mood!

Moods are such fickle beasts. So far today I've been peaceful, happy, sad, depressed, exhausted, elated, feeling like I could fly. I have to some extent moved out of the downness of last week (caused I think as a side effect of a short course of a different drug for something else - legal and prescribed for me I hasten to add!). Hopefully I'll be able to keep out of the slough of negativity and nastyness?

To some extent today has been like waking up from an alternative reality to find that I've written a whole lot of angry stuff and put it up on the internet. That was bright. On the other hand they're very real feelings, even if they aren't ones I'm feeling just this minute and I think getting it out of my system has helped. Cathartic, a bit like being sick, "better out than in", as they say.

Today I have enjoyed fellowship, I've seen Christians, I've been able to talk about Jesus and it's been refreshing. I'm seeing another sister tomorrow, God is good, please remind me of this next time I grumble about unanswered prayers! I've been to life (cell) group twice in two weeks, how good is that?

In fact good things do happen to me, they may be few and far between, they may not out-weigh the bad things, but they are there. For my own reference, for when I next feel inclined to wallow (a foul habit I wish I were well rid of):

• knitting group last Thursday - fun and doughnuts
• knitting group last Saturday - fun and frappes and a lovely time on a wonderfully chilled Saturday afternoon
• seeing Hazel today who is simply wonderful, one of the greatest adverts for Jesus I know, always makes you feel better about yourself and like there is some hope, even for a useless worm like me
• making it to lifegroup for the second week in a row and having a good laugh and being encouraged
• seeing Becca tomorrow, even though that hasn't happened yet
• Alex and Katherine coming at the end of the month (ditto)
• Anthony Trollope finally coming up with the happy ending in Barchester Towers

Where from here? Taking things one day (or hour or minute) at a time (as needed), walking with God. Writing my benefit appeal (whoopee), going to the psychiatrist (ditto, let's hope they haven't cancelled it again) and seeing Becca (this time the whoopee is sincere). And working towards forgiveness and healing of hurts and banishing prickly nastiness. Think that's enough to be getting on with?

Some background

Was just doing some more thinking, I have far too much time to do that, but it did occur to me that there is back history to all this hurt, so if you're sitting comfortably, then I'll begin.

As many of you will know I became a Christian up in Durham at the end of my first year and in my second year I changed church for a variety of reasons, it just seemed to be the right place for me to be. And at first it was, I was comparatively well, especially in the first term and I was on top of the world (in hindsight I reckon I could well have been manic or hypomanic during this period, but that's another matter). I belonged to my church, I made loads of friends, attended cell group and both Sunday services, I was baptised, Sunday was the highlight of my week, especially the time of singing at the beginning of the meeting. Some Sundays I would be out all day at church and with church people. I really felt part of things and like I belonged.

Then I began to get sicker. By a few weeks into the first term of my third year I could no longer make it to church and only made it to cell group because it met in my living room. In hindsight this cell group was a massive blessing and I should have been more grateful for it being there, to my housemates for being ok with it using our living room, for the fellowship I received. However, I found that now I could no longer make it to the main church meeting and to events and lunch at the pub I no longer seemed to exist. It was as though I had never been there, in the church that previously I had felt such a part of. Through that year I felt more and more let down by the church, for simply not being there, for not bothering to get in touch, for shutting me out because I was ill.

Even when I made it to meetings I felt out of place. I wasn't energetic and rejoicing and dancing and singing, I wanted to worship God, but felt cut out sitting down and feeling tired and old and not happy. It felt like you had to leave your problems outside the door and fix on your perma-grin as you stepped inside. Sometimes the leader of the church would stand up and talk about how because we followed Jesus we helped one another and visited the sick - several times he actually mentioned visiting the sick - and I wanted to stand up and say, "When did you visit me then?" I wanted to walk out, so much hurt and anger.

It was like no one wanted to have anything to do with me because I was struggling and sick, like I was a momenta mori. Some friends did their best to help, some were wonderful. But a lot of people told me to "rely on God" when I was hoping for some fellowship or support. How did they think I got (and still get) through the day? Gin?! I was learning more and more about God, I was desparately clinging to Him because it honestly felt like He was the only one left. There was such a cult of busyness at Durham and I suffered because of this. I hope my life never becomes so busy I have no time for my friends and my brothers and sisters.

