Category: On parenting

Are you ‘abiding’?

Last week’s sermon included the passage that was my favourite when I was growing up – John 15, the vine and the branches. One phrase kept cropping up on Sunday – ‘Abide in me’. I haven’t been able to shake it so far this week, and I think it may be because it is a lesson I need to relearn. So what does it mean to abide? I looked up some online dictionary definitions and I really like some of the words Brainy Quote uses to describe ‘abide’:

‘To wait; to pause; to delay. To stay; to continue in a place; to have one’s abode; to dwell; to sojourn; to remain stable or fixed in some state or condition; to continue; to remain; to wait for; to be prepared for; to await; to watch for; to endure; to sustain; to submit to.’

Wow. There’s a lot to digest in there. And I think the overriding sense is of taking your time, making space and waiting to hear from God. To linger with Him rather than ticking off time spent with Him as another job done successfully before rushing onto the next one. To truly abide in Him, which is how the Scriptures say we bear fruit as Christians, we need to open ourselves up to Him constantly – wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Now, as a mum of two small kids I have certainly learned the art of talking to God while doing a hundred and one other things. And I think that’s what He likes – He wants to interact with us in all our ‘daily doings’. But I also think it is important to draw aside and come before Him quietly each day. Our lives are so full of ‘noise’ and ‘stuff’ that we can be totally distracted even when we are supposedly communing with God! And He very rarely shouts at us – His is that still, small voice. How are we supposed to hear it when it is being crowded out by everything else? When did you last hear it? I have been really challenged by the fact that I am now writing and editing for Christian publications, so am spending more time in the Word and studying than I have done since the kids were born, and yet the craziness of my schedule means I don’t feel like I have connected with God intimately for a little while. I think the words ‘Abide in me’ are a gentle nudge to me that He’s missing me. How about you? Is He missing you too?

A pioneering woman, pt 2

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The second part of my interview with Wendy Virgo:

How did you juggle supporting your husband and being involved in ministry while you raised such a large family? What were the biggest challenges?

Very early in our marriage, Terry and I redefined what we meant by “ministry”. Everything in our lives was to be seen as under the umbrella of serving God; there was no distinction between “sacred” and “secular”. So my ministry to God included loving and supporting my husband, loving and training my children and creating a godly and peaceful home and all the domestic activities involved in that. It also included praying, worshipping, seeking God for gifts of the Spirit and teaching and encouraging others. So as it was all ministry, I didn’t feel I was having to juggle home and ministry! But I did have to fight for time to study and pray, and I learned to pray while I was doing other things.

I found there were seasons in life, so that consistent times of prayer and Bible study were difficult after the birth of a new baby in the period of night feeds. I had to learn to talk to God while I was ironing or driving to the supermarket. There wasn’t much time for reading so I would learn to “feed” on a few verses of scripture. I also drew strength from being with others in prayer times etc. A young mum can feel very alone, so it is important to make time to meet with others.

As you said above that you had to fight for time to study and pray, could you share what you have found most useful for your own personal devotional times?

I have used different methods of personal study over the years. Sometimes I have followed a year plan; sometimes used daily notes. (I actually write for CWR’s excellent “Inspiring Women Every Day” series). I particularly like using the Bible Speaks Today series of commentaries edited by John Stott. I prefer to work through a book of the Bible rather than to jump about. That way you get a much more in depth understanding of the development of Biblical truth than if you just hop from one topic to another…although topical study can also have its place.

As the children grew up of course, the rhythm of life kept changing and now Terry and I are in the happy season of being able to pray together every day, which we really love!

