The Long Walk Home

It’s Wednesday morning. I’m sitting in an empty house. Before me on the table are scattered lego objects from the boys early morning play. I’ve been engaged with life admin for the last hour. To do lists lie next to me, photos have made it from my phone to my laptop, emails have been sent, bills paid. It’s the first time in a couple of weeks where I’ve had time to sit and sort. I am feeling happier as a result. Clearer in my mind.

I’ve been wanting to write for a while and now as I type away onto the screen I hope for words to come. Coming back to writing always brings the questions of why I am writing at all in my mind. The best thing to do is ignore that voice. Write anyway. Write just because.

And so here I am.

We have come through the long half term our council decided was good for us in this land of Brighton. I was unimpressed at the start but, this side of the last two weeks, I’m feeling grateful for the extra time with my eldest weirdo, glad of time to connect again after his first half term in the world of school. I’m glad that we had two weeks to hang out together. Glad of the many National Trust places visited. Glad of autumn fun in the cloudy gloom.

We had a great time away on the Isle of Wight with friends who are family. The boys and their girls had a brilliant time playing together. We stayed up late chatting into the night, putting the world to rights, drinking wine and praying together.  Faith still underpins and encircles all we are and do and it was good to remember, with others, that there is a greater reality to this world than all we can see, touch, taste or smell. The friends we went with are of the inspiring kind, the ones who help me want to parent better, to love more and to see the deeper stuff of this life. I came back utterly refreshed, not because it had been a perfect few days (the weather was grim and husbandface struggled with the days) but because we had tasted more of reality together. It also seemed that talking to the creator of the universe had it’s benefits and I can taste answers in the air since we left the island.

We returned to interesting news about the future. Husbandface will probably be let go from his job in the next month or so. Oddly this is freeing news, news that has set his mind free to not have to fear a place that it became impossible for him to stay sane in. In the last week it has felt like shafts of light have entered our world again. The clouds are starting to part and glimmers of blue are shinning through. Every morning this week I’ve been given coffee and half an hour away from the boys to start the day with. That kind of space hasn’t happened for a year or so. It seems like hope is peeking it’s head over the parapet. I am so so grateful for shafts of light and hope in the tunnel. (and if you pray, pray that finances will work out ok through it all…thankfully, at the moment, the wonder of light returning eclipses any worries about things like that…)

The last half of the holidays saw our eldest turn 5. I guess his birthday will always hit me harder than our youngest’s one. It marks the point where our lives changed forever, where we entered this world of parenting from which there is no turning back. 5 years on and I think I’m still processing the change in worlds and feel further than ever from the me that existed back then. I am in awe of our ever-growing boy. I am full of all the emotions when I think about life with him. Parenting is such a mix of wonder, fear, joy, guilt, new discoveries of where anger comes from, anticipation of the future and being dragged right into the present moment to ‘play with me Mummy’. One day soon I’m going to try and figure out what is my responsibility in this raising a boy to be a man thing that we have going on around here. I want to embrace my role, to know what I’m not responsible for and to be able to trust that there is a bigger reality of redemption at work in us. I don’t want to fear the future. I want to depend on the One who parents me so beautifully and who shows me what it means to love unconditionally, unrelentingly, patiently and with hope.

On Sunday morning I heard again of a God who pours out love on us, who does not give up on us, who promises love and delivers on that promise. I felt again the ache of missing relationship with this reality who I’ve been unable to escape from all my life. I felt again the wonder of a God who comes looking for us, who doesn’t wait for us to come crawling back but who actively seeks, who runs out to meet us on the long walk home and who throws his arms around us in delight. I will never grow tired of hearing of such love. I love how such simple words have always broken through my hard tired heart and melted me tender again. I felt like I’d drunk deep from refreshing waters after Sunday morning and I am glad.

And there we are, life continues around here. This week has felt lighter, the clock changes have enabled me to feel more awake in the morning. I am grateful for sunny autumn days. I am grateful for space to think and to have meandering thoughts I can pour out onto a screen. I am hopeful for more words around here.

