I didn’t expect to be writing again before going to Sicily. I didn’t expect to be feeling better, having energy, having something to say. I was resigned to my state – accepting/submitting to feeling exhausted for a few more weeks. (I know there is a difference between those 3 words/states: I’m not sure which of them was most accurate for my attitude!)
How did I know on Friday that on Saturday I’d feel better, that Sunday would be a great day and Monday full-on? How could I know? I have no choice but to U-turn on my ‘not blogging’ decision in the same way I reneged on my decision to write regularly: “it’s always the same when you set yourself up with something” cuts both ways! And I serendipitously came across this TS Eliot quote posted on facebook years ago that explains it perfectly. Realising this is an opportunity to be humble in the face of this lesson, I’m sharing it so those of you who expressed concern will know I’m already in a much better place – in time for our trip! 😉
Read that again! The wisdom of humility says, I was wrong, my pattern is wrong, I need to re-evaluate. It’s best not to impose a pattern at all – our knowledge is so short-sighted, so incomplete. And it is quite shocking when we realise that! But I have been learning this very thing over all these months – take it a day at a time, we don’t know what will happen, we must hold things lightly, be willing to change our plans. This time I just didn’t see I was being so black and white and actually defeatist, assuming this would continue for ages. As Lee Child’s Jack Reacher taught me, “Assume makes an Ass out of u and me“.
Here’s another quote from someone: “Hope is the confident expectation of the goodness of God”. I thought ‘giving in’ sounded sensible and righteous(!?!) better than ‘giving up’ – it worked in Florence’s song! But perhaps it was hopelessness speaking. I couldn’t work out if I was depressed because of fatigue or fatigued because of long-term depression. Gladly, it was the former. However it comes over us, the ‘black dog’ of depression is despair, the opposite of hope; everything seems grey and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. When that’s deeply rooted in sadness, for whatever reason or none, chemical issues in the brain, genetic disposition, it is a dreadful illness to treat and to learn to live with. I have escaped the worst of it despite the loss of my son, but it took my mother’s life and has blighted my daughter’s for many years.
We can trust – have complete confidence – in the goodness of God, so that is where eternal hope comes from. God doesn’t change, S/He is Light and Love, Grace and Mercy. Sometimes I can’t see or feel that Presence – depression does that, numbing everything, flattening mood to the lowest level possible. But I choose to believe.
But expectation isn’t the same as faith, not really. As Eliot says it is based on our limited knowledge rather than a Bigger Truth. Expectation will blinker us to other possible outcomes, blind us to reality. How many of us have had false expectations of what a holiday will be like and become utterly miserable when it isn’t as we imagined? That’s why I’m trying to be realistic about next week, remembering how tiring it is to climb those amazing steps in Caltagirone! It helps that we’ve been before – I don’t have to rely on imagination. This time I have even booked an apartment that isn’t half way up them!
So – not knowing what will happen in the next hour, let alone tomorrow or when we arrive in Sicily on Saturday morning, but confident of the goodness of God, I can go forward in hope on the adventure of life.
Yet that feels a bit too positive at present! I think many of us live with a kind of low-level anxiety in this present time – it feels wrong to be happy-go-lucky. The war in Ukraine, the state of the UK government, the climate crisis, Covid that hasn’t gone away, gas prices that rose 20% this morning, the threat of food shortages… These are serious times – times for hanging on to peace and hope in fact, because our faith in a good God is for times like these! But it’s not easy, no wonder we feel on edge – and no doubt this was part of my acute anxiety/ not feeling right last week!
It’s important to keep focussed, watch and pray, take care over our decisions – yet not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself (when it comes!), as Jesus said. If I have learned anything at all since Sam was diagnosed it is there is always grace for today! Or in Eliot’s words once more, “the pattern is new in every moment and every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all we have been…(we need the) wisdom of humility; humility is endless”
No (false) expectations.
Heart Space 