Let them eat (birthday) cake

Today I am wishing Happy Birthday to my favourite aunt.   In fact I plan to stuff my face later with chocolate cake in her honour.    She would be so proud, and I know that an hours drive away in her house she will be doing the same thing :-)

Because we both love Meatloaf I've decided to post a wonderful video of the man himself and the lovely lovely Cher.  'Dead Ringer for Love'.   This was released in 1982, 2 years before I was born, back when my aunt was a mere teen with a great taste in music.

I had a brief moment of wondering if I should post a live version with the great Patti Russo, but I stuck with Cher.

Enjoy!

Book review: A New Name: Grace and Healing for anorexia

"We think we must climb to a certain height of goodness before we can reach God, but he doesn't say, 'at the end of this road you may find Me.'   Instead he says, 'I am the Way', I am the road under your feet, the road that begins just as low down as you happen to be."  Helen Woodhouse

"So give yourselves completely to God.  Stand against the devil, and the devil wil flee from you.  Come near to God, and God will come near to you."  James 4:7, 8

Growing up I was told that God was nowhere, not real, just a fairytale minus the pretty princess wings.   Any hint that he was real was tempered with a snort at the "good living" neighbours we had, who ushered their children out to church on a Sunday.   God was nowhere to us, but our view was that even those who went to his house still didn't get to meet him.

As my life progressed and I met with various deep dark struggles I lacked a support network.  Sure I had a loving family, but nothing underneath that to pin hopes on.   I would wish on stars, love watching films about witchcraft and put weight in words from fallen humans who didn't care one way or another about me.   I was lost, and as my teenage years got hard I struggled to hold my head together.

Being bullied, feeling so out of place amongst peers, I was a bit of an ugly duckling.   I looked in the mirror and just didn't know what to think.   I wasn't sure of myself, so I took on board what I was told.

Ugly, stupid, disgrace.

I became very dark, threw myself into the darkest music I could find, found other people with dark thoughts and together we just dwelt in our mire.    Despite being in similar company I still felt lost.   I felt like a no one, and so self-distain grew.

My vice became self-harm.   A 'fantastic' way to control myself.   To punish myself.   To have a physical representation of my ugly mind.

I'm not sure what the official consensus is, but from studying Social Work and from talking to others I can see a cross-over between different forms of self-harm: the cutting, the burning, the starving, the self-denial.   I love to read about people and their struggles.   Not in a morbid way (although my husband may disagree), but just to learn about what makes us all tick, and how similar we all are beneath our happy masks.

And so this post is my review of 'A New Name: Grace and Healing For Anorexia', the book I'd mentioned a few posts ago by Emma Scrivener.    It's published by Inter-Varsity Press, and I know for sure that the Evangelical Bookshop in Belfast has copies, as that is where Andrew got my copy and met the author.   I have it signed!  Woo!   There's no price on the back, but I'm guessing it's less than £10.

It's an easily read book about a subject that isn't easy to read about.    It's short, divided into clear chapters and I read it in less than 24 hours.   (It's amazing how many books I can read when lying feeding Lydia trying to get her to sleep!)

Emma is Belfast born, but now lives on the mainland.   Is nice to have local issues and places talked about, and that centered the book for me, made me have an instant rapport.   Basically the gist is: it's her account of her life as a normal girl in a normal family, who develops anorexia, receives treatment, has relapses and many struggles emotionally and physically, how she met God in the midst of it all and how he has pulled her up and out of that quicksand.   

Reading it I nodded a lot, felt a lot of her pain, and was cheered to know she's in a better place now, and was comforted to know there are other Christian's out there who struggle with keeping their minds on an even keel.

I've never had anorexia, although I do have a few body issues, I've never been on a diet or felt the compulsion to slim down or check my weight.   It was interesting to read a true account of someone's life with the illness, and I respected her honesty and her ability to be accountable for the hurt she caused herself, and her loved ones.   

