2022 – Opportunity Unleashed

Going to the Park as a Blind Mama

The first time I took my daughter to the park was intimidating. I knew she was big enough to start going in the swing, but it wasn’t her I was nervous about. I wasn’t terribly comfortable with the layout of the playground. What if I couldn’t find the baby swings? Would other parents be grabbing me and dragging me around the place if they saw me trying to get oriented? What if all the baby swings were taken? How would I know and wouldn’t it be really awkward if I just stood there close by, listening to determine whether they were occupied? What if the other parents talked to me? Or, what if none of the other parents wanted to talk to me? What if all the children were attracted to Prim and she couldn’t do her job because she was being distracted?

I know it sounds dramatic, but my heart was racing along with my thoughts as I directed Prim to the gate of the playground and we made our way toward where I thought the swing set would be. As I suspected, parents did immediately notice me and offered help, but it wasn’t in the sort of aggressive way I was expecting. They just greeted me kindly and offered help if I needed it. I had an immediate sense of simultaneous panic and relief, something like, “Oh no! They are talking to me!”, while at once thinking, “Oh thank the Lord, they are talking to me”

One dad let me know that he and his child were using the swing closest to me, but that there was one available right next to them. I was endlessly thankful he had chosen merely to give me useful information about the location of an available swing, rather than seeing me close by and rushing to move himself and his child out of the way, which sometimes happens and always makes me feel terrible. We struck up a friendly conversation for a minute while we pushed our little ones in the swings side by side, and I started to breath. This going to the park thing wasn’t so bad after all.

Every time I have gone since, it has gotten easier and easier, and today was down right delightful. Little Miss thoroughly enjoyed her time in the swing, then walked and crawled about, happily observing the other children at their play, climbing the steps of the jungle gym, and obliging me as I put her on the slide a few times. One mother admired my daughter, remarking, “She’s gorgeous.” and we had a casual back and forth about our little girls, while two other mothers recognized me from a mums and tots group we have taken part in and we chatted amiably the whole time.

Once a cause for anxiety, trips to the park are becoming more and more a blessing, and the glimpse of possible friendships developing from it is an even more unexpected bonus. Add to that Prim’s great work taking me right to the gate of the playground, and then the baby swings, and the incredible weather… and I’m just feeling really thankful for trips to the park with my two sweet girlies.

Too Good to be True?

“This is too good to be true.”

I thought it the night my then boyfriend and I made our relationship official. I thought it at new years 2020 when we got engaged. I thought it on our wedding day. I thought it the moment I found myself in a hospital bed with our sleeping firstborn cuddled against my chest.

There are some things in life that prompt a kind of otherworldly happiness, a transcendent delight that seems somehow out of place compared to the rest of our human experience. That’s why so often we describe such things as “too good to be true”. We are natives to a world full of brokenness. Our expectation for existence itself is shaped by our rather uncomfortable familiarity with pain, disappointment, fear, guilt, grief, and conflict, among a host of other wrongnesses. It isn’t just romance that prompts such moments, but let’s use it as an example.

We are very aware that even the most amiable of earthly romances have not escaped the enevitable, tragic ending that all human relationships face, that is of separation in death. All earthly relationships, no matter how special or intense, come to an end. Even if two people proclaim their undying love for one another, and live it out, they themselves are not undying creatures, at least while they dwell on Earth. This is why we have tragic love stories, like those in the classic dramas or Shakespeare. With the existence of transcendent joys comes the potential, even inevitability of profound sorrow.

There’s something very wrong about that, though. The reason we have such phrases as “undying love” is precisely because we feel that love is something that should last, something eternal, something that doesn’t quite make sense in the context of a world full of betrayal and death. So, too good to be true? Yes, in one sense, it is.

And yet, it is true.

Perfect love stories untainted by sorrow are a thing only of fiction, but beautiful love stories do exist, and it begs the question why?

