Trials – Page 4 – Mum in Zone One

Changeable Woman

Here are some thoughts from Week 7 of my pregnancy – mid August – because we so quickly forget what it’s like!

They say when you’re pregnant, more blood has to pump around your body. Is it possible that I can feel that happening? I’m incredibly thirsty, inconceivably tired, and keep getting short of breath when I move.

This week I had seven friends round for a dinner party. Does it count as a dinner party if we ordered fish and chips? Of course not. We didn’t even foot the bill. When one friend left she said, ‘thank you for eating your fish and chips with us’ which was exactly what I’d done. (It was actually a great evening. I would highly recommend such measures when you want to see friends but are completely wiped!)

I keep forgetting things. The other day I texted my friend to tell her we’d eaten at our new breakfast bar (I know, I only text urgent news). Half an hour later she mentioned it and I asked her if she’d been watching us through the kitchen window. Rather a wild accusation! She said, ‘No… you told me.’ Embarrassing.

I keep crying. I was reading an email out to my family about a friend’s son recovering from surgery, and I burst into tears. Well that’s quite a reasonable response, if a little out of character. I also nearly cried when trying to decide if the aforementioned breakfast bar was big enough or not. Definitely not reasonable.

I keep wanting to eat spaghetti hoops from a tin (I found some at my mum’s today – wolfed them).

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, my body and mind are falling apart, which usually only means one thing: I’m pregnant.

But despite all of this evidence (as well as the positive pregnancy test – I’m not crazy), I still worry that maybe I don’t feel pregnant enough. I’m seven weeks, which feels like a long time but then it’s not really. I lost a baby later than this back in 2010. I’ve always thought it would be great to find out you’re pregnant at around 16 weeks, when you’re beyond the “danger zone” and can tell all your friends. But of course, that’s never happened to me. I always figure it out at around 4 or 5 weeks, and then can’t stop thinking about it until I take a test. Then you need to wait a good couple of months before you get to see the miraculous heartbeat on the screen, and explain to everyone why you’ve been behaving like a complete nincompoop with the energy of a 93 year old.

So that’s the stage I’m at now. I occasionally panic that the baby isn’t OK. I read about the harvesting of foetal body parts and consider the grave injustice of this world. Why do some people have to suffer childlessness and loss, while others who don’t want children are blessed with fertility? What a mess this world is in. And since this world is in such a mess, do I really want to bring another child into it? Well if I don’t, it’s too late now. But of course I do. I already desperately want this child to be healthy, and safe, and happy in the Lord.

And then other times – particularly between midnight and 7am – I panic at the thought of having another person determined to interrupt my sleep. Plus what if I don’t give enough attention to each of my children? And a hundred other concerns. So thus far pregnancy has taught me to pray, and trust in God’s oft-baffling but ever-true sovereignty.

Reading this now, early October, I’m thankful that even when my moods, senses, family size and body shape change, God never changes. The gospel is still true and God is still just and good, even when I’m eating spaghetti hoops out of a tin and crying at the news, when I forget I invited someone for lunch or I fall asleep on the sofa at 8.30pm.

Enough nonsense, here is some relevant truth from Walter C Smith:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

When the Going Gets Tough…

“How can I bring a child into a world like this? How can a person grow up with all this around them?”
This is a line from the film Se7en, which if you’re as old as me you’ll remember all too well (and never quite get over).

Sometimes it can seem a strange decision to bring children into a world that’s so dangerous and full of suffering. It’s something a lot of parents worry about. The world’s in a mess – why would we want to inflict it on our loved ones? And if we do want to, should we? Is it selfish?

Older people are always harking back to the good old days when you could leave your pram outside a shop and your kids could play out after dark without any fear (I don’t buy any of this, incidentally but I won’t get into that).

But what really concerns me and gives me a knot in my stomach is the thought that my children are growing up in an increasingly secular, anti-Christian country. Our laws are changing, and they’re moving away from the Christian foundations that many of them were formed upon in the past.

And in the name of “tolerance” our freedom to speak about and express our beliefs is slowly being stolen from us, and we seem mostly powerless to stop it. Will my children lose their jobs or even go to prison for being Christians when they’re older? I don’t know, but that thought scares me.

So what should I do about it? Maybe tone down the Jesus stuff in the hope that they will keep their heads down and not really mention him to anyone? Or maybe we should move to another country where they would be free to live out their faith in safety. That’s a bit drastic, maybe we should just surround them with other Christians at all times, so they don’t suffer any conflict. All of these things – and other ways of either running or hiding – can seem appealing at times.

Last Sunday we looked at Psalm 11, in which one of King David’s allies was advising him to run and hide because their nation had, too, turned from God’s word:

“Flee like a bird to your mountain
For look, the wicked bend their bows;
They set their arrows against the strings
To shoot from the shadows
At the upright in heart.
When the foundations are being destroyed,
What can the righteous do?”

In other words, there’s nothing left to do but leg it. There’s no hope for us, when the world around us has turned it’s back on God’s word.

But David’s response is quite simple: he trusts in the Lord. He knows that the Lord sees what ‘the wicked’ are doing (whether they’re in the shadows or not), and that the Lord is in charge – he’s ‘on his heavenly throne.’ Nothing gets passed him. So when the world seems out of control, actually it isn’t. The Lord still reigns.

In Britain today, children are extremely safe. The rules on child protection and health and safety are stricter than they’ve ever been. We are extraordinarily well cared for medically. Whatever you’ve heard about the NHS (if you’re not British), it’s amazing. Ask anyone who has a chronic illness or has had a brain tumour removed. Our government is stable, and our police are relatively uncorrupt (is that even a word?). All of these things are huge blessings to us, but the trouble is that we start to trust in those things instead of in the Lord.

The British justice system is not my refuge – the Lord is. So when the former turns against me, I will not fall to pieces. The Lord sustains us, so if we lose access to medical care we will continue to trust him. We’ve become so comfortable with life that we can forget who really provides for us, and that we’re really living for another home.

Of course it’s upsetting when we see injustice and we see the world turning further and further from God’s way. That should upset us – it’s a God-given emotion:

‘For the LORD is righteous,
he loves justice;
upright men will see his face.’

This is SUCH an encouragement to me. Yahweh loves justice. So if my children – or the people I see on the news – suffer injustice, then the Lord will sort that out one day. He really does care what’s happening to people, much more than we do. And if my children keep trusting him, they will see his face. And it will all have been worth it.

So when I’m worried about how Christians might be treated in twenty or forty year’s time, I can thank God that he is still in control, that he sees what people are doing, and that soon he’ll put everything right. This is what I can teach my children, because unlike our country’s laws, it’s a truth that will never change.

If you’re still not sure, look at Jesus. In Gethsemane, wicked men hid in the ‘shadows’ to arrest him, although he was innocent. He didn’t ‘flee’, but all of his friends did. And when has there ever been a clearer picture of ‘the foundations being destroyed’ than when God’s king hung dying on the cross? And yet: since that tomb was found empty, every believer can know for sure that one day they ‘will see his face.’

With special thanks to Robin Silson, who so clearly explained this psalm to us last week.

The Power of “Goodbye”

What’s the hardest thing about raising young children in the city?

I wonder what you think. The traffic, the rent, cramped living, the lack of grass? The noisy neighbours, the hit-and-miss schools, the on-street (and not even your own street) parking? How about the hours spent commuting, or the polluted air, or the lack of like-minded Christian families? These are all relevant – some more than others. (Grass is overrated, friends. Heaven is a garden CITY.)

For me, not one of these things is the hardest thing about raising my children in the city. The hardest thing is this: people leave. I’m trying to nurture a stable family in a transient city, which feels a bit like trying to make friends in the middle of Kings Cross station. Some people do stop, they say hello, they might even invest a little. But then they have to rush – they have a train to catch.

People leave for good reasons. They take the gospel to undesirable places, or their job moves them, or they go to Bible college, or they move nearer to sick parents. (Some people don’t leave for good reasons, by the way, but I’m not here to judge.) And I can cope with that – ish. I miss them, and I cry when they leave, but I can see the bigger picture. The West Country needs youth workers: I get it.

But it’s harder for children to see the bigger picture. My daughter doesn’t even know how long an hour is; my son doesn’t quite know the difference between London and Longnewton (my parents’ village). So how are they meant to understand that it’s actually a good thing that we’re waving goodbye (yet again) to another precious friend, because they’re meeting a need somewhere in South East Asia? My heart aches in a way it never used to before I had children, because I don’t like to see them sad. It’s as simple as that.

It’s not just church family members, either. It’s the teachers, the support staff, and the classmates. They can be here one day, and gone the next. And each time this happens, I feel like my child’s foundations are crumbling away, bit by bit.

But I need to learn some things. I spent last night and this morning in tears about this issue, by the way, so please don’t assume I have this figured out!

The more people leave us, the more we rely on the Lord. He’s my rock and my foundation. He will never leave me. Time and again the Lord reminds his people of this fact: ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’* Sweet, sweet words. (This is what I told my daughter the day her nursery teacher was dismissed without notice.) And of course, Jesus himself comforted his disciples with these words: ‘And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ (Matt 28:20). When friends leave, we’re forced to lean more on the One who never does. So if our weak foundations do crumble, by God’s grace they can be replaced by the true Rock.

