A Fifth Pause in Lent - Gratitude

Hi and welcome to the fifth Pause in Lent! Time is really moving along here! The other participants are listed in the sidebar to your left and I hope that you enjoy visiting them over the next few days - I am still getting a lot out of reading the other posts each week. There are no new garden photos this week because I've lent the camera to Son 1 who is in central Toulouse with Ben and some visiting friends today (Saturday afternoon - I'm preparing this post in advance). But for the record, most of what seems to have grown in the garden this week is clover in the lawn. As soon as it cools down, I'm going to have to mow...

And that leads me on quite well to the idea of the Gratitude Journal, which I first learned about from the lovely lady over at Homemade and Happy. She really seems to be someone who practices what she preaches, so I paid attention to what she told me! The thing is, that I have always seen myself as someone who looks on the positive side, so that, for example, when I think about the rampaging, mile-high clover in my 'lawn', I think MORE about the beautiful weather in which both the clover and I have thrived this week.So maybe a gratitude journal wasn't necessary for me? It seemed worth the experiment, as it was a big part of the Simple Abundance book, which had clearly had a big impact on the happy life mentioned above! It also wasn't difficult for me to find either a note book or the time to write in it each evening, as I have been in the slightly on-off habit of keeping a prayer journal for the last 17 years or so.

So the cute 'strawberries' notebook you can just see above became my first gratitude journal. I'm onto my second one now, in a special journal so kindly given to me by Lululiz!

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I'm going to let Sarah Ban Brethnach, the author of Simple Abundance, explain the Gratitude Journal to you in her own words:

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"There are several tools that I'm going to suggest you use as you begin your inner exploration. While all of them will help you to become happier and more content and will nurture your creativity, this first tool could change the quality of your life beyond belief: it's what I call a daily gratitude journal. I have a beautiful blank book and each night before I go to bed, I write down five things that I can be grateful for about that day. Some days my list will be filled with amazing things, most days just with simple joys... Other days -rough ones - I might think that I don't have five things to be grateful for, so I'll write down my basics: my health, my husband and daughter, their health, my animals, my home, my friends and the comfortable bed I'm about to get into, as well as the fact that the day's over. That's okay. Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only survive but surmount our difficulties."

These photos are all nabbed from 'gratitude' posts I've written before, as this idea of listing five things to thank God for began to take a hold in my life. You'll find the original lists here, here and here.

Here are a few things I've noted, first from the point of view of others, and then from my own experience:

A Gratitude Journal doesn't suit everyone - Gretch Reuben of the most excellent and helpful Happiness Project tried one and, as she had predicted, gave up on it. Maybe it could have worked for her if she'd kept on going, but more likely, different things just suit different people and you have to find the ones that work for you. She was approaching this from a non-spiritual point of view and maybe it seems a bit more silly to be saying a general 'thank you' than a specific one to someone whom you believe gave you these wonderful things.

The converse of that is that I read, soon after my Happy friend had told me about her Gratitude Journal, a Christian writer whom I generally admire, on the subject of saying 'thank you' for five things each night. She wrote along the lines of how 'even non-Christians (editorial cringe, cringe) feel that they can benefit from saying thank you for the little things they observe in their lives. How much more can we (BIG editoral cringe) thank God knowing as we do His salvation and mercy!'

Now, I'm not cringeing about the fact that she felt that our salvation through Jesus was the biggest thing we can thank him for - not at all! But I felt she was pretty condescending to a whole lot of intelligent and truly grateful non-believers/people of other faiths out there.

In fact my own experience has been that, whilst a Christian can pay lip-service to the big things - God created and loves us, Jesus died to save each of us and rose again, the Holy Spirit is our daily guide and help - it's not always a very DEEP gratitude. It can become simply what we feel we should do.When I am busy feeling guilty about the clover in the lawn and not remembering to really dwell on the wonder of this super hot-summer weather in April, I am not living with an attitude of gratiude (yes, it's your turn to cringe). My 'thankful' words to praise God are sadly rather meaningless because they skim the surface of my thoughts, and don't tune in to a genuinely grateful heart. So thanking God for seemingly 'little' things, and just taking the time to note them to myself ('must write that in my gratitude journal tonight'), have made me grateful for the big and the little things, and have given me a more genuine resillience to the hard times - more than any amount of Christian theory did before. So here is my gratitude list for right now - expect some little things!

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Thank you God for:

Lizards on the wall - their legs are just fantastic the way they move!

