Emmanuel

I was struck with awe this week at the thought of what the advent of Jesus means to me. A feeling of giddiness overcame me as I realised that when Jesus came into the world, an infant of a poor carpenter and his young bride, born under suspicious circumstances and of questionable lineage, not within the constructs of the Jewish calendar but coinciding with the census of the Roman empire, that God announced loudly and clearly that everyone is included. All are welcome, all are accepted. Whether a prostitute, an adulteress, a murderer, a magician, a thief, an orphan, a widow, a societal outcast, none are too low to have God live among them.

And so I, with all my faults and insecurities, have become a daughter of the God of the universe, a friend of the King of Kings. Emmanuel is with me. I, who was once far away, without hope and without God in the world, have been brought near through Christ. He is my peace and my access to the Father.

May we find peace, and know God with us, as we celebrate the Advent of our Lord.

Winter

Having come home from sunny California where we swam outside most days and only wore a sweater occasionally in the evening to blustery England where we've pulled out our winter coats, hats and gloves, it would be easy for me to sink into the mire of self-pity, wondering what in the world I am doing living in this climate. But as I was walking through the field to preschool yesterday, I felt God reminding me that Winter teaches me about faith. When the trees are bare, the flowers have died, the wind is bitterly cold, and most of the wildlife have gone into hiding, I find it easy to get down. I find it easy to hate England. I find it hard to get out of bed before the sun is up and to stay up hours after it has gone to bed for the night. The shortest day of Winter here in England is less than 8 hours long.

But Faith is believing in something that we cannot see. It is believing despite the evidence of the barren landscape that Spring is just around the corner, and new twigs and buds and baby animals will be bursting forth in just a few short months. Faith is believing that despite the darkness of the day, God promises His Kingdom will reign, and that I am one of the instruments of His Kingdom. So whether I see it or not, I have to believe that He is at work under the bark, the frozen ground, in the burrows and the caves, waiting to burst forth in light, and that my prayers and good works and acts of faith are bringing that Kingdom just a little closer.

Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

No more diapers

It's official. My days of diapering are done. Macy is sleeping through the night without nappies, as of the last two nights. I'm not sure what that does for my blog, as I'm no longer changing diapers. I'm hoping it will mark a change in my life that means more head space and more writing space, but maybe I need to change my blog title! Suggestions?

How does my garden grow?

My mother-in-law gave me this great book a year or two ago, and I finally found the time to do one of the many great projects in it. We spent most of the last three days in the garden, getting very dirty and having lots of fun, and we now have peas, carrots and lettuce planted in the vegetable patch, and we have lemon thyme, sweet peas, dianthus, and erysimums in our "smells of spring" flower patch.

Mummy-fied

I never wanted to be a mummy, which is the unfortunate English term for a mother. I am Mommy, Mama, or Mom, thank you very much, indeed. But as my children's English accents are becoming more pronounced, I am slowly leaving my identity as Mom and moving into one of Mummy. Which is probably appropriate, as my waking hours are becoming more and more about mindless wandering, doing tasks that require little if any brain-power. If anyone sees me walking with my arms out in front of me, knees not bending, don't be alarmed, I've just been mummy-fied.

Looking for God

I have been doing my annual attempt to read the Bible in a year again. I usually get to the minor prophets sometime in the summer and get so unbelievably bored that I give up. This year I am on track to read the Bible in three years, which is probably a more reasonable goal for a mother of three. What has struck me most in my readings is how very present God is. I so often look for God in the heavens, as an other-earthly being who needs to come down and step in to my situation. But what I see again and again with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, and Moses is that they often engaged with God without even realizing to whom they were speaking until he had left. And that reminded me of Jesus when he said that whenever we clothe/feed/house a stranger, we are clothing/feeding/housing him. And somewhere else the Bible mentions hosting angels without being aware of it.

While this revelation isn't earth-shaking, it has made me see my life just a little differently. Rather than looking for God to come down, I'm wondering how many times I've missed him and I've started looking for him everywhere.

Celtic Daily Prayer

I don't know what's happened to me, but I feel like I'm changing. I just feel so much more calm. Life is not easier, I am no less busy, but I somehow am just not so bothered. Maybe it's the prayers.

The Brothers K

By far my favorite book ever written. So much so that even though I have what feels like no time, I am reading it (well, listening to it, actually--I LOVE AUDIBLE!) for the third time. Thank you Madam Duffy for the best gift ever.

I've got five minutes.

I dreamt last night that I wrote the most profound post ever written. It was as if God himself had spoken through my keyboard, and it was beautiful. I read it out in my dream, and then I woke up and it was gone.

I am struggling to juggle kindergarten and preschool and play groups and discipline and diapers and whining and reading and cooking and cleaning and the endless tidying and streams of questions and whys and the me-time that I so desperately need and the wife-time that my husband needs and the husband time that I need and wondering how long we can go on at this pace. I'm reading Job and realizing that it's just all too big, and so I embrace what I can and let go of what I can't and practice just being and knowing that God is good.

Sometimes it's the joy in the midst of pain that is the most satisfying.