****

Bangladesh

 
For the last couple of months, I have had Isaiah 3 rattling around my head. It is a condemnation of the rich women of Judah who parade their beautiful jewellery. It lists it all – the sheer abundance of it:

“…the bangles and headbands and crescent necklaces, the earrings and bracelets and veils, the headdresses and anklets and sashes, the perfume bottles and charms, the signet rings and nose rings, the fine robes and the capes and cloaks, the purses and mirrors, and the linen garments and tiaras and shawls.” Is 3:18-23

This is the West, this is us, me. We have so much. We waste so much.

But God does not condemn them for their vanity – he condemns them for the provenance of their riches:

“‘What do you mean by crushing my people
and grinding the faces of the poor?’
declares The Lord, The Lord Almighty.” Is 3:15

The clothes in my wardrobe are from various developing countries, and few of them are fair trade, though I would like to buy fair trade. I now buy my clothes entirely from eBay, so my clothes are second-hand, but it is almost impossible as a Westerner to cleanse yourself from the stain of ‘sin by association’. I am writing on an iPad, and it says ‘assembled in China’ and I wince as I know that Apple has a dubious record of treating its workers well. I would happily pay £50 extra for a fair trade iPad, but I don’t have that choice. I only have the choice to buy or not buy. I bought it: but would I have bought it if I could see their faces?

“What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?”

Like others, I have been haunted by this picture of the victims of the Bangladesh factory collapse. These are their faces, the faces of the poor who have been crushed because of our desire for cheap clothes.

The news on this will fade, and we will forget it. I don’t want to forget it. I want to have this verse ringing in my ears. I don’t want my purchases to be crushing God’s people – either figuratively or literally.

It is hard to do this. The world is one big tangled-up mess, and it is hard to try to untangle ourselves from the sin that is everywhere. But I want to try.

*****

Oklahoma

I looked at the pictures. There was so much destruction, so much vulnerability. The thing that moved me most was the report that someone had grabbed a megaphone and was reading out the names of the school children who had survived. I couldn’t quite get my head around the feeling of being the parent in that crowd – waiting, hoping, for your child’s name to be read out.

Whenever I hear of earthquakes or storms wreaking such disaster, I think of Romans 8:22:
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

Everything is affected by our brokenness and sin – even the weather, even the earth. We are broken, and we live upon a broken earth.

What should we do at times like this, when suffering is so big that we don’t know what to do?

We hold off answering the big questions: we feel them, rather than asking them. We sit. We weep with those who weep, even the ones we have not met. We pray. We pick up the rubble and rebuild.
 

*****

Me

This week I have been more aware than usual of my brokenness and vulnerability. I am still in the middle of this relapse – my cognitive energy is much better than a week ago, but I am still having to cancel seeing people, still needing others to look after my boy in the afternoons. I am still spending hours and hours in bed, alone and I am struggling with it. I feel guilty for struggling with it – because, well, there are people who are waking up today without their child, or brother, or father, whose homes have been swept away. But guilt is not productive. So I tell you honestly – I am struggling. I am sad for Bangladesh, and for Oklahoma, and for me. Brokenness comes in different forms and different degrees, and we can feel sorrow for all of it.

*****

 
I read Romans 8:18:
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
I sit with that verse and cry awhile – feeling the brokenness, feeling the outrageous hope.

 
I don’t often pray this particular prayer, because I don’t often mean it, but this week I mean it: Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus.

Over to you:
Sit, weep, pray: Read the news reports on Bangladesh and Oklahoma. Read this article by Vicky Walker and this one by Zack Hunt on Bangladesh; this one by Addie Zierman on Oklahoma.

 
Rebuild: You can donate to the Oklahoma disaster relief effort here. In the US, you can text REDCROSS to 90999—it’ll automatically send $10 to Red Cross relief in the area. You can help the Bangladesh survivors by donating to Save the Children, who are doing ongoing charity work in Bangladesh.

