Life in lockdown: Weeks 3-4

Posted on April 18, 2020 by Kath
things sign.jpg

Credit to the wonderful Sarah Nolloth for this beautiful banner going up outside our church…

I started this series a couple of weeks ago, so I might as well carry it on. If only for a record of these days.  I find it strange to notice how many weeks are going past and how long this time has felt. It feels like much longer than a month ago that ‘normal’ life existed.

We’ve had a very contrasting couple of weeks. Holy Week was lovely, I felt full of energy and awareness of the One who made me, who walked this life as a human and who holds us in these times. Easter was a lovely focus for work and for our life as a family. I had kind of been building up to it for the whole of the first part of lockdown. Getting to Easter seemed like an achievable goal. 

No surprise really that the last week has been one of crashing, burn out, exhaustion, tears, a body giving up on my punishing run schedule for a bit (husbandface points out that going from running 15km in a week to about 35km might be a bit too much), breaks in routine with the boys, more grumps, shouting and a whole lot of wanting to give up.

The post Easter crash was pretty big around here. I was able to have a morning in bed on Friday whilst the boys and husbandface played with the super cool Nintendo Labo (combining high tech with old fashioned cardboard box modelling makes us all happy). I managed to shout out some prayer needs to some people from church and friends afar which helped me feel less alone. It also helped me be convinced again that prayer works and is a super practical thing we can do for each other in this odd place of not being able to rush around to be an actual physical presence of support.

I took the rest of the day slow and woke up today with some remembering of who I am and how loved I am (thanks to all who prayed, apparently prayer can work…). I cleaned the whole house (a sign that my mind is much better than it’s been all week) and we went up to the woods to find the carpets of bluebells that make my spring soul sing each year.

I am grateful to nature for doing the same old things regardless of this pandemic. The daffodils have been and gone, primroses are scattered all over the front lawn, the cherry blossom outside our house is emerging bright once more, the bluebells and forget-me-nots are now all over the estate we live on and the leaves are blazing luminous green on all the trees. I am so grateful for this time of year, for the never ending cycle of life which is helping me stay rooted in today. I am glad to be reminded that there are some unchanging certainties in this world and they come around year after year.

Lockdown continues.

This week we’ll attempt some kind of school type activity each morning and get back into our home learning routine rather than holiday routine (not a whole lot of difference to be honest.) We will enjoy our woods still,  I will continue to read The Animals of Farthing Wood from our picnic blanket whilst the boys climb trees and drink hot chocolate.  I might run on a slightly less insane schedule. I shall try and remember that God is my enough and able to help me in these times rather than just the endorphins (much as I love the endorphins).  We will clap and cry and wave at neighbours on Thursday night. We will pray for this situation to be resolved. I will sit with my boys in their sadness at missing their friends. I will feel my own sadness at this odd world. My course starts up again and I will learn a new skill in Spiritual Direction online (pretty good to have the opportunity to try that out).  Work will carry on in different, intriguing, ways. I shall reach out and be honest and we will stumble on.

 

 

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Easter Saturday

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Kath

Pathetic fallacy is when the weather in a story reflects the mood. Dickens does it well in great expectations according to my GCSE memories. Sometimes the weather shows up for us. In hard times it can give us foggy landscapes, wild gales battering waves against a headland, lashing rain in the night.

Sometimes though the weather pays no attention. Frankly I’m deeply grateful that the last few weeks of lockdown have brought us sunny day after sunny day. The opposite of the pain in this world right now.

It makes it harder to remember the awfulness though. I’m sitting on the bench outside our house, the wood pigeons have started their late afternoon cooing, primroses, forget-me-nots, daisies and dandelions litter our front lawn, blazing colour. There is a gentle breeze cooling my skin. The sky is blue. There are hums of noise in the background but mostly this feels like a Sunday afternoon in the 80s. Quiet. Different. Beautiful. Endless.

It is this beauty in front of me which makes it so hard to remember the darkness. I’ve felt this way before. Way back in time I led summer teams of students in Eastern Europe, teaching English and Jesus. I spent lots of time in Poland where I had the strange privilege of visiting Auschwitz twice. Both times I felt so conflicted inside. Here was a place where horrendous things had happened and yet the grass was green. The sun shone. The birds sang. How could they? Why didn’t they stop in horror like all of us who visited? Why weren’t they too silenced by the darkness of human hearts?

I don’t understand how the two go together. That as I sit here I know hospitals are overflowing. People are dying without their loved ones. People are lonely and isolated. People are scared for their lives as domestic violence spikes in a terrifying manner. And still those birds sing.

And then I think I come to know some thing which might help in the search for why.

Without all this beauty pointing us beyond, lifting us to bigger things, dropping hope into our laps, I think we might go mad. If all the sadness was reflected in the natural world all the time I think we would sink never to rise again.

