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.

Hot Cross Buns

Last year I read the book by Kent and Barbara Hughes called Disciplines of a Godly Family. One of the many helpful things I found in it was to create traditions for the important events in our life as a family. Easter is a huge event in our life together, if it wasn't for what Christ did for each one of us (I mean specifically Andrew and I) we probably would have never met!

So Andrew and I started looking for Hot Cross Buns recipes to bake on Good Friday. We got one yesterday and went to the supermarket to get all the ingredients. It was exciting to try to figure out how we could alter the recipe now that we live 2800m above see level.

This morning we had a slow morning since our little girl was so kind in sleeping in. We got up, had breakfast and starting the baking process. You need yeast to make hot cross buns, which involves kneading and waiting. It was great to be able to cook together with Andrew again. (We used to do it a lot, but now that we have our lovely Lily cooking needs to be quick and simple!) It was great to put everything together, to feel the dough, to see it rising, and to make the little balls. It was great to smell the buns in the oven and see our pretty perfect buns when they were ready. But the best part was to show them to Lily and to sit next to her and show her the little cross on her bun, and explain to her that in a day like today, many many years ago, Jesus had died for us so we could live.

I know that the words might be too big for her now, that she doesn't understand sin and substitutionary atonement, but she does understand that we eat something special today. I want today to be the first of many Easters in which we as a family get together and bake hot cross buns, not just because it is great to have the smell of baking overflowing the house, but because it is such a tangible way to help us to remember that Jesus died on that cross so we can be alive and rejoice in the life he has given us.

Jesus, thank you for living the life I could never live and for dying the death I so justly deserve!

Godly anger / Ungodly response

I am a shy person and I need time and space to regroup. Well, this week it has been one of those weeks in which any private time is impossible! The house has been crowded with people (all nice people, for sure) which means that Lily has been sleeping with us for the last 6 days. So we have had 6 pretty bad nights. We are tired because of the lack of sleep, and for sharing the space with 20 more people in the house. And as we get tired, or should I say, as I get tired, I get easily offended and angry.

I love cooking for my family. Cooking used to be one of those things that I did as a way of relaxation... Well, now I just try to keep sane as I cook dinner and play with Lily while Andrew is writing his essay for tomorrow. So after spending about 2 hours preparing meat balls (I am really struggling to make Lily eat ANY meat!) because she used to like them, I am tired and I just want a peaceful dinner, where my husband enjoys my cooking and my little girl eats with gusto. But, that's not what happened tonight. Well, my husband did enjoy the meat balls, but my girl screamed and threw a tantrum. So we had a trip to her cot to give her the chance to calm down, and for her to get the message that she can't just do whatever she wants. But, when she came back she was still upset. She is allow to play with a toy while we finish dinner, but she didn't want to do that, so she threw the toy and, not only that, she took the fork that had meat ball and cheese and threw on the floor! At that point I had enough. I was ssoooo angry with her! I took her to the cot in my angry mood, and put her in her cot. I told her that tantrums are not acceptable and that neither is throwing food on the floor. She answered "Ta" every time, which in Lily's language means yes, but I still left her there as a way of disciplining her. And I also left her there because I needed time to calm down. Poor Andrew, he didn't get a pleasant dinner either, because he had to deal with two angry girls!

Reflecting on what happened, I was right to be angry with Lily. Her disobedience should make me angry, because it is going against everything that is good, and because it makes me act in such a way to stop her from keeping in her sin. Godly anger is right when my child decides to rebel against me. Now, the tricky bit is to deal with this anger. The right response for Lily's disobedience was to discipline her taking her to her cot. The wrong response was doing it angrily for not respecting her Mummy. I was so cross with her, that I wasn't the gentle, tender and loving mother that I should be. I know that so many times I fall short from what I should be. And my tendency is to feel bad about it, and to want to run and hide away. But the right response to an ungodly anger is repentance. Yes, so when I went to pick Lily up, I explained to her why she was there. I asked her to say sorry. Then, I said sorry to her and asked her forgiveness. I wish I never did the wrong thing, but I know that I always do something that hurt my little girl, and that I will keep doing wrong things because I am a sinner and I sin. But I want my little girl to grow up knowing that Mummy will always come to her and ask for her forgiveness because her Mummy knows that the Lord forgave her so much more!

Everyday life

We have been living in this country for more than a month now, which means lots of things...

First, that our visa has expired and that we still haven't even managed to put all the paper's together to present to immigration (the fact that there was an earthquake in Chile where our papers were going to be authenticated didn't help!)

Second, that Andrew is getting much better with his Spanish, so much so that his teachers one week say "we need to focus on your grammar" and the next week they say "actually, you just need to talk to other Bolivians and you will pick up the grammar"

Third, that I finally have set a routine for Lily! Which makes Lily and her Mummy much happier. That means that Lily is learning to wait patiently in her cot in the morning and that I don't have to get up at 5:30 just because she is awake; that I can do my "chores" with Lily and so I can feel I am serving my family and Lily learns that Mummy has other things to do apart from playing with her; that Lily is learning to actually stay in her room for "room time" and play in her room for 10 minutes!

Fourth, that I am learning to eat Bolivian food, and to learn to cook it! Now I love "Humintas". Now you need to understand that the first time I try it, I misheard the name and I thought that it was "Humitas" which is yellow corn with basil cooked in the corn leaves in hot water! Savoury dish. Well, Humintas is like a cake with cheese on top and with sugar. But now, I truly like it and Sonia, the lovely house help, taught me how to cook it.

Fifth, that I am learning to love the streets of this country, despite the smell and the dogs. I am enjoying the amazing things that you can see on the streets: like a man doing tattooing outside the bus terminal, another man saying "keep an eye on your weight for 50 cents" with a house scale, and people selling all sorts of food.

Sixth, that I am looking forward to move to Tarija, not as a way of escaping from where we are now, but as a way of being truly happy for the future that the Lord has for us in Tarija.

God has been so good to me, he has sustained me and has shown me that he is with me every day, all the day. He has given people to talk to, he has feeding me with his word and with the amazing food that I can find in this country, he has cared for me when I have been sad for my family who has suffered so much, he has embraced me here, in this city that is surrounded by velvety hills, on the top on the Andes. I have met God in this country and I can truly say, He is the same in here! Alleluia!