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Will I ever feel full?

Will I ever feel full? Have you ever asked yourself that question? I mean I will admit the question came about because I working out my calories for the day and I was feeling pretty hungry and I was pretty annoyed about the lack of calories available to me but my mind quickly moved from food to my heart. Will I ever feel full?

I guess what I’m wondering is what does full even feel like when it comes to our hearts? As a Christian is it even possible to feel full this side of heaven?

I kind of wish there was an equation that you could follow… do this, add that and take away the other things and hey presto you feel full.

Just me? 

And then as I type that ridiculous equation out it occurs, maybe its not about equation and it’s more about relationship. It’s taking the time to interact with God. It’s making Him real. It’s daring him in all circumstances. It’s not letting the circumstances of this world overwhelm us because He is bigger than it all. Bigger even than a world stopping global pandemic. Just as invisible but WAY more powerful. 

This is a space holder for this thought process.  I feel like there’s more behind it but I wanted to get it written and expressed. If and when I manage to think about more I will link to it here but I wanted to encourage you to ask whether you feel full or if you are filling yourself with things of value and substance? Things that won’t let you down or can’t be taken away by country shutdowns or losing passwords for site log ins (and don’t tell me that can’t happen because you’ve got LastPass… maybe you’ll forget your master password…. it happens…!) 

With love

Sarah x

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Surprised by time

Do you ever find yourself surprised by the speed in which time passes?  to try and write a blog and realise it was nearly a year ago I decided that I was going to have another go at writing my blog. Almost year?! I’m not actually sure where those 11 months have gone, but they sure have been full!

So wave two of trying to write a regular blog did not last for very long I got tied up by how best to write what things to say and let’s be honest having a six month old and never going to be go it go easily with trying to write a blog frequently. 

Ill try and give you a whistle stop tour of the past 11 months.

My children are now 1, 4 and 6 with two of them at full time school or nursery and number 3 firmly in my pocket. I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve had without her – 2 in case you were wondering! – in the past 17 months and that’s pretty exhausting but she’s amazing and makes me laugh a lot. She is also incredibly feisty and knows her own my mind. I often find myself thinking that I am in big trouble as she gets bigger. My 6 year old mostly loves school and it’s fun watching him learning to read and excelling at maths. The 4 year old started full time nursery school in September and he loves it. Plus just two school runs a day makes a HUGE difference to my day with the smallest one.

Since I lost blogged I’ve managed to lose 6 stone!! I mean that one probably needs a whole post about it. But I’ll just quickly mention it here. I am back to running anywhere up to three times a week and I’m hoping to run a half marathon later this year although I suspect it may be next year now. 

My business, Sprouting Butterfly, is still going and although it’s not as successful as I would love it to be it plays its roll in my own life and in the lives of my customers and for that I am grateful.

I had the incredibly privilege of being at the birth of my most amazing friends little boy. It is an experience I will never forget and such honour to be able to be by her side. She was amazing!

I went a course on how to tell your story and spoke about vulnerability at a women event in November in front a rather large cloud which was incredibly and terrifying in equal measure! Maybe I’ll post what I said at some point! 

I’m writing this post in the midst of a global pandemic (I mean you know that because you’re probably reading this in the midst of global pandemic too but I felt I should include it!) The country, and most of the world,has been shutdown because of a Coronavirus knows as Covid 19. It’s frightening, and isolating and terrifying and because of the impacts on our plans incredibly frustrating. We had been due to fly to America for a 3 week holiday over this time including a cruise to the Bahamas via Florida. As I type this I should be in the middle of blue seas and blue skies on a ship but instead it’s grey and cold and it’s a challenge to settle that in my heart. 

For the past 3 or so months I have been living with the need for two things to happen.

  1. this lost holiday – to get a rest, a holiday and an escape! The ship had childcare included which was just going to be so valuable and restorative.Plus the time with my husband and my sister in law and brother in law who are some of our best friends was hopefully going to be life giving 
  2. The one year old starting at the childminder. She had been due to start going two mornings a week after the Easter holiday and it was going to give much needed head space and rest. 

Unfortunately neither of those things are now happening and so I am processing disappointment but also trying to keep my mental health in check and balanced as much as I can. 

