A New Life To Live

   I have a very active baby alive in my womb right now. I think this last baby is the most active of all the sweet souls that have grown inside me. It moves so much. I wonder is it just uncomfortable? Does it just want to get out and start living? It reassures me often that it is strong and alive!

 I wonder who this little life is? What have they internalized living inside me. How does life seem already even before they emerge to take their first breath. I hope for the absolute best. This pregnancy has held a lot of stress for me. I so deeply wanted to manage what life had to throw me better than other times I have been pregnant but it was not to be. I have had some of the worst panic attacks of my life, and many emotional breakdowns while hosting this life. I have deeply disappointed at my lack of capability but at the same time. I have also had to hold grace for myself too. Holding these dual emotions has taken practice and intentionality. 

 So soon this baby will emerge. I pray for health, for a safe coming. I am anxious about all the unknown details and the pain I need to go through. I have been told I should deliver a week early for safety reasons. I didn't know this until just a short time ago. I need to choose to be induced or monitored closely. I have not done this before. I have been blessed with naturally progressing and for the most part beautiful labors. So far I have not felt able to make final decisions. I keep waffling back and forth as to what to do. It does not help that my healthcare provider is away and unavailable on the day that I should technically get induced. 

 During this pregnancy I felt this strong need to not be needy, to not be an inconvenience to anyone. It felt like survival to me to not be a weight. However, I have probably been the most needy and the biggest 'burden' to those around me ever! It is like I knew what was coming deep down and fought it hard but could not win.

 There is always this process of surrender when giving birth. So much is out of my control and that is what I face now as tears well in my eyes and I try to hold onto faith and hope. 

I am going to give birth, and have life emerge from me, I am going to hold in my arms this soul created by myself and my husband. A precious child that has an entire life to live. I hope all goes well for the baby and me. If you believe in the power of prayer please pray for me during these next few weeks. I feel vulnerable and indecisive.

Thankyou :)

Tansy

Relationships

  Something I have held onto with the tightest grasp possible in my life is relationships. It is not easy to be on the other side of a relationship with me because I am beyond intense. I am often searching for ways to understand more or find a different, better way etc. To be in a relationship with me is not always easy, I am not fun, and sometimes it has to be downright discouraging. 

  At the same time, the love I feel for those that are in my life is fierce. I care so deeply about every detail that makes you you and about all the nuances of your life. I don't have many friends anymore. Why? They have not told me, they have just simply stopped speaking to me, sometimes after a twenty year friendship. I have my ideas why though. I have learned in heartbreaking ways that no matter how much you love someone and wish the best for them and hope to model or coach or control or whatever form it takes ~ no one can be changed. It is only myself that I can hope to work on and refine.

 I genuinely celebrate accomplishments and victories in the ones I love lives because they are such treasures to me! I also see that the depth of my care can apply undo and unfair pressure on those in my life.

  It is all so complicated for me to navigate. I often feel like I am flailing and doing things so wrong. Yet, also I am trying so hard to do things right! Not just for those in my life but for myself. I want to encourage, uplift, help, hope and pray for those I love.

Why write this? I think constantly about those in my life. I am praying for them, wishing I could do better, lift more loads, and support more consistently, and I never get it quite right. I often feel like such a failure. Yet that shows the insecurities I struggle with and how much I rely on others for my self-worth. As pure as my intentions are and as generous as my actions may be they are not always needed and not appreciated because they were coming from myself. They were not necessarily coming from a place that the other person actually needed.

Oh my word it is such a battle for me.

For all of those that care so deeply for others and find yourself confused or disillusioned, Lord bless you :) May you find peace. May you grow and mature so that you have capacity to process and be healthier in your responses and your intentions.

And to those I love and continually let down...just know my love for you is so so SO deep. I want to do better, I want to love you so deeply in a way that feels safe and caring and beautiful. 

My musings for today :)

Tansy

July Family Photo Shoot

 Having a photo shoot with everyone I wanted to attend seemed impossible honestly. I was way too incapable to arrange it all and have it come to be. I was too weak, too vulnerable.

And miraculously it happened.

Thanks to my sisters and my children and my husband for doing all they did to make it happen.

