All things are possible?

One of my favourite Bible verses is this:

Matthew 19:26 (New International Version)

Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

A good friend gave me this last weekend, the funniest part of it is that the following day my daughter did catch me with my dress tucked in my knickers walking (on crutches) down the path.

On a more serious note it has got me to thinking about all the things going on in my life that at the moment feel a bit 'impossible'. Could my faith be strong and sure enough to really believe that they are? So I thought I would list them:

1. I want to believe that we can provide a safe and stable home for my niece and that it won't be to the detriment of my other children's safety and happiness.
2. I want to believe that my body will enable me to do all the stuff I want to do.
3. I want to believe that my parents would come to know Jesus.
4. I want to believe that a broken relationship can be repaired.
5. I want to believe that my home church and work place will be lead my a new visionary leader and we won't be left in an interregnum for too long.

I am sure there are more, but these will be good to focus on for now. The promise is there that all things are possible - the challenge for me to believe it is now on.

Our New Addition.

Meet our newest addition to our family, she is 12 years old, shares the same birthday as my 8 year old daughter and is my niece. For those of you who have been reading my blog for some time you will know that just before I started blogging back in January my younger sister died. She was a single parent to this gorgeous now 12 year old. For the last 6 months she has been living with my mum and dad who lived very close to where she had lived with her mum. This enabled her to carry on at her school. However, this has not worked, my sister had written a will back in 2002 shortly after her husband left her asking that my mum and dad would be her guardian unless unable to and then it was to be us. This did mean that although disappointing for my mum and dad we know that my sister would have been happy with the decision we have now all made.

We are under no illusions, we know that we are not taking on an easy job. We have had her with us for 6 weeks now, she has settled into her new school here relatively easily and is starting to make new friends. She gets on fabulously with my 9 year old son, not so well with our 8 year old daughter - but I expected that - sharing mummy when you are 8 is very, very difficult.

We are now trying to make sure we can get all the support that is available to us. Social services have finally taken us seriously and come on board, which I hope is going to be a good thing. We are also fortunate to have a Child Bereavement charity close by who run groups to support both our 12 year old and our two younger ones.

I have now made the decision to take the six weeks off work that I have been signed off to have and concentrate my energies on providing as much as I am able, to our three lovely children, my husband and myself.

So now we are in the process of letting as many people as possible know the news, including my sisters friends, by sending out 'New Addition' cards. We have a big job ahead of us but we are as ready as we will ever be for it, my husband came up with a very good way of describing how we feel about it all a few weeks ago:

"It's a bit like when you are expecting your first child, you read all the books, you talk to people about it, but actually until that child is in your arms, in your home, you really don't have a clue how it is all going to work out, and even years down the line you are still learning."

Listening to God

Have you heard the story about the Christian man whose boat capsizes in the middle of the ocean? He's all alone and starts praying to God to help him survive this catastrophe. A man in another boat comes by and offers to help him out and is surprised by the response he gets - "no thanks it's okay God is going to help me". A helicopter flies over with a winch man offering to help, again he is surprised by the response he gets - "no thanks it's okay God is going to help me". Eventually he drowns and when he gets to Heaven he asks God why he didn't help him - God responded - "I sent you a boat and you refused its help, I sent you a helicopter and you refused help - so here you are".

So why is this story on my mind today - I had a terrible nights sleep because I feel a bit like the man in the sea.

At work I have been trying to organize a holiday club for the end of July. This holiday club has been an uphill struggle since I started working for the church some 18 months ago. I am now looking at two lifelines that have been sent this week and wondering if they are from God and if so - I should be hanging on to them:

1. After having my knees operated on last Monday, I have been signed off work for 6 weeks and told not to drive for at least 4 weeks. This takes me past the date of the holiday club.
2. Yesterday our Child Protection Officer informed me that I couldn't use 9 of my volunteers as they have not got up to date CRB forms completed for our church.

I hate giving in and not being able to complete projects and so feel in complete turmoil. I have been feeling very low about work for some time. We have got so much going off at home that the thought of being able to concentrate on home things and getting fit for the next 6 weeks is far more appealing than struggling to do a holiday club which will not be the best I could do and may lead to me ruining my knees again.

So I am waiting and listening and trusting on the discernment of others to help me make the decision as to whether I pull out completely from this holiday club. It's a hard thing to do, very hard.

Progress

As the week progresses - so do my knees! I got to change my dressings today, taking off the big padded cotton wool and crepe bandages. The bad news is I now have to wear tubi-grip for the next 10 days!



I am finding it very difficult to sit still and rest, there are so many jobs to do in the house that it would be great to get up and do them. I am already able to walk around the house just using the furniture, I am trying to behave myself and still use one crutch when I am outside. I am so hoping that this means that I am going to be much more mobile when they are properly healed.



My daughter had a friend to play this evening after school, it was very amusing to listen to them play, they were using my daughters mountain walking stick as a crutch. It is so lovely to watch them assimilating my experience in their play. This is a picture of the pair of them as my husband scootered the friend home.

Splish Splosh Splash

It has been very warm here all week - I know for many folks saying in the 20's is a good thing but when it gets too the high 20's in England for more than two days it seems it is officially a heatwave. As our guinea pigs live outdoors I thought they might be feeling a bit warm too, they will be 2 this August and this is the first time they have had a bath!! Maisy the one in front seemed to quite like it and happily kept going up to her belly. Twitchy the one at the back just was not so keen! My daughter had great fun playing with them and gave them the treat of some time on the front lawn afterwards to nibble the grass (which needs cutting!).

Knees

My knees have been really dodgy for about a year. I had presumed it was my rheumatoid arthritis but after visits to my consultant, MRI scans, it turns out I have osteoarthritis in them as well (same as my ankles and spine - lucky me!). The only solution that was likely to bring any improvement was surgery. As they have been bad enough to really restrict my walking up/down stairs and hills for the last 6 months+ and I have not been able to ride my bike I decided that I would have surgery. This has taken an awful long time to come round. As you will see from the photograph though - it is now done. I opted to have both knees done at the same time as it would have just been too inconvenient to go through it all twice. The surgery was keyhole to wash out the joints and to smooth off the cartilage around the bone that had gotten too rough, causing the pain. Surprisingly I managed to have it done as day surgery (I never usually manage to get things to go to plan), I was second on the list and so was wheeled down to theatre about 10.30 back on the ward for 12.30 and home about 4.30! I have a whole rigmarole to go through now including having to wear tubigrip through a heat wave from Thursday - aghhhh. Hopefully though in a couple of months time I should be bouncing around for the first time in quite a while.

Memories

Memories are funny creatures I think. Sometimes you might feel that you can control them and then suddenly they will pop out from nowhere and startle you.

Today there is a lot of media attention on the sudden death of Michael Jackson. I probably haