Who should I invite to my birthday party? A decades-old question that is harder to answer than it is to decide on the right outfit for the occasion. Harder than pulling off the trickiest cake recipe, and harder to work out than what to do to celebrate! I’d like it to be small. I’d prefer it if people knew each other. I don’t want to offend anyone by not inviting them. It’s just too complicated and I’d really, genuinely, prefer not to do anything anyway.

As a Christian, I know God wants me to love others. And I want to do that widely and openly, without favouritism or exclusivity. But I also crave deep friendship. And I feel real tension about doing both of those things well. A tension that is brought home to me every year when I briefly contemplate the idea of getting a few people together to ‘celebrate’ my gradual aging.

My fellow ruminators, worriers, and 3am spirallers, welcome! 

The world may not understand your anxiety, but never fear, I’ve got you. Throughout history, there have been those who are super chill, and yeah, they may have a better time than us, but they’re also the ones who get eaten by crocodiles… Right? Anxiety helps us survive. The world will tell you to worry less, but I want us to lift our game! To that end, here are 21 easy steps to worry more. Happy spiralling!

1. When faced with an unexpected difficulty or hard thing, don’t stay in the present and wonder, “Do I need to deal with this today?” Instead, ask yourself, “What if?” and ponder all the terrible possibilities. 

candles are lit

lamps are warm

fire is on

floor is swept

table is set

wine is poured

I have been married for 6 weeks!  

As we say in Arabic, thousands of congratulations to us!!! 

الف الف الف مبروك !!!!!!!  

Five days before the wedding, I was struck down with gastro and subsequently had a panic attack, ‘How will I cope? How will I look after our overseas guests? How will I enjoy this?’. I had prayed for a joyful wedding, for guests to taste the kingdom and for community to be built. But how could I pull this off? Then the night before the wedding I cried, because I felt anxious, inadequate about being a good hostess and unsure if I ‘deserved’ this gift of marriage? But through the comfort of tears, friends and prayer, Jesus invited me to turn up and receive his good gifts. 

As we walk through our front gate, the kids on the street swarm around us. We have been visiting the place where we got married, a dusty Middle Eastern town where the children stay up late and play football on the vacant plot next to our house. We pause to chat with them; “Messi or Ronaldo?”, they ask, knowing full well that my husband is Argentine. They tease him and several loudly claim that Ronaldo is the better player. We laugh with them but beg to disagree. “For sure, it is Messi!”. The World Cup is underway, and these kids are rallying around their football heroes, excited to watch each match unfold. 

I have been thinking about what it means to have a hero.  At the beginning of the year, I decided to do a deep dive into a hero of the faith. Perhaps I could do this every year, I thought. Pick a hero and do my research; read their books, learn from their convictions and watch how they lived them out in weakness and in crisis. 

The fields lie in slumber, the vine cut back to root,

her branches are a memory, no sign of leaf or fruit.

The winter sets in cold, with sheets of glistening frost,

all is still and quiet, the summer sun long lost.

I left my AirPods in Tasmania. As far as I know, they’re either chilling by the Little Blue Lake, swimming with the platypi in the Ringarooma River, or, most likely, wedged between the bed and the century-old wall of a small hotel room in Winnaleah. 

I first discovered the AirPods were missing after my sister and I had driven two and a half hours southeast to our next destination—there was no going back. Within minutes of checking every bag and pocket for the little white case, I messaged the hotel owners and begged them to search for them.  Sadly, there was no luck finding them, not yet anyway. Over the course of our holiday, sporadic hours were spent browsing online earphone sales, but I never bought a new pair. There was still the possibility that they’d turn up in the post. But it felt strange without them. I don’t have them constantly attached to my ears, but I do use them while walking the dog, going to the gym, or, when I can’t be bothered with a screen or a book and would rather listen to music in bed. 

Is it ‘bad’ to be a ‘Martha’? Does being a ‘Martha’ mean you are obsessed with cleanliness over godliness?

I can be a bit of a ‘Martha’ in that I gravitate towards what needs to be done. Mess and clutter make me stressed and anxious, and one reason why I can’t watch those hoarder shows on TV; they give me cold sweats. I find my depression and anxiety is worse the more clutter I’m surrounded by. Decluttering is one of my hobbies and I did consider starting a business at one stage, helping other people to have one almighty throw out, but I could see myself being a hoarder’s worst nightmare (having said that, I don’t care what your house looks like; please still invite me over for dinner). My house is nowhere near as clean and tidy as I would like, and I’ve learned to live with that. But I still have minimalist tendencies. I’d be quite happy in a caravan with few earthly possessions. I’m not a cook, like Martha, but I often felt guilty for not having a chaotic house full of people all the time. I tend to jump up in the mornings (once I’ve had my coffee) and start thinking of my to-do list, rather than God’s to-do list, which I’m sure involves sitting at His feet first.

