Oh, March! It's a Pinch!

Yes, we've come to that time of year again when the generous Christmas donations run out and most people (understandably so) aren't feeling the desire yet to extend their generosity to us once more. It's an adventurous time, to put it positively. Lauren and I get really good at tightening the belt and using all of those funny odds and ends in the kitchen that would otherwise be forsaken to an eternity on the shelf or in the back of the cupboard. We're thankful for the surplus which has now become essential and for the chance to be more efficient; it's nice to feel a lot of gratitude for small joys and be more focused on day-to-day life.

On the other hand, it is still very much winter in Montreal, although March is upon us, and it will continue to be winter for another month! Uggh! When you don't have much money and it's too cold to stay outside for long, you have to use your creativity and imagination to pass the hours with two youngsters on your hands. On top of that, Dennis has had some sort of strange illness for the last week that has appeared, disappeared, and reappeared several times. Is it a cold, a fever, an ear infection, a toothache, a combination of these? We've made all these guesses. He slept good last night, however, and we're hoping we're out of the woods. Our sweet little Nell is developing opinions, which is exciting, but can be quite tiring as well, especially when her opinions have to do with sleep. She also likes to smile a lot and converse with us through her beautiful cooing, so a little extra wakey time isn't so bad after all.

All in all, we're hanging in there, hoping our financial resources increase over the next few months and giving a lot of time and thought to our future plans. I'll stop here, and save some steam for the next post...à bientôt!

hello...

Just writing a quick update for all you who wait with bated breath for the next blog post from the FlanClan (ehhum, hi mom). Nell Lavender is approaching two months and we continue to fall more and more in love with her. Dennis is officially obsessed with anything that plays music, has lights, or buttons. Thus, the DVD/CD player that my mom gave him (thanks, mom) is his very close friend. He also puts on concerts with his guitar sometimes that are absolutely amazing. I have to admit that I'm getting excited about his undeniable love of music!

I went back to work about two weeks ago, so Lauren has been at home with the two kids, learning that new reality. She's doing great so far, especially amidst the austere Montreal winter. She still has two more births to attend and a few more projects/book reports to complete her doula apprenticeship. We're hoping to get to those in the spring. As for work with YWAM, things have been really crazy. I won't get into all the details, but both our Urban Cultures School and YWAM Montreal itself has taken a beating these past few months. Nonetheless, we're moving forward, learning from our mistakes, feeling more united and more positive about the next few months.

So, there it is. It's not much but it's all I can muster at this point. I hope to post again soon!

Nell Videos

Two new videos up of our one-month-old Nell on our youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dflashflan18?feature=mhum

Right On!

Below I'm going to paste a page of David Brazzeal's blog entitled "following". David and Sanan are the founders of our church community out here, Curieux, and now live in Paris. I found the following quite inspiring in its simple, balanced, straightforward reasoning.

I consider myself a follower of Jesus...
I follow him in a variety of ways…

I follow Jesus in his simplicity…

He lived a very simple life…didn’t own much, treaded gently on the earth…me, I’m trying to learn how to do that.

I follow Jesus in his creativity…

He was a creative story teller…he spoke in riddles and enigmas…He left people with something to ponder…He was practically a performance artist, knowing that walking into a room and washing feet was more powerful than a lecture on humility.

I follow Jesus in his compassion for the poor…the marginalized…the oppressed….

He seemed to prefer “hanging out” with this group much more than the rich or the spiritual leaders of the day. You can’t read the stories of Jesus w/out this jumping off the page. This is not natural for me (being a middle-class, middle-age, white, male) but I’m learning to follow him in this… by contributing to and volunteering with organizations that help the poor…by treating them like fellow human beings when I see them and by caring extra money to give to them. .

I follow Jesus as spiritual mystic…

Jesus spent long hours alone staying connected to his Father…he frequented gardens and hilltops to find a bit of solitude…So I’m learning to pull away from the distraction and make time to reconnect with him…to meditate…to give thanks…to contemplate…to intercede…to lament…to rejoice…to be silent.

I follow Jesus as someone who enjoyed life…

He had deep friendships…loved to journey together with them and talk on the road…he went to lots of parties…loved and cared deeply for people…So I am learning to be a companion to my friends on the journey…to enjoy long conversations at parties and to love and care for people.

Dispatch from the Northeastern Front...

Denny, here. Sorry for the war terminology in the title...but at times things do get a little intense with two kids on our hands. Our lovely Nell was born almost three weeks ago, and as our babymoon comes to an end, two young kids and winter set in simultaneously. C'mon, couldn't we have timed this a little better? What about a spring baby?...One that you can whisk away into the great outdoors without having to put fifteen extra layers on? And the D-man is smack dab in the middle of his twos--headstrong, determined, and creative as ever--reaching new heights (literally) most the time in our kitchen.

Okay, the italics rant was a little therapeutic venting. Sorry to expose you to such honesty. Anyone who's had children I'm sure will understand...? Needless to say, things are getting crazy and we're all learning some good lessons. I've recently started reading my first parenting book, Kids are worth it!, by Barbara Coloroso. In fact, it's been one of the most challenging, inspiring, immediately applicable books I've ever read (and I'm only through chapter three). I'll end this muddy blog post with a quote from that book that hits it on the head for me right now.

"Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults."

-Peter de Vries

Amen, brotha!

Nell Lavender

So, it's been too, too long since our last blog. Here's a short one announcing the arrival of our lovely daughter Nell Lavender on Dec. 28th at 1:30 in the afternoon right in our bedroom.

The birth experience was amazing (although a bit longer than we anticipated!), our midwife was phenomenal, and Lauren especially was an all-star. It was a privelege to witness and be a part of such an intense, trying, wonderful birth. Welcome, Nell!

A Special Advent

"We are told to put on Christ, and we think of his life of work, his public life, his teaching and his suffering life. But we do not think enough of his life as a little child, as a baby. His helplessness. His powerlessness. We have to be content to be in that state too--not to be able to do anything, to accomplish anything."

Dorothy Day

This Advent, which literally means "coming", we're waiting with the whole Christian church for the coming of Christ as a crying, sputtering, fleshy little baby. With the due date for our second child just around the corner, Lauren and I feel an added significance and anticipation this year. We will experience once again the holy, earthy, beautiful, messy experience of what it means to give life and to care for it, and the blessing of doing this at a special time of year. Of course, we're anxious, nervous, a bit uptight about it all. Sometimes it feels like trying to anticipate an earthquake; there's only so much preparation possible, and then it's just anxious waiting. And the added stressors surrounding our ever-challenging financial situation and distance from family at such a special/challenging time do not make the waiting very care-free. However (and there's always a "however"), we do feel blessed to be doing what we're doing out here in Montreal, and to welcome our baby into this world in our very own apartment, and to become a a family of four! for our second snowy Christmas in Montreal. Dorothy C. Bass describes Advent as"quiet but expectant, leaning, as if heavy with child, into the future." I don't think that description is too far from our own experience at this extra special time.