simple learning

I've discovered that homeschooling is not complicated. Its essential ingredients are simple. Time, healthy relationships, community, and wisely chosen freedoms. When we homeschooled previously these things were not so readily available to us. I was driven to follow a particular recipe, not able to improvise. I was too concerned with how our learning looked to others, with wanting my girls to measure up. Now I'm finding that the recipe for learning comes instinctively to me, and what works each day is different. We make it up as we go along.

Homeschooling is the trip to the art gallery we took the other week. It's learning the violin, and experimenting on the piano. It's the impromptu flax weaving session my Auntie Celia gave the girls and their cousins when she came to visit. It's the mess in Isobella's bedroom that always involves several books lying open, and whole worlds created on floor. It's the full set of 1980's children's encyclopedia I bought from an op shop the other year. It's the pictures we painted while we were reading "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton.

Homeschooling is the beautiful and user-friendly handwriting programme we use. It's us all doing the dishes together, when we can. It's riding bikes. It's the swimming lesson, the gymnastics class. It's the maths curriculum that works with Isobella's brain, not against it.

Homeschooling is the blog we started for Greer last week, and the blog that Isobella has been doing sporadically for over a year. It's the fun touch typing lessons on the BBC website. It's starfall for phonics. It's Paddy and I working from home as much as we can, and Isobella coming in to the office the other day and asking "when can I start working in the business, Dad?"

Homeschooling is me not having to rush around like a mad thing in the mornings trying to get us all out the door on time. It's the freedom I have to get on with my day, after the hour or so of focused table-work that is our morning rhythm. Then whatever the girls do in their natural self-directed manner, with me close by for support, whether it's playing or reading or researching or creating, is all good. It all counts.

Homeschooling is the freedom we have after trying school twice, that we know now home is where our learning happens best, and that we are in for the long haul. I have long range forecasts, rather than driven short or medium term goals. That's freedom. Homeschooling means more time for me to write in the mornings, if I've gotten up early, and it means more headspace for me to write at that desk in my mind as the day goes on, if I haven't. It means setting a pace for our days that suits us all. It means peace.

Homeschooling is the library. It's the beach. It's the zoo and the museum, when we get there. It's going all together to the preschool music and movement class I help run and watching the girls play with the babies. It's seeing Isobella smile, noticing how much more confident she is, how settled and happy in her own skin she is. That's homeschooling.

It never felt like this when we did it before. There were too many agendas. We never really got confident. It was like riding a bike with trainer wheels, too scared to take them off, but always a bit wobbly.

This time there is no agenda.

this girl

She gives me flowers, and her smile is toothy and wide.
She runs everywhere, runs into things. Runs into ideas at a million miles, and then runs away from them again.
She exclaims, loudly "It's not fair!"
And then, with only a little persuasion, she tries again.
Eight will be a year of learning new things, and a year when tricky things become easy. An eight year old brain  will more easily be persuaded to run in straight lines, when she wants it to.
Her present was a bike, a bigger one, a bike suitable for a girl who knows how to ride it, a girl who has places to go to, a world to see.
And the present she chose for herself was a new sponsored child, "a new sister" she said.
Some days she wishes she came in an easy package. Some days she cries tears of frustration that things don't work out the way she expects them too. Some days it's all too hard. The violin, the maths, the holding the pencil with her thumb wriggled back.
But most days she lives in a whirlwind and sings about it. Lives right on the intersection where the ideas whizz back and forth, and dances.
Happy birthday Isobella, we are a year older!

sweet like a fig

These figs are from the tree in our orchard. The tree is laden with them. I've had them lined up on the window sill, turning and watching them, then squeezing them open and eating them when they are are as ripe as they can be without starting to spoil. Then they are the sweetest, most delicious thing I've been eating these days. And so sensual. The way the smooth soft skin yields under my fingers as I bite in. I'm in heaven.

I wouldn't be appreciating these figs right now if I hadn't gone sugar-free for Lent. I'd have enjoyed them, yes, but I wouldn't be anticipating them, wouldn't be relishing them the way I am. Sugar deadens our taste buds. It sets us up to want more, and sweeter, and now.  Sugar makes the sweetness of the fig seem ordinary and bland, when really the truth is the opposite. Sugar is predictable, it hits the same outrageous high every time. It has no complexities, no surprises.

I want to be like a fig. I want to ripen softly, to open up when I'm ready. I want my words to be sweet but not cloying; attractive, but not irresistable. I don't want to woo with unsustainable highs, I want words that are ordinary yet when put together create something unexpected.

And I want to be soft. I want to be soft for my people. I want my softness to protect them, to nurture them, to rub off on them. I want to be sweet for them, to taste good to them. 

The outer membrane of a fig thins and softens as it ripens, and eventually the flesh within bursts through. Until then the skin is surprisingly firm, for something so thin. The fig holds its package tightly, hiding it, tucking it in, pregnant with sweetness. I'm pregnant, we all are. We're all pregnant with something. With words or images; or acts of service, courage or discovery. We might be pregnant with kindness, faith, or hope. Do we let ourselves ripen? Do we allow our skin to soften, to be firm yet yielding? It's not easy.

precious

It was this little guy's first day in the world yesterday. He was born on Tuesday night and I got to be the lucky photographer. I can't think of anything more special than getting to see my newest nephew make his unforgettable entrance into the world.

I don't do pushing, I do caesareans, and that breaks my heart.  My sister, however, is the full monty birthing mama. It was her fourth, and she went into labour in the afternoon, got to the hospital after dinner, and gave birth in the pool at quarter past eight. She had a bit of help from the gas, but it was all her work. This precious boy came out in one push.

I think they're both incredible. The photo above is testament. Literally minutes before this photo was taken that boy was inside her, tucked up in darkness. Then together, a team, they propelled him down and out into the bright light of life on the outside. She held him close, the cord that fed him still attached, and in that moment you see there, he opened his eyes.

What's even more amazing is that this little guy might not have been here at all if my sister and her husband had taken popular opinion into consideration when they got pregnant. Popular opinion would have said that it wasn't the right time, that another baby would stretch their already limited resources just too far. I'm so grateful that they made up their own minds. I can't see anything but hope and new beginnings when I look into the face of that little boy. As well as an entire person, a whole world of thoughts and dreams and talents hidden within.

I'm not saying it's all perfect. My sister is heading down into the shadow land of life with a new born. Where days can be as dark as they are filled with light. She doesn't need to do anything for lent, she will be living it, twenty four hours a day. Every bit of her strength and sanity will be tested, over and over again.

And then, before she knows it, she'll be planning his twenty-first birthday party. Just like that.

five

I nearly missed a moment tonight. The girls were late to bed and Paddy was out. I was hustling them along and had already turned the lights out when Greer asked me to read her a book. I was so close to saying no. She'd been reading in bed, we'd read earlier in the day, and she was tired. But then I saw the book she wanted me to read and I relented. It was the book I gave her for her first Christmas. A sweet little book called "Mama Loves You". Each page has a different animal mama with her baby, and each page finishes with the words "mama loves you." The last page shows a woman holding her baby, and reads "you are my moon, my star, my sun, mama loves you, little one." It could be over-sweet and schmaltzy, but some how it manages not to be.

