Through the waters

Written July 2017

"Take my hand!" she said. They swam down into the deeper water. It was clear and warm to comfort them. This wasn't going to be an easy ride but it was right. It was full of healing.

As they swam, a vortex of water swirled to the right and a vision opened up.

"I'm letting you into my pain," she said softly. An invitation, an admittance.

"I'm here." The calm reassurance. She trusted her completely.

Their eyes saw through the water as if it had vanished and they were in the room - the hospital room with the wheely bed and the machines. The doctors, nurses, midwife stood around. Her husband was there.

"The baby's heart rate is 80." They are very concerned. "We're going to do this fast."

The girls' legs flutter the warm water as they watch the scene unfold. She can see herself on the table, legs hoisted, face flushed with drunken exhaustion. She knows there is fear of medicine but no fear of death. Her friend doesn't feel that though, she only sees in the physical.

The baby is vacuum sucked. The body slips out. There is a kerfuffle over cutting the cord. He is taken and brought back. He is laying on her chest.

"I love you," she says. It is what it is. But watching it she feels the confusing mix of right and wrong.

The vision is suddenly swirled into the vortex and is gone.

The weight of grief now feels heavy in the water. Her friend feels it too. Although they are underwater, they can breathe and speak.

"How did that make you feel?" her friend asks.

"It's hard. It's hard to... to explain... to feel... to know what I think." A quiet pause.

"Let's keep swimming?" her friend suggests gently.

She hesitates but she knows it's the way. "Okay."

Her friend takes her hand and gives it a tight squeeze.

"She's got me," she thinks. She's with me in this. She feels loved and not alone.

They swim on. The water is calmer again, less heavy, still a grief but a more settled one.

Another vortex swirls, this time to the left. They push towards it expecting to be easily pulled in but it resists them. It pushes back. Her friend looks at her questioningly. Her eyes are asking why...

"I don't like looking at this one."

So it wasn't that she didn't want to share it. She didn't like it herself.

"Why not?" Her friend is expecting it to be a painful experience - a trauma - a hurt. Perhaps it is the time with all the blood loss. Or a family hurt.

"It is hard to let myself want it."

Oh... "Sometimes we just have to let ourselves dream.. if we chase them away what are we left with?"

"But it is over. It never came true."

"Please show me. I will be right here with you. You can do this."

She takes a deep breath. "Okay."

She opens her mind and the vision opens around both of them.

She is in her living room in the blue birthing pool. The room is quiet, peaceful, there are soft voices. She is clearly in the throes of labour, unaware of surroundings, focused in. She squats, one hand steadying her, the other feeling the pressure, the force, adding resistance to the downward pull of the pushing. She is quiet and there is that mix of distress and pleasure that is slow labour.

"I can see the head!"

"Really?!"

She, watching the scene, remembers the excitement and anticipation of that moment. But it never came.

The scene freezes and fogs over. They keep watching, waiting for something to move... but it doesn't. It is stuck. Her friend speaks her name questioningly.

"Sorry. I think.. I think it wants to show us my dream. The alternate reality. If I let it."

"Please let it. You need to go there. You've spent two years not going there and you're not getting anywhere are you?"

"No."

Suddenly the scene unfreezes and the labour continues. It is becoming intense. She is still in the pool. The birth pool. The head is descending. It is not fast but it happens. Eventually there is a stronger stretching feeling, a burning... the head is coming.

Everyone is quiet. The midwife positions the doppler. The heart rate sounds strong. She seems satisfied and pulls it away.

Her husband is watching with anticipation. She is in pain - this is scary and hard but they are encouraging her.

"You can do it, you're so close!"

In the water watching, she turns away, not wanting to hear and see the pain and suffering. Her friend is quiet.

"I want to get out of the pool!" she suddenly cries out in the scene. That was unexpected.

She turns back to the vision to see the midwife respond, "Okay if you think you can..."

She is scrambling out of the birth pool and hobbles over to the bed; the floor mattress with a waterproof sheet over it. She gets onto her hands and knees. Now with all her courage she lets the head through. Slowly, painfully, a lot of fighting and not quietly either. The midwife is coaching... and eventually it slips out.

"The head is out!"

"Is he okay?"

"He's okay. Just wait."

