Here We Are: Highlights

Every Sunday morning in the summer, we gather with the cottagers in the lodge to share our highlights of the week. Our first experience of highlights was at Easter, when we were here as the host family (the host family is responsible for running activities over the course of the vacation week or weekend, helping with set up and clean up, and being a welcoming presence to cottagers). That weekend, one of the cottagers shared that his highlight was seeing his sons learn to ride bikes for the first time. That highlight made an impact on Brendan. He was struck by this father’s pride in seeing his sons enjoy a quintessential childhood activity – and also by the fact that the boys were 8 and 10, but didn’t have an opportunity to ride bikes until they came to Waupoos.

This week, several kids said that their highlight was everything. I can relate, because it’s hard to pick just one favourite thing to share about a week here. Every day has its highlights, and it seems the more we practice looking for them, the more readily we find them everywhere, in everything. This is not to say that there aren’t challenges to be faced here too. My challenges this week involved wrestling with post-move exhaustion and learning to navigate the push and pull of wanting to be both outside with the community and inside working at making our new house a home. I realized this week that this feeling of being pulled in many directions will probably be my constant companion here at the farm. There are always jobs to do and people to serve, and they are all in addition to living out my primary vocation, which is to look after my family. As I was making the boys lunch one day, feeling guilty for all the time I had spent inside that morning, it occurred to me that I was still engaged in ministry. I was serving my children, fulfilling the duty of the moment. Being here at Waupoos doesn’t make my children need me any less, nor does it make their needs any less important. My first call is still to care for them, even if other needs beckon. Living here will demand that I balance serving inside and outside and I’m sure there will be many times when I feel torn and frustrated and inadequate. I did this week. But with challenges come blessings, and the blessing in feeling torn and frustrated and inadequate is that it can make us more aware of our need for God. I can’t walk this tightrope on my own. I need the hand of God to hold me up. He can turn my frantic wobbling into a graceful dance, if I lean on him.

I was also reminded this week that God called me here knowing my woundedness. He doesn’t call us to serve only when we’re perfect and whole and have overcome all our weaknesses. He calls us in the midst of our struggles; he asks us to have the courage to give ourselves to him and to others, even in our frailty. The fact is, we are all wounded soldiers. None of us are impervious to struggle. If we waited until we were perfect to do something with our lives, we would never do anything. Not being perfect is particularly infuriating for a perfectionist. But what is perfectionism anyway? Is it not only the misguided belief that no matter what I do, it will somehow not be good enough? Good enough for what? For whom? By whose standards? Ultimately, only God’s standards really matter. Clearly, he doesn’t disqualify us from service because of our imperfection. And through our suffering and our struggles, he makes us holy. If we let him.

One of my highlights this week was a conversation I had on this topic. At open house on Saturday, I spoke to a woman who has a baby at CHEO. The baby is a twin – her sixth child. He has a heart condition and has been in the hospital for four months, which is his entire life so far. Every time I see this woman I am moved by her courage in the face of suffering. Yesterday she said to me that she had prayed for her family to be holy, and that God was answering her prayers. Suffering makes us holy, she said. It makes us pray, it makes us depend on God, it reminds us that heaven is our ultimate destination. This is not just pious sentiment. These are the words of a woman who has struggled and wept and had her heart broken again and again. This is real faith: to be convinced that God is drawing us closer to himself through our suffering.

Earlier today, I had another conversation that moved me deeply. One of this week’s cottagers poured her heart out to Sabrina, Lee-Ann, and me this morning. Her life has been full of suffering and she’s in a particularly difficult situation right now. She feels broken and alone. We listened to her and prayed with her. Afterwards she said, “I’m smiling now. I couldn’t smile when I came in.” Our time together wasn’t the answer to her troubles, but God used it to give her hope. And hope can have such power, even in the darkest of circumstances. There is so much darkness in the lives of some of the people who come here – it can be tempting to despair and wonder why God allows them to be hurt so deeply. But we can’t lose hope. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (Jn 1:5) And as my friend reminded me yesterday, God can make us holy through suffering.

These were some of my highlights this week.

And then, of course, there were the boys: