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.

Feeling sort of gorgeous

I did Katy's hair differently this morning. 

She wants to grow out her fringe. I said yes, because when her hair is wet and away from her face after a shower she looks even more beautiful than she does with those big eyes peeping out from under. 

She has short, dark, naturally glossy hair in a vaguely bob-like shape but she hates me brushing it. She loathes having it messed with and yet she was blessed with a double crown which means that her natural parting is like a donkey's hind leg. Her resistance to brushing and styling mean that quite often she goes to school with her hair pretty much as it got out of bed.

Wow. This is a profound post, isn't it? 

Anyway. The fringe. I said yes, because the more of her lovely face that I can see, the better. Today we crossed a bit of a Rubicon in that it became clear that it's now long enough to need the heavy fringe kept out of the way if she is to continue to see out. Let's see whether she's going to grow it out or have it trimmed back in again, then. Time will tell. 

I carefully separated out the fringe, brushed it together, put a twist in it and clipped it on top of her head with no less than three hairclips. Two blue and a pink. Some wispy bits came down immediately and I'm quite sure that the whole lot will be out on the playground by lunchtime, but she looked just lovely. 

I said so, Daddy said so, Grandma said so. Big sister sort of grunted, which Katy took for agreement as well. On the way to school, a neighbour complimented Katy on her hair and another Mum commented, 'Great hair, Kate,' as we passed by. Katy stood tall and flipped her hair about a bit, looking pleased. I checked her clips. 

Leaning down close, I whispered to her, 'You are gorgeous. Are you feeling gorgeous?'

Pink cheeked, she whispered back, 'Sort of.' 

We squeezed hands and walked in the school doors. 

A tiny moment. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing important in the eternal scheme of things. But I thought my heart would burst and I wanted to say thank you. 

I look at my daughters, both of them, and I am amazed at how beautiful they are. I suppose that I have to take into account that I am their mother, and so I would see their gorgeousness whether it was really there or not, and so I count myself lucky that they are actually gorgeous, and so I do not have to delude myself. But my point is, I love them with a ferocity that I didn't think was possible before I had babies of my own. 

I look at my children and I see their beauty.

I am your child, Lord God. I know that you look at me and think that I'm beautiful. You know how hard that is even for me to type, because for all I know about your endless love, and your inability to make mistakes, I think that you're wrong.

I'm not touting for compliments or asking for reassurance. I know what there is to know from a head-perspective. I tell my girls that the world's definition of beauty is not real and they should never measure themselves against it. I tell them that they shouldn't compare themselves to anyone else because everyone is unique and special and no two people are alike. I tell them that beauty is far more than good skin and good hair and slim thighs and a narrow waist. I tell them that they are beautiful just how they are and they should stand tall as princesses, for you are their Daddy.

This applies to me, too. I know it does, I know. I just can't seem to move the knowledge from my head to my heart. I look in the mirror and I don't like what I see. I compare myself with others and find myself wanting. I see the airbrushing and elongating of models on the magazines, the billboards, the television and still, I wish...

There's just a huge hole in me that needs filling. A deep, old wound that needs healing.

You are the Healer. In your time, Lord. 

I wonder if you ever try to whisper to me, 'You are gorgeous. Are you feeling gorgeous?' and I plug my ears, shake my head and turn away. For I am your little girl just as Katy is mine. And strange as I might find it, I know that you love me with a ferocity that makes mine for her look half-hearted. 

I'm glad that Katy started today feeling sort of gorgeous. Long, long, long may it last. I suspect she'll come out of school with her hair in her eyes and two out of three clips (if I'm lucky - we get through hairclips faster than biscuits round here) and we'll have to start again tomorrow, but I like that she went into school this morning feeling special. 

I bet you want that for me. I know that you love me, and you approve of me, and you look at me and see beauty. 

Abba, Daddy?

I would like to feel sort of gorgeous.

A letter to tuck in your pocket

One and a half more weeks of holiday and school starts again. You can tell that my two girls' minds are beginning to turn to the new term because sometimes out of nowhere comes a little remark that reveals a hidden iceberg of thoughts and worries.

Katy is going back into year two, her last year at the little local infant school just around the corner. Her year one class has been split into two and she isn't with any of her friends. I held my breath as she handed me the paper, waiting for anguish and gnashing of teeth, but she was philosophical. 

'Mummy, there'll be all those new friends to make.'

What about that. 

I can't tell you how much I admire her. Six years old and fearless in the face of a daunting situation. Of course, she has her insecurities, but in the playground she's relaxed and confident of her own welcome and as a result the other kids want to play with her. How wonderful that is. I would love to be more like that. 

Her big sister, on the other hand, has moments of excitement about going back into year four, but mostly she's apprehensive and as September draws closer I can feel her happy holiday mood slipping a little. Last term didn't go particularly well and the troubles and tears multiplied until we were just nursing her through the last days before the long holiday. It's all been on the back burner but now it's time to turn up the heat again...

I encourage and reassure and comfort and advise, but the bottom line is that they both need to work out what to do to get through school and friendships and so on for themselves. What works for Katy might not work for Elizabeth, and what has worked all along might not always go so well. They are unique little bodies and personalities and neither of them is me. They're not going to handle it as I did (and that's probably a good thing; I made a complete hash of friendships for much of my school career). 

So, I will walk them to school and I'll buoy them up with words of encouragement. I shall tell them that they are warm, kind, beautiful, clever, interesting and fun to be with. I shall advise them on letting others go first, winning and losing with grace and happily playing games suggested by other children even if they feel they have a better idea.  

They have new school uniforms, (rats, socks. Forgot socks) and shiny new shoes. They'll have new haircuts and pencil cases. They'll be as ready as I can make them, but when I've waved goodbye, they'll pretty much have to sort it out for themselves.

Here's what I'd like them to remember:

Beautiful daughter of mine,

You are loved. 

More than you know, you are loved. You are loved by all your family back here at home; by me, watching the clock for school pick up time and anxiously searching out your face in the exodus of children passing through the school doors, and you are loved beyond imagination by your heavenly Father. 