The next contraction comes and the midwife guides the body out with a slip. She passes the baby through and she holds him to her chest. It is overwhelming and scary and she loves him. And she is so tired. He is puffy and messy and foreign looking. He has a big umbilical cord running down underneath her. He is hers. She holds him tight as he breathes and whimpers.

"That was hard wasn't it. My precious boy."

They quietly watch a long drawn moment of love. As if the scene freezes but is still full of life. She doesn't want to let it go but also she wants to run as far away as possible. And hide. Because the emotions.

Her friend hasn't moved. She wishes she would just disappear because she suddenly wants to be alone.

On the other hand she wishes her friend would understand what she felt.

"So... I really shouldn't want a different reality."

"What does God want?"

"What?"

"What does God want?"

She stops and searches that question. Is she asking what God's plan had been? Is she asking what god wants her to do now? Is she asking if God wants her to imagine a better outcome or not day dream such things?

"God wants... me to be able to move on more healed. But I don't know how to do that."

"Do you know what I can feel?"

"What?"

"The water. It is full of this promise, this yearning for light. It wants to free you."

"How?"

"You have to swim."

Well that makes no sense. But she decides to try.

"You go first."

"... okay."

Her friend swims and she follows. Her friend is surprisingly fast and she has to really work hard to keep up. She starts to enjoy the feeling of rushing through the water - the waters of grief - the exertion and the release for her body. Her pain is rushing out through her frantic limbs.

"Wait!" Her friend stops and turns. "I need a rest for a moment."

"Okay." Her friend sits near.

She shuts her eyes and breathes deeply inward. And outward. Now what? It is on the tip of her tongue to just speak it out.

"I really wanted him to be born at home. I really wanted the birth I thought I was promised. I really, really wanted to birth him and hold him and love him and have him attached to me. I wanted what I saw in so many videos and so many stories. I wanted it for myself and now I will never have it. How can I hope for it again."

But she can't speak. It is too hard.

"How can I hope for that," she says instead, weakly.

"You have to stop hoping like that. You have to stop painting pictures and wanting them to come true and then having these fights with God when they don't. I get it, I see why you do it and I know it feels like the only way to cope but it's not. It's actually not the way to cope, it is breaking you."

"What?" her eyes fill with tears.

"It's like... you're at the bottom of this water making these visions and fighting about them all the time. Not just the visions we saw today but all the ones you make. And god wants to take your hand, take you up and show you these wonderful rainbows. Not worldly promises, but heavenly ones.

So it's okay to grieve. It's okay to cry. It's okay to be devastated because you wanted that birth and you didn't get it and it sucks. God would have loved to bless you with your hearts desire but he couldn't. And it's okay to hate that and to want it to have been different. It's okay."

She senses something... "It's not permission that I need. It's a revelation."

"Of what?"

"... of love."

"Who's love?"

"God's love. God's love brings out the deepest pain."

"Do you remember in that last scene, you holding your baby and saying you loved him. And how hard it was. And the pain. And how much you cared?"

"Yeah."

"That is God's heart for you. It is mirrored in parenthood. He loves you, he holds you, and he says, "Oh gosh, that was hard wasn't it." He knows and he cares so much."

Suddenly the water filled with light and a washy sense of glowing love and she knew how much he cared. She had felt like he didn't care that her heart was broken - not really - that he hadn't cared that she hurt so badly, in the moments that brought pain and afterwards. Now as a new revelation of his love filled her she finally began to open to him and all her tears wanted to come too.

Her friend put her hand on her shoulder, "Let your feelings out, please. You have to let God's love in."

"I want to know that you get it," she whispered to her friend.

"I have been there. I get it. Trust me."

"Okay. Hug?"

"Yes."

A song fills the ocean.

"Your Love oh Lord is like the oceans,
Deeper than endless seas.

Your Faithfulness is like the mountains and Your Word never fails."

Her friend steps back. She is with God now.

"I needed to hold my son on my chest. I needed to birth him. You took that away from me," she cries out. "I feel robbed!"

But she knows it wasn't him who stole it. She knows he wanted it to go well too. It wasn't only her dream. The enemy had brought destruction and God hated that. God was on her team, he was not the opposition.

"You wanted it too," she admitted to God.

"God I need you to show me your promises of heaven, not of earth, because earth is too painful. It's too hard," she sobbed.

She cried all the tears and thoughts and feelings she could find until things were quiet and she was done.

