breathe

I was walking home at high speed with a sleeping baby in buggy, wondering if I could quickly get home and race around a little, clean the bathroom, maybe make some muffins before he woke up. As the streets passed me by I kept glimpsing the sea... 

I was reminded of something said to me in the early busy days of trying to set up a new home here. "Remember to breathe Ali". It's so easy to find more seemingly important things to do. Even with this on our doorsteps, I often still have to choose to take time out of my day, put some chores on hold, get less done, and decide that in that moment, it's more important to walk the longer way home, and breathe a little looking out to sea. So I did. I breathed it all in for a short time. 

I need to remember to keep choosing to breathe. So simple.

Hope

There had been some days of feeling a little disheartened.   Some things that felt like they might grow surely were not going to in the way I might have hoped.   Some dreams felt like they needed more time to be nurtured perhaps or just too great to expect to ever come to fruition.   Maybe even a mistake to ever begin to imagine them.   Then, there it was, at the end of our daily journey home one day, loud and clear, written on the wall.   It made me smile and has been doing so every day since.   It's been making other people smile too.   There is a proverb that says 'hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life'. Trusting and waiting for the tree of life.   A few days later I noticed something on the adjacent wall, slightly obscured by a bush.  It made my heart sing knowing that the giving and receiving of this one is an antidote to a sick heart.

  

a pocketfull of time

Time is feeling so different these days with a very small person to care for, who fills much of it. There aren't long stretches of it anymore for wandering through a day, but instead lots of small 'pocketfulls' of it, here and there. 

Sometimes the pocketfulls get filled with things like painting nails blue and picking lavender for a friend, and they are truly treasured. Time seems to stretch on days like this, when I manage to use these moments well, and the sense of thankfulness over being able to make something so small happen in these brief pockets lasts me all day. 

treasure

One of many treasures found and looked upon.   I gasped with delight as fingers unfurled.   Camping holiday hands, telling a few tales of adventure.   There was much to be found at the foot of the mountains.  

Looking Up

It had been a perfect weekend in so many ways.   After what had seemed like an age, a long weekend filled with the first real sunshine and warmth that we had felt in a long time.   There was wind to fill the sails of a city windsurfer.   There were also sick children and sleepless nights, together with gracious grandparents.   Then on our final evening as we were getting the children ready for bed we saw these rising silently, a quiet only interrupted by the rhythmical gush of hot air.  As if somehow enchanted, we were all drawn outside to look up.   Others too from the little row of cottages.   We stood and watched as more took flight, an unexpected beauty.  For me another reminder of the bigger picture and to remember to keep looking up.

(photo courtesy of pb)      

fresh wonder

I always knew, before having my own child, that little ones often have a way of slowing you right down to their pace. They can make you appreciate the world in perhaps a different way, through their fresh eyes. I love that about children. Joseph was about seven weeks old when he was captivated by this blossom tree. It's leaves and flowers were swaying in the dappled light and his little eyes marvelled at it all. We stopped, and took it all in, slowly.

I watched him watching, then I watched what he was watching and I wondered with him.

I was so grateful to him, for making me take time. For making me go slower in this moment of beauty than I ever would have done had I been on my own. 

new life

I am realising that so often there has to be some kind of dying in order to bring forth new life, but that God gives all the equipping of strength, grace and the many other things that we need to see that through.  

It makes the new gift of life all the more precious and sweeter. I am loving and savouring the sacred moments of treasuring this new little one, and the journey that brought him to us. 

Pink

A delight for this little one to be immersed in her favourite colour as she organised her things.   A treat to share a pink cup cake with aunty Ali.

the extravagant use of angels

During a fun little trip to Paris, we were peering at the metro map, trying to work out how to get to the Eiffel Tower. A kind french couple, before we had had a chance to figure it out, were offering to help us with which train to get, the quickest way there, how to work the ticket machines, and before we knew it we were clutching our tickets and on our way.

We could have worked it out, we have navigated the London Tube for years, but these two just stepped in, bringing unexpected ease to our moment. They had kind faces, smiles, and blue sparkly eyes. Somehow this moment really stuck with me. They got on the same train as us, and I watched them. They somehow captivated me. Of all the beauty of Paris, somehow this kind pair had grabbed my attention and I kept thinking of them, bizarrely, days later. 

"There was something slightly angelic about them. I think they might have been angels!" I said to my husband. "That would be a slightly extravagant use of angels!" he said. Yes. I loved that. The extravagant use of angels to unnecessarily bless the everyday. To make the simple mundaneness of finding our way a little more blessed. Thank you. 

Photo credit: Photo taken by Matt Kendall