Empty hands

I had coffee last week with someone who has just finished treatment for cancer. 

It was an incredibly uplifting conversation. It's clear that God really can bring something wonderful out of the most depressing and ominous of circumstances. The cancer was stage three - it had spread to lots of lymph nodes and the doctors have no way of knowing whether it has crept further on still in the bloodstream. Time will tell. 

Isn't that the human condition? Time will tell. We don't know. Technology doesn't know. Modern medicine doesn't know. The best that we can offer is 'time will tell.' And we think we're really clever. 

And yet, in that inexplicable way that we hear about occasionally, it's not all bad news.

The cancer has brought this lady closer to her family. She understands her body more than she did before and has learned to listen to its needs with more care. She has been forced to reassess her priorities; both in terms of tasks that need doing with limited energy, and also on a larger scale, not knowing what the rest of her life looks like; what is really important? She has been in receipt of such care and kindness from the people round her that she now knows that she is loved after years of doubting it. 

All these things are precious gifts. I wonder, is it possible to receive these gifts without the imperative of grave illness? 

I found myself nodding in agreement as she spoke of priorities, of understanding the important and the trivial and learning to tell the difference, and yet I wonder if it's really possible to see such things as they are from a position of full health (as far as I know; time will tell). 

Is it? Is it possible?

We spoke of those moments where something that you've always 'known' becomes real heart knowledge - the moment that the penny drops. The eyes widen slightly; something falls into place. You turn to another person and tell them of the mini-revelation you've just had and they look at you, bemused, because yes, they've known that too, but they don't see like you do. It's obvious... and yet it suddenly means something wholly different and more profound. 

The realisation that this is not all there is.

This life can be full of joy, or full of pain, or a mixture of both and many other things, but when you're in a place of grief and loss and fear and helplessness, it's a tremendous comfort to know that this is not all there is. CS Lewis said in his Narnia book 'The Last Battle', I think; this life is only the cover and the title page of the story of our experience. It's only when we reach heaven that the real story begins. A lifetime seems long (though only time will tell) and yet it is just fleeting in comparison with eternity, where the story will begin in earnest, and each chapter is better than the last... 

The realisation that any sense of control we have in this life is an illusion.

When all is well and life is trundling along uneventfully, we think we have everything sorted. All is well. I know what today is like, what tomorrow is likely to bring. I have plans. I know what I'm capable of, and I am full of hopes and dreams and expectations.  I want to be in control more than anything. I want to be able to decide what I do, what will happen and when.And then... I am not well. The doctors will do their best and my body will do it's best to handle the medicine that might be worse than the illness itself, but suddenly tomorrow is not guaranteed after all. Suddenly the hopes and dreams might have to be shelved. Suddenly I can do nothing about any of this. I am even too weak to climb the stairs unaided. 

When I open my hands to Jesus because there is no-one else, and nothing else to do (because I've looked around for something else - anything) I find that my hands are empty. They've always been empty. I've been grasping tight in my fists... nothing. Holding on to something that never existed.

My hands are empty. 

I am trying to be fit. I am trying to lose weight, to eat healthily, to get exercise to feel and look better. I think it's working a little bit - last night at swimming I paused at the end of my lane to catch my breath and I put a hand on my heart and felt it beating so, so fast - and I thought to myself how grateful I am that it can do that. I ask it to pump oxygen around my body faster, faster, more, more.... and my heart rises to the occasion. That is a miracle, and I can't do a single thing about it. One day it will stop beating completely, and I can do nothing about that either.

(I hope I'm not in the pool at the time.)

I'm not trying to be morbid or focus on the inevitability of death, though I imagine perhaps that's how it sounds.  As we had our coffee and my friend told me how different the world looks when you have a diagnosis of cancer, it was not a pathetic, frightening thing, though both fear and sadness were things we discussed. The 'penny-drop' moments that she described made me realise one thing, and it's a good thing, a reassuring thing, a very, very precious thing. Really, it is. 

Our lives are in His hands. 

In His hands, and there is no safer place. They are not our own, and we take every breath because of Him. 

I read somewhere one of those pictures with inspiring words on it that someone created, and it said, 'When Jesus is all you have, that's when you realise that Jesus is all you need.' 