"Your Love oh Lord is like the oceans,
Deeper than endless seas.

Your Faithfulness is like the mountains and Your Word never fails."

The song rang through the water again.

"Are you ready to leave the water?" That seemed to be God. She hesitated...

"You don't have to leave fully. And you can come back if you do. It's not about that.
I just want to show you something."

"Okay."

She swam up toward the surface. Her head came out into the sun. The water rippled around her. It was all so beautiful and sunny and still and heavenly.

A rainbow appeared in the sky shining light rays down. How does a rainbow even shine light? Well it was.

"This is my promise."

"What are you promising me God?"

She was expecting some bible verse she'd heard a million times like, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." It didn't change anything though.

"I'm promising you a wild ride with me."

Wow. That felt right actually.

"But you're not going to know what each bit is, or what is going to happen, or what the details will be. You are not going to know if each moment will be happy or sad, grief or pain, joy or excitement. You can't know. It's not the way it works with me. I need you to let go of that needing to know. You need to drop that control."

"That is hard!"

"You don't have to strive to do it, just let go into me and I will help you. Now come with me."

A little light flickered down into the water and she followed. It took her back down to the depths where the visions had been.

The second vision was there again. She could see it through a little window in the water. It wasn't surrounding her anymore but she could see it.

"This would have been wonderful but it wasn't what happened."

"No."

"What actually happened?"

She looked toward the other vision - the hospital - the pain - the reality. She paddled over. Again it wasn't surrounding her but it was there.

"Can you find me in this?" asked God.

She suddenly saw the wild ride. God in the midst holding them - holding her baby, holding her body,  holding her husband.

It was a traumatic part of the ride but it also had promise and hope and joy in it. It was so full of everything good and bad that she hadn't been able to decide if it was good or bad. That had been so confusing. Now she realised it was just everything. It was a wild ride with God.

Peace filled her. Finally.

"Thank you God," she whispered quietly with resolve. "I love you."

"Now let this precious girl love you."

Her friend swam through the waters toward her.

"Hey..."

"What happened?"

"God showed me his promise. Come..." she beckoned. Her friend followed her to the window of the first vision.

"God showed me... he was there. He was holding us. This was a wild ride with him."

"That is so good."

"Ready to go?" her heart was settled for now.

"Yes!" her friend agreed.

Their feet pushed off and they swam strongly toward the surface together.

In suffering is the abundance

Hello blog. It's been a long time. We have been living in a new city, settling in a new church, growing a new baby - a lot of new! There was a long season of retreat. A time to be quiet, to focus inward, to keep things in my heart. Now it feels time to share. 

The first thing is a song. 

Trials may come
But Jesus is stronger
Trouble may reign
But Jesus is greater
There's a thief come to steal
But Jesus has victory
He has overcome the world  

In his presence
Fear falls away
No power can stand
Against his name
In our suffering
We find perfect peace
Cause Jesus has overcome  

Take  heart, he has overcome
Take courage, he has overcome
Take heart, He has overcome,
He has overcome
He has overcome 

He is light
He is light
He is comfort
He is comfort
He is steadfast
He is sure
He is truth 

You are light
You are light
You are comfort
You are comfort
You are steadfast
You are sure
You are truth 

Take heart, he has overcome the world. Know the bible verse? One morning I had that verse on my mind, studied it for a while in different versions and loved the amplified version.

“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace. In the world you have tribulation and distress and suffering, but be courageous [be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy]; I have overcome the world. [My conquest is accomplished, My victory abiding.]”
JOHN 16:33 AMP

Lately I have a new understanding of suffering and trials. 

I always felt that I'd fallen outside of God when things went bad. It's hard to explain.. not fallen outside of God's grace, not outside of love or presence, plan or protection. Just outside. Outside of his fullness. Outside of the way things should be in Him. Outside of the best, the abundance, the life we have in him.

And it felt awful. Disappointing. Depressing. Dark. I needed to get back into what I had fallen out of again. I seemed to fall out all the time. 

I was seeing it all wrong.

I've begun to understand that in life we suffer, the world is broken, things can be super rough, but God is in it with us, pouring out what we need, comforting, loving, present, here.

And that is the abundance. That is fullness. That is life with God. When we suffer we don't fall out of that. We don't need to stop suffering in order to get back into it. Suffering is just part of the abundant life with God.

