ON RE-EMERGING INTO THE SUN (2019 IN REVIEW)

This was the year that I swore to take hold of my life. It had been a wobbly few years, learning about who I was and who I wanted to become. If 2018 was a  year of diving beneath the surface to recover who I was and who I wanted to be, then 2019 was a sort of re-emerging into the sun. 

At 10 seconds to midnight the pilot came onto the intercom to lead passengers in a countdown. And so, I rang in the new year with strangers and a suddenly wide awake plane somewhere over Ontario. That quiet moment of mid-air delight was just the note I hadn’t known I wanted to welcome 2019 in on. I was mid-chapter, learning about Hannah More on that flight - a borrowed book from B - and goodness wouldn’t she shape the next year. 

This was the only year where  I broke down the 12 months into quarters for focus. While there was some ebb and flow, I mostly stuck to the structure it gave me the ability to delve deep and work hard. They were organized as follows: The Excavation, The Adventure, The Shift, Discovering A New Thing.  

The Excavation:

In late 2018, I had a series of conversations that convinced me something needed to change. I needed to stop being a bystander in my own life. It was time to stop feeling “time famished” as my cousin M would say and begin to carve out a life I chose instead of living in constant service to a schedule that seemed to have a life (and force) of its own. And so, I said no to some things I really loved. I stepped back from the March of Remembrance and Hope after four beautiful years, passing the torch to a wonderful spirit who has breathed new life into the committee. I ended my time with the youth shelter that had, when I first moved to the city, helped make it  feel like home and “righting my frame of reference.” I took a course in mediation every Thursday. I wrote a chapter for a book project and began to spend my evenings editing a project that I didn’t know would change my life. 

I did small things that helped me feel at home in my own life - like get furniture for instance (from the side of the road but still) or buying a bathing suit or setting up my tithing...things that I had always intended to do but never seemed to have the time or courage for. I threw an engagement party and sensed myself on the edge of deep change. I spent a lot of time at the refugee shelter. It snowed a hell of a lot. I began to go to sleep before 11pm. E visited and we went skating and sun spotting. I spent time in old journals trying to recover who I was. We celebrated sweet and strong B’s birthday. I remember making a lemon cake and never wanting the evening of warmth and belonging to end. A moved to Montreal and we were reunited. I began to relax into my life. I took a weekend, all long walks and early nights, jazz, and Italian food with my soul twin in Chicago. These years, it seems like we just pick whatever spot works best to do what we always do - read, write, cry, laugh, and remember that we do not walk alone. Someone wrote me an email that read, “God...not the fixer but the one who accompanies.” And I thought, yes and amen. 

I began to love the snow and cozy evenings at home with H, the cat, and my projects. I spent a lot of time quietly working my guts out on both my day job and this excavation. I remember missing out on a lot of things but remembering that it was in service of a broader season. And as April dawned, I was able to say that the last three months had truly been spent excavating my life and sliding out of the slippery surface of unconscious pattern, accumulated obligation, and acquired habit. I both left things behind and saw things entirely new be birthed. As the days grew longer, the sun got higher, and the snow/ice went away for good, I wanted to remember that season as one of learning how to walk more gently through the winter both inside my heart and outside my door.

The Adventure:

April dawned bright and clear and I felt like I came up for air. I also remember feeling like I couldn’t escape the change that was hurtling towards me. Thanks to R I found someone to come and live with me in the coming year when H would move out. Within a few days, I had offered this future kindred spirit a spot in my flat, sight unseen. It was one of the best heart decisions I have ever made. We celebrated D turning 35 and a cancer free scan. We sent a book manuscript out into the world. A travelled my way this time and the entire city seemed to cram onto rooftops to catch the sun as winter began to give way to spring. 

I walked across my bridge at sunset so many times but every sun streaked sky made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have this as my stop on the way home. We went wine tasting in Prince Edward County for H’s bachelorette and I will always treasure the image of all those friends crammed onto the same two narrow beds under beautiful pieced quilts like Little Women come to life.I spent a lot of time dashing in and out of a university study that would eventually be the sacred ground for deep forgiveness to take place. I went hunting for peonies on my bike with J. I ran into a shocking number of people from home while on the road from Toronto and Hamilton and Ottawa. While dashing too and fro, I fell in love in spite of myself. S and I reunited in Toronto for 24 hours before catching the train and meeting J to celebrate P and H in Waterloo. I want to remember curling up alongside friends and family on benches in Mennonite country between the service and reception. I want to remember belly laughing at my abject terror at being led out onto the dance floor. I want to remember us all singing them quietly with sparklers into the night and a new life. I want to remember the smell of roses in my hair. D, L, and I road tripped back to Ottawa where they cooked, filled, and cleared out my fridge. They cuddled, listened, asked, shared, danced, sang, and just generally loved deeply and well. 

