Author and Inspired Writer

Went to see my optometrist last week and she mentioned that I have very early stage cataracts. Huh. My mother had cataracts that required surgery, so this news didn’t come as a complete surprise but it’s the first time I’d ever had a problem with my eyes.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “They’re just starting. Besides, sooner or later everyone gets cataracts.”
Mm hm. Cold comfort.
Then she asked me if I wanted to get new lenses this year.
“Don’t think so,” I replied. “Has my vision changed that much?”
“No,” she said, “just a little in your left eye, and that’s going the other way.”
“‘Going the other way'” meaning…?”
“Well, your distance vision in your left eye has improved.”
“It has?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, how the heck did that happen?”
She shrugged slightly and made a noise that sounded like how you’d say “I don’t know” with a mouthful of toothpaste – no words, inflection only.
“Your vision with correction is 20/20. Without your glasses it’s about 20/50. And your near vision is completely backwards.”
“‘Completely backwards.’ I never get enough of people telling me that.”
“No, no, I mean at your age you should need reading glasses. Your near vision is like that of a teenager.”
“Uh-huh. So, let me get this straight. I should need glasses for close work, but I don’t.”
“Right.”
“And I have incipient cataracts, but my distance vision is improving.”
“In your left eye.”
“In my left eye.”
“Right again.”
I took a second to let that sink in.
“I’m a unique creature, aren’t I?” I smiled. She smiled back.

Can’t wait for next year’s appointment.

I just finished my second reading of A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans, and it is one of the best autobiographies I’ve read in this or any year. Funny thing is, when I picked it up in Chapters, I glanced at the cover and put it right back on the shelf. What turned me off? The subtitle – How a Liberated Woman found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master”.

Uh-huh.

Well really, I thought, how liberated could she be?

But something, happily, kept bringing me back to this book. On the second time around, I read the back cover – “Strong-willed and independent, Rachel Held Evans couldn’t sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment – a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible for a year.”

Uh-huh.

That still didn’t tell me if this was a book that would bless my feminist soul or have me drop kicking it into the nearest snow bank. Back on the shelf it went.

One more time, as I was leaving the store, I picked it up, thumbed through it, and came across the section on Junia the Apostle. “Oh ho!” says I. “I know this story.” Junia is mentioned in Romans 16:7 as “outstanding among the apostles.” Wow, right? But with time the Church became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of a woman apostle and the name was changed to the masculine Junias. (It was finally changed back to the original Junia in the New Revised Standard Version.) Evans wrote so engagingly about the incident that I read the entire section standing there in the aisle wishing the people who kept bumping into me would shop somewhere else so I could read in peace! I flipped a few more pages and there was a piece on Debra, Tamar, Leah, Vashti, and what’s this? Mary Magdalene! I’m deep into writing a book of poetry on Mary Magdalene and so took this as a sign from God that indeed I should buy this book!

So I did. And loved it. And read it again. And loved it some more. And bought copies to give as gifts. Do yourself a favour and buy A Year of Biblical Womanhood. You’ll find it funny, provocative, and inspiring all at the same time.

I consider myself blessed to have found it, and wise to have bought it.

Advent. That’s right, you heard me. Advent. It’s a liturgical season (a churchy thing) in which people of faith take the four weeks leading up to Christmas to reflect and make spiritual preparations to celebrate Christ’s birth.
And I like it SOOOO much better than Christmas, for a number of reasons.
Most importantly, it helps me balance my perspective. See, there are some radio stations around here that think it’s fun to play 24 hour Christmas music starting November 1st! Not kidding. And it’s not even the nice kind of Christmas music. Last year, it seemed like everywhere I went there was Burl Ives merrily wishing me A Holly Jolly Christmas. I think the stores had all synched up their music systems just to annoy me. No offence to Burl Ives fans, but if I hear that song one more time I’m going to break something – like the all time record for exiting a retail establishment while letting loose a string of most decidedly unChristmaslike expletives. I did most of my Christmas shopping online this year, so no holly, no jolly, no swearing. Blessed relief!
I watched the Black Friday crowds south of the border stampede their way into stores that opened at some ungodly hour of the morning, (some shoppers had been camping out on their sidewalks for days!), trample each other to get to discounted items, and even engage in fisticuffs, actual punching, if someone got in their way.
Um, is it just me, or is that nuts?
And advertisers keep urging me to celebrate the true spirit of the season by buying a new car. Well, sure, I can see that.
Well no, I bloody well can’t!
I know it’s a betrayal of all things womanly that I hate shopping. All kinds of shopping – shoe, clothes, grocery, electronic, automotive. But there is something especially perverse about otherwise intelligent, peaceable adults indulging in this kind of advertiser-stoked feeding frenzy this time of year.
So I withdraw into Advent – slow down, light a candle, find quiet, take a breath. Sure, we’ve bought a few gifts and put up the tree, but what brings us the most joy this season is selecting items from Plan Canada’s Gifts of Hope catalogue for families in need in developing countries. Chicks, goats, school essentials, literacy training, even a girls-only latrine, these are gifts that protect human dignity, and offer hope for self-sufficiency and a better future. Such a little bit of money can do so much good and gives so much joy to giver and receiver alike.
We have three weeks until Christmas arrives. And to my surprise, the days are moving slowly, giving me time to savour the gifts of this season, the peace, the simplicity, the joy.
If only it could be Advent all year long.

One of my FaceBook buddies posed this question a while back, and responders gave some expected answers: losing my health, something happening to my kids, bugs, enclosed spaces etc. And I was just about to comment about my fear of heights when I watched my fingers type – I’m afraid I won’t measure up.

Well. There it is. I sat back in my chair. Where did that come from?

Oh, I suspect it’s been there a long, long time, taking the shine off my accomplishments, trying to get me to believe that the best I can hope for is a life of mediocrity, that I will never, ever, be good enough.

Then I asked myself a question: if I’m afraid I won’t measure up, what exactly am I measuring myself against? Yup, you got it gentle readers – other people. And God! there is such dis-ease in that! “I’ll never have their spirituality. I’ll never write like that, or preach like that, or sing like that, or accomplish what they have, or keep as clean a house as they do.” (Um, I’ve kinda given up on that last one. I mean, let’s face it…)

But if I compare myself with myself, I see such growth, and such potential! I have ventured to do things I never thought I would in a million years! I have learned to do things that have enabled me to be of service to others and enriched my own life at the same time. I have shown strength, compassion, friendship and creativity. I’m a handy person to have around, a good listener, a unique writer, open to new ideas, willing to learn, and I’m funny as hell. Against the measuring stick of my own goals and aspirations, I’m doing pretty good. Not perfect – still have that housework issue to work on – but not bad. And I’m only going to get better. So I guess I admitted and overcame my greatest fear practically at the same time.

Which is not a bad day’s work.