Tuesday, March 30, 2010

I'm this way because ...

Part 2

Do you know how sometimes someone says something as a toss-away statement and it ends up totally hitting the mark?

That happened to me last week.
We were having our staff devotions/prayer time and using the Arrow Lenten Devotional as our guide. The passage we were reading was the Lazarus-being-raised-the-dead story (John 11), and we briefly discussed the suggested question/reflection that an Arrow alumnus has written. Blah, blah, blah it was all good and fine and then we prayed. To be honest, looking back, I can't remember the point of that study. At the time it seemed insightful, but whoosh. In my head one minute, gone the next.

And then.
Then after all was said and done, and just as we were finishing up, Steve says, in his quiet Columbo-like way, "you know what always strikes me about this passage? The very last verse. The one where it says,  (after Lazarus has come out of the cave/grave) "Jesus told them (Lazarus's neighbours, friends and family) to unwrap him and let him loose."

"It's a great illustration of what community is, isn't it?" he observed. "Lazarus was literally bound up in death clothes and while Jesus could have wrinkled His nose like Samantha  or waved a magic stick like Moses and had those stinky bits of fabric fall away from Lazarus's body *snaps fingers* just like that, He purposefully leaves the unwrapping process as something Lazarus's community needed to do." (OK. Steve didn't reference Samantha or Moses. I added that. It's my blog.)

Hmmm.
Who in my community of friends and family is bound by something and needs my help to unwrap it? To free them of it?
Conversely, do I have my knickers in a knot about something and maybe need someone to help me sort it out? (I don't want to take the panty analogy any further because children read this blog.)

And speaking of community, who exactly is in mine?
Do you know who is in yours?

Seeing how as I've got the old photo albums out AND know how to use the scanner (!) I'm going to tie-in my thoughts on community with some old pics by saying, my parents, brother and sister were the biggest part of my community during the first 15 years of my life.

So. I am who I am partly because these people have loved me forever:
(if you click on the pics they become life size.)


Yes. That's me in the middle, wearing someone's curtains. And that's my mom in the mini skirt. My Grandpa and Granny are right behind me. And resting his chin on my head is my Uncle Dean (who is 4 years older than me.)
(Here's the story. My grandpa and grandma had two kids - Don and my mom, Hilda. When Don was 21, he moved to Kansas for school and my mom (who was 17) moved to Abbotsford to go to MEI for grade 11. Granny was lonely. The big ol house was empty. Night moves were made. And Dean was born 9 months later. )




What? Don't all families have stories like that?
Yeah, so that's my mom with the high hemline matching her high hairdo and that's my dad rocking the turtleneck because he was rebelling against TIES.

This is us again, years later:

(The only addition is that guy in the back with glasses. Who brought him?)   :)

The wimin in my fam:





This is my family. We spent hours talking at the supper table, we spent long weekends camping, we spent New Year's at Harrison Hot Springs and we spent spring break in California. We went to Killarney Park MB Church in Vancouver, so we spent a couple of hours every week on the freeway. And between us three kids, we gave our parents eight grandchildren in eight years.





(No, I didn't crop him out of 20 years of pictures. Photos capture a moment in time. And in that moment - I was married.)

During those pre-boyfriend years, my mom was my best friend:



She was a flashier dresser than I.
She Accessorized.       Always.
Here we are at my grandma's place. This is how she dressed to have fespa with her mom. Her footwear? White knee high shiny plastic(?) gogo boots.


Sometimes I was her accessory... matching moomoos for breakfast at Denny's in Palm Springs :)

Matching bathing suits...

This is my mom: (with all the other moms at church who taught Pioneer Girls) -

(I showed this pic to Kaitlynn yesterday and she was all, "I wish I had a mom as cool as yours." And then she looked at me and said, Erhmmm. What happened to you?")

My dad was my biggest cheerleader, believing I could do anything.
He liked tight white shorty shorts.







I will spare you the pictoral evidence, but believe me he wore those shorts on every holiday for YEARS.



Because Jule and I are five years apart, we only went to school together for two grades. For all our growing up years, we never had the same get-ready-for-school morning schedule. So even though we shared the upstairs bathroom, we never shared it, if you know what I mean. We had bedrooms on opposite ends of the house and never borrowed each other's clothes. (We borrowed mom's.) (DUH.)








The five year age difference disappeared when we started having babies at the same time.  :)

My brother:





These are my people. My first 'community'.

It's their fault.

:)

Three things I'm thankful for:
1. Drew added oil to my truck tonight. "Now these are the types of chores you can have me do."
2. Good Friday is right around the corner.
3. Love.

Shalom,

2 comments:

valerie said...

I love your family and that you made me part of it. Mostly good memories except for Jim chasing me and kissing me all the time. Sheeshhhhh.

Oh yeah, I love Easter more. He is Risen Indeed!

Anonymous said...

Talking about Dad's white shorts, you forgot to mention that every year before our annual trip to P.S. dad would spray paint his white shoes.