Picking the Readings

My fiancé and I have been trying to choose our readings and prayers for the wedding ceremony. We’d left that task until we took our marriage prep course, as we weren’t sure what the options were. Now that we’re finishing the course, we finally looked up the options. Then the fighting began.

I liked Genesis and he liked Tobit. I tried to explain why the Genesis passage meant a lot to me. In the next hour or so, he asked me about five times why I wanted it. I gave up trying to explain. He tried to explain why he liked Tobit. I said I’d only read the book once and thought it was a weird story. Then the discussion deteriorated into an argument about creationism and whether Genesis is figurative or literal.

The next night he tried to find something we could agree on, so he looked at the prayers and asked which one I liked. Prayer 2, I said, after reading through them. Of course he liked Prayer 1. We both tried to explain why we liked our respective prayers. I thought that we should be looking at the prayers in the context of the whole ceremony and the theme that we wanted to have. He thought that if we could agree on the prayer, then we could pick the rest of the readings to go with the prayer. So now not only were we not agreeing, we weren’t even approaching it the same way!

I told an older friend about our current dilemma. She laughed and said that’s why she’d thought, once, that she shouldn’t have asked for her husband’s opinion on wedding details. It must be easy for the woman who can just do it all herself without such debates. Perhaps. I think I’m happier, however, knowing that he has an opinion and that he’s going to share it with me, and that in the end, whatever happens on our wedding day will be something that we worked out together and that is important to both of us.

I’ve heard of women who had their whole wedding planned before even meeting the man. I didn’t want to be that sort of bride (maybe I knew I’d meet a man who would want to be involved in all the planning!). The only thing I had planned was my dress; I wouldn’t let myself speculate about the rest of the wedding. So now we are going through all of the decisions together. Sometimes agreeing instantly. Sometimes agreeing after much discussion. Sometimes he has a great idea, sometimes I do. Sometimes something is important to me and doesn’t matter to him, or vice versa. Either way, what happens on that day is about and for both of us.

Last night we managed to pick a series of readings that we both liked (neither Genesis nor Tobit). We also agreed, without any problems, on the vows that we wanted to say to each other. Now we just have to pick the prayers to match the readings and we’re ready to go… until we reach the next decision to make on the to-do list. :)

Wanting to Write

I want to write. I have that itch, that desire to sit at my computer with my fingers flying, words coming from somewhere deep within me and forming on the page, little black marks on a white screen, easily placed there and just as easily removed. The problem is, I don’t know what to write about. My mind is hopping from idea to idea – maybe that. No. How about that? No. Nothing is settling.

Perhaps the lack of mental effort on my current project is requiring that my brain find other creative outlets. I’m doing a proofread – which means that the document is nearly perfect, and I’m only finding the odd spelling mistake every three or four pages or the odd missing comma every four or five pages. I much prefer messy documents, where I have to mark and rearrange and think and read carefully and reread. And so, because this proofreading isn’t occupying my mind enough, my mind is wandering.

Wandering to the things that I want to write, but haven’t got the time or information or ability to write yet. I’m on my coffee break at work; I’m not about to start on a novel, even if it was here instead of on my computer at home. A few of my characters are running through my head, demanding attention, but I keep putting them off. Not yet, I tell them. A little longer…

I tried wandering among my favourite blogs, but that only made me want to write more. Short stories, short articles. Something creative. Yet the ideas aren’t coming. Because in a few minutes I will have to leave my computer and go back to my proofreading. I can’t get buried in my writing, lost somewhere in the creativity and the expression. And so this is all I will write for now.

Sticks and Stones

There’s an old saying that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Maybe other old sayings are true, sources of time-refined wisdom, but that one isn’t. And that’s probably no surprise to you either. We can all think of times when someone said something that really hurt us, that we’ve never forgotten.

Maybe, however, that saying reflects something else. Sticks and stones cause obvious hurts – broken bones can be seen. So can bruises and cuts and scrapes. Walk around like that and everyone will ask you what happened to you. Did you fall down the stairs? Run into a door? But the pain that words cause – nobody sees that. When the pain comes, we can keep smiling, even if we’re crying inside. We might never let anybody see how they hurt us. We keep walking around, broken and bleeding, but nobody knows.