My photographer was my sister and my daughter and they captured all I hoped they would.

Here are some photos :)

It was a very bright day and it did not work to take the photos at the time of day light might have been better so this was a test shot :)

                                                                        My family ~

At this moment, when all our hands were together, the baby started to moving inside and we all felt him or her at the same time. It was incredible.

                                                                      My miracles

                                                                    The current baby

Announcing Baby Number Six

 This entire year so far I have been pregnant. On midnight as Christmas day began I decided to take a pregnancy test. As the house was completely peaceful and a gloriously happy day would begin not many hours later I decided to see if I might be pregnant. I had had really intense hormonal symptoms for days already and felt off. So I took the test late at night and it was positive! The emotions that filled me were absolutely ones of joy and thankfulness. I finished up my Christmas duties and tried to get a few hours sleep before everyone rose with great excitement for the day.

For some reason, I woke up at 6:30am and found my husband alone on the couch. I asked him if he would like an early Christmas gift and he said yes with a question mark surrounding the answer. I went and got the test and gave it to him. It was a beautiful way to start a really special day for our family. 

So from Christmas day onwards, I have known I was pregnant. I am forty one years of age and this is my eighth pregnancy. I was the sickest I have been in a pregnancy for twenty weeks. That was intense but not at all unexpected and I took it one day at a time. I had vomiting, daily headaches, intense nausea and on top of that I am more newly diagnosed with celiac disease and so regular gluten comforts of food were not accessible to me. It was not the funnest time but I made it through.

After I was done being sick (the week symptoms started getting better) my husband and I undertook a huge project. We moved my parents from their current home to another town. Our children and my sister helped but mostly it was the two of us. We packed, sorted, physically moved furniture and supported my dad in hospital and my mom at my home. It was a very intense time and took about a month to complete.

After this my energy tanked completely and iron deficiency symptoms hit with full force.

It has been one day at a time one step at a time trying to keep people fed and laundry and dishes caught up. Other than that everything else has been a bonus. My husband has supported where he could, my sister has been a hero, and my children have had their moments of deep kindness and empathy which has been deeply appreciated. There has been encouragement from different parts of the world when I needed it most from caring friends, and although it has been a rough road for me in so many respects it has been worth every second.

The baby in my womb is active, responsive, sweet and already empathetic and sensitive. I am so beyond thankful for the gift of this experience once again. I am so thankful for this life inside me and this life I am privileged to live and experience.

As we prepare to welcome this life into our family and discover all that this child was meant to give and be and bring we hold hope for a safe birth and for a healthy child.

I know I have not written much this year. I hope that explains why.

Love Tansy

This is the evening we told our children. There was much excitement and surprise as well :)

                                                             Just beginning the journey.

A Photo Shoot by My Daughter

 During this time in my life where I feel really weak I have not had the best attitude. I have wanted sympathy and loads lifted and all sorts of things. When those moments come I can't explain the beauty that it brings my soul.

One of those instances happened for me with this photo shoot. My young daughter and I went out to a small field full of Dandelions gone to seed, the light was starting to take on that quiet glow of evening and she captured something of what I wish for amongst all those wishes....beauty, joy, time in nature, a more carefree heart, the list goes on. 

I was so proud of her as this was her first photo shoot with no training. She naturally could see and capture what I hoped for and it was a really beautiful moment in time.

Here are some of the photos.

Summer 2023

   How has your June and July been? I'd have to say that this Summer has held some unexpected twists and turns for our family. The country that I live in has a leader who has questionable morals and whose actions clearly do not hold care or concern for the people of his country. As he takes our country further and further down roads that lead to destruction people suffer. This has meant some suffering for our family but on a very small scale compared to many. 

   Along this vein we have been trying to think of ways to afford soaring prices of, well, everything. So we thought we would rent out a vehicle that we owned. We took time and effort to prepare that vehicle in the best possible ways so that it would feel enjoyable, clean, safe etc for anyone who rented it. Long story short, an hour and a half into its first rental journey it broke down. It was also in another country at that time and it was a holiday weekend. The amount of effort, stress, anxiety and hope that had been invested into that first rental experience was quite vast. We have felt stuck and undone at the result of the experience. That door was firmly closed and ended up costing us so much money. We are a ways through the situation now but we are still feeling the effects and our vehicle is not usable at the moment. That was a very unexpected disappointment.

