the matchbox

At the moment, I am lighting a candle every evening.  This means striking a match.  But the box of matches I dug out is old and worn. The striking surface has lost most of its friction.  I need to press the match very firmly as I strike, and often make several attempts.  Press too hard and the match itself breaks.

I mentioned to Andy that we needed a new box of matches.  He dug one out from somewhere and I picked it up yesterday, pulling out a match.  I struck it hard against the side of the box and the flame flared so suddenly it made me jump.  I had not realised how ineffectual the other one was; I was so used to having to make several attempts.

After lighting the candle, I stared into the flame, suddenly thinking.  I had been caught by a moment of recognition, of description.

I realised - this is a bit like how it feels to struggle with CFS/ME - at least, it is for me.  So often I am filled with ideas and passion and inspiration - 'matches' full of potential.  Then I go to light them up and end up desperately striking against an old, worn box, unable to find the energy needed to ignite the passion, to implement the idea.  It's a repeated frustration, and often I feel like I am left with a pile of ideas I cannot use - a pile of wasted, broken matches.

On thinking about this I am not intending to sound self-pitying or miserable.  Rather it feels like a moment of helpful reflection.  Some things are hard to describe; finding a picture for them is something of a release.  And of course this image could cover a multitude of limitations, struggles and illnesses.  

Sometimes, for all of us, life just feels like striking ineffectually against a matchbox that won't do what it's supposed to.

So - do I give up trying to light a candle?  No. Rather than spending all my time waiting for a fresh matchbox, I don't intend to neglect what I've got.  It may take a few more strikes, but the flame is worth it, in spite of - and because of - the effort needed to catch a spark.

Image from stock.xchng

spring potential

There's something about the first hints of spring.  Reminders that winter does not last forever.  Life sprouting from the seemingly empty and barren.  Potential in its purest form - a promise of beginnings.  Of a whole new season lying ahead, holding life and hope within it.

thoughts on newness and resolving

These days I don't make official New Year's Resolutions.  There is nothing so paralysing as my own expectations of myself.  I like to think of having hopes, dreams, intentions.

But if I'm honest, there's always a giant To Do List in my head and at the beginning of the year, after Christmas is over and there is a sense of starting - yes, it does gain more weight.  Something in the mentality of the season, together with the usual break from the ordinary in late December, means that I return home with a mind unusually geared up for action.

Some of the things on the To Do List are rather trivial and hardly worthy of a New Year's Resolution (NYR), such as 'must clean out that drawer'.  Other hopes/dreams/intentions are rather more profound: 'I would like to be more courageous/wise/disciplined'.  All, of course, are personal in some degree, because they are within my sphere of influence.  'Achieve world peace' would be rather unobtainable since I am not the only person on earth.  However, I can think about how I interact with family and friends.  I think about what I choose to say or not say.  When I choose to stand up, when I choose to sit down.

As I noted in the last edition of our church magazine, I rather like the idea of prayers for the year rather than resolutions.  And certainly, it gives a different emphasis.  'Dear Lord, I would like more courage/wisdom/discipline this year,' has a degree of co-operation involved, no longer a lonely pursuit but a conscious decision to ask for help.  Or as the wise man once said in a rowing boat - you can row and pray at the same time.  The two are complimentary.


So, although wary of making NYRs, I do have a gentle bundle of intentions.  Of hopes.  Of prayers.  And the word 'New' carries a certain sense of possibility.  I went through a stage a couple of years ago when I pondered the nature of potential and worried that left on the shelf too long, covered in the dust of years, it shrivels into nothing.

Such a thought did not hold in the long term, since it doesn't fit with my worldview.  I believe in a God who redeems, a God who is constantly taking things off the shelf and transforming them into something beautiful. The potential you left behind may take a different shape now, but with a bit of imagination, who knows what it will be? Even if it's been left there for years.

You may just need a bigger duster.

Of course, pondering the nature of newness, I remind myself that 'his mercies are new every morning', and I certainly don't have to wait until January 1st to consider how great is the faithfulness of YHWH, the great I-AM, always was, always is, always will be.

update on Fragile World

Thus far I have managed to raise over £350 from my anthology for the people of Darfur (over $600). I send it off periodically to World Vision. I'm pretty pleased with that at this time, and the money continues to come in from various places...a family friend at my parents' church can't get enough of Fragile World and is publicising it left, right, and centre! Which is good, since I find myself feeling rather self-conscious about blowing my own trumpet, as it were, even though the cause is something outside of myself. I'm getting very encouraging comments and appreciative remarks which reinforces my sense of purpose.

I'm thinking next year of collating a book of prayers to raise money for the abused women of the Congo, through Tearfund who work with them directly. I'm encouraged that this is working, and things can be done by those of us who feel hampered by our limitations.

We all have the potential to make a difference in our own way. We just have to work out what it is. And even if it seems to us a small, even foolish thing, it can achieve more than we can ever imagine in God's hands.

Today: 5/10, medium

Yesterday:5/10, medium

potentiality

'Do you think you'll have reached Malachi by the time we retire?' asked Andy a couple of days ago. He was, of course, referring to my bible tour - currently still at Genesis 12.
'I can't think like that,' I confessed. I can't think of that in such a huge way. I need to enjoy it wherever I am on the journey.

I am enjoying it. Now that I've 'upped the intake' from twice weekly to daily it heightens my senses to the themes I'm reading about. I read the passage, make notes on it, read through the commentaries, making notes on anything that strikes me, and then may even scribble down further thoughts - a personal response, in a way, to all that I've studied. And I love it when I am suddenly struck by something.

I was reading the Brueggemann commentary and he was writing about Sarah's barrenness and lack of potentiality, saying: 'This God does not depend on any potentiality in the one addressed.' As sometimes happens with me, this opened a thought channel which I happily roared down... I've been thinking, even struggling, with ideas of potential fairly recently. Some struggle with what others consider lack of potential. others, having been told they have potential in what ever way, encounter limiting circumstances, or life being somewhat different than they imagined, and feel on some level they have lost something. That they have let themselves down.

I know sometimes I have worried that previous 'potential' I have had is lost. As Margaret Atwood says in her novel Cat's Eye, 'potential has a shelf life.' I was very struck with that line at the time because it was what I feared to be true. However, this morning I scribbled delightedly in my bible reading journal:

Our human ideas of potential and loss of potential lose their significance in the light of God's calling. Any potential or non-potential within ourselves is irrelevant when it is God who calls and when we put our faith and hope for the future in Him.

It doesn't matter, I thought. Not when God is in the picture. He is not foiled or fazed by my abilities or talents or amount of 'potential'.

I think we often carry little fears with us which wrap like bands around our minds. They prevent us from experiencing the true freedom of faith. But then when revelation comes, we hear a sound like splintering glass. Losing its grip and denied any strength, the fear falls to the ground and shatters into pieces.

Then we hear the sound of laughter.

And we realise it is our own.

Energy levels: 5/10
Headache: Medium

Yesterday: 4/10, low-medium