Sometimes I sit on the bus, looking at the people crowded around me, talking on their cell phones or staring out the window or chatting with their seat mate, and wonder what they would look like if we could really see them, like God can. Would they still look so good, so polished, so happy? Or would they be broken and bleeding, cowering in fear, crying out for help?

In Frank E. Peretti’s novel Prophet, he tries to give us a glimpse of this. The main character is talking to his boss about a news story he wants to run on abortion. She’s hard, business-like, refusing to let him run the story. Then, like a prophet, he catches a glimpse of what’s really going on inside her. She’s cowering behind her desk, crying, because she had an abortion and has never healed from the pain. It’s that pain that causes her to react to him.

We see our friends or coworkers, ask them “How are you doing?” and get a typical, “Good, and you?” in reply. The phrase has become an empty greeting, meaningless. Nobody really wants to know how we are doing. I answered that question automatically once, on a day when I was hurting so much I was almost crying at work, and then thought ironically that I was anything but good. One of my friends sends me emails asking, “Really, how are you doing?” She knows when I need to do more than just answer “good” to that question.

Broken bones heal in a few weeks, bruises in a few days. Usually they don’t even leave a trace of what happened. It’s all forgotten, gone. Not so with hurtful words. Especially when the wounds are cut again and again. I sprained my thumb once while playing touch rugby. It should have healed in a week, but it took a month, because I kept respraining it. So often the words that wound us don’t just come once, but again, and again, and again, and nothing heals. The wound get deeper. The mask gets harder. And people who don’t see think that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Scared of Commitment

Okay, it’s no news that marriage is in trouble in the world. This oldest of institutions is coming under attack, or simply becoming “old-fashioned” to many people, as Michelle Goodman’s article “Who is and isn’t marrying, and why” makes clear. I want to cry after reading that article, because people just don’t get it.

The article made me think of the fact that people are afraid of commitment. We want a warranty on our relationships, so that if the going gets tough, we can get out. So let’s not get married. Let’s just live together and see how it works out. Or let’s have a “commitment ceremony” but leave ourselves room to bail when we no longer feel like being committed anymore. You never know – a better Mr. Right might come along. Or you might find out after a few years that Mr. Right is really Mr. Wrong. So leave all the options open.

We want everything to come easily in life, and everybody knows that marriage takes work. For starters, marriage is a covenant, and there are no outs in a covenant. Check out the covenant that God made with Abram in Genesis 15. Those animals cut in half represented what was supposed to be done to the person who broke the covenant. What was significant about this covenant was that Abram didn’t walk between the animals, as both parties were supposed to; only God went through the animals, meaning that if either party (Abram or God) broke the covenant, God would pay the price. Which He did – on Calvary.

That kind of price is a price that few people are willing to pay today. We don’t want to give ourselves completely to another person and say, “Until death do us part.” Putting two completely different people together in such a union takes work. A ton of work, as I’m discovering (and I'm only engaged!). But, unlike most people in today’s society, I’ve decided that it’s worth the work. Marriage is still an institution made in heaven, despite earth’s earnest attempts to mess it up.

Happy Birthday Me!

I’ve always measured spring by what the weather is like on my birthday. They usually fall pretty close together. And being March, no two birthdays ever have the same weather.

I remember my Kindergarten birthday for the mud. Mom had invited my classmates over for a birthday party. At the time, our front lawn wasn’t lawn yet, but just dirt. Or in March, mud. Most of the boys in the class, and a few of the girls, managed to get themselves stuck in the mud while my twin brother and I stood on the sidelines watching. Our classmates requested and then demanded help in getting out, but we weren’t going anywhere near them. We had long experience with the mud and weren’t venturing in.

In other years, Mom has gone for either her last cross-country ski of the year or her first bike ride of the year on my birthday. Last year was a skiing year. My brother and I spent the weekend before our birthday skiing in Panorama with my aunt and uncle. This year there isn’t enough snow for the skiing, but it’s not quite warm enough yet for the biking. Saturday was nice – a promise of things to come – but today has turned cold and windy again. There was even a rumor of snow earlier, but I haven’t seen it yet.

