I know I haven’t written here for a while, and that is because life was much more manic over the school holidays than I was expecting. It has been wonderful to have much more writing and editorial work – things have really picked up – but trying to juggle that as well as the kids being home all the time has been difficult. I know there have been times when I have been short-tempered, stressed up to my eye balls and the hard part is when you know you have a deadline there isn’t much you can do – the work needs to be done. The reason I started working again was threefold really – I had felt God told me to start writing more and then some opportunities suddenly arose, since the recession we have definitely needed some extra input financially, and I have also really enjoyed concentrating on something other than kids’ stuff. Part of me is definitely fulfilled by all this – and I know I am meant to be doing it. But not at the expense of my kids and that’s been a really difficult thing to try and balance.

I noticed particularly on holiday that things had been pretty askew. I had piously posted on someone else’s site that I was so looking forward to my holiday as I usually have a chance to really spend time journalling and talking with God about those things I hadn’t had time to in the previous busy months. But, of course, that didn’t happen this time round. We were at a wonderful place, but didn’t spend too much time there as we had full days out and about. What I did really enjoy was the focused time with my kids, doing all the fun things we had saved up our tesco vouchers to pay for! And I realised that when I came back I wanted to be able to put things more in balance.

I can’t pretend that I’ve worked out the answer – it has really appeared itself due to my son’s age. But this week he started pre-school and I have made a real effort to work hard in the few hours of the day he isn’t here, and stopped trying to loads of other things when the kids are back around and instead have taken time to do activities with them. So far we’ve had worship parties (dancing about like crazy people and singing at the tops of our voices), pretended a duvet is our home and snuggled under it for ages and made wooden dolls. I don’t know if I’ll be able to compartmentalise my life so neatly throughout the year – I’m sure there will be times of extra work busyness – but I’m so grateful for the chance to slow down and at least try to start the term off in the way I hope to continue…