A few days after they left, four of the dearest women I know all flew separately to NYC for the perfect sunny weekend. We crammed too many of us into a hotel room, wandered through museums, drank too many glasses of wine, ate the best food, and gave thanks for being young and together. I soaked in my sacred space. We got stuck - as per usual!! - in Toronto and I will always love M for letting H and I sleep for four hours in her house before we returned to the airport just in time to fly into Ottawa, shower, and go to work. In between trips my favourite waiter told me to love well and be vulnerable. I loved him all the more and resolved to do just that. My favourite priest, seamstress, barista, and friend made me smile in a way that will leave lines on my face when I am old. I had 24 hours of calm, a basketball game, and a heart talk in Montreal before a colleague dropped me at the airport. I was off to Paris. “You’re going to Paris and you forget to tell us?!” my cousin asked in incredulity as I sat on the tarmac and I realized just how fast life was moving lately. 

I spent 48 hours in England with K, B, and their amazing gang, meeting some family that would become kindred spirits though I didn’t know it then. I walked with two of my best boys in Oxford. I only had a short time to zip through the English countryside. I was in need of refreshment in a deep down way. And so those ramblers wined and dined me. They brought me to church, coffee, and even on a wander to lunch in the next village. And I couldn’t know then that I was sowing the seeds for a life I wouldn’t live for a few years yet. I hopped on a train then and went to meet G in Paris. It was there that the seeds for a life I wouldn't take hold for a while yet were really planted. We didn’t love Paris like we thought we would but we came to think and along the way, the magic seeped in almost in spite of us. 

I never want to forget sitting along the St. Martin canal and vowing to be “proud of the pivot.” All the years later, I can tell you that I really am. Proud, that is. I began to explore movement not just in body but in spirit - from fear to love. I rounded out my quarter of travel with the same bunch of crazies who pilgrimage to me to every wedding. We flew those forgotten suits, the bride’s veil, and danced the night away piling into cars at evening’s end, reunited - as we always do - once a year at yet another wedding. The next morning I took a seaplane to the mainland to do it all over again. I was home long enough to turn down a job, get my heart broken, and to learn that dear family members were making one final move back across the pond. I ended the quarter speeding to the Sunshine Coast on a water taxi to spend the first few days of July with my family in a little town on the water dear to us. We didn’t know it then, but it was our last holiday as a family in that form.

The Shift:

Just before finishing my season of travel, I stopped in at a refugee shelter that would come to weave itself deep into my heart, all chickens and children and courage. I returned to Ottawa and spent the next three months in a state of protracted change. Someone who would become a dear friend shared my room during some of the hottest months of summer. Unbelievably, we didn’t kill each other. In fact, she still teaches me everyday what it means to be brave. M moved in and thus began one of the most beautiful friendships of my life. A few changeovers later and E joined us, again sight unseen, another grace making our trio for the coming year complete. This was the stretch of time in which I spent almost everyday feeling tender. People bought me flowers and sent poetry and I spent a lot of time crying and feeling adrift. I look back on this time fondly as the season where everything save my two postal codes - work and home - changed. 

I thought a lot about the process of growing into my life, of growing older, and all that accompanies that process. Of the clarity, lightness, complexity, weight, softness, sadness, dreams, closed doors, wisdom, curiosity, peace, and the wrestle that comes to make their home in your life. As I took a breath and looked around, I asked for eyes this next season to see the grace, the fullness, and for the courage and joy and forgiveness that dwell there too. I danced my way through several more weddings in languages that were not my own but felt heart-familiar all the same. I hosted book clubs and brunches, went on long walks, and then, just as the ground seemed to stabilize beneath my feet, five friends left for far-flung corners of the globe all at once - Ireland, Quebec, Egypt, and Australia. It broke something loose in me, sowing the seeds of my own movement but I didn’t know it then. I moved so many people that I began to believe I was part of an ace moving crew. I felt like everything was changing. I was gifted many tiny graces in this season - phone calls, articles, flowers, reassurance, coffees, space, and quiet. When the complexity got particularly loud, I looked back and remembered those things too. That’s the thing about grace, it tends to show up quietly and often when we least expect. I baked up a storm. 

I road tripped with R through Ontario, went late night grocery shopping, camping, I fell in love with C, R, and tiny I. I spent a lot of time at Arlington 5 and the refugee shelter. I built some bones for my sister’s website. I stayed in a lot of people’s empty beds and apartments to get space from my own life, a different perspective or angle to survey what to do next. I bought sunflowers because P told me that they were God winking up at me. I ended this space of float and new by flying home. I felt enfolded and was surprised to look up and feel a little more like myself as I trailed after my sister at the early morning flower auction, fed the chickens at Barnabas, danced with family for the first time in eight years at Camp Sunrise, and celebrated my birthday with my earliest childhood friends before getting on an evening flight back to Ontario. 