When you have no certainties left - when your very life is threatened, none of the things we chase after in our affluent western world; wealth, position, influence, comfort... those things don't seem important. Not even the good, wholesome things like health, family, love. None of them will help when we glimpse death, and told that he might be coming soon. No, only one thing comes into clear focus, and that is Jesus. 

The only decision we make that truly matters is this. To open our empty hands and lift them to Him. And, as my friend testifies, the treasure that He fills them with makes us realise that we have never before known true riches.

That's what's real. 

Dreams and dead things

I don't like autumn. I know, every time I say that (and I have mentioned it before) there's a collective groan from the autumn-lovers.  They speak of vibrant oranges and yellows and reds and the exhilaration of kicking their way through piles of gorgeousness on brisk, bright mornings and they eat pumpkin and make chutney and so on.

I don't do any of that. Today the rain keeps on coming down and it's mid-morning but still hasn't become properly light. It's dank and miserable. Everywhere the world is getting darker. Death is all around me. The few leaves that weren't blasted into next week by yesterday's storms are swirling into brown drifts. The plants need cutting back to clear away the dead stalks, spent seed pods and rotting foliage, and I'm not tempted to go and do some gardening.

Autumn is a time of decay, shrinking, dying. 

I sit here with both hands round a cup of coffee and I listen to the rain on the roof and contemplate the long months until the days start to get longer. 

I know, it happens every year. You'd think I'd be used to it. Perhaps I should stare at a white screen for a while until I get my share of daylight. Alternatively perhaps I should shut up and look on the bright side. 

It'll soon be Christmas. 

Anyway, I think I'm growing up. I've realised something about autumn. 

Leaves are falling from the trees onto my flower beds. They will eventually make a blanket over all the sleeping shrubs and bulbs and the blanket will help keep moisture in and protect the ground from frosts until it slowly composts down into the soil. The drifts of fallen leaves will dissolve into leaf mould, leaving my heavy, clay-ey soil richer and conditioned. 

Underground, I imagine the roots and bulbs snuggling down for a winter sleep and taking on board the nourishment from the soil around them. Undisturbed by footballs and footsteps, the garden rests. Takes a deep breath and sighs. Relaxes before the brighter sun, warmer temperatures and longer days start to signal that it's wake-up time. Spring rise-and-shine time. 

But autumn is for snuggling down. Putting on the heating and digging out the woolly socks.

The tree lets the leaves fall to protect itself from the relative dryness of winter - it's a survival mechanism. The dead stuff that falls and decays and is so often the focus of my autumn grumpiness is essential to the cycle of the plants in the garden. 

Things fall and die. As a result of their death and decay, something new can grow.

And if that's not a life lesson, I don't know what is. 

For a long time now I've felt as if I'm stalled. I want to move forward and yet I've had no idea which way was forward. To step out in faith without knowing exactly what that meant. I had some ideas that came to nothing. God has asked me to wait, and I have not waited graciously.

I'm ready for the new growth, that moment in spring when you look around you as if you were seeing for the first time and suddenly there are bright, impossibly green shoots everywhere you look. I want that. 

Rapid growth, dramatic development, shoots and buds and blooms. Colour, not darkness. Not the leaf-mould, mulchy, sodden ground wait, wait... it's a slow process. 

Maybe it's all a slow process. Maybe there's a place where dreams go to die and as they fall, limp and lifeless, they start to enrich the soil around them. Perhaps God is saying that something has to die for something to be born. The dead thing isn't lost, wasted, useless; it's a catalyst for something new and beautiful. I didn't realise that my plans were the leaf-mould of the future and it has been no fun to watch them curl up and slowly turn to compost, but I believe His way is best. 

His dreams are bigger than mine. 

So the soil of my life is being forked over by the Gardener. He's digging in some of the leaf-mould as things die and decay. He's digging deep, and it's not comfortable. If I am the soil, then my instinct is to stay dense and full of clay, but things don't easily grow in soil like that. The good stuff needs to be worked in until the whole texture of the soil changes. Until it is transformed into something fertile. 

Who'd have thought that the good stuff turns out to be the stuff that gets thrown away? 

