Author: kaitpack

Day nineteen of the new year

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Maybe the snow will never melt. It will leave its layers on the street, one week after another, until we can’t get out the front door. 

Maybe we will never be as close as we once were. Have the time we once did.

These are my thoughts in the third week of January, the worst of all weeks.

I HAVE NO FRIENDS, I tell a dear friend. 

I HAVE NO COURAGE, I tell my husband. 

Really I am just forgetful. 

I forget last July, sitting on her front steps long after the stars and the bugs came out – long past our butts going numb against the cement. Reluctant to head inside, to cut a good conversation short. 

I forget that feeling we had waking up in our very first house, that very first Saturday morning. The trip to Home Hardware and the excited discussions about sitting on our patio, cooking hamburgers, unpacking the fine china and serving cocktails to a long line of guests.

But I remember the eight months of house hunting – do I ever – going to listings, making offers, getting outbid. 

I should be studied – the way I forget the good things in the third week of January. 

As if we never had those late nights fishing where he put his hand on my knee and said, “These are the nights we’ll remember.”

But I don’t. Not on day nineteen of the new year. 

I don’t remember I’ve felt this way before, trapped between seasonal depression and hormonal chaos. And the best approach has always been to wait and see. 

Wait and see if the snow melts and the temperature warms and the trees grow green leaves again. Wait and see if we have another late summer night, catching up on the years we haven’t lived close to each other. See if we catch another monster fish – another story to tell our kids someday.

We are people who wait. Wait to see if death will die. Sickness will be a tale we tell about the past. Evil will be outlawed and heaven will be home. 

It feels hard and holy in the third week of January. 

But I will wait and see, with the screen off and the earbuds out. No scrolling to the end. Minute by minute, trusting and hoping that I will taste and see that the Lord is good.

Those will be the days

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Those were the days. The Christmases. When everyone was there. Everyone – and the cheese and the crackers and the strange pickled things and the same people getting offended and offending everyone else. Those were the days.

The Christmases. When I’d leave the townhouse I shared with three other university students and bring my laundry home to the farm. When everyone was there. Everyone – and the chocolate-covered almonds and the strange Christmas pudding. Those were the days. 

The days I believed that Christmas morning had some magic to it, would bring me every happiness, even if it didn’t.

“I used to love Christmas,” I tell him, dramatically. But we became too practical for our own good. Never had a tree as adults, never hung up stockings. Not in that basement apartment. Not when we were underground, with the small windows, waiting for our life to start. 

“I used to love Christmas,” I tell him. 

And he listens. A good man. I come home from the conference, pull off my heels and there he is – snipping old lights off a massive Facebook-marketplace-miracle tree. Five Christmases together and it’s our very first tree.

“I’m really in the Christmas spirit this year,” I tell them – and it’s not just the tree.

“I have been learning about heaven and it has been changing my life.” I tell him more than once. Just so he knows the big thing happening in my heart, as we live together, make dinner together, take out the trash and clean the floors. 

I’ve never understood Advent – not past the lighting of the candles at the front of the church. Not until this year when I’ve been learning about heaven and remembering His coming – the impersonation of hope. 

Those were the days. The First Christmas. When everyone was there. Everyone – and the animals and the angels and the humble in heart. 

But there will be greater ones yet. When everyone is there. The redeemed and restored – from every nation, tribe, people and language. The new earth, plants, creatures, creativity and culture. The feasting, celebrations, music, laughter and learning.

And no more shadow of death. 

Those will be the days.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:3-4

That awkward moment when…

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Are we all just freaks, trying to connect over the latest report on The Weather Network?

Or maybe some of us are more freaky than others?

We’re pumping ourselves up in the bathroom stall at every party, gearing up for some light banter – and hoping it doesn’t show that we might have a touch of social anxiety. 

Sometimes I watch him at social events. He always seems to have something witty to say and I find it fascinating. But I guess he married me because I can bring up the topic of terminal illness while we’re all sipping beer in a hot tub, having a grand old time? It is one of my coolest party tricks.

What was God thinking when He decided to enter into the human experience – attend weddings and go to dinner at other people’s houses – ALL THE TIME? 

Willingly choosing to enter into the misunderstanding of it all.

“Everyone struggles,” he always tells me. 

