I have a desire to write something for each day of Lent. I know. I’m behind in my thoughts. But better late than never. I want to do this as a discipline. As a challenge. As a start of trying to write better rather than just bemoaning the lack of time to write. To notice details. To call my soul to pay attention to reality. To simply observe life.
I can’t promise it’ll be an interesting read, I may just write about a coffee cup and the wrinkles around it that the milk has left. I can’t promise poetry or insightful reflections. But I want to turn up and write.
So here goes.
Last night my youngest boy decided that he couldn’t sleep unless he was holding my face. I don’t know what is going on in his tiny brain. He’s certainly developing at a crazy rate at the moment. He understands more and is babbling to change the world. And he can say Batman. Or something that sounds vaguely like Batman. He’s just copying his best friend who can also say Batman. Don’t ask me why we think it’s important that our 16/17 month olds can say Batman. It’s cool ok?
Anyway. He’s not sleeping well. He also has a cold which doesn’t help anything. And so he slept with his hand on my face. It’s a very smooth soft hand. A hand that was once inside me and a hand that will one day grow into a mans hand. For now it’s very small and expressing a deep need.
My mind flitted between amusement, annoyance and a strange sense of privilege that this tiny human needs to hold me to settle into deep sleep. For now I am his safest place in the world. That thought makes me want to cry. I get to be a safe place for him. I pray I will always be a safe place for him. I pray I will be a safe place for other people (maybe not in the same way, it would be weird if friends had to sleep with their hands on my face). I pray that we will all learn how to be safe places for each other.
I long and need to put my hands on the face of my safe place. Psalm 27 talks about seeking God’s face, gazing on his beauty, waiting for him, his presence being our safe place. I feel like I need my safe place more than ever in these days of exhaustion, sleep deprivation and friends and family going through uber hard times. I am as restless as my little boy was last night and I long to lean into my safe place so I can be still once more and drift into deep sleep and peace.
January really does suck. Each morning I wake and think of the things I will accomplish in my 2.5 hours without children in the evening. Each evening I crawl into my pjs at 6.30 and slump in front of whatever Netflix we are mainlining at the moment (if you haven’t tried Jessica Jones you are in for a treat :). It’s not that life is different, it’s not that life is awful, although it’s had it’s moments. It’s just January.
The final spaces on the Advent Calendars in our house are waiting. The gaps, though smaller, speak louder and louder of the missing piece, the final picture, the end. The longing of the month is almost complete. Christmas Day is around the corner. 
It’s been a funny old week. A week where I’ve been reminded again of the frailty of human relationships. We are so easily hurt and misunderstood, it is far too easy for the distance between people to grow and grow. An old Rich Mullins song comes to mind. “We are not as strong as we think we are. We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rage, and with these, our hells and our heavens, a few inches apart, we must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.” We are frail. We get things wrong, I get things wrong, I am arrogant and selfish. I’m also delightful and lovely. But yeah, arrogant and selfish as well. Far too much of the time.
The Long Walk Home 