When people leave to serve in God’s Kingdom elsewhere, it does help the children to have a more global perspective. This is hard for them, but it is possible. We’ve found that showing them maps and praying for people in other countries has helped them with this. And, similarly, they are learning that we all suffer for the advance of the gospel – those who go, and those who stay behind. These are hard but character-building lessons to learn, and I pray that by learning them my children will be blessed, and will be a blessing to the Kingdom as they grow up.

Also, waving goodbye to people makes us long for Jesus to return soon. I can tell my children that in the new creation, in the garden city, there’ll be no more goodbyes. There’ll be no unreached people groups, no sick relatives, no war zones, no more tears. It would be nice if my church family could be together forever, and that nobody would have to leave, but then we wouldn’t look forward to heaven enough. And one day, we will be with our brothers and sisters for eternity. In the words of that great Australian theologian of our time, Colin Buchanan: ‘Hooley Dooley Wop Bam Boom! Jesus Christ is coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Click on the speech bubble, top right.

*Deut 31:6-8; Joshua 1:5; 1 Kings 8: 57.

Enjoy yourself (Just not in the same way you used to before)!

I used to look forward to, and enjoy, weekends away with church. Now I brace myself for them, and often feel I’m the worst version of ‘me’ when I’m there. Sad, I know. But I believe that through prayer and practical wisdom this, the “time away with church family, with a family,” can be conquered!

I’m going away today, so I thought I’d offer some tips on how to get through, I mean enjoy, your time away (it’s more fun than packing). I’m in no way the expert, but I thought I’d share what I’ve come up with thus far – you’ll see I’m learning from my mistakes.

Things NOT to expect:

Sleep – Time and again I make the mistake of arriving on a conference/camp/ weekend away already tired, and hoping for some rest. Go on, point and laugh, I deserve it. You won’t get much sleep. Things will prevent you from sleeping: probably your children. But while you can do everything in your power to encourage your children to have a good night’s sleep (blackouts, familiar bedding, nightlight etc.), there are always things you can’t control. Even if your children sleep wonderfully, you are still likely to be woken up by something else, e.g. someone else’s child; a fire alarm; a 5am delivery van; a 3am Pentecostal prayer gathering (this has been my experience, anyway).

Catching up with good friends – this is unlikely, because you will be busy with your brood and also there may be other people who need you more. You don’t want to end up resenting your children or anyone else who gets in the way of your nice long chat with so-and-so. Maybe think of this as an opportunity to arrange to meet up with that friend in the next couple of weeks! Then, if you do end up having a good chat: bonus!

Taking part in everything that’s going on – it might be the teaching you look forward to, or the social aspect, or praying together. But it’s likely you’ll miss out on something you’d really like to have been at. You might get trapped in your room with a clingy baby and no phone signal to beckon help, while everyone else is having a whale of a time doing “organised fun.” You might miss all of the talks because your 3-year-old is terrified of the unfamiliar surroundings, or you might have to take someone to A&E. Hopefully none of these will happen, but I’m just saying it’s good to be emotionally prepared to miss out.

Things to DO:

Be thankful. Sorry everything above is so negative. I think that if we “manage our expectations” (fancy phrase) then we’re more likely to be thankful for any fun/teaching/sleeping/encouragements that we do receive. I need to remember to be thankful, because I just won’t be otherwise. I’m like that, me.

Forget yourself. I find that at these intense, emotionally draining times I get too focused on my own “problems” (e.g. lack of sleep/missed the seminar), which is just a recipe for disaster. If I try to focus on making sure other people are OK, I’ll actually start to forget what I was so narked off about in the first place. Get over yourself, Catherine (or, you know, something less harsh).

Research – if you haven’t been to the venue before, try to find out what you need to take with you from someone who has been or from the venue itself. You don’t want to arrive and realise you were meant to bring bedding. Almost equally you don’t want to stuff five duvets into your boot (trunk) and then discover you didn’t need them. Especially if you don’t have a driveway, so loading the car is tricky, and you bought the duvets especially. Just saying.

I’ve now noticed that (maybe apart from the final one) these are quite good tips for life in general. Maybe that’s because time away with church is really just a more intense version of normal life. And I need to remember, too, what an AMAZING privilege it is to have the resources, the community, and the freedom to be able to do this. Would my North Korean sister be grumbling about missing the Saturday night karaoke if she were here? No, I’m pretty sure she’d think she’d died and gone to heaven.

Have a good weekend, folks!