A re-focusing on my role

I said I was going to write more on why I missed the last day of the Newfrontiers conference – so here goes… Last week was utterly manic for me – great but manic. It was wonderful to be able to plan to attend the whole conference, as I only normally go for one or two days due to childminding issues. But each day we travelled to Brighton – and each day, during the breaks, I was running around speaking to people, making new contacts etc for work purposes. In that sense it was a double blessing for me, and extra exhausting! But then we arrived home on the Thurs early eve… Within an hour we were heading for A&E. Why? Because our youngest had blood pouring from his mouth. The two of them had been playing around on the floor of his sister’s bedroom while I tried to call them into the bath. As I pulled them apart he fought me and slipped – albeit 2 inches – onto the carpeted floor and started howling. I thought it must have been a carpet burn on his chin as I saw he hadn’t put his hands down to steady himself. But no. There was a huge amount of blood and two bottom teeth sticking out alarmingly far from his mouth and at 90 degrees to where they should have been. What followed was an evening in one A&E, then another early morning trip to a second A&E, a wait for the plastic surgery team, a painful try at removing his teeth without any pain relief and then a different type of painful wait for a recovery bed in what was a hospital now closed to paediatric patients. God’s favour was on us though, and the doctor who saw us wouldn’t give up and finally secured him a place at the end of the dental day surgery list. My poor little boy had managed to lacerate his bottom gum with his top teeth and, while the gum healed itself with what seemed to be miraculous speed, his bottom two front teeth were not salvageable. So we went through an incredibly short but traumatic general anesthetic process – he fought it, I fought back tears – and then he bounced back far quicker than we did!

There is nothing like an accident to refocus yourself and I am glad that it was my basic mothering instincts that took over that day. Okay, yes, if I’m honest I did have one or two thoughts about how was I going to work out particular articles without seeing the people I was due to on the last day of the conference. And I had been so so chuffed to be at the start of the conference, having never been, that I was really looking forward to being at the final day of the final international conference! But that did all pale into insignificance when I saw my poor boy and I just desperately wanted to hold him, to make it better, to take his place. All the times I had worried whether I was not paying my kids enough attention, whether I had too much of a focus on the new direction my work is taking, whether church takes too high a priority in our household, were swiped away that day when I realised without a doubt that I would make sure my kids came first. They are such a precious gift from God and I am determined to be the best mum I can be!

A whirlwind week

It has been a little while since I’ve been on here – mainly because life has reached whirlwind proportions. And the thoughts spinning around my head also have me reeling from their speed. So I’m trying to catch a moment to slow down and take stock. The last week has certainly been a varied one: I had my birthday, found out my mum was incredibly ill, had a terrible conversation with a magazine editor that left me wondering if Christians really can be that judgemental, shot down to see my mum in hospital, enjoyed a fantastic international day at church and also made some great new contacts with book and magazine publishers.

Each night I have fallen into bed late, absolutely exhausted, only to be denied sleep by my 2 year old, who really doesn’t seem to understand that waking up at night does not equate to coming to say hello to mummy, daddy and his sister! Even with the gate firmly fixed on his door he is still finding a way of keeping us all up at night. I look at him tearing around during each day and wonder where on earth he gets his energy from – and whether I could borrow some of it! In amongst the busyness, and emotional turmoil at times, I worry that I am so focused on different things I am not parenting to the best of my ability. I guess as parents we always have that nagging feeling – could we be doing things better? Are we juggling too much? Our society seems to only accept survivors – supermums who can spin every plate highly successfully and look fantastic at the same time!

That’s not really the reason for this entry though. I could write a series of blogs on that subject – and on the fact that while I believe in a God who can heal today, and have seen miracles in front of my eyes, one of those dearest to me – my own mum – continues to suffer pain from a debilitating disease day after day, year after year. I know suffering and healing are subjects I’m never going to fully understand, but I do have lots of questions I’m waiting to ask God when I do see him face to face! God does seem to have a way of turning things upside down – I travelled to see my mum expecting her to be hardly able to lift her head from her hospital bed but I was greeted by a beaming face as she had just had a chance to talk to a daughter of a patient about her faith and offered to pray for her. Gone was the downcast soul who had had enough of struggling with each breath and here was someone excited and vitalised by her faith once more. She said herself that every time she is in hospital she has such ‘divine encounters’ and that being there had lifted her spirit from the depth of despair. She is still physically in severe pain, but her spirit is back in line with her God.

All of this has made my own spirit go up and down. A high point was definitely yesterday at church where we celebrated the diversity of nationalities within our church. Sam Amara from Nigeria visited us and preached and we feasted on a wonderful array of dishes from around the world afterwards.

