Dustier Feet, Softer Heart

We Can Build A Fire

2018-10-02T12:42:00.000+02:00

(Written with Malakhiy's mother's permission)

It was an average day at Skatties, kids playing outside. One of our Skatties mommies was staying with us for a couple of weeks to have a rest for the relentless exhaustion of addiction and darkness. Her three children joined my three in cycling up and down the driveway, and in eating all the food and drawing on all the things. It was busy. And in the midst of all the mess and tears and scattered cups, this mommy forgot herself and her own journey, and she said to me, you need to help my friend.
She came. We drank tea and sat on my sofa, her sinking a little deeper than me, nine months pregnant. Life had been excruciating up until this point, with her traditional cycles of escapism only adding darkness to dark. She was just out of hospital recovering from a trauma only those at the end of their rope know about, when you can't go on and you give up, but God had stepped in and preserved her and her tiny baby. She was beautiful and strong, and I liked her immediately. We stood in the garden, and she said, I feel love so deep here, that I can't go back to the old ways. And since then, she hasn't.

Her sweet baby boy Malakhiy Storm Varrie was born into the world on a clear, sunny winter morning, at home. His mommy was taken to the local hospital, and that's where we met him. His skin was soft and golden, his eyes were deep, dark chocolate, sparkling at the centre. His warm naked body was wrapped in blankets, and he was unbelievably beautiful.

It was a fight to get him home – social workers, nurses, everybody seemed to halt the process. Days passed and Malakhiy would stay in the hospital nursery, sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking. They were worried he wouldn't be safe at home. His mommy tirelessly visited him, sometimes shooed away by nurses who said she was “interfering with their routine”. One day she couldn't find a taxi home, and she walked the entire way – for hours, as the rain thrashed down on her body that had given birth days before. And then one lovely day they all agreed he was ready and she bundled him up into blankets and brought him home.

Soon after, Malakhiy's mommy, Malakhiy and his brother moved in with my friend Clare down the road. She rested from the trauma of the last few months, the toddler brother played, Malakhiy fed, cried and slept. One afternoon I went round there with my three kids, and all Malakhiy's brothers and sisters were there, and it was busy. I was so tired that day, and as I saw little Malakhiy sitting in his chair my heart sighed. I'm so tired, but this little one is here, and he deserves all the cuddles in the world. And so I reached down, and picked him up, tiny precious boy, and rocked him in my arms. And slowly, rhythmically, he relaxed. He closed his eyes, and he fell asleep. I laid him down, slowly, slowly, on the sofa, but moments later he was awake and being passed around. “Mummy!” Lily cried. “He's putting his fingers around my pinkie!” And there he was, and we were all so touched that someone so beautiful, someone so fresh from heaven, would reach out and touch us.

A few days later, I was standing by the sink, it was early in the morning. My mum was in the kitchen too, chatting with the kids as they flitted around, in and out. My phone rang, and it was Clare. “Morning!” I said, surprised my friend was calling so early. And I heard her words, shaking on the end of the line. It's bad news. Someone's just called me to say Malakhiy's died. I don't know any more, her sister just called me. Everything slowed down to a blur. I'm driving there now, do you want to come? I'll be there in five minutes. And soon we were driving through Manenberg, praying with every piece of love we had. When we arrived at the house his mother was heaving and gasping on the floor. People passed in and out the house, a crowd was gathering. And there on the bed, this tiny boy lay completely still, eyes closed, face up.

By the time we reached the clinic he had been dead for forty five minutes. The nurses busied around his body, but quickly walked away. It was too late, it seemed like cot death and there was nothing they could do. And we were left, just like that. Instantly I saw a picture in my mind of a tiny fragment of metal, like a jewel, like a star, embedded in the Father's great heart. But I didn't want to see that, I wanted to see him raised so we prayed under our breath, fiercely. As we prayed we waited for the line of people to come - people who never feel like they have the right to come - police, ambulances and then two men to take him away in their car. What should have happened quickly didn't, and we waited in that tiny room for five hours. We wept and wept until we sat in silence, the electric heater pumping hot air on our feet, and then a wave of weeping began again. Malakhiy's mommy rocked him, sang over his warm body, just like she was singing him to sleep. I held his body longer than I thought possible, I wanted him to be held if God blew breath into his lungs, and even if He didn't, I wanted Malakhiy to somehow know we loved him, even now. The hours passed, his fontanelle dipped inwards. And at one point his mother screamed into the air he's getting cold, he's getting cold, he's getting cold, and we broke.

They arrived, brought out the a little navy blue carry cot, placed his body in it and placed him in the boot of the car. And they drove off, just like that, and of course his mother collapsed on the road. I wouldn't blame her if she ran through the streets after that car like a mad woman - they were driving off with her baby.

I got home and hugged my children, and felt like I had cried all of my insides out. As we shuffled the kids into into bed, Lily ran out into the garden. “Look!” she shouted into the night. “Look at the star!” And I looked. A tiny, strong, searing star cutting into the night. A tiny fragment of metal embedded into the Father's heart. “I see it, it's beautiful,” I said. “Now come inside.” It was beautiful, but a star in the sky wasn't enough when a mother bled for her baby, when we all cried out for his life.
The weeks passed and though we prayed for resurrection, it didn't come. It is true that God is inside us, and all around us. He was with us. He showed himself in a vision to Malakhiy's mother. He met us every morning. Malakhiy's brother Tithon has joined our Skatties family, beginning his weekdays with us, surrounded by toys and cuddles and healing. Malakhiy's family have moved back in with Clare, and his mother constantly astounds me as one of the strongest, most beautiful mothers I have ever met. She is quite simply a miracle herself, and I wish I could gather the world around her feet to listen to her.

We sat on the floor yesterday at Skatties, we were playing doctors. Zuraida brought over a baby to me. “Oh hi!” I smiled. “What's your baby's name?” “Malakhiy,” she replied. And as soon as she said his name, Tithon reached out his three-year-old arms for the plastic baby. He took this little doll, and held him. He stroked his fingers over his tummy, over his face, gently over his eyelashes. I didn't want him to see me cry, but of course he did. Yes, God is inside us, and He is all around us.

It was a hard few months. We are coming out of it now - we are feeling the warmth of rest and provision and it feels wonderful. But when I look back, I'm aware that we walked through a rocky few months. Sicknesses in our family - pneumonia, laryngitis. A friend relapsed, and another, and another. Robberies, breakages, a dear friend lost another baby. But in the days after Malakhiy died, partly for therapy, and partly as warfare, I threw myself into the preschool. I moved the furniture, I bought stuff, I rearranged our routine, and it's all bearing so much fruit now. The kids are loving it, they are coming alive. Zeeha's writing her name, Zuraida is looking so well, Omie is shooting ahead, and Tithon is stroking a doll, healing under the shadow of free play and God Himself. And many nights I still look up at that star, that white ball of flames, and it teaches me that even in the darkness, we can build a fire. A roaring one, a lasting one. And we all know how fire spreads.

Stoneless

2018-03-29T21:05:00.000+02:00

(names changed)

Each morning starts the same. First the quiet, dark hour, as Lily is driven to school and the younger two toddle around the house by lamplight, and I sip tea. Then yellow light falls through the blinds, the traffic picks up outside and the morning finds momentum. I change nappies, wipe spills, fill bowls, kiss foreheads, throw in laundry, pile dishes high on the countertop. And then the red car beeps at the gate and five more children flood the garden and fill my arms, and they are a blessing – everybody can see that. I pick up Jamiz. He's three but the size of a one-year-old. The doctors are trying to work out why – malnutrition? disease? – and his baby teeth are dark, rotting away. But his eyes are shining brown and endless, and his self-forgetful smile lifts me up every day. It's hard to put into words what a blessing it is to be gifted a cuddle by Jamiz. I hold him tight, this warm lump of a boy, melting into my arms. He doesn't want to be put down.

In ten years he will be in a very dangerous position. Raised in the centre of Manenberg's gang activity by a mum who's trying her best, he's one of five young kids, and he's already slipping through the cracks. Every single gangster on the street corner, every single addict lurking around the bins was a little boy, just like this. Eyes shining brown and endless. A warm lump of a boy, melting in a woman's arms. Not wanting to be put down.

//

“No hopeful kid has ever joined a gang. Never in the history of gangs, and never in the history of kids,” writes Gregory Boyle. “Gang involvement is about a lethal absence of hope. No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang, he's always fleeing something.”
I don't know much about gangs, or addiction, but I am watching these children in the morning and their mothers in the afternoon and there is nobody on earth that could convince me they are disconnected. Already tiny Zinnia is hitting and swearing, partly because her mother Bilquis is hitting and swearing, but more so because her mother Bilquis has broken Zinnia's heart. Zinnia came into the world with black newborn eyes searching for her mother's. She rooted at her mother's breast for safety. Her body cried out to be rocked to sleep. As she learned to lift her head and crawl on all fours she would fix her little eyes on on her mother's face. She looked for her, every single day of her life. Her mother couldn't come. Bilquis was carried by another force, an evil force that swung her around from hyperactivity to anxiety to violence to deep, frightening sleep. Zinnia longed for this woman to be her source, her warmth, her world. But Bilquis was gripped by something else. When Zinnia looked to her mommy, she was beaten, laughed at, neglected. Now Zinnia is three and she is hitting, because her inner world is in turmoil. It's very confusing and dark in there. And if Zinnia was ever to reach 13 years old and use a drug to escape her insides, somebody stand up to cast the first stone.

//

We had church in a field on Sunday, in this green stretch of farmland not far from home. It took us just 10 minutes in the car, all eleven of us squashed thigh to thigh, but it felt like a lifetime away. Surrounded by fields of green and mountains, we sang together. The joy of the Lord is our strength. The sun shone against the brilliant blue canvas and I breathed in the beauty. An hour before I'd been standing above Bilquis' bed. Wake up, I'd said. I'm sleeping, she'd replied. Finally she pulled on a mini skirt and sandals, as men walked in and out her shack, some the slippery kind. She pulled Zinnia on her knee and into the backseat of the car. Within minutes we were under the open sky, surrounded by grass.

There's not much to small talk about with somebody who seems like they're walking the edge of death. She has done this for years, tik'd through four pregnancies and births, lived outside under scraps of metal for years. Did your mom die? I ask. Yes, she nods. She was stabbed to death. By her boyfriend. Her eyes are fixed ahead at the blue mountains in the distance. I think of this, her mother stabbed to death, just like her own boyfriend who was murdered outside our house by the metal stairs. Three of her four children taken away to be raised by others. A breeze blows through the fields. She is lost somewhere for a moment, she is unable to hold it together and her eyes fill. And I think – see this woman on the streets of Manenberg, scavenging and screaming and smoking, and we might reach to cast a stone. Put her in a field and ask her about her mother, and she will start to cry. And the stones fall.

//

Shinita has been teaching at Skatties for two months. She's growing like a flower with her face in the sun. By day three she had asked for prayer and tears escaped. Instantly she left violence and drinking behind, breaking the cycle she'd be born into. She'd already astonished herself by spending her child welfare money on actual clothes for her kids, but last week really took her by surprise. She arrived at my kitchen flustered. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “I don't know what is going on. I need to talk to you.” I'm all ears. “So, tomorrow is a holiday. And... and I need you to know, I don't know what is happening. I need God to explain this to me… I want to take my children out.”

She did. She took them to one of the most beautiful beaches in Cape Town and pushed them on the swings and paddled in the water. This week her son turned two, and we gathered at her house and ate white cake and kissed his face. The happy chaos of children filled the room, and she shone. Weeks before she had sat on my couch, and I'd said to her it was amazing to me how ready to change she was. “I just needed someone to pick me up,” she said.

When our stones fall, we find our palms carrying love – something altogether more weighty and beautiful. “Judgement, after all,” writes Gregory Boyle, “takes up all the room you need for loving.” Yes, the weight of love is heavy. I'm convinced more than ever that God needs absolutely nothing from us to love us, but asks absolutely everything of us to love other people. I don't really need to know the ins and outs of that, except I'm signing up, wholeheartedly. And I find a secret there – it's the gateway to joy. That's the bit that surprises, I think, because it all seems so costly from a distance. But there I am in the field, with a woman discovering her belovedness. There I am, holding Jamiz with his endless brown eyes and we can all see he is the one holding me. There I am watching Shinita come in with her cake, and she is radiant, and we are singing.

And here we are, Easter Sunday morning. Gathering in the dark, babies bundled up, huddling by the fire. We sing and tell the story to each other as we know it - the one of our Saviour, Healer, Forgiver, Friend. The sky grows from indigo to yellow blue, and we toast buns on the fire. It's not lost on me that as I picture my palms releasing the stones that come between us, we recount the story of God who blew breath on the heavy stone of His own tomb, and He rose. A tender man, a new friend - clean after 20 years of abusing his system - sits to my right. "I used to think I had to do life alone," he says. "I can't believe I thought that." "I know what you mean," I said. The stones are gone, we belong to each other, we have all won the lottery, and the sun spills over the horizon, covering us in light.

Burning Children

2018-02-25T21:05:00.000+02:00

She didn't come to school today, so we went to her house. Keandra (not her name) doesn't really have a house – she drifts between her grandma's brick home – where's she's washed and fed, and where people drink hard on the weekend – and the shack next door where her mother stays – this is the place her eyes fall shut at night, and the place people come and go, in and out, filling up their body on tik.

I don't know a single sober person that lives on that street, my friend from round the corner said. I don't like it. It feels impossible to me that such a cramped, busy road wouldn't hold a few functioning families, but it seems she's right. The police are permanently parked at the front, people weave in and out of shacks and houses. Everyone is thin and gaunt, something is controlling their days. Children are unattended, there is a giant pile of something, like furniture, like foam, in the street. People are laughing, and it's not a happy laugh. It is a street born of oppression, oppression from people who look like me, and this street continues to oppress itself relentlessly.

She runs across to the car, this precious two-year-old. Her grandma comes outside. She wants the child to sleep at her house, she says, but the child longs for her mother. And the mother lets her sleep next to her, breathing in and out air thick with drugs, in a confusing place where people scream, shout, laugh and sleep far too long. After a while mommy comes out, wearing a pink dressing gown, frizzy hair and a little attitude. We talk a bit, about drugs and children and what social services can do. The last time I spoke to another Skatties mommy about social services she had sat in the car and wept silently. I will burn down my house if they take my children away, she'd said. But Keandra's mommy stares back. We talk about lost sheep and I picture them sweet, and mischievous and in need of a cuddle. This is what a lost sheep looks like – dull dark eyes, pink dressing gown, sleeping until noon and unreachable.

We're driving away and in the rearview mirror I see Keandra picking up a stone to throw at her mother. It's the first time she's probably seen her today and she's angry. Her anger erupts in my garden too, swearing and hitting. And of course, her sweetness shines. She loves making coffee from mud, and she is the first each morning to reach up for her cuddles. Her giggle is perfect. She is two, and she is angry, and we're driving away watching her mother laugh with her boyfriend, and I can't help but feel I am leaving a child in the middle of a fire, and she is going to burn.

