Meep

It is a sad day. I have just returned from re-homing Murray, the kitten my sister got last christmas. Due to unforseen circumstances, he became ours and adapted to life at our place. He used to chase the other cats around the house, hanging off their tails, in fact he rattled Oscar so much that the vet said he had developed anxiety issues! But he settled down and it was with much remorse that I found a new home for him, as we felt the new house was just not safe enough for him, being on a busy road.

The lady who wanted him turned out not to be what I had expected. I forced myself to drive away. And pulled over 100 metres down the street and burst into tears.

My overwrought sense of responsibility shrieked at me, Hey! You can't just leave this little guy with a lady that you didn't meet first.

My grief yelled at me Not another loss! Not so soon.

My maternal heart screeched Go back and get him! She might not love him like you do.

I then made a fatal mistake. While parked up on a strange street, I called my sister and sobbed out the story. She began to cry too and soon the two of us were wailing on the phone to each other and Mishal began to fuss in the backseat. Thus began the messy emotional process of trying to get him back, to re-re-home him.

But before I sent the message to the new owner that we had changed our minds (no money had changed hands we told ourselves, it was alright) I waited to run it all past Greg.

In between meetings he listened to my tale of woe. Bloody ridiculous he said. And listen up darling. The cat will be fine, she'll love on him as she is home all day, she was respectful and intelligent over email and pursued wanting Murray. Don't stand in judgement of her because she is different to you. Let him go, let the responsibility of re-homing him go. New wineskin time, don't you dare get him back. It would be wrong.

I sniffed. True. All true. Thank God for a steadying husband who does not function solely out of the quicksand of maternal emotion.

And so I head off now, dust mask on, downstairs to wash and pack the filthy stuff that has been covered in concrete grime from the landlord's repairs, with a lumpy feeling in my gut and reddened eyes. And no chocolate, what was I thinking when I did the grocery shopping - moving week and no Cadbury's Energy Scroggin? In two hours my children will be home and the tears will start all over again as they realise Murray is gone. Then off to dance/drama lessons and later to the Town Hall for Kenzie's school choir performance. No time for tears. Especially not when I have a six bedroomed house to pack up in three days.

Moving forward...

Heart of the Issue

Yes, I realised belatedly that I had missed the post where I announced we were moving. My apologies for that.

As some of you might remember, moving up to Auckland was fairly difficult for me. I can say a year on though, that it has been a wonderful place to live and was just what we needed, I was merely blind to this at the time. I am so relieved that God allows us to mutter and moan but still pushes on in His plan despite our tantrums! The home we have lived in this past year was found in a tight spot, where we had a matter of days to leave our apartment and needed somewhere urgently. Although we originally had no intention of living North of Auckland, again, God knew better and we have enjoyed living over the harbour bridge and being a part of this laid back community. The children's school has been excellent and to all intents and purposes, one might wonder why we are moving on.

Hard to say really. The point came when I returned from Tonga and turned to Greg in the car on the way home from the airport and said out of the blue "we need to move to the heart of the issue." And he looked at me and laughed, saying those exact words had come to him during the week. Neither of us are sure why, but we both felt a prompting, and whereas we could have reasoned it out logistically as a bad idea, we decided in our true fashion to push the door, so to speak.

The house we have found is one I think I have been to in my dreams, unlike the current one. As an artist, and after a few experiences as a child that left me feeling like the world had broken, it is very important to me where I live. This desire of course has been surrendered many times, and will be again no doubt in the future, but for now, for whatever reason, the door is open to a place that wraps its arms around me with welcome. It is a home.

Possibly the most special element is the outlook, as this new house is set on the edge of a green farm park in the city of Auckland. Beyond the garden fence, fields lie. For a girl who literally sets up camp in Psalm 23 at times, green pastures speak to me in a profound way and I completely delight in them. Also, to the part of me that grew up on a farm in the savannah, a spacious place is profound and every hemmed in house has me itching for a visual stretch.

The house is an unpretentious typical kiwi family home, four bedrooms with hardwood floors (no more mess on carpets), and white roses in the garden. I will post pictures when we are in, this time next week. Greg, who has commuted lengthy distances to work for over a dozen years, will for the first time, be within walking distance to the office should he every choose to leave his beloved car in the garage. And the schools in the area are highly thought of. But as there will be three more weeks left to our NZ school year when we move, I will drive the children back to the North Shore for school each day. This is not a pleasant thought, but will at least allow them the honour of seeing out what has been a year of challenge and reward, right to the end.

Funnily enough, it turns out after we had signed the lease, that this location is dead centre on a map of the city.

The very heart.

Tiny bits

For you Cat, I fought the toddler off the candy pile. Whereas I can't rightly claim to have posted it yet, I can truthfully say that it is sitting in a bag at the door, waiting for an errand's trip. I also cannot claim to really like anything I am sending you, beside the tiny magic elf. But my children chose with me and insisted that these portray an average kiwi family's familiar favourites. I hope you and yours enjoy...

