Category: Life

Our Daughters’ Daughters

More Life Lessons from Mary Poppins

Anyone who read my post Sand Through A Sieve and thought it was inspired genius (well, who can blame you?) may realise that I am quickly coming to regard Mary Poppins as a Parenting Bible.

Today I put the DVD in and went about my business, tidying up and generally being housewifely (in other words, quite unlike myself) and heard the Suffragette Song come on. You know the moment – and if you don’t I suggest you watch  Mary Poppins urgently, there are valuable lessons to be learnt. Mrs Banks comes home after a day’s campaigning for votes for women, and launches into song. Among the many wonderful lyrics (I particularly like ‘Though we adore men individually / We agree that as a group they’re rather stupid…’) the chorus goes like this:

“Cast off the shackles of yesterday

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray

Our  daughters’ daughters will adore us

And they’ll sing in grateful chorus

‘Well done, Sister Suffragettes!'”

This set me off thinking. If my last scan was right, I am expecting my first daughter in approximately 57 days and 7 hours, and it would be nice to think that she will have daughters of her own some day and so on and so forth.

I have had all sorts of nice little fantasies about having a daughter. We’ll go shopping together – she’ll probably teach me more than I will teach her in that department – we’ll have girly moments, painting toenails etc like in Mamma Mia! We’ll finish the dollhouse I started when I was a teenager. She’ll have the voice of an angel and the grace of a ballet dancer. I’ll buy her girly dresses and dolls and she’ll ignore them all and go for the monsters and aliens. I’ll introduce her to Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen and she’ll devour Stephen King and Terry Pratchett. She’ll adore her big brother and be a real Daddy’s girl and the four of us will go out and eat ice cream on the sea front at Whitby in October.

I haven’t really stopped to think about the more profound things I want to teach her. I want her to be strong and assertive, two things I have failed at miserably so far. I want to pass on my faith, but leave her the freedom and conviction to figure out her own beliefs. I want her to think about the world and how she can make it better, so that her daughters’ daughters can look back at her and her generation and think “Wow, what can we do to build upon that?”

I don’t know about you, but I, to my shame, very rarely think about what our ancestors had to fight for to get to where we are now. The whole movement for women’s suffrage in England, for example, fought against the tide of popular opinion and went through arrest, force-feeding, torture, ridicule and even death because they believed it was wrong to deny women an equal say in how their country was run. Do we ever think about those women, and ‘adore them’? As we would like our daughters’ daughters to adore us?

They are, of course, a tiny representation of the people throughout time who have fought for what they believed in. Our own lifetimes throw up a handful of names – Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela. Mother Teresa, fighting against the poverty and injustice she saw every day in India’s poorest. Nameless campaigners out right now, protesting against war and injustice and human rights.

I want my daughter to grow up with a social conscience and awareness. I want her to not be afraid to fight for what she thinks is right. Our ancestresses have left us a legacy of being able to vote, to speak out and be heard. They have given us a platform to speak from, on behalf of women, men and children all over the world who are still being oppressed, and I know I don’t do their efforts justice.

Mary Poppins has reminded me that we also have a chance to leave a legacy, that we will have descendants who will look back at our generation. They can ignore us, despise us or adore us. I would like to think that I and my daughter can still do things that will make our daughters’ daughters adore us after all.

Sand Through A Sieve

A lyric that gets me every time I hear it is from Mary Poppins, when Bert is cleaning up his chimney sweep gear and listening to Mr Banks. He comes back at him with this:

“You’ve got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone

Though childhood slips like sand through a sieve

And all too soon they’ve up and grown

And then they’ve flown

And it’s too late for you to give…”

Generally, I find it really exciting when I think of Daniel doing new stuff like going to school or reaching a new milestone – this morning I did a post on his blog about potty training, which we’re hoping to start at the weekend. My husband (who’s as soft as muck!) gets quite sentimental and likes to hold on to the moment; he’s dreading September when Daniel starts school nursery. Probably the ideal is somewhere between the two of us.

But this afternoon, I found myself wanting desperately to freeze the moment we were in. He was sat on my knee, cuddled in while we watched his In The Night Garden DVD together. He was stroking my arm and I was stroking his hair, and it’s a rare moment now. He prefers to laugh and run away than sit and cuddle. He likes to be up and playing, and I take advantage of that to do – well, actually, I don’t know what I do. Writing and housework in theory. But our time together this afternoon made me realise how true that lyric from Mary Poppins is. I don’t grind, grind, grind at the grindstone, not by a long shot, and maybe if I did I would realise the true value of time at home. I do, though, let Daniel’s childhood slip through the sieve without fixing it in my memory properly, and today I was truly regretful of that, because it’s not sand, it’s more precious than gold dust.

We haven’t got much time left as just the three of us. Baby is due in 10 weeks, and while that will bring its own moments to treasure, I will never get this time back. I know how much I love Daniel, and I’m pretty sure Daniel knows too, but I mustn’t take any of it for granted.

