What do you dream? —Carolyn R. Wilker

What did you dream as a child, as a youth, or as a young adult? Has that dream come true, or is it still on the way?

Today I began to read Exit Stage Right by fellow writer Jennifer Willcock. In it a student dreaming of a career in ballet goes for an audition at a prestigious school, despite anxiety whether she will be accepted. [No spoilers]

I thought about the fictional girl and how we follow our own dreams.

From the time I was a small girl, I’d wanted to be a teacher. My dreams may have come about because of a Sunday School teacher, as I learned new songs and heard new stories. Or it may have been inspired by my first teacher in my elementary school. Whatever it was, I saved my Sunday School papers and told my mother that I would need them because one day I would be a teacher.

  

Mom gave me a set of loose leaf rings to keep the Sunday School papers together. I believe I would also have kept my school notebooks indefinitely, as well, if I had been allowed to. The Sunday School story pages eventually disappeared and my school notebooks made their way to the attic of our farm house, to yellow with heat and age, and one day be tossed, but I was fiercely attached to my goal.

After confirmation at age 14, I eagerly accepted the challenge of teaching Sunday School, planning each lesson and teaching the students entrusted to me. I taught children of varying ages, and at summer camp too. It was as if my site-glass was permanently set on that goal.

Me with one of my Sunday School classes and fellow teacher

During my Grade 12 year at high school, I applied to college in the Early Childhood Education program and was accepted. I achieved my dream, teaching for several years—in co-op preschool, a city daycare centre—and then my own children as they came along. Eventually I made my way back to co-op preschool with my daughters, assisting the teacher and filling in when she couldn’t be there.

In time, I began to write, then began to teach again—adults this time—and curiously also to take up Toastmasters and storytelling, and writing stories for others, including children. My goal shifted, but I was still teaching and helping others learn.

 

Storyteller at Enabling Gardens in Guelph

Through it all, there has been one guiding principle—my faith in someone greater than I am. A force that has been with me since childhood, something I continue to learn about. In spite of this current time with the Covid-19 pandemic, no matter my emotions at the moment or my goals for another book, I know that Jesus walks with me each day. I can count on him.

Your dreams can take on different shapes as mine did. They can take you on adventures you never dreamed possible. Who walks with you and guides you in your dreams? I hope you found a guide with a reliable compass.

https://www.carolynwilker.ca/

Carolyn R. Wilker is an Ontario-based writer, editor and storyteller

Tis the Growing Season

Everywhere I look now, I see the green of spring, pretty petalled flowers and their stems, leaves unfolding on trees, and little shoots coming up in the garden. And bigger plants that were started as seedlings. And while refreshing the flower beds this spring, sharing some of the overgrowth with fellow gardeners. Soon the weeds will come too, unfortunately.

Our own garden beds

We’ve got an extra bed for plants this year, besides our own two raised ones in our backyard. A church not far from ours has expanded their community garden and I thought I’d like to try it out this year. That bed is planted too, just last week, so the seeds are doing their thing, germinating underground, I hope, and the tiny onion sets are beginning to poke a stem through the soil. It’s an experiment this year, having an extra garden elsewhere. My granddaughters helped to plant at our home, and I look forward to showing the two older ones the other bed when they come next week. It will take some extra work and time going there and back, but it’s an interesting experiment thus far.

Community garden bed behind this colourful one

The promise of growth happens in spring in creation and it can also happen in our lives when we dare to explore something new. I haven’t always been a writer, for publication, but I’ve always been a reader. My first career as a preschool teacher taught me things that I didn’t know that helped me when my children were young preschoolers. It’s still an age I enjoy, even if my energy is not all it used to be. Each new thing I’ve tried—retail, election work, learning to play musical instruments, storytelling, teaching, writing and editing—have brought with them lessons I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. New connections were forged and publication credits encouraging, but also humbling.

The down sides have been like the weeds, cropping up here and there, making me doubt myself and my abilities from time to time. I ask myself, Was I meant to do this? But it was always something I wanted to try, like learning to play guitar more than a year ago, and more recently, deciding to try playing bells in a bell choir. The learning was still sometimes quite hard and required greater concentration.

Storytelling at the Button Factory

I’m still learning and hope I always can continue to learn. It keeps life interesting. It’s not always something brand new, but a different area of something that already holds my interest, like natural gardening and ways to work with nature instead of against it. 

And so the weeds are there all the same, in the garden and in our lives. I just need to learn when to pull them out and examine the situation from a different perspective before jumping back in again.

Garden, if you wish, but learn to recognize the weeds.

