letter to the one(s) who noticed

‘Wedding day arrived!’ a friend’s facebook status this morning. Her daughter is getting married today. A child’s wedding is a most precious and joyous experience. Knowing the story behind her getting to this place (adoptions and a late natural conception) I know there will have been an extra measure of joy at that wedding today.

Our eldest son got married last year and the wedding was conducted by Vic (not his real name.) Vic was a late replacement for the original vicar who had to pull out. He was relaxed about photography during the service (unlike the original vicar who had said a blanket no.) The photographer took a number of photos of Vic during the service in action, both men doing what they loved best. As a thank you the photographer gave Vic and his family a framed photo as a gift. Tangible gratitude in art form became a genuine treasure for Vic’s family when he died just a few months later.

As Jesus entered a village, ten men, all lepers, met him. They kept their distance but raised their voices, calling out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Taking a good look at them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” They went, and while still on their way, became clean. One of them, when he realised that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough. Luke 17:11-13 (msg)

And the mind can be a deceitful thing, playing tricks and telling you for sure that ‘no-one notices.’ Even when you know it is a lie hijacking and demanding full attention. It becomes a step on a muddy slope and before you know you are sliding uncontrollably towards the bottom, into the pit.

Ignored comments roll away empty, a whoosh of tumbleweed across a room

Sometimes you can’t articulate feelings

Some days you can’t see the amazing, challenging, moving and powerful that others are able to see, just the all consuming black or the dreary grey

At times it is just hard slog

Period

That’s when you really want someone to notice

And then you can just about make out the chink of light that reaches into the pit. Either the friend who is giving you an empowering hand to haul you out or the one who is sitting in there with you until your heart is still and calm again (neither of you noticing muddy asses.)

Whether you are the One or the ones I can’t thank you enough.

This is for all of you xx

Linking up with Ruth & Sabrina at #LettersTo (at Sabrina’s Ruth's place this week)

story (5 minute friday)

Joining with the writing flash mob that is Five Minute Friday at the home of the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. Writing not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. For joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker.

Five minutes on story

Forty years ago today on the Isle of Man, a small island off mainland Britain, a huge fire ripped through a holiday complex called Summerland. Fifty happy holidaymaker’s lives were lost.

We were on holiday as a family in the same town at the time. I was too young to absorb the impact of the situation and its awfulness.

It is one of those sad events that is perhaps not as widely covered as some others. Fifty lives whose stories were snuffed out agonisingly and many more who have suffered since from the loss of  a close  family member.

Photo credit: Neal Fowler (Fragile)

The fire was started by the careless discarding of a cigarette

How often do our careless words have a destructive impact on others’ stories? Changing the course of events and missing God-given opportunites to shower grace.

Let us learn to love well and not be a spark to a devastating inferno, one that burns up and suffocates another.

Be oxygen to draw out the best in each other's story and recognise the true value of our own.

beware the moose

Ok it was a late thought but I think, significant. 

Over the weekend I had a not so good day (full, heavy head and mental lethargy.) For once I forewarned The Scotsman rather than plough on, letting the negative cycle kick in, take over and spontaneously combust some time later exploding in our faces, with an all too familiar choreography.

While brushing my teeth at the end of the day it occurred that I am finally learning to speak up more when the bad days set up camp.

Over the years having unwittingly absorbed mum's tendency to put her own needs right at the back of the queue, it is all too easily second nature to do the same and I have long relegated feelings to the end of the line. Risky when they are screaming, kicking and demanding to be addressed. 

And I'm sure this has an effect when sharing well-being (or not-well-being) with others. If a person I am telling seems disinterested, I usually register fairly quickly and don't bother carrying on. But at home disinterest is tinder to the fire and I get into a cycle of not feeling valued if I haven't been listened to. I forget The Scotsman is human too and that's where the explosive confrontations occur.