Meanwhile, bags of lollies aside, I am living in a cardboard galaxy.

Packing does funny things to my head, and although a part of me enjoys sorting and organising and placing items together and bundling them up, another, bigger part, doesn't.

Especially when the marker pens are dry and scratchy and don't give satisfying black letters of inventory. And when the packing tape twists repeatedly due to a lack of dispenser, and when small child keeps stealing the scissors, and when I turn my back for a SECOND, and same child writes on furniture/climbs onto the tabletop/runs away/tips out the washing powder/sets the oven timer/opens the fridge/pours out the bubble mixture/smooshes her iceblock into the carpeted stairs. Perhaps the greatest, most alarming travesty is her continual mixing up of the toys: barbies, pollies, sylvanians, littlest pet shops and tea sets. This is serious peoples. I cannot move a huge muckup of mis-matched stuff. She also has a terrible cold and feels most unwell, bringing me the syringe and demanding medicine.

Tonight my big girl has her end of year social dance. Life is whistling by... is it possible I have such distinguished offspring?

Yesterday, on an outing to buy her a shrug to wear over her formal dress, she stopped me as we were leaving the car.

'Mum! Did you realise you were wearing that jersey out in public?'

I spun round and took in my reflection on the side of the car.

'Sorry babe, didn't really think it was that bad.'

"Mum.' said firmly, slightly incredulous that I would dare to flaunt with fashion disaster in a banned outfit, 'I'm sorry, but you are going to have to leave it in the car.'

'But it's cold,' I protested, pulling the sides of the shabby wool together.

She shot me a look. One that said 'Wear that cardigan and die.'

I took it off and threw it into the backseat. And for the following hour walked around sucking in the evidence of what the missing cardigan would have concealed. And shivering.

And secretly smiling. She is so right. And I love having kids that tell me when things are just not cool and don't worry about offending me.

Carry Light

I have missed you. Your arms of words, letters of love, your blogs.

But the time apart did me no harm, and while away with family in Fiji last week, I walked along the beach at dawn one morning before the babes awoke.

The beauty around me was astounding, cliche perhaps, admittedly, but breathtaking none the less. We breathed, me and God, in and out, and my toes dimpled the grains that He counts.


And as His rose of gold rode higher into the morning sky, the infinity of Creation swept over me and a fresh realisation fell upon my faltering steps of burdened motherhood, my broken places, my murmuring lips.


The first thing God spoke into existence was beyond the capture of scales and deftly slips beyond the measure of man.

Candle-flicker for time-worn traveller and chasing away of darkness for the watchman, the mother, the soldier, the prisoner, the dreamer.

Spilling into battlefield trenches, through the glass squares of homestead panes and filling cups of mountain and pasture, it is very the paint of shadows. Smudging dustclouds to sunset, setting the ocean to fire, by its very nature it reveals and illuminates, bringing life and growth.

Re-tracing my steps along the shore with eyes closed to the glow, the backpack of motherhood and the responsibilty fatigues of mental combat began to dissolve. Light will do that you know; melt our heavy stiff shells and bathe us with brillance till we are swept up in the dance along the water's edge.

And the source of this miraculous dazzling hope?

Gossamer pages of words tell me He is my everlasting light, the very same one who covers himself with it like a garment, the heavens a curtain.

\

Simple brillance - confoundingly and magnificently weight-free.

And there unfolds this astonishingly profound mystery. We are designed to actually carry this full but weightless life, this light, this spill of gold, fresh from the very face of God.

Like Mary. A mother. Carrying the kingdom of light in her very self.

Too important to mess with

At last, the experts are speaking my language.

Croc Drop

Last night, our butter-wouldn't-melt toddler had 'an accident' after her bath, on the floor in our master bedroom, semi-hidden behind a painting.

However she was driven out from behind the easel in fright, claiming in astonishment to have laid a crocodile.

I am flashing forward nineteen years and seeing a beautiful girl at her 21st, devoutly hoping that she has managed to convince her father and sisters to keep all potential cringe-worthy stories from their speeches.

Too bad she's too young right now to convince her mother to do the same...

Splinters

I have red rimmed eyes.


Saying goodbye to these guys is stupendously painful. They have been a big part of our journey for the last two years and we love them. But, being purebreds, they need more TLC than I can honestly give and are being rehomed today.


I think I might cry for a thousand years. Love hurts.

The Rim of Duty

Probably one of the most extravagent blessings of being able to be in Tonga, was the lack of walls put up by people. I notice how easy it is in our busy westernised lives to scurry about behind our closed doors, down our long driveways, between the arms on the clock face. We make our meals in quick crockpot or pasta ease, view the world through the selective eye of electronic screens and relate instantly through choppy text letters. We churn with effort to keep our plenty managable, juggled and uncluttered in a crowded plastic culture. We lack the flow of community and simplicity.

