi is truly crushed...as are we all because really how cool would it be to have unicorns in the bible...

"...oxen..." Stef reads again...then we keep reading to see if there are any other animals like unicorns mentioned...

meanwhile Samara has woken up and walks out into the living area as we are diligently reading our Bibles..."What's going on?" she wonders

"We're just talking about unicorns in the Bible." Stef informs her...

" that's sacrilegious." Samara matter-o-factly states.

I start laughing, loudly...

"No really, in the King James Bible there are unicorns!. Lexi defends the validity of our conversation piece.

Samara and Stef start saying something about "Charlie come home"...in a sing songy voice...i don't know what they are talking about at this point and look down and realize my coffee cup is empty...it's time for my second cup.

Summer Pictures and Pre wedding photo shoot

pondering the if and's or what not....

I am super nosy, I am like that crazy person who loves finding out random fun facts about...everyone...it can get awkward, sometimes it is down right rude...but deep inside me there is this need...to know...
about your name, for instance...is it a family name? do you like it? what does it mean? how is it spelled? well maybe I don't ask that cause really i am more into the story of the name rather than the actual logistics of the name...I mean what if you were named Olga after your maternal grandma who died flying planes in world war II? How cool is that!
Another fav question is what would you have been named if you were a boy? My roommate would have gone from being Alexandria to Jergin...even her sister Samara could have been Jergin...I think God intervened...cause Alexandria Marie and Samara Rose are such beautiful names...and Jergin well,...isn't...
the story of your name, I feel like finding out you were named after your parents favorite politician, Diefenbaker or Kissinger, starts the imagination rolling as well as answers some significant questions...it's like this alternate reality...the universal question of 'what if?' or 'would a rose by any other name?'
I mean who would you have been if you had been named Ruth instead of Carissa, what if you really had been given all the middle names your mother wanted to give you...like, Susanna Elizabeth Anne Lydia Mary....the story of your name and you...it fascinates me.
insert random soliloquy
where does a parents inspiration come from?
My sisters are purists...they are back to the Bible...if it's not in the book, it's not making the cut in their family...
then there is the literary couple, with children like Bronte and Darcy...
or the stepford's naming their offspring with numbers like Bryce Arnold Jessup IV...
the classics will always be in style, names like Jane and John...I mean would this world come to if there were no more John's? but you could be named John because of your uncle who died or you could be 'named' John because your a spy and you needed a really lame alias that won't draw any extra attention that Fabio would...
which brings us to the foreign name contingent...which can take on a whole range of possibilities...I mean your parents could be tracing their family history with names like Savannah, Florencia, Brooklyn...or they could just be suffering from geographical confusion with names like Asia, or Africa and America...which continent do you come from?
you could be named after your mother's two favorite celebrities, Aniston Jolie...or your father's favorite power tool...Dewalt...
end random soliloquy
you carry your name with you till you are no more...true, you can change it for a price, and most of us tweak it here and there from time to time...we like to call this a 'nickname' but really it could be a subtle way of having an identity crisis or simply making a bad name work for you... nicknames can also be given by others which is a whole different post in itself...
cause usually, in most cases, your stuck with your given name from the moment your parents know about your existence. and whether they have a meaning or story for your name before you arrive...just by being you...your name takes on a whole life of it's own...it's your story, your journey, your epitaph, and I want to know cause...

it's
not
just
a
name.