This summer was rough for my family. We gathered up all of our belongings and moved to a new province, leaving our friends, our communities, and the ocean air behind us. Not surprisingly, our children are extra emotional, and, if I’m being truthful, my spouse and I are also more emotional than usual. As much…
As a teenager I worked in a small town restaurant. Usually it was fun waiting on tables, chatting with happy people and serving good home style food. I saved enough tip money to buy my first car. On busy weekends people lined up out the door to wait for a table. That’s when fun gave…
As I wrote last month, a kintsugi workshop helped me realise that God can bring beauty out of brokenness (“What If It Could Be Beautiful?” Aug. 7). All brokenness – whether physical, emotional, relational or situational – results from sin, but not all is a direct result of our own sin. Some forms of brokenness…
I bought new shoes recently. They are unlike any shoes I’ve ever bought before. They are sleek and streamlined on top, rugged with aggressive tread on the bottom, and they have high-tech elastic “speed laces” with a quick-action toggle and a nifty secret pocket on the tongue in which to hide it. The only thing…
My family and I are currently nomadic. Living on others’ couches, trailers, and mattresses, we are in transition. Originally from Vancouver, having lived overseas in East Africa for five years, we are now alighting temporarily in Ontario. It’s been painful and beautiful and confusing. We never intended to be nomadic. But even when we had a home, I…
Encouraged. Faithfulness. Gratitude. Hope. These were some of the words our guests shared with us as we ended the 60th-anniversary celebration of Shalem’s Mental Health Network on June 1. We gathered with 80 of our closest friends. Staff, board members, both past and present, donors, supporters and community partners visited the Gage Park Tropical Greenhouse…
The World Health Organization declared covid-19 a global health emergency on January 30, 2020. More than three years later, at the beginning of this May, the WHO said the emergency was over. People have generally been ahead of the WHO, though. Mask-wearing had already decreased to only a few individuals, and people have generally returned…
Many of us, when we reach a certain age, look down at our bodies and vow to make a change. We want to get thinner or become healthier, so we start an exercise program and hope it will extend for more than a few weeks. Our change in behaviour is a conscious act of will,…
There was no possibility of meeting in person that day. The pandemic had brought with it risks so new, and an uncertainty so deep, that gathering the lectio divina group in the same room was now out of the question. A few minutes before 8:30 a.m., I settled my infant daughter and her toddler brother with their…
Safe space has become a buzzword. It is unfortunate that this important concept has become a slogan with so many different meanings that it is often meaningless. Like the cheapened cries for freedom, calls for safe space raise questions such as: safe for whom? Safe for what? What do you mean by safety? Labelling a…
Dear Parents and Caretakers, Something needs to be brought to your attention: your child needs you. This might seem obvious, but I think more time needs to be spent contemplating this statement. It is well known that Gen Zs are significant recipients of mental health struggles. Increased pressures – both academic and societal – as…
Trauma has become one of the most exciting areas of medical research and therapeutic treatment today. Revolutionary discoveries about the mind-body unity of the human person are bringing hope to many people living with deeply embedded emotional and psychological pain. Books like The Body Keeps the Score by the Dutch scientist Bessel Van Der Kolk…
|
Uploaded
Failed
|
 |
