New Year: raising my game

Everywhere I look there are people setting goals, making resolutions and girding their loins as, inexorably, the New Year rolls in once more. The New Year's apathy of the old familiar days where the mood came down with the Christmas decorations doesn't seem to prevail any more; there is purpose and determination and energetic insight right, left and centre.

I've been asked a couple of times what the New Year looks like for me. What does 2015 have in store?

Well. On one level, I wish I knew. As usual, the New Year stretches ahead of me like a blank page, pristine in its unsullied whiteness, waiting for my footprints, scufflings and scribblings. I have hopes and dreams and fears and expectations, but ultimately there is only One person who has already familiar with this year and all the others and knows how the plot unfolds, and it's not His way to give too many clues. I have a tendency to want to know things up front so that I can prepare myself, but even that's all a bit of a fallacy; a grappling for control over things that are in nobody's control but His. But - He has never let me down.

Last year was a vintage year for me - one that I'll remember as a Great Year. Not easy by any means, but I have changed more profoundly in the last twelve months, I think, than in any similar period in the whole of the rest of my life. I have done things that I never would have had the courage to have done because I have chosen to trust that God will never let me down; and He didn't. I have asked Him to make changes in me that I have, all my life, been unable to make in myself, and then trusted Him to do it, and He has begun a process that is making a fundamental difference to who I am.

I didn't see any of it coming. This time last year I was doing the 'blank page' bit and bemoaning that I couldn't see what was ahead and God smiled and said, 'All in good time,' and so I am learning, slowly, that it's better that I don't know. Things unfold in their own time - His - and He knows what I can handle and when.

So, I don't have the first idea of what might happen this year, and for that it turns out that I'm grateful.

However, I can see a couple of things coming in my direction this new year; thundering ominously toward me like oncoming trains.

My eldest daughter, Elizabeth, is a talented swimmer. She dives in, starts swimming, and quite often gets to the other end of the pool a way ahead of everyone else. She loves being in the water and in training can often be found doing a somersault in the middle of a lap just because she's happy. We have had a fantastic year watching her begin her transformation from swimming lessons to competitive swimming and the inevitable has happened a little earlier than we anticipated.

She's been promoted to the next squad. This is brilliant!  Her hard work, commitment and talent have been recognised and it is indeed time for a new challenge as her current squad had little left to offer her. Time to move on. Time to raise her game.

And mine.

Time to move on to a much more rigorous training schedule that involves five sessions of swimming a week plus land-training, plus travelling to different pools to train, plus weekend galas, to say nothing of the hours spent rinsing swimsuits, drying towels and producing bananas and muesli bars from handbags and glove compartments.

The piece de resistance? Two of these sessions (mercifully only two - the next squad up has five of these) are scheduled for 5.30am. AM meaning 'in the morning'. Five o'clock. Oh-five-hundred hours.

Most people grimace when I tell them this, but I have met nobody who has reacted with the same unbridled panic that I did on first hearing that this was imminent.

There is nobody in the world who likes their sleep more than I do. Nobody. Not a soul. So, I think it is with some amusement that God has put me in this position, and I think I know why.

I am afraid of not getting enough sleep. 

I never used to be; back in the pre-children days I was like anyone else in that occasionally I had a late night, went to work the next day and the world didn't end. I got tired, I carried on, I had an early night, it was all ok. But then I had a baby and found that first year as a mother so, so difficult.

I don't know why exactly - probably many reasons. Elizabeth was a baby who wanted to be held constantly, not the self-sufficient kind that could be placed in a cot to gurgle contentedly.  I was freshly bereaved (my Dad died the week before she was born) and deeply depressed; I am the kind of person to make heavy weather of everything... all these things and the completely normal new baby stuff make tiredness inevitable - but I reached a level of exhaustion that I hadn't dreamed of in my wildest nightmares.

I don't make any claims to being the only person in the world ever to have been tired, and it slowly improved a little only to happen again when Katy was born. Crippling exhaustion that took control of me and made the world a hostile place and me incapable of functioning properly in it. Now that the girls are nine and seven respectively I have a deeply held conviction that I am in possession of a ten-year sleep deficit that may not be corrected until the kids have left home.

