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.

An idea for a tea towel.......

Yesterday we went to a small village called Siria to visit a Christain Organisation called Networks who are  based there. Networks was established in 2001 and has been working with the poor in Romania for ten years. Lindon and I were given the details of this organisation by some friends in England when they found out we were planning to come to Romania. At first I just nodded and smiled......Romania is a BIG country which is notoriously difficult to travel around due to it's distinct lack of motorways i.e. one, in the whole country, somewhere near Bucharest and therefore of no use to us whatsoever. But I looked them up anyway and was surprised to find they were located in the county of Arad, next door to Tinis, which is where we are. Brilliant!!!!

So, after a few calls and emails we arranged to go for a visit so we could see what they do and discuss opportunities for us to volunteer. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes from our house to the base in Siria, so we set off about 9am and enjoyed a nice drive through arable farmland in the sun. It's incredibly flat around Timisoara, which is surprisingly hard to adjust to when your a native of the Yorkshire penines, still, at least it significantly reduces your petrol consumption :-). We arrived at 10.30 and introduced ourselves to Karen, a full-time networks volunteer of ten years, who is originally from Rochdale and whose accent became reassuringly broader and more northern sounding the longer she talked with us. She told us all about the organisation and the different works that they are doing in different communities in and around Arad. We were really impressed by the variety of their activities and the thoughtful philosophies behind their interventions in these communities.

Networks are involved in basic crisis help for the very poor, i.e, distributing food,  firewood and emergency medication for those who desperately need help to survive day by day. But they are also very concerned with addressing the more long-term issues and have many projects to help people work their way out of the poverty they find themselves in. For example, they have a full time social worker who is dedicated to helping people get the id and papers they need to be able to work and get medical help. Without an id card you cannot get a job, sign a contract, access a hospital or claim any kind of help from the government in Romania (Note to self: Get and ID card!). Many people have no papers whatsoever and are not even sure when and where they were born making it a difficult but essential task to get them registered.



Networks also place a high value on education since this will be a significant factor in helping the children break the cycle of poverty that their families are in and so they provide pre- school clubs and homework clubs in deprived communities to help encourage the children in their learning. Similarly Networks are concerned with helping to provide employment opportunities for those who are willing and able to work and have several enterprise schemes on the go. One such project is the Dece clothing company. Women with families to look after are provided with the skills, designs and materials to make high quality hats at home which are then sold internationally via the Dece website. Networks are also helping families by building giant greenhouses in their gardens enabling them to start growing fruits and vegetables and helping them negotiate contracts to sell them to the big supermarkets. We went to visit one of these newly built greenhouses and the owner was very enthusiastic about it...... his only complaint was that he could have planted earlier if only it had been finished lol.


After we'd heard all about it at the office Karen took us for a walk around two of these communities, the rural community in Siria and the inner city ghetto that is kakece (i have completely made that spelling up) in the city of Arad. Despite my enthusiasm for being involved while sitting and hearing about the work in these communities- the reality of being in them was a bit overwhelming. I wish I could say I was filled with instant love for the grubby little kids with bare feet and  (very) snotty noses who came running up to us, punching and hugging us in a bizarre show of affection and demanding to know our names. I wish I found it easy to look them in the eye and hug them back. But I'm afraid if I'm completely honest- the unknown is pretty scary and overwhelming, and these kids covered in dirt and shouting at me in Romanian were very much the unknown and I was a bit daunted. I know as I spend more time in these communities and get to know and recognise the people I will become more used to them and their ways and relax a little bit but at first, in all honesty , its going to be a challenge.

The next step for us is to fill out an application form and work out when we will be available to help out. Our hope is to be able to volunteer on a regular day once a week. Obviously my being pregnant and our limited availability will put restrictions on what we can do but Networks have so much going on that they are sure they will be able to give us something useful to do. I was so blown away by the commitment and ambition of the founders of Networks who have given so much, and achieved so much, that I came away feeling a little bit useless and mediocre .........but then I came up with a wise saying, all by myself, and it made me feel better..........I'm thinking of printing it on a tea towel.......

