A - Z Challenge - N: Noticing

Today is the first day of Spring, my favourite season of the year. Today is rainy so I am staying inside, but yesterday was the very best sort of day, the kind with sunshine and blue sky and little shimmers of colour in the corner of your eye wherever you looked. Remarkable really, as only seven days previously we'd been making snowmen. Only in England. 

This year the Spring Inspection is difficult for me. It's much lonelier, as my mum isn't here to see it and enjoy it with me; it was her favourite season too. We'd count down the days, stand by the window willing the weather to take a turn for the better and snuggling into blankets and throws while we waited. At the earliest opportunity we would carefully step outside to take a walk around the garden, latterly with mum leaning heavily on my arm and me always with an eye to the nearest bench or bit of wall on which to have a rest if she'd been on her feet too long. 

We'd wander round (always clockwise, for some reason) and hunt for signs of new growth. Tiny buds, leaves, shoots - any signs of life after the dullness of the winter hibernation.

Nothing went unnoticed as we gently cradled buds, avoided stepping on the crocuses and aconites, picked up fallen twigs from the silver birch or made mental notes of Things That Need Doing. 

Yesterday, Mothers' Day, I walked around the garden on my own and life was waiting for me. The snowdrops are nearly finished, the crocuses still spectacular and at their peak, daffodils just beginning. The hyacinths smell gorgeous, the muscari just beginning to bud and the currant bush looking as if it can't contain itself much longer.  

What undid me was the magnolia flower. Just the one flower on the stellata at the moment, although other buds are forming. The reason I stared at the single flower for so long with tears running down my face was that my Mum loved this little magnolia bush. It was a present from my brother and myself many years ago, but we had to move it from it's original spot  because of building work, and all gardeners know that magnolias are particularly grumpy about being moved. 

The star of the show

I was all for ditching it and buying another, to be honest, but Mum wouldn't have it, and she was in charge. So, we dug the biggest hole we could, took as much root as we could (it took two of us to lift it) and we planted it in a place far away from diggers and builders' feet, and we tended it as best we could. For years, the stellata sulked. No flowers for many a spring, then a handful of weedy, sickly looking  droopy flowers more like wilting splats than stars. In recent years it has looked definitely alive and doing ok, if not actually thriving, but I thought that maybe it was as good as it got. 

Every year there were the jokes about the magnolia that I wanted to kill, the one I didn't care about, the neglected one, the plant with hurt feelings - and here it was, one big, fat, happy-looking flower, and no Mum to see it. And, looking at the rest of the bush, this year looks like the year that I am forgiven. I'll post some more pics if I remember. 

I am reading a book at the moment about the importance of noticing things. Noticing the small things, the minute glimpses of joy and mystery and beauty. I realised that I used to write about it too - how the little things matter (sometimes vastly more than the so-called Big Things) and how the little things are vital for your soul. For my soul. I am determined to start noticing again.

It has been hard. I don't blame myself for shutting myself away from the world, withdrawing into myself and my small, insulated place of safety, because things have happened to us that meant it was the only way I could cope. I'm not sure there was another way, to be honest. But here, it's spring, with its newness and hope and it's sparkling, indomitable spirit, and, like that magnolia stellata, I must stop licking my wounds and harbouring my grievances and see if I can muster a flower. 

I have no idea if this is possible. If it turns out that it isn't, then alright, maybe some other time. I'm done with making promises (and this A-Z challenge is testament to that!) and I'm not ready to set goals. I just feel that I want to put it out there that this spring, heartsick as I am that Mum isn't here to see it, maybe I want to push towards the light with a new green shoot. 

Maybe nobody is looking, and that's alright. Maybe I am the only person to have noticed that immaculate stellata flower, but it would have opened its petals even if nobody ever saw it. It blooms because that's what it does. 

God notices. He doesn't miss a thing. 

And just as I gently lifted the magnolia flower between my fingers and lifted it to gaze full in its face, so He gently lifts my chin so that I can look in His face and notice that He is still there. 

Roll on Spring

Today's one of those days where spring seems a long way away.

It's a dark, dank day with wind that seems to be coming from every direction and throws cold rain in my face. The children have been bickering and fighting and I'm digging deep for reserves of patience that I can't find. Our house is particularly wintry today.