Anyhow, this isn't intended as a personal attack on any person or institution, it is simply to explain some of where I'm coming from. I have, over time, begun to deal with the hurts from this period from my life. Mercifully quite a lot of it I cannot remember, others have faded.

In an ideal world I would have less time to mull all this over, but although I do my best to stay as occupied as I can manage there is still a lot of empty silent time (with the best will in the world there are limits on how long you can think about knitting!) and that no doubt accounts to some extent to how I feel and how big it all feels. I want to move on and I want to have a positive impact on us, the body of Christ, because as an idea it is brilliant.

The good shepherd

I was reading an Adrian Plass piece earlier about the verse "I am the good shepherd" (see John 10) - the piece is from "View from a Bouncy Castle" for those interested in such things. He was talking about why Jesus chose the image of "sheep" to describe us and our need to belong and concluded with how we are all part of the same church, we all belong to Jesus and one another. So however we feel about one another, we still belong to one another through Jesus.

Given how I've been feeling about the church lately (see posts ad nauseam) this struck a chord. I hate how angry I feel, how hurt, how I want to say nasty mean things to make someone else hurt too in a sort of crazy lashing out. How I feel isn't helpful, it's not edifying, it's not glorifying to God in any way, it doesn't make me any better or make my life better in any way. I want to be able to forgive, help me Lord Jesus because I can't do it on my own. I am so very sorry.

Apart from praying I don't know what else to do. The likelihood is that I'm going to continue to be ignored and treated just the same and still hurt. I'm trying the best I can to cope and deal with all this. Life does seem very bleak though. It's not bad to want some fellowship with other Christians is it?

the wrong temperature

I spent ages trying to get warm after I went to bed tonight, must have slept some, but then woke up far too hot. Pulled some cover off to try to cool down a bit, was immediately far too cold. Put the covers back on, immediately far too hot.

It's maddening. I can't sleep and my fingers are icy but the rest of me too hot and I wish my body would get to the right temperature! My brain wasn't co-operating either, on the verge of lots of nasty dreams, which is why I got up and gave up trying to sleep for a while. You'd think that with something called "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" you'd at least be able to sleep? Just goes to show that logic is over-rated.

May as well try for some more sleep. Toodle pip

a smiley robot and the kindness of strangers

http://www.tweenbots.com/ check it out, it's awesome and very sweet. Put a smile on my dial

Some positivity

I had a lovely afternoon. Yes folks, you read that right, me, having a good time. We had a knitting group meeting in Cafe Nero and there was yarn, there was knitting, chatter about knitting (and some about other subjects) and amazing ice drinks. First time I'd tried one of these. It was mango and passionfruit juice blended up with ice, incredible! Apparently it's called a Frappe. Apparently even my parents had heard of them and tried them, but the idea had somehow passed me by. It was wonderfully cooling, as good as an icecream, but less messy.

When I can suspend all the nasty things and forget about all the worries I can be quite content, calm, even verging on happy. But it's fragile and I suppose it is good to enjoy yourself sometimes, but I do worry that I'm just being an ostrich and burying my head in the sand. However, for now I'm going to try to stay positive and enjoy the little things like having company and amazing icy drinks.

garbling

This evening I have been charmingly irritable, so I am typing this from behind the barricade I built to protect innocent bystanders from projectile rage. It's Les Miserables come to Croydon. Seriously, why do I get so irritable? I hate it. I even get irritable about me being irritable - vicious circle or what? I try to avoid people when I'm like this, though my poor parents can come in for some snapping, that said, they often put themselves in the line of fire. They can be slightly oblivious to hints, a pithy message in six foot high three dimensional letters might just get the message across, but little short of that.

Mercifully frantic knitting - the sort where if you look carefully you can actually see sparks coming off the needles and the yarn gently smokes afterwards - and properly belly-laugh comedy can melt away the nasty prickly feelings and coax me out from the barricade. Tonight it was 'Genius' on BBC2, though I still maintain it should never have left Radio 4, don't mind me, I get a little protective of radio as a medium. The hot bath and Adrian Plass that preceded the laughter-fest helped a little too.

