Out of My Mind for Ten Years

In September of 2010, the Portage Daily Graphic/Central Plains Herald Leader advertised for freelance writers. What I really wanted was a regular column. I even had a name: “Out of My Mind.”

In one of my boldest acts of reckless abandon, I called and requested an appointment with then-editor, Elisha Dacey. Seated in her office and trying not to reveal my nerves, I told her I wanted to write a weekly “slice of life” column. Some humour, some faith. Hopefully a little of both sprinkled into each. I gave her three samples.

She hired me.

I’ve lost track of how many editors have come and gone in these ten years, but readers have remained loyal. One of the funniest stories occurred about a year into my column-writing, when I went to vote on Election day. I gave the poll clerk my name.

“Are you the Terrie Todd who writes for the Graphic?” She peered at me over her glasses.

“Yes.”

She frowned a bit. “Huh. I thought you’d be shorter.”

I assured her I would try to sound taller from then on.

Over the years, several (well, okay, maybe two) readers have asked when I was going to put my columns into a book. I figured a ten-year anniversary would be a good time. Trouble is, ten years’ worth of columns would be as thick as a phone book (for those of you old enough to remember phone books.)

Good old Microsoft to the rescue. I created a table in MS Word and listed every column by title, the date it ran, and its theme. Then I gave each a score from zero to five. If a column promoted a local event long past, it received an automatic zero. My personal favourites, and the ones that generated emails or won awards, scored fives.

When all 460 columns were entered, I instructed my computer to pull all the fives to the top and voila! 145 columns, the perfect length for a book. My first column made the cut, as did my farewell column when “Out of My Mind” got cancelled in 2016…as well as the return column when I was invited back fourteen months later. (If you’ve already calculated that ten years of weekly columns would total 520, not 460, the cancellation explains that.)

Once I eliminated the also-rans scoring less than five, I told my computer to sort the winning columns by theme. Then it was a matter of copying and pasting each column into its category and creating a table of contents. Now, readers can easily find stories under a given topic or season.

This book signing will look different.

Then the pandemic complicated things. The book had a bit of a false launch. Now that September is here, the official month of the tenth anniversary, it’s party time. Since Covid-19 is preventing us from serving food, I’ll be giving away a $40 gift certificate from The Cheeky Baker and the winner can place their own order. If you are a local reader, I hope you’ll come celebrate with me, purchase the book for $20—or one for each person on your Christmas list. Or just say hello and enter the draw. Saturday, September 12, between 10:00 and 1:00 at the Portage Regional Library.

I deeply appreciate your kindness and tolerance. A column should offer value to readers and I’ve often fallen short. But if I’ve managed to make you smile or even laugh out loud, if you’ve discovered a tear on your cheek or have thought a new thought, I’m happy.

You’re teaching me the discipline of deadlines, the wonder of word counts, and the extraordinary grace and humour of hometown folk.

Happy Anniversary to us!

 

A CONCERT FOR COVID

Some hilarious parent posted a photo on social media that said, “How I disguise my snacks from the lazy, unemployed people who live here.” In her hand, she holds an ice cream sandwich, hidden behind a large leaf of lettuce. Her children play in the background, oblivious. Funny, right? I laughed too.

Later, I imagined what it might be like to show that picture with its caption to a family living in a place where children must work. Where if the entire family isn’t employed, they starve. Where the parent may not have eaten today because they gave their share to the child. No one in that family would understand the joke.

Experts predict half a billion more people are at risk of being pushed into extreme poverty due to the impact of Covid-19. My goal in sharing this is not to make you feel guilty if you’ve been able to eat and feed your family today. Rather, I want to encourage you. You can do more than you think from home to help those in dire circumstances, thanks to people in the trenches who were already doing great work before the pandemic hit.

You can read a wonderful example on Compassion Canada’s website which describes how a woman named Meseret and her 15-year-old daughter, Saron, sold everything they could and took any work just to cover another month’s rent on their tiny, primitive dwelling. Eventually, they were evicted. Meseret felt reluctant to turn to the Compassion center that Saron had been part of since the age of five.