 
Reform: Buy Fair Trade – these sites in the US and UK are a good starting point. Sign this petition to Gap, H&M, and other apparel brands. This excellent website has a searchable list of products and stores, rated according to how ethical they are, to inform our buying choices.

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What we think of as our greatest achievements, may, in the light of eternity, be nothing; what we think of as our weakness may, in the light of eternity, be our greatest achievement.

I’m delighted to be over at Bible Reflections today, writing why living our ‘Plan B’ may not be such a bad thing, after all. Do check out the other great articles while you’re there. Won’t you come on over with me?

(NB this is adapted from an earlier post, so long-term readers may find it strangely familiar!)

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Not many people know that I have a story of miraculous healing. I am VERY excited to be telling my story in Prodigal today – both of my miraculous healing and my not being healed. Please do come over with me and comment!

Health update: It has been a funny kind of a week. I am taking it very, very easy this week as I try and ride out this relapse. I am better than I was, but my battery is running very low indeed. I am cancelling one thing at a time, and postponing the panic. And people have been so very kind – I am really very grateful. And thank you so much for sharing my post far and wide for ME awareness on Monday – i was overwhelmed by the response. Thank you so much.

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But last week I found myself slipping into worsening health.

A month ago, I started taking a new drug that seems to help a bit. I have been writing more, doing more, enjoying myself more – and then this last week I was reminded that drugs are not magic. I have been tired, losing focus, unable to get my brain together, and by the end of the week I woke up and my body was screaming in pain, every muscle in acidic agony. Today I took a few steps and felt my legs buckling underneath me.

I am typing this on my ipad very slowly, whilst lying in bed; i don’t know how long my brain energy will last today. i am hoping that I will not slip back into relapse.

****

It is ME awareness week and I want to write something on M.E. and silence. Last week I felt the silence of being able to retreat away from social media. Then, as I got worse, I felt the silence of being unable to speak.

For eighteen months after the birth of my boy, I found myself largely silent. I couldn’t speak to friends for more than thirty to sixty minutes (per day). I had to ration visitors. I couldn’t leave the house much or for long. I couldn’t write. Each day, I read Facebook over and over, and tried to write one thing a day, just to prove to myself and the world that I was still here. I had thoughts, but they were hard to lasso and tie down, they just swirled around in my head. Eventually, they became congested, a long traffic jam of ideas, noisily beeping their horns, unable to go anywhere. My mind had plenty of noise: my mouth was silent.

Over the past eighteen months of rest, my cognitive energy has gradually improved, though my mobility is still badly affected and I remain housebound. I have tried to make up for lost time. I have spoken.

There is much noise in the world about M.E. from the people in power. Last week, there was a piece by Michael Hanlon in the Sunday Times magazine portraying patients with M.E. as hysterical extreme activists (he used the term ‘terror campaign’) and the psychiatrists who are treating them as heroic victims. It is nothing new: this type of piece has been doing the rounds for the past twenty, thirty years. A psychiatrist receives death threats from a couple of people: therefore that proves all M.E. patients are hysterical and don’t want to accept that they have a psychiatric disease. This is the story that is told again and again in the papers; M.E. patients have a psychiatric illness but they don’t want to accept the stigma (or indeed, to recover, because they are psychologically invested in their illness). We hear the stories of the miracle cures, the sudden recoveries. There is much noise, and it skews our perspective.

We don’t hear the silence of the 25,000-50,000 people in the UK, with M.E. so severe they are too ill to leave their house or bed; too ill to write, to talk, to walk. We don’t hear that an estimated 10-25% of people with ME never improve, and only perhaps as few as 10-15% recover fully. We don’t hear of the ME patients who were moderately ill but made debilitatingly and permanently worse by the very treatments that are hailed as the ‘gold standard’ and prescribed by NICE guidelines as the only successful treatments.

In the UK, there is no treatment recommended for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E. other than Graded Exercise and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This is based on the assumption that CFS/M.E. is a somatisation disorder (psychosomatic), that symptoms are caused and perpetuated by a combination of muscle deconditoning, stress, false illness belief and exercise phobia, and that it has no physical origin. If you don’t get better from these methods, it not the methods but the patient who is viewed with suspicion. We don’t hear of the alternative treatments: indeed, I had been ill for seventeen years before I learnt of possible pharmacological treatments for M.E.

