Heather

Thoughts on going to church, and why it’s important.

I’ve spent my whole life going to church. You could say I was born into it. I was born into a family that placed a strong importance on attending church every Sunday. When you’re a kid, it’s great. You get to hang out with your friends, go to Sunday school, eat copious amounts of cookies and watered down juice. I loved it. Unfortunately as I got older I started to realize something.

Churches are full of sinners.

The church I loved broke apart when I was eleven years old. It was about as ugly a church split as you could get. Claws came out. I watched people who took communion together one day turn into enemies the next. They did horrible manipulative things to get what they wanted and what they felt they deserved. The worst part is that they probably thought what they were doing, was right.

Take anyone who has spent significant years attending church and ask them if they’ve ever been a part of a church split. A lot will say yes. Church splits are depressingly common. Sometimes church splits are necessary, as in the cases of unrepentance or false teaching. Sometimes church splits are because of pride.

Whatever the reason, they are painful. They leave open sores that last for several lifetimes. They leave multi-generational damage.

After our church split, my family and I spent a year going to a different church every Sunday until we found one we felt we could join. It was a long year, but it was also an informative year, because during that time I got to see many many different ways that Christians worship God.

I saw some bad, but I also saw a lot of good.

I once went to a church that was very energetic. One Sunday, the pastor called a woman up to the front who was the church custodian. I didn’t know the woman, or her story at all, but I think she was going through a hard time. The pastor got her to stand at the front of the church and thanked her for all her hard work, then he asked people to give what they could to show their appreciation for her.

Dozens of people in the congregation stood up. One by one they went to the front and laid money at the woman’s feet. By the end there was a sizable pile, and she stood there crying tears of joy. That church loved that woman, and they loved her generously, in a tangible way she would remember for the rest of her life.

I’ve seen people at church stop before taking communion, apologize to someone they have hurt, hug, cry and reconcile, and then go and take the body and blood of Christ.

There is good as well as bad amongst these wretched sinners filing into the pews every week.

For eight years I went to a church where there was no Sunday school, and at least five of those years my kids were the only kids. I tried to keep them in the service, but since my husband was the pastor that meant I was solo parenting, and by the time Sunday rolled around I was already exhausted. Not to mention my kids have always been noisy. I tried books, but that didn’t interest them. I tried suckers, but they would just crunch them in 5 seconds instead of sucking on them quietly for ten minutes like I had hoped. Eventually I just gave up fighting with them and took them to a back room. My kids would play with the toys and I would watch them. And every Sunday I would ask myself:

Why am I here?

Why do I drag myself to this building? Why do I fight with my kids to bring them to church? Why am I exhausting myself, just to watch them play with toys?

I wasn’t getting to worship. I wasn’t getting to hear the sermon. I wasn’t even getting to hear the announcements, so I had no idea what was going on most days. Why go through all that, when I could have just stayed home and let my kids watch TV while I read my Bible? Surely I would have benefited more from watching a sermon online at home, than two hours sitting in a back room.

But sitting at home isn’t church.

I think we all go through a phase where we ask that question. Why am I here? Why do I go to church? Do I even believe any of this? Is this giving me anything?

The thing I forgot then, and I forget now just as often, is that church isn’t about me. You could argue it’s for us, that you can reap rewards like friendship, accountability, love and community. A place where you can repent, and sing God’s praises, and be forgiven. Where you can grow in your faith, be taught, and spiritually fed. But church isn’t about you, just like the Bible isn’t about you.

It’s about Christ. It’s His house. Its where we go to kneel at His feet and remember that He is the King of our life.

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. (Colossians 3:2-4)

I love that line. “Christ, who is your life…”

My Life tells me to go to church. So I go.

That probably sounds like a weak reason, but it was the only reason strong enough to keep me coming to church every Sunday for those long years with little kids. It’s the only reason I still go to church, after seeing so much sin and destruction inside the church walls. Because after everything Jesus has given me, the least I can give him is 2 hours once a week. It’s the bare minimum. And yes, I have to worship him beside sinners. Beside people I might not like. Who might not like me. People who sometimes act the total opposite of Christ.

Maybe you’re in a similar situation. Are you dragging yourself to church every Sunday and asking yourself: “Why am I even here?”

Maybe you feel like you don’t fit. You wonder how long until people figure out you don’t really belong in that church pew. Satan wants us to be alone after all. He drives us to isolate ourselves. That voice telling you you don’t need to go to church, or that voice telling you that you don’t belong, or that your sin is too great, that voice is not from God. It’s from the other guy.

Maybe you’ve been hurt by the church. Maybe you’ve watched Christ-followers do awful things to other people in those pews.

You could quit. You could never come back. But the sinners in the pews doing a terrible job of representing Christ are not the reason you’re there in the first place. And if that is the reason, then watch out, because it will eventually crumble.