Greer smiled the whole time I was reading. And when I turned to the very last page she wriggled with excitement, said "my favourite page!" and snuggled right up. It's been a while since I read it to her and I was surprised at her response. It wasn't so long ago that it seemed like we were always at loggerheads. If there was anyone that was going to get me to raise my voice, it was her.

Ever since she was an exasperating toddler there have been times when I have wondered how she could possibly be my daughter.  Where I'm keen to please, she is stubborn and defiant. She was born feisty, and I'm still learning how to tell people what I want. If she's not happy about something I know all about it. She is loud, cheeky, and some days it feels like she goes from one whining complaint to another. It used to be common for her to ignore me, in fact, I got to the point where I would expect her to ignore me.

Something happened over the holidays. I'm not even sure what it was. I guess the home-with-Mum days turned into weeks and somehow a new peace reigned. One night she crawled into bed with me, and instead of walking her back to her own bed like I usually do, I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. The next day we were down at the beach and she came and sat on my knee and didn't want to get off. I buried my face into her hair and the thought of sending her back to school at the end of the holidays made real tears run down my face.

Greer was a big factor in the decision to send the girls to school last year. Greer hasn't got the learning quirks that Isobella has. Her brain runs in straight lines. She's been writing her name since before she was four, doing maths since she was about that age, and she's the kind of kid who when you talk with her you get the uncanny feeling you are talking to an adult in a child's body. Usually by about this time each year we are saying "oh but doesn't she seem like she's already five... or four... or three." In fact we've always ended up treating her like she's at least half a year older than she is.

Except for now. During the holidays I found myself thinking for the first time, "but she's only five." She's only five. I found myself wondering what she would gain by going back to school. I found myself pondering all the things she had to learn that could really only be learned at home. How to ride a bike. How to share and co-operate. How to be a loving big sister. How to use polite words instead of stomping and sulking. And for the first time I realised that I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that those things were more important for a five year old than learning to read, to write or to sit quietly on the mat. And so Greer became a big part of our decision to return to homeschooling.

The battles I faced daily last year have almost gone. I can see now that she actually wants to please me, most of the time. And I see softness not hardness in her face. She doesn't pull away from me when I reach out to her. She wants to be with me.

I can't think of anything sadder than the very real possibility that our relationship could have stayed as it was for the rest of our lives. Sure it would have been warm enough, just, but it wouldn't have been affectionate, and it certainly would have been stormy. She would have grown up seeing me as her enemy, always wanting something from her that she didn't want to or couldn't give. She would have grown up thinking I was never satisfied with her, that she never quite met my expectations. I would have been so used to the battles that I would have been continually on guard, always bracing myself for the fight.

And I would have missed that moment down at the beach when she sat on my knee and the tears ran down my cheeks as I thought about how much I loved her, and loved being with her.

After I'd finished the story we talked about the last page, about how it's a real Mama with her real baby and the Mama is talking to her baby. "And that's me, isn't it" she said, "I'm your baby." I smiled and said yes and she leant into me, and then she added "And you love me, don't you."  It was a statement, and yet there was a question in it, in the way her voice lilted at the end. It was enough of a question that it caught me at the back of my throat, like I'd swallowed a moth or a bug.

"You love me, don't you?"

And I knew in a rush, as I hugged her and reassured her, that she hadn't always got the message.

pause pt 2: driftwood, feathers and treasures

"driftwood, feathers and treasures"


This is what Isobella made with the treasures she brought home from the beach on Monday.


In her words:
This is my art. I made it.
From left to right: bark, driftwood, pheasant feather, bone leaf, seagull feather, mangrove seed with roots, tui feather, driftwood, bark, and same for up and down - driftwood and bark.
I found them at the beach yesterday and it was fun. Me and my sister Greer played in the sand at the beach and then we walked home. At the beach we saw some birds flying and Mummy took pictures of them. The end.


This is the fruit of our pause, this is what freedom and fossicking bring.


She's a contradiction, that girl of mine. Brilliance and difficulty wrapped up in one. Her assessment put her in the 98th percentile for verbal comprehension, and the 21st percentile for processing speed. I'm not telling you this because I think she's unique, on the contrary. I'm telling you this because there are thousands of kids out there like her. Inside their minds is all spark and connection, but put a pencil in their hand and suddenly the fire goes out.  At school Isobella looked normal. Her teacher kept reassuring me so. But deep down I knew that something didn't add up. And so we got the assessment done. It put words to the instinct I'd had all along, the instinct I'd feared to act on, not confident enough in my own appraisal of my daughter. I'll never hold my tongue again.

pause

I took the girls down to the beach yesterday in the late afternoon. The tide was out and the air was full of sea birds circling, searching for food. I sat watching them for ages. There was a strong breeze coming off the water and the birds were coasting down and back up again, around and down and back up again. The big girls were playing separately, but I heard them both singing about being a bird. I want to fly in the sky like a bird, way up high like a bird. 


We stayed down there for nearly an hour. Everybody just kind of sighed and settled down. As if our brains all let go and started coasting. We fossicked about, we day dreamed.

It was a gift to us though, because we wouldn't have got it if we hadn't changed our eating pattern a week ago to eating our main meal in the middle of the day. We've been eating dinner at lunch time since the beginning of Lent. It was Paddy's idea, and it seems to have stuck. We're so lucky to all be at home at lunchtime most days. So yesterday at five o'clock I was down at the beach, instead of rushing around trying to get dinner ready. It's another tweak to our rhythm, and it works.

When we got back from the beach the girls played outside while I did the dishes and got their tea ready. The big two rode their bikes up and down the driveway while Abi ran beside them yelling "ready set set go!" I stood on the deck watching them for a while and saw Greer come racing down the driveway at top speed, grinning from ear to ear. It was that kind of face that means this is the best thing in the world I could be doing right now and I am happy happy happy.

I see that face often, more often than when she was at school. Sure she was proud of herself at school. There were times where she would go up a reading level nearly every week. She smiled about that. But it wasn't the same smile as the one I saw yesterday as she raced down the hill with no training wheels, the wind whistling past her face and her bare arms.

I'm doing a secret experiment with Greer. I'm not encouraging her to speed ahead with writing and reading, I'm letting her set the pace. She does one thing from the school cupboard in the morning while the candle is lit, her choice, and after that she is free, more or less. We read together every morning, there's violin practice, and plenty of helping to be done, but I'm not forcing her to sit down for more time than it takes to finish one thing in the morning.

I've been watching her, waiting to see if she will get bored, and I'm amazed that she hasn't. She enjoys the work she does first thing, and often carries on at the table doing colouring in or something else quiet after she's finished. She's good at violin, and she's learning to wash the dishes, taking turns with Isobella to either wash, or dry and put away. And then she slips into playing seamlessly. Her babies need plenty of looking after. They get changed and dressed and fed and walked in the toy stroller. They get packed in a back pack to come to the beach, along with a bottle and a few books to read if they get bored. And then when the babies are sleeping, or playing happily, she's outside in a flash, on that bike. It's bikes and babies that make Greer smile.