Familiar with Pain

It was mostly fear that had prevented me from reading this book sooner. Especially sensitive since becoming a mum, I didn’t think I’d have the nerve to get through a memoir of the holocaust. But I’m really glad I took the plunge, because never was an account of the Lord’s faithfulness more profound and strangely beautiful than The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. This isn’t a book review, friends, but I am sharing one of the lessons Corrie taught me.

I started reading this book with hunger – a hunger to know that God is still good, even when the unthinkable happens.

Injustice is a legal term, and the legal system is not known for its shows of emotion. But I think injustice is, actually, extremely emotive. Often when I’m most upset, traumatised, furious, it’s because of injustice. Child abuse; exploitation; oppression. Someone, through no fault of their own, is suffering at the hands of others. Our hearts cry out against it, don’t they?

It can make us angry. Not just angry with the perpetrators, but with God, too. Doesn’t he see? Doesn’t he realise? How can he let this happen? Is he sleeping? I want to wake him up.

Here’s an excerpt from The Hiding Place. I’ve chosen one which doesn’t spoil the story for you. Here Corrie writes about the little Bible she had with her in Ravensbruck camp, and the routine medical examinations she, her sister Betsie and the other prisoners had to endure:

I had believed the Bible always, but reading it now had nothing to do with belief. It was simply a description of the way things were – of hell and heaven, of how men act and how God acts. I had read a thousand times the story of Jesus’ arrest – how soldiers had slapped Him, laughed at him, flogged him. Now such happenings had faces and voices.
Fridays – the recurrent humiliation of medical inspection. The hospital corridor in which we waited was unheated, and a fall chill had settled into the walls. Still we were forbidden even to wrap ourselves in our own arms, but had to maintain our erect, hands-at-sides position as we filed slowly past a phalanx of grinning guards. How there could have been any pleasure in the sight of these stick-thin legs and hunger-bloated stomachs I could not imagine. Surely there is no more wretched sight than the human body unloved and uncared for…
But it was one of these mornings while we were waiting, shivering, in the corridor, that yet another page in the Bible leapt into life for me.
He hung naked on the cross.
… I leaned toward Betsie, ahead of me in line. Her shoulder blades stood out sharp and thin beneath her blue-mottled skin.
“Betsie, they took His clothes too.”
Ahead of me I hear a little gasp. “Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him…” p.182-3.

Throughout the book, Corrie and Betsie find impossible contentment and even see beauty in the overwhelming ugliness of their situation. But if you widen your lens and absorb the bigger picture of her situation, your heart bursts with indignation at the injustice of it all. They’re called prisoners, but their “crime” had been protecting people from genocide. They’re people, made in God’s image, treated like vermin. None of this should ever have been allowed to happen.

But there is a greater injustice even than this. There was an ultimate injustice, and it happened in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, give or take. Not only had Jesus, God’s Son, committed no crime, he alone had committed no sin. He suffered injustice through man’s justice system, and died forgiving the ones who tortured and killed him. More than that, he died so that they could be forgiven:

“What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
“Crucify him!” they shouted.
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate… had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. Mark 15: 12-15

You might be wondering – OK, but how does that help? I think it helps in many, many ways, but here are two (which I think, on reflection, are overlapping!):

There is the way it helped Corrie and Betsie in their situation. Jesus does see their suffering, and not just in a way that we see things on the news and know about them. He sees and knows, because he’s lived through it himself (“a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”). Not just that, but he’s lived through worse. He suffered the ultimate isolation – being abandoned by God the Father – so that we don’t have to. So he can give great comfort in our time of need, because he’s been there. He’s actually been where we’ll never have to go: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 16:34). We’ll never have to, because he did.

And it also helps because of what he achieved for us. When we look at the cross, we see how much God cares about justice. He wanted to bring us into a world where there is only goodness and truth, where everything is fair, where there is no isolation and no grief. And there was only one way to make that possible, but it required sacrifice. Not ours, but His. So through suffering we can look ahead to that certain hope of a new creation where none of these questions will ever need to be asked again.

He was treated badly and made to suffer.
But he didn’t open his mouth…
He was given a grave with those who were evil.
But his body was buried in the tomb of a rich man.
He was killed even though he hadn’t harmed anyone.
And he had never lied to anyone.

The Lord says, “It was my plan to crush him
and cause him to suffer.
I made his life an offering to pay for sin.
But he will see all his children after him.
In fact, he will continue to live.
My plan will be brought about through him…

He was counted among those who had committed crimes.
He took the sins of many people on himself.
And he gave his life for those who had done what is wrong.”
From Isaiah 53 (NIRV)

Related links: Trust Issues; More than Sparrows; On your Knees

More than Sparrows

You may not want to hear any more about the crisis in Iraq, but I just feel I can’t not write something about it. It’s been buzzing around my head and thrumming on my heart, keeping me awake at night and causing me to question so many things. The only thing that could have stopped me writing about it is the fact that I’m not sure how to articulate any of those feelings, especially in a useful or encouraging way. So this won’t be neat – how could it be? I don’t have all the answers – I’m not sure I even have any.