So I am soil, and I am in need of nourishment. I am claggy clay, but partially leaf-mould and I am waiting. I am changing, slowly, imperceptibly, into soil in which God will make something grow. 

All in His good time. 

It turns out that there's a reason for autumn. 

It happened...and I'm still alive

Well, I worried and worried and fretted and flapped and chewed my fingers and asked 'What if...?' and the very thing that I feared so much has happened. 

Swimming. Source of endless angst for me as it necessitates getting my out of shape body out of comfy jeans and T shirts and into a garment that's small and tight and doesn't cover anywhere near enough of me. I read articles about how to choose a flattering swimsuit and I can never understand it. If it doesn't cover chin to ankle in dark coloured flowing fabric, preferably bias-cut, then how on earth can it be flattering? 

Anyway. 

I have Big hang-ups about the way I look, and I have started swimming again to try to get a big fitter, and (who knows) a bit thinner. 

I started swimming with the swimming club that my daughters go to, as they have a 'Masters' squad (ha!) that trains twice or three times a week and has in one lane a handful of older people that are closer to my level of fitness than the svelte gods and goddesses in the other five lanes. They sashay out from the changing rooms laughing and joking in their beautiful colourful swimsuits while I sort of skulk in my black one that's intended to make me invisible. 

Despite all this, I have been enjoying it.

I've perfected the art of draping my (large) towel over one shoulder, carrying my kitbag in front of my legs and scurrying between the changing rooms and the pool incognito with my hat and goggles on. You'd be amazed at how quickly I can arrange my things on the poolside and get into the comparative safety of the water if I time it right.

All this time (since February) I've been working on this. I know that it's unlikely that any of the other swimmers are particularly interested in my progress along the side of the pool, and I have repeated to myself over and over that I don't know any of them, and so what they think doesn't matter to me. 

And then. 

And then the devil upped the ante. At least I think it must be the devil's work, because no sooner had I started to get used to the way things were, things turned into a nightmare.

My older daughter swims three times a week with the same club, though at the up-and-coming end of it rather than the gasping for breath end. Sort of like the sublime to the ridiculous. There is one session a week that Elizabeth can't go to as she is committed elsewhere. Many of her swimming friends do attend that session, and it was always on a Monday at 5pm - 6pm.  This never mattered in the least, until they moved that session to 7pm - 8pm. 

This is the hour immediately preceding my swim. These kids, friends of my daughter, would be getting out of the pool just as I was getting in. Only a bunch of kids; eight, nine, ten, eleven year olds. Surely once they'd got over the hilarity of Lizzie's mum in a swimsuit and goggles surely the interest would wane? Maybe so, but the fear of being recognised by anyone made me blanch. 

Then, hot on the heels of that awful thought was another, more sinister concept. If those kids were emerging from the pool at 8pm, then their mums would be waiting in the changing rooms for them, just as I was stuffing my clothes in a locker and trying to sidle past to where the water is. 

The Sunday before this new arrangement started, I couldn't sleep. I worried and worried. I strategised that if I arrived ever so early and got changed in loads of time, I could maybe wait until the kids were just climbing out of the pool, which is the cue for the mums on the viewing balcony to get up and come down the steps to the foyer and changing rooms. In that minute while everyone was in transit, I could take my chance to dive out and down the far end of the pool, walking flattened against the balcony wall where they couldn't see me. This was the best plan I could come up with and hinged on split second timing. 

I worried and worried. I asked God to make me thin overnight (not for the first time). I asked for a mysterious blanket of fog to descend over the pool between 7.55 and 8.05pm.  I asked for courage, for discovery was inevitable.

I even had a dream about it that night; no kidding. I dreamed that I was in exactly this situation and I was so worried, but when I arrived that night at the pool everyone was leaving the building via one door, and I was able to enter through a different entrance at the other end of the building. Perfect! In my dream, my anxiety evaporated. Problem solved. I come in, they go out, and never the twain shall meet.  

In my dream, I said to myself, 'God will make it alright'.

I woke up thinking, 'God will make it alright'.

