Need a Gift Idea For Your Parents? Picture This!

1. Assuming your mom and dad, on a day not so very long ago, got together and said "I do", blinked, had you and your siblings, blinked again, and you all became a family grown up enough to have to plan what to get your parents for Christmas, consider giving them a family photo shoot. 

L to R: Carlin & Kayleen, Ricky & Jasmine, Danette & Ken, Kerra, Rolin & Seth & Joy

2. Have the son in the family who is a graphic designer do up an attractive gift certificate for presenting to your parents at gift exchange time on Christmas Eve. At some later point, get your siblings' and spouses' heads together and decide which local photographer to hire. 

Side note: Hopefully you'll find a photographer as fun and professional as Amberley Freeman, whom our children were fortunate to nab just before she, with her family and her business Unfrozen Photography, moved from a local town and relocated in an area several hours north of here. Amberley gets the credit for all of the photos in this blog post. 

3. Appoint an organized daughter-in-law to find a date among busy summer schedules that suits everyone to attend the photo session. Have her arrange with the photographer the location and time of event, and communicate the details with everyone. Get another creative daughter-in-law to coach along the lines of wardrobe color coordination for the event. Her coaching should include sending out a color palette and encouraging remarks to the family on their WhatsApp chat.

4. Have the daughter and son-in-law who live in the States come to your parents' place for a week (providing the pandemic has simmered down enough to allow for it) and bring their photogenic selves as well as their willingness/eagerness to make the Christmas gift happen during their stay. 

5. Have the photographer suggest a lovely setting such as the park in your nearby picturesque village of St. Jacobs, which includes a walking path beside the Conestogo River. The setting should include the option of places off the path where a family and their photographer can jaunt into sunlit meadows or among stands of stalwart riverside trees. 

6. Make sure your photographer comes equipped to engage the youngest member(s) of your group. Ideally, besides bringing her camera and its accessories such as an extra memory card, she will have toted along her experience, flexibility, patience, and creativity. Her attention-getters and expression-enhancers should include a wooden box (which she is not afraid to hop on and off of, herself), items from nature such as a twig or a stalk of timothy grass, hand motions, and questions like, "See the monkey in my camera? He's winking at you!" Bonus if she is a master at making authentic-sounding animal noises.

7. Come to the family photo session with ideas of poses besides the normal whole family scenes. Your suggestions added to the mental list your photographer has accumulated over the years will give you plenty of options. Among the categories in the options...

...there will even be subtitles (such as Dad & Sons)...

(and Brothers Only)

 ...under the main headings (such as Men in the Family).

There will be Mom & The DDs, which stands for Dear Daughters, 

and Mom & The DDs & The DDs, 

which is DDs plus the Dear Daughters-in-law, 

in case you wondered.

8. Also be open to the possibility of your photographer suggesting various poses within a category, such as Conversing in a Row and Standing in a Row under the Siblings title...

...or Nephew & Auntie under the Favorite Youngest in the Families title.

9. After you have duly thanked your photographer, go home from the family photo session and gather in your parents' kitchen to eat fresh rhubarb custard pie (compliments of the daughter who loves to bake), while sharing impressions of the photographer's expertise, and saying to each other, "I can hardly wait till we get the pictures and see how they turned out." 

10. And, finally, accept the sincere gratitude of your parents for the beautiful, meaningful, and long-lasting Christmas gift of a family photo shoot.

How To Treat A 57-year-old Woman

 

If you’re a lady ten years her senior and you don’t know her from Eve, but you talk to her anyway as you get up from your seat in a McDonald’s booth where you’ve been having a snack with your friend. You walk by the table where’s she’s sitting with her elderly friend, munching fries and chatting, and you say to her in a casual but friendly, sincere manner, “By the way, I really like your dress.”

If you’re an 8-year-old son in a family who has just welcomed a new baby and you’re impressed with the meal she made to help out your mom, you dig into the Butterfingers Delight for a second helping and exclaim, “This should be called ‘Hallelujah Dessert’!”

If you’re a young lady from her church and you’re taking part in the feet-washing aspect of a Communion Sunday service for the first time and she offers to partner with you at the water basin, you accept. When it is your turn to kneel and “gird the towel” for her, your glance takes in her skinny toes and cracked heels, but you look up and tell her, “I don’t know if anyone ever told you this before, but you have beautiful feet.”

If you’re her dad, and on her birthday you’re far away from her home and away from your own home at a church function, you take a break after lunch and go for a bit of a walk away from the noise and bustle of the event so you can phone her. In the conversation, you reminisce about the day she was born (It was just as brilliantly sunny as this day is, and you were so excited about being dad for the first time – to TWO baby girls – that you could hardly keep your feet on the ground) and ask her the familiar questions such as “Are you doing anything special to celebrate?” and then just before ending the call, you gather up your fatherly affection and advice and affirmation and roll it into one heartfelt statement: “Love you, Daughter.”