Joking apart, I live in fear of ever getting that tired again.

So does my husband, and by that I mean that he lives in fear of me ever getting that tired again. I was horrible to live with, and even now, if I'm in need of sleep, he is careful to give me opportunities to nap rather than turn into the miserable, brittle, despairing, snarling woman that I can be when I've had insufficient sleep.

I was mulling this over with a friend a few months ago and I concluded in hushed tones (so that God wouldn't hear) that there was a chance that I had put sleep in such a position of importance in my life that  I'd elevated it to the status of god.

I'd made a god of sleep. Oh, shush.

So here I am, mother of a nine-year-old who wants to be a swimmer, and so I need to get her to the pool at silly o'clock twice a week. Do I think God heard that conversation?

God, are you smiling? Are you planning something?  Last year, with your help, I conquered several lifelong fears. Is this next on the agenda?

I'm really not looking forward to it, but I can see that from your point of view, it's necessary.

I'd love to be unafraid of being tired. Seriously, it has a hold over me, the fear of insufficient sleep. I lie awake sometimes watching the clock and worrying that there are not enough hours left before morning and there's no chance of tomorrow being a Good Day; it's already too late. There are things that I don't do because it would mean a late night or an early morning. Sleep isn't just something necessary that happens at the end of the day; I spend far too much time thinking about it, planning it, and probably too much time doing it, though it rarely feels like it.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be climbing out of bed at 5am to wake my slumbering nine-year old, cajole her to eat a banana and a muesli bar while being unable to stomach anything myself, drag my hands through my hair before scraping ice from the windscreen to get her on the poolside for 5.20am to do her thing with her team-mates. 5am holds no fear for her - indeed she's beside herself with excitement and can't wait to start the new programme.

The cafe isn't open until 8am so I'll have to take my own coffee.

We said that as long as she's enjoying herself, win or lose, we'd get her where she needs to be, when she needs to be there.

She needs to be there early.

So, that's one of the things that this year holds.

Last year I trusted God and He did amazing things. I'm still trusting Him.

New every morning

Goodnight, God.

I'm so tired. So tired that I'm all mixed up. I can't think straight. 

Last night I wanted to get an early night because I was tired and by bedtime I'd developed a muscle spasm in the big muscles of my neck that I couldn't lie down. For hours I tried different constellations of pillows and painkillers and kept getting up to re-warm my wheaty so that I could sort of poke it in between my shoulder and my neck but the result was a terrible night. Coupled with a mini Katy-tantrum at about 5.50am I'm sure that you could tell that today wasn't going to be a great one. 

I started it with a scowl. A stiff neck and a scowl. 

I feel as if I haven't done too badly in the circumstances, but you might have different ideas. This morning Mum and I took the children to get their feet measured and buy new shoes and Elizabeth ended up with some trainers that I think are awful. She, of course, loves them. Glitter, different colours, shiny bits...ick. Sigh. They were the only ones that fit. I wanted to stamp, but I didn't. We had lunch in a cafe and they barely touched their meals. We came home and I wanted half an hour's peace before we went to a party for one of Katy's classmates' fifth birthday. I didn't get it. Spent two hours in a packed soft-play place bouncing between Katy who was involved in the party and a whiny Lizzie, who wasn't. Refereed on the way home as they picked on each other in a tired and crabby sort of way and then delivered them through bath time and a bed time with many false starts (well, false finishes, actually - I kept thinking they were settled and they weren't) and I haven't shouted. Have I? No, I haven't shouted. 

I didn't actually shout. I felt like it. Well, maybe internally, a bit of shrieking. For those amongst us that could see in my head, (that's you, then) I don't suppose I acquitted myself that well, but at least I didn't demolish either of my children by bellowing at them. The odd snap, maybe... And I did do a bit of an angry dance after taking Katy back to bed for the fourth time, but it was out of anyone's line of sight. Except yours. 

Ah well. I think that maybe I'll settle for that. 