Of course, even that relief and reassurance, throughout Monday the tension mounted; I was aware on some level that it was unlikely that God would make it alright by changing the fabric of the sports centre in time for my swimming session. I seriously considered giving it all up and not bothering. If things hadn't already been so hard regarding this swimming thing, I might have decided to stop going at this point, but seriously it seemed that there had been one obstacle then another in front of me since I started this latest fitness drive that I am stubbornly convinced that it's the right thing to do. It must be doing me some good. It must. I don't want to be intimidated.

So Monday night came and I put my plan into action, and do you know what? It worked like a charm.

Nobody noticed me. Hallelujah.

If only that were the end of the story. The following week, the stress levels climbed, the same situation, and one of the kids pointed at me and waved. A couple of weeks later and I got cheers and a round of applause from the balcony. Several of the mums have asked me about the swimming; some of them have laughed. One pulled a disbelieving face and said, 'You?!'

Yes, me.

Some of the mums have said how brave I am (they don't know the half of it), and one or two have congratulated me. A couple have even confessed to a degree of envy. On the night of the embarrassing applause, one of my fellow swimmers said, 'Take no notice. You're having a go, they're just up there sitting down.'

This week I swam and as I walked onto the poolside half a dozen of the children waved and smiled. I waved and smiled back, and I didn't glance up to the balcony (with my contact lens out I don't see very much, anyway). I had a laugh with a few other swimmers in my lane, learned some things, swam a personal best and I'm starting to master the butterfly.

Yes, me.

So here's the thing that I need to keep hold of.

The thing I feared happened, and I'm still alive. They found out about me, they saw me, they laughed at me (but not all of them; and that's important), and yes, it was pretty much as bad as I thought it'd be, but I'm still here. The world is still turning, and I am still swimming.

Progress-wise, hmm, well, who knows. I scrutinise my body and the scales for signs of a dramatic up-turn in health, but if there are any, they are so gradual as to be imperceptible, but that's alright. I didn't get out of shape in the space of a few months and so getting healthier will be a slow process too, I guess.

I'm thanking God for two amazing things that have happened to me lately.

1.  I am actually enjoying myself.

2.  I am not afraid of being seen any more.

Well, not as afraid as I was. I don't relish the long walk to and from the changing rooms, but if I meet someone I know I no longer feel that I might die. This is a very small thing on one level but on another, for me, a Very Big Thing.

God did indeed make it alright.

Sinking and swimming

Advisory:  This post contains nothing profound, nothing revelatory or inspirational, nothing very spiritual or deep in any sense at all. (Unless you count the deep end, which is 12'6". Not the place to drop your goggles.)

As part of my latest drive to shake off some excess poundage, I have started to swim again. The water level of the local swimming pool rises ever so slightly twice a week as I climb in and trawl up and down for a bit.

I have to say, getting in is a bit easier than getting out; funny how heavy you feel when you try to exit a swimming pool. Heavier than you were when you got in, strangely enough, which is unfair given that you've worked off some calories while in the water - it stands to reason that you should feel lighter when getting out, but sadly not. I hate getting in and out - much more than the actual swimming, which I don't mind too much.

The distance from the ladies' changing to the shallow end seems a long way to me. While in the water, I'm just another head and shoulders, the water happily distorting all that lies iceberg-like, beneath. It's a great equaliser; until we all start moving, it's hard to know who's the swimming club star out for a bit of serious training, who's the sinewy lifelong swimmer with lungs of iron, and who's the portly middle aged woman trying to work off a bit of flab.

That's me, the last one. In case you were wondering. 

My aim is to swim twice a week. 

The other day the water was quite warm, for a change. Last week it was so cold that you could see your breath and the lifeguard had a jumper on; it felt like a Christmas Day swim in the Solent. The cold wasn't the worst of it, mind you. The worst bit was that I saw five people that I knew.

Five. That's not good news for someone as self-conscious as I am. I try to keep track of people I know when I see them in the pool so that I can engineer a good moment to get out when it's time to flee. I try to wait until they're on their outward length when I head for the steps so that their backs are turned when I make my exit but with five people that wasn't too easy.

That's how self-conscious I am. I hate being spotted in my swimsuit, even though I know intellectually that nobody actually cares. The casual observer probably has no interest in the sight of me staggering to the changing rooms but still it preys on my mind.