If she’s not your mom biologically or otherwisely, (after all, you’re old enough to be her mom) but she has mothered you in kind of a roundabout way, you send her a card and/or call her to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. With genuine pleasure you enter into the joy of her family gathering ‘round and rising up to call her blessed. (This in spite of your personal never-to-be-fulfilled longing to have your own children and grandchildren.)

If you’re a peer of hers who knows your way around in the areas of food, art, politics, and nearly everything else better than she does, you enjoy hanging out with her anyway. When you ride with her to a ladies’ party at a restaurant in town, and she’s maneuvering the route in the city rather confidently, you declare, “You drive these back streets like a pro!”

If you notice her love of photography and you’re a noticer of beauty/lover of creativity yourself, you send her a note including the words “…thank you so much for faithfully taking and sharing your beautiful photos. It’s not listed as a spiritual gift, it certainly seems akin to being one, in my opinion. To realize the beauty of little moments and scenes, and then to be willing to pause and be present enough to take a photo of them…”

If you wear titles such as Prolific Writer of Books as well as The Ann Landers of MennoWorld, and you happen to have a little “writery” tete-a-tete with her at a conference, you (in the midst of your Opinions on a certain subject) listen to her piece of wisdom (that she’s not even giving as such), and then you turn around and quote her in one of your blog posts because her “What would you advise instead?” stinger of a question would not stop buzzing in your head.

If you’re a reader (male or female) of Dani’s Discoveries, you sometimes stop and tell her, when you see her and she’s least expecting to hear it, that you read her blog. And you make it sound like reading it is an enjoyable experience.

If you’re someone who has just read this blog post, instead of thinking that wow, now there’s one 57-year-old woman who is obsessed with affirmation, you acknowledge the impact of a word fitly spoken. You decide that when something impresses you favorably about someone, be they 7 or 57 or 97, you’ll take a moment to mention it to them in sincerity. You realize that they could get all shy or inwardly spluttery about it. (Pretty dress, what!? This ancient, faded, “pilly” thing? I wasn’t planning to wear it to town, but I forgot to change before coming to McDonald’s!) But you do it anyway, because you just might make their day. Or month. Or year. 

Signs and Other Signs of Spring

The blue hand-painted sign alone makes me want to buy a bluebird house. 

Spring has arrived in Waterloo County! I can say that with certainty after experiencing the sunshine and warmth of the past few days. The growth and color in the world of nature has just popped. While on a drive through the countryside today, I reveled in the sights characteristic of this most delightful season. I'm happy to share some of those sights with you via this series of photos:  

A slow-moving vehicle sign isn't necessarily a sign of spring, but there were 

greenhouse plants on the floor of the buggy, so this scene counts. 

I bought the lovely fern plant from this little 

roadside house of green. 

New life towers over markers of death. 

Weeping willow green is one of my favorite spring colors.

This tiny picturesque church stood across the road from 

the previously pictured graveyard. 

Farm scenes like this one are abundant along the back roads in this region.

Glorious magnolia.

I guess church steeples, as well as farm scenes, took my eye today. 

I returned home from my drive to find spring beauty in "my own backyard".

The first blooms to show up in our orchard are on the Vista Bella apple trees.

My neighbor's sun-painted beauties. 

Maple leaves unfolding tender and fragile as a new baby.

O Spring, you are very welcome here!

If spring hasn't arrived in your area yet, I'm sure it will very soon. What's your favorite sign of its arrival?

Re-membering Passover

One evening last month Ken and I had the privilege of partaking in a Passover meal. When Steve (Ken's brother) & Rose asked us to join them and several other friends in commemorating this Jewish tradition, we were delighted to accept the invitation.

It wasn't the first time for Steve & Rose to host a gathering like this. Occasionally sharing a Passover meal with a group of friends in their home has come about in recent years because of their relationship with a young man named David. Following a serendipitous meeting with him at a local farmers' market about a decade ago, they gave David a home with their family for a week. Ever since then, their acquaintance has been developing into a comfortable and rich friendship. 

Among the many valuable things I've learned from the example of Ken's family over the years is the joy of accepting and learning from people of nationalities and cultures different than our own. It was a treat to taste of this delight as Steve & Rose welcomed us guests into their friendship with David and into his knowledge of Passover. David is not a Jew but a Christian who has an intense love of studying scripture and Jewish traditions. 