I need to catch some of the gold dust before it slips away forever.

To err is human…

…to forgive divine. Alexander Pope

I’ve been thinking a bit about this quote lately. Taking it literally, it works out well for me. Especially since most people focus on the first part and use it as justification for something they’ve done. Or not done. Or said, or not said. You get the message.

“Well, I know I shouldn’t have done x, y, z, but you know, to err is human and all that.” Uh-huh, and at this point the other person is supposed to be divine and forgive, just like that. That’s not going to happen, realistically. So it’s a win-win situation – I can err, because I’m human, and that’s what humans do, and I don’t have to forgive because that’s God’s job.

The problem is, I’m not let off the hook that easily. First off, forgiveness is important. I think that’s a fairly unarguable statement, whether you believe in God or not. If you know you’ve done something wrong, you like to know that the person you’ve hurt has forgiven you. If you’ve been the victim, you need to get some closure from the hurt, and draw a line under that chapter of your life. That’s basically forgiveness – letting go of the offence so it can’t hurt you any more.

If you do believe in God, forgiveness is taken to a whole new level. There’s the ultimate forgiveness, for all human sin. Yes, to err is human. Sin is essentially turning away from God, choosing self over God, and humans do that on a spectacular scale. We all have free will, and the best of us uses it at some point to do what we want to do, not what God wants. There has only ever been one perfect man who unfailingly chose to put God’s will over his own free will, and that was Jesus. And let’s be honest, we should pay for that. We are hurting God every time we sin, in the same way that we are hurt when people betray us or let us down. If we need forgiveness from each other, how much more do we need it from God? But God does not have to forgive us – He does not have to do anything. Which makes it even more amazing that He does. There is a whole other discussion here on sin, redemption and salvation, but I’ll save that for another time. The relevant point today is that God forgives us  – and, by the way, that means for the bitching x did about y last week, as well as the pack of cigarettes z nicked from the corner shop last week, as well as the countless innocents killed by wars, and the wife killed by her husband for not cooking the dinner properly. God’s forgiveness does not have criteria or a cut off point, it is there for all sins, even if we personally think they are unforgiveable. In His eyes sins are not graded, they are all equally bad, so it’s a good job it is up to Him to forgive them, not us.

But on the other side of that, He is also calling on the part of Him in each of us to forgive each other. This is hard. To forgive is divine, and since we are made in His image it is a standard we are asked to aspire to. Forgiveness may be important, as I said earlier, but not necessarily imperative until you bring God into the equation. He directly commands us to forgive when He gives us the perfect prayer to use:

Our Father in Heaven,

hallowed be Your Name,

Your Kingdom come,

Your will be done,

on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

As we have also forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

(Matthew 6:9-13 NIV). Most people know these two lines as ‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’. It’s hit-you-over-the-head clear that forgiveness is not optional, and it ties in with the rest of Jesus’ teaching to love our neighbours.

Now, confession time. I find forgiveness a real struggle. Even as I am writing this, I am painfully aware of offences against me both long-term and recent, and I am bitter and hurt. It’s the reason I wrote this post – I know what I need to do, I know what God calls me to do, and I do struggle. I take things very personally and very deeply. I invest a lot in relationships and when those relationships let me down I grieve for a long time. It’s not so bad when people apologise – I can move on. But there is no sub-clause saying “as we have also forgiven our debtors [*as long as they’re really, really sorry]”. Jesus says, again unequivocally, that you have to love your enemies. Forgive anyone who has wronged you. And this is one of the many places where I fall down. I’m naturally clumsy, and never more so than on the road to God. But I have to learn, slowly and painfully, that I cannot have the whole-hearted, joyous relationship with God that I want while I am carrying this burden. It is a real, heavy burden, that twists your heart and colours everyday life with bitterness. I suspect there are thousands, maybe millions of people under similar burdens, of varying shapes and sizes. Luckily, Jesus knows we are human, with failings, and He’s got a lifebelt for us.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matt 11:28)

If we call on Him, He will help us. The only way I will get rid of my burden is to offload it onto Him. I need to pray for the strength to leave old wounds behind and look ahead. And when I’ve done that, I can have hope that my own sins (against God and others) are also forgiven.

On God, #1

This post is a bit of a new direction for me, but I felt it was something I should write.

At the risk of putting off some readers, I have to say I am a practising Christian.

Wow, writing that felt like I was confessing to some heinous crime.

When I say I am a ‘practising’ Christian, I know that can be taken in a number of ways. I am practising in the sense that I go to Church most weeks, I pray, I read the Bible, I have faith in a living God and His Son who bought our salvation by His death. On the other hand, I am not a practising Christian, in the sense that I know certain truths and values to be priorities for Christians and I constantly fall short of this. I have yet to fit the Christian part of me comfortably into the external projection of myself, so that when I am with people who do not believe in God, I hide my own faith until directly confronted with a question, but when with other Christians, I am uncomfortably aware of my lack of continuity and commitment. I guess in a third sense, I am practising in an endeavour to improve!

