Below is a short extract from the introduction to the book 'Mothering Sundae'.
I always intended to be the perfect mother. After all, how hard could it be? Coming to motherhood late, I’d had many years of watching my friends and family raise their kids. And I was pretty sure I could do just as well or perhaps even better!
Baby was going to come with me everywhere and experience the full, rich life that I would lead. I would breast-feed him for at least eighteen months: he would be plump and healthy and days would be full of sunshine and laughter. The way I saw it, child-rearing would be filled with trips to feed the ducks, picnics in the park, and days of creativity: painting, sticking, and generally recycling all the empty cereal packets. Yes, I was going to be the sort of mum that kept them all: neatly stored on an organized shelving system, in an immaculate and highly creative house.
It was a good plan and I would have really enjoyed it if it had worked out that way. But these plans held no place for mind-numbing exhaustion, no place for temper tantrums in Tesco, no place for all the stuff that must go with you everywhere and certainly no place for size 16—or dare I even whisper it—size 18 dresses. In my plans the baby didn’t cry all night or want feeding when it wasn’t convenient—I once spent the whole evening feeding baby Rosannagh in the toilets at a restaurant, I even had my meal there. In these plans poo always stayed where it was meant to be—inside the nappy— rather than managing somehow to completely fill the 'Babygro' from top to bottom: how do they do that? All this fun and laughter wouldn’t have to take place alongside that nagging feeling that it was about time that I cleaned the loo, changed the sheets, did the washing, paid the bills, weeded the garden, and even perhaps had an evening out with their father. I wouldn’t have to look after baby while I was throwing up with a migraine. And these plans always—but always—included bank accounts that were nicely in the black rather than hopelessly in the red. On top of that the pictures in the dream always included a house that was a ‘real home’: full of understated ‘chicness’—rather than a half-finished decorator’s nightmare! It would never rain, I would be constantly full of energy, baby would be a little bundle of joy and happiness all the time, and it would all be just perfect.
I know now—oh what a double-edged sword is the wisdom of hindsight—that although babies arrive crying, helpless, and naked, they don’t arrive empty-handed waiting for life to write nice things on all their blank pages. They arrive with a full set of emotional luggage, that they will stack haphazardly on top of yours, and that they will gradually unpack—presenting you as parents with some of life’s greatest joys, frustrations, and challenges.
Being a mother has been an emotional roller-coaster ride: juggling my own needs and issues with the needs of the five little people that God called me to love. I have lunged from first birthday parties and nativity plays to the funeral of a son and the possibility of my own death from cancer. From that first ‘I love you mummy’ to ‘I’m leaving home’. From combing the hedgerows for food because we had run out of money, to laughing in the waves on family holidays.
Through all these happy times and through the desperately sad times the foundation in my life has been my relationship with Jesus. Without this relationship I don’t think I would have made it this far. Following him is my focus, my guide is the Holy Spirit, and my manual for the journey is the Bible.
The Bible is an amazing book. There just seem to be layers upon layers of truth contained within it. I know of no other book that gives us such a detailed glimpse of events that will take place in the future. Written nearly 2 millennia ago it accurately predicted a global focus on the tiny reborn state of Israel, a world that is increasingly becoming one global community with a unified monetary system, and a numerical system for personal identification that can be implanted into a person’s body.
From it we learn that the world’s system is racing headlong towards a climactic end, and that we are nearer to that end than any generation before us. Indeed we and our children will almost certainly live to see the dramatic changes in the economic, political, global, and environmental landscape that it forecasts.
And our babies—with all their baggage—will grow up to be fully fledged citizens of this brave new world. A world coloured by a history that has turned it into a maelstrom of conflicting and often hostile forces. From the very beginning of their lives these forces will try to shape them, mould them, and make them conform to their own characteristics.
. . . . But for many people the stress and busyness of their day-to-day lives mean that God and faith find no place. He is dead, extinct, non-existent, a figment of other people’s imagination, or at best just marginalized as a vague influence on the edge of reality. He’s something to be thought about later—one day—when there’s time.