Since becoming a mother I am definitely more sensitive to hearing about people suffering. I don’t know why, I think maybe I now have more of a sense of how precious life is. But when I hear about mass killings and horrors worse than death – unimaginable suffering – a lie creeps in. It’s not a myth, but a lie. I start to think that maybe children aren’t as precious as I thought they were. I’ve been praying for and caring for my kids, and loving the bones of them, and thinking all this time that God loved them too. But maybe I’ve got that wrong? Maybe life is more throw-away than I thought it was? This might sound crazy to you. But when I hear a man on the radio saying that every child in his village has been murdered, I can’t marry that up in my mind with the idea that every child’s life matters. I thought it did, but maybe I’m wrong? And I don’t want to be wrong!

But when I think about that rationally, what I’m really doing is letting something other than God’s Word tell me the value of human life. I’m letting terrorists tell me the value of human life. And why would I do that? Why would I let them preach to me that these children and families are not valuable, and that God doesn’t care about them? (Incidentally, if God didn’t care so much, then why would anyone else in the world care so much? What is human life if we’re all just atoms bopping around? But that’s a thought for another day.)

So how do I know that God cares as much as me? Or rather, how do I know that God is furious about this, and that he loves those people much more than I do?

In Matthew Chapter 10, Jesus speaks to his disciples about how the world will treat them. He tells them they will be ‘flogged in the synagogues’ among other things. Please have a read of it for me. And after he’s warned them about that, he gives them this beautiful reassurance:

²⁸Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. ³⁰And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. ³¹So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

God does care – he cares about every hair on their heads. And one day, he will bring about justice:

³²“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. ³³But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.

So when I think about those families, trapped on scorching mountainsides or crammed into refugee camps or much, much worse, I must remember that the Lord our heavenly Father made those people, and he loves and treasures them, and he will put things right one day. Let’s pray that the Day would come soon, and ask God to encourage our brothers and sisters with these truths from Revelation 7:

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵Therefore,

“they are before the throne of God
    and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
    will shelter them with his presence.
¹⁶‘Never again will they hunger;
    never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’
    nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷For the Lamb at the centre of the throne
    will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
    ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

Trust Issues

‘Don’t trust anyone.’ You often hear that in films, and you can be sure that the main character will later be betrayed by someone that they do make the mistake of trusting. The implication of this is that you can’t actually live without trusting people. You might think you’re not a trusting person, but you still trust some people. If your children are at school, you trust their teachers to teach them and not to harm them. You trust the barista in Starbucks not to poison your coffee. And the higher the stakes, the more trustworthy a person needs to be. If you’re jumping out of a plane, you want your pilot and whoever packed your parachute to be trained and qualified!

I’ve put my ultimate trust in one man – not just for my life, but for the lives of my children. That man is the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth. I am bringing my children up to put their trust in him, and to do that I have to be sure I trust him myself. Otherwise, it’s too great a risk.

I got some good practice at this just under two years ago, when my brother had to have brain surgery to remove a benign tumour. My brother believes in Jesus, and so Jesus promises that my brother will have eternal life with him. Faced with the idea that my brother could die (brain surgery is brain surgery, after all), I had to decide again: do I trust this Jesus? Do I trust him with my brother’s life? At that time, I clung to this promise of Jesus from John’s Gospel:

‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ John 11:25 (He said this to Martha, whose brother had just died.)

At that time of fear and uncertainty, I chose to trust Jesus. And every day, as I teach my children the Bible and bring them up to be soldiers of Christ, I am choosing to trust Jesus. I’m trusting that he is all that he said he is when he walked the earth.

But how can I trust him? There’s no greater risk than risking your eternal future, and so how has Jesus earned my trust?

Let me show you:

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”’ Then they remembered his words. Luke 20:1-8.

Friends, the tomb was empty.

Meltdown

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! I wrote this post a week ago and I’m just getting around to posting it. It occurred to me that perhaps it’s wildly inappropriate to be writing these things on Mother’s Day – but then again I thought maybe the opposite is true? I hope you don’t have a meltdown today, but I’m sure there’s no guarantee. If you’re not a mum and you read this, maybe it will inspire you to give a mum you know a cuddle today!

I had a meltdown this week. By meltdown I mean a grown-up tantrum, unless when I write grown-up you think of rational, reasonable and proportionate, in which case it was just a tantrum.