A quote for the day on my iPhone this morning:

'Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.'

Lamentations 3:22-23

Oh, God, thank you for that. New every morning. They need to be, because I crumple them up and throw them aside so often. I am saved, but so often I fail to find any joy in it. I know that you love me and want only good for me, and yet I turn away because in my creature-wisdom I think I see things more clearly than you. I know that I am never alone, and yet I complain that I can't feel you. 

CS Lewis said:

'Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.'

Doesn't it just. I trust you. I do. Then I don't. Then I try to but I don't manage it. Then at a moment of Spirit-led prayer or worship it all comes together for a nanosecond and I get a glimpse of how life might look if I did, actually, completely, let you take my troubles from me - and then it evaporates into a sticky slick of anxieties clutched in my sweaty little palm. 

When it comes down to it, what can I do, though? 

Who can I rely on, if not you?  I can't rely on me because I constantly disappoint myself. I can't even keep up to my own standards, let alone anyone else's. I let myself down. Who else? Who will take care of Katy?  The doctors? Well, maybe, but they tried twice last year and her tumours are back. Tomorrow we'll take her to a new hospital to see a new consultant and, who knows, make plans for a new operation or try a new treatment. Perhaps it will solve the problem, I don't know, but I'm wary and I'm scared and every fibre of my being resists entrusting my precious daughter to a doctor or an anaesthetist who doesn't care for her as I do. 

But you do. You love Katy more than I do. Not sure about that, but I read it in the Bible and so it must be true. Father, I'm relying on you. I'm going to have to. I'm going to put out the light in a minute and lie down and I'm going to try to leave it all with you. Try and open my tightly clenched hands and let you take the worries from me: my anxiety about getting up at the crack of dawn and getting us all out of the house in time. My worry that there's a forecast of snow for tomorrow and we're travelling to another city for a 9am appointment. My concerns about finding the place, getting there on time, the cost of train tickets, tram tickets, getting wet and cold on the way, finding somewhere for lunch, getting back in time to prepare for visitors over Easter. 

All of which are satellite worries around the main one, which is all about what is wrong with my beautiful daughter and what can be done about it? Will it hurt her? Will she get better? Will she be frightened? 

How strong do I have to be?

'Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.'

Amen. Your compassions are new every morning.  I'm going to be needing tomorrow morning's, Lord. And if tonight is anything like most nights for the last three weeks my doubts and fears and panics start to creep back overnight so I'll need to rely on you all over again in the morning.

Don't let me be consumed, my God. I'm frightened for my little girl and I'm frightened for me. 

Right, I'm needing sleep. 

Come with us tomorrow. Give the doctor wisdom and compassion and gentleness, please. 

Let's get this thing over with, can we, this time?

Conviction and condemnation

'I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity."

CS Lewis

Lord, I know where he was coming from when he said this. 

I'm not entirely sure about the port, mind you. I like a glass of port after a meal; at Christmas I was prevailed upon to try blue stilton with my port (as you know, I am not a fan of mouldy cheeses) and I have to say that the port really did make it an exceptional experience. Somehow the strong taste of the cheese and the sweet richness of the port combined to make it very pleasant indeed. Still, I think I am more of a red wine sort of girl. Or a nice demi-sec champagne. 

But that's not the point. 

Discomfort. How much is it of my own making, and how much is healthy discomfort? With regard to what I believe, how much is justifiable and how much inappropriate?  How much of the discomfort around issues to do with faith in my life is down to you, and how much to me?  What things are issues that you are nudging me to resolve, and how much comes from the other guy?

The difference between conviction and guilt, for instance.

The other day my regular devotional email asked me what my daily quiet times were like and suggested that perhaps I should get up earlier in the morning to make sure that I spent time with you. Every fibre of my being shouted 'Nooooo!'  Please be assured that it's not because I don't want to spend time with you; I very much do. It's more that I am not a morning person. Left to myself I would stay up late and get up mid-morning but you know that. It's not particularly compatible with having a family, however. I don't think I ever greet the day with enthusiasm and spring out of bed with energy. It's a grudging leg that slides slowly out from under the duvet after every last bit of 'snooze' has been wrung from my alarm clock. 