Writing Your God Story by Rose McCormick Brandon

I’m teaching Writing Your God Story at my church, the second go-around for this six-night workshop. No one gets more out of these classes than I. As prophets of doom condemn the world and one is tempted to believe that nothing good is happening, stories of redemption pour forth from my students and fill my soul with hope. Their stories remind me that God is always working in human hearts.

One tells his story of a life of addiction to food and alcohol. Until three and a half years ago. That’s when he met Jesus and His life began to change. Today, he’s one hundred pounds thinner and sober. And eager to tell his story.

A young woman born in a refugee camp in Rwanda to a praying mother tells how God saved her life more than once. As a child she stood on the bridge over the river as thousands of bodies floated by. I recall this image as it appeared on the news. She was there, present, viewing this horrific scene. Today, she’s the founder of an organization that supports Rwandan children.

A man writes of his healing from cancer. Another writes in creative non-fiction style about the darkness of his past. The big stories of forgiving abusers and God’s intervention in hopeless cases should be told. But so should the small stories, those everyday miracles of finding a lost item, obeying a nudge from God to call a friend, a check appearing in the mail box on the day the rent is due – this is where people live and they want to know that God cares.

It’s important to tell our stories. Tell where we came from, where we’re headed and what has happened along the way.

Personal stories remind us of God’s goodness. They inspire faith. 

Keep all God’s salvation stories fresh and present. Micah 6:5 (The Message)

Our stories are important because they intersect with God’s story. View your life story as one page in God’s massive book.  God is still writing His story, and He’s writing it in our lives. C. H. Spurgeon wrote, “On a small scale, we have repeated a portion of early church history in our own personal stories. The life of the believer is the life of Christ in miniature.”

If we only speak our stories, they will be forgotten. But, if we write them, they will remain.

Our God stories are our best witnessing tools. Let’s keep telling them.

***

Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of four books, including, Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children. Visit her blogs, Listening to my Hair Grow and Promises of Home. Her books are available at http://writingfromtheheart.webs.com

When things take us by surprise—Carolyn R. Wilker

This week has been one of surprises and evidence of change in our lives—some of which does not come entirely by surprise. You see those little signs of those changes, if you look for them, but others, such as a death, can completely turn your world upside down and change the landscape around you.

Earlier on Friday, Heather came for a visit, one that we’d planned weeks ago. We talked about our work and other activities we’re engaged in and how those events shape our lives and contribute to both health and happiness or stress and distress. And since we both enjoy word games, I brought out my Scrabble board and letter tiles and we played a game.

 Before the visit was over, I received a phone call from someone who asked me to sit down before she relayed her news. Surprises, and yet in some ways we might have seen this coming. But still I was not ready to hear it. I had to deal with that at the moment and then, because I had a guest in my home and an event to host that evening, I had to set that news aside or at least try to.

On our way to storytelling, my friend Judy and I talked about events and circumstances that could take over the rest of our lives. She called it compartmentalize, which means to set something into its own space, then deal with it at a separate time.

We had a good evening of storytelling at The Button Factory, with engaged listeners and a great variety of stories, including two of the musical variety. It was my first time to host, and it had gone well. I had been able to focus, to tell my stories and lead the evening, with only a hint to a fellow storyteller that other things had absorbed my attention and, therefore, I hadn’t much time to feel nervous. But my stories were ready and I was ready to tell them.

Home again, and nearly ready to settle in for the night, I quickly checked email on my Playbook, for it was 11:00 p.m. by that time. While sipping on a last cup of tea, I checked if anything of an urgent nature had come up. One email caught my eye and seemed more prominent than the rest. Had I read it correctly? I scanned the email again and tried to shut out everything else from the day. Denise’s husband had died. I didn’t know Dennis, but I know his wife Denise. Through The Word Guild, through Write! Canada and events I’ve attended where she’s been there also.

Compartmentalize again. I decided to send a card to Denise since I couldn’t get to the funeral. I want her to know she’s in my thoughts and prayers, especially now.

In my dreams all those pieces of news swirled around and around, my weary brain trying to sort everything out and put it into order.

 As I process all this news and think of the implications, I remember again that God is with us wherever we are. He knows our thoughts, our worries, our concerns and our delight.

 I must admit that I have a hard time putting my worries in his lap and leaving them there, but I try again. Nothing will bring Dennis back, but we have the certainty of knowing he is with God now. That much will be a relief to his family in this sad time.

While other matters seem to be unsettled, we will eventually deal with those too. Perhaps compartmentalize is the best word after all, that and accepting the grace available to us, through no actions of our own. God with us.

Carolyn R. Wilker, editor, writer, storyteller

www.carolynwilker.ca