Jennie Goutet's Blog: A Lady in France, page 25

My Garden in a Magazine

Anyone who has seen the weeds in my yard in person (or scrolls down to look at the photos) will chuckle to see that my garden has been featured in a British magazine for expats who live in France.

And here is the article itself – probably too tiny for you to read. But never fear! You can buy your own copy!

Living France is the essential guide for anyone who dreams of a new life in France. Published 13 times a year, it is packed with detailed guides to the best locations to start your new life, inspirational stories from expats already living across the Channel and invaluable expert advice on everything from legal and financial issues to property and renovation. Available in selected WHSmith, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and independent newsagents, the magazine is also sold online on www.buyamag.co.uk/France-Magazines or you can take advantage of our subscription offers on www.subscriptionsave.co.uk

Visit our website www.completefrance.com for more great articles about France.

* This is not a sponsored post, and I was not paid for my article or to promote the magazine.

But weeds, notwithstanding, I was very honoured to be featured. And the garden is a source of pleasure for me – I love watching everything come up, and tasting the fruits of our labor.

Now in current garden news, the strawberries are ripening.

And the tomatoes are climbing.

The jasmine is weaving.

and the irises are standing.

The calla lilies are debuting (seriously for the first time)

and the peonies are budding.

The sage is flowering

And the roses are opening.

And God is just filling the canvas with something new every day.

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The City of Reims

Reims, sometimes spelled Rheims, is the largest city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, and is pronounced similar to ranse (like dance). It was peopled with the Celtic tribes, called the Gauls, before the Roman conquest; and afterwards, the city name changed to the Durocortorum. But legend has it that the name Reims comes from Romulus’ brother Remus who founded ancient Rome.

As the Roman empire died down, the Franks descended from Germany, and France comprised three warring factions: the Goths, the Franks and the Burgandians. The Franks took the Northeastern part of France, and their leader, Clovis was baptised in Reims after a battle in which he prayed to the Christian God and was granted victory. The city was considered sacred because of his conversion there, and all of the kings were crowned in Reims for a millennium (816-1825), apart from Henry IV.

I don’t have many pictures to share about the city as our focus for the day was the cathedral. But when you go, don’t forget to visit the Porte de Mars – the gate standing from the Roman times. We didn’t, unfortunately. It was too far and we had tired kids. The picture above shows the storage houses from Roman a couple of centuries AD that have more recently been turned into shops.

The cathedral of Reims is one of the finest examples of gothic architecture.

Built in the 13th-14th centuries, “its interior (is) characterized by soaring vertical heights, the richness of its sculpture and the technical quality of its construction” (quoted from here)

This is the interior, looking towards the Ambulatory:

And closer up.

This is looking from the Apse towards the front

and closer up.

As you can see, the restoration on the cathedral is almost constant – there’s almost always something being done. Here is part of the ceiling being restored where you can see the before and after.

In continuing with the pictures, here’s a look down the aisle.

And here are some stained glass windows. The traditional ones:

And the newer ones. If I’m not mistaken, this one at the back was designed by Mark Chagall. (I know he designed some, but am less sure if these close ups are the ones).

This other 20th century window is from Brigitte Simon.

It’s called “The Water of Life”

Here are some more pictures from the inside:

And more from the outside.

We went to the Champagne region to visit the cathedral of Reims, but we didn’t end up seeing much more of the city than that before having lunch and heading on.

Surprisingly, it was the impromptu visits to Troyes and the Faux de Verzy that charmed me most in the region. That …

and the countryside.

I got my information for the history of Reims from here, here and here.

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Church At Its Best

On Friday night we drove to our friends’ house for a baptism, and half the church was there to celebrate it. Fredérique is a college chemistry teacher who studied the Bible for four years (only doing so because her husband is a member of our church). She is analytical, scientific, rational. She was a confirmed atheist.