Our friend from Yorkshire visiting us, with his great new fiancée.

The smell of the flowering olive in the evenings.

Glasses which mean I don't get a headache at the computer any more.

My family and our love - often imperfect but always there.

Linked to Spiritual Sundays - more inspiration through blogging!

The Sweetest Thing

Click here to get the soundtrack to this post! Then come back and look at this new sweet thing in my life.... ... and on my washing line.

It's huge! It's clearly made of the kind of fabric used for 1930s eiderdowns, but this is just the fabric.

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Where did I find it?

In my mother's collection, of course!

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What shall I do with it?

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Well, what do you suggest? j

Quick note: if you need (as I did) an explanation for the U2 video, click here.

A prophecy fulfilled...

Mine, mine, all mine!

And Nana Go-Go, I did read your helpful advice but my dad's Tesco is an inner-city one and it doesn't have clothes and shoes. And do you know what, I just wanted to splash out!

A Fourth Pause in Lent - Honest to God

Welcome to this week's Pause in Lent - you'll find all the participants in the list on my sidebar. This week my post is very much inspired by thinking about what I read in 'Pause' posts and comments last Sunday and Monday. You have had me thinking all week, friends! I have a horror of the kind of 'Christianese' or 'Churchianity' that has participants pretending that everything in the garden is lovely, 24-7, because they know Jesus. Hang on..? This is the Jesus who is about to get crucified, as far as the church calendar goes, isn't it? Why should everything be permanent grins and all-my-problems-fixed when our own Lord had one of the hardest lives we can imagine?

It isn't really a surprise, because I know and like so many of the bloggers participating, that this year's Pause is NOT an 'isn't life cute and cuddly with the Lord'-event. That's not a criticism, it's a compliment. Like the writers of the Psalms in the Bible, we are brave enough to tell God when we feel terrible. We are brave enough to tell fellow bloggers too. We don't feel we have to keep up the pretense of a perfect life in front of God, our friends or, perhaps especially, ourselves.Looking at posts and comments from last week, one of us feels 'a fraud' for even participating, one of us is flat-out furious with God following a tragic bereavement and one of us (OK, me) is fighting against gritting her teeth and snapping at her children due to numerous family stresses.

So we have anger, anxiety and a sense of hypocrisy, and we're telling it like it is.

I'm so proud of us!

I'm not at all suggesting that we are, or should be, happy to leave it at that and stay there in our wretched states. But if we're not prepared to say it, to challenge God with it, to challenge ourselves with it, then we'll never face it at all.

My very good, randomly-chosen, Lent book is by Gerard W. Hughes. He talks a lot about how we think that the ordinary every-day stuff, and the nasty unkind stuff, should be kept from our prayers.

Quite the opposite is true, he points out! He says: "The facts of our life are not 'distractions'. The word distraction is from a Latin root meaning 'to draw apart' or 'drag away'. The facts of our lives are not distractions: they are the place, the only place, where we can meet God, for that is where he is with us. "

I have no idea if I can encourage my fellow bloggers with these words, but I truly feel that when we are honest to God about the hardest things and strongest feelings, we are getting to a place where we can know him better. The sweet and cuddly stuff, whilst part of reality, is only a part, and knowing God in the tough times and telling him the truth about how we feel allows us to let him in, deeper, to our thoughts, feelings and concerns.Reflecting on all of this, as I mowed our 'lawn', gave me the chance to re-assess the writer of one of my least favourite Psalms. The Psalmists really told it like it was. Here's Psalm 137 - oh yes, it starts out all famous, but how many of us can tolerate the end:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!” Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. j

Well that ending makes me sick. But it's not necessarily an emotion endorsed by God, it's just one honestly expressed by a writer who had seen evil things (probably those very things) done to his own people. And then he had the courage to say it to God. I pray that we will have the courage to tell God what we are really feeling and thinking, in the confidence that he can handle it and that it will help us to move on to a better relationship with him.

Yvette and Josianne

Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, there were two little French sisters, called Yvette,

and Josianne.

This weekend at the Vide Grenier I met Yvette's husband, and he sold me her childhood laundry-labels...

... and then I met Yvette herself,

who really did not look old enough to have owned something so 'vintage'.

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It was a very pleasant way to buy French vintage. I'm going to use the label-tape like ribbon... watch this space!

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Tomorrow I'm off to Edinburgh to help celebrate my dad's birthday. It's a real flying visit but I'm looking forward to seeing him.