The answer to the question “why go to church?” is one simple answer. The Sunday school answer we all know.

Jesus.

He’s the reason we go to church. We do it for him, not for ourselves and what we get out of it.

He is the reason, I’m still here.

It’s the Christmas season! Let’s talk family traditions.

This year was only our second American Thanksgiving, and while not having Thanksgiving in October is still a little weird, there is a nice bonus to the change in date. An exciting perk of Thanksgiving at the end of November, is that it jumps right into Christmas.

We get into the family holiday, festive turkey cheer, and all of a sudden the Christmas lights are up! We can see trees decorated in rainbow lights through people’s windows. We put up all our indoor decorations, and the advent wreath is ready with 5 new candles. The countdown to Christmas has begun.

Do you have Christmas traditions you like to celebrate? I love hearing from people about what they do as a family. There’s always that taste of uniqueness in every home. Everyone does their Christmas just a little bit different from someone else’s.

One of my own personal traditions is to watch The Holiday every year by myself. That probably sounds depressing, but the reason behind it is that my husband likes to make fun of the movies I watch and so its more enjoyable by myself. This tradition started when he worked as a pastor. Christmas for the pastor is no vacation. If anything its the eleventh hour. Its go time!

In other words, I took advantage of my husband being away to watch the girly movies I wanted to without being mocked. After I put the kids to bed, I would sit in our basement, light myself a fire, and soak up the lovable charm of Jack Black and Kate Winslet. I watch that movie almost exclusively for the one scene where Miles and Iris are in the video rental store (remember when we used to go to a store to rent movies?) and Miles is singing the theme songs to all his favorite movies to her. If you haven’t seen it, go get it and watch it. Even just that one scene. It’s brilliant. And keep your eye out for Dustin Hoffman.

Movies are a big part of Christmas traditions! Some hunker down for nine hours of Lord of the Rings extended version. Others its How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Home Alone. I’ve heard the argument for Die Hard as a Christmas movie. Apparently Bruce Willis doesn’t think so, but who cares right? It doesn’t have to be a Christmas movie to be a Christmas tradition.

And while I love movies, my first love will always be books. Do you have any Christmas traditions that revolve around words in print?

My favorite as a kid was One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham. It follows the whole Christmas story from creation to the nativity, up to the crucifixion. I mostly loved the pictures. Full pages of complex illustrations of every kind of animal. Faces so detailed they could be real, complete with laugh lines and grey hairs.

My other favorite Christmas book is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. It’s even funnier now that I’m a parent, and at least two of my kids could easily be one of the Herdmans. Also, if you’ve spent any time at all in a church, the descriptions of the women running the Ladies’ Aid and the potluck are hilariously accurate. And if you’ve been to a church Christmas pageant a time or two, you can definitely relate to this story. There’s the younger kids as angels or sheep complaining their costumes are too hot. There’s the one kid picking their nose at the front. There’s the young boy who doesn’t want to sing and scowls the whole time. (Cough cough. It’s one of mine.)

Not only is the book ridiculously funny, its also challenging on a deeper level. It challenges us to think about the nativity story in a new way. We hear it so much we forget Mary and Joseph were refugees. That Jesus was an illegitimate child they had to hurriedly marry to cover up. Its easy to settle for a shiny, pristine Christmas story. Safe and snug and happy. But it wasn’t like that at all.

While I love forcing my favorite books on my kids, they rarely share my love for them. Instead, they are coming up with their own favorites. Right now my 3 and 8 year old are obsessed with a Nutcracker book that plays the famous ballet music by Tchaikovsky. My 6 year old keeps asking me to read Finding Christmas by Robert Munsch, where a girl is looking for where her parents hid her presents.

How about you? What are your favorite Christmas stories and traditions? Are you breaking out of the traditions you grew up with and forming new ones?

Whatever your holiday routine, I hope this time of year gets you excited instead of making you full of dread. I hope you have joyful traditions, instead of a heavy to do list.

Reminiscing about the stories we loved when we were kids.

There have been two special book series in my life. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that got you through hard times when you were a kid in school. The ones you stayed up waaaay too late at night reading under your covers with a flashlight. The ones you cried when they ended, not because the story was so sad, but because you knew that was the last book in the series, and there is nothing quite as exciting as reading a good book for the first time.

The first pivotal book series in my childhood was the Narnian Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. I wanted to live in Narnia more than anything. Pretty sure if I had a wardrobe instead of a closet I would have crawled in that sucker and stayed there for hours waiting for a magical door to open. I wanted to be Lucy. I wanted to know Aslan and bury my face in his mane. I wanted to be a queen of a magical land filled with fawns and talking animals.

I remember weeping while reading the Last Battle when the evil dwarves killed all the horses that had just been freed and were charging out to join the battle.