That’s why we convene on a riverbank in July, sipping beer and eating chips. There’s the person taking the selfie – half of us are not looking. Someone shares something personal and another person interrupts at exactly the wrong time. We are all working through different things in our minds. 

But we come together in misunderstanding. 

I have friends who are twins. One has always been the initiator – inviting people over and planning the big events. The other is the noticer – always aware of people on the fringe and ready to bring them into the conversation.

“I want our house to be a place where people feel they can come anytime,” he says the week after we buy our first place. And I know, he’ll be the initiator. I’ll be the noticer. And both will be necessary. 

I tell her how I’m giving speeches often now – at Toastmasters. I’m hosting events and speaking on panels, even if my hands shake when I hold the microphone. I’m trying, in spite of myself, to be seen.

And to get past my own internal monologue to see others. Enter into misunderstanding. Carry each other’s burdens. Give the clumsy side hug. Offer up a scattered prayer out loud in the parking lot. Really listen and not know what to say. 

And when all else fails, look up from my phone to say hi and talk about the weather.

“If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?” 2 Corinthians 12:17-19

Shores of Nineveh

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I expected to be swallowed by a fish and vomited on the shore of Nineveh. Or thrown against the cliffs of tragedy, the rocks cutting through my cynicism. 

My toxic trait is that I read the comment section on all the post-Christian influencer videos. 

It was only last year that I left her a seven-minute voice message: “I don’t want to be this cynical.” 

We’re in our thirties now and I’ve treated church like a McDonald’s drive thru. Get in. Get out. Consume the saturated fats and don’t run into any neighbours when you’re not wearing makeup. 

Reading the Bible was a daily habit because I’m a highly disciplined person. Not because I was hoping God would speak to me. GOSH NO. And if He did, please just use a still small voice. Nothing bold. Nothing crazy. 

But halfway through 2025, I realize my heart is softening. We used to be cynics together, but now she’s quick to tears whenever she sees me. She tells me how all her best laid plans are strewn across the past year and half – and she has never loved God more than right now, in the aftermath. 

There’s no pastor calling me to kneel at the altar at the front of the revival meeting, but there’s a softening when I grab his hand under the covers and we pray like we do every night. Even when we’re doubtful and our egos are bruised. Even when he can only pray for God’s will to be done because God’s will sure as heck doesn’t seem to align with his.

She says she’s always believed in blackness after you die. She asks me what I believe. “Heaven,” I say. 

“It’s funny,” she says, “no one really knows what happens after death except the people who have died.” 

And those who have risen, I want to say. Instead: “It does take faith.” 

It takes faith to see her tears and then agree with her that God can pick up the pieces of her best laid plans. His redemptive work still turns up from time to time in 2025.

It takes faith to reach my hand over to his every night. “We should pray,” one of us says to the other. 

“It does take faith,” I tell her. But I’d like to throw my ego out the window so I can have a heart as soft as butter – full of hope. Perhaps all His promises ARE true. 

I’ll be that believing fool.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

Old boring people potential

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I knew life would never be boring if I married him. It would be filled with many wild ideas I would feel the need to veto. But never boring. 

I knew this early into dating, when we were exploring abandoned buildings and jumping onto moving trains. 

It would be filled with a lot more small talk with strangers and minimal use of the self checkout at the grocery store. 

But never boring. 

Maybe there would be live lobster to cook and that would freak me out. Maybe there would be spontaneous road trips to the Arctic that would give me preemptive nightmares, but there would not be boredom. `

“We have nothing in common,” we often joke. Also: “We make a good team.”

I love to read. He rarely does. He likes to instigate adventure. I like to expand on it. He likes to buy things. I like to save. He likes to chit chat. I like philosophizing. I overthink some things. He overthinks the other things. 

On our two-year anniversary trip, he leans toward me and says, “You just married me to keep life entertaining.” I laugh because it’s partly true.

But I also thought we had old, boring married people potential. The potential for growth. We’d keep the adventure, but cut the drama. Apologize earlier. Forgive easier. 

Sure enough. We’re only two years into marriage, but every Sunday after church, we buy groceries at Costco – those dill pickle salads and a bag of apples. Eggs. Greek yoghurt. Fruit. We are faithful to the weekly list. 