I nodded at the times she made reference to how her body became her whole world.   How there is a beat of adrenaline as you master yourself and how controlling the body can make us think we're controlling the mind.    My self-harm was never an out of control tear-myself-apart rage, but a series of methodical sitting down with a 'kit' and just cutting or burning in strategically chosen areas.  I was very much in control - wanted to see the pain I had inside.   I had an inner feeling of self-disgust and now I had something to focus on too.   

Emma says on page 62, ".... The things I had once cared about no longer seemed important.  Even if people hated me, I didn't care.    Let them whisper - now I was beyond their reach and they couldn't hurt me.   I had a secret they knew nothing about, something they couldn't control.  My body was mine and mine alone.   It made me powerful and untouchable...."

That resonated with me.   Her dramatic weight loss was hers, something she could control which in the end controlled her.   Thankfully the power of the Gospel got her a way to break free from that and gain strength from the best source, Jesus.    My own story was that I felt shame about myself, so self-harmed which led to more shame so I got into a vicious circle.   I knew what I was doing was my own action, that no one could stop me or approach me.   They could see it, but they couldn't take it away from me.   That was a sick sort of power which kept me doing it for so long, it kept me going in those wrong actions and kept me rooted to the spot.

I became a Christian about 6 years after becoming a self-harmer, and it took me a further 3 years to stop altogether.   I stopped then relapsed a few times after becoming a Christian, but the big reason I stopped was my pregnancy with Adam.     He's 3 years old now and I'm happy to say I've never relapsed.  

I can't speak for Emma, or for anyone else, but my own view is that I can never say never.   I can't said I will never do it again, but I can know that it isn't my source of power and strength anymore.   I have a soul that can never die, a higher purpose to glorify God and to enjoy him forever (guess who has been reading the Catechism with Adam recently!).   I take strength from fellowship with other believers, from reading the Bible and from quiet times in prayer and reflection.   Admittedly my chances of quiet time with a 3 year old and an 8 month old are quite rare, but I try.   I can only try.

The quote I opened this post with is a lovely one I've written on the inside of my Bible.   Christians aren't good living in and of themselves, as I used to think.   They aren't superior people, but ordinary people with an extraordinary light inside them.    I was very low and have now felt able to walk taller and supported by God.   That isn't that I'm wonderful, but that God is.   I found life hard to deal with, and all the friends, romances and earthly pleasures can't fix that.   I have now set my eyes on what the Bible tells me, and have strong hopes for the future.

The devil is smart and will get into your thoughts if you let him.   He waits to do that, as he knows once he's in your thoughts he will be able to move your actions.   He only wants us to hurt and to do what's wrong.   The quote from James shows this.   If we resist the devil and don't give him an opening he will run away to find someone else.   But even if we resist God he doesn't run away, he is always there and will always be there to call on.

Emma ends her book talking about her marriage to a Minister and her walk with Christ.   Her struggles with fellowship and the strong friendships that have helped her heal.   Her descriptions of the Gospel and how God has worked in her life are encouraging and set out in a way that any lay-person can grasp.    She doesn't use Christian jargon or academic terms.   She's honest and I respected her for her down to earth approach.

It's a good book, deserves to be read by males and females of any age.   When I read it at first I wanted to bring it to the older teens at our church Youth Fellowship and discuss it there.    It would be a good book to educate people about anorexia, how it effects the emotions of a person.   I think it could spark debate about health care, vices and where God is in the middle of it all.

Please get yourself to your local book shop and get a copy, or go to her website for more information about her, about eating disorders and to buy the book.

"Your scent is still here, in my place of recovery"

I had a good day yesterday.   I reconnected with my walk with Christ again, after a prolonged and bitter absence.   Will write more about that once I can peace together the right words.

Met with 2 friends at different times of the day (MN and then JK), and spent time in text conversation with 2 others, (IP and SK-V).   All very much a tonic to my recent state of mind, and all uplifting.   No demands, no pressure, just awareness of what I'm going through and love.