People talk about false responsibility, over responsibility. People say remember you are not God, you are not the rescuer, remember if you don't go for that child then God has another plan. I picture a man holding a child by the ankles over a bridge. Would I listen to those voices? She's not your responsibility. You're not the rescuer – maybe this is a white saviour thing? Just make sure you're not too weighed down by this. God can rescue that child without you. Or would I run as fast as I could, body shaking, grab by her limbs and hold her close, and whisper in her ear this is never, ever going to happen to you again. The children are hanging over the bridge. By the hundreds. By the thousands. If it's not our responsibility, then God knows I don't know whose it will be.

///

I sat with Willow early this morning. Lily had been gently shuffled out of bed and into the car for school, by 6.30am. The house fell quiet. Leo pottered from room to room, and I longed to put the TV on so I could enjoy my morning tea in peace. But she wanted to draw, and I thought, as so many mothers do, let me just extend myself a little more. And I then asked her, why don't you draw what's in your heart?

She took the pens – pink, red, purple. She drew a big pink heart, with a thick red line around it. That's the blood, she said, all matter-of-fact. And that's the shooting stars, she said, pointing to the purple lines fizzing out from her heart. And she took the yellow and scribbled around it I love you God, and then God loves me. It was beautiful. I fell in love with that shabby piece of paper. That scrawled piece of evidence felt like it told me every minute of scraping Weetabix off the table, every minute of playing princesses, every minute of wiping tears is being stirred together into a pot of golden yellow and pink, and it's her heart. Her heart is covered in blood and is shooting stars outward and it sings I love you God, God loves me. The morning sun fell through the blinds, and I saw the worth of my work. I now I think of Keandra, and all the other little souls that build with blocks in my garden and I see the worth of our work. His blood, shooting stars and God loves me in golden pen. This is what we are building, and every minute counts.

///

God looked over the earth for somebody to carry His child. The child could have been delivered miraculously, of course, but He preferred the bloody, flawed womb of a woman. Despite an almost rock-solid theology on free will, if I was absolutely honest I still don't really know why He doesn't whisk all these suffering babies out of the fires they're birthed in. But I know He chose a bloody, flawed womb. Then and now. So if He's choosing my hands and my home – messy and raw and unfinished, weak and trembling and willing – then I will be ready in my bedroom like Mary, ready to say Let it be to me as you've said.

And maybe He's choosing her womb too – Keandra's mother. Maybe He's choosing all the mommies of all these babies who come into our classrooms reeling from the pain under their skin. Maybe He believes in them. I believe you can be a good mother, I said to the woman in the pink dressing gown outside her shack today. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but one day you can choose to be become one. I'm not sure how much I really meant that as the heat beat down on my head this afternoon, but if He does choose the bloody and flawed, if that's where His holiness is birthed, then scruffy hair and shacks and tik are just a dark womb, waiting for life. I'll be there when it comes, with my tea and my face in the sun, ready to wave a Skatties child out of my garden and back into the arms of her mother who is well. I'll be there.

Though we're driving off, fighting this feeling that we're leaving children to burn, I'm watching the clock. I absolutely believe it is a matter of time. Things will change, if people keep running towards the bridge with their everything – their last pieces of energy, their spare rooms, their savings, their beaten-up prayers and their vulnerable hearts. And while these treasures are walking through the blaze, there is a fourth man in there with them. That, I know for sure.

They Sparkle

2017-12-23T15:12:00.004+02:00

It's the beginning of the holidays and we are loving it – the heat, the freedom, the long summer days. We went to a playpark this morning, realising how good it is to be with our kids, we are making tea in the afternoon. Life is slower than it was a few weeks ago. The builders still mix cement in the garden and lay bricks – they're building a new classroom for the coming year – but the pace has slowed. It's time for that.

Just the day before, we finished the year with a party. The mothers and a grandmother came, and we sat in the sticky heat and watched Santa give out presents one by one. You are such a kind boy. You bring so much fun. You are so loving. We told the truth as we see it, speaking out how they've shown us what God is really like. And this is what one of our teachers said to me: We used to have to search for their smile when they came. But now, they sparkle. We don't have to search anymore. She was right, their faces were radiant – shining and sparkling and light, basking in the love of their teachers and mothers. And I looked at the mommies of our graduates and my heart swelled with the heaviness of hope. One mommy brave and clean and tending beautifully, steadily to her child. Another mommy as lost as she has ever been. We licked sticky icing off our fingers and when the front gate finally closed, I made some tea and went to bed. What a day, what a year. I started the year by extending our homeschool circle a little wider – we have the space, the toys, this would be good. But God picked up his needle, unstitched my heart to bleed and never tied things up again.

So it is quieter now, and I have time to lull about the house with my kids. The cement continues to be mixed outside, and I sit with the teachers and plan for the next six months. God blew into my room a few weeks ago and caught me off guard. Give me six months, He said, and I knew instantly what I thought He meant. Six months to spend time with my three little ones, six months to take my foot off the pedal of going deeper and faster and bigger, six months to sit on the floor with Leo and play with blocks, six months to discipline my mind from dreaming change to being a present mummy – just that. It's not ideal timing in my head – I feel things are growing and getting stronger and I want to be in middle of that wave, but the teachers are ready for this, and we need it. The last couple of months have been so busy I've heard myself shoo the kids outside too many times, reach for the remote a little too easily. I am tired, and so are they, and we need a breather to hunker down and be present only for each other. I trust God about these things.

“Can my son come?” she asked me. “He can't,” I replied. “This school is for kids whose mothers aren't there for them at the moment, and you're such good mommy.” She was disappointed and began to share some of her journey searching for a school. There are good preschools in our community, but she hadn't found them yet. One forced the children to sleep for three hours until their mothers came, another taught them solely religion, and another beat the toddlers. “I saw it with my own eyes,” she said. “I was working there. The boy was two, he asked to go to the toilet, and they said no, and after a while he peed himself. And that teacher told the other teacher to hit him. After that I couldn't go back. My mother said I must go to work, but how could I? If I did I would cry every day.”

That day was a low day for me. The cockroaches were getting me down, the boy peeing himself haunted me. I saw a clip on the internet of the community mocking and punching a man with mental illness, and I saw clips of my friends baking Christmas cookies with their babies, and I'll be honest with you, I wanted to get in the car and drive into greenery and safety and set up camp forever, cuddle my babies and make crafts. But once you see pain, what are you supposed to do? Run away, or run towards? Is this not a defining question of our very lives?

“The school's in Sherwood Park,” I told her. “Just by Nyanga Junction.” Nicky (one of our teachers) and I sat in a dark, crowded room with a mother who we're trying to reach – we want to enrol her two-year-old in our school next year. “I know you!” The mother said. “I know your house! Your brother gave my boyfriend takkies last year! They stabbed him there by the stairs, he's dead.”

We walked from her house to mine, she's swaggering a bit but I know this is out of her box. Her box of a life shrouded in absolute pain. Addiction controls everything, both of baby'sdaddies have been murdered, she's lived homeless, out in the open air for years. When Nicky first met her all those years ago she was living behind our local shop, under scrap metal. Her newborn baby had his cord around his neck and was growing blue.

I think about her two-year-old, and how this little sponge is going to soak up language and love and colours and sensory play, and how it will absolutely define her trajectory from here on. It's so wonderful I can hardly bear the weight of it. “And the mother is going to change,” said Nicky to me in private, with total surety. “When she comes, and receives the love, she's going to change.”

We finish our tiny tour, and sit in the garden drinking water. The mother is quiet and her swagger's gone. “I can't believe this has happened to me,” she said. “I couldn't have imagined that this was going to come into my life.” It's her first taste of mercy, and I drink too. We are all in the garden in the sun, wondering how we ended up here, basking in the unbelievable luck of a Father who is good and says let's leave the past behind now, shall we?

Yes, Father, let's.

The Fight on our Hands

2017-09-25T19:54:00.002+02:00

Keeba jumped out of the car to pick up one of our pupils. Keeba is a teacher at Skatties and she loves those kids fiercely as her own. This particular pupil lives in a tiny shack at the back of her Aunt's house. It is a dark, dilapidated place where adults wander in and out without knocking, using drugs and occasionally screaming at each other over money. It haunts me sometimes, when I am not there, because it is filled with children and I cannot say they are safe.

As she passed through the yard, an uncle caught Keeba's eye. Why do you always come here for this child? He asked, spitting out his words. This child will just end up like her mother.

This child is four. She is bright and beautiful. I love to spend time with her. She is learning to write her letters – steadily, slowly – and she loves to be cuddled. When you pick her up her eyes sparkle. Keeba felt a pang of anger rise in her stomach. The uncle looked at her. This child is dead, he said.

I am applying for Lily to attend school next year. I'm also looking for schools for two of our preschool kids, who graduate this year. For our Manenberg kids the doors swing shut – they aren't academic enough for one school, their parents aren't 'engaged' enough for another – even though we will pay the money and get the kids there. I apply for Lily and the doors swing open. Come, come, look around. Ask questions, anything. Attend our open day, look here's some coffee, make yourself comfortable. I look at Lily, milky peach skinned and the world opening up for her. I look at our other two students and see the path getting narrow. A narrow path leading to noisy, crammed classrooms and confusing, frightening homes, and gunfire on the street, and tik available on the street corner, and who could expect a child to succeed under these circumstances? They are sponges, we know this, that's why we shower our own babies in love and language and praise. They are sponges, and these kids are destined to soak up hell, and become a part of it.

We see Charlottesville and recoil inside. It feels like an evil so alien to us, but I don't think it is. The fires they carried in their hands are still alive and roaring around us, separating our educational systems and communities. The chants of you will not replace us still echo around our city. And we can put out the fires, and silence the chanting, we can, if we want.

My husband is making a film this week about our church and interviewed Keeba. Can you tell me a bit about the kids' situation at home? She was asked. It was her first question. She paused, and couldn't answer. She wept, and we put the camera away.

This is the fight on our hands.

And we will immerse these little sponges in love. We are a little army of mothers, and we are linking arms to pray and we are weeping and we are tickling under arms and we are making something out of colourful card again, day after day. We are laying down boundaries until our voices grow hoarse, please sit at the table until everyone's done, sit at the table until everyone's done.

Our hands grow raw in the fight, yes. Just this week a child told her mother we beat her at school. On the same day one child pushed another child into the monkey bars and bruised her face. The child who was bruised was Lily, my child, who forgot about it much quicker than I did. Some of it's normal kid stuff, and some of it isn't. Manenberg has been at civil war for about a month. There is endless shooting and bodies disappearing into the ground as the media falls silent. A one-year-old was shot in the arm this week. A one-year-old. I look at my baby boy, all giggles in the day and resting his warm cheek on me in the night, and I pray.

This is what the children see. This is the fight on our hands.

One of our kids has been acting out for a while. Her daddy's been picked up by the police and she's struggling. She can't listen, she can't sit, she twists and turns through her therapy session. But I remember a couple of months ago, I set out the paints. She picked up the green and drew a big line, and another big line. It's a gun, she said, and she held up to the class. No, love, we said, draw something else. She paused. And then she picked up the brush and began to paint, drawing a line and circle in a very dark shade of green. She dipped her brush in the water, and painted the same in paler green, and again paler still. She painted reflections underneath. It looked like a forest trees in shades of green, growing above the water. It was beautiful.

This is the fight on our hands.

We are David, and Goliath comes out in the morning and the evening. He comes in gunfire and violence in the home and tik on the street corner. He is taunting us, look at you, you're so small. We look down at our stones, our little weapons, our tools. Our stones are paint and therapy and cuddles and porridge and consistent boundaries. They do look small. We place them into our hands and throw, again and again. And before we know it, Goliath lies dead. The God of holy fury and tender mercy fights for his children, made in His image with own gentle hands. Watch Him fight. Look, there is one child learning to write his name, and there's another believing the therapist when she's told she's important. And there is another, painting trees on the water. The narrow path is opening up, I can see it in front of us. It looks beautiful and the sky looks like the Father's heart. God is here.

And as we use our stones every day, we begin to see His plan unfurl. These children grow into beautiful stones themselves, the foundations of Manenberg, and one day us mothers will throw them back out into the darkest corners of this community and they will conquer their own giants. One day they will birth their own movements of beauty and freedom. And that is when we will know, when the children run out in their hundreds, that the fight on our hands is won.

Children of God

2017-07-19T10:30:00.000+01:00

She'd disappeared for a few minutes, but I found her. Ambling up the garden, the sun in her wispy three-year-old blonde hair, fresh rhubarb in her hand, dark and leafy red, pulled from the earth. I soaked it all in – the warmth on my skin, the yellow sun kissing everything, her baby-fat legs plodding through the grass.

We exhale during these days. I walk through the woods with my husband on a cool afternoon, we buy creamy expensive takeaway coffee, we lap up the love of our friends, our mothers cook for us and shoo us away to bed when we offer to clean up. The girls dig and chase ducks and delight in their grandparents. I creep away to read books, a long lost luxury I've discovered again. My current read is a nourishing, beautiful book. I am storing up its message in my heart – go slow, shave off the busy things you do to prove yourself, be present, learn to rest. I know this kind of stuff is a lifeline to me, that if I am to keep burning – or keep going at all – I will need to steady the pace, and be gentle even to me.

The six weeks are up. We fly today. It is so familiar to me, this feeling – the black suitcases full and waiting, the babies in pyjamas ready to be scooped up and taken across the earth. The thrill of feeling God breathing on us just a little closer than normal, because I am fumbling about, reaching for Him, He is the reason for all of this.

There have been moments where I've wanted to hold on. Walking by the river Thames, sparkling brown on a summer's morning in London, I imagined my life here again. I stopped in by two old friends, both of whom shape my heart and love me well, this time pushing my third little baby in a buggy. I want to grab it all sometimes – hold on, and squeeze. This is good and beautiful, God, can't I keep it? But it sparkles and shimmers better because I have given it away. It has been laid down, so when I get to hold it, it's lovely – water in my hands, never enough time – but I am grateful. This is good and beautiful, God, thank you.

And as I ponder on some of these truths in this book – that it matters that I take care of myself, that the hustle needs to die – I find myself back by the Thames. This is good and beautiful advice God, can I build my life on it? I can imagine a life with only this as the foundation – coffee and space and stimulating work and rigid boundaries and lots of me-time, me-time, me-time. Maybe no need for a preschool or homeschooling or living in Manenberg. I can drink in this message like it's the gospel, but it's not – it's essential and good, but it's just a component.

We find life when we give it away.

It is beautiful to watch Willow gather up the rhubarbs. It is lovely to see them frolic in the garden and take ballet lessons. There are wonderful schools that our children won't go to, and beautiful sights they won't see. Today we take them out of a green paradise of raspberries and hollyhocks to our concrete back garden in Manenberg, where the smell of marijuana floats over the wall and the grass died in the drought. I don't think they're losing out. They come alive there, and so do we.

The world is dying, and it's not an understatement. I walked by some toddlers having a football lesson on holiday, a sweet, gentle sight. Chubby legs kicking balls and falling over, each with a mummy or daddy holding their hand, laughing and cherishing and cheering them on. And before I knew it, my swollen heart tore and tears poured down my cheeks. All these resources, all this love. All this, for only a few.

