I am not a blogger...

For the 4th time in as many years, my attempts at some kind of daily Advent discipline have ended up lost in a frantic household, forgetfulness, chocolate coin wrappers and screen overtime.

I should probably learn, but I don't. My life is not a pretty blog of creative parenting, spiritual disciplines and daily space for charting it all. It's a place of limited space, tiredness, differing priorities and beautiful chaos. This week particularly, despite no London commute for me, it's been a mixed bag of essay marking, sick children, school events, cabin fever and manic youth work, plus some quiet times of writing cards, filing and other necessary stuff which quite frankly didn't stir anything very profound! The realisation (maybe I'm slow but I'm also a bit of a silly idealist) is that those who do daily blogging are giving it far more time, across the whole of the year, that I will ever have, or want to have. The realisation too that, much as I love to write, I'm not overcome with the need to write in the way that those whose blogs I follow seem to be.

I'm a resourcer, I like to find things, try things and share things. So I'll stick with that. I'm more interested in connection and conversation and at this time of year, there are enough other Advent blogs and hashtags trying to engage us so I don't need to add to the list just for my own guilt inducing lunacy.

So, apologies if you've returned here since last weekend hoping for something else on my self imposed advent journey. As I head into my daughter's ninth birthday weekend with climbing wall parties to manage and cakes to make, party bags and celebrations to put together, I acknowledge I've failed one task, but not in the things that are really important. So I'll pick myself up and get back in the saddle again when I'm next ready to write. I'm not a blogger....well, not every day anyway!

Pilgrimage mop up...

Last week was a significant week in many, many ways. I got back from Sheffield late on Thursday night having dropped Esther in Rochford on the way. We nattered all the way home and I nattered to Andy when I got in too. Much to my delight, I arrived home to discover that both the spare room and our bedroom had been decorated while I'd been away. We now have a lovely electric blue feature wall in the spare room:

And a duck egg blue wall in the master bedroom:

Andy knows me well enough to just get on with these things - what I don't know can't stress me out! Love him! Thanks to my mother in law too who was roped in! 

Anyway, before this new working week gets going, just thought I'd do some overall reflections on the rest of Pilgrimage and some initial stuff that we're implementing as a result:

- I went to a brilliant Missional Families seminar which was particularly helpful because it a) included a handout and b) included opportunities for group work within the workshop. Style of the rest of the conference had been quite didactic so this was really refreshing.

- Mike's devotionals continued to inspire and challenge, thinking through being a family on mission and understanding how Jesus calls us to surrender to him when we are part of the family. Well worth getting the downloads. 

- profound time of reflection around what we were taking away and what we were leaving behind.

- personally, I had some frustrations around the absence of women sharing their Missional journeys and teaching. The front led stuff was very male dominated, although clearly there were loads of women practitioners around during the conference. It would have been nice to hear from them a lot more. I have fed that back to a few people and it has been heard so I don't think it's an ongoing issue. 

- it was great to meet some new people and also put faces to names as well as meet twitter people in real life.

Coming home, there are a few things we're putting in place:

Regular family prayers - starting with Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7am and a breakfast prayer time on Saturdays. Started today, using Shane Claiborne's Common Prayer and focusing on thankfulness which the kids can really get hold of.

More focus on the vision for the Friday Mums group - what is it for and what is the Up, In, Out of the activities of the group. It's going so well and growing too but needs some sharper focus to have that foundational discipling culture so it can be sustainable and bear fruit. 

Taking more time to pray generally as above but also being more aware of issues around covert spiritual warfare.

It's quite a time of transition and change for us as we await some indication of where we might be next year for Andy's curacy and consider what life might look like for us all with a move coming up. Generally, we need to have more time together as a family, to just be, so we're reclaiming Saturday mornings from September and ending Matilda's dancing classes to focus more on her swimming which is something we can all do together. 

