Will Dig Life

Dear friends, it's been an eventful year. Goodbye, boat life! Somehow it's only been 6 years since Mr and I even met, and since then there's never been a dull year. Long may this continue! We started 2017 with a move - no, two moves. We had sold our boat and needed to be out by 6th January, but hadn't exchanged on the house by then. As a solution it just so happened that a colleague of Mr had a basement flat we could move into for three weeks! Amazing provision, a great place, although moving twice in one month isn't something I'd recommend with two under 3's. At the end of January, though, our new house was ours and we moved. On moving day we were joined by what seemed like the entire body of  Lawrence Weston Community Church , everyone showing up to help: so the challenge became less one of physical hard work for us and more one of coordination of the many willing helpers! Midway through the morning, an elderly lady from the church showed up at...

I was driving today and had the radio on, listening to an interview where this question was asked. The interviewee was a bit at a loss to explain - and I totally understood why, such an all-encompassing and foundational change as becoming a Christian... how would I explain, concisely and simply, the difference it's made for me? Any answer I came up with seemed trite, worn, cliched. What difference? I could talk about how I'm simply not the same person I was... but how can anyone really appreciate how radical a change it is to go from dead inside without even knowing it, to alive? Or how much knowing and leaning on Jesus has helped me in the bad times? Oh no, I'd never bring this as an argument because I went through much worse before I was a Christian than anything life has thrown at me after... and I survived, even without knowing him. I think the best way for me to explain the difference inside is to say:  I care now . I never used to care about others . Not s...

We're a family.  Have been for a few years now. We're building a shared life: first as a couple... then came a home of our own... a dog... a baby... and another baby on the way now. Family: the settled everyday adventure Until I met Mr. and we started building this life together, my highest goal in life was freedom. Flexibility. I loved being able to say I could pack two bags and be off tomorrow, into the sunset - and for years, I could have done that and sometimes I did. Aged 22, I packed my bags and went, one week after telling my family I was going to move to New York. After a while there, I packed my bags again and moved to Virginia. I would have stayed but it wasn't possible, so I packed again - six weeks before having to leave the country when my visa expired I had no idea at all where I was going to go, then I met a lovely couple from the UK and they said, hey, why don't you move over there. So I did that. With the exception of leaving Austria, I never ...

A friend with a nearly 4-month old baby visited me today. We don't see each other much these days since I've moved away, but before she gave birth I offered her a few thoughts on baby parenting (mainly to trust her instincts rather than parenting books / other people's opinions, and follow the baby's lead) and she told me today how much she took those things to heart and how well it's served her. Both she and her baby are thriving and loving the bonding early months. But, she also told me that there's already pressure on her - friends with babies the same age are sleep training them (leaving them to cry alone), raising their eyebrows at her feeding her baby to sleep... at not even 4 months old?? I was gobsmacked. She asked me, why is it bad to feed your baby to sleep? My answer: I'm not sure, I still feed my 3yo to sleep and it's the one thing that makes her  want  to go to bed - without it I don't know how much fight she'd be putting up! ...

I was never 'into' Christmas as an adult. Along with most reasonable people, I rolled my eyes at the waste of electricity for fairy lights, the earlier-every-year creep of its attending commercialism, the nonsense of a fat bearded man in red and white coming down chimneys. (I didn't grow up with Santa so from an outsider's perspective it just is weird to celebrate Christ's birth that way). Now I have children, however, I have to engage with the culture around us, interpret it for them in a way... I want them to experience that deep and meaningful anchoring to the past that traditions give us. But not with Santa. I'm uneasy about that man. Traditions and family I think that traditions serve several important purposes for kids: identity (this is what we as a family do);  anchoring (this is what we as a community do), and sign posting (this is why we do this) These are probably why I rejected the traditions I grew up with as a young adult: I did n...

We need money. The cold hard truth - we are just about managing on one salary, but it's tight and the house is still a project with much more to do than we have money for! So, we need some more income.  Mr. and I sat down for a long chat about that. He can't change jobs; in his industry there is great uncertainty due to Brexit right now, and he sees lots of colleagues being made redundant. He's got a good pension scheme where he is, and has been due a pay rise for several years (!) now - hopefully that will come to fruition at some point. So changing jobs isn't workable for him, and changing careers (which he would quite like to do) would mean taking a huge pay cut for several years as he gets stuck in to his new career, which also isn't workable right now. As for me, I'm qualified as a marketer (postgrad). But I don't have the mental capacity at the moment to really apply myself in that field; if I wanted to be employed, it would be difficult to fin...

In my previous post, I illustrated the way I feel like a car on ice - I've lost traction and it feels like going into a spin is just a matter of time. Now, this isn't a sudden, new thing; it's built up over months, until finally the penny dropped in my head. I'd been going, running, slipping and sliding and instead of stopping to think what's going on, I turned to coping mechanisms. I see this so clearly now! But in the months leading up to this realisation that I need to actually put some commitments down, I found myself desperately trying to fix myself somehow. Because  it had to be me  that's wrong, right? Too lazy / disorganised. My first instinct is to find the problem within myself, and fix it. My second instinct is to do the ostrich: focus on something completely unrelated and hope that the actual issue will go away. So at first, to fix myself, I started making plans. A well planned day wouldn't get away from me! I knew what I was going to do ...

Confession time: I'm not up to it all. Lately - that is, over the last six months or so - I've been increasingly feeling like a car that's gone on an icy patch: I'm still going in the direction I want, momentum is carrying me, but I've lost my grip on the road. Plates I'm spinning are beginning to drop. I need to do less, and that is a very tough realisation to come to. For someone who's always worked full time, volunteered, was active in the church.... I often feel like I'm hardly doing anything now! But somehow this "hardly anything" takes much more of my mental and physical energy than anything I've ever done before. But it's hard to remember this when I'm asked, oh can you JUST do this.... help there... because all those requests are small things in themselves and they're oh so easy to add to my plate. Sure I can do that little thing! And this too. And the other. And - then I'm starting to slip and slide on the i...

I read something the other day. A Christian parent, with the best of intentions, said their goal for their child was to build "a habit of cheerful, first-time, complete obedience". I thought about that. I mulled it over for days. And I have pretty strong feelings about it: this is  not  what I want to build in my children. Not at all. It's something I have read and heard fairly frequently in Christian circles, this idea of instant obedience as a goal for your child. With the idea that they will then be quick to obey God in a cheerful and complete manner. So why do I disagree so strongly? There are just so many things wrong with this idea! Firstly, I don't want my children to obey any and all authority out of  habit . A  habit of obedience  is not good in an adult, and adults is who they will become. "I was ordered to do it, and I obeyed." - as an Austrian, with the shameful past of the 20th century behind us, this makes me shudder. I ...

It's 9.30pm and N - now 2 years and 4 months old - has only just fallen asleep. We started this evening at 7pm or so. At times like this, every single minute truly stretches. She doesn't fight, as such; she just lays there and stays awake. Counts her fingers. Plays with her lips. She doesn't try to get up but she's definitely awake and conscious. And it's the most  infuriating  thing! Why? Because there is nothing, nothing whatsoever, that I can do to get her to go to sleep. She's not doing anything wrong. She even closes her eyes when I tell her to sleep now (for a moment or two). Over the course of these long 2+ hours I go through a lot of approaches. None work. We start with breastfeeding, as usual; when one of us has had enough, she comes off and I'll cuddle her. That's when I expect her to go to sleep. But no.... the fiddling, whispering, finger play - or, if I crack down on everything, simply laying there awake continues. And continues. S...