Sometimes I am the Levite in that old story, the priest. I am hurrying by, I am going to the temple. I want Christianity, I want the beauty and loveliness. I want to build a temple for my sweet little family, a place where the worship's on and the doors are shut and the children are reading on the sofa. A temple for my God – I am in a hurry to get to that safe, protected place. That's where God is, isn't He? So many of us are building our lives on that, so it must be where He is, right?

He's not. He's in the midst, whispering to me. There is somebody dying by the side of the road. Her name is Zuraida, she is four years old. Go pick her up.

Even if the oil and the wine pour down your hands. Even if the blood stains your clothes. Even if there are cigarette butts and crisp packets in your garden, even if your toilet never gets flushed, even if people you love disappoint you, even if you disappoint yourself when your love runs out, even if your heart swells with the pain of these children. Go. Pick her up. Let the oil and wine and the blood run down.

I don't know how to thread it all together – self-care and suffering. But perhaps it is this: I'm God's beloved child, so I am worthy of love. And everybody else is God's beloved children, and they are worthy of love. That won't come without a cost, because there are too many who know too little of that love, there is a great gaping deficit, and we have held too tightly to things like time and money and our houses, so there is a lot of mess to untangle.

But I'm not too scared about it anymore. I know that it brings life, I feel it pulsating inside, His tender heart becoming mine. It's undoubtably worth it – wholehearted pursuit of Jesus was always a treasure in a field, we knew our hands would get dirty digging and we'd lose everything else to buy the field, but we'd seen the treasure. And it's changing us, all the time. I am the Samaritan some days, but other days I am the beaten man by the road, unable to overcome my selfishness, my ego and my sin, and I look up and all these children are operating on me. Stitching and sewing, healing and cleansing, making me the dream of my heart – that I would reflect the holy one I love.

So off we go away, underslept, a little heartsore, a little nervous, gently into the unknown again. I feel swept up by His spirit and held by His love. I think of Abraham, that cherished hero of mine, how he walked out without knowing. I don't know how to run a school and raise three children and homeschool and invest in my marriage and disciple my friend and find secret time with God and run and eat well and go slow. I don't know, there's no grid or model. But I have the stars, innumerable and clear, speaking of future fruit, and I have the presence of Almighty God, a wind that surrounds.

How the Dawn Comes

2017-05-13T07:21:00.000+01:00

We met for church in our living room this morning. We sang worship, we gathered around the hurting, we prayed for my sick baby. It was sweet. It has rained showers all afternoon - the girls have been playing pirates and the baby has been sleeping off his flu. We sip tea and wait this slow afternoon out.

***

Life is extreme where we live. Whether we'd prefer to face it or not, there are hard and dark things happening in my community. School children are sold for sex, young men carry machine guns. A mother is crying because her babies will soon be taken – she cannot kick her habit, her baby was found alone in an alleyway at 9 o'clock at night. A father teaches his six year old to carry a knife. Mothers ache for their sons. Women endure unspeakable violence. There is that man who walks up and down my street every day to use drugs, he is mentally sick and always alone – was that what God dreamt for him on the day he was born, with his eyes shut, rooting around for milk?

This is the darkness. It is sometimes numbing, sometimes overwhelming, but it does compel us to move. Come out, into the ocean at night. Walk in the waves and find the Saviour. And in that sense, living in places like this, we must be honest with ourselves, there can be a sense of adrenaline, where you go beyond your exhaustion and breaking heart, and start reacting to all the stress around you. Fight, get up, fight, help, stretch, don't stop. What was once an invitation becomes a pull, and you are no longer on the offense, and you can't remember exactly what you're fighting for, you only know what you're fight against. It's easy to lose your heart out on the sea, being so close to the waves.

***

But to light up the darkness we release fireworks. And they light up the sky for a while, and they make us feel happy. They sparkle and dazzle, they point us to a greater light. I see this play out in my life, all this releasing of colourful fireworks in an attempt to ward off the dark. We buy a house, Nick makes films, he builds a studio to record local music, I build a preschool, I paint the walls a warm peach, I buy colourful toys, I dream up a sweet little routine. It has been thrilling and such a tremendous gift to be a part of all of these things. Fireworks everywhere, bold crackles of colour sparkling and promising light. I will never stop letting them off, as long as I live.

But there is a quiet after the show is done. The house is nearly finished, the school has opened. Dry paint sticks to the preschool table, and the grass grows worn under the swings. Where is my hope when the last firework bangs loud against the sky and the black dark remains?

***

I lay in the dark, 2 a.m., my restless, sick son next to me. Guzzling down milk and unable to breathe, he coughed and spluttered and wouldn't settle. Exhausted and frustrated, I got up. I made tea and we sat in the living room together by lamplight. Things have felt quiet with God for a while, something a little off, but I opened the Bible in the silence, stumbled on this: Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him? And I thought, how I have tried to direct you. I have said you are out there in the darkness, or you are in the fireworks. I have said you are in the dark and the pain, and I have gravitated there in search of you. And I have said you are in the fireworks, the great grand works of God, the opening of schools or the buying of homes or the preaching on stages.

But you are here in my living room, in this holy place, with my sick baby, hovering over my tea like silent steam.

I woke up the next morning different. I began to think about everyday hope. To open the school and then to scrape the old paint off the table every day. To sweep my floors, to put out the crayons, to touch their cheeks, that is such a lovely story my love, now pick up your banana skin, no, pick it up, put it right there in the bin. Hope looks like something. Hope looks like clay in my hands, working it, allowing it under my nails, keeping it warm with my fingertips. Sometimes hard, sometimes joyous, sometimes creativity and celebration, sometimes mundane and long. I need to work at it. I can't put it down for long. Hope requires hard work, and the relief of it all is Emmanuel, God with us.

Dusk falls, the girls play outside, the oven hums ready for chicken nuggets, golden hot for the children. Slow, beautiful life – this is what God has give me, and this is where I began to work out hope with my hands, every single day. I might jolt against the slowness, against the ordinariness, but I will submit. I will stay here, and as I work with hope in my hands like clay, I will see promises fulfilled. God is here, look at us working together. The fireworks may fizzle, but my face is set like flint, no one can stop me stirring this porridge, and I know in my soul that the dawn is on it's way.

The Waters

2017-03-28T18:19:00.000+02:00

I got up early on the day of the conference, surprised I was going at all. Willow had vomited all over the bed the night before, I was sure I would need to stay home with her. But she woke up so bright that we strapped the babies into car seats and packed Mini Cheddars into our bags and drove to the church.

I used to think about justice a lot. It was a passion of mine, in those London days where we would read books early in the mornings and debate the world's brokenness at dinner parties. Then we moved to Mozambique and it squeezed me, tight. No water, flickering lights, high humidity, overwhelming need, beans again for lunch. Babies squeezed me tighter, and my babies got sick, again and again, and while I loved that nation it felt like sandpaper against all of my skin some days. So justice - addressing poverty systematically and challenging my own privilege - became another burden on my breaking shoulders. I instead insisted on relief. Sometimes I looked defensively, bitterly at proponents of justice - don't tell me anything else. I am tired. Let me have my imported ice cream and a luxury break in Cape Town and don't dare talk to me about my money, my privilege. I've given everything else away.

And so it remained that way. We still made big decisions based on justice - we moved to Manenberg, we handled money in an unorthodox way. But I was still recovering from the squeeze of Mozambique, and when it came to discussing systematic injustice at a deep level my hands remained gripped, in the shape of a fist. I no longer wanted to discuss restitution much. Love yes, but not justice.

I listened to the speakers at that conference. I opened my ears and I think that is a good place to start. Colonialism, slavery, apartheid, economic injustice, educational disadvantage, people without bread. Knock, knock, knock. Knocking on my heart and opening it up to consider that my life's work is deeper than charity. I considered restitution - that old friend I used to think about. I listened to the stories of the past. Of women who were raped and men who were dehumanized and children - this nation's children - who grew up thinking they were less than because of the colour of their face. These are also the stories of today and I needed to hear them, I needed to connect what is happening in Manenberg to what happened twenty years ago. I needed to connect what is happening all around the world to what happened hundreds of years ago. And as I opened up I knew this: I need to understand and I need to change. I felt incredibly heart sore and it didn't go away, it lay heavy on my heart through every session, every coffee break. I felt sore and soft. My fists uncurled and my cheeks grew wet.

On the second day of the conference a mother was shot down the road from us. She was caught in the cross fire. She leaves behind a six month old baby. And I couldn't stop thinking about this baby. And how Leo looks up at me and knows me, how he smiles a sparkly-eyed smile for me, and how he roots around with his tiny lips for my own body's milk. How a mother's love was stolen from this sweet six-month-old baby forever. My friend was caught in the shooting and, shaking, she said to me, why are we here talking about the colour of our skin when innocent people are being killed in Manenberg? And I couldn't really answer her in that moment, but what I wanted to say is, because they are connected. I know that gangster was the one who pulled the trigger, but there is something else we need to talk about, not just him, but I can't explain it, I just have to tell you that my own fists are uncurling.

I faced my own sinfulness at this conference. It was hard. I know, I know, maybe some will tell me not to be so hard on myself, will tell me I'm doing good. But I'm just being honest, that is what I did. I looked inside and I saw how much I don't want to share. How much I block out the hungry and the mamas struggling to clothe their babies and grown men defecating in buckets. As I hold my money tightly. I think that is sin. Let's not be to scared to admit we have it. I came forward on the last evening during worship and I was crying. Jesus you will not want to look at me, I told him and I knelt on the ground. And then I saw him, in a vision, in a way I don't often see. His clothes were blazing white and his eyes were pure and burning. And I was so surprised, He was looking right at me. Even in all of our sinfulness, there He is. He is looking straight at us. With all that love, not flinching for a moment.

There is a tap running, Mahlatse Mashua shared with us on the last night. You come into the flooded room, and what do you do? You can mop up the water, but you must also turn off the tap. I walk into the floods of Manenberg, and I am busy mopping up the water, catching these little ones who no one is mothering, and taking them into our little preschool. We paint and play. My arms are tired and my back aches, but I know this mopping work is beautiful. And during this conference I was reminded of the tap - the systematic reasons why everything is such a flooded mess - and I feel like I am seeing with a bit more light again. I don't feel so afraid to talk about these things. I can mop up the water and wrestle to turn off the tap. Turning off the tap means searching out my sinful soul, and becoming free. I am no longer so frightened of that. There is a new strength.

In fact perhaps these waters, like Lisa Sharon Harper said, are a baptism for me. Isn't it freeing to think we don't have to hold onto our wealth? Isn't it refreshing? Isn't it like cold water in the face, a little jolting but so cleansing? I am becoming clean. And isn't it a bit like resurrection? Like Thomas, as Craig Stewart said, putting his hand in the side of Jesus, feeling the wound and finding the resurrection power? I think that's what I'm finding. Water, life, resurrection, and the hope of a redeemed world, at last. If the process is brokenness, then the promise surely outweighs it in reward.

Eight Days

2017-01-21T15:38:00.000+02:00

We opened last week. Opened is a grand word, and it wasn't an especially grand beginning. I woke up tired and began. Three little ones joined my three - one cried and barely talked all morning, the other lapped up cuddles like she was thirsty. We served porridge with a lump of jam, we put out the yellow play dough, we wrapped them in blankets for rest time. The one who cried stopped crying, the swings were loved, the reading session was a disaster, the children softened hour by hour. The sun shone and the air was warm, sweet. We dropped them home.

Eight days we've been running now, and it is full and tiring and stretching, but there is ease and loveliness too. That is a blessing. There is still pushing, an occasional hit, a little swearing. But it has been as if the magic of this back garden – the sun, the gentle breeze, the singing and the stroking of their heads – has covered them so far, and they haven't fought it. It's early days and it's quite possible that familiarity will create space for the ugliness of pain to surface. But for now, He is a rest to us all.

I still wake up in the mornings wondering how on earth I am to climb this mountain. All of my children can still need nurturing at night, and the baby will certainly wake at least twice. I wake up exhausted, in a daze, reaching for tea and for strength, and I think, not only do my own little ones need a day full of love when I am empty, but other ones are coming too. They are all coming empty. But I remember I am not the filler, just a faciliator, and He is good. And there is nothing to do but to peel back the duvet and put one step in front of the other. This day, I say to myself, this day I will see the goodness of the Lord.

Whilst the preschool hours are even sweeter than I'd anticipated, it is also true that the after-hours are harder on my soul than I'd prepared for. These tiny treasures slip out of our car in the afternoon into houses where there is pain and confusion, ready and waiting for them. They come from homes battling substance abuse, alcoholism and domestic abuse. I knew that before we started, but there is something about watching with your own eyes the face of a young child disappear into a home where you know they will hurt. The most searing moments for me have been when I drop one of these precious ones home and there is no one to officially receive her, she just drifts into the backyard of shacks filled with all sorts of wrongdoing. No one will put her to sleep. She is three years old.

We were at the beach on Saturday morning, early and sweaty. It felt good to swim in the icy blue water and sit in the hot sand. It was there I shared about our first days at school with a friend, as we watched our kids digging and splashing. And it slipped out of my mouth: I just can't believe that we as adults are letting this happen. It is absolutely on our watch. And even I – the one with the fundraising video and the little school in the turbulent neighbourhood – want to recoil because it is just so heartbreaking. Their lives haunt me, all the time. I find it hard to pray without seeing their faces. I want to step back, I want to distance myself. But that is not courage, and it is certainly not love. It seems they are so often interlocked, courage and love, and how sometimes we wish we could change that, but it is not the way of God.

But look. Look at the way the light shines across the garden. Look at them all, squeezed in the hammock and giggling. Look at her painting, she is so gifted at that, who would have known? And look at that one, starting to chatter to herself, like she's found a bit of joy. Look at my eldest, she was so lost on the first day, and now she is playing games with them and I think they could be friends. Look, this house is startlingly beautiful, it is filled with little treasures and Jesus' presence and I can't even contain the hope I feel all the time. Another little one joins us tomorrow, her mother is bringing her. And who knows, maybe the mothers will see and believe, with a bit of time. That would change everything.

I look at their faces, the ones who have seen more than they should, and received so, so much less than they should. They are determined, riding the bike, riding the purple scooter. They want to conquer the monkey bars. Arms stretched out, one in front of the other, gritting their teeth. They need help, yes for now, but maybe soon they will work their way across themselves. With grit and strength. With practice every single day. Every single day, I tell myself, as I wake up again to stir the porridge, put out the paints. They will get strong, I believe it, and I will see them cross over to the other side.

The Preschool

2016-10-16T16:20:00.001+02:00

It was a rainy afternoon in Scotland, and I sat with my Bible by the patio doors in the dining room. The girls were younger then, it was about a year and half ago, and they flitted around, talking, singing. We had just left Mozambique a few months before. We were sure we were to land in Manenberg soon, and I was asking God what that looked like. I was reading Isaiah, one of my favourite books - a rich tapestry of mystery and promised light, and I found this: The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. At the time Lily was saying to herself over and over again “butterflies... butterflies...” and something dropped in my heart. God is asking me to invite children to play and delight over the hole of the enemy. My eyes fell on the next verse: They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. No violence, no violation. But play and delight and freedom. This would lead these little ones to the knowledge of His face. This was how the waters cover the sea.

