LEARNING FROM KIM

I love this story from a La Arche community member:

"I learn a lot from Kim"

I learn a lot from Kim, whom I live with at L'Arche. When Kim was wished a Happy 41st Birthday she responded, nonchalantly, saying, "Thanks. I don’t look it." In that moment she ministered to me, teaching me what it means to be free, to be young in spirit, to tell your own story, to resist society's expectations of what it means to be a certain age or fit in a certain category. I was also touched when Kim announced her first home was here at L'Arche in Richmond Hill, her second home was in Markham (her family home) and, quite proudly, "My third home is in heaven." Although we couldn't help laughing about the mortgage on that third home, I realized a deeper theological truth--that she wasn't seeing past, present and future, but was truly living out God's vision, seeing beyond set time lines and seeing the bigger picture. When Kim was cutting tomatoes for dinner, rolling her eyes she exclaimed, "Ha! And, they thought I was handicapped!" She then went on to say how she's been proving people wrong and learning new things all along. In that moment, I realized that I too had bought into a hierarchy of people, that I had been competing and that I had been buying into "us and them" boundaries--none of which are part of true community.

Janna Payne, L'Arche Daybreak

LIFE SO FRAGILE

Last week we came face to face with this reality as Hannah, carrying our first grandchild, suffered a traumatic miscarriage in her 12th week of pregnancy. Why? Not yet known. Not sure it will ever be known. But "how" Hannah and Dirk have responded in their grief is inspiring as they indeed have had a glimpse of God surrounding them, carrying them, giving comfort and perspective through their pain. Through Hannah's writing she has been able to share that grace experienced.

Grieving is not finished in a week, however. Life returns to some semblance of normal but from time to time the grief can wash over us like a tidal wave like the tsunami that hit Japan this week...perhaps to remind us how fragile is life...to lead us to look to what is eternal.

I noted in my journal the day of the miscarriage these words from Psalm 139 The Message:

"Like an open book, You watch us grow from conception to birth. All the days of our lives are spread out before you, the days of our lives prepared before we even live one day."

Twelve weeks our little grandchild lived on this earth in his mother's womb but now in heaven for eternity. It causes me to wonder and acknowledge that God's ways are so often hard to fathom. But it also leads me to trust in God's perfect love; he is the potter and we are the clay. We have been shaped in new ways because of the brief coming and the sudden leaving of a little baby, a child of God, we had opened our hearts to and will never forget.