In the Westernized world that we inhabit most adults live with boring predictability, like hamsters on an endless treadmill, chained to the pay packet by mortgages, loans, spiralling living costs, and peer pressure to conform. Our homes must be fully colour coordinated, we must have up-to-the-minute labour saving devices. We must keep our houses squeaky clean and smelling of synthetic lemons, with an ever-glossy kitchen floor, in a garden plot that would put Eden to shame. Within this environment we must live happy, clean lives, with immaculate children, who are only ever cute and never disgusting, inappropriate, rude, or ill. We must look constantly as if we’ve walked off the front cover of a glossy magazine, and wear expensive creams and make-up to keep age at bay. If we are ill we can go to see our busy doctor who will prescribe pills to make us instantly well and happy again. We must have a partner and a rampant sex life. We must be calm, self-assured, in control and have successful careers with large salaries in order to repay our debt mountains. We will take holidays in the sun where we will laugh a lot, showing off our perfectly straight, white teeth. And just in case we might be aware of some gaping hole in our lives—if we have the time to think at all that is—we can gather a few bits of a pick-and-mix religion to fit in with our lifestyle and give it meaning and hope. To be really successful we must make sure that our children follow in our footsteps. Later we will be forced to sell all our hard-earned assets in order to pay for care as we sit dribbling in some nursing home waiting for death (or perhaps euthanasia) to release us.
As someone who believes in Jesus I don’t want to become entangled in the values and principles of this fallen world. Nor do I want to train my children to conform to these patterns. I belong to a world where God our Father like a designer at his drawing board has made plans—plans for each one of his kids. Knowing the forces that would shape us, he has planned our lives giving each of us a unique purpose and a unique relationship with himself. He has plans for each one of my children. He has plans for each one of your children. ‘Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth: all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.’[3]
. . . . Born out of my own struggles, health issues, and mistakes, and out of the struggles of my family, this book is about the things I’ve discovered along the way and the things I wish I’d known before embarking on this journey. I have written primarily to those who are raising children within the context of a Christian family. However, I hope that those who are caring and nurturing in a much wider sense will also find this book helpful.
Although the content of this book contains more background information than precise ‘recipes for success’, you will probably have noticed by now that I have also ‘snuck’ in a few of my knit and crochet designs. I hope that some of you will enjoy making these projects and that they will serve as a reminder that the things we hear from Jesus should always have a practical and creative outcome. We are called to do the things he says and not just to hear them. Knowledge just makes us proud.
I hope also that you won’t see what I’ve written as yet another parenting burden—another set of rules. We don’t need another set of rules. For at the heart of our desire to be good parents lies the love that we have for our children. Jesus considered love to be the most important of all God’s laws. When asked about this he replied: ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'[8] Not only does this reply show us that love is at the heart of God’s dealings with us, it also points to the fact that we humans, being made in God’s image have three parts to our personality.
I have a similar three part approach in this book. So often we focus on what we can see and feel and hear, but our personality is made in the image of God and like God consists of three parts: body, soul and spirit. If we focus our parenting skills on only one or two of these parts then we do our children a disservice. They may grow up out of balance and unable fully to take hold of their calling and destiny.
My journey remains just that—a journey—it has begun but it hasn’t finished. I don’t profess to know it all, or to have perfect understanding. If that were the case my journey would have ended, and where would the fun be in that? Nor do I profess that we have put it all into practice, but we are seeking to do so more and more. As time goes by I anticipate that I will hear more, learn more and understand more. I hope, though, that this little snapshot will be of help and that those of you who have struggles may find the information contained in this book increases your faith for the future, your hope and your direction.
‘May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ!’[9]
[3] Psalm 139: 16, THE MESSAGE.
[8] Matt. 22: 37, NRSV.
[9] 1 Thess. 5: 23, THE MESSAGE.
Scripture verses used are from the King James Version (KJV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and ‘The Message’ (THE MESSAGE).
Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved
Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
I always intended to be the perfect mother. After all, how hard could it be? Coming to motherhood late, I’d had many years of watching my friends and family raise their kids. And I was pretty sure I could do just as well or perhaps even better!
Baby was going to come with me everywhere and experience the full, rich life that I would lead. I would breast-feed him for at least eighteen months: he would be plump and healthy and days would be full of sunshine and laughter. The way I saw it, child-rearing would be filled with trips to feed the ducks, picnics in the park, and days of creativity: painting, sticking, and generally recycling all the empty cereal packets. Yes, I was going to be the sort of mum that kept them all: neatly stored on an organized shelving system, in an immaculate and highly creative house.
It was a good plan and I would have really enjoyed it if it had worked out that way. But these plans held no place for mind-numbing exhaustion, no place for temper tantrums in Tesco, no place for all the stuff that must go with you everywhere and certainly no place for size 16—or dare I even whisper it—size 18 dresses. In my plans the baby didn’t cry all night or want feeding when it wasn’t convenient—I once spent the whole evening feeding baby Rosannagh in the toilets at a restaurant, I even had my meal there. In these plans poo always stayed where it was meant to be—inside the nappy— rather than managing somehow to completely fill the 'Babygro' from top to bottom: how do they do that? All this fun and laughter wouldn’t have to take place alongside that nagging feeling that it was about time that I cleaned the loo, changed the sheets, did the washing, paid the bills, weeded the garden, and even perhaps had an evening out with their father. I wouldn’t have to look after baby while I was throwing up with a migraine. And these plans always—but always—included bank accounts that were nicely in the black rather than hopelessly in the red. On top of that the pictures in the dream always included a house that was a ‘real home’: full of understated ‘chicness’—rather than a half-finished decorator’s nightmare! It would never rain, I would be constantly full of energy, baby would be a little bundle of joy and happiness all the time, and it would all be just perfect.
I know now—oh what a double-edged sword is the wisdom of hindsight—that although babies arrive crying, helpless, and naked, they don’t arrive empty-handed waiting for life to write nice things on all their blank pages. They arrive with a full set of emotional luggage, that they will stack haphazardly on top of yours, and that they will gradually unpack—presenting you as parents with some of life’s greatest joys, frustrations, and challenges.
Being a mother has been an emotional roller-coaster ride: juggling my own needs and issues with the needs of the five little people that God called me to love. I have lunged from first birthday parties and nativity plays to the funeral of a son and the possibility of my own death from cancer. From that first ‘I love you mummy’ to ‘I’m leaving home’. From combing the hedgerows for food because we had run out of money, to laughing in the waves on family holidays.
Through all these happy times and through the desperately sad times the foundation in my life has been my relationship with Jesus. Without this relationship I don’t think I would have made it this far. Following him is my focus, my guide is the Holy Spirit, and my manual for the journey is the Bible.
The Bible is an amazing book. There just seem to be layers upon layers of truth contained within it. I know of no other book that gives us such a detailed glimpse of events that will take place in the future. Written nearly 2 millennia ago it accurately predicted a global focus on the tiny reborn state of Israel, a world that is increasingly becoming one global community with a unified monetary system, and a numerical system for personal identification that can be implanted into a person’s body.
From it we learn that the world’s system is racing headlong towards a climactic end, and that we are nearer to that end than any generation before us. Indeed we and our children will almost certainly live to see the dramatic changes in the economic, political, global, and environmental landscape that it forecasts.
And our babies—with all their baggage—will grow up to be fully fledged citizens of this brave new world. A world coloured by a history that has turned it into a maelstrom of conflicting and often hostile forces. From the very beginning of their lives these forces will try to shape them, mould them, and make them conform to their own characteristics.
. . . . But for many people the stress and busyness of their day-to-day lives mean that God and faith find no place. He is dead, extinct, non-existent, a figment of other people’s imagination, or at best just marginalized as a vague influence on the edge of reality. He’s something to be thought about later—one day—when there’s time.