I’ve always liked spring. The changing of two seasons, the promise of better things to come, new life everywhere. It’s a good time of year for a birthday.

Men with Beards

When I was growing up, my dad always had a beard. Not even my mom knew him without his beard. He grew it during university and never shaved it after that. As a little girl, I would climb into his lap to get a whisker rub. I liked his beard a bit long and bushy, as it was softer for whisker rubs that way. His office demanded that he appear trim and professional, however, so he made regular trips to the barber.

When I started university, I noticed one of my fellow students right away. He had curly black hair and a thick black beard. Apparently he noticed me too, as he was sitting in front of me during the next class and afterwards turned around to introduce himself. The rest, you may say, was history. We studied and hung out together at university, kept in touch when he transferred universities, and started dating the year we both graduated.

During that time, I saw him completely cleanshaven only once. I had to give him a second glance when he walked into our English class one morning, sans beard and with a hair cut as well. But the beard grew back again in a week, as he didn’t like shaving. By the time we started dating, he waffled between a goatee and a beard. My preference for his beard and his preference for not shaving has caused the beard to keep growing.

After we got engaged, I sent a picture of him to my uncle, who hadn’t yet met him. My uncle commented that my father’s choice in facial hair had influenced my choice of men. After receiving the wedding invitation with a picture of us in it, one of my dad’s university friends commented to my dad, “Is he a man after your own heart? He certainly looks like a man after your own appearance.” I laughed.

I don’t know how Dad answered that email. He hasn’t liked my fiancé since we started dating. But they have more in common than just their beards. My dad took us to church every Sunday and taught us to believe in God; my fiancé knows what he believes and tries to live it. My dad is a do-it-yourself handyman; my fiancé can put together a computer, fix a vehicle, or assemble a bookshelf. My dad can start a conversation with anyone; my fiancé is also very good at making friends. My dad tried to show me how a lady should be treated; my fiancé treats me that way. My dad encouraged me to chase my dreams and do whatever I wanted to do; my fiancé also does that.

I looked for a long time before I found a man who had all the character qualities I wanted in a husband… and had a nice beard too.

Melody's Music

My entry is this week's Faithwriter's writing challenge, "Melody's Music," is now online.

My Wedding Dress

When I was in high school, my best friend’s older sister got engaged and Mom offered to sew her wedding dress. I went along for most of the shopping trips, watching as the bride chose the dress she wanted and then found the satin and lace for it. On one trip, Mom had a long list of things to get. I followed her around Fanny’s Fabrics until I got tired and plopped down on a chair beside the pattern books. While Mom kept shopping, I started randomly flipping through a book.

I wasn’t looking for any patterns, just randomly browsing and keeping an eye on Mom to see how soon we could go. Then I turned a page and found my wedding dress.

I stared at it, studying every inch of the half-page colour picture. The model was tall and dark-haired, like me, casually posed. I pictured the dress on myself as I walked down the aisle to my groom. It was the most gorgeous dress I had ever seen and exactly what I wanted. The only problem was that I didn’t even have a boyfriend. I wouldn’t be getting married for years – maybe ten or twenty. But that was the dress I wanted.

Mom wandered back to say she’d be just a minute longer. “That’s a pretty dress,” she commented, glancing over my shoulder.

My tongue wouldn’t move, but I wanted to say, “It’s the dress I want for my wedding.” She would laugh at me and tell me I was getting a bit ahead of myself. But what if, when I finally met the right guy, I couldn’t find the right dress? What if the pattern was no longer being produced? Mom would be sewing my wedding dress too, and this was the dress that I wanted her to sew.

I was still sitting there when she came back again. The pattern book was still open to the same page. She looked at it and asked, “Do you want to get that pattern?”

“Could we?” I begged, my face lighting up. In a minute I had found the drawer and the pattern and pulled out my size. In the van on the way home, I couldn’t stop grinning. Mom laughed with me that I’d found my wedding dress so easily. My best friend’s sister had been to a dozen stores before finally deciding on the dress that she wanted.

Over the next few years, Mom used the pattern for a couple other dresses. I finished high school and started university, but remained single. Once in a while, when I was sewing other projects, I’d dig that pattern out to glance at it. I still loved it, and knew that someday the right man would come along.

