Dancing to faith

In the last 9 months I've been through three losses, trained to become a Nia dance instructor and am in week 6 of my second pregnancy. It's been everything but an eventless year.

Rewinding to end of November 2018, November 29 I believe it was, I'm sat in the dining room of my Alpha Course hosts. It's our last but one session, and the topic is prayer. They offer to pray for everyone in the group individually, for our own specific issues, mine being our (medically) unexplained infertility.

I don't think too much about this, with Christmas soon approaching and with nearly 4 years of trying without success. Christmas passes and January arrives. Without a period. I'm too scared to get hopeful after way too many negative tests. However, after a week I pluck up the courage to buy a test. On January the 8th I took a day off to be free to celebrate the end of the Alpha course. I happen to do the test on this very morning. I notice a new curiosity sneaking in instead of the fear of the negative, and I think, what if it was a yes?...

...And there it is, the first time in my life, ever, the test says 'PREGNANT 2-3 weeks'

I cannot believe my eyes! I wake hubby up, who's still half asleep, but not for long. We are both swept into a wonderful, yet scary new reality of becoming parents, or so we thought...

That evening I decide to share at the Alpha celebration what a blessing the Alpha course has brought into our lives. Never in my life have I had so many people offer to pray for me, for us.

The following 8 weeks is a bit of a blur now, but involves lots of nausea and stress at work, strains in our relationship over priorities in life at this stage, a 3 week illness with the worst fever and aches I've ever had, praying baby would stay strong in spite of the paracetamol and antibiotics I very reluctantly ended up taking, and my 38th birthday, 4 days after which I'm told baby no longer has a heartbeat....................................................................................................................................................



Come April, barely a month after Grace left us (I chose a name for our baby as part of my healing) we find out that Daniel's granddad is very poorly, with very little time left. So come the hospital visits, which turn into visits to his care home where he was receiving palliative care, to our final visit to say farewell on April 22.

The funeral is tough, with moments I'm not sure who I'm crying for more, granddad, the baby or myself...

Our two dogs who have been an unbelievable comfort in my life through the worst of times, are not so much anymore. Lujzi, our 15 year old is fast deteriorating, sleeping all day, losing mobility and hearing and slipping away from us gradually. Our final cuddle happens on June the 3rd at an emergency vet in Wimborne where we decide to let her go and be free of pain. And she falls into my arms for the last time. I'm absolutely heartbroken............................................................
My heart in pieces, my faith a mess, my body and soul joyless I try to get through every day as best as I can, but I feel like I'm just a hollow shell being blown around by the wind.

✨✨✨


My first glimmer of hope arrives in the form of a Nia dance leaflet I pick up at a friend's yoga class, and instantly I have an urge to look up the next training date. Little more than a month later I'm dancing through my sorrow in Crispin Hall Glastonbury, and rediscovering the healing power of dancing. I feel joy, I feel hope and I want to wake up in the morning again just to move my body, to experience freedom from pain, both physical and emotional.

I thought I couldn't possibly cry any more tears, but the dancing moves things buried deep down inside and the dance floor becomes healing, cleansing medicine for me.

My teacher on the training brings to my attention that it is not unusual for ladies to fall pregnant soon after a Nia training. Our conception happened within less than a month. The magic of Nia paired with a powerful reconnection to my faith, brings a second positive test, a new ray of hope.

Where my faith was concerned, I was so struggling to fit into the box I created in my mind of what a relationship with God should look like. Bringing dance back into my life I was able to open up to a whole new world of connectedness to body mind and spirit and my own intuition.

Today I am hopeful and grateful for everything that has happened, as it has made me who I am right now. A stronger, healthier, more joyful and balanced person than I've ever been.

I can't wait to embark on this journey of becoming Mama once again with fresh eyes and surrendering to the will of God and letting go of wanting to control the outcome. The one thing I do know is that dancing and my faith are a well of strength and inspiration on my journey, and ones that I will always be able to depend on no matter what.

                               🙏💃🙏

A dog and her girl - IVF, letting go and new hopes...

It was 15 years ago one evening I'm out with some friends when I get a phone call from my brother saying he found a puppy on the way home from his night out and that it's sitting in my bathtub right now. That night had been challenging. It's not long since I lost my dad to a long battle of alcoholism, I'm having stomach problems of all sorts so I happened to be at the hospital on an emergency appointment just before I went to visit my friends and received this life changing phone call.

I ask my brother, 'does she have fleas?' He says 'no, just some flying bugs around her in the bathtub'.
Fleas, of course, many of them. When I first saw her she was shaking like a leaf, tiny and soggy from the bath water, drinking the shampoo water from the bath tub. She was the most adorable thing i'd ever seen. She was only meant to stay with us until she was better and I'd found someone who was going to adopt her. The TV repairman next door and his daughter.