But let's not dwell on my lack of sleep. There lies great disgruntlement. And you've heard it all before. Actually, most people of my acquaintance have more information than they needed on the subject of my sleep deficit.

What I'm interested in is that after reading this email with some scepticism, I sent it to a friend who I know has a similar devotion to her pillow with a facetious comment about it not being my desired reading for the day. I know she would have sympathised. What she came back with was a one line suggestion that I should think about whether I was feeling convicted, or guilty.

I believe that you do sometimes convict us. You make us aware that we need to change our behaviour. You point out an area of our lives that needs work. You love us while doing it; mostly you are gentle and understanding, but you are also perfectly righteous and cannot stand and watch us indulgently while we do something that offends you. I also believe that you choose your timing carefully, because if you convicted me all at once of all that is wrong with my life I would shrivel up and expire.  But when the time is right, and you know that we are in a position to do something about it, you might just whisper, 'Ahem. Have a think about what you just did.'

So, how do I know the difference between conviction and guilt?  Do I feel guilty about not finding a quiet time every day? Yes, sometimes.  Do I feel convinced that it should be held first thing in a morning?  No, I don't think so. I hope not. Please, no. I do accept that last thing at night isn't so good. Especially not lying in bed with the light off and covers tucked round my neck. Surely after lunch is good enough?  Or sort of mid-morning? Is there really something special about first thing when I'm clinging to the last vestiges of a warm bed? I'd be interested in hearing your views on this. Well, I think I would. 

I'm getting off the point again. 

I think the difference is that when I feel guilty, I start feeling bad about myself, and negative thoughts crowd in. 

'There's no point in trying to get this right, I'll never do it.'

'If I can't do this, I'm not a very good person.'

'I'm a bit of a failure, really, aren't I?'

...and so on.  Coupled with my constant need to Get It Right, this is guilt for me. I easily feel defeated, which makes trying again so much more difficult. Giving up seems an easier option. Guilt has me focusing on the problem. 

Conviction is different. Conviction seems to be when I suddenly stop and think to myself, 'Blimey, I should be doing that differently.'  I sometimes feel sad that I got something wrong, but the long, lingering sense of blame isn't there. There's an answer to the problem. When I feel guilty I feel ashamed and heavy. When I feel convicted I feel that I need to be forgiven, yes, but that things aren't ruined forever. I haven't blown it. I'm not the sum of my failures. It isn't a comfortable feeling, as CS Lewis said, but it isn't crushing, defeating, depressing, insidiously demotivating.

Conviction comes with the knowledge that you will forgive me and I can try again. Guilt, on the other hand, discourages me from trying again because I feel too bad about things. 

Guilt comes with condemnation, and conviction comes with forgiveness. With guilt, a door slams shut when there's realisation of wrong, whereas with conviction, the door is open and there's a light shining from the next room.

You said that you came not to condemn the world, but to save it. So if I feel condemned, then I believe it's not you that's doing the condemning. 

But if I realise that I need forgiveness, then I know that you are waiting with open arms and a smile to forgive me and send me out to try again. 

'There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.'

Romans 8:1

And that's me. In you. So there's no condemnation. 

So, do I feel convicted or condemned about early morning quiet times?

If it's all the same to you, I would rather shrug off my feeling of discomfort about the concept that it's necessary to get up ridiculously early in the morning (because in this house to beat the children out of bed and have any peace first thing would mean rising before the birds. That might be a slight exaggeration). I'd rather continue my search for a better time. I confess that my search has not perhaps been relentless and determined. I could probably do better. 

Help me to notice the difference, Lord. Help me not to get dragged down with guilt and anxiety over the many ways that life goes wrong and I need to do things differently. Help me to understand when you are prompting me to come to you and sort something out, and when I am being lied to by the one that the Bible calls the Accuser.  

Help me to understand the difference between conviction and guilt. Help me to be honest and keep a short account with you so that the rubbish doesn't pile up round me so that I can't see over it.