Everything I do accommodates two 

From the coffee I pour in the morning 

To the seven extra mugs in my drawer 

To the spare camping chair 

Tucked in the footwell beneath the door 

And the extra van keys 

I get it, I get it - not everyone loves sport. Perhaps sport evokes memories of enforced laps during PE lessons, or spectacular unco-ordinated free-falling on the football field.

Perhaps you would share the perspective of my Year 10 form teacher. Upon looking at my truly ridiculous list of extracurricular activities—at peak craziness I was in four different sporting teams at the same time—she asked incredulously, “When do you have time to have life?” To me, being in four sporting teams was ‘having a life’!

If you are like my form teacher, then I ask for your indulgence for a few minutes. I invite you to step inside the mind of a person like me. A person who genuinely loves throwing, catching, kicking and shooting balls of all shapes and sizes. A person who loves sport. 

Late summer fruits. Fluffy scavengers. Early rain. Lines hung full of washing. Making indoor fun. Heads full of curls. Quiet moments. Little seedlings poking their heads up through the soil. Waiting for produce to ripen. Siblings to hold, always. Adventuring outdoors. Roasting marshmallows over the fire. This is our autumn daze.

Eighty percent of my childhood family holidays were exactly the same. We’d pile into the 1985 Tarago and drive for an hour until the first of us shouted, “I see the trees,” shortly followed by “I see the sea.” Our Gran owned a beach shack where we’d spend a week every school holidays. Tall gums lined the only road in and out, and we’d crane our necks on the approach to be the first to spot the sign we were almost there.

When my grandad died on April 10th in 2021, he left behind a memoir. When I finally read it, I was also reading Destiny: Learning to Live by Preparing to Die by David Gibson. The two were weirdly complementary. With the first I was saddened by the passing of time; with the second I was almost comforted by it. The first had me dwelling on the past while the second had me anticipating the future. The first helped me to process the death of my grandad. The second helped me to process the inevitable death of all my loved ones, even my own death.

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend an art retreat in northeast Tasmania with my sister. She is an artist, and a very good one at that. My own artistic experience, however, was limited to high school art class, a paint-by-numbers kit, and a paint-and-sip evening with colleagues.

The retreat had been pitched to me as a relaxed and flexible do-what-you-want kind of gig. So rather than feel daunted by trying something completely new, I devised a simple plan: I would discover a hidden natural talent and amaze everyone, or failing that, I’d use the time to get some writing done.

In a perfect world, I would support our local school as a Christian family by keeping my children there until the end of their schooling journey. I would keep my children living at home with me. They would continue to be involved in our local church each weekend.

But we don’t live in a perfect world.

A year ago, I was determined not to be seduced by the idol of education. Nothing much has changed in that sphere. I must constantly remind myself that we serve the Lord Jesus and not the shiny aspirations of the world.

I am listening 

to the laughing kookaburras up the tree

to the wind blowing down the chimney 

to the piano which is out of tune 

to the possum crawling in the roof 

to the bubbling of slow cooked beef stew 

to the swaying clothes on the line 

to my client who’s having a hard time 

to the chicken scratching a place to sleep 

to my loose fan belt starting to screech

What does it take to be joyful?

I pose this question to myself as I sit opposite my husband at our local café/playground. It is a beautiful spot, framed with gum trees and filled with casual weekend vibes. It’s a pleasant 30-odd degrees, the kids are playing, and I have a latte and the paper. It is a picture of the idyllic Saturday morning for our family.

Quite different from the scenario earlier in the week when I had endured a severe case of gastro overnight. As I lay in bed, hoping to get some relief, my four-year-old daughter came and informed me that Daddy had now been sick too. So as I was the better of the two of us, I hauled myself to the lounge room with the minimal aim of ensuring no children injured themselves. Inevitably, a few hours later, one of the children succumbed to the illness. Several loads of washing, much Glen 20 and Hydralite later, I collapsed into bed. What a contrast. 

I am learning that friendship needs a sustained curiosity to last the distance.  Last week I sat by a pool with a couple of good friends. We sat in the shade, ate snacks and swapped book recommendations between dips into the glistening water.  It has been over fifteen years since we forged our friendship. One of us has an appetite for bike riding, another loves attending live country music and the third enjoys ocean swimming. Perhaps these interests have not changed much over the years, but we have. We attend different kinds of churches, have different strengths and have not followed the life paths that we expected for ourselves when we were in our twenties.  Nonetheless, we enjoy a warm curiosity towards one another that has sustained and deepened our friendship. If we had assumed on being the same people that we were when we met, our friendships may not have continued. 

As a young woman I remember wondering who went to the gynecologist. Women seemed to talk about it in the movies, but I didn’t know anyone who had a gynecologist. I thought maybe it was something Americans did. Now I realise–it’s middle aged women who go to the gynecologist. All my friends are doing it. Things just don’t work quite how they should anymore. Copy and repeat.

“Hurry, make more

Hustle, cut through

Quick, achieve it

Climb, how high?

What can you win?

What can you gain?”