A black eye and a taste of heaven

This is an old post; I wrote it when Lizzy was eight, and it's only needed a little updating now that she's eleven. Yesterday was her birthday and it all came back to me once again.



Yesterday was my little girl's eleventh birthday and she was more excited than an excited thing. We did all the stuff; we did presents, we did birthday-tea-full-of-treats-with-little-nutritional value, we did balloons, we did singing, we did blowing out candles. We did hugs and we did great big smiles. We did reminiscing, Daddy and me.

I gave birth to Elizabeth after a rapid labour that confounded the midwives. I had a single paracetamol for pain relief at about half past eight because the midwife who examined me thought I had a very long way to go and assumed I was a bit of a wuss to be asking about it so early in the game. When I got hold of the gas and air I left teeth-marks in the mouthpiece and nail marks where I had it clenched in my fist. Daddy arrived at half past nine fresh off a train from London and walked in nonchalantly just in time for the punchline. 

At 10.16pm, Elizabeth Lucy took everyone by surprise and was born on a plinth in an examination room on the hottest day of the year 2005, and all the fans were in use elsewhere. It was warm work.

I held my little girl in my arms and I was filled with wonder. Long fingers, a mass of light brown hair, button nose, little chin just like her Daddy's and a big black eye. She was brand new, moments old,  with a lusty cry before she was even fully born. 

Red and bruised, head slightly elongated, one eye bloodshot and swollen shut, little rosebud lips giving us glimpses of a little pointy tongue, the sharpest of tiny fingernails. Beautiful? Well, yes and no. Or more accurately, no - and yes, breathtakingly beautiful. A whole person made up of half me and half Daddy. Two of everything down the sides and one of everything down the middle. Breathing, crying, suckling, waving, kicking, snuggling. Fragile and yet so strong. Miraculous. 

I can't explain it, that thing that happened that night. The way that I went in to the hospital someone's wife and someone's daughter and came out still those things but now someone's mother too. Everything changed that night. The world tilted slightly and never righted itself; it's strange that nobody ever noticed but me. 

Even after the midwife cut the cord, Elizabeth was attached to me. She always will be. I tell her that she's my baby girl and sometimes she snuggles closer when I say that and other times she stiffens and tells me in no uncertain terms that she's not a baby, she's a grown up girl. She has a little sister, also my baby girl, and Lizzy sometimes feels the weight of older sister responsibility very keenly. Lizzy is my oldest, my firstborn, my worrier. She's my vibrant, energetic, imaginative, complicated, softhearted, fearless dynamo of a daughter.  

Things weigh heavily on my Lizzy, her self-esteem sometimes is tissue-paper fragile and we work and we work to build her up. 

I know it's not the way to bring up a brave, strong woman, but I'd spare her every second of pain and hurt if I could, for the whole of her life. I'd rather the rough stuff happens dot me than her. From complicated and painful orthodontics to disaster in the final of the 100m butterfly to the boy who asked her to a party and then told her he'd been joking when she said yes.

And since I'm no stoic myself, it's nothing short of a miracle that I'd do that, and do it in an instant. But a miracle did happen that night when I had my baby. I became someone different when I became a mummy. I'm still growing into that person; I suspect it might take me the rest of my life. It's not easy.

Not easy at all, but often wonderful. I sat on the side of her bed last night at 10.16pm and I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and inhaled the fragrance of her as she slept.

When she was a baby I used to carry her with her head on my chest and I would breathe in her baby smell and I remember offering her to another family member to sniff because she smelled so beautiful. They smiled politely but they didn't get it. I wonder if it's just for me - some primal thing, some deeply profound connection just for mother and daughter? I don't know. I do know that from the moment I took my first breath as a mummy, it's my favourite fragrance in the world, matched only by that of her little sister. 

They say that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory - then maybe that's why. Last night I remembered like yesterday that night in the tiny room on the hard, high, narrow examination table, hot and exhausted and dazed, with my baby girl on my chest. 