We don’t hear about the effects of a few psychiatrists’ opinions influencing the majority of doctors and social services workers: denying M.E. patients wheelchairs or other aids because that will ‘encourage’ them in their ‘illness beliefs’, the patients denied home visits because they ‘need to be encouraged to get out and about’. We don’t read about the autopsies of M.E. patients, showing they had inflamed spinal cords, and recording ME/CFS as cause of death – an indisputably physical origin to their illness. We don’t read about Rituximab trials in Norway, where, in a small, double-blind trial, patients with very severe M.E. showed significant recovery after being treated with a cancer drug. We don’t hear about the UK government refusing to fund a larger trial for Rituximab because the psychiatrists on the panel blocked the application.

We don’t hear these stories, and there is so much noise and untruth; they would be drowned out, even if they had the strength to whisper them.
****

Sometimes i am aware of how unusual my position is: to be ill enough to experience these things and know the importance of it, yet well enough to write. That is why, today, I am pushing the envelope, just a little, to write this. My brain is not as clear as it should be. I will not be able to edit, polish, find an accompanying picture, respond to comments, provide the links and references for the facts I have cited. (I will update it with references and links as soon as i am well enough.) I will hit publish and then spend the rest of the day resting, hoping.

Last week, I intended to be silent online but writing offline. But for the first time in a long while, I was silenced by my illness.

Last week, I remembered the horrible powerlessness of not being able to speak.

In my silence, I felt the terror of being ill with no-one able to treat you, the vulnerability of not being believed, the loneliness of being in one room for years and years. I heard the whisper of the thousands and thousands of patients with severe M.E. who are too ill to write and cannot speak their story.

In my silence, I felt theirs.

 
Over to you:

There are two ways you can help:

• Stop the silence: At the moment, there is next to no biomedical research on M.E. Please write to your MP asking them to stop pouring all the funds into investigating psychosocial causes and treatments for M.E. and to fund biomedical research into the illness instead.
• Raise money for biomedical research: one easy way of doing this is to sign up to Easy Fundraising, and nominate Invest In M.E. as your chosen charity. Then, whenever you shop online, if you do it via Easy Fundraising, you can raise money for biomedical research, at no extra cost to you.

For further reading:

• When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your eight years - Jenny Rowbory – on eight years of being bedbound with very severe M.E.
• A howl of desperation for those who cannot howl, by Scott Jordan Harris – a powerful piece on severe M.E. patients and the harm of Graded Exercise.
• Why should you care about M.E? My piece for last year’s M.E. Awareness Week.

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(Updated with links 16/05/13)

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Yesterday I blogged on the best of the blog posts of the month. You can catch up here.
 

Music – CDs
It’s an all-Christian line-up this month, but Christian without the cringe-factor.

• Josh Garrels – Love & War & the sea in-between. It thrills my soul to see Christians making music that doesn’t sound ‘Christiany’. It has a sort of Gungor/Mumford and Sons/Noah and the Whale/Phillip Phillips vibe, and I love writing blog posts with it in the background. This is a brilliant album, and every track is a winner (apart from track five, which mysteriously has some rap – but this is to be forgiven, because the rest of the album is superb.) Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

• Nickel Creek – This Side. After my country/bluegrass education in the comments for last month’s ‘What I’m into’ (thank y’all so much for that!), Charity Erickson recommended that I would like Nickel Creek. She was right – I love them. Folky/bluegrassy – they sing comforting, plinky-plunky songs of longing for home. I loved them as a band – they had a real Alison Krauss/Eden Burning vibe. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

• AnnaJo – Jackpot. AnnaJo is someone I ‘met’ on Twitter, browsed her website, listened to the samples of her music and loved it, so promptly bought her EP. She has a fun, quirky, jazz-influenced piano sound, with clear and pure vocals. The boy has been much taken with it, and on one 3-hour journey with Jon he insisted on hearing only AnnaJo and the Beastie Boys playing in the car. You can listen to samples to see for yourself and buy a copy directly from her website.