//

I have been spending my days trying to juggle three. I change Leo's nappy on my bed, while the princesses jump in his cot and ask me to rescue them from the dragon. I cut up apples and spread peanut butter while Leo naps in the carrier and I kick the washing machine shut. Just one minute, I say throughout the morning. I just have to put out the washing, I just need to feed Leo, I just need to clean up this water. I just need to go to loo, no don't come in, okay, okay you can. There is sometimes a sweet spot in the afternoons where Leo will lie still and gaze at the clouds, and the girls will potter in the dirty yellow sand in the sun, and I will see how good, how good all of it really is. And there are times where I feel so squeezed and so thin I feel like I could split open, and I collapse exhausted, asking God to relieve me from it all. The squeeze, most of the time, is a beautiful thing. Desperation is fertile soil for God Himself to grow. I need you. He comes. Sometimes the squeeze is a warning flag – a flag saying change something – so I am paying attention and trying to ask for help, trying to make life easier if I can. After all, non-commissioned martyrdom won't save anyone and will only make me a snappy mother. But my days are also filled with a squeeze that God Himself has breathed into being. I am supposed to be leaning on Him. Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? the friends ask in Song of Songs. I am, I answer, in the mess of biscuit crumbs and plastic toys and sippy cups. I am.

I have wondered if in the fullness of my days there is any room left for anything else. And then I remembered what he'd spoken to me about before. Children. I think, for now, it looks like using our out-building as a little homeschool room. We are fixing the roof and fixing the floor and fixing the walls. We will paint it and fill it with colourful toys and rugs and books. My girls will spend their mornings there and I hope we can fill it with little friends from our community too. There are some beautiful preschools in Cape Town – spacious, light, creative spaces. I don't like that they are full of nearly all white toddlers. And it is not fair that lots of tiny ones in my neighbourhood wake up to a house full of drugs and streets full of gunfire. It makes feel sad and a bit sick in my stomach, and I'm hoping this little shed at the back of house can be a tiny shard of light, of healing. To the children themselves and to all of us.

I'm a little tentative about this because I spend nearly every Monday wondering if I have the strength to manage three children, never mind any more. I am nervous to bring in the builders and I am scared to write a post about it for everyone to read. But I am also learning the lifestyle of leaning. The essence of poverty of spirit is that we do become full, but we also remain poor. We are filled and it is magical. But we also remain, as Sara Haggerty puts it, “laced with weakness”. I'm trying to remain unafraid about that. And I want desperately to be someone who dared to believe what they understood to be the whisper of God.

And I'm still learning to believe in the humble things. Sometimes I have to fight my pride. The voice that says if I was preaching and leading, my life's work would be more significant. But He speaks to me, quietly and firmly, reminding me He is devoted to children. He sees the wisdom and beauty of children. That the humble places are like gasoline poured out on the ground, ready for his match to strike. To ignite. Reminding me of the Chinese orphaned little ones that He once spoke to, deep in the mountains. They were the ones that are grew up to be pillars of the church, or fiery martyrs of the faith. They ignited. And sometimes when I lose myself in the neck of my baby, tickling him with my nose and becoming immersed in the cacophony of his sweet giggles, I find my heart whispering, of course you are everything. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I missed it for a moment. I am learning, sweet baby. Jesus is showing me.

//

It was bedtime, and I was settling into the familiar pattern. Leo was full of milk and fast asleep, Willow was settling down in her bed. I pulled the wooden blinds, turned on the lamps. I was stirring the pot, tired, Lily was flitting around my feet. She started speaking to me. Do you know Mummy, that when my heart is out of love, Jesus will give me a new heart? And He will fill my new heart up again with His love? I stopped stirring. God is my best friend, she said. I knelt down and looked at her. How did you know that? I asked her. Jesus just sang it to me, she said. And when He sang, love hearts were coming out of his clothes. I didn't know what to say, but I know in a thousand sermons I've never heard anything quite as beautiful as that.

//

So we are fixing the roof, fixing the walls, fixing the floor. We will break up the concrete and put down grass. I want to plant flowers and put in a swing and lots of dirt to build towers in. I hope to see children run and play and laugh and be loved. I will probably be there cutting up apples, either thanking God I get to do such an amazing thing with my life or fighting my ego that says this is too small a work or desperately crying out for help. We will pull out the play dough, we will paint, we will pick dandelions and we will read stories. I will kiss foreheads and change poo-poos and remind them to share, come on now, you've had it for a while, share it with her. But most of all, I'm hoping that the Jesus who has love hearts coming out of his clothes will show Himself to us, to all of us. And if He passed through my living room while I was unaware one night, I have no reason to believe He won't do it again.

When Your Child Is In The Lift

2016-07-22T13:23:00.004+01:00

The porter knocked at the door. He was ready for us, with his heavy brass trolley, and we began loading up our suitcases. Willow crawled on her tummy on the plush carpet. It was a stunning hotel, much more than we could afford really, but we had been exhausted from Pemba and it had been our first night in Johanesburg. We splashed out and it had been beautiful. The morning after, refreshed and rested, we loaded up our bags to continue our journey to Cape Town.

Where's Lily? I asked Nick. She must be in the room he replied, as we stood in the corridor loading our things. She wasn't. She must have gone down the corridor? I asked Nick, slight panic rising in my throat. He ran off down the hall and I checked the room again. I couldn't see her. Nick returned after circling the floor. She wasn't with him. She was gone.

The next few minutes felt like a terrifying blur. Like free falling into a nightmare. Because my husband is calm under pressure, he reached for the nearest phone and called reception to report his missing daughter. Because I am not calm under pressure, I fell prostrate on the ground and cried out from my guts GOD, throaty and primal. I looked out the window into busy Johannesburg and my heart raced - I had no idea what to do. My world was falling apart in seconds. She was gone.

And in a flash, the lift arrived in the corridor and a beautiful South African lady with a warm smile was carrying my daughter in her arms. My knees buckled and I clung onto her tiny frame. And as I wept over her hair, Lily also began to cry and we held onto each other tightly. She had - in a moment of seconds, while we were loading our bags - run into the corridor, pressed the lift button and stepped in. A little Mozambican toddler, she had no idea it would whisk her away like it did. But she came back, carried in arms, and I was so grateful I carried her the entire morning through the airport, even though my body ached.

****

I scroll, just like any other person, through my Facebook feed, and I see pictures of sunsets and new babies and date nights and mission trips. And then one night, just like any other person, I saw the story of Philando Castille. He was murdered for being black and it's so shocking, everyone is saying, and it is.

I think of all of the mamas. The brown-skinned mamas in today's America. Holding their tiny newborns, kissing round, warm cheeks. Smelling hair, counting tiny toes. Singing lullabies as they rock their precious ones to sleep in the dark. Swaying side to side, the holy dance of motherhood. Believing good things for their tiny babies of promise. Who knows what this little one will become? Kissing the nape of the neck, wrapping the squidgy arms up in a blanket, their hearts full and heavy with a love only God knows.

And one day those mamas look up and have to send their babies out into the world. A world that will not be kind to their babies, their precious black babies. A world where white men might open fire without reason, where white women feel afraid without reason. And I think of those mamas, waving their babies off, as if they are going into a lift, down, down, down. And they don't know if their beloved ones are coming back.

****

I am really just living normal motherhood here, in my corner. I hang clothes on the laundry line and stir soup and read stories and wonder where all the crumbs come from all the time. It's sweet and draining and frustrating and wondrously beautiful. And then I hear shots over the wall in the night or I hear stories from the friends we are making and I remember there is a lot of other stuff happening in streets and homes around me. So as I hang clothes and stir soup I think. I think about where those shots are landing. I think about lives cut short, violently and brazenly, at eighteen years old. I think of those men differently now I hold a son in my own arms.

I think of all of the mamas. The brown-skinned mommies in Manenberg and Hanover Park and other communities near me. Holding their tiny newborns, kissing round, warm cheeks. Smelling hair, counting tiny toes. Singing lullabies as they rock their precious ones to sleep in the dark. Swaying side to side, the holy dance of motherhood. Believing good things for their tiny babies of promise. Who knows what this little one will become? Kissing the nape of the neck, wrapping the squidgy arms up in a blanket, their hearts full and heavy with a love only God knows.

And one day those mamas look up and have to send their babies out into the world. A world that wants to ensnare them into the torturous trap of heroin. A world that convinces them to abandon their sweet, strong bodies to gun death on the streets. Bodies that were made to run breathless and grinning on a football field, that were made to protect and defend, that were made to lick ice lollies in the summer and build with wood. And those mamas see their children, and it's like they can't stop the road their sons are taking. Their sons are eleven years old now, thirteen years old, and drugs and violence have pounced. They are in the lift going down, down, down. And they don't know if their beloved ones are coming back.

They still remember the way his hair smelled the morning he was born.

****

I know what it was like to lose my daughter. Only for a few minutes, but it is etched on my brain and I cannot forgot how it felt. And I think of all the mamas. What it's like to watch before your eyes your own beloved slip away and never know if they will be brought back, carried in somebody's arms, safe and yours. The world is not very safe for someone of colour. I am tired of that, and I am just watching. I cannot fathom the exhaustion those mothers carry.

We have to sit with that next to us, even though it digs into our sides. I don't know what on earth I can do about it, I have three tiny children that are more than I can manage - really, if I wash my hair and cook a meal it's a good day. I feel like I have no time or energy to tackle these things, but I know what I can do. I sit at His feet and I ask Him what to do. I know if He can honour a widow with two coins, I know if He can break bread and feed five thousand, I know that if He can take twelve people and change every nation, I know that if the kingdom is yeast and mustard seeds, then He can use a tired, tenacious mother.

So I try not to be afraid when I see children seemingly lost into the world and I imagine beautiful things instead. I imagine tiny ones playing with toys. I see girls learning maths and holding their heads high. I see those sons on the football field. I see them licking ice lollies on a summer day. I see Jesus laughing with joy over these ones, the ones He created for life. And I see the mamas, smiling a quiet smile, remembering how they held their tiny frames and said Who knows what this little one will become? And now, they know.

Heart Surgery

2016-07-01T15:15:00.001+01:00

At 8 in the morning I felt the twinges. By 9 I called Nick home. By 10 I was pacing and breathing in, and out. By 2 we had left for the hospital, in and out of traffic, dropping the girls off with friends. By 3 I was lying in a hospital bed alone, Nick filling out our paperwork, the machine monitoring my contractions. Breathing in, and out. And that was when the bubbly midwife's face grew solemn and she said to her colleague something like I don't like that.

The machine kept monitoring and I kept breathing and the contractions stretched me wider into unbending pain. I started to twist and writhe with each one but miraculously and somehow peacefully I kept breathing in, and out. 4 o'clock came and then 5 o'clock. My doctor was on holiday and so a new face was in charge – thankfully a kind and strong woman who gave him every chance she could to come naturally. His face was up, he was in distress. She would give him a little more time, she said. One more check. We prayed he would move in between the unyielding beating of my body, rhythmically every few seconds. His heart rate was dropping. There was no more time.

Wheeled in a trolley through to a room brightly lit, doctors everywhere working fast. An injection in my spine and I gazed up at them all, all these people around my body, and I was suddenly relieved of the rhythmic pain. A curtain was placed over my stomach and I never imagined this, but they opened my body, rather than me opening it for them. Strangely free of pain, I chatted with the doctor about Mozambique and her pretty engagement ring until they reached in and pulled him out, and then I placed my hands on his warm, wet, blue stomach and I wept.

I wanted to hold him of course but I couldn't with my body half open, so they cleaned us both until we were ready. It was only when I had been stitched up and wheeled back, and the last nurse left the room, that I looked at Nick next to me, and the baby sleeping peacefully by my bed and thought what was that?

There were two miracles that day and I could see them plainly. The first miracle was that I was surrounded by a place so equipped and people so skilled that they could reach my impossible-to-reach baby by surgery - a miracle that he could come out beautiful and healthy and guzzling milk. And the second miracle was me. I don't know how, but from those twinges at 8 in the morning to his first gulp of air at 6 in the evening, I was carried in a river of peace. Swept along, strong and calm. Calm through the contractions, even though the pain left my hair matted with the writhing against my pillow. Calm through the process even when I threw up and couldn't move, so swallowed it down again. Calm through the corridors, calm through his heart dropping, calm through the surgery. Utterly, breathtakingly miraculous that I could be that woman, at peace in a storm.

The following days were heavenly to me. I shall never forget them. I cuddled my sweet newborn in the dark all night and all day. There were no responsibilities, no washing to be hung, no porridge to be made, no phone calls to return. A couple of precious friends dropped by and sat my bed, holding my baby and holding my hand. I couldn't move from the pain and I didn't need to. I sat still, breathing him in, the scent of his hair and his face, so soft and warm. I fell asleep feeding him in my arms and listened to old worship music from twenty years ago, a balm to my soul. The mountains stood still outside my window and I drank lukewarm hospital tea. It was blissful.

We spoke with our doctor before we left the ward. She was back from our holiday and it was so valuable to debrief with her. She laughed at the size of his head – a big boy – and we talked over our options for the future. I've written before that God spoke to us about us giving Him permission to decide on our number of children. So in the back of my head I have always prepared myself for a big family. And post-surgery I was left with so many questions. It's complicated now - to go natural again is a 'severe risk' for mother and baby, but if I take the c-section route I can only have two or three more little ones. Which is more than enough for the normal woman, I know that, but I felt God ask me to lay down the rest of my life, the rest of my womb. So I was left asking, I have laid down my rights, and now, what?

We drove back from the hospital and had a blistering fight about something small and irrelevant. Of course. Because we were processing such a traumatic birth and such an altering to what we felt God had led us to. And I stopped in at the mall for some food, and I walked slowly, the scar twinging at my stomach. Tears rolled down my cheeks and suddenly all I felt was gratitude. That what had felt like a sacrifice laid on the alter – yes God, as many children as you want – had grown into a desire. To hold them, to nourish them, to smell their holy baby breath. I had wrestled against the call of endless motherhood and thrashed against it and then, almost without me looking, it had blossomed into a blessing under my feet. I wanted it. I wanted them, all of them, all of the babies he had. They had taught me, these tiny ones, more about Jesus than I could ever have learned in a classroom or on a 'mission field'. They carved Him right into my heart. They had hollowed me out, all my selfishness, all my ego, all my pride, and filled me with His beautiful light. Tears flowed down as I walked and I just felt this, thank you. Thank you sweet children for changing me. Thank you Jesus for knowing what's best.

