It’s 4am and I’m sat on a rickety chair in my son’s room, listening to the rain. He woke a couple of hours ago and has been restful since, as long as I don’t move. As soon as I shuffle, he’s awake again, asking where I’m going. My feet are a little cold and my…
On making pasta, and other Small Things
Today, the children and I made pasta, and it was a small thing, really, but also a big deal, as the small things so often are. It was a big deal because I had been ill and it was the first time I had been able to summon the energy for such a task. And…
Lent
Lent is essentially a “churchy” time, when the unfashionable concepts of discomfort, sacrifice and mortality are brought into an uneasy focus for us, beginning with the marking of a cross on our foreheads in ash. We are dust, and to dust we shall return… For a long time in the West, our privileged culture has…
2021 in Books…
Like everyone else, I didn’t find 2021 the easiest year. As I pushed my way through it (much as one might hack through relentless thornbushes: with a lack of verve, but a certain sense of grim resolve), I found ways to take care of myself amid the sheer exhaustion. I threw myself into short power…
Old House
This year, our current home, the one I’m sitting in now, has become affectionately referred to in our family as “the old house”. For the past year, we’ve been planning a move “up the lane”, where we have been extending a little bungalow at my in laws’ place. It’s a small extension, and a small…
What I’ve Been Reading: Once Upon a Time in the East, by Xiaolu Guo and Hungry, by Grace Dent
These are two ostensibly different memoirs, but they have in common authors who reveal an immense force of vulnerability, strength, tenderness and passion. Both women have sharp intelligence, gritty determination and a gift for insightful, vivid writing. In both books, we explore childhood: Guo’s in rural China and Dent’s in working class Carlisle. Both authors…
World Adoption Day
It’s World Adoption Day, and, as with many of these occasions, its immediate effect on my day-to-day life has been pretty low. I saw a couple of extra adoption related posts on social media, and that was about it. And yet… Adoption, of course, affects every minute of my day-to-day life, every day. Adoption is…
List (A Poem)
Sometimes I feel a weight in the world: it’s dreary And I know it’s not just me. Sometimes I see strain and grief pervading things The ache and edge that all of this brings. The effort it takes to wade through the pressure Of comfort and wanting Or striving and worrying. Or the lonely stone…
Gracious Uncertainty
I’ve had these two words ringing around my heart and head for days now. Each morning, when I have my shower, I take two minutes while the water warms up to read a page of a Christian devotional book. Perhaps more than ever, I’ve needed these two minute reads lately. Often tired after a broken…
Some of the people I don’t know, to whom I am immensely grateful
Words are powerful things, especially when they are strung together tenderly, with art, care and passion. I think, often, that I really don’t know where I’d be without the words of books and songs. Shauna Niequist describes this eloquently in her book, Cold Tangerines. She tells the story of the birth of her first child…
Limits
If there’s one thing that a nice, long summer holiday can teach you, it’s that we all have limits! Fill in the gaps for yourself: There are limits to how much spending/mess/bickering/clutter/adventure/organising/day trips/food/sleeplessness/work/failure/achievement/expectation_____ I can handle. I recently read this – about knowing our limits – by Micha Boyett (If you’ve not signed up for…
Life Lived 