Lord - here you are. I'm dumping today in front of you because it's only eleven o'clock and I've had enough of it already. Last night I had one unsettling dream after another - about having experiments performed on me, about everyone laughing at me, about collapsing in front of a crowd of people. Getting up time seemed like the middle of the night, which is never a good thing. 

It's funny how the glass seems sometimes half full and sometimes half empty, isn't it? The other day we were marvelling how some of last years apples are still clinging onto the trees in the garden despite the fierce weather we've had recently. We commented on how they glowed in the light of a low winter sun, looking like little orange lanterns in the trees. Today they just look brown and rotten and even the birds don't want them.  The trees themselves seem more gnarled and covered in lichen than they usually do. I have been reliably informed that there are two snowdrops out in the garden already and it's a sign that Spring is on it's way - but you can't see them from the kitchen window and I can't be bothered to put on a few more layers to go out and have a look. Spring seems a long way away. 

Grump grump grump. 

I've said that the children can do whatever it is they do on their gadgets; some mindless game that causes hilarity and squabbling in pretty much equal measure. I know I should be playing games with them or doing a jigsaw or baking or designing a family mural for the stairwell or finding a cure for world poverty or something, but I haven't the energy. I just need five minutes. Or more. Five years, maybe. 

I've got a cup of coffee here but it went cold while I was adjudicating in the lengthy argument about the blue felt tip pen. I put it in the microwave a moment ago only to find already in there was a coffee from earlier and for some reason I burst into tears. 

Lord, you know what? There are times when I don't want to be with my children. 

There. I've said it. 

I feel very guilty that I said it and even guiltier that I think it from time to time. It's supposed to be different from that, isn't it? I'm supposed to be delighted with them twenty-four hours a day and constantly thinking up new ways to celebrate our family-ness. I don't think I'm very good at that. Sometimes it all gets to me and I want to run away and hide and not come out again. And then I feel guilty for not revelling in the undoubtedly precious gift of my girls. If I'm honest this happens quite a lot. Is there something wrong with me? 

You know that I love them. You know how much I love them. You know my strengths and weaknesses and you'll know that my current state of being is down to a mixture of lack of sleep, a cold, the time of year, hormones and good old self indulgent bad mood. 

I can't do anything about the first four and I don't want to do anything about the last one. It would take too much effort to be cheerful right now. 

I don't suppose it's any co-incidence that I haven't been talking with you much for a while. I find that when I stick close to you, hanging onto you, following in the footsteps like the page following King Wenceslas, then I feel better. Safer. More secure. But maybe gradually I've dropped back until the snow covered the footprints, and then for a bit I tried to find them so I could catch up, and then I stopped trying because it got too hard and so I sat down in the snow and felt sorry for myself. 

So I'm a bit adrift. Help me. I don't think I'm doing so well at anything today. At being a mummy, at being me. At being your child. 

I'm going to see if I can find those snowdrops. 

***

Brr. Cold out there. But there are indeed, just as Mum said, two little snowdrops that are just in bud. They'll flower in the next few days. A little bit of hope in this miserable, colourless season. A little bit of purity and beauty creeping up on us out of the mud and dead plants and fallen leaves of the season left behind. A bit of the future; a bit of promise. 

That's what I'm needing today. A bit of something positive. A little bit of peace.

I feel like a child today. I feel like howling and stamping and saying, 'But what about me? What about what I want?' but I'm a grown up and I'm not allowed to any more. And I probably should have feelings like that under control by now, but they bubble up to the surface sometimes and it's all I can do to sort of squash them so that people don't know how juvenile I can be. How selfish. 

I don't want to be like that. 

Thankyou for letting me get this off my chest. I do feel a bit lighter since I had a moan. 

I'm going to hang onto those little snowdrops. I'm going to go and see them again tomorrow. I shall watch as they unfurl into that tiny intricate little bit of early Spring. I hope that the snow doesn't come and cover them up. I hope that the crocuses and daffodils aren't far behind. I hope that the sun comes out soon.

Lord, I don't know if you ever just got out of bed the wrong side but thank you that you understand the whole range of human emotions and you don't condemn us for experiencing any of them. 

Thankyou that there's always another chance. Thankyou that even when I wallow in self pity for no real good reason you always care enough to help me up and brush me down. Thankyou for forgiving me and loving me all over again. 

