Missin’ you, Mama

Posted under Family, Mom by Sarah

I think my mom would have been amused to find her former favourite mechanic schlepping plates and making lattes as co-owner of one of the local cafes.

She would have cried when she heard my song on the Noted CD.

She would be surprised to find that I now like the uniquely-patterned couch and armchair I inherited from her. Birds being one of my least favourite creatrues, I was never very appreciative of the brown, red, taupe, pink and beige pheasants that gallivant on said furniture. Now, however, since I built my living room and dining room around the pattern and colour scheme, I have grown to enjoy it. She’d feel right at home, I think!

This fall, Mom and I might have been students together: She had planned to go back to school for a second degree, hoping to find a way to professionally use her intelligence, wisdom, and hard-earned life experience.

Though her death forced me to get my own apartment and enabled me to buy my Trixie Toyota, if she were still with us she would have been excited to no longer have to share her car with me (or find coffee stains on the upholstery), and I imagine her coming over for coffee every now and then… something I always wished for.

I think she would have enjoyed the memorial we had for Mark. It seemed like she was there in spirit, anyway, and that the event was honouring her life as well as Mark’s. I wonder what she might have done differently, or what her ideas might have been. Still, I have no doubt that she would have been proud of us, proud of how we chose to celebrate Mark’s life.

I’m missin’ you today, Mama. I’m so glad Mark is with you now, but I wish I still had you, too….

A Day in My Life, June 2008

Posted under Beauty, Books, Church, Clothes, Coffee, Creativity, Culture, Family, GrownUpVille, Idiosyncraticness, Lessons, Life, Longings, Mom, Money, Music, Nature, News, Seasons, Serverdom, Singing, Society, Technology, The Guts Of Me, Trixie the Toyota, Waitressing, Writing, Yummies by Sarah

I had a sudden desire today to chronicle and compare the different stages of my life, as I look back and notice that my life in June 2008 is remarkable different from that of June 2007, June 2006, June 2005, and so on.

I invite you to be a witness on this journey.

June 2008 finds me 27 years old, living in a two-bedroom second-floor apartment in the only apartment building in a tiny town in East Huron County called Brucefield. This town is known for it’s flashing light, yellow if you’re driving between Clinton and Exeter on Highway 4, or red if you’re coming from either Seaforth or Bayfield. There is one elementary school, one church, one drive-in restaurant, two mechanic shops, one Asian/Home Decor/B&B/Lunch Room location, and one fire station.

My apartment overlooks a cornfield, the view of which is mostly obstructed by a lovely birch tree. Said tree helps me feel more confident walking around in my apartment in less-than-decent clothing on summer nights. After all, who would be driving by slowly enough whose gaze could penetrate the birch branches in the split second I happen to be passing through my dining room, several feet from my beautiful picture window?

I enjoy living alone, though sometimes I do wish someone was there to care whether I came in or not, or to wonder where I was, or to motivate me to do dishes, finally! My neighbours are understanding and quiet, the area is safe, and I actually have a place to call home. MY home. I’ve immensely enjoyed painting and decorating my apartment, putting all of my good taste to good use in a place where I’m the boss, now and forever.

Another addition to my life is that of Trixie the Toyota, a pretty, dark-green 1997 4Runner who goes with me everywhere I go. She hauls the accoutrements of my life and hobbies without complaint. She has survived being rolled over in the ditch after skidding out on an icy country road, being hit-and-run by some unknown person, a not-so-successful attempt at backing up a trailer, and carrying some of my more treasured furniture.

Not so enjoyable are the bills that go with being established and mobile, namely cell phone, rent, insurance, hydro, phone/internet, groceries, gas, repairs, etc. I can’t say as I ever yearned for that part of nesting, but I take it in stride, usually. I’ll be much happier when I can finally get my tax returns done (for the past 2 years), pay off my credit card, and have money set aside for winter tires.

I have spent more than a year at the same job, as a server at The Brew’n Arms English pub and restaurant in Bayfield, Ontario. Earlier this year, I graduated to keyholder and Dining Room Manager, as well as Kitchen Painter and Orchid-Caretaker extraordinaire. My bosses are wonderful people who have become friends and family, as well as the most understanding and flexible supervisors anyone could ask for. They make me want to stay and do my best for them, for their business, for their town.

Last year at this time, I was also working as a drywaller, and, shocker! I don’t miss it a tiny bit. I do enjoy my refined house-painting skills, which I have recently put to good use in a “cottage” in Bayfield, and hope to expand as a second job. If you hear of someone looking to hire a house painter, give them my number!