We're not getting the end of day madness we used to get when she was at school. She's not ridiculously tired every night at dinner time. I haven't seen any of the defiant outbursts that seemed to happen just because.  Because I've been trying to be good all day and I'm home now and I just won't. She's setting her own pace.

This is the beauty that finding our own rhythm is. This is how we get all the pause we need. The moments of letting go and coasting, of fossicking and daydreaming. This is the kind of time we are rich in.

finding our rhythm

It starts the night before, when I measure two cups of porridge into the pot and cover it with four cups of water and a splash of vinegar. I set the table then too, just the placemats and spoons usually, and then the candle in the middle of the table. The floor around the table may be covered with toys, there might be books all over the couches just out of frame, and there's often a load of washing drying in front of the window, but the table is clear. The book is the piece de resistance. It sits invitingly at my place setting. The girls know what it means now. In the morning I cook and then pour the porridge. Both kinds of milk go in jugs on the table, as does the brown sugar. I serve the sugar, they serve the milk. I light the candle, we pray, and then we eat, and while we eat, I read.

This isn't anything like how we used to do homeschooling. I longed to find a rhythm for our days but it eluded me. I was too busy trying to "fix" my biggest girl, convinced I could get her "ready" for school, whenever that was going to happen. But I realised while she was at school last year that there is no easy fix. Her brain is brilliant and wayward, usually at the same time. This was confirmed by the assessment we had done just recently. So we have returned to homeschooling again completely free. There is no fixing needed.  What is needed is what we have in abundance; time and freedom.

I read this incredible post about rhythm and order in January, just at the time we decided to give up school for good. It baffled me and wooed me at the same time. Candles at breakfast? We never eat in darkness, not even in the middle of winter. Setting the table so it looks beautiful? We had eaten breakfast in the kitchen pretty much the whole time the girls were at school last year, them at the little kids table and chairs, me standing up, yelling at them to hurry up between mouthfuls. But the author's thesis was simple, and it rang true; "...stop trying to order the child, and bring order and beauty to the environment."

I don't know how to express to you that I've never seen myself as one of those mothers. One of those mothers who make beautiful things and have beautiful things and have children who make beautiful things. (That's another story in itself.) I looked at that table set with candles in the post linked to above and half scoffed. Me? Create something beautiful? That was the kind of thing those mothers did. But then I found myself putting my favourite candle in the centre of the table one night before I went to bed. The table was clear, and I realised it would be so simple to lay out the place mats now, that I'd be silly not too. We'd already started reading together at breakfast time, but putting the book at my place setting, well, that came in an inspired rush and before I knew it I had made something beautiful. A place for us to gather at the start of the day, a place that would draw us, woo us in. And it does.

I wrote yesterday about Lent, the journey I have set off on. Even since I wrote those words a picture is becoming clear. The fruit of this journey I am on will be seen in the rhythm we find, and the freedom that waits. Lent for me this year is my un-learning. Un-learning the habits gathered like dust under eleven complicated years of marriage. Lent will be my re-building. Which will become the re-building of us all.

monday

I had a bit of a melt down on Monday. Monday is the day I try to get most of the cleaning done. As a teenager and young adult I resisted my mother's weekly cleaning schedule kicking and screaming all the way, but as the years have gone by and I've added on a husband and children, weekly cleaning has seemed more and more reasonable. Now that we are out here in this enormous house in the bush, it's a necessity. By the time a week rolls around you can see the dust piled up in the corners, and the dog hair and the sand, and the mud and the dead insects. So Monday is cleaning day, and that's just how it is.

It's still holidays of course, so getting the house cleaned with three tag-alongs is an undertaking, even in the best of circumstances. I decided to turn it into challenge for the two big girls, with manageable tasks, and plenty of rewards. We started off really well. They tidied the floors of their bedrooms, cleaned the vanities in the two bathrooms, and had a go at cleaning the toilets too, after I'd done most of the job . They were pretty happy, but I hadn't even started the vacuuming, because I had to manage them all the way, and we were more than half-way through the morning. I started vacuuming while they carried on in the bedrooms and unloaded the dishwasher, and then it all fell apart. Abigail had turned the dishwasher on while we weren't looking, and it had run long enough to make all the clean dishes wet again. So Greer, very gallantly at first, had to dry everything before she could put it away. Ella was supposed to be carrying on tidying up the piles of chaos in her room where she'd cleared the floor by just picking stuff up and dumping it somewhere else, but, as usual, her tidying kept turning into playing or reading. Greer was slowly getting the dishwasher unloaded, but she had Abigail as a very keen helper, and by the time I went to check on them a bit later, unloading the dishwasher had become a vast picnic game, with every single dish from the dishwasher laid out  in an arc on the floor. The floor that hadn't been vacuumed yet, let alone washed. I think you can imagine.

I stayed calm, at least I thought I stayed calm, and left them to undo their playing, because all I really wanted to do was get on with the vacuuming. I like vacumming, as long as I don't get too many interruptions, but here it takes hours, so I really had to get on with it. A few minutes later Greer was standing in front of me, telling me that she had been carrying some plates and one of them had tipped onto the floor and broken. My heart sank. I followed her to the kitchen. Sure enough, one of my favourite plates was lying in pieces on the floor. I walked out with tears in my eyes. I didn't want to talk to them, and I couldn't face cleaning it up. I walked down to the hall, shut the doors behind me, sat by the bookcase and started putting the books that were on the floor carefully back on the shelves. The tears kept rolling.

I wasn't sad, and I wasn't stressed, but my brain felt like it was full of exploding fireworks, and I was exhausted. Micro-managing three children while trying to clean the whole house had done me in. I sat on the floor crying over the books for ages. The girls kept coming to see how I was and to ask when they could have their next marshmallow. All they wanted was ticks and rewards and a prize-giving and it just made me feel small and tired and taken for granted.

I managed to pull myself together, but I was quiet and slow for the rest of the day. I told the girls I wasn't ready to do ticks on the chart or marshmallows, and so they eventually stopped asking and went off to play. I sat and ate lunch by myself with a good book, and then I read something that was a revelation.

I'm reading "Intimacy and Solitude: balancing closeness and independence" by Stephanie Dowrick. I'm reading it with a pencil for a book mark and I'm underlining and scribbling notes everywhere, because it's that good. The part I was reading was was about the development of "inner security" through a child's early relationships. This was what jumped out at me;

"When things are going well for an infant, the mother stands in for the parts of the infant which are helplessly immature, and comforts the infant through the stages of learning which teach the child that although need is felt within, it must be met from without."