• Rend Collective – Campfire. This is worship music, but not as you know it. It’s in a similar vibe to Mumford and Sons, with more of a folky edge than Josh Garrels. They have a refreshing, homely sound, that does evoke joyous Christian festivals involving sitting round a campfire with a guitar. Fabulous album. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Books
 

The Compassion Quest – Trystan Owain Hughes.
I was interested in this book, both for the content, and because I know the author. We overlapped at theological college, though he already had a PhD in Theology when he started his ordination training. My main memory of Trystan was singing the duet, ‘Something stupid’ for karaoke at the end of year ball. (We were pretty good, if I do say so myself. All the harmonies exactly – which isn’t easy for that song. )
 

This book is theology – but gentle theology. I mean that in the sense that it is more accessible than your average theology book: I found it slightly theoretical at times, but is well-illustrated and peppered with interesting quotes throughout, so it’s fairly easy to read. I also mean ‘gentle theology’ in the sense that Trystan’s gentleness comes through every page. He speaks truth, and sometimes some challenging things, but in a soft, Welsh voice that comes alongside and encourages rather than blaring and condemning you for your selfishness. He has a degenerative spine condition which left him in bed for almost a year, and he understands suffering. He speaks into our individualistic and narcissistic society about the truth of our interconnectedness, building a strong case from the Bible and Christian theologians. It was really good for me to be reminded that the New Testament letters assume a corporate application – the ‘you’ that we read is plural, when so often we apply it individually.
 

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

• “There is, therefore, no such thing as ‘your’ problem and ‘my problem’ in the body of Christ. The whole body suffers if even one person is sick, lonely, depressed or hungry.”
• “We are called to have the mind of Christ (phronesis) that is expressed in a self-emptying servanthood to others (kenosis).”
• “The aspiration to ‘mend’ or to ‘cure’ is clearly well-meaning, but the real need of people who are suffering is an incarnational and compassionate giving of time and attention.”
• “…as soon as we slap a label on a person, our understanding of that individual becomes distorted. We start to see the label instead of the person…”
• “This does not, of course, invalidate the concept of justification by faith, but simply completes it. Our actions do not bring us closer to God’s love, as God’s love cannot be brought any closer to us than it is already. It is only our acceptance and recognition of that love that is in question. As such, our emphasis on compassionate action must include compassion towards ourselves for when we fail to live lives of love.”

 
Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

The Lighthouse – Alison Moore
This made the Man Booker Prize Shortlist for 2012, and I could see why. The prose was so tight and evocative, every image and smell chosen with precision. It is a story without much action; a man goes of a walking holiday after newly separating from him wife, and recollects the events of his life that led up to this point. It is the presence of inaction that speaks most loudly through this very passive protagonist, and it raises questions about what we leave undone as well as those things we do. It is delightfully misanthropic, and each chapter written as a perfectly constructed painting. The only downside was that that’s how it felt: like walking through a gallery of perfectly-painted scenes, without as much emotional engagement or movement as you would get from, say, a Khaled Housseini novel. But it’s cleverly and evocatively written, so I would definitely recommend it. Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

TV
 

We’re loving watching Endeavour – Inspector Morse in his early years. We used to live in Oxford, where it is set, and it is fun to spot our old haunts in between the corpses.
 

Online:
I’ve been enjoying getting to know the other amazing women enrolled on Elora’s online writing course, Story 101. I’ve found it to be a really inspiration and motivating experience so far, and can definitely recommend it. I am also loving Elora’s 30 days of prompts: helpful questions to help you discover your ‘one thing’. Check out these courses on her website.
 

Here on my blog, my post on how the government’s benefits assessment system fails and abuses disabled people seemed to hit a nerve, and was retweeted more than 230 times. Thank you to everyone who shared it.
 

I announced I was writing a book, and explained how I was needing to Breathe In a little, and was overwhelmed by your messages of encouragement. Thank you.
 

