It’s been another four years, so time for a post!!! (past time, one might say!)

2024 has arrived – for me it felt like it pushed its way in, disregarding my wanting to enjoy the last few weeks of 2023, arriving before I was ready for it…a somewhat unwelcome guest. I’m not rested enough, my home isn’t organized enough, I wanted to make more memories this Christmas season…

But life is like that, it doesn’t wait ’til you’re prepared for all it will hold. It moves, things change, transformation happens for better or worse. All we can do is learn from the past and push forward. When I look back at 2023 there are many things I wish I’d been able to do – with some, the time has passed and I need to move on, but with other things there’s an indication of where I should focus this year.

And so 2024 is here, whether I want it or not! Today I’ve found space to take a moment, the first of many I intend to carve out this year (though I wasn’t as successfull as I hoped last year!). This year we have an additional household member in the form of a 2 (ish) year old pup we are fostering – she hasn’t mastered leash walking yet, so mornings start with the two dogs running in the yard, while I hang out with coffee – so I’m going to use this time to make space for thoughts that I’ll document. Last New Year’s Day I read this poem by Mary Oliver and share, mostly to remember and mark the steps on this journey.

The Journey – by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept your company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

Wow, it’s been quite a while! Tonight I decided it was maybe time to brush the cobwebs off this blog and start writing again – bear with me!

For a while I’ve needed to take time to stop and figure out what I’m thinking and feeling – and what better way than taking the time to write…at least once or twice a month (that’ll be a big improvement on once in almost four years!!)…maybe more frequently!

I’m not sure that there’ll be a light post anytime soon – but that reflects where I am…where I suspect may of us are. Things aren’t easy and the brokenness that we’ve tried to hide and not look at is fully on display. It’s time to dig in, listen to those who are experts in their fields, and then figure out the way forward.

The first thing that springs to mind is the COVID-19 pandemic – and it’s in someways the easiest to get riled up about (it doesn’t take much digging or self reflection!). It messed with our travel plans in mid-March to visit family, all of who we hadn’t seen for 2+years…and then it caused school to be cancelled for the kid at the same time as work got crazy…and this all erupted right after I was knocked out for a week by the worst stomach virus I’d ever encountered. So far we’ve avoided catching the current coronavirus, but it’s impacted our lives, continuing to change how we navigate things – although I’m well aware of how privileged my take on this is (more further down and most likely in future posts).

Now 4 months later life is still disrupted. The airplane tickets we’d rescheduled for October to visit the UK are looking less and less useful. School is starting in 2 weeks, but COMPLETELY online through the foreseeable future – and how the kid will interact and cope is still an unknown. In fact there is still so much unknown about COVID-19, and in this uncertainty listening to expert voices directly has been helpful – there’s a Town Hall meeting my friend hosted here with some really good information.

I’m thankful to have a job that pays the bills, is meaningful and currently is causing me to grow and develop – but it now has to be balanced with more ownership of my child’s education. And by education, I’m not worried about the academics…I want her to learn, sure, but I’m more interested in her learning HOW to learn and the importance of CONTINUING to learn throughout your life. When we (by that I really mean “I”, but I suspect/hope I’m not alone) get lazy about learning, we lean on our biases and blind spots as we view the world, we tune out the voices of those who don’t mesh with our worldview, we walk through the world looking like we’ve got it all figured out. And then when the cracks appear we try to patch things up quickly and on the surface, so we can just move on.

I want my kid to become a good person…an active and caring part of her community…and I feel I fail at that so often – being responsible for that direction is sobering. It’s been a luxury to delegate some core value development to the kid’s school and teachers as they talk about Community, Compassion, Courage, Creativity and Craftsmanship. In these next months it’ll be up to me to walk the talk more.