He made you just as you are. He made you deliberately, not accidentally. You were designed by a Master craftsman who never, ever makes mistakes. When He finished making you, my little one, He sat back and smiled, delighted with the little girl He had made. He knows every hair on your head and He sees every breath that you take. He promised a long, long time ago that He would never leave you, and He is always at your side. Even when Mummy goes back home, He walks through those doors right next to you. He sits by you and cheers you on, and He puts His arms around you when things are tough. 

He is so proud of you. We all are, my lovely, but your heavenly Daddy knows the things that we can't know. He knows how fearful you are of new situations and He sees how difficult you find school, sometimes. He understands that now and again things go wrong and He smiles with pride when you don't give up; when you say sorry, when you try again.

You are loved. Let that sink in really deep, my darling, so that you can find that knowledge quickly when you need it. Try to understand those three little words so that they build you up. Things knock you down, sometimes, and I know that you feel fragile and vulnerable at school. It hasn't been easy so far and I know that you're sometimes overwhelmed and uncertain how to handle things. When you're feeling left out or insignificant, remember those three words: you are loved. Remember that you are loved just for who you are, not for anything you can do. That love doesn't falter when things go wrong, or you make a mistake. 

You are loved, all the time, no matter what. Just think: the Creator of the world loves you. He loves you so much that he smiles as He thinks of you. He is delighted with you, just as I am. 

I want to say it again, because I know how easy it is to listen to things but not to really hear them.

Those other girls? The ones that say mean things and hurt your feelings?  Oh, my love, there will always be girls like that. I'm forty-two and still they're around, only now they're at the school gates instead of whispering at the back of the classroom. It's not going to change because you're a year older. It's something that has always been, will always be.

Don't be one of them. I know there will be times when you'll be tempted to try to fit in by laughing with the mean girls; how membership of their circle seems a coveted prize, but don't do it. Friendship acquired at someone else's expense isn't friendship at all, and all too soon it'll be you on the outside again, for truth and companionship aren't built on secrets and sneering, but on compassion and honesty. 

And when you've been rejected or hurt and you want to lash out and hit back; don't. Close your eyes and count to ten, or breathe deeply and walk away, but don't play their game. Jesus taught us to love those that are not our friends. It's hard - even for grown ups - but He told us that we must be kind to those who aren't kind to us. And that means her, my lovely girl. Yes, you know who I mean. The one that you don't see to eye to eye with, and yet part of you longs to be part of her crowd.

Time and time again you've left school with her spiteful words ringing in your ears and before we've even walked home you've had tears on your cheeks because of this girl and her friends. Don't return meanness with meanness, because the momentary satisfaction that it brings quickly evaporates and leaves a guilty residue that only damages you. Better to return spite with kindness. Then you keep your integrity and the whole of heaven rejoices, because it's not an easy thing to do. 

I'm doing my best with that one myself, love, because I hate to see you hurt. Forgiving those that hurt you, even if they're only little themselves - well, I'm doing my best with that too. And one day, when you have children of your own and you know the fierceness of the love that you feel for your baby, you'll know how hard it is.  

Be brave, my little one; the world has plenty of people like her, but more that are not. Don't judge the whole world by the standards of the mean kids.

Seek out the children who are kind to you, who make you laugh, who make you feel happy, and do the same for them. Be a good friend, and you'll find good friends. I pray every day that you will find someone lovely to do life with; a girl who will link arms with you in good times and bad, who'll encourage and comfort and cheer you on. But until you find her, sweetheart, don't give up. Don't give up on friendship, or on the other girls, or on yourself. When you find that precious girlfriend who understands you, who accepts you and loves you it will be worth all the troubles. 

Remember, you are loveable. You are precious and unique and special. You are beautiful, inside and out, and you are loved. 

There is no-one like you. Don't compare yourself with anyone, because you don't know what it feels like to be them. Just be yourself. You were created to be you, just where you are right now, surrounded by the people you're with. There is no mistake. It's all in His hands. He's watching over you so, so carefully, and He will keep you safe. 

And I'll help. I'll be there in the morning, waiting by the gates in case you turn around for another wave. I'll be there when you come out, negotiating my own way among the grown up girls who chat and gossip in groups just as they did in this same playground when I was in your shoes. All day my mind will return to you, my lovely, and I'll wonder who you're sitting with in class, whether there'll be anything you like for lunch, who you're playing with in the playground. 

I'll be talking to Jesus about you and asking Him to hold you close, to help you, and He'll be saying to me, 'Don't worry. I've got her.' 

He's got you.  

With love

Mummy

 Linking up with Sabrina and Ruth at 'Letters To...' 

This time we're at Learning (one day at a time) and the prompt was: 'A letter to tuck in your pocket'. 

Popular posts: With butterfly wings

Well, there I was just about to put this post up again because it's one of my most popular posts, and as I read it, I realised how little has changed. I find it both depressing and comforting that a year ago during the summer school holidays I was struggling to find time to spend with you, Lord God, and struggling generally with day to day trivia of life.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, hey.

I was flat on my tummy yesterday in the garden photographing a butterfly.

For all these reasons it seems apt to repost this:



Evening, God.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Busy busy busy, you know; school holidays, packing for trips, the odd tummy bug. I'm wanting to catch up. 

Today we went to a Butterfly Centre. We went in bright sunshine, came home in torrential rain and picnicked in a howling gale, but we had a wonderful time. 

Butterfly

What a fantastic place. 

Birds of prey, fabulous peacocks, ancient tortoises, snakes and spiders and butterflies. Amazing, delicate, extravagantly beautiful butterflies. They lived in a recreation of a tropical rainforest complete with pools and tropical flowers, creepy crawlies, bats and birds. Everywhere things scuttled and crept and fluttered and slithered. The air was hot and humid and the sun shone through the transparent roof and transported us to another place. A large scaly lizard like thing as long as my arm perched up in the roof and a display of tiny, jewel-like poison dart frogs kept Katy occupied for ages. Elizabeth was mesmerised by a large snake slowly consuming a white rat and I was transfixed by the beauty of the butterflies. 

In our garden we often get butterflies. We have buddleia and cornflowers and marigolds and lots of (ahem) 'wilderness' areas and we're used to seeing what I've always thought of as cabbage whites and something that looks a bit like a red admiral (but probably isn't, I realise). I don't know much about butterflies and I confess that even today I was more interested in gazing at them and trying to take a decent photograph than I was in reading the educational material available. 

