Crying Out

It's a familiar sight: she stands, weight on one leg, hip jutting out, eyebrows tense, not quite catching my eye. Her voice is hard and she fights her corner. I am, she claims, being just as rude to her as she is to me. I have two other children who need my attention, a few minutes left of the half-hour I had allowed myself for a coffee and catch up and I have not yet switched on the kettle. Water is trickling from the bottom of the washing machine which just spun as if it had a house brick in the drum. I don't have the patience. I don't have the time. I suggest, firmly, that she goes to her room, stops winding her brothers up and tries to calm down. She deserves my attention I tell her and I can see that she needs some positive parenting, it just isn't going to happen right now.
Later, flood abated, new washing machine ordered, bread rolls shaped by my middle son and dictation and graphs completed, I do sit down. I'm curious, I say, as to why she is in such a bad mood. She admits that she can see now that she has been very rude, but that it's hard to see in the moment. She is fed up and frustrated. Her eagerly anticipated bath was ruined by a fresh and sore knee graze and then she had to shower after anyway because she'd forgotten to rinse her hair. It can be tough being eight. I express sympathy, commiserate with her frustration and she softens. Her shoulders drop, her face relaxes and she slithers from her chair to climb on my lap. We all need to be heard.

Mobile Woes

The connector on my mobile phone has been playing up.It can take all night to charge and I can't listen to music while I run any more because the regular movement dislodges the headphones. On Saturday, my husband kindly took it to our local store to be fixed, but they were unable to accept the phone from him and so he came home with it. On Monday, I dropped it off myself and was told there was only a 50/50 chance of it being reparable and I came away with a courtesy hand-set. I am not getting on well with this model and texting has become a painful and laborious procedure, accompanied by much cursing. Today, I dropped the phone and it has sustained 'liquid damage'. It is broken. Its little screen lights up but nothing else happens, there is no-one home. I rang the shop to find out what I should do: could I return it, pay for the damage and pick up another one? No - he cannot issue two phones on the same account: giving this one back didn't seem to figure. My only option is to buy their cheapest pay-as-you-go phone, at £17:99. Oh, and pay £50 to replace the broken one! £50! His best advice was to put the wet one in a bowl of rice in the airing cupboard and hope it dried out. The mobile phone repair company I spoke to were going to charge me £20 to inspect the phone and then, if they could sort it out, another £20 to mend it.
So, now I am phone-less and £50 down. I can't put my SIM in my husband's phone, or either of the two extra hand-sets we have because they are 'network locked'. I can't use either of the other SIM cards we have knocking around, presumably because the numbers have not been used for so long.
When did I become a person who had spare SIM cards, two spare hand-sets and feels anxious at the thought of being without a phone?
How do I become a person who trusts in her Father's provision for her every need and doesn't stress about £50, knowing that I have never lacked for anything and won't be in want because I have this unexpected, and unwelcome, expense?

The phone is showing more signs of life after its day in a rice-spa, so, although it is not fully functioning, I have a seedling of hope. But when I found a packet of silica beads which I thought I might put close to the phone, to help the drying-out along, the dog found it. And ate it, just to add to what I have found a very trying day, and I had to call the vets to make sure that she wouldn't shrivel up like a prune, desiccated from the inside out. (She'll be fine!) I think it's time I brewed some camomile tea and, now the heating has come on for the evening, let the airing cupboard work its gentle magic. And perhaps I'll just check my e-mails ...

Kitchen Cupboards

I had a new cupboard installed in my kitchen yesterday. We've changed the kitchen around a fair bit since we moved in to make it into the heart of my home that I envisaged: somewhere you'd love to come and natter over a cup of tea and some home-made cake, somewhere you might want to come and off-load and be prayed with, somewhere my children can sit and draw or play while I cook, somewhere I can enjoy a romantic meal with my husband or a cosy supper with a friend.
Yesterday's cupboard saw the removal of a fridge (we have another) and, in its place, a new cupboard. Oh, all that space! I proceeded to sort out and de-clutter and rearrange one cupboard at a time, creating a 'baking cupboard' in the new space, and organizing breakfast cereal and crockery more logically. By the time I had cleared out a couple of boxes for the charity shop and moved everything to my satisfaction I was left with one empty cupboard!
I was struck with the parallel with my personal, emotional life. I am doing a fair bit of sorting out of my internal world at the moment and a phrase that keeps coming up for me is 'making room for myself.' By getting rid of the stuff I don't need and don't use, by rearranging my resources, by acknowledging my desires and taking them seriously, I can create some more capacity in my own life, some space, some room to grow.