With summer starting to fade I have to admit, as crazy as it sounds, that I'm looking forward to September. It's been a full summer for Jess with going to Bible camps, day camps, folk dancing and volunteering (she spent a week working with children with disabilities - I am so proud of her!) But we're ready for her to go back to school. Junior high will be a new adventure for her, and us as well. We hope the school we picked will work out for her as well as the school she attended in grade six. Jess grew (again) over the summer, and now that she's wearing glasses she looks less and less like the little girl we met almost two years ago, and more and more like a young lady. And so pretty too - everyone who meets her says that right off the top. Getting a gun to keep the teenage boys away is definitely at the top of my to-do list. But Jess said to me, "Dad, you don't have to buy a gun to keep the boys away. I'll do that myself!"
I also look forward to the fall because I associate it with new beginnings and seasons of change. And I could use a little change in my life. What that change is I'm not sure of. As I wrote in my last post I'm feeling confined, that I need to get out of the box called "my life." Perhaps I need to think outside of it; this is something that a few people have mentioned to me. Easier said than done - for me at least. It's like that line from the Dreamworks film Chicken Run: "It's not just the fences around us we have to overcome, it's also the ones in our heads." It's hard to overcome the obstacles in our minds when real obstacles are in front of us. I feel stuck, and it's not the first time I've felt this way. But I can look back at other times in my life where I felt stuck and doors were opened for me that allowed me to move into new places. Normally this would serve as a spiritual history for me to draw on, where I could interpret the challenges of life through the lens of my faith.
But it doesn't help things when I find myself going through a crisis of faith. For the past five months I've been really struggling with my sense of purpose, my place in life and the things that I believe. Now this isn't a bad thing, as too many of us go through life taking our views for granted. But so far I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel, no sense of completion to my journey. Maybe there won't be one. Maybe, for now at least, there doesn't need to be one. But it's ironic that in this time of doubt that I found myself yesterday in a place where I was reminded of where my faith was birthed. Yesterday I attended the funeral of a very dear friend who impacted my life in a profound way. Had it not been for her, her husband and son, I would have not become a follower of Jesus.
Her name was Linda Mantin, and she was the mother of my faith. I met Linda and her husband Tony through a friend at school, Clint, when I was 15 years old. They as a family modeled the Christian life for me at another time in my life when I was searching for meaning and direction. What I saw appealed to me, and eventually their faith rubbed off on me. Linda was genuine; she never pretended that everything was a bed of roses. She shared with me her struggles, her burdens, hurts and sense of loneliness. Yet she processed her pain through the worldview of her faith in God. She was a student of the Bible and she always talked about the power that was in the blood of Jesus Christ - His sacrifice on the cross. I didn't always understand or agree with where Linda was coming from, but she had faith. And we all make a leap of faith, whether we realize it or not. But it wasn't just faith itself that made her who she was, but rather the object of her faith that gave her hope. It touched a lot of people, as it was quite evident at yesterday's graveside service. And as I said "bye for now" - the phrase Linda would always use when she ended a conversation - I thought about the certainty she lived with as I struggled with my own.
Maybe what's needed to overcome the fences - both in my head and all around me - is another leap of faith...
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