Fragile, but strong enough to do what it's meant to do.

Stunning colours, so fragile. Amazingly detailed; some of the butterflies looked as if they'd been coloured by hand. Elusive - they landed on a leaf at eye level but before I'd raised my camera they were off again, flitting between luscious blooms from petal to petal, weightless. They've been described as 'living flowers' and I like that. 

Apparently the average lifespan of a butterfly is about a month. They don't live very long, but while they live they are spectacular. They are pupae, then caterpillars, then they snuggle into their chrysalis for a while and then they hatch into gorgeous creatures that flutter and dance and sit on flowers waiting to have their picture taken, if any huge and clumsy human being stumbles near. 

Each of these tiny insects is unique. You made each one different. You chose their colours, the design on their wings, their size and shape and habits and flight pattern. You watch over each chrysalis as they sleep and you count very wing beat. What a Creator you are, to take such joy in the tiny and helpless. Even the fleeting life of a butterfly has meaning in the fragile eco-system of the rainforest, just as it does in my back garden. 

You made them beautiful just because you could. Your attention to detail never fails to amaze me. You could just have made a red one and a blue one and a yellow one, but the intricacy and detail are breathtaking. Today we even saw transparent butterflies. How cool is that? 

You know what captured my imagination today, though? It was when I came to the cabinet where the butterflies emerge fully formed from a chrysalis spun by a crawling caterpillar.  Ranks of chrysalises (is that the plural of chrysalis?) hung in rows - bright green, dark green, yellow, red, russet, even shiny gold. Some butterflies were in process of struggling slowly out of their cocoon and this is where it got to me. 

A butterfly has to battle to leave the chrysalis. It's not easy. It works hard to tear its way out and it has to fight, then rest. 

Fight, then rest. 

It is in the action of pushing its way into the world that the butterfly gains enough strength in its brand new and breathtakingly beautiful wings to fly. If I were to help a butterfly out of it's chrysalis, it would die. It would never fly. It would never become what it was meant to become, because it had never built up its muscles. If butterflies have muscles. I'm not sure about that, but you get the drift. 

Wow. 

Maybe I'm like a butterfly. I know that I live longer, but that's nonsense really because I know that my lifespan is only a tiny wingbeat in eternity. A blink. I know that I'm not as wonderfully beautiful as a butterfly, but then you tell me in the Bible that I am just those things; wonderful and beautiful. As I peered at those tiny insects today, feeling enormous and substantial in contrast with their delicate fragility, it made me think of the way you look at me. I am as vulnerable and ephemeral as a butterfly. 

I am nothing without you, my Creator.

Struggle, then rest, then struggle...

I too have a purpose, and I need muscles to fulfil it. If you helped me out of my chrysalis every time I tired and moaned and cried out to you to do it for me, then maybe I would never fly. 

So often I don't like how life is hard. I don't like that it takes so much effort and that even the good things, even the blessings, are hard work. We went to the Olympics last week and we visited family and we did wonderful things that are good gifts from you, opportunities that are rare and to be cherished, and yet I found myself exhausted simply with the daily job of negotiating life with two small energetic children who are programmed to get up early, stay up late and make much noise in between. 

I keep asking you, Father, why is it so hard? Is it just me? The generations before me just got on with things, why do I struggle so much? I want you to take the difficulty away and give me a break. But maybe, I wonder, if you did, then I might never have the strength to fly.

'Mummy, it's you with butterfly wings.'

Is that it? Do I need to push my way out, struggle, rest, struggle, rest, until I emerge into the light and open out my beautiful wings? Only then I'll be strong enough to take off and do what I was made to do. Fulfil my purpose in life. 

A few days ago my little girl, Lizzie, gave me a picture she'd drawn on a bit of notepaper. She handed it to me as a present. 

She said, 'Mummy, it's you. It's you with butterfly wings.'

Ah. 

So here it is. 

I'm as unique and beautiful as a butterfly, and my life is just as fleeting.

If you created and painted the butterflies with such painstaking love, then what a work of art am I?

A butterfly is just a tiny insect but has a vital, God-given role to play in the world, and so do I... 

Fragile as they are, they need strength to do what they were created to do. They struggle, and rest, and then one day they spread their beautiful wings and fly.

And you smile.

That's good enough for me. 

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.

Do what you do

Dear God.

Everyone has something to say about what's happened in Oklahoma. The way a tornado flattened an area miles wide with so little warning that some people didn't have time to find a safe place, not that there were any if  The way some were safe in a vault at the bank, customers huddling with staff. The way a lovely old lady wept in thanksgiving when her little dog scrambled out of the wreckage of her home. 

The way schools was destroyed and children were trapped and crushed and drowned. 

In the world of social media everyone has something to say. I suppose I do, too, because I sort out my feelings when I write them down, and after half an hour reading about this disaster on the internet news I'm a bit of a mess of feelings. I haven't got anything to say that is helpful, or wise; I wonder if there's anything that anyone can say that helps. 

Nobody told me when I was expecting my first baby that I would one day only have to think of another mother an ocean away one day and find tears running down my face. Nobody told me that a picture of a mother desperately waiting for news would break my heart. 

I've always been a bit of a softie, and I know that even before my babies came along I'd have watched this footage with horror and shock, but when I went into a hospital as somebody's daughter and came out somebody's mother, something shifted. Suddenly there was a little life - and nineteen months later another little life - more precious to me than mine. 

There were mothers and fathers standing in rubble as the emergency services lifted debris, waiting to know if their child would come home that night. Someone with a megaphone started shouting the names of the kids who were alright, who still had breath in their body to say who they were. Imagine waiting to hear your baby's name, waiting and waiting as people around knelt in relief and scooped up their battered, wounded but living-and-breathing child and your little just didn't come out?  

They must have been so frightened, those little boys and girls. They must have cried and shouted for their mummy or their daddy and they didn't come. 

Oh, God. 

