Dear Fellow Preggy Mama,

How are you? Are you doing ok?

In my last post I was talking about how hard the first 2 trimesters of this pregnancy had been, with the fires and everything.. I was so full of hope for an easy third trimester.. ha! And then along came one healthy dose of gestational diabetes and a scare at a routine ultrasound which led to the 4 longest weeks of my entire life (but today we were told he is 100% healthy – Thank You Jesus!)

Oh and also a global pandemic.

We are doing well here folks! My Mom was saying today how this kid has already lived so much life and he’s not even born yet..

So no, this trimester along with the rest of my pregnancy has not exactly been how I envisioned it.. and I’m sure it’s absolutely not how you envisioned yours either. No one expects what should be one of the happiest times of your life to be marred by a world half shut down and half gone mad. If you’re anything like me, the roller coaster of emotions you may feel right now is incredibly real and incredibly intense..

On one hand you are so beyond excited to be bringing another life into the world and you cannot wait to kiss that little face.. On the other hand you’re absolutely terrified to bring another life into this world and you’re wondering if you even can kiss his face..

Part of you is embracing the unexpected down time to relax before baby (and by relax I obviously mean frantically clean and cull every inch of the home you can no longer leave), and the other half of you wishes you could just go out and buy all the pretty things you’ve wanted to buy for so long, instead of filling endless virtual carts online and hardly purchasing a thing because its just not the same.

You are so grateful, beyond grateful, to be pregnant and carrying life within you, no matter what the current climate is because you know there are countless women who would give anything to simply be pregnant at all..

And yet, it is so hard to always find the joy because it’s just not supposed to be like this – you’re not supposed to have to speak to the lady at the ultrasound place through a mask and a screen from 2 metres away.. you’re not supposed to rush in and out of every antenatal appointment nervous to even breathe the hospital air.. you’re not supposed to have to tell your other kids they can’t come meet their little brother the day he is born.. your baby’s grandparents and great grandparents are not supposed to have to see him for the first time through a screen.. And you’re definitely not supposed to be afraid that they will tell you your partner can’t be there when you’re in labour..

Regardless of how grateful and blessed and happy you are to be having baby, doing it in the world we find ourselves in right now is really flippin’ scary and really flippin’ hard..

And you may feel really guilty for feeling all these things, I know I do..

But I just wanted to tell you that it’s ok.. it’s ok to grieve for the way it should have been while still doing your best to embrace the way that it is. It’s ok to cry about a cancelled baby shower or your parent’s cancelled flights. It’s ok to be really really frustrated that you can’t even go grocery shopping, or to be wondering how you will cope when baby arrives and no one can come and help you fold the washing and clean the kitchen.. It’s ok to wish your mom could put her hand on your belly and feel your baby kick instead of just having to be satisfied with bathroom bump selfies from across the country, or across the world.. It’s ok to be scared and frustrated and disappointed and overwhelmed. You’re not alone.

But girls, we are going to get through this, and we are going to have our beautiful babies, and they’re going to be perfect and we are going to finish strong.. This virus will end.. the madness will cease, and life will resume eventually… And when it does we will look back on this season with the utmost pride because we gave birth in truly crazy circumstances, and we went through something very few people have..

Times are real tough right now girls, it’s true .. but guess what – so are we, and we can do this.

So hang in there.. you’re doing better than you think you are,

Love, Ferne

I haven’t written anything for a long time. The reason for this initially was a bit of discouragement and self doubt, coupled with a rather unhealthy love hate relationship with my good friend Netflix and my buddy Stan. But then life went a little nuts and I don’t think I would have been able to write even if I had wanted to. I feel like my mind is still playing catch up with the last 6 months.