We arrived with our food contributions for the huge buffet that was to follow, and walked down the narrow cobblestone street where our friends live. When we arrived there were so many people that I hadn’t expected to see there – so many people I didn’t realise had made such a big impact in Fredérique’s life. But then, when you’re part of a church for 6 years, and actively studying the Bible for 4, you tend to make some strong connections.

A bunch of people shared about Fred’s transformation, including her twin sons, Paul and Simon. These rough and tumble 12 year old boys, who I’ve only ever seen wrestling, running, fighting, yelling, and playing soccer, looked like cherubs when they encouraged their mother in sweet voices about the change they saw in her, thanking Emma and Eugene (a Korean name) for studying the Bible with her, and then coming up to hug her. Fred’s husband, Emmanuel, took her face in his hands and called her “the wife of my youth”. They met in 7th grade.

When it was time for Fredérique to share, she did so for about ten minutes. She shared about how she came to the hard-won conclusion that God exists. She said

how she decided to make two camps, the “for” and the “against,” but found that for every “for” she could find an “against”, and quoted Pascal who discovered long before her that for every sign of the existence of God you can find a parallel sign to contradict it.

how Emma and Eugene told her to search in her heart. God is in the heart. She has to feel it in her heart, not know it in her brain. “But there must be something wrong with me because I don’t feel it. I feel nothing. How can I have act on something I don’t feel?”

how she decided to start putting the Bible into practice, and found to her amazement that when she spoke patiently to her husband instead of yelling at him, or when she apologised to her children for doing wrong (for example) that the result was desirable – and how she rationed that she could just put the Bible into practice like a recipe without actually believing it. But no, it doesn’t work that way.

and how, finally, she decided to focus on love, which is an emotion that doesn’t come from the earth, and cannot be explained away,

how she would do anything for her own family, and started to believe that perhaps God felt the same way for her,

how she saw the love of the people in the church who wanted to get to know her, and came over after work to teach her the Bible every week, and who wanted to be her friend, year after year, even when there was no “result”.

And how she finally came to believe that if the existence of God can be explained at all, it is through love. And so that was what she would focus on.

There were many kids there on Friday night, and we didn’t leave until after dark. As we were heading out, William said, “We have to get my (disgusting, large, toxic rubber) spider. I threw it and it went over the fence.” (italics mine).

The old fashioned street lamps didn’t give much illumination on the cobblestone street, so we took out our iPhones to use the flashlight function, and started searching under parked cars, in the clumps of grass, behind the trees that bordered the narrow street.

“Are you sure, honey? It doesn’t seem to be here? Maybe you threw it behind the hedge on the other side of the fence.”

“No, no, it went over the fence,” insisted six-year old William.

Our pastor and his wife came out, John and Carol. They are young “empty-nesters” – an American couple who came to Europe 25 years ago to help start the church in Paris and Brussels before going back to raise their kids in Boston. Now that all of their kids are out of the home, they came back to boost us since our little congregation had been without a minister for ten years. We needed them.

John heard what happened, and immediately took out his iPhone for the flashlight and started searching.

William started to get anxious, and ran back into the yard to see if the spider had indeed gone behind the hedge on the inside.

“William, let’s pray!” Carol called out. He paused, looked back at her doubtfully, but then turned away again. “William, let’s pray,” she said again. And though he was beginning to look under the hedges, she said loud enough for him to hear, “God, please help us to find William’s spider. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.”

“Amen,” I said. But after a few more minutes’ search, John and Carol started to walk down the cobblestone street to the train, and disappeared over the hill.

“We’re not going to abandon the cause,” said Juliet.

“We are going to abandon it,” said her mother, faithlessly prosaically. I wanted to go home.

The whole family turned to walk up the hill towards the car, and William reluctantly followed. And just then, we heard, “William! William!”

We turned back and saw two silhouettes, outlined by the old street lamps, running up the hill hand-in-hand, and yelling, “William! We found your spider!”

“No way,” my husband muttered.

When they arrived, breathless, with the spider, William was in a state of shock. “It’s not my spider,” he said, disappointed. “The end is all squished.”