I realised in a flash that what had worn me down wasn't the cleaning, or trying to do it with three children tagging along; it wasn't the broken plate, or the fact that the day was more than half over and I still had so much to do, although it all contributed, it was Isobella's room. Isobella is a whirlwind, her brain is like a whirlwind, and her room mirrors this exactly. For her, tidying up is torture. It is nigh on impossible for her to sort through her chaos and create even a modicum of order. I have been her chief tidy up-er for nearly eight years. I never expect her to tidy up completely on her own. I always have to make her tidy up, and always micro-managing. "Put that there, move those over here, throw those things out."  And I always carry on where she gives up. I have been "standing in" for her need for order her whole life. And for the first time I admitted to myself that this causes me to feel a constant low-level, often unnoticed, stress. It was time to stop "standing in."

I know I am making this out to be simpler than it is. There are all sorts of questions that arise, such as, does Isobella really have a need for order, or am I projecting my own need for order onto her? But the fact of the matter is that I need her floor to be clear so that I can vacuum it, and she needs to be able to clear her surfaces so that we can dust, mostly because Greer is allergic to dust, but also because I think it's important for her to have use-able space in her room and for her to learn take care of her possessions.

The back-story here is that a couple of months ago I figured out I am pretty dyspraxic. That's another story for another post, but I'll tell you this much. It means that I have enough trouble keeping my own stuff ordered and organised, let alone anyone else's. So my daughter's chief tidy up-er is, by nature, an average tidy up-er herself. And Paddy is no more skilled in this area than I am. I tell you, it's the blind leading the blind.

I've written about my struggles with chaos before, and order was my word for 2011. I wrote about chaos and order, and sought to find my own version of order, well before I even knew what Dyspraxia was. I was searching for some kind of ordered nirvana, and yet, instinctively, I knew my order was never going to look like any one else's.

If tidiness is just not on your radar, or you're happy with whatever level of tidiness is achievable on any given day, then you might have come to my house as a visitor and thought it looked pretty tidy. If you are a sworn and proud tidy person (like my sister and Mum are) then you'll have come to my house and seen that there is always something that needs doing. Always a basket of washing sitting somewhere, dishes on the bench, a cupboard in disarray, or a bedroom down the hall that hasn't been tidied for a week. And this is my reality; I actually like a certain amount of order and cleanliness. Clutter and mess for me are like visual white noise. So whatever tidiness and order you see on any day, it will be the best that I could do, and was probably hard-won.

This is quite an admission. I spent the first part of my life trying to rebel against my mother's strict sense of order. I was labelled the "messy one" in the family. As I grew older I realised I wasn't that messy at all, and decided that I had been unfairly labelled. Nevertheless, chaos was always my default setting. I never could quite understand why no matter how hard I tried to be organised, chaos was only a scratch under the surface. I partly came to terms with this last year, when I wrote a post about having grown up living in two worlds. That was really a breakthrough. As soon as I admitted I had my father's relaxed and anti-establishment home-making genes, as well as my mother's, I somehow gave myself permission to be tidy, as contradictory as that sounds. I gave up my rebellion against order once and for all, or so I thought. The house was definitely tidier.

Then we moved here, where it takes half an hour just to vacuum the lounge and dining room, and where dirt, in every form, is a daily part of our lives. The girls spread out from one bedroom to three, and for the first time Isobella had her own desk, her own bedside table, her own dresser, and her own wardrobe. You might think that would make it easier for her to keep her room tidy, but it's actually had the opposite effect. She now has three or four times as much surface area to spread out her creations and clutter, piles and treasures.

Right now I'm writing at the dining table while the girls play around me. I'm not ignoring them, but I am getting the words out while I can, because this story is good for me to write. They have taken out pretty much every puzzle we own, and have spread the pieces around on baking trays and tins as "biscuits" and put them all in the oven. They are happy, and they are occupied. Right now I don't care about the inevitable chaos. The puzzle pieces that will be strewn from the kitchen and down the hall to the lounge. I don't care that the puzzles will be all mixed up, and I don't care that someone, probably me, hopefully with helping hands, will have to sit down and re-order it all. I'm happy because they are happy, and I'm happy because I'm getting these words out.

You see, I can handle chaos. I've grown up with it close, either from within or without. I've learnt to control it, and when I need to I can. But my brain is like a tight rubber band that has to let go with a ping and unravel regularly, and that's exactly what my environment is like too. Chaos and order come and go like the tide. It's the two worlds of my upbringing, it's my wild brain, and it's the dyspraxia. It's just the way I am.

I can't expect any more of my eldest daughter than I expect of myself. Her brain is even wilder and harder to control than my own. But I don't need to take responsibility for something she's old enough to take responsibility for herself, even though she may seem to be less than capable in that area. So I am resigning as her chief tidy up-er. I'm not saying I don't care how messy her room gets, not at all. But the micro-managing is over. I am making peace with her precious chaos.

sixes and sevens

I'm all at sixes and sevens this week. Still tired, although not as people-weary as I was. This week everything felt difficult. I lost energy rather than gained it, and the house descended into more and more chaos as the days went on. Everything I did was undone as soon as I did it. The smell in the kids' toilet wouldn't go away, even after I cleaned it. Yesterday the kitchen floor was covered in crumbs five minutes after I'd swept it. There was no point.

It didn't help that Paddy and I had slipped back into our old pattern of confrontation, our bugbear. I sat on the toilet crying and realised, for the first time, that I don't have to wear it any longer. That I can fight this thing that brings out the worst in both of us. That I can say "no" with as much freedom as I say "yes."And at the same time, in such a funny contradictory way, I realised that I can wear it, I can take it, that I would lay myself down again and again for this marriage and this family of mine.

This morning I read a quote from Richard Rohr at Heather King's Shirt of Flame and cried.

Christians indeed have a strange image of God: a naked, bleeding man, dying on a cross. It's not what you would think the image of God could be or should be. Is God eccentric here, or is it we who have not diagnosed the human situation correctly?
Jesus receives our hatred and does not return it. He suffers and does not make the other suffer. He does not first look at changing others, but pays the price of change within himself. He absorbs the mystery of human sin rather than passing it on. He does not use his suffering and death as power over others to punish them, but as power for others to transform them.

I read Luke 6 while I was crying on the toilet this week. You know, turn the other cheek, give your coat to the one who steals your shirt. This is how Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The Message:

To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously. Here is a simple rule of thumb for behaviour: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them!

This is possibly the hardest, most misunderstood thing that Jesus ever taught. If we think it's describing a passive, gutless life, then we should think again. Jesus was not a victim. He could have walked away from the cross. Instead he was steadfast and unflinching, and what he accomplished was possible because he took his fate willingly. Giving is always a choice.


Luke 6 in The Message goes on like this;

Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticise their faults - unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don't condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you'll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you'll find life given back, but not merely given back - given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.


I realise now, right now, that there are things in our marriage and in the daily grind of motherhood that I have subconsciously felt victim to, that I have felt I had no choice but to accept. That invisible victim-hood was a quiet, small fire that fueled on-going resentment. Resentment doesn't stay hidden, and it brings along its sister bitterness with it. Those two are a no-fail recipe for a hard heart.