Heading into a new week, I'm grateful for the opportunity to go away, to deepen my friendship with Esther as she and Will explore TOM with us and loving being back at home with my wonderful family. God is good. 

the passing of time...

Since I last blogged, a lot has happened.
Andy has been to Tanzania and returned safely - having had a life changing, challenging and amazing experience of how a community can be mobilised to make a difference to it's own people. Some of his photographs are absolutely amazing and I'm still hearing new stories and reflections as he chats to others and responds to questions. If you'd like to know more, check out this link to Tearfund Transform's info page

Sadly, while Andy was away in Africa his grandfather died on 20th February after suffering a massive stroke on 2nd February. The funeral was this Thursday just gone, up in Newcastle so we've both been doing a lot of travelling. It was a wonderful day of celebration and remembering, obviously tinged with sadness but so many slivers of joy and hope breaking through into the grief. I know Andy is in the process of writing some of his own thoughts about Grandad Jack (or Gramps as our kids called him) and he will post them on here in due course.

I've been really snowed under with work and it's pretty full on right up until the end of term when I'm off for a week and we go away as a family. It's been a privilege (and a very daunting one at that!) to be teaching on the St Mellitus Youth Ministry degree course last Monday and this Monday coming. A really great group of engaged and interesting youth workers with a multitude of experience behind them. Couple of other exciting projects include starting the Innovate training for youth leaders and volunteers after Easter and the Growing Young Leaders programme for young people aged 14+ in April. I'm away quite a lot in the next few weeks - National Youth Advisers conference, Diocesan conference and Pilgrimage in Sheffield - all great opportunities in their different ways.

We've just filled in a preference form in connection with Andy's curacy starting in summer 2014 - requesting our ideas on where we might like to be, what kind of context, churchmanship and community and any other thoughts about where God might be calling us at that stage. This is probably not the place to discuss things too openly apart from to say we're up for anything really and have chosen a wide range of options and now need to sit back and let the process work. Which is another daunting prospect!

Lent disciplines are going well on some days and not so on others. I have managed, on most days, to keep to my limit of £1 extra spending - usually involving a chocolate injection! It's been important to plan what we eat and also challenging to still be hospitable within reasonable limits on spending. After a number of months of quite tricky times with Andy being under considerable pressure and then his grandfather being poorly, it now feels as though we can cement things at home a bit more, beginning with two families coming for lunch tomorrow after church. The stuff going on amongst school mums and local community events is also exciting.

I've been prayerfully considering some options for how my work might pan out over the next few months and years. Again, not able yet to say anything concrete but much of the supervision, coaching and huddling work that I do in my 'day job' has some possibilities for ongoing work, depending on where we might end up in 2014. Within all these wonderings, God is clearly at work and reminding me that I need to be patient and trust His timing. He has been faithful up until now and that will not change!

So, March begins with a renewed sense of focus and drawing near to Easter, that seems very hopeful.

all will be well and all will be well

and we are all well - despite the total silence for 3 months! Blimey!

There has been a reason - and one which we're only just able to go public with:

Just a little while after my last post on our membership of the Order of Mission we discovered we were pregnant again - and after last year's sadness have kept it quiet until the all important 12 (or in our case, 13) week scan. 

Added to that the waves of nausea, complete tiredness and inability to concentrate and screen time was something I kept to a bare minimum for work purposes!

But we are pregnant, everything is going well and we're starting think positive about this new arrival - currently named Baby Squid. (M was Little Prawn because of a description in a pregnancy book about what she looked like at 8 weeks when we found out she was coming, so we're continuing the seafood theme!)

Other events in the last 3 months:

Andy went skiing with 4 mates to France for his 30th birthday:

I went to Scarborough for a few days to catch up with friends and family:

I have been away a fair bit with work which has been interesting and exhausting in equal measure. Our house is on the market, with only 2 viewings so far. Andy has got through his sponsorship interview and is now confirmed on a selection conference (BAP) in May. Matilda has been assigned her school place in Maldon for September, even though we hope we'll be in Billericay by then...