I am from the eastern US, a place that at one point must have been completely forested, and even now is full of trees. I grew up walking wooded paths in all seasons, and always loved looking at the patches of sunshine that filtered through the canapy above, pooling in warm golden puddles on the forest floor. There was one particular place, a thick pine grove at the top of a steep rocky hill beside the Patapsco River, where even in brightest daytime it was always dark and full of shadows. The top of the trees had become so thick that the lower limbs were no longer living, and many of them had fallen onto the ground and tangled themselves into shrubs growing up between the trunks. The gnarled scaly branches seemed to reach out sometimes to snag clothes and hair, and crackled menacingly underfoot.

It was not an inviting wood. I often imagined the sorts of dark-dwelling creatures that might be lurking in the underbrush. Those lovely pools of sunshine were very rare there, and were thus all the more precious to me. There, they weren’t just pretty, but a sign of hope, that light still existed somewhere beyond my gloomy surroundings.

Things we call “too good to be true” can be like that. They point to something else, a world beyond our present reality that is full of goodness and light. As Christians, we call that place Heaven, and the source of the light is the king of Heaven, that is, Jesus. Our world is dark, and we in some ways only expect dark things because of that, but there are beautiful things because there is a beauty that exists eternally outside our realm of space and time. Like the sun glimmering through the branches of the trees, Jesus shines into our somber reality in every lovely or joyful thing we have on earth.

So, too good to be true? No, only too good to be earthly, and it is a sign of God’s grace that we can see it. Even when the world was corrupted by our sin, God did not abandon us entirely to it. He preserves such good things out of his own goodness so that we can see him, and be lead to worship him. It is like Psalm 19, which says that the Heavens declare the glory of God. So it is that every otherworldly beauty beckons us to kneel in reverent awe of the one who made it, and when we rise to carry on, we have hope, knowing that they point to a time to come, when those things that seem “too good to be true” will be the only truth. The sun puddles of the forest will expand to engulf every bit of the wood, and there will be no more shadows.

Increasing Productivity as a Recovering Master Procrastinator

I got suckered by a Facebook ad yesterday. It was a somewhat intriguing article about someone’s journey freeing themselves from the shackles of chronic debilitating procrastination. At the end of the article was an invitation to take a free quiz to learn what kind of procrastinator you might be, and get a plan to defeat it. Against my better judgement, I clicked the link and took the quiz.

As I suspected, it was a useless waste of time, because I had to pay for my results, which I refused to do, but it did get me thinking. How on earth will I ever quit my habit of procrastination? It is a vice that has troubled me as long as I can remember, and I can only say I’ve made any significant progress in curbing the habit in the last year or so. The fact that I am writing this right now is proof that I am not as beholden to my habit of procrastinating as I once was, however, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Here are a couple of thoughts that have recently occurred to me in the pursuit of that elusive goal.

I first considered when I am already successful as a non-procrastinator. Are there already times when I refuse to allow myself to say, “I’ll do that later.’? The answer is yes, of course there are. I am a mother. That means any of my child’s immediate needs always take precedence over my preferences, indecision, anxiety, laziness, or whatever the cause of my desire to procrastinate may be. I just have to do, and resolutely ignore any part of me that protests that I would rather do it tomorrow. This is true of any situation wherein I find that I am not tempted, or at least can resist the temptation, to delay the task at hand. I make a conscious decision to prioritize the thing in question, and choose to do it whether I want to or not.

So what does this tell me about the situations where I am not successful in resisting the urge to put things off? It tells me that when I procrastinate, it is either because I have:

A. Not made a conscious decision to prioritize the task

B. Have not consciously considered the consequences if I do not complete the task, and or

C. I have become distracted by my feelings surrounding the task and have irrationally allowed those emotions to dictate my behavior.

There have been times that I have felt powerless to break the hold that procrastination has had on my life thus far, but identifying these causal factors, and noticing places in my day-to-day routine where I already regularly resist the tendency gives me great hope. If I can begin to identify the moments when I think, “I’ll do that later”, I know that I can redirect my thoughts to consider why I want to delay the task, and, if appropriate, choose to instead prioritize and complete it, just as I do with duties related to mothering.