I washed Abigail's feet this morning in the bathroom basin. She had run around in bare feet all day yesterday and I had forgotten to do it before I tucked her in last night. I was about to put socks on her this morning when I saw how filthy they were. I couldn't bring myself to put clean socks on all that dirt. She was happy as I gently rubbed her feet in the warm water. Even happier when I let her put some soap on her own hands and join in. Then I sat on the toilet with her on my knee and dried those two small feet. And I realised that service is the embodiment of my love for her, and the best way (along with physical affection) that I can assure her of that love.

I could walk away from it all. I could walk away from the battles, the impossible effort it seems to truly know and understand another person. I could walk away from the smelly toilet, the crumbs on the floor, and the weariness that chases me whichever way I turn. I could say no to all of it. But I won't.

tired

I know I've written this before, but I'm very tired. We are at the end of two weeks' school holidays, and it has been lovely having the girls at home, but a bit too busy for my liking. Somehow the days turned into a blur of social visits and errands. And added to that, I've developed a bad habit of staying up too late. It's not a winning combination!

Tomorrow we are heading off to our church camp for the long weekend. The girls are beside themselves with excitement, and we'll have a great time. But I have to say that the thought of spending all weekend with large numbers of people just makes me feel even more tired.

It's taken me nearly all of my life to admit that I really am an introvert. I used to think I was an extrovert. I'm pretty outgoing and I love people. I remember at one point a long time ago thinking "why would I ever want to sit in a room by myself and write?" Now I'm in no doubt at all. All I want to do is sit in a room by myself and write!

I read this post at Conversion Diary about being overwhelmed and it made me think back to the days when I couldn't even recognise let alone understand my emotional state. I've experienced exhaustion and burnout more than once. For me, they have always triggered depression. But even though I had helpful counselling each time, I never recognised that part of my exhaustion was related to my introverted-ness. I was an introvert living like an extrovert and it was almost killing me.

Now I get it. I'm tired right now, not just because I've been staying up too late, but because I just haven't had much time to myself over the last two weeks. In the past this feeling would have had me worried that I was doing too much, and the feeling of wanting everyone else to go away and stop talking to me would have made me think I was on the road towards burnout again. But now I understand, that feeling is simple. It just means I need everyone else to go away and stop talking to me!

In her post about being overwhelmed, Jenn at Conversion Diary describes the emergency "burnout gas mask" steps she takes as soon as she starts feeling overwhelmed. I like the idea of having steps that I have already thought through and default to automatically as soon as I start to feel really tired or overwhelmed. These would be mine. As in, I should be following them right now.

1. Quiet.

2. Sleep.

3. Write.

4. Time alone.

Unfortunately not all of these things are completely within my control. I'll have to ask for help. But I know that if I don't, I'll only feel worse. It's a no-brainer really.

meet my enemy

Meet our stove. It looks pretty innocuous, right, a very ordinary stove. But don't be deceived. This stove is a menace. I've been cooking on this stove for nearly four months now, since we moved here in June, and I can tell you, this stove is nasty!

Let me tell you why. Only one element can actually be turned down. The other three just burn and burn. The largest one in particular gets so hot that I'm scared I'll hurt myself. And it's only got one setting. Burning hot. It turns off, but it will not turn down. 

In the first weeks after we moved here I swore a lot in the kitchen. I even cried a couple of times. Every pot we own now has black on the bottom. I've burnt everything from rice to potatoes, eggs and even the onion and carrot I was trying to sweat to make soup. Tell me how am I supposed to cook something on a low heat when none of the elements produce a low heat? 

I can tell you I've tried everything. I've had two elements on at the same time, one being small and therefore slightly (slightly!) cooler than the other, and I've moved the pot from one to the other. I've tried every element and every setting on every element, going through all the options in case I'd missed the magic combination. I've even resorted to standing in front of the stove and lifting the pan about fifteen centimetres off the element and cooking that way. (It still cooks!) Everything boils over at some point, so the trays under the element are covered in black and often with a little pool of old cooking water that burns up the next time I use that element and stinks the house out.

So after the first two months we realised the stove had to go, and we started making plans to buy a new one. Now, sitting in the kitchen next to the said stove, is a second hand but shiny and beautiful stove. It's gas top and electric oven, it's big, and it's getting installed today. We won't know ourselves! 

When I finally got to show mum how bad our stove was she couldn't believe we'd put up with it so long. I told another friend about it and her reaction was the same. "It must drive you mad!" was her reaction, or something along those lines. 

The funny thing is that after I admitted how bad that stove was, and once we'd decided to eventually get a new one, the stove stopped making me mad. I even stopped swearing about it (mostly!) The food was still burning, and the pots were still turning black, but it didn't get to me anymore. I just expected it.

I was thinking about this one day this week, on a day when Abigail was being particularly trying. It was one of those days where she was climbing on the tables, opening the fridge and helping herself to a glass of milk, getting the bread out and trying to make her own lunch, and throwing the girls' best coloured pencils all over the floor. It was the kind of day that when Paddy wakes up from his day's sleeping and comes out to see us the first thing he hears from my mouth is "that baby is driving me nuts!"

But somehow, in the midst of cleaning the honey off the floor, and picking up the coloured pencils for the umpteenth time, my frazzled brain managed to make the connection between my frustration with Abigail and my frustration with the stove. And I realised I'd started to feel like Abigail, that sweet two year old of mine, was my enemy.

Now I was smart enough to know, once I'd figured that much out, that there was no point in going down that track. If I continued to see that two year old as the source of all my problems and frustration I would only end up more frustrated, and she would probably end up on the unfortunate end of a fair bit of venting. And that wouldn't be fair on her. 

So I'm adjusting my expectations. I'm no longer surprised when she chucks the girls' pencils all over the floor. I hardly blink when she grabs a glass and helps herself to water out of the water dispenser. I merely make a murmur of disapproval when she helps herself to the milk and pours it, half into the cup and half on the floor. And I now know that she's capable of getting herself a slice of bread from the fridge and helping herself to the pourable honey from the pantry. These things no longer take me by surprise. And I'm reminding myself that she won't be two forever.

Frustration can be blinding. We rarely think straight when we are frustrated. And frustration leads to resentment and resentment becomes a weight that's very hard to shift. It makes us desperate for a scape goat, desperate to lay the blame somewhere, because if we are going to feel this bad we might as well have a good reason for it. 

That stove wasn't my enemy, it was just a malfunctioning stove, and Abigail's not my enemy either, of course. She's just a very determined two year old, who will only be two for eight more months. Right now I should be giving her breakfast, but she wouldn't let me put her in the high chair. She wanted to join in the with the big girls' game of school. So she sat down on a little chair in front of them and turned the pages of an old biology text book, and talked to herself about "buzzy bees." Then while I was writing this she came over to the servery behind me, reached up and grabbed Isobella's bowl of half-eaten cereal, and pulled up a chair. She's sitting next to me eating it now with an adult size spoon, and the milk is going all the way down her front and onto the chair. At least I'm not surprised!

how it is

This is how it is. I am very, very tired. The girls have all had colds made worse by asthma, in varying degrees. On Tuesday night Greer was awake coughing for literally two hours. It's a hacking, gasping cough that I hate. Last night I sat praying beside her on the bed as she was going to sleep. What else could I do? I sat there thinking of the verse from Psalm 127 which comes up in the afternoon prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours; to those he loves, the Lord gives sleep. I took it as a promise for her, and I reminded God of it desperately. I sat there until the coughing seemed to slow down, and she went to sleep. She did cough later on in the night, but nothing like the night before, and she managed to sleep through it. I'm so grateful.