We now have a group of 10 young people in our youth group each week which we run jointly with the URC and we hope to join with the Methodists too in the Autumn when we move on. 

Our nephew Freddie is now 8 months old:

and we're due another niece or nephew in August, courtesy of Ian (Andy's brother) and Ange in Scarborough:

We just got back from a weekend in Sherwood Forest with the RB's and are thinking about getting a camper van. We also booked our summer holiday to the Yorkshire Dales and M and Andy are going to Greenbelt at the end of August...so much fun is planned!

Hmm, not much else to report without going back eons...I'll try and be better in future but obviously, won't be promising anything too grand!!

M at rehearsel for her dance show...cute!

Heading to TN and retelling the story

In just over a week, I'll be hopping on a plane and making my way out to south eastern United States for a little break. You may have read on this blog about our loss earlier in the year and our journey since then and this is part of the healing process.
Around now we would have been reaching the end of a twin pregnancy if all had gone to plan. It's difficult to know when the date would have been as twins are even more unpredictable, but it would have almost certainly been sometime in September. Back in the aftermath of the miscarriage, we realised that 2010 was looking very empty without this event to mark a stake in the ground and so we made the decision to look for positive, memory making experiences so that September 2010 wouldn't always be about loss, sadness and miscarriage.

Andy and I this summer...he's pretty cool

Thanks to Mr Tesco Clubcard points, converted into Airmiles, I am flying out to Atlanta GA where I'll be picked up by Emily and Jack to have a week with them and their new, month old daughter Madeleine. Can't honestly remember if I've told the Jack story on here, but I'll tell it again anyway!

Back in 2004 we were having some work done on our house in Gateshead. As it was roof work, very messy and dusty, we went off to New Wine festival for a week leaving the workmen to get the job done. It was a wet week, plenty of rain in Somerset for the festival and the same in the North East. On our return to our house, we unlocked the front door and were faced with a smell I can only describe as rotting. All the way down our stairs, directly in front of us was black sludge and the walls had black wet patches all down them.
We were in complete shock - and it transpired in the following few hours that our builder had left the roof uncovered on a night of thunderstorms and huge amounts of rain and we had been flooded from top to bottom...
Fast forward a couple of weeks - we'd moved out cos the house was uninhabitable, the insurance company were assessing the damage and the dehumidifiers were doing their best to dry out the house. Living with Andy's godparents near Durham, we started to lick our wounds and the implications of the flood were sinking in. It was pretty depressing. I had compassionate leave from work, Andy eventually suffered anxiety bouts which left him deflated and struggling to engage with people at all. In the midst of this, in early September we were invited to lunch with Andy's other godparents and their new Methodist minister...well, free meal we thought and a change of scene...
And there we met Jack King, newly arrived from the States, Tennessee to be precise and over for a year as part of his seminary training. He was the same age as me (26 at the time), living in the Manse or Vicarage and getting to know not only the church but also the North East culture and language and food!
We had a great year, lots of fun times, meals out, trips to the beach and theatre and just general hanging out and connecting with this great man of God who was just wanting to make the best of every opportunity. Jack and Andy especially bonded and Jack was introduced to the extended Smith clan on their many visits as well as to my folks.
On 7th May 2005, at our combined housewarming/27th birthday party, Jack blessed our newly refurbished, redecorated home after 6 months of work, renovations and living elsewhere. It felt like a coming home in so many ways and that evening was one of the most significant and memorable of my life.
After a year, Jack returned to Tennessee, to a job in Knoxville at the Methodist Church there and we kept in touch as much as we could. Just after his arrival home, Hurrican Katrina struck and he was involved in huge amounts of ministry and outreach to displaced people from New Orleans.
Jack met Emily on his return to Knoxville and they married on 7.7.2007 - we weren't able to go, Matilda was only small and money was not so forthcoming with just a few months notice. But we did visit for 10 days in August 2008 with Matilda who was then 18 months. Meeting Emily was nerve wracking - what would she be like, would she like us? But it's fair to say that she and I had a soul connection, something God given and truly special came about in those 10 days and it was with many tears and sadness that we left to come home at the end of our trip...we promised to return again for Andy's 30th birthday in 2011 which we still plan to do.
But with the events of this year and the sadness and loss and rebuilding we have been doing, I needed something exciting and unique to to focus on. Soon after the miscarriage, while I was convalescing at home, Andy asked me what would make me feel better or I would look forward to doing. I didn't have to think long before I said "I'd like to travel on my own"...Andy's following question was "Where to?" and I knew I'd want to go and see Emily. I have many wonderful friends and family, more than a girl deserves. But there is something unique about a friend at long distance, who it isn't so easy to see or contact, where time zones mean we're asleep when they're awake and lives go at a different pace.
Google Chat has been a life saver as Emily and I have kept in touch and worked through many feelings and emotions. She took time out of lectures to chat with me online, rang when she should have been sleeping and enabled me to see beyond my immediate situation and gave me hope for the future.
I feel very blessed at her willingness to give up some of her precious time with her new baby to spend with me next week. I am amazed and in awe of a God who has allowed me to follow and share in such a dear friends' pregnancy and have loved that journey, in spite of the pain we have also found in it. Pain is not always bad, it is refining and forms us in a way which is more precious as a result. I have no doubt that it would have been easier to stick only with friends who haven't been pregnant, but in Emily and in my sister, I have people whose preciousness to me and whose understanding of me have enabled me to cope with pregnancy close at hand. It was with huge elation that we stalked Facebook and waited on emails for news of Emily's labour and we rejoiced at the birth of Madeleine Clara King on 19th August, followed by the birth of our nephew, Frederick Peter Lane on 24th August.