Desperate poverty aside for a moment, third world countries have this and are the richer for it. Many homes have no doors, and meals become a family effort, feeding many and all pitching in. The children clamber over aunts and uncles and there are no tight lines of boundary and rule. And when you look into the eyes of the people there, you see them for who they are. Sometimes when talking with other women, I feel we have to track through the mental gates of first world motherhood; past the committee woes, the household budgets, the hunt for lunchbox fillers, the best recipes, the struts of our profession; the poles of influencing our children and the bars of running a household.

Then we can really talk. Heart to heart.

What an honour it was in Tonga to be able to communicate without digging like this.

One night at conference, our wonderful speaker expanded on the way Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, and drew her up from the depth of her past shame, meeting and quenching her thirst. I love this story and how He is so real with us, meeting us in the heat of the day (the Samaritan woman collected water at this unfavourable time because she was shunned from the other women who gathered in this community during the cooler hours), sitting with us in our isolated shame and quietly, knowing everything about us, going down in layers to the heart of our thirst.

He was sent to meet us at the well of our own self-set expectations, the hollowness of perceived protocol and the deep ridigity of our laborious performing; in the depths of our disappointment, our buried heart fears and our guilt riddled bucket of motherhood. He is the gift of God sent to release us from carrying our weights of emptiness. He sees us as women, and wants to meet us face to face on the sun scorched rim of duty.

Would you pause with me in the heat of your day and let the giver of living water refresh us? Shopping lists, defrosting chicken, vet bills and overflowing laundry piles not withstanding? Could we just sit with Him and listen? Could we fill up first not on the soda pop of first world busy-ness but could we give Him the opportunity to drench us in fountains of everlasting life in order that we might walk fully free?

Bringer of Grace

She sat, brown hands uncurled and open on her lap, while tears ran out from under dark lashes. Bare feet together on the woven mat, we pressed in around her and prayed. And the sorrow of years fell like rain, the disappointments broke and joined the flood and we lifted our voices to the King, the Father, the Healer. To embrace and overwhelm the broken heart, filling and breathing new life into the empty places.
Grace and peace be multiplied.
Lifting her countenance, white smile shone through and the gold glinted. She stood and walked while we watched with goosebumps. She was free from the weight of condemnation and shame. In a culture acceptant of royalty, she walked with regal height and head up. We stood and watched her leave, smiling and quietened in the moment of grace and peace.

By the end of the trip, we had changed her name to Sarah. Princess.

Journal peek - Day 2

Honest words fell into diary pages on the second day, muddled and unformed in direction. As this is an essential part of journeying, I let them stutter forth without trying to think things through too much. I let comments slip out uncensored and did not try to wrestle them into boxes of reason - there was the small matter of my future at stake. Interestingly, this was the last time I needed to journal this way, after this my writing time became much more focussed and dealt to heart issues that I was able to uncover and unpack into the light for the first time, thus propelling me into a unprecendented heights of freedom.

It is mid-afternoon, sleepy time. Apart from the singing shouts of neighbouring children and the incessant whining of a chain saw, the noises of the night are gone. I am assuming in the heat that the animals have gone off to sleep curled up in the shade.



We drove around the island this morning, and I shot the country through my lens, freezing the broken, peeling buildings and dilapidated street side stores. It is poor, run down and some places lie in ruin. There is a slow undercurrent, people move like treacle and sit staring into space, waiting. They walk with casual steps, under the shade of parasols or drapes of fabric over their heads. Dogs roam the streets, heavy with whelping and cattle are tied by the neck to trees and graze amid the piles of rubbish that line the narrow strip road. Tiny striped piglets trot squealing after lumbering sows through plantation green plots and frangipani trees offer twirls of white or pink flowers on their grey twisting arms up to the rainclouds.



The water is serene, wave-less and dotted with fishermen. The cafe we went to for lunch was on the waterfront, simple and bright in the sun and sea breeze. I tried the internet there but it crept so slowly that I lost patience.



Afternoon sleep is elusive, now loud traffic noises on the busy road, and throbbing music beating from a nearby building. I think of the ones at home, in the sunshine and routine, I hear they are playing outdoors, giggling and having afternoon tea. I press my toes into the bedspread, noone is here is ask me for permission to watch something on tv, or to eat something from the lolly jar, and no baby needs me. I am free yet holding back, although not sure why. I would like to cry, and the lump is big in my throat but no words are linking to that place and no tears will fall.


The journey back to remembrance has been stark. Third world mission trip meets the new life I have crafted about me. I am overwhelmed by the separation from routine, the new experiences, the level of need, feeling so small in this place and yet can sense a deeper part of myself is beginning to freefall out of dark folds.

