My precious Lily

We just celebrated Lily's fourth birthday. It is hard to believe that we have had her with us for 4 whole years! She is so great with words and is able to express herself so well in English. She makes us laugh with her ideas, like when she tells me that she loves me SO much that she will marry me! And she is a great big sister. She helps Bella to get down from the cot, gives her books to read in the morning (sometimes a little bit too early Sigh!), she helps her to sit on her high chair and helps her to put shoes on. She loves singing and dancing and is able to create her own words for her tunes, which end up with quite amazing lyrics! She loves ALL kinds of animals, including the disgusting mouse that ruined our Saturday lunch with some friends. The only living creatures that she doesn't like are Ñamñamñas (which supposedly means arañas - spiders), she always runs to tell me about any spider that she has spotted! She loves going to kinder, specially when they celebrate parties. She loves lollies (although her mean mother doesn't let her eat them) and party bags full of goodies. She also adores playing with water in any form, shape and place... the worst time was when she decided to fill a wooden box with water and left it on her bed... She is into experimenting a lot...
She has always preferred eating broccoli and carrot but lately has delighted me telling me that she just LOVES the meatballs that I make for her (I certainly prefer this as a mother's day present than a card!)She loves Grandma Nola, Grandpa, Grandma Mena, Grandpa Arturo, tío Claudio, tía Mimí, tío Timo, tía Evy (our lovely neighbour), Ale and Fily (teenage friends that come to play with her), Gaby (an 8 year old girl to whom Lily look up to), Rexy (our german sheppard) and finally Cleo and Sabba (our two cats. Today she stood up on her stool while I was inventing brocoli soup and with tears in her eyes told me that she would like to have rabbits and that she would call them Cleo and Sabba. She is starting to feel the sadness of living this home. Lily arrived in Bolivia when she was 18 months. She has grown up eating empanadas blanqueadas (a form of pastry with egg white and sugar on top), quinoa soup, peanut soup, and "pollito" (chicken). She doesn't find strange to see street dogs everywhere, food being sold on the street, and skinny dogs begging for food inside our church. We are leaving Bolivia for good and she is starting to feel sad about it. She is only four so she can't sit down and explain to me her emotions. She can tell me though that she would like a pet that would remind her of her pets here. She knew that after her birthday party we were going to start packing things away. She loved her party but got really sick. So today she has been lying in bed calling me to be near her, telling me that she wants me to rub her back, to hug her. I think the months ahead will have a lot of this closeness. I pray that I would be aware of the way my little Lily needs me to survive and thrive home assignment and celebrate her fifth birthday in Punta Arenas Chile!

Lily and Bella painting together                                                       

Lily's surprise cake (she couldn't decide what she wanted!) simple but effective 

My lovely 4 years old Lily                                                            

Lily with friends Zoe, Jade and Gaby                                                   

 Lily enjoying the jumping castle despite the cold! 

                                       

Water or gasoline?

Oh well, I guess is time to blog again. I think this blog would be something like an annual blog! There are always tons of things that I would like to say but I always feel hesitant in sharing them. But this time, I will be brave.
I am taking an online distance course on Dynamics of Biblical Change. It has been a real blessing and it has pushed me to see my heart with a new light and to seek ways in which I can find a way to change. I have been struggling a lot with my girls disobedience and defiance. It gets really tiring and burdensome when Lily is unhappy about 98% of the things I offer her. And my natural response is to get upset and angry with her, to try to reason with her (bad idea!) and make her see that she is having another tantrum. Well, in watching my lectures and reading my readings and writing my assignments I have realised that what comes out in the difficult situations is not determined by the situation but by my heart. Dr Powlison uses the great image of a bottle of water, when it gets squashed what comes out is water, but if the bottle is full of gasoline, then it doesn't really matter what the situation is, when the bottle gets squashed what comes out is gasoline! So I was looking at my impatience and my anger and I got to the conclusion that what was coming out of my heart was pure gasoline. I felt sad and hopeless. I guess it is a little bit normal that when you are faced with the ugliness of your own heart you feel a little bit depressed. So I started to ask God how I could put something good inside my bottle so when it gets squashed by the circumstances what would come out is something that would bring honour to him. And God gave me the answer: prayer for my girls more. I decided that I am going to start the day presenting them and me before the Lord. I thought that if I pray for them and think about their weakness and sins I would be more compassionate to deal with them and love them well. Today was my first day! I sat down on my bed and prayed for them, gave thanks for their beautiful selves and pray for their temptations. When I got up I felt like I didn't have a burden on my shoulders! My lovely Lily was terrible during the morning but I managed to see her with different eyes. I still got cross with her, but I managed to express my love for her and not my anger. She was SO different during the afternoon. I am not doing this to twist her arm and change her, I am doing this to change MY heart because she will always push my buttons, that is what your own children do to you (I have discovered!) As my best friend says, I thought I was a nice lady until I had children.
I am grateful to my God that he doesn't let me stay in the ignorance of my own sin, but he shows it to me little by little and he empowers me to change for his sake.

