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. 

A - Z Challenge - L: Love

I've a feeling that this blog post might be a short one, but it's one of the biggest I've ever tried to write. I could have called it 'Loss' or 'Lost' or 'Lonely' or 'Lament', or any number of words beginning with L that signify the sad, broken feeling that permeates life at the moment. Ha. Maybe I should just have called it 'Life'. 

The last few years have been hideous for our family. On top of the strains and stresses of a global pandemic which knocked everyone for six and the disaster that is Brexit that ruined the family business, we have had other serious stuff that's not my story to tell, my job only to try and help others through. All this is ongoing. Then, on 16 April, Easter Saturday, my Mum (90) fell in her bathroom and hit her head on the floor. 

We thought she was getting better to start with - she was remarkably alert despite the trauma and the blood loss, and the doctors and nurses checking her over and dressing her wounds were optimistic that she would be back on her feet in a few days. To cut a long, painful, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute story very short, she never did get back on her feet. 

My Mum died on 21 May 2022 at 10.25pm. Oh, God, I miss her. 

I was there at the end. We had time to sit around her bed and play her favourite music and hold her hand and tell her how much she was loved and what a wonderful Mum she'd been. I hope she could hear us. 

I hope she knew who we were, because latterly there were times when she didn't know us at all. My heart broke over and over as she slipped further from us into confusion and I did everything I could to comfort and reassure her, but I wish it had been more. It was exhausting and devastating and although I know that I was not capable of anything else, I am tortured by the idea that she was anxious and I was not there, and I am haunted at the memory of every moment of panic when she did not recognise her surroundings. 

But I was there all that day, all evening and at the very end, when her breathing slowed, and then there was a long, long pause. I leaned my forehead on her shoulder and wept. She took one more deep breath, sighed, and she was gone. Just like that.

I thought in my youth that when I finally lost my Mum I would be self sufficient with a family of my own and I wouldn't feel the devastation I contemplated when I was a kid. I thought that having taken care of her for twelve years since my Dad died and having felt the strain of being a full time carer in recent years, that there might even have been an element of relief. I thought that because by the end we knew that she wasn't going to get better, I might have been a bit prepared for the day when she left me. 

On all counts, I was wrong. 

Yes, she was 91 years old, yes, she was frail and struggling and the subdural haemorrhage that was the final straw could not be treated. Yes, I'm in late middle age myself and my husband is the best of all of them and my two daughters are the lights of my life. But, oh, Lord God, I want my Mum. 

I thought I'd tell you about her. Maybe share some stories about walking on the beach together, about sharing Sherbet Fountains, about laughing when her ice cream melted everywhere on holiday last year. About our shared inability to go for a coffee at a garden centre cafe without coming home with rockery plants. About her delight in her grandchildren, her pride in her family. About how badly she missed my Dad after his death in 2005. 

I don't think I can do it. 

She was my Mum. My biggest ally; nobody is ever as completely on your side as your mum, are they? If the whole world was against me, she would still be in my corner. Even in her last months I would go in and flop down on her sofa and tell her the things that were bothering me. She would listen, she would sympathise , she would give me a hug. 

I remember one time; I didn't even need to say anything. Mum was drying dishes at her kitchen sink and I came into the room. She took one look at my face and put her arms around me. As I hugged her back she felt so small, so slight, so fragile. I kissed the top of her head and helped her to her chair before she got tired or lost her balance. I put the kettle on. 

I go in there now and she's not there. Her chair is empty. I've sorted out some of her clothes and given them to charity shops, and I've cleaned out cupboards and put them to new uses but there are some things that I can't tidy away. Her favourite cardigan still hangs in the wardrobe because I can't let go of it. Her glasses are still on her chest of drawers by the mirror. The book she was reading still has her bookmark in it.

And I can't tidy away the love that I still have for my Mum that now has nowhere to go. I've looked after her for the last few years but she looked after me for my whole life. I sometimes think that I was more of a worry to her as an adult than I ever was as a teenager. Every day I think of things I want to tell her. I see things that I know would make her laugh, bits of gossip about people I see at the shops. I looked through a photo album I'd never seen before and I need to ask her who some of these people are. 

Who else knows what to say when I ask, 'Have a grape'? (the answer is 'I don't want a grape, either!', and then we both laugh - it's a long story). 

Nobody holds up the other end of our shared jokes any more. 

Watching all the pomp and ceremony regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth these last couple of weeks has been like scratching off a scab on a wound that is still painful. Mum was an ardent Royal supporter. She would have been so sad that the Queen was dead and also fascinated at the splendour of the funeral and loving the glimpses of the Royal Family. We would have watched it together with a packet of biscuits and lots of cups of coffee. It would have been another shared experience. 