As an overthinking worstcase scenario thinker all I can tell you is that this whole pandemic is like living out one of my many and varied worst case scenarios but with no one to be able to tell me that I am being ridiculous which is tough. Interestingly I’ve spent a few weeks so overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions that I haven’t been able to engage with them. But I am slowly finding my thoughts becoming clearer and so that is where this new attempt at blogging springs from.

I hope you’ll enjoy journeying with me as I process random thoughts God places in my mind and also any interesting things I read or listen to.

Much love

Sarah

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What I deserve

Do you ever catch yourself thinking that you deserve something? I don’t mean the things that you actually do deserve like money for a job you’ve worked hard on or recognition for a role that you have played. No I mean catching yourself thinking i deserve X, Y or Z but then realise that there’s no reason you can think of that you deserve it. 

That’s what I caught myself doing earlier today. I was thinking about my birthday. A key piece of information you need for this thinking is that I’ve already made a decision to stick to my calorie tracking on the day, in fact I have gone so far that I have planned exactly WHAT I will eat and when so I don’t have to make any choice. Well when thinking about my birthday I caught this little voice in my head saying but you deserve a treat. I think for the first time EVER I heard this lie and I almost laughed out loud about it. It’s so unbelievably not true that I wonder why I’ve ever believed it before. 

Let’s start by looking at the definition for DESERVE: 

“DESERVE, MERIT, and EARN mean to be worthy of something. DESERVE is used when a person should rightly receive something good or bad because of his or her actions or character” Merriam-Webster

“to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.)because of actions, qualities, or situation” Dictionary.com 

Now when I look at those descriptions I that it is very clear that to deserve something you have to have DONE something. You need to have DONE an action to EARN it. So if you take that and look at my thought process about my birthday and a treat I am basically arguing that because I was BORN that means I should have a treat…. Now as a mum I think I find this statement more funny because I know full well that the person that deserve the treat for me being born is not me… my mum earned that treat! 

So I think it’s pretty easy to write off this idea that just because I was born I should be allowed to have a treat. But the thought process didn’t stop there, oh no.

What do I deserve? Not just my stomach and my cravings but the whole entire complete me? Mind, body and soul, what do I really DESERVE?

And in response there’s a clear shout. 

I DESERVE TO BE A HEALTHY WEIGHT. 

I DESERVE TO REACH MY TARGET

I DESERVE TO SUCCEED

I DESERVE TO NOT MAKE THIS JOURNEY LONGER

I DESERVE TO SHOW MYSELF I AM WORTH MORE THAN A SIMPLE TREAT

I DESERVE COMMITMENT

I mean if anyone reading this asked me to help support them lose weight and they turned to me and said it’s my birthday I deserve a treat, I sure as heck wouldn’t just say ‘Sure you do, go eat a weeks worth of calories in one day’. Not a chance. I’d be asking them why. I’d be reminding them of what they are aiming for. I’d be asking them if they really wanted to gain a pound or two or three which they will then have to lose again? I’d be reminding them of how much eating isn’t the answer to having a good time or making something fun. So if I wouldn’t let a friend go wild on their birthday without asking them questions and challenging them why on earth am I allowing myself to do it. 

(You may want to consider if you really would want my help cos if you’ve asked I sure as heck am not going to let you just cheat… not even on your birthday!!) 

So that’s the aim. The aim is to remember that I DESERVE more than a treat. I deserve to be healthy and investment in myself on EVERY day of the year. That’s why my meals are planned. Thats what I will remind myself in the morning. I AM WORTH MORE. And so are you.

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18 months

Do you ever look back over certain time periods in life and wonder how much you have changed? Sometimes nothing seems to change even over long periods. Other times everything seems to change in the blink of an eye. 

I’ve found myself looking back over the 18 months that it is since I last posted here on my blog. I say posted because I’ve sat and I’ve started to write many times but i’ve always been pulled away or got confused or lost in what I’m trying to write. 

18 months is apparently quite a long time and this 18 months in particular for me has been a pretty big deal. 

So this post is my attempt to summarise this time frame knowing that much of what has happened will probably be referred to in the future….!

