I’m gonna be honest. I sheepishly need to confess that I am a bandwagon jumper and currently caught up in Blue Jays fever.

But yet, out of nowhere, it began to rain. I couldn’t understand it at all. I was literally getting wet and kind of chilled. And on top of that, while I was trying to figure out what was going on, Superwoman walked by me.

I would have at least taken a farewell photo of and/or given it a hug and a kiss goodbye first. But alas it was too late. It was over. It was the end of an era.

My little girl, the one I walked to her first day of kindergarten with just yesterday (it seems), will jump on the subway tomorrow morning and head off to her new school.

One person without a home is one too many.

I didn’t think she even knew who I was. After all, she’s lived all over the world and has seen and done everything. Everyone who is anyone in The Salvation Army world knows her name. I was a friend of her husband Commissioner Stanley Walter. We worked together when I was director of Friendship Room and then Gateway. He was our accountant in his retirement. He came to work every week in his SA uniform, smiled at everyone, did his 4 hour per week job more efficiently than any form of accounting I've ever experienced, updated me on our financial situation, gave me a word of encouragement and/or constructive critique, and left. I loved him and was deeply saddened when he told me he was sick and wouldn’t be back. In 2004 I quietly sat in the backseat at his funeral to pay my respects, didn’t talk to a soul, and left. I didn’t even bring greetings to his grieving wife, not wanting to interrupt her grief and thinking she had no idea who I was anyways.

In my weakness, I am being molded into much less the ‘fixer’ I always have tried to be, and more of a listener. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

In Mark 2, there’s a story of a disabled man whose friends carry him to the house where Jesus was staying, believing Jesus can heal him.

There was this one time when I played in a band with a guy who was severely mentally ill. When he sat down to play the drums, his eyes went clear and he became a drumming machine.

Well to tie up this little series of thoughts, I’ll share what I’ve been thinking a lot about these past few days due to my work; the word ‘joy’.

So we ‘bought’ a van! Never dreamed that would happen but life has a funny way of bringing irony in to being.

Throughout all my years of living with MS I’ve adopted a mantra; “I have MS but MS doesn’t have me”.

Well I’m ‘celebrating’ 19 years of life with MS this month. 19 years!

Well it turns out that Friday June 3 was ‘National Doughnut Day’! Who knew?

The legendary Henri Nouwen once wrote that there are 3 things necessary for closeness to God; 1. Contemplative reading of scripture. 2. Prayer. 3. A spiritual guide

I’m kind of all riled up today. I just heard that my good friend Alain in Montreal who for many years has been running a drop-in for folks on the streets out of a downtown church, is looking for a new location in order to run his program.

It has been an up and down few weeks. Major ‘ups’ actually. And major ‘downs’. I guess that seems to be the kind of life that’s been handed to me.

May is dignity month in The Salvation Army world. Once again, we at Toronto Housing and Homeless Supports (THHS) will be doing our part by making our missional focus for the month ‘dignity and respect’.