Mum's funeral was not much like the Queen's, as you can imagine. We all had Covid at the time, so hardly anyone came, even though the funeral directors were very skilful in keeping the poorly people away from the healthy ones. It was over in half an hour without any need for gun carriages or orbs or sceptres. On the night they came to take Mum's body away I took off her wedding ring, grown loose as she became more and more frail, and I slid it on the ring finger of my right hand where it's stayed ever since. Her ashes have been scattered in the same place as my Dad's. We planted roses. 'Peace' and 'Remembrance'.

She's gone, and it really hurts. I don't know what death is, really. I know what Jesus told us about it, and I hang onto the things that I believe to be true. I hope that on that night in May when she left here she found my Dad waiting for her. I hope that maybe she was part of the reception committee for the Queen when she arrived a few months later. I hope that she's okay. 

I hope she knows how much I loved her. 

A-Z Challenge - J: Jesus

Well, who knows what letter of the alphabet everyone else is on? I am on J, which is a good place to be, because that's where Jesus is. 

Once again, an old post but this time heavily reconfigured. Some things do not change, do they?

'In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus.'

This is a quote from a traditional spiritual song that I don't know which was famously (apparently) arranged by a lady called Alma Blackmon. The words are very simple, and beautiful and the refrain: 

'You can have all this world

Just give me Jesus'.

That's about it. 

There have been a handful of times in my life, Lord God, when I've run out of... well, everything. Energy, ideas, patience, peace of mind. This week is pretty much one of those times. It's been a week in which anxiety and worry linked arms and barged their way back into my head where they set up camp and made themselves comfortable. Fear crept in quietly and ominously and now huddles with them round the camp fire and depression has taken a step out from the shadows and is asking to join in the conversation.

Give me Jesus. 

Lord, give me Jesus when I rise, and before that, when I lie in bed and stab at the snooze button and try to stay asleep because it's easier being asleep than awake. Give me Jesus when I come downstairs and try with as much tact and diplomacy and thick-skinned-ness to communicate with my teenage daughters who have their own sizeable problems at the moment. 

Give me Jesus as I exercise to try to loosen my aching joints and fight on against the accumulating excess pounds. Give me Jesus as I make phone calls and check for sad messages that are surely coming soon. Give me Jesus as I break news, as I make arrangements, as I try to think of things to say. Give me Jesus when I'm on the brink of saying things I should not say. 

As I spend time with people I love, give me Jesus so that they can see Him, not me. 

Give me Jesus as I try to find a meal that everyone will eat at a time when everyone is free to eat it. Give me Jesus as I head off to bed before my daughters and try to sleep not knowing when they'll go to bed and if they'll be able to get up in the morning. 

Lord, Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, just give me Jesus. 

Lord, you can certainly have all this world. I don't want it very much at the moment. It's a world full of broken marriages and pain and illness and hospitals and doctors and shaking heads and bad news and low self esteem and tears and waiting and lying awake at night not-knowing and filling the gaps with imagination that just loves to paint everything bleak and grim. 

It's a world full of shadows that are so dark that sometimes it's hard to see you.

It's a world where you are visible in the huge extravagant beauty of the magnolias blooming in my garden (well, the ones that survived last week's sub-zero temperatures) and in the promise of the flowers on the tomato plants and in the baby radishes peeping potential above the soil. It's a world of purply-grey stormy skies and lashing rain then watery sunshine and subtle rainbows and the smell of wet dusty ground. 

It's a world where those that have eyes to see and ears to hear can find you all everywhere - and all that's just lovely and great but right now it's not enough, Father God. I don't want to discern you in subtleties, I want to run actually, not figuratively, into your real, solid, faithful arms and feel the weight and strength of your embrace. To let my legs go as wobbly as they feel and let you pick me up effortlessly and hold me close like a little girl. 

Daddy, I'm tired.

I don't want to be strong. I want to give up. I want to stay asleep. 

I don't want to keep trying to communicate when I don't have words. I don't want to persevere with the goals I've set myself - who am I kidding? I abandoned them long ago, but they haunt me still. I want to sit down and not move. I don't want to make decisions and I don't want to explain bad things to small children and I just don't want to do any of it any more. 

I don't want to run the race, I'm tired and I want to rest. 

You can have all this world. Just give me Jesus. 

Rock of ages

'Hello again, Lord.

This morning I was feeling sad. Cross and sad. Hard done to. Unappreciated. You know the sort of thing. It was all people stuff. Hurt feelings and so on. It might all have been trivial but it was painful and I was sad. It felt very bad at the time.

I lay on my bed and had a little cry. I tried to read some of my devotional book but I wasn't really paying attention and had to keep starting the paragraph again. I was just feeling worse and worse. I decided to go off by myself for a little while.

I thought I'd find somewhere out in the countryside on my own and sit down and see if I could find you. As I drove off I wasn't sure where I was going and I had tears streaming down my face. I couldn't go anywhere in civilisation. I turned the worship music off because I didn't want to hear anything upbeat. 

Got where I was going. Parked the car. Bought a drink from the ice-cream van because I didn't have any change for the car park machine. Wondered if it was worth it as I only had half an hour. Placed ticket in window of car, locked up, trudged along path to find a place away from the myriad of hikers. 

