Gressenhall Rural Life

Went to Gressenhall with Mary, Dom and James this morning.  The black sow had had piglets this morning!  How about that for timing.  James had his time in the play area and Mary and I did the nostalgia thing in all the furnished rooms and outhouses: 'yes, we had one of those.'

It has been an amazingly good week.  I have had a lot of tummy pain, which I think must be a chemo side-effect, but otherwise have just been able to get on with things and not think too much about it.  It has been difficult to remember to take the tablets, in spite of setting the alarm on my mobile for 6.30 pm, which is normally at the end of the evening meal.  One night I had to make toast at 11.0 pm because I realised I had not dosed myself but so far I have not actually missed any completely.  The problem is I am not a mobile phone person, so it is hardly ever with me and probably tinkles to itself uselessly in another room.

My last blog was written quite late in the evening with the television on, and may well have seemed a bit odd and incomprehensible.  It actually grew out of an intermittent train of thought that is very real to me, but is intemittent because that is how all my thinking is these days.  It is as though I can only grasp deep truth by the coat-tails, never full on.  Anway, the following morning in bed, my daily Bible portion for the day made me sit up and take notice, and feel that I was grasping something significant albeit in bit-sze pieces.  Bear in mind that it is a dated choice of reading, and I was reading it on the appointed day:
 ^' Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.'

The reading went on to specify that we should concentrate our thinking on good things: true, honourable and right; pure and lovely and admirable; excellent and worthy of praise.  A long way from worrying about intellectual reasoning, the meaning of things and issues of life and death.  It's not that I think I should never have given them any thought, but somehow I feel this is not the time in my life for it.  I have come full circle and learned enough to know that it is fascinating and motivating but not essential.  I can be at peace without thinking God needs me to make anything happen.  If I had been born like my uncle, 'poor little Albert', I would have been held in his hand just the same, and if at the end of my life my memory dissolves like Mum's, I shall not be abandoned.  It is humiliating, and hard to accept, but I am sure it is true.

Mary is coming tomorrow and staying overnight.  I think we are going to look at some video editing, although I had thought she had a little video machine, and in fact she hasn't.  Maybe she has some on her camera.  She might want to look at some of the footage of Mum, especially some lovely bits Mary-Ann and I found of her in Wales.

This is my seventh day of this new course of chemo.  It has not been at all bad.  The weather has been not just good, but hot, like 28c.  This has meant I have hardly been troubled by the cold sensitivity at all.  I have been back on cold drinks for several days, able to hang out washing, fetch stuff from the fridge, wash fruit and veg under the tap.  I have done both my school walks, and expect to complete my week's duties tomorrow.  I did my Grandma day yesterday, and although we didn't risk going into town we made cookies, finished a scrapbook page for James's album and played ball outside.

I simply haven't had the Day 5 drop.  I feel very calm, and happy that I am doing what is right for me at this time of my life.  I am not achieving great things, making a difference in the world, improving my mind or leaving behind a great legacy of wisdom and provision, but just being, and feeling a great sense of thankfulness that it is OK just to be me.  I may never know in this life what this is all about, how I fit into the great scheme of things, and why things are the way they are.  In that I am no different to anyone else on the planet, although I am certainly having it easier than most of the world.

It was our cell-group meeting last night.  We have a lovely lady octogenarian who exudes calm trust in God and takes a keen interest in everyone and their doings.  She never misses the Sunday service, but when questioned about her reaction to the sermon she freely admits that she loses it as soon as she leaves the building.  I wish I were that honest, because I do too.  I am not sure if my mind is going, or my priorities for concentration have changed.  I was thinking about that today hanging out the washing: about the relationship between mind and spirit, and how the spirit functions without mind.  Does it?  Does a relationship with God require full function of the whole being?  That can't be right.  Instinct tells me that often those with the deepest spiritual awareness are those with the least mental capacity.  Sometimes I think so-called intelligence works in opposition to the spirit, looking for explanations, patterns, rules, power.  I have tried hard all my life - striven, worried, measured myself, gritted my teeth and gone on trying.  It has been part of who I am, it has driven what I have done, but it hasn't made me any more worthy.  And has God looked down on me with a smile and a shrug, thinking to himself: there's always one who has to do it the hard way? 

Maybe I'm just hanging out too much washing.