3 times a bridesmaid ......

I do recall that little jingle being said to me as i was coming up to and over that no of bridesmaid duties. I tried to ignore it. I wasn't going to get married it appeared, at the same time as others.

I loved being a bridesmaid, the latest one i was in was one where the Bride won Bride of the Year. My beautiful second cousin Alex asked me to be part of the party. And we got to be in a magazine! The local barista told me i was in the magazine, at the time of publication. "Oh my goodness - what were you doing reading that magazine?" i replied.

There have been 9 wonderful times, all different and all beautiful and dear friends. I'm still hopeful for number 10. Harder as you hit your 30's!

And there are more!

Bride of the year and the Lloyds do the bridesmaid thing together ......

and i've even had the priviledge of marrying many friends ..........

And somewhere in the middle of those momentous celebrations, there was my own, dated 22 May 1999.

My body-guard brothers walked me down the isle and sang with me in the car on the way to ceremony .....

The diabetic bride....

My special friends, Sarah, Ange, Chrissy and Anna ..........

Funny thing is, i'm just about to send divorce papers off, as d hasn't seemed to have got round to it. We would have been married 11 years today ...... and i'm alright about that.

Truthfully it's been good for my heart to look over photos and see the many great times i've had, many with d as part of the package. And that's alright too. I think i'll need to look over the photo albums again soon, with more detail. Maybe when looking through them, God will speak again or bring another bout of healing, or just some joy from the incredible life i feel i've lived so far.

I loved being bridesmaids to my friends. I've dearly loved marrying people too. Marriage is a wonderful idea of God's. I'm hopeful that this ditty is not true: 9 times a bridesmaid, one time a bride, never a bride again.

All parts being known

A few aims of late:

To start using ical (calendar programme on macs), esp as I have it on my computer but also so I can be more accountable to myself in the PE area of my life mostly.

To get my teaching registration up-and-running so I can begin to teach again. Kind of beginning to realize, after many-a-year, I am passionate about that and pretty alright at doing it.

To get up earlier to read and pray.

Get some prayer for my fear: When I was little I remember vividly praying in my bed that I would die before my mum and dad so that I wouldn’t have to be sad. I think now, that those were big thoughts for a young girl to have at such a young (maybe 5) age. Where did they come from? Funny, or actually not funny thing: Dad died of cancer when I was 11. Crazy.

I spent my married life fearing that d would die too. We would discuss it and he would always comment that he wouldn’t die. He was right. He didn’t die, he desserted. Jumped ship. I always remember having very opinionated views re death and divorce, as a teenager and teacher. My opinion was that death was easier. It was final. On a bad day, I will wish that it was death and not the other.

So my latest thing that I worry about, is what will happen if I die, with my girls? I just had a few thoughts over the weekend and am thinking rather than just leave those to fester, I’ll open them up to Jesus who is the Light of the World. He is the light of my world. I’ll get someone to pray with me cause I always remember how my fun and luscious friend Ange said one day: Let’s stand together and pray, let’s believe together for this. I’ll stand with you. Kind of like: two is better than one.

He is a kind helper bringing things to the surface, of our lives, so we can see his restorative work. Rather than carry this load, I’ll share it.

Just a cute thing to finish with. Mum arrived last week with presents for Mothers day that the girls had picked out. Check them out.

How well they seem to know me. I've not talked about wanting a teapot to them but i have wanted one. My fav colour is blue and mum tried to talk L into buying a white one (as ma knew my favouring kitchen colour was white) but she was definate in wanting this. I love it!

I couldn't have chosen a better candle myself. What wonderful taste k has!

To be loved is to be known. I felt really known in this experience. Precious ones.

Stretchy love

(L mastering skipping at dance class - what a pro)

A newer friend made this cool thing for our family.

It is a piece of board (you need your imagining head on now) covered in material (board not too big - a small platter size) with felt houses on it, 6 in total.

One of the houses is the biggest and each house has a nail in it.

Attached to this board is elastic with tags on it. You write the names of your family, one on each tag. These tags have a hole in the middle, big enough to fit on the nail of any of the houses.

The biggest house represents our family home where K, L and I live.

The pink house, made of felt, in the left hand bottom corner, is d's house, we decided.

The other houses are listed as our special friends homes so we can talk about visiting them if we want.

The thing that makes this stretchy love is the following - the elastic joins all of the tags together, the girls are joined to me, the girls are joined to d (who is missing in action) but the mum and dad tags are not joined. Stretchy love.

When i first looked at it as my friend was explaining, i almost wanted to cry. I had acquired a picture that expressed the emotional picture of our life. Separation yet together.