And many nights, after dinner, we go on a 1.82 km walk in the dark. We talk about what houses we like along the edge of the neighbourhood pond – the one on the edge with the big patio. It’s not very exciting at all, but it’s one of my favourite things. 

We still run unplanned half marathons on a Monday and take last minute trips to the Northwest Territories, but we stay home too. We eat the same meals. Watch the same shows. Go to bed at the same time. Assume the best of each other, more often. 

I knew life would never be boring if I married him. But now I know, boring moments make some of the best building blocks. 

“But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs.” 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-11a

I do not know God well enough

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I do not know God well enough.

But I know she just lost her friend to a car accident. I know she just lost her baby in a miscarriage. And I know we just lost another man to an overdose. 

I do not know God well enough. 

But I know we just lost another house in a bidding war. I just lost another week to an illness. And I just lost another chance at a scholarship. 

I do not know God well enough. 

But I know what she told us over dinner as we celebrated her 60th birthday – and he asked her how it feels. Does she envy for youth? “I’ve gotten to live those years already,” she said with a smile. “Many people are looking ahead to them, but I have the guarantee of looking back on them.” 

I know what I feel on a Wednesday night when nothing seems to be working out for me – or for anyone else. “It’s been a weird week,” I tell him. “If only I knew God better.” If only my view of Him wasn’t blocked, but widened and expanded and lengthened. 

Maybe I would have perspective. The guarantee of looking back on who God has said He is. Showed He is.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace. (Helen Howarth Lemmel)

I do not know God well enough. 

But I know the way he asks for my company on an errand even when we’re both having a bad day. I know she always sends me notes and cards and newspaper clippings because she thinks of me often. I know the way she’s there to talk it out even when she’s barely slept. 

And God’s love is deeper than that. 

I do not know God well enough.

But I know He is gracious. Slow to anger. Abounding in deep, unwavering, committed love.

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.” Exodus 34:6-7a

Give in to joy

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Marriage is not for the rational. 

Not for his logical brain. Or mine. 

Until death do us part. For richer or poorer. When he’s puking on the bathroom floor on a Saturday night or making me soup as I shiver and sweat under layers of blankets. 

It’s a miracle, finding someone you want to vow to love for a wholly uncontrollable amount of time. (Humans–being prone to change.)

“How is married life?” Everyone asks. 

“If I had known how good it would be, I might have been less afraid to do it sooner,” I tell them.

It’s a miracle we let our cold feet lead us down the aisle and plunge into the insanity of choosing to love each other. 

A miracle. Like when we’re halfway through our trip to New Zealand–and I’m hangry to the enth. I pull the wrapping off my burger. “This is not what I thought I ordered,” I mumble. 

“You have mine,” he says without hesitation, handing me his bacon burger with double paddies.

What an insane, unreasonable institution. 

We’re at one year of marriage–and everywhere people are getting sad diagnoses. I can’t help but get stuck in the possibilities of tragic endings. 

I reach out to touch his arm in the night to feel certain. 

I read Mary Oliver daily to cope: “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.” 

A year ago, I didn’t need to eat with him, sleep with him or brush my teeth with him. Think of all I could lose now. 

“I love nights like this,” he smiles at me across the table. Later, I look in the mirror and think, “Wow, I am happy.” So very happy. 

And I will not be afraid. 

“She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.” Proverbs 31:25

In awe together

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He comes home and I meet him at the door with a kiss. We crack open a bottle of wine and I almost fall on the floor laughing. 

And he comes home and I’m lying in bed, worried that I’ll lose him and everyone I’ve ever loved. Scared I’m too old and married to make new friends in this big city. 

It might be a real shocker, but marriage hasn’t fixed the anxiety I feel over what wars may or may not happen, what economic disaster or health crisis is coming next or the person I’ll turn out to be. 

She asks me what God has been teaching me lately–and I can’t put anything into words. Maybe because I’m in the middle of it. What I do tell her: “If I had known marriage was going to be this good, I might have wanted it sooner.” 

And the older I get, the less I know. Maybe that’s why I get stuck in the Psalms. There are no pretenders with the poets.

Or with certain husbands. I go to him when we’re only a few months into our vows, wondering if I’ve made Jesus into my image–the non-denominational, pretty chill God I want Him to be. And maybe I don’t know the God who actually IS?