In my final year of university, a friend I’d known since my first year revealed to me that he’d liked me since then. We started dating. The next summer he proposed. Soon after that, Mom and I pulled my pattern out and went shopping for white satin and lace.

This week, Mom started cutting out my dress. I looked at the pattern pieces scattered around the sewing room, at the pattern resting by her sewing machine. I can’t wait to try it on and see how it actually looks. Finally, I will wear my dream dress down the aisle to meet my groom.

Picture Hanging

We were hanging pictures again this weekend. That may seem like an odd statement, but we are still in the process of hanging pictures. When I moved into the apartment two months ago, my fiancé and I decided that instead of hanging up all of my pictures and then rearranging them when he moved in with his pictures after the wedding, we’d just hang all of our pictures at once. So he brought over his picture collection and we went to work.

An hour and a half later, we hadn’t gotten anywhere. Oh, we’d made a few decisions – a couple little ones in the kitchen, one in the bedroom, one in the hallway – but most of them were still sitting around as we debated where they went. The problem was that we have slightly different opinions about picture hanging. If I held it up against the wall, he said it should be slightly lower. Or a bit to the left. I said it should be centered on this wall. He said it should line up with that other picture on the next wall over. He liked two pictures together on a wall; I said they clashed with each other.

The other problem is that we have slightly differing tastes in art. He doesn’t like watercolours. I don’t like a couple of his pictures. Most of my pictures were done for me by close friends. Most of his pictures are religious art. There are some pictures that we both agree we really like, but it was still hard to decide where to hang them – would it fit better on this wall, or should we put this picture here and that picture over there?

Eventually we put up as many pictures as we could, until we ran out of nails to hang them on. Then the picture hanging ceased for about a month, until we resumed this weekend. We made a trip to Walmart for picture frames first. “Just a quick trip,” he said. A couple hours later, we returned with our booty. Let’s just say we put a lot of thought into which frames go with which pictures. It was great fun to frame the pictures and see how much better they look that way. Then the picture hanging debate resumed…

We’ve decided that the rest of the pictures can wait until after the wedding, when we have the rest of his furniture moved in (and know what wall space is left for pictures) and decide what wedding pictures we want on the wall. Picture hanging remains an exercise in communication and compromise for us. I may not like some of his pictures, but they mean a lot to him, so they will go on the wall. Somewhere. Once we have thoroughly discussed it and completely understand each other’s point of view, have gotten frustrated or mad and forgiven each other, debated the hanging a dozen times, and finally stuck the hook on the wall.

Stranger than Fiction

Last weekend, my fiancé and I went to see Stranger than Fiction. He started telling me about it by warning me that it was a Will Ferrell movie but I should like it because it was about a writer. I’d already heard about it from a fellow writer, who had asked, “If what you wrote became true, would that change what you wrote?”

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, Stranger than Fiction is about Harold Crick, an IRS agent who is the main character in a story written by Karen Eiffel, a British author. Harold begins to hear Karen’s voice in his head, narrating everything he’s doing. Karen, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to kill Harold to end her book. When Harold hears this, he becomes desperate, and goes to a university English professor to find out how to prevent his death. Harold finally finds Karen and asks her not to kill him. She has already written the ending, however, and just has to type it, so she gives him the manuscript. The professor reads it and tells Harold that this is Karen’s best novel yet, her masterpiece, and Harold must die. Harold himself then reads it, and returns it to Karen telling her that it’s a great book. He goes through the next few days, willing to end the story as Karen had written it. However, having met Harold, Karen can’t stand the thought of killing him. She rewrites the ending of the novel, saving Harold in the nick of time.

One thing I noticed was that Karen was a wreck when she was trying to kill Harold. She smoked. Her hair was messy. She couldn’t concentrate. Her thoughts were dark, destructive, disastrous, as she mentally acted out various scenes of death. She was not a happy lady, but rather one desperate to finish her work to satisfy her publisher. When she rewrites the ending, she comes into the professor’s office a completely different lady. Her hair is neatly combed, she’s wearing a suit, and everything about her says that she’s calm and happy. She knows that because of how she’s changed the ending, this novel may not be her best work; but she isn’t killing someone, so she’s happy with that.