Here I am, sitting on my sofa after a long day with the boys. Wanting to write something deeply profound to join in the lovely Tanya Marlow’s synchroblog thing about waiting, in honour of her new book launching this week. 

Here I am. The wine is waiting for me to drink it. Husbandface is waiting for me to come upstairs with chocolate. I am waiting to watch some Big Bang Theory before our eyes shut and we give into sleep. I am waiting for son2 to wake up and crawl his way into our bed to spend the night on my face again. Waiting.

‘Those who wait’ is a brilliant book, you should buy a copy now and several for your friends. If we had slightly more disposable income this month that is what I would be doing instead of instructing you to. It’s a book about waiting but about so much more.  It has amazing retelling of Bible stories from the perspective of Sarah, Isaiah, John the Baptist and Mary. It has incredibly moving benedictions and prayers. It has creative exercises that you actually want to do instead of just reading and feeling vaguely guilty about moving on to the next part of the book (as with most ‘creative’ exercises in books I’ve read). It has group discussion questions that sound like you might want to use them. It has 24 chapters for the season of Advent. It even has detailed historical notes on the background behind the stories.  It’s a beautiful thing.

You should buy it because it speaks to the universal experience of waiting. There is no-one alive who has not had to wait for something. Waiting is a mixed bag, it can be hard and weird, joyous and crazy, full of anticipation or full of dread and fear. Waiting can feel like limbo floating or eager desiring joy, or both things at different points of the day.

We find ourselves in the mad limbo of waiting at the moment. Husbandface is still sick, there is no nice neat chronological timeline for his recovery. It sucks. Life feels on hold and yet time moves relentlessly forward, the boys grow, we have to get through each day, head down, moving forward.  But the bigger picture of what this life is all about seems to have got lost in the never ending question of when will this end? Will it ever end? What will happen about jobs? What will happen when the money runs out? What will happen if this never changes? We wait but we don’t really know what we are waiting for.

It’s not like the pregnancy waiting of expectation and fear of the unknown. It’s not like the short term waiting on a job interview result. It feels a bit like the waiting for son1 to sleep through the night, a mythical future we could only dream of until one day it happened, just like that. But even that felt more concrete than this waiting world we live in. It’s not a world devoid of joy, there are moments of wonder, moments to embrace, but it does feel like sitting around in a room deeply confused as to why the doors aren’t open, or where, indeed, the doors have gone.

It’s too easy to look at others and think that they are handling waiting so much better, to worry about the ways we are handling waiting, if only we could get the faith together to believe God was involved in all of this, maybe that would turn the magic key to make this all better. In some senses then it’s like the odd waiting that I did when I was single. I was waiting for a husband somewhere in my subconscious but I was deeply aware that this was not like waiting for a bus. This was waiting for a possible future, a potential future, a future that might not happen at all. It was a waiting and not waiting all at the same time. In some ways we wait for husbandface to get better and in some ways we are not waiting for that at all. In this bizarre waiting we must get on with life, we must still live and breathe and love and hope in the right now in front of our eyes. We have nothing else, no certainty to cling to.

Maybe we aren’t in a room at all, but rather walking along a fog drenched path. We see what is in front of our eyes. We walk on, step by step, we put one foot in front of the other and we desperately cling to each other and our boys. Maybe the sun will come again, maybe it won’t. But the path still takes us on, to fog drenched towns, and people and places to live in and love in. Sometimes the sun shines through and we can taste hope clear. Sometimes it doesn’t. We are waiting for a maybe. We are walking on in the waiting and trying to make the best. We are waiting for the ultimate sunny day because that one is f**king certain and this life is so utterly crap at times that we need to cling to the future that has hope and sure solid clear blue sky in it. That future which will usher in a new kind of life for us all. That future which works backwards here and says that the weird waiting is worth it.

Here I am. Stream of consciousness on waiting over with. Go read Tanya’s book. It made me cry on public transport because it was so freeing to read tender words from one who knows what it’s like to live in an uncertain waiting world.

The waiting for the wine is over.

One day that will finally be true.

The holidays might just begin sometime soon…

‘This is part of the synchroblog on waiting, to celebrate the release of Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt and Delay by Tanya Marlow – out now. See more here and link up to the synchroblog here.’

