Blunt utensilsSeptember 28, 2015
Last Tuesday we took Adam and Baba with us on the weekly shop, it was a nice day, the walk was calming. There, we decided to stop at the supermarket cafe to give Adam his tea and perhaps have a light tea ourselves. In this echoing space, partially screened from the bustle of a 24 hour shopping experience and with a trolley doubling as a high-chair we had a conversation about a knife. These knifes looked all right from the first glance, but one soon realised that the end curve was beyond blunt. Cutting anything more resistant than a trifle was, well, a trifle awkward. Something in that knife rang a bell, enough for me to take the photo and ponder as the week went past.
Have I let my faith go blunt?
Faith is a strange beast, it dries out without a regular water, grows mould when we get overly content, cracks and splinters when it’s not stretched regularly. It’s a precious and delicate thing is faith, though often we wield it like a sword that’s rusted and old and blatantly more a symbol of attack than revolution. I don’t want my faith to be like that. Missionaries are expected to have it all together faith wise, who expects this I’m not sure, but it certainly feels that way, it’s not true though and we too get blunt.
Last week I also received an e-mail from a lady that made me need to defend my faith. It wasn’t an attack but a plea to recognise aspects of Christianity we weigh differently. I’ll be honest, my first reaction was not positive. I read the long script knowing I needed to form a reply, knowing I had an opportunity to alienate or include, knowing it would be a task to ponder and deliberate. As I sculpted phrases and paragraphs in my response, reading and re-reading her e-mail, I was struck by the passion her faith displayed. I resonated with her journey, the inherited theology, the fracturing of her religion as she discovered the depth of her true faith, followed by the painful deliberation of rebuilding a home in your heart that was fit for the king of the universe to enter. It was a journey I had made before and yet somehow the photo album of that time was dusty already.
As Septembers aim to organise removes clutter from the everyday, I realise that the clutter in me also needs a re-order. It needs a dust, a brush, a stacking and indexing, a clean space that my faith can grow into. I’m actively starting that journey, slowly re-shaping the blunted edges. I’m not sure if I’ll have a steak knife or a butter knife as time goes on, but whatever it is I hope it’s fit for the purpose heaven has for it to play.
September’s projectSeptember 23, 2015
My challenge is to do a project every month and share it here. I’ve got a whole host of ideas and very little in the way of budget, so frugal is the name of the game. (Click on any image to see it bigger & scroll all images!)
September’s big aim has been for me to get creatively organised. Drum roll please…
This month’s project was a book box
The big job this month was to make a book box. Our play area in the bedroom is dominated by books that Adam adores but scatters. I had thought about putting up a book sling but worked out the cost was actually a little higher than I had hoped. Cue a nappy box, a craft knife, paint and a glue gun. We’ve had this for a week and a half now and every morning Adam has book play while I get dressed, make the bed and browse e-mails.
I hope the photo’s are self explanatory in the most part. This project was rather long winded because it needed multiple coats of paint and hence a lot of drying time. The curve edges were traced via a piece of paper, that got flipped, to make them even. The pieces of box that were removed formed the dividers, supports and shelf. The shelf slopes downwards a little. Honestly the toughest bit was cutting out the word books! It’s not perfect but I’m happy. Total cost : nothing, nadda, zip. I had the paint, a decent craft knife and the glue gun in my craft cupboards already.
Beyond our lovely play area, organisation continued with a weekly organisation sheet. First, I had a good search on-line until I found something I liked. A weeks trial proved I’d use it but showed many scribbles, missing extra’s and blank spaces. The result was my own sheet that’s still being tweaked but i’m totally in love with.
Lastly, Adam will now quite happily sit and play, so it’s easier to work away in the background on projects. On the list for some time has been to paint the other big wooden plank with blackboard paint. This ticked the all the easy, frugal, fun and flexible boxes. I’m sure Adam will love it when he’s older, mummy is enjoying it right now!
The yoghurt & pizza daysSeptember 16, 2015
For me it’s a pot of fruit yoghurt that comes to the rescue. The lovingly prepared meal is spat out, clawed from the mouth by tiny fingers, pushed away and rejected. It’s not that he’s not hungry, and one day he’ll realised that biscuits and grapes are not a balance diet, but not yet. So out comes the yoghurt, the full switch doesn’t work for the yoghurt, he’ll eat a whole adult pot and keep going. Perhaps I should have rushed to prepare something else, but I chose the easy path and reached for the fridge.
Mummy’s yoghurt is pizza. The days she just can’t cope with any more she cries pizza. The kitchen is a bomb-site with almost every dish stacked and re-stacked in the dirty pile. Toys are strewn over the floor alongside crumbs and shopping bags that never quite got emptied. Dirty clothes sit in piles waiting for the machine, that finished long ago but never got emptied and now needs rewashing. She’d leave the mess and escape if the return wasn’t so deflating or she’d made it to the shower today.
Thankfully today isn’t a pizza day, it almost became a yoghurt one. They are common around here but thankfully they are getting a little less common than before. It’s shaming how many bin-days our wheelie contained a pizza box. Like many I lay in bed with grand plans, ‘I’ll do *(insert seemingly reasonable tasks) tomorrow’, to find myself the next evening telling myself the same thing. Sometimes I’d beat myself up about the failure, get frustrated that my time is so preoccupied, chastise myself for all the “switch off” time where little is achieved.
Mostly, I’ve learnt to stop myself from doing this. My time is no longer my own – if that means pizza and yoghurt because I just haven’t the strength to dig out the cooker then that’s just going to have to be ok. My time is no longer my own – it’s full of holding little hands as tiny feet walk, and a myriad of other things that come from the roles of mummy and wife. My time is no longer my own – I signed it away long ago, long before delivery rooms and wedding vows, in a huge cupboard, in a church hall, in a summer of my youth.
That time I want to control is a gift given not a right claimed.
And as a gift it’s delighted in. To type this blog, to brandish a paintbrush, to slob before a tv show or to visit friends, each is a delight. It’s a gift delighted in when used wisely and also when it’s squandered with grace, joy and recuperation. So roll on the pizza and yoghurt days, roll on the days when mundane tasks stack up, because life is being lived.