  The next weekend after that fiasco I had asked my husband to hang some pictures for me in a precarious spot above our stairs. It took time and effort to unearth the frames, choose and get pictures printed for them, figure out the layout, and then for my husband to figure out how to hang them all. As he was in the beginning process of this the ladder he was on collapsed. He fell to the floor with his knee caught in the ladder rungs. He broke his arm and tore something in his knee. My health has been poor in some respects and he has had to be more of a support at home than usual. With a broken arm and hurt leg he could not offer that same level of support. We both hobble around looking very careworn and elderly and our children have not been able to have the care and support they need as we physically cannot offer it! 

  There are always ALWAYS silver linings in some respects in situations like this. For example, if the vehicle scenario had turned out positive then it was rented out for a majority of the summer. My husband would not have been able to maintain it like he was required to and I would not have been able to either. The vehicle breaking down was a blessing? 

  Also, my husband booked no time off work this Summer and his job is very demanding. With his injuries, he has not missed a full day of work but he has come home early and taken time to rest to attempt to heal. This has been necessary for his mental and physical health and in a way then the injuries have been a reminder of what his body really needed. 

  A happy and also unexpected part of our Summer was that before his injury he put up a pool that was given to us last year. We had thought we would not set it up but because of my health we knew the children would be home all summer with not a lot to do. This pool has been a sort of lifeline. The weather has been very hot and our house is very hot and the pool offers glorious reprieve and pockets of joy on long hot days when I can't do much more than lie in bed. 

 Another happy Summer happening is that my middle daughter has been able to spend extended time with people she values and it has brought her much joy. She has not had to be here all day every day with not a lot to do. I am thankful for that for her.

 And so the lists of both negatives and positives continue. Time marches on and Summer 2023 is what it is. 

I hope your Summer or whatever season you are in is what you need it to be but if it is not ~ well, such is life isn't it? The unexpected heartbreak, the anxiety or the unknowns, the accidents and the turns in the road that lead to disaster. May you continue to keep on. May you find moments of illumination in your darkest hours and may you know in your deepest parts that you are loved and not forgotten.

xo

  

 

Seasons of True Hopelessness

  The other day I was chatting with my counsellor and telling her I was in this season of true hopelessness. I felt like this was sort of the end of something really vital I had held onto for my entire life. There is a verse in the Bible that talks about your heart being sick without hope and another one about how without vision people perish. I have always thought that I needed hope to keep going and to be good enough.

  So many of my little hopes, and my big hopes, have come to an end. I have not felt like this is some sort of poor me victim response, but just simply my coming to reality. I cannot change people, I cannot be enough to make people want to change, I cannot be worthy of love to others, those are some big ones, but then there are the other ones too. I always hoped in my adult years I could have a horse, or live on property, or live in community. I have realized more and more that while all of these things had the best of intentions and were also a way of protecting me and keeping my head up it was sort of like a little child just holding out until they had dessert or their birthday and hoping that would make everything better or more manageable.

   My counsellor talked to me about how true hope often comes out of total despair and that the hope that comes is more realistic and more helpful. How it is actually more sustaining and can bring more peace. So it is something I have been thinking on when I can. 

  True hope for me now looks something like this ~ I can choose my attitude today. I can choose to offer something different to my family right now, I can choose to offer words of kindness. I can choose to let go of this offense and I can choose to communicate clearly. I can choose to put boundaries in place and stick with them, I can choose what actions I want to take.

  It goes much deeper than all of my 'if onlys.' So many of those centered on other people's actions and gave them more control than they ever should have had. 

 Do I still wish for things? Of course. Do I still long for change? Yes, yes I do. However I don't kid myself and think that if only this happened or if only this person did this would life be transformed. 

 I am sure I will revert back in moments of weakness to the sweet hopes from younger years but with the capability I hope I have gained as an adult I can pull myself in, tell myself the truth and make more realistic sustaining choices.

 We shall see how it goes.

xo