Category: Faith

From the Blog

Faith

On Sea Changes and Souls at Sea

We recently made a sea-change. Sounds exciting doesn’t it, the stuff of reality TV and life adventures. Actually, it was more like a series of hiccupy jumps, gulping for air, rather than a seemless transition. Together with our three children under eight, we moved from the deep inner-city surrounds of Sydney and the bustling communal environment of Bible college, to Toowong, a Queensland suburb close to the bush, where it was rumoured a giant python regularly sunned himself on the street, and finally to the very outer-edges of Brisbane, where land bumps up against water, and every sunset demands a camera. And if you think that sentence was long to read, imagine travelling all that distance.

Read More
Amazing Grace

How can I love you more?

It was mid-1990. I remember it, in a pleasant, hazy sort of way. The Winter Olympics played on a small square television set (who knew then that flat screens were so much cooler), I was acquainted with the thrill of my favourite books, and the secure encirclement of parents who seemed intuitively to understand how to make us their trusted friends.

Read More
Faith

A Very Restless Christmas

Our eldest comes into the kitchen, stands close beneath my chin and asks me if she can have some flour. ‘We’re not cooking now!’ I reply in my shout-speak. It’s a variation of my usual mum dialect, one I’ve developed on our recent interstate relocation in soaring summer temperatures. I like to think the new environment and pressures have made this elevated frustrated inflection in my tone and general demeanour inevitable. 

Read More
anxiety

Declutter Me: Ambitioning a Quiet Life

‘That’s what we do. We make mess. We’re a messy family.’ Five year old E sums it up with characteristic bare-to-the bone directness as we stand side by side and watch our freshly washed floor endure a new littering of crumbs, toys, unknown sticky substances, and yes… yet more spilled-milk.

Read More
anxiety

Choices

We made a decision this week. Parents have to do that. Make decisions. From the moment your child breaks forth into the world, with wails and flails and celebration, you are looking up information, filling out forms, viewing everything through over-alert, keen-to-do-right,  protective parent eyes. Even before your little person or people arrive you begin the process. I know I read whole slabs of literature on birth options, and I’m not even that zealous on this point. I have friends who probably could be awarded honorary doctorates for their commitment to making the ‘right choice’ in this area.

Read More
Faith

Stepping off Regret Road

‘There’s just no point in wasting time looking back’. He stood at the front of the school hall, staring down the barrel of an audience of nervous, eager parents hanging on his every word like support ropes. An ex-cop with so many stories under his well-weathered belt, stories of struggle and hardship, those of others, and his own, tangled together, etched into the lines on his face and tremor of his voice.

Read More
anxiety

Courage in her pocket

It began as a secret. A small, quiet act of defiance to carry her through the day. As she walked (tarried, resisted) out the door to go to school she would feel for the little zip in the side of her school dress. She’d pull, frustrated, as it stuck, and then, just as it seemed we were all in for a hard morning, the zip would release, and our eldest daughter would calm as she set about her self-made act of survival: stowing away chosen items in her pocket that reminded her of home.

Read More
Faith

Slow Growth: A Parable in Basil

She lies awake in her bed by the window, sheets tossed away to fight against the heat of the night. Our restless firstborn. All the churning inner energy and  frustration of Dr M and I channelled into one small body. Next to her, less than a foot away lies her brother J. J the forever baby of the family. J the Jack-in-a-Box boy full of playful alertness.

Read More
Amazing Grace

Angel Words for Earthly Fears

Our daughter has recently acquired a new fear. I say acquired as we tend to collect fears in our family, like some people collect stamps. Ever since a seagull swooped down and took a chip —not even her chip, mind you, but a chip in the hand of someone standing nearby her— E has convinced herself that every bird, at every time, in every environment, is a chip-stealing, beady-eyed vigilante.

Read More
Faith

On Sea Changes and Souls at Sea

We recently made a sea-change. Sounds exciting doesn’t it, the stuff of reality TV and life adventures. Actually, it was more like a series of hiccupy jumps, gulping for air, rather than a seemless transition. Together with our three children under eight, we moved from the deep inner-city surrounds of Sydney and the bustling communal environment of Bible college, to Toowong, a Queensland suburb close to the bush, where it was rumoured a giant python regularly sunned himself on the street, and finally to the very outer-edges of Brisbane, where land bumps up against water, and every sunset demands a camera. And if you think that sentence was long to read, imagine travelling all that distance.

Read More
Amazing Grace

How can I love you more?

It was mid-1990. I remember it, in a pleasant, hazy sort of way. The Winter Olympics played on a small square television set (who knew then that flat screens were so much cooler), I was acquainted with the thrill of my favourite books, and the secure encirclement of parents who seemed intuitively to understand how to make us their trusted friends.

Read More
Faith

A Very Restless Christmas

Our eldest comes into the kitchen, stands close beneath my chin and asks me if she can have some flour. ‘We’re not cooking now!’ I reply in my shout-speak. It’s a variation of my usual mum dialect, one I’ve developed on our recent interstate relocation in soaring summer temperatures. I like to think the new environment and pressures have made this elevated frustrated inflection in my tone and general demeanour inevitable. 

Read More
anxiety

Declutter Me: Ambitioning a Quiet Life

‘That’s what we do. We make mess. We’re a messy family.’ Five year old E sums it up with characteristic bare-to-the bone directness as we stand side by side and watch our freshly washed floor endure a new littering of crumbs, toys, unknown sticky substances, and yes… yet more spilled-milk.

Read More
anxiety

Choices

We made a decision this week. Parents have to do that. Make decisions. From the moment your child breaks forth into the world, with wails and flails and celebration, you are looking up information, filling out forms, viewing everything through over-alert, keen-to-do-right,  protective parent eyes. Even before your little person or people arrive you begin the process. I know I read whole slabs of literature on birth options, and I’m not even that zealous on this point. I have friends who probably could be awarded honorary doctorates for their commitment to making the ‘right choice’ in this area.

Read More
Faith

Stepping off Regret Road

‘There’s just no point in wasting time looking back’. He stood at the front of the school hall, staring down the barrel of an audience of nervous, eager parents hanging on his every word like support ropes. An ex-cop with so many stories under his well-weathered belt, stories of struggle and hardship, those of others, and his own, tangled together, etched into the lines on his face and tremor of his voice.

Read More
anxiety

Courage in her pocket

It began as a secret. A small, quiet act of defiance to carry her through the day. As she walked (tarried, resisted) out the door to go to school she would feel for the little zip in the side of her school dress. She’d pull, frustrated, as it stuck, and then, just as it seemed we were all in for a hard morning, the zip would release, and our eldest daughter would calm as she set about her self-made act of survival: stowing away chosen items in her pocket that reminded her of home.

Read More
Faith

Slow Growth: A Parable in Basil

She lies awake in her bed by the window, sheets tossed away to fight against the heat of the night. Our restless firstborn. All the churning inner energy and  frustration of Dr M and I channelled into one small body. Next to her, less than a foot away lies her brother J. J the forever baby of the family. J the Jack-in-a-Box boy full of playful alertness.

Read More
Amazing Grace

Angel Words for Earthly Fears

Our daughter has recently acquired a new fear. I say acquired as we tend to collect fears in our family, like some people collect stamps. Ever since a seagull swooped down and took a chip —not even her chip, mind you, but a chip in the hand of someone standing nearby her— E has convinced herself that every bird, at every time, in every environment, is a chip-stealing, beady-eyed vigilante.

Read More