When d (the tag) is at his home alone, we are at ours together. They are joined to him though. Nice visuals. When they put their tags on his house (their weekends with him), they are still joined to me via elastic. Hard to see our little felt house, with one person at it. But it's true and cleverly portrayed.

I felt i hadn't seen into the 7 year olds heart for awhile so was quite pleased as she shared something from her stretchy-heart experience.

"I wish i wasn't born in this family".

"yeah" i replied.

"i wish i was born in a family like Kathy and Mark" (two parents, lovely peeps).

I was thankful for the shared heart. I was happy for a glimpse into her private world. A door was opened and i thanked her. I agreed that I wished it wasn't this way too.

We talked the next day through shower steam, about how glad i was to hear her heart and that God was full of surprises for our family.

I'm glad of stretchy love. It's just another tool to help these and hopefully many more, wee dear-hearts, process and heal and understand the messiest of things. Life.

When i get to go out, this is often the picture i'm left with - little noses pressed against the window, trying to be glad for me that i get a night out, trying to be glad that it's Grandma babysitting, mostly wanting me just to stay home!
I'm glad of the love that stretches, even when i'm away from them.

easy-peasy (if that's possible) sticky pud

Excuse the picture (it looks great in Nigella's mouth!)

100g dark muscovado sugar (buy near normal sugar in superm)

175g self-raising flour

125 ml full-fat milk

1 egg

1 t vanilla ess

50g unsalted butter, melted

200g chopped, rolled dates (not sure what rolled are sorry)

For the sauce:

200g dark musc sugar

approx 25 unsalted butter in little blobs

500 ml boiling water

wahoooooo

Preheat oven to 190

butter dish

combine the sugar with the flour in large bowl

pour the milk into a measuring jug, beat in the egg, vanilla and melted butter adn then pour the mixture over the sugar and flour, stirring, just with a wooden spoon (don't you love her simple instructions) to combine. Fold in teh dates then scrape into a prepared pudding dish.

Sprinkle over the next lot of sugar and dot with butter. pour over the boiling water

cook for 45 minutes.

oh my goodness, delicious self-saucing kind of pud. could be done in a crock pot i imagine! must must be served with something white like icecream!

Firstly the crocko potting evening was fabulous. Alyson Gofton did a splendid job of entertaining whilst taking us through a history of NZ electrical appliances and how the crack-pot has revolutionalised the working mothers life!

A few tips – put your chicken in breast side down, upside down to the normal way you prob do. The breasts are the leanest and therefore have all the moisture sucked out of them the other way. If you put it upside down, the juice from the bird falls downwards towards the breast and makes them a-lah-perfect and not dry! Also she encouraged you to rest your meat out of the crockpot for ten or so minutes with tinfoil (or newspaper?) on top of it. Interesting. Not many recipes were given as you really needed to buy her book but it was a fun outing with the girls.

I had a marvelous (slightly crazy idea yesterday) and began to execute last night and today. A beautiful friend had shared a new sticky-date-self-saucing-toffee pudding recipe (from Nigella’s Bite) with me so I went with that as a start. I wanted to celebrate Mothers day with my girls in a special way, that would provide an opportunity to bless them on my day.

The day started with a lovely family at church saying they were going to pay for my piano to be tuned! Cool. A very good start.

I had lunch out and then scrambled to do some prep before the girls got home from staying with the dad. They were pretty excited to see me and when we were home I asked them to get dressed into something pretty (I mustn’t have stipulated ‘frock’ as liv came out as a lady bird and kaiya as agypsy from Ireland). They wore make-up and had done their hair, so cute.

Next they entered the lounge,

Had starters while we all wrote kind things about one another on our placemats.

Next was the main course followed by a speech of love thanking the girls for making me a better person.

There was dancing to Abba and finally the sticky date yum yum. I was too full to eat it after nacho’s but the sighs of delight after worry about ‘dates’, was too good to be true. “good”, “oh gooooood”, “emmmm”, “tastes like porridge but better” (thank goodness). “can I have some more?”. No.

The menus, the candles, the themed table, added to the heart-felt message I wanted to stamp again: You are precious to me. I love being your mum.

Later in bed with the younger of my two, we talked about how to pray for people who were unkind. I talked a little about how hard it had been to pray for d when he left. The little ones eyes welled up, “I just feel so sad mummy, I miss daddy.” Talk of why ……..? Why ……? Why ……?

And then this great question too: “How many people in the world are separated?” Now she’s thinking of others as well as her own pain. I gave her some stats (great to know useless bits of info sometimes!) and suggested when we pray, that she prays for all the children in the world who live in this situation.