But the beauty is here. In the despair. In the questions. In the pain. The beauty is here and hope comes to us and whispers of bigger realities and bigger love. The stuff that will help us through these tired days. The stuff that will help us press through fear to love. There is such beauty in these strange troubled filled days. And I think we need it.

It’s Easter Saturday and I wonder if the sun shone all those years ago on that silent day of rest. Of quiet sorrow and sadness. I wonder if the aching beauty of creation confused Jesus’ friends emotions as much as they are confusing mine. I wonder how they sat with the pain.

I like this silent empty day, probably because I know the end of the story. There are many stories going on right now that none of us know the end of. Today, in all it’s confusing silent beauteous pain,is for those stories.

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Good Friday

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Kath

It’s Good Friday. A strange day of sadness and wonder. Even stranger to not be able to share it in person with friends this year.

This year I’ve put together (with technical wonder from the husbandface) a devotional for our church on Gethsemane and the permission it gives us to feel our pain and lament in this life:

In it I reference the excellent Rich Mullins song: Hard to Get. It sums up all I feel about Good Friday, the pain of this life and, in a strange way, gratitude at having a God I can cry out to in the midst of pain.

And here’s a poem:

To stay.

To know you could have got down, walked away, had the power to make this stop.

To stare.

Horrorstruck.

Surely he can do it. Turn this around? He calmed that storm. He made Lazurus come back to life.

Why does he stay?

Why? He offered us hope and he turns his back?

Why. Why won’t you come down?

To stay.

To take on the darkness
To hold tight in the pain
To go through being wrenched from all I love.

To stay.

To gaze.

Seeing that pinprick of light at the end of this tunnel.
For that.
For that Joy.
For that one day soon.
For that slow dawn.

For the death defeated final shout.

For people pouring through the curtain into the arms of their Maker.

For hope.
For light.

I stay.

I will take this darkenss
which has never understood or overcome me.

To stare.

All is lost. This is the end.

A mothers hope destroyed.

Can I go back? Back to what?

It was all for nothing.
I will get back into my boat

To stare. At what?

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70 years of Dad (MBE)

Posted on April 9, 2020 by Kath

It seems rude not to have a blog post to mark the occasion of my lovely Dad turning 70. It’s a milestone almost as big as the day we walked through the tunnel which earned him his MBE.It’s also incredibly rubbish that we don’t get to spend tomorrow with him, or go on the lovely family weekend we had planned. I know it’s small fry in the bigger picture of being sensible and safe (especially as he now hits the jackpot of underlying health conditions and age to be very at risk in these pandemic days) but it’s sad nonetheless. It is fairly gutting not to be with this lovely man on his birthday.

I like a list about a family member. See previous blogposts. My brother at 30, and40,My mum at 60and it’s about time Dad had a list at 70.

So here goes.

Things I love about my Dad. 

His steady steadfastness (some might call this stubbornness but today I choose to rejoice in the good aspects of stubbornness). He is a deeply committed man, true to his word and has taught me lots about the slow steady plod on this long walk home.

He gave me my love of nature. By taking us for walks in the country every Saturday and Sunday afternoon he gave me my obsessive need to get outdoors at least once (preferably more) a day. Those times are ingrained on my soul. It’s fairly certain that I’ll ingrain that on my kids souls too.

He taught me how to walk up mountains. Slowly, step by step, small steps at a time. It’s a good way to walk through life too.

He taught me about how much Jesus means. Throughout my childhood and teenage years I knew every morning he would go to his study, read his Bible, pray and desired for God to make an actual difference in his life.

He’s incredibly generous and kind. I love this man and his generous love bailing me out of many a situation in my 20s.

He’s super shy but to us he has always been our Dad who made us laugh. I valued his humour growing up as well as his ability to be someone in whose arms I could safely let out all my anger and rage.

He is a walking example of the acts of service love language. Every morning growing up he would bring Mum a cup of tea and us a glass of squash and brought it to our bedrooms, before going off to talk to Jesus. He did stuff around the house, he cleaned, washed up, got stuck into household chores and made amazing things. He was an incredible example to my brother of how to be a gentle, kind, servant hearted man. Unsurprisingly my brother has grown up to be just such a man to his family. Unsurprisingly I married a man who was kind, gentle and servant hearted. His legacy is strong.

He never really says it, and I think he’s phoned me up once in his life but I know he is crazy about me and loves me to the moon and back. It’s odd how that can happen without many words but it can. And I am glad I know. (I also know this because of his wonderful chat with husbandface when he was slightly old fashionably asking my Dad if he could marry me).

When he gave me away at our wedding (I think more for his sanity and sense of handing over his over-fatherly sense of responsibility than for any reality that I was someone who could be given away) he gave the loudest I DO ever. He made everyone laugh. I know that meant he loved me and was very glad this day was happening.

I loved that his wedding speech was full of in jokes and references that only he and I and Mum and Mark would get. It made it way more personal and lovely.

