Being pregnant again has really tested my ability to trust God with our baby. After experiencing losing a baby once and the randomness of it and the lack of control I had in the whole process it is hard to trust that God will protect the baby growing inside of me. It makes me ask a lot of hard questions like why he didn't protect our first child and what makes this pregnancy different?
I think the things which comforted me in my loss are not so helpful right now. When we lost our first baby I came to some peace with it through understanding that creation is fallen and our loss really was symptomatic of that. It wasn't personal, it just shows the tension of being in the now but not yet time we are in as we wait for Jesus to return and fully restore our world.
But now that I am pregnant again it feels terribly risky and I have withdrawn from God in fear of it happening again. But recently I have realised I really need to deal with this as I do want to trust God again and trust Him with my life and in particular, our children and family. And what I have come back to is His character. I know God's heart broke with us when we lost our first child and I know that he knows this baby already and has plans and hopes for her. I know that God does not wish us to suffer loss and tragedy. So since that is who He is then I have no choice but to let go and rest in Him. If I am honest there is nothing I can do to control the outcome of this pregnancy except take care of myself. The rest is faith anyway. And who better to trust than the creator who guides the miracle of new life which is happening inside me.
I still have no easy answers for the tension and fear I feel about this but I am grateful to God for the way I have been freed from paralytic anxiety and that this pregnancy is going so well and that the baby is doing all she should. So I place myself in God's hands, knowing that he knows my heart and trusting that whatever happens in the future, I will never be alone.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Ending the involuntary vow of silence
It has certainly been awhile. This seems to the pattern with my blog. After my last post things changed in bigger ways than I had really expected. I had decided to leave teaching and spend a year doing some theological study and thinking about what next for my life. I have spent the last 3 years wanting to start a family and it hadn't happened so I decided that living my life on pause was not working and that I needed to really surrender my hopes and plans to God and get on with living what I believe is truly important.
So I thought about it all really carefully and prayed and did what has been one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life, walk away from the security of my job into the unknown. Well it seems that God took me seriously when I committed to surrender my plans to him because the afternoon of the day I resigned from my job I discovered I was pregnant! I was so over the moon but also spinning as this meant no job, and also no study as my due date is before the end of the first semester. So what did that mean? What was I supposed to do with myself?
So in the midst of some pretty debilatating all day morning sickness I wresteled a bit with this. I know that may seem weird since I had been blessed with what I truly wanted, but as I am sure you will know, the mind is a crazy thing. For so long I have been programmed to do things because they seem like I should do them, they are worthy or have some massive purpose or reason. But here I am with no big responsibilities and with the most chilled out life I have ever had. How does that work with my protestant work ethic? Through this I started to get really honest with myself. Throughout my teaching career I always felt unprepared and stretched, like I was faking it till I made it and trying to solve everyone's problems but I always feeling I didn't have the skills to really do a good job. That constant tension is exhausting and gradually I have lost a lot of my confidence in my abilities. I also feel like I never really made a decision to be a teacher, rather that it just seemed to be the logical next step.
For years I have wanted to be at home, or at least make a change and reduce the pressure I had been feeling in my work. And here I am. God has blessed me with everything I truly wanted but was too afraid to admit. It is such a lesson in not trying to be who you think you should be but instead being honest with God and trusting him to work through those struggles.
So come June I will be home with a baby and in the mean time I will do some relief and whatever else pops up.
The weirdest thing about all this is when people ask me "What are you going to do?". Honestly I have no idea how to respond to this question. I am going to be a Mum. I know that seems very 1950s but at present that is the next chapter and I will see where God leads me as far as future work or career goes but at present it seems like the wrong question to be asking. I know I am privileged to be free of the dreaded mortgage, which certainly gives me more choice in what I do. But I also think it is sad that there is so much pressure on women to not only raise a child but also continue to be career focussed. Gender equality can provide so many opportunities but also so many obligations rather than choices.
So I am now 17 weeks pregnant, no longer strapped to the couch and eating porrige morning, noon and night and really enjoying this new season in my life. Who knows what the future holds but it is amazing how things work out.