My two precious reasons to change!

Tears in my hands

About four weeks we had the great pleasure of discovering that we were pregnant. Our third baby was on the way. We didn't plan it, it was a surprise, but a lovely surprise. I was a little bit daunting to think that Bella would be only 15 months old when this new baby arrived but we were confident that God gives us children and he gives us the strength to raise them. As normal a pregnancy makes you start planning, dreaming, counting one more in everything.

I went to my Doctor and he was cautious. He sent me for an ultrasound. Last Thursday I was with Andrew waiting for the ultrasound to start and I could only breath in and beg God to give me strength. As the doctor started to look for my baby he only found a very tiny embryo that didn't match the gestational age, and the most terrible thing, there was no heart beat. Tears started to pour out, I couldn't stop them, I didn't want it either. My baby was dead. I lost my precious baby.

I am not the first mother to lose a baby and I won't be the last one, but it was comforting to remember an article that I had read at the CCEF webpage about pain and how God does not compare our pain to anyone else's:

God, however, never compares our suffering to anyone else’s. Never. He doesn’t even compare it to his own suffering. There is no, “Let’s see, you just got divorced. Hmm. Do you want to know real pain? I suffered and died for your sins.” Instead, his personal familiarity with human pain assures us of his compassion—not of his comparisons. (http://www.ccef.org/blog/no-more-minimizing-pain)

God knows that death is horrible and that tears people apart. It is not intended to be, God didn't put death as part of life, death is a result of our sin. The death of my baby has made me cry and cry. It doesn't really matter what good intentioned people try to say to comfort me, like "well, it was under 12 weeks, it was expected!" or "but you have another 2 babies, I know someone who doesn't have any babies yet" or "this baby was not meant to be". I have found comfort, however, in rereading Psalm 139. I know that my God made my baby, he wove him inside me and he wrote in his book each one of his days... his short eight weeks of gestational life. He was meant to be, he was meant to be my precious little baby that only lived for that amount of time. Life is life not matter how much it lasts. I don't ask God why, because I know why: it was written in his book this way, he, in his perfect counsel, had planned it this way.

I am scarred, I know pain in a different dimension now, but I love God even more. He has sustained me and has showed me that he is a sovereign God and that nothing escapes his loving care.

I need a Saviour!

I was going to write about Carnaval and how terrible it is but I changed my mind. What is actually in my heart right now is that I need a Saviour. Well, it is not really a discovery, I have known that for more than 20 years now, but, oh how easily I forget! I have been struggling with my lovely girl, trying to teach her how to obey. We have had ups and downs (it does feel that we have more downs than ups though!!) and when I am sleep deprived and tired it is so much harder to put up with disobedience. Well, it is exactly then when I find it really hard to obey God as well. I know that God wants me to correct my child with a gracious heart, with the right motives, with his glory in my mind; but what I actually do is get really upset if my girl doesn't obey me because her disobedience is getting in my way of what I really want. I want her to come straight to the table at dinner time because I WANT to have a peaceful dinner; I want her to put away her shoes because I WANT to do other things rather than putting away her shoes; I want her to go to sleep because I WANT to rest. You get the idea. None of these desires are bad in themselves. There is nothing wrong with wanting a peaceful dinner and a restful night. But my problem is that I want it too much! And I let my desires govern the way I teach my lovely daughter. I am a wretched sinner, I am a selfish woman and I desperately need a Saviour! I pray to my God that this evening, and tonight (even the middle of the night!) I will remember that I need grace and forgiveness as much as my daughter does, that I can't obey God as I should and neither can she, and that the only person in the whole world who is able to actually obey is Jesus! Praise be to God for reminding me how much I need Jesus.

