Feels like it’s been a while.

Feels like I have so much to share and no idea where to start.

What a week, what a month, what a year!

I’ve been waiting for a time of quiet so I can think and write it all down.

But even when there is no audible noise, there is soul-noise.

Yesterday it seems I may have found a place, a time of rest.

Because this morning it is a little quieter in my head, my heart.

Can I share?

This year has been one major event/change/transition after another.

Don’t we all have years like that?

Sometimes the big things are not good things.

This year they have been good things – thank God.

Because of course there will be times that are the opposite.

But not right now.

This year there was Meeting Oliver, Graduation, Turning 40, and Publishing My First Book.

But I don’t think I’ve mentioned much about church planting or the Northern Ontario focus or the Dominican focus.

Not to mention I am watching my boys grow up more and more every day. It’s a whole new phase with one of them in youth group and the other finishing up primary education soon enough.

And my husband will soon join me in entering another decade of life – he will also turn 40 next month. We really are growing old together.

Then there is IF – something new and beautiful and filling me up daily.

I find myself leaning into this song more and more every day…

I remember finding this saying at my mum’s house a few years back – I keep it in my wallet..

I can trust the waves, for I know the One who made the ocean.

Ya, exactly.

Lots of waves, not big horrible waves of destruction…

But waves that knock me over, flip me upside down, spin me around and around, and make me search for which way is up.

My husband tried out surfing in Mexico when I was five months pregnant with our first son.

We were much crazier then, in different ways, and didn’t mind hopping on a plane with 5 days notice and travelling across the world to catch a few days of adventure – with a baby coming we knew life would be spinning us around in many ways.

I remember sitting on a beach near Los Cabos, with a woman I barely knew, trying to spot Josh and this woman’s boyfriend on the horizon.

They had this crazy idea to try surfing.

Josh with his long wild hair and his fearlessness.

Me with big baby belly, red kerchief on my head, sprawled on the blanket on white sand.

They told us at the surf shop where we rented the boards that it was dangerous to go out on the waves that day.

Some of the walls of water were 12 feet high they said.

But still Josh went out, having never surfed before.

Back then I revelled in his craziness instead of trying to tame it (oh my, why do I even try to tame this in him?).

I remember scanning the horizon, not seeing the soon-to-be-father that I’d been married to for not even two years.

I stood up and searched some more.

Trusted.

I knew he was there somewhere, that God had him, that he would saunter back up the beach to me with that smirk on his face.

And he did, but not for a while, and not without a fascinating tale of adventure to tell.

He’d been knocked off his board, tossed into the waves, spun around and upside down, couldn’t tell which way was up.

Good thing he had tied off the board to his ankle.

Good thing he had something to pull him rightside up, to show him the way to swim.

Ya, good thing!

And I looked at him and knew I loved the craziness in him.

Always have.

And here we are, almost 15 years later, and I still love that in him.

But I’ve started riding the waves with him more and more.

I’m not sitting on the beach anymore.

Not wrapped up in a cozy blanket, watching life happen – now out on the waves alongside him.

And it’s spinning me around and upside down, and some days the waves seem way too big to be trying to navigate.

So instead I let them wash over me, and I pull on the rope that shows me the way up, and I come up for air, and get ready for the next wave.

Knowing that the seas do calm, the waves do still, and it will get easier to catch my breath – eventually.

Really, though, I wouldn’t want to miss the ride – waves and all.

What crazy changes this year is bringing so far…