Last week I was stressed. Quicker to cry, quicker to snap, quicker to feel out of control. It was horrible. After an inspiring chat with Dave on Sunday night I’ve asked myself these questions each morning:

What would it mean for us to enjoy today?
What would it mean for us to flourish today?

On Monday enjoying and flourishing led us out into the sunshine and exploring the woods in a local park. With every step I saw Dan grow more confident and joyful. I learned so much more about Jemima – she is brave! She made me smile by often choosing to walk to the side of the woodland path rather than on it. I can see that being a metaphor for her personality and will applaud her all the way.

Yesterday enjoying and flourishing involved fighting against our grumpy moods and lazy legs and splashing in the puddles in our garden. I noticed how Dan loves very prescriptive games and enjoys explaining extremely convoluted rules and then can’t help but break them the second he thinks he might lose!

Today enjoying and flourishing meant playing in the garden and a spur-of-the-moment trip to McDonald’s for tea. I was overwhelmed by the kindness of the people working there – they even asked some people to move so that we could have a table which was appropriate for Mikey. The lads at the table were super gracious and the women serving us made it an easy an enjoyable trip.

It has been so good to go from being grumpy, stressed and burdened to enjoying time with the kids. Long may it last.

What have you enjoyed this week?

The crowds find it easy
When you look through the gospels again and again you see that crowds of people follow Jesus. Some of them are on Jesus’ side while some are hanging around waiting for the mistake that will mean they can discount him. The presence of the crowds tells me that for lots of people, it was fairly easy for them to get to Jesus. There may have been complications: they may have missed a couple of days of work or annoyed their family or have gone hungry because they were so compelled to follow Jesus. But access to him wasn’t their big problem.

Jesus teaches the crowds, he feeds them, loves them and heals them.

He could have left it at that. He was reaching thousands of people. That is amazing. They came to him, they were interested and ready to follow him. Easy. What a ministry.  He could have left it at that, but Jesus doesn’t.

Jesus makes it easy for the rest
This is one of the things that makes me love Jesus.

There were crowds of people who found it easy to come to Jesus. But there were also so many people who didn’t, wouldn’t or couldn’t come to Jesus. So he goes to them – Jesus makes it easy for the ones who found it the hardest to come to him. Here are a few examples:

Zacchaeus – what’s stopping him? He is horrible. He abuses his power and takes money from his own people – even the really poor ones, so that he can have a nice life. Politically he is on-side with the government which is oppressing his countrymen. Everyone around him has rejected him, so Zacchaeus knows Jesus will too. But Jesus makes it easy for him. Jesus finds him, while he’s up a tree. Jesus leaves the crowd of fans who are walking with him and goes to Zacchaeus. An unreachable man and Jesus reaches out to him.

Or the man who is paralysed. What’s stopping him? He physically can’t get to Jesus (so his brilliant friends take him) and his heart is stopping him too. But Jesus makes it easy for him. I love the fact that Jesus is surrounded by religious movers and shakers. But instead of focusing his energies on them, he pays attention to this man on a mat who can’t move or shake anything.

Or when children come to Jesus. What’s stopping them? The disciples stop them – kids aren’t important enough for Jesus to be interrupted. So Jesus makes it easy for them and tells them to come.

Or a blind man who shouts out for Jesus as an enormous crowd walks past. What’s stopping him? The crowd! Everyone tells him to shut up. Except Jesus who stops everything for this man who knows Jesus is the king and wants to see. Jesus makes it easy for him when previously it had been impossible.

I could go on for post after post after post talking about how Jesus makes the biggest effort for the people who couldn’t get to him on their own. Jesus will leave a crowd, ignore the religious elite, chat to children while they’re parents wait. He will listen to the ones society wants to silence. All so that the ones with the biggest barriers to Jesus are drawn in too. Just read through Luke and you’ll see what I mean!

I love him for it.

So what?
There are so many implications for Jesus’ way of doing things and his amazing love for the most difficult and needy people. One application must surely be that we should be working the hardest to help those who find it the hardest to come to Jesus. That certainly includes young people with disabilities.

