The Basran Family - Growing Faith at Home
An interview with Bex Basran
Beth Craggs
It had been a bit of a hectic morning at my house. I had hoped to get up early to spend a few minutes in prayer, but instead had snoozed my alarm and was running late. One of my kids refused to get dressed, another had misplaced a water bottle. I’d snapped at the third for blocking the hallway.
I started thinking wistfully of the Days Before Kids, when my time was my own, my sleep was sufficient, my patience well-stocked. By the time I met with Bex Basran, my list of personal regrets for the day had reached the double figures. During the interview, though, I began to see things with a completely different perspective.
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
Every time I think about the hour I spent in the company of the Basrans, I’m reminded of some verses from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:5,22-23) Throughout the – sometimes noisy, often chaotic - interview, Bex’s youngest two daughters climbed on and off her lap, their contributions to our conversation ranging from “Mummy, can you read this birthday card to me?” to “Mummy, when was this photo taken?”. While Bex shared her story, her experience, and wisdom, I watched in wonder as she demonstrated each of these fruits in the ways she responded to her little ones.
I left the interview feeling really humbled by Bex’s honesty about her faith and family, and the insights she’s gained from parenting her five daughters, aged 8, 7, 5, 4, and 2. Not only that, but so much of what she shares boils down to serving God in every situation, which is something that anyone can aspire to, whether or not they have young children.
Here’s a snippet from our conversation.
What brought you to Sheffield?
I came as a student to study history, and ended up staying on as the student worker for my church (Wycliffe). Before long, Sheffield just felt like home!
Can you share a moment that’s been pivotal for your faith?
Well, faith affects everything, doesn’t it? God changes your life completely. My faith affected me as a teenager: when my mum had cancer and when my sister had an eating disorder, it was really good to remember that God was in control and that He knew what He was doing, and that He was looking after me. My own father had died before I was born, so just to know that whatever happened to my mum, God would look after me, was a big comfort.
Then, my choices during and after university were all shaped by God. I was very much involved in international student outreach and telling people about Jesus. After finishing my role as student worker, I spent some time as an office temp. While I was doing the photocopying and making coffee, God was teaching me that I can serve Him and praise Him wherever I am, and whatever I’m doing. I was able to be a witness to the other people in the office. Later, I became a teaching assistant, because the hours meant that I had the energy to continue having people over to my house for Bible studies in the evenings, and going to the International Cafe [a meeting hub for international students]. So even though I had thought about serving God by training to become a teacher, I realised that it would mean giving up all the other ways that I was already serving.
God has definitely changed how I view myself, too, especially since becoming a mum. I realised that quite a lot of my identity had become caught up in the work I did with international students and other ministries, and being a mum slowly took all that away, until it was all I could do just to care for my kids: there wasn’t space for anything else. For a while, I felt really hampered by my children, but then I realised that actually this is just a different phase: that God has given me these children now to tell about Jesus. I was reminded that I didn’t need to earn His love, and that for now, the place that God wants me to share my faith is within my family. At the same time, I can also keep fulfilling my earlier callings by continuing to open up my home to others, and inviting them into our family.
What’s been bringing you closer to God recently?
Coming out of lockdown, suddenly life became very busy again, and seeing so many people being broken and struggling, I found it quite easy to feel really overwhelmed by all the need. My diary started filling up with events, my phone was full of people who wanted to arrange to meet up, and actually, the realization that I can’t do it all has thrown me back on to really wanting to pray to God to ask Him for help every day. Because I can’t do it on my own! I look at the day ahead and think “I don’t know how I’m going to do all that! God, please send somebody to help me or give me some kind of supernatural strength because I can’t do it on my own.”
Then there’s also all the complex questions that people have been coming out with as a response to Covid, such as, “Why bother with church?” and “Why has it all gone wrong?” It has really just impressed upon me the fact that God’s the only one who knows and He’s the only one who can give those answers. Remembering that makes me really want to read His words and sit and listen to what’s being said in church on Sunday because there’s no one else that makes any of that make any sense. So the enormity of everything being crazy messy, has really thrown me back on Him.
I’ve also just started reading a book called Love your Church, by Tony Merida, which is so encouraging, about how to love your church and team, and to see why God has put us together, and how He wants us as a team to serve Him.
How do you bring your faith into your family’s daily routine?
My husband Alex and I are always looking for opportunities to talk about Jesus and God, what He’s done and how He wants us to behave. Often, it comes up when the kids are fighting: we talk about God’s forgiveness and His love for each of us, and how we need to respect each other because He’s made us. We need to forgive each other because He’s forgiven us. That Jesus died so that we can be forgiven. And sometimes, in the middle of all the screaming and anger, when I’ve got really cross, I’ll try to stop, and pray out loud, and say something like “Sorry for screaming at my children and feeling that I need to control this situation. Help me to give thanks for them, help us to get to school on time without shouting at each other.”
Also, Alex recently bought my oldest two girls (they’re aged 8 and 7) one of the XTB Bible Notes, and they work through that together in the evening: one of them writes and one of them reads. Sometimes that in itself causes some fighting because one of them will want to read the prayer or something when it’s the other one’s turn. So when that happened the other day I had to interject with “God doesn’t want to hear you saying a prayer to spite your sister. He wants you to sort out your relationship with your sister first, and then you can talk to Him.”
