Miracles

Beach Day!

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As the weather is so lovely, I thought it would be a good time to share one of our favourite beach stories! One summer about 8 years about when our kids were aged between 4 and 11, Sean was working most of the day on a Saturday and so was a good friend of mine, so I offered to take her kids and mine to the beach for the day.

So, I took all six down to the beach and reserved ourselves a spot. I set up the windbreaks and umbrella, sun-creamed all the kids and then entertained them for around 6 hours. Sean then arrived with my friend. She bought a dinghy, which we immediately blew up and took out on the water. Sean said he’d look after the kids while we headed out in the dinghy for a row and to give me a bit of a break.

Now, we had a lovely time bobbing on the waves and getting away from the noise of the shore. To be honest, I was a bit hopeless at rowing, a bit of lack of co-ordination! But we got pretty far out. Eventually, we felt we should head back to shore and check everything was ok with the kids. As we drew closer, we saw all the children standing on the shoreline calling something to us. We couldn’t hear, but they were very urgent about it. As it felt urgent, I jumped out of the boat and swam to shore. The kids immediately surrounded me, and that’s when I heard this story!

When I had left Sean with the kids, the kids had all gone off to play, and Sean had been enjoying a bit of peace after a busy morning. After a few minutes, he decided to have a quick headcount and counted only five instead of six. Both my friend’s kids were with him, but only three of ours. The youngest, Leo, 4, was nowhere to be seen. Minor panic set in. Sean was sure he must be with one of the other kids.

He checked with them all, and none had seen Leo for a few minutes. Bournemouth beach in the summer is heaving! Sean took a deep breath and commissioned the kids to go off in pairs to try to find him. They scoured the shoreline without success, and they regrouped. At this point, Sean began to try to rationalise in his head what he would say to me when I got back. He knew I’d had the kids on my own for six hours and he’d had them for less than half an hour and lost one! One thought was that maybe three out of four was ok!

Finally, my friend’s daughter ran up and said she thought she had found him but couldn’t be sure. Sean was a little baffled by this but ran in the direction she pointed in. There was a large crowd of people surrounding a beach hut. Sean pushed his way through and there, right at the centre, with some police officers and some friendly beach hut owners, was Leo. Sean swooped in and scooped Leo up. He reassured the police he was definitely Leo’s dad and managed to convince a tearful Leo to agree!

He headed back to the beach camp and gathered the children to talk to them. “Now kids, Leo’s here, everything is ok, there’s no need to tell mum about this!” Cue the kids then running to the shore to wave and shout at us as we headed back!

Reflections Release Day

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Todays the day! Reflections is released for sale on Amazon! Click here to buy a copy!

I’m so grateful to all those of you who have pre-ordered an ebook, I hope you enjoy reading it! It would be really helpful if you could add a review.

The 4th March is a significant date for me as it’s the day that I started to follow Jesus. Reflections may not be a Christian novel, but it is about finding a way through. It’s about new beginnings. I know for many people they’re still searching for the hope to keep going. I sometimes wish I had all the answers but I know someone who does, and I’d love to introduce you sometime.

If I hadn’t started this journey with Him then I don’t think I would be writing this today. I certainly wouldn’t have the incredible support network I have around me. So many people have contributed to helping make this possible and if I thanked them all, I would be writing another novel. It’s been 32 years of people pouring wisdom and kindness into me. Sharing their lives and showing me what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus.

If you want to know more about Him, then please get in touch.

Journey to Autism Diagnosis – Part Two – Newborn days

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So our beautiful daughter was born. I felt great afterwards because I’d refused all drugs and so bounced out of bed to have a shower leaving Sean in charge!

Our baby girl wasn’t happy though. First nights with new babies are always rough. I had expected crying but I wasn’t ready for the ear splitting screaming she started. I stayed for the night in hospital as she was born just after midnight and she screamed the whole time except when I was feeding her.

I took her through to the nursery to ask for help from the midwives, as my eldest had cried but not like this. My instinct told me she was in pain. But the midwives just dismissed me saying that it just meant she was hungry. They were clearly busy and a crying baby isn’t unusual. I left hospital as soon as I could the next day.

When we got home though the screaming continued. Sean thought he was going to lose his hearing as it went on all day and all night. The midwife added it to the notes in her red book – ‘very high pitched cry’.

After weeks of this, with hardly any sleep, we were willing to try anything. The health visitors referred us to a consultant and we saw a chiropractor in the meantime. After four months with no change and feeling at the end of our resources we asked our church leaders to come and pray! She stopped screaming that day. The consultant and Chiropractor discharged us and I stopped going to the health visitor. I had lost faith that they knew any better than I did!