I'm going to go and see if the girls will make room for me on the sofa. 

Crowded with you

Hello, God.

Your old friend CS Lewis said this:

'We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.'

I think this is true. I don't have a big brain, and so I can't quite get my head around it, this thing about the Creator of the universe who is so unimaginably huge that holds the galaxies in his hand, yet wants to know me. Wants to share in the minutiae of my life. In the same way I don't really grasp what it means that you are everywhere.

I saw you.

You are...everywhere. 

The thing is, I have noticed that some days I have eyes that see you and some days it's as if I'm walking round with my eyes shut. Some days you're everywhere and others you're nowhere to be found. I've come to realise that the former is true, even on the other sort of days. Sometimes I want to see you and my eyes and my mind is open and ready and eager to experience you, and then there are the times when I have my eyes screwed shut and my fingers in my ears and I'm shouting 'lalalala' rather than risk bumping into you. It doesn't mean that you're not there, though. 

And when I do see you all around me, I realise that the days when I ignore you are days when I miss out on so much. 

Hairy Caterpillar

This week we've had unseasonably warm weather. I had the opportunity to sit in the garden and do nothing because my older daughter was home from school poorly. We saw a dozen different types of bird on the bird table and splashing in the bird bath and we saw ladybirds and caterpillars and the most enormous bumble bee I have ever seen in my life. Spring is appearing all around me and in the last seven days the bare brown branches of trees have a haze of green on them. The magnolias have budded and blossomed and the leaves are starting to emerge. Shoots of plants that I'd forgotten about are starting to push through the heavy soil that desperately needs a bit of a dig. The grass was cut for the first time this year. The greenhouse is clean (ish) and I have packets of seeds that I'm looking forward to sowing. Soon, when the risk of frost is gone I'll pot up my bedding plants and wheel out the big yucca again and the front of the house will be in its summer plumage again. 

It's not just the signs of Spring that make me think of you. This week has not been a great one for me and yet you have been close by my side and I've been aware of you. Even at the moments that I've been least loveable, I have known that you have loved me. 

On Tuesday night my daughter Elizabeth told me that she didn't feel as if I loved her. This was after a particularly explosive bath and bedtime where we were all upset and angry but it hurt me very much. I cried and cried. I felt like an utter failure as a mother. The next day and the next, Elizabeth was poorly and we got to spend lots of time together. She needed her mummy and I was only too pleased to be needed. On Friday Lizzie made it back to school, a little pale and wraith-like, perhaps, but it was her class assembly and the last day of term before the Easter break so I said yes. 

We went to see her assembly and it was lovely. In typical Lizzie fashion she hadn't told us what her part(s) were in the assembly and it turned out that she read some bits, held up some pieces of work and then was the dove that left Noah's ark and came back with the olive branch to show that the waters were receding. She was a beautiful little dove in her pretty summer dress doing a fluttery dance around the 'ark'. 

I was very proud. 

Healing indeed. I hope I don't drop the ball again too soon. 

You are indeed everywhere.  In the darkness and the light. In the colour and the shadows. In happiness and misery. In success and failure. 

You're there in the Spring blossom and you're there when a child is sick. You're there in the middle of the night in the bathroom and you're there in the sun in the back garden. You're there loving me when we are ashamed of ourselves and you're there loving us when we think we're doing alright. There's forgiveness and acceptance and love. 

Thankyou for being there.

Thankyou..

for my family

for healing - physical and emotional

that Spring comes after Winter

for bumble bees and hairy caterpillars and ladybirds

that dead things come alive again

Thankyou...

that there's nothing I can do to make you love me more

that there's nothing I can do to make you love me less

Lord, keep my eyes open. The world is a darker place when I can't see you. Keep me looking and finding and noticing. 

Amen.

Pure joy and relentlessness

It's a beautiful morning, Lord.

The sun is out, the birds are singing, the magnolia buds are looking fat and pink and full of promise against the blue sky. The children went off to school happy as they're having their 'Mini-Olympics' today and are allowed to wear sports clothes for the day, and I have a little time to potter on my computer and check in with you. 

Two things have happened. Possibly three, but I need to work it out in my head and then I'll decide. 