I’m not attending church because I couldn’t handle the one I had called “home” for years. I’m generally fed up with the institution that is what church has become, with all its expectations and traditions and legalism. I would enjoy a faith-based community of believers that is honest and open, a group that can laugh and be reverent in an informal way. I really could expand this paragraph to a whole essay, but suffice it to say that I have not encountered such a community, but I still seek to hold onto my beliefs. I am discovering more of what life is like on “the other side” (outside the Christian bubble), and it’s very educational, despite occasionally dangerous.

If it were possible to live on coffee, I’d do it.

I’ve joined the wonderful realm of BlackBerry, as I once dreamed of doing. And I’m paying for it, too.

Writing is still my best communication method.

I rarely see earlier than 10 AM, or close my eyes earlier than 1 or 2 AM. I’d like to change that.

The music in my life has developed over the past year as well. I am the youngest voice of the all-female cover band, Cactus Jam, and I love it, despite playing mostly Legions. I was also privileged enough to be part of Noted!, a project sponsored by the United Way in my county, which is helping to boost the music careers of the 17 women chosen to participate. We got to record 14 tracks in a professional studio, and a great-sounding CD is the result. This past winter I also ventured out to sing a few times at Open Mic nights at a local pub, and have been the featured soloist at two church events.

This year finds me recently motherless, a drastic blight on anyone’s life, and definitely on mine. It has changed so many things and finally propelled me into nesting in the first place. It also made my brother and I guardians of our youngest brother and launched me further into the land of disabled children in Ontario. I now have a lawyer, communicate regularly with several case workers, get all kinds of official mail, and have to return junk mail still addressed to Mom.

June 2008 also finds me blonde, and with an even greater fashion sense. I love that about growing older! I predict I’ll still be stylish in my 80s. If I’m not, remind me of now.

I’ve discovered I love flowers and plants, doing the Toronto Saturday Star crossword, Pinot Grigio and Shiraz, premium beer, CBC Radio, brie on melba rounds with semi-dried tomatoes in duck confit, Dollarama’s plain candles, serving dessert, mom’s old couch and armchair (with my apartment’s decor built around them), C&E used furniture in Goderich, Americanos from The Bean, and living in Huron County!!! (Sorry, but that deserved more than three exclamation points)
Being Sarah Elizabeth takes different shapes all the time, and I’m enjoying the process. Here’s to another year!

A Day to Remember: Sunday, January 13, 2008, 9:45 AM

Posted under Family, Life, Love, Memories, The Guts Of Me by Sarah

Some days should be forever etched in your memory. Other days you remember and you wish you didn’t. Today is a day I hope to remember, clearly, forever, even though it already feels like a blur.

My body feels drained and my face feels dry and scratchy, the outer curves of my nostrils red and irritated. I’ve cried so much today, and laughed so much, for that matter, and I know that there is much more emotion to come.

Somehow, I think I’ve always felt it. Known that she’d go young, leave us while we were young. Still, I never woke up wondering if today would be the day. Today was the day.

She’s gone, my mom, gone to a place where cancer can’t get past the gate. It was a stretch to look at her thin, jaundiced body, as it slowly turned blue and cold, and think of her true self finally unleashed in paradise, but that’s what I believe happened to her this morning as we all hurried to get to the hospital in time, vainly.

I’ve imagined a motherless life, with me having to be uber-responsible (surprise, surprise) and my siblings and I banding together to take care of each other in our quasi-orphanhood (orphandom? orphanimity?). I’ve thought about the technicalities and legalities I’d have to follow up on once she was no longer on earth. I’ve anticipated the release of tension and stress that would come when we no longer had to worry about her, make her food, take her to the bathroom, be with her 24/7.

But I wasn’t ready. Today wasn’t supposed to be the day. I thought I had the weekend. I wanted to hold her smoothly soft hand one more time, see her eyes light up when one of us walked into the room. Why didn’t I ask her more about herself, about who she was, about what her life was like before she naively married my father and went on to become the mother of six children?

It baffles me how you can know someone all your life, how you can actually belong to someone’s soul and body, be grown from their DNA, and feel as if you don’t know them at all. I feel like I miss my mother more for the woman I hadn’t gotten to know yet and less for the one I had already.

I wasn’t ready, but she was.