I guess it might mean gambling more often, ploughing on and sharing frailties with others. Even in the face of perceived disinterest. And even when tentative hints lead to the other person taking over the break and filling it with themselves. 

It is glorious when my convoluted clues do break through and I know a connection has been made. 

Equal space


But not everyone can deal with vulnerability face to face 

In fact they might feel more at home being faced by an angry moose...

#3goodthings [21 July 2013]

17 July
BBQ-ing with home group
watching swifts swooping at dusk
getting to know our new Youth Worker

20 July
seeing my lovely brother & sister in law
seeing Chagall exhibition at Tate
Brazilan Fiesta procession


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21 July
the Liverpool Museum
Liverpool Doors (a poetry on doors project)
fascinating stories of Liverpudlians with mixed Chinese/English/Irish heritage


237 gifts

a letter to explain (Sat Dad)

A letter to try to explain what I seem to have been unable to explain to others for years. Not for want of trying. Maybe I have given up too easily when someone else fidgets uncomfortably while I try to talk and let the distraction of that dictate how much I say. Just possibly perhaps someone has understood but I have not registered because of reactions exploding in my head in their own little firework display.

I love my Dad. He has been through alot during the last five years, losing his wife (my mum to cancer), having treatment and life changing surgery for cancer himself and now watching his only son receive treatment, also for cancer. A lot of change and grieving to journey through, and all that pressing into the process of the natural degeneration of synapses that goes with ageing, the body slowing down and the loss of confidence. 

And this is all true, yet somehow once I go down this road of separating out his trials, giving them the greater weight, because they are somehow worse on a scale of 1-10 suffering, my side of things starts to diminish. Shoving my stuff back down because it seems less important in comparison. 

Lately things have been beginning to leak back out into the overflow car park, because the main one is full again.

Co-dependancy is a huge factor in how both my parents operated. Mum was the one who tended to everyone’s needs, leaving her own unhealthily at the bottom of the pile. And I guess too she acted as a bit of a dam stopper for Dad and a fair amount of that now rushes out in uncontrolled bursts towards me and my brother in conversations. And he seems to have absolutely no idea what he is doing. Sigh.

Melody Beattie in The New Codependency articulates the situation so well, and I am using some of her words in quote/paraphrase here:

Communication that drains energy or power from someone under the guise of “talking”  

Dad has always taken great pride in being able to navigate himself to places by looking ahead at the map and driving himself without using anyone else to direct him en route (he was a Geography teacher and it is a natural passion.) So because he feels secure in such knowledge, a common conversation thread is for him to ask what route we take when we go places and then proceed to tell us which way he would have gone and why it is better. When our daughter took a train journey over Christmas the unsolicited advice regarding her planned route came thick and fast. To each one of us, separately. I try not to engage knowingly with these types of topics to prevent the predictable direction these things take, and often I end up saying very little in phone conversations. He is firmly installed in the driving seat and in the thick of it I have little idea of how to take the steering wheel back off of him.

People may act like they want to have a conversation with us, but many people with codependency issues use conversation as a way to get us to take care of them. People segue from asking how the other person is into begging the person to tell them what to do, listen to them complain, or take care of them emotionally. If someone is “taking power” in communication, it can be detected by how the person who is robbed of power feels when the conversation ends— exhausted, drained, or depleted. 

All this keeps on happening during ‘talking’ and it feels like a never ending circle going nowhere ever. I can’t see it changing and really some days the sad thing is that I wish Dad was gone too so I didn’t have to do it. Any more.

Normally at this point in writing I would say but-God, and try to tie it with a neater bow. But the ribbon is frayed at the moment and the paper torn.

It feels like the one prayer that is just out of reach, where God is not saying much. Not to say that there are not shards of grace in there sometimes, but most of the time it is just hard going.

I am happy for this post to stay linked to Ruth's blog as it feels that this is a safe place for it to be. I would prefer it not to be posted out further, thanks people!


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Linking up with Ruth & Sabrina at #LettersTo (at Ruth's place this week)