The other night my little girl Katy was so tired that she thought of something that upset her and she thought of it so much that she dissolved into tears and she couldn't get herself right again until we'd cuddled and snuggled for a long time. Other people's mummies were to go on a school trip with them next month but I wouldn't be going. Lots of reasons for this, (the main one being that I didn't want to go; I didn't sign up to go) but Katy suddenly, surprisingly, decided that the most important thing in the world was that I would be with her when she went on the school trip. Alas, too late. The class teacher had been inundated with offers of parent helpers (why? I don't understand it) and so it was too late. Katy, for reasons that escape me, inconsolable. She so, so wanted me to be there. 

And this is only a school trip. I felt so guilty. Guilt that I wouldn't be with her on a lovely school visit. That I should be there for her. That in not being there I was letting her down. 

How much more could a heart take - not to be there when your little one is terrified in the midst of a hugely powerful hurricane? When the winds are blowing at over two hundred miles an hour and the roof is torn off and the walls are collapsing and cars are flying through the air? When they're lying contorted and hurt under the rubble of a collapsed building?  Gasping for air before unconsciousness and suffocation?

Nobody told me the all-consuming love that I have for my children. Yes, they get me down sometimes. Yes, I find the job of being their mummy relentless and frustrating and overwhelming sometimes - much of the time. But not to be there when they needed me?  

Far away there are mummies and daddies who will somehow have to find out if peace is possible again the other side of something like this. Like the time a man walked into a school and carelessly took the lives of all those small children and their brave teachers. Like the time a huge factory collapsed in Bangladesh and more than a thousand people lost their lives, some of them barely old enough to operate a sewing machine. The time that we saw on our televisions scenes of skeletal mothers and babies in Somalia in the last stages of malnourishment sitting on the parched ground, waiting for death. 

Why do we think that those mothers love their children less than we love ours? 

I breastfed my babies and I had excess milk that I froze for convenience. I eat so many calories that my hips are well padded for carrying my well-fed children. What must it be like to have a baby knowing that you have no way to feed it, to keep it alive?

What must it be like to send my little one to school with a lunchbox with a cheese and ham sandwich (Elizabeth's favourite) and a bag of raisins and a chocolate biscuit. To put a little 'I love you' note in the lunchbox - or that morning was I too busy to write one? - and then to find out that today was the day she wasn't going to come home? 

What must it be like to wait in the twisted remains of a building for news of my whole family and then the building starts to burn?

It's all misplaced, of course, the guilt, but it goes with the territory of motherhood. To protect and nurture and kiss it all better. To be there to make things right when knees are grazed or bullies say the mean things. It's so deeply ingrained in me that to deny me that need to respond is to rob me of something fundamental. I can't imagine the pain that those mothers must be going through. 

Where were you, Lord? I think you must have been there; surely you couldn't have stayed away. I pray that you were there with those little ones as the roof was ripped off. There when the teacher shielded their little bodies from the bullets. There when the factory collapsed like a house of cards. 

There as every mother cradles her baby and feels the raw power of the new love in her heart.

You must be. It comes from you.

Oh, God, what's it all about? I've read blog posts about comfort and about your tears falling as rain. I've read articles about why there's suffering in this broken, dysfunctional, terminal world. I've seen people railing against your injustice and hard-heartedness and others thanking you for your mercy and never-ending love. 

I just can't get the images out of my head. The mothers waiting for news. The sure knowledge that I would a million times rather die with my daughters in my arms than live knowing that they needed me and I wasn't there. 

I haven't anything to say. It makes no sense to me.

Well, I have one thing. I don't understand it one bit, but from the very deepest part of me, all I can say is that I know you, Lord Jesus. 

I know that you are love. You are compassion. You are the healer.  I know that you loved those children of yours in Oklahoma, in Connecticut, in Bangladesh and in Somalia. I know that you loved the five little souls who died in Derby in a house fire set by their own father and the little girl murdered in Wales whose body they have never found...and so on, and so on. 

I know that you care. 

I know that we are not lost. Somehow, and don't ask me how, as we stand in the middle of grief and horror in this beautiful and terrifying world, we aren't consumed, for you stand with us. 

You won't be defeated by evil in any of its forms. 

You say that you can bring good out of the most desperate circumstances, but I'm guessing those mothers don't want to hear that right now. There isn't any good, surely. 

When they wake up tomorrow morning and the next day and the days after that and for just a fraction of a moment they can't remember what immense, towering grief it is that looms over them - Lord, do what you do. Comfort, soothe, protect, heal. 

Loving Lord, do what you do.  

Image credits:

IMGP3231.JPG by spiroll

Katrina_LynnMeadows_2.jpg by msand39

downedtree.jpg by taliesin

all from Morguefile.com. Used with permission.

Sisterhood and suspicion

Morning, God.

Someone wrote something, and I read it.

It was a blog post about women and friendship. It was a beautiful post celebrating sisterhood and the support and encouragement and the sort of connection that only women can have. About the special bond that is found in a group of female friends.

You know what came into my head? 

'That's not true.'

Emphatically. The voice in my head was loud, angry. Maybe a bit shrill.

I flinched. Where did that come from? 

God. Help me a bit, will you? Because it came from somewhere deep inside me, back through the years and comes from somewhere that I thought I'd sorted out, even if not forgotten about. I read the article with narrowed eyes and looked at the pictures of smiling women with their arms around each other and you know what? I don't believe it. All that perfect-friendship stuff. I looked at those pictures with a suspicion and cynicism that shocked me.

Sisters.

Until the last few years, I've never had a close female friend. As I was growing up, I had a few female 'friends', but those friendships weren't what they should have been. They were full of hurt and betrayal and unhappiness and they took from me a lot of confidence. In later years I've had some friends who I still value, but they've somehow stopped short of true intimacy. There's been a holding back; a superficiality. I think it comes from them, but maybe it's been me. I don't know. 

This is a minefield. God, I don't know what you're doing here. This is a big thing for me. Here are some things that are flooding through my mind at the moment: 

I've always said, 'It takes me a long time to get to know someone.' That's because I'm so wary. 

I've always said, 'Men are more straightforward than women.'  I've always done better with boyfriends than girlfriends.  From late teens onwards I usually had a boyfriend, but after a few very painful friendships, no special friend of my own sex.