Oh she prayed good, with her merciful heart. God I pray you would bless her and k, that you would help their hearts to be real and to heal and to be stitched up where they are broken. Those were some of my words and i will have to keep praying that over them as they grow and grow……… And that’ s OK. I have to remind myself too, of this truth – that He is a good God and no matter what dumb or crazy things people do, He has goodness plans, as we allow our gaze to fall on Him and our arms to reach out, or I guess to simply fall into His arms.

'We live under the mercy. God does not treat us as alien others, lining us up so [as to] evaluate our competence or our usefulness or our worth. God rules, guides, commands, loves us as children whose destinies God carries in God's heart. The word mercy means that the upward look to God in the heavens does not expect God to stay in the heavens, but to come down, to enter our condition, to accomplish the vast enterprise of redemption, to fashion, in us, God's eternal salvation'. Eugene Peterson.

I hope that wherever you are at, God can be part of it as you allow Him.

Love to my friends, some of who are not mothers but who all carry a beautiful heart for others. You are amazing and you always encourage me in my walk in this world. Thank you.

(Our placetag holders above, sticky pudding recipe tomorrow, possible crock pot one!)

the pot of all pots

I’ve been using her for awhile now. She truly makes my day go better. 3 min prep at the most some days and then I’m set. Arriving home to her sweet smells, is one of those things that helps make life worth living.

Tom night I’m attending a crock-pot evening with Alyson Gofton. I quite like those kinds of things, learning new things to do with my old thing. My crock-pot has become one of the best presents I’ve ever been given. Hopefully I can share some helpful hints another day after having time with Alyson.

Every Tues I get together with a few friends at my local pad/café. We banter on about our kids homework pressures, the latest happening at church along with our latest cooking disasters/exploits. It’s really cool. It’s fun mostly, challenging in helping one another with different things going on in our lives. Some of us are going to this crocking potting evening. I’m a huge initiator of activities, love organizing get-togethers with others. I’m often thinking of stuff to do – where can I have a mid-winter Christmas dinner and who will it be with? Which café might we try next for our dessert night?

I recall as a young girl my mum saying that friends of hers had told her to go home and read a book, when they were planning to go out together by themselves. She must have commented on how lonely that felt (as dad had died) or something along those lines. I’m thinking that me organizing stuff is such a great thing, but I’m having to recognise that sometimes I do get disappointed if my plans don’t come about. It’s not the same being on your own when plans may fall through. And it’s not something that I want to grumble about because pure and simple, that’s life. I think what I get is, I’m understanding that at times I feel that same sense (not on the same level) of abandonment that I felt when d left me. A little loss of control and a creeping-in of that celine dion song, “all by myself”, he he.

Saying to myself: ‘I’m feeling a little abandoned today’ and following that with, ‘and that’s OK’. Even just to be able to acknowledge that, name it, is and can be quite significant. Sounds weird but it is goodness.

The opposite feeling to that is an overwhelmed feeling and I think I’ve experienced a big amount of that over the last few weeks. I haven’t allowed myself much time to relax with myself so it has become foreign. I’ve worried about stuff and not known how to share it or where to even start. Coming home and having ‘alone’ time is usually filled with folding the washing (ah sigh) or putting the tatoes on to boil. And when presented with time and no jobs, I feel sometimes like I’m in a foreign country not knowing the language. Ahh what do I do?

So I’m conscious of a few things that are going on in my noggin, realizing I need to discover again what things give me joy. I walked the other day, after many a day of not walking. It was bliss. I could breathe the air in and talk to Father God. I’d forgotten how great it felt. I’ve enjoyed blogging heaps in the past, but have felt lately it’s a little like a task I need to tick off, rather than what it actually is – life to my thoughts. Clarity to my noggin. Breathing space for my heart. Maybe I need one of those cool iphones/blueberries (as a friend called them once in a guessing game) or something so I can jot down my thoughts as I ride around town doing the business of life. I’ve also done a lot more talking to God about the different things by simply asking him to shine his light in my dark or worried places. I’ve asked Him to help show me the way to walk as I feel the different things at this moment.

Prov 3:5-6 – Trust in the Lord with all your heart (shine your light where I don’t trust you Lord). Lean not on your own understanding (sometimes I have no idea what is going on for me – my understanding is zilch), in all your ways acknowledge Him and he will direct your paths (I do acknowledge you God, that you are a good God, a loving and caring, faithful and consistent, all-knowing bountiful God).

Currently my crocking potting meals are corn beef (ah der – that is so familiar to most nz families),frozen chicken covered in some kind of herb rubbing on low all day – perfecto! pork (slides off the fork it’s so tender), beef – delicious with garlic and rosemary rubbed into it, and sometimes I just chuck some chicken pieces in and hope for the best. I’ll share some more goodies if there are any from my next big social event tom pm. Love me