So, quiet times. 

You tell me. I'm listening. I'm bracing myself in readiness for a word from you.

But I'd ask you to remember that I'm not at my best first thing in a morning, and certainly not before my first coffee. You made me that way....

Go back to sleep, please

Hello God.

Today has been one of those days that all mums of small children will be familiar with. Today started too soon. 

I am at my absolute worst when I'm tired. I love sleeping, and I'm very good at it. I also need a lot of sleep. Some people can function perfectly efficiently and affably on a few short hours of sleep but I can't. We are away from home at the moment and last night the children took an age to settle as they are a) in the same room, which is a novelty, and b) in a strange place, with strange beds, strange noises and so on. They then woke up once or twice in the night and needed more attention, and were up to stay at five o'clock.  That's 5am. 0500. In the morning. I was not best pleased.

Lord, it must be so much easier to be a mum if you are a morning person. My Mum, for example, was always up early; always up and washed and dressed and breakfasted before my brother and I emerged to bother her. I never once woke Mum in a morning or got told off for starting the day too early. Now, maybe this says more about me as a child if I never got up early but I can't believe that. All children get up early, don't they? 

Mine do. And it seems to be getting earlier, to my immense discomfort. 

Every night I go and see my girls before I go to bed. Every night I sit on the edge of their beds and say a prayer for them and I make a promise to myself to be more patient. To be less cross. To be smilier and less critical. Then come the morning it's all gone, poof, blown it before breakfast because they wake me up and I hate being woken up.

I suppose the answer is to go to bed earlier - but after their bedtime at night and after I've got them settled I have a precious couple of hours to do all the things that I have to do and all the things I want to do before going to bed myself. No matter how tired I am it seems to stretch to longer than it should and as a result I am in sleep deficit mode before my head hits the pillow. 

Moan moan moan. Complain. 

I think perhaps when the children reach adulthood and leave home I shall spend a fortnight in bed. Maybe that's when I'll balance the books. But that day is a long way away and I need a coping mechanism soon, please. 

I just want a tighter grip on my temper.

I am a light sleeper. I never used to be, or at least I don't think I was, but when the children came I learned to be woken by the slightest little noise. Bryan could always sleep through the girls' screaming but all it took for me was the little baskety noise that indicated that Elizabeth had wriggled free of her swaddling and was waving her arms and legs around and batting the Moses basket and I was awake. Not willingly awake, but awake. Praying that it might be some mistake, that she might miraculously go back to sleep rather than allow her thoughts to turn to an early morning snacklet, but she usually woke up feeling peckish. Awake. 

Now it's pretty much the same. I hear the whimpers that precede shrieks when there's a nightmare. I hear doors opening and footsteps on carpet when someone is out and about. I'm sure that compromises the quality of sleep, doesn't it?

So I've had a whinge. Got that off my chest. What can you do to help, God? Well,  if it was up to me, my first choice would be that you suddenly bless both my children with the desire to get a good twelve to fourteen hours sleep per night. Could you see your way clear to that? Please? 

If not, and I suspect you won't mess with someone else's body clock in order to please me, it'll have to be me, please. 

I'm not good at this. I am often tired and when I am tired, I'm not good. I'm not nice. I am grumpy and short tempered and narky. I don't like it about myself and I admire the opposite in other people but I seem to be powerless to change it. So, as ever, if I can't, please help me, because you can.

Help me to be nicer. Help me to understand that my little girls are up and raring to go when I am not, and  yet that isn't a character flaw in them. Help me to love them for their enthusiasm to start the day instead of trying to beat it out of them. Help me to respond with love and grace and patience even when I feel like the undead. 

Hmm. Sorry for the zombie reference; for illustrative purposes only. Not because of any strange unacceptable theology.

