Wow I haven't been here for a while. The socks are still on the go - just turning the heel of the second one.

Overall I feel blank, I don't know how I am, or what I'm thinking or how I'm feeling. Healthwise we seem to have hit a dead end, apparently my fibromyalgia is just getting worse. Where does that stop?

I've just got back from church group, so I should be feeling refreshed and fired up, pity feelings don't behave in the way they're supposed to eh? We were looking at John 4-5, two healings, so discussion was on healing. Yay. Just what I want to sit through. Yes, ok, I should have been joining in, I tried, but my brain feels so fogged up right now. There was an awful lot of theorising going on, which always annoys me. I know it shouldn't, but it does, it's easy to be dismissive of "suffering" in theory, but then it's easy for me to be a spaceman in theory, it doesn't mean I'd have a clue how to drive a spaceship. (Possibly a poor analogy? I plead brain fog). I didn't really have the words to defend myself, or put my point across. Though at one point I nearly cried. Particularly when one person kept trying to edge towards the sickness = you've sinned in some way argument. Yes I know I'm a sinner, but I'm also a forgiven sinner, through putting my trust in Jesus, who died for me, for us, to pay the price for our sins.

I just knitted (it was that or fall asleep). I did manage to forget my pattern but my amazing friend Fran texted me the details of the pattern I needed, now I just need to work out why I've got 4 more stitches on one side of my gusset than the other. Well done me!

Feel a bit better for "saying" all that anyhow, once upon a time Amy and I would have discussed it afterwards and I would have felt like I had an ally. Oh well, onwards, if not actually upwards.

Neon!!!

IMG_2136
Originally uploaded by foggyknitter

So I suppose this is why Opal call line of their yarn "Neon". It totally is, so cool! These are the latest pair of socks I started making, the ones I um... didn't quite mean to start. It just sort of happened. Yarn fumes.

For those with an interest in such matters, they are Broadripple from Knitty.com

Hoping when hope is in short supply

My parents have just got back from holiday, perhaps three hours ago. In that time the quiet tranquility of our home has descended into bag laden, hot, exhausted chaos and stress. Stress is back in the building ladies and gentlemen. It radiates in waves off my mother, breaking heavily against us, catching up everything in its path into its swell.

I've already reached a point of being too stressed to sleep, within about two hours of their return and am working hard on unwinding and chilling out. I dread tomorrow, I am already eyeing up coffee shops to disappear to for the morning and already feeling guilty for considering it and leaving my dad holding the baby as it were; feels like a coward's way out. We shall see.

So, how do you keep hope alive in hard times and hard situations like this? How to survive? Mercifully I bought Matt Redman's new album on itunes earlier today (how wonderful is internet retail? No longer need energy to shop!) and the God focussed lyrics are helping so much. I increasingly feel like God is the only sanity in this mad, mad world. When I was despairing at Him just now He gently reminded me that His grace is sufficient for each day, like Corrie ten Boom's railway ticket, He gives me the grace I need to survive each day when I need it, fresh each day, like the Manna in the desert.
"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning" Lamentations 3.22-3

Living with faith and trusting God seem to be a constant struggle and fight, each day, to believe and with God to get through the day somehow. This morning's verse from "Morning and Evening" (Spurgeon) was encouraging though:
"Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
"You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory." Psalm 73.23-4

I leave you with the chorus of the last song on the Matt Redman album which has been calming me now, the verses of which are a new setting of "My hope is built on nothing less".

"When the mountains are falling,
When the waters are rising,
I shall be safe in you.
Though the nations are quaking
Every kingdom be shaken
Still I will rest in you."

A song truly worth singing.