I am 26 (give or take) weeks pregnant with baby number 5. Madness? Yes. The gap between Evie and this baby is a whole year longer than between all the other kids because truth be told we just didn’t know whether or not it was the right thing to do. So many variables, so many unknowns.. health, finances, life, the other kids, my sanity, the fact that we live in a glorified shoebox.. but then a friend gave me the best piece of advice I have maybe ever received.. she said “Ferne, you will never ever regret having another baby, but 2, 5, 10 years down the line you may just regret not having it” and that kind of made up our minds.. that and a whoooole lot of trusting Jesus in ways we never have before. At the start I said I was going to treasure every moment of this pregnancy knowing it will most likely be my last… I said I wanted it to go slowly and I wanted to feel and remember and savour every moment of it. Unfortunately that hasn’t really been the case, not because there is anything wrong with me or the baby, I thank Jesus every day that I am carrying a beautiful healthy strong boy and that in 14 weeks he will be in my arms, and I thank Jesus every day that the rest of the kids and Hoody are safe and healthy and doing really well.. but life the last few months has been hectic..

In October last year, a small bush fire started 40 odd km away from us, when a bolt of  lightning struck a tree. Sounds so insignificant hey. Fast forward a couple of months, yes months, and that fire was blazing through 512,000 hectares of Aussie bush. I can’t say this little Irish girl ever imagined her daily existence to be centred around constantly checking a Fires Near Me app… or that I ever imagined loading up all of our valuables and precious things into the car and not unloading them for more than 6 weeks. If you had told me I would be evacuated from home the week before Christmas, and would sit in my sisters house and watch my town burning on tv, not knowing what we would go back to and if we would still have a home, I probably would have told you I wasn’t cut out for that. But when you’re living in it, it’s amazing the strength you find inside, the ability to deal with it, to carry on, to cope so much better in the moment than you even cope with it in the aftermath looking back. It surprised me last time too, when I was 34 weeks pregnant with Lydia and we would wake up in the morning and the first thing we’d do was check to see if we still had a home. Its amazing how we are so much stronger than we think we are..

Our reality is that we were incredibly lucky, if that’s the right word to use… we may have had to drive through kms of burnt out bush to get home 3 weeks after leaving, but we still had a home to get to. Hundreds of people weren’t so fortunate. Its funny how you can feel so grateful and so guilty at the same time.

These fires are out now. Because when it rains it pours. And boy did it pour… and only weeks after we drove over the bridge in one direction to get away from the fires, we were rushing to cross it in the other direction so we could get home before the river flooded. And then we found ourselves a little bit trapped, again, this time at home, this time by water… what a crazy country this is. Seeing floodwaters gush through the black silhouettes of burnt out trees is something I could never have quite imagined, and yet…

Hoody and I went for a drive the other day down a street in our area where so many people lost their homes.. we drove past ‘waterfalls’ that were a result of the few weeks of torrential rain, and we drove past trees brought down in recent storms, we entered the street and passed houses spared, with beautiful gardens and happy old men mowing the lawns, and then we drove past letter boxes with family names on them, announcing houses that just weren’t there. Blackened bush and tangled metal on the ground, ‘No Entry’ signs and lonesome chimney stacks. Abandoned sheds and devastation. And km after km of burnt trees, as far as the eye can see. It’s almost too much to comprehend.

But, dotted throughout the heartache and ashes, there was something beautiful to behold.. Tree Ferns. Hundreds of them. Blackened and burnt and all but destroyed. But out of the top of them, brand new leaves not just sprouting, but flourishing. And they are everywhere. Like black beacons with bright green flames, they are igniting hope and life. They took my breath away and I said out loud, “wow, there’s a message in that, a message for all of us.”

Beauty from ashes. What we assume is burnt and destroyed and dead comes back to life in spectacular fashion when the rain comes. What we have given up on, forgotten, what we have labelled too far gone or too broken, can flourish when the rain comes. New growth, new life, new hope, bright green against a backdrop of black, enhanced and exuberant because of what it has come out of, what it has overcome, what it has risen against, what it stands in spite of. Brilliant. Bold. Alive. When the rain comes.

And so the last few month have been crazy. They have made this pregnancy go so fast, and they haven’t exactly been what I had in mind. But they have changed and developed and strengthened me in a way that I couldn’t have imagined, and the lessons I’ve learnt and the mental battles I’ve fought have created in me something that will help me become the person I need to be to live this life well and raise this baby, and the rest of my babies, as best I can.

And oh what stories we can tell him now, of how he was forged in the fire and of how he flourished in the rain.