(*actually, more than three.)

Magnolias in Spring

I walked back from school today and the world seemed in vivid colour. I put my headphones on as I walked and I chose a song that I like. However, as I put the iPod in my pocket, it jumped to another track. It was 'My Troubled Soul (Praise the Mighty Name of Jesus)'. This song has resonance for me as I've long been a worrier and I do believe you spoke to me through it some time ago. 

'My troubled soul, why so weighed down?

You were not made to bear this heavy load

Cast all your burdens upon the Lord

Jesus cares, he cares for you'.

(2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music / EMI)

I am so often weighed down and at the moment my anxieties are particularly burdensome. I've gone on and on about my worries so I know that you're aware of them; I know that it isn't your plan for me to stumble about here trying to carry something that's too heavy for me. How come I can't leave them with you when I do believe that you are there waiting, and I can trust you?

'...and all your worrying won't help you make it through...'

I can't make Katy better. I can't do anything on my own - I rely on you for every breath. I do indeed need to trust again in the promise of your love. 

'So I will praise the mighty name of Jesus

Praise the Lord the lifter of my head

I will praise the rock of my salvation

All my days are in his faithful hand'.

Lord, you really did lift my head. This morning as I walked back I noticed the magnolia buds against the blue of the sky. I noticed little green shoots on a bare hedge just starting to come to life again. If I hadn't looked up I would never have seen them. 

little green shoots of Spring

Lord my days are in your hand. So are my little Katy's and those of everyone I care about. I switched the computer on and a daily devotional by Max Lucado was in my email inbox. He was talking about just this. Everything is in your hand. It's under control. You've got this one. 

There's no point in fighting and kicking and objecting. 

'Trust again in the promise of his love'. 

It seems to be something that I need to do over and over again. I think I do trust you, then I realise how knotted up with worry and confusion I am and then you gently remind me and I understand that I've taken it all back. All the responsibility. All the heaviness. I can't stop Katy's illness. I can't even look after her as completely as I'd like. Only you can do that. Only you are all-encompassing. Only you will never let us down. It's only you. 

'I will praise the rock of my salvation.'

There's so much more going on this morning. I read a Bible verse first thing on my phone and I confess that I pressed the little 'next' button quite quickly because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. 

'Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.'

James 1:2-4

My initial response was 'Ha.' And I don't mean I laughed in a happy sort of way. Who can think to themselves, 'Hooray! Things are going badly at the moment! Praise the Lord! My life has come crashing down around me!'  Who? 

I don't get this one. So I pressed the button and found another verse that was a bit more to my liking for the day. I forget what it was. Perhaps that's significant.

But about an hour later a friend sent me a text with this very verse. She said, 'Courage and strength, my friend.'

Trials, yes. Joy? No. Testing of my faith? Seems likely. At this point I know that it would be perfectly possible to say that I don't understand why this is happening to Katy and I don't think you're being fair. But I can't do it without you. Where would I go, if not to you?  What shall I do, if not persevere? What choice do I have? 

Run away? It's tempting but it's not an option. Go to bed and refuse to move? Yeah, right. Also tempting, but I can't do that either. All I can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. Courage and strength. Yes please, give me courage and strength. 

Next in my eventful little hour was yet another little touch from you via technology. You are a God who moves with the times, are you not? 

I was browsing on the computer and I read the blog of a friend of mine who lives many miles away across the sea and yet I feel as if I know her. She is my sister in you. We're family. She pointed me to you this morning.

Dwelling in the House: Relentless

'Over the last few months, God has been teaching me about belief in the face of

unyielding circumstances.

Faith boils down to this: do I just believe in God - 

or do I believe God?

You see, I've got some stuff in my life that is not.

More than once, I have cried out in prayer, 'Lord, this situation won't end. It is relentless!'

His answer:

So am I.'


(Ginger, December 2010)

This made me sit back in my chair. Well, actually it's a stool, so I didn't sit back as such, but I straightened up and took my hands off the keyboard in a sort of 'pause' moment. 

Katy's lump is back and now there are two. This disease seems relentless. The surgeon told us that if he hadn't got it all, it might come back, and getting it all was difficult as the tumour was wrapped around a nerve in her neck. He must have left some. And it started growing, relentless. Slowly at first, perhaps it was a little stunned following four hours of surgery attacking it. It hadn't been beaten. Slowly, determinedly, then picking up pace, but relentless. 