Victory

Hello Darlings, I'm back!
With lots of washing, dusty sandals and a heart that has undergone a transformation. Who could ask for more?

Bit by bit I hope to condense some of my thoughts into a couple of posts, at the moment I am caught between children, clothes pegs and working on the images I took while there.

But today I'll leave this thought with you.

God's hand is ALREADY raised in victory. Whatever it is we are going through, owning the reality of this is a leap from sitting back and waiting for something amazing to happen. Stepping out with praise, even in the opposite spirit to what the circumstances dictate, unleashes a download from heaven. I have seen this firsthand this week like never before and my heart is smiling :)

I was right on the cliff-edge, ready to fall, when God grabbed and held me. God's my strength, he's also my song, and now he's my salvation. Hear the shouts, hear the triumph songs in the camp of the saved? "The hand of God has turned the tide! The hand of God is raised in victory! The hand of God has turned the tide!" Psalm 118

Walking Into the Future

It was agony watch to my girls walk wailing up the hill to school after our last hugs. I lay on my bed and cried with the sheer force of walking through my determination to make a new start, with the etching of a new line in the sand. But it was also a calm grace that propelled me forwards, for the sake of my children, to allow the future to be severed from the fear of the past and to release them into their futures without trepidation of history repeating itself. I carried a weight of significance throughout the rest of the day, alert but a part of me felt numb. Saying goodbye to loved ones is a particular wrench and brings I know for both my husband and I, a fresh respect for those who lose loved ones forever. The permanancy of being apart from each other carries such a unique despair that I wonder how those who have endured this tragedy manage to ever see beauty again. But I guess that's where the nature of God comes in and as we lean into His everlasting arms, we realise we cannot outrun Him and that no matter how deep the sea of grief, He is there with us.

Below is my journal entry from first thing today.

It is early morning and the cacophony still continues but now in the light of day seems softer somehow. Rumbling, rattling diesel trucks churn past the open slat windows in the equivalent of Tonga morning rush hour. The neighbour's china chinks. Birds twitter, geckos bleat and the roosters that began their morning chorus at midnight are still huskily giving the new day song. I have learned something new about roosters. Once one starts, a chain of rooster harmonies ensues. We went to bed at midnight, washing our black soled feet before climbing into bed. My pillow is roughly quilted on one side and satin on the other. I slid constantly off it during the night, while listening to the pig snuffling and snorting outside my window, the cat fight, the generator and during the incessant barking of many dogs. I feverishly worked my ear plugs to try to block out the worst of what was the loudest night noises I think I have ever heard, but I still woke up repeatedly as a crashing animal or shouting person jolted me upright. At one stage I thought I was at home, in my own bed and it took me a moment to make out the back of a sage green door, and the moonlight squares of window, covered with sheer panels of pale green beneath a thick tasselled polyester brocade fabric, tied in the middle.
Our flight was good, and we arrived in the dark. I was taken on a trip to Africa with memories of little men waving us in with batons, and others shuttling the plane steps up to the exit door. We piled our baggage into the van, and joined the screaming baby in the back for the trip to our accommodation, stopping first at a store for water.
We are in a simple home, but palacial by Tongan standards and after driving around today snapping photos of the island, I am feeling blessed to be in such clean surroundings. I even bought my tea bags, I know, silly creature comforts, but it is quite amusing to make my tea, in my own mug amid the geckos and coconut palms when I know that last week I stood in my own kitchen.

At this moment it is dusk, and I am alone in Friends Cafe with pacific music piped out from the speaker tied to the curtain rail. My dinner was the toughest beef curry known to man, and after I had shooed the feral cats away, I settled to post this before I am picked up. Sadly for some reason, no photos will load, but I will try again when I can.

My thoughts are at home, lightly only because I know that thinking too hard will reduce me to rubble. Know that you are loved my little ones. And G, you are missed beyond expression.

Hall to Light - 1000 Gifts

My bag is half packed. The cat keeps nosing in under the lid and trying to nestle into the tumble of contents that I have placed in there. In there I have cartons of long life milk and hand sanitizer, journal, suncream and nurofen. There are skirts for church meetings and shorts for play, the camera, the lens, the chargers, my art box. But more than that, more than the equipment and gear, I am carrying an expectation.

To go away on a mission focused trip, without my children is about re-writing the past. It is my line in the sand that says the history of trip related trauma does not dictate my future. The two words mission and abandonment have been welded together since my parents were abducted when I was eleven. Although my heart beat in time with a call for nations, my head told me in no uncertain terms that the cost to my children was too great. But I am walking out this journey, in the opposite spirit, one foot following the next, unsure of the details but fully assured that despite the outcome, grace will be sufficient for my needs.