I started discussing the movie with my fellow writer. She said, “If what you wrote came true, would you still put your characters through whatever turmoil you currently write for them? I thought about it for myself and decided, yes, I still would [because] I can see where their going even if they can't. Then I thought about God and why good things happen to bad people and was very grateful that it was Him, not myself who was responsible for the most perfect ending of all.”

She got me thinking about the God-aspects of the movie. In a way, Karen is like God to Harold. She has control over his life, the ability to write what happens to him. She also knows the complete story and the best way to end it – the overall picture that Harold accepts when he sees it. What I found most intriguing, though, was that Karen changed the ending when Harold changed. He was willing to give up his life to save a little boy and to save Karen’s novel. And Karen decided that it wasn’t worth it.

I wondered, does God ever have a plan for our lives, but then change His plan because we change? For example, if someone had made a bunch of mistakes and rejected God in their life, and God had written the end of their story… but if they changed at the last minute, would He rewrite the ending? I believe He would. Like Karen, He knows the complete picture; but like Karen, He also gives us choices to make. We can choose Him or reject Him. And that determines the end of the story.

Shopping for Something More

My entry in last week's writing competition, "Sewn by Mom," received a high commendation. I'm entering in Level 3 now and there's a bit more competition! Some of the other entries are very good. This week's topic was shopping, and my entry, "Shopping for Something More," is now online. Let me know what you think of it!

It's One of Those Days

I think I got out of bed on the wrong side this morning. It didn’t seem that way at first. I managed to drag myself from bed a few minutes after my alarm clock went off, and ate breakfast and got out the door a few minutes earlier than planned to head for the pool. But then I missed two turns on the way to the pool (which is bad because there are only four turns to make on the way there), and had to backtrack. Good thing I was early or I wouldn’t have had time for that.

I swam my usual kilometer, dressed and did my hair and drove back home. There, I had time to hang up my swimsuit and towel to dry and then I was out the door to catch my bus. As I was crossing the street, I saw the bus pull up to the stop a block away. Since I wasn’t going to madly run down the block to catch it, I missed it. Then since the next bus wasn’t going to arrive for another ten minutes, I cracked open my book to read while I waited.

When the bus pulled up, I just stepped on and kept reading. Until it turned a few blocks before it was supposed to, and I realized that I was on the wrong bus. And just before I got off that bus, the bus that I wanted to be on went past. So I walked back to the bus stop, growing colder by the minute because the weather hasn’t warmed up for March yet, and had to wait ten minutes for the next bus to come along. At which point I got on, opened my book again, and somehow managed to get off at the right stop to get to work only five minutes late.

So far nothing else has gone wrong, other than the fact that I’m extremely scatter-brained this morning and thinking about anything but the document I’m supposed to be editing. But at least I haven’t spilled my coffee or broken my pen or anything like that… yet.

The Copyediting Course

On Saturday, I started the first day of a three-Saturday editing course. I’ve been watching for an editing course to take since I started this job six months ago. I got into editing sort of by accident, because of my interest in writing and my grammar skills. I discovered that I really liked it and I kept on doing it, learning by experience and from my fellow editors here. However, I thought it would be a good idea to pick up some courses to expand my skills and qualifications.

This course is on copyediting, which is mostly what I do – checking for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Other types of editing were also touched on, so I’m getting a better idea of what editors do. It was also neat to see where all the other people in the course are working – there are a few from the local newspaper, a local magazine publishing company, and various other places, including universities and freelancers. I’m discovering the range of places that editors work in.

I learned a few new techniques and found out some things that will be useful when I start freelance editing in a few years. But mostly, I discovered that I do know what I’m doing. That may sound funny, but I have a tendency to question myself. I’m the youngest person in the department and have the lease amount of experience behind me. It was good to see that yes, I am an editor, and yes, I am doing what editors do.

Sewn by Mom

This week's writing challenge topic was "sewing." That generated a few ideas, as I grew up learning to sew, watching Mom sew, and sewing my own clothes. I wrote three different pieces on it and left them over the weekend to think about which one I wanted to post. Then I wrote a fourth one on Sunday night and posted that one. "Sewn by Mom" is now online, and I may post the other unentered entries here later.