BASKETTCASE

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.