It is not only a wife and a mother of three that is embarking on this trip to Tonga. It is an eleven year old girl, willing to walk back down hallways that used to be narrow and dark. It will be with upturned face that I will see the light. It is the passion I carry for broken women that spurs me on, footfalls through the valley to get me to a place where I am no longer afraid of what has bred my fear to date. It is the dream that gives momentum to my steps. And it is the gift of being able to dig deeper during a shadowy passage, to find that eternal hope, the one that outlasts the terror.

Here is what I am grateful for today:

110. For feet. Will we let them take us to places that need to hear about Real Love?

111. For shoes.

112. For a husband who releases without pressure, gently pushing me to take bigger risks.

113. For a passport, so many have no way to get one.

114. For a delightful diva who lent me her funky top so that I could make one to take with me.

115. For birthday parties.

116. For Sunday papers.

117. For brave daughters.

118. For a great book.

119. For heart song, bird song and watching my three girls sing with gusto to Hoe Down, Throw Down.

120. For laughter, last hugs and e-tickets.

Come away with me.

Crazy Eights

Turning eight is terribly important.

Somehow the mere silliness of life up to that moment leaves the field of the involuntary and a focus on refining the act of childhood takes to the fore. The accidental delight of being younger than this is replaced by the ability to recognize the power of choice, and how to steer the vehicle of one's mindful actions into certain places.

The acknowledgement of consequence begins to build and a familiarity with one's own capacities emerges, yet still, deliciously, a pond of possibilities still exists beneath the practical. In these lucid depths, imagination stirs and sparkles, only now, with the added strength of focus, childhood's vessel is sturdy enough to row into the sunlit ripples.

Here is where talking peacock fish are caught on threads of silk, and blossoms fall from trees of fancy to float upon the water. Here is where the child takes herself, aboard her tiny craft of emerging mental independance, to sit and sing and weave jewels of the sun between the strands of her hair.

And over the years as the boat improves in capacity, the adult in the child will still find go gliding on this secret pool of paradise. And emerge energised, armed with dreams, proposals and visions. Recipes, models, maps, concepts, experiments, novels, blueprints, doctrates and essays all surge from this stillness between the oars, watching and listening and rocking in careful quiet joy to the motion and art of play.

Eight is the platform of dreams.

Eight is the meeting and intertwining of logic and fancy. Simple block towers become complex lego structures, and many years on, add to city skylines. Leaf cups of nectar grow into scoops of sherbert and later, platters of culinary worth; playdough patting and rolling morphs into sculpture, gardening and landscape design, stick figures and dolls clothes parade down fashion catwalks and paintings; the stories of emerging childish words unfold into publications that line the bookshelves of many.

8 is a number associated with new beginnings, Creation took 7 days and the eighth was the start of the functioning of all that had been spoken into being.

8 is a fascinating mathematical number, being the first cubed prime.

8 is the base of the octal system, on which is built an impressive empire of computer logistics.

8 is the number of B vitamins that play a role in cell metabolism.

8 keys form the scale in one octave, the foundation of the art of music.

For us, watching the unfolding of our second child into eight is like watching a rare and delicate species unfurl the petals of undiscovered beauty into form. Especially with this child, who is introverted, wild and in possession of incredible determination. Her competative nature, sensitivity and common sense sometimes overwhelm the softness of just being. She is dominated by her desire to belong, to have friendships that satisfy with loyalty and depth, to be the first. These powerful motivators are weighty beyond her years and it is with great interest and love that I hold back on busy things in order to give her imagination a chance to cradle the hot coal of impatience she nurtures. We try to keep things simple, uncluttered, unrushed. Just be we say. Rest-time. But she writhes and squirms and puts down her pen in frustration, not being able to write as fast as the words that tumble from her mind, or read quickly enough to gallop the story along as was its design. She scoffs at safety, at sedate pace and at not succeeding. If a challenge cannot be conquored immediately, and with excellence, it is severed. Her alarm bells ring when she is forced to be adaptable and still, or wait. And emotion spills from those blue eyes at injustice and heart hurt.

She is our child on the fly; glittery, skittish and impossible to catch, yet ignites the imagination with a sweetness that catches each breath of wind.

She was born at 8pm, on the 16th, weighing 8lb8oz.

She no longer sleeps with blanky.

She still sucks her thumb. A lot.

She is outgrowing the love of pink.

She loves shoes.

And winning.

And red toenail polish.

She adores animals, still wants to be a vet.

Deeply longing for a puppy, year after year.

She loves cuddles, bedtime stories, jumping on the trampoline.

And like last year, sausages still top the food list.

Her favourite dvds this year have been Mamma Mia, Little Rascals and Yours, Mine and Ours.

She will no longer be co-erced into eating fish and chips.

Her skin is the softest we have ever felt, her cheeks like rose petals.

Subway is her best takeout.

She is fierce in her loving.