I worry for my small daughters about friendships in the playground. I so want them to find a true and trustworthy friend to do life with, and I long for them to find it way, way before I did.  Already, at the ripe old age of seven, Elizabeth's experienced girls who've said they were her friend and then hurt her badly, and it presses all my buttons. Makes me anxious. Makes me want to scoop her up and tell her not to worry, it'll be OK. I wonder if that's why she plays with the boys more than the girls? 

Oh dear. 

The thing is, I do know what friendship is, now. It's taken me this long. I'm in my early forties and I have a friend who is a true and beautiful gift from God. She is a woman the author of that article had in mind as she celebrated friendship.  She accepts me as I am.  I don't have to tidy my house when she comes round. I don't worry if my mascara smudges when I'm talking to her. I trust her implicitly. She keeps my secrets, she holds me when I cry and eats cheesecake with me until we both feel sick. She knows me. She comforts me, inspires me, encourages me and talks sense to me when I don't have any of my own. I don't have to put up barriers. She sees me as I am and she still wants to be with me.

We do this for each other. It's not all one way. She accepts my friendship; she values it. She doesn't throw it back at me or look at it with contempt. 

She is my friend. The friend I didn't have when I was seven, or eleven, or twenty, or thirty. I've never been solitary, don't get me wrong, but I've never trusted as I do now. I've never received so much, or given so much. 

So I read the article about the miracle of women and the power that we have to build each other up and until recently I have only seen the power we have to bring each other down. When I walk into a roomful of women I am immediately intimidated. I assume that they're looking at me and criticising what I'm wearing, my make up, my face, my words. They're noticing every flaw that I've tried so hard to hide, physical and emotional. My bad hair day, the spot on my chin, the fact that my jeans are a bit tighter than they were last month, my confusion and diffidence. They look at me when I walk in and they talk about me when I leave. I don't think about it any more, because I realise that I've come to expect it. Something inside me is programmed to believe that other women do this to me. To each other. 

I am afraid of women. Women can destroy each other's confidence with a look, a remark, an expression. Sometimes, the wounds go very deep indeed. 

One day, she'd be my friend, the next, she wouldn't talk to me. On the way to school I would never know which today would be. On the off days she'd tell other girls mean things about me. On the good days, she'd link arms with me and all would be well. I just let it happen. It doesn't do much for my self esteem that I just let it happen. 

She would tell me that I was fat and ungainly and she'd tell me who I should avoid standing next to as they were so much slimmer/prettier than me that it made me look worse. She told me I'd never get anywhere, be anyone. She criticised the way I walked and the way I laughed. She chose a seat at lunchtime at a table without space for me, so I'd be standing there with my tray of food, but nowhere to sit. She laughed at me. 

Another she, a grown-up she, my tutor at university years later, told me that someone had said things about me but wouldn't tell me who, or what, but it wasn't nice, and it wasn't true either. I looked around at the people I shared the lecture room with in a different way because of her. I didn't trust anyone, and until then I'd been having a nice time. I thought I had friends. She told me that I had no integrity, that there was something wrong with my character. That there was something wrong with me. 

My beautiful girl

Other shes weren't there when I needed them, let me down at key moments, didn't turn up, drifted away, moved away.

I could name names, Lord, but there's no reason to; you know the people I mean. From my childhood and adulthood. I'm sure they didn't know the impact they were having. I'm glad that they didn't. 

So we women do have power indeed. Oh, we do. A fearsome power. We can crush. We may not do it with our muscles but the devastation is complete.

A group of girls in the playground; is there anything more lethal than that? A couple of girls took my daughter's woolly hat on a cold day and threw it in a puddle. A girl told her that her new coat made her look silly. A girl told her that she was too tall to be a girl so she must be a boy.

The girls that are friends one day and the next they won't let her play.

She went to play with the boys. More straightforward, see? Only now at seven the boys start to do that thing where they don't want to play with girls, even tall ones. She must try again with the girls, like it or not.

Oh God, hold her close. It's so complicated and I don't have the skills to help her. I'm terrified that the only stuff I can impart won't help at all but will make things worse. Keep the mean girls away from her, will you? Don't let them wound her. And don't, please don't, let her insecurities grow and overflow so that she becomes a mean girl. Bring her a friend, or (is it too much to ask?) a couple of friends that she can trust, have fun with, grow up with, will you? Please, please, don't have her wait until she's forty to find a woman who is a soulmate. 

Someone who will bring out the best in her, not diminish her.

My beautiful girl

I realise that even though I'm supposed to have dealt with all this, there's still a gaping wound that needs healing. I can feel tears behind my eyes even as I'm talking to you, now.

Today I was reading of the bond that a woman can have with another woman and finally, I know what that's about. I assumed that such friendships were for other people - not for me, but now I know that it's not true. I can trust someone who is trustworthy. I know that she wants what is good for me. We're not in competition. She lifts me up. She prays for me. She isn't afraid to tell me that I'm wrong, that I need to think differently. She's right there with me.

She loves me. She loves you. 

God, I bet there are so many people out there like me. Who haven't experienced the joyful, wonderful feminine sisterhood, but the darker side of women. The cold and hurting side. The bit that chips away and undermines and leaves you defensive and wary. 

Lord, I know that it's not too late. I know that you can heal and make new. Father, will you reach down into the depths of me and mend the bits that are broken? Is that what you're doing? And maybe one day I can help someone else. Women should stick together, shouldn't they?

Not pull each other apart and walk on the pieces. 

Thankyou for my friends, Lord God. For soulmates and sisters to celebrate and grieve with. Who walk alongside, accepting and supporting, passing tissues and eating cheesecake. 

Father, for the girls that are now women whose names we both know; may their lives now be so much happier that the bitterness and nastiness that spilled over and soaked me through is no more. I'm supposed to pray for them, aren't I? It's hard to hand them over to you, Lord, but I know that they are your daughters too. Bless them. Next time I say that I'll try to do it without the gritted teeth.

Help me to open my hands and drop the memories that I realise that I've never thrown away. The remembered misery and fear and the knot in my stomach. The loneliness and mistrust. The wariness. The feeling that other women are not potential friends, but threats. Help me to leave it with you. 