Yes it has definitely been a pretty crazy week. And today has continued to be crazy. I’m on my own for a few hours, for which I’m exceedingly grateful to my husband, but busy organising work and what I need to do before heading off to Brighton for the last Newfrontiers International Leaders’ Conference, Together on a Mission. I am excited about what God will do when we are all together – I just hope I manage to stay awake! ;D

Feeding the clown while half asleep…

I had a really fulfilling day yesterday. Absolutely manic but I felt I achieved a lot and got on top of loads of things that had been hanging over me. As well as looking after my son I cleaned the whole house from top to bottom, worked on some articles, came up with some more article ideas, did a load of ironing, cooked a nice meal for me and hubby after the kids were tucked up in bed and even managed to watch a film with him too as it was our only night off this week. I went to bed exhausted but happy. I had just snuggled down into the covers, just got myself into that half asleep state, when in padded our little boy saying the rain had woken him up. I got up, told him the rain wasn’t scary, put him back into bed, tucked him in, kissed him good night and prayed with him then left his room while saying there was no need to get back up again till morning. This little routine happened about 8 times over the next 21/2 hours – then he finally fell asleep… only to appear again at 4am. This time I was so exhausted I couldn’t even bring myself to get back up and let him crawl in with us. I never normally do that – and it was a bad decision because then I only got fitful snoozes after that. As our daughter ran in at 7am all bright and cheerful my heart sank, as I knew I was helping at the school fayre all day and really needed to be livelier than I was feeling! I know there are so many other parents out there that have to cope with this lack of sleep on a regular basis. For me, it is one of the hardest things about parenting. It’s at such times, when something out of the ordinary happens, that I realise that the pace I live my life at is only just about do-able. I did really enjoy helping out at the fayre on the ‘feed the clown’ stall but I felt incredibly sick. As soon as we got home both me and my son crashed out on our bed for a couple of hours – actually quite nice but not a luxury I can afford most days. I asked my husband to help me make sure we both go to bed early each night this week – as it was getting later and later and now I’m just past exhaustion. I know I was talking about spiritual spring cleaning the other day – but we also have a responsibility to look after our bodies too – and this one is just plain tired…

Appreciating one another

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Many of the thoughts that get me delving more deeply into my brain to ponder an issue occur when I’m doing something mundane. I guess that’s just a reflection of my life as a mum! I was busy dishing up dinner the other night when it suddenly dawned on me that I had probably already prepared, cooked and served up hundreds – if not thousands – of dishes since getting married and that there is no end in sight! We will have been married 18 years in August, our eldest will turn 6 in September, but I will still be clocking up the amount of meals I’ve prepared for us well after the time my husband and I retire! I started to get the hump – started to think about how many jobs a mother – and wife – does that go on behind the scenes, unnoticed. But then something in my spirit stopped me. And I started remembering all the times when my husband had sacrificially given of his time and I’d taken it for granted. And the times when my kids may have done something I’d been trying to teach them to do for ages and they suddenly ‘got it’ – but in my weary state I didn’t seem to praise or encourage them that much. I then started thinking about all the people there are in our church. A church doesn’t function without the help of its members and I wondered how often I’d thanked the welcome team for putting out the chairs faithfully each week for example. And, as I head up the worship team with my husband, I started thinking about all the musicians we are responsible for. How often do I take the time to check how each one of them is? I know I make sure to thank each one that plays alongside me on a particular Sunday, but what about all the other times when I’m not leading – do I still make time to show my appreciation? I know that it would seem forced to thank everyone every week, but I did get stopped in my tracks and just believe it is worth each one of us thinking about this. Do we truly appreciate those people who are around us day by day – the ones that we ‘do life with’? We could all do with some encouragement – why not tell someone how much you appreciate them today?

The gift of parents

As I said in my last post, we went to HTB’s Relationship Central Conference last week. With two small children at home, I was only able to go because my parents kindly offered to stay with us and take on my role. They stayed on for a few more days in order to enjoy the weekend with us all, and to help me out further as I had a backlog of article writing I needed to focus on. Just having one clear day without constant ‘little person interruptions’ has enabled my stress levels to go right down as I now feel things are back to an achievable level. While I feel bad that I didn’t get to see my parents that much, we did manage to have a few fun evenings – and mum and I grabbed a couple of short girly shopping trips! They left this afternoon but all day I have been thinking about, and thanking God for, the blessing of parents. Not only are they happy to travel up and help whenever we need them to, my mum does a lot to lighten my load around the house too and my dad amuses my son whatever my mum and I are up to! And it is wonderful that my kids get to see their wider family fairly regularly, even though we aren’t local to one another. It brings a richness and vitality to their life – and stepping back from the hands on parenting gives me a chance to view my children from a slight distance, and the result is always fresh delight (okay the double meltdown that occurred after my parents left wasn’t great, but I am certain I handled better than I would have done usually). I have been challenged today as to whether my parents truly know how much I value their practical help, the love they show to me and my family and their words of wisdom. If you feel the same about your parents, do they know it too?