The best thing was that I discovered that one of these friends (JK) suffered through similar events that I suffered through.   I'd rarely spoken to anyone about it, don't know if she had, but through the course of the conversation it just came out, and I wasn't afraid.   I really saw God working in that moment.   To let us know that we weren't alone, that someone else had more than just sympathy.  That although it wasn't alright, we were going to be alright.    

April 24th is a bit of a wobbly day for me.  12th 'anniversary' of when my dear VSM just stopped being.   Her "obituary birthday", as the band Nirvana call it; I've always liked that term.

I still am angry.  Very angry, but sad too.   Sort of feel trapped as a 16-year-old, but look around and know I'm not.   I'm older, much more mature, have children and a husband.   Sometimes I want to reach through time, cut down her rope before she stepped into it, and bring her up to 2013 with us.   But I can't, and who knows if she'd even want me to?

Anyway, anyway, not much more to say about that.   Don't want to think too much and undo all my progress from yesterday!

Here's another poem, this time from February 2005:

Ether

I pour poison into what

I have spent so long forming.

The concave and curves

slope down to an end.

When there is no more left

there will still be a film,

a poison resin -

clinging to the sides.

Stare straight ahead

My head has been lit recently, and I've made little secret of the fact that I've been battling with myself and my own shadows.   I have told people this, some people, and I am met with blank faces and the turn of heads.   Others I've told have whispered that they too feel/felt the same, and I smile knowing I'm not alone.   

I always feel alone.  Very rare for me to feel akin to anyone.  Some people, perhaps.   Most others, no.   I am skilled at little apart from building up walls, and burning bridges.    I'm told otherwise, but find it hard to feel otherwise.   Another sign of my inherent failure.

I want people to feel happy, content and self-actualise - my Women's Aid volunteering and church work show this - but as for myself, I want to fade in and out like a ghost.  Is easier that way.

I haven't cut or burnt myself since March 2009, which is a great thing, and I pat myself on the back.   At times I get flashes of temptation.   I want to break open my blades, or turn on the oven, but I don't.   I see the faces of my children and change my mind.  I always change my mind, and I'm glad of that.  

I'm building up over the next few posts to review a great book I recently read, by this woman.   Andrew met her at a book launch in Belfast, and I got a signed copy!    I would have loved to have attended too, but alas, 3-year-olds are not known for being able to sit quietly for long, so I stayed home with the kids (as usual).

Anyway, I'm going to dig deep and vomit out some of my old poems here as I work up to reviewing the above book about anorexia and self-distain.

Here you go.   This is a poem from way back in November 2004 (just after my 20th birthday).   I was still self-harming then, no matter what else was happening around me.   I had just got engaged a few weeks before this, and although I was happy, I still was battling myself and my mind.

Shut Your Eyes

The lines

they can open

and they do.

They seemed ready-made

and waiting

to be opened.

That sliver

that anticipation 

of blood

is what I loved.

A conscious effort not to

to not is what I'm told

Tell me what to do.

Why don't you

why don't you listen?

You speak to me

I don't hear sense

when I see it in front of me

I am the cause and the effect of this

and do I want to lead myself back,

back to the den of vipers?

Guide me to the ground,

the swollen open ground.

Drown me out

when I try to voice a fear

and an opinion.

This isn't just hurting me

the tell-tale signs

will not wash off.

This will perhaps kill me

this instant cannot last long enough

This paint, this canvas

this etching, this piece

of flesh.

This piece is shattered.

I begin again in the

hopeless pursuit.

Lost, hopefully found

After weeks of awful snow here, which left us having to dig our cars out of feet of snow, it is now approaching Spring.   It's been sunny for days - albeit cold enough to still need a hat, gloves and a scarf - and I'm starting to feel my mood improve as the weather does.

We took the kids a walk into our local town on Saturday.  It's only a 5 minute walk and Adam loves to walk past the fire station and dream about when he's older and a fireman (or a builder, or a teacher, or a doctor, etc etc).