I had this friend when I was in high school. He was reliable, steadfast, not scared to tell me the hard truths. One day, 2003, our 15/16 year old selves were chatting on msn messenger, because those were truly the good old days, and out of the blue he said something to me that has impacted my whole life..

“Don’t change yourself, Ferne, you’re nobodies shadow.”

I think I just brushed it off at the time, sent him an awkward smiley face or something and changed the subject. I failed then to realise the importance those words would have on my life..

Ferne circa 2003. Who was I? Gosh I don’t even know. We moved around a lot growing up, never staying put more than a few years at a time. While a part of me loved the adventure of life, a part of me was tired of always being the new kid, the one with the messed up accent, the one who never quite fit in.

Introverted by nature, its hard finding your place in the world when your world is always changing. That, coupled with some pretty intense bullying in my early teens, meant I became a master chameleon, really good at changing to fit in with the environment around me. Losing myself a bit more every time the colours shifted.

I was also really good at believing that I was amazingly mediocre at most things. I was ok at playing basketball and alright at drama, my grades were alright, my art was ok, I could scrape by in French (when I wasn’t hiding in my moms office during that class.. yea.. she hated French too) and more or less hold my own in history and biology. But don’t ask about me about maths, chemistry, music, boys, small talk, being on a stage, general conversation.. utterly hopeless in those departments!

I thought I was just an ok friend, a pretty good daughter, an alright sister, most of the time.  I believed there was no one area of life that I really stood out in, excelled in, was good enough in. And most of the time I was content for this to be the case. I liked being a bit invisible, a bit in the shadows, a bit of a wallflower. It was easier when friends hadn’t ever really stuck around and goodbyes came around too quick.

By the time I got to my mid teens and my 5^th school I did have some truly wonderful friends. But I still didn’t really know how to be me. And so I morphed again to make sure I didn’t lose them. Blending in, not allowing myself to be different in any way.. I took a back seat, hiding behind their anything but mediocre-ness, content to join in on their wins so I didn’t have to try having any wins of my own and risk being reminded that I was as wanting as I truly believed I was.

But I guess this friend of mine actually saw me. He saw through the pretence and the pretend and he reminded me that I didn’t have to be an obscure, bland version of the people I was around. That is was ok to be myself, to figure out who I was, maybe to even shine. And as I sat there that day, on a gym ball in my parents bedroom, it was like I heard the heart of God through those words on the screen, giving me permission to simply.just.be.me.

And those words have come back to me so many time since that msn chat. Like when a silly boy broke my heart a couple years later, I remembered I was still enough. When my plans got flipped and I found myself on my way to Australia, terrified to start all over again, after a whole life of starting over, I remembered I just needed to be me. When I was surrounded by so many definitely not mediocre people in college, I told myself, again and again, that I was nobodies shadow. When I got married, when I had my kids, countless days that I have spent trying to figure out how to do this life well, his words have been a mantra in my mind, reminding me that being who I am is enough, no hiding, no changing, no doubting who God created me to be. No shadows, only Light.

So often we don’t realise the impact our words can have on a life. For good. For bad. I doubt his 16 year old self ever thought that what he said that day would alter so many moments in my future. I can quite honestly say I don’t think he would even remember. We lost touch and I haven’t spoken to him in well over a decade. But words remain. We can never underestimate the impact they can have on a life. For good. For bad.

So in case you don’t have a friend like him to speak random truths into your life today, I will. So listen carefully..

You, my friend, are nobodies shadow

You are more than capable, more than worthy

Do not change who you are

Do not think that you’re just some mediocre space filler

Like JLo in that silly Wedding Planner movie we all love,  you are not a poor man’s version of anyone.

Don’t waste your years trying to blend in

You are you.

And you is enough.

 

We have this plum tree in our yard. It’s a bit odd… to say the least. It has one branch that grows at a funny angle, trying desperately to reach the sun. It has a pretty obnoxious stumpy bit where another branch has failed at a similar pursuit and been cut away. The branch on the other side, well, it became a makeshift wooden trampoline for many tiny enthusiastic feet, which broke it almost all the way through.

Almost. But not quite.

Now before I go on I must explain something. We live in Bilpin. A town well known for its orchards. Beautiful trees ladened with fruit that people travel to from far and wide. Land of the Mountain Apple. Fruit trees for days. Our little deformed friend more than pales in comparison. It may not even be worth a mention.