Though when I was in the bath I realised that so far as the church seems from where I'm sitting I'm one of the worst combinations any church could be lumbered with, single female (there's already plenty of us in the church waiting to be made inferior by smug marrieds and pounced on for "singles ministry") and chronically ill and apparently stubbornly refusing to be healed and fit in with the neat and tidy comfortable conformity expected of church members. Hands up, I admit it, I'm exaggerating. Most of the married people I know are at very worst not intentionally smug, the majority are lovely. Likewise I haven't yet been pounced on about singleness, perhaps because 24 no longer counts as "on the shelf" yet or perhaps because most of the time I'm not well enough to be there? It does seem interesting to me that "singleness" should be considered a Christian issue, along side prayer and Bible study and cell groups and predestination and mission and quiche. Is it that not being married is seen as untidy or wrong somehow? Yet there seem to be as many issues (if not more) to being married as there are to not being married. So why is one state apparently beamed upon with utter approval while the other is treated as a vaguely embarrassing problem?

However, I think being single is the least of my 'offences'. I am young and chronically ill (illness seems to be better tolerated among the more elderly in the church, by which I mean people of at least 75). As yet there has been no 'getting better' (as all sick people are expected to play the game and do) nor has there been a miracle cure, not I hasten to add by choice, of course I want to be well! Instead I struggle through life, finding every day incredibly difficult and doing offensive things like being unable to be on rotas or committees, or even make it to church. Sometimes I feel about as welcome within the church as Banquo's ghost in MacBeth or swine flu on the underground.

I know I've gone on and on about all this lately but I am upset by it, more than that I'm angry, at the sheer injustice of how I am treated and how I see others treated. I am upset by the gulf that exists between the church I read about in the Bible and the church I see existing in the world in terms of the attitudes towards the 'untidy' and most especially the sick. We don't choose to be sick or disabled, we don't choose to be unable to take part in church activities and 'do our bit', we don't deliberately go out of our way to be difficult and uncomfortable, really, please believe me. I'm going on and on about this here, on my blog, as a way of getting some of how I feel out of my system, otherwise I'm going to explode, yell, shout, cause a massive scene, be insanely rude, part of me longs to do it. The more sane part of me knows this is a bad idea. But fellow Christians, brothers and sisters, I'm sick of being invisible. Sorry if I've somehow wandered off with the wrong idea about what the church is for, but I thought we were here to support one another? To encourage one another, teach one another and reach out into the world to share the priceless treasure we have been given. Not simply to attend meetings, be on rotas and prove how holy we are by how packed our diary is.

I know I'm guilty of this too: I hold my hands up. Before I got too sick to continue and when I was a very new Christian I was a fully paid up member of the cult of busyness, I rarely saw my housemates, dashed from meeting to meeting, having I will admit a great time and acquiring a great deal of head knowledge. They say there's no more vehement opponent of smoking than an ex-smoker, likewise some of that phenomenon is true for me, I'm a human being. But I did run myself into the ground doing this, doing what I thought was right and was what a 'good Christian' did, what a holy Christian did. So I pushed myself and pushed myself through all the signs and symptoms my body used to try to put the breaks on me and I crashed headlong into the buffers. Please, I beg you, don't do the same.

Busyness is something I've noticed is prevalent in Christian jobs too, from the most humble volunteer or intern through to ministers (and no doubt bishops and archbishops) everyone is running from one meeting to another, one appointment to another. Starting work at 5am and finsihing at 11pm, constantly on the go. No doubt unintentionally it shuts anyone who is not physically up to keeping up from working for the church. I would have loved to have done a church internship but knew there was no point because I can't keep up. It's as though we're trying to prove to God and to one another how committed we are. It's also as though we don't believe that God can do without us, but He can, He chooses to use us, amazingly.* But the kingdom of God won't fall apart if we all slowed down, spent some more time "be[ing] still and knowing that I am God" (Psalm 46.10), spent some more time with one another, helping one another along the road with Jesus.

This stuff doesn't just go generally for "the church", it also goes for friendships. 'Busyness' has also robbed me of most of my friends. Being ill for a long time is immensly boring and immensly lonely. Yes I rely on Jesus, I do my best to maintain as close a relationship as I can with Him and He is a great comfort, but sometimes you long for more, some human contact, a voice, a face. I also long for the opportunity to give something to the church and to my friends, because the healthiest relationships are ones of more or less equal levels of give and take. This feels garbled and self indulgent, this whole post, I don't feel like I can quite get across exactly what I'm trying to say. Anyhow it is long past bedtime now so I shall have to return to it tomorrow

* (See Psalm 50 and another place I can't remember but will fill in later)