The Long Walk Home

It’s Friday. I sit and write on a cold sunny November morning. The sunshine seems to have brought out the writer lady at the back of my brain and as always with the intention of closing the gap between theory and reality I type away. I am a writer. This means I write.

I used to write Friday roundups of our lives when our world felt pressurised and painful over the last three years. It was good to have a space to download the week and then move into the next. And yes it was good to know more people were aware of the pain and I felt less isolated and alone.
Life moves on. The husbandface is in a good place, he still lives with anxiety and ptsd effects lurk, but more in the window of tolerance and awareness. It’s a good place for him and us. I’m not in such a state of desperately wanting our struggles to be seen so we can feel less alone.

Time passes by, the earth rotates and we carry on living our days. We’re in the post preschool years. I work, he works, the boys jump all over us and still need constant snuggles to fill their love tanks. We listen to their needs, we talk to their teachers about what’s going on in their heads. This week son1 was appointed monitor of the visual timetable because it’s incorrectness at times was worrying him (that’s my boy, on oh so many levels…). Son2 needs his teacher to be aware of anything hurting him or troubling him and so we talk through his sore fingers/legs/ankles etc each morning. I’m grateful their teachers listen and care.

I go to work. I ponder the unseen and how to measure anything. I pray for the Spirit to be at the centre of our community life together as a church. I forget to pray. I listen, I plan, I talk, I dream.

I’m half way through my first term of my spiritual direction course. So far I have felt strongly the absence of God in my life, the weirdness of the last 7 years of having to weigh up my relationship with my Maker in many different ways than before, the ease in which I slip into numbing and distraction from the unseen reality which guides my footsteps in this world. Sitting in a room with 15 people each week, all of us intentionally talking about how to pay attention to the work of God in our lives and others lives has made me aware of the hole, the lack. In that absence I’ve sensed again the presence who has me. The longing has led me closer to the tangible sense of desiring God again and I am deeply grateful for the ache leading me to seek quenching for my thirst and satisfaction for my hunger.

I marvel at it being 3 years since we walked through the doors of our church, weary, grieving and hurting. I enjoy remembering those first few months, crying in every service at this new freer world we had found ourselves in. I remember the service when both boys fell asleep in our arms and we swayed to songs reminding us that when we see God we can find strength to face the day. I remember the touch of the Spirit in so many ways reminding us that our source and hope still had us, and held tight. I remember and I am grateful.

Last weekend husbandface’s sister and our nephew came to stay. We had lovely times together, at many points over the weekend she articulated good things about our world and encouraged us effusively. I bathed in the joy of someone seeing our lives, noticing our world and being verbally specifically encouraging. It was a shock how much I needed that and bore in me a much greater desire to encourage others and a greater awareness of the need for specific verbal encouragement in our lives. We all long to be seen and known and whilst it is incredible to belong to a God who sees and knows us so well I think one of the major ways of divine means of encouragement is each other. So do it. If you think something good about someone, tell them. If you notice, don’t assume they know you’ve noticed. Tell them. Let’s start an anti stupid English understated culture revolution and give some words of hope to each other.

I think that’s most of my rambling thoughts for now. Time to enjoy the sun some more, walk around and appreciate Autumns burning beauty. Potentially more rambling chat to follow next week.

How’s your world?

My friend Adele has got me thinking again. Good friends have a habit of doing that. She is all about the term revillaging right now. In a similar vein to the need to rewild and get back to nature she’s sensing in us all a need to get back to the idea that we need a village around us. Well not just the idea but actual people.

Most often that metaphor is used for new mothers, to be honest I found it all a bit hard to stomach when people would tell me that it takes a village to raise a child and as a good friend said to me over coffee today, well where is the f***ing village then?

I slowly found my people through our NCT group, until the small ones went to school we met faithfully each week and a small part of the village was found. We also had a tiny church who felt like a significant part of the village until it closed down and now we are part of a bigger church where people are busy (including us) and it’s hard to maintain the structure to live village like with others. Mostly I hold out arms of love in passing on a Sunday morning and feel the ache of it not being enough.

It’s not just parents who need a village. I think it takes a village to live a flourishing life for us all. Revillaging is insanely appealing but for some reason I feel exhausted thinking about it in our world right now.

So here are my rambling questions and thoughts. Honestly I hope this can be the start of a conversation. I want some solidarity, answers and advice. I want to be challenged where my thinking has got a bit negative. I want a hug and to be told it’s going to be alright.

I love the concept of a village around me but at the moment I feel swamped by the idea of what that means. Frankly I would love an actual village to be in, one location, one set of people, one shared life. I feel the problem of location. I want one space and yet the supposed village I am part of extends across a lot of space and time. There are loads of connections with people. How do we know where to start? Where to invest relationship? Who to push towards? Most people I know seem uber busy, and for some reason our diary is super full but still I feel no nearer to having this village thing.

Maybe the problem is one of my expectations being too big, I want community/village life to look everydayish. I want to be able to walk to peoples houses, to share houses and gardens, to naturally overlap more so it feels less exhausting to push out into people’s lives, never quite sure if you are wanted or welcome.

I want this and yet I feel overwhelmed by how to create it or even if it’s realistic or actually just wanting people to reach out to me rather than me doing the leg work. I want to be part of change but I am tired and I want it to be simple.

Back in the summer I was in some angst about this whole thing and I came to the conclusion that lots of this is about showing up in places and trusting that time will do it’s work. I think that’s still true but I’m now wondering what the end result is? Will I ever be content with our level of community? Will I ever think it’s enough? I know my craving for connection seems endless and I have trouble looking at what I have and being grateful. I wonder how I can rest in what we have whilst being generous to those who seem to have more and deeper connections.

Maybe my materialistic consumer mindset is winning when it comes to relationships as well. Maybe I see community as a commodity rather than a flesh and blood reality in which I and you together are working on loving each other through this life.

I don’t know. All I have are some jumbled questions and some angst. I want to see what I have and be thankful. I want to lean into the village spaces of our local area/school/church and be open to the people in front of me. And yes I want and crave the deep connection stuff of being known and truely knowing. I want to know the Other who dwells in all these connections. I wonder if my deepest needs for connection are met in that Other and the dance which has existed before time. I wonder if I knew that more then I would be freer to rejoice in others connections and be content with the ones I have.

Over to you. What do you make of all this? Do you have a village, do you want a village? How do we get a village? How lonely are you? How can that be eased?