“It is your spider,” my husband said. “Look. The two legs are missing.” He turned to John, “Someone must have found it here and thrown down the hill.”

John said, “It was way down there.” Then to William, “It’s such a big spider. I stepped on it and was so scared!”

“You didn’t step on it,” Carol admonished, giving him a look. She turned to William. “He didn’t step on it. You see? God answered our prayer!”

As we were driving home, I texted Carol, “I will never forget the image of you two running   hand in hand in the streetlight, yelling, “William! William!”

She texted back, “God hears even the seemingly unimportant prayers because he loves us that much! I was so excited to find that spider!”

And though it didn’t seem to make much of an impact on William that night, the next day, he said to me in his franglish, “Maman, remember? … ‘William! William! I found your spider!'”

I wanted to write down everything that happened on Friday night – the baptism that came with faith that grew out of the love from the assembly, the feast, the kids running around and the adults talking and laughing, the spider retrieval …

I wanted to write it down and remember it because it just seemed to me that this is church at its best.

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The Forest of Fairy Trees

In the Champagne region of France, you can stroll through a forest of fairy trees, called the Faux de Verzy (pronounced foe de vair-zee).

A “fau” is an old gallic (French) word for the beech tree. It’s now called a hêtre in French, a word which originates from German.

A fau (or plural – faux) describes the dwarf beech, oak, and chestnut trees that are found in the forest of Verzy, as well as a few other forests in the world (i.e. the Lorraine region of France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark). But the faux in Verzy are the most stable, and there are over 1000 trees there.

This looks like a walking tree monster, doesn’t it?

Books from the Middle Ages talk about the Arbre des Dames, which meant “Fairies’ Tree”, but most people call them dwarf trees.

The forest also contains regular beech, oak and chestnut trees, so scientists can’t link the anomalies to the soil or the region. In fact, they can’t really explain the fau’s existence.

Books from the abbey of St Basile mention the faux as early as the 6th century, and most people credit the existence of the fairy trees to the monks. Legend states that monks brought the trees from Asia on one of their pilgrimages, and planted them in the forest. Others state that the tree came about from a hereditary pathogen. Only one in 10 of the trees that grow in the forest will become a fau.

And even then, the roots are so fragile, it’s difficult for the tree to survive the elements.

In Verzy, the faux are protected by walkways so people won’t unsuspectingly step on a baby fau.

The canopy of green hides an exquisite sculpture of branches

We were reminded of their frailty each time we saw a dead fau.

The Faux de Verzy are located near the city of Reims, which we visited as a family. (More on that city on Friday).

Definitely a kid-friendly location.

Who knows! With all the greenery –

you might even get a good picture or two!

No matter what, you’ll have fun.

* Information from the French and English wikipedias.

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Frozen Berry Meringue

This is an easy, gluten-free dessert! It contains only meringue, whipped cream, frozen red berries and a red berry sauce, called “coulis.” You can make it, or buy it on Amazon, and I suspect you can find it in your local supermarket too. I discovered the recipe from my mother-in-law, who got it from her sister-in-law in Grenoble. And who knows where she learned it?

Whip 2 cups of heavy cream. I like to put the beaters and the bowl in the freezer ahead of time because I think it helps the cream to whip better. It needs to be quite stiff.

Then measure out about 3 cups of meringues – you can make them, but store bought is easier.

The meringues go from this

to this. Crush ’em!

Mix the meringue bits with the whipped cream

and get ready to freeze the mixture.

My mother-in-law always makes one big round of frozen meringue, but I had the idea to make individual ones.

These cereal bowls make quite a large dessert portion, so ideally you would put them in smaller bowls. Use 6 to 8 small rounded bowls – ideally plastic bowls that are a little malleable. I used what I had. Cover with saran wrap.

Freeze them for at least 8 hours (though you can make this portion several days in advance).

About an hour or two before you’re going to serve the dessert, mix the coulis with the frozen berries and let it sit out.

