Empty?

I felt empty.

Steve and I had dreamt about this weekend.

We had loved our time at Keele University:

the campus, the courses, the nightlife,

and the Christian Union.

The CU weekends away with inspirational teaching, relationship building and muddy football games were an annual highlight.

We walked away after graduation both wanting to go back and impart into students at a later date.

Knowing the CU president and our return to England imminent, the stars seemed to have aligned and opened an opportunity.

We were excited and eagerly anticipated all the things we would do, the ways Father God would move.

Who would have known that we would travel to that weekend, driving away from a house shrouded in grief just less than three weeks previously.

Like I said, I felt empty.

The weekend passed like a blur.
We had planned and prepared as diligently as ever, but I looked back and questioned whether things were as creative as we could have made them,

whether we really challenged them enough,

if our words were full of Holy Spirit, or just read off of a paper.

I wondered if I had really given my best,

if we had done the right thing.

After the weekend, our Facebook burgeoned with friend requests, comments about how much our talk spoke to them. And I got the warm and fuzzies.

When you think you don’t do well,

When things are super hard,

But you step out in faith regardless,

God can do great things.

True.

But not the end.

The thing is

I don’t just want warm and fuzzies.

I don’t just want to experience the high of a temporary feeling.

To think I did something good one day

And the next

Nothing substantial has changed

More was in store:

Never would I have imagined

That out of pouring myself out

That weekend still grieving

And being open to what Father wanted to do

That now

Two years to the day later

These girls who sat on seats and listened

Politely taking notes and clapping in the right places

Now

Sit at my table

Text me

Do lunch

Talk birth

Live chat through Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners

And pour into my sweet daughter

(with Petit Filous)

I don’t have much to offer this great world

Just my stories

My inappropriate humour

My meager words

And my love for people

But offer it I will

In the hopes that my longevity

My sticking around and involved

 it makes some difference

It changes some directions

It makes Father God bigger,

more visible,

more tangible,

in more lives.

Waiting

I have many great traits.

I’d get tired if I wrote them all, but these are my favourite:

My spontaneity and creativity, throwing myself into the new and different, 

desperate for another crazy adventure.

My ridiculous organising skills, 

planning incredible and detailed events at the drop of a hat.

Combined, I’m a fireball of life and activity.

I’m also the least patient person I know.

My ever-increasing belly, shovelling sweets like the Oompa Loompas my husband so affectionately likened me to, weighed heavy on my frame, making me desperate for escape.

Desperate to end the nine months of puking

Of being restricted in my own skin

Of reluctantly slowing down my pace

 The messages piled in:

“Happy Due Date!!!! Any twinges ....???”

“no sign yet?! booooo xx”

Due day came and went…

“Where are these babies??????”

“Dear baby miller,

I am writing to officially give you an eviction notice. Please vacate your mothers womb by 12am this evening before the overdue cranky woman hormones go crazy ;) “

Everyday waiting for something…but yet nothing came, not even a hint…

“You not blown yet? Milking this whole pregnancy thing abit too much aren't you?”

“Ok, I'm done being patient for you!!! Go jogging or climb some stairs ... or ... OTHER things ... and get that baby moving! “

You were “done”?!

I was done.

Overdone.

Completely spent and exhausted from being patient.

Dogs and cats wait 60 days.

Rabbits wait 33 days.

Mice only wait 20 days.

Humans?

271 days.

Why forced to have so many bloated days?

What reason is there behind this torture?!

Texts of encouragement came in, but none spoke more strongly than this:

“These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance.

That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother.

We are enlarged in the waiting.

We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us.

But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, 

God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along.

 He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

God knew what he was doing from the very beginning.”

{Romans 8}

We wait

For that spouse that never comes

For that job promotion they say is just around the corner

For the day we will earn more

For that relationship to be fixed

For the house of our own

The morning the contractions started

Painfully waking me at 5am

Faithfully pulsing every 20 minutes

Five hours later

As my mum arrived panicked and scared of missing the birth

They remained still 20 minutes apart

My pudgy self bounced frustratingly on the exercise ball

Netflix choices blurred into mundane viewing

My time had come

Labour was imminent

But yet Father God was still calling me

In a place of patience

We wait

For the marriage proposal

For the big break into the industry

For the manager to appreciate our efforts

For the fertility treatment to work

For acceptance on a course

For healing

The sickness came back.