So I thought about it all really carefully and prayed and did what has been one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life, walk away from the security of my job into the unknown. Well it seems that God took me seriously when I committed to surrender my plans to him because the afternoon of the day I resigned from my job I discovered I was pregnant! I was so over the moon but also spinning as this meant no job, and also no study as my due date is before the end of the first semester. So what did that mean? What was I supposed to do with myself?
So in the midst of some pretty debilatating all day morning sickness I wresteled a bit with this. I know that may seem weird since I had been blessed with what I truly wanted, but as I am sure you will know, the mind is a crazy thing. For so long I have been programmed to do things because they seem like I should do them, they are worthy or have some massive purpose or reason. But here I am with no big responsibilities and with the most chilled out life I have ever had. How does that work with my protestant work ethic? Through this I started to get really honest with myself. Throughout my teaching career I always felt unprepared and stretched, like I was faking it till I made it and trying to solve everyone's problems but I always feeling I didn't have the skills to really do a good job. That constant tension is exhausting and gradually I have lost a lot of my confidence in my abilities. I also feel like I never really made a decision to be a teacher, rather that it just seemed to be the logical next step.
For years I have wanted to be at home, or at least make a change and reduce the pressure I had been feeling in my work. And here I am. God has blessed me with everything I truly wanted but was too afraid to admit. It is such a lesson in not trying to be who you think you should be but instead being honest with God and trusting him to work through those struggles.
So come June I will be home with a baby and in the mean time I will do some relief and whatever else pops up.
The weirdest thing about all this is when people ask me "What are you going to do?". Honestly I have no idea how to respond to this question. I am going to be a Mum. I know that seems very 1950s but at present that is the next chapter and I will see where God leads me as far as future work or career goes but at present it seems like the wrong question to be asking. I know I am privileged to be free of the dreaded mortgage, which certainly gives me more choice in what I do. But I also think it is sad that there is so much pressure on women to not only raise a child but also continue to be career focussed. Gender equality can provide so many opportunities but also so many obligations rather than choices.
So I am now 17 weeks pregnant, no longer strapped to the couch and eating porrige morning, noon and night and really enjoying this new season in my life. Who knows what the future holds but it is amazing how things work out.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Seeing a future
I am feeling so revived and excited about the future. It has been gloomy year for me where I feel like I can only see a few feet in front of me and my past calls me more than my future. But some seeds have been planted over the last few months which have helped me see that there are possibilites for my future that I never would have considered before.
I had forgotten what it felt like to feel truly excited about the future and free to plan for that future. I believe that it is a work of God in my life to redeem my pain and create a new hope. And what I find so exciting is that it is so unexpected and that gives me faith that no matter what I think about my life and what I believe is possible or impossible, God is active and I can put my hope in Him.
I promise to be back with a less cryptic update soon.
But in the meantime it is springtime in more ways than one!
I had forgotten what it felt like to feel truly excited about the future and free to plan for that future. I believe that it is a work of God in my life to redeem my pain and create a new hope. And what I find so exciting is that it is so unexpected and that gives me faith that no matter what I think about my life and what I believe is possible or impossible, God is active and I can put my hope in Him.
I promise to be back with a less cryptic update soon.
But in the meantime it is springtime in more ways than one!