So are you. You are bigger than the universe, let alone bacteria. You are bigger than anything, and our troubles are so small in comparison that they should be nothing to you, and yet you reach down to reassure me. You reach down to hold Katy's heart so that in church on Sunday when our Rector asked, 'Who will let Jesus into our homes?' Katy's hand shot up and she said 'Yes! Open the door!'

The illness might be relentless, and so are you. You won't give up on us, will you?

You cannot be beaten.

I might not understand why or when or anything much at all, really, but then you tell me that I don't have to understand. Just trust. 

Trust again in the promise of your love.

I have lots of stuff in my life that is not trusting you. Help me parcel it up and leave it in front of you. Leave it with you. 

Thankyou for lifting my head to see the magnolias against the blue sky. 

Thankyou for good, good friends who have wisdom to share and for obedience to you when you prompt them to share it. 

Thankyou for your word, and I'm sorry I sort of snorted at it this morning.

I'm struggling a bit with the 'pure joy' part. 

Help with this would be gratefully received. 

The smileyness of daffodils

Hello God.

Things to thank you for.

In list format, as my brain isn't feeling up to putting in all the little joining and describing words. I know that I've been down in the dumps lately and I need to look up at you for a while so that I can get a refill of joy.

Oh thank you thank you thank you. There are signs of Spring! Daffodils are coming out. I love daffodils. I love the determined cheerfulness, the extravagant shape of the flower, the vivid colour against the fading Winter greys and browns. I've got a glassful of daffodils right in front of me now and behind them is a bowl of fruit; red and green apples and oranges and the yellow of the daffs. It's beautiful. Daffodils are smiley. They make me feel smiley. Daffodils spread smileyness. You can't look at daffodils and not smile, can you? Did you plan it that way?

I bet you did.

Thankyou for blue skies and sunny days and the promise of time spent outdoors. For wellies and muddy gardens and not bothering to look after the lawn because the sound of my children having fun is more important.  Thankyou for big trees and tiny little green buds on the bare skeletons of hedgerows. All full of promise and hope and newness and potential.

Thankyou for showing me.

Thankyou for families that take care of each other when they're poorly. Thankyou for Mums who produce Poorly Person Biscuits just when needed and who give permission to go and lie down just when needed as well. 

Thankyou for my little apple swan (Bramley) who made his way out of the fruit bowl and into our lives via a YouTube clip that someone sent me. Something so simple can be so magical. The children were impressed at my prowess with a kitchen knife. So was I, actually. 

Thankyou for the rainbow against a marvellous purple sky right now as I look out of the window with the sun behind me and the fine rain coming down. All the colours of the paintbox and more in a fleeting display that lasts only minutes. Just because you could. 

Thankyou for the artwork stuck to the kitchen cupboards made for me by my little girls who wanted to say Get Well Soon to Mummy. Lizzie did a wonderful house and garden scene with a huge slide and Katy did a picture of her favourite meal to tempt me to eat when I was off my food. (It's sausages and chips with peas and tomato ketchup, if you couldn't tell.) They make me smile every time I see them. And since they're stuck to the door of the cupboard where the biscuits are, that's quite often. Convalescence, you know. Got to give in to the biscuit cravings. Ahem.

Thankyou for the beauty and innocence of their faces asleep last night when I looked in on them at bedtime. For some reason Elizabeth looked breathtakingly lovely last night. I don't know if it was the tilt of her head or the way her hair framed her face but she looked wonderful. I could have gazed at her forever. 

Thankyou for my husband who as I type this is bent over a disemboweled computer explaining the component parts with infinite patience to our eldest daughter and letting her fit the bits in as he mends it. 

I'm going to go to the toyshop now and choose a present for Katy, who'll be five on Wednesday. Five years since I had my smallest baby; how did that happen? That little one who snuggled into me and fed for those long hours in the night when there was only the two of us in the world?  That little one whose cuddles I love so very much suddenly become a child who can read a little and write a little and even spell?  How is it that they grow up so fast? What sort of toy can we buy her that might stimulate her, entertain her and yet keep her little a while longer?

