I'm back!

I’m back!

In my last post back in November of 2021 I wrote about how I had missed sitting on my verandah at Bountiful and writing. I’ve come to see the verandah as my writing place, but it’s been the least hospitable space imaginable in 2022 due to the incessant rain.

I don’t want to complain about the rain though – the drought and bushfires are still way too large in my memory – but what a wet year it has been!

In November 2021 we were still preparing for the arrival of my little grandson, and my son Andy and his English wife Ruth arrived back in Australia in early December to be here in time for the January birth. Claire’s pregnancy had an especially troublesome final trimester thanks to high blood pressure, so the six weeks leading up to the birth saw us as hospital regulars with time for little else. The call was made to induce and after a very long labour Oakley Andy Maxwell came into the world on December 21. He stole our hearts and has no intention of giving them back! 

Our first Christmas together was a memorable one, being just four days post-partum and our new mum’s ‘blue’ day. All Claire wanted was a nice photo of she and Oakley, but every time we tried she’d leak onto her shirt, and soon ran out of dry clothes. Such things are disastrous on day four!  

Since then, we have settled into a rhythm and I have the joy of looking after my grandbaby one day a week so Claire can have some breathing space.

In January we got the exciting news that another grandbaby was on the way, as Andy and Ruth are expecting in October. We’ve since found out they’re having a boy, and we’re thrilled that we will have two little guys who will get to grow into men together.

I had my usual first of January prayer time with God to ask for direction for the year ahead and His guidance was to make no big changes until after Easter. To be obedient to this I asked my employers for the grace to remain working remotely until then, and then re-examine. It was a blessing to my heart to see that by Easter Claire was settled with Oakley – we’d even managed a trip to Queensland to introduce him to extended family. It was the right time to go back to face to face work, with the flexibility to work online if either of the girls needed me.  

Due to some staffing changes at work, my role has broadened and my three days in the office are now even busier, and full of creative opportunities. We then head down to Bountiful for four days, one day of which is my day with Oakley.  Then it’s back up the highway to Sydney to start all over again. I wouldn’t say that living between two houses is my greatest strength, but we’re making it work.

Whilst snow flurries are furiously blowing outside my window right now, it is encouraging to see that the hard work we put in last year will pay off again as we get a second season of blooms joining us from our 2021 planting of bulbs. We have snowdrops, tulips, anenomes and daffodils beginning to poke their heads through the soil – bulbs are surely the gift that keeps on giving! (More on that in a future post when I have some pictures to show of them all in bloom). 

Things may seem drab and dark during a wet winter, but it encourages me that these are exactly the conditions needed for the bulbs to thrive. It’s been a metaphorically wet winter season for me since November, but I’m back, pushing upwards to meet the sun.

How has life been for you?

Tracey 👆