Mercy for Mamas on Mother's Day

While in Uganda I met a lady called Melissa.  We only met briefly but I feel I know her so well through her blog.  Her adoption story of her little girl Mercy was a little out of the ordinary and she spent many months in Uganda waiting for little Mercy's VISA so they could fly home.

Now back in the USA, Melissa has set up a fundraising blog in honour of Mercy's birth mom, who sadly died during Mercy's birth.  You can read all about Melissa and her new work, called Mercy for Mama's at http://www.mercyformamas.com/ 

This new initiative buys a simple care package that saves lives.  The video below is taken off Melissa's blog and explains everything much better than I ever could.  The cost of each care package is $7 (roughly £5).  The mama kit contains things we take for granted, but it saves birth mom's lives and helps deliver new borns into our world safely.  It is such a precious gift to these women.

I know you may never meet these women, but from giving £5, you KNOW you helped bring a new baby into the world safely.  What a wonderful gift and privilege to us who can give.

So, this Mothering Sunday, why not spend £5 in honour of your Mum, Grandmother, or any other special lady in your life, and buy a mama kit?  What a wonderful legacy to know you brought a baby safely into the world.  And for such little cost.

You can donate directly through the site, or if you'd like to send your's along with mine, and see me, feel free to pass me for £5 and you have my word that it will go to the cause and buy a mama kit for a very needy mama in Uganda.

Happy Mothering Sunday all you Mum's out there!

Cuban Princess

Someone asked me last week who the family was we talked about while on our Cuban holiday.  They are a wonderful family that we met on previous holidays in the country.  While my parents were there one year, they made such a good friendship with the couple, they were then asked if they would become their first born child's Godparents.  Such an honour for them.

And so meet our little Cuban Princess - my parents God-Daughter: Aniella

New friends!

With little sister

Isn't she beautiful?

No language barrier could stop these girls having fun together!

And so this is the first post about the topic of Vulnerable Girls across the world.  The link may not be very clear at the moment, but as we delve into the topic, I want you to keep little Aniella and her sister, Annaly, in your thoughts. 

I named a day......will you?

As part of the above campaign, I named today as a day to raise the issue of children dying from malnutrition in our world!

In our land of plenty this seems an unthinable thought.  I mean, our supermarket shelves are over stocked, as our cupboards often are.  There are times when food is simply wasted of thrown away, because we bought more than we needed. 

And yet, so many children literally starve to death, or suffer the implications for the rest of their days of malnutrition.

Look at the facts!

Save the Children have also made a film about malnutrition affecting so many children in the world.  Check it out here!

So if the smallest action you can make, is naming a day to bring this issue into the limelight, then please do! 

When will your day be?

International Women's Day

On 8th March I received a text from a friend in Uganda.  It said how he was preparing a meal for his mother, for all she had done and in honour of International Women's Day.

I later heard the same thing mentioned on the radio. 

What a wondeful idea I thought!

Little did I know that the concept had been around for years.

So after googling it and learning a lot, it brought my thoughts back to something I wanted to blog about for a while.  In fact, something my eyes were opened too on our Cuban holiday. 

Something that exlores the vulnerability of women around the world. 

So over the next week or so I am going to explore this theme in this blog. 

To have enough is to give enough

So how many of us, if we're honest, have days where we say that we've done enough?

Enough for the day?

Enough for ourselves?

Enough for each other?

In these moments I think we must be measuring ourselves by our own worldly limits and certainly not by God's standards!

Surely we can NEVER do enough to advocate for the orphan and widow. 
To stand up for the most vulnerable in society.
To putting our faith into action.
To serving a God who laid down His own life for us and the wrongs we do.

But yet I still hear it in the most unlikely places. 

People, who deem themselves to be Christians, saying they have a calling to serve God, but yet fail to walk the walk.  Those who fail to go that extra mile for not just another human being but for God!  Those who become lazy in their faith journey.

Simply talking the talk is NOT good enough.

God ALWAYS asks for MORE!  God asks for ACTIONS!

And yet, when we feel like we've done enough, it's in these testing times, where God enocurages us to go further, that our faith grows and our trust in Him develops stronger.

'And God is able to make all grace overflow to you so that because you have enough of everything in every way at all times, you will overflow in every good work.'

2 Corinthians 9:8

In our good works, God will fill us with His grace!

We live such comfortable lives, with little stresses or worries, and yet the suffering continues for so many. 

Children are still left without families.  Slum families will struggle to stay safe, warm and fed tonight.  A woman is raped.  A child abducted to become a child soldier.  Someone spends a night on the streets, homeless.  A widow mourns.

The list could go on.....but you know the realities as well as I do.

Somewhere, someone is in need of love, in need of comfort and ultimately in need of action.

It may be in another part of the world, but it could also be on your doorstep.

