a big fat 3 good things

The checkout assistant waited whilst I rummaged through my handbag for my purse. Not surly, gum-chewing impatience, just a quiet, all-the-time-in-the-world patience. As I inserted the credit card in the machine she said ‘You do like butterflies and turquoise don’t you?’ It hadn't even occurred to me that I was all matchy, matchy and I was genuinely impressed with her attentiveness and observation.

This weekend just gone we visited our son and daughter in law for the last time before they move south, taking them and our grandchild-to-be an extra 2.5 hours away. I have mixed feelings about them being so far away but I know they have heard and prayed about the God-whispers calling them into a new chapter of their lives. (And should you southerners not look after our grandchild there will be wigs on the green.)

We attended morning service at the church where D has been working for the past few years. We have been there a few times before and in different contexts. The prompt to recount these things is strong. It feels good to be thankful, but I know in tiredness, vulnerability, and motorway traffic jams, gratefulness will easily evaporate.

*****

26 years ago we attended just the one service in the same church when D was a baby himself. We stayed with the minister and his wife. She observed me with him and suggested I might have depression. She was the first person to ever mention it. Then I had no idea, but now I am grateful to her more than she will know. Young motherhood was one of those pressure points which made the depression rise to the surface. It is not until much more recently that I have accepted depression as part of who I am, not just another sorry episode of failure (except during the tired and vulnerable moments.)

Thankful she noticed.

Much more recently we went to another service at the church as a family, a rare free Sunday when we could all be in the same place with all our grown up children. The speaker was talking about times when money was tight for him and his family, when their children were growing up. Hand-me-down and severely price-slashed winter coats, familiar to ours in the years when we were still a clergy family. 

At the end of the service D turned to me and said to me ‘You gave up a lot so you could spend time with us when we were little and we always had everything we needed’ (Rough translation ‘almighty cock ups notwithstanding I think you did an alright job’ - I’ll take the compliment). I know that whichever way motherhood had been done, stay at home or working, the way would have been littered with mistakes on all sides.

Thankful he noticed.

And on Sunday just gone within those same old stone walls we sang these words:

You are my rock in times of trouble

You lift me up when I fall down

All through the storm, Your love is the anchor

My hope is in You alone

I was overwhelmed with thankfulness at what God has done with, for and through us over the years. In spite of all of us really.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us” 1 Samuel 7:12

*****

This morning as I left for work a butterfly was gently flexing its wings on the wall by the front door. And then in the revoltingly overcrowded, standing room only train my nose was pressed up against the blouse of the woman in front (unobtrusive evidence and truly honestly not a selfie)

theology of laundry

One of those ordinary weekends playing keepy uppy and tackling the laundry. This morning whilst folding, I remembered a laundry related story from years ago.

When our children were small, as parents Sunday mornings consisted of a manic couple of hours supervising the washing and dressing of two pre-schoolers and one just-in-schooler. At the same time we tried to keep an atmosphere that might maintain the previous hours of holy preparation prior to preaching (him.) Anything else was a bonus (ie that I might actually have my top on the right way round and for extra points a dash of make up approximately applied.) The reality was that our children probably picked up a number of words they shouldn’t have, from me.

One such morning in the middle of it all daughter (who was still too young to speak properly) started yelping once her leggings were on her legs. It soon became clear that this did not fall into the category of a tantrum and that she was actually making a genuine commotion about something on her leg. The leggings came back off and she calmed down eventually. After a time the leggings went back on again and the yelling started even louder and so the leggings came off once more. Only this time it became clear what the problem was.

A wasp dropped onto the floor.

The black and yellow striped blighter had probably crawled into the leggings whilst they were on the washing line the day before and dozed off. It didn’t take too kindly to being woken up and consequently had stung daughter a few times before any of us worked out what was happening. Needless to say by this point she and I were both equally distraught and both stayed home that morning and shared lots of cuddles.

The story has been re-counted a few times since, under the bad mother header. At the time I felt awful that I had not been able to work out sooner what was happening. (And perhaps almost as bad that I had not ironed the leggings and squashed the problem beforehand). Anyway short of installing and monitoring washing line CCTV, BBC TV wildlife-style, I couldn’t have prevented it.

I was reminded just this week too of some painful experiences of recent years when I saw someone at the station. A person whose inability to deal with their own pain meant that pain was meted out to others, including us. And the associated feelings from that time quickly came rushing back, making me realise it’s not all dealt with yet.

We don’t want those we love to be hurt and to be in pain. We don’t want to be wounded by others. And pain inflicted by others sometimes reveals things about ourselves that we really don’t want to see.

All the foresight and micromanaging cannot prevent pain occurring. Sometimes it just happens.

Most of the time we are a work in progress along the way, releasing it to our Father as we go. And that’s OK.

But the peace that follows after we’ve moved through it is usually the best.

#lentphotos - 40 - loss

This photo was taken following a Baby Memorial Service. 

I attended the service as a musician but it is a particularly painful loss that I have never experienced personally. The sadness in the midst of that group of people was tangible and some families had lost multiple children. 

In our previous church one family lost a baby shortly after birth, another lost a teenage son to cancer and two families lost adult children (both to cancer). Others in and around these times talked about their children taken away before time from years ago, the heaviness of the weight of wounds remembered once more.

No matter what stage in life this happens, it is an unbelievably painful, raw, lonely and bleak loss. 

And there are the other losses too, family, friendship, health, employment, security, homes.. 

In the aftermath of loss unanswered questions hang in the air. Letting go is difficult.

Because the wounds of loss are often deep healing takes time. Steps towards disentangling peace from pain can be almost imperceptible, silently.mending.

On this day Good Friday we remember that love does its most significant work. 

Releasing us from all of our sins once and for all. 

In the agonising, raw and lonely pain of Jesus' death, the self-imposed injuries of our hearts are noiselessly and gently bound piece by piece.

A painstaking work in progress.

Your hands, though bloodied on the cross

survive to hold and heal and warn,

to carry all through death to life

and cradle children yet unborn.

Inspiration from lyrics of We cannot measure how you heal