Take the frozen meringue out of the freezer and tip it onto a plate. Pour hot water on the bowl if you have to, but ideally you will have a plastic bowl that you can just twist and it will pop out.

Then divide the berry coulis mix over the top of each meringue. And then, you see, it looks like this.

Mine melted a little too much from getting it out of the bowl with hot water, and the result was just a little less pretty.

But the taste is oh-so beautiful.

Frozen Berry Meringue   Print Prep time 10 mins Cook time 8 hours Total time 8 hours 10 mins   From: Lady Jennie Recipe type: Dessert Cuisine: French Serves: 6-8 Ingredients 4 heaping cups of meringues 2 cups of whipping cream 1 package of frozen red berries 1 jar of red berry coulis Instructions Whip the cream. Crush the meringues. Mix the two together. Divide mixture in 6-8 bowls, or in one large one. Freeze for at least 8 hours Reverse onto plate (with a rim). Pour berry coulis on top. (Divide if making individual portions). 3.3.3070

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The City of Troyes

Troyes is pronounced like the French number three (trois) – twah. It’s in the Champagne region and the only reason we went there was because it was so close to our hotel. It ended up being my favourite place that we visited.

Its greatest charm is that so many of the houses and businesses are in medieval buildings.

The houses are old everywhere.

with old factories

and old architecture.

The streets are narrow.

And Troyes boasts one exceptionally narrow street: The Ruelle des Chats (Alley of the Cats)

It’s so narrow, the houses slope together and almost touch at the top.

Here is the view from inside looking up.

Here is the view from the wider portion of the street.

And even further back.

And here, towards the front again – from the tight part, looking out towards the pinprick of freedom.

There are some charming open plazas to offset the tiny alleyways.

And the Seine river flows through the city so you have some cute little bridges with statues everywhere.

Statues like this.

Juliet shows her French roots by automatically kissing on the side.

However the boys’ body language is universal.

There was so much to see, and the kids were just thrilled to be there.

No, they really were. They were just hungry. “When is it snack time?”

Troyes was home of the author Christian de Troyes, who was the first person to put the old myth about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table down on paper. It was also a marketplace on the Roman Road “Agrippa” that connected Boulogne and Milan, and as such, the ‘troy’ measurement for gold mass comes from here. Joan of Arc brought Charles VII to Troyes on his way to Reims,  freeing the city for him.

The churches were not destroyed in the wars, and the Saint Pierre / Saint Paul church (gothic and renaissance in architecture)

is not far from the Basilica church, Saint Urbain.

If you want to know more, there is a good comprehensive (but easy to read) history of Troyes here, with the sources cited.

When you’re visiting Troyes, you simply breathe in the history no matter where you go. We ate dinner at the Grill Saint Jean.

I had missed the photo on the back of the menu, which shows the history of ownership. The owner pointed it out to me as we were leaving and I asked how old the building was. They’ve been able to date the first owner back to 1460, but the document states that the building was already in disrepair at that point, so it had been built centuries before that.

We were seated next to this staircase, and it wasn’t hard to imagine people from centuries past running up and down.

<Wench! Get me some beer!>

(or something like that).

By the way, despite the bread that was not up to French standards, and the inferior quality of ice cream served to the kids (who didn’t care), I’d say that the welcome, service and food at the Grill were excellent. I recommend it for when you go.

At the end of the day, we drove the short distance back to our hotel (The Best Western – another winner), entirely satisfied with our introduction to Troyes.

* This is not a sponsored post.

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Kindness Wins. Always.

I was planning on writing this post on Thursday, and sharing the first post about our trip into the Champagne region today. But my external hard drive with all the pictures doesn’t work anymore. Sob.

So today’s post is about this book, by my friend Galit Breen:

I knew I would like the book because I love Galit’s writing. You can read her blog here. (And you can practice pronouncing her name properly in your head. It’s Guh-leet).