My post for Micha Boyett on perfectionism and doing it anyway was also popular, and the lovely Alice Buckley sent me a card to encourage me to keep ‘doing it anyway’. I have it on my bedside table to remind me as I write.
 

 
And I am taking a week off social media and the Internet, and I explained more here.
 

At home:
 
I have been mainly writing, in the little snatches of time here and there. I am trying a new drug, and hoping it will help. So far, there are minimal side effects and I seem to be sleeping more deeply. But it’s too soon to tell if it will do any good. I will wait and see.
 

On Twitter, I did an impromptu survey of whether Beethoven or Mozart was better. It was pretty even, with just two votes pushing Beethoven over the edge (though I think one of those was a vote for the dog…) A significant minority voted for Bach, even though that option was not given. Bach obviously has some fans!
 

I am still doing the curly-wurly-twirly hair thing, and loving it.

(You can get these rollers here.)
 

I don’t know about April being the cruellest month, but it was certainly pretty darn cold, here. Winter seems to have lasted and lasted, and now in the first days of May we are having a few welcome glimpses of sunshine. I can’t leave the house very much at all, so I am grateful for my garden and the chances to lie out when the weather and my health are both good enough. And I am grateful for the reminder that the long winters do eventually break – all of them.
 

Over to you:
What were you into last month?
 

**Disclosure: I have become an Amazon affiliate, which means if you click on a link above of something I have recommended and buy it, you will donate a few pennies to me, at no extra cost to you! How good is that?? (Needless to say, I only recommend stuff that I like.)**
 

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Here are some of the best things around the interwebs this month:

• Kiki Malone @ Kiki in the morning – Reflections on the classical condition. “A bumper crop of compact handheld mirrors” – on the pathological narcissism of our society. This is probably the most insightful thing I have read all year. I LOVED it. Do check out his whole site – I found it via Seth Haines, and Malone’s voice is an important one in the blogosphere.
• Preston Yancey – when God is gone again (and this is not doubt) – Preston at his best
• Elora Nicole for A Deeper Story – I am not a robot. On being an angry and gentle feminist.
• Addie Zierman – Christian concert – the Chris Tomlin edition. This post on worship concerts was both nostalgic for me and captured just what I feel about Christian worship concerts, halfway between cynicism and being profoundly moved.
• Sarah Bessey for Micha Boyett – One Good Phrase (Calm your heart). I wish Sarah could be my parenting mentor. I love her tips here for using words to parent well.
• TJ Walsh for Transpositions – Finding beauty in the practice of creating: an artist’s reflection – I am thinking more about a theology of creativity at the moment (more to come in May) and this article really helped me to see how art can be worship

On illness and suffering

• Malcolm Guite – Thank God for doubting Thomas. I loved this poem, and his accompanying sermon on doubt and healing, ‘Touching the wounds’, really ministered to me.
• Kay Morgan Gurr – Can I pray for healing for you? Lady: can I pray for your leg? Me: no. This is an honest and helpful response from a chronically ill Christian on why sometimes it’s NOT helpful to pray for healing.
• Susan Silk and Barry Goldman for the LA Times – How not to say the wrong thing. Dump out: comfort in. This is GENIUS – a must-read for any friends of people who are suffering. (Scroll down past the annoying ads.)
• Stephanie Glidden @ Walking through the valley – Insurance vs Assurance. I am new to this blog, written by the wife of a man who has ALS (a terminal neurological illness which slowly paralyses you). Her thoughts on illness and suffering are well worth perusing, and I liked this piece particularly.

