When my spring seminary course wrapped up at the end of July, I found myself with a stack of books that were not required reading.

I settled into the sweet space, turning pages as slower rhythms of living returned.

One book that resonated was Henry Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, a story of homecoming.

Nouwen commits an entire book to reveal what hours and days of sitting before the original, famous Rembrandt painting offered him.

Throughout the Bible, many significant relationships usher in the next stage of God’s plan to redeem the world.

John the Baptist and Jesus epitomize a dynamic biblical relationship, leaving a historical and eternal mark.

John’s life and ministry are an opening act to Jesus’s.

In this blog post, I celebrate the gift of friendship.

I am grateful to have been blessed with several deep friendships, some for a season and others forever—or forty years and counting!

On July 1st, 1984, I was gifted two bosom buddies.

As the country celebrated with fireworks, the Canadian anthem, and everything red and white, a baby tried to push her way ahead of her sister.

I am unsurprised that when we closed the door to babies a few years ago, desires grew beyond my home responsibilities.

I was out of survival mode.

Keeping six young kids fed, rested, and safe was easily a full-time job and a couple of part-time jobs combined in harder seasons.

While life is still full, this is mostly my choice and no longer filled up with meeting the most basic survival needs.

I recently found myself in a reflective place in parenting.

I was butting heads more often with one particular child while also being frustrated with my entire motley crew.

Thoughts were teasing me that I was done with this whole parenting gig.

Especially as I have been enjoying the more affirming parts of my adult life lately: guest teaching, workshops, retreats, worship team, seminary classes, and anticipating a part-time homeschool facilitator job starting in a few months!

I quickly tossed a book into my suitcase.

It was not from my seminary reading stack but a Christmas gift I had been slowly reading over the last few months.

I didn’t expect much reading time on our five-day family getaway to the mountains for my fortieth birthday, so a book with just a few chapters left was realistic.

As one of those odd people who rarely leave a book half-baked, I was determined to finish it for the sweet taste of accomplishment more than revelation.

‘Revelation’ sounds dramatic, but that is often my experience when words and God collide.

A few weeks before, I had been complaining that God seemed distant—he wasn’t speaking to me in the usual wordy ways.

During a little break on our trip, I turned to the final chapter in The Right Kind of Confidence and read the chapter title, “Deeply Rooted Confidence.”

I was out for coffee with a lifer friend, one of the few who grew up with me since the church nursery. I had texted the night before to see if she had an hour slot in her lineup of clients, and there we were on a Monday afternoon, getting all our words out in a beautiful space—not the brown Tim Horton’s booth per se, but a safe space built from years of sharing the highs and lows of life.

On a recent podcast, Simon Sinek said,

“When someone is struggling or in need, all they need is 8 minutes from a friend to hold space with them to make them feel better.”

What an honour to receive a text from a friend asking,

“Do you have 8 minutes?”

As emails arrived in my inbox at the start of this new year, it was amusing and a bit overwhelming that one after the other, they asked to steal the sacred time my family enjoys on Saturday mornings.

Four sacred Sabbath Saturday mornings in a row could be gone just like that!

I was relieved when I brought this concern to my husband, and we narrowed it down to one meeting that was mandatory and released the others from our calendar, typing “skip” beside each one in our Google calendar.

This past Saturday, we enjoyed our usual slow, extra special Saturday breakfast where Benj and the kids make some kind of delicious baking, usually topped with berries, syrup and whipped cream, and then piled into our minivan for one of our “experience” Christmas gifts.

We cross-country skid in the beautiful winter snow for the rest of the day.

Like never before, I am reminded that the Holy Spirit is drawing us into sacred rhythms of life if only we would listen.

A mantra or word to frame the next season or year is sometimes chosen haphazardly and other times with great intention.

After significant stress from a season of two parents battling and one dying from cancer in 2022, I thoughtfully chose resilient to depict my posture in 2023.

The demands of this modern world leave little opportunity to be still, let alone quiet.

It is comforting to know that throughout biblical and church history, in what may have been simpler times, practices of silence and solitude were as necessary as they are for busy individuals, especially Christian leaders, today.

Jesus pursued these spaces for himself and his disciples, leaving no question that Christ-followers must execute them.

For many years, my jogging stroller contraption was my ticket to any sense of “silence” and “solitude.”

Those words are in quotation marks because this setting is not the true definition of either. I had to keep my expectations low, so I didn't get frustrated by inevitable interruptions.

Hours were not flying by when I had six children eight years and under, but I had it pretty good.

My babies slept in a separate room within days of being born, and most of them consistently slept through the night within a few months, though my last one pushed the envelope here.

Still, there was always the possibility of an interruption (or more) on any given night—a reality of six young children.

There was no one to put me to bed while my husband was away on a backpacking trip this summer, so there I was at 11 PM eating the chocolate almonds he left under my pillow and scrolling through homeschool videos on YouTube:

Do I have enough planned for this next school year?

I could try this curriculum…

We really should learn another language…

Why not beautify our cursive writing?

Pause. Breathe. Remember, Charlene.

Be With Me

I'm leaving my wonderful husband and six kids at home in a few weeks and flying to join my mom and siblings at a cottage by a lake for several days.

I have been revisiting our home systems to ensure things go smoothly while I'm away, and this practical blog post will share some of my thoughts and practices on meals, chores and the big one, laundry!

I link to resources and previous posts on these topics as well.

When home systems flow, they facilitate physical, mental and emotional space for the more soulful parts of living, like relating and creating!

Here are my Top 3 Home Systems:

I interacted with the story of Job throughout my life as a faithful Sunday school student and church attendee; however, my first encounter with death and grief twelve years ago, when I had an early miscarriage, made it more personal.

The Sunday after my miscarriage, my tears fell in the hiddenness of this loss as I tried to sing along with words that echoed Job’s:

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised" (Job 1:21b).

But walking through cancer journeys with both of my parents in the same season trumped any heartache I have experienced.

The first half of this blog post examines Job exegetically, while the second half offers personal reflections.

The words to this poem poured out through many tears one afternoon while working on a paper that reflected the themes of time, grief and wisdom from Ecclesiastes.

Suffering and loss are inevitable life experiences for individuals and communities.

While grief is reflected in a myriad of postures and expressions, a sense of longing is usually present).

Suffering, “a feeling of more than one can bear,” involves a longing that can translate to hope in the right environment.

But today’s drugs of choice, including common coping mechanisms of denial and illusions of control, only exacerbate pain.

The Bible provides a down-to-earth model to process difficult emotions and lift one out of the “pit of despair” (Psalm 40:2).

Before examining a familiar passage of lament and the impact these expressions have on our spiritual lives, ministries, and the modern world, a broad biblical survey reveals God’s heart in suffering.

I mindlessly twirl the gold chain around my neck until I reach the tiny square locket that holds a picture of my dad and me on my last birthday and another of my family with my mom and him a few years ago.

It jolts me back to reality.

So much has changed.

I’ll turn 39 in a few days with my keepsake necklace representing the gaping hole in my heart.

My older sister sent me a Marketplace link the night before my 15th wedding anniversary.

I happily sent an e-transfer and drove a 60-minute round trip to pick up a sizeable wood-framed wall sign from “the back porch with the Christmas lights.”

That same night my husband measured and nailed the sign into a spot that had been waiting for something meaningful for almost four years.

It showcases a bold statement ‘blessed’ in scrolly letters, and I didn't see the deeper meaning until weeks later.