“I didn’t want to bother them,” she said. “They’d already done so much when they provided food support for us at the start of the pandemic. I’ve always believed in working and overcoming my problems, but I knew I could not overcome this by myself.”

Then she received a call from the director of Saron’s Compassion center. She had called to check in, as she and the rest of the center staff have been doing regularly during the pandemic with all the families in their care. Compassion helped Meseret with six months’ rent on a new place—which to her, felt like six years.

“I felt seen and heard by God,” Meseret says. “Her phone call brought a sense of hope and a promise of a better tomorrow. They always know what to do.”

Wouldn’t you love to be part of those kind of stories? For the first time ever, Compassion Canada, World Vision Canada, and Food for the Hungry Canada will unite for a virtual concert led by incredible artists such as Hillsong, Toby Mac, Kirk Franklin, for KING & COUNTRY, Michael W. Smith, and more.

You can watch the concert live on Facebook or YouTube this Friday, August 28 at 7:30 p.m.  Unite to Fight Poverty is a FREE two-hour concert event benefiting families in the developing world who are most vulnerable. You’ll receive an opportunity to support COVID-19 relief efforts in areas of the world with the greatest needs.

God put you here for a reason. You have a part to play in his kingdom work.

Tune in online:

•      Facebook

•      YouTube

 

In Defense of 2020

People treat this year as though it’s the black sheep of the family. The kid on the playground who stinks so bad nobody wants to go near him. A laughingstock. If you spend any time on social media, you’ve seen the variety of memes dedicated to, “If 2020 were a …”

If it were a playground slide, it would be a twelve-foot long vegetable grater in the painful direction.

If 2020 were a beverage, it would be a colonoscopy prep.

If 2020 were a bag of chips, they’d be orange juice and toothpaste flavored.

A hilarious video shows a dozen guys trying to roll out a rain delay tarp over a ball diamond in a deluge. The tarp seems to be folding in on itself, forcing them to roll it all up and try again. It’s labelled, “If 2020 were a tarp.”

 

Someone asked, “At what point can we just start using 2020 as a swear word?” followed by examples of how that might work. “Well, that’s a load of 2020,” or “What the 2020 is that?”

We need to laugh, don’t we? Especially if the only alternative is tears. But I detect an underlying assumption that 2020 is unique. We gleefully anticipate 2021, believing it will somehow, magically, be better.

I don’t want to be a gloomy Gus, but what if it’s not? A few months ago, I wrote about the wonderful reunion we’d enjoy when church services could resume. I imagined the hugging and the laughing. Now that we’re resuming, it’s nothing like I predicted, and we don’t know how long it will be until we’re free to hug or to sing our hearts out without masks—if ever.

Who knows what fallout effects of this year’s tragedies will continue to plague us for decades? Who’s to say another virus won’t surface on the heels of this one, as bad or worse? What if, in 2025, you find yourself longing for the good old days of 2020?

This year is getting a bad rap and bullying it isn’t helping. Good things have happened, too. Babies have been born. Couples have bravely taken the plunge and gotten married this year despite restrictions. At least it will always be easy to calculate their age or anniversary year.

Personally, 2020 is the year I released my first self-published book. It’s also the year I signed a contract on my fourth novel, to be released in 2021. I’m pumped about seeing this book distributed, and why wouldn’t I be? I’m a 61-year-old with a lung condition living through a pandemic. Those factors only increase the sense of urgency.

And when forced to wait for something, you can know God is in the waiting time with you. A song I love says, “We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know Who holds tomorrow. Knowing this, we’ll live above the world and all its sorrow.”

The nightly news is grim. It can easily fill our hearts with fear and anxiety. What if instead, you used the news as a daily reminder that—whatever’s going on around you—you are here today, in this moment. You don’t need to wait a minute to do what God put you here to do. If you’re not sure what that is, Philippians 4:4-9 is a great place to begin.

Who knows? 2020 could turn out to be your best year ever.