And I just thought that I should tell you about it – lest you think that I’ve got it all together. Some people tell me I’m always calm. I can be screaming on the inside, but for some reason people will say to me things like, ‘How are you not stressed?’ My family (parents; brother; husband) find this all very amusing, because they know I’m like a wild donkey really in the emotions department. Anyway, I’d hate for you to think that, because I write this blog, I’m fine every day. And even when I tell people I’ve had a meltdown, I will say it in a calm (or even entertaining) way, which detracts from the reality of the emotional rubbish heap I found myself in on Wednesday evening.

I think it’s normal to do this sometimes – to find a day really hard and to decide to sit and have a cry. Or worse, experience the thunderstorm on the inside but not quite know how to express it. Maybe something obvious triggers it – a toddler tantrum followed by the washing machine leaking and then rounded off with banging your head on the kitchen cupboard (I HATE banging my head. It’s my least favourite thing to do). In a way these times are simpler, because then when your husband comes home (or your mum walks in) and finds you in a heap on the floor, you can explain yourself.

Other times it’s less obvious. Could it be cumulative tiredness or stress? Hormones? Doubts trickling in about God’s goodness? Worries about money occupying your thoughts and reducing your capacity and patience?

This time it wasn’t really anything obvious. I wanted my husband to be home, and he was a bit late. I suddenly felt really, really sick of looking after my children, all the while watching them and feeling incredibly guilty for having such selfish thoughts: ‘I’ve been breastfeeding this baby for eight-and-a-half months and I’d like a day off!’ ‘God has sustained this life for eight-and-a-half months and all I can do is whine about it!’ Etc.

I’m no expert, but I assume that if I felt like this every day, I would probably be spiralling into a depression and should ask someone for some serious help. But once in a while, is it normal for a mum to feel trapped and weary and a bit like she needs to scream into a pillow? I dare say it is.

Now it’s probably the appropriate moment to present the solution to my emotional problems, in order to encourage any mums out there who can relate to what I’m saying. But actually I don’t have the solution, and because I don’t think there is an easy fix, I’m not going to try giving you one.

My husband, like many men, is a fixer. This is a good quality, and I’m not knocking it. But it’s a burden for him when there’s something he can’t fix. That’s why it’s hard for him when I’m in labour! And it’s hard for him when I’m just feeling fed up of my 24/7/365 job. He can encourage me to go to bed early, but that won’t necessarily stop me being tired (especially if the baby wakes in the night). He can remind me of God’s kindness and all there is to be thankful for. Now that is a good one, but it won’t necessarily cheer me right up instantly. So sometimes, I just need a hug. It’s a cliché, but sometimes you do just need a shoulder to cry on, and for someone to tell you that it’s not really surprising that you quite fancy a holiday in the Maldives.

But when I’m feeling down, I need to preach to myself, rather than listen to myself. Below I’ve listed a few things that spring to mind, in no particular order because this is not the place for a polished piece:

Is God surprised by my tears? I assume not, otherwise why would he say that ‘he will wipe every tear from [our] eyes’? (Rev 21.4)
If life is hard, then that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. I can learn to change my expectations – life is not a bed of roses. CS Lewis wrote: ‘If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.’ So I can thank God, even in the tears, that he’s teaching me something, even when I can’t fathom what that is at the moment. Then I can go to bed – tomorrow is a new day.
My church family is there for me, so I need to be honest about how things are going. Anything else is lying. And they can’t help me at all if they think I’m absolutely fine.
Guilt and shame are a thing of the past, because I am in Christ. Yes I should say sorry for wishing I were far away from my beautiful children. No I may not feel ashamed and guilty. ‘Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.’ Romans 8:33-34.
I need to pray that if God doesn’t want to change my situation, that he would change me instead. I trust he can do this, because he’s been doing it for about thirteen years now. And sometimes, when I’m not looking, he does graciously change my situation too. Thanks be to God.
My emotions don’t define me, so there’s no need to panic. God is still God when I’ve locked myself in the bathroom. The gospel is still true when I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day.
Sometimes, like Elijah in 1 Kings 19:3-6, what I actually need is to sleep, eat, then sleep some more.

Learning to say ‘Thank You’

One day this will be a nostalgic image for me!

I’ve been excavating this week. When you have your second or subsequent baby, you have to unearth all of the baby paraphernalia that you’d hidden under the bed/on top of the wardrobe/at your mum’s house. It’s quite heartwarming in a way, because it takes you back to those early days with your older child(ren) which seem so long ago. But in other ways, it’s a tiny bit disheartening. What I mean is, I find it really satisfying to get rid of stuff I don’t need anymore because I’ve moved on to a new stage. So going back to the earlier stages and starting all over again can bruise my organisational ego. I’ve realised that I often look forward to the day when I won’t need an entire kitchen cupboard dedicated to plastic crockery, sippy cups, bottles and baby food. Or when I won’t need to buy kiddie snacks or dairylea slices, because the kids will eat what we eat (this may never happen but shhhh don’t tell me). But even as I long for this I do have a sneaking suspicion that it’s not a very godly way to think.