More on this next time, but for now:

• If you are a leader – who do you focus the majority of your time and energy on? Is it the ‘crowds’ (the most able, the most influential and the ones who find it easy) or do you work harder for the ones who find it harder?
• Do you love Jesus’ way of doing things or do you wish he’d chosen something easier?
• How could the set-up of your church or group actually be stopping people getting to Jesus?
• What are your thoughts and questions?

Excuse the lack of pictures – I’m distractedly writing this while Mikey is refusing to sleep! So far he’s taken the sheet off the mattress, the mattress of the bed and his clothes off his body!

To kick us off, let’s not be polite. The fact is – disability brings difficulty. It brings difficulty both for the person experiencing the disability and for the churches and youth and children’s groups that they are part of.

It’s difficult when you struggle to understand what’s going on at Sunday club and it seems that everyone else is coping just fine. And it’s difficult for a leader to have a Sunday club group that has been running seamlessly and a child with needs above and beyond everyone else’s comes along. Suddenly your neat, tidy and predictable group becomes messy.

I can think of three ways leaders (and other church members) react to these difficulties:

• One response is frustration and annoyance! Some leaders have a utilitarian mindset that says, “well most of the kids in the group are having fun and understanding the teaching”. So, in practice, they ask the child who finds it extra difficult to work extra hard to fit in. The young person has made things difficult and leaders expect them (or their parents) to minimise that difficulty. They must be flexible because the majority of the group (read: the able ones with ‘real’ potential) are happy as things are.

• Another reaction to the difficulties presented by disability is a real desire to encourage and offer support. I see this regularly – it’s wonderful! But most leaders and church members lack any knowledge of how to improve things. Mostly, we just don’t know what we can do to make it better. We feel helpless and frustrated.

• Sadly, many of the leaders’ difficulties are due to weariness. They don’t always want to invest the effort and time required to make things accessible because they are exhausted. They can see the difficulties but can’t see a simple solution and it feels like another weight on their shoulders. Many of our leaders are working incredibly hard already. Anything extra on their plate is just too much.

I think there is an answer to all this (I’m not saying there is a solution!). There is a way of responding to the desire to focus on the more able kids, to the lack of confidence in how to help and to the reluctance to do the extra work needed. I think that when we look deeply at Jesus’ approach we will see how he often overlooks the apparently able and influential in favour of the weaker ones. We will see how amazingly he includes people and how he works harder for those that find it harder to come to him. We’ll look at a bit of that next time!

But for now:

• Do you identify with these difficulties?
• How does your current set-up create difficulties for someone with a disability? (Is the environment and way things run disabling?)
• What would you add to the list of difficulties?

ps thank you for being so supportive of my decision about the pictures of the children. You lot are the best! xxx

Dave and I have talked many times about whether it’s OK to have pictures of our kids and their names on the blog. Until today we’ve been happy to share our lives and have felt that as long as I’m not posting anything that will shame, embarrass or harm them in the future, posting pictures of them is OK.

But that has changed. I have been naive.

I’m utterly grateful that the people who read this blog are lovely and full of affection for our children. But I guess that’s blinded me to the fact that there are plenty of horrible and malicious people out there who won’t look at pictures of Mikey and think, “he’s gorgeous”. Instead they will say, “he has Down’s Syndrome – let’s take the p*ss”.

This blog post by Ellen at Love that Max has opened my eyes. The gorgeous girl whose face is used for disability hate-propaganda is called Heidi. Her parents have written one of my favourite books. She is a lovely girl, from a lovely family. But because of the label ‘Down’s Syndrome’ people have decided its OK to mock her and to encourage others to join in. Because  she has Down’s Syndrome, (according to the people who create this stuff and laugh along with it), it doesn’t matter. Because they see people with DS as stupid and ugly and they don’t believe they matter in the same way as everyone else. I think you know what I think about that.

I know that you don’t feel that way. I imagine that, like me, you enjoy seeing the progress our children are making and their lovely little faces. But it’s not hard for someone to copy a picture and use it for malicious purposes.