Relationship central

On Friday I had the huge privilege of attending Holy Trinity Brompton’s Relationship Central Conference. HTB is where Alpha was born, and those running the conference created the hugely successful Marriage Course and Marriage Preparation Course. On Friday they launched their new Parenting Children and Parenting Teenagers Courses. Both promise to be as helpful as the marriage courses, which are now run in over 100 countries round the world. Just before our pastor went on sabbatical we took time out to go on the Marriage Course at a local church that was running it. It was so helpful to have that opportunity just to pause and take stock. As we are in the process of buying a building for the church now we were excited about the prospect of being able to run such a course there in the future, which is why we went to the conference. Having been, we are now hoping to run the parenting ones too!

As leaders will know, when you are in charge of a church it is difficult to ever find the time to visit other churches, so I was really keen to go to HTB as I’d never had the chance to (even though I used to work in a publishing house just down the road from it 15 years ago). I was blown away by the welcome. The conference was brilliantly organised and executed by many friendly faces all eager to help make the day as accessible and enjoyable as possible. Enticing muffins greeted us as we arrived, and the food just kept coming all day long! I have never been so well fed at a conference! 🙂 My husband recently attended the HTB leadership conference and he commented that, yet again, the church proved that they certainly know how to put on a conference. The highlight was definitely meeting and listening to Nicky and Sila Lee. God has certainly placed a particular gifting in them but it was so refreshing to see them in the flesh and watch them banter with one another. It makes them seem ‘normal’ and helps put across the notion that what they are teaching is attainable – they aren’t super spiritual beings, but just like every one of us. The materials they have put together have been done in such a way to make them as cheap and easy to use as they possibly could – another attention to detail that is going to bless thousands across the world as they start to implement these new courses in their churches.

Half-term antics

These holidays have seemed much longer than a week – we have certainly packed a lot in! My five-year-old daughter seems to have far surpassed her years. Her dad found a cabin bed at a bargain price online so she is now sleeping near the ceiling, fully kitted out with a sofa and desk underneath her bed. It would be a perfect hideaway for a teenager – every time I sit to read her a bedtime story in the space underneath I think that I’d like the room to be mine! I think there may be a bit of reliving our lost childhood going on for both her parents! 😉 When she went into that bed her brother moved from a cot into her old bed. Packing up all the baby stuff last week, and now the cot this week, has seemed like the end of an era. I know people always say it, but they do grow up fast! When you are in the midst of it it doesn’t necessarily feel like that, but every so often there are those moments that take you by surprise, cause you to step back and marvel at how much they’ve grown and developed right under your nose without you realising it. They are such a gift and each moment so precious – I just need to slow down enough to enjoy them…

Cooking with a toddler in tow…

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This morning I decided to utilise one of my favourite presents from last Christmas again – my slow cooker. For some reason I was feeling more relaxed than usual with my cooking, so I suggested my little boy ‘help’. Normally I’m cooking on the hop, taking a quick break from working, playing a game with the kids or one of the many chores that are piled up waiting and so I find it hard to cope with the extra time – and mess – that cooking with a toddler entails. I’m also a bit of a control freak (I graciously say ‘bit’ to describe myself now as having two small children has certainly forced me not to be quite so freakish about things!).

Stood on a chair next to me my son was ecstatic every time a new vegetable came out of the drawer. He gasped at the sound of the pork sizzling in the pan as I browned it off, found the steam that came out of the slow cooker when I then placed the meat in it fascinating and begged me to let him help me do some chopping. Taking the time to see things through his eyes really helped me focus too. I learned today that God really is with me in the mundane. He showed me how much pleasure can be found in listening to a toddler try and say ‘aubergine’ and ‘courgette’ for the first time. I looked around my kitchen, at the mess and pile of jobs left to do, but realised that slowing down, just for a few minutes, can make so much difference to my outlook for the rest of the day. Now to see how long it lasts – especially as my son is currently on my lap busy pushing keys and playing with the mouse as I try to write this!! ;D