Growing up I was always told, ‘Don’t wish your life away.’ I think that was because I always wanted to be about three to five years older than I was (those days are gone, I can assure you). Although this isn’t a phrase from the Bible, it is wise advice. Always pining for the next thing is really a recipe for discontentment. While I’m longing for the days when I can have a serious conversation with my son, I’m missing the blessings of the here and now. While I’m pining for the time when I won’t have to cadunk my buggy up the steps because my buggy will be long gone, I’m ignoring the beauty of cute babes in a pushchair.

I’m reading a really interesting book which has encouraged me massively – One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Today I read this, as Ann recollects holding her sleeping daughter, the youngest of six children:

‘My baby is five… She is leaving me, she’s growing up and moving away from me, and she stirs and I sweep back the crop of golden ringlets. Stay, Little One, stay. Love’s a deep wound and what is a mother without a child and why can’t I hold on to now forever and her here and me here and why does time snatch away a heart I don’t think mine can beat without?’ (p. 160)

I felt so rebuked by this. My eldest isn’t five yet, and I often wish she were just a bit older. But I’m sure one day (maybe soon) I’ll turn around and mourn the loss of their early years. That will also be discontentment of course! So what’s the solution? How do I enjoy the here and now; savour the moment? Well, Voskamp’s book is all about thankfulness. I know I should be thankful for today, but how?

One wonderful thing about being a parent of young children is that you have someone showing you how to live in the moment and enjoy the here and now, every single day. Here are a few things my tots were excited about today (and these are just the ones they shouted about):

– steam from a chimney

– an aeroplane (many, many times, we live under the Heathrow flight path)

– a blue van

– ‘Sparkles’ (Actually the sunlight reflected in raindrops on a grey, dirty pavement)

I want to be more like that. I want to be enchanted by the mundane and thankful for the ordinary. If I can learn to do that, then I’ll start to focus on the beautiful things in my life, great and small, and to sideline the hard things that I can’t change.

At the end of a wearying day, I want to tell my husband every detail of the battles I’ve endured. I don’t want to focus on the lovely things, because… hmmm, if I’m honest I don’t want him thinking I’ve had an easy day. Then he might not sympathise with me. If I tell him all the blessings, then who gets the glory? Not me, of course, but the Lord, the giver. I want this, and I don’t want it. My new, spirit-filled heart wants to praise the Lord; it’s my sinful, self-centred self who wants to wallow in self-pity, ingratitude and dissatisfaction.

I’ve heard many times before that being thankful is a way to find joy and to be content. But it seems so hard to do. It is hard, but I’m realising that it’s a lesson to learn, and a lesson that takes time. We can train ourselves to be thankful. Ann Voskamp trained herself by writing one thousand things she loves, or in other words one thousand gifts she is thankful for. I’ve started trying to do this myself. I’m making quite slow progress, partly because I’m out of practice (I’ve never been in practice), and partly because I don’t have my notebook lying around all day (for fear of it being splattered/snatched/accidentally recycled), so I have to remember things and write them down later. But even so, I can tell that God is gently changing me as I discipline myself to find the beauty in my life.

So may I encourage you now to try this – you don’t have to write it down or set yourself a target of course, but if you would like to find more joy, try learning to be thankful for the ‘now’ you’re in. Maybe you live in a beautiful location, in which case your list will probably be full of natural beauty. However, may I refer you to the title of this blog, and remind you that I live far away from wildlife (unless you count pigeons and the odd urban fox, which I absolutely do not!) or sweeping landscapes. But there is still beauty in my life, and I’m learning to find it. Here are ten items from my list so far, just to encourage you to give it a go:

7. Help up the stairs

10. Soft slippers on aching feet

16. My children stopping at the road

20. Double glazing

23. A cup of tea by the bed

26. The listening ear of a friend

44. The kitchen bin, empty

60. The radio

62. The generosity of friends

111. Anaesthetic

Nothing spectacular I know, but they’re God’s gifts to me and it’s right that I thank him for them. You can probably think of something more joy-filling than an empty kitchen bin, and I encourage you right now to thank God for whatever that is!

So I’m hoping, by God’s grace, that by cultivating a thankful heart, I will bring glory to God with my attitude, I’ll find joy, and I won’t get to the end of my life and realise I’ve spent it wishing I were somewhere else.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.