To forgive. Even if I have to keep on forgiving. I didn't realise until this morning that I hadn't.

As the healing power of a God-given friendship starts to seep into my consciousness, help me to let it go to all those places where the cynicism and suspicion still linger. Melt the parts of me that are cold and wake me up to the miracle of restoration that you are doing in me. I don't have to accept that part of me was damaged when I was a child. I don't have to tell the story of the bullies and the spiralling self-esteem and finish it with a shrug, and a 'That's how I am.'  I don't have to settle for wounds that won't heal.

I've only just realised that. Only just. And I'm supposed to be all grown up. 

So, Father. I know that we women do indeed have power. Power to change the lives of those around us. Lord, let me only bless other women and not harm them. How many women, like me, assume that they are nothing more than the sum of their negative experiences? How many women lick the wounds inflicted when friendships hurt and fail and then hide them away without realising that healing is possible?

Help me to reach out, to touch, to support and encourage, not discourage, undermine or damage. I want to make a positive difference. 

I've been hurt and you're putting me back together. 

Thankyou.

..........

Oh. Lord, I've got a postscript. School run, this evening. I was walking to school and I slipped in my headphones (as I do; it's not too far, about two-and-a-half songs) and pressed 'shuffle'. You chose a song for me.

'Rise up women of the Truth

Stand and sing to broken hearts

Who can know the healing power

Of our awesome King of Love?' *

Lord, I've been hurt and you're putting me back together again.

I know the healing power of our awesome King of Love. And I shall sing.

'Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.' Jeremiah 17:14

Amen. Yes, please, Lord.




*(Shout to the North and the South, Martin Smith, 1995 Curious? Music UK)


(Edited and reposted from last year. Some things have happened recently that make me realise how far I have to go with this one.)

Here

Well, let's forget that I'm a little late to the party, but embrace the fact that I'm here at all. 

Today is Friday, which means that many, many people all over the world are tap-tapping away at their keyboards to join in Lisa-Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday party. Each week she posts a prompt word and then anyone who fancies joining in, and can work out how to cut-and-paste the FMF button onto their blog sets a timer for five minutes and just writes whatever profound and inspiring words occur to them. 

My luck, I'll run out of time mid sentence. 

So I'm giving it a go. 

Here

I am not a 'here' person. I'm a 'yesterday' person, and a 'tomorrow' person but rarely here, right now. 

(Oh blimey, that clock is oppressing me).

I am one of those people who often wish for a 'fast-forward' button in life. Things will be better when..... Frequently I need a 'rewind' so I could try something over again, or do it a different way. Sometimes a 'pause',  because I don't want something to slip away from me; occasionally a 'Stop/Eject'  when it all gets just to much. Rarely just 'play'.

Oh, God. I need your help. 

I don't like living life full of regrets and anxieties - I look down the street behind me and littered right and left are things that weren't perfect, mistakes and messes.  Up ahead of me are obstacles and fears lurking in dark alleys and around corners. I watch my two daughters sleep and I worry that I've done and said things that have damaged them; contributed towards the anxious and fearful women they might one day turn into, chips off the old block. 

I want to be a 'here' person. Lord Jesus, I want to see those same two children and take in every detail of the wonder and glory of you, reflected in them. The expressions on their faces, their funny stories, their endless questions. I want to savour the feel of their small hands in mine while they still want to hold my hand. I want to have the energy and confidence to laugh and make things and not worry about the mess. I don't want to be haunted any longer with what might have been, and what still might be.

I want to feel free to be me, right here, right now.

I want to leave behind the debris on the road and walk onwards, swinging my arms. I want to see the flowers by the path ahead and the sunlight streaming through the clouds and not try to see around corners that I might not be called upon to walk round anyway. I want to feel the warm breeze on my back. 

I want to give up the replay and fast forward and just press 'play'. 

And let life unfold, knowing that you are at the controls, not me. 

And you are always here.

*

Alright, five minutes and eleven seconds. And then I did a bit of a tidy of the typos. Is that allowed? 

Here are the rules of Five Minute Friday, for anyone who's inspired to have a go:

Check Lisa-Jo Baker's page for her weekly prompt (this week was 'Here').

Write for five minutes on your own blog and link up with hers using the tool underneath her FMF entry. If I can do it, anyone can, seriously. 

Visit the person before you and pass on a little encouragement, because we all just love to have someone say something nice.

So that's the plan. 

Lessons in losing

Morning, Lord.

I don't have any deep insights this morning. I just want to get something off my chest.

The other week my two girls took part in a swimming tournament. They go to a swimming club that starts out with basic swimming lessons when they're very young and as they progress they are encouraged to become competitive swimmers at whatever level is appropriate. They both love swimming. I love it less as the lessons are not at particularly convenient times and there's an awful lot of sitting around waiting and finding parking places, but hey, that's what being a mum is all about, isn't it?

So. Last year Elizabeth was the best in a group of learners (immediately after the competition she was moved up two levels to a new group) and she flew in both her races, winning two gold medals. Last year Katy did pretty well in the youngest learner group; she came fourth on her front and fifth on her back using a float. She got medals too; everyone who took part got a medal. At the medal presentation night some days later they were both bursting with pride, and so was I. They took their medals to school to show to the class; their confidence grew and they were happy.

This year was a completely different story. A year older, Lizzie was among the youngest in her group. Her first race was the backstroke, which she likes, though she prefers the freestyle. She was just wonderful and she won her heat. She arrived at the end of the pool first and turned to grin at us in the stands. Her little sister was jumping up and down in delight and shouting 'Lizzie! Lizzie! That's my sister! Hooray for Lizzie!'

Then it all went wrong. Elizabeth climbed out of the pool. She didn't know about the etiquette of staying in the water until everyone had finished; nobody had mentioned it. The man allocated to her lane told her off. I don't know what he said, or the manner in which he said it, but her shoulders were sagging and her face fighting back tears as she rejoined her group on the side of the pool. She stood on her own until her next race, uncertain and self conscious and worrying about whether she should stay or go and get changed, and whether everyone knew that she'd broken the rules and what they would say when they found out. It turns out that the man had told her that she might be disqualified because of her error in the first race but she'd have to wait and see.