I am home now. I have waded back into the beauty and chaos of home. It is very jarring sometimes – too noisy, too demanding, too exhausting. I am unravelled by sleeplessness and my body feels like it rarely is given a break. I don't know how to spread myself between all my tinies and I lean heavily on our parents to see us through the first few weeks. Leo needs to be held and rocked and comforted a lot. I feel like I might need that too. It's partly the exhaustion, it's partly the vulnerability of being new in a new place. Sometimes I want to walk cleanly away from the path we are so carefully carving out for ourselves in Manenberg. Sometimes I feel like I have given everything I have for these tiny people and I wonder how I will ever get any part of me back. I wonder how long I will feel this overwhelmed for. I need a lot of courage.

But I remember what I felt in the mall. Like I could see with my eyes that throughout the years these little ones have brought more of His glory and more of His light to my soul than anything ever did before them. So I ride it out. I smell his hair and I fill up my heart with faith. And I pray, and He answers, and hope swells up, my heart becomes swollen with his goodness. I step over my stumbling blocks. I believe for my place in our new area, I believe for my calling to these tiny ones. And I recall my former thoughts - These sweet children, they are changing me. Thank you Jesus, you know best.

Night Offering

2016-06-09T16:52:00.001+01:00

I lie next to her in the dark. It's not the first time this week I've heard her pitter patter of feet shuffle into my room, not the first time I've felt her little arms around mine as she crawls into my bed. She's been having nightmares, afraid of the dark. And so again, I stumble out of bed blind, and lead her back to her duvet. We snuggle under together. Her bed was cheap and the mattress reminds me why. My 38-week-pregnant stomach sinks into the springs, the tiny one inside kicks. I gaze on her face, watching for her to eyes to close. For her body to finally rest.

I am exhausted. I have an hour or so in this little bed so I plan my next day. What should I do tomrorow? What's the best use of my time? I try to think of how to be effective, how amidst dishes and nappies and hazy exhaustion I can offer Him something, how in the middle of the stretch of motherhood I might stretch a little further so the kingdom can advance through me.

And then there is a little heart voice that whispers in the dark. What if this is the holiest thing you give Me all week? Body aching, eyes blurring, stroking her head in pure exhaustion, silencing her fears with love. And I look like Him. But I nearly missed it.

I'm learning how I've divided life into kingdom and normal. Kingdom is preaching and teaching, feeding and healing. It's non-profits and rescue houses and worship nights and it's out there, on the streets, with whoever I've decided the broken are. Normal is wiping counters and correcting her attitude and kissing her head at night. And I'm learning how I thought I had to rush through the normal – even in all its mighty beauty – to get to the kingdom, in order to be used by Him. And slowly over the years, He is walking through my days and washing everything new. He is blurring the lines I drew with His water and the colours run. Whoever accepts a child in My name, accepts Me, He says. And I start to reimagine what kingdom means.

So I start the day with my anointed work. I change their bottoms, I smell their hair. I throw clothes in the machine, I stir hot porridge, I read His words out loud. I open the door to whoever comes. I see the sunshine and sit outside to watch them play, and when it rains we huddle under a blanket and put the cheap red heater on, blasting heat on our faces.

See. I read this one word during my morning quiet time. It's what Jesus said to the blind man who asked for his eyes to be opened. The English translation writes that Jesus said “receive your sight” but the Hebrew word is one pure word – see. I feel Him tell me the same thing. See. You've been blind to Me, moving through your days. You think I'm out there, but I'm also in here. See. I am learning to open my eyes. My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. See.

Part of it, maybe, is surrendering to being part of the body. I think deep down I want to be the hero – the one who set up this charity, the one who saved this person's life, the one who is in the middle of the action and redemption and the story. And when He says, yes, there is a magnificent place for you at the table, and a big part of it is mothering, it feels like I'm breaking off that opportunity to be at the forefront. I won't be the hero, I will a limb of the body. The beautiful body of believers moving in one direction, redeeming and healing together. And I am healed too. I get to look at Him just as I am, weak and translucent, radiating His glory. Because glory is all that's left for me to behold when I've taken my eyes off earthly prizes.

Sometimes motherhood wraps me in her arms and cuddles me – like the times Willow kisses my cheek without stopping, the times Lily giggles with that wrinkled nose. And sometimes it strips me raw, and I can't imagine giving any more. Regardless, it's a holy chamber. Sometimes joy and golden light. Sometimes weakness and surrender. I give and give and give and give. What if this is the holiest thing you give Me all week? My thoughts are not your thoughts. See.

I am opening my eyes. I think of the widow. The one Jesus saw, as she quietly put her tiny coins into the temple treasury. She must have thought it was small, insignificant, not going to reach very far. His eyes beheld her. He raised His voice to everyone who could hear. She gave out of her poverty. She gave all she had to live on. I think of this heroine of the faith. How she gave everything she can, and how His eyes of love fell on her and He was captivated. And as my body moves slowly though these days, as I wonder how I can honestly manage to raise these children, as I look outside and question if my offering is worthwhile, I give all I have to live on. I give out of my poverty. And His eyes of love fall on me too.

***

I wrote this two weeks ago. I now sit typing in the dark, with my newborn babe lying asleep in the basket next to me. When I think about how much I love this little one I feel like some breath was taken out of my lungs. And now, what was a once-a-night rising for my oldest is now a lot more. I am rhythmically up every two or three hours, wiping him, winding him, giving him milk, laying him down to rest. It's 2.30am and I hear a train pull into Nyanga Junction - I am comforted that someone somewhere is also awake and doing meaningful work. His breath slows, his sucking falls into sleep. I hold his tiny, warm frame. No one sees. I gently lay him down, into the mattress. I give all I have to live on, and I will feel my poverty at 7 a.m. when everyone wakes. And His eyes of love fall on me too. Kingdom, pulsating through the darkness, and lighting up my eyes. Jesus, I am beginning to see.

The House

2016-04-23T17:57:00.000+01:00

We thought we'd move in straight away, and of course, we didn't. It was a long, zig-zaggedy line of viewed flats and raised hopes, and then frustration and more nomadic living. Maneneberg was not available for us. We spent the winter, spring and summer in Cape Town moving from place to place, and though I thrashed against Him in the beginning, I began to exhale and let go. I noticed the pool, the garden, the beach – all gifts. I fell pregnant for the third time and it was so right that that time was one of provision, beauty and rest. I was thankful.

In the midst of it all, we viewed a house, many months ago. It was the only one available in the little pocket of Manenberg we searched in, at the bottom of the street. We packed our sleepy girls in the car with peanut butter sandwiches and drove over as night fell, excited to view it. And though it was spacious and lovely, we both talked on the way home and felt set – it was not for us. It was too big for what we needed. It was near a street where gang shooting happened. It was near a busy walkway and a junction and lots of flats. It was not enough of the fixer-upper. we'd dreamed of. It wasn't for us.

But at this point I hadn't exhaled and let go of the process. I was frustrated we hadn't found a home yet. So I prayed, endlessly hammering on God's heart with my own discomfort – not at ease in the unknown, not at all. When? When? And I felt Him give me a date. Septmber 14^th. I wasn't sure if I had heard Him right, but I tentatively wrapped my heart around that date and nurtured it in hope.

We stayed with our friends in Hermanus. A beautiful stay, drinking tea from a Thermos on stunning grey beaches while our baby girls sifted sand through their fingers, sharing life and our thoughts. While we stayed there, September 14^th came around. I checked the internet throughout the day for a new house to come on the market. Evening fell. Nothing.

But that night our friend Johan felt burdened to pray with Nick for our housing situation. I left them to it and went to bed, uncurling my grip on that date, uncurling my grip on the whole process.

The next day we drove the long empty Cape Town roads back to our rental flat. Willow fell asleep, Lily was quiet. We talked. And it was then Nick told me as he was praying with Johan, he had felt God speaking to him. Telling him we should buy that house we had seen a few weeks ago. The one we had decided for so many reasons wasn't right. And though I had questions, I also smiled. When they had prayed together, it had been September the 14^th.

God must have seen my questions still remained, because He had to tell me himself. A few days afterwards, we were worshipping together as a family. (This often means Nick and I are singing with our eyes squeezed shut, sometimes teeth clenched, and the girls are pulling our hair, the guitar strings, the curtains. But every so often we all sing and it is very sweet.) And I have never felt quite what I felt during that time. This heaviness fell on my back. I felt pushed to floor. I couldn't move. Take your tribe and move to that house, I felt Him say. I was slightly afraid, because I felt totally immobile. I could feel Lily prodding my face but I couldn't get up. It was heavy and beautiful. After what felt like a few minutes, I was released. Weak, I found my way to the kitchen and ate four slices of toast.

We bought the house.

We moved in two months ago, and decided we would live in the house whilst renovating. That was a challenging decision. Everything was instantly covered in the dust and dirt. The kitchen and bathroom because empty shells of concrete. The kids ate endless bowls of Weetabix on a soggy cardboard box and I would sit on the floor next to them holding my 7-month belly. The kids and Nick got a nasty flu with a stomach bug and there was nowhere for anyone to go. I cried by my bedside and wondered if I'd bitten off more than I could swallow. But sometimes we need to struggle and kick and thrash against difficulty in our calling, sometimes it looks like labour. Sweat and salt tears and clenched teeth. And then life at the otherside, beautiful, sweet, peace-soaked life. And eight weeks on, our house is almost done. The rain is pouring down outside, our house is bathed in lamplight at 4 o'clock. The girls are covered in felt-tip pen, I am wearing the comfiest clothes I own. A white moses basket stands by my bed ready, the tea is made.

We are in.

So what next? Sometimes people ask us what we are going to do here, and I am asking myself that question every day. Probably a little too much. I know He speaks to me about the fire of intimacy, and I know He speaks to me about becoming smaller so my heart can grow bigger. I know my little ones are central to my life's calling. I know that between us we have little ideas. Seeds that might start to shoot, tiny green beads of life stretching out of the black dirt of our days. It feels slow and good. Sometimes frustratingly slow for my frame, which is always ready to run. But I choose to walk, walking around with my eyes open and ears open. We play at the play park and buy milk at the shop, we walk open. I walk slow now I am nearly 8 months pregnant and I think He calls my heart to match the pace.

Building Blocks

2015-12-23T14:05:00.001+02:00

I think my hands trembled just a little as I unwrapped the test. I'd had nausea for a couple of days and I'd fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon. What a relief, was all I could think. What a relief that I don't have to be in control of my life, in control of my own happiness. If it bore two red lines, the promise of a new precious life, I didn't need to be frightened – this wasn't my show.

Two red lines. And we laughed, the kind of laugh tired parents with two tiny children might laugh, with delirious joy. Because we know now just how tired you get, just how worn down you get. And we know that there is no greater earthly sweetness than holding their fat little limbs, than hearing their whispers, than learning what joy really is through their tiny lives. That really, even wrapped up in vomit and tantrums and neediness, there is nothing on earth closer to God than them.

Two red lines, it showed, and so we begin.

I've been very sick during the last couple of months, with morning (all day, all night) sickness. These have been difficult days, days when my bed has been my home. Days of endless slices of toast and Coke in the morning, cold and sweet, at 7 a.m. These have been days when I groan and stretch and when I feel like I can't endure an hour more, her face pops round door, shining eyes and chubby cheeks, and I felt strengthened by the joy of seeing her. These have been days, long-houred days, of mindless television and worship infiltrating my heart as I lie on my side. Of watching the world outside whizz by in colour and anticipation and knowing one day I will join it, but not now. These have been days of weakness and trembling, of sweating and aching. These have been days I feel like a newborn myself, reaching out for help and collapsing in rest when I receive it. These have been days when a life is formed underneath my skin. And I stretch and give way, knowing that one day I will see the face of this new baby popping round the door, and my heart will be glad.

I have given my womb into His hands, given Him permission to direct it's course, to give it life whenever He might desire it. I begin to see why. It would have been easier for me to achieve projects, to use creativity, to sit in meetings, to love the unlovely in the morning with my free time, to do ministry 'out there', not in my home, to pack it all up at the end of the day with my laptop and Bible. Those things aren't always easy, I know that. But they might have been easier for me. I know that because when I did those things, I loved God so much, and I prayed – sometimes fervently, sometimes professionally – but I didn't know Him like I do now that I mother.

This calling has driven a well inside me.

It emptied me dry, desperate and thirsty. It has swollen my insides to burst with a love so tender, so powerful I feel heady at the weight of its fragrance. The mundanity has left me thirsty. The demands have left me needy. The joy has left me full. The tenderness has cut my heart open. And more than anything, I have sought Him, in tiny fragments all through the day. And the night. I am not able to pack my life away at the end of the day. I am not able to pack Him away either – and I don't want to. Because in my neediness, He gathers His needle and thread, and sews through my insides His beauty. It pierces, it cuts, it heals, I blossom. Motherhood made Him everything, all the time. I don't walk around spiritually impressive – far from it, mostly I crawl – but my heart is undivided.
In these days we have also bought a house, in Manenberg. I turned up to the estate agent's meeting in Spur, with it's bright lights and faux-leather seats, feeling awful, staggering sick through the mall. The girls played and we sat together, Nick and I and two estate agents, sisters from Manenberg themselves. And I filled in the forms, but if I'm honest that day I didn't really feel like it. Sickness makes me gravitate towards everything easy. It tells me I want a big house and safety and loveliness and wooden floors and sweet playgroups and trees, and it makes me feel all slow, like curling up and saying no. No to brokenness, no to guns, no to concrete, no to the hard places.

I signed the papers.

This is a change, this swelling life in my stomach, and I find questions fluttering around my head. With three kids can you really do anything in Manenberg? Motherhood is hard enough, isn't it? Stay somewhere safe and nice, and you raise your kids. There's no point living there if you just mother. And are they really going to be okay? And as if the internal voices aren't enough, external ones prod and push: You must get a gun. You mustn't walk alone. Those people don't care if you're a Christian.

So I take a deep breath and remember my basics.

One. This short, short, super-short life is about heaven. Eternity is the only thing that matters. In just a few years, bam! whoosh! I will be with Him forever. So I live for that.

Two. This world is horrifically, brutally broken. There are children walking the streets in Manenberg looking for food at five years old, with no adult in sight. There are thirteen year old girls raped in school buildings. There are people with pale skin colour hiding behind gates, eating another tuna salad, wishing it would all go away. There are people everywhere who are hungry for God and hurtling towards a forever without Him. It scares me a little to think about that, but it also crystallises everything into perfect clarity. I have to give, to go, to love, to lay down. It's His heart.

Three. I really think He is asking us. What else do I do? I want any no ripped out of my heart. I want to always give Jesus a yes.

Four. My kids are smart. If I teach them to love Jesus with all their heart and always give them their yes, but then I give Him a no because I'm scared for their benefit, it's a bit confusing for everyone.

Five. I really want more of Him. More than anything. More than I want my own body, so I break it open and shout a celebratory yes to the life He's given me. More than I want my own time, so I welcome these little ones into my space and celebrate, because it's a deeper joy than I could have dreamed. I want Him more than security, more than predictability, more than a big white house surrounded by peony bushes. I have been close to Jesus. I have seen His eyes and I have known His tenderness, and this is what I want.

I am simple and I like these simple building blocks. When I think about these things, I feel strong. I feel like life just came back into my lungs and my eyesight became sharp. Like I ate something nutritious. Sometimes I wish I found waltzing around in his will more natural, like a dance, rather than a race where I need to stop, eat and refresh. But it's better this way. It is God Himself, not my personality, who is making me strong. And it feels miraculous.