"Don't let your inability to do everything right undermine your potential to do something right".
                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                    Ta Da!!!!!!!

What to have for lunch...????

I am five months pregnant. Before I got pregnant I thought about what it would be like to be pregnant, then, when I found out that I was, I thought about what it would like to be more pregnant, you know, with a big fat belly and all that. Right now I'm thinking about having my own baby in my arms. But I'm pretty sure once I finally have my baby in my arms I will be thinking about how I will cope when he/she decides it's time to leave home.

Funny how very rarely we are satisfied with the present moment of life. We, or at least I, are always looking for the next thing. I don't know if it's just me but I tend to decide what I will eat for lunch while I am eating breakfast- well I say 'decide' but I am actually truly rubbish at decisions of all kinds so the reality is I merely think about it, ponder it, come up with a few options. You'd think, with the amount of time I spend thinking about what I will eat and when upon any given day, I would be able to boast a rich and varied diet and perhaps have written my own cookery book including all the fabulous new recipes I have concocted during these times. Unfortunately the reality is I usually just end up going with soup!!

There are lots of wise sayings about life being about the journey and not the destination, which when we read we all nod knowingly and say 'it's so true'. There was even that annoying x-factor song a year or so ago which reminded us it was really all just 'about the climb'. And we know it, we know it's the truth and yet we just can't help thinking about what's next.

What's with that!! I'm not saying it's wrong it just seems odd that we are wired that way. We always seem to be looking forward to the next thing. When I get here, or do that, or have the other, then I will be settled and happy and my life will be complete. Somehow we have to figure out how to enjoy now for all that it has to offer.

Unity Square- Timisoara

Right now in my life, I have just moved to a new country, I am learning a new language, I am making new friends, I am finding my place in a new church and a new city and of course I am expecting a baby. You'd think that'd be enough right.......... but for some reason I am spending all my time thinking about what it will be like WHEN I've settled in properly, WHEN I can speak Romanian, WHEN I have lots more friends, WHEN I am useful and indispensable in my new church, WHEN I know the one way system in my new city and WHEN I have my baby. I have so many hopes for my future here- I desperately want to have a purpose and be useful even if only in a small way. And that can only be a good thing right? But somehow my hopes for the future are preventing me from enjoying the present to the full. I should be enjoying settling in and finding my way around and learning about people and places and culture instead of fretting about how long the future will take to come about!!

So the lesson I'm learning this week is one which I really ought to have learnt by now. And to be fair I am generally doing quite well with it, I just have my occasional relapses and moments of panic. It's patience and trust that the future will happen despite of and regardless of how much time I spend planning it and fretting about it. And it's peace and joy and contentment in the moment that I get to live now. You only ever regret it when you look back and realise how good life was back then if only you could have relaxed and enjoyed it for what it was.

Timisoara Cathedral

So....... right now in my life I am sitting on my terrace, writing out my thoughts about life, in the hope that it will help someone else figure out their thoughts about life, watching my belly wriggle with life and making the most of the sun. This afternoon I have a language lesson to do but first its lunchtime and my soup is ready :-)!!

Hello Timisoara!!!!

We arrived in Timisoara at around 7pm local time on Friday the 18^th March. I'd love to say we were bursting with excitement or even crippled with fear because either of these extremes would have been easier to describe or explain than the general fuzziness and confusion we were actually experiencing. Arriving at the flat created similarly mixed emotions. The sight of five friendly welcoming faces was a genuine pleasure but the dirt and the dogs surrounding the place made me more than a little anxious.







As it happens we are very blessed to be living in a lovely new flat in a new block on the outskirts of town. Nonetheless the general state of disrepair in Romania can be a bit of a shock at first, especially when you are arriving at dusk on a cold, wet day and you've just spent a week in Switzerland (quite possibly the worlds most beautiful country and almost definitely the cleanest and tidiest).