There’s a poetry to her words so I always love what she writes. But because of the topic itself, I didn’t expect to get so much out of it. My eldest is 11, and I’ve really shielded her from all things online so far (except for pictures on my own blog). It didn’t seem like the subject was really necessary for me at this stage in life.

But I have to be honest. Even as a blogger, I realised how social media “illiterate” I was when I read about everything kids are doing online these days. It’s not that Galit made me feel stupid – she’s incapable of being anything but kind. It’s that I tend to have my head in the sand about all these things. I only just got a phone that would allow me access to Instagram last month. (By the way, I’m here on Instagram. I meant to tell you that).

My daughter is already asking for a phone. She will be in junior high next year and instagramming on her own before I can figure this whole thing out. It’s crazy to think that. I needed the reminder that kids don’t always have filters – even the very best kids. And they need training on how to protect themselves and others online. They need training on how to react towards bullying when they see it, and how to avoid being bullies themselves, even inadvertently. Kindness Wins provides this training.

It teaches you about hashtags to teach your kids to avoid, or to use with caution. It reminds you to use short, repetitive messages until the whole “being respectful and safe on social media” thing becomes instinct. It teaches you how to see more than just your kid’s account, but also the interactions that they have with their friends (and their friends with their friends). It reminds you never to talk about anyone’s body, whether or good or bad. Ever. There is so much here that should be instinct, but you just don’t think about it. Or at least I don’t. Because I have my head in the sand.

As I was reading, I was wishing for a recap so that I would remember it all when it came time to talk to my kids. And there it was at the back of the book! So now everything is at my fingertips. As a result of reading the book, I got my daughter an e-mail address that I will allow her to use to communicate with her grandparents, aunt, and cousins. It will be under my surveillance, as will any of her early Instagram usage (whenever that happens). She won’t join Facebook until she is of the legal age to do so. And now I feel confident that I can send her out there, knowing she’ll be safe and wise in her online presence.

You can buy the book in print or Kindle format on Amazon, by clicking here, and at Barnes & Nobles by clicking here. If you have coming of age kids, I highly recommend this book!

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Eleven

This girl is eleven.

When you’re eleven, you no longer want to be a princess (except in the secretest part of your heart).

So instead of princesses, you have a pizza party theme. In the evening.

And you play Pictionary! And Lougarou (Werewolf).

And you eat real pizza.

And you take silly pictures.

And your mom bakes a cake.

(even if it’s too moist to hold together)

And you eat candy.

And you give glittery nail polish to take home along with the candy.

And your parents are realising that having you grow up

is … oh, maybe 95% perfection

and maybe 5% pain.

We’ll revise the figures at thirteen.

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Do and Do; Rule on Rule.

I am well. My house is an explosion of colour and toys from cousins visiting and birthday party paraphernalia, but I am well. Mostly.

I was sort of hard-hit to learn that the actor who played Gilbert Blythe in the Anne of Green Gables mini-series died. I’m not usually affected by celeb deaths, but this one felt more personal. He was only three years older than me, for a start. But I also grew up reading Anne of Green Gables over and over again, and discovered this mini series when I had just completed my semester abroad in Avignon – my first time away from home.

That year, I spent Christmas with my aunt in Germany, and once when she was away at an engagement (made before my visit was planned), I spent the entire day watching the mini series. It was such a cozy return to comfort after my months away from home.

I bought the series to give as a Christmas gift to Juliet so that she could discover Anne with an ‘e’, and we recently watched it as a family . For him to pass away right now felt extra personal and sad.

Yet overall, I can sense a shift in my heart and thought process regarding this whole grace thing. Saturday when I was reading the Bible, I suddenly remembered a scripture I hadn’t thought about in years, but I still remember where I was the first time I heard it nearly twenty years ago.

I was sitting with a friend in the hallway steps of a New York apartment, waiting for someone who was supposed to arrive but who wasn’t there yet. She shared it with me – probably in response to some comment I had made, which revealed my total lack of understanding of this whole grace thing. I was blown away at the time.

So when I thought of it on Saturday, I had to search for it and find it right away, and I eventually found it in Isaiah 28.