Well, Saturday afternoon and lots to do. I'm glad we talked. 

Thankyou for teaching me to look around and see how wealthy I am. How many blessings. How much I have. How rich I am in every way that matters. 

The sun is out. The daffodils are yellow. Bramley the apple swan is going brown and his head is drooping.

Best eat him, I think.  

Snowdrops and grumpiness

Morning, Lord

Today's one of those days where spring seems a long way away. 

It's a dark, dank day with wind that seems to be coming from every direction and throws cold rain in my face. I've just taken Katy to her swimming lesson and found the changing rooms noisy and echoey and claustrophobic where normally they don't bother me. Since we got home the children have been bickering and fighting and I'm digging deep for reserves of patience that I can't find. Our house is particularly wintry today.

And I don't feel very well.  

Lord - here you are. I'm dumping today in front of you because it's only eleven o'clock and I've had enough of it already. Last night I had one unsettling dream after another - about having experiments performed on me, about everyone laughing at me, about collapsing in front of a crowd of people. Getting up time seemed like the middle of the night, which is never a good thing. I'm tired and I have a headache and a sore throat and a runny nose. 

It's funny how the glass seems sometimes half full and sometimes half empty, isn't it? The other day we were marvelling how some of last years apples are still clinging onto the trees in the garden despite the gales and fierce weather we've had recently. We commented on how they glowed in the light of a low winter sun, looking like little orange lanterns in the trees. Today they just look brown and rotten and even the birds don't want them.  The trees themselves seem more gnarled and covered in lichen than they usually do. Mum told me earlier that there are two snowdrops out in the garden already and it's a sign that Spring is on it's way - but you can't see them from the kitchen window and I can't be bothered to put on a few more layers to go out and have a look. Spring seems a long way away. 

Grump grump grump. 

I've parked the children in front of the television. I know I should be playing games with them or doing a jigsaw or baking or designing a family mural for the stairwell or finding a cure for world poverty or something, but I haven't the energy. I just need five minutes. Or more. Five years, maybe. 

I've got a cup of coffee here but it went cold while I was adjudicating in the lengthy argument about the blue felt tip pen. I put it in the microwave a moment ago only to find already in there was a coffee from earlier and for some reason I burst into tears. 

Lord, you know what? There are times when I don't want to be with my children. 

There. I've said it. 

I feel very guilty that I said it and even guiltier that I think it from time to time. It's supposed to be different from that, isn't it? I'm supposed to be delighted with them twenty-four hours a day and constantly thinking up new ways to celebrate our family-ness. I don't think I'm very good at that. Sometimes it all gets to me and I want to run away and hide and not come out again. And then I feel guilty for not revelling in the undoubtedly precious gift of my girls. If I'm honest this happens quite a lot. Is there something wrong with me? 

You know that I love them. You know how much I love them. You know my strengths and weaknesses and you'll know that my current mood is down to a mixture of lack of sleep, a cold, the time of year, hormones and good old self indulgent bad mood. 

I can't do anything about the first four and I don't want to do anything about the last one. It would take too much effort to be cheerful right now. 

I don't suppose it's any co-incidence that I haven't been talking with you much for a while. I find that when I stick close to you, hanging onto you, following in the footsteps like the page following King Wenceslas, then I feel better. Safer. More secure. But maybe gradually I've dropped back until the snow covered the footprints, and then for a bit I tried to find them so I could catch up, and then I stopped trying because it got too hard and so I started off on my own. 

So I'm a bit adrift. Help me. I don't think I'm doing so well at anything today. At being a mummy, at being me. At being your child. 

I'm going to see if I can find those snowdrops. 

***

Brr. Cold out there. But there are indeed, just as Mum said, two little snowdrops that are just in bud. They'll flower in the next few days. A little bit of hope in this howling wind and driving rain. A little bit of beauty creeping up on us out of the mud and dead plants and fallen leaves of the season left behind. A bit of the future; a bit of promise. 

That's what I'm needing today. A bit of something positive. A little bit of peace.

I feel like a child today. I feel like crying and howling and stamping and saying, 'But what about me? What about what I want?' but I'm a grown up and I'm not allowed to any more. And I probably should have feelings like that under control by now, but they bubble up to the surface sometimes and it's all I can do to sort of squash them so that people don't know how juvenile I can be. How selfish. 

