A suitable job for the pregnant girl......

It's taking a bit of getting used to this being pregnant lark.

I've never been one to sit around while other people did stuff. I like to have a go. I'm the girl who joins in with the boys games at the BBQ, I go for the heavy looking box, and I love to get out and push if your car won't start. So when I first announced I was pregnant I was bemused and slightly offended when people started taking my bags from me and insisting I sat in their chair when really I'd much rather sit on the floor. I was pregnant....... but I was still fit, and strong, and much more adept at getting up off the floor than many of the people who felt obliged to help- bless em.

Now that I'm a whale, with an aching back and a very wriggly little being inside me- who seems to prefer to lie primarily in awkward positions- I'm not only more aware of my limitations, I'm infinitely more appreciative of that special treatment!! Still, it's taken me a while to get used to being careful. It's not just the physical stuff- it's all the other risks you suddenly become aware of when you feel responsible for someone so much more vulnerable than you.

I hate a fuss. In fact, I generally hate having my own way. Mostly because I don't know what my own way is. Lindon always laughs at me because when he asks what I want to do, he knows that I'm not really deciding what I want at all, I'm actually trying to figure out what I think he wants so that I can say I want that. Pathetic sounding I know, but it's not something I just do with Lindon. I do it most of the time. It sounds saintly but don't misunderstand, the truth is I very rarely have a strong opinion on what I want to do, or eat, or see- I just want everyone else to be happy and then I can relax and enjoy myself. My genuine preference is to do whatever you want to do because that means you will enjoy doing it and so everything will go well. Which makes me the absolute worst person when it comes to making decisions- I'm the perfect companion for someone who knows what they want but absolutely useless if you need someone to show you a good time. So anyway, my point was that I don't like to kick up a fuss, I'm much happier just going along with whatever is happening around me. The problem with being pregnant is that sometimes you have to make a fuss. Sometimes you have to refuse food that people have made you because it's a risk. Sometimes you have to go home from a party because someone has been in contact with a disease that could seriously harm your unborn baby. And the worst of it is.....it's probably fine...... but then what if it wasn't?

Since I've been in Romania I've been trying to find the balance between not being afraid to get on and do stuff and not taking unnecessary risks. I think being in a foreign country with so many unknowns, coupled with a very strong desire to be well-and-truly home in England before this baby comes, have not only emboldened me in the 'making a fuss' department but have encouraged a little more restraint in the 'joining in' department too. Nonetheless I still find it excruciating having to be awkward.

In an earlier blog I mentioned we were hoping to get involved with a charity in the nearby town of Arad. A few weeks ago we spent four days working with them in the small village of Siria where they have their base. There is all kinds of work to do in Siria and Lindon was very popular with his many skills and talents. I on the other hand was a bit of a problem. I knew I didn't want to work with the kids (the least labour intensive option) because I didn't want to risk getting sick but hard labour was probably not a brilliant option either. The first day was easy, I stayed at the base sorting donated items into bags to distribute to families at Easter. By the end of the day though I had decided that bending down 50 million times to rummage around in boxes on the floor was probably not on the pregnant girl list of job skills either.

So the second day I offered to dig. 'I'll just take it easy' I thought..... 'how hard can it be'? What I hadn't accounted for were the ancient broken tools the poor old widow whose garden we were digging would have for us to use. I was expecting a spade I could stamp on, or a trowel I could kneel with. I was given a hoe. Now I'm not a gardener but it really didn't seem like the best tool for turning over hard soil ready to plant corn- you had to bend at the waist and swing with both hands like a pick axe. But the little old lady was quite bossy, almost scary, and she didn't take kindly to stops of any kind......even the inevitable ones that occurred when the hoe fell off the handle.

..."only not pregnant!"

I think she thought I was fat and lazy at first....... she kept tutting at me and if my hoe broke she gave me hers so I could keep going while she went and fixed it. Then, with Lindon insisting I took a break, I decided to try out my Romanian conversation skills. 'Bebe' I said pointing to my stomach (Romanian conversation is clearly one of those special skills of mine) at which point she grabbed the hoe off me, took my hand and led me to the other side of the garden where she found a much more suitable job for the pregnant girl......I was to drop corn kernels into the little holes she dug. Meanwhile everyone else should keep swinging.

The third day I joined a team driving up to a camp ground an hour away from Siria to do some groundwork. It doesn't sound like the best idea but I pushed for it because the weather was glorious and the location of this camp, in the hills near a lake, was said to be beautiful. There was painting to do, as well as strimming and digging, and as it was outside I figured it would be white wash and suitably ventilated by the wind - so no problems for a pregnant girl. As it happens it was the fumiest gloss paint you've ever smelt, and the day was so still it was making my eyes water, not to mention the fact that most of it required a ladder perched on uneven ground. I painted a door, with my T-shirt over my mouth before I decided to make a fuss. I'm sure it would have been fine but I'd read somewhere that the fumes from household cleaning products could be something of a risk so I decided it wasn't worth it. So I approached the team, sorry to be a pain but could they find me another job. "Sure, take this metal brush and strip all the loose paint off the windows on the cabins so they are ready to be painted." After about 2 hours of this particularly mundane and boring job I took a break and called Lindon. Upon investigating my questions about paint fumes on his phone he discovered that a bigger risk was in fact stripping old paint in case it had lead in it. Great! So off I went again to make a fuss again. I finished the day raking up grass and loading and emptying a wheelbarrow...... at least with physical work you can usually tell if it's having a bad effect.

