The Butterfly Experience

In December last year we visited the Butterfly House near Coffs Harbour.  The girls were desperate for a butterfly to land on them; they sat still and quietly for a long time in a relatively warm and humid hot house , which is to be commended for a 4 and 6 year old, willing a butterfly to land on them.  Eventually after waiting and waiting to no avail the lovely lady who worked there carried over two very delicate butterflies and sat one on each of the girls.  They were overcome with excitement and happiness. 

These butterflies were only 4 hours old, as the butterflies sat on the girls they opened their wings for the first time and started moving them, pushing the blood into their beautiful new wings so they would eventually have the strength to fly.  The butterflies are very fragile and vulnerable during this phase but they must move through it to become stronger, more independent and to become the beautiful creatures they have been designed to be.

Today as my little girl clung to me, burying her head into my neck, trying so hard to be brave but quietly sobbing I thought of those sweet little butterflies.  She has been basically attached to me for four years and now she has to stretch her wings out and it doesn't feel good, for either of us.  I know that if I hold her too close she will not have enough room to stretch those wings out fully, she needs time and space to start flapping those tender, new wings of hers. 

As she clung to my arm, crying out she wanted to stay with me, saying she loved me, I had to remove myself.  I wanted to cry too, I wanted to grab her and hold her oh so tight and take her home, but I didn't.  I know in my heart, stepping out and starting to explore the big wide world without me by her side, in a safe, caring, stimulating environment, for a few hours a week, is probably a worthwhile and beneficial thing for her to do.  Plus I need a little bit of time too, quiet time, time to earn some money, time to pursue my dream of writing.

I know I have many more moments just like this ahead of me.  I've already had a few when our big girl started school, caught the school bus for the first time, didn't get invited to a friends birthday party, all these experiences that they 'need' to have to grow into independent, compassionate adults who can contribute to make the world a better place.  Man it is tough!

Every time 'we' have one of these experiences I think of their beautiful wings getting a little bit stronger.  I hear a chorus of angels singing around them, cheering them on; I see the Holy Spirit surrounding them with love, peace, mercy, strength and joy; each time I see the colours of their wings get more vibrant and their wing span get wider; their heart get bigger and yes I cry when they aren't looking.  I cry because I am proud, because I am filled with love and yes I get a little bit scared that if I feel anymore my brain and heart just might explode, but this is the cycle, and beauty, of life.

How wonderful to be able to witness the unfolding of these beautiful wings so closely, what a genuine gift to hold them tight enough to give them strength but still let them fly when they need to.  What a miracle it is to stand by their side for the rest of my lifetime praying for them, encouraging them, loving them and being able to play a small role in supporting them to humbly and gracefully be the magnificent God created masterpieces they are.

So if you see my little butterflies out there in the big wide world, flapping their wings, trying to get strength can you give them a smile, encourage and support them and I will do the same for yours, ok.

 

Why did Sam fall off the bike?

Yesterday morning my 6 year old daughter and I headed off together on a bike ride.  My husband got me a new bike seat and new bike tyre tubes for my poor old bike which had been left to rot under the house since having children, and he 'restored' it (the gears are still stuck in one place but never mind) for my Christmas present.  Bike riding is the only form of exercise I have ever enjoyed so I was pretty excited. 

Since Christmas I have been riding down to our letterbox, about 1 kilometre, and back every few mornings rediscovering my love of bike riding.  The breeze, the freedom, the physical challenge, the practical aspect of getting somewhere quicker than walking and the knowledge that my heart, lungs and leg muscles are enjoying themselves too.  I'm slowly building up the courage to go further up the laneway but I'm a bit scared of being run over, anyway I digress.

Yesterday Sage woke up just as I was heading off on my ride and she wanted to come. There was a slight breeze, the tree of abundance at our back door was flowering, the birds were singing and as we were riding along I was daydreaming about how perfect this scenario was.  If I could whistle I would have been whistling a happy tune.

Oh yeah, why did Sam fall of his bike? .... Because Sam was a fish :-)

Sage got ahead of me, beating Mum at everything seems important at the moment, and as I looked up I saw her falling quickly, then her head went 'doink' on the metal grid, she cried loudly and hysterically.

I rode more quickly towards her, trying to stay calm, her head just hit a grid, with nothing breaking her fall, I knew that would really hurt.  We left the bikes, I carried her home, there was a massive lump on her head in seconds and there was a slight cut.  Oh and she was still crying very loudly and hysterically.  As we walked inside I looked again at our flowering tree of abundance and thought how quickly situations can change.