Priests and prophets stagger from beer

    and are befuddled with wine;

they reel from beer,

    they stagger when seeing visions,

    they stumble when rendering decisions.

All the tables are covered with vomit

    and there is not a spot without filth.

“Who is it he is trying to teach?

    To whom is he explaining his message?

To children weaned from their milk,

    to those just taken from the breast?

For it is:

    Do this, do that,

    a rule for this, a rule for that;

    a little here, a little there.”

Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues

    God will speak to this people,

to whom he said,

    “This is the resting place, let the weary rest”;

and, “This is the place of repose”—

    but they would not listen.

So then, the word of the Lord to them will become:

    Do this, do that,

    a rule for this, a rule for that;

    a little here, a little there—

so that as they go they will fall backward;

    they will be injured and snared and captured.

That verse is written on my heart (the way it appears in my Bible) “do and do, do and do; rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there – so that they will go and fall backward, be injured and snared and captured.”

I know it. But understanding it as a twenty-something, zealous without knowledge, busy without responsibilities – and understanding it as a forty-something, wise (sometimes) without zeal, and buried under responsibilities are two very different things.

Borrowing loosely from the book, Jesus +Nothing = Everything, it feels so much safer to add a little rule here, a little rule there in order to have the world spin the way it should. It feels safer to do this or that thing to be righteous (and therefore guaranteeing God’s blessings for a good and peaceful life) than it does to rely on this wholly unpredictable thing called grace. If it doesn’t depend on what we do, then we’re in the same boat as everyone else! Completely at God’s mercy and unable to predict what will happen.

But the more we add rules to our life, the less of a resting place it is. I think it’s safe to say that God hates us striving to attain perfection through our own efforts as much as he hates outright evil – maybe more? One has a semblance of goodness, but both ignore God completely.

God has been thwarting our efforts lately. That’s what I think, anyway. We’ve been after our banker about that one piece of paper that is missing (for months) that will allow us to move forward with our refinancing and work loans. When I went into the bank on Friday to see if she had gotten it for us, I was told that she had collapsed that very same morning and was hospitalised with (what I guessed was) a stroke from being overworked.

(I feel really terrible for her, and brought a card to the bank. I haven’t been able to find out if she is okay).

I’m waiting for my mother’s birth certificate in order to translate all the official documents and start the French naturalisation process, but they are backlogged. All official documents have to be dated less than 3 months, but it’s been 2 months so far that they haven’t sent the birth certificate and I wonder if the 3 months will expire on all the other documents before I have a chance to send them in.

My father and step-mom were supposed to arrive tomorrow and my husband took a week off from work. We were supposed to go visit the Champagne region and just enjoy our time together, but they have had a complication with their passports/flights. Now I’m not sure if they can come.

We are still having leftover problems with our dog, though we gave him away months ago. The insurance company is forcing us to continue paying until we prove that we gave him up. But we sent all the official papers with him to the refuge in Germany, so we have not been able to do that.

And then there are other nagging concerns, which are too personal to get into here (namely because they are not my story to tell). Nothing is going the way I want it to, and I finally broke down and cried last night. That’s actually a good place for me to be because it means a softening of the heart rather than a kicking out in frustration. I’m learning.

Because despite all my efforts, I am not able to bring about the results that I want. Do and do. Rule on rule. A little here, a little there. And all I’ve managed to do is fall backwards.

So I’ve stopped. No more kicking against the goads.

And I’m seeing that the flowers are still coming up. Food still tastes good. My legs work and I can walk where I want to go. Kids are still funny. Soap smells good and it’s nice to be clean. Hugs feel amazing, and there is no shortage of them. The shutters are closed at night against the brisk wind and the darkness.

And all is surprisingly well in the world.

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Attaining Perfection

I spend much of my days frozen with ineptitude, sitting amid the ashes and rubble, staring at the vortex of chaos that eats into the structured semblance of order and whips the pieces into more chaos. Does anyone else feel this way? I sometimes wonder if people commit suicide because they cannot bear the disorder. We were created for more. We were created for perfection. And all around us is disorder.