Inelegant, undignified, undone. 

Nobody tells you these things about having a baby. Nobody tells you the true horror of the sleep deprivation that makes you feel as if life is not worth living. Nobody tells you about the dilemmas of high temperatures and endless crying and inoculations and school selection. No-one teaches you how to untangle baby-fine hair or comb for nits or how to use hair straighteners because that's what all the girls at school do. No-one tells you what to do when your baby girl is bullied, or bullies, or doesn't get on with a teacher. Nobody tells you how to prepare your daughter for senior school, or puberty, or ready her for success and failure.

You play it by ear, and sometimes the notes are all muddled up. 

It's a good job you don't get a glimpse of the soul searching that goes on when your baby girl has no confidence, or loses sleep to anxiety, or cries too easily when things go wrong. Was it me? My inadequacy complex was genetic? Or have I criticised too much, encouraged too little, corrected too forcibly? Crushed when I should have coaxed? Demolished when I should have built up?

Don't get me started. I'm eleven years in to this motherhood thing and the truth is that I don't know what I'm doing any more than I did that night in June eleven years ago. There's no instruction booklet and no map. I just feel my way; every year I have fewer answers. Sometimes we skip along at a lovely pace, everyone smiling, and the scenery is wonderful. I take lots of pictures and get very sentimental with souvenirs. Other times I get completely lost. I hit dead ends and unexpected detours and I have to crawl my way back. I ask a lot of questions and cry a lot of tears, inwardly and outwardly. 

 Nobody tells you how to do it. I think that's pretty normal, isn't it? 

But the most breathtakingly powerful thing that nobody ever tells you is that the whole world changes. 

The whole world changes. So much that I'll never forget a single detail of 10.16pm on that evening eight years ago and when I look down at the long, lean frame of my beautiful sleeping girl, arms flung out in her birthday pyjamas, my head fills with memories of first breaths, first smiles, first steps - and my heart swells.

Nobody tells you how much you'll love them. 

It's a little taste of heaven.

To my teacher

To my teacher

I was in your class for English, and English was the first lesson of my first day at senior school.

To start with I sat at the front because I wore my eleven year old enthusiasm right out in the open and I didn't realise that my eagerness to please might be more sensibly hidden somewhere the mean kids couldn't see it. As the school years progressed I chose a seat further back, but the enthusiasm didn't wane, and my goody-goody keenness was justified.  This was my thing, and I loved your lessons. 

You took my appetite for stories and fed it with rich, nourishing food.

This post is continued over at The Association of Christian Writers More than Writers blog, where I post on the 23rd of each month.

Do come and say hello. We're a very friendly bunch. 

A black eye and a taste of heaven

Well, thank you for another year, Lord God.

Yesterday was my little girl's eighth birthday and she was more excited than an excited thing. We did all the stuff; we did presents, we did birthday-tea-full-of-treats-with-little-nutritional value, we did balloons, we did singing, we did blowing out candles. We did hugs and we did great big smiles. We did reminiscing, Daddy and me. 

I gave birth to Elizabeth after a rapid labour against all the expectations of the midwives. I had a single paracetamol for pain relief at about half past eight because the midwife who examined me thought I had a very long way to go and assumed I was a bit of a wuss to be asking about it so early in the game. When I got hold of the gas and air I left teeth-marks in the mouthpiece and nail marks where I had it clenched in my fist. Daddy arrived at half past nine fresh off a train from London and walked in nonchalantly just in time for the punchline. 

At 10.16pm, Elizabeth Lucy took everyone by surprise and was born on a plinth in an examination room on the hottest day of the year 2005, and all the fans were in use elsewhere. It was warm work.

I held my little girl in my arms and I was filled with wonder. Long fingers, a mass of light brown hair, button nose, little chin just like her Daddy's and a big black eye. She was brand new, moments old,  with a lusty cry before she was even fully born. 