On the way back Lydia fell asleep in the pram and as usual we left her pram outside the front door in the garden.    Lugging her up steps into the house = waking her up, especially with noisy Adam crashing about.   She sleeps well in the garden, and it can be seen from our living room. 

So far, so normal.

Lydia woke up while I was cooking lunch, so I brought her inside, leaving her pram outside with the intention of folding it down and returning it to the car later.

The very second we sat down for lunch the doorbell went.   I opened it and standing there were two workmen I'd noticed further down the street when we were returning from our walk.   They were holding a boy, perhaps around 18 months old, wearing just his pyjamas. 

One of the builders said as his opening greeting, "Is this your child?"  He looked so hopeful that I'd say yes, but I said, "Um no I've never seen him."   The other builder looked at the empty pram in my garden and looked back at me.   I said, "I do have children, but he isn't one of them!"

Turns out they'd found the boy walking in the street himself, and they'd picked him up to try to find his guardian.   Not sure if they'd seen my pram earlier on the way back from the walk and put 2 + 2 together, or if they were just going door-to-door.   Either way, they looked pretty shaken, although the boy didn't seem fazed.

Our street is quite quiet, shaped as a semi-circle it's the sort of street you only need to enter if you live there or are visiting someone.   Both ends of the semi-circle open out onto a more main road, leading to the town, with a nearby shop.  

The poor boy could have walked out into the main road.   Not even sure if he'd come from inside one of the houses, or maybe from the shop.   Who knows?  I didn't, and neither did the workmen who found him.

My only advice to the men were that they should ring the police and let them sort it out.   That seemed a bit cold, but legally I guess it's the smartest thing.   People are cynical and seeing two strangers, both male, carrying a young child might make them wonder the worst.

I was a bit shaken, to be honest, as I'd heard of that happening to others, but it's never happened to me before.   For all my knowledge as the Child Protection Worker in church and my 2 years studying Social Work, I doubted myself for a while: was I right to send those men away, still carrying the lost child, with just a word to ring the police?   Was I washing my hands of the problem?   Did I just not want to be bothered?

Later that day I spoke to an ex-policeman.   He exclaimed that the men shouldn't have 'removed the boy from the scene' and that the correct procedure is to stay where you find the child and ring the police from there.   Don't touch the child (unless visibly hurt) and do not pick him/her up! 

So yeah, in short, the men didn't do what they were 'meant' to do.   But thinking about it, I would have picked him up too.   I would have gone door-to-door seeking his parent too, because that seems the most caring thing to do.   I think so anyway.... but a lot of things in life now are about covering ones own ass, so ringing to police and staying put is sensible.

I've no idea what happened with that little boy.   I'm still wondering about him, and looking out for the workmen so I can quiz them.

I really hope he's alright.

Love, not hate, will win

Adam (3 years old) & Lydia (7 months), March 2013

This was taken on the day we'd booked to have a professional family photograph taken.  Except it didn't happen because some feckwits decided to plant a hoax bomb about 500 yards from the photographers house at a sports club.    

I've seen my fair share of bomb alerts, been stranded in Belfast more than once when a bomb alert was declared, and I am thoroughly sick of it.  Was sick of it at the time when growing up, and I'm even more sick of it now that I'm grown up and a mother of two.

The photographer lives about 1.5 miles from our house, and we couldn't get into his street, nor even the main road leading to it.   Police were standing re-directing traffic, but open to who-knows-what themselves.    We rang the photographer to tell him our predicament, and he told us that we were the 3rd booking he'd had cancel that day.   

Way to go feckwits, way to make local businesses lose money and way to make Co. Antrim look rubbish.   

Adam asked me what the police were for and why we couldn't get to the man's house.   Good honest simple question.   But there wasn't really an answer that I wanted to tell my 3 year old, and I didn't want to confuse him.