King in Swaddling Cloth

2015-09-25T14:16:00.001+02:00

I rose early, tiptoeing across the wooden floor, past the girls' room, towards the front door. It opened with a soft thud, I slid outside. I walked towards the beach, imagining it empty. But I found a lady tourist taking photos of a sea gull in front of the sunrise, and group of Xhosa people, all dressed in white, singing on the rocks by the ocean. A man was led to the icy blue waters, drenched three times and rose to life. The singing was beautiful, lilting, repetitive.

Amidst all the beauty I only saw lack. I chose heartache. I thought of Mozambique and I missed it. I missed them. I sat on the bench, gazing at the startling sea. The group finished – some of the men changed in the public bathrooms and the women waited outside. A girl from the group sat next to me. We talked for a moment about her church and when she left she smiled and said “have a blessed Sunday.”

It was totally up to me whether I did or not.

And as if that girl's words sang into my day, I did. A wonderful long, happy Sunday with friends and kids in the dirt and food and sunshine.

And when I woke up on Monday, I kept thinking this: Today is what I have to love you. Today, not tomorrow. Today with all it's ordinary mundanity, with burning glory embedded, in the cracks.

Today over breakfast. Cold milk poured over Weetabix into plastic bowls, orange and red, given into tiny hands. The same words every morning, this bowl is yours, I'm just getting the spoons, yes there's three Weetabix in there for you, Willow is getting two. Milk spilt on the table, smudged cereal on the floor. Bending down, wiping mouths, rinsing cloths under hot, running water. Today is what I have to love you. Here, now.

Today, and so I pray. Sometimes tomorrow can seem like it holds this glorious intimacy with God – when I live there, when I do that, when we go to this meeting, when we are older. But today is what I have, I don't know if I have tomorrow or not. So I whisper to Him when I remember. Nothing longer than a few words, but something. Something to love Him with.

Today, in the mess and whirl and pink and noise. In the frustrated toddler-cry and the pretend games, picking up toys and breaking eggs into bubbling butter. One by one. Scraping yesterday's food off the floor and putting her hair up again and nursing the other to sleep. I forget to pray. And I'm discouraged because I wanted to give Him something here. But He gently reminds me I am, with my voice sometimes yes, with my thoughts sometimes yes, but also with my hands. My hands, cooking food and cuddling tiny bodies and putting on socks. My feet, repetitively circling my home like liturgy, walking to the playpark in the wind like worship.

Today is what I have to love Him with. Not tomorrow. I still dream, of course. I need to dream the same way I need air. Crisis after crises flashes on my computer screen. A child dead on the beach, and many others hidden in Congo and China and Manenberg, and a whole world who needs to see His love. We need to dream. Dream higher and wider for more glorious things. We need to match this ugly onslaught with such a pure and blazing vision, brighter, stronger, unyielding. This is how we need to dream. This is how He dreamt, so high and wide that He stretched His own bloodied arms out to cover the world with His love.

But once I've dreamt all these bold and beautiful things, I must give today all that I have, knowing the boldest and beautifullest things are often under my my roof. In the form of warm cheeks waiting for kisses and warm hearts ready, like clay, to mould. I wake up to this all the time. I hold these ones, I treasure them. Many times I am weak and tired and I don't, I hurt my people and I say sorry, and I remember I'm covered in skin and grace.

And as night falls, the air grows quiet. I slow. I look at my hands, my feet, my heart. My gold, my frankincense, my myrrh, laid at His feet, King in swaddling cloth.

Stars

2015-08-31T15:47:00.002+01:00

I read today of the 'waiting room'. I didn't know there was such a place, but if there is, we are there. We wait for a Manenberg home to appear for sale, as if by magic on the internet. We wait to begin our work. We wait to see our dreams take form. We wait to fully immerse ourselves in relationships. We wait to build.

As we wait, we work and worship and wonder. We don't sit on our hands, following the hands round the clock. We work – sweeping floors, cuddling children, wiping surfaces, organising bank accounts and bills and insurance and all the administraion that comes with moving nations. We meet with inspiring people. We worship and wonder in the midst. We see the outrageous glory of each day and we sing a song back to Him – both with our lips and with our hands, working unto His sweet name. It is good.

Will you find your sanctuary here? I feel Him ask in the dark, as I comfort my baby-toddler back to sleep. And the question echoes thoughout my day. Spreading peanut butter on bread, opening books to read on the sofa, sweeping pink playdoh off the ground. After much wrestling and striving and surrendering, yes, I tell Him. This place is beautiful and I am grateful. Yes.

I have given Him my yes, yes to finding Him in unexpected places. Because for some, finding Him in a violent community would be hard, but for me it's expected. For me, finding Him in the beautiful mess of suburban motherhood is unexpected. But I am learning He shows up. How He shows up, if only I have eyes to see.

I have surrendered great dreams at His feet, and when I open my eyes I find myself holding two living dreams in my hands, two sweet girls emenating His presence and love. I could – almost – move into the smartest suburb in the land and be surrendered there. I don't have to save the world, I will love Him here in this place, with these treasures He's given.

But then He says pick up your dreams, they are from me. Dreams to see a community healed, to see light pierce darkness. To run towards addiction and abuse and watch God redeem in stunning, constant love.

So I dream big. I remember that night, walking home from another gathering. Another night we had sat on the dusty floor of a hut and worshipped. The warmth wrapped around my shoulders and the stars, piercing and pure, glinted above me as I walked. And I felt the call echoing from the sky, the same call Abraham heard. Count the stars. I began to dream, dream again about all the lives I could reach in this lifetime. I began to dream about my descendants. Nations. People groups. I was nudged from timidity out into the spacious land of faith. I believed for great things in the orange dirt. And here, in Cape Town, I dream big again.

And I look down at my children. And my schedule, full of nappies and tuna pasta and floors to be swept and Cbeebies and playing in the dirt, and how does a mother ever leave the house, never mind change the world?

There are my tensions. I will lay it all down for my sweethearts, because they are precious beyond reason. But He also gives me great dreams and inviations, to run with Him out into the world to redeem it. Which one is possible? Many of my world-changing heroes either are childless or are away from their children to an extent I couldn't manage. Many of my mama heroes have told me they have surrendered many desires to be the best possible mother to their littles ones. Which one do I choose? Do I chop off what I think God gave me, even if it feels like chopping off my arm, chopping off hope? And yet I will not, not ever, consider laying my children aside for anyone else. They are too valuable, and they are mine to hold.

I spoke all these things aloud to my husband, who is quiet and listens with his eyes. And as we talked, an answer surfaced. I can mother my children, and be part of a healing process in the world at the same time. But I didn't like the solution.

It will look small.

It might look like teaching my children their letters and inviting a couple of other little ones along. It might look like coffee with another mama, whilst we hold our babies and talk about who He is. It might look like being a family, getting to know our neighbours, learning a language, asking for help. It might look so small. And I thought I believed in small, but it turns out I secretly adore big. Because I twisted and turned at this idea, this solution. It felt so right but it felt so difficult.

As we talked, I remembered who we'd spoken with earlier in the day. We had cups of hot coffee on a cold Cape Town winter morning, and listened to some sweet boys who are living with our friends and breaking free from drugs. One of them was telling us his story. “But I'm super proud of ___,” he said, turning to his friend. “Because it's his birthday today and he's clean.” We turned to the young man he was talking about. “Ya,” he admitted. “I'm 20 today. It's my first birthday through all my teenage years being sober. I called my mum today and she is very happy.”

What I am calling small – just one life – He calls breathtakingly beautiful. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I remembered Him. How our friends stopped for him in the chaos of his young, precious life and loved him alive. He is so precious. My daughters are so precious. Each breathing life, with wrinkles around the eyes and a heartbeat under the skin, is so precious.

And I thought of that night, dreaming of thousands of stars, endless fruit, and thought how can that be true, but also God call us to seemingly tiny things? And then I think of His life, how He poured Himself into one at a time, God with skin on, and how the whole world lit up with His love.

Desert Miracles

2015-08-19T08:27:00.003+01:00

We flew from London to Cape Town seven weeks ago. Lily fell into a deep sleep for almost the entire flight and Willow slept so fitfully I begged for morning light. We arrived, carrying babies and bags, got a taxi. The airport was so close to Manenberg, the community we were moving to. If only then I could have said to my heart, be still. It's a few minutes away, but a few months away. Be still.

We heard of a place to rent in Manenberg. It was everything messy. Upstairs, no garden, no furniture, no security, near the gang zone. But, in Manenberg! And a church couple for landlords, and promises of better security, and we could furnish a flat in a day. So we moved from place to place and waited for the flat to be ready. We lived by the sea, we played in the sand, and waited. We moved to housesit for friends, we drank tea in the winter sun, we lived from our suitcases and waited.

Problems arose – tenants not moving, drug addicts next door. We hung on in hope, but with a week to go the whole thing fell through. Homeless with no plan, we drove around Cape Town trying to find anywhere to sleep. Steadily, softly explaining to the girls what we were doing, when inside I had no idea. And back in the place we adore, that little corner of Fish Hoek, by the sea, we found the perfect flat. It was spacious and light and available for four months, yes we said.

The day before we moved in – in the midst of cleaning and packing – we received the message that the money had still not arrived from the UK. We could not move in. Homeless again, racing around trying to find somewhere, anywhere to sleep. When would it stop? When would we rest? I began to wonder what it was like to wake up in a home, with a long, predictable day ahead to mother and wash dishes and see friends and it felt like an unknown dream.

During this messy renting process we searched for a home to buy. We found one. A sweet little 2-bedroomed cottage on Manenberg Avenue. An eighty-year-old widow had lived and prayed in those walls for nearly fifty years. It was a humble place and had lovely light and a garden and I could see with my eyes, it was right for us. Nick and I got home and talked about it all evening. God showed me lovely things. The next morning, so excited, we called to put in an offer. And I couldn't believe – how could it be? - that somebody had got there first.

And it was then I lay face down on my bed and wept.

And the only forward was to see with His eyes. So I asked for His sight.

And He showed me. Think on the promised land, He said. Hope. So I began to imagine it, the streets of Manenberg, the ones always filled with clothes drying in the sun, and I saw them filled with yellow light. It was beautiful, shining on and on. This was what I longed to see. My tears slowed. It was absolutely enough for me, to see as He saw, to have my eyes filled with light. I got up.

Still the moving took it's toll on our bodies and hearts. Willow stopped sleeping, stopped napping, started waking at 4 a.m. to begin the day. Some nights we were awake for hours and hours in the depths of the night. I don't know if it was the cold of the Cape Town nights or the moving or if it was just a stage for her. I don't know. But I knew we were struggling to grip onto everything, and sometimes we looked ugly towards each other. We were stretched, money tight, sleep consistently broken, no home. And I began to question, in the stillness of the night, if we were really ready for all this, if Pemba had been enough for us, if we should just fly back and be welcomed into the bosom of the familiar.

But if there really was a promised land ahead, the streets of light, shining and healing, we couldn't stop. We needed to cuddle and pray and love and walk. And just like the Israelities, we needed to see miracles in this place. Because there were many. Water out of the rock, fire at night, cloud by day. Bread falling from the sky. There were many miracles, here in this place. I leant in, learning from Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, about joy and gratitude and seeing beauty with my eyes. Everywhere. I was a hunter of beauty in the mundane and the painful, and He was the gift-giver, the intimate One, who was everywhere.

I started scribbling them down on paper, these gifts, these miracles buried like treasure in the mundane. Sticky chocolate faces. Still, quiet blue sky. Playdough in the afternoon. Sweet scent of the white candle. Like water out the rock, like fire in the sky. Miracles in the desert. I began to see.

I woke. It was the last morning of our intense moving season. It was the day we would move into our Fish Hoek for four months. Four whole months of being and loving and building towers and making chocolate squares and gathering up empty tea cups, always so many tea cups. I woke up in our quiet B&B that Sunday morning, and tiptoed out of bed, the girls still lay asleep next door. And as I sipped tea in the cold morning, the morning kissed my head. Scarlet red sky, burning above the still, lapping violet ocean waters. The mountains, a delicate black outline, slowly warming and showing their faces. The sun rising and cascading golden glitter over the waters. Joy, joy in the morning.

And I sat, surrounded by beauty and He spoke. Enjoy Me, and My creation. He had whispered it for months now. That I could see His miracles anywhere, in mess and transition and struggle. And now I saw it with new clarity, in the scarlet sunrise. So many gifts surrounding me like magic. Hot baths for little bodies. Cream on dry hands. Salty sea air in my lungs. Willow asleep in my arms in the dark. Miracles everywhere as we walk.

I would read it later in Voskamp's book, this quote from Teresa of Avila:

Love once said to me “I know a song,

would you like to hear it?”
And laughter came from every brick in the street

and from every pore

in the sky,

After a night of prayer, He

changed my life when

He sang,

“Enjoy Me.”

We exist in the middle of transition. We parent, we work, we wait. We wrestle, we pray, we surrender. I slowly open my frustrated hands to receive the daily wonder He gives. Because I know, even when we finally arrive in Manenberg, there will long patches of desert to walk through before we get to some of the shining streets He showed, so I want to learn joy today. We walk towards the promise. I open my eyes. And I see miracles all day, all night.

On Need and Grace

2015-06-26T16:21:00.002+01:00

We fly today. In a way it feels natural. Normal. Like putting on familiar, soft clothes, we will go through security and onto the plane and out into Cape Town. Maybe even a little like home. And there's this other feeling that's so familiar. It jitters and aches a little and I know it. Need.

I am needy.

We left Mozambique six months ago today. And today after a long, deep breath of rest, we board a plane again. And I remember, how I birthed need - again and again - in the dirt and strain of Mozambique. I need you became my morning song, my afternoon song, my night song. And then we left, six months ago. And then we boarded a plane from South Africa to London. My oldest slept in a pile of pink blankets on the floor, and I hushed my littlest in my arms, swinging her back and forth in the carrier, hush hush hush, hush hush hush. Just before midnight she gave up and slept, a heavy weight in my arms. I didn't become strong as we flew across borders on that overnight flight, as we descended into that city of bright lights and predictable train times. I needed grace as I boarded, and grace as we got off. I needed grace in Mozambique. And in this land we've spent months in, this land I grew up in, so familiar, with steaming cups of Earl Grey and meadows and grey sky, here I also needed grace.

Grace - this word means a myriad of things to me. Partly, to me, it is a beautiful word for help. I look back on these months, and I see - just like in Mozambique, on the hot, languid afternoons with no electricity and nowhere to go - I've needed grace here. Just like there.

I've needed grace in the morning. I didn't wake up in a dirty bed, with bamboo prodding my back and itchy bites on my neck, but I still needed grace. I needed it to live fully alive and in love. I didn't want to fall asleep in my heart. I didn't want to forget. I needed grace so much, I couldn't slip into the comforting rhythms of selfishness and sleepiness, eyes glazed over supermarket shelves and in front of screens. In the midst of music and noise and adverts and shops and screens, I needed an altar, I needed this: Jesus, keep me awake and in love.