Five days later and I am discovering that 'hello' is just as complicated an experience as 'goodbye'. It to, is full of contradictions. Excitement and hope at the prospect of new and positive experiences; fear, nervousness and insecurity about how we will fit in and cope with the new place or among new people. Since we arrived in Romania Lindon and I have experienced a roller-coaster of feelings and emotions; panic, excitement, fear, joy, regret, hope.

Luckily for us, the sun decided to make an appearance yesterday and as everyone knows, it's much easier to be positive in the sunshine. Regardless of the weather we are also blessed to have a great team of people around us who are helping and encouraging us and generally being friendly. Interestingly the other things that seem to be the most effective in helping us adjust to the 'new' in our lives is in fact the 'old'- the familiar. There is a mall near our home with shiny floors and food and clothes to buy, just like in England. The other night we even went to the cinema and ate popcorn and watched an American blockbuster- I particularly enjoyed the fact that while everyone else was having to read the Romanian subtitles, I could sit back, close my eyes if I so desired, and listen to the dialogue in my native tongue lol.

We have created for ourselves a little haven of familiarity in our flat with objects and pictures from home and these things are all helping our adjustment to the drastic changes we have experienced. We miss our families, we miss our friends, we miss our pets, we miss our view of the hills, we miss understanding more than 6 words of a conversation. We are adjusting to seeing dirt and poverty all around us, we are adjusting to stray dogs running all over the streets, we are adjusting to not being able to drink the tap water, and having to drive on the wrong side of the road. We are also adjusting to new people, a new culture and a new language. Saying hello to a new way of life, or a new job, or a new circumstance is not always easy. It often requires adjustments to our expectations, adjustments to our routine, adjustments to our character but if we can find the strength to be flexible there is potentially a whole world of new experiences out there for us to enjoy. We believe God has a plan for us to be here in Timisoara for a while, we don't know exactly what he has in store for us here but in focusing on his purposes we are finding the strength to be flexible.  

Sunshine, Balconies and Roaring Fires

I'm not sure what it is about balconies and verandahs that get me so excited but I just love them. I'd say it was the association with childhood sunny holidays in foreign hotels that caused this indiscriminate love but this seems unlikely due to the inherent problems of balconies in tents and the distinct lack of foreign travel (and consequently sunny holidays) that actually occurred in my childhood. Wherever it comes from my love of balconies is well known, at least to my husband Lindon. So much so that if they ever decided to make one of those 'don't tell the bride' type documentaries where the husband has to choose the family home without my input, Lindon would have hit the jackpot if he found a house with a balcony. It wouldn't matter how dilapidated the rest of the house was or how tiny the rooms, all he'd have to do would be to take me out on the balcony and I would be sold and everyone would marvel at his genius in making the right choice.

This morning I was lucky enough to be sitting on a balcony in Zurich, looking at the snowy Alps in the distance and feeling the warm sun on my skin. Three of my most favourite things, a balcony, a view and sunshine. There's something about these moments of pure pleasure and relaxation that restore and renew you in a way that nothing else can. The moments when you take a deep breath and everything is peaceful. The moments when you realise that there is more to life than all the chores and busyness of the day. The moments when you suddenly become aware that you are not the centre of the universe, in fact you are actually quite a small part of it, that the world continues to revolve even if you stop off for a moment. There are several situations that cultivate these feelings for me: sitting on a balcony (as i think i may have mentioned earlier :-)); looking out to sea; standing on top of a big hill; sitting in front of a roaring fire; lying on my back and looking at the stars; feeling the sun on my skin after a long miserable winter; a glorious sunset (and equally a sunrise though i admit to experiencing significantly less of these); looking around at a group of family and friends and realising there's no-where else I'd rather be. These are the moments when life makes sense.