But it is.

When spring time comes around the orchards of Bilpin are ladened with flowers. A photographers dream. God paints the trees in pink and white and yellow and green and all you see is perfect lines of beauty that would make Monet’s heart sing. You would think that, with all those beautiful specimens around He would forget about our little plum tree. It really doesn’t look like it could produce anything lovely at all.

But you would be wrong,

He doesn’t forget our tree. Come springtime He covers it in blossom, and I mean covers.. and it is so beautiful.. just as beautiful as any other tree in Bilpin, if not more so. Even the broken bit that the kids love so much is radiant with flowers. How that is even possible I don’t know. God likes to do the impossible. It’s there on its own, no orchard around, no formation in which to stand to attention, a little worse for wear, a little less than majestic.. but the bees – they love its flowers just the same. You can hear them from the house, hundreds of bees loving our tree.

And then comes summer and our tree produces the sweetest plums you will ever taste, if you are quick enough. The birds, you see, they also love our plums. They don’t see the scars on the branches or care that they don’t look quite like they’re meant to, that they’re a bit battle weary, a bit unconventional … they only care about the fruit. And despite the struggles this tree has encountered during its life, it is no less capable of doing exactly what it’s meant to do. And the birds cannot stay away. We haven’t managed to save many plums from them for years!

I think sometimes it’s easy to feel a little bit like this decrepit little plum tree. It’s easy to feel like we are invisible because maybe we are alone, that our value is somehow diminished because we don’t fit the mould. It’s easy to think that, in our raggedness, with our bruises, we will be forgotten amongst the stately and grand orchard trees, with their straight lines and their even branches. We think our broken bits and our scars and the reminders of the dead things we had to cut away will disqualify us, make us unworthy, invisible, incapable of doing what we are created to do, of producing anything of any worth at all.

But we are wrong.

He still sees us. He enables us despite our shortcomings. He gives us purpose when we feel alone, He makes us radiant with flowers, and the bees still come..

And in the summertime we too can bear fruit, regardless of what state our branches are in. Even when life has tried to break us almost all the way through.

Almost. But not quite.

Our scars will produce something beautiful, something worthy, something valuable, something perfect, if we keep reaching towards the Son.

 

Words.

There is nothing in the world like them. Words are a gift. Words are a weapon. Words give meaning to life. Words take life away. They are ethereal in their ability to uplift. They are heavy with the weight of what they mean.

Life. Death. In the power of the tongue.

For as long as I can remember I have been in love with words. Stories and lyrics and poetry and prose. Reading them, writing them, sticking them on my walls, covering my books in them. Other peoples fantastic ability to craft sentences that you feel in your soul. My own words trying to give meaning to what’s in mine.

Reading works by literary geniuses such as Emily Dickinson and Charles Dickens, Robert Frost and the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen and Wilkie Collins.. escaping to the worlds of J R R Tolkien, and C S Lewis.. marvelling at the chaotic universe of George R R Martin and my life being forever changed by Markus Zusak and his book thief.. to name a few..

I wish I could sit down with each of them and thank them for being my friends.

I have always wanted to write. I remember scribbles on a page when I was just a little girl.. poems and songs, essays and stories that my english teacher was foolish enough to commend. Maybe one day I will write a novel.. what a dream that would be.

But for now I will write about the things I know. The things I see. The things I’ve experienced. The children I’ve been blessed with. The role of ‘mother’ and ‘wife’ that I’m still trying to figure out. The God I serve and the people I love.

I know there are many others.. other people writing similar things. But not the same things. If the words I write can impact just one person, one person who may not read someone else’s words but who happens upon mine, well then, job well done. I don’t pretend to have all (or any) of the answers.. to know how to do this.. to have anything at all worthwhile to say. But I do have a passion and a heart to help people feel like they’re maybe not alone, to encourage and to uplift.. to write things that matter.. even just to one person.. even just to me.

And so I am going to try..

Welcome to my blog.

Life is full of light and shade, mountains and valleys, blessing and heartache, love and pain.. but you can’t have the blossom without the rain..