I don't want to be like that. 

Thankyou for letting me get this off my chest. I do feel a bit lighter since I had a moan. 

I'm going to hang onto those little snowdrops. I'm going to go and see them again tomorrow. I shall watch as they unfurl into that tiny intricate little bit of early Spring. I hope that the snow doesn't come and cover them up. I hope that the crocuses and daffodils aren't far behind. I hope that the wind calms down soon.

Lord, I don't know if you ever just got out of bed the wrong side but thank you that you understand the whole range of human emotions and you don't condemn us for experiencing any of them. 

Thankyou that there's always another chance. Thankyou that even when I wallow in self pity for no real good reason you always care enough to help me up and brush me down. Thankyou for forgiving me and loving me all over again. 

I'm going to go and see if the girls will make room for me on the sofa. 

Tough as a pansy

Good morning, God!


The sky is blue, the sun is shining, the daffodils are flowering, there are little bits of green on all the bare twiggy bushes and it's mild enough for me to take my coffee down the garden to drink while I survey what's left of the plants after the cold, cold winter has taken it's toll.  


I love Spring. It's such a hopeful time of year. All the newness and freshness.  You know what struck me the other day, Lord? I drove the car onto our drive and there's a little flower border down one side.  Last summer I planted some pansies, yellow and red ones. When it came to the end of Autumn and I was pulling out the spent bedding plants, I hesitated with the pansies as the garden centres at that time of year are full of 'winter flowering pansies' and I didn't actually know if a pansy was a pansy, or if there were hardy pansies and pansy pansies, if you see what I mean, and since mine had been planted in May, whether they would do their thing all winter or if I needed the Grr version of the pansy to do that job.

Well, I pulled onto the drive and glanced at the bedraggled looking border, and there are my pansies, particularly the yellow ones, with a profusion of flowers and buds, looking bushier and more cheerful than ever.  They'd survived all winter, with all that snow; we had more than two feet of it at one point - and temperatures as low as minus 14 degrees.  
And those determined little pansies flowered all the time, and now that Spring is here they're turning their beautiful little faces to the sun and flowering all the more.


How lovely is that?  


I know there are so many life applications I could take away from this little observation, Lord; I know that you looked after the tiny flowers through all that harsh weather and how much more will you look after me with all the rubbish that life throws at me.  I know that there's a lesson to be learned about being hardy and determined enough to carry on flowering despite hardship and ice and enormous fuel bills and deep snow.  


The thing I like most is your attention to detail.  Tiny pansies. A low-growing, small, clumpy little plant, but they lived through the winter when so many of my other shrubs didn't - bigger and showier plants that you'd think were stronger have turned up their toes and died.  


My little pansies are happy in the Spring sun and I love them for it.  


And I love you for it too. 

Keep taking the pills

Thankyou God!


Spring is here - milder weather, blue sky (howling arctic gale, but we'll overlook that), crocuses and daffodils coming up, little tiny bits of green on the trees and hedges.  It's almost time to plant tomato seeds and put them on the kitchen windowsill and forget to water them, and the children are wanting to go outside to play again even though the garden is muddy. Because the garden is muddy.


It's usually the time of year that really energises me; makes me feel hopeful and optimistic (within the parameters of my characteristic pessimism, I mean) and generally cheers me up.  This year it's not happening.


I stood outside Elizabeth's school today being buffeted by an icy wind (why does her class always come out last whenever it's cold or raining?) and contemplated how not happening my Springness was this year. I could see the daffodils they'd planted along the side of the classrooms and the crocuses in neighbouring gardens and little bright green things on some bushes, and it was sunny and yet I just felt like waking up from hibernation, opening one eye and then closing it again and deciding to give it another month or so.


This time last year I'd already cleaned the greenhouse and organised the plant pots and had smiled a lot more and written about how wonderful it was to see clothes drying on the clothes line again after a winter in the tumble dryer.


Why am I so apathetic?  I put it down to three things:


1.  I am definitely not a picture of health at the moment.  I've got a season ticket to the GP, who smilingly informed me that I was 'chronically viral' the other day and this very morning added encouragingly that my immune system must be pretty much knackered (as you know, that wasn't the word he used. His was slightly less polite, to my surprise).  I am at present attacking three separate ailments with antibiotics and I ran out of paracetamol the other day - and you know how obsessive I am about having crates of painkillers ready for every eventuality.