In the Westernized world that we inhabit most adults live with boring predictability, like hamsters on an endless treadmill, chained to the pay packet by mortgages, loans, spiralling living costs, and peer pressure to conform. Our homes must be fully colour coordinated, we must have up-to-the-minute labour saving devices. We must keep our houses squeaky clean and smelling of synthetic lemons, with an ever-glossy kitchen floor, in a garden plot that would put Eden to shame. Within this environment we must live happy, clean lives, with immaculate children, who are only ever cute and never disgusting, inappropriate, rude, or ill. We must look constantly as if we’ve walked off the front cover of a glossy magazine, and wear expensive creams and make-up to keep age at bay. If we are ill we can go to see our busy doctor who will prescribe pills to make us instantly well and happy again. We must have a partner and a rampant sex life. We must be calm, self-assured, in control and have successful careers with large salaries in order to repay our debt mountains. We will take holidays in the sun where we will laugh a lot, showing off our perfectly straight, white teeth. And just in case we might be aware of some gaping hole in our lives—if we have the time to think at all that is—we can gather a few bits of a pick-and-mix religion to fit in with our lifestyle and give it meaning and hope. To be really successful we must make sure that our children follow in our footsteps. Later we will be forced to sell all our hard-earned assets in order to pay for care as we sit dribbling in some nursing home waiting for death (or perhaps euthanasia) to release us.
As someone who believes in Jesus I don’t want to become entangled in the values and principles of this fallen world. Nor do I want to train my children to conform to these patterns. I belong to a world where God our Father like a designer at his drawing board has made plans—plans for each one of his kids. Knowing the forces that would shape us, he has planned our lives giving each of us a unique purpose and a unique relationship with himself. He has plans for each one of my children. He has plans for each one of your children. ‘Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth: all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.’[3]
. . . . Born out of my own struggles, health issues, and mistakes, and out of the struggles of my family, this book is about the things I’ve discovered along the way and the things I wish I’d known before embarking on this journey. I have written primarily to those who are raising children within the context of a Christian family. However, I hope that those who are caring and nurturing in a much wider sense will also find this book helpful.
Although the content of this book contains more background information than precise ‘recipes for success’, you will probably have noticed by now that I have also ‘snuck’ in a few of my knit and crochet designs. I hope that some of you will enjoy making these projects and that they will serve as a reminder that the things we hear from Jesus should always have a practical and creative outcome. We are called to do the things he says and not just to hear them. Knowledge just makes us proud.
I hope also that you won’t see what I’ve written as yet another parenting burden—another set of rules. We don’t need another set of rules. For at the heart of our desire to be good parents lies the love that we have for our children. Jesus considered love to be the most important of all God’s laws. When asked about this he replied: ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'[8] Not only does this reply show us that love is at the heart of God’s dealings with us, it also points to the fact that we humans, being made in God’s image have three parts to our personality.
I have a similar three part approach in this book. So often we focus on what we can see and feel and hear, but our personality is made in the image of God and like God consists of three parts: body, soul and spirit. If we focus our parenting skills on only one or two of these parts then we do our children a disservice. They may grow up out of balance and unable fully to take hold of their calling and destiny.
My journey remains just that—a journey—it has begun but it hasn’t finished. I don’t profess to know it all, or to have perfect understanding. If that were the case my journey would have ended, and where would the fun be in that? Nor do I profess that we have put it all into practice, but we are seeking to do so more and more. As time goes by I anticipate that I will hear more, learn more and understand more. I hope, though, that this little snapshot will be of help and that those of you who have struggles may find the information contained in this book increases your faith for the future, your hope and your direction.
‘May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ!’[9]
[3] Psalm 139: 16, THE MESSAGE.
[8] Matt. 22: 37, NRSV.
[9] 1 Thess. 5: 23, THE MESSAGE.
Scripture verses used are from the King James Version (KJV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and ‘The Message’ (THE MESSAGE).
Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved
Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.