A penny for your thoughts...

Inside a traditional French house it can be a bit dark on a cloudy day... ... the homes are made to keep us cool in summer, not light and bright in springtime!

But things are brightening up thanks to all the flowers in our garden, indoors and out.

This weekend it was the floral fair for which our town is quite famous. We variously waked and cycled up past the church to the festival, and the boys were entranced by a display of pansies (pensées in French, meaning 'thoughts') near the entrance. Ben and I were similarly impressed by the variety and also the price:

10€ for a box of our choice - that meant 20 plants!

Everybody chose three favourites, and then we collectively chose a few more to make up some good sets.

The boys rolled off home when they got bored (Son 1 clutching a succulent for his bedroom), but Ben and I held out for a really thorough look round.

We came back with plenty of other plants too, but it's the pansies which are the star of the show for the moment!Thanks for your lovely, kind comments on my last post. Do you want to know what I did on Sunday? Ben took the boys out and I visited a Vide Greniers and then settled down in the garden with a novel (I often read something 'serious' for a while in the garden, but seldom a novel) and a beverage of my choice. SEE! Your advice has fallen on receptive ears! Thank you very much, friends.

A Third Pause in Lent - Anxiety vs ... What?

Welcome to a third Pause in Lent! The participants are listed on the sidebar to your left, and it's great to see what people are doing and thinking as Lent continues. You'll have to put up with the distraction of my garden flowers again while I do my 'Pause' - I've decided to make these Sunday posts a weekly record of how things are coming on in the garden... Sunny morning vs cloudy afternoon, as you see!

And the title of my post is Anxiety vs... something.

In listening to God, and reading the various books and blogs put my way, I've realised how much time I spend worrying: feeling anxious, about the boys.If you asked me to list my emotions for the boys I'd hardly put 'anxiety' first on the list! Love, pride, care... surely these come first?

But if I measure the amount of time I spend 'feeling' those things like love and pride (in as much as you can measure anything like that!) I am rather troubled to find that I probably spend more time on anxiety than I do on love and pride.

This is disturbing, because if I try to show love and confidence, but am underneath feeling anxiety, that's going to come out, isn't it?

I know that anxiety can be seen as an expression of my love, but I'm pretty sure it's not the best way of showing it!

Now, I have some pretty good reasons for concern, so I'm not feeling anxious out of nowhere. You can skip the list of woes if you don't know me and want to get to the point!

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Son 1's bad knee turns out to be caused by a very mild version of a bone disorder that causes lumps and spikes to grow at the ends of the long bones. He hardly has this at a disfiguring level, but may still need an operation(s?) to remove the lumps that are making it dangerous for him to do sport or even run around with his dog. If you add this to his dyspraxia, trichotillomania (very well-controlled now), eye-appointments and underachievement at school due to handwriting difficulties and stress, then you will realise that he and I have spent quite a lot of the last months going from one appointment to another, sometimes hearing difficult news. I fear I am turning into the kind of mum who exaggerates or imagines problems for her child, instead of just accepting that he is who he is! I don't think I am, but some cause for anxiety in his situation...

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Son 2 is pretty hunky-dory at school now that he's redoubled, and has made good friends. Fantastic news! But he gets very tired and irrationally angry at times - no surprise for a 12-year old whose brother is getting lots of attention, but it's taken me, Ben and my dad some serious thinking about to handle it well.

So here they are, my jeunes pousses (which means both growing youngsters and sprouting plants - great metaphor).I know that I am anxious about them, and self-awareness has now shown me that I am anxious far too often and about far too much, to actually be doing them any good. Anxiety can push me to make appointments for poor old Son 1 and get his medical and educational needs seen to, but it can't actually do anything else positive. On the down side, anxiety can rub off on them (a cause for Son 2's anger, even?) and can give them the deep-down understanding that things are out of control.

What is the alternative? I took the book 'The Power of a Praying Parent' off my shelves just before Lent, and decided that I needed to go through it for a month - there's a prayer each night for your children. Despite not being quite 'my kind of book' (American friends, have you noticed how we Brits express things differently to the way you're used to? This book is a bit of a challenge in that way) it's still a fantastic reminder that the real way to help your children is to turn each worry, each anxiety, into a positive prayer rather than a pointless pity-party.
I can't possibly sum it up better than Saint Paul did:

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Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
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Philippians 4:6

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Don't forget to visit Spiritual Sundays as well as the other Pause in Lent posts!