Red and bruised, head slightly elongated, one eye bloodshot and swollen shut, little rosebud lips giving us glimpses of a little pointy tongue, the sharpest of tiny fingernails. Beautiful? Well, yes and no. Or more accurately, no - and yes, breathtakingly beautiful. A whole person made up of half me and half Daddy. Two of everything down the sides and one of everything down the middle. Breathing, crying, suckling, waving, kicking, snuggling. Fragile and yet so strong. 

I can't explain it, that thing that happened that night. The way that I went in to the hospital someone's wife and someone's daughter and came out still those things but now someone's mother too. Everything changed that night. The world tilted slightly and never righted itself; it's strange that nobody ever noticed but me. 

Even after the midwife cut the cord, Elizabeth was attached to me. She always will be. I tell her that she's my baby girl and sometimes she snuggles closer when I say that and other times she stiffens and tells me in no uncertain terms that she's not a baby, she's a grown up girl. She has a little sister, also my baby girl, and Lizzie sometimes feels the weight of older sister responsibility very keenly. Lizzie is my oldest, my firstborn, my worrier. She's my vibrant, energetic, imaginative, complicated, softhearted, fearless dynamo of a daughter.  

We found out last week after Xrays at the dentist that Elizabeth's adult teeth have not formed properly and many of them won't be coming. The dentist talked me through her Xrays and showed me the spaces in her jaw where lurking teeth should be. Her baby teeth haven't been a great success as a few of those formed poorly before she was born and so we've been hanging our hopes on their temporary nature, but alas they're going to have to last. She's got a decade or more of intervention ahead of her, poor love, extractions, orthodontics and implants, just to work on a smile. 

Elizabeth heard the dentist say that there was a strong likelihood that at the end of all the treatment, as a young adult, she'd have a nice smile. Afterwards, on our subdued ride home, she asked me, 'Isn't my smile nice now?'

That's one of those moments that made me catch my breath. 

Oh, my little love. I remember the very first smile, wide and toothless. It was the most wonderful thing I ever saw then, and still is, at eight years old with gaps and unevenness and trouble buried beneath the surface. It will be at twenty when it's wide and white and even and the braces are off and the implants are implanted and she's buried the trauma of the season-ticket to the orthodontist. If I were only around to see it I have no doubt that it would take my breath away at ninety five when only those implants remain and there are gaps once again. 

My heart hurt for her. Things weigh heavily on my Lizzie, her self-esteem sometimes is tissue-paper fragile and we work and we work to build her up. This problem isn't going away any time soon. The dentist told me that things were not as bad as they could be; there are many worse off. Of course there are. It's just that I don't want my little girls to go through stuff like this. And to be honest I don't want to go through it either; holding hands, drying tears, whispering love and encouragement and support as they struggle, just wishing that it was me, because it would be so much easier that way.  

I know it's not the way to bring up a brave, strong woman, but I'd spare her every second of pain and hurt if I could. And since I'm no stoic myself, it's nothing short of a miracle that I'd do that, and do it in an instant. But a miracle did happen that night when I had my baby. I became someone different when I became a mummy. I'm still growing into that person; I suspect it might take me the rest of my life. It's not easy.

Not easy at all, but often wonderful. I sat on the side of her bed last night at 10.16pm and I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and inhaled the fragrance of her as she slept. When she was a baby I used to carry her with her head on my chest and I would breathe in her baby smell and I remember offering her to another family member to sniff because she smelled so beautiful. They smiled politely but they didn't get it. I wonder if it's just for me - some primal thing, some deeply profound connection just for mother and daughter? I don't know. I do know that from the moment I took my first breath as a mummy, it's my favourite fragrance in the world, matched only by that of her little sister. 

They say that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory - then maybe that's why. Last night I remembered like yesterday that night in the tiny room on the hard, high, narrow examination table, hot and exhausted and dazed, with my baby girl on my chest. 

Inelegant, undignified, undone. 