I was swimming along, trying to stay submerged as much as I possibly could, but it seemed that every time I came up for air, there was someone grinning at me. Figures from the past (junior school classmate: might not have recognised me in goggles - I can only hope), someone from the school run (no such luck, wanted to compare notes on the school trip), a couple of people from church (likewise, bright smiles) and a waitress from my favourite cafe (might not technically count as someone I know, but nonetheless...)

On the upside, I was motivated to keep moving. Chatting at the pool requires effort and concentration as my eyesight is limited without my contact lens and more often than not my goggles are steamed up or half-full of water. My hearing, never that acute at the best of times, is also somewhat compromised when my ears are swishing with water and so more than an awkward 'Hello!' between breaths is about all I can manage. Am I the only person who gets hung up on the possibility of social encounters at the pool? I bet for most people it's not a thing at all.

Sigh.  It's so much easier not to bother, but I must do something. I've asked God to help me with the problems I have with eating and myriad other problems relating to self esteem, body image and health and so it's only right that I should try to help Him help me.

So - up and down the pool.

It's amazing how your mind wanders while you're swimming.

I've tried doing lots of things to relieve the boredom as I trawl up and down the pool - I have counted breaths, counted strokes, sung songs in my head, recited poetry, tried to pray, but it's all a bit disjointed and incoherent, as if the act of swimming demands not quite enough concentration to be absorbing, but too much to allow the thoughts to do anything constructive. 

'Breathe...breathe...breathe...ouch...shoulder twinge...is that a hair clip on the bottom of the pool or a small creature? Blimey, that guy must have lungs of iron...water in my goggles...breathe...breathe... cracked tile...hello, Jesus, been meaning to talk to you about...bit cold tonight...LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY...did I send Katy's school trip permission form back...?' 

And so on. 

In my own little world, watching the underwater world go by, looking out of my little round windows. 

Goggles. If ever there was an invention straight from the devil, it's got to be goggles. I have a hate/hate relationship with mine. 

Before I invested in my first pair I asked about, got some recommendations and deliberated long before choosing which to buy. Make and model. Then a few weeks passed without the opportunity to nip into a sporting goods shop, so I ended up getting some out of the vending machine in the foyer of the leisure centre. 

That was a palaver in itself as I managed to jam the machine and someone had to come and open it up, rummage in the bowels of the machine (isn't it fascinating, the inside of a vending machine?) and extract my goggles and my change. Then it turned out that I'd inadvertently purchased a pair of kids' goggles, so had to do some apologising before I was allowed to change them for an adult pair. By this time I had no bargaining power and so accepted the first pair that were handed to me. This pair were a sort of grey and purple and, if I do say so myself, I looked a complete prat in them when I put them on. 

It was about two weeks before I got the hang of actually putting them on without snapping them painfully on the bridge of my nose or accidentally removing eyebrow hair, but then it turned out that they leaked. I'd read the instructions on how to adjust them but I just couldn't get it right. Maybe my eyes are the wrong distance apart or something. Every time I raised my eyebrows, they sort of slipped down. Of course, the ability to raise one's eyebrows unimpeded while swimming is a bit of a necessity, isn't it?

By the time I splashed my way to the deep end there they'd be, half steamed up and half full of water. I would squint through the murk and tread water while I emptied my goggles. So I tightened them a little more, but still they leaked. I think my eyes must have bulged with the pressure, but since I can't see much it's not a problem. Actually, as I have one short-sighted eye and one long-sighted eye, I am able to see any distance if I kind of lose focus in one eye, but that involves a slight turning in of the eye I don't use, so I don't tend to do it very often for fear of unnerving those around me. (Imagine: a fat middle aged woman treading water with half-full goggles and a wandering eye?)

Those goggles never did stop leaking. I tightened them until they started making a sucking noise when I took them off, and still they leaked. They left a pair of rings, raccoon-like, that stuck around for an hour or so after I've finished swimming, which isn't a good look for the school run.

