Last night I was cycling home at 12:30am. A friend staying overnight texted to let me know she was in the area and ready to come home (I didn't have a spare key for her). I pulled over to answer her text and then merrily went on my way, pedalling through a red light without a second thought. It was a T-junction and I was on the top of the T, with no cars or pedestrians in the intersection.

A few seconds later a siren blipped behind me. And then again. It took the second or third time to register in my brain, followed by the thought, "The police can't possibly be pulling me over," but the sound of the siren indicated they were, so I stopped.

A car with two young male policemen rolled up beside me. "Hi ma'am. Do you know why we're pulling you over?"

In fact I did not, and couldn't think of a possible reason. "No."

"Do you know what colour the light was you just went through?"

I looked back. The fact that the traffic light was still red clued me in.

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

"You're a wheeled vehicle on a highway. Are you aware of the fact that bicycles have to follow the exact same rules of the road as cars do? Stop at every red light and every stop sign?"

I paused, too long for the policeman. "Are you aware of that?"

"Generally, I guess..."

"If we ticketed you, that would be a $400 fine. Can I see some ID?"

"Sure." I fumbled in my backpack for my wallet and driver's license, which I handed over.

"So this license is current. Do you drive a car much?"

"No."

"Are you aware that this is an offence which we could take points off your license for?"

At this point, the ludicrousness of the situation really hit me, but I tried to remain respectful. "No, I wasn't aware of that."

The policemen quizzed me about where I was born, my height, eye and hair colour, weight, and phone number, noting everything down. "Are you ticketing me?"

"No, but we're giving you an official caution. This is on record, and if you keep running red lights, you could lose your license."

I tried to damp down the eye-rolling response which this generated. I was pretty sure this was BS, but I wasn't about to tell the policeman so. "You can go," they finally said. "Have a good night." "You too," I said, and took off again.

It's good to know the police are working so hard to enforce the laws. However, commonsensically, everybody knows that bikes don't follow the exact same rules as cars, partly because we're not tonne-or-more speedy killing machines. A bike slipping through the top of a T-intersection where no pedestrians are crossing has about the same effect on traffic as someone walking on the sidewalk. The irony is that normally I'm fairly conscientious about stopping at reds, even on small side streets where most cyclists just breeze through.

Technically the police were correct. However, if they try to take points off my license for running reds on a bike, I'm pretty sure I can argue my way out of that one. I doubt the law actually supports that, but on the other hand, I'm not going to deliberately test that theory.

A few weeks ago I returned to cycling for the first time after my accident. I have to admit to a good deal more caution than I exercised before. It's made me slow down. Obey the rules of the road more stringently. Stop more. Signal turns. Always wear my helmet. Never assume anything. Ring my bell.

So in that sense, it's a good thing. I'm thankful that a broken elbow was all that resulted. If it took that to make me a more careful cyclist, then I guess it was worth it.

It made me realize how much I appreciate the sense of freedom cycling gives me. How I can go anywhere in the city, anytime, without relying on public transit. During my weeks of broken-elbowness, I realized how much I dislike being crowded into subway cars and buses with so many, often rude, other human beings. Cycling makes me feel like I own my transportation.

I'm just a lot more careful about it. That's how wisdom is learned, I guess.

At some point, I was going to write about biking in Toronto. How I'd gotten over my initial terror and was enjoying it despite the perils. How despite slight mishaps like getting knocked onto the sidewalk by an opening car door and getting hit (lightly) by a taxi, it was a good way to travel.

But then I broke my elbow riding my bike. So I'm typing this one-handed.

I was leaving work and going to meet my friend. The route involved turning left from Queen Street. I sped up to avoid being hit by a car turning left onto Queen from the street I was turning into (bad move, I know). Suddenly, my wheel fell into the groove of a curve in the streetcar track, my bike stopped short, and I catapalted over the handlebars, breaking my fall with my arms. I remember a vague feeling of dread as the pavement rushed closer, then lying by my fallen bike with intense pain in my elbows as a crowd of voices asked, "Are you ok?"