It’s worth mentioning here how hard it is to have a baby who cries all day. When you’re out and about and see a mother struggling with a crying baby, rather than offering suggestions, that she’s probably heard a thousand times, it’s so much more helpful to remind her she’s doing a good job, to keep going and that it will get better. I had people think they could help and take her to try their techniques only for them to give up and pass her back. They could walk away but I was left feeling despondent and literally help-less. The best help we received were from friends who took my toddler or both kids so that I could sleep for an hour or so. Such a blessing.

During this beginning part of our journey I made all kinds of excuses for what was happening. First and most prominent was that I’d had a boy first time and so I didn’t understand girls, maybe this was normal. Or perhaps it was my fault because I was so tired all the time and maybe it wasn’t that bad.

You can see from this part of our story that early intervention was minimal and we were leading it with our need. We had no experience that told us maybe we should hold on to the help we were offered. The health visitors didn’t have any suggestions that indicated there could be something more going on beyond what we could see.

I still question today whether if I had pursued help whether some of her difficulties would be easier. This is a breadcrumb trail that leads no where, so if you’re on that trail, look up and walk away. You are the best parent for your child. Love them unconditionally on good days and bad, no matter how tough that is. It’s what will steady them in their own walk through life.

Moves and Miracles Part Two

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So where did we get to last week? I’d just told you about our last eviction in February 2020. We were given two months notice. So we had to be out at the end of March 2020. We were very blessed to have some friends kindly offer to help us by lending us enough money to be able to buy a home of our own.

But then lockdown happened. There were no house viewings, there was no way we could buy anywhere or even find somewhere else to rent. We were very lucky that another friend of ours had a flat we could move into. So in the middle of lockdown we packed and moved most of our stuff into storage and moved into a two bed flat.

Four kids, two adults and four rooms. We have some great stories from that time but the favourite was the day I took the kids to the beach for the morning. When I got back Sean had locked himself out of the flat and so was sitting in the hallway outside the flat on a zoom meeting!

We let ourselves in and I went into the bedroom and started to change out of my swimming costume in the bedroom. Which you should know was also the office. Sean thought this was the moment to come in for his zoom meeting! So he walks in with all the senior leadership team on the zoom call as I’m undressed! I obviously screamed and threw myself into the fitted wardrobe! Luckily no one saw anything but they definitely heard me scream!

Through this time we were organising the buying of our new home. Apparently, it’s not normal for friends to lend other friends money. Every mortgage company refused to consider it. But our financial advisor was incredible and helped the whole process to go through. He made sure we could do it without lying! It meant we prayed a lot, along with an army of our friends! Even so wasn’t until a week before our proposed moving date, while we at Adventure Wonderland, we were given the yes to go ahead! We ended up exchanging, completing and moving in on the same day!

It was a real rollercoaster! On the 31st July 2020 we moved into our first home that we own. Everyone involved agrees this was a miraculous provision, that if you take God out of the equation, it could never have happened.

So if you have housing needs I’d love to pray for you! I have faith for some crazy miracles to happen. Think walls of Jericho and Goliath’s being defeated!

Moves and Miracles Part One

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In the last six years as a family we have moved six times! It all started in 2014 after we had our last baby. We were living in a 3 bed terraced house in Springbourne. We’d lived there for seven years and been really happy. But I had a habit of shopping on ‘Rightmove’ and I regularly would point them out to Sean! Then when I was looking after Baby four, I saw a vicarage near us for rent it was at £1200 per month and only had a six month lease on it. But I just had a good feeling about it! So I organised to go and view it on a day when I knew Sean would be busy and thought it would be a good morning out with the kids.

As it turned out Sean was free and rolled his eyes when I told him what I’d organised. When we got to the house the eye rolling didn’t stop. Even though the house was perfect for us, in fact better than we needed, it was only available for six months and was £400 more a month than we were currently paying. We walked away with the words of the estate agent ringing in our ears, ‘this place will rent at £1200 within the week’.

So that was that.

Or was it?

Later that week I would speak to a friend who would challenge me to push the door for the house a bit harder and pray about it. I did and felt I should write to the landlord, which I started to do. Sean saw me doing it and took over! We prayed about it and pressed send!

A few weeks later we had a call from the landlord who was very interested in having us and even agreed to our limit of rent! We couldn’t believe it! We moved into what was a home we couldn’t even imagine living in!

After two years we got evicted. There were tears from us all. But after gathering the family to pray another beautiful home became available,  after six months we were evicted again. Again we prayed and we were offered a new home by the same landlord. So when we were evicted again after two years we gathered the kids to pray again. This time we had to find a new landlord and home. This time there was no negotiating rent but we moved in May 2019 with a promise from the landlord that it would be at least five years before we would need to leave. So when we got an eviction notice in February 2020 we were a little shocked to say the least.

Next week I’ll finish this story and tell you the incredible ending and the home we now live in.