For a Christian to celebrate Passover is to correlate the Israelites' Exodus story and the coming of Jesus for our salvation. The meal is highly significant; it is full of symbols of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. No wonder our invitation said the meal would be lengthy with the "symbolism of each dish explained as we go" and that we should "be prepared for a very worshipful and meaningful evening".

Our group of 11 that evening was almost as varied as the group of disciples that met with Jesus for the Last (Passover) Supper. From farmer to funeral director assistant, minister to musician, secretary to stay-at-home mom, we were all grateful to be chosen to share the communal meal called Passover. As we gathered together for this "festival of freedom", in a sense we met to re-enact and re-member that long-ago release from bondage in Egypt as well as the looking forward to a coming Messiah. 

The first event of the evening, the Leaven Search, took place before we sat at the table for the Passover meal. To typify the purge of leaven that happens in Jewish homes for eight days prior to Passover, we searched for a small piece of leavened bread that had been hidden somewhere in the house. Ken found the little bread roll in Rose's china cupboard. Unleavened bread is part of the Passover meal because it is a reminder of the haste in which the Israelites left Egypt - there was no time for the bread to rise before their sudden departure on Passover night. Leaven is also a type of sin. Sin puffs us up. It is also hidden and sneaky. I Cor. 5 talks about purging out the old leaven: "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

Throughout the meal we had the traditional four cups of wine (in our case, non-alcoholic grape beverage). These four cups, sanctification, deliverance, redemption, and restoration, correspond with four promises made to Israel by God: "I will bring you out"; "I will deliver you"; "I will redeem you"; and "I will take you to be my people". (Exodus 6:6) An interesting aspect of drinking the second cup was first dipping our finger into the wine and shaking 10 drops onto our plate to signify God's wrath in the ten plagues.    

There was an empty chair and place setting at the table for Elijah. In a traditional Passover celebration, Jews provide this for the coming Messiah. At the end of the meal, they also open a door to the outside and look for him coming. As Christians, we viewed the unoccupied place at the table as a reminder of the Unseen Guest - our Already-come Messiah, and the gazing into the skies through the open door as a looking for Jesus in His second coming. 

At the beginning of the meal, David brought to the table three linen-wrapped pieces of unleavened bread called matzah (matzot is plural for matzah). The symbolism soon became evident as David unwrapped the middle piece and broke it, wrapped it back up, and "hid" the cloth package in the dining room. Typically, the children at a Passover meal search for the hidden bread and a leader of the group pays a ransom to the child who finds it. After the ransom is paid, the piece is eaten by all. My heart felt so full as I made the connections while David led us through the steps. Jesus, God the Son, second person in the Trinity, became bread for us. His body was broken in death on the cross, bound in linen strips of cloth, hidden away in a tomb for three days, and then was found fully alive again. Since that price has been paid for our atonement, we can all partake of that Bread...

We broke bread together around the table there that evening. Breaking the matzah not only is symbolic of breaking with our sinful past, but also of the breaking of Christ's body for us. The pattern in modern matzah is striped and pierced full of holes, also reminding us of the stripes on Jesus' back from the scourging He endured, as well as the nail-holes in His hands and feet and the spear-hole in His side.

Another symbolic part of the meal was eating the herbs. The bitter herbs - in our case, horseradish - were strong enough to make one's eyes water. This was a reminder of the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt, and of the bitterness of our lives without salvation. The parsley also was dipped in salt water, representing the tears of affliction. The greens in a Passover meal, parsley and Romaine lettuce, represent life (newness of life out of bondage) and are also symbolic of the cleansing hyssop the Israelites used to apply the blood on the doorposts of their house for the death angel to see and pass over. 

 

The lamb and the roasted vegetables rounded out our platefuls, and were a delicious part of the feast. 

The dessert was charoseth, or haroset, traditionally a mixture of apples, nuts, cinnamon, and wine. It represents the mortar the Israelites used to make bricks while they were slaves in Egypt. It was a sweet and tasty end to the meal. I read later that the haroset is a reminder to us that even the most difficult circumstances in life are made sweet by the promise of future redemption. 

Probably the most compelling part of the evening for me was the time at the close of the meal in which we got up from the table and stood behind our chairs to sing a hymn together: We're Marching to Zion". The Jews traditionally drink the last cup and say "Next year in Jerusalem" at the end of Passover, closing the celebration with the wish for all Jews everywhere to be able to return to their homeland, like they did after leaving Egypt. So we did too. All of us around Steve & Rose's table joined our voices together saying "Next year in Jerusalem!"

Thinking about us Jesus-followers living in exile here and longing for that day when we shall return to our Homeland and reign forever with our King just kind of wrecked me. In a good way.

Joy washed over me as I pictured us all celebrating together in the presence of our Passover Lamb. I let the tears come.