how I got married on friday

I am an eye. I open, and I see everything. I close, and I am safe. My eyelashes are angels wings, they cover me.

I went away, I went up high. I looked out through the black sky and saw the tiny lights of another whole country. I looked out and saw myself. I was myself.

I came back, and I saw all the dust that had fallen into my eye, blocked my light, caused me pain. The dust was from another time. It was not part of this one. I said good-bye to it, I made my needs clear.

Then Paddy and I stood before each other in the same place we exchanged rings eleven years ago. We left those rings behind, traded old vows for new, and marked ourselves, in pain, with a ring that can never be taken off. Our new vows were etched into our skin, in a band of belonging. We belong to each other.

And how we will treat each other in this new now is quite different to how we treated each other before.

There will be no taking for granted, no leaning on each other for things we can do for ourselves, no more suffocating each other with our insecurities, no more silence that only makes temporary peace.  No, we are speaking for ourselves now, standing on our own two feet, side by side to face the world. We will be each other’s greatest champion, we will watch each other soar.

Those rings we wore the first time, they were easy to attain. We booked the church, got dressed in our finest. We paraded each other around like we had won a great prize, thinking finally I must be worth something. But the finery was only skin deep. Underneath our wounds were gushing. No ring could bandage them.

The marks we wear now were not so easy. They are spoils of war, the treasures hidden in darkness. They are not pretty, they do not shine. But they are our most valuable possession, worth more than all the gold and silver in the world.

happy birthday to myself

I'll have turned thirty-eight by the time I finish this post.

I have a running joke with the girls leading up to their birthdays. I say I'm not going to let them turn six, or eight, or whatever the number is. I tell them in no uncertain terms that I like them just the way they are and I don't want them to grow a second older. So no birthday, I say. They giggle and pretend to complain. It's a good gag, a nice routine. We all smile.

And I smile especially because I know how much I mean it. I really don't want them to grow any older, I really do love them just the way they are. I know how terribly quickly their few years have gone by, and I just want to grab them and hold them still for a second and look at them.

And then I chuckle to myself because I know how much I don't mean it. I can't wait to see them grow up, to see them become themselves. I think that will be the most amazing thing. I like them so much now... how can I not just carry on liking them more and more! I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to go.

I'm heading to forty, the halfway mark. Is it all down hill from there? If it is I think that will be a good thing, because I can tell you that it's been mostly uphill to get here. That one year old birthday girl being fed ice-cream by her auntie, she has no idea. And neither does any one else in her vicinity. No one could have imagined how complicated things were going to get. And stay. I've spent my whole life looking around and feeling like everyone else had it easier, or happier, or more normal. Until now.

The last few years I've been chipping away at myself. Scraping at the layers I'd wrapped so tightly. It was laborious, seemingly without end. At times I wondered if there was anything underneath after all.

 But there was, of course. There was me. And there were several points on the way where I saw myself. One when I started this blog. Another when I changed my name. Another as I understood why I had always felt so broken. Another as I negotiated my way through tricky days in our marriage. Spiritual direction was the vehicle for illumination and insight, time after time. I celebrated my crazy family and began to understand why chaos is all too familiar to me. I didn't give up on that book. I finally made peace with the girls learning at home. And I deconstructed whole worlds of belief. These moments were windows that came and went. Some days were dark and grey. Then there were the days I looked straight into my own eyes. Like I'm doing right now.

Going to Cambodia was incredible. I knew I'd have an amazing time but I didn't realise how momentous it would be. Something happened over there, far away from everything that was life as I knew it. Something happened to me. I left with a small suitcase, and I came back with myself. My very own birthday present.

life at home

I've been writing to you in my head for a week now, ever since I got off that plane last Sunday and spent the day relishing the family and feeling miserably cold. I was going to tell you about how we live under a flight path, and that when I left Auckland I saw our beach from the plane as it banked at the edge of the harbour and then took off. I wanted to tell you how I wasn't in a window seat but I managed to look out just at the right time and there below me I saw the estuary and the row of houses at its edge, the bush with our house somewhere in it, and the beach, our beach. A second later I saw the rolling surf of Whatipu beach at the mouth of the harbour,  that wild place that makes me dream novels. I carried those images tucked inside me as the plane sped upwards. I don't know how I could have left without them.

