counting

So my baby is three today. Three years ago today they whisked her out of me, and ended my baby making days in one foul swoop. I now have mixed feelings about Abigail's birth day. I look at the video of her caesarean and see the smile on my face as clear and bright as a blue sky, and yet I know that in the very instant I am smiling they are doing the tubal ligation I requested, and taking away every other baby I would ever long for.

And she wants a baby too, that three year old of mine. She says “my need a brother and a sister.”  She is right. She would run the show if we let her, and a younger sibling (or two, or more) is just what she needs to help her remember that there are other people in the world beside herself.

Isn’t that one of the most important things we can teach our children, after all? Far better for them to learn it now than suffer the heartache and  loneliness that can only come from a life lived in expectation that everybody else should be about the business of making them happy.

We are away for the weekend, and I can see the ocean from out of this wide window. The white breakers are crashing on a faraway shore, and scrubby green hills rise up above the seaside-town-turned-suburbia.

With all this space I can finally hear myself think, and I am weighing up my life. Measuring expenditure versus income, checking the balance to see that it does, in fact, break even. I’ve never been able to do this before. I’ve never, not in my whole life, known where I start and where I finish. I’ve lived at the whim of everybody else’s feelings and expectations. If you were happy, I was happy. But it never really worked for me, it only made me tired and anxious and depressed. I don’t need to live like that any longer, and I am thrilled.

The three girls have been playing and playing today. They took armfuls of toys up to the rooftop deck, ran around, and then dragged them all back down again. This is nice, this having a three year old. The older two have spent so long having to put up with her interrupting their games, or messing up their creations. There have been things they wanted to do that they couldn’t, because a toddler had to be included, or kept safe. Now comes our reward for  that. Three girls who play together, who genuinely enjoy each other’s company. We can all relax a little.

I’m going to Cambodia for a week this month. I’ve been so busy with the wedding I’ve hardly had the chance to think about it. But the tickets are sitting in an envelope on my desk, and my renewed passport should be arriving any day now. I’m going to visit my dear friend Mels who has been teaching in Phnom Penh since January. We were talking on the phone a couple of months ago and she told me about the holidays she had coming up. “I should just come over and visit you!” I said, half-joking. I got off the phone and told Paddy what I’d said, and he agreed. “Go!” he said, in so many words.

I’ve been a traveller for as long as I can remember. I made my first solo overseas trip when I was eighteen, the summer after I finished school. I went to South America, mostly Chile, and I came back convinced that the only thing that I wanted in life was plane tickets. Since Paddy and I got married twelve years ago I haven’t left the country. We’ve dreamt of travelling, but it all changes once there are two of you, plus children.

This trip is my reward, in a way. I’ve put family needs and responsibilities ahead of my own ambitions again and again. Women do this without even thinking. It’s in our DNA. But eventually the time comes, or should come given the right circumstances, when we can reap a little freedom from the hard work we’ve put in.

I’m turning thirty-eight next month. I’m thinking of the next two years as preparation for my fifth decade, rather than the tail end of my fourth. And my preparation will be doing more of all the things that are important to me. More writing, more reading, more travelling, more walking, more babies and more abandoned enjoyment of that family of mine. I owe it to all of us.

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.