Micah must have wandered downstairs first thing before coming to wake Liam and I up. ‘It’s Maisie’s birthday!’

That was just before 7am. We watched colour learning videos on YouTube, we watched programmes on the telly. At 8:30 I went down to make the breakfast pancakes requested by the birthday girl. At 9 I set off the smoke alarm, and that combined with a visit from her little brothers finally woke her from her teen slumber.

We had a few presents before breakfast. Present giving is normally a combination of a happy birthday child, over excited siblings fighting over who’s giving a present, who’s sitting on the birthday person’s lap, a sulker who can’t cope with the focus of attention being on someone else, and a parent complaining they can’t see or hear the presents being opened over the melee.

Maisie doesn’t eat a lot most days, but she makes up for it on pancake days and birthdays. Especially when bacon is involved.

There was an impromptu costume change before virtual church, two Hogwarts students accompanied by a cowboy and a boy dressed as WonderWoman.

The Bible story today was about Zacchaeus, the short man who climbed a tree to see Jesus. The meaning of the story may have got a little lost because any time the word short is mentioned, Megan takes a lot of rubbing from her siblings for her (lack of) height. To be fair, although Maisie has officially overtaken her and has now reached my great height. Which is all of half an inch taller than Megan.

After lunch our social butterfly had several zooms/FaceTimes and socially distanced visitors to keep her amused whilst Liam played with expanding foam in the summer house and I constructed crêpe towers.

In between trying not to overreact to Micah’s daredevil antics. We’re holding bets on how long it is before he’s on the summer house roof and abseiling over the garden wall.

The cake had its moment over a family zoom with very ill-timed singing, and the two couples who were late to the party paid the price by having to do their own performance of happy birthday.

General consensus over the rainbow crêpe stack was that it looked impressive and tasted lovely, the whipping cream with a touch of icing sugar was much more popular than buttercream to my less sweet toothed family members. And other than the colouring procedure and tossing of 18 pancakes being a bit laborious, it was actually very easy and much less stressful than some of the cakes I’ve attempted over the years. And Maisie loved it, which, at the end of the day, was all that really mattered.

Dinner was Dominos whilst watching a Disney film. Oh how I do love nights with no cooking or washing of dishes! We never eat in front of the telly, and now I know why. I struggle with that level of chaos. Although, come to think of it, the dinner table is equally is wild. Perhaps it’s the people not the environment, one might suggest?!

After dinner excitement was provided by Maisie trying out her new candy floss machine. I don’t think we could be classed as competent enough to open a stall yet, although maybe by the end of lockdown she’ll have perfected the technique. It won her the well sought after favourite sister title for the day though, so a worthy investment some may say.

I asked her this evening if it had been a good day, knowing that she, out of all three girls, was the most sad to not celebrate with friends. She declared it ‘not the best birthday ever, but it was fun.’

I’ll take that.

In my nostalgic pondering over pancake making and rainbow stacking today I thought back to when Maisie was born, and all the emotions that came with her arrival. It had been a rollercoaster couple of years to say the least, and here I was, at 25 years old, at probably one of my lowest emotional points, with a just turned one year old who had never slept, and a newborn baby girl. Who at a few days old, as I watched her weight drop and knew that my mothering instinct was right, I held up next to the window and took a good look in her mouth to find the source of her feeding problems. And discovered a gaping cleft palate.

Suddenly I was thrown into a different mothering role, of advocacy and survival and special needs feeding and impending operations and speech difficulties and hearing loss and all the questions and fears that come with something unexpected.

There are some seasons of life that just are the pits. Emotionally, that was one of my lowest times, with mounting insecurities and shame, and feelings of inadequacy and pressure, guilt and fear, loneliness and exhaustion.

But even in the pits, God heard me. Even when I couldn’t pray, He knew. He was closer than a friend. He saw into the depths of my soul and drew near. Maisie was and has always been a gift I didn’t know I needed.

Maybe lockdown is the pits for some of us. Lonely, fearful, painful, uncertain.

God hears. He hears the words we struggle to voice. He sees the pain we put a brave face on. He knows the fears we try and bury. He loves. he cares.

‘Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!’ – Psalm 4:1

‘As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God!’ – Psalm 40:17

We are never alone.