The first night I had with her I dried her from her flea infested bath, gave her some clean water to drink and fed her liver pate with lots of garlic, having heard somewhere that garlic was good for worms. After seeing her flea situation I could only guess how many other organisms were also inhabiting her tiny body. Her little breath stank of garlic. I wrapped her up in a blue cloth, you could only see the tip of her nose, and put her in a white Styrofoam box, the closest thing I could find to a doggy bed.

The same doggy is now 15 with white whiskers and a freshly shaved belly from a liver scan she recently had, she's curled up in her wicker basket under the radiator and resting her tired little legs. The vet put her on a weeks rest for her hind left leg to heal.

My heart is in pieces.

I've lost people I've loved and felt the deep pain of that. But I've always loved dogs way more than people, they could never hurt you as much as people can.

So D and I got married just over 4 months ago and have been trying for a baby for almost 2,5 years now. Me being 36 and he 37, our time and options are becoming limited, or so it feels.

We're in the process of starting IVF, but secretly I pray that we can conceive without me having to be pumped full of hormones. I believe nature knows best in most areas of life, so why would this be any different.

So far according to the doctors our infertility is 'unexplained'

I have a flashback of being 15 or so and being so angry with the world around me that I decided I would adopt a child instead of having my own...

Not to mention the doubts in my head about ever becoming a parent worthy of raising another human being...

Then there was a dream I had about half a year ago about a blonde little girl, aged 2 or 3 in a snow white dress, waiting for us to adopt her...

And then there was the day we watched the film LION, and the scene in it when the adoptive mother, Nicole Kidman's character talks about her past, her alcoholic father and her vision of adopting children later on in life...

Who knows what God has in store for us. I am keeping an open mind for D's sake and from gratitude to God for keeping me sane all these years and for giving me hope again.

I wake up very often in the middle of the night around 2-3 am and cant get back to sleep so I pray and talk to God and ask for healing for all the sadness I'm still carrying. I look at cheerful people and so wish to be one of them, but when I'm on my own with my thoughts I still find so much pain and struggle, especially lately with what we've been through with Lujzi, the only baby I've ever had...

Last night I was quite poorly with my cold and feverish headache and had a longer than usual chat with 'Papa' the name given to God in the wonderful film The Shack. In this film God appears as a beautifully warm and loving lady brought to life by the radiant Octavia Spencer. When Mack the main character who grew up with an alcoholic, abusive father first meats her and looks shocked and puzzled, her very poignant reply was something like 'with a past like yours we didn't think you could handle a father figure'. How very appropriate as far as I'm concerned.
So my very lengthy conversing flowed into a very soothing resting with God, like I was being cradled and held safe, reassuring me that whatever life brought, this safe haven would always be here for me to return to no matter what.

I just lay there hot with fever, gasping for air through my mouth as my nose was so blocked up, thinking of all the people and animals I love dearly, and the fear of losing them suddenly turned into a letting go.. A handing over everything to God and trusting that he or shall I say she will watch over them all and never leave their sides whether in this life or what follows.

I have decided to call my God Love, no he, no she just an all embracing Love.

I've just spotted it on a candle in front of me and it says:

'Love makes life lighter'

A beautiful thought to close this entry with, I believe.

Love Noemi
xxx

White Piano

Her name was Beatrix and she lived upstairs on the second floor, just above my flat. She entered my life just after my father exited it. I was 22 at the time, I remember that clearly. She was a peculiar girl, like none I'd met before or after her. Eyes sparkling blue and childlike, tiny, vulnerable frame and wavy blonde cherub-like curls; her fascination with angels was no surprise at all.

Mine was non existent at the time; not sure who to trust and what to believe in I was just plodding along in life, waiting for something to happen.

One day I bumped into Beatrix on the way home and noticed her eyes were red from crying. I invited her in for a cup of tea and she ended up staying for several months. Where
she came from or where she then disappeared to I might never know, but she left a mystery behind that I am still trying to solve.

Among her few possessions were a bunch of angel books that she kept in a pile in the living room. I didn't show much interest in them until one day she handed me one to have a look at. I sat down on the sofa and opened it on a random page in the middle somewhere, only to find the script of a conversation between a girl and her father. It was a psychic reading where the girl, her name was Laura I believe, was talking to her dead father and he was apologising to her for all the things that he had done. Later on in the conversation the grandfather appeared as well and explained to the girl that he is the one to blame for everything, as he too was an alcoholic and had mistreated her father.

