Isn’t endurance strange? One moment, we feel close to the end of ourselves and the next we are digging deep to keep going.
When I think of endurance, I think of the things I’ve achieved in life. Running my first 5k without stopping. Learning to breastfeed. Writing my dissertation.
But there are smaller thing too. Asking for help. Being a wife, and mum. Going out on that first run.
I wonder, then, when you’ve shown endurance. When have you dug deep to keep going?
Back in September we had a new arrival in our family – Biscuit, the hamster. She had been long awaited, a gift promised because of a house move across the country. Our 6 year old was so very excited and, although she hasn’t done the lion’s share of looking after it, she has adored this tiny furry friend (or sister as she was referred to from time to time).
Sadly, we found lovely Biscuit dead in her bed this week. She had been fine, running around her cage, eating her food, running on her wheel. She should have lived for at least a year, if not two. Her death is very unexpected.
I share this because we aren’t surrounded by opportunities to talk about death and the heartache that comes. It was almost simpler when my grannie (the 6 year old’s great-grannie) died in the autumn. She was old, she was poorly for a few days beforehand, and she was slightly removed from our day-to-day family life. Of course, my daughter was sad when Grannie Mac died, but with Biscuit it’s been something else.
When my husband and I discovered Biscuit’s furry corpse, still so soft and cuddly feeling, my natural instinct was protection. “Could we just go and buy her an identical one? Replace Biscuit before she notices?” I asked my husband anxiously. Thankfully, my husband is much better at this than me.
“No,” he said, “We’ve got to do this properly.”
Despite my best instincts to shelter my little one from the heartache of sudden death and loss, the best protection that lasts long-term is the type of protection that allows you to develop a strong heart for the future. Not cold-hearted and impenetrable, where no pain and loss makes a mark. Instead, a strong-heartedness that knows that, in time, despite the current heartache, you will overcome the loss that death provides.
We told her. As the words came out of my mouth, her face crumpled as she let out a cry. The tears came and it was devastating to watch her as she experienced the depths of grief for a beloved family member. As the news has settled, we’ve talked about how we might say goodbye to our furry friend. We’ve shared our favourite things about her. We’ve let our daughter cry and grieve as best as we can, even though – to us – it was just a £10 hamster from Pets at Home.
There are hundreds of websites out there that will tell you how to break the news of death to a child, how to talk about death, how to help your child grieve when the time comes. This is not one of those. Rather, this is one pained mother encouraging you to be honest with your child. To hold them close when the tears come, and to keep pointing them onwards to a time when they won’t feel so much heartache.
Death and heartache are an inevitable part of life. Our job, as parents, is to enable our children to walk this painful path with hope and love.
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
I try not to think of the future or the past, if I can help it. It’s too easy to let the imagination get carried away dreaming grand dreams for the future, and too simple to let the mind dwell on all that has gone before.
Yet, I do often think of the past.
I find myself wondering how different life would be if I had made different decisions along the way. I think about the events of my life and how, for better or worse, they have formed me. I wonder whether there is anyone who knows absolutely all of my past and still chooses to be with me in the present anyway.
I guess the good news is that there is someone.
Jesus came into the world to restore our relationship with God the Father. Isn’t that incredible?
I was reading Genesis 16 this morning and Hagar speaks of the God who sees her. It is quite something to think of. How many of us have a longing to be really seen? To be known and understood, and loved and affirmed anyway?
So, yes, I think of the past. I wonder how it might be different, not because I am unhappy with the status quo, but because that’s what my mind does: wonders. And I do wonder, and marvel, that there is a God who sees me – all of me – and chooses to be with me in the present and I know he will be with me in the future.
What is the greatest gift someone could give you?
Daily Prompt from WordPress
Flowers. My favourite, a pink peony. Or a vibrant,
architecturally strong mix of dahlias.
Chocolates, the ones I don’t have to share.
My favourite scented candles.
Samphire. Sage. Bergamot. Lavendar.
Something that surprises me in entirety.
No.
Perhaps the greatest gift is time.
To do as I please with.
To rest.
To breathe.
To dream.
Time. For me,
the greatest gift.
As a teenager, my hero was the sailor/adventurer Ellen MacArthur, who became the youngest person to circumnavigate the world solo. I had started sailing and, to me, this adventurer was incredible. Transfixing, even.
I knew what it was to be sailing in less than ideal conditions, alone in a boat. Yet, I was never really alone. We always had 2 instructors on the water in a rescue boat who could come alongside at any moment. As I’ve grown older I have come to realise that, whilst my hero was in the boat on her own, she wasn’t totally solo. There were support teams at the end of a radio, race marshals and rescue teams nearby whenever possible.
This got me thinking, are we ever truly solo?
I often go out for solo walks, to mull things over, to quieten my busy brain, to be alone. And yet, even then, I don’t walk solo. I walk with the voices and experiences of my life, lived in relationship with other people. I may walk solo, but I carry with me the wholeheartedness of a non-solo life.
It’s impossible to escape it, really. For me, even when I am physically solo, I walk with Jesus spiritually. I carry relationships and interactions, past and present, with me emotionally.