Nobody tells you these things about having a baby. Nobody tells you the true horror of the sleep deprivation. Nobody tells you about the dilemmas of high temperatures and endless crying and inoculations and school selection. No-one teaches you how to untangle baby-fine hair or comb for nits or do a French plait because that's what all the girls at school have. No-one tells you what to do when your baby girl is bullied, or bullies, or doesn't get on with a teacher. You play it by ear. 

It's a good job you don't get a glimpse of the soul searching that goes on when your baby girl has no confidence, or loses sleep to anxiety, or cries too easily when things go wrong. Was it me? My inadequacy complex was genetic? Or have I criticised too much, encouraged too little, corrected too forcibly? Crushed when I should have coaxed? Demolished when I should have built up?

Don't get me started. I'm eight years in to this motherhood thing and the truth is that I don't know what I'm doing any more than I did that night in June eight years ago. There's no instruction booklet and no map. I just feel my way. Sometimes we skip along at a lovely pace, everyone smiling, and the scenery is wonderful. I take lots of pictures and get very sentimental with souvenirs. Other times I get completely lost. I hit dead ends and unexpected detours and I have to crawl my way back. I ask a lot of questions and cry a lot of tears, inwardly and outwardly. 

 Nobody tells you how to do it. I think that's pretty normal, isn't it? 

But the most breathtakingly powerful thing that nobody ever tells you is that the whole world changes. 

The whole world changes. So much that I'll never forget a single detail of 10.16pm on that evening eight years ago and when I look down at the long, lean frame of my beautiful sleeping girl, arms flung out in her birthday pyjamas, my head fills with memories of first breaths, first smiles, first steps - and my heart swells.

Nobody tells you how much you'll love them. 

It's a little taste of heaven.

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah...

Hello, Lord.
Today we had a sermon based around a song that was a particular favourite of mine when I was at University in Liverpool.  We listened to this album a lot and so I know the song word for word. Lots of memories - eating fish and chips out of the paper in the back of a car driving around Sefton Park late at night after one or two drinks (not the driver, I hasten to add), singing loudly; putting on makeup ready to go out with this song in the background; listening to it on my Walkman while strolling along the riverside. Not particularly spiritual memories (especially not the first one, I think), and also I suspect that a careful consideration of the lyrics was perhaps absent on those occasions as well. 

Joan Osborne: One of Us

'If God had a name, what would it be

And would you call it to his face

If you were faced with him in all his glory

What would you ask if you had just one question?'

'If God had a face, what would it look like

And would you want to see

If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven 

and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets?'

Matt was talking about the will - would you want to see, if it meant that you would have to believe; no choice but to change your life completely?  

I found it hard to put myself in that position. I tried to imagine it, but I couldn't get past a strong sense of awe and gratitude that I do know you. No, it was more than gratitude, it was a deep feeling of joy. Not the jumpy-up-and-downy type of joy, but something deep inside me that felt like heat. Like a hot water bottle in a cold bed in November. Like the first swallow of mulled wine on a winter day. Not emotional but solid. Reliable. Permanent. 

Well, you have lots of names, don't you? I know a few of your names and yes, one day I will fall to my knees in front of you and I will have the confidence to call you Lord, Saviour, God Almighty, Creator and King of Kings.  And by some inexplicable product of your grace and mercy you have invited me to call you Daddy and Friend. Me! Little insignificant me, given significance because you chose me and you cherish me and you want me to be all that I can be. 

It seems an amazing thing that one day I will indeed be in your presence and enveloped in your holiness. One day I too will be pure and perfect. Because you sent your precious son to die for me, I can one day come to meet you face to face.  

If God had a face, what would it look like

And would you want to see...'

I do want to see. Sometimes I can't wait to see. I don't mean that I am some sort of saint-in-waiting or that this life is so appalling that I can't wait to throw in the towel; when I thought I might have breast cancer a few weeks ago I realised how attached I was to this life and the people in it. But sometimes when I'm in church worshipping you and it all seems to come together and I'm in the moment it feels as if you've lifted off the roof of the church so that the angels can join in.

CS Lewis said:

'It's safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.'