Sleepless nights

My last entry was all about hope. This one is all about coming close to losing that hope. There are studies that show that lack of sleep messes up with your mind, and I can confirm that!

I have a beautiful baby who is going to turn 3 months in 3 days. I struggled with the first couple of weeks having an unsettled baby, then I struggled with trying to teach my baby to put herself to sleep...and after some time and perseverance I managed to have better days and better nights. But for the last 10 days my baby has gone bananas! She is sleeping ok during the day but she is waking up every two hours during the whole night...or she is awake for three hours in one go in the middle of the night - like last night.

I am extremely tired, I get teary for no reason, and I start finding it hard to have a joyful heart and to serve my family happily. I would love to talk to my baby and have her tell me why she is not sleeping... I would like to find an obvious reason for all this... I would like to ask God what he is trying to teach me so I can learn it quickly and have a night with more than two and half hours of sleep in one go. I am not happy with my lot. And if you compare it to someone else's lot, it looks so little. What is to be sleep deprived in comparison to grieve the loss of a loved one? What is to be tired in comparison to be in prison, or sick, or alone?

I know this is just for a season and very soon (well, maybe in three years time!) I will manage to have better and more restful nights. In the meantime I want to find hope and joy in God, knowing that he is good and that he still cares for me although I am not receiving his will with a happy heart. If I sleep through the night, praise be to God; If I am awake most of the night, praise be to God! May the Lord help me to talk to my tiredness rather than letting my tiredness dictate how I feel during the whole day (and night!)

Post natal depression

When Lily was born I was thrilled to become a Mum, but I was also diagnosed with post natal depression. I know some people that would say that depression is not something that happens to real christians. I guess those people need to read more biographies! (Spurgeon's and Edward's)

Anyway, when I became a mum my hormones were crazy and my mind was not right and able to deal well with a new born baby. So I faced the darkness of depression... everything was a cause to fear and hardly anything was a cause to rejoice... Well, God in his mercy sustained me and helped me to walk through that terrible time. And now, He has given me the joy of having another baby. My beautiful Gabriela is far from being the baby from the book that every mother desires but she is wonderful and a token of God's faithfulness to me. As every baby she has good days and bad days, good nights and bad nights. No rocket science to say that. The difference is how I cope with this. When Lily was a baby everything that happened was a prescription of how life was going to be forever. That's why after a bad night sleep I was devastated... I just truly believed that from then on every night was going to be miserable and I would never recover my strength again! Now it sounds silly but at the time it was terrible.

I lived in fear. Now I live in hope. If Bella has a bad day, I think "Oh well, maybe tomorrow she feels better" And I rejoice in that! God in his mercy has let me taste how terrible and hard is to live in fear so now I can enjoy everyday seeing hope at the end of the day. I am so glad that God's mercies are new every day and with every new born!

Being a Mum

It is nothing new to say that being a mother it is hard work. You don't sleep as well as you used to, you don't have the quiet space that you used to, you are not free to go out at night as you used to. But although all those things are true, what I really find hard work it is not the physical tiredness but the emotional and spiritual one. My two little girls have been a real instrument in the redeemer's hand. My Lily is a delicious two year old who is active and chatty, who loves dancing and telling stories, who enjoys being thrown up in the air by her Daddy and eating chocolate biscuits or ANYTHING that has chocolate. In the middle of her little life she has exposed my heart so much. And I am grateful to God for it. She is challenging and makes me work really hard, but what she has achieved again and again is that I run to my Saviour and I bow down to Him because I have ran out of ideas on how to deal with Lily. If you see this in a negative way you can say that I have a very difficult daughter. But the way I am encouraged to see it today is that a have a wonderful daughter that helps me to deal with my own heart. God is good and doesn't let me be my own king, ruling my life with my own resources. He encourages me to go to Him, because in Him I find comfort and peace. There are SO many things that I can't fix in my Lily's life, and I am glad... not because it is easy, but because it pushes me to recognise who I am. I am a mother who needs God's help to raise her children. I am not a super mum, my child DOES have tantrums and DOES drive me crazy sometimes. I want to always be reminded, specially when she is a lovely christian woman, that it is NOT my doing but God's. And I hope that when that time comes my heart will be more in the image on Christ than now. Motherhood is a long path and children are not the only ones changed and shaped in it.