I know all of this sounds very simple, and it is, but I think the reason that it is a revelation to me now is because procrastination for me has never been a very thoughtful thing. It has always been a sort of knee-jerk reaction, or gag reflex. Something came to my attention that I needed or wanted to do, I thought, “I’ll do that later”, and that was the end of that. The pattern is so familiar that many times I hardly even notice the thought at all. The thing just gets pushed to a later time, and I get annoyed with myself when I realize I still haven’t gotten around to doing whatever the thing is I could have already done. It sounds stupid but “catching myself in the act” so to speak is a new sort of skill, and the opportunity to develop it further is an exciting prospect to me. Here’s to ever increasing timely action and efficiency.

A Dwelling Place for Eternal Beings: Learning About Contentment in a Season of Searching

They say moving is one of the most stressful life events you can experience. I always thought that was because of the effort of physically dragging all your belongings from one place to another, and then finding yourself in a place where you may not have the same social circle you are used to and feel out of place and disorganized. Having actually moved several times since then,, though, I personally think the hardest thing about moving is all the stuff that happens before you actually start packing, that is, the house hunt.

We’ve been on the house hunt for half a year now. I’ve found it incredibly challenging for a couple of reasons. I suppose there are the obvious difficulties, of identifying houses that fit your criteria, establishing that they are available and within your budget, visiting them, and potentially making an offer, but then there is the emotional element.

Every house we visit that seems viable, I start imagining. I envision our baby growing up there. I think about the things we might change, the furniture or decorations we might use, what we might do with the garden or shed, the opportunities we might have there to be a blessing to our church family or neighbors through hospitality. With each house, a new set of dreams is born, and each time we have to move on from that house, for one reason or another, those dreams have to die.

As those dreams come and go, I find that I struggle more and more with contentment in our current situation. I visit a house and see that we could have a kitchen table, a bathtub, a garden, a sitting room big enough to have company, room for our daughter to crawl and toddle safely, storage (blessed, blessed storage space), etc, and naturally I am reminded that we don’t have those things right now, and it could be a while until we do. The emotions rise then, frustration, fear, doubt, and I have to reevaluate. What is really important here? Is it the convenience of a kitchen table, or the luxury of a bathtub, or is it something else?

“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.” (Phil 4:11-12).

My husband works weekdays from our sitting room, which means my dog, my daughter, and I spend our days in our bedroom and postage stamp kitchen. Baby plays with her toys on the bed, or, if I have cooking or cleaning to do, she sits in her bouncer or plays on her mat (which covers pretty much our entire kitchen floor hahaha), and I scoot awkwardly around her to do my chores. It’s times like these that I think, man, it would be great to not have to trip over my baby in order to do my laundry.”

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:16, ESV)

It was in one of these moments that the Lord stopped me in my tracks. I listened to my baby cooing as I stepped carefully around her on her mat, and was tempted as usual to dwell resentfully on the lack of space, but instead all I could think about was her. Suddenly I saw her, not just as my sweet little baby, but as an eternal soul. Her days were already laid out for her by the all-powerful God that made her, days that I was living with her even now. God planned that she should be playing on her mat in our tiny old apartment, and that I should be singing to her while I shuffled around her to do dishes and fold clothes. God planned that I should be her mother, and my husband her father, and my dog her canine pal. God planned that we should raise her up to know and love him, to teach her his ways, and God willing to prepare her for an eternity spent worshipping him in glorious daily activity in the new Heaven and new Earth.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)

Joy filled my heart at that thought. I didn’t have to have a kitchen table to teach my little girl about Jesus, or to model his love to her every day. I didn’t need a bath tub to tell her what it means to be a sinner in need of forgiveness, or to share the Good News that Jesus took the wrath that we deserved and that we may have everlasting life in him.

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2)

When I think about our apartment in the context of worldly standards, it is just a drafty, old matchbox, but when viewed in the context of eternity, it becomes a sanctum of holy joys, a place where God can be served and praised and delighted in, a place that may not be suited to comfortable dining, or entertaining any number of guests, but that is perfectly suited to entertaining the Holy Spirit, and all the work he has for us here and now as he intended from eternity past. I still look forward to moving, and I think we will still struggle from time to time with contentment regarding our housing, but I pray that every time my thoughts stray toward dissatisfaction, God would remind me once again of the incredible blessing it is to have his sovereign hand at work in our lives. Now is not a wasted season spent searching for a home while we are trapped in a cold and inconvenient living space. Now is a season that God has planned to prepare myself, my husband, and my baby for an eternity spent in the house of our Father. There is no house hunt more important than the one that ends there.