And he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. (I’m highly suspicious of people who do.) “It’s incredible,” he reminds me. That God loves us. Shocking, really. 

And marriage hasn’t fixed how I am highly undeserving of redemption. But we get to sit in awe together over it. 

The guy in my book club says it best. “When you put so much stock on certainty, you take away the possibility of faith.” 

The older I get, the more my life is filled with the possibility for faith. 

And the older our love gets and the more he says “I got you”, the more I realize there’s something to having someone to wonder with. Worship with.

Have faith in the un-fixable moments. 

We’re empty of answers. Filled with awe.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Passing the baton

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I’d like to call him to tell him I rode away with “that fella” on the motorcycle, one arm tucked around his waist and the other keeping my wedding dress out of the wheel. 

But as I was saying my vows, he was saying his goodbyes. As I was grabbing my husband’s hand, he was letting go of this life. 

We embark on our honeymoon and they call to say he’s already gone. Part of me wonders if he planned it this way–this passing of the baton. 

“Grandparents love you with no expectations,” I tell him, even though it took years before he stopped calling me Marjorie’s granddaughter. It took years before I was just his. 

“What did you love most about him?” He asks as he rubs my leg and drives us to our new home. 

His storytelling, often over liver and onions. His stories about Grandma and his first wife, growing up in Montreal, living in Turkey and the best place to find a Montreal smoked meat sandwich. 

We unwrap wedding presents until I find the one from him, the painting my Grandma made. I bury my head in my new husband’s lap and cry. 

I loved that he never stopped planning. “You have to dream,” he always told me. He would call and tell me about another cruise through the Panama Canal. I would tell him how I’d like to go to Namibia. You have to dream. 

And one reason I married him is because I know he’s better at dreaming than I am. And maybe it will rub off? “You should do it!” Is his first response. Also, “you should never be afraid to fail.” 

We don’t know much about marriage, but we start with that–the day after he’s gone. 

He always told me he was lucky he found two women to love until death do us part. He would visit their graves often. Two women to love. Two funerals, too. But he was lucky, he said. 

I hang Grandma’s painting on the wall above my new office in my new home in my new city with my new husband in the hopes that I’ll remember. 

Remember the love they built, eating icecream on the front porch at 9 PM. Watching the dog walkers. Watching birds in the birdhouses he built. 

I’d like to tell him I drove away with my new husband on the motorcycle. That I’m happy and I miss him. And that in sickness and in health–and in death–I am lucky to have loved.

Speaking of Ecclesiastes

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There was the year the barn burned. 

And the one where our shed blew away and half the house too. 

There was the year we stopped talking. 

And another, when we started from scratch. 

The year Grandma died. And the one when my nephew was born. 

The year I realized I wasn’t as good as I thought I might be. 

And the year I realized I wasn’t always going to be young and pretty. 

The year of painful acne and world travels. 

Of bad habits. Of quitting. And starting them again. Doubt. Confession. Repeat. 

The year a boy said, “There’s something missing here.” And the year another said, “I think we should do this again.” 

The year I still wonder if I could’ve done it differently. And what would that have been like? 

There was the year I prayed a lot. And the year I prayed very little. 

There was the year I felt like I loved God. And the year I felt like I’d never met Him—and maybe it was all in my head. And He probably didn’t love me anyway. 

There was the year she told me to wear SPF because I’d get wrinkles when I was older. And the year I got wrinkles. 

But the fine lines in my forehead are the reminder that I know I’m different than I used to be. 

I’ve only had 29 birthdays. By Grandpa’s count, I’ve got ages ahead of me. By others, I’m an old maid. 

Happy new year either way. 

But isn’t it interesting that God made seasons? And why are we all so obsessed with categorizing time into manageable chunks? 

God’s outside of time and we even try that mad business with Him. 

I guess I don’t know if this was a good year or a bad year. The best of them or the worst of them. If I’m a better person or a worse one. Or sort of similar. 

The older I get, the less I know for sure. 

But the more likely I am to get some perspective. 

Enough to know that I’m grateful I’ve lived long enough for fine lines on my forehead. I’m grateful for time with all the people who are still alive and that I get to keep saying “Jesus, I love you. Help my unbelief.” 

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:” Ecclesiastes 3:1