My “friend” vomit that had consumed each week of my pregnancy

Overwhelming took over my labour

Contractions ranged from 1 to 7 minute gaps

Each painfully convulsing my body

A disjointed 10pm walk to the hospital

A delusional time on gas & air

A two hour grueling stint in water

And there she was.

The words of the friend rang in my ear:

“Labour doesn’t matter once it’s stopped.”

Those things are coming.

Those dreams deep in our beings, with heartbeats and kicks and pains

Have life within them

They are cooking, developing, growing.

It may not be happening to you as quick as the dog

Or the cat

Or the mouse

As quick as your sister

Your friend

Everyone else

But it’s coming.

It was relayed to me, that I spoke these words to my precious Zella, 

as her wrinkled grey body lay wetly on my exhausted chest:

“I did this for you. I did this all for you.”

All the waiting

The agony

The stretching

The pushing

My reward, my prize, the end

Was truly worthy of the waiting

My heart has softened

My soul has learnt patience

My character has developed

Truly, I was enlarged in the waiting

Tock

We stand to attention at its bells

Grudgingly wake up to its alarms

Wait nervously as its hands tick

This wonderfully uncontrollable thing

Silently is in control of us

It comes

To no surprise

That I delight in nothing more

Than sprinting ahead

Of the tocking master

To chase it down

And refuse to let it grab its hands on me

But sometimes

Especially in this time

Time defeats me

By not telling me how long

I must wait

Wait for a job

Wait for a house

Wait for friends

Wait for course answers

Wait for money

Wait for these things

But what am I really waiting for

My heart cries “What time is it Mr Wolf” desperate to run paces ahead

To a sweet victory

And not be devoured

By the dinner time of the enemy

Who lies in wait

For those who would waste the ticking minutes

Pouring over pages of John’s words

I read over and again

It is not yet me time

My time is not come

Brother Jesus seems to enthralled with the

Watching of the clock too

For there is something ahead

That cannot be awaken

Until its due time

What am I waiting for?

Lessons.

For Kingdom school is starting

Lining up outside

Awaiting the creaking of an opening door

To the room of revelation

Where head master would draw me in

And show me the things I have not yet grasped

My lesson now?
Patience.

And yes this is a lesson I have repeatedly learnt

But each time I flunk out

Because what has been remembered for the test

Has been forgotten for the life

Patience.

To not think my short-nosed plan is so correct and accurate

That I need not wait to see how things pan out

To realise there was no real way to prepare for all this changing

The moving of bags

The moving of roles

The moving of heart, and connections with friends

The moving of place where we learnt to be married, where we learnt to be missionaries, where we learnt to be truly us

Patience to settle back into this land of cold unfamiliarity

My house

not yet restored to being

my home

nothing yet has gone to “plan”
no job or school was one on our list three weeks ago

no idea remains for the rest of the year

for the nearly four weeks

have been a rollercoaster no end

Tick.

I still have much patience to learn.

So much to learn about the sovereignty of the clock maker.

Fairytales

The whole world stood still.

2 billion tuned in to watch.

I awoke at 4am, an event paramount to a lunar eclipse.

Tweets flew around as champagne breakfasts began on a country’s day off.

What would she wear?

How proud would his mother be.

“the scars of your love remind me of us, they keep me thinking that we almost had it all”

the heartbroken soul pens her album

dirty with the fingerprints of the thief of her heart

yet this break up record still spends consecutive weeks at #1 of charts

on both sides of the Atlantic

rough winds creating a tide the lovesick surf upon

“Sometimes it hurts instead, sometimes it lasts in love”

It’s prickly fingers juxtaposing soft skin

Provide the best metaphor

Bright vibrant colour expressing what words cannot

Yet uncultivated, uncultured

It cuts the soul

Millions of thousands of dozens delivered

Gushing smiles receive them willingly while the singletons look away, dreaming of when their turn will be

That tangled mess of a thing called love

That we don’t want, yet we do

We search out, but act coy

Enthrals each one of us

5 years ago I walked away

afraid of it

yet wanting it

hearing words from Father

loud enough for even my deaf fearful ears to hear

“if you don’t trust him, you’ll never trust anyone”

but when cardiac muscle, strewn like confetti, damp with your tears, lines the cotton of your pillow

how can you believe?

Because you don’t roam a forest, with a basket of muffins, red cape hooded over blond locks of curls

And you don’t live in the frame of a Toshiba set, with all resolved at the end of a 30 minute slot

But you listen to ‘21’

and you watch the Royals

looking longingly at the roses

And you wouldn’t do it at all

if your heart didn’t still hope

for fairytales. 