Then with our five-year-old, we’ve just started a book called Everything a Child Should Know About God. Each section is very short: it might be something like “God made the world, He made everything in it and He made us.” Then it has a verse for you to check out in the Bible, so you look it up and read that. It takes less than five minutes but it’s kind of ideal, just a thought for the day and a moment to learn about God.
With my pre-schoolers, I’ve really appreciated going to toddler groups at local churches - there’s MiniKidz at City Church, Sticky Fingers at Christ Church Endcliffe, Wycliffe Church has Noah’s Ark - and they’re all lovely for sharing a Bible story and some child-friendly Christian songs that we can sing together throughout the week.
Alex really loves singing to the girls, so he’ll often spend time with them singing their favourite Bible songs, or teaching them new hymns, as part of their bedtime routine.
Do you have any family traditions around Christian celebrations like Easter and Christmas?
We try to join in with whatever our church is doing to mark the celebration. Last year we got the Real Easter Eggs, and the Real Advent Calendars, which come with chocolate and the Bible stories of Easter and Christmas. We all loved those as a family; reading the sections of the story, doing the activities together. At our church we also had an at-home Easter egg hunt, where each clue would be related to a part of the Easter story. That was really fun!
At Christ Church Endcliffe for these past two Christmases, we put on this event for the whole community called The Christmas Experience, which is an immersive walk through the Christmas story. You meet the different characters and hear their stories, and they’re all dressed up. The girls really enjoyed it: it brought the Christmas story to life for them.
Have you had any moments with your kids when you’ve seen them start to live their faith?
I’m beginning to have those moments with my older girls. My eldest - she’s 8 - is a real questioner. I used to worry about that and think that it was a bad thing. But now I see that she’s not doing it in a critical way: she questions because she wants to understand and make everything make sense in her head. So now, when she asks a question, I might say, “Well, what do you think? What do you know about God that might help you answer that?”
Then my second – she’s 7 – is very much not a questioner, but I’ve really enjoyed listening to her work through the XTB Bible Notes with her elder sister because they have to discuss the answers together, and it’s been great to hear their thought processes as they work through these questions about God and the Bible on their own.
How has having kids helped you grow in your own faith?
I think for me, having children has really highlighted my own sinfulness. There are all these small people demanding your time and attention. They are not thinking about you, they don’t care if you’re exhausted. They just need you to respond to their needs. And so that’s reminded me how much I need God’s grace.
I often think of a time when I was walking up the road back home from school with all five girls. And one of them had been complaining all the way back. She was complaining and complaining, about everything. In the end I just snapped, and I shouted at her in public down the street. I said “I am so sorry that I have collected you from school, that I have given you a snack, that I’m bringing you home to give you tea and let you watch TV if you need to. I am sorry that I care about you every day and try and make sure that you’re okay.” And then I stopped short because I suddenly realised, “I am shouting at this child that I prayed for.”
I longed for children. I really wanted them. And suddenly I realised that I was in essence saying to God, “Why have You given me children? They disobey me all the time.” And He could just as easily turn around to me and say “Oh, I’m sorry that I blessed you with the one thing that you actually asked for. I’m sorry that I blessed you abundantly with more than you actually wanted initially.” It made me realise that I’m just like the Israelites in Exodus. We can look at the story of how God brought them out of slavery and provided them with food and water and everything they needed, and when they complain it’s so easy for me to think, “How terrible they are, how ungrateful”, when actually I’m just the same and I really need God’s grace. I need Him to forgive me every day, because here I am complaining about my life when actually I’ve been given so much, and even if I lost it all, I’d still have reasons to rejoice because God is always there.
How do you carve out time for your own relationship with God?
I try to snatch moments throughout the day; if I realise that everybody’s happily playing or they’re watching the TV and I don’t have to make tea yet, I’ll try to take a minute to sit down to read the Word. I’ll also try to make the most of the opportunities through church: for example, there’s a women’s Bible study group during the day on a Friday which is great because I’m slightly more awake than during evening Bible studies. Also, after all the girls are in bed, I sometimes listen to songs from CityAlight. I find them so helpful as a way to meditate on scripture.
And for a while, I used to print out the notes we made for the international students – that had the Bible verse, sermon, and thoughts for the week – and I would stick them up on my coffee cupboard. That meant that whenever I went to make a coffee or tea I would have a reminder of what we’d been learning, and that was really helpful. I want to start doing that again soon.
As I watched Bex’s faith express itself so beautifully through the love she showed her children, I thought back to my own morning, my wish for more of my own time to spend with God. I realised that the answer was right in front of me: I can share my faith right here and now through showing love to the people God has brought into my life. When I feel like I’m messing up as a parent, or as a follower of Jesus - often both at once - God’s still there, ready to forgive me when I ask. His grace is sufficient, even for tired parents.
Bex talks about learning that she can serve God wherever she is, whatever she’s doing. Can you find a new way to serve God in whatever places you find yourself this month? As Bex reflects about feeling unable to do everything, and leaning on God each day, where might God be prompting you to lean more on Him in this season?