Perhaps it’s morbid, but I took pictures of her dead body as it lie there in the hospital bed. I want to remember the way her skin looked, how thin her face was, what she was wearing, the tinge of blue under her fingernails, the pattern of the freckles on her cheek.

Mommy, someday, someday, I’ll find out about the rest of you, the other half of your life before we met. I’m gonna be sad for a while, Mom; have regrets about your last days, weeks, and month; do my best to honour you as I do my part to wrap up what you’ve left behind; and learn from your legacy. I’m gonna be sad for a while, but then I’ll start looking forward to forever with you, someday.

Puttin’ on the Ritz

Posted under Family by Sarah

As if my life could get any crazier, my second brother and his girlfriend of about a year and a half decided early in December that they wanted to get married. Before the month was out. Uh-huh.

So, of course, we had to pool our resources, call our people, and get real creative, real fast.

Somehow we did, without spending overly much money, and without driving each other crazy, and on December 29th, the second sister-in-law was added to the clan.

The garden-party-esque reception was likely the best-decorated reception ever held in that church gymnasium, thanks to the time and efforts and creativity of my siblings and a good friend, L.

Not without a few sibling squabbles, some exhaustion (and me seeing stars), and MAJOR lack of sleep, the two younguns are hitched, took a brief few days away, and are back to the difficult life at mom’s house. Felicidades!

Christmas with the Crazies

Posted under Family, Life, The Guts Of Me by Sarah

I’m crazy, you’re crazy, we’re all crazy, I think, I wonder. I’m slowly becoming more and more convinced that we all have an element to ourselves that is less than sane. That element seems to only increase with time and circumstance in my family. Pity the girls that have married (or are about to marry) into us. And should there be guys marrying in someday… Heaven help them! Or they will have to be superheroes.

Issues. We have issues. Us girls more than the guys, apparently. We’re intense, we’re emotional, we react strangely to things, etc.

The two of us even seem to be polar opposites to each other, never able to clearly communicate or to see eye to eye about anything. It has only intensified over the years, as our lives went different directions and our personalities developed in different environments.

Now, every family gathering seems to be characterized by some clash of ours, this Chrismas more so than usual, I think, to the degree that we had a red hot verbal lashing of each other between the giving of grace and the filling of the plates. It ended up with her yanking her plate off the table and stalking upstairs to eat, yelling that she’d only stay if I left.

The thing with us, and not just us girls, I think, is that we incite a thunder storm of ear-covering magnitude, we run away, we take a few breaths, medicate with something or other, then return as if nothing had happened. We don’t deal. We don’t know how to deal.

In some ways, I’m grateful that my sister incites me to vocalize my frustrations and anger with her, because I feel like I know how she feels about me, how we feel about each other. I wish more of us were that open with each other.

Yet, I’m sick of the storming and the bashing and the yelling. These past two days have been, well, to say it again, intense! I’m trying not to write this out of anger, so I won’t go into details, but she’s mostly unbearable, today was rough when she was in the house, and enjoyable when she wasn’t.

I wonder if this very difficult time in our (and I’m referring to all of my immediate family now) lives will make us shy away from each other, as our weaknesses and insecurities and, again, ISSUES become more and more glaring. Can we keep it together? Or will we run away from each other?

Superheroes, these in-laws, superheroes, I say. The Apostle Paul says it’s better to marry than to burn. I wonder if it’s better for us to stay single than to pull other people into our issue-ridden dysfunctionality. I mean, love can conquer everything, they say, but our kind of crazy I wouldn’t wish on any lover.

Still, we had a mostly merry Christmas, I’d say due largely in part to the three little adorable blonde heads distracting us from our issues and making us smile in spite of ourselves. I love you, Salome, Jaida, and Eliana! May you never inherit our emotional complications!

So Not Okay

Posted under Family, Friends, Life, The Guts Of Me, Writing by Sarah

Using the words I hear so often as I make my way through the seasons of The West Wing, I would like to issue a statement. Guess that makes you the press.

Despite the recent silence on this end of ATransparentLife.com, life has been anything but uneventful for me. The events include an eight-hour road trip to Ohio for the wedding of a friend, which became a mini YWAM Monterrey reunion; witnessing Remembrance Day ceremonies on television for the first time in a long time; getting two winter coats for $70; living through the first snowfall of the season; oh, and moving back into my mom’s house, which I will be doing later today (it’s 1:13 AM).

