On Saturday the 10th December I flew over from Adelaide to Perth for an extended holiday with Thea,Stew and ‘their patch work’ family. It has been wonderful with some stormy patches of “my way is the best way of doing something”, yet through all the ‘argy-bargy’ of Christmas, New Year , job loss, new house build finalising, summer school holidays etc we have gotten along very well. OK so I found myself drinking far too much diet coke vanilla and eating M and Ms.

Despite this I found myself once again wrestling with the Lord about what he can see for me and what I can see and want for me. He’s correct 100% of the time, I get that. However on a warm pre -Christmas day I found myself sitting on a beach at Bouvard, watching Thea and Stew setting crab pots out in the estuary while granddaughters and their friends tried to catch crabs in plant baskets nailed to poles by screaming and leaping in the air. I thought it was a fascinating and new way of crab catching, deafen them before scooping then up into the buckets they were towing.

It was then that as I looked across the water that I realised that I wanted to live here and that it was alright to do so, that the ‘footprint of George Shaw’ now lay lightly upon my soul and the land.I then set out to look at places for rent and talk to old colleagues about employment opportunities here in Education. I have wrestled with myself overt his and come to the conclusion that I need to make a decision and then take it to the Lord and wait on his answer as I move ahead with creating a new stage of my life.

I don’t fear living alone, in fact I think that this stage is part of my unfolding, a necessary ‘Aunty Peg’ phase of independence and making my way in life. Little did I know that when I was flying over what was to befall me. How was I to know that the combination of sea, water ways, WA plants and people was to find their way into my soul.