Soft in her care of little ones, very good with directing and protecting Mishal.

She has struggled at school this year, with bullies and lack of deep friendships.

She still does gymnastics but her lack of flexibilty causes her strife, however her natural strength and balance compensate.
She is walking in that unique girlhood way, through the door of awareness from babyhood to the beginning of wisdom, and shedding the layers as she goes. She was my fiesty baby, picky eater and clinger. I said then that she would probably grow to be an astronaut or inventor so separated from conforming was she. Equality and medocrity irritate this child to the heights of exasperation.

She was born to run at the front of the pack. Not an easy task for a second sibling, at the shoulder of a strong leader sister. She is hardwired to escape the shadow, and seek out her own limelight.

She sparkles, shines, screams.

She is spirited.

She is eight. This is her year.

Scrambled Womble Eggs with Diamonds

In a crumpled bed, quickly moving my rusty fingers over the keyboard as he gets ready to go to work and take with him my link to the world. How I am missing my online community. Heavy downpour outdoors, thinking the children are going to need galoshes and mackintoshes to get to school this morning, if only we had such Paddington bear-ish props. I have had a busy few days and heading into a few more, making next weeks meals so that the poor guy does not have to cook as well and be a solo parent while I am away. So I have five meals to make today, and it is Maddy's birthday tomorrow, party on Saturday. Class treats to bake and the party to cater for, all the while eyeing what clothes to pack for Tonga, and whether we have enough wrapping paper for Maddy's gifts, and working out how many sachets of cat food will be needed until I get back. It all mounts up madly, and I enjoy it, but need time to sift through and get it all done methodically. That's the crazy part, Mishal is double trouble at the moment, ignoring each demand to stop doing something, and on a mission with those tiny fingers to find every bead, crayon and lipstick she can. She refuses to be buckled in, eat her dinner, get out of the bath, have her hair brushed, endure a channel change, give something back that she took. She's done several reverse raspberries that pierce the skin with love, and has most alarmingly taken to running away, a great joke. In light of the dear little girl who ran away in NZ last week and was only found a week later, this is extremely underlined in my thoughts and each list, or recipe, or washing sorting moment is fractured with me rushing around trying to find her.
I am trying not to be defined by motherhood. I am trying to think and speak clearly but it is proving true that my lack of computer time is meaning I am a jumbled up womble. Deep breaths.
While Mishal was asleep yesterday, I worked on creating cute little plastic cups lined with spotty pink paper, filled with pretty lollies for a quick, simple eye-candy party favour for Maddy's party, geared at being gluten-free. I enjoyed using my scrapbooking scallop punch, my pegs, balloons and creating something. I left them on my desk... while on the phone an hour later, Mish climbed up onto my desk and proceeded to feast on the chocolate fish poking up out of the tops of the little cups. Deep breaths.
I am thinly spread, in my head. In that lack, I still place in God's hands, my overwhelming desire to be learning from Him. Time-poor, His inspiration has to be rich, literally nuggets that land like scattered diamonds for me to scoop up on the run. Trying to be alert and watchful to that richness is sometimes difficult when I want to glaze over with survival mode, or when I want to faze out with grief processing, or when I just want to think. But I keep making myself look. I keep singing with the music that pours into my kitchen from Rhema, I keep scribbling down notes on the back of envelopes, till receipts. I have conversations with God while driving, out loud I might add, much to the intrigue of my children.
And its so funny, God is not confined to my limited mental capacity. It confounds me how He meets me wherever I am at. But today, children are calling for help finding clothes (they are camping upstairs in the spare room while their downstairs wing is off limits having a leak fixed), and my sweetie darling is heading off, possibly needing to take this laptop with him, so I am away. Love and miss you my bloggy friends. xx Scuse my typos, no time to re-read.

Of broccoli, words and fat pants

Grateful today:

88. For sight. After a fortnight of being unable to download from my camera, I miss the images acutely. I am profoundly thankful that my eyes can take in light and hue, and regularly get the opportunity to feast on texture and gleam. A few days off makes me hungry for this visual smorgasboard but so aware of what a gift it is. I do not take it for granted.

89. For how my husband's hands are always warm.

90. For cherry red nail polish.

91. For broccoli. We are re-naming our youngest daughter, Miss Brassica. She is addicted to the stuff and will easily eat everyone's portions in one sitting. She flicks her carrots to the floor, and the rice is for the birds, but she is monstrous in her greed when it comes to those little green trees.

92. For an outdoor table in the sun.

93. For a neighbour who brought flowers over, arranged in a tall spaghetti jar.

94. For having the leak downstairs fixed, finally. For a landlord who is following through.

95. For leaders that inspire.

96. For hot baths to melt tension knots from shoulders.

97. For little hands that served water and ice in champagne glasses to the table tonight.

98. For ten year old innocence that calls her new revitalising cleanser, her Retavaliser.

99. For middly girl wanting a piece of the cosmetic action, making me pour out the contents of an old deodorant roll-on bottle, and filling it with purple sunscreen to roll under her arms.