Depression and suicide
On 5 April, Rick and Kay Warren’s son, Matthew, committed suicide. He had been struggling with severe depression for most of his life. The Warrens’ moving statement is here. I have been praying for them as they grieve and process their tragic loss while under a considerable amount of public scrutiny. Since then, others have written very helpful articles on suicide, depression and Christianity:

• Katharine Welby – Hopeful depression – this, by the daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, expresses perfectly that paradox of despair and hope that coexists in depressed Christians
• Susan Isaacs for Donald Miller @ Storyline – Thoughts on Depression and Suicide: Sometimes you just want to go home - so many helpful things here, including a hole in a bucket analogy
• Adrian Warnock @ Patheos – Psychiatrist and Christian, Adrian asks, What can we do to reduce risk of suicide? – I liked this for the encouragement to ask people about their suicidal thoughts, without shying away.
• Ann Voskamp @ A holy experience – What Christians need to know about mental health. “That — depression is like a room engulfed in flames and you can’t breathe for the sooty smoke smothering you limp — and suicide is deciding there is no way but to jump straight out of the burning building.”

On writing

• Addie Zierman has a book deal! I actually cried when I read this – I have been following Addie’s journey for so long, and just waiting and waiting for this to happen for her. Every week, she writes my heart. And I CANNOT WAIT for this book. It’s coming out in the autumn/fall. Put a big fat ring around your diary for that whole season so you dont miss it. It’s gonna be good.
• Preston Yancey also has a book deal! It’s on the silences of God. I so need to read this book – and maybe you do, too. Keep an eye out for this one.
• Sarah Bessey for DL Mayfield – In which i am (not much of a) war photographer - on storytelling and friendship -
• Elora Nicole – what she has learnt from publishing series – especially this

This month in the papers:

• Jake Wallis Simons for Telegraph – It’s the end of the legal system as we know it – most people don’t realise how our UK legal system is being secretly taken apart.
• Susan Vdovichenko for Liz Boltz Ranfeld – The Boston marathon bombers are Caucasian, not white – and why this matters
• Giles Fraser for The Guardian – How to bury Margaret Thatcher

At the beginning of April, the world felt a very dismal place. Here in the UK, the severe cuts are just beginning to take hold, and many vulnerable people are all the more vulnerable. And we are still in a recession. And it was snowing and cold:

On disability and welfare cuts

• Ricky Tomlinson for Guardian’s Comment is Free – 10 lies we’re told about welfare – some much-needed myth-busting here
• Zoe Williams for The Guardian’s Comment is Free – This disability ruling reveals new depths of political dishonesty. “Nobody said, in any of the parties’ manifestos, that they would claw money back from the severely disabled”. Think that the changes to welfare won’t affect the most severely disabled? Think again.
• Grace Dent for Independent Voices – Mrs Justice Thirlwell, the one woman Philpott couldn’t defeat – on the brilliant summary by the female judge in the Mick Philpott case – it’s not about benefits, but domestic violence. And then read Polly Neate on how the government is cutting resources for victims of domestic violence. These cuts to welfare will not result in fewer Mick Philpotts, but many, many more.

M.E. news

• Cort Johnson – Could oxygen-starved tissues be causing pain and fatigue in patients with ME/CFS? - long but helpful
• In the UK, there is a new research initiative launched for CFS/ME. I am tentatively pleased about this: there are reservations that it includes psychiatric research rather than exclusively focusing on much-needed bio-medical research, but almost all of the main M.E. charities are involved, so that looks promising. Most exciting is a biobank, with the hope that we can begin to gather enough data to search for biomarkers in the illness.
• Harlow boy with CFS denied home tuition - This is STILL going on. There is a common assumption, fed by the NICE guidelines and certain quarters of the medical community, that ME in children is nothing more than truancy and school phobia. As a result, sick children are being deprived of the resources they need.

 
Phew! Bit of a bumper edition, this month. Hope you find the links helpful.
 

Over to you:

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People often ask me how I can stand it as an extrovert – being housebound and unable to see friends very much. One answer is that I just have to – so that’s how I stand it.
 

But another answer is ‘the Internet’. I started blogging when my brain energy was just good enough to be able to write once a week or so, and since then my cognitive energy has improved, though my mobility hasn’t. So I write, and I chat. People are so quick to condemn social media as ‘anti-social’ and destroying ‘real’ friendships and interactions, and I appreciate that it can be a danger. For me, though, it has been a lifeline, and I spend much of my day idly ‘chatting’, or keeping up to date in people’s lives. Reading the bite-sized bits and pieces is not as demanding on me as reading a book. There are so many with M.E. who can’t look at screens at all; I am profoundly grateful for the friendships I have been introduced to through Twitter and blogging.
 