The next race was called and this time they were encouraged to dive in if they felt comfortable. The older ones dived, which gave them a headstart straight away. Elizabeth's group have only just started to dive (with varying success) and so she started in the water. She swam both the remaining races carefully and cautiously, leaving no room for criticism of her style or manners.

Subsequent heats of the backstroke told us that Lizzie hadn't won anything, and the news that she had transgressed one of the rules took away any pleasure she might have felt in her heat victory. Now, in her best race, she was so afraid that she might get it wrong again that swam with exaggerated care and cautiousness and came ninth. It was miles slower than her warm up lengths at which point she had felt invincible. In the car on the way home she cried. It took us ages to establish what had gone wrong because she thought she'd done something terrible and was reluctant to tell us.

Katy's tournament, the next day, was even more of a disaster. Her teacher had entered her in the 'unassisted' freestyle and backstroke races and Katy panicked without a float. She swam so, so bravely that it broke my heart, but she came last by a mile. So far behind that she got her own round of applause. She burst into tears as she got out of the pool and cried without stopping until the next race.

'Mummy, I'm not a winner. I never win anything. I'm a loser.'

She actually swam further than she had ever swum before without any assistance, but she was devastated by coming last. I told her over and over how proud I was of her, how wonderfully hard she'd tried but it made no difference. I even asked if she was sure that she wanted to take part in the backstroke race, half hoping that she'd say no so that I could whisk her away, but she wanted to swim again.

The same thing happened.

Oh, Lord. I know that they can't win all the time. I know that they need to learn to lose. I know that I can't save them from every defeat and humiliation and disappointment. I know that this is supposedly how character is built. But I don't like it. I just don't like it.

Both my girls cried on the way home from their swimming tournaments. Last year they were jubilant and encouraged, this year full of self doubt and misery.

So, what, Lord? Am I just an over-protective mother who wants to cushion her daughters through their lives? No doubt that's what I am. Katy was entered in the wrong races and Elizabeth fell foul of a rule she didn't know about. It wasn't fair but there's nothing I could do about it.

There was no joy.

Is your heart so closely linked with mine that yours breaks when mine does? When I watched my girls going through a tough time I longed to take it away for them. I wanted to pick them up in my arms and disappear off to cuddle and whisper them better. I wanted to fight for them; to tell the man with the rules that he might be right, but she's seven years old and she didn't know, and did he realise that he'd crushed her? To say to Katy's swimming teacher that she was out of her depth (in more ways than one) and if only he'd entered her for an easier race she'd have been on top of the world.

Lord, I'm struggling with lessons that need to be learned. My girls learned that life isn't fair, that honest mistakes have consequences and that people are not always kind. All that on top of the lesson that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Katy feels as if she always loses.

You know what? I was so proud of them too. Amid all the hurt and anxiety my heart swelled for both of them. Katy had the option to quit after her first disastrous race and she didn't. Through her tears she said yes, she wanted to try again. Elizabeth didn't run away and hide even though she felt terribly self-conscious and anxious for having broken the rules. She stayed to swim again not knowing if her name would be called or not.

I thought that was amazing. I was very proud. Do you feel like that when your children down here turn up for the next race even though all the fun has gone out of it? When we try something hard and fall flat on our faces, do the angels cheer when we still get up for the next race?

It was a hard weekend. I cried. I cried for Katy's dashed hopes of winning something at last and I cried for Lizzie's confusion and self-doubt as she stood and waited to see if she would be asked to leave the pool. She really thought that they might announce that she was disqualified. She's seven years old. Katy's just five. Oh dear.

Lord, it's hard work being a mummy, sometimes. I love them so much. Is it hard work being a heavenly Daddy? Do you wish you could save me the hard lessons but you know that I need to learn them? Do you wish you could protect me from life's rubbish when you know that it's only when I wade knee-deep through it all that I develop muscles and eventually get to the other side?  You know better than anyone what it's like to watch as your child is treated unfairly, hurt indescribably and rejected completely. Did you want to snatch him up and send a fireball to consume the rest of us?

I don't always think there's a greater good when our children suffer. When kids get ill and die, where's the lesson in that? Sometimes life is just unfair because this world is broken. Feelings get hurt not to build character but just because people don't take enough care. I know that disappointment at a swimming gala is a million miles removed from some of the injustices that life throws at children. I suppose I should be grateful that they only battled with defeat in a swimming race. Help me keep a bit of perspective on it.

Thankyou that you are a God who cares about the little things as well as the earth-shattering. You care if your little ones are crushed by something as everyday as a children's swimming gala and you care about your little ones whose little ones are hurt. Thankyou for not telling me to pull myself together.

Sigh.

So that was it, Lord. I don't know if there's a spiritual lesson embedded in here, but I want to ask you to hold my girls tight and heal any wounds that they carry round with them. Don't let there be damage done to delicate self-esteem. Don't let guilt and failure and defeat get a grip on their hearts. Help me to show them that doing the right thing is more precious than winning. That courage is better than quitting. That turning up when discouraged is brave, and you can't be brave if you're not afraid in the first place.

I'm going to stop rambling now. Patch my Mummy heart back up, Lord; I know that there are going to be plenty more bruises like this.

Your heart must be pretty battered.

Blessed are the peacemakers

Evening, Lord.

I seem to spend much of my life trying to avert war. 

I do. Conflict, at least. Alright, anything from bickering and squabbling to major civil unrest. It's tiring. 

Is that what you think when you look down on this earth and count the places where we're at each others' throats?  Do you sigh and shake your head? Do you wonder at our ferocity as I sometimes wonder at the fury of my two small girls?

They are seven and five years old. They are beautiful children with smiles that light up a room. They are sweet, thoughtful, loving and gentle. 

Mostly. 

Then there are the times when the explosions come out of nowhere and ignite everything around that's flammable. I am speaking mainly about my littlest daughter, Katy. The Tantrum Queen. 