I don’t really want to wait and see what happens and regret it. This is my blog, not my kids’. I can’t knowingly put them in harm’s way and then blame it on a person with evil intent. Disability hate crime is on the rise. Sick, isn’t it?

Over the next few days I’m going to go through all the posts on this blog editing and, where necessary, deleting pictures of the kids. I’m gutted about this. This may mean some old posts look odd and it will mean future posts will need slightly more creative pictures that don’t include full faces. I’m doing this for pictures of Dan and Jemima as well as Mikey. For now, I’ll keep using their names.

I hope you will understand and will keep reading. In reality, it won’t change the content! I’m not suggesting that other people should do the same as me, I’m just taking what seems to be the wisest course of action for us.

I feel really sad. But I’d rather not make it easy for people to behave in appalling ways.

please be patient with me if you follow this blog on a feedreader and it messes things up. I’ll be editing pictures and posts over the next week.

On Friday I had a much better day and also felt pretty blush-ridden when I remembered that other people were having much harder days. I love how those of you who read this blog are such encouragers. I really appreciated the solidarity and the “yeah, me too’s”. I’ve been really moved by how people have related, consoled and spurred me on. Wow.

After I wrote about the lectures I did, a few of you said you’d like me to post some of my thoughts on including children with disabilities in church, so I’ll start posting one a week. The sort of things I’ll write about are:

• Disability brings difficulty – how we respond
• Access to the gospel – Jesus’ approach
• Why bother with inclusion?
• Being known
• The gospel of grace for everyone
• Communicating well
• The lasting impact

They will be shortish posts and I will aim to do one or two a week. In spite of my degree, I am no great theologian – so the posts won’t be terribly deep! Hope that suits you. If there’s anything specific you’d like me to cover, let me know!

I thought yesterday was one of those days. I dropped an entire cup of tea on our bed and Jemima poured an entire cup of water over the sofa. It went from there.

I was wrong though. Yesterday was just a day. Today? It’s been one of those days.

One of those days when Jemima has done nothing but scream at me – unless someone else is around, in which case she is quiet and sweet and gorgeous.

One of those days where I want to scream at her too. Unless someone else is around, in which case I am smiley and fine and sweet to her (how is it so much easier?!).

One of those days where you walk round Tesco and feel the tears rise up like sickness.

One of those days where I try to turn to God for help and comfort but don’t find any. So I turn to food and the comfort is immediate and seems so much more real.

One of those days when I suggest a takeaway because cooking isn’t going to happen.

One of those days where failure feels new every morning. Great is my faithlessness.

Tell me you have these days too?!

Tell me your remedy? Today, mine is curry, cookies, catastrophic thinking and company.

We had a lovely Easter day and a fun, really rainy egg-rolling trip with extended family on Easter Monday. We got roped in to chucking thousands of plastic pink ducks over the bridge for a race.

As you know, we weren’t terribly well prepared for Easter. Over the weekend I did a quick ‘off the top of my head’ Easter story for Jemima and Dan just before they went to sleep. This is Jemima joining in a few days later (45 second video).

A real reminder (and challenge) to me that simple and interactive works so well. She keeps on telling me the story.

I did my first Signalong training session this week. Gosh, I felt I overloaded everyone a bit. The first session is a bit like learning grammar – not terribly fun, but very important. The next session is less heavy. Thank God.

This week I’ve taken a trip down to London to do a lecture at Oak Hill Theological College about including young people with disabilities in church. I loved seeing my friend Mel who is a member of staff at the College. She is an energy boost to me and always encourages me so much.

I’d be interested to know whether you’d like to read any posts on this blog based on bits of the lecture? Let me know (I won’t be offended if not!).

I was lucky enough to be at the college when some students did a session about teaching your kids about Jesus. Lots of people brought the resources they use and shared their ideas. It was amazing! I know Bible college people are likely to be more earnest than the rest of us, but it was so brill to see what people did with their kids and to be encouraged to keep going/start again with our lot.

Both preparing for the Signalong course and the lecture took up quite a lot of brain space, but now I’ll be blogging like a maniac again whether you like it or not!

