My inbox is too full. The online garden centre says buy now for 50% off border favourites. Past Book says get a beautiful record of your 2021 facebook photographs with 35% off. The wine club says get involved, send messages of appreciation to the growers of your favourite bottles – don’t they know it’s Dry January? The hairdressers tell me it’s 7 weeks and my hair is growing. Sarah Bessey (check her out!) has sent 2 emails I want to ponder and pray over:
“I pray that your life will become an outpost of hope and love. May the things that were meant to destroy us be cast down and come to nothing. May you rise from the ashes with a grin, a wild heart that won’t be talked out of love and possibility.”
The grumpy boiler service engineer arrived at 8am. I’d just fed the ravenous kittens – who have grown by about 50% of their body weight in one week! I try to keep them shut in their ‘kitty-proof room’ in the (upstairs) bathroom – they haven’t ventured downstairs yet. But Martin likes to open the doors and let them run wild, scampering over the furniture and eating plants. It’s chaotic fun but not conducive to being quiet and still before the day! However, I already know what I must do today – apart from take the car to the Alfa doctor at 2pm. I must de-Christmas the house.
Have you had a good time, a happy new year celebration? What do we dare hope or plan for the Year ZOZZ? I have learned not to plan ahead – or at least not to expect my plans to work out. The disappointments of the past 2 years have taken their toll: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” All our lives have had to change and as ours was ALL about travelling I have had a big fight about being stuck in Leicester – more stuck than most, if you remember!? I actually do have some trips in the diary to give something to look forward to, but I hope I’m holding them lightly. Again Sarah has an apposite word to strengthen our hearts in this apocalyptic time:
We may not see an end to the pandemic. We may not see the great changes we hope for, at least on grand scales. I do pray for it though. I dare to pray for it. May God bless and keep those working to keep us safe and healthy. We pray and we work towards it but my prayer for you is that those realities, those challenges, these powers and principalities that rule in our world still, will not reduce you or twist you. Instead, may you rise to the demands of our time with dignity, grace, and not-sitting-down-not-shutting-up hope. May justice roll down like mighty waters, as the prophet Amos said, sweeping up and away everything meant to diminish the image of God in any of us.
She’s a great encouragement in the midst of the prosaic – take the laundry off the radiators, clean the kittens’ room, book that hair appointment. But I find I’d rather be busy – as long as my energy holds out. If I stop and ask myself how I feel, how I am, the answer is Flat. Or Nothing. Or Don’t Know. Part of this writing is trying to find that out. I’m not as tearful and sometimes feel quite content in the moment, just getting on with what I have to do. There is a deeply-felt anxiety related to being a mother – all I can do is take God into that and plead wordlessly for help and mercy. I have to keep reminding myself I am fully-loved and all is well, all will be well – but that’s par for the course. I’m still tired, but not as weary-to-the-bones as I was, nothing an afternoon lie-down can’t ameliorate. And I HAVE BLOGGED!
Hey – this morning the sun is shining. 🙂 And we have cute-as-pie KITTENS!
Heart Space 