I'm being silly, but my problem is a real one. Most mornings my day starts when I am not ready for it. I try to have my 'quiet time' first thing in a morning because last thing at night I have a tendency to fall asleep if I close my eyes. If I am permitted to wake up in my own time (and I include with an alarm clock - not talking about the sheer indulgent luxury of a lie in - ooh, just imagine...), have twenty minutes or so to read my daily readings and have a little chat with you, I feel so much better. When my girls then burst into the room I can greet them with a smile. If I manage to fit in a shower and getting dressed as well - my cup runneth over, but that doesn't often happen, more's the pity.

I know that the answer is a combination of going to bed earlier, setting the alarm a bit earlier, teaching the children to have some consideration for other people and above all, changing my own behaviour in modifying my reactions. Keeping control of what I say. Not being Crabby Mummy every morning. 

Easier said than done. It might sound a little thing, but I still need your help. Thankyou that nothing is too small for you to be concerned with. I am fed up with my days starting wrong. I am fed up with starting the day with sharp words and criticism and complaints. I am fed up with the nightly transaction of looking at my children asleep; beautiful, innocent and guileless, and resolving to be nicer and then blowing it again before breakfast. 

Help me, Lord. Help me to gain control over my brain so I can sleep more quickly and more efficiently. Help me to give love when I feel more like being cross. Help me be a better Mum. 

I'm off to bed now. Better had, I think.  

Abba, Father, my Daddy

Hello, God. Remember this?

Here's something that happened to me a couple of years ago.  Well, maybe three and a bit years ago; I can date it pretty well as I was deep in the throes of exhaustion and despair that happen when you're a newish Mum; Elizabeth was around two years old and Katy was a matter of months  - and I remember very clearly the desperate tiredness and misery that accompanies this sort of time.  Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of loveliness about it but, perhaps the Eeyore streak in me remembers the pain of it more clearly...

Anyway, Bryan was in London at work, it was about half eleven or midnight or somewhere way past my bedtime and I was staring in the face the diminishing hours before the next night time feed, but I couldn't get to sleep.  I was feeling very sorry for myself.  The girls were both asleep (and in those first few months after Kate came along that in itself was a bit of a miracle) and I needed to sleep as quickly as I could as I was far too well acquainted with 3am and knew that we would be meeting up again in a few short hours. I couldn't get to sleep and I was crying. It's so clear to me as a memory, and that's strange in itself as much of that time is a blur. I was lying on my right side, my preferred 'go-to-sleep' side, and sniffing into the pillow.

I was having a hard time praying, round about then; quiet times were simply opportunities to nod off, and I was so tired that stringing a coherent sentence together was an impossibility anyway, so my communication with you was kind of monosyllabic.  That night it consisted of, 'Help me, God' and lots of sobbing.

Then I had the clearest picture I've ever had; I wish that I was a brilliant artist because I can see your face in my mind still.  My heavenly Father, you reached out and put your arms round me. Your expression was one I understand now I'm a mother - it was a combination of sympathy and kindness and amusement too.  You were looking at me as I do at one of the children when they're distraught over something minor and self inflicted - a sort of 'my poor little love, come for a cuddle' sort of look.

I felt so sleepy it was strange.  I tried to stay awake to hang on to the feeling but I went straight to sleep and that was that.  Wouldn't it be nice to say, 'And that was the first night that both children slept through!' but the truth is I don't remember. No idea when I next got up to feed, or how long I slept that night. I will never forget your face, though.

The thing is, Lord, since I've become a mummy I'm much more aware of you as my Daddy. I know there are so many sides to you that I need to understand more; the intimacy of the Father relationship is only one facet of many, but it's wonderful to me as I struggle with being a parent, and after all my own Dad has been dead more than five years and perhaps he wasn't the cuddling kind of Dad.

It's the wonder of loving someone so so much - how my girls make me so happy and proud when they achieve something, and how disappointed I am when I see them being mean and selfish. How proud I am when they share, when they do something new, and how sad and fiercely protective I am when they get hurt.  Why should it be any different with You?  I'm sure that You smile when I finally learn something you've been trying to teach me for ages, when the penny finally drops. I hurt you so often.  And yet you came to me that night those years ago and comforted me just because you love me.  I needed you, and you came.

That's a wonderful thing.

Thankyou.