When I last posted I was trying to find some way to process and battle with the miscarriage of our much wanted third child. In January 2018 we fell pregnant again but unfortunately we lost a second baby to miscarriage just 2 weeks after we found out. We joined just 2% of people who have two concurrent miscarriages. We were heartbroken again but I think in many senses we were numb to it. The grief on top of grief was too much to process.

Just one month later we fell pregnant again. Fear was HUGE. Anxiety through the roof. It was hard to feel excited and I didn’t feel able to dream about this baby’s life. We went for an early scan at just 6 weeks and where I was waiting to hear those much feared words of “I’m sorry there is no heartbeat” the sonographer announced “and there is your baby’s heartbeat”.

It was not an easy pregnancy with sickness, pelvis problems and just general fear. BUT on November 6th 2018, 2 days before her planned c-section, Abigail Hope Johanna Beavis was born. She did not fill the hole that the losses have created but she did complete our family. We still carry grief but we also carry joy. 

Also in the past 18 months we almost had to move out of our home, our oldest started primary school, Ross was made to travel with work, having big impacts on our family life. Ross fell through our ceiling from the loft, we had some holidays to Center Parcs, I ran every day for a month, I battled with lack of discipline and weight gain, our now middle child started playgroup and then more recently moved to nursery school. I started a business, we had a ridiculous heat wave, some of our best friends got married and I navigated more life without my mum. I’ve had a rocky recovery from major surgery and restarted my weight loss journey. I’ve read a number of deeply inspiring books and have been challenged by friendships, small groups and prayer groups to look at identity, personality types and who I am in God. I’ve walked the path of third baby not gaining weight properly and it took a great deal of time to adjust to the idea of being a mum to a girl. Parenting a newborn, parenting 3 children and a change to routine as Ross started a new job have all stretched and challenged me, often very close to the edge of survival. 

It feels like a lot in 18 months. I am not the person I was 18 months ago. BUT I think that is a good thing. 

As my head comes up above some of the newborn fog at 6 months I feel called to start writing again. To go back to some of the things I’ve attempted to write over the past 18 months and to start being obedient to the things that I feel God poking me to write in the hopes that my vulnerability and honest can comfort, inspire or help just one person out there.  

So here’s to the second wave of my WholeheartedJourney blog. I hope you will join me for the ride…..

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Sit. Still. Settle.

Do you ever hear yourself saying something that one of your parents would have said to you? There’s often a mixture of horror that you are turning into one of your parents and a realisation of why it was that they said it in the first place.

I was sat with Sully on the stairs, actually i was sat on the stairs semi hiding from the children who were watching trying to read some more of my book, but i digress. Sully came and climbed onto my lap. He snuggled in for a cuddle and then shifted position and snuggled differently, then he knelt up and tried another position, bumped his head, got frustrated and then tried another position. To say that it was irritating would be an understatement.

I found myself exclaiming “if you are having a cuddle would you just sit still and settle”. He settled into the original position he had been in, snuggled in and had a good long cuddle.

As we sat cuddling I felt one fo those God nudges that said “That’s what I’m trying to say to you” and so I stopped and I thought for a few moments about what I had said:

“Sit still and settle”

Sit. Still. Settle.

For a number of months I have been avoiding just stopping and sitting with God. I occasionally set out to spend time with Him but I fidget, get distracted, DO something instead of just BEING with Him but I don’t just sit with Him and rest in His arms.

The thing is that it’s really hard to just sit with God at the best of times. It’s an even harder thing to do when life is tough, when your heart is broken, when you’re filled with grief and when you don’t understand the segments of your life.

Pain makes stopping and sitting with God so hard. It means coming face to face with the fact that the realitiies of your life don’t match up with the goodness of God. It draws your heart to the fact that you don’t feel that goodness and it doesn’t feel like God is in your reality. That’s a painful place to sit.

What’s even more ridiculous is that I know if I were to make the effort to BE with God I would find that those two conflicting states would become less conflicting. God’s peace would become a reality and that pain would be experienced in the presence of a loving God not on my own.

So God wants me to just sit and stop fidgeting… not an easy call but if it’s something God is calling me to, it’s probably for a good reason.

