2 years and counting

Looking back over the last two years is a good thing to indulge in:

Fabulous new friends who have been life to me and the girls.

Surprise gifts of money in the letterbox, my handbag, a chewing gum container, posted many times, adding up to well over 4 g. We have been blessed.

Parcels in the mail, just because people want to surprise us.

A dear friend ringing faithfully every Mon to pray with me no matter what my emotions are doing. Always a prayer. Always a mention of scripture to encourage.

Finding the creative side in me.

Buying a new wardrobe of clothes miraculously. Amazing. Fun!

A trip to London and beyond.

Food parcels, diet coke by the box-full, firewood, lamb and venison to fill the freezer, vouchers, coffee (so much coffee), cards, emails ….

A beautiful cottage to live in, in a fabulous suburb

Older and wiser people visiting and allowing me to visit and wallow or inquire

Having a voice to ask for help and using that voice

Being accepted with the gifting I have and being used in that @ church

Ah so much to remember and to remind what God has done in this time. To be able to look at a painful period in my life and to say there was joy and love and definitely laughter.

Discovering a small liking of wine, not an indulgent liking thankfully.

Going to movies with my mum. My mum giving us so much, my brothers and their families doing the same.

The visits from youth and families that were in our church previous to now and them valuing who I am and not distancing themselves because of where I’m at.

Flowers – so many flowers

Sharing and praying and teaching my girls through this time. Knowing that what we have been through will help others and will aid us in the future.

The countdown is on. This weekend d will come and talk. Not really sure what I think about it all. It’s pretty obvious in many ways that it will be the end.

It’s been two years. L turns 6 next week and it was on that day that d announced his unlove for me in a undemonstrative way. I’m hoping this week will go fast with school going back etc. I’m hopeful in God that I’ll not erupt like a lava-filled mountain but will have some clues beforehand as to how I can respond to whatever the heck d may say.

As I’ve admitted before, I get anxious before big situations and I anticipate it all going rather badly. I’ve already planned some meanish things I can say on the weekend to him, so this week I’ll try and boot them out of the way, so that I don’t feel the need to protect myself from rejection. Big sentence. I always find that I needn’t have anticipated the worst outcome of a situation and that God pleasantly surprises me.

Things to think about this week: There are some options with jobs this year, so I’m going to look into that this week. Exciting. Planning L’s no 6 cake is on the agenda plus the invites – ahhhhh. Covering school books. Meal planning? Baking stuff for school lunches. Focusing on the known and not the unknown.

Planetshakers latest album has a song, which has a line or two saying this: 'You are good all the time and your love endures forever'. That is the known. The weekend is the unknown and that makes it scary. But I will try and sit and relax in the known.

10 things i love about .......

Ten things making me happy

Thanks for the tag beautiful Amy. Here is my list. It’s good to stop and recall some of what makes my heart beat loudly.

A fun and romantic movie def does

Humour. Being able to laugh at oneself and with others.

Coffee

Faith in the presence of a companioning God

Beauty – in things, art, people or words. God speaking through his creation.

Playing games with the girls or cards with friends – thanks for the latest one Cazzie, you rock!

Baking and eating it

Creating - stuff, a new look in a room .......

Walking outdoors with a friend

Togetherness - Family meaning blood and other combos of friends. Remembering to celebrate.

These two make me smile outloud and ridiculously happy.

When the heart has to wait

Here are a few notes (Sue Monk Kidd – When the heart waits) I took awhile ago. I thought rewriting them would be helpful to me and maybe you when you read this. Love me xx

The life of the Spirit is never static. We’re born on one level only to find some new struggle toward wholeness gestating within. That’s the sacred intent of life, of God, to move us continually toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.

A cocoon is no escape. It’s an in-between house where the change takes place. When you wait, taking the long way, you are trusting that there’s a transforming discovering lying pooled along the way. Thoreau – “nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.” Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? Jesus experienced a sense of Gods absence. “My God, where are you? Why have you forsaken me?”

God making a home with us during our waiting, sharing the experience no q asked. Creating a “merciful being together”.

I feared waiting because such pauses in life brought me close to the dark holes and empty pockets inside me, to the rigidities and self-lies I had fashioned.

Contemplative waiting is consenting to be where we really are.

We have to learn to stand still in order to continue our journey…. The more we run around, the more we lose touch with ourselves, the less of us there is …. Allan Jones

We tend to align ourselves with the rhythm and pace around us. If you want to stay in your waiting, you’ll need to refrain from the frantic pace around you.

We can go on and on, waiting for the next “happening of life”. Hurrying toward it, trying to make it happen. We live from peak event to peak event, from brightness to brightness, resisting the flat terrain of ordinary time – the in-between time. Waiting is the in-between time. It calls us to be in this moment/season, without leaning so far into the future that we tear our roots from the present.

“A lifetime burning in every moment” TS Elliot.

An attitude of expected beingness – not intent upon results and not concerned.

Giving up our need to control and manipulate, we can relax and relate to life with a faithful knowing that if we cease to act, life itself will not cease. It may, in fact, grow full.

In waiting (Meister Eckhart) we find God new and immediate in every moment, not something “out there” to be grasped some other time.

The heart

Proverbs 27:19 As water reflects a face, so a mans heart reflects the man.

We heard a great preach yesterday at churchie re the heart. Keeping it soft. Keeping it close to God rather than far away. A preach on how Spiritual formation is happening all the time, whether we notice it or not!

On reflection, I notice it. The same morning, yesterday morning, I made the youngest of my two fully tidy her new pink (hand me down) desk or I threatened to give it to the older one. Ahhhhh, poor darling didn’t have any idea how to tidy it and I was a rambling mother making her tidy something just for my own picky-nature.