Community – right now that core value has me continually pulled to look outside my (very small at the moment) bubble. And with all that’s been in the news, especially with regard to race, I’ve found my self digging in, listening, reading, and looking for the path I’m called to tread. I’d been thinking that I needed to listen, learn more, get it all together before I started speaking (or writing) about race. But today, while running, I was listening to a podcast which reminded me of a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. As part of the interviews on “The Bitter Southerner” episode I heard an exhortation from John Archibald (a journalist) to “overcome the great silence that exists in many of our lives” in regards to race. So expect thoughts on this to come. And I’ll finish with an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Two things on Saturday caught my attention, and in my current self-absorbed way led me to thinking about (my) life.

I was feeling pretty accomplished on Saturday morning – I’d woken early (despite a late night watching the Olympics opening ceremony), made it to a friend’s house by 8am to help bake 200 cookies for a wedding, ran some errands and then managed to jump start the truck. Having driven around the neigbourhood for a while, I came home, turned it off and then restarted it. Yes, I can fix things…I can get some help (in the case, jump leads)…but then I can use the tools I have to get things going again…back on the right track…self sufficient…moving forward…(you get the gist!).

So, I drove off to an estate sale I’d noticed thinking that they might have a bookcase or desk that I’m needing. Sadly all the furniture they had was sold, and even then, none of it would have worked. Not to worry, I ran into a new friend and we had a good chat before going our separate ways. Then I went back to the truck, and it would barely turn over as I tried to start it. Wow, that juice ran out quickly…the indicator had shown the battery to be at full power and I’d been relieved that it was a quick and easy fix.

Ah, yeah, quick and easy isn’t always the long term fix. And there’s that dreaded time again…moving from trucks to life…I feel like I’ve done A LOT of work – digging, trying to understand, setting new thought patterns in motion. Surely I’m ready now for new adventures, my heart is healed, I’ve got it…and yet, I may have some peaks where I’m doing good, but the underlying emptiness is still there – this season is still “draining my battery” so to speak. It’s gonna take more than a quick jump start to get me through the every day stops and starts. I’m going to keep the jump leads around for a while!

Later in the day I was driving to church to help set up for a wedding of two dear friends. I was excited to celebrate the day with them, and that, combined with tasks to do and some new good friends got me through what was at times a hard day. Nothing like a wedding to remind you that once upon a time you were there…and then in your case things fell apart. Anyways, with the truck fiasco I was running late, but as I was driving and checking my wing mirrors, I noticed I had a little friend (he seemed to resemble a praying mantis) clinging on to the mirror. He made it the 14mile drive, which included some fast interstate driving. Sometimes in life you just have to hold on I guess! Later when I went back out to the car, he’d jumped on over to the other side, but by the time I headed home, after the storms, he was long gone…and I realized I’d not taken the picture I’d meant to. The journey continues…

Today I spent a couple of hours in the front garden. In the heat of the late afternoon it wasn’t my top pick of where to be, but it needed some attention – grass to cut, weeds to pull, some large ferns to chop down. It looks a lot better than it did, though still could use weed eating around the fence and flower beds along with finishing pulling weeds…rain stopped play!

I have a circular walled flower bed in the garden…it looks great when it’s tidy, but was severely overgrown. The culprit was some form of ivy-like plant that had spread across the whole circle. It had twisted itself around the branches of my rose bush and it took quite a bit of time to loosen it. As I spent a good while there clearing it, gently pulling, cutting and unraveling it, I got thinking about life in general, and of course my life in particular!

• It is so easy for something invasive and damaging to take over and cover the beauty in life…in this case the failure of my marriage and the feeling that I’ve lost who I am.
• It’s gonna take time to unravel things and find out all the parts that have been touched by this. You think you’ve got it all and then you find another offshoot!
• There’s patience and tenderness needed in the separating and clearing – there were many, many twists as the weed sought to wrap fully around the bush. It takes time, intention and kindness…oh, that dreaded time!
• There were times I had to trust in the strong roots of the rose bush as I pulled the weed off – they didn’t fail. I need to trust in my strong roots and inner ability to survive and thrive.

The rose bush was amazingly still flowering underneath the tentacles…now I (and everyone who passes my garden) can actually see it!

Here endeth the metaphor! (Sadly I didn’t take a before picture to show the amazing contrast!)