Discovering Something New:

I kicked off this final quarter with what I call my grand birthday tour. A party with family and friends back in B.C. followed by singing and cake at our bi-annual staff retreat in Hamilton, a beautifully arranged party in Toronto at Cafe Belong (the name seemed chosen just for my delight) and a surprise dinner with someone I used to love too. When I arrived back in Ottawa and we celebrated there as well. I felt like I had been given the gift of being reminded that I did not walk alone in all the many places and among the people that have come to feel like home. It’s funny, I look back on this time as one in which I was in movement more than ever while simultaneously having a longing for home and stillness birthed in me. Oh how I would need that in the months to come. 

And so, I hopped on a plane and went to D.C. for the first time in a few years. I reunited with old friends and encountered spirits I have since determinedly carried with me. They were an extraordinary compilation of people. We sat in coffee shops and truck beds, in train stations and hotel lobby’s. We were all as different as could be. But tonight, as I look back, I see the through thread: a commitment to reminding each other that we do not walk alone, an honesty about needing to listen to one another. And perhaps most importantly of all, the shared conviction that love is a stubborn thing, central in fact to this belonging to and persisting towards one another. Ottawa showed off as I came home that fall - leaves all fiery and bright. I celebrated Thanksgiving with my former professor and her husband, taking my role as the tea and coffee server as seriously as I always do. I loved every minute I spent around their various tables. “I always want to err on the side of generosity,” a friend said to me around that time and I reflected on all the people that embodied that generosity in this thing called life. 

I hopped back on a plane to meet folks who could be described as exactly that - embodied generosity. We reunited in Denver, years after naming ourselves ‘the A team’, folks having flown in from four different cities. We piled into the car to drive into the mountains - our most free spirited firecracker was getting married and we weren’t going to miss it for the world. I remember waking up and being in awe of those mountainscapes and equally surprised that we had managed to get ourselves (almost) all together again. My soul twin happened to be in town too. So she drove me to the airport, three hours of overlap and total joy. We were going to do it two more times in two more cities before the year was out. I read reams of books and had scores of beautiful conversations on the road during these months. Especially now, each seems so sacred to me. I think I called B for a book meeting in every airport I flew through. I stopped home long enough to go to Matthew House, get another wisdom tooth out, and to do a little writing too. Emails mostly. One read, “Hope to see you and if not, remember to keep breathing. I miss you, I love you, and appreciate that we get to get to know each other during the course of our lives.” I got used to the new shape of things, slowly. I restarted on a project again. 

Before the year was out I went to D.C. one last time, overlapping with spirits I carry with me even now. I headed straight from there to Boston, spending a magical and exhausting 48 hours with my youngest sister and that cousin twin again. We laughed and danced and drank and ate and cuddled and stretched and walked. I loved belonging to them. My other sister told me she was going to make me an aunt. I wanted to be a good one. I got home just long enough to get very sick. B came to stay to write the bar exam. K came too - for a book sale and a Halloween too. There is one specific morning I still carry with me on which I woke up with a smile on my face, in a house filled with brave people. Some barely slept, others finally slept, each and every person reaching for a dream of their heart. Which sometimes looks very official and often looks just like the next step. 

I danced my way through one more wedding, trotting home through the snow at midnight just down the road. I took one final trip that year - one that would form the basis of an entire chapter to come. En route to England, I spent a sacred 45 minutes overlapping with A in the airport. My heart gave birth to a dream right then and there. I spent the next seven days encountering it, though I didn’t know it then - in the family house in Harpenden, heads bent over a map. I discovered it in a flat in London with B, listening to a choir with S and K, at Oxford with T and E, in the British Library, on the train, and on the stairs in an old country estate in which I rediscovered a voice I didn’t know had been hiding within me all along. Oh England - it restored to me a sense of the Advent spirit and a belief in kindred spirits. And so, I boarded a plane back to Canada with an extra measure of hard won courage, a renewed belief in the power of humour to ignite relationships, and the reminder that we do not walk alone. 

I finished out the year with a final push, drafting the beginning of a dream. “Do you think perhaps you’re scared,” one of my most sacred voices said to me quietly in the late hours of a December night. Quiet all on my end. “Yes,” I let out the breath I was holding. “But I think I’ll do it anyway.” So I wrote that damn letter and the essay too. I asked for forgiveness and to be loved well and differently too. It’s funny, on that final day of the year, my first print piece in a national newspaper got published, almost without me noticing. I was already in a car, on my way to ring in the new year, mostly in a language that was not my own. 2019 was the year of movement and stillness, of deep love and deep work, of breathtaking change and chance, of adventure and intuition, and most of all a year of growing into and returning to myself. As I welcomed 2020, I know I’ll always look back on this one as my fulcrum year, the year I fought for wholeness, and the year I became “proud of the pivot.” And so, it came to an end the way it started, my year of brave right up until the very last second. I distinctly remember a friend writing back when I first dubbed this year the “year of brave” to say, “ Did you mean your life of being brave?” So I smiled and wrote back, “Ok, just let me take this one day at a time” and when I look back now I’m so glad I did just that.