When I could answer I said I was ok, I thought, but please don't pull on my arms. A passing firetruck paused, and a cop who'd seen the whole thing offered to call an ambulance, but I didn't want the bother of waiting hours in the emergency room so I refused. Somebody handed me the remains of my bell, which had been knocked off and shattered, and I walked off to meet my friend.

The bike seemed ok: besides the broken bell, the handlebars had been knocked wonky and the chain was off, but otherwise it appeared undamaged. As I walked, I was conscious of my left arm hurting more than the right. When I arrived at my friend's house, she gave me a bag of frozen corn to rest my elbows on as we chatted. However, it soon became apparent that more than casual damage was done: I couldn't move my left arm without intense, stabbing pain.

My friend insisted on accompanying me to the emergency room. She helped me put on my jacket and boots and we walked to the nearest hospital. After checking in we amused ourselves during the long wait by speculating on other patients' maladies and cracking silly jokes. We arrived just before ten in the evening: it was the small hours of the morning before we were finally called in. A doctor briefly examined the arm and sent me for an x-ray, which involved contorting the arm into various agonizing positions. At 3 o'clock I sent my friend home. At 4 the doctor came back with his verdict.

"I don't see a fracture, but I'll have the x-ray techs take another look at it in the morning. Here's a prescription for the pain." On the pink hopital slip he'd written "No fracture."

So that was it. My arm wasn't broken. I wearily collected my things, retrieved my bike from outside, and trudged home, arriving at nearly 5am.

The next day the hospital called. Because of soft tissue swelling, they couldn't see a fracture, but the swelling was consistent with a radial head fracture of the elbow, apparently a common type of injury incurred when falling on the arm. I was to put it in a sling and come back on Monday (that was a Friday).

In a way, I was relieved. I was certain it was broken, so this verdict made a lot more sense.

I made it through the weekend with my arm in a sling, including working at the store on Saturday, albeit more slowly than normal. On Monday I went to the fracture clinic and had the arm examined by a specialist, who diagnosed a radial head fracture and a torn ligament. The arm has to be in a cast for three weeks, with a brace and physiotherapy after that. The cast was put on, and that was that.

I have to say, I will never take having two arms for granted again. Everything is slower, more difficult, painful, or impossible with one. I'm managing most things, but it's tiring and takes so much longer. I have a new respect for people who live with this all the time.

Also, I have a new respect for streetcar tracks.

It's been an eventful weekend. I decided this summer I was going to go trail riding at The Ranch, and finally I booked a two-hour advanced ride for this past Friday evening. It was a perfect day, and the ride was idyllic, a challenging but beautiful meander through fields, woods, steep river banks, and the riverbed. To make it more exciting, my horse, Cisco, a flea-bitten grey, suddenly decided to throw a little bucking fit for no apparent reason. I've sat a lot of bucking in my day, but my seat isn't what it used to be, and this was completely unexpected. I went flying and hit my bum, then my (thankfully, helmeted) head. After lying still to assess the damage I realized that a) I was in one piece and b) I'd kept hold of the reins, something I was inordinately proud of. The guide offered to switch horses with me, which turned out to my advantage. His horse, a big Appaloosa, had much smoother gaits than Cisco and was calmer, so the ride ended peacefully with a magnificent moon rising over the cool summer twilight. Apart from a fair amount of soreness (much of which is simply due to not having ridden regularly in ten years), some scrapes and bruises, I'm fine.

However, my brain was perhaps rattled more than I realized, because after being kindly given a ride to the bus stop I simply got on the first bus that appeared. The driver turned out to be a horse person, so we chatted happily for several moments before I suddenly saw a sign for Hamilton. I live in Toronto. I pointed this out to the bus driver, who said "Oh! I wondered why you were going to Hamilton when you told me you lived in Toronto." There was nothing for it at that point but to keep going, so she took me into Hamilton and told the next driver for Toronto to allow me on without paying extra fare. She was really a very nice person.