I went to the supermarket today and did nearly a whole month's worth of shopping. I ended up with two overloaded trolleys and a fed-up two year old who just couldn't see why she should stay sitting down. I was weary and slightly overwhelmed by the amount of food I was about to purchase. The checkout lady smiled as I shifted Abigail into the trolley our groceries were going into and finally strapped her in successfully. "I think you are very patient" she said out of nowhere. I smiled and chucked inwardly. Too tired to be anything else, I thought. "Do you think so?" I laughed, "that's very nice of you to say." And we had a great conversation about meditation and being kind to your soul, about how stressed people can be when they come to the supermarket, and mothers who have nine children and how sometimes more is actually easier. It was a conversation that made us both happy. And then I went to the chemist, popped into Isobella's class to drop something off for their show next week, and once we got home, finally, I'd been out all day.

It's Friday tomorrow, and there's the week gone. With sick children and broken nights and grocery shopping. One of those weeks where I take the treasures where ever I can find them.

Tonight as I was tucking her in Greer told me she thinks God is going to help her get all the way along the monkey bars at school. I smiled and felt compelled to add a note of caution, even just going one more bar than yesterday Greer, even that is good. Trying not to envision a trip to the emergency clinic. Then her face lit up and she said "imagine if there was a monkey bar that went all the way around the world. Imagine that you could go all the way round the world!" And then I got it. Going all the way to the other end of the monkey bars is like travelling to the other side of the world, it's that far, and that amazing. And what a thought, what a dream, to swing across the bars and land somewhere completely else.

And then suddenly the moment comes where my mind soars, because I can do that. Right here on this page, and in my head, that almost boundless place, I can swing over to anywhere. Sickness, tiredness, supermarket shopping, I swing right on over you.

still re-modelling the dream

It's two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm sitting at the dining table eating lunch. Abigail is in bed and my two big girls are nearly at the end of their first day at school. I almost can't believe what I've just written. The decision to send them to school has happened so quickly, I'm still in shock.

Homeschooling was never something I planned on doing. As I've told you before, I once swore I would "never" homeschool.  Ha. Those words came back to haunt me when, as Isobella was about to turn five, the dream of a homeschooling life crept into my heart. At that stage Isobella had petit-mal epilepsy that was not yet controlled by medication, and it seemed cruel and counter-productive to send her to school.

I started reading and thinking about homeschooling. Through books such as Teach Your Own by John Holt, and through the internet and blogs I found along the way, a whole world opened up to me. Not a small, sheltered and narrow world, as I had assumed, but a wide and fascinating world, full of intelligent parents who were passionate about giving their children a holistic and broad education, while still giving them plenty of time and space to play. This blog, and this blog were the first blogs I ever read, and those families enchanted me with their other-worldy life of books and nature and freedom.

 Just before Isobella turned six, we had to decide whether we were going to continue homeschooling. To my surprise I found that school seemed like a good option, and Isobella agreed wholeheartedly. Isobella was happy at school, she made friends and had a great teacher, but she didn't thrive the way I'd expected her to. When people asked how school was going I'd say "school's fine." Then after six months I realised that it was okay for me to want more than just "fine" for my daughter.

So over a year ago now, we decided to go back homeschooling.  It was an answer to the cry of my heart. I realised that not only had school not been good for her, it hadn't been good for me either. I had turned myself inside out to find a morning routine that got us to school on time, and I found the after-school pick-up almost as stressful. The decision to go back to homeschooling felt like us deciding to be us. It felt like I was saying, to myself and to the world, we're a little different, and we need to do things a little differently.

I've loved teaching my girls. I found that I'd rather be teaching my own kids than anyone else's. And as I've written before, homeschooling "made me the mother I'd always wanted to be." It taught me to just be. It gave me permission to step out of the busy world of pre-school activities and be mostly at home. It taught me that there were no commitments in my life that were more important than my children, and it forced me regularly to be completely present with them.

Most importantly, homeschooling gave Isobella the space and freedom to be herself at a time when her self-concept as a learner was most vulnerable. She told me after we took her out of school that the boys had teased her for her "scribbly" writing and drawing.  She had often been on the list of kids who had to finish their stories at lunchtime. And sometimes she would bring readers home that completely bored her. It was so good for her to be able to do her own thing at home.

Then in May this year I took Greer out of kindy a term early and started homeschooling her as well, because I knew she was ready for it. I couldn't see it at the time, but actually, that changed nearly everything. Greer quickly flourished, and one day during her first week of "official" homeschooling, I looked at the two of them working up at the table and the thought came to me in a flash, those girls are going to love school when they get there.

One night a couple of months ago I had a dream. In the dream Isobella was at school, and she was happy. When I woke up the next morning the dream sat in my heart like a half-open door. I tried to pretend it didn't mean anything, but the dream wouldn't go away. It scared and thrilled me at the same time. And so we started thinking about school again.

I found myself admitting things I hadn't admitted to myself before. I did find it a challenge teaching both girls. Their needs were very different, and I often felt like I had to be constantly on point to keep Isobella on task and to keep up with Greer. And then there was Abigail, whose daily mission was to climb up onto the table as many times as possible! I realised that I had been unconsciously withdrawing from the girls at breakfast time, in preparation for a morning of school work, and then withdrawing from them again at lunch time because my brain had just had enough. Afternoons had to be outside play or rest time, because by then I had simply run out of words. I don't know how other introverts do homeschooling, but I think if we had carried on I would have got very worn out.

I've shed more than a few tears over this decision. I felt like sending the girls to school was giving up on the dream that was so precious to me. I wondered how Isobella would cope, and I feared the return to a family life lived according to an institutional timetable. But since we first started talking about it the girls have not changed their minds. To say they were keen to start school would be an understatement.

It's taken me three days to write this post and it's now Wednesday. The girls have settled into school easily. They are in love with the library, have both joined the group that helps with the worm farm, caught the school bus home yesterday, and will be catching it again in about half an hour. I'll put Abigail in the buggy soon after three, put the dog on his leash, and walk up the road in the sun to meet them.

But I don't think I'll ever be a typical school mum. I don't feel any different this week, with the girls in school, to last week, when they were at home. I don't see school as the perfect answer to their education, and we didn't stop homeschooling because it wasn't working. After three days at school Greer is already saying she is bored with maths. She wants to count to one hundred, not to ten.

And that's the thing, see. We can do that. We can count to one hundred all afternoon and all weekend if she wants. I won't completely pack up our homeschool things, and if Isobella still wants to write stories with me I'll be in heaven.