Sometimes it feels like the moment I get something, find a truth to grab onto and truly believe, life throws things at me specifically designed to shake it. It’s that old adage “one step forward, two steps back”!

Journaling has become more of a discipline these days, helping to get thoughts out of my head and putting a record of them on paper. It’s good to look back on – it definitely marks some of those steps forward. These are my own personal cairns on my path, allowing me to see where I was and where I’ve moved to…and in some cases where I need to get back to!

One of the things that’s sitting with me is embracing my identity – who am I? Someone called me sweet the other day and they meant it in a really great way (I think!) but that’s not the thing that first comes to mind when I describe myself…but what if some of these good characteristics people see in me ARE part of who I am. I have been finding that when I let my guard down and show who I am that there is joy and freedom, with a side helping of fear and vulnerability!

I’ve been also trying to focus on things that I can control – scheduling workouts (enjoying an online kickboxing class!), moving unnecessary meetings and making sure I have times with friends so I don’t turn into a recluse – have been achievements of the past week…now to just keep that up as I realize the weekend looms before me with no plans until Sunday evening!

I just returned from a retreat that took the image of a wilderness for the journey after divorce. It was a good weekend, though not the easiest – facing where I am isn’t the most comfortable at the moment. I had thought that after almost 2 months I was coming to terms with “divorce” – but then I found out that my ex had moved on to a new relationship and moved his girlfriend in with him. The feelings of hurt, worthlessness and failure were all stirred up…I wanted to somehow race away from this place…where are the good things for me!

And yet, there are some cairns on this journey to point the way, and they encourage me that the path through this isn’t short, but has markers that those who have traveled before me have left to show the way – the way to healing and ultimately fullness of life.

So I entered the retreat at just the right moment, with just the right people around – it wasn’t what I’d planned (I’d meant to go the previous month), but it was definitely the right time and place.

Truth was spoken – the hard truth of where I am, with the knowledge that there were others walking right along beside me – and the truth of who I am. The purpose of this journey, to transform me, to take me to a place that I couldn’t have got to any other way. But there’s work in this journey – letting this build my character rather than defining my life, finding my purpose and identity, knowing the approval of God, allowing the truth to set me free (and not just my version of it), keeping on keeping on and committing to love earnestly and intentionally, leaving the old story and habits behind. Emerging to the future beautifully transformed, wearing my scars for I know they are a testament to grace and restoration. My story isn’t finished!

 

I got to spend almost two weeks back in the UK with my daughter. We were with family for most of the time and it was wonderful. So welcome to be embraced and loved, cared for and supported. I’d deliberately decided not to try and travel around to see lots of people, but instead to focus on some close friends and enjoy the time with family that my cousin’s wedding facilitated.

It was great and sad – wonderful to see my daughter with her cousins, aunts, uncles, granny, great aunts & uncles…and yet also sad when I looked at life there, realizing that I can’t go back and that I’ve lost so much of who I was. It was sobering and encouraging to go through boxes of old letters, mostly from people I’m not in close contact with anymore, and read the things they talked about and said about me. Who is this person who wrote long letters that they responded to? Where is she…can I find some of her life again??! It was hard to leave – my family truly are a rock. And the history that had been remembered was challenging me to bring the things that matter to me into the now.

I’ve recently been looking at the Enneagram model, which has been giving me a lot of insight into who I am and what that means. On their scale, I’m a 9…a reluctant one, but the more I read about it the more I realize that it describes me! This type is the peacemaker…sounds great, but really for me it’s been a lot about ignoring my preferences and adopting those of others…and then getting resentful and frustrated. Much of my journal writing over the past few years has been “who am I?”…what is it I like, what do I want to do…really, what do I WANT, not what do I think others think I should want. There are so many layers and I keep peeling back more and more, and realizing that there is some great treasure in the 9, but also some unhealthy character traits. And at the moment I have the space to explore that and become the best version of myself I can be.

I keep on being drawn back to this – beautifully transformed, wearing my scars!