Mikey just lost his first tooth.

This is new for all of us. I remember losing my first tooth and asking Mrs. White to put it in a yoghurt pot. There was plenty of excitement and build up.

But for Mikey there was no build up. No watching him wiggle his wobbly tooth. No showing us how precariously it was hanging on.

Dave wiped his face after tea and then Mikey came into the front room looking sad. He cried and put his hand to his mouth. Dave brushed a crumb off Mikey’s face and saw blood. I dashed for a cloth.

“Has he bitten his tongue? Has he split his lip open? Did he bump into something?”

It turned out the crumb on the floor was his tiny tooth. Mikey was pretty shocked and upset.

Suddenly I have a boy so grown up he’s had enough of his milk teeth.

But he’s not quite grown enough. He doesn’t understand what his body is doing; he struggles to be aware of sensations like pain, heat and cold, he can’t tell us that his tooth feels weird or hurts.

But there’s more teeth in that lovely little mouth. More chances for him to get to grips with it all.

And at least he’s not nagging us about the tooth fairy, because I have no idea what the going rate for baby teeth is.

Oh, it’s Easter tomorrow? Yes, of course I realised that! Of course I’ve been doing loooooads of creative play with the kids to help them grasp the wonderful message of Easter. There is no way whatsoever I would have become obsessed with Draw Something instead (I’m alicecrumbs if you want to play!).

Our Easter cake is ready. Of course, it’s the lemon cake. I can’t stop thinking about it.

The children are getting Easter baskets tomorrow (a bit like Christmas stockings). A friend did this last year and I really like how it helps Easter feel as exciting as Christmas. Plus one of the gifts is a tiara for Jemima and I can’t wait to see her looking blindingly trashy.

I attempted an Easter story with Dan and Mikey this morning. Mikey made Jesus fly onto the cross and then demolished it. Dan got sad because he wanted to put Jesus in the tomb but Mikey had filled it with bricks.

Dan and I made the tomb yesterday out of foil and glued-on tissue paper. Honestly, I nearly exploded with frustration. I kept getting annoyed that Dan wasn’t doing it ‘right’ and then he would puff with despondency and all the bits of tissue paper would fly into the air.

Whenever I try to have “memory making” moments, the memories I seem to create include me being rather rageful. Hmmm.

I think we’ll watch this video again tomorrow. It’s from the cbeebies website. (Thanks to my friend Celia for sharing it.) It’s a gorgeous and short retelling of Jesus’ resurrection using sand drawings and a light box.

Lovely Dan has been full of excitement about Easter (lots of that is thanks to Sunday club). I’m glad it’s special to him already. Let’s hope it stays like that for him and becomes that special to Mikester and Jemeemo.

I totally agree. This is now my new favourite cake. The sponge has egg whites and cornflour and is light and moist and yet gorgeously dense when the cake is chilled overnight. The frosting tastes incredible. Very lemony and creamy. It adds a freshness to the cake which means you feel that yes, you could manage another slice. The crumbed topping gives a gentle texture and a little bit of sweetness to match the tartness of the frosting.

I used this recipe but bought lemon curd instead of making my own. I used one jar in place of the batch of homemade lemon curd the recipe suggests. The instructions are really clear.

I also only used a bit of the crumb topping. This isn’t because it wasn’t lovely, it’s just that I have the world’s hottest hands and when it comes to turning anything into crumbs I manage to produce a few clumps and the rest turns to biscuit dough.

It is totally delicious and I highly recommend it. Really really really. Especially if you’re not that keen on frosting with icing sugar.

My favourite thing about making it was Dan’s little commentary as he explored the zested lemon with fascination; his little hands glistening with the gorgeously scented the oil.

“I could smell this all year.”

“I washed my hands. The smell of the lemon has float away now. Can I rub the lemon again?”

“Mummy, smell my chin.”

And then looking at the cake:

“I think that will be great for me when I taste it.”

“That’s what I call fancy cake.”

Lovely Dave deserves great cake. He loves our family in a selfless way. I’m very proud to be living this life with him right next to me and feel a whole lot braver when he is near.