Which brings me to my point: I’m so not okay. So not okay with moving back in with my mom, so not okay with being the oldest, so not okay with Mom being single, so not okay with how my family sucks at communication, so not okay with being weak yet neither am I okay with any I-Gotta-Be-The-Strongest-Cause-I’m-The-Oldest philosophy, and, for those of you wannabe therapists out there, so not okay with you trying to fix me.

I’m gonna spill my guts some more before this is over, but pretty please, do me a favour and don’t use the comments section, which I should probably close if I was using my better, more cowardly judgment, to try out your quacking skills. Just listen and know the pain.

In the past couple of weeks, I was shocked to learn through late-night Facebook messages from a good friend that Mom had called her twice in the same week because she couldn’t get off the couch and none of her children were there to help her. Not getting off the couch meant she couldn’t get to the bathroom nor could she feed herself. As a side effect of the steroids they put her on to combat the aggressive symptoms of brain cancer (double vision, migraines, etc.), she is very weak. She spends most of her time sleeping and has little appetite, as a result of the new and more powerful drug she is taking to target the cancer in her liver.

Mom now has a hospital bed on the first floor, a cane, daily homecare, someone to help her shower, and a rotating schedule which delegates her children certain days of the week to be on call and to help get her supper and get her to bed, as well as certain jobs around the house.