On a normal day, having given good instructions and plenty of time, it would have been an achievable task for the just about 6 year old. But as I rushed to wash my hair in the shower I realised that I had acted out some of my inner agro on her. And I hadn’t even got to church to hear the preach on the heart.

On the way home from church I whispered my sorry to her. I wanted my heart to be right with her. I realised I was holding some rough stuff inside yet acting it out on others.

Man it’s great to be self-aware. I’m so grateful for the prompting and soft voice of my maker who makes me aware. He said he would never leave us or forsake us. He said he would leave the comforter, the Holy Spirit, to guide us and to lead us. Appreciating that.

I’m feeling like we’re a little bit small. 3. I’m feeling like we are a little boat on a big sea. We were 4 and that felt tidy, complete. Maybe just needing a dog. But now each of us, in our way, desire more companionship than our current number. We do love days of being on our own and having a rest from crowds. But mostly we love going back to the crowd of friends we have.

I know a little of what the girls feel from hearing them speak. Their screams of delight when I announce a plan with friends. I feel it mostly at night at the mo. The routine of getting girls in bed, making a cuppa and sitting down to watch something. I am missing d and the company we had, when it was healthy. I miss the ‘us’ factor when I’m around others at the mo.

I’m reading a book by Joan D Chittister – ‘Scarred by struggle, transformed by hope’ which goes through the different struggles you face when you have a disaster come upon you and the gifts that come with that. She is a nun I think. She is brilliant at writing and insightful. ‘The gift of surrender …… There are times to let a thing go. There is a time to put a thing down, however unresolved, however baffling, however wrong, however unjust it may be. There are some things in life that cannot be changed, however intent we are to change them. There is a time to let surrender take over so that the past does not consume the present, so that new life can come, so that joy has a chance to surprise us again.’ Two years ago, this month, d left us. Sometime in the next few weeks (or months if it’s his normal timing with doing the hard stuff!) he will be coming to talk to me. An apology of some sort is on his agenda. Maybe an explanation. Maybe and highly probably, he walks after he apologises. I’m totally not sure which way it will be but it’s certainly on my mind. Will I have to lay that dream completely down? Will I have to start all over again and how weird and/or fun could that be? How weird would it be starting again with d boy? How will I keep doing repair work with the girls as they go through the grief process at different ages?

So many questions and continually not many answers. But there is the peace that surpasses my own understanding and there is Joy in the pain of it all. I can only marvel at the last two years in how we have survived and lived and loved.

Other books I’m enjoying are Annabel Langbeins ‘eat fresh, and ‘Etcetera etc’ by Sibella Court (beautiful, home-stuff design book).

Life is certainly not always happy-happy, clappy-clappy but in life there is always a choice. To live and to tend the garden of my heart. Another good challenge for tweeeeny ten.

tweny-10

Hello twenty-ten. I really like your name for this year. It’s short and snappy. It’s rather cool.

I’m thinking it’s important to look back a little on last year, not to get depressed (“you’re soooo last year!”) but to take the good stuff into tweny-ten. I’d also like to look forward to this year, maybe a goal or two. I haven’t done that kind of thing for awhile – Main goal has been SURVIVAL.

09 saw me get better at saying NO to offers or jobs that I didn’t need. That was good.

09 saw me eat something special just about every night after dinner whilst watching yet another borrowed movie. I’d like to see less of that and more reading maybe. Definitely.

09 was a year where I made some great connections with all sorts of people. To take that to another level where I invite them home for a meal or support them in some way, to invest in their lives and to perhaps be a little or a lot more of Jesus to them, is always something I wanna do.

Coffee was a stable and daily thing. A sure stayer.

Creativity was allowed to flow more in the fullness of my life – in problems, in home deco and baking. I love you creativity. I love seeing you in others and I love you being more at home with me.

I’d like to read more this year. I have some amazing books. I have some lovely spots around my house to lounge about in reading those books. You can do it Sarah!

2009 was another opportunity, to show my girls that we could live life despite the sad normality of our smaller family situation. I’m hoping that we will be able to find and see more of God in the vulnerability of our situation. L, the just about 6 year old, is expressing herself incredibly well at present. She talks of ‘finding it so hard with the life-change we are having’. “Mum”, she whispers at midnight recently, “is the life-change hard for you too? Does it make you sad mum?”

“It is just so sad. I sometimes don’t even know why I cry mum”.

I’m hoping, as the ‘captain’ of this crazy ship we are riding on, that I will have the wisdom to navigate our way round, allowing the waves of tears and emotions to flow without reserve and judgement.

K, the delightful 7 year old, wants peace and love for each parent. She wants to please each one and not cause any tidal waves. K is in a different place. A place where it seems very normal and acceptable. She writes beautiful notes and says caring things to each of us, so that we are OK. She even asks me about how d is my boyfriend?! I’m not sure if she thinks that is how a normal boyfriend behaves. I’m not sure if this is her way of responding. Whatever the case, I’m hopeful I will hear God’s wisdom and have His strength to navigate the ship for her too.

Together, the three amigos that we are, love people. We love being invited.
We love being involved and being around folk. Christmas time was different for sure, not having the girls here. But it was so full of relatives (esp my amazing bro) and lovely friends that I hadn’t seen for yonks, that it became less painful and more joyful.

Having the girls arrive home a few days after Christmas, was joy.

Love you my precious girls. Thanks to my beloved friends. You are needed and appreciated.

(I’ll be back soon, we’re off again for a few days at Grandmas. There is of course way more to say about what one must leave behind and what one must gather up for the new year.)