Remember my post in January about resolutions wherein I stated that I planned to publish something twice a month? That really only happened for the month of January, didn't it?😅

None the less, with all of this social distancing that's currently going on, I've found myself with more time on my hands, meaning more time to put out some (hopefully) quality content.

View from the side of the I-95, NC.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an interesting time, to say the least. At twenty-three years old, I can say that this is the strangest time I've found myself living through... up to this point in my life, at least. I remember the SARS epidemic of 2003, but not vividly. I remember masks, the acronym SARS, some people dying, the acronym SARS, people coughing, aaand that's about it. C'mon, I was six years old - what do you want from me?

A year ago this morning I was sitting alone in a booth at Coras Restaurant, drinking coffee alone with my resume and anxieties, and waiting for two pastors to show up to interview me - both of whom were late because of traffic on the 401, and one of whom I didn't know and wasn't sure what I'd do if he arrived before the pastor I did know, seeing as I wouldn't recognize him.

With my luck, the pastor I didn't know at that time was the one who arrived first, but luckily the restaurant host was able to help him determine that the person he was looking for was very likely the young lady sitting by herself in a booth drinking mediocre coffee, looking anxious and unsure, and waiting for people to arrive before ordering.

That meeting on January 31st, 2019 ended with me getting a job as a worship leader.

What a year it has been!

source: Micheile Henderson; unsplash.com

"'Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life' is possibly the worst platitude. Work is tough whether you love it or not. Do not quit your paying job to pursue your passion if you think it's going to be no work and all sunshine and daisies."

I'd say that that quote still rings true. I mean, my passion is my paying job which is something I'm super thankful for everyday, but my point when sharing that quote last year was that sometimes my job can feel just like that - a job. It's still my passion for sure, one hundred percent, but some days I can feel like I'm simply going through the motions of scheduling people, choosing songs, and so on.

I also wrote in that post that the pastor's wife told me that I'd need to find something good in every situation or else I'd never be content. That is also still true. It's a great reminder to me that I need to find my joy, satisfaction, and contentment in the Lord and not in my passion or my job.

This past year has been crazy and different for me in many different ways but the Lord has remained evermore the same and has been faithful through it all. It's true that I never know what tomorrow will bring and how long I'll be doing this job, but right now I love where I am and what I'm doing; I love my new church family, and I'm so grateful for what this past year has taught me, how I've grown and changed and developed in my skills, leadership, and ministry. I can't wait to see what these next 365 will bring!

Happy New Year! It's 2020 y'all.

Before you roll your eyes too much at the title because maybe you're someone who can't stand New Years Resolutions because we all know they'll be broken by the end of January. And you're right! Maybe they will be.

But maybe they won't be.

I'm often a pessimist disguising myself as a realist, but when it comes to a new year and the opportunity to implement some fresh changes, I like to be a little bit of an optimist.

Let me have my moment. Please.

source: unsplash.com - Cristian Escobar

Both last year and this year I came up with around ten goals or resolutions. Don't worry - I'm not going to give you all ten in today's post. Some of them are just for me, but I think some of my goals could also be good lessons or thoughts for others!

I spent some time this afternoon reflecting on this past month and journalling about it. After doing so, I felt it adequate to title this post what I did, seeing as December has felt almost like a whole year in and of itself.

Sunrise a couple Sundays ago.

I want to give in to my dramatic side and simply say that the disaster began at approximately 10:30pm on December 3rd (if you know you know), but I can't allow myself to write off the entire month as a disaster. Suuure, there was the accident (see aforementioned "if you know you know" comment) and my brain is a little bit worse for wear; but there was also the 22nd annual Christmas concerts at the church I grew up in that I got to be a part of (❤️!!!) even though I no longer attend the church; there was relational (read: friendship) tension; there was my young adults group's Christmas party and the church staff Christmas party only two days apart from each other #partyanimallife; there were Christmas celebrations with both sides of the family.

The young adults group I'm a part of just finished studying through a book together called The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction (feel free to click here for more information on the book).