Transferring Guide Dog Schools?

I am a proud guide dog user, and a proud graduate of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, based in Yorktown Heights, New York. Both of my beautiful black labradors were bred, raised, and trained through GEB. I got wonderful post-graduate support from my trainers there, and expected to continue attending for successor dogs for the rest of my guide dog working life, and then I moved internationally.

As far as I can tell, Guiding Eyes would still be willing to work with me as someone that has already worked with them twice. I actually already did meet up with my trainer about a month after I moved here (she just happened to be coming on vacation and stopped by to check in with us ha. That’s definitely commitment), but there are complications when I need post graduate support, with the distance being so great. Thus, I am considering transferring to my local guide dog school.

In some ways, I am quite bewildered by this idea, because I have loved my experience with Guiding Eyes so much, and even more so as a returning graduate. It is lovely to have that connection with trainers and staff, and have that whirlwind catch up session any time you have a field visit or go back for a successor dog. If I carried on going there for every one of my guide dogs, there could be staff there when I am fifty that were there when I was sixteen. In that way, it is a very special relationship that I do not want to relinquish too easily. That said, I am also a naturally very curious person, and would be interested to observe the various differences between the two schools by pursuing follow up support and training with my local school… that in addition to the minor factor that they are not located an ocean away, which does make any necessary extra support a bit easier to organize.

So, it is my local school that will be delivering a follow-up visit with Prim and I tomorrow, and I am looking forward to the process. I am hoping to get a couple of things out of the visit.

1 Work on impulse control.

now that Prim is not only responsible for my safety, but also my baby’s, I am much more conscious of the way food and dog distractions can be dangerous, even life threatening. We had a frightening experience not too long ago, which I will write about another time, that convinced me this is an area that needs a bit of work for us as a team.

If I were to work with a Guiding Eyes instructor on dog distraction, I would expect them to encourage me to use a combination of leash corrections and counter conditioning (rewarding Prim for looking at me rather than looking at the other dog). I would anticipate possibly some use of the touch command, which I have described in another post, and other obedience exercises in the presence of other dogs. I assume the trainer tomorrow will expect that my training may be slightly different to that of his school, but I hope he will describe what he would personally do to work on this. It can be so helpful to hear other perspectives, more tools in your tool box and all that.

2 Work on a challenging route.

Most of my daily routes are not all that complex, and the truly complex one is sadly a long enough walk that I think it would be a bit unmanageable to do with the trainer, but there is one I can think of that I have never quite gotten a firm handle on, and that seems always to be a bit of a struggle for Prim in the distraction department.

3 Obtain a harness from the local school.

This feels a little strange to do, because Prim was trained by Guiding Eyes, and represents them, to the extent that a dog can represent an organization, when she puts on the harness with their name stamped into the leather, but I have requested whether we could be issued a harness from our local school, as recent events have revealed that the GEB harness is much, much different from the one people expect to see here, and that has caused problems more than a couple of times.

The only major snag in all this is that my childcare plan got derailed last minute, which means baby has to be there while we work on all this. How will all this go? I have no idea… but I shall update here with any relevant thoughts.

If I Could Name All the Guide Dog Puppies | A List of Names Beginning with G

It’s 2022, and so far as yet this year you have not heard any of my puppy name ideas, and that is an absolute travesty. I know that you have been waiting eagerly, the way my dog is currently waiting for her dinner, that is, drooling and dancing around my feet while I try to get other things done. Calm yourselves then, sit, good readers, sit and listen, for I have a whole list of G names for you to enjoy.

Guppy (Masculine, or neutral?): I always thought this was just a nickname for a baby fish, but apparently it is an actual type of fish, the most popular sort of fresh water tank fish, also called a rainbow fish. How cute would it be to call them Guppy Puppy?!