We stared at each other. Stubborn incomprehension on both of our faces. He looked angry and frustrated. I would have given anything to get into his mind and make him see sense. I asked question after question, knowing somewhere deep down that I should stop the interrogation of my almost 5 year old but not having the sense to walk away and breathe. We stared at each other. He blew in my face and walked away. I frustratedly sighed and huffed for a while. Later we hugged goodnight and again stared with incomprehension at each other. He, probably wondering what the fuss was about, me just wondering how I would ever understand this boy and help him navigate the world.

Later that night I turned to friends on Facebook for comfort. I felt like a failure once more in this odd land of parenting and wanted help. People expressed their support and care, people reassured me that I am actually a good parent, most of the time. There are times I get it right. A friend then dropped the line that set my thoughts free. Of course I have failed, I have not parented perfectly everyday of my life. But. There is forgiveness. There is grace. There is One who parents me and who sets me free to be ok with my failures. There is One who tells me that I am not a complete failure, but who is also realistic about the times I have been harsh, angry, impatient or lazy. There is One who always, unfailingly, offers forgiveness and a chance for a new start.

To be honest this is sometimes one of the only reasons I can find to still call myself a Christian. This good, insane, crazy news that I am forgiven. An external source is offering me grace. I don’t have to try and be perfect, I don’t have to sit and despair over my failure to be perfect. I can run to the safety of the arms that say I am dearly loved, that I am enough and that I am forgiven for all the ugly selfish behaviour that still dominates my life at times. It’s the only way I know to deal with the reality that I sin, that I hurt people around me, that I fail to love. I am forgiven. From a source I trust and believe in. I am forgiven. Words from the one who faced the worst so I didn’t have to. I am forgiven.

It’s also the only way I can face the future, when again I will be faced with children who are not perfect, who will be ugly in their behaviour to others. I will be faced with my fear, my anger, my ability to hurt others. It’s the only way I can look to the future with hope, knowing that I am and will be forgiven. Jesus died for me. Once for all. Once for all. I don’t know how else to live. I know those words don’t always sit well, I know those words can bring all the wrong images in the minds of some read these words. But I have no other ones. These give me hope and life. A way forward in the mess. A way to live without fear. It bothers me greatly that these words have been used in ways that don’t bring life and hope.

For now I live in the tension that I am not as I wish I was, but I am loved and forgiven and can be good enough for my beautiful boys. I live needing the encouragement to know that my parenting is pretty good at times. I live needing the encouragement that when it isn’t, when it looks ugly and wrong that I am forgiven, that I have a place to run to for safety and refuge. I long for the wisdom to know when I need to say sorry and when I need to say ‘go’ to the dark negative thoughts that swirl around me and trap me in fear.

I am grateful friends on Facebook provided that full picture last night.

This weird world of parenting can be so full of guilt, it’s hard to figure out what I am responsible for and what I am not. We are growing small people who will become big people and responsible for their own choices and actions in the world. I imagine there will always be part of me who feels responsible, who thinks if only we had done things differently…. But I think that’s the part of me who wants to think she can control everything. I can’t.

That’s been my ultimate lesson from the moment son1 blew our world apart. I could not control how he slept, or ate, or developed, when he sat up, when he crawled, when he spoke words, when he finally learnt to sleep all night in his own bed. I cannot control when he learns to read, how he interacts with his friends, what he will do next week. Together with the lovely husbandface we can try and provide an environment for him and his weirdo brother to flourish in, to be loved in, to be cared for in, to be listened to in. We can try and be his safe place, his touchstone to run to when the world confuses him but we cannot control him or how he engages with this world.  I sigh in relief that I know a God who loves him more than I ever will, who holds onto us in this weird process of helping a boy grow into a man and who works for good in our lives. I am so glad of redemption, forgiveness and hope. I am glad we have the Spirit who helps us make wise, good choices, I am glad to belong to something bigger than me and whether I have got it right today or not. I am glad that it is never the end of the story.

Your correspondent, once more writing to remind herself of Good Things and maybe finding a few more reasons why she’s a Christian along the way.