While waiting for the bus in Hamilton, a young Philipina girl with a suitcase came and sat next to me. We started talking, and before long she was pouring out her story. She'd left a nannying job in Hong Kong because she heard Canada would allow her to sponsor her family, but she'd ended up imprisoned by an abusive employer who threatened her and took her money and her belongings. One night she managed to sneak to her employers' computer while they were downstairs and send a quick email to a friend. The friend contacted the police, and eventually she was rescued and taken to a shelter. Now she was headed to Toronto to find another job. She was a Christian, and her faith and hope in God remained strong despite what she'd been through. She encouraged and challenged me, and I was able to help her find her way from the bus to the train and then to the subway in Toronto. Perhaps she was the entire reason I'd taken the wrong bus...God has reasons for such twists and turns in our lives.

Most of the rest of the weekend was taken up with entertaining three visiting French girls. One is staying for a semester at the University of Toronto, the other two are friends who'd come along to see her settled in. They were beautiful people, and it was a lovely reminder of how deep and immediate our fellowship in Christ is even with Christians we've never met from the other side of the world. I've experienced it many times with Christians from many different parts of the globe, and it's always wonderful.

But it's very late, and I'm up too late as usual. Tomorrow's another day, and another recreation day as our church is going to the beach. One of these days I'll actually get some work done...

So I didn't get the second job I interviewed for either. A friend of mine speculated that they may have already had a candidate in mind and simply had to interview others for the sake of protocol, which makes a lot of sense of several things:

-the interview was about 15 minutes long
-the interviewer didn't seem to have read my resume very carefully
-the reason given why I did not get the job was that I lacked enough "web-based knowledge". Headdesk. The only piece of "web-based knowledge" I'm really missing is programming, and this was a content management position.

But it's perfectly ok. I am resting in trust of the one who holds the universe, and I know I don't need that job. He'll provide for me anyway, as he's faithfully done up till now. I'm learning a lot about things like surrender and trust, some of which I may blog about in the near future.

Well, ok. By "popular demand" I really mean about three people. But I'd been intending to blog anyway. I just hadn't got around to it, ok?

This is going to be one of those boring "here's what's happening in my life" posts. It will be brief.

This has been the Summer of Housesitting. I travelled to the States for a week and a half in the beginning of July to take care of my parents' house, the dog, and the cat while Mom and Dad went on a well-deserved 30th wedding anniversary jaunt. I wasn't back long before friends of mine in Toronto asked me to housesit for them while they went to England. It was spectacularly refreshing to have a house to myself for nearly three weeks, not to mention a cat and an iguana. It was spectacularly stressful to be in charge of hosting the after-church gatherings and weekly homegroups, but it all happened without loss of life, limb, or sanity (just).

And, I'm job-hunting. After a bit of a hiatus while I focused on freelancing I'm launching myself into the employment market again. An interview a few weeks ago was a spectacular failure; another one yesterday went rather well, and I'm glad it happened that way round because the second one seems like a much better fit. I'll hear back from them next week, so here's hoping, but if not, I'll trust it's for the best and keep looking.

I was supposed to go to England in August...but I am not going to England in August.

That's about all...as far as externals go. As far as internals go, there's always a lot going on, but this post isn't about that. I'll try to write something more interesting soon.

1. I am a real human being

Yes, I know your website is frustrating you. However, it is an actual human being with feelings (me) you are dealing with—please keep that in mind.

2. I am the good guy

Yes, I know your website is not doing what you want it to. But hey, guess what, I'm your friend! I'm on your side. I'm working to make it do what you want it to. If it isn't, I'm not the enemy, and often it's not my fault—just discuss it with me, and we'll find a solution.

3. I don't know everything

I know it's a shock, but I am not some sort of omniscient internet guru with a database for a brain. Often, figuring out your problem is a learning experience for me too.

4. I am fallible

Another shock. I make mistakes. When I do, I'll admit them to you, and I'll work to fix them.

5. I have limitations

I'm not some sort of magical technological genie sitting behind a desk waving a magic wand to—hey presto—make websites appear. I'm limited by many things, not least the technology itself. Please be patient with me.

6. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.

'Nuff said.

7. I sometimes do know what I'm talking about.

Yesterday, God gave me a bike.

Recently I decided to pray for a bike, because I have been spending a lot of time walking. I have been spending a lot of time walking because I do not have money all the time for the TTC.

Walking is free. However, it is slow. It also can get tiresome, particularly if, like me, you are walking three miles one way to church twice a week, along with various other jaunts.

So I asked God for a bike. It's been a few weeks. I put the word out among a few friends that I was looking, but nothing turned up.

The bike had to be free, or almost so. I expected that any free bike would be a rusty old junker, which was fine. All I needed was the ability to get from Point A to Point B.

Yesterday, our handyman called.

Our handyman is a Czechoslovakian guy called Miro who works on the house sometimes. I'd last seen him a few days ago when he showed up to fix our door latch. I knew he was a Christian, and we'd had brief conversation, but that was about it.

So when Miro called, I thought he probably wanted to fix something. I wasn't prepared for what he said.

"Susanna, I have a bike. It's brand-new, one of those little folding bikes. I have another bike I use, so I don't need this one. I saw someone in Canadian Tire buying one like it, and I was going to offer him this one for free, but for some reason I hesitated and then when I went back he was gone. Could you use it?"

I was astonished. "I've been praying for a bike," I told him. "Yes, I could use it."

"Really!" he said. "I'll be there in 45 minutes."

Miro showed up 45 minutes later with a spiffy, almost brand-new Schwinn bike. He helped me adjust the seat, handed over the manual, and that was that.

I couldn't stop laughing. And I couldn't stop thanking God. How amazing he is, and how generous he is. To hear the prayer of a girl who really could use a bike, and then answer it seemingly out of nowhere in such an unexpected fashion—I'm still flabbergasted. Not to mention, it blessed Miro, who was tickled to the depths of his being at being such an answer to prayer.

And the bike rides very nicely, thanks.

Yesterday I had a job interview. It was at the headquarters for a family of luxury hotels, an extremely posh office located in Toronto's downtown financial district. The interview went ok. We'll see where it leads, but I have a feeling that kind of corporate culture and I aren't really a great fit.

On the way back, I decided to stop at a coffee shop. Although normally I don't do this, I felt a strong need for a caffeinated beverage and some time to contemplate. I popped into my favourite downtown yarn store and then the cafe a few doors down. I'd brought my knitting, so I pulled it out and began to work.

Knitting in public provokes a lot of reaction. I've never had so many conversations with strangers as since I took it up more seriously and began knitting on public transit. It seems to fascinate people, and it's rare that I don't get at least one comment.

This was no exception. I looked up at one point to see a woman outside the cafe looking at me intently through the window. She looked away when I spotted her, but a few minutes later the door opened and I looked up to see her approaching me. After introductions she said, "Can I ask you a favour?"

"Sure, I don't know if I can do it, but you can ask."

"Can you help me with my knitting? Someone promised me she would help me, but I've been waiting and she never did."

"No problem, go and get it and I'll help you."

She disappeared out the door with effusive expressions of gratitude, and I carried on knitting. While she was away, a guy walked by the window of the cafe, did a double take, came in, and asked about my knitting. He'd just bought the same needles I was using and wanted tips on how to use them. We chatted for a while, and then my original lady showed up again. While the three of us were talking, the guy let it drop that he'd studied theology. It isn't every day you meet that sort of rare bird, so I quizzed him and it turned out we had several friends in common.

He soon had to leave for a class, but the lady and I carried on. As I helped her cast on and decide how many stitches she wanted for the scarf she was making, she told me about her life. She was staying in the shelter across the street, but hoped to move back to her family home in Markham where she'd raised her children. Her daughter was in university and her son had just passed his entrance exams, so she was very proud. She had MS and had been paralyzed from the waist down for a time. She'd taken up knitting in an effort to keep her hands nimble.