All of which is to say how much I am dreading next week.
 

For my online writing course, Story 101 with Elora Nicole, we have to spend a week without social media or the Internet. Because I have relatively little ‘real life’ contact with friends, this is the equivalent of going on a silent retreat for a week, and I am HYPERVENTILATING at the thought of it. What if I miss something important? What if… (Actually that’s probably the only valid ‘what if’ – the other what ifs just start sounding a bit hysterical: ‘what if I get bored?’)
 

It’s only a week*. And I need to work on the book some more, keep my new-found writerly angsty diva-style moments to a minimum (hopefully – but no guarantees), breathe in. If I’m honest, I am afraid of silence, stillness; even in my housebound and often isolated state. I distract myself from the silence with the noise of others’ lives and opinions. And sometimes I wonder if in letting so much noise in, I’m keeping God out, as well as the silence.
 

So this is where I’m at. It’s a funny sort of in-between place. Sometimes bravery looks like getting up and doing the routine of your life again today, just as you did yesterday. Sometimes bravery looks like saying no, changing things. For me, this week, bravery means embracing silence, and seeing what it brings.
 

*um… The week starts tomorrow. After I’ve posted my monthly ‘what I’m into’ for April. That’s allowed, right? I’m sure it is.

Joining with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five-minute-Friday. This was my best five minutes on ‘brave’.
 

Over to you:

• How would you feel about a week without any Internet?
• What does ‘brave’ look like for you, at the moment?

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We went to Paris as teenagers, splashed in a fountain even though we weren’t sure if we were supposed to, because it was too darn hot, and we weren’t going to get drunk and go clubbing in Paris because although that sounded exciting it also sounded dangerous and a little too much effort (we went back to our grubby little room instead and read books); but we were teenagers, dammit! and we would splash in a fountain, even if we weren’t allowed to. We browsed French second-hand books in the Latin quarter and talked philosophy by the Sacré Coeur, and tasted proper cheese fondue in a tiny little bistro in a back street.

It is a privilege to have a friend who has known you like that, for such a long time. I am thankful. I miss her. She lives too far away and is threatening to go farther. And who can I talk to about that?

There is one, I am reminded, and I stop to ponder the great privilege that he calls us friends, not just children, not just servants; that he confides in us about what He is doing and invites us to confide in Him.
 

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15 NIV)
 

Joining with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five-minute-Friday. This was my best five minutes on ‘friend’.
 

Over to you:

• Do you have a best friend?
• What does it mean to you that Jesus calls us friends?

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And… Exhale. (Photo credit: colemama via Flickr)

I had said to myself I wasn’t going to write this week. As of two days ago, I went on strike.

I wasn’t sure if it was my body or my emotions that were the part I had overdone but either way, I felt like an elastic band that had snapped, and was wandering through life in a bit of a stupor. (I’m lying, by my use of the past tense. I am still in a stupor). I told myself I would give myself permission not to do my Story 101 writing course assignment about the rhythm of creativity – because I am wrung out and have no more ideas, no more words, nothing left of myself to give to anyone.

And then the words just snuck in through the back door of my mind, and here I am, writing.

****

I should probably tell you a secret: I am writing a book. (I am trying to write a book).

It seems that every time I write a post about how it feels to have M.E., thinking that it is self-indulgent and no-one will want to read it – it goes huge and people thank me for saying how it really is. I had so many ideas for blog posts about M.E. and what it really feels like, I realised it was long enough for a book. So I started writing it, secretly, with my spare energy, spare minutes. I am hoping to publish it in January 2014, via Kindle. (I have a few other writing plans up my sleeves after this project, but this is the first.)