I would love to see inside her head, just for a minute or two. Half an hour, tops. Surely it would explain so much to me if I could just get a look at the world from her point of view. What is it about getting up time or teeth-brushing time, or getting dressed time, or leaving for school time, or mealtimes, or going to bed time that is so incendiary? If only I knew. Her temper can go from 0-60 in a matter of milliseconds. There will be hardly any warning before the balloon goes up. And when it does, we need to run for cover. She can scream, she can shout, she can kick, hit, throw things and turn over small coffee tables. There is no earthly point in reasoning; the order of the day is to prevent serious injury. Most at risk are the shins and eardrums. 

Lord, keeping the peace is not easy when it is necessary to get out of bed, clean teeth, get dressed and eat meals, then do it all in reverse on a daily basis. I can't let her live on Haribo sweets in her pyjamas until her teeth go furry; I don't think that's anywhere in the job description for being someone's Mummy. So carrots need to be eaten. Toothbrushes have to do their thing. Socks need to be put on and rules have to be stuck to. 

I guess every mum feels like a referee. I'm just having a moan, that's all. If the children are quiet, playing nicely together, laughing - I rush to smile and point out how proud I am of the lovely way they're playing. Within seconds, someone's been assaulted. They can be best friends in all the world one minute - Katy wailing how will she possibly manage at infant school without her Elizabeth, who starts Juniors in September - and then moments later she'll be hurling a marker pen at Lizzie's head and telling her she's a stupid girl and she hates her. Elizabeth can be charm itself at a teddies' tea party with her little sister and half a minute later kicking Kate under the table because she was 'looking at her with a funny expression'. 

I am stern, I am understanding, I am patient, I investigate. 

I am calm, I am fair, I am judicious, I blow my stack. 

Blessed are the peacemakers. How blessed are they if they avert a crisis a few times a day, run away and hide a couple of times and then once or twice make it a whole lot worse?  What about those times when it's completely unclear who is the aggressor, who's in the wrong, who did it or threw it or tore it or spoilt it? What does the peacemaker do when two angry children with mutinous faces are expecting justice for the Nth time in an evening and the would-be peacemaker just wants a coffee and five minutes peace? 

I would love to know how you train a child in the way that she should go with gentleness and compassion when you have to tell that child that she can't have a biscuit because tea is nearly ready, knowing full well that you might as well light the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance. When do those susceptible grow out of tantrums, Father? Does it ever happen? Do I want to know the answer?

I'm not really going anywhere with this, Lord God. I love my girls and I wouldn't have them any other way. Actually, I would. I'd have them a bit less volatile. A bit more understanding of my point of view. A bit less heavy sighing and eye rolling from my older daughter and a bit less shrieking and flailing from my younger one. But I don't seriously think that my experiences differ from the norm very much. 

It's just a stage they're going through, isn't it? Isn't it?

Thankyou for my girls, God. I love them to the ends of the earth. Oh, Lord, I bet it's quieter at the ends of the earth, is it? Not so much arguing and bickering? Who has the bigger biscuit, who is hogging the red pen, whose sunflower is the largest?  I love them. I would do anything for them. I so want them to grow up as thoughtful, compassionate women. I want them to do things to help people, to make people happy, not putting themselves first whatever the cost. I want them to be fair, generous and warm. 

Sometimes it's hard to stay one step ahead; to know how to play it. I find myself making so many decisions on a daily basis and trying to second guess the outcome of each one. Always analysing the implications, looking for negative precedents that I inadvertently set that might come back to bite me one day. I know the danger that lies in the three words, 'Just this once...' 

I know the onerous weight of having to be oh-so-fair every step of the way. Nobody's slice of cake must be larger than anyone else's.  The felt-tip pens must be equidistant from both colouring books. Perish the thought that one should get to wear their favourite T-shirt when the other's is in the wash. Often I feel ill-equipped for the task of being a mum; I don't feel very grown up myself. 

Endlessly entertaining, endlessly confounding. Frequently surprising, frequently infuriating. Challenging, amazing, hilarious and awe-inspiring, my daughters leave me shouting with frustration and speechless. 

'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.'

Matthew 5:9

Lord, does this include those of us that simply want to make a happy home for our families? For those of us that resolve every night to be more patient with our children, and for those of us who look forward to seeing their little faces as they emerge into the playground after a school day only to be cross and irritable before they even get back home?  

I do my best to avoid flare-ups and disagreements and sometimes I unthinkingly cause them. I try to choose my battles. I try to intercept missiles and intervene in a timely manner, and sometimes I put my head in the sand and hope that nobody gets seriously hurt. I think this is family life. Am I wrong? Somewhere, is there a mother who presides over a brood of children who never have a cross word? Nobody ever feels hard done to? 

I don't think so. 

Lord, I know that you don't have any grandchildren. My two girls are your children and so am I. I have my fair share of sulks and strops and tantrums. I dig my heels in and refuse to be placated just as Katy does. I roll my eyes and do my own thing like Lizzie. Lord, is it as frustrating to be our Heavenly Father as it is sometimes for me to be their earthly mother? 

Give me what I need to do this job well, Lord. Give me wisdom and an insight into their world. Give me a sense of humour. A bigger one. A better one. A sense of humour that's more easily accessed than mine sometimes seems to be. The ability to throw caution to the wind and let them make a mess without fretting that everything isn't perfect. 

More love. More generosity. More gentleness. More fun.

This job is far too big for just me, Lord. You chose me to be mummy to these wonderful children so full of potential and you don't make mistakes - you think that between us, me and you, we can do it.  Help me hold up my end of the bargain. Lord, I need your help. I need you to teach me to be all the things that we want them to be; no good trying to get them to do as I say and not as I do. Change my heart to be more like yours, Father. I'd rather have them take after you than me. Teach me to guide and to forgive as you do, over and over again; and the many times that I get it wrong, Lord, give me the humility to own up and be grown up. 

Thankyou for the immeasurable blessing of my two girls. For their smiles, their wit, their energy and their inspiration. I would do anything for them - I pray that they know that. Please Lord, help me to help them grow up to know right from wrong. To choose kindness over selfishness and forgiveness over conflict. To understand their worth and know that they are loved so, so much. By us and by you. 

I once asked you for patience. You gave me two children so that I could practice and get good at it. Hmm. I won't make that mistake again. Maybe when I'm as old as Methuselah I'll have patience in buckets. Alternatively, by then I might just be so hard of hearing that I can't hear the shouting.