Now, I've written enough book reviews and book reports to easily turn this post into one, but I don't particularly feel like doing that. What I do feel like doing is attempt to convince you to read this book too.

And how will I go about that, you might ask? Good question.

Kneeling in prayer as a group. 🙏🏼

I shall start by telling you that I know habits are hard! Well, creating and maintaining them, that is. I think we all know that breaking a habit is pretty simple.

"The kind of habits worth cultivating [are] little habits of love, not carried out for success, not carried out to prove who you are, but cultivated because of a longing to love God and neighbour." (p 167)

The habits in The Common Rule are broken down into two sections: daily habits and weekly habits. The daily habits are: kneeling prayer, one meal with others, one hour with phone off, and Scripture before phone. The weekly habits are: one hour of conversation with a friend, curate media to four hours*, fast from something for twenty-four hours, and Sabbath. (*it turns out the four in "four hours" is arbitrary, much to all of our relief.)

It was tough working through all of these habits this semester. I'll admit that I didn't succeed at all of them, but I did at least attempt each one. It was helpful, however, knowing that I was struggling through these challenges along with other people.

You also might be curious to know which of the habits I struggled with the most. When it came to the daily habits, I struggled the most with turning off my phone for an hour every day; with the weekly habits, I would say that I (surprisingly) struggled with one hour of conversation with a friend, and potentially Sabbath - I don't know yet because that's the habit we're practicing this week, and I have done that one before (read about it here).

In terms of turning my phone off for an hour every day, it was more of a mental struggle as opposed to a physical one. Legitimately powering my phone off was easy; it was the thought of "What will I miss while my phone isn't on for a whole sixty minutes?" that got to me. It's kind of ridiculous how attached we all are to our phones, our social media, our notifications, and it was even more ridiculous how worried I felt about potentially missing those notifications. It was almost as though I lowkey felt like the world was going to fall out of orbit, or a close friend or family member would die during that hour and I wouldn't be able to hear about it immediately because my phone was off. For sixty minutes.

It was bad.

When it came to having on hour of conversation with a friend once a week, I think we all know that I don't really struggle when it comes to talking 🤪, but the whole point of the habit was to have an intentional conversation with someone once a week, which I'm not sure I do in general, not just the week when we practiced that habit. I know I talk with people a lot, but I can't often recall how many of my conversations are intentional and go deeper than surface level.

Like I said before, I definitely did not succeed at all the habits as we studied through the book as a group. And when reading the epilogue the other night, the author shared about a day wherein he was failing at practicing the habits in his own book! And that day he was supposed to send out an email to some people he was leading in a study through The Common Rule. Since he was having a hard time that morning, he shares,

"I did write my email that morning. I wrote it one-handed, on my phone, on the porch while holding [my son]. It began with this: "I woke this morning feeling like a failure and a fraud."" (p 162)

How did that go over with the group he was leading? He continues,

"No other email I've sent has brought in so many grateful responses. Apparently nothing else I ever said about the Common Rule habits was as helpful as talking about failure - because failure is where we live." (p 162)

That last phrase jumped right out at me as we read aloud through the epilogue as a group on Wednesday night. We do live in failure. All the time. Every day. But we try to act as though we don't. Or at least I do. I've joked with people recently about how I've mastered the art of putting on a façade. I always want people to think I'm thriving and doing well and have everything together. And honestly, I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to live that way day by day. We always want to be living our best life, right? And putting our best foot forward.

That's why I was so impacted by Earley stating that failure is where we live.

As a result of the Fall back in Genesis 3, we are living a life of constant striving - striving to be better, to be less sinful, to be more like Jesus, to be this or that. There's always room to improve, areas where we think we can or should be better.

For me, hearing out loud that "failure is where we live" was extremely comforting to me. It doesn't make me want to stop improving or trying my best, but it does make me feel like some of the pressure has been removed in terms of my need to put my best foot forward and put up a façade of constantly living my best life.

While there's always room for improvement, there is also grace to embrace where we are now and accept that we will inevitably fail at times. But we can always get back up and keep going.

Rattlesnake Point, Milton ON - October 2019

Last year, almost around this time but not quite, I was writing a one month blog post for my time in Montréal.

