Fulfilment

Firstly, a caveat; there is much to be concerned, prayerful and sad about. Please understand that I am not suggesting – for a second – that this is not the case.  However, were we not to look for the good, we could easily get disheartened.

I am also aware that parents of young children reading this blog could feel cheesed off – unable to relate.  Never mind.  I trust that each of you will find something of encouragement here.

Rest.

Even during the holidays, it seems a battle to find rest sometimes.  I have to fight the urge not to feel guilty if we don’t organise at least one or two outings or activities that require getting up early and rushing around preparing ‘stuff’.  The pressure leaks in.

Two days ago, Paul told me he was going to set the alarm.

I was quiet for a few moments while I thought carefully about my response. And then I gave it.

“No.”

I am not usually dictatorial – perhaps a “CF” (control freak) at times… but not dictatorial or particularly direct at home.  Carefully, because we had time, I constructed my explanation.  It started with a question… “Why?”

There are so many reasons why one might deem it necessary to set an alarm when working from home and I get that.  You could argue that it is needful in order to maintain motivation; that it’s good to have a routine and set goals.

Getting enough sleep and waking up naturally is one of the most healthful things that you can do for yourself – did you know that?  It takes me so long to settle into rest that I rarely end up getting sufficient amounts of it even over the holidays.

Did you know that in Old Testament times, the land was farmed for six years and then given a year to lay fallow? To rest?  The Sabbath year.  I can’t stop thinking about this at the moment.  Rest is a beautiful biblical principle. Whether you are a person of faith or not, you cannot fail to recognise that Sundays have lost their ‘quiet’ and that we have lost the ability to rest.  In a story in the New Testament, the disciples are stressed out in the middle of a storm on the Lake of Galilee – note what happens next, they have to WAKE Jesus up… he is sleeping in the boat, in the midst of the storm. He is resting.

I recently had some minor surgery.  This really wound me up.  I am not good at taking time off work.  I hated it and was itching to get off the sofa as soon as I could possibly stop wincing in pain to return to the grindstone.  Imagine my frustration when, two weeks later, I was clearly in the throes of Covid-19 and had to self-isolate.

Now the schools have closed.

However, something magical has been happening.  I have slept.  I have begun to take enforced rest.  Not rest that stops when I am better… or on Monday morning… but rest that surrounds me like a blanket.  Rest that is a balm to my tired soul.  Rest that whispers through the quiet streets.  Rest that cradles the flourishing spring flowers and rest that seems dense in the blue and cloudless skies.  Rest that – when it isn’t whispering – sings the songs of reinvigorated songbirds.

I won’t be supporting a bid to set a regular alarm clock in these strange, unfolding times.

May I suggest that you also sink into the new rhythm of life and stop pushing against the tide?  Find rest and reacquaint yourself with this friend who only has blessing for you.  I have almost felt a very gentle warning for myself ­– this opportunity may not come around again… take it now. If you can go with it (PLEASE bear in mind my caveat at the start) I have even had a feeling that the positive flipside of the very obvious and difficult negatives is that this is almost a Year of Jubilee – these came around every 50 years – after seven lots of seven… a year when debts were forgiven, amnesties made and rest ruled.

I am a teacher and – you will probably know that – we NEVER stop.  I am blessed to have a head who recognises this opportunity and finished her email to us this morning with this:

MOST IMPORTANTLY – take time out.

Thanks, I will.

On the first day in Tirana, Albania this week, I decided to walk back to my hotel for lunch. Partly because I wanted the exercise of a brisk walk through the city and also because I love the challenge of remembering a route.

I was staying in a new hotel for the first time and so was unfamiliar with the short drive to the office in the morning. I therefore paid much closer attention than normal in the back of the car, while we spent much of the time in the relentless, rush hour traffic of Tirana.

So, when it came to walking back to the hotel, I was up for the memory challenge!

It wasn’t that difficult to be honest. I had a pleasant lunch and then looked forward to the walk back – this time keeping a look out for the various landmarks I had taken even closer notice of an hour or so before.

What struck me about this exercise was that the landmarks – let’s call them ‘signs’ for the purpose of this blog – were not always obvious at the large junctions, where I had thought they might be. Or rather, I had tried to notice something at a certain junction but in fact, the ‘sign’ I did recognise came after I had made the decision to turn right for example, at a set of traffic lights.

The mural I had registered in my mind only appeared a bit further along the road – not at the corner.

If you’re anything like me, you want the signs to show up and point you in the right direction when you expect them or would like them to be there. You probably don’t know or can’t remember what that sign looks like but you hope to recognise it when you see it.

In life however, the signs usually show up when they need to be there – not necessarily when you expect or prefer them to be there.

Sometimes I find at least, you need to be prepared to go with your inner sense that “this feels right”. Soon after, you very often see that yes, it felt right for a reason. The sign you were hoping for does indeed show up – just not where you thought it would be.

With or without an active, daily faith, the reality is, we all have to live by faith one way or the other.

Faith in our subconscious memory, faith in our ability to find our way back, faith in that often dormant ability that enables us to be as good as we can be – if we learn to trust the signs.

One morning, when I woke up, I couldn’t see.

I called out to my Mum (I was only about eight years old at the time!) who came in to see what the matter was.

It turned out, I had conjunctivitis. The nasty pus that comes with it had effectively congealed over my eye-lashes and therefore, I could not open my eyes in the normal way.

Imagine for a second, if you woke up one morning and the effect was permanent!

As Helen Keller famously said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”

At the beginning of this year of all years – 2020 – why not look around you and begin to imagine what could be a reality at some point during this year?

Could it be the realisation that your life is far more impacting than you previously imagined?

Perhaps the reconciliation of a relationship that you need to see happen?

Maybe that creative idea you’ve been putting off for so long has finally clambered its way to the top of your To Do list?

Whatever it is, let’s all do our best to ensure that when we look back on 2020, we can confidently say it was a year when we really pressed in to our vision for life and all that can happen within it.

I haven’t always had a study but now that I do, I never want to be without one.

Having only recently furnished it with a couple of pictures and most of my favourite books, it finally feels like a home from home.

A place of peace.

Somewhere to work, write and read.

As I embark on rewriting a novel I wrote almost twenty years ago, this is crucial for me at this time in my life. Needless to say, the original draft did not get published (even though one well known literary agency was initially very enthusiastic, while someone else in America offered me a contract with the unforgettable words, “This story has obvious motion picture potential…”. Sadly that ‘offer’ turned out to be a scam).

I eventually gave up on it and continued in my day to day life, occasionally wondering what might have been.

Recently however, I have been doing a bit more than merely wondering what might have been and actually returning to the novel that took me two years to write (early mornings before work and late nights after putting young children to bed).

I asked someone to read it and they eventually came back with some honest feedback, which confirmed what others had said, and made me realise how much I wanted to not simply leave the manuscript as it is, gathering dust, going nowhere.

Some things in life are better left alone. Acknowledge what they were, be grateful for the good they ushered in and then move on.

Other things deserve a touch of resurrection.

A fresh breath of life, perhaps with far more maturity attached. Maybe a more secure and stable structure could make a huge difference and who knows what that could lead to?

For me at least, I can apply that to the novel as well as my life in general.

What about you?