Then there's the issue of steaming up. All goggles steam up, even the ones with the non-steam coating. I was struggling with mine one day when a stranger volunteered the information that you had to spit into your goggles to stop them steaming up. He demonstrated (on his own goggles, I'm pleased to say) and then stood there, waiting for me to do likewise. I hesitated, then delicately licked the lenses in as ladylike manner as possible, and he laughed, informing me that I'd be better 'gobbing' in them.  I muttered something and pushed off from the side with as much dignity as it's possible to muster after an exchange like that. 

Next time I was at the pool the helpful man was there again and he smirked at me from the far lane. Had I felt like it, I could have informed him that his advice didn't work as copious quantities of saliva still hadn't solved my steaming up problem, since I'd had a sneaky gob on them before I left my cubicle in the changing rooms. Maybe there's something wrong with my spit. 

I think my current pair are a bit better, and I have to say I have finally cracked the steaming up problem, if not the raccoon rings or the looking like an idiot. My goggles are reliable enough for me to leave in my lens these days so I have a better chance of identifying objects beneath me on the seabed without adding a floating contact lens to the debris. 

The struggle continues. 

Up...down...tiles...tiles...turn...agh, coughcoughcough...how much longer? I'll be 44 next birthday...MUSIC AND PASSION WERE ALWAYS THE FASHION AT THE COPA, COPACABAAAANA...oh, lovely swimsuit...bit chilly tonight...'Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio...' ouch, my hip...breathe, breathe, breathe...

Breathe...




Footnotes:

1.  I am not actually a Barry Manilow fan. Really.
2.  The secret to unsteamy goggles appears to be a tiny, tiny drop of washing up liquid rubbed over the inside of the lenses. Pass it on. Let's eliminate the need for goggle-gobbing.
3.  This is my 400th post. Thought I'd make it an important one. 

Hurting

Evening, Lord.

Blimey. It never rains but it pours, hey. As Shakespeare said, 

'When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.' 

Hamlet Act IV scene 5

Is there anything in the Bible along those lines? Possibly Proverbs? I'll look into it. 

We've got an appointment to see the new doctor who'll be looking after Katy over at the children's hospital next week. In the last few days I've had appointments with doctors, nurses and dentists and I feel a bit as if I'm falling apart. In a physical, literal sort of sense. Bits of me don't work properly. Last night the children behaved badly at bedtime and I confess, so did I, in a angry and shouty sort of way, and we all ended up in tears. Katy crept onto my lap and whispered 'Sorry Mummy' and we had a cuddle. Lizzie handed me a note that told me that she knew in her heart that I didn't love her.

I went to pieces. It was late, I was very tired, it had been a hard day. I wasn't feeling well. My tooth ached. The children were being horrible. 

My oldest daughter told me that she thought I didn't love her. She said that she could see it in my face and she could hear it in my shouts. 

I don't think anything has hurt me so much in a long time. It took my breath away. A tidal wave of feelings overtook me. Intense emotional pain. Guilt. Despair. Shame. Fear. Self-pity. More guilt. I had been so angry with them. They wouldn't listen. More bath water ended up on the floor than in the bath. They wouldn't be still so that I could brush teeth. They wouldn't get into their pyjamas. They were silly, then they fought with each other. I narrowed my eyes and I glared and I shouted. We all cried. Katy came for cuddles and Lizzie hit back. 

She hit her target, I think. I didn't know what to do. I struggled to find words. Me! I talked with her and I hugged her but she wouldn't look at me and just kept saying, 'It doesn't feel like you love me.' Then she asked me if I'd mend a toy that she'd broken earlier. She didn't want to talk about it.  

Lord, does she really not know that I love her? I'm so, so sorry. She and Katy are the most important, most precious things in my life. I've said to them over and over how much I love them, that I love them even when I'm cross with them. I've said I'm sorry for shouting and I've told them that Mummy doesn't always get it right. What am I to do when they are impossible? I know, not shout. Not throw the towel on the floor. 

Sigh. I need to pull myself together. I know that she's six, and perhaps she doesn't understand the power of her words, but nevertheless, they broke my heart. I know the difference between conviction and condemnation and I'm still working on which this is. Both, perhaps. I know that I should have had more self control, more patience, more kindness. But I love my girls to the end of the world. I have never, ever, felt like such a complete failure as a mother.