I was going to write to you about the flights, there and back. Listening to Josh Garrels and sensing a new story being uncovered. Watching the other passengers, the couples leaning in to each other, the children itchy for freedom. I wanted to tell you about the roar of the engines and the way my stomach flipped as we left Bangkok, next stop Phnom Penh. I would have written to you about the lights on the tarmac at dusk on the return trip and listening to Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto as we flew above Australia at night and the tiny outposts of light I saw as we crossed the outback. And the knowing that was becoming so clear, about myself, about my life and the journey my life has taken.

But then I came home to my people. They'd been more than fine without me, but still it took a week to get clean sheets on all the beds and clean towels on the towel rails. There were benches and corners to clear, and washing to fold. I walked through the flotsam and jetsam of a week that had happened without me. I was living my life again.

And then my dear friend's father passed away suddenly, unexpectedly, and threw us completely. Her heart is now an aching wound, and her mother's life has been ripped in half. How does that wife fill the space that was so warm with his presence? How can she even count the millions of ways he filled her days and made sense of them? He was sixty-two and healthy, so treasured by his family and friends. How do they go on now? They go on limping, looking upwards. There's nothing else.

I know about this. I know about grief that acid ache.I stood at the washing machine five years ago, on the morning after my Step-Dad Don died. We washed his clothes for the last time and I cried at the smell of him on his blue vest. My chest was tight and hollow, my stomach sour. It was the worst day I'd known, and there hasn't been one like it since. Losing someone is being handed a loaf of stale mouldy bread and being told to eat the whole thing, one dry scratching bite at a time. We have no appetite for grief. And yet it is work that must be done, a job that cannot be left unfinished, or else it will take our lives too.

My friend Marita rang from Sydney last night with news that a mutual friend of ours had died. My friend Corin, who got back in touch with me through this blog, was a writer I've known since I was at school. He died a long way from home, somewhere in the States where he'd made a new life with a wife who sang in a choir. We had a brief email conversation a few months ago. It was a tiny, momentary glimpse, like seeing him out of the window of a plane as I sped past. I hold that image close now. He was wild and beautiful and found.

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.

Packing the kitchen

We are packing to go away again. This time to Taupo, where there is a chance of snow! We are going away with Paddy's family to celebrate his mother's seventieth birthday.

The kitchen bench is covered with food from the pantry, waiting to be packed into bags. I want to take as much food as possible, partly to save money, but mostly because we have some interesting dietary requirements in this family and it's easier to have the ingredients so we can still do all our normal cooking and baking at home. And we can't do baking without baking equipment! A sieve, the scales, a large round cake tin so we can make a birthday cake for Gran, the slice tin I use for the oaty slice I make all the time, and two muffin tins. (I'm so excited about this gluten-free whole grain muffin recipe.) When Paddy sees the enormous pile he's going to have a fit. It's not like we have a big car.

I'm not much of a chef, I'm useless at chopping, and I can never get the timing of things right, but I like cooking. I especially like cooking when I'm not rushed. Baking in particular can be calming and grounding. Collecting and then measuring ingredients, mixing and pouring. Even better if no one is talking to me while I do  it.

When I clicked over to Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef just now to find that muffin recipe, Shauna was writing about a fellow food writer who has just very sadly and unexpectedly lost her husband. This friend, who has been supported amazingly through this funny thing we call the internet, had to decide whether to keep the summer holiday plans that had been made before her husband passed away. A holiday to a cottage they go to, or had gone to, every year. She decided to go for the sake of her girls, and told Shauna that three whole bags out of their luggage were for the kitchen. The kitchen is a good place to do grieving.

I'm not grieving, but I can't imagine going on holiday and not cooking. If it means taking less clothes to make space, then so be it. Cooking brings people together, it makes us more mindful about what we eat, and it is one of the simple yet so meaningful ways we can love each other. A friend from church recently had a new baby and a few of us made some meals for the family. Now sitting in the bottom of the church freezer are a random collection of plastic containers, all labelled with the handwriting of the person who made the meal. A vegetable pasta bake, sultana cake, shepherd's pie. The scrawled writing on the top a clear reminder to my friend that someone was thinking of her when they were in the kitchen.

I watched this emotional short film this week. I found it, bumped into it, on Pentimiento. It may make you cry, but I promise you it is worth it.


This was grace - short film from Andrew Laparra on Vimeo.

This is the story of a family, of a mother and father who have a special needs child. One of the first scenes is of the mother feeding her son. It's a simple, probably exhausting task, that happens many times a day, day in and day out. Yet it connects her to him. By feeding him she is loving him, sustaining him, serving him.

The pre-dinner rush on a normal week is often one of the most stressful times of the day. I hope that while we are on holiday we get the chance to appreciate the wonderful thing that it is, to have each other and to feed each other.