And still we fail to try.  Or we worry about the little thing that we can do will fail to meet the needs of this person. 

God has given us comfortable lives to help those without this comfort! 

Our love multiplies with every need we see!  So why then should we fail to act upon it?

Throughout our adoption journey so many comments were made to me about how good it was of me to adopt.  So much emphasis on meeting a need.  And yet the need is still there.  Not for Lutaaya, and a need was met in her life, but this isn't ALL God has called me to do.

The calling to adopt was the strongest I have ever felt.  There has been a period of quietness and contemplation since we arrived home from Uganda in 2010. 

But yet God Calls......

Maybe quieter.....

Maybe a different message.....

But still there!  Still alive.

God hasn't sent me a message saying, 'Well done on adopting Lutaaya Natasha, now go and enjoy your time together and forget about anything else for the rest of your days for you heard and followed Me.'  Instead He gets me thinking, 'so what now God?'  'What next?'

And that's my call to work out.  But what's yours?  What has God filled your heart to do tonight, tomorrow?  I'd love to hear your stories, so feel free to post them in the comments part. Let's see what mountain's God is moving, or the little actions that mean the world to someone. 

Whatever it is, lets's act!

Surely it's better to do SOMETHING for someone else, rather than NOTHING! 

How things have changed....

Just over a year ago my little girl had never had a pet!

When she came into our home, she had to meet our cat, Gypsy.  I can hand on heart say, she was NOT impressed!

But oh how things have changed.....

What a difference a year makes!

In the trying times we learn.

Attachment is such a difficult thing to comprehend.  It’s something that tends to come naturally to most of us.  We are born and raised by one or two main caregivers.  We learn that these are the safest people in our worlds and we can trust them in any situation.  We understand their faces, their tone of voice, their body language and we learn the appropriate ways to respond. 

Add to that extended family and family friends and we have our safe support network.  Anyone not in this circle of people and deemed a stranger, we are taught to be cautious to remain safe. 

That is true attachment.  Someone there when things are going well, and they remain there, along for the ride when things get tough.

The thing is though, some children never get this start in life.  They may have never formed a valid attachment to anyone.  They may have suffered trauma in their early years.  They may have lost a primary care giver.  They may have had several care givers who they never have the opportunity to build relationships with.  They may have simply been let down one too many times to find it difficult to ever trust again. Or they may have experienced all of the above.

Such a sad place to be. 

And it isn’t just children who have grown up in a care system who may experience attachment issues. 

I see varying degrees of attachment issues in several of the young people I work with.  I’ve seen it in my daughter.

It’s the reason she spends most of her time with me.  It’s the reason we limit the circle of people around her so she recognises and understands who exactly is in her circle and who is not.  It’s the reason we promote safe and positive relationships with the people I know and trust, so she doesn’t build inappropriate relationship or have no awareness of stranger danger.  It’s the reason we limit opportunities for people to cause ‘let downs’, in making broken promises to her that she simply cannot handle.  After all she’s been let down enough in her life, now is the time to trust and grow.

The good news is that it isn’t a lost cause.  As long as we put the work in to create a positive relationship then we can work on rebuilding attachment.

It’s baby steps most of the time.  A normal day can offer up lots of opportunities to create a safe and nurturing environment in which me and my daughter can grow together.  And yes, ultimately the main attachment has to be towards ME!  I’m Mum, and she has to learn to understand that and all that it means to have me as Mum.

Some people just don’t get it!  Some people don’t even try to get it. 

And that’s OK. Because maybe this is something they will never need to be aware of.

Although what I’ve found lately is that in the trying times we learn the most. 

We went through a stage a while ago where if something had broken or been lost, we would experience total melt down.  I mean screaming, crying, .......

If meltdown didn’t happen then the broken object may just be hidden away so we don’t even have to deal with it.

Things have changed.  This week in fact, a kitchen storage jar fell off the shelf and the lid smashed.  Only this time things were different.....

There was no meltdown...

There was no hiding anything....

We finally had a positive attachment moment.

I simply watched for what reaction we were about to have.  She took a deep breath and waited too.  She regulated her behaviours to a certain degree and just when it looked like the tears were on the horizon, I was able to step in with a simple statement:

“It’s OK.”

Followed by a small hug.

Rather than questioning my reaction based on her earlier childhood she simply waited to see if this trust thing was for real.  It was a chance for our attachment to be tested.  A time for her to actually check out if I was up for the task.  A time for her to see how far she’s come!

And no I don’t mean for everyone going through a tough attachment time to go out and smash things so they can check out their reactions.  Just look for those moments when you have your child’s full attention, when you are both feeling vulnerable and then use this opportunity to build on what you already have.

All those days of creating your ‘normal’, they all add up for these moments.

 

The trying times;

The testing times;

The learning times;

The trusting times;

The loving times;

The forever family times.