I've needed grace to find Him. I needed grace when I sacrificed time to meet Him. I set aside space, I gave, I pushed, I pressed. I needed grace then to sustain me, as I walked deeper in Him. And then I became grumpy and anxious and uptight and I realised I needed grace in a different way. I needed Grace to come and kiss my forehead, stroke my hair and loosen my need to prove myself. I needed to tiptoe in the holiness of the garden and watch the peonies open in the sun and just relax. I needed to give myself a break from all the running for Him, and dance with Him instead.

I've needed grace to love my children. The wisdom to know how to shower them with abundance and still remember that dirt and laughter is all we ever needed anyway. I've needed grace as we place our family planning into His hands again, never knowing from one month to the next if life might take a radical turn in the form of a wrinkled newborn frame. I need grace if it does and grace if it doesn't. I need grace if we have another because God knows mothering is tiring, and I need grace if we don't, because my heart longs for another life to hold soon.

I've needed grace to swim upstream. Upstream against criticism, upstream against well-meaning questions, upstream against dullness at the door of our hearts. Upstream against every piece of parenting advice that says pursue predictability and self-care so you can parent well, as we say no, uproot all we know again and pursue a life given, believing children watch and learn. Upstream against my own fears, my own sleep-walking towards comfort, my own doubts. Such strength is needed to swim upstream. And then every so often we look around at these budding little girls under my feet, and the pure exhilaration of a life full of Him, and the peace we feel deep inside, and we have found a still lake to float in. No swimming required. And I look at those muscles we grew, and they are so strong.

I need grace as we pack our bags again. We turned up at the visa office. We waited in line, our girls watching Peppa Pig under our feet and I prayed if it's a no, Jesus, let me find You quickly. Grace if it's yes, grace if it's no. We always need Him. We were handed a pile of papers, and little precious stickers were stuck in our passports. And we left, smiling like we couldn't believe it, and we ate pizza and messaged our family and we laughed. And now we need a new sort of grace. Grace to say goodbye, grace to leave loved ones, grace to live like nomads, grace to parent well, grace to be courageous, grace to follow His still and tender voice. Grace to learn a language, to walk streets we don't know, to learn a culture, to be wise, to be courageous, to stand up, to sit down, to burn, to listen. How, oh how, are we supposed to make this transition gracefully? By grace.

I look back, this one clear thread of dependance is busy weaving its way through our lives. We are always so dependant. I look around at our few possessions going in bags – Johnson's baby soap, wooden blocks – and I try to work it out. Has God made it that way, or do we keep choosing to make ourselves needy? I think perhaps He chose it long ago, and up until today He keeps marking out a way that makes us needy. But somewhere along the path, we chose it too. I tasted it. I tasted what it was like to be in need, and though it was uncomfortable and sometimes scary, sometimes sad – I fell radically in love with Grace. Grace, who is always drawn to need.

The thief in agony, the woman with the issue of blood, the weeping prostitute, the lonely rich man, the dying girl. Israel, covered in blood, a newborn in a field crying out, without swaddling clothes. He is so drawn to us all, He can't keep away. He's compelled and He says "Live!" That is grace.

We board a plane today, back across the sea and the continent of Africa. I'm needy, dependent, a child. I love it this way, because I get Him. He loves it this way because He gets me. And then - it's stunning, it really is - all this unabashed, wild happiness gets thrown in, almost like an opulent afterthought.

I Won't Tell You I Miss Rice and Beans

2015-05-22T15:35:00.003+01:00

Up and down we go, around and out of the country. On my in-laws' green sofa in the drawing room, at my parents' sturdy wooden table. Drinking tea with friends, pushing our battered pink buggy up and down the streets, always with our jackets zipped up because our blood turned African years ago and we feel the cold, even though it's spring. We have a lot of fun, splashing about in the pool in France, face down in worship in Holland. And we feel the tension of transition, all the time. We listen to our loved ones, and they listen to us. Some ask questions, one of which is this. “Was it sad, when you left Mozambique?”

I cast my mind back to that day. I didn't feel sad. I felt hot. Hot, hot, hot, dripping down my face and pressing in on every side. Nick was lying in bed too ill to move, and I packed up our entire house alone with two children underfoot. It was the day after Christmas, and I pressed everything into suitcases and left the rest outside on our porch, sold or given. I felt stressed. Only two out of the group of boys we invested in over years had the courage - the capacity? - to say goodbye, and although I remember thinking this should hurt, it didn't. I was too stressed and busy to have time. I was hot. We arrived at the airport and our friend came too, but we barely talked as the sweat poured down our faces. I sat on the floor spooning pink yoghurt at the babies, while Nick lay, sick, prostrate on the tiled floor.

There were emotional moments saying goodbye to loved ones – missionaries and Mozambicans – but honestly, that day, it felt like the plane came not a moment too soon.

I was determined I wasn't going to be a fraud. I wasn't going to leave bent over and wake up the next day with rose glasses, declaring it all lovely when it wasn't. I wasn't going to post photos of me smiling in the dirt and say I miss the rice and beans when I really, really didn't. I would tell the truth. It was amazing but it was also hot and hard. It was too much. We got sick and we snapped and it felt like we ran out. The house was dark and cluttered – we tripped over wires and over children and over each other's careless accusations, spoken from feeling pressed in ourselves. So I guarded my heart. I didn't miss it at all, I told myself, because if I did, that would be inauthentic.

The only problem with that is we are allowed to feel two things at once. I am allowed to remember the hard and the lovely. I am allowed to hate it and adore it.

And the longer I let my heart breathe, the more I can admit, I did adore it. Mozambique. I would walk up to the prayer garden every morning, the sun yellow and full of hope, the children waving as they zig-zag up the dirt hill to school. I loved those children, all of them. The hard ones and the distant ones. I see their faces in my mind. The babies – that one baby I fed and that tore at my heart with such a force that I wept that I couldn't be his own mother. And the mamas. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever enjoy people again like I enjoyed the mamas. They drove me crazy the way they shouted and ignored my personal space and never said thank you, but they made me laugh every day. They made me think. I watched them, carry their babies and eke out a living, with strong arms and determination. They would suffer but they would never stop. Never stop carrying their babies and eking out a living and they would never, ever stop laughing.

I miss them.

I miss the simplicity of throwing my children in buckets of water and watching them waddle in the dirt, naked and happy. I miss the evening glow at five pm, walking around the base and seeing all the wonderful faces of the Makua - people who accepted us, loved us, held us. They were never hard, not ever. Sometimes they were complicated and sometimes they told us what they thought we wanted to hear, but they would always embrace us.

I miss it.

So I let that tender part of my heart breathe, and cry a little, and it's good. I put boundaries around it, because I won't let myself wish it all back. It was good and wonderful and so hard and too much. It was about Him.

And He is the one who frees me to feel that tenderness and let go of it again. He is the reason we live. He's the reason we moved there, and the reason we left. He's the reason we rest here in this green island of the UK, and He's the reason we fill in forms to fly across the world to Cape Town. Thankfully, whether I love or resist Mozambique needn't be the most important thing. He is. Thankfully, when I look ahead to Manenberg, how I feel about it needn't be the most important thing. Some days I'm so excited I can barely think of anything else. Other days I'm so unsettled I don't want to go at all. The beauty of it all is that He is the reason for everything. He is the source of our joy and our strength. What a relief to not have to dig my hands into a piece of dirt for stability. I have found it in Him, and He is with me always.

I wake up most days and exercise my faith, like a muscle. Back and forth. The longer I'm away from Cape Town, the less I feel naturally drawn to setting up home all over again. But that's not the deciding factor. His whispers are. He is so pure and exhilarating and lovely and present. He makes me strong. Sufferings lead to endurance, which leads to character, which leads to hope. Suffering, in a small and humble way, marks our little path. The trial of Pemba, the goodbye, the insecurity of transition. He makes us strong. He helps us walk, holding us up like a toddler waddling and falling, waddling and falling, and our muscles grow. Our faith grows. Our hope grows. And we laugh, running into His arms as He shouts “well done my love!” And our eyes, seeing His sparkle, start to shine like His.

My Ark

2015-03-25T16:04:00.002+02:00

She's the cleaner at the Cape Town guesthouse we stayed at. Her eyes sparkle with the knowledge of Him and she's become my friend. And one day, as she's scrubbing the dishes, I lean against the counter and share with her our plans. “We're moving to Cape Town,” I say. “To Manenberg, to join the friends we told you about. We are so excited.”

And she stops. She stares at the sink with hard eyes. She's from Lavender Hill, a community so like the beautiful Manenberg we want to move to. She knows the gangs and the drugs and the fear and the ache. I wait for her in the silence, until she says, “Is that was He's saying?” “Yes,” I tell her. “Then okay,” she says. And after a while, she starts to scrub again.

She is not the first to hesitate at the mention of our plans. She – the hard-working Cape coloured single mother – has company all over the world. She joins many others from South Africa and abroad. The loud ones, protesting and fearful and pulling out the newspaper to reveal shocking headlines. The gentle ones, probing and advising and reassuring that it isn't necessary. Reminding us of our children. And while sometimes I defend our story, sometimes I'm a little tired, and I nod and smile.

And when everyone's done with their thoughts, sometimes I wonder quietly. Is it necessary? Because I'm ready for a home and a sweet pre-school for my kids and a rhythm to our days. I long for a house to call my own and friends for my daughter that last longer than a week. And shouldn't I protect these special years with these special tinies, without any noise or brokenness hollering at my door? And do we really find life when we give it away?

I think on that familiar question you get once you've had a couple of kids. Are you having any more? And I remember the second half of our honeymoon, in Brighton. The rain poured and Nick got food poisoning and we slept in a pokey little flat far away from anything. One morning I rose early and I sat with God. It was there He told me to give up contraception. It was a little honeymoon surprise from Him to me. And eventually with toing and froing and fearful prayers we said yes.

Two beauties later, His voice is still the same. We are intoxicated with joy over these treasures. Every day is a rush of love and laughter and wonder. And we are hazy with exhaustion. Still awake every three hours, sometimes at length. Pouring ourselves out into our little love cups, Willow and Lily, until we fall into bed with everything given.

And when I tell people, sometimes we get strange looks. You're going to have 19 children! Don't you want to take a break? And in the middle of the night last night, after my younger toddler – not a baby anymore – kept me awake for an hour, I crept downstairs for a moment of stillness. The cold Scottish night poured into the window and I stared, glazed over, at our little picture book Bible. And I thought. Do we really find life when we give it away?

I look at the picture. Noah and his ark. All those sweet little animals, the rainbow, the colour, the magic, the beauty. And I think, this is not a fairytale.

It was real. Noah bashing out that ark from wood, sweat running in his eyes, faith welling up as his energy. Trusting – utterly – in the unseen. And here we are, bashing out our own little ark for our family. To take us out to sea, to take us out into the unknown, carried on the promises of God. Trusting in his ways. Trusting they are better. Trusting that when He said children are a blessing, He meant it. Trusting that when He said love the broken, He meant it. Trusting that when He said nothing's worth more than Him, He meant it. Trusting it's true, when He said – those words dropped from His lips into our world – that we really do find life when we give it away. He said it. He meant it.

So I bash out my ark, at times with tired and trembling hands, and I believe. Sometimes the wood catches my hands and it's painful. When I realise we have barely any little girls to come to my three-year-old's birthday party because we've moved too many times. When I realise it may be months before we settle, and my heart is crying out for home. When I have no idea if a government will give us a visa or when someone makes me doubt whether I'm putting my tinies first. When I cry in the kitchen. Carpentry is rough work. Our hands can bleed.

But the secret is, a lot of the time, this bashing out of my ark is thrilling. The wind in my hair, the waves crashing against the sides of our boat, the night sky above us. We follow Him. He leads us way beyond our understanding, and it's glorious to rest in His infinite knowledge. His whispers feel closer than my skin and I depend on them. Intimacy with His beating heart is as crucial as my breath. We blossom as we collapse in need. My daughters thrive as we pour our energies into cultivating their insides because their externals are shifting sands. No permanent home, no nursery, few playdates but a lot of singing and whispering prayers and believing and holding hands. We are all on this ark together. Carried by the wind – the promises of God.

When we see the rainbow and the green olive branch, a thousand signs of His goodness, it is wonderful. And we see them all the time. But it is always His company we live for. On an ark, on the shore, the song that carries us is this – we do find life when we give it away. In His pulsing, glorious heart.

His Face Is Still The Same

2015-02-18T11:01:00.000+02:00

The memories are a bit of a blur, naturally. One is of me running – aimlessly, wildly – back to my dorm and hurling down the concrete steps to the floor. Blood spilled from my chin and I ran to the toilet, confused, until my sweet friend found me. I still have the scar. Another memory I have is being in our regular Monday night club. It was 'school night'. And though I'd been drunk out of my mind every other night for months, suddenly I had a moment of clarity, seeing all these students dressed as little girls but with a lewd twist. I couldn't stand it. I found myself running home, alone, in my party shoes. I sat in my little dorm room, stared at the moon and out of my heart came one word. God.

I name you, though you do not know me. Isaiah 44. I read it, this week, surrounded by a white duvet, eight years on.

I think of how He named me back then. He wrote a song over my days, that said Beloved. You do not know me, but I know you. You are lovely. You are cherished. In and out of rooms I shouldn't have been in and He still cried it over me. You are perfect. You are holy. You have a destiny. Up and down the stairs, bottle of anything in hand. I have a plan for you. You don't know it yet, but you are going to shake nations, beloved. Broken and searching. Eyes glazed over and hungry. Beloved. Full of beauty and promise.

And one day, I turned my eyes towards Him. And the kindness I found there was overwhelming. Warm tears rolled down my cheeks and I felt like I was walking into sunshine. And even when I fell down again, there He was. A Father, singing that song over me. Just like I read this week, I name you. Naming me with all sorts of wondrous, beautiful names and I could hardly breathe with the sheer luck of it. That the God of all things was actually kind beyond all kindnesses, and He looked at me with love.

As you know, we are in Cape Town. Resting and laughing and reading and cooking. Relishing little luxuries so rare to us like buying ice tea and running along the beach and painting. And then Willow got sick. Everything goes under when a baby is ill. We are awake multiple times every night, often for hours. Patting and singing and shushing and feeding and nothing is working. We are tag-teaming and collapsing. Eating chocolate and drinking caffeine. She got better and but her sleep remains crazily broken, breaking us.

I have felt nauseous with the exhaustion of spending 3 a.m. until 5 a.m. wide awake pouring my guts out for my little love. Sometimes I've barely looked Him in the eye, I have been so tired, escaping into a little mecca of screens until I shut my eyes at night. Sometimes I have railed against Him. Sometimes I feel like I'm dropping the ball. I'm not praying enough. I'm not passionate enough. I'm not impacting enough. I'm not playing with my toddler enough. And for sure there are a thousand experts who will tell me my baby should be sleeping better than this by now if I just mothered enough.

And then I find myself, surrounded by my duvet, reading these words.

I name you, though you do not know me.

