Bonniebax Creates

A love letter to my Aunt. I usually talk about the people around you - the ways I learned from their creative compassion, persevering endurance and stubborn self-sacrifice.  But I sometimes forget to mention how much I’ve learned from you! The loneliest ones found a home in your arms, on your lap, in your smiling eyes and gentle touch. The foster girls, the ones that felt different than others, the sad ones. You were a safe and faithful friend. Busy hands can help keep a person’s spirits up - peeling potatoes, snapping beans, knitting, writing, puzzles, and the list goes on.  You gave so many people the gift of belonging, by remembering people with a smile of recognition, as well as often knowing their birthdate and their name. You built connections from the least to the greatest.  You belong too. Everywhere. You belong at church. You belong at picnics. You belong on trips. You belong in the family pictures. You belong in the joke. You belong in the conversation. Even whe...

The most hurt I've seen on my child's face happened up on stage at a church program, where he had memorized one less Bible verse than was needed for the prize that all the other kids received. He had worked so hard and attended each week with joy and dedication, trusting the Christian leaders to guide him. And as his shoulders sagged and his eyes filled with tears at his sense of failure, my heart sank. Because I knew he didn't just miss out on the prize and the recognition, he also realized that he wasn't as valuable to God as the other kids. And my heart shouted a big NO. Of course we have had nothing to do with that program since. It was a turning point for me. I was a smart kid growing up, not always smart socially, but smart in school. In some ways it was good for my confidence, but in other ways, it built a false confidence in me. Striving for perfection became a fun challenge and without even realizing it, I began to frame many things in my life in terms of perfe...

I remember the first time I heard the Patriarchy mentioned in a derogatory way, and it wasn't long ago. Some of the writers in this arena have been talking about this for years, but it wasn't the right timing for me I guess. I did a Bible study many years ago about the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), and that's about all I knew about the patriarchy.  When I was growing up, my dad and his three brothers with their families all lived for a while in the same vicinity as our grandparents. We all went to church together - and church for us was a full day event. The moms brought potluck and we played baseball or red rover in the field next door before coming in to afternoon church and then heading home for supper. My dad and my uncles all preached, as well as any other man in the church, whether they had any gifts of speaking or reading the Bible or not. The pre-teen and teen boys could pass the collection or offering plate and could also 'lead singing' by standing...

Welcome! If you're just joining me, we're going to have a chat about faith getting turned upside down and I want to share a bit about my process as I go through a rebuilding of my faith. I'm very much in process, and learning as I go. I loved the stories some of you sent me to share that you're in a similar situation with faith.  It's hard to know exactly what triggered my faith to have a crisis in the last couple of years. It has been building up for awhile.  About 10 years ago or so, I remember feeling overwhelmed with doubt. Mostly it was doubt about the Bible. Like, an ark? really? Every animal on it in pairs? Or how did every person in this world come from one pair of humans? How did different cultures form and get to different continents? I couldn't even begin to go there with dinosaurs and fossils. I just had question after question and it seemed incredulous to me that the Bible could be true. I finally confessed these thoughts to my amazing husband, and ...

 2020 will go down in the history books as a year that changed everything. And for me, it really did.  Some of the changes were superficial, and some have turned my world upside down. I adopted a sour dough starter until I realized it made too many dishes and was too much daily cooking work for me. RIP Michelle Dough-bama. I painted a lot of pictures in online classes and they are hanging up in a lame amateur gallery in my office downstairs. They make me happy.  The biggest thing that happened to me in 2020 was that my faith got turned upside down. I mean up.side.down. The whole experience was bewildering and frightening and sad for me. And like a friend of mine said the other day, once you start, you can't go back. You can't.  I saw a quote awhile back that brought me some hope in this difficult process. "What if your doubts are God's whispers to bring you to the truth of the actual gospel?" Doubts feel like failures to me as a Christian, and this framed my doubt...

Here's a little clip from a story I've been working on lately. <3 Ruby glanced up at the bright blue sky and felt her heart lighten as she walked along the trail beside their neighbour’s field. Her dad had mentioned that the saskatoon berries were ripe for picking up by the northern swamp this week, so her plan for the morning was to pick berries until her basket was full, and enjoy some time alone. At least in the bushes it was sometimes a bit cooler than out in the field, she thought, as she wiped her sweaty brow. Her dad had been right, it was a great year for berries. The saskatoons were full and juicy, and Ruby quickly had her basket over half full. She sat down on a large rock to rest and enjoy some as a treat, and hummed a song she had heard at the Caroll’s last week. As the words came back to her she started to sing.   Come and sit by my side if you love me, Do not hasten to bid me adieu..   She couldn’t remember the next line, but jumped in surprise when she heard ...

I was planning to follow along on Hope*writers prompt challenge this week, but I'm late to the party! Today's prompt was CONNECT. Crystal Bowl For Cheap I stood at the corner of two dusty roads in that tiny town, holding out an exquisite crystal bowl as an invitation to a car driving slowly by. The contrast of the dirt and the crystal was not lost on me, and as they kept on driving, I was hit by a realization that changed my perspective from that day onward. It had been a lovely fall day that Saturday - the kind of day that started out chilly enough for a hoodie, and ended up hot enough that the old records on display started to warp in the warm sun. As the family pulled out tables to set up and carried boxes from the old bus where they were all stored, we quickly worked up a sweat and had to shed our sweaters. It was our long-awaited estate sale day. My father-in-law had passed away earlier that spring, and in a way I felt like our collective mourning couldn’t really progress ...

Today was Mother's Day. I spent it thinking about ways that God mothers me, which I don't think I've ever thought much about before today. I saw it everywhere, and had reminder after reminder about God as my mother.  In the past, I’ve felt a bit offended or uncomfortable with people or writers calling God a ‘she’ and referring to God as their mother. I’m not exactly sure why really. It felt brazen. I wondered if the writer was a little too angry at fathers and men, or diminishing God’s nature, or maybe adding to the Bible. The image of God as Father has always been deeply meaningful to me and I’ve clung to it. But God as a ‘she’ felt weaker, isn’t that just the saddest realization?? It brings a tear to my eye actually. No wonder I struggle with feeling like a ‘less than’ sometimes. I know the Bible refers to some ‘motherly’ characteristics of God, but what if it’s broader than that? I think it is. I’d like to do some research about gender in the Hebrew language and the Bibl...

I like being nice. I like people who are nice. As a Christian, being nice strokes my ego, making me feel like I’m doing a good job for God on this earth. I think about the statement sometimes from the Bible, “they’ll know you are Christians by your love” and I nod pleasantly to myself. But some days, love looks different than nice. Like today, remembering Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. It’s a tragedy beyond words of our day, and I don’t feel nice about it. I feel angry, overwhelmed and heart-broken. It’s not OK. How is something like this even possible in our day and age? I read that experts estimate the number could be about 4000, or up to 25,000 in north America. Why do we know such few details about these loved ones? Tiffany, Amber, Rose-Anne, Annie.  The motto ‘Save our Stolen Sisters’ resonates deeply with me. My sister and a dearly loved cousin have indigenous backgrounds, as well as some friends, and I know this could just as easily be them at different times in thei...