Mother's Day.

I remember last Mother's Day, I remember it really well. 

It was my first Mother's Day. 

I remember waking up and instead of feeling celebrated I felt the pressure to feel celebrated. 

Instead of feeling thankful I felt a burden. 

I remember crying a lot that day, so much so that I really thought I would not be able to stop. 

I remember refusing to leave the house. Because I did not feel like I could go and be loved on like the other Mums when I was not living up to expectation I had perceived was there, and It wasn't. 

Nobody expected me to have it all together but me, and I couldn't, so I stayed at home. 

I remember having two beautiful children that I could have enjoyed that day like I had many others, instead I let myself stay where I was. Feeling overwhelmed and anxious and I lost an entire day to that. 

I didn't fight the feelings or challenge the thoughts, I excused myself from the fight. 

I felt sorry for myself. 

To be honest I kind of still feel annoyed at myself for it when I think about it too much. 

I'm just being real because last Mother's Day I was anything but that. 

I wonder why we are so afraid to admit that our emotions are overtaking us?

I wonder why eventually we stop trying to fight them or challange them? 

I wonder why we let them make themselves at home in our mind? 

I wonder why we hide them away? 

This Mother's Day I woke up feeling Blessed that I can even be a Mum, that I have the privilege to Love my baby while I have her and enjoy her (even after she threw up all over me) 

I woke up thinking and feeling different not because I'm some awesome human, but because my feelings are not my master. 

Because time and time again I gave my emotions to my Master. 

When they became out of control, I gave them to the one who was in control. 

Because when they lied to me I told them the truth, and I told it over and over and over again until I believed it. 

Because I refused the accept that this is just how I feel or how I think or who I am. 

Instead I chose to fight. 

Because I choose to believe in a God who says I am worth it. 

So a year on, just one year later and I cannot imagine feeling like I did on that day. 

This year is a Happy Mothers Day! 

I hope you realise and think about how valued you are today! 

XO 

The risk of Love.

I've avoided writing about her. 

For some reason it was just a really hard concept for me to get my head around. 

Seems so easy to tell you about her now. 

She is sweet and funny and oh so very loud. 

I mean she talks all the time! 

She smiles and giggles and almost never stops moving. 

She looks for me when I call her. 

She watches people and her face lights up when they look at her. 

People stop me to say hello to her, to speak life into her. 

She's flooded with Love wherever she goes. 

And I'm captivated by her! 

I have Loved and been Loved before, but it was not until I Loved her like I do that I felt and understood how God must feel about me. 

I'm not even sure I could adequately describe it now. 

Almost like it hurts a little to think about. 

Something's that's both pure and fierce at the same time and I'm sure they should not fit together. 

Yet somehow they do. 

I've never been aware of how much risk it could involve, still, it's so worth it. 

Just like it was worth it for me. 

I get so many comments about how attached people would get, how they could not let them go, I've been warned against getting too attached as if loving her less would make it easier, as if the more I give my heart to her the more pain I'd be causing herself. 

As if it's foolish to Love her as much as a possible can. 

I guess that's a little true. 

It would have hurt less not to love, it hurts less to hold back and to stay distant. 

Yet God did not do that to me, in fact just the opposite. 

Spilling out every available part of himself and sparing nothing to make sure I could be close to him. He took the risk knowing that I could not ever match His Love for me. 

That I could not reciprocate it even if I tried. 

And It all of a sudden makes so much crazy sense to me. 

I'm worth the risk of Love. 

She's worth the risk of Love. 

 

A little on Love

A letter to my baby girl. 

I caught you looking up it me today with the biggest smile, you were in fact meant to be sleeping. 

In fact you have hardly slept all afternoon, it made you grumpy but every so often you look up and smile, makes me wonder what you are thinking. 

And I caught you looking at me the same way I look at you. 

Smitten. Captivated. In Love. 

Exactly as it should be. 

I'm in Love with that look you give me. 

In Love with the way you smile at nothing. 

I'm in Love with you high pitched coo when you are trying to talk back. 

I'm in Love with the way you play with your ear while you feed, or grab my shirt when you fall asleep in my arms. 

I'm in Love with how your cry is more of a yell. 

I'm in Love with how you sigh just before you fall asleep. 

I'm in Love with the way you follow people with your eyes and don't like to face away from the action. 

Wanting to be part of what is going on. 

I'm in Love with everything about you. 

And I do not regret it. 

The goodbye will be that much harder because of it, but your future will be that much more secure as a result of it. 

All in.

I LOVE to write.

 I actually need to do it to process. When stuff gets messy it's the thing that I know for sure will unclutter my brain and bring clarity to whatever is happening. 

But I struggle to write most of the time. 

I do not do it often. 

I'm distracted from it. 

I'm frustrated by it. 

It's not that I avoid the writing itself, Its more of me avoiding the places it comes from. 

The dark places in me. 

The confusion that turns into more clarity with every word I type. 

The fears that loose their power the second I lay them down upon the page. 

The pain that cannot be healed unless it's poured out before Him. 

It's the bravest thing I do because I am putting my heart all over the page as I write. 

What's even more crazy is that I let people read it! 

So I read something today that we are doing as a creative team. 

100 days of being creative. 

Like actually actively creating something or exercising our creativity daily. 

For me, that's writing.... Every... Single... Day. 