"In the world you have tribulation and distress and suffering, but be courageous [be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy]; I have overcome the world.”

This is what it's all about. Jesus has overcome amidst the suffering. Not always overcome the suffering to make it leave. 

I'm embracing suffering better, I feel like I'm in the fullness and purposes of God even during the trials. I am anticipating childbirth again and last time there was a lot of trauma. It is possible the next time won't be smooth either. 

This time, whatever happens, I won't feel like I've fallen out of God and be swamped with all the disappointment and grief that comes with that. Whatever happens, I can look forward to God being with me, providing and comforting during the trials because that is the fullness of life in Him.

On the anniversary of leaving our home.

It was exactly one year ago today: April 7th, 2016, about 4:00pm. Without warning, I taught the last piano lesson in our house - a house we had bought and lived in for seven years. "I think we have to leave our house," I had said earlier that day. When the lesson ended we collected a few things for staying overnight and walked out of our home. We never really went back.

I had mould poisoning. I had been sick for years but we didn't understand exactly why. When I had been unable to walk into any building without reacting to perfumes and chemicals we didn't really know why. When my body burned after every mouthful of food we didn't really understand why. When I was thin and weak and in bed for months we didn't really understand why, until finally a lightbulb turned on and we saw seven years of living in mould ridden houses. Black mould in a bedroom. Systemic mould through an entire building. CIRS - chronic inflammatory response syndrome that causes chemical sensitivity, sounded just like me, and is often caused by mould. My eyes were opened.

A few days earlier my wooden floors were cleaned - a vinegar spray - mycotoxins released into the air and the biggest immediate reaction I've ever had after walking into a building. Three days of joint pain, fatigue, falling, unable to control my body correctly. "We need to leave this house!"

So twelve months ago today we searched for somewhere to stay - surely someone had a spare room we could sleep in? A friend's kid was away and we could use their bedroom for one night. Okay that will work.

"I don't know if we will ever be able to go back to our house," I told my friend, "And if we can't we have to get rid of all our possessions too - you can't keep them." Mould is a tricky thing to deal with - a devastating illness.

The next day we found another house to stay at for three nights - a family had gone on holiday. I had a wakeful teething eight month old, an exhausted and stressed husband who was still trying to go to work every day because he couldn't get any time off, I was very sick and we were trying to correspond with mould experts and figure out what on earth we could do with our house - could we fix it? Could we ever go home? I wanted to believe we could but my gut feeling since the day we left was that we would never ever go back.

When the stay at our friend's house ended we wanted so badly to just go home so we did. We had nowhere else to go and we were homesick and exhausted. After half an hour back inside I knew I couldn't be in the house anymore. Ever. But we had nowhere else to go that night.

I slept on a fold up bed in the hallway with my head at the open front door. Then I moved to the car. My husband slept with our baby in the bedroom and brought him to the cold car in the middle of the night for feeds. I remember sitting in the car feeling totally abandoned by everyone including God because we had nowhere to go. How could it come to this? Having nowhere to sleep? Surely we couldn't end up so un-helped?

My husband says going back home for that single night helped him come to terms with the need to move out.

The next day a friend with a full house of people cleared a bedroom just for us to stay in. What beautiful generosity. I was so touched by their gift and their presence. But where would we go next? Within a day or two we were offered a house to house sit for two weeks. Brilliant. So we squished into a little front bedroom, my baby and I in one single bed and my husband in another. Now we were desperately looking for long term accommodation. It seemed sensible to rent a house but I strongly felt that God didn't want us to rent. Someone had mentioned a live-in missionary training college we could possibly stay at and I felt that yes, that was God's plan.

"We've discussed it at staff meeting and decided that yes you can stay in our accommodation for six weeks, we wouldn't normally say yes but we prayed and felt that it's right."

Wow God.

So we moved there. It was a little furnished two bedroom apartment with a bathroom and cooking facilities and a shared laundry. We would go over to share meals with the community. It was the same price as renting but for some reason that's where we were to be.

God had said there was a gem there for me. I had often idealised living in a community. Living there I learned that just because you are in proximity to people doesn't mean you want to be or are in relationship. I waited and waited for that promised moment but it never came. I think the gem was the lesson I learned - that in the end I was happy to be left alone in my own home.