This was my first major dealing with a coincidence of this magnitude. The first thing that came to my mind was that if somebody had swapped the names around and put my name instead of Laura's, every word would be an exact mirror of how things panned out in my family. I was puzzled and not sure what to think; part of me thought that perhaps this was how my Dad was trying to communicate with me, part of me thought things like that can't happen, especially not to me. Nevertheless I shared my thoughts with Beatrix over a nervous cigarette on the balcony; to which her reply was "wait till you see what happens in 11 years time"
I remember thinking "no you can't do this to me, I can barely wait five minutes for things let alone 11 years!!! Nevertheless, as it became clear that she wasn't going to let on any more of whatever she was referring to I worked out in my head that I would be 33 when this thing, whatever it was, was going to occur...

A note from almost ten years after writing this entry - two days ago my mum told me while painting pottery together in a cafe, that Laura was one of the names they thought of giving me. (02.03.2026)

Faith and Food

My journeys with faith and food have not been without challenges. In both areas I have been searching and striving for certainties and perfection and because of these very high expectations feeling like I've failed over and over again.

In my issues around eating I have experimented with anorexia, bulimia, and believe I might be now going through a phase of orthorexia, where I'm obsessively trying to eat healthy, and trying to make everyone around me do the same, and feeling very very tired and depleted in this new form of perfectionism.

This morning I walked the dogs in the forest and cried and prayed for my God to somehow show me a way to love and accept myself as I am and teach me healthier ways to improve my state of health and state of mind.

My life is filled with blessings,  please don't think me ungrateful, but I feel a strong need at the moment to face my fears and insecurities, look them in the face and soar above them somehow, becayse until now they've been in charge and I've had enough of being unkind to myself and wishing I was slimmer, healthier, funnier, a better girlfriend/fiancee/wife, friend, daughter, better this,  better that... ENOUGH  of the nonsense, I believe in God's power to heal me and I'm ready to listen and surrender and hand over to him all the weight,  physical,  mental, spiritual that I have dragged around pretty much all my life.

It's time to believe  I am loveable even I don't feel very loved, it's time to believe I am valuable even if I'm not saving the whole world, time to see myself through God's eyes and change perspectives. Swap self doubt for faith, self loathing for respect, judging myself for compassion and kindness and develop the attitude towards myself that I try to have towards others around me.

I do this keeping in mind the serenity prayer, asking God for strength to accept what I cannot change, courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I wait patiently, hand over my fears and anxiety and trust that the guidance is on its way. Amen.

Butterfly

 

I've been drawn to butterflies ever since I can remember. My mum telling  me that one landed on my nose when I was a little girl is one of my fondest memories. The transformation they go through in their lifecycle is mindboggling and awesome. Somehow deep down inside it always gave me hope that if a caterpillar could possibly turn into something with such beauty and be given wings to fly, then who knows what potential there is in me, sharing the same Creator.

Most of my life I felt like a caterpillar, small and insignificant seemingly taking forever to get anywhere, stuck to the ground that was built with all the events of the past. I so wished to be light and graceful and soar like the Butterfly and leave behind all the painful, heavy parts of me that no longer served me.

It was 2009 when I decided to leave my office job at Bournemouth University to embark on the adventure of becoming a Montessori teacher. A beautiful, kind and gentle soul I was working with at the time popped into my office on my very last day, sat down and started telling me a story about a butterfly...It would be very difficult to render the story in such a special way as she had but will tell it as I have carried it in my heart.

There was a wise old man who was known to have a special gift of being able to answer any question he was asked without fail. One day two little girls tried to test his knowledge and prove that nobody could possibly know everything. They decided to take a butterfly in their hand and ask the wise old man if it was alive or dead. If he said it was alive, they would let it live and if he said it was dead, then they would crush it. What they didn't expect was the following. When they got to the old man and he asked them what they wanted to know, they told him they had a butterfly and wanted to know if he could guess whether it was still alive or dead.
Much to their surprise the wise old man paused for a moment then went on to say "the fate of the butterfly is in your hands..."

I am forever grateful for this story and message it carries.

Quite a few years pass, many beautiful memories created on the tapestry of my life as well as knots and events not so beautiful. It is March of 2015 and I've just come back from a magical long weekend in Rome with a very special friend. One of the souvenirs I brought back from this mini holiday was a tiny cross made of thread that fell in front of my feet as I sat on the ground of Ciampino airport waiting for our flights. When I asked my friend if she had anything to do with it she looked as clueless as I did.
The day after our return I was back on the road visiting lovely ladies and gentlemen, helping them with their daily activities. The job involved a great deal of driving. As I was making my way to someone near New Road at the roundabout just before it a shiny white Mercedes overtook me and as I caught a glimpse of the number plate I had to look again because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The number plate read loud and clear: J E Z U S. Hungarian for Jesus. A big clue in regards to what was going to evolve in my life from hereafter...