As of yesterday, I've been living in a house with nine other students (and two Residence Directors) for a month.

This first month being back at school has been quite different than my first month in Montréal was, but as it turns out, there are still some similarities. I re-read my one month in Montréal post and in that, I shared five lessons that I had learned during my first 30 days.

backyard cotton candy sky viewsss.

This time around, I've once again recognized that transitions are rough, you need to have people in your corner, and everything will be different, and that's okay.

These lessons are all less in-your-face (or my face, rather) than they seemed to be last year, because I'm living in my home province this time - only one hour away from home, and I'm pretty used to the "being in school" vibes from prior years of life.

It's been great being back in the classroom, actually; I've realized I missed it more than I ever imagined I would. Today we finished studying through Genesis, and I've been learning so much! I mean, I learned a lot throughout my undergrad, but that was a whole different ball game because I was taking general studies courses, theology courses, and music courses. The program I'm in now is completely different because we're spending the whole year studying through the Bible, and that's it. No music courses, philosophy, hermeneutics, ethics, or anything like that.

During my undergrad studies I was in a different mindset faith-wise as well. I was in a place, mentally, where I was simply taking in everything that I was learning. In my program this year, my headspace is more inquisitive and thoughtful; on the first day of class I almost had a crisis of faith while we were talking about whether the Bible should be taken at face value or metaphorically. It was actually pretty cool; I was happy with myself for really thinking about the things I'm learning instead of immediately accepting everything that I'm being told.

Over the past two weeks, another lesson I've been learning is about bruises. How big they can be, how dark purple they can turn, and how long they last. This lesson has been less fun.

I've been called both "Bruiser", and "A Walking Incident Report" over the past 72 hours. I now have a fear of wooden staircases, doors, and the wind. Be glad you're not me. 🙃 Orrrrr just send a giant roll of bubble wrap my way asap, please and thank you.

My most recent incident report-worthy escapade happened almost 24 hours ago now. Fun fact: I actually intended to write my one month post yesterday, but spent my evening in the ER instead. Here's the story, because it's pretty iconic actually:

One of the assignments we have for school is to memorize a small section of Scripture each month, so yesterday I'd set a reminder for 5:00pm to remind me to work on memorizing that. I decided I'd go outside on the front porch to work on that task, so I grabbed my sheet of paper and the iced coffee I'd made and went to go outside. The thing is, someone in the house had opened up the screen door in the back, and it was a pretty windy day. So when I opened the front door as well, the house essentially turned into a wind tunnel and as I reached back to close the door, the wind whipped it closed on my fingers.

'All I wanted to do was memorize a Bible passage!!!' is what I thought to myself as I sat on the front porch, trying to get a grip before re-entering the house to find a driver who could take me to the hospital. After all that, I ended up memorizing half of the passage while waiting to get x-rays done in emerge, so I guess that's good...??

Last week I fell down the stairs by the way, hence the "Walking Incident Report" nickname. But that all seems like a distant memory now in light of more recent events.

Aaall in all, month one has been quite memorable. It's had its ups and downs as you can obviously tell but, in the grand scheme of things, isn't life just one big ol' rollercoaster of ups and downs? Tell me I'm wrong... Except don't actually.

Like I said in my Montréal one month post when talking about how different you realize everything becomes in a new phase of life:

"Sometimes the "different-ness" of it all will feel like a lot. It will feel like it's consuming you. But it will be okay. Because while everything is different, you can rest assured that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), and it's that truth that will hold you up during the uncertainties of the "different-ness"."

I've officially been living in my new home for two weeks now. It's kind of been a whirlwind; I feel like I've lived here for one day and also a year and a half, simultaneously.

I moved on August 25th, and a mere four days later - on the 29th - as a group we started our journey of reading through the whole Bible in eight days. Cover to cover. Wild, right? Trust me, it really was.

We read for at least eight hours every day, only taking a day off on Labour Day. Sometimes we read as long as twelve hours in a day. It was a longgg haul to say the least.

camping views at Craigleith Provincial Park last week.