I hardly get it together to blog once a month, which is funny because I am writing a blog right now about struggling to write a blog. 

I have at least 5 different half written pieces and even more thoughts about writing pieces. 

As scary as it is, it's also so simple... 

The more you create to more creative you get. 

So I'm in. 

I'm not gonna share everything I write but I am going to write and when I am struggling to write I'm gonna write about that. 

When I thing everything I write is crap, well I'll write about that. 

So I am all in. 

The 100 day creative challenge. 

For what it's worth.

Nobody really talks about the gradualness of grief. I'm not even sure I should call it that really. 

They say that's what it is that you experience when you do short term foster care and your children move on. I always thought not, surely that's not what it's like. It completely is. 

I handle the more ripping off a bandaid kind of pain, like intense pain all at once and then it's over. This is not like that at all. 

It's more like layers of it, not so much that I can even see it or notice it myself until it's right there in my face urging me to actually feel it. To be honest a lot of the time I do not have time for it, which in my brain translates (probably badly) to the fact the people in my world do not really have a heap of time for me to be in this moment that hasn't happen in a set time frame. I live a busy life and I purposefully got busy right after they left purely as a distraction, well I actually I fell ill right after, then I got busy. In my thinking also, it's always busy, far to busy to actually stop and feel it. So it's more like drops that slowly fill up until I find a place to pour it out. 

And I'm sorry for all the metaphors and word plays, I'm not making it try to sound pretty... Ok well maybe I am just cos it's slightly better then being just black and white about it all. 

So there are layers and they are still happening and maybe God created me specifically like that for a reason. 

I'd rather not.

But I guess He knows what He is doing with is all. 

There are moments of remembering something and then feeling like it's going to happen again, but realising it's not. 

Moments of feeling like I'm ready to have them back now and knowing I can't and kind of being ok with it still even though it hurts. 

That moment when you realise they are never coming back that's scarily similar to when someone you love passes away. 

It's funny how it feels the same even though it's not the same thing. 

It's really just still being completely at peace with it, trusting God with it, knowing you did all you were called to do in those moments and grieving for those moments all at the same time. 

To think this is only the first time I have ever done it and that I'm going to do it all over again. 

So totally worth it! 

It's been a long time.

So.... it's been a long time.

I know I meant to write a blog post my babies leaving and I'm gonna get to it soon. There are a lot of emotions for me to put into words and I have not really a lot of breathing space to do that just yet. I tend to be either feeling not a whole lot about it or feeling everything at once so it's a working progress at the moment. I know that I miss them like crazy and a whole lot more then I expected I would, but I feel peace about the part I played. 

Plus there has been a whole lot happening, I've been working like crazy and have a brand new nephew to cuddle plus a friend who had a baby at the same time, plus DW on tour so I've been hanging with Miz a whole heap.. 

But I'm writing a blog now so... 

I've been thinking about the prodigal son a lot and to be hundred percent honest it's taken a long time to swallow my pride and write about it because I kind of related to him a lot lately because it has actually been a long time, since I just sat with Jesus, since I wrote about Him, since I even read my bible. I don't mean like a week I mean it's actually probably been months since I did and do I go thinking about whether this son ever just missed his Dad while he was away. 

I got thinking about that fathers reaction when his son came back out of need, because he wanted his provision and not even as his son but as his servant. 

You know those friends you have in your world who are kind of hard work sometimes, the ones you have to be the one to make the effort with 90% of the time. The ones you sometimes don't hear from for a while and then hear from when they need your help, so you of course do because that's what mates do. 

I just wonder if it was kind of like that with the prodigal son, I mean, he came back because he needed something right? 

What I Love though is how the father reacted to him. 

The same way He does with me when I do what I have done and just do not make him a priority in my personal life, cos I've been to church almost every week the same as I always do. I was sick so I missed a few but I was physically present. 

At home though I was just like him. Just away doing my own thing, missing having time to just sit but not actually making the time for it. 

My own fault really. 

When I actually sat down and did that though, He just did as He always does, listened to me and spoke just like He would have if it was a few months ago. 

So it's been a long time and sometimes I'm just like that son or that friend that's just gone until they are not. 

In the end it's still all good with Him and I. 

Blog about babies will be coming soon. 

Living in the grateful.

I was grateful when she woke me up this morning. 

Grateful when he called out "Mum" from his bedroom. 

Thankful that for now that's still who I am. 

At the moment in thankfulness is where I am. 

Because people have asked how I'm doing, people have asked how I am and how I feel or how I will feel when they are no longer mine. 

All questions I tend to avoid answering. 

Truth is I don't really know about that yet. 

What I know is the now. 

And for now, I'm grateful. 

Grateful that I got her first word, her first clap, first wave. 

Grateful to witness her first crawl...almost- Thanks Rach ;) 

Grateful that I taught him "I Love you" and that now he says it back. 

Grateful that she took her first steps in my kitchen. 

Grateful that they were loved by my entire world. 

Grateful that I took him to his first day of daycare, got him his first scooter and took him to his first zoo and aquarium trip. 

Grateful for all the memories, all the photo's and all the funny stories that are mine to keep. 

That's where i am right now. 

And the tears and sadness will come later.

I will miss them and I will wish they were here. 

I will grieve for his first day of school and her first time riding a bike. 

But even then I will remain thankful for the time I had with them. 

So very grateful that for that season I got to be there Mum.