We had been watching the house market, prepping to put our house up for sale, looking for something to buy in our city. Things weren't moving as quickly as we had hoped! We needed somewhere else to stay. It still felt wrong to look for a rental. One day a house came up - a house-sitting opportunity for two months. We took it.

It was the beginning of August. We had stayed in six houses since April. With about one week left house-sitting we now finally felt to start looking for a rental and found one immediately. We moved again.

The new house had clear messages of healing and restoration. Every one of my favourite flowers was in the garden - daffodils everywhere, orange tulips, white lilies. It was like God saying, "I am here, I am in this, your spring is still coming."

It was the first house that was actually mould free and within three days I felt like a new person.

Meanwhile we had sold our house, almost all our furniture, a lot of our other possessions and friends helped move our remaining mould contaminated things into a storage shed. The shed was pretty full. We had only kept things with us that could be washed thoroughly like clothes, bed sheets and metal or plastic things. The rest was in that shed.

Many of our friends and family thought we were over-reacting/pedantic/crazy. A few were very supportive.

For weeks and months my husband went through the long exhausting task of sorting everything - boxes of books, toys, kitchen ware, sentimental items, teaching supplies, Christmas decorations.. so many boxes. He would need to shower and change clothes every time he handled them. If I was around the dust from that house my vision would go a strange sort of fuzzy that I had never experienced before, my nose would go stuffy and my legs would go to jelly. It was bizarre.

There is so much more I could share - so many more stories to tell - but that is not the point of this post. We sold our house. I found somewhere to teach from temporarily. My husband kept going to work. We kept parenting. I felt amazing in our new mould free house after seven years of severe muscle fatigue. My husband's side project took off and brought in income. We started thinking maybe it was time to move out of the city. We felt it was time to finish up at our church. He could quit work. He could work from home. We decided to do it. I would have to quit work too. We waited on God to tell us where to move to. He wouldn't speak. We watched houses every day. Is this the house for us God? Where are we moving to God? What next God?! Nothing. No voice. No whisper.

I love planning. I love planning. I had to learn to stop. I love knowing what is about to happen. I love insight and discernment and words of knowledge. I had to stop. We had no idea what the plan was.

One day I heard a calling to Hobart. A few weeks later we decided it felt right.

It took three months to find a suitable house. The entire time I was still learning to stop wanting to know the future.

Last week we moved house into the most amazing rental properly in Hobart. This is clearly a new season - hopefully a resting season and a season of relationships and support. We need a rest.

God and I are good now. For reasons that have less to do with being forced from my home and more to do with what I will share another day.  It was still extremely testing walking out of my home. I never got to walk inside to say a proper goodbye. I never got to spend a "last night" in the bedroom or teach a "last lesson" in the studio. There was no sentimental goodbye. Deep down I knew I would never come back but I didn't really know.

Life can be crazy.

A friend very dear to me posted yesterday that we never actually have control over the future - if we think we do it is a false sense of security. And that things can change any moment. We can only savour the moment we have now.

Things changed for us in a blink. One day we were doing normal life and a few days later we were essentially booted from our home almost as if it had burned down.

Reflecting on that today I thought, "Yes things can change in an instant but those changes aren't always bad." We think of an instant death or disaster and how one day life was lovely and the next it was gone. However what looked like disaster to us was always full of hope, even though it was incredibly difficult. We felt the hope brimming in every step.

We would not have sold our house anytime soon. We would not have left the city. My husband would probably not have quit work and gone full-time at his dream job. I would probably not have quit work. (What a relief that has been - I am so burned out.) We may not have left our church (more burn-out). We wouldn't have sold our piano and ended up with an amazing baby grand for the same price! I wouldn't have got rid of nearly 600 piano books - a great loss but new freedom to focus only on the best. We wouldn't have decluttered and thrown out so many - so many things! We wouldn't have found simplicity and freedom and newer better things. I wouldn't have got my health back.

What we had - our jobs, church, house, possessions etc. - they were okay for that season - but we were very ready for much more. We had to let go to get more. I really feel that we were pushed through that process a lot faster than we could have pushed ourselves and it has turned out to be such a blessing.

Somehow for the last year God was watching over it all. His hand was there.

I also love my new freedom to not want to know what is going to happen. I just want to be in God without our relationship being about knowing the future. It is actually less stressful to not know.

We don't need to know.