Sometimes in the noise of life, I think solo might be preferable… but then I remember, we weren’t made to live life solo. We were made to live life in connection with others – even if we need to escape to the solitude for a little while.
It’s the first day of the New Year and my various email inboxes has been inundated with sales and offers all generated to muster up this image of new me. This new me is, as based on the 25 or so emails I’ve received from various companies, a requisite of human existence. Now, I am far from the perfect person: I get cross, I nitpick, I fall into the trap of being too ‘busy’ for others, I lack generosity of thought towards others. Clearly, I am not such a good person. In fact, you could say, there is much room for improvement.
But when is enough enough? Which of these many emails with offers of help for self-improvement will finally allow me to be a better version of myself? I have lost count of the money wasted on gym plans unused, recipe plans uncooked and self-help books unread.
In all likelihood and in reality, none of these supposed fixes possess the power to improve myself… at least, not in the way that I need improving. In all likelihood and reality, I will finish 2023 the same weight as I am now, wearing the same clothes, with the same hairstyle and the same penchant for late nights, chocolate binging and Netflix.
I have been fooled over many years into believing that there is something fundamentally wrong with almost everything about me and my behaviour. I am fatally flawed and so, as each new year arrives, I make unsustainable promises to myself about exercise and food, my appearance, my emotions. I have been conditioned by companies to believe that there is something that needs to be fixed in my life… and, crucially, I have wrongly believed that they have the antidote.
Over the last few years, though, I have come to realise that this is not the case. Don’t worry. I am not delusional; I am well aware of my imperfections. However, I have become more aware that the shame I feel around my body, or my mental health, or my behaviour when I am under pressure, or even just my neurodivergent-related organisational problems, will not be solved by the very companies who have spent so much of my life conditioning that shame into being. I have become more aware that my imperfection does not require a new me each January. It’s not that I don’t wish to change, or even that I don’t think I need to change. It’s that I know that a new me isn’t strictly for a new year. It’s that I want to get off the treadmill where I am sold an idea as though it is a necessity.
And yet, I am hopeful for some change, because I know that within me there is a great desire for good change. There is a desire to be kinder (to myself and others), to go deeper into relationships, to grow into myself and my voice whilst maintaining humility. There is a desire for change that lasts and that matters; there is a desire for a change, not of my dress size, but of my heart size.
I am hopeful that, as I spend more time with my bible and praying, that I might become more aware of the magnitude of God’s love for me. I am hopeful that, as I become more aware of that love, I might feel less shame around the things which hold me back. I am hopeful that God will do the work on my heart if I would only allow him in. I am hopeful that I will be less nitpicky, less busy, less cross and more generous. Not because it’s a new year and new me, but because God is enlarging my heart and calling me to be more like the me he created me to be. He is calling me to be more like him, to be with him.
New year, new me? No. It’s a new year, same me. But this year, I am hopeful that God will continue to draw me close to him, that I may know my true worth lies not in the quick fixes offered by companies, but in his inescapable heart-enlarging love for me.
Happy New Year!
I am an Anglican to remember.
I don’t mean this statement in the sense that one might say, ‘it was a Christmas to remember’; that I, personally, am an Anglican of any ‘memorable’ quality. I mean it in the sense that I am an Anglican in order to remember. For me, ‘remembering’ is the beating heart of what we are, what we do, and what we are called to be for the sake of the world. I will offer here a sketch of three ways in which remembering constitutes our identity and our vocation as Anglicans.
There is nowhere else to start. Christians remember Christ. We remember Christ in our preaching, in our rhythms of prayer, in the seasons of the Church, in our reading of Scripture, and in our liturgy and sacraments. We seek to encounter Him, to know Him; we strive to incline the orientation of…
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Help! In just 2 weeks time, a puppy arrives at our house. I will admit that I’ve always been more of a cat person, but over the last year or so dogs have moved up enormously in my estimations and I just love them now. So, my family are happy that I’ve finally conceded; they’re getting a dog. Or rather, we’re getting a dog.
But… people say… puppies are harder than babies. And I’m thinking, ouch! Those newborn days were pretty painful. Exhausting. But at least I didn’t have to go to work.
It turns out there’s no maternity leave for when you get a puppy.
I guess it’s time for those newborn days to come back again.
Lost
shouting
screaming
wondering
“Where are you?”
You said
you’d never leave
and yet
Are you there?
Do you hear me?
Do you care?
Then
a whisper
a reminder painted
across the sky
prisms
of colour
point to the promises of yesterday
a stranger
sent from you
Declares
God is good.
Look
to the cross.
Yesterday’s Promises, by Olivia Haines
26/9/2022
Luke 24: 13-35
Image: Preach the Story, 2019
Lift your eyes,
Look up,
Daughter of Abraham.
Lift your eyes,
Be free,
Daughter of mine.
Valued you always were,
Beloved you always are,
Cherished you always will be.
Worth more than the sparrow,
More than the ox,
More than the scorn of religious men.
Lift your eyes.
Rise up.
Follow me.
Delight in me.
And arise.
With me.
Arise, by Olivia Haines
21/10/2020
Luke 13.10-17
Image: Barbara Schwarz, OP, “Jesus and the Bent Over Woman,” acrylic on canvas, 2014.
A New Mission 