I would also like to make a distinction at this point between myself and some who do claim, rather loudly, to be Christians and to represent Christianity. There are those who take passages from the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, and (I believe) distort them to justify acts of violence, discrimination and hate. I believe that the God I am coming to know more and more has a deep love of people, and is saddened by these acts. I don’t want to go into particular details here, each issue is a discussion in itself, but the fact is that Christianity is based on God loving the world (not just one sector of society) so much that He sent His only Son to die for it. That kind of love just does not match up with the kind of things some people are saying and doing in the name of God or Christ.

Jesus made it very clear that God is about love. His teachings in the Gospel emphasise that people need to show love for each other in every aspect of their lives and use this as a base for their actions – Matthew 22:37 – 40 reads “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.” On the basis of this, we are told not to judge others until we have judged ourselves. Specifically: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged…Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matt 7:1 – 3). This passage is often overlooked by those who are quick to condemn (either verbally or more violently) others for things they do, and I know that I am also guilty of this.

The good news is, it’s not just one way. We have to show love for God and for each other, but we get it back from God in bucketloads. I often find myself trying to sort things that go wrong out on my own, instead of praying about it or asking for help. When I do turn back to God, I feel His love almost as a physical sensation. It’s a wonderful feeling that cannot be described. There are hard times, times when I need to learn a lesson, but I am reminded constantly that God is not abandoning me during those times, any more than I abandon my son when I stop him having a biscuit or sticking his fingers into an electric socket. When I don’t feel God with me, it’s because I am shutting Him out and trying to go it alone. God wants to be allowed to love me, I just have to let Him.

The Year I Turn Thirty

2010 is the year I turn thirty. Yes, it’s not until October, but it’s a big milestone!

I know a lot of people have hang-ups about milestone birthdays, and I’m probably due some kind of early-mid-life-crisis, but to be honest I’m actually pretty excited about it. I love birthdays anyway – every year since I turned fifteen I’ve had a sort of awed feeling that I actually made it to another one (nothing morbid, I’m just easily pleased). Thirty feels like a respectable, grown-up age. Your twenties are in-between times, you’ve got neither the optimism and energy of adolescence (or the excuse!) nor the maturity and hindsight that nothing but a bit of life experience can bring. It’s a time where you find out that your preconceptions that you grew up with are wrong, and you haven’t yet figured out new ideas to replace them. Whereas thirty is, to me, the time when you pull your socks up (figuratively speaking, of course!) and say ‘Right, this is who I am, this is what the last three decades have turned me into,’ and look ahead to the future as a new, mature adult. In theory anyway. I realise that I will almost certainly be not much different in a year’s time to now, but there’s always hope.

There are of course lots of targets I won’t have met by the time I’m thirty. I won’t have had a book published, although I’m going to keep (start?) plugging away at the short stories and competitions. I won’t have learned grace and poise and polish – I’m afraid that I am and always will be a bit of a shy, bumbling mess. But perhaps I will have learned to come to terms with it. I probably won’t have won the lottery or made millions. But I can come to terms with that too. What I will have done is gained a comfortable home and life, a wonderful husband and two adorable children (although one of them won’t be born until April. I’m assuming she will be adorable too). I have formed world-views and faith that I am pretty comfortable with, although these will keep being refined and tested.

When I’m thirty, I will also find my experience of motherhood changing, and this is so scary. Instead of the mother of a baby boy, which is how I’ve come to think of myself over the last two and half years, I will be the mother of a son who goes to nursery and a daughter. I cannot even begin to think how this will change me, but it will be the most exciting year finding out.

When I’m thirty, I will hopefully be a little wiser than I am now at twenty nine. I hope I will have learned how to save, and how to deal with difficult life events. I’ve had a few in my life already, that have definitely left their mark, and the year I turn thirty seems like a good time to deal with these and try to put them behind me. I’m hoping this year can also give me the strength to help my husband do this too, and that this year sees us having some better times as a family, able to put the challenging times of the past year or two behind us.

When I’m thirty I hope I will be further along my path as a writer. I keep setting a lot of goals, and they keep changing or being missed, but I hope that by the time my birthday comes round I will be better at keeping to my goals and more disciplined, seeing writing more as a job than a hobby and improving myself.

I know I am putting a lot of expectation into this year. I imagine there are people reading this and thinking ‘Don’t be daft, none of that is realistic,’ but I don’t care. I am, despite things that are going on at the moment, starting this year thinking that 2010 is a landmark year for me, and that things are going to go well for us. I am going to try and start this year being optimistic and full of hope.

What milestones do you have for your landmark birthdays? Or for 2010? I would love to know, and see if other people share my new-found optimism. After all, it’s not every year you turn thirty.