After a few hot weeks of school holidays, basically being confined to the air-conditioned part of the house, I was really starting to feel like my children were the most ungrateful, wild, whingy whiny, painful creatures and I was the crankiest, most awful, fun-less mother to ever exist.  So this bike ride represented a change in attitude, a new approach, an uplifting of our spirits, bonding, a commitment to enjoying the remaining week or so of holidays and then came the 'doink', the ice, the cuddles and the Panadol.

I don't know about you but I often put so much pressure on certain events, activities or occasions that it is impossible for them to live up to my expectations.  I am getting better, once upon a time I might have been quietly cranky that an accident ruined my perfect moment in time, I would have repressed these emotions because they were irrational and awful, but they were real.  Highly strung you might say.

The longer I live the more flexible and fluid with the flow of life I am becoming.   The truth is there is hardly anything in life I can really control, when I let go of my tight grip often far more extraordinary things happen.  It is a constant process of prayer and enlightenment for me to give myself over to the flow of life, and I regress often.  I quietly and repetitively mumble to myself “Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force,” by Laozi, this tends to help.

Anyway, my big brave girl recovered from her fall quickly, the ice meant the wound on her head went down surprisingly quickly.  It meant I got to sit and cuddle and comfort her for a long time, which was actually really lovely.  The next morning she came riding with me again, without incident, and it was very beautiful and enjoyable.

I'm not sure there is a morale to this story, except life is happening every day, no matter if it is the way we expected or wanted, and there is beauty to be found in lots of situations.

There is a dead goanna under my step and it stinks

The goanna had been peacefully patrolling our yard faithfully all summer long, keeping away brown snakes whilst not being a threat to us at all.  Sadly we have a not so intelligent Labrador, Minnie Mae, who thought the goanna was a threat to us, so when it ventured under the house Minnie Mae protected us by killing this unknown intruder.  I was very upset that the useful goanna had been killed by the useless dog but such is life.  Now the poor dead goanna is so full of maggots its skin is crawling ... too much information sorry, it is really gross?

Anyway, for some reason this poor goanna has made me think of what I will be like when I am old.  No matter how useful and peaceful I am now, I will get old, and eventually suffer the same fate as the goanna, hopefully in a grave not under a step.  The Bible says "The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty ... they are soon gone, and we fly away."  Life is precious because it comes to an end, I really do want to make the most of it, right to the very end.

In my various roles in the field of Community Development, and as a member of a number of organisations over the years, I have had the pleasure of spending time with a broad cross section of the community.  I have met many elderly people who continue to contribute and inspire no matter how old they get, they have enhanced my life and I love each one of them dearly.  I also have an amazing Nan, she turns 93 soon, she is generous and graceful and kind and every time I see her I leave feeling happy.  So I am blessed to have many elderly role models.

Alternatively I have met many elderly who are bad tempered, threatened by youth, stand in the way of change and generally annoy and alienate most people.  The ones that make you silently groan inside when you see them coming towards you.  The same can be said of any age group really, but for some reason the difference between the two groups seems to be accentuated with age. 

Recently two people in Roma have turned 104, they are still pretty spritely too and they continue to amaze and inspire their whole community.  They have both said that getting plenty of sleep,  eating lots of healthy food and being true to yourself and following your dreams is the secret to their longevity.  There has to be some truth in that. 

Some other words of wisdom from elderly people I have found online are:

• Look in your back pocket. If you're lucky you'll find some money. If you're more lucky you'll find a note from your girl that says 'I love you'.
• Don't cook bacon in the nude
• The grass is always greener over the septic tank

Dr Ye Li of California University is Riverside said "The findings of a recent study confirm that although brains slow down with age, experience and acquired knowledge from a lifetime offset the declining ability to learn new information".  Wisdom really does come with age.

We live in a country with a growing elderly population, if we are lucky we will get to be old people one day too, so planning for and considering what we will be like in old age isn't really all that silly.   Again the Bible says "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day," 2 Corinthians 4:16.  There is hope and purpose even in old age.

I do pray I can be a helpful, kind and inspiring older person, making a positive contribution to my family and community right up until I take my last breath, just like our poor goanna!  If you know me when I am old and I am being obstinate and cranky please remind me of this goanna story :-)

Are there any elderly people in your life that continue to inspire and encourage you?  What sort of older person do you think you will be?

Identity theft

In 2007 the Justine Miller, or Justine Brotherton, that had existed for the previous 30 years some how disappeared, in an instant my identity changed, how I felt about myself changed, my purpose for living changed and the things about myself that I considered important changed.  It was nobody's fault, I became a Mum, and after a long, emotionally draining IVF struggle, as I held that little pink bundle in my arms I promised myself and God that I would love this person with all my strength, every day of my life.

"Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of light" James 1:17.  I see both our children as perfect gifts from God, I see my Heavenly Father in their sleeping faces, I hear Him in their laugh, I see His goodness in their kindness and capacity to love, and mostly I feel undeserving of such gifts, I look at them and wonder why I got so lucky.  Subconsciously I feel how I love my children is a direct reflection on how I love God.  If I don't love them enough it means I am not grateful for the gift God gave me and I am letting Him down.  In my conscious mind I  know this is not true, but I have basically devoted the past 6 years of my life completely to the well-being of our children. I wanted to be the best Mum I could be (P.S. I still do not know what this means).

I do not want to interfere with the wonderful human beings the girls have been created to be, but I know they still need guidance and look to us as their parents to decipher wrong from right.  I have attended parenting workshops, read books, blogs and articles on the importance of play, attachment, early brain development, nutrition, spiritual growth etc. 

For six years I have played, listened, sung, photographed, documented, danced, created, painted, moulded, anything that helps them to express themselves, explore their creativity and develop skills.  We have gone to swimming, gymnastics, dancing, speech therapy,to ensure they get enough stimulation.  We bought 60 acres so they could explore and be free and let their minds expand and not be limited by fences or walls and so they would be physically active.  They ride motorbikes and horses, pushbikes and sometimes help drive the car or tractor.  Fun yes but exhausting, occasionally I get in the car and just drive off and for 20 minutes pretend I am free from the responsibility of caring and guiding them.  I feel perpetually guilty that I am messing them up, they seem so wild and free and out of control sometimes, actually most of the time.

Now, for the first time in six years, with the girls going to Kindergarten and School, I have to let go of my identity solely revolving around their fulltime care.  I will let go of their sweet little hands as they walk through the gates of their prospective schools and I will be left wondering 'what now'.  I will have 5 days a fortnight to explore what it is I want to do, but what the flip is it I want to do!!!! Emily Freeman in her book "A Million Little Ways" says 'Do you desperately fear you have nothing to offer the world but secretly hope you're wrong"?  Ummm, YES. 

As the years pass by and the girls become increasingly independent there will be more time for me to do the things I love, pursuing what I am passionate about.  I get heart palpitations just thinking out it, a mixture of excitement and fear.  Adele Basheer says "The best thing about starting at the beginning is you can only go forward", so this will be my mantra for a little while.

I know I will never regret my choice to spend so much time with the girls when they were small, and every moment spent with them is a blessing to be enjoyed and cherished, but I also have to give myself permission to live my own individual dreams now too :-)

“The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” C.J. Lewis 

Let It Be in Twenty Fourteen

As the  festive season came to an end, and I was faced with the reality of the year ahead, I felt a little hesitant. The temperatures are over 40 degrees, there has been no decent rain for months, it is hot and windy, dry and dusty, there are already a pile of bills to pay, farmers all around us are gripped in drought, I am stuck inside with two small children trying to stay cool (they have squeaky little voices, they are always hungry and they make masses of mess EVERYWHERE) and after we sat down and wrote our goals for the year ahead I was exhausted and overwhelmed.  I bemoaned to a friend "I don't know if I'm looking forward to another year exactly the same as last year, how boring".

Then it all changed, I opened my "Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation" newsletter and read about how Allan Frenkel underwent treatment for Acute Lymphatic Leukaemia at 18 years old and how the Walk 4 Whit team participated in the City2Surf in memory of Whitney Lane who passed away last year aged 19 years.  Now I am praying I have a year exactly the same as last year.

I pray my children continue to grow and learn, to be happy and safe and to be free and spirited.  I pray my husband and I continue to be fit and healthy so we can keep working hard to build our dream and  laugh and live side by side and take time to enjoy all the special moments shared while we have a young family.  I pray I get to keep talking and laughing with my sister and friends and that I keep growing and learning.  I pray I have a spiritual and creative year ahead.  I want to be softer and kinder to myself and others and now I am excited.

This quick and significant change in my attitude made me realise how easy it is to become a spoilt little toad when we have so much.  I have so much of everything; love, food, freedom, time and I still want more of everything, something.  I had the hide to say that another perfectly peaceful and happy year would be boring.  I kind of want to slap myself.

My theme song for the year is "Let It Be" by the Beatles, every time I try to plan years into the future, or fret about money I am going to sing this song and hopefully relax.  For as long as I can remember I have wanted to see how the future will turn out, this has never happened, but so far each time I get to the future it has been more amazing than I could of ever dreamed possible.  I need to trust this will continue to be the case.