2.  I have given up Facebook for Lent. This might sound trivial and somewhat frivolous, but I am definitely missing the company and support of my online mates.  Today I would have posted that I'm not a happy bunny, and they would have doubtless been supportive and sympathetic and encouraging and made me feel loved. Hmmph.


3.  Something else.


I feel as if things are going wrong for me.  One thing after another is breaking, crumbling, aching, becoming troublesome. Is this the co-incidence thing that we've talked about recently?  The more I step out in faith, the more difficult things get?  The more I try to do for you - the more excited I feel about my walk with you, the more I find obstacles in front of me?  Maybe my giving up my prodigious Facebook habit in order to concentrate more on you is making (ahem) The Enemy feel uncomfortable, so he's throwing in my way circumstances that would normally have me running to my support network?  That sounds a tad melodramatic to me, but as you know, I haven't really got this devil thing sorted out. 


CS Lewis (who spoke so much sense) said that it makes the devil happy when we underestimate him but I still feel a bit uncomfortable about giving him credit for all the duff things that are going on right now. I must get to grips with the idea of spiritual warfare. That's for another day.


To continue my whinge, I'd like to bring it to your attention that this week I've missed two church meetings I really wanted to go to, am even as I chat with you now I'm missing the lovely acapella group that lifts my spirits so much. I've had to cancel a coffee date that I've been looking forward to for weeks as I've got something stressful that has to be done in the afternoon and I know that I can't fit in both things either time-wise or energy wise and I'm unprepared for both.  I have spent much of the time that I should have been busy doing this week sleeping instead, which in itself is a blessing but doesn't seem to have given me the boost I would have expected.


Oh I just need to get a grip, don't I?  


I can see you nodding, only you do it in such a way that I can't take offence.  You've got that lovely indulgent, loving expression on your face so that I don't feel got at, I just feel like my Daddy is amused by me, but loves me too much to take the mickey.  


What do I do, Lord?  What do I do to feel full of energy and expectancy and enthusiasm again?  Can you see your way clear to just filling me with it while I sleep tonight so that tomorrow I start the day feeling great?


Or maybe I just have to keep on keeping on.  Be a brave soldier.  Learn to be a bit more self sufficient without my Facebook buddies?  Or better still more dependent on you. Look at you when my instinct is to look to them.  Listen to you when I'd be seeking advice in cyberspace.  These are fundamental things, aren't they, Lord?  I am such a spiritual baby sometimes.


Psalm 121

'I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
   where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD, 
  the Maker of heaven and earth.'


So if I lift my eyes up I might see you. 


Or at least, if I'm lifting my eyes then I'm not focused on the ground, on the problems, on the puddles and the mud, unable to see the vastness of the sky, and the sun, and you.  If I lift up my eyes I'm not looking inwards, or at myself and my problems and hurts and anxieties.  I know that you won't let me down.  I've been here before, when I'm feeling bewildered and hurt that you're letting these things happen to me and maybe I'll never get to the bottom of why.  But, as I've said before, what I do know is that you will never leave me.  And if I can't feel you next to me, that doesn't mean that you're not there.


'The LORD will keep you from all harm—
   he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
   both now and forevermore.'


You always have, and you are still watching over me. 


So why is all this rubbish happening and why do I feel so low?  I don't know.  Maybe when I'm wiser and more mature as a Christian I might understand what it's all about; or maybe not.  Maybe that saying is true, that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  


Maybe I knew that when I started to do new things for you, when I gave you a little tiny bit more of me than I'd done before, when I just opened another little door of my life and let you in, a bit that I'd been withholding, maybe I knew that I would meet with opposition.  Maybe as the angels celebrate, in another place there are demons grinding their teeth (now I do sound like CS Lewis).  


Well, I'm going to keep on with this, I'm going to keep on talking to you, and leaning on you heavily.  


I'm going through this week with my worship CD on in the car, my devotions applications on my iPhone, my Rick Warren book and the new one by Eric Delve on my bedside table next to my Bible, and the distraction of Facebook absent for once.  


Ok then.  I'll keep taking the pills.