Tear-stained and sniffly. Red-eyed and red-nosed, clutching a handkerchief. Everyone else there seemed to be kitted out with hiking boots and gaiters, rucksacks and walking poles. Those little transparent pockets with maps in. All organised and purposeful. 

Rock of ages, cleft for me

My favourite place. I left the path and began to meander among the rocks on the Edge. I kept stopping and looking about me for the right spot. I asked you to find me a place. It didn't take long. 

It was a hollow. A little rocky, grassy niche between a few mammoth boulders strewn there for centuries. I could sit on a smooth rock with my back against another and a few feet away more enormous stones sheltered me from the breeze and from anyone else. 

I could have been the only person in the world. 

I felt as if I was protected. Tucked away. Hidden. Surrounded on three sides. Enveloped. And not by rocks but by you. 

Safe. 

You know what came to mind?

This: 

'Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee.'

I hid myself in you.  It wasn't for very long, because I had to get back, but for a short space of time this morning I left my little world and sat with you in yours. Apart from some hikers miles away in the valley there was no-one in sight but I was not alone. You were all around me. All around me, just as you always are, but I was aware of your presence in a wonderful way. You were with me. You showed things to me. You were tapping my shoulder and pointing and saying, 'Look. Use your imagination.'

I could hear the birds. Countless voices, different calls.  I must find out about birdsong so that I know whose voice is whose. Sweet twittering and chirruping and the low call of the wood-pigeon. Swifts swooped and danced in the air. A kestrel hovered. A couple of bees buzzed in front of me. The wind whispered in long grass. A bird flew past level with the rocky edge and I could hear its whistling wing-beats. Another came to land close to me but was surprised to find me there and took off in a flutter of feathers. A dog barked and I heard its owner's whistle.  

So beautiful but so easy to miss.

The rock I was leaning against had horizontal striations which might tell a geologist something about its history. Not me; it just said to me that it had been around an awful long time. Millstone Grit. Different shades of sandstones in layer upon layer. 

Roses of lichen in a palette of grey and white flowered across the surface and soft green moss on the sides in the damp and shade. Rabbit pellets by my feet, heather in white, brown, cream and the palest of pink. A tiny spider made its way across the rock face. 

Down in the valley where the road curled round and back on itself the odd car went past. The irregular shaped fields, marked out with Derbyshire dry stone walls, were home sheep or cows, or horses, or crops. I was high enough looking down that huge oak and beech trees seemed small, dwarfed by the landscape of ridge and rocks. In the distance a forest of birch. 

Occasionally there was a small break in the clouds and sunshine played on the greenness for a moment or two until it disappeared again. 

Immediately to my right was a deep crevice in the rock. Dark enough for me to prevent me from seeing how far it went back into the hillside. At such an angle that the light was dim. In this crack in the rock was growing a fern. A small plant, sturdy and healthy-looking, growing in a most inhospitable spot. Damp and  hidden from view unless you were sitting exactly where I was sitting. I would never have noticed it if I were just walking past. You knew it was there. You showed it to me. 

Look, in the darkest places, life. Not just surviving, but flourishing. 

The fern was thriving in the darkness of it's little crevice. Unfurling it's fronds in the space it had taken root. 

'Rock of ages, cleft for me.Let me hide myself in thee.'

It was beautiful. Bright, improbable green against the grey and brown of the rock.  You can bring life out of darkness. Hope out of despair. Beauty out of ugliness.

As I leaned back the rock was hard behind me and cold underneath me. Each side of me there was rock. In front of me opened out a vista to gaze at for hours. Openness and space.  Unyielding stone behind and yet in front, a vision of your glory.

When my back is against the wall, there you are in front of me. With beauty and majesty and glory spread out to breathe new life into my soul.

When I was suffocating, there you were with fresh air.

Deep breaths.

A safe place. A few moments of stillness. Solitude. A space where my lungs could fill. I thought I was finding a place to have a cry and lick my wounds; maybe tell you all about my hurt feelings and upset, but instead you took my hand and led me to a place where you could soothe me. A spacious place.

'You brought me out into a spacious place...'

2 Samuel 22:20

Rock of ages. From the beginning of time you have been unchanging. All else fades or evolves or shifts. I know that the seemingly permanent landscape of the countryside that I love so much would alter unrecognisably before you will change even a tiny bit. You are firm and solid, reliable and faithful. Everlasting. Eternal. A safe harbour. A place to run to.

My refuge.

'Oh Lord, my strength and my fortress
my refuge in times of distress.'

Jeremiah 16:19

My rocky fortress indeed. Hidden from view.

I was distressed and you took me away to a place I could breathe. You held my hand and showed me your treasures and you smiled on me. My refuge indeed.

I may have missed church this morning but I still visited your sanctuary. I met you and we sat together a while. It was a holy place where I could worship.

Thankyou, my God.

On the way home I turned up the worship music and sang.