Freddie

Madeleine

There are a mix of emotions right now - I am SUPER excited and cannot wait to get off that plane in Atlanta and see Emily and Jack and kiss that baby's head. I am also desperate for switch off time...being disconnected will be so good for me and I am going to try and be disciplined about staying off facebook and just keeping in touch with home. But my Love Language is acts of service and I want to bless Jack and Emily and Madeleine with my time there and hope I can be useful in getting them settled in their new home (they moved 10 days after Madeleine was born!), and doing what I do best - feeding people! I am nervous about being away from home - missing Andy and Matilda and having these experiences without them will be weird. This is a situation where I'm not sure of how I will feel...and I'm not good with the unknown or the unplanned. But God has been teaching me so much about letting him take control - and miscarriage in a way is the ultimate lack of control. Nothing I could have done would have changed the outcome. I don't understand that, but that's the way it is. And I must leave that with the Lord, who has plans to prosper me and not harm me, to give me a hope and a future and my hope and my future lies in my wonderful, faithful, loving husband and my clever, inquisitive and hilarious daughter. Only God knows what our family will look like in 2, 5, 10 years but I am content and thankful for all I have and all I have been through...strange as that may sound.
Who knows what these 6 days away will bring. I am open to whatever God wants to do in me and I shall be surprised I am sure. And I'd appreciate your prayers (Jack and Emily may do too!)

stream of conciousness...