Friends asked me after court how I was doing and I would think for a minute and answer “fine”. I wasn’t weepy, I didn’t feel overwhelmed (at least not most of the time)…there were no huge emotions. Then I realized I wasn’t feeling anything… I was numb. It was how I coped, I guess. It seems such a clean, simple event – there was very little fighting, we agreed things fairly easily, the court attendance was scary but straight forward and I managed not to cry while sitting in the witness box. I was numb – that was the only way I could carry myself after stating to the judge that there were irreconcilable differences in my marriage and I was requesting a divorce. I was asking for something that wasn’t my first choice – I felt like I’d been pushed into the corner and it was my only option that gave me some control over the situation.

Control…sometimes that’s over-rated. It doesn’t always bring peace and certainty! This part is done – now we wait for paperwork and then more filing and dealing with changing titles etc. It stretches on out! Having lost my Dad in no way prepared me for the death of my marriage – with death, the person is gone, there’s no-one physically left her to get angry at. Not so here – there’s the trauma of the death of the relationship, however the person is not out of the picture, especially with a kid involved! I’m hoping that once the numbness passes, the grieving process will be quick.

Tomorrow I go to court for the first time in any case.

I’ve only ever been inside the courtroom for a wedding a few years ago and more recently to observe some mediations.

Tomorrow I go to court as the plaintiff in divorce proceedings.

This still feels a little surreal. And when I realize that this is really happening there’s an overwhelming wave of sadness and fear for what the future holds.

Holding on to truth is hard…what a difference a day makes! Right now my mind is gripped with these two emotions: sadness and fear – they’re holding tight and envelop all else tonight. I wander from distraction to distraction, hoping that I can make it through, that the darkness won’t consume me.

Tomorrow…

It’s been quite a couple of weeks. And this week, I’m sure, will be no exception it seems.

I’m not quick to embrace change, especially at the moment when my life seems like there is so much uncertainty. Last week I learned that our rector is leaving – it’s a good move for him, but he’s been someone who’s walked with me through these past few months: connecting me with people, helping me navigate through, encouraging me, being a father’s voice (much missed with my own Dad passing away 4 years ago) – the thought of the void his move will leave is unsettling. And yet, I know that it is God who provided this person to support me during this time, and He doesn’t change – He is still my provider and I choose to trust, even thought there is so much uncertainty. In fact, if there wasn’t the uncertainty there would be little need for trust!

These next seven days are going to be about change in my life. This Wednesday sees me going to court, at which time the dissolution of my marriage will be finalized -there are so many emotions tied up with that, mainly sadness and shame…and they are weighing heavily on me as I look forward to the next few days. I have space on Wednesday after court should be done to be with friends and grieve – I’m grateful for the time and the friends who have come alongside me in this. And then I look on to the weekend – Sunday will see me confirmed at St. B’s…a new beginning…a marker to where I am building community…a commitment to continue on this journey. It’s not taken me where I thought I would be going…and that’s ok.

And in these past few months I’ve found so many truths expressed musically, that resonate with my soul and stick better than words alone. This week I’m choosing to focus on truth…and I’m glad of my piano (albeit an out of tune old thing…but it accompanies me ok!) to sit at, play, sing and let the deep truths wash over me:

I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand.

And the weird thing, was that as I sang these words of truth…true because of who God is, not what I’ve done or who I am or what my status is…I found that the following words started to resonate…

My heart is overflowing, my love just keeps on growing, here in the grace of God I stand.

It’s true – as I look ahead to Wednesday, with the official ending of a relationship that I’d committed to “’til death do us part” I’m not feeling much of an overflowing heart, at least not with love, maybe with tears. And yet, as I let the truth of who I am in Christ – how much my Heavenly Father loves me, my heart did start to expand. And the heavy, grouchiness of the day started to disappear. With integrity I could sing…

And I will praise you, Lord, yes, I will praise you, Lord,
And I will sing of all that you have done.
A joy that knows no limit, a lightness in my spirit,
Here in the grace of God I stand.

(thanks to Dave Bilbrough…I think this was a song I first sang at summer camp!)