Category: The journal

Rain

2nd April 2020

Lying down on my bed while the littlest has a nap and the older two watch some afternoon tv, I listen to the reassuring rain falling gently on our roof.

My senses are all heightened these days and the tapping of those raindrops soothes with its wonderfully familiarity.

There is something about the way those raindrops fill up the soundscape as I pause to listen, allowing my attention to be fully absorbed by it. Something about it just eases my mind a little. The constant worried chatter in my head is drowned out as I simply listen to the rain, and the birds and that lone plane.

It’s so nice to pause and listen and contemplate something else other than this virus and its never ending far reaching effects.

Not my plans

23rd May 2018

All a persons’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the LORD. Proverbs 16:2

Commit to the LORD whatever you do and he will establish your plans. Proverbs 16:3

In their hearts humans plan their course, the LORD establishes their steps. Proverbs 16:9

Many are the plans in a persons heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21

Letting go

29 April 2018

I am letting go. Letting go of…

…ideas of a big family, siblings for my two, a long “career” as a mother of young children, lazy chats at playgroups, an easy social network of ready-made “mum” friends…

I am trying to balance things out. Trying to balance…

contentment with longing, acceptance with hope. Trying to perfect the tightrope walk of living with the decidedly uncontrollable unknown future while fully enjoying the present moment which holds so many joys too wonderful to be missed.

All who fall down

April 2018

The LORD upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. Psalm 145:14

Today I am weary.

I’m in my garden, feeling the warmth of an autumns evening, and all I can think of is the children. The children I see week after week whose greatest and sometimes only achievement each day is to simply get to school. Little children who got themselves up out of bed, packed their own lunch, found their own clothes to wear and possibly left the house without someone to even say goodbye to them. No warm hugs, no kisses, no ‘love you! have a good day!’ whispered into a grateful ear.  Just a parent in bed, sleeping in or sleeping off the night before or perhaps themselves simply too weary of life itself to gather the wherewithal to get up and keep on keeping on.

It is sobering to be privy to little children’s daily woes. Naturally, it presses heavy on my heart. So I pray. I think of seeds and earth and rain and I pray.

Continue reading All who fall down

We fly away…

Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. Psalm 90:10

His death sent visceral shockwaves through our community. Ripples of grief spread through every generation of this town as old tears were shed with new ones.

I did not know him personally, this strapping young man, but only of him and his young sister who attends the school I work at. It was in support of her and our school staff and simply as a member of the community that I attended his funeral.

Continue reading We fly away…

The shoreline

November 2017

But I have calmed and quietened my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. Psalm 131:2

For four years I have grieved. I have cried. At times I have basically raged like a tantruming child. I have questioned. I have despaired. My heart has been broken.

Continue reading The shoreline