A new season

I started a new job today and the children started a new school. It was with a great deal of trepidation that we left the house this morning, with my son insisting that he wanted to " stay with Daddy". Once at the school, he said goodbye very cheerfully and my daughter barely had time to get the waterworks going before she was distracted by new toys and new faces. Then it was my turn. A new job always involves new people, which for an introvert, even a seasoned one like myself, is still a VERY scary prospect. I need not have worried as I was warmly welcomed and made to feel at home immediately. It is also a familiar environment, as I am now working as a school social worker at a school for the Deaf, which is where I had a number of cases as a new social worker when I first started practising.Watch this space for further developments....

Remembering Hannah Rose

Easter weekend is always a time of mixed blessing for me. Remembering Christ's death and celebrating His resurrection is always a time of great rejoicing for me. I love knowing that I serve a risen Saviour, that He died for me and is waiting to welcome me home one day. I used to enjoy the Easter weekend much more than Christmas as a child and young adult.  However, for the past 6 years it has also been a time of great sadness, as I remember the loss of our first baby, Hannah Rose.  It is six years to the day today that I had the miscarriage. I saw that minuscule little dot on the ultrasound and heard her heartbeat for the first time at 6 weeks and by the following week I had lost her in a rush of blood and pain. I thought at the time that I would never recover from the loss, as it felt as if an integral, vital part of me had been ripped away. As the years have past, while this sense of loss has never disappeared completely, I am no longer reminded of it daily and it does not fill my every waking moment and stop my breath with pain. It still comes to me, as grief will do, but mostly when I least expect it. A beautiful poem, a friends baby shower, Christmas time because it would have been her birthday. At these times I shed a tear if needed or wonder with longing what she might have been like had she lived.  However, my grief is tempered with the knowledge that she is safe in my Father's arms, that she has great-grandparents, a great aunt and a grandpa to welcome her into Heaven with loving arms and that while this loss was so devastating at the time, it is not an eternal separation and that I will see her again someday. Remembering Hannah Rose this Easter weekend has not come with the sense of shattering loss as it has in years past. It is rather with thankfulness that I hold my two younger children close and give thanks for God's blessing and faithfulness in the years that have past and know that while at the time my grief was so overwhelming it has been used to mold me into the woman I am today and also been used to bring a measure of comfort to others. Sleep well , baby Hannah. Mommy loves you.

Our household has grown with the addition of two goldfish. My son's first comment when he saw them was WOW! That comment made me stop and think really hard about the last time I saw something as simple and beautiful as a fish and said wow. As a child and even a young adult so many things brought tears to my eyes and made me stop in wonder at their beauty. I remember standing in the Drakensberg mountains with tears streaming down my face and goosebumps on my arms as two friends gave an impromptu open air concert. This past weekend my daughter and I spent ages watching a tiny little chameleon climbing up into a tree. She was speechless and fascinated and so was I. When did life become so hectic and complicated that I stopped being awed and amazed by the beauty of Gods creation, be it by the thunder and lightning of a Highveld storm or by the intricacy of a dragonfly wing? In this modern age of Ipads, Ipods,Wii's and Mnet, I need to remind myself to stop in wonder and connect with that which my Creator has given me to enjoy each day.