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Set backs

I wonder if you ever find yourself trying to workout how you ended up back somewhere that you thought you’d left behind for good? I mean emotional and spiritually as well as physically.

As the result of one life change event I find myself wondering how I’m back here. By back here I mean experiencing deep and painful longer for a baby in my womb and in our lives. I also find myself back to comfort eating and having lost the belief that I am worth the effort.

Losing a very wanted baby back in September at 10 weeks pregnant has left such a huge hole in my heart. That grief has tapped into emotions and experiences that we faced when we spent 3 years and 3 months trying for our first baby. Although we have only briefly (so far) been in this situation we find our selves longing for a baby and I find myself feeling the weight of infertility on my shoulders again – despite the fact that at the moment that is not our situation.

The feelings of helplessness, despair, grief, longing, hopelessness, loneliness, jealousy, overwhelmed and sadness flooded back in with the grief of our lost baby and the hope of his life that went with him.

Losing Toby, who’s name means God is good, has not removed the desire to have a baby, it has amplified it. Just because I can’t have THAT baby does not mean that I do not desire to have A baby. Not that a baby will replace Toby and all those lost dreams and the place he would have had in our family and our hearts because there will always be a hole for him. BUT we chose to have Toby because we felt our family was missing one more member, felt we had love to give another baby and so that feeling remains.

3 years of infertility were accompanied by 3 years of comfort eating and dieting in vicious circles of failure and backward steps. In the years since we had our first and second babies I felt God speak to me about how I was worth the effort that it takes to lose weight. Worth the investment. Worth the time. Worth it. I felt that God showed me that was the problem. I never believed I was worth the constant investment that losing weight would take.

When pondering life with God through fasting I found that God spoke to me and revealed something more.

In experiencing infertility and now in experience grief of a miscarriage I find myself having to ask God to get me through each day, because each day feels like a mountain bigger than I can climb alone, sometimes bigger than I want to climb full stop.

In wanting a baby both during infertility and now I find myself committing to petitioning God to give us the desires of our hearts.

In having children I find myself praying that God will protect them, help them to grow, help me to care for them well and make wise decisions.

In a world a throw away marriage I ask God to protect mine, with some baggage from the past to make this feel harder.

God revealed to me that I feel that as I’m already asking so much of God which all feels so important I don’t want to waste His love and grace on something that is just for me. I don’t want Him to be with me and help me to lose weight if it may mean that one of the other things I’m asking for will fall through the gaps.

And YES I can see how proud that statement is, that I think that I can influence God’s actions in such a way, but it is just the truth of the thought process and to be honest I am at a loss on how I will move forward.

It’s so hard to feel like you’ve gone backwards in emotions. It’s so hard to see the progress but feel those past feelings. Emotions are hard.

I don’t have the answers. I’m full of uncertainty and confusion. But I hope that I can help you somehow to feel normal?!

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Real beats perfect

It’s so hard to be real. It’s a so hard to vulnerable. It’s so hard to admit our weaknesses. It’s so hard to stop striving to be perfect and just aim to be real. But REAL will ALWAYS be more beautiful, more inspiring, more present and will ALWAYS build community.

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Waves of grief

I found the following on website that the link didn’t work when I sent it to anyone else so copied it and emailed it to a couple of people. But I’m sharing it here too because I think that this description is so accurate. It’s something that EVERYONE should read.

When Asked for Advice on How to Deal with Grief, This Old Man Gave the Most Incredible Reply

Someone on reddit wrote the following heartfelt plea online:

“My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Many people responded with words of encouragement, but one response in particular, by an older gentlemen, really stood out from the rest…

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love.

So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out.

But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

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Not ok

A quote I found on the Saying Goodbye Facebook feed:

“She watlks, she talks, she cooks, she cleans, she works, she IS but she is NOT, all at once. She is here, but part of her is elsewhere for eternity.”

 

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Wave of light

It’s october 15th – it’s a day for lighting candles for babies and children who have died. Who good to remember them. How much it sucks to have joined those who do it for such a personal reason.

We grieve and remember our lost baby and all that they would have been to us in our family. Those lost dreams.