Some people seem to handle it better than others. They have a greater tolerance for deficiency. They experience more joy in taming the vast unknown one project at a time, one task at a time, one minutia at a time. But I’m not like that. Is it depression? Laziness? Perfectionism? What is so terrifying about accepting things in their unfinished imperfect state? Is it that I’m afraid I will be loved less?

I’m afraid I will be loved less.

I shared this with my husband. What will happen if I don’t tame the chaos in my life?

Well … the very worst thing. My one child who suffers from an excess of sensibility (which I recognise with a strike to the gut) might end up unable to bear the disorder. I might lose him. The simple house projects, that we cannot bring about through lack of time, might not get done until we’re old, and that will mean that we spend many more years in disordered imperfection than we do in ordered asylum. The sweetness of declaring a set budget and set diet – boundaries fixed in pleasant places – cannot offer relief if I’m too overwhelmed to set them in the first place, knowing all the while I’m all too likely to fall short of keeping them. What will happen if I can’t perfect my eating routine now and I just keep getting fatter and fatter until I die?

My husband told me he cannot love me less. He told me the other day that he glanced down at a pair of discarded shoes on the floor. They are my most basic pair. Black oxfords with little ties and customised insoles. They have not been polished recently and the edges are worn, and he thought, “Those are the perfect disguise for the perfect treasure.” You take one look at those shoes and you look away again. You think – they don’t contain anything of value. They are not chic Louboutin killer high heels. (This comes from me – not him. My husband has no idea who Louboutin is). The person wearing those shoes will not be anybody special.

These shoes!

But then, thought my husband, the treasure remains hidden for only me to see. This is what he told me, and this was the balm that he poured over my heart while I simultaneously tried to process it and believe it.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7

“I can’t handle the chaos!” I said.

“The earth was chaotic at one time,” my husband answered. “And God created perfection and order out of it. And our world is surprisingly orderly despite everything. We can’t get that paper from the bank, but the spring flowers come up just the same. And along with it,” he joked, “the weeds.”

“What does it say at the beginning of Genesis?” he asked, ” The earth is chaotic?”

“The earth was formless and empty,” I replied.

“In French it says chaotic. It comes from the Hebrew words tohu bohu, which the French have actually adopted, although in French it means more of a loud chaos, like a ruckus. There are many different interpretations of tohu-bohu, which is why it’s translated in so many different ways.” And then – because he needed to get to work – he got up and handed me four different French translations to discover, before walking off.

In one French Bible it said chaotic and empty. “La terre n’était que chaos et vide.” In another it said empty and vague. In a third it said invisible and unorganised. And in the last one it said unformed and empty. The world was kind of a mess, and God created order out of it in this beautiful way – creation! And the small order he brings out of every small disorder is part of the creation process. And the making of who we will be out of who we were and who we are is part of the creation process too.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7b-10)

I will go on, of course, despite the crushing chaos. Of course I will. It’s unthinkable to give up. But I’m finding it is just as vital to surrender to what is if I am ever to taste grace.

PS I was honoured to win Voice of the Year (VOTY) from BlogHer with my post at BonBonBreak on The Threat Stemming from Charlie Hebdo. Unfortunately I won’t be attending BlogHer this year because we have run out of frequent flier miles.

PPS I’ve also decided to stop teaching English classes in the home next year because I’m not able to get enough time with my kids and they have really suffered from it this year. I will continue my tutoring at a private school because it falls during school hours. And I’m on the fence about continuing lessons in the after-school program.

It’s a little terrifying for me – the end of an era. I’ve been teaching some of these kids for 6 years. I’m unsure how it will all go financially, but I want to make more of a career out of writing and be there for my kids, so I have to take the plunge. I hope this will ease the pressure I’ve faced this year due to lack of time.

And I hope it will help me to embrace the imperfection.

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