Oh, Hello September

Woah - Hello September! When did you arrive?

September will always feel like "back to school" time. Time to bring out the pants and socks, the new notebooks, the pens and the backpacks. Time to leave the flexible summer days behind and enter into the schedule filled with school, extra-curricular activities, and youth group. It's time for packed lunches, late night paper writing, Saturday sleep-ins and life being organized by the agenda book.

For the second year, September does not have me going back to school (although late-fall may see an online course). September now means cooler days, a more relaxed schedule and the next set of projects and deadlines approaching alongside a very full schedule. September still has the joy of bringing out the fall wardrobe (I'm one of those people who love fall and winter clothes!) and doing some preparations for children and youth ministry in the church... which is sort of like school preparations!

My work has the summer months as the most full and most busy months of the year. The summer months are filled with some of the most joyful and holy days as people gather together to form community, to pray, to play and to learn. Which means that when the fall days come I have both a more relaxed and more flexible schedule alongside a more full schedule as commitments beyond Sorrento Centre come back to life and the meeting commitments I have made fill up many days and weeks of the year.

At the Cathedral everything starts up again in September: Sunday School, Youth Group, Young Adults, Staff Meetings, Bible Study, Parish Dinners, and the list goes on and on and on! And I am so excited and so ready to continue the planning and get back in touch with everyone. Alongside this my National Church commitments begin again: meetings, readings, writing, gatherings, traveling. There is much new for this year, namely - heading off to the World Council of Churches in South Korea as one of the handful of delegates representing the Anglican Church of Canada. Excited. Terrified. Honoured.

For me, the fall days also are the days when I get back into my cooking and preparing of meals. And I love cooking and baking - so when the time comes for me to get back into the kitchen I find myself filled with peace.

Fall means planning, traveling, preparing, cooking, resting.
Fall means new challenges and opportunities.
So, as much as I am surprised that September has already arrived I am also so very ready for it!

Rainy Day

It's been a rainy day. It's been a good day. It's been a difficult day. It's been an emotional day. It's been a hopeful day. It's been a long day. And yet... it's been an incredibly short day.

It's been today.

And today is today.

And therefore, it is good that it's been today.

I've been reminded today that there are days that just continuously go from wonderful, hopeful, and full of smiles to sad, difficult, and full of tears. I'm okay with these days... but they are hard. And when days are hard I become tired.

But there is hope, even in the tears.

And tonight, when I got back to my room after my work finished at 9:30pm, I painted my toenails purple. And purple is good.

New

Windowsill Candles 

I've always loved opening something for the first time... lighting a new candle, starting a new bottle of hand soap, smelling a new book, sleeping in a newly made bed, having dishes newly cleaned.

I love baking something new or even something familiar - it's the look of newly baked cookies cooling on the rack that I love so much. 

New, new, new. New life, new friendships, new challenges, new adventures, new questions, new answers. Newness can be exciting, very exciting. But the familiar - yep, that's often what I get drawn back to.  

Tonight though while surrounded by my familiar routine I greatly enjoyed lighting a new candle and struggled to keep myself from trying a new recipe. Some newness needs to be saved for another day!