I really want to finish this while I’m on an early-morning roll, but my body is so not okay with staying up any longer. I’ll try to jump on this wave again later today once I’m back in Highspeedlandia. Ciao.

~~~~~~

I’m back on an early-morning roll, just three days later. I now come to you live courtesy of a brand-spankin’-new Belkin Wireless G Router. What is life without the ability to communicate globally simply floating through the air? Still haven’t had a chance to properly unpack everything, perhaps because this room is simply so dang small!

Basically the deal with my mom is she’s not doing well right now and what if she doesn’t get better? So we (my siblings and I) are supposed to be diving into every moment as if she only has a handful left. I want to dive onto the nearest plane headed for anywhere but here.

Someone wrote me today about their own experience caring for their sick mother and about how they resented her for being sick. I think that’s part of what I feel. After all, moms are supposed to be strong and run their own households! A good friend told me she just didn’t get why I wouldn’t want to be at home and close by, at my mother’s beck and call. Talking about it made me feel as if I have really deep, sick issues. I definitely don’t have a better explanation for wanting to run farther away from rather than closer to. Something, sometime, happened to screw with my head, I guess, which is influencing my current emotions.

I’m taking my time about being emotional and angry and exploring the depths of that. I’m pushing the limits of being “weak” and, again, emotional in ways I’ve never allowed myself to, ever. Hopefully it gets worse before it gets better?

I will eventually talk to someone, the right person, but I doubt it’s going to be you, at least not concerning this topic, blogs on this site excepted (to spell it out for you, you’ll have to come here for the dish or go hungry). So please, just pray for me and us all and send food to my mom’s house if you can.

The Turkey, The Tension, and the Giving of Thanks

Posted under Discipline, Family, Ranting, Seasons, Writing by Sarah

It’s 1:17 AM and I should really be sleeping. It’s been too many late nights and too many mornings hauling my behind out of bed while feeling like I’m being irresponsible and/or missing something important. I hate that feeling. Still, I had this great blog title in my mind, and the conviction that I should be writing more, and that I should discipline myself to write at least a little something every day if I’m gonna be serious about this blog and about the whole writing thing.

Yes, I’m rambling (settle in, folks).

Today (well, yesterday, technically) was our Thanksgiving celebration. We held it at my brother’s house, the one that’s married, and one of my mom’s sisters and her family joined us: something we’ve never done before. Auntie and Uncle have five kids, three married and the other two with significant others. All were there but one sibling and her husband (and their two sons). We are six plus one wife and one significant other. All of us were there but one sibling.

Auntie and Mommy both have cancer and aren’t in the best of health these days, and decided they weren’t going to be cooking or hosting, which was fine with us because we have a sibling who is married with a cool house in a different town and three gorgeous little daughters to distract us from ourselves.

I started the day later than I’d have liked, missed what would have been a fun and refreshing walk with the friends I live with, and got to my mom’s house to pick her and little bro PK up to head to big bro SK’s house. PK was still in bed because, well, he’s eighteen and Tegan and Sara were playing last night in London. Nuff said. Mom had been up for hours and was ready and waiting for her sleepyhead children to pack up the stuff she was responsible for and get their butts in the car. PK was annoyed at being summoned from his slumber, Mom was annoyed at our tardiness, and I was wondering if that was gonna be the tone of the day.

Thanks to the novelty of having ten relatives, a sibling’s girlfriend, the youngest brother we rarely see, his worker, and three nieces in attendance, not to mention some great food (yes, and wine), it wasn’t. I made up for my earlier lack of responsibility in having neglected to get up in time to make my usual rolls and cranberry sauce by making other rolls and buying canned cranberry sauce, and then by generally making sure the whole food train was running on schedule. And by looking cute, if I do say so myself.

There was a general sense of gratitude that we were able to be together for the special occasion, especially right before we ate, when we took a few moments to poll each other for things we were grateful for. A few of us became teary-eyed when some talked about how we need to make family time precious these days, and especially when one of the cousins’ girlfriend shared her thanks to my mom for giving her hope.

Several hours, laughs, and food courses later, it was time for the mother and the little brother and I to head out, away from the convenient distractions, into our car with just the three of us, on the road for forty-five minutes. That is, we finally pulled out of the driveway about twenty minutes after I took the initiative to announce (because Mom was out of energy for the day) that we were leaving, and started to make preparations for it, including having PK take the food containers out to the car. I stood around for a while in the general vicinity of the door, waiting, waiting. Then I made the rounds of good-byes, hoping to further signify that our time was indeed up, following which I stood at the door some more, with my bags (yes, there were two) over my shoulder.

Mom got up: finally! A motion in the right direction! She moved to the bathroom. So I stood for another few minutes as she did her business and began her farewells. I then announced my next step: leaving the house to approach the car (insert fanfare here). Before I left, PK got up from the couch to which he’d returned after loading the car, and headed to the throne room for his turn (have I mentioned it’s only a forty-five minute drive?), following which I assumed he’d head outside. I put my stuff in the car, arranged some things in the back seat, and was just getting into mine as Mom came out. Perfect timing! Then we turned the car on, ready to drive away as soon as PK came out. What seemed like ten minutes later but was probably only one, Mom suggested we turn off the car. I didn’t want to because it felt like enabling, but I did because I pay for the gas.

Still we waited. Had I not just stood inside the room waiting for, well, a while before leaving the house, then waited in the car for what seemed like too long, and had I known that Guy Cousin Number One was doing something special for my mom, the patience would have lasted longer. As it was (as I perceived it, anyway), the logical expiration of my patience had come and gone, so I stormed the castle. I met my opponent just past the drawbridge, looking for his shoes, and we had words that might have been in Greek for all he understood them. Big, Bad Bitch (or B—h if seeing all the letters offends you) strikes again!

It’s 2:00 AM right now. Just wanted you to know that. And you can feel free to take the blame!