The second book series that was pivotal in my younger years was Harry Potter. Now I know Christians get all uppity when it comes to talking about Harry Potter, but I would just like to point out that The Narnian Chronicles also have questionable parts. Remember the guy from Calormen who has no idea who Aslan is, but makes it into heaven because he’s a good guy? Yeah, chew on that for a while. I could probably put an entire blog post debating why you should let your kids read Harry Potter (that’s not a bad idea!) but let me return to my original point before I get too far down this tangent rant.

I remember I was in grade eight when I first laid eyes on Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone (why is it sometimes called the Sorcerer’s Stone instead? Anyone know?). My friend had the book sitting on her desk at school and I leaned over to read the first sentence of chapter one, and asked: “What book is this?”

And that was it. I was hooked. That book had me so enthralled by the first sentence I borrowed my friend’s copy and proceeded to try and read all of it instead of paying attention at school. I remember at the end of the day she very politely asked for it back, and then probably had to pry it out of my vice-like fingers.

Thus began a ten year journey of reading lovable Harry Potter. I would pounce on the next book as soon as it came out, read it in three days, and then lie around bemoaning my life because I would now have to wait a WHOLE NOTHER YEAR until the next one arrived. Fortunately they soon started making movies and that helped to ease the pain of Potteritis.

Harry Potter books carried me from elementary school, through high school, and up to my wedding. I read The Deathly Hallows aloud to my husband when we were on our honeymoon driving to the Grand Canyon and back. I feel like I grew up with Harry and Hermione and Ron. We faced the battles of bullies, puberty, and dating together. I even dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween one year. That’s right. Not Hermione, or Luna or Ginny. Harry. Heck, I had the glasses already and the short hair. I really hope the photographic evidence of that never surfaces on the internet…

Sigh, I miss those days. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fantasy series as life gripping and world overtaking as the Narnian Chronicles or Harry Potter. To be honest that’s my dream! To be as good a writer as C.S. Lewis or J.K. Rowling. Maybe I need to change my pen name to H.M. Knutson? That’s probably step one.

So! Here’s my question for you. What books formed you in your childhood or your youth? What were the books you couldn’t put down once you started them. The books you wished you could live inside them and be one of the characters.

Pretty sure I’m going to dream of Hogwarts or Cair Paravel tonight.

5 funny stories about moving from Canada to America.

Okay, so I realize it’s a bit brazen to use the term ‘strange land’ when I moved from Saskatchewan to Minnesota. I didn’t have to learn a new language, or eat foreign food, or learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road. Moving from rural Saskatchewan to Minnesota is about as big a step as switching from a 9:30 am Sunday church service, to the 11:15.

But even with all our similarities, and the many things we have in common, I have been surprised over the past 6 months how many things are different.

Numero Uno! The postal service.

I don’t know if you know this, but where I used to live we do not have mailboxes on our front lawn. Our mailbox is at the post office, and in order to receive said mail one has to get into their car (usually with four screaming children) drive to the post office and unlock a box with your number on it (usually with four children screaming over which one got to put in the key). In cities, especially older areas, you can have a mailbox on your front lawn. My parents used to have one, and my mom bought it with a lovely red flag that you could raise. The mailman thought this was great and would lift the red flag whenever he delivered their mail.

But in America, that little red flag doesn’t mean you have received mail. You put that sucker up if you’re SENDING mail from your own house. This is also a foreign concept to a Canadian. If you want to send mail in Canada you have to get in your car (with four screaming kids) and drive to the post office, and put the letter in a special slot (while your screaming kids fight over which one gets to slide that letter in).

Whoever is the mailman that has to deliver to our house in Minnesota, we owe you an apology! We did not know the purpose of that adorable little red flag. When we moved in my kids thought it was great fun to raise it. They put rocks in the mailbox and raised the flag. They put the red flag up when the mailbox was empty as a prank for their siblings. They put the red flag up whenever they felt like it, because that little red flag just looks so darn cute sticking straight up.

Number 2. Vehicles

We do not have two license plates in Saskatchewan. We have one license plate and it goes on the back of the vehicle. The front of the vehicle is where you put your ramming bar for plowing through snowdrifts on the back roads. I’m just kidding. In Canada we travel by dog sled.

Once again Heather’s ignorance shines through as I did not realize the two license plate rule. So when my license plate tags showed up I thought it was a little odd there were two stickers with the same dates on it. But no worries! I knew what I was doing! So I put those two matching stickers on the back license plate with pride. Look at me! fitting in with my Minnesota plate.

Then while driving I noticed every car around me had a front license plate. Whoops. Instead of saying APR 2023 on my license plates, mine now reads 2023 2023. I tried to scrape those stickers off. They DO NOT scrape off. They mostly just shred into a thousand tiny unusable pieces.