taking a break from getting ready, packed and sorted to go away. We're off away this weekend visiting my parents for my dad's 60th, seeing my baby nephew who was born on Tuesday and catching up with other family and friends. I'm very much looking forward to it!! Chomping at the bit in fact.
Andy is playing the guitar in prep for a Street Pastors day tomorrow where he's leading worship.
Matilda and I both had our hair cut today - I'm a bit shorter (again!) and M has a new neat bob just under ears. She looks grown up and cute.
I love scrap-booking and baking and I got to do both today and I feel great! I finished the album I've been working on (watch this space for a post including all the layouts!)
I'm looking forward to the routine coming back next week with work and life separated as they should be. It's been difficult working at home more through August as I felt I never gave my all to work or Matilda. But I seem to have got done what I needed to and we've had some great family time at Great Notley, Barleylands, baking, singing, doing craft, watching films, gardening and having silly times!
Toy Story was great - M loved it and danced at the front of the cinema during the out-takes!
I'm privileged to be leading an away day on Wednesday for Restored which is Tearfund's project campaigning against domestic abuse.
In 4 weeks I'll be in Tennessee with Emily and Jack - oh yes!
I didn't even realise X Factor had started again - frankly I'm waiting for Strictly...
That'll do for now, enjoy the Bank Holiday and thanks for stopping by!

stream of conciousness...

I have had a day of retreat today - after a very busy weekend at Bradwell Pilgrimage.

Days off such as this are rare - I usually take a Friday so I can have the time with M and if I happen to be off over the weekend, I find Friday gets me ready to have family time and make the most of it - you know, do the chores, schedule appointments for her, get shopping in etc etc. The system slightly fails when I work over a weekend cos I often have bits outstanding in terms of preparation and so Friday days off get a bit lost in lists and jobs to be done.
So, knowing the Saturday of this weekend would be crazy as would the week of preparation leading up to it, I scheduled today as a day off/time in lieu.

I've baked Apple and Banana fair cakes and a Coconut and Raising tray bake. baking is one of my best abiding activities.
Naps are of God and naps where you can wake up gradually without rush are of the highest order and I believe will be present in Heaven!
I've read more of my book 'When will there be Good News?' by Kate Atkinson.
I have not done any washing cos we've got our gazebo up in the garden and it's too small to accommodate both the washing line and the gazebo.
I feel I'm recovering from church yesterday...
I'm sad we couldn't go to The Order of Mission Southern Gathering on Friday and Saturday - and taken with the realisation that we feel connected to this group of people despite only knowing 3 or 4 of them in any depth.
Andy and I went for dinner with the Baggies last night which was funny and poignant and not done often enough. We talked life shapes a lot and laughed about how weird some of that language is when you are uninitiated "how is your semi circle?" - "how is the up in and out in your men's ministry?" !!
God seems to be prompting me to think about strategy for mission in my church context - not surprising but definitely more prompting today and over the weekend than for a while.
The sunshine makes my skin burn but I love the fact that my freckles are popping out all over the place.
The Forsyte Saga is one of my favourite drama programmes of all time.
I'm a bit disappointed that there weren't many pictures of me at the Bradwell Pilgrimage over the weekend - but I think it was because I didn't stand still for long.
Our Falcon Camp at the end of this month is nearly full.
My mum is amazing and I love her flexibility and the way she just mucks in with our crazy life and loves us for it.
Andy is now referred on to the DDO - having been through vetting by our Vicar and the Deanery Vocations Adviser. We have a joint meeting in a couple of weeks which is an interesting and scary prospect.
I enjoy days on my own more and more as I get older and also since the miscarriage - which is a good thing but I don't get much opportunity for it in my normal life.
July is set to be crazy busy - lots to do and lots in my brain at the moment...so I haven't left the house today and have only been on Facebook (before posting this!) to share my recipes.
I'm getting into wearing leggings and jogging bottoms in public, indicating I think that I have accepted my large bottom for the time being - sigh...
Matilda was in a great mood this morning - and told me she didn't need to brush her teeth here cos her childminder had a dragon toothbrush at her house...wow!

I love my husband at the moment in a way which is awe inspiring - his journey is so life changing and potentially radical and I admire him immensely. M is also great great company and wonderful in the way she accepts God at work in her life. Watching her play in the sand and paint a worship picture at the Pilgrimage was such a blessing and I feel hugely admiring of her simplicity and her simple love for everything that crosses her path.
Stream over - some semblance of order will be returned soon...