Reading over the other posts I've written about homeschooling has been hard. I've felt tears pricking as I read. And it's been surprising to see how similar each stage of the journey has been. None of the decisions along the way were easy. Each of them was accompanied by tears and deliberation. And each time I felt pulled, as I do now, in both directions. School, good. Home, good.

I'm seeing something now that I never saw before. We really don't fit neatly into either the school or the homeschool box. My girls crave the stimulation and company that school gives them, and yet, for various reasons, they don't naturally slip into their place in the system that is a public school. I know that school will not meet all of their needs. And yet I have a gut feeling that somehow, despite that, they will thrive.

And then there's me. It's not like I'll be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. There's no question that this house is a job in itself, and there is plenty of work to be done on our business projects. And what about all those words I haven't had the time or head space to write? We had a big chat about school with the girls one night before we shifted.  They were so keen on the idea that I was taken aback. "If you girls go to school, what will I do at home all day?" I asked, half teasing, half choking back the tears. "Write, Mama," Isobella piped up immediately. "Write!"

birthdays and babies

She's two now, that baby of mine. She turned two on Thursday. She was pretty happy about it, she knew what was going on. We gave her some playdough tools and a puzzle. We'll do a joint party with Greer when we get to the new house.

It wasn't long ago that I was lamenting the fact that she was turning one. Well a year, that's not very long, at least it doesn't seem long any more. Back then I was joking about finding a recipe for a bonsai baby. And now she's two.

I didn't think I wanted a third baby. After Greer was born I spent months angst-ing over whether we were "done" or not. Oh I talked and wondered and talked and wondered and cried. It was such a difficult decision. Most people I knew seemed happy with two. Two was such a normal number. And as much as I loved my babies I hadn't overly enjoyed that immediate post-partum period. So, out of desperation to make up my mind, I decided I was done. We sold the cot. Then one day I was sitting behind a woman breastfeeding her newborn. I could hear the baby snuffling quietly as it fed, and suddenly it hit me. I wanted to hear that sound again. I wanted another baby!

I sat behind that woman with tears rolling down my face for an hour. All I could think about was her baby and the baby I had only just realised I wanted. I rang Paddy. "I want another baby" I told him, crying. He laughed and promised me we'd talk about it when I got home. It didn't take much to persuade him. And so we got our precious Abigail Hope.

We have enjoyed her so much I can't believe I ever thought we were done without her. She's such a treasure, and third time around everything was so much easier. She wasn't an easy baby, but I had the hindsight of knowing that the worst times with a baby never last forever.  And now that she's well past the baby stage, we still enjoy her. She makes us smile and laugh all the time. She's the most fascinating combination of sweet and feisty. And she makes me want another baby. She confirms to me, every day, that I am not done.

There is a slight technical issue though. You might remember I had my tubes tied at the same time as Abigail's c-section. Hers was my third caesarean, and I just presumed that was what was expected of me. As I told people who asked, "three is the magic number for caesareans." I hardly gave it any thought. It seemed the sensible, practical thing to do. And I was so blown away to be having a third baby at all, that three seemed like a huge family. I never imagined wanting more.

Then I met someone who had been told by her specialist she could have "as many c-sections as she wanted." Soon after that I found out that the writer of one of my favourite blogs had had three c-sections and was pregnant with her fourth child. I started feeling jealous. Then I read one bloggers' answer to "do you want more children?" and her post about the Catholic teaching on contraception, and I cried. I couldn't believe I had given up the ability to bear children so easily. I couldn't believe I'd done it with barely a thought.

Now I look at pregnant women wistfully and newborn babies longingly. Hardly a day has gone by in the last six months that I haven't wished I could get pregnant. I've had a tiny taste of the longing ache to have a child. And did you know there is such a thing as post-tubal ligation syndrome? I didn't, but it turns out I've got at least half of the symptoms. Sex hasn't been the same either. I've just felt, well, sterile. There's no other word for it.

Last week Paddy and I watched "The Blind Side," a movie based on a true story. If you haven't seen it it's the one with Sandra Bullock as the feisty Southern Mom who along with her family, takes in and eventually adopts "Big Mike." Michael is a boy they find wandering the streets and who ends up becoming a very successful football player. I started crying in the opening scenes, and kept crying, until it got to the point, about halfway through the movie, where I turned to Paddy and said, sobbing, "I can't watch this any more unless you say we can adopt!" He was teary-eyed himself, and he smiled and nodded. 

I don't know what this means for us exactly. All we know is that we are not done! Our hearts are open to the possibility of growing our family. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I don't know whether it means we will definitely adopt one day, or perhaps foster, or maybe even somehow, miraculously, get pregnant ourselves. All I know is I don't feel sterile any more, and that is a very good feeling.

movement and rest

Yesterday it was exactly a month until moving day. While the house was on the market we lived in an unnatural state of order. I had a genuine fear of "stuff" the whole time. Nothing came in, plenty went out. I didn't let the girls bring home so much as a piece of paper! Once the house was off the market, we more or less got back to living like we normally do, and now, with four weeks ahead of us, the house is already filled with boxes.

Moving house is one of the most stressful things we can do. There's a list that counsellors and psychologists use, that list of the ten or twenty most stressful things a human can go through. There's tragedy and disaster in there, and a bit of the ordinary too. New job, moving house, that sort of thing. Moving house.

What state will I be in, in a month's time? Will I be beside myself with exhaustion, mumbling and incoherent, about to curl up in a hermit's ball for a week?  Or will I be tired, relieved, but calm? This is where reality TV meets the voyeurism of blogging. As long as I stay sane enough to put a sentence together, you will watch the drama unfold. I could even add a little poll to my sidebar. You could click "yes" if you think I'll survive, or "no", if you think I'll be a blubbering mess at the end of it all. Let me just see about that....

I was going to write a post about rest a couple of months ago. You might remember I decided to go to bed early for Lent. This was a very genuine intention, and it counted for a lot, as far as I'm concerned, even if sometimes real life got in the way. What that intention did was change the way I considered bedtime. Before Lent, bedtime had just been the thing I got to eventually when everything else was done. During Lent it suddenly became the focus of my evening, the goal I elevated above every other, once the girls were in bed. For almost the first time in my life, bedtime was important.

There's a context here. I've got a history of overdoing things. I know the taste of burn out. I've spent most of my life so intent on making other people happy that I didn't know how to look after myself. "No" was a word I had to get married to learn to use. The day I decided to go to bed early for Lent was the Sunday before we put the house on the market; after three manic weeks of  painting, cleaning, tidying, sorting, and shifting whole rooms around. I was so tired I was shell-shocked and tearful.

That's what I don't want to be in a month's time.

But when it comes down to it, I'm not sure I know what to do to avoid it. I mean, we have a whole house to pack and move, as well other deadlines for some really exciting projects.  And then there are all the ordinary things which carry on regardless, like homeschooling, and the fact that there are five of us and we all like to eat, wear clean clothes, and see the floor we are walking on. These things alone take up most of my time.