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Avoidance techniques
I am a bit of a procrastinator. Hence me writing this now rather than doing marking...Any way, I often procrastinate for emotional reasons. It is not as if the thing I am avoiding it even very bad or hard, but for some reason I have an emotional block about it. I just don't want to go there. Sometimes I do the same thing to God. I avoid Him because I have some feelings and thoughts I just don't want to deal with or own up to and because I have the feeling that He might expect me to deal with them and challenge me on my thinking. But every time I push through the desire to avoid I am so pleasantly suprised but how God transforms the situation, often just be helping me see it in a different way or reminding me that I can trust Him. I have a list as long as my arm of things I am avoiding dealing with right now and I just need the courage to own up to them.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
It's the little things
The little things which get me through the day and give me those little moments of joy which remind me of what life is supposed to be about:
having a great conversation
a hot cup of tea
picking veges from the garden
cuddling my cat
noticing the weather
cooking our own food
making silly jokes that go on and on and make me hysterical
unexpected mail
reading the bible and praying
writing in my journal
escaping into a tv programme which reminds me of what I truly care about
sleeping in and not regretting using my time better
giving the house a good clean and surveying the results
changing seasons
having a great conversation
a hot cup of tea
picking veges from the garden
cuddling my cat
noticing the weather
cooking our own food
making silly jokes that go on and on and make me hysterical
unexpected mail
reading the bible and praying
writing in my journal
escaping into a tv programme which reminds me of what I truly care about
sleeping in and not regretting using my time better
giving the house a good clean and surveying the results
changing seasons
Thursday, 18 September 2008
When dreams go bad
I have been thinking about what to do when my plans and dreams do not happen. What do you do when the things you dream of do not happen when and how you want? What if they are things beyond your control?
I think there are two choices or ends of the continuum of reaction to this situation. At one end I could doggedly stick to the plan and the dream despite the fact that it continues to not be fulfilled in the hope that one day it will be. This could be viewed as a faithful and hopeful response, especially if you feel that the dream is one God has placed on your heart and in your mind.
However the risk is that this approach will result in the quiet creep of despair. I don't think the human heart can cope with continual disappointment if there is not something sustaining it in the wait for the dream to be fulfilled.
And this brings me to where I find myself. No matter what I dream of and hope for, my life must be meaningful and purposeful now. The tension of a hope not yet realised will always remain, but God is with me now, active in my life now, not just when I reach that hoped for moment or goal. So what am I going to do now to live out God's presence and reality in the place I find myself?
What do you do when you find yourself in a place you never wanted to arrive at with a set of experiences as your baggage which you would quite happily have lost in transit or never packed in the first place? For me I continue to wrestle with the fact that at the core of me I am changed and I can never be the same. I cannot switch off the part of me that stands before God, shocked to the core and traumatised by the reality and randomness of this world. But something new is emerging...
I have no plan anymore. I have no more delusions of control or security in the things of this world. No plan or job or success can protect any of us from loss and pain and tragedy. So I don't want to strive for those things any more.
Now all I want is meaning in my life. If life can throw such painful curve balls then I want every moment of my own life to be about the love and hope and faith which holds me together. I want to feel my life has purpose and meaning beyond just daily survival and going through the motions.
And so with no plan and with the realisation of the fragility of life there is a new freedom I am realising that I would have never known otherwise. My security is in following Jesus, clinging to him and living out what he places on my heart. Because nothing else has sustained me, healed me and held me together over the last year. Busyness, work, money and even friends and family cannot fill that cavernous hole. But God's miraclous love does seep into the parts of me which cannot be reached. The hole, the scars will always be there but God is making things new and his grace is bringing real and tangible hope into my hopelessness.
A woman I am priviledged to know had a breast removed due to cancer. Instead of breast reconstruction she had a tatoo of daisies placed along the line of the scar. There is no denying the scars, but beautiful things can grow. A new freedom can begin new dreams and plans and reorder my priorities so that life has a fullness of joy I never would have experienced otherwise.
May the Lord, who has begun a good work in me, see it to completion.
I think there are two choices or ends of the continuum of reaction to this situation. At one end I could doggedly stick to the plan and the dream despite the fact that it continues to not be fulfilled in the hope that one day it will be. This could be viewed as a faithful and hopeful response, especially if you feel that the dream is one God has placed on your heart and in your mind.
However the risk is that this approach will result in the quiet creep of despair. I don't think the human heart can cope with continual disappointment if there is not something sustaining it in the wait for the dream to be fulfilled.
And this brings me to where I find myself. No matter what I dream of and hope for, my life must be meaningful and purposeful now. The tension of a hope not yet realised will always remain, but God is with me now, active in my life now, not just when I reach that hoped for moment or goal. So what am I going to do now to live out God's presence and reality in the place I find myself?