Ahh familiar familial tension and how it just makes me want to run, run, run in the other direction. For the record, I didn’t ask for my personality or my birth order, and I’m willing to trade if anyone has something cooler to offer.

Not being able to swerve to miss hitting a skunk after only a few minutes on the road went a little way towards alleviating the tension, but I have to say I didn’t finish the day on as grateful a note as I would have hoped. It’s a good thing my passengers were both sleep-deprived: I got time to cool down.

Turns out the things that I listed as being the most grateful for I really truly am: my new (fake) glasses, wine, and my Uncle for bringing the wine, but mostly for being immune to all the family crap. Cheers, Unc! And Happy Thanksgiving to all!

GrownUpVille: Reality in Fast-Forward

Posted under Family, GrownUpVille, Life by Sarah

I have little time to write today because I’m in Responsibility Hyper-Drive.

My mom’s health has taken a turn for the, uh, more serious, so as not to say “worse”, and she’s currently unable to take care of many of the everyday things of her life. That leaves me, a single, unsettled 26-year-old doing what no one in my station in life should have to do: paying Mom’s bills, rearranging lawyer’s appointments, becoming the primary contact for my younger siblings, etc.

If you thought I was mature and strong before this, look out! I will be able to take on pretty much anything, even perhaps a stray satellite falling to earth at thousands of miles per hour, aimed somewhere between your house and mine. I’ll be able to talk about finances and invalid care and insurance and parenting with the experts, having substantial experience already.

Wow I can’t even think clearly enough to be as witty as I’d like to be in this post, so I’ll sign off. But not before I tell you how adorable I look in my new fake glasses from Claire’s, with my hair straightened with my new fancy HotTools flat iron!

Happy (Christmas) Easter

Posted under Family, God, Life, Seasons by Sarah

When I was a kid and Easter Sunday felt like the first day of Spring, I loved sunrise services. I would carefully pick an outfit that looked as “Spring-y” as possible, which meant it was mostly yellow, green, pink, or white. I would be excited about wearing only a sweater over my dress instead of a winter coat.

To this day, the thought of greeting the sun on a warm-ish Easter Sunday morning evokes excitement. A day in which people are gathered in celebration, all over the world! A day full of surprises, bright colours, good food, and family.

This morning, what I’m excited about is seeing my neices this afternoon, and playing with them, albeit indoors. Salome bossing Jaida around, stealing books right out of her hand and asking Auntie Sarah to read them to her. Or grabbing my hand to lead me to her room, where I’ll sit listening to her jabber on and on about very amusing topics that are too advanced for Auntie Sarah to fully understand, duh. Then, of course, there will be another book to read. Then another, then another, then another, till I’ve read all of the books in their possession five times each. Jaida will happily toddle around with her recently discovered walking skills, charming us all with her smile and patient personality.

This morning is the fourth day of what I like to call Winter: Recharged. Snow has not stopped falling for four days straight, and there are no signs of it letting up! Needless to say, I didn’t hear of any sunrise services being planned for this, my first Easter at home in Canada in six years. Apparently I didn’t pray hard enough for snow at Christmas and sun at Easter, because the Big Weatherman In the Sky seems to have gotten them mixed up (no, not a slam against God’s abilities, but a joke; laugh with me now).

Happy Easter, anyway. May your day be filled with laughter and good food and cracked, dyed eggs leaving stains all around your house because the kids can’t hide them outdoors.

A Bit O’ Ranting

Posted under Family, Ranting by Sarah

Today I drove my mother to the city (I live in a town of less than 10,000 people) to have something called a Port-A-Cath installed. It’s a semi-permanent port for drawing blood and injecting chemotherapy. Because my mom’s going to be undergoing treatments for at least 12 more months, which means every 3 weeks they poke around her veins to find one that’ll accept an IV (and sometimes it takes up to 4 attempts, leaving the failed attempts bruised and tender) and just as often having to have bloodwork done, she wisely opted for this procedure.

Have I mentioned my mom has breast cancer that metastasized to her liver and lower spine?

Though it’s a reality in our culture that kids someday grow up to “take care” of their parents, you never think that day will come before you’re middle-aged with a passel o’ tots of your own, and a home, and a minivan, and at least one life insurance policy. At 25 and single, without so much as a car to my name, it’s definitely not something I foresaw for this season, and, no offense, Mom, it’s not something I enjoy.

The worst part is, if I were to be brutally honest, I’m not needed as much as I thought I might have been. She’s doing heaps better than anyone could have predicted, and she only “needs” me the odd time, to drive her to an appointment, or make dinner or clean up the kitchen or do laundry. I’m not organizing visits to a sick bed, planning menus for someone who has no appetite, creating and maintaining a relaxing environment, taking charge of the care of my younger siblings, etc.

At the same time, I dread the thought of someday having more responsibility. I never asked to be the oldest of a single mother of six, and I don’t want to accept the “natural” role that goes with that birth rank. I’ve unnaturally stepped into responsibility beyond my years so many times in my life, and, though it became normal for a while, now I want to run the other way. I wish my dang siblings (all of whom I love, of course) would just step up and take the responsibility!!

Perhaps it takes me stepping out of the way so they’ve got their backs against the wall and they have to do something about it. If I’m there in the middle, why should anyone else do anything? Sarah will just take care of it all! Sure, she’ll gripe and growl, but it’ll get done!

I do have to admit that this whole feeling is magnified by the fact that I’ve come back from almost 6 years of living on my own in different countries to live in a tiny, sound-magnifying house with my mom and two of my brothers. This house is not big enough for the all of us! So what if there are four bedrooms? I can hear my mother snoring upstairs and the dryer running downstairs. I can hear everything that is said and done on the first floor and everything in the bathroom echoes painfully into my room.

Yet, it all seems to point to this being the right place for me for now. I’ve prayed about another place to live, but nothing has opened up. What I thought would be a few months turned into seven and counting. I got involved at my church. I got a job. I started a Bible study with some friends.

Just remember, family and friends… IT’S NOT PERMANENT! Sorry if that’s become a hurtful statement… I really love you all, but small-town Ontario is not my heart’s home, and I must move on when the time is right, whether my siblings step up to the plate or not!