100. For keeping my 'fat pants' and not throwing them out. They have been pressed into service in my new expansion of emotional eating :)

101. For rest. I am choosing to appreciate the on-line diet and use it as a break for my brain.

102. For the ability to choose courage despite the internal voices that tempt mediocrity.

103. For reading out loud.

104. For reading in quiet.

105. For the way the sun set last night as I drove home over the bridge through the rainbow river of a sky.

106. For pictionary games with the girls. Hysterical laughing over ridiculous drawings, bendy rules and a timer that turned over and over.

107. For tomorrow. That it comes without question or rebuke, just steadily rolls into newness. What a miracle of creation the new day is.

108. And again, because I never tire of being grateful for it, for life.

109. And love.

All sorts, like the liquorice

I am finding that being away in the school holidays, borrowing hubby's work laptop (mine far away being fixed) and not having me-time for days on end is the enemy of blogging. Perhaps I have an unhealthy addiction but the blog and lens-eye of perspective, perhaps like a sanity drug, is sorely missed when I fall off the wagon. It's the getting back on I find hard, how to pick up the threads of images and words and go back to weaving them into a shape that makes sense to me.

My Mondays of Gratitude have been so important to my progress, in some weeks that is the only day I blog because I know the other days I would be tempted to give voice to the negative. I choose to forage for blessings on Mondays and this smoothes out the beginning of my week. I start with a tithe of thankfulness and it trickles down. When I fall asleep at night, sometimes instead of worrying whether I have fed the children enough vegetables and whether this will make them get cancer, or if the cat is so compacted with furballs that he might starve, or whether I will continue to eat chocolate like a pig and not being able to wriggle into my clothes; sometimes I remember just to let the blessings flow in. I lie there, eyes closed and sink into the rich layers of remembrance; life, breath, water, provision, light, softness, joy. I skim each breath past the hitch of worry and into the deeper well, entrusting God to take care of the rest.

I have found keeping my morning pages to be extremely helpful to siphon off the meaningless clutter of sensible thoughts that clog up the creative streams. I write 'must get rid of cats, buy vitamins, return overdue library books, vacuum lounge, make dinner' and before I know it, shopping lists have turned into doodles of trees and swirling words like peacock fish or vanilla lemon. It is very hard to be a creative and a respectable housemaker and parent let me tell you. Throw in the odd dose of pms and iron defiency and my children never know whether I am going to have steam puff out of my ears because I am cross they left chippie crumbs on the carpet, or whether I will be cheerfully vague, allowing them eat chocolate biscuits for breakfast or play outside in their pyjamas in the rain.

The last week we have been staying with family back in the town we moved from nearly one year ago. It is so lovely to be back in Auckland again but sad too. I miss so many aspects of our lives as they were then, however in the moments I get caught in that frame of mind, I hear these song lyrics from Moving Forward by Israel Houghton,

I'm not going back

I'm moving ahead

I'm here to declare

In You old things are made new

I am finding it takes courage and choice not to miss something so hard that it snaps your resolve to nothing. I employ a healthy serving of brain power to avoid sliding down the kitchen cabinets and raging on the tiled floor, storming my heart out because the things I knew and loved are so far from me. My expectations and identity were things I used to take for granted and now are facets of life that I hold up loosely, not mine own. My parent's separation has brought to the fore every insecurity I had tucked away, and the eternal child in me is frequently face to face with the wrench of the new situation.

This coming week I will be packing for my upcoming trip to Tonga, trying to get my head around leaving my three babies for nearly a week while I go off with a little group of girls from our church on a missions trip. And trying to unloop the link between missions trips and disaster, two decade old memories running like they were yesterday. Waving my parents goodbye, off to their mission trip to Mozambique and then the world ending as we were told after three days that they were never coming home.

Somehow I have tangled up going on a mission for God with the certain cost of forever changing your life and damaging those of your children. I have the two words, mission and abandonment, cemented into one concept - loss. Although in my instance, after three long months, I tipped even further when faced with processing the reality that after mourning my parents, they were actually alive and returning. This left me unpicking the new seams that grief had worked into my psyche. I was still actively doing this through my teens, realising that loving them did not mean I would lose them necessarily. But as a parent, new angles of this experience come up, and leaving my children and heading off into a rather earthquake and tsunami prone corner of the world for no other reason than to be obedient to an inner call, is quite scary.

So that will be next week, but for now, on this quiet Sunday, I will put the worry to one side and shake out the dream of being some use to the broken. And eat some more chocolate. And head back to evening church to lean in and learn more.

Hope your weekends have all been good and that the beginning of the new week (and term for some of us) is full of delight.

