Peace and Focus

I’ve been at university for around six weeks now. I feel as though I’m settling in to things and really enjoy being there. The brain strain is pretty intense though. It isn’t possible to read, absorb, process and make decisions on too much information at once, so my days are a little over 6 hours and that is it. There are a couple of pretty big breaks in there too, or it just gets too much. It has really surprised me just how difficult sitting, reading, and thinking can be. My roommate is finally a little more comfortable with me and things are going well.

I’m really excited about the direction I’m taking. Some students begin their Ph. D with a topic and never look back. Others can take up to 6 months to work out exactly what they’re doing. It appears that 6 weeks should be enough for me. I think I have a topic. There have been a lot of researchers trying to understand what it is that makes a family functional or dysfunctional. I think there’s a substantial difference between a family that is functional and a family that is flourishing. It seems that if I’m right, I’ll be spending the next three years outlining a theoretical approach to family flourishing, developing a model of family flourishing (designing what it looks like), and then testing that model. It may not be everyone’s kettle of fish, but I’m thrilled about it!

One of the most difficult things about my study is that it is so much an individualistic pursuit. I have all these thoughts, some terrific and some less so, but no one else is studying this, so there is no one to bounce ideas off. It is easy to see how people who work at a university forget that there’s a real world out there. It’s entirely absorbing.

Kylie is still settling in and I expect this process will take a while. There are some great friendships beginning here, but relationships left behind are irreplaceable. Kylie is doing some amazing craft, scrapbooking and handiwork though, and is really focussed on working with the children . I'm so grateful for her.

Chanel went to the dentist last week and we discovered that Chanel needs three fillings. It is weird for me to say that. I’ve never had a filling and I wonder if I did something wrong? As usual, Chanel is in the thick of everything. She is the most active and involved child I’ve ever seen. At school she has joined the choir. In a vote for the Student Representative Council Chanel obtained the second highest number of votes in her class (and only missed out by one). Not bad for the new girl that’s only been there four weeks.

Abbie has been such a treasure since she started school. She absolutely loves reading. Abbie reads her nightly book to us at least 5 times and gets just as excited about it each time. She has now learned over 50 words by sight and pesters me every day to spend more time practicing her reading. We’ve had her reading books at level one and two for her reading program. The teacher assessed her a few days ago and said that Abbie should be on level five. Whoa! That’s progress.

Ella is still playing with snails. She loves them. We’ve stopped getting upset about it because it makes no difference. Plus, she really gets a great deal of joy out of them. Ella still hates going to bed and has made that quite clear several times recently. That said, twice in the past week her head has been on the pillow and eyes closed for the night before we’ve been able to hug her. And Ella still makes us laugh and is more enthusiastic about life than anyone else.

Ella also started speech pathology again this week. We had small reservations about her speechy in Brisbane, but didn’t know what alternatives we may have had, nor did we want to look around for another new one. Now that we have seen what the alternative could have been we feel like we wasted a lot of time and money in Brisbane. The new speechy we have is amazing. She is VERY experienced (and charges for it), and after one session we are confident that we will see some exciting developments in Ella’s ability to communicate. We feel blessed to have found her.


Annie Grace is such a dream. She has decided that food is worth developing an interest in, and is eating lots, at least twice a day. Annie still has that magic ability to glance in my direction and change the course of my day. It is impossible to feel anything other than happiness when a gorgeous 6 month-old baby girl smiles at me like that.

After 8 weeks in the house we finally got the oven wired in. We’re using it, but it doesn’t fit! We couldn’t believe it when the electrician tried to slide it in and the oven was too big. It goes most of the way in, only sticking out a few inches, but we don’t care. We just ate lasagne! And the roast is cooking… Ahhh, heaven.

On other house news, we finally got rid of the rubbish. The pile of garbage I dragged out of the backyard from previous tenants was enough to fill a 5 cubic metre skip bin, which we did! And there’s still more under the house, but that will have to stay. We don’t use that area anyway.
More good news… after 3 months of waiting, and three resprays because they got it wrong, my motorbike is finally on its way down from Queensland. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see it again! I should get it this week. And I’m told by someone trustworthy that the third respray is quite good.

Things are going great at church. Last week we had great fun on Tuesday night with lost in the suburbs. I took about ten kids out into the middle of a suburb. They were blindfolded and had no idea where we were. I gave them a map with no writing on it and no street names, and told them to get to the spot named X. It was about 4 kilometres and they had about 45 minutes to get there. Great fun. One group got very lost! It made for some terrific stories.

We also had an amazing night with the young men for their activity this week. We talked about the promise we make to God when we are baptised. When we keep that promise we are guaranteed to have His Spirit. What’s amazing is that once we make that promise, that’s it for the rest of our lives. We make a decision at such a young age, and commit to a path. I am so grateful I am on that path. Because I am on that path, I have blessings beyond deserving in my life. Even better, I have peace.