She told me that she didn't think I loved her. 

I have tears welling up just thinking about it. 

So after a terrible evening full of tears and worries and regrets I went to bed. Best thing to do. I read a bit of a book by Max Lucado about Easter. It's called He Chose the Nails: What God did to win your heart. It has a chapter in it that tells a story of a young girl who turns away from her father to go her own way. It speaks about rebellion and how we have all at some point rejected your love. 

It made me think.  

Now, this is where I don't know if you spoke to me through the few pages of this book that I read last night, or if my imagination was working overtime, or if I'm even making any sense, really, but it occurred to me that I might have hurt you just like Lizzie hurt me. 

Have I ever told you, 'It doesn't feel as if you love me?' 

All the time. 

Recently, I've been asking (or rather, not asking, as I haven't really been talking to you that much, have I?) whether you love me enough to look after my Katy. I've wondered if I can trust you if 'your will' might not be to my liking. After all, you do allow people to die, don't you? People who love you lose people they love, don't they? Bad things happen to good people, don't they? 

So I know that I have doubted your love. Perhaps I never stamped my foot or wrote you a hurtful little note, but you knew it was in my heart. 

'It doesn't feel as if you love me.'

Sometimes, it doesn't. 

But, like me with my beautiful little girl, maybe it doesn't mean that you don't. 

So what is there to say? 

Lord, I don't know if this analogy goes any further; Lizzie and Katy had been badly behaved at bedtime and I lost my temper. I don't think that you're punishing me for something with all the stuff that I have on my plate at the moment. Health issues, Katy's health issues, (and now Lizzie's health issues, as she's been home today with gastro-enteritis, poor love). Yesterday I had done some nice things for people. I'd been helpful and thoughtful and done my best. I wasn't looking for a disaster at bedtime. Katy's been having nightmares and I'm a bit sleep deprived. I was vulnerable and I lost control and it all went wrong. 

Lizzie didn't feel like I loved her. 

Poor darling. I do. I do. I love her so, so much. But life doesn't always permit me to smile and let it go. Her behaviour was terrible. I shouldn't have shouted, but I didn't deserve that little note, did I?  

I don't always feel as if you love me. 

Are you saying, 'I do. I do. I love you so, so much'?  Do I have the power to hurt you, God? 

I'm so sorry. You shower me with blessings and I doubt that you love me. Things don't go my way and so I become petulant and spiteful. I might wrap it up with more sophisticated phraseology but what I mean is, 

Sometimes I don't feel as if you love me.

I know that you do. I just want to feel it more. I like feelings. I like it when I feel you smile at me. I like it when things go my way. 

Elizabeth likes those things too, and I love to give them to her. There's nothing I love more than to see her happy little face and feel her affection and make her happy. There really isn't. But she's unlikely to get them when she's naughty. 

Now I don't mean that I'm proud of the shouting and the towel flinging and the angry face because I'm not. It wasn't good. But I wonder if I'm just as bad. 

Father, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for hurting my little girl and I'm sorry for hurting you. 

Make it alright, will you, Lord? Please? 

I wrote Elizabeth a note last night. I said I'm sorry that we were cross with each other and I'm sorry I shouted. I said I'm sorry she didn't feel I loved her but that I do love her so, so much. She didn't mention it but I know that she read it. Today I spent much of the day with my arms wrapped round her as she felt poorly. I held her when she was sick and I sat with her when she was in the bathroom ill with cramps. I have stroked her hair and read stories and kissed her over and over. I would go to the end of the earth for her. 

You sit with me when I cry in my sleep. You give me strength to wait for my daughter when she is in surgery. You have touched me with love when I needed it most. I shouldn't doubt you. 

Lizzie knows that I love her. I'm sure she does. I will try harder to make sure that she doesn't doubt it.

I know that you love me. I'm sorry if I hurt you. If it was anything like that note last night it hurt an awful lot. 

I have forgiven Lizzie.

I hope that she has forgiven me. 

Forgive me. 

Thankyou for second chances. And the ones after that. 

Heal us, Lord. Heal us when we hurt each other. 

Amen.