Push, Push, Glide: Reflections on my Daughter’s Fourth Birthday

My daughter turned four last weekend. She’s my eldest, and four seems much older than three. Three-year-olds can be classed as toddlers; four-year-olds go to primary school. Yikes.

Miriam has been asking me for months if she can go ice-skating. Living in central London without a car and with two younger children, this is not an easy request to grant, so I told her that when the winter outdoor rinks sprang up we would go. This coincided nicely with her birthday, so I booked us a lesson on her birthday – at the crack of dawn, incidentally!

On the way there, I was thinking about how relieved I feel when I look back over the years since her birth. I’m relieved because I found things so much harder when she was first born than I do now. I expect most people feel like that, although I know some mums love the baby phase and find the pre-school phase harder. I don’t want this to sound ungrateful, because children are such a precious gift, but I found the first three months in particular extremely difficult. I feel so relieved to have gotten this far! Many thanks to God for his grace!

When we arrived at the ice rink, Miriam was given a stabiliser to hold – they give out heavy, plastic penguins with handles so children can push them along and spend less of their time prostrate on the ice. But from the moment she stepped onto the ice, Miriam hated it. Several teachers tried to help her – ‘Come on, take baby steps, I’ve got you, yep small steps, you won’t fall, you’re safe’ etc., but to no avail. She was miserable.

One of the teachers told me to try waiting inside to see if that helped Miriam to get engrossed and start to enjoy it, but as I watched her through the window she just stood there, morosely gripping her penguin, watching the other children slide and shuffle about. It was, for both of us, excruciating.

It did strike me that her experience on the ice was a tiny bit like my experience when Miriam was first born. She had wanted to ice skate because she’d seen it on the TV and it looked fun. It looked elegant and graceful. It looked rewarding. I think she probably assumed it would come naturally – that she’d get it right first time.

My ideas about motherhood were about as naïve as Miriam’s were about skating. Even when people told me ‘it will be hard at first’, I still didn’t really know. You can’t know, can you? Not until you get out there on the ice. Until day three of breastfeeding. Until no amount of pacing will stop the crying. Until you realise that between you and your husband, despite your combined intelligence and the books you’ve read, you have no idea what you’re doing. (I have friends who between them are Doctors three times over, who have at least once managed to put their baby’s disposable nappy on back to front AND inside out!)

One thing that it hurts to admit is that it’s actually a good thing that I didn’t and don’t find motherhood easy. True, this is a result of the Fall – frustrations and disappointments and poo down the wall won’t happen in heaven – but God is also using this season to make me more like Christ. It’s hard to be proud when you’re crying because baby won’t get his wind up, or crying with the pain of breastfeeding or just crying because you haven’t had any sleep, or crying just because. This is when we learn to depend on God more. If I’d found motherhood easy, then I’d have been even more proud and self-sufficient. Instead, God chose in his kindness to refine me: to make me more pure.

It’s amazing how a change in perspective can affect you. Since I’m older than Miriam, I know that ice skating is hard and you have to practise, fall on your bum fifty times, get back up and practise some more before it gets remotely fun. And yet, when I became a mum for the first time I was so shocked at how hard it was! (I don’t know why I’m using the past tense – I still regularly get surprised by how hard it is.) But as we struggle and learn, we’re growing. God is giving us character – which we wouldn’t get if the lesson were easy.

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Romans 5:3-4.

I have to admit that, compared to God, I am about as wise and patient through difficulty as my four-year-old daughter. Thanks be to God that he has the right perspective, and he’s there with me on the ice, holding my hand and cheering me on.

And do you know, it’s not all bad! Even though Miriam was stubborn, reluctant, sullen and uncooperative, I could see glimpses of a talent for skating. I know that she didn’t believe me when I said from the sidelines, ‘You’re doing it! That’s it!’ And when your mum or your friends or your husband say to you, ‘You’re doing a great job’ and it’s week three and you’re just trying to keep your head above water, you might think, ‘as if!’ but they do mean it. They’re seeing glimpses of the ability God has given you to excel at this particular line of work.

So I’d like to encourage you (no matter how old our child is, by the way!) – if you feel today like you’re slipping around and just getting cold and wet, please remember that God is growing your faith and your character, which is priceless – ‘of greater worth than gold.’ (1 Peter 6:7) And the people you see gliding around have all been in similar positions to you, they’re just further along the journey. And slowly but surely you are making your way across the ice. Small steps!

On an even more personal note, I would just like thank God for giving my daughter breath in her lungs for four whole years. “[Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17. From emergency C-section until now, may I never forget that it’s the Lord Jesus who is holding us together every. single. day.