We watched a movie about magicians the other night and they said the closer you look the less you will see!  I think this is true of life, when I look too closely at things, overanalyse thoughts or ideas, think too long about small decisions, try and micromanage each day and force decisions and outcomes, give myself nightmares over things that might not ever happen, then I become blind to the beauty and the gifts right in front of me.

After all the Bible says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths" Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV.  I'm going to Let It Be and not keep such a tight grip on this life which is fragile and precious, and see how it all works out :-)  Happy New Year!!

Don't take the goat

I came hurtling around the laundry door about to launch into a fascinating story about who I had just bumped into down town when I realised Craig was on the phone.

“I just don’t think so”.

Silence

“Uh um, yes I understand”

Silence

Always the eternal sticky beak I was ease dropping, his tone was much more serious than usual, he was really concentrating and I could not figure out who he was talking to or what they were discussing.  After a long pause he says “Ok then, we will see how it goes, bring her out this afternoon”.

After he hangs up the phone my very practical and very kind husband turned to me and said “Fr Scott is bringing out the goat this afternoon.  She has destroyed their backyard and he isn’t allowed to keep her”.  Without taking a breath he continued “Council have already been around to say it is prohibited to keep a goat in town.  He has nowhere else to take her, we will just put a pen down in the paddock, and it will be fine.  Templeton and the goat might even become friends.”

I gently reminded him “I thought you told me, when we saw the very cute baby goat at the Bazaar, in no uncertain terms Don’t Take The Goat, it will destroy everything”.

“Yeah I know” he said, turning to head outside, he mumbled on his way past “It will be fine, I will make sure she can’t get out of her pen”.  The gauze door closed and he was off  to plan what to do with the goat.  I know he didn’t really want the goat either, but when it comes to animals he is a softy, he befriends them, talks to them and they are extremely loyal to him in return.

After lunch we headed to the paddock to goat proof the pen we had been using for our poddy calf.  It was hot, hard work but we were proud of it, it looked like a fort, completely impenetrable.  Not long after we had finished a young, enthusiastic, kind of ugly goat arrived.  She was not a cute baby goat anymore, with big floppy ears but rather she had long skinny legs, a fat tummy, crazy eyes on either side of her head and a kind of speckled black, grey shaggy coat and two stumpy little horns starting to grow out of her head.

Not to be deterred we introduced her to the pen and Templeton, the poddy calf, who she was suppose to become friends with.  After trying to head butt the calf repeatedly with her tiny little horns she went exploring, and right there in front of us she jumped up and over the pen we had worked so hard to build!  Here began a long and repetitive pattern of Goatie escaping from the pen, Craig adding more wire and mesh to try and keep her in and everybody shouting ‘That bloody goat’.

Every time she escaped she would head straight up to the house.  She had spent the first few months of her life in a residential backyard, with two other dogs, four children and some chickens, she was absolutely domesticated  and thought she belonged up at the ‘main house’ and was an integral member of the family.  We had a very different idea, we wanted to fatten her up quickly and eat her as soon as possible.

We did try to be loving custodians of the goat, we would go down early in the morning and cut new tree limbs for her to munch on, we would let her out so she could run around the paddock and stretch her legs.  Each time she would do a couple of crazy tricks, running really fast, then jumping up in the air ducking and weaving her head.  We thought it was hilarious, we would start to relax and enjoy the fun but next minute she would do a mad dash back towards the house and eat the new growth of all newly planted jacarandas, rip the newly laid turf out at the roots, jump on the beautiful timber outdoor setting and cause mayhem and destruction.  We would then chase after her shouting “That bloody goat”.

After a week or two we would forget these incidents and we would let Goatie out again.  On one occasion we thought it would be brilliant to include Goatie in one of Sage’s eKindy web lessons.  We went and dragged big branches onto the deck, laid down some blue fabric for the creek, got big rocks, it looked beautiful, and then we added Goatie.  Well only about 30 seconds into the web lesson with the Brisbane based kindy teacher Goatie jumped onto the table and head butted the computer, scaring the life out of the teacher, Sage cried because Goatie was ruining everything and I tried, in vein, to regather and make the session work.  Eventually we gave up, I mumbled “That bloody goat” under my breath and dragged her back to the pen. Goatie thought the venture had been a great success, she couldn’t understand why everybody else wasn’t happy.