Number 3. FOOD

Food is probably the biggest adjustment whenever you go anywhere that’s not your home. We all love food. Food carries traditions. It carries memories. It carries comfort.

It also carries names.

I spent several trips to the grocery store trying to find chickpeas. They are not called chickpeas in America. They’re called garbanzo beans! who knew.

My husband also learned the hard way, that there is no Deluxe Pizza in the U.S.. When he ordered one the lady at Papa Murphy’s looked at him like he was crazy before very politely saying: “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He switched lanes. “Fully loaded? do you have that?” Again the this-guy-is-crazy expression.

It’s called Supreme.

Other terms we had to learn: Tater Tot Hot Dish. Its not KD, its mac & cheese. Icing sugar is confectioners sugar. And there is no such thing as brown flour.

Well there is. But you can only buy it in small bags and hardly anyone uses it. In Canada we buy our whole wheat flour in 10kg bags!

Number 4. Weather

My neighbor told me Fall is the season for shorts and sweaters. I thought he was joking. Then autumn came. I would bundle my kids up in snow pants, long sleeve shirts and winter coats because the mornings felt like winter. By noon it would be 68 degrees (+20 Celsius). By 3pm when I’d pick the boys up from school they would be beet red. Sweat pouring down their faces.

“Mom! You over dressed me again!”

In Saskatchewan fall lasts 2 weeks if it’s a good year. One day its summer. You’re frolicking at the beach getting a sunburn. The next the world is all white and you’re hunkered by the fire waiting for the next 6 months to pass.

We also use Celsius to tell temperature which is, I’m sorry to say, but the far better option. If the numbers are positive its warm. Negative its cold. Zero is where it freezes. Now I have to figure out freezing from 32?? My brain exploded.

Number 5. Medical Care

My husband hurt his wrist. I should probably say it was doing something manly like lifting a car to save a pregnant woman, but it was from crawling around the children’s museum with our kids. He’s going to be thrilled I included that tidbit! He asked the woman at the pharmacy if they had any tensor bandages. He received yet another look like he was crazy (this happens a lot apparently). My husband proceeded to try and describe what a tensor bandage was. You know, those long stretchy pink things you wrap around wrists and ankles?

We learned its called an Ace bandage. I don’t even know how to spell it, but I’m guessing that’s right. Unless maybe its Aice? or A.C.E. bandage? but what that acronym stands for your guess is as good as mine. Always Comfortable Easy wrap. Okay I got nothing.

And yes in Canada we live in the land of free health care (as do 43 other countries!). Not entirely free, you usually have a small monthly deductible if you’re a part of a group plan, and eyes and teeth are often extra.

Canadian health care does have its problems. Over loaded hospitals. Long wait times for knee and hip replacements. Long wait times for scans and sometimes even family doctor appointments. But I won’t complain about Canadian health care anymore! Not since we received our $700 bill for going to a medi-clinic to get antibiotics. Yikes.

And guess what? the antibiotics didn’t work. So we had to go and see a new doctor over Christmas holidays. In Alberta. It cost us $20 for the new antibiotics. That was it. The whole bill. $20.

#5. 2. This is a Duotang.

Okay I realize I’ve gone over my 5 stories, but I couldn’t think of a category to put this one in, hence the 5.2.

The most important thing you need when moving to a new country, is a good local friend! This comes in very handy when one has to ask strange, embarrassing questions.

For example. When your son’s school sends out the supply list for the year and you’re standing at Walmart and you realize they want you to buy a paper folder.

You think to yourself. Okay a paper folder. That’s easy. Its a paper thingy with slots for loose papers.

But then I started thinking, or maybe its a Duotang… and my Canadian spidey-sense went off with the inkling that Duotang was quite possibly another Canadian term that was bound to receive a this-girl-is-crazy look. So instead of awkwardly asking the employee at Walmart, and having to explain myself with hand actions and audio-visual demonstrations. I texted my good Minnesotan friend.

And she said: “I have never heard of a Duotang in my life.” (that might not be a direct quote… it was a while ago.)

So here you go. If you don’t learn anything from this very rambly blog post, at least you can leave with this. Duotangs are paper folders with those metal tabs that slide into hole punched paper.

According to Wikipedia, it was actually a company started in Chicago in 1931. Then the company was bought out by Oxford. So the term Duotang died out in the U.S. and became “paper folder” whereas in Canada it lived on.

So if you know anyone who immigrated to a different country, find them and tell them they’re doing a great job.

Because I can’t imagine how hard it was for them to leave everything familiar and go to a place where they had to learn how to do every day life from step zero. Especially if English isn’t their first language.

And if you want to hang out with some crazy Canadians, we’re always up for a laugh. We’re pretty easy to spot. Over dressed with our toques on, trying to pay for things with monopoly money, and showing up for Thanksgiving a month early.