He wasn’t afraid to talk to me as a teenager about whether I was seeking to be closer to Jesus in my friendships and relationships. That might sound overly heavy but it was a deep expression of his love for me, he talked to me about these things and I’ll never forget the life turning night when he challenged me about a relationship that wasn’t great for me and to seek my relationship with Jesus. I acted on that challenge and lots changed that night. I am grateful that he cared.

I could go on. I am so grateful to have this man as my Dad. I once asked my Mum why she’d married him and she said one of the reasons was because she knew he would be a great Dad (no idea if you remember that Mum!?), as someone who didn’t have a Dad from the age of 5 she had that desire firmly in her head. I am glad because I got an amazingly kind, generous, loving Dad who I had a lot of fun with.

Lastly I count myself as privileged to be unconditionally loved by this man and glad of the echo there of the unconditional love I have from my heavenly parent. I can understand God’s love a little better because I had a Daddy I could cry on, who I could batter with my arms when in rage and still be held. I do not take that for granted at all. I am deeply grateful and long to be the kind of parent that through all my flaws and failings am still a little bit of an echo of the massive love God has for my kids.

He isn’t perfect, who is? I could list the things that wind me up about my Dad and although in keeping with our family tradition of being rude to each other to show love I don’t think I will. No back handed compliments today. Just a whole lot of appreciation and love.

 

 

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Holy Week

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Kath

It’s Holy Week, lent is almost over and with Palm Sunday yesterday and Good Friday in a few days time we have this week between. A time where we sit and remember the events of over 2000 years ago, the events which changed everything. Last year I wrote that I’ve always been an Easter person. I wrote out of pain and sadness that things were still pretty grim in our day to day lives, out of the pain of seeing my favourite and best still be haunted and affected by the ghosts of the past. He’s still not great but we ride up and down the waves of the good and bad moments each day.  Last year, through the pain, I wrote out of a desire to connect with the events of Easter again.

Yesterday I spoke to my lovely brother and we talked of the weirdness of not being able to do Easter in church this year. We reminisced about events which marked our childhood. We mentioned the rhythms involved in our Easter celebrations when we were teenagers: Word Alive for a week followed by events at our home church, St Saviours, in Guildford. Good Friday- for him with his Urban Saints group and me up at the Cathedral or at the 3 hours at the cross service at church.  Easter Sunday and the sunrise service by the river that we both got up early and cycled to, whilst our parents stayed in bed, then the joys and party like atmosphere at our Easter Praise evening service, the music, the sight of our Vicar thumping along with the band on the organ to Thine be the Glory (organ solos are a thing people). Easter was a BIG deal for us.

Easter still is a big deal in my heart and mind. Whatever I make of the stuff which surrounds this faith in Jesus thing, this is the story I can never get away from. The story that grounds me to the earth. The story of a curtain torn, God and God’s people reconciled together, the beginning of the sadness of the world coming undone by the man taking on the brokenness of the world deep within himself, the silence of the darkest day echoing the silence of our darkest days and then the wonder and joy of resurrection, new life, death losing it’s sting and there being hope for our lives beyond this immediate world in front of our eyes.

I loved joining our church a few years ago because we are a church that does Easter well, with Passover suppers, dark sad Good Friday services, then wonder filled coffee on the beach coupled with big joyful songs back in our church building on Easter Sunday morning. I am gutted we won’t be doing these things in person this year. However, I remain determined not to forget the reality of Easter in these strange times we live in.

I could talk about Easter for days. And so I probably will over this week, to remind myself, to bring me hope in these lockdown days, to hold onto the reality of Easter even though this year it will be devastating not to be able to mark the events together with our church family.

Each morning we open resurrection eggs with the boys and try not to get too annoyed about the fights as to who gets to open the egg and who gets to blue-tac the picture and bible verses to the wall. Each morning we remember a different aspect of the Easter story. This year we are zoning in on Palm Sunday, the upper room and feet washing, the breaking of bread and drinking of wine, Gethsemane, Peter’s rejection and the guards mockery, the death of Jesus, the quietness of Saturday and then the Empty Tomb on Sunday morning.

This morning we read about Jesus washing his disciples feet and again I was amazed at the kind of God we have, a God who came to serve and not be served. Son1 is obsessed with Greek Gods at the moment, having read a lot of Percy Jackson books. It’s so telling that when we thought about the Greek gods we wondered if they would ever wash people’s feet. It seems such a scandal to have a God like ours, one we would never create on our own. The gods we create are those which reflect our love of power, control and being in charge. The God of gods blows away all of that and doesn’t grasp power, rejects control and comes to wash our feet. Jesus came to do something for us rather than have us do something for him.

I am full of negative comparisons at the moment, full of feeling a lack of productivity in my work, feeling like I can’t do much in this full on world we inhabit at the moment. Maybe that’s ok, maybe this world can show to me how much Jesus wants to do for me and the ways of service, rather than me doing lots or proving how brilliant I am. Maybe it’s ok not to be in control or in charge. Maybe it’s ok to stick my feet out and have them washed clean.

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