So finally, Craig had perfected the pen and Goatie was securely restrained then a friend who is a Vet popped in to visit, she suggested the goat probably had worms and would need to be wormed and have her pen relocated to a different part of the paddock.  Well this did lead to a number of expletives being expressed but we did it, we moved the 10 very heavy steel panels and all the wire and mesh down under a beautiful shady tree.  It took weeks to secure it because Goatie got out every time we turned our backs.  On New Year’s Eve we had all just gone to bed at about 1am, we had friends camping out on the deck, at about 3am we heard a loud shout of “The bloody goat is trying to eat our tent”.  By the light of the full moon only 3 hours into the new year I could see her out there chomping on the leaves of our house yard trees, the pen was too far away so I chained her up in the shed, next to a huge tuft of grass, where she ‘bleated’ all morning until the sun came up.  So on New Year’s morning we all rose from our beds saying ‘that bloody goat’.

Eventually we gave in to Goatie’s demands, we built a pen in our backyard so she could see us and talk to us all the time.  This made her so happy, plus we could feed her extra food much more regularly so she got too fat to escape from her pen.  All was good, but we did want to reclaim the back part of our yard, so the time came to ring the abattoir and enquire and the humane slaughter of the goat.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, the girls and I were out and Craig came home from work to take her to the abattoir.  It was such a difficult occasion, we thought we hated that goat but we were sad.  She had worked her way into our hearts and we had developed a relationship with her, that was not supposed to happen.  It was not made any easier when the slaughterer said to Craig “Is this your pet mate?” as Goatie looked up at Craig and bleated pleadingly to be taken home again.

On Friday 18^th October Goatie was lovingly marinated using a traditional Ugandan recipe and she was  BBQed on Saturday, when 45 of us gathered in the name of fellowship and fun to taste the  bloody goat and she was delicious.  It was an afternoon filled with laughter, singing, love and joy, it was a memorable event that people will talk about for years to come.  In the end Goatie bought us all a huge amount of joy and we are so eternally grateful that we did take the goat.

At the end of the feast Fr Scott said "Today at the Farmer's Markets I saw turkey chicks ... anybody keen"!!

She has lost another shoe

An ongoing dilemma in our home is shoes being lost!  Not the pair of shoes, it is usually just one and it drives me batty. I make threats of “If you lose these shoes you are not getting anymore” but the reality is we live in a town where the temperature is 35 degrees plus from September to April so if you walk on a footpath or road with no shoes it does actually seriously burn the sole of your foot.  As soon as I see a shoe removed I search for it, in an attempt to return it the shoe basket, but sometimes I must admit I get distracted and in a blink of an eye the shoe is gone.

 I have not found an effective way to overcome this problem, so off we go down to Target to buy yet another pair of shoes and this sparks a great dialogue in my head about how money doesn’t grow on trees, then I start listing off all the other bills that need to be paid in the next month, including electricity, telephone, rates, food, car expenses, the myriad of insurances, birthday presents, Christmas presents and I start getting a feeling of dread deep in my stomach.  Sadly, this does not curb my spending; it actually inspires me to spend more because I think ‘Well this ship is going down so we may as well go out in style’.  If there are any Financial Planners reading this don’t panic, I have already been told that I live in a perpetual financial crisis that is not going to end well.

So, as you read in a previous blog, the realities of life sometimes lead to me suffering from the symptoms of P.I.M.P’s or alternatively I pretend my  life is a classic Australian television drama, and I am one of the main characters.  In my television drama I am the well educated, corporate who has abandoned the rat race to realise my organic, hippy, free range tree change in a small country/coastal town, not very original but it works for me.

Haha, do I sound completely mental now, I do love being in my television drama.  After writing my blog about having a poo in my pants a number of concerned friends and relatives urged me to expand my mind, one signing me up for a brain detox program, one suggesting I join the local writers group and one suggesting I need serious therapy.  Following their advice, today, in real life, I went to the library and participated in the Roma Creative Writing Group which I loved and I am going to embark on writing short stories to help expand my mind.  Then I took the girls for a milkshake at a café and I knew everybody there so had fun partaking in light hearted chit chat and it was all so Home and Away/Koala Brothersish.  It made me feel happy and slightly aloof from the reality of bills, endless (endless) housework and the demanding squeaky voices of my beautiful children.

As I write I am starting to think that the heat and wind, the lack of structure that school holidays bring and spending a vast majority of my time with a 3 and 5 year old, I may have lost my grip on sanity, I may be slowly descending into a weird and wonderful world of lunacy.  The exciting thing is I have been reading my Bible a lot more in the past week and every time I open it I feel like Jesus is encouraging me to explore this (temporary) craziness.  So I am keen to document the process because I am hopeful once school returns and structure becomes important (I know I function much better when I am busy) my mind will recalibrate and I will be far more normal, and I remain confident my life has a definite and meaningful purpose and this little journey is integral to discovering my specific objective.

Anyway, I’m off to start my brain detox so my mind will be clear and clean which will hopefully lead to much more normal posts from me - fingers crossed  J