Geansí (Neutral): pronounced Gan-Zee. This means jumper in Irish, as in sweater, and it sounds ridiculous to call your dog Jumper or Sweater, but for some reason the same word in Irish is my top name for a big fluffy doggie if we ever got a second one.

Gabbro (Masculine): a crystalline, blue tinged rock. Reminds me of Gabriel in sound.

Gaither (Masculine): a second name name, but also apparently a Scottish variant of the word gather… go figure.

Gala (Feminine): a fancy party, but could be a fancy puppy.

Galaxy (Feminine): a name for the puppy with stars in her eyes.

Gallagher (Masculine): Irish, meaning “eager helper”.

Galahad (Masculine): English, meaning pure or selfless.

Godric (Masculine): Old English, meaning God’s power. Notably the first name of the founder of the Gryffindor house in the Harry Potter series.

Gulliver (Masculine): as in Gulliver’s travels, which I have not read, but reminds me of Oliver without being quite so common place.

Gondor (Masculine): here’s our LOTR reference for this list… the greatest kingdom of men in Middle Earth.

Gossamer (Feminine): as in light, delicate, gossamer wings.

Glimmer (Feminine): a glimmer of hope, the glimmer of starlight on the surface of the water. I like it.

Gazelle (Feminine): another lovely delicate choice for a sweet girl.

Galatia (Feminine): a region in the ancient world that eventually became part of the Roman empire, Saint Paul wrote a letter to the Galatians, now a book in the New Testament. Definitely worth a read, by the by.

Galen (Masculine): 129–199, a Greek physician that advanced the field of both anatomy and physiology, and also a cool name.

Galena (Feminine): a dark-colored mineral.

Galway (Masculine): a town on the west coast of Ireland known for its bay and talented street musicians.

Gardenia (Feminine): a bush or tree native in warm areas with fragrant, yellow or white blooms.

Gecko (Neutral): as in the lizard, known for being very vocal and active at night. If you’ve read my lists, you know me and naming dogs with other animal names. I just can’t help myself at this point.

Genoa (Feminine): a city in Italy, and also the name of one of my friend’s guide dogs and I thought it was pretty.

Well, are you satisfied? What would your picks be for a litter full of G puppies?

For more puppy names, you can find all my ideas in the “Guide Dog” tab of my blog, or find my list of A names here to start at the very beginning.

Give Me the Will of a Woman

It’s 2022… and you know what that means.

More posts at random intervals on semi-arbitrary topics written purely for the enjoyment of the process you say? Ha, wrong again… well, I mean probably right but first…

It means it’s time for another poetic reflection. The Lord taught me many things over the last year, and one of those things has been my desperate need for Him to reform my desires, to cause me “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13, ESV). This is my prayer for this year, that he would continue that refining process, changing my affections to reflect His, that I would hunger less after the things of this world and more for the things of His kingdom. I pray that he would do the same for you, and hope that you had a blessed Christmas and New Years.

I Need the Will of a Woman

I need the will of a woman,
Not the will of a wisp.
I need the want and the strength to do, like Ruth did, 
The thing I’m called to.

I need the Word, sung and sewn in my heart by the “Great Gardener”,
Who will change my will.
Would that he would. 
Would HE so that I could 
Walk on The Way that is narrow,
And plant the seeds he has placed in my hand.

My shepherd knows all of my faults.
He knows that I strive and fumble and fall.
He knows my will is the worst of them all,
And it is a wisp.

It is a whim that blows only one way,
And that only against.
It tantalizes, teases, whispers delights,
But they are always fleeting,
And always come at the price 
of blood.

I need the will of a woman like Mary.
“Let it be unto me as YOU have said.”
And let my will be dead.
Let my will be yours, And your will be done.

Give me the will of a woman.
Like Lydia who with her whole household sunk
Beneath the water and then rose up,
And left her old desires there in the sea,
To follow her Jesus to the cross,
To count every other thing as lost…

For the sake of Christ,
May He renew my mind,
And give me
The will of a woman of GOd.