{The Ordinary Moments 2015} #9 – Drama, Drama, Drama

Over the last few weeks we have made a huge transition for us, moving back to the church that I grew up in.  Church has always played such a massive part in our lives.  It is further for us to travel, but it is still only 10 minutes down the road, and here are the people I have known and loved for most of my life.  The friends I grew up with are still there and now raising their children there.  It is so lovely to see all these little mini me’s of the people that I love.  I have spent some time catching up with some of my nearest and dearest and trying to explain particularly the last four years of my life just feels like an episode of Eastenders.  It’s not that everybody needs to know our business but at the same time, these people know me, really know me, and they can tell that I am different as a result of circumstances that have occured.

My friend pointed out to me that James and I have been through nearly every major stressful milestone that life can dish out, aside from loss of each other of course.  We’ve had divorces, custody cases, two pregnancies (both of which I was extremely unwell for, pretty much bed bound), two miscarriages, facing homelessness, financial hardship due to James completing a social work degree whilst I was unable to work due to pregnancy related issues, work placements, depression, anxiety, TIA’s, blending a family, getting married, moving house TWICE, losing family members, family members being extremely unwell (heart attacks, falling off roofs), we’ve both passed our driving tests – wuhoo!! but it wasn’t easy, starting new jobs.  If you read the blog post I wrote ‘Our Complicated History‘ you’ll see that we didn’t exactly have the best starting point when we first met too.

It is fair to say that as a result of all of the above, who truly knows if I’m struggling with postnatal depression or just being overwhelmed by life in general?  As a family though we are striving to eliminate any sources of drama in our lives.  It’s not anyone’s fault that circumstances have happened, some things that have affected us have been consequences of poor choices.  We could maybe have paced things out a bit, but due to our history I think we were eager to get past all the hard stuff and try to pursue a life of peace, happiness and financial stability.  We don’t desire to be ‘rich’ per se… well we certainly wouldn’t have chosen the career paths that we have if that were our aim, we just want to be able to support our family without worrying about one or both of us having a near break down everytime the rent is due.  It is has been an interesting journey, but we finally seem to be coming out of the mire.

I have many friends who are going through difficult circumstances and my heart reaches out to them.  I want to be there for them, but we just don’t have the capacity or any room for any more drama in our lives.  Sometimes you need to strip everything back and only when you’re in a stable position of strength are you able to help those around you, that you see in need.  I’m not saying I don’t care, or I wouldn’t try and guide them to someone else better suited to help.  Recently I had a friend who literally had nowhere else to turn and so despite feeling overstretched we welcomed her into our home, because I knew she would do the same for me… I knew it would be short-lived and I would not sleep at night if I didn’t do what I could.  Sometimes, we need to stretch ourselves just that little bit further if there’s an end in sight and we know we can have a recovery period afterwards.  If we’d not had Martina with us, who knows how that would’ve turned out, but we did, and so we were able to stretch for a limited time.

We have resolved as a family to literally just deal with the basics, getting on top of the laundry, cleaning the home, cooking good healthy meals, keeping everyone clean, trying to stay well, and obviously James is working and paying the bills.  This is ALL of our goals for life at the moment.  We are not trying to add anything else into the mix.  I am aiming to rebuild my self-employed career when I have got into a routine looking after the family home (this is why we hired an aupair, to help us work from a position of strength) but by stripping back things – even such as the girls dance for a short season, we’re able to live simply, frugally and just work on being ‘us’ a secure little unit.  We may seem boring, but this is how it has to be for us in this season of life.

Once we are more financially stable we aim to put back in the girls dance, swimming lessons for the babies etc. but for now they’re not the priority.  Everyone being healthy and happy and trying to keep a loving home that is full of peace and not drama is all we are striving for.  I know this is a bit of a different twist for our ‘Ordinary Moments’ post this week but this pretty much sums up our week and the choices that we have been making as a family.

This blog is for our children, and to keep all our memories, so babies when you look back and read this, and this season may have seemed more boring, stripped back or maybe you enjoyed more family time and less activities, please know the reason was because we love you and we want you to grow in peace, joy and love, that this would be your normal, your beautiful ordinary, and when you have a family too, this is what you look for.  Our prayers are always that you would be able to take on the goals in your lives from a position of peace, strength and stability.  We love you all xxxx
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