Another two years and four months pass, it feels like I show no resemblance to the girl from 2015, let alone anyone earlier than that. I have met someone kind and loving and funny and if that wasn't already incredible enough he's gorgeous too AND wants to marry me, ME of all people. We're living in the most beautiful home I've ever lived in on the doorstep of the New Forest, planning our beautiful wedding and surrounded by more blessings than I can possibly count. We've got the most loving, supportive families anyone could hope for, our two adorable furry friends who take us on amazing adventures in the forest day after day, and our lounge opens onto a forest where we can watch squirrels chasing each other, birds of a variety I've never known to exist having baths and collecting worms for their little ones and water and tend to our begonias and daisies and roses that we have been fortunate enough to nurture in our back garden.

That sounds pretty perfect right? I mean who could find ANY fault in a life like that?

My caterpillar.

Close to three months before the wedding, it hit me like a steam engine, a fear like I've never experienced before. An ocean of paralyzing emotions made worse by the fact that everyone around me, including myself, expected me to feel nothing but pure joy and excitement. I so desperately wished with every cell in my body that I could. But when alone with myself all I could think of was that someone with so much emotional luggage as what I've been lugging around all these years could NEVER be the wife Daniel deserves and a mother to precious children who deserve the best of everything life has to offer. All I wanted to do was hide somewhere in a corner of the world where nobody could find me. But the only thing scarier than me taking on the commitment of being a wife and mother even if it was with a Man as wonderful as Daniel, was the thought of a life without him...

Where do you go with a nuclear bomb of this magnitude?

The only place where the impossible and unimaginable is made possible. You go to God.

Last night my beautiful friend from Rome invited me to a worship in her church called "Seek First the Kingdom", it felt like my last hope to make any sense of the chaos whirling around inside of me.

You might be thinking how on earth did we get from the butterfly to here? Keep reading.

I'm driving to my friend's when a car pulls out in front of me with the following on its number plate:

L 3 3 3 P K E. For those of you not fluent in Hungarian, I'm guessing there will be quite a few out there, lepke in Hungarian means butterfly. Plain and simple. And 33 or any multiples of three in my heart has always symbolised Jesus.

So I carry on driving with a curious excitement growing inside me that reminds of a beautiful saying I brought from the sweet Bay Tree nursery that was my second home for a good two years. Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.

I did.

The worship was light filled, my friend's presence safe and healing, the music soothing, the flowers reassuring and radiating joy and simplicity. The evening could not have been more nurturing and invigorating. Like the softest, fluffiest, loveliest wooly blanket wrapped around you by humming angels when you're cold. It was like a little glimpse of heaven for a weary soul...

When the singing started, so did my tears... There was more singing and readings and more singing and the whole worship just felt like I was riding a rainbow. At the foot of that rainbow were two ladies with gentle smiles and soft hands who sat on each side of me and prayed for me to be able to believe that I am good enough to enter something as sacred as Marriage and to be able to accept Daniel's precious love. They prayed for the healing of my past and for the Holy Spirit to fill me up and as I just paused to write that, I felt a warm tingly feeling rushing up and down my arms.

When the praying quietened down and the gentle hands left my shoulders, the first beautiful lady to speak on my right said the word

"butterfly"

She said she was shown a butterfly and said I would be like one...

Then I turned to the lady on the left and she said what came to her was Mother Theresa and the words

"life is a song, sing it, life is a gift, unwrap it" a poem I had on my wall for years and which still resides in my little chest of treasures, given to me by the family of the same little girl who drew the winged picture of me above...

Amen.

And when all else fails you book yourself in for an Indian head massage ;)

5 minutes of peace...

Sometimes the only way to face a raging storm is to sit down in the middle of it, let the thunder shatter you to pieces and the rain pour down over you, cleansing you from the inside out...and when the storm finally passes you can take the light that finds its way in through the cracks and shine it on the pieces you want to pick up, and let everything else go... let the rain water wash it all away and bath yourself in the newly found ray of hope...

Some other rays of hope for times like these...


"Be still, and know that I am God..."

/Psalm 46:10/

And one of my favourites...

"I said: what about my eyes?
God said: keep them on the road.
I said: what about my passion?
God said: keep it burning.
I said: what about my heart?
God said: tell me what you hold inside it.
I said: pain and sorrow.
God said: ....Stay with it. The wound is where the Light enters you."

/Rumi/

And one more to remind us of the power of gratitude towards simple things...

Thankful

         for the day
when light falls
         like a gift
the angle of each hour
         shines like a blessing
quiet minutes
         become an offering
of limitless possibilities
         like that of enormous Love

/Eve Jackson from Poems in the Waiting Room issue 75/