What do you do when you find yourself in a place you never wanted to arrive at with a set of experiences as your baggage which you would quite happily have lost in transit or never packed in the first place? For me I continue to wrestle with the fact that at the core of me I am changed and I can never be the same. I cannot switch off the part of me that stands before God, shocked to the core and traumatised by the reality and randomness of this world. But something new is emerging...
I have no plan anymore. I have no more delusions of control or security in the things of this world. No plan or job or success can protect any of us from loss and pain and tragedy. So I don't want to strive for those things any more.
Now all I want is meaning in my life. If life can throw such painful curve balls then I want every moment of my own life to be about the love and hope and faith which holds me together. I want to feel my life has purpose and meaning beyond just daily survival and going through the motions.
And so with no plan and with the realisation of the fragility of life there is a new freedom I am realising that I would have never known otherwise. My security is in following Jesus, clinging to him and living out what he places on my heart. Because nothing else has sustained me, healed me and held me together over the last year. Busyness, work, money and even friends and family cannot fill that cavernous hole. But God's miraclous love does seep into the parts of me which cannot be reached. The hole, the scars will always be there but God is making things new and his grace is bringing real and tangible hope into my hopelessness.
A woman I am priviledged to know had a breast removed due to cancer. Instead of breast reconstruction she had a tatoo of daisies placed along the line of the scar. There is no denying the scars, but beautiful things can grow. A new freedom can begin new dreams and plans and reorder my priorities so that life has a fullness of joy I never would have experienced otherwise.
May the Lord, who has begun a good work in me, see it to completion.
Thursday, 7 August 2008
The little things
It is has been a long time. Lots of wrestling and hard things to accept and deal with. And I have been contemplating holding on. When things in life are not co-operating, when life seems disappointing and draining, what do you do?
Well what is working for me is doing the little things that I know are the right things to do and hanging on. So I have been reading my bible in the mornings, trying to do my best in my job, care for my husband and enjoy the blessings now. I am trying to use the gifts God has given me and generally wanting to live the life I know I should live but make lots of excuses not to.
I know that sounds like a lot of "shoulds". But to be perfectly honest, they are good and right things to do. So it is not a guilt trip, it is more that I know that God has shown me the things you can do in life that make things easier, that help me to walk in step with him, rather than fumbling and crawling around on my own. Living well now gives me hope and it is amazing how God has blessed my choices.
For example I have had people really encourage me and that has given me the confidence to consider what God may have for me in the future. That has been too scary to consider for a long time as my self confidence was so low. Also I feel like I am not in that awful rollercoaster of closeness with God for a few days and then distance just through lack of time spent together. I feel like I am learning and growing and that makes me feel that life is full of possibility. That despite suffering and struggles God is doing a good work in me.
So I pray that I can be a committed partner with God in doing the little things. And in doing that trully surrender the big things to His care. In a confusing and painful world that is where my hope is found.
Well what is working for me is doing the little things that I know are the right things to do and hanging on. So I have been reading my bible in the mornings, trying to do my best in my job, care for my husband and enjoy the blessings now. I am trying to use the gifts God has given me and generally wanting to live the life I know I should live but make lots of excuses not to.
I know that sounds like a lot of "shoulds". But to be perfectly honest, they are good and right things to do. So it is not a guilt trip, it is more that I know that God has shown me the things you can do in life that make things easier, that help me to walk in step with him, rather than fumbling and crawling around on my own. Living well now gives me hope and it is amazing how God has blessed my choices.
For example I have had people really encourage me and that has given me the confidence to consider what God may have for me in the future. That has been too scary to consider for a long time as my self confidence was so low. Also I feel like I am not in that awful rollercoaster of closeness with God for a few days and then distance just through lack of time spent together. I feel like I am learning and growing and that makes me feel that life is full of possibility. That despite suffering and struggles God is doing a good work in me.
So I pray that I can be a committed partner with God in doing the little things. And in doing that trully surrender the big things to His care. In a confusing and painful world that is where my hope is found.
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