Because I understand kindness for the drunken mess of a girl at the bottom of the concrete stairs. I understand that she needed it badly then, she thirsted for it and she was given to drink, deeply. I understand she couldn't get out of the hole except by this lavish, overwhelming love.

And then, somewhere inside me, I think it runs out. Because it's time to get up and go to work. Because I'm saved now and He's given me enough to run hard after Him. So if I'm tired and I can't produce the goods, all I've got to do is try harder. It's time to show Him I am strong and holy after all.

I name you, though you do not know me. The source of my everything, these words. The source of my everything, this grace.

His kindness shines like the sun, just like all those years ago. His face is still the same. His eyes have not changed. And while I'm busy scurrying and proving and fighting and failing, my belovedness falls me on like gentle rain. I never had to do anything to prove it. It was always a gift. And all those names start being echoed out around my house. When I'm tired and I'm picking half-chewed food from the floor, there He sings Chosen. When I'm looking down at my offering and it feels so small, He says glorious. When I'm frustrated and aching and searching, there He soothes me with beautiful daughter, you are my heart's desire.

We have this in common, the drunken teenager-me and the 27-year-old mother-me. We both thirst for his kindness. We both hope with all our hearts that this love which seems too good to be true is, in fact, truer than the air we breathe. We both need it more than we can say.

And it is. It's all true. Just as it was for me back then, it is for me now. Kindness and grace and tenderness. Deep wells of mercy in His eyes, as He looks at me the same. The same way He gazed at my newborn frame wrapped in blankets, the same way He laughed over me as a child playing in the grass, the same way He sang over me until His throat was raw in nightclubs and bars, the same way He delights - delights - in me as I walk before as a mother, but really a little girl wrapped up in big-girl skin. He's kind. And it's all lovelier than anything I can say, lovelier than the sea I gaze at now, sparkling in the sun.

Following a Heartbeat

2015-02-07T15:28:00.002+02:00

We'd just got engaged, inside a tree in Kew Gardens. And then, soon afterwards, He said Africa. And I could barely believe it, it had been a desire of my heart for so long. It was so outlandish, so extravagant I didn't dare say it out loud and so I pondered it in my heart, waiting for more confirmation before I shared it with Nick. One night as we worshipped I fell to my knees and wept. I wept for Africa and I could not contain myself. For fatherlessness, for hunger, for prostitution, for little girls. Finally when I got up, Nick was standing there and I knew I had to explain. It's Africa.

After a flurry of activity to the finishing line of the wedding day, we said I do – him calm, me trembling – and settled into a little flat of our own in a corner of London. And we cooked together and prayed and thought about our future and after six months, I said to Nick what's next? And he said, it's Africa.

We had one friend living there, in Manenberg, a turbulent area of the Cape Flats, South Africa. He was almost the only friend we had in the entire continent, and we loved everything he was doing, so we imagined – after coffee with him – that we were headed there. And then we heard about a school for missionaries in Northern Mozamqbiue, and we thought, we want to be missionaries, let's go. And we got on a train through Europe, blazed a trail through the desert of the Middle East and spent long, bumpy hours on a bus down through Africa. We got out at Pemba, and He told us to stay a while, and that ended up being four years. It was a long, beautiful, hard stay. And every day I think of it.

We had two babies in the meantime. And I felt God lead me to give birth not in my British homeland with family and friends, and not in my Mozambican homeland in the dirt. But in Cape Town. We went. To that city of mountain peaks and dark blue ocean, of heartbreaking violence and relentless hope. And in the quiet moments between nursing and cuddles and night wakings, we wondered if God might yet call us to this city, just as we'd imagined after coffee with our friend all those years before. But this time it was gentle and clear. It was a no, and it was time to pack our bags to go back to Pemba.

A few months ago we were broken and tired and sick. We asked our friends, who knew our journey intimately, to pray for us. We asked people we love, but who didn't know our journey, to prophesy. And then came a little message from a sweet South African mama warrior, raising her toddlers in the UK. It said this: leave Pemba, work in Manenberg. How could she know we had pondered this so often? How could she know we were sensing our time in Pemba was closing?

Little nudges from the Holy Spirit reared their head throughout our days. We had coffee and the man next to us was a vicar, whose first church, he told us, was in Manenberg. We drove to the airport, going back to Pemba one last time and the song playing on the radio was 'Manenberg'. The word flashed back and and forth on the radio screen. We dreamt of buying a house, and that same week were offered the money. We drove two hours to stay at another ministry to find we were to share a house with another missionary moving to Manenberg. It is beginning to feel like momentum.

Which I needed. It was only a year ago, as I cradled my newborn Willow, that I spoke out loud my fears – that I didn't want to go near Manenberg. My tiger-mother heart would not negotiate. Now I will. And that is because my children are not mine, and there are a thousand other reasons. All revolving around Jesus and His worthiness, and the lost and the severity of what that means, and the burning love I have for my kids and the weight of this holy call of motherhood. It's all wrapped up in there. I am going to Manenberg. I will apply all the wisdom of Jesus to make sure my babes are safe. And beautifully holy. Both.

So we start to base our entire lives on what we know, even though much is unknown. What we know is the Manenberg song is on the radio and a friend sent a prophesy. What we know is we are getting all these little nudges. What we know is our desires and our theology and the dying world all collide as we contemplate moving into this community. So it all leads us to this point, even if it's scary and new and I have all these doubts. (Bashing this out on a computer is a tiny step of faith.) Even though much is unknown. We step out on what we know. And it didn't surprise us much when we told our friend – the one we'd thought of joining in Manenberg five years ago – and his beautiful bride that we planned to come, that he told us he had written our names down in connection to Manenberg five years ago. Because he had a sense back then. And so did we.

I want to know everything. Everything right now. I have a thousand questions and I throw them relentlessly at my patient Father every single day. Where will we live? What house? And the ministry. I need to know exactly who, exactly what. In which building? Partnering with who? The visa. Every day there are people getting visas quick and easy, and others being thrown out the country. Which visa should we get? Oh God, what are we doing? We need a blueprint! A blueprint! Did you hear me?

And this is what He says about the unknown parts. That I am to I curl up to His heart and listen to it beat. And I echo David's words:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Beat, beat, beat goes His heart. On planes, with packed bags, moving into a culture I know nothing about, learning a language all over again. Beat, beat, beat. Like a child with its mother. Wishing I had plans, being content with presence. Beat, beat, beat. To stare in the face of mountains and gunshots and women with pain beyond measure, whispering in my heart, do I really have the faith? Will it be too hard like Pemba? Can I raise my children there? Beat, beat, beat goes His heart. I love you, I know you, I am with you. I am desperate, desperate for souls and I have no idea how to win them. No idea how to win the heart of this beautiful community so torn and ill-treated. Beat, beat, beat goes His heart. And here, I start to believe.

Curled up, a little baby in his arms, I may not know. But the miracle is that the intimacy of this place is enough to make me believe. Which is all I ever needed anyway.

What He Gave Me

2015-01-26T17:32:00.001+02:00

We got off the plane sticky and sick with arms full of children. The orange Makua land disappeared out of sight as our little plane ascended into the sky, and after turbulence and three hours and dirty nappies we were thrown out at Johannesburg, exhausted. We pushed our children and bags on airport trollies – five suitcases, two car seats, nearly all of our possessions – through immigration and bright lights. When we finally got outside it was pouring with rain. Sheets of fresh water falling from the sky, over our sticky limbs as we ran. And as I stumbled into the grandeur of our beautiful hotel, two babies in my arms, a man welcomed us with a kindness that felt rare. Like balm. Motioning to the rain, he smiled. “See it as a blessing ma'am.”

We reached Cape Town and stayed with friends in a storybook house in Constantia. Grand dining table, fountains, piano. Bustling with life inside, as they open their doors to everyone. I woke up to wander across fresh dew, surrounded by mountains and trees, with sprinklers spraying flowers – purple, pink, blue – and sat by a fish pond to pray. I always felt compelled back into that garden. I would pour some blackberry tea and sit in the shade and soak it in. And when our kids woke up we swam in the pool, bounced on the trampoline, and ran great hot baths.

Other times we've stayed with friends (friends who squeezed into their children's beds to host us; that taught me of love) and other times we've stayed by the sea – that's where we are now. I just have to look up and I see endless, rolling blue ocean. Grandparents have arrived, with arms ready to hold our babies and I can breathe a bit more. I even have time that I just don't know what to do with, because when my every moment has been full and squeezed like lemons, I can forget how to pass time leisurely, carefree. I'm hoping to learn.

He knows how to give us rest when we need it.

I relax. I notice once I've fed Willow back to sleep at 5am, I can turn over into my thick white mattress and fall back to sleep. I don't stay awake, bamboo prodding my body and dirt grazing my feet. I notice at the girls' bedtime, the four of us are found tickling one another and rolling about on the bed, to a cacophony of giggles. Not swatting mosquitoes and sweating and snapping. We are still parents, we are still tired. But life is so different. With the pressure off, something comes back inside us.

And yet I find myself in the kitchen, looking at Willow and remembering our sweet Mama Alima. I call to Willow vovo! just as she did, and Willow's eyes light up, and the tears roll down my cheeks. And one night I found myself out in that magical garden in Constantia, as night fell, and I saw the black silhouettes of those tall African trees, and heard the call of crickets and birds, and my heart beat faster. I stayed out there a long time, sensing Africa, whatever Africa is. It is not simple. I am beyond relieved our time in Pemba is finished. And yet I'm calling Willow vovo and I'm there in the dark listening to crickets. I did love Pemba. And it is better to have left in love. Sick and tired, but in love too.

And in love with Him. I wish we had done more, I tell him. There was the amazing work He did through us in the kitchen – I will never forget the aggressive thief who cooked the beans having his heart softened and starting to giggle. There were the tiny little businesses that lifted some mama's heads. There were some changes in those boys we fought to love every week. But God knows I had dreamt for more, for overwhelming revival, expressed in hundreds of ways. And this is what He says to me.

But I gave you Me.

He did. In that little hot house, in that tiny red kitchen. When I knelt in the night in desperation. When I rose at dawn to walk amongst the bougainvillea and I felt utterly romanced. When I danced with my children because I was beyond tired and the joy came. When I looked left and right and often all I had was Him and then I discovered He was rubies and sapphires and everything precious. That His beauty was captivating and there was nothing near it. I hungered. I ached. And it was breathtaking to see He was real and He was love and He was near. In that moment.

I left Pemba with five suitcases. And that.

Him.

Mary, Your Shoes Are Not Comfortable

2014-12-23T06:33:00.001+02:00

I met him the day he was born. I won't tell his birth story – it's his. It's dark and tragic and holy and miraculous – miraculous that he made it, from that hut into the arms of our aunties on the base. Heart still beating. And I saw a photo of him – a newborn smaller than a book – the same day he was born, and with my body full of milk, I thought I need to feed that child. And then a few moments later, when my friend came to my door, his tiny frame wrapped in kapulana, saying he wouldn't drink from bottle, I knew my premonition was right.

So I held him, and I wept for his beauty and his neediness and his heartache, and we played worship over his beating heart. I fed him with my own milk. And although my toddler was fast asleep in her bed, and my four month old was gurgling next to me, I thought I want to take him into my home. My home was overflowing and sleep barely threaded together into more than two hours at a time, but that is what I thought.

I daydreamed about it. I had always wanted to adopt, but I knew nothing of this desire until I held a mama-less newborn, rooting around with eyes shut. When my babies fell asleep, I would wander over to the baby house and gaze at him. One day in the baby house I heard him crying in the next room, and I must have looked ridiculous, holding my toddler's hand, carrying my baby girl, and leaning over the cot to pick up the newborn to give him to the auntie. It was too much – always, it was – but I couldn't see it then.

It wasn't until one night, sitting at my kitchen table, I faced the hard truth. In Mozambique adoption is both a marathon and a lottery – perhaps you will get lucky in the end, but in the meantime you must be willing to wait years. Perhaps you will not be lucky, but by then your heart has knitted to your baby, and how could you leave him then? So you might stay twenty years until he is grown, because you can't leave the country with him. I thought through all this and still resolved defiantly I could do that with God. But the thought of committing 20 years to a land I can barely survive in some days was too much. The floodgates opened and I wept.

Nine months later, we feel God calling us on. We are ready to leave. We are so full of peace, so full of joy. It is good. We know God is leading us, and we are beginning to understand His process.

For 18 months whilst in Mozambique, at least one member of our family has been sick. That means someone's either coughing or puking or infected or limping or hosting a worm. It's been tiring. On not much sleep and in a hot little house. It has been hard. And along the way I've asked God to move in power, take our sickness away. And then I've woken up the next day, and Nick is still lifeless, eyes shut, on the bed. And Willow's still coughing. And one night, honesty crept out in the quiet and I whispered to Nick why doesn't Jesus do something? I feel like He is just watching.

Only now do I begin to see. I remember the times we wondered about moving on, but in the end I stubbornly held onto this place. I didn't want to move again, and heart pushed itself deep into the ground of Mozambique. I forced my roots down in faith - which was beautiful and necessary for these last four years - but my heart became buried. It took months of sleeplessness and sickness to peel it back out of the dirt. To clean it and wash it and give it space to consider a new path. I don't think God sent the sickness. He didn't send the thieves or the worms or the power cuts. They all come with the territory of living here. They are part of the broken – stunning yet broken – package. But God, He came for my heart. And through it all, He was tenderly lifting my heart out of the dirt, cleaning it up, and presenting it back to me. And He said, it's time to go, beloved.

I look at the baby boy now. "I thought he would be mine," I silently whisper to God. My heart still aches over the gap I didn't fill. But he is six months old, and he's gaining weight. He has aunties that love him and brothers and sisters at the centre. He is smiley and he's eating solid food. He's eating solid food. And God tells me in Isaiah there is a better name than sons and daughters. My season with him was to hold him, to nourish his fragile frame, and to hand him back. And all the while, he planted a seed in me. A seed full of adoption and compassion and heartache and beauty and faith. And I will carry it with me always. As I hand him back.

I look at this season drawing to a close. "I thought this land was going to be my inheritance," I silently whisper to God. This land of purple bushes, sleeping babies, wrinkled grandmothers, orange dirt, empty blue sky. But it wasn't my inheritance. I am so full. To be honest, I am so relieved - to be released from this difficult season. My heart is full of peace. I walk around the base, and the sea breeze occasionally permeates the heat, and I smile at these children who I've walked with for four years. I know almost everyone I meet. And the baobab trees stand tall and grey in the sun, and I feel it pass through my hands. My season was to hold this place, to nourish the hungry, and to hand it back And all the while, this place planed a seed in me. A seed of joy and soft-heartedness in suffering and pure intimacy. And I will carry it with me always.

Oh Mary, your shoes are not comfortable. I travel between nations with dirty, cracked feet, like you. My legs ache as I carry my baby, like you. I am young and scared and exhilarated and tired and full of faith, like you. I don't know where I'm going to stay, just like you. I carry a promise amidst all the bags and the questions, like you. I am in love with the invisible God, like you. And, just like you, I also have whispered in the quiet of my room, "Let it be to me as you have said."