It feels foolish and exciting to write these words, to confess my ambition whilst realising I may never complete it, and I say it to you whilst shuffling my feet and looking down at the floor. But I’m telling you anyway, because I am realising that to do anything in this life I need deadlines, accountability – and cheerleaders.

Though my mobility is still pretty terrible, my cognitive energy has been good and steady for a few months, so I have been able to write more, and I feel excited and energised by it all. And then there are weeks like this week, where I feel listless and wordless and wondering what on earth I am doing; I am in a slump, with no idea how I can flick myself out of it.

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The word ‘slump’ makes me think of my boy.

I love the transparency of toddlers. Some people complain about the phase: the tantrums, the embarrassing things said to strangers – but I like the honesty of it all. They sigh, and you know it is time to change it up.

Yesterday, we were building Lego houses, and we were completely absorbed in the fun of deciding where to put the fifth bed – and I heard it: the sigh. The slump. It was subtle, but it was there. The completer-finisher in me wanted to carry on but my Mummy radar knew this was the time to stop.

We are not designed to do the same thing for a long period of time. We breathe in – we breathe out – even our anatomy is in a perpetual state of flux. My boy had reached the end of breathing in, sitting down – he needed some OUT; he had had enough quiet and he needed some noise. Toddlers are no different to adults: we just hide the sigh a little better.

“Would you like to go and run around outside?” I asked. His eyes brightened and we put on his wellies, and I sat and watched him run in circles in the garden, whooping, laughing, shouting; his breath releasing the energy and emotions that were stored up from playing.

*****

We are not designed to be continual contemplatives, most of us. Nor are we designed to be constantly running a marathon. We need to pray, to think, to dream, to inhale deeply of God’s word, and worship in the quietness of our hearts; and then we need to breathe out – to run, to serve others, to discuss, to walk alongside, to work, to produce.

We inhale: we exhale. If we exhale for too long we find ourselves gasping for air; if we hold our breath for too long, we burst. Sometimes we need to listen for that sigh, the slump. I had heard it in my soul.

I saw it in my boy, his slower pace as he clomped around the garden, the restless way he was fiddling with the stones.
“Shall we go in now?” I said.
“No! I LIKE it here,” he said, but his tone was whiney and I knew we were about five minutes away from him losing concentration, falling over and crying. We went inside and cuddled up on the sofa together, and we both took a big breath as we started to read The Wizard of Oz.

****

My health means I have the lung capacity of an 80-year-old (almost literally, and very definitely metaphorically). I have been breathing out for too long, just in the bursts of writing and the enjoyment of chatting with friends. I have loved it; I have been whooping and hollering and laughing, but I have also been overwhelmed and I am five minutes away from falling on my face.
 

I have heard the sigh. I need to pause.
 

This is what I will do: I will not write any more today; I will read. I will read the word of God and breathe in his life-giving Spirit, his holy Breath.
 

Over to you:

• How do the rhythms of breathing in, breathing out; creating, receiving; working, resting ebb and flow in your life?
• Are you feeling the need to ‘breathe in’ or ‘breathe out’?

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Watching my toddler, it looked like a whole lot of effort. It’s surprising how quickly we forget, how these things become second nature. (Not that I would want to actually jump around the room, you understand – so much effort involved.)

Bend…up-thump! Bend…up-thump! He was still doing it, all round the room, and his cheeks were growing rosy from the effort.
 

“Look, Mummy, I’m a kangaroo!”
 

I don’t know why it’s so hard to teach metaphor to secondary school kids – my preschooler knows it instinctively. He doesn’t say, ‘look mummy, I’m like a kangaroo’ – he jumps therefore he is. The similes, they come later, along with the self-doubt. The metaphor, the transformation, that’s instinctive. It’s there at the beginning. It is a freeing and terrifying thought, that if you do, you are.
 

Perhaps that makes me a writer.
 
 

Joining with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five-minute-Friday. This was my best five minutes on ‘jump’.
 

Over to you:

• “If you do, you are.” What would it excite you to say you are, if you follow this logic?
• And what would it dismay you to realise you’re not, if you follow this logic? (Hope that makes sense!)

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