So now what?

Well here it goes, a more personal blog post than I usually do.

Let's be honest, I don't blog often enough to make that statement but I am making it anyway.

I am having a bit of an identity crisis.  I am too young for this teenage angst and not yet old enough to be having a mid-life crisis, yet here I am, experiencing both.

Let me explain

Since leaving home right after high school graduation, I have always been on the move. I spent 4 years in college, then got married. My husband and I moved from one community to another over the first 4 years, but always within the same general area. In this time I had four different jobs, all within the same field, always experiencing a 'promotion' with each job.

Then we had our son and felt the need to live closer to family, so we made our first provincial move as a couple, from British Columbia to Manitoba. Over the next three years we moved twice in Manitoba. I got my first pastoral job, and boy was it a job. It was amazing and frustrating and scary and exhilarating all at the same time. Looking back I was awfully inexperienced to be running such a large department and at times it showed. It was a breathtakingly painful experience to work in that church. The pressure, leadership, friendship and grace were intense at times but in the end it was not a fantastic fit for me or my family, and we found ourselves moving provinces again.

This time we landed in Saskatchewan, where I worked at one church and my husband took a job at another one. We both loved what we were doing and where we were. We were developing friendships and a community until the unexpected happened. My husband was offered an amazing opportunity in Montreal, and we just had to let him take it. This left my son and I alone in SK keeping on with life in the most normal way we could. This continued for two years, until his employer offered him a permanent position and we decided to move to Montreal, ending our 4 years in SK.

Fast forward to today. We have now been in Montreal for just over three years and if you have been paying attention, 3-4 years is the longest we tend to stay in any one place. We have had the same house, church, and school for 3 years. I have already started and finished a master's degree and am starting a PhD this week.

So here is where the identity crisis starts. I don't know how to live in place past 4 years. How does one stay in a place that long? How do I take those friendships and turn them into deeper friendships? How do I challenge myself in an employment that is starting to feel like the 'same old thing'? I think that starting my PhD will help keep me challenged and excited and in many ways it will, but in some ways it won't. More schooling does not have the same excitement as starting again. There is a thrill in applying for jobs, selling homes and moving. But I know that there is a sadness and stress in them too.

I don't know how to survive in a place once the excitement has worn off. And worse than that, I don't know how to survive in a place when my polish has worn off and the others around me can see my short comings.

This lack of long term experience in a place is freaking me right out. I just want to quit everything that I am doing and pack up and move. The question is where would we go? And for what reason? Could I do that to my pre-teen son? Could I move him again when he is just really starting to make great friendships here.

I can't. I know I can't.

I guess that means I need to learn how to put down roots in a place. I need to learn how to not fear failure, knowing that I can't run away from it. Not this time. Not right now at least.

Not right now.

Treasury of Memories

I have always loved to bake and cook, ever since I was a little girl. It probably had something to do with the fact that my mother is a cook and baker.  If you need a meal cooked, a banquet catered or a recipe, my mother is the person to go to.  She has been cooking for fundraisers, schools and churches for as long as I can remember.  She would always convince me to help her with her cooking endeavors and I would always readily agree.  I would love to spend hours in the kitchen with my mom preparing meals for others, reading recipes and making up our own as we went.  One of her go to cook books was, and very much still is, The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes.

 This classic cook book filled with tried and true recipes was so worn that it no longer had covers, there were notes written in every margin and each blank space had other recipes scribbled in.  Some pages had been so used and spilled on that you could barely make out the recipe, then again those pages were mostly memorized already and consulted only as a formality.

I loved this cook book as a kid.  So when I saw it on the shelf of my local Ten Thousand Villages store in Saskatoon this past June I quickly bought.  I love thumbing through the recipes looking for the next one to try.  And that is when I decided that I would cook my way through this wonderful cook book.

Now here is the catch.  As much as I love this cook book, it has some quirks that may make cooking my way through it rather interesting.  This cook book was published in the 60's, a time of jellied food and easy casseroles.  Many of the recipes also take for granted that you know a lot about baking or cooking and they use many vague phrases like ' mix until it feels right' or 'add just enough flour' (without giving a quantity). So the results could be...interesting.  I will be picking recipes to make, following them to the best of my ability, with no changes or alterations, hosting friends to try the recipes and then blogging about them.

So come back often to check out what I'm cooking next.  I'm going to end this post with a quote from the introduction:
        "By the time the book was on the drawing board it was decided to add a chapter of Mennonite recipes. Many of these originate from times of want and austerity and are no longer in use but may be of interest for coming generations, perhaps as inspiration to adventurous cooks."

Consider me inspired!