Wow. If that's true (and surely it is, for it was said by CS Lewis), then it's an amazing thing. Me, pure in heart? Ha! But on the other hand - I know that when the day comes for me to tremble in front of you as I have nothing to hide behind, I can lean on your forgiveness through Jesus and not have to pay the unpayable price for my sins. I am more excited about meeting you than I am about all the baggage that I would leave at the pearly gates because I trust that it's all dealt with. There must be a holding bay there or something. But you said that you would wash me and I would be whiter than snow. So maybe there's a bit of me that's pure in heart?

So there's the odd occasion when I get one of those glimpses of you and the thing deep inside me - the joy, the warmth - it responds by reaching for you. Is that my soul?

'Love so amazing, so divine

Demands my soul, my life, my all.'

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Isaac Watts, 1707. Charles Wesley reportedly said that he would give up all his other hymns to have written this one.  As for me, I like the new tune better than the old one, and I like some bits of it better than others. These last two lines I love. This was the last hymn today and I by no means did it justice as my children were back from their groups, showing me their art and asking me when they could have a biscuit. I'm sure you will let me off the hook for not singing the closing hymn with the appropriate degree of reverence and concentration. (I like to picture you as delighted with Katy's picture and Elizabeth's whale as I was, and sympathetic to their need for sustenance as it was getting on for lunchtime.)

I know that your amazing love demands everything from me, and I long to give you everything. There was a time when I held it all back because I knew that I couldn't/wouldn't give you everything and so I thought it wrong to try to give you anything much at all. Of late I have realised that there's no point in waiting until I can do it all perfectly because that day will never come. I just lay in front of you what I have, what I can. Some of it makes a decent present but I am quite sure that the majority of my offering is far from worthy of you. It's all I have. I know that you love me as I am while wanting more for me, and that touches me in a way I can't express because if I am so disappointed in me much of the time, then how much more must you be, perfect Lord, and yet you still insist that I am your precious child.

Adrian Plass reckons in his book 'When you Walk' that you can see into our hearts and even our messes and botched up attempts at doing the right thing please you. He said:

'God looks into our hearts and and is pleased by an intention to do what we are told. He has learned to live with the scrambled means by which we attempt to be obedient.'

I do have times when I long to do what is right. I am no good at it because my impulses are to do the other thing, but at times I want to be the person you want me to be. I hope that you don't miss those little moments, so that you can see the intention in my heart before it passes. Before it gets drowned out by all the other shouty little voices that so often prevail. 

'What if God was one of us?'

Back to Joan Osborne again. Me being me, I have a problem with the grammar here, as it should, of course, as you'll know, be, 'What if God were one of us', (In case of doubt or desire, IF is followed by WERE) but I can overcome my disapproval in order to mull over the message, just as I did in 1996 to belt out a good tune with wild abandon and no thought for the neighbours in my student days. 

What if God were one of us?  Well, you were, weren't you? So we can't say that you don't know what you're talking about. We can't say that you don't have a clue what it's like to be a person, to be happy and sad, to laugh and cry, to love and mourn and suffer and die. I hold this so close to my heart, Father, knowing that you understand. There's nobody better equipped to understand than Jesus Christ when it comes to having a crap time. 

'For we do not have a hight priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we hav one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - and yet he did not sin.'

Hebrews 4: 14-16

Thankyou that you are not remote, distant, God-like in all but personality and presence. You came and found out what it was like to be the created, not the Creator. You didn't make for yourself a cushy little time on earth where you were treated as you should be entitled; you did it all the hard way. You let mere men criticise and condemn and reject you; you let us sneer and spit on you. You let us kill you, so that we might be free. You did that so that we could come into your presence one day with confidence and call you by your Name and look into your face. You were indeed one of us. 

Joan Osborne, at her most profound, for the last time:

'Yeah, yeah, God is great.
Yeah, yeah, God is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah...'

Oh yeah, you're good. Oh yeah, you're great.

Amen.