One day at the beginning of Lent I read Psalm 127 in the afternoon prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours.

It is vain for you to rise before dawn,
and go late to your rest,
eating the bread of toil - 
to those he loves, the Lord gives sleep.


I imagine the bread of toil like a slice of stale bread that's been sitting on the bench all afternoon. It's dry, chewy, and curled at the edges. Some of us are better at eating the bread of toil than others. Some of us are probably just like our mothers, who ate the burnt chop and shouldered most of the work around the house simply because there was nobody else to do it. To us there is something safe and familiar about the bread of toil. We've spent so long eating it that the taste of anything else is foreign and extravagant. The bread of toil seems to take the moral high ground. Work is valued, and inactivity discouraged, right?

I've always struggled to see value in rest. For me, real rest is something I've come to as a last resort, and often with a sense of failure that I can't carry on. It's not something that I've been able to see as valuable in its own right. It's not because I think I'm invincible. I think it's just that activity has been such a big part of my identity. I achieve, therefore I am.

There's a tension here, of course. Necessary work is exactly that. It has to be done and there's no avoiding it. Work that is associated with fruitfulness is exciting and often a pleasure.  The work for a project that is finally getting off the ground after years of dreaming is a miracle in itself. And then there's the old proverb about work being its own reward. The feeling of a job finished and done well; there's nothing like it.

But if we just keep on going, we gradually become less efficient and less productive, and eventually come to a grinding halt. I like what Ovid wrote about rest:
Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. 
And then there's what Jesus said about rest:
Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

 I've read those words of Jesus countless times, I've meditated on them and I've tried to apply them. But I know now that I've never understood them. If I had, my life would have looked very different. Let's see how I go this time around.

Me and Gill Greer

We're still sick, but don't worry, that's not what I'm going to write about. Being sick has meant that there hasn't been much going on around here, except for a bit more time to read and think than normal. Plenty of time, actually, to get completely caught up in this post, the one that followed it, and the debate that ensued. When I say caught up, I don't mean I actually took part in the discussion, but I do mean I read avidly from the safety of my sick-bed on the other side of the world. It was one to watch, I tell you.

Abortion is something I never thought I'd be writing about here. I've been planning on writing about it, one day, when I'm grown up and all, but on a new blog I've had in the pipeline for a while, a blog that will explore some ideas around Christian feminism. So abortion, right, that was going to come up. Just not here.

But last week I read an article in The Listener about Gill Greer, the New Zealander who is Director General of International Planned Parenthood Federation. The article was part of a series which showcases kiwis overseas who are doing good things. Gill Greer was recently named among the "100 most inspiring people who have delivered for girls and women," and by the sounds of it, she's earnt it. She runs one of the world's largest organisations, and is an intelligent, compassionate and vocal advocate for women's health rights. And abortion, did I mention abortion?

Gillian Greer made an impression on me. She is a grandmother, was an English teacher, and seemed personable and interesting, someone I could easily have a coffee with.  So I was thinking of her when I read the arguments that went back and forth over in that corner of the internet. She put a face to the political dispute that's been broiling since the Republicans started pushing for the de-funding of Planned Parenthood in the United States.

Abortion has always been a complicated issue for me. My mother had an abortion, and I was conceived in the nine months succeeding. If she hadn't had that abortion, I wouldn't be here writing to you. To me, that's complicated. But it gets more complicated. When she realised she was pregnant with me, it was suggested that she have another abortion. Somehow she knew that this time she wanted the baby.

Someone else made an impression on me this week, the author of the post that started that enthralling pro-life/pro-choice debate. Calah writes about being a young Catholic mother. She's always honest, and often funny. But what she wrote in that post took my breath away. If there's anyone who is entitled to write about the decision to keep or abort a baby, she is.

"Amidst the debates swirling around about defunding Planned Parenthood, some oft-repeated catch phrases are being tossed around like word grenades. One of these are "women in crisis." I'm sick and tired of hearing about "women in crisis" and how they need access to emergency contraception and abortions. That is a huge, steaming pile of lies, propagated by people who like to murder babies. Women in crisis do not need access to abortions. What they need is love, support, a safe place to live, and people (even strangers!) who will tell them the truth: that they are more than capable of being a mother. That they can do this. That their crisis, no matter how terrible, will be healed in the long, sometimes painful, always joyful process of becoming a mother.
Think this makes me heartless, speaking from my comfortable suburban home, having never known trials in my cushy little life?
Think again.
When I got that positive pregnancy test, the one that changed my life, I was addicted to crystal meth."

While I've always been pro-life, I've never felt comfortable with the rhetoric and actions of most of that camp. Placards and feisty arguments don't seem to have won us any battles so far, and I can't see any evidence that they will in the future. Certainly, if all we do is alienate our opposition and make the women who choose to have abortions feel judged and condemned, then we are missing something, drastically.

Gill Greer is quoted in the Listener article as saying "I probably get less calm when people talk about themselves as pro-life. My response to that is - I'm pro-life, I just happen to be pro the woman's life, and I believe if she has the ability to make a safe legal choice as early as possible in her pregnancy, that's saving her life." If you read those words and all they do is make you angry, then read them again. This is a woman who genuinely cares about women and their families; she's just doing it in a way that I and many others don't agree with.

And yet. And this is where it gets even more complicated for me. I was brushing my teeth last night, thinking all of this over, when a realisation hit me with such force I just about choked on my toothbrush. I realised, for the first time in my life, that I'm grateful that my mother had access to a safe abortion.

Life is exquisite. No one can look at a newborn and deny it. For all of us, no matter what culture or place we live in, whether we are a man or a woman, child or adult, a new birth is a holy moment. It connects us with the wonder of this world we live in, it reminds us of the beauty and preciousness of each individual, and it reminds us, if we let it, that there is a bigger story to our lives, that we are part of something bigger than us.

But life is also very complicated. All of us have survived some measure of hurt and dysfunction in our upbringing, and all of us battle with the disappointment of being let down by others and by our own averageness. We've all made mistakes, and we all suffer the consequences. In the complexity that is my own life this is abundantly clear. And yet I look back and see cause for hope. I see a story being woven out of the random and sometimes ugly threads of my life that is ultimately good.

Abortion is damaging, not only literally for the life within but also for the mother. Gill Greer might not believe it but there are plenty of women who say they suffer from Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome.  We can't be silent about this. The stories of women who regret their abortions should be respected and listened to. But can we do this without completely alienating our opposition? Is there any way a respectful dialogue can happen between the pro-life and pro-choice camps?

I'd have a coffee with Gillian Greer. I'd listen to her stories and her heart-wrenching statistics. Then I'd talk to her about the stories I've heard, some very close to home. I'd ask her to make adoption an easier and more accessible option for women who come to Planned Parenting. I'd ask her to consider the reality that Post-Abortion Stress syndrome is for many women, and suggest that Planned Parenting be more open about the negative effects some women experience following an abortion. Am I nieve? Possibly. But I'm a dreamer, and where would we be without those?