I bluffed, lied to him and then distracted him so he'd drop his attention.   But in years not too far away he will learn about bombs, about bullets, about badness and I won't be able to always divert his attention or his footsteps.

I grew up as the eldest child of a policeman.   During the hard 1980s & 1990s as an RUC man he carried a lot of fear, anger and worry.   As children we picked up on that atmosphere and I remember it clearly.  I also remember his strength, his desire that we wouldn't hate people from different backgrounds, and his fierce love protecting us.   

After our aborted attempt to make it to the photographers we drove to my parents house.   No point in wasting our lovely clothes and how well we'd scrubbed up to get picture perfect.   The above picture was taken by my dad.   A man who knows a lot about plans being scuppered by bombscares (for example, he missed the birth of my sister in 1990 and my brother in 1992 because bomb alerts meant he couldn't drive across the city).   

He loves the kids, loves my husband and I, and for all the hurt and pain he's seen in the face of politics and paramilitaries he knows a huge amount about devotion to what is right.

We were pretty as a picture, safe with them, and that's what made a bad day perfect.

Thank you, daddy!

Nurture the seedlings

If you've ever wondered how many times the first song from the CD accompanying the Gruffalo storybook can be played in a car journey from Glengormley to Finaghy (via the M2 and M1), then the answer is 21 times. 

Adam loves that CD in the car, as long as I play the first song, or at a stretch, the first two songs on repeat.   And repeat and repeat.

It's cute though watching him playing imaginary drums and trying to sing along to the tunes.   He sits in the front with me and sometimes I wonder to myself: when did he stop being a little baby and turn into this beautiful boy?    I catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye and just marvel at him.

This devotion is thin on the ground in the middle of the night, let me tell you!   Further to my recent post about our sleep struggles, the truth is we're still struggling.   I'm still struggling and at times I feel like I'm drowning.

Admittedly Adam is getting a bit better.   Usually as Andrew will pre-empt him, and just go in to sleep on his floor before Adam's banshee wails start.  

Lydia on the other hand has become the 'problem' sleeper, although it's only a problem if I think about it through modern Western eyes - which is a hard thing to avoid.

A mix of teething, clinginess to our comfort, and need of milk to deal with growth spurts mean that she's up usually hourly throughout the night.    Sometimes it's every 2 hours, but during the night time is fluid and to preserve sanity I usually avoid looking at the clock.

Co-sleeping has saved me a little bit.   Lydia lies in bed with me feeding as and when she wants and I doze deep enough to actually dream!

Reading some 'sleep training' books has made me doubt my instincts and made me feel angry at times.   What is wrong with me?   What is wrong with Lydia?   At my worst I found myself sinking in my emotions, feeling like I was choking.   I swung between rages and tears - oftentimes directed at my poor husband, but more often at myself.

Then the more I thought about it with logic the more I realised there wasn't anything 'wrong'.  I'd been doing all the right things to encourage her to sleep but still she wanted to party.   She was happy and thriving, so I should cut her and myself some slack.

Motherhood isn't just a 7am-7pm role, but a 24/7 job and so we shouldn't and can't demand a baby fits in with our desire for their sleep times.   As nice as that would be, they are humans, not dolls.

Some like to leave their baby to scream and cry till they give up and fall asleep exhausted, but that really isn't my style.   One of the delightful library books I got out suggested putting several fitted sheets on the cot mattress so that if the baby screams itself sick then it'd be easy for the parent/nanny/whoever to go in and remove the vomit-covered sheet.   Really?  How about that for good tender loving care?  

As stressy as I can get from lacking my own time due to Lydia either being wide awake, or just about to wake up, I do love her.   I love her enough to not leave her screaming and crying.   I know a little protest whimper is okay, and Heaven knows I did that with Adam, but at only 6 months the idea of leaving her to cry alone in the dark just chills me.

So co-sleeping and musical beds between the 4 of us it will be for the foreseeable!