It’s Easter Saturday and in a spare 10 minutes I grab my materials and toss them on the corner of the bed – a chalk marker, a pile of inch paper triangles and a glue stick. It takes 2 tries to get the wavy line right and I run out of triangles. It looks like the bunting has escaped someones clutches, I kind of like it’s flow.

I started decorating windows many a Christmas ago, it’s common then, but it’s the Palm Sunday leaves that I find most meaning in. Theses simple brushstrokes, of chalk and water paint, arch over the screen of my view, they frame the way I see the world outside my little sanctuary of home.

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I must admit I have rather a fondness for seasons of preparation, the church year, and the slow approach to an event that merits more than just a days examining. For many Advent is exactly what I’m describing, but for others Lent holds an equally dear place in their hearts. Lent is a time of fasting, penitence and reminders of suffering, not particularly child friendly topics, but the aniticpation of Easters joy is wrapped in all that gloom.

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It’s mid February and I’m cleaning garden furniture as my son draws a rainbow waterfall on the concrete. Today is unseasonably balmy. Today is also 10 years since I stepped onto Serbian soil for the first time, landed to a much cooler February where the world was monochrome with snow. Life today is nothing like I expected, far from what I envisioned as I stepped off that BA plane. I had firmly nailed my colours to the mast when it came to what I felt called to be and do – and mission was an intentional hiccup in the plan, never a long term life choice.

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