Photo credit - flickr (due to the sad fact that I have nowhere to download my camera to!)

1000 Gifts - Glass Peony Plays the Sax

The more I thank, the more I see to be thankful for.
The more I set myself on the path of gratitude, the further from ungratitude I find myself.
This week has been delightful.


79. He came home.


80. He spoiled me ;)

81. I have a house. I got time this week to potter and love on the stuff around me, grateful for the story it tells, the casual, beloved pieces that sit and receive my smiles. I may live in a rental property that is does not 'speak my language' but I am able to make a haven none the less, some place of peace, restoring heart to those who fill my home. My husband walked in from airports, hotel rooms and offices. He walked into birdsong, fragrance and the arms of green, homespun grace and sat suitclad and mute, on the bridge back to home and whole. This is family.




82. For this little chap that the children discovered in the bottom of the garden.

83. For the profound activity of building.

84. For time with my sister and making inspiration boards to lay heart-vision. This now hangs on the wall over my desk and gives me much to rest my eyes on in between the words.

85. For rainwater that my two big girls carried in for me to rinse my hair with. They want to see out how soft and shiny it will be after I'm done. No pressure Mum...

86. For sprigs from the bottom of the house; humble perfume to sit in the sun and fill my senses with the morning.

87. For a place to give voice to both the little and big girls in me. May it always be the sound of truth, and shibboleth, a flow or torrent of life.

This week has been leaping with words such as sweet silk, light and courage; glass, peony and blossom; healing and living. Falling notes from a saxophone, the pages of a great book on love, the warmth of spring. It is a dance and the glory keeps shining off drops in the heart of the bloom.

Duck bread

i ♥ warm spring afternoons,

living near a park and strolling down with bag of bread

to watch this girlhood captivated by simple nature.

Sparkling Buckets of Daughter Joy - 1000 gifts cont...

Gratitude sometimes has to be wrung almost desperately out of the soggy rag that I use some days to mop up the puddle in the bottom of my boat.

Today has been no exception. With my fellow sailor away for the week in Asia, I awoke to the slaughterfield of three cats versus one bird. It was not a pretty sight, feathers are the least of it. I shall not divulge more horror than that, other than to say, it was a close call to swooning with the sheer outrage that these cats deliver me gross offerings everytime Greg goes away. In my gagging, rubber gloved, vacuum-wielding frenzy, I resolved to become a cat-free family. To add insult to injury, Mishal had previously unwittingly headbutted me powerfully in the face while I lay unsuspecting in bed. I felt the crunch of my cartilage and my feet kicked involunarily while I cradled my face, spurting blood and sobbing with the pain. No harm was really done, other than to my white duvet cover and a mulitude of wet facecloths that my terrified children brought to me. It is tempting to crawl into a cabin of pity but instead I will wring each drop of jaw-dropping thankfulness out of the swill that wants to capsize me and allow myself to be emptied and dried out in the Sonshine.

66. For her birthday we took Mish to the aquarium. Besides being terrified of the penguins, she had a wonderful time watching the fish. I am thankful for those smooth gliding forms of the underworld - for Creation and the creatures of the oceans.


67. For Barney and the inspiration that made me melt. She lovingly danced with each of the inflatable penguins in this box and sang loudly to all of them "I love you, you love me, we a 'appy family". She ended each song with a wet kiss to the end of each beak.

68. For the feeling I get in my tummy when I looked back and saw her walking, looking up at her daddy. For great dads.

69. We then moved to the beach. For toes, sand and sun.

70. For the smile I got when she realised how small she actually is after all.

71. For the arms of another, bigger and stronger to cradle us when the waves crash over our feet and threaten to wet our hemlines.

72. For holding on.

73. For J O Y. This little girl has it in buckets, she reflects it but just doesn't know it. Her smile is often lost but my gratitude is there for the way she is sensitive in her acknowledgement of disappointment and delight.

74. For walking as guardian parents, one either side of this dear treasure of our own little family.

75. For the three mini ladies gifted to us, each gifted with such passion and sparkle for life.

76. For the promise of going happy places.

76. For humour; I can still hear their shouts of laughter as they played...like children. Long may it last, for it paints gold onto the heart of a mother. Kenzie is impish and gurgles with happiness when she is allowed to frolic - approaching the teen years but embraces young fun with readiness. For that I am grateful.

77. For sisterly love. Loud, obnoxious and violent at times but when the time is right, rich in easy companionship.

78. For a world of possibilites awaiting the dip of a silver oar; a response to the notion that the wind is actually meant to be tugging on your skirt and your hair. For living brightly under a sky that is never-ending with opportunity. In that light and that of love, I am profoundly ashamed of my petty niggles today. I have flung my sail high and am hearing the tide, feeling the lurch of the boards at my feet, and responding to the inner call to live big today.