It wasn't long before I had to go, but before I went, I prayed for her, physical, spiritual and mental healing, blessing, and a place to live, and invited her to church. She thanked me over and over and left beaming with joy. I left beaming with joy and thanking God. Honestly, there's no better feeling, no greater natural high, than feeling his love pour out through you to someone else.

As I walked home, I thought back to the interview. One of the interviewers had asked, "As you look back, what would you say is your greatest success? It could be work-related or non-work-related." I'd given some BS answer about delivering a website a client was happy with. Now, I realized that answer was a lie. My greatest success is when I love. My most triumphant moment is when I allow God to pour through me to bring blessing and healing to someone else.

The interviewers also asked that standard question: "Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What would be your ideal job?" I answered carefully that my ideal job would be exactly what I'm doing: designing websites. Even then, I knew that was only partly the truth.

If I could pick where I'd be in 5 years, it would be bringing God's healing and love to the poor and the broken. It would be pouring my life out to see them live. It would be living fully immersed in the kingdom of God. It wouldn't be stuck in an office pounding out websites.

How can you say that in an interview? You can't, I guess. But it struck me again how opposite the values of the kingdom of God are to the world's values. How upside-down the kingdom Jesus announced is. It's a kingdom where polish, professionalism, class, and appearances mean nothing. It's a kingdom where loving a poor old homeless woman with MS in a cafe is actually most important.

I know which one I'd rather be giving my life to.

When I was a young teenager, my mother taught me how to sew. She had made almost all of her own clothes as a teenager, and saw this skill as an essential part of womanhood.

I thought otherwise. As a clumsy, impatient 13-year-old who preferred climbing trees and playing football with the boys, I was endlessly frustrated with the fiddly, slow, detail-oriented nature of sewing. Crooked seams, parts of the garment sewn together that weren't supposed to be, and wild thread tangles drove me to the point of tears many times.

To add to the pain, the garments I had to sew were my absolute nemesis: dresses. My qualification for clothes was simple: could you climb a tree in them? Dresses failed this test, therefore to me were completely useless.

The one aspect of sewing that provided some enjoyment was the design. I liked visiting the fabric store to pick out a pattern and pretty cloth to go with it. But the making part involved hours of pain, with my only consolation the compliments I sometimes received on my homemade creations.

My poor mother, after seeing me through to what she considered an adequate level of skill as a seamstress, finally allowed me to give it up. I never returned to making garments, though in the years since I've been thankful for the skills that allow me to sew on buttons, hem trousers, and fix holey seams.

Shortly after I quit sewing, my mother upgraded from her antique Singer machine to a slicker, newer plastic model, and the Singer was relegated to a closet. For years after I left home my mother offered it to me, but I was ambivalent. Finally I decided I would take it, but it was another year or more before, on one trip home, my mother got my father to carry the machine out to my borrowed car and put it in the trunk.

After that, it sat for several months in a corner of the dining room. This past week, the purchase of trousers some 5 inches too long compelled me to drag it out. To tell the truth, the whole process of threading it, filling a bobbin, and setting it up rather frightened me. I contemplated some lazier options, like taking the trousers to a tailor, but lack of funds prevailed.

The case was more battered than I remembered, and the heavy metal machine inside more antique-looking and covered in dust. Two ancient cardboard boxes held a scary-looking buttonholer and an assortment of bobbins and other mysterious metal parts. The instruction booklet, along with the various pages that had separated from it, were also inside, but I was surprised at how naturally the once-automatic process of winding the thread around the various bits of machinery to the needle came back to me. When I inserted the electrical cord and plugged it in, the little light popped on, just like it always had.

I put my prepared trouser legs under the needle, lowered the foot, and gingerly pressed the foot pedal. The familiar clackety-clack ensued, and a neat hem spilled out. A few moments later, I had hemmed trousers, with a surprising minimum of pain and suffering.

I put the machine back in its case with no small sense of satisfaction. Sewing, my once-nemesis, and the machine I'd loathed, were now my servants and my friends. Thanks, Mom. I'm sorry for all the agony I put you through while learning, but I'm grateful you persisted. I may never make a dress again, but at least I can sew a hem.