It's not naive to think they still come true.

Emergency

S&S Babysitting inc. is in high season, with overnight watching while parents are away seeming to the be the most popular request of April. A few weekends ago, while supervising three teens, their mother got the call no one wants to get:

“Hello Ma’am, this is Dalworthington Gardens Police Department…”

Heart sinks.

Face drains of all colour.

A thousand tragic situations race through your mind before you decide on a combination of the three worst.

“Your neighbour has caught your dog, it seems she escaped.”

Heart searches safely for a steady beat.

Colour returns.

You prepare the talk on responsibility you will give your kids…and Steve and Sebrina.

At any given time, our whole words could change with that phone call, that email, that message

Of emergency.

Beth Moore describes the three things that can happen to us in an emergency.

Panic.

This is my favourite.

Sheer, unadulterated, woman going crazy and wild.

The “fixers” of us have to find a solution.

And what better solution that seven things all at once.

Chickens who left their heads behind long ago, there is nothing that can control us.

And in this crazy madness

We do

The

Wrong

Thing.

Our panic results in us completely losing the plot, the sense, and hands raised up in the air, all that we held onto is strewn across the sky.

All is ruined.

Paralysed.

Frozen to the spot, the news cripples us with sad results.

Everything stops.

We hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing.

Numb to action, wading in inaction.

Confined by a wheelchair of fear and dread, completely unable to cope.

You stop. And you cannot move.

The tears fall but no hand can rise to wipe them.

You are stuck.

All is still.

When I think about emergencies, I am reminded of Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) who says in her “joyful parenting” manifesto:

“Today, I will not have any emergencies.

There are no emergencies!

Only amateurs hurry.”

No emergencies?

What a preposterous thought!

There is always something to panic/be paralyzed over!

There is always something to worry about!

There is always something unexpected that comes up!

There is always.

It is always.

The torrent of life.

The rushing waterfall of pressure.

The never-ending list.

No day will come with nothing to do but sit still.

Each day has something for us. Something good. But something challenging.

“911 what is your emergency?”

“I need help with my math homework!”

“I didn’t get the food “my way” at the restaurant!”

“My son won’t clean his messy bedroom!”

“My boyfriend won’t propose to me!”

All genuine 911 calls.

All genuine emergencies to those people.

What today feels like a genuine emergency, but tomorrow will be the laugh among you and your friends?

Oh, this temporary world, where so much is fading away, tricks us time and time again into believing that what we are seeing and experiencing right now is all there really is.

But when we take the time.

Take time.

Pray.

That moment of silence, where I seem paralyzed, but my stillness allows something greater to move into action

That moment where my panic draws me to the only place I can really gain strength and help.

The emergency fades.

The sirens stop blaring.

And I see it for what it is.

A temporary problem that will not defeat me today.

A temporary problem that will attempt to steal my joy.

A temporary problem that is simply that.

No.

There will be no emergencies today.

Flat Stanley

My head awash with the stress of this life

Why is it…

Why all these things

Decisions

Pains

All at the same time

You poke your head out of my bag

And smile

Your static arms

Fixed position

A stable constant

In this world every changing

Your lighthearted ways bring comfort through this

Heavy yoke

Burden unrelenting

With you

Everyday

I find beauty

New

The things I looked at a million times

Are fresh with your eyes

Dinners become gourmet dishes

Buses become extravagant transport

Houses become terraced palaces

I capture the simple

I marvel in the ordinary

I see your work Father in every little detail

In one hand I take sickness

Emotional distress

Secret hurts

Stressful futures

Perplexing decisions

But in the other I take your joy

Words you speak to me through others

Food that I didn’t even know was in the house

Baggy clothes that smell of a husband far away

The chance to help friends learn Facebook

I see the hope

Not in the future

But in right now

The hundreds upon thousands of gifts before me

Piled high

But seemingly hidden behind piles of mud, dirt and grime

Distraction

Obstacles

A wall that must be broken down

I hold Flat Stanley’s tiny hand

Raising him high to capture the moment

His adventure makes me smile

Reminding me

Of my adventure

My journey

The process

I want to skip forward

Race through all this angst

But Stanley says that there is something in this moment for me to know

Relish

Learn from

Savour

There is something in each moment

That I cannot miss

That through the tear-speckled eyes I must blink to see to

The gift

My gifts

That are new every morning