These are also the moments when you start asking the right questions. Instead of asking 'what's for tea?' or 'what shall we do now?' we find room for the bigger questions- the important questions that somehow get crowded out and disregarded as we go about our everyday lives. It's in these moments, in the silence and the peace that we discover what's really important to us. It's in these moments that we become aware that we are more than just what we do and what we know. Our modern way of life has pushed God and spirituality out of our awareness. We scurry around, our busyness justifying our existence and giving us purpose but ultimately failing to fulfil our desire for significance and belonging. And then, every now and then, we stop. We see a fantastic view, we stop. We feel the warmth of the sun on our backs, we stop. We wrap our arms around someone we truly love, we stop. We stop, we take a deep breath  and we become aware of that simple truth that deep down we all know, and yet somehow we seem to be able to ignore most of the time, "There is more to life than what needs doing next, there is something bigger going on here."

These moments help us to embrace life. They encourage us to seek God, to seek purpose. They help us to re-assess our priorities and re-order our lives. They give us incentive to be a better person, a better wife, husband, parent. These moments are precious. Seek out the silence and the stillness and the deep breath moments.Walk up the big hill and take in the view. Sit outside on a clear night, wrapped in a blanket if you must, make time to sit still when the sun shows it's face. Ask the right questions and don't be too busy to seek out the answers.

Saying Goodbye

This week I have mostly been saying goodbye. Everywhere I go I am embarking on my last something. Yesterday, for example, was my last Sunday morning in bed, my last home-cooked Sunday dinner and my last service at church. Today is my last day at the cute little cafe where i work with some of my best friends and tomorrow is my last aerobics class at a school where I have been teaching fitness classes to the same lovely ladies for about two years now. Last week I suffered the trauma (and I am not being overly-dramatic here-it was horrific) of my last days, nights, walks, hugs and chases with my beautiful dog whom i have loved since he was born 5 years ago.

It's funny how all the everyday mundane things in life suddenly seem so precious when they are limited. Why on earth do i feel sad when i realise this is the last time i will clean the coffee machine at work? What is it about the fact that i no longer have to push the rubbish entirely into the bin to avoid coming down in the morning to butter packets and tinfoil meticulously licked clean and strewn all over the floor that makes me burst into tears. The very things that made me cross with the dog are the things that make me miss him. The things that have to be done all the time, the things that make life seem boring and mundane, these are the things that i suddenly feel so very sentimentally attached to now that i won't get to do them anymore.

I guess that's the positive side of saying goodbye. When you say goodbye you are forced into a recognition of  the good in your life. The people and things you see everyday, the journeys and jobs you begrudge, the clutter that messes up your house- these are the things you suddenly love when it's time to say goodbye. The other positive thing about saying goodbye is that it elicits such a great response from the people in your life. Suddenly everyone feels at liberty to say nice things to you. It's great :-) It's like you died and got to go to your own funeral (and thankfully lots of people came and everyone was nice- phew!)

We all have seasons in our life. We move home or job, we get married or have children, we sell the old and buy something new. Whenever we move onto a new season in our lives there's a few goodbyes to be said. No matter how much you wanted the bigger house with a garden it's kinda sad when you leave your old house for the last time. No matter how much you love your children you sometimes miss the way of life you said goodbye to when they came into your life (or so I'm gathering from the 'make the most of your freedom now' advice i keep getting from parents lol). But if you didn't say goodbye, if the fear of change or regret prevented you from moving into the next season of your life, you'd be stuck. You could be missing out on all sorts of new pleasures and joys and relationships if only you could pluck up the courage to take a risk.

Moving into a new season in your life is a risk. Saying goodbye to the old season is a risk. But as long as you are moving forward with your life and making good decisions then there is positive to be found, even in the goodbyes. This week I am wallowing in the familiarity and love of the present season, which is now drawing to a close. I am grateful to be forced into a recognition of the love and joy and beauty of the life i have been living. I am overwhelmed by the love and kindness that has been expressed by those living this current season with me. I am grateful for the positives of saying goodbye.

Next week i will mostly be saying hello (or Buna Ziwa). Next week i will be looking forward with excitement to the new season in my life and hopefully i'll get to experience all the positives of saying hello lol.