Since that week we have been making the 100 mile round trip on crazy Romanian roads one day every week to help out with the many projects Networks is running. And finally we have found a suitable job for the pregnant girl. I am spending my one day a week working with Dece- a micro enterprise company that Networks have established which empowers and enables some of the women in the poorer gypsy communities to work from home and earn some extra money while taking care of their kids. Dece workers make hats, and scarves, and bags and hopefully a few other new things soon if any of my research comes in useful. So now I am spending my day sat down. I am researching sales opportunities and new product lines, and apart from needing to stretch and walk a little more frequently than others might I am happy to find I am finally capable of making myself nearly as useful as everyone else!!

What Time is it Mr Wolf?

Where does the time go??

Apparently it's nearly a month since I last posted a blog. It feels like about two weeks.

Similarly the diary tells me I've been living in Romania for nearly two months now and will be going back to England for the baby in one month. It feels like it's the other way around.

Yesterday I woke up before my alarm. The alarm was set for 8am but I was nicely awake at 7.45. Hmmmm surprising. Especially since I didn't go to bed particularly early and sleep is one of my specialities. Good though. I love it when you get up early and get loads of things done. I'd do it more often but as I mentioned sleep is one of my very special talents. So, I now had two whole hours before I had to be at the office for a meeting with Wendy about producing a newsletter for Kairos.

I was having a lovely morning, eating grapefruit, reading, praying, listening to a bit of music when the phone rang at 9:28am. I know it was 9:28 because that's what time it said it was on my phone when I picked it up to answer the call. So you can imagine my surprise when my friend on the other end asked me if I was ok and questioned why I hadn't come to the meeting yet. "Because I thought we were meeting at 10am" was my genuinely confused and innocent response. Apparently I was absolutely right, we were meeting at 10am. The only problem was that it was in fact currently 10.28am.

I had taken the battery out of my phone the afternoon before and when I shoved it hurriedly back in just as I was leaving the house that evening I was disgruntled to find it had forgotten the time and date. It seems I proceeded to rectify this problem somewhat carelessly, and unfortunately the consequences were felt the next day. Not so much by me, I had a lovely morning dawdling about, but definitely by poor Wendy who sat in the office waiting for me for 50 minutes. I really should have been more suspicious about the whole waking up before the alarm incident.

Time is such a funny thing. They tell us it's a constant. But I often find it to be one of the most relative things in this world. Most other forms of measurement produce strikingly consistent results. The scales, for example. Even though I fain shock and surprise they are usually simply confirming my fears and dashing my weak hopes with alarming consistency. Whenever I measure out a litre of water for cooking it usually looks about the same. I'm pretty good at guessing people's heights and even distance, which can be a little confusing due to the different speeds of our available transportation, is usually pretty predictable once you have reminded yourself of your context. A 5 mile journey in a car is a misleadingly short distance if you then find yourself having to walk back. However once we have familiarised ourselves with each form of transport most people can make a pretty accurate guess how long a certain distance will take them to travel. My experience is that, even those who seem incapable of making an accurate prediction,....those who say "I'll be there in 5 mins" to which you nod and smile but automatically assume it will be at least 15...... even those people, are perfectly capable of measuring distance. They know it will take 15mins, they are just hoping to soften the blow of their inconsiderate lateness by making you think they'll be there soon. (I know this because I am this person....... I hate being late...... but I always am........it's another one of those special talents of mine).

But Time..........Time is different. Time is notoriously difficult to judge. Time is so relative it even has the extraordinary ability to appear to have gone both fast and slow to the same person. For example the last eight weeks since I left Haworth.......sometimes seem like an age. It's forever ago since I last walked the dog on the moors, since I saw my family, since I went to Morissons. I've done so much. I've driven across Europe, visited my friends in Switzerland, moved into a new house, furnished said house, made new friends, visited new places etc etc

But then sometimes.......it's like no time at all - Morissons.....pah....I know it so well I could talk a blind man into doing my shopping via skype without the need for video call. How can we possibly have been here 8 weeks already??? What's especially bizarre is that I am capable of these contradictory evaluations of time simultaneously!!!! Right now it feels like both a long and a short time that we've been here. And unfortunately this confusion rears it's ugly head with reference to practically every event that has ever occurred in my life......they were all so long ago and yet they feel like 'only yesterday'...... all at the same time!!!

I realise that I personally seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about time. "It's passing so quickly", "it's passing so slowly", "how much time do I have", "what shall I do with this time", "did I use that time wisely". I really should stop going on about it. But the other day when I based my day and my decisions on an entirely irrelevant time that I had, it seems, simply plucked out of the air, I realised again that Time is a law unto itself. It just ticks away. It doesn't matter one bit what time we think it is. It is what it is, all we can do is deal with it wisely.

I am currently reading a philosophy book called 'The reason for God' by Timothy Keller and he makes a similar point about God which is worth mentioning. God exists or He does not regardless of what we think on the subject. And if He does exist then He is what He is, it does not matter what we think He should be. It's an obvious point but one which seems to elude most of us post-modern thinkers. We say "well I think that if there is a God He will be like this and will do this" and if he isn't that or he doesn't seem to do what we think he should, we dismiss the whole concept. We then go on to base our whole lives on this decision about God that is merely a personal whim or preference, without really investigating our assumptions.

It didn't matter that I thought it was 9am, it didn't matter that I had programmed my world to exist around the assumption that it was 9am. It was 10 am. And that's the truth of it. If only I had checked some other clocks I would have known it was 10am. But I was so confident of my own clock...... the clock that told the time I myself had decided upon that I didn't see the need to check. And it affected my whole day......and incidentally the day of those around me!! God is or isn't whatever He is or isn't, we cannot dictate this truth or control it with our thoughts or preferences, all we can do is seek the truth and deal with it wisely.