The time I wanted to break my legs, otherwise titled, ‘In which I feel like sh*t”

I’d like to have energy and feel great. That is to say, I wish I did not have fibromyalgia.

That is to say, I wish I did not have continuous headaches, I wish I did not have a sore throat and earache 6 out of 10 days. I wish I didn’t feel like I was burning right under my skin down to my bones on the worse days. Like a huge elastic band snapped back and stung all over on the better days.

I wish I didn’t have lower back pain, shoulder and neck pain and I wish I didn’t have sharp pains in random places and I wish I wasn’t exhausted and feverish-feeling all the time. I wish stirring porridge and mashing potatoes and lifting children and fastening seat belts and sitting and standing up and not lying in bed all day with a hot water bottle didn’t hurt and exhaust me quite so much.

I wish I didn’t have muscles that tell me I have an infection that really is just a figment of their imagination. Who knew muscles had an imagination?

I wish that even though I do have those things, I didn’t have the depressing feeling […]

It is well

It is well

There are busy people and calm people, fast and slow ones. Happy-go-lucky and melancholy people. There are al sorts of people and all sorts of days.

Busy ones and calm ones. Happy and melancholy. Days full of plans, dreams and energy, days that are empty, tired and without vision.

There are people who live in extremes and I might maybe possibly be one of them. If there is a happy day, I am certain that all days will from now on be like that, or I want to make sure they will be. When a slow and visionless day comes along I become instantly depressed and convinced that all days will from now on and henceforth ?always be like that.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that I have learned not to pay overly much attention to my feelings about it.

Because like in one of my favourite songs…It is well with my soul. It will always well with my soul. Because there is an all consuming presence, it doesn’t swallow me up in uncaring blackness. It covers me, holds me, fills and?loves me.

It is not a nameless and unpersonal force, it is […]

Waiting

At the end of the sand, the beginning of the water, and the water comes and goes. Feet in the wet sand and the wave comes back, covering my feet.

Waiting on the next wave, staring at the blue sky and the clouds far away. Seagulls fly there and come back and I want to ask them what they found there, far away in the golden sky. I can almost feel my wings as I imagine flying there but they are missing and so I stand and wait. I don’t know what I wait for, really. It’s always something different, something small and insignificant yet important to me at the moment. Underneath, surrounding that, there is a mysterious longing for something I don’t know and something I haven’t seen yet. It’s on a child and a house and security. A husband who comes home, the oven timer that goes of. The washing machine that’s done so I can empty it out. That vacation and that meeting, a visit from a friend. It’s on a home in Heaven, in which I believe and look forward too, for which I received a longing, built into me and wrapped with mystery […]

Walking on this waterless floor

Abel is going to fight lions and Gabriel is going to save the world like Superman.

A little later they are scared of the dark and they don’t get the discrepancy in that.

I used to plan to go and save orphans, do big things and make everything better.

Now I clean the floor and I don’t know what to cook tonight. I am impatient with my boys who disturb me in my fretting about food. In my subconscious, I assume I will become patient in an orphanage full of children. I will most likely undergo a character transformation on the plane ride there. I must have figured that was how it would go when I was younger. Because although I never showed many signs of patience with my younger siblings, in the orphanage of my dreams I was almost a saint.

Walking on water. As if I can only do that when I’m somewhere else, doing something great and noble and good. It has no use whatsoever to do it right here and right now.

It is quite sad, of course, that there are children who have no mom and do dad. I would be totally awesome […]

How the laundry basket told me to live right now

There’s a piece of brown, broad moving tape on our laundry basket upstairs.

I put it on a year and five months ago to keep the lid and the basket together when we moved here. I don’t notice it very often. When I do, I figure I might as well leave it on until we move again.

Were not staying here anyway.?It might be time to take it of now.?It can become a habit to move on.

We’re not staying here anyway.

I don’t want to invest myself here anymore. It’s too risky?and it will?make it hurt more to leave. I might even leave a part of me behind.

I detach, dream of and plan for the future instead of being present in the now.

I’ve lived in 14 houses now. The longest we stayed in a house was 4 years and the shortest was 5 months.

There’s always the initial giving it my all, wanting to put down roots, attempting to push and stomp them into the ground.

Going all out to make friends. Excitement about the new. Towards the end when I can feel the move looming up just beyond the horizon, there’s the pull-back. Slow at […]

27 and the very ordinary day

27 years ago I was born. I don’t know when I stopped lying awake for hours, butterflies in my stomach because tomorrow was my birthday.

Although I still like parties and gifts and celebrations, it is not the momenteous occasion it once was. Worthy of hours of unlost sleep. Not a lot of things are worth that. The Memoir of Life series, to be sure. Calls with friends overseas, sometimes. Talks with sisters and friends. Babies, although I don’t always think so the moment they wake me up, they are always worth it anyway. But it stops there. I mean, not even chocolate makes the cut anymore.

However that may be, a few days ago I turned 27.

It was the most anticlimactic birthday of my life, and also a really good day – in a very quiet way.

I got up a little later then usual, just in time to sort of get dressed and help juggle the boys off to school fed and decently clothed. I am not brave enough to let them pick their own clothes yet. Especially on rainy days. They would go in sleeveless shirts and shorts if I let them, the sunloving little urchins.

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Being a stay-at-home mom – Interview on Het Moederfront

A few days ago an interview about being a stay-at-home-mom came on the dutch website Het Moederfront. Because Celeste asked, here is the english translation with many thanks to my friend Meredith who did a terrific job at translating. Thanks!

Naomi (26) studied nursing. After a quick and difficult pregnancy, she remained home fulltime with her child. Naomi is married to Mike and they have three children together.

Was it an easy or difficult decision to become a fulltime mom?? I never considered the combination of working and motherhood, so it was definitely an easy decision.

I used to be a Mennonite. This might have played a role in my choice to be a stay at home mom. Every mother stays at home with the children in the Amish Mennonite community where I grew up.

On the other side, I probably would have done it anyway. Even before we became Mennonite my mom stayed home with us. And ultimately, she?s been my inspiration for doing the same.:)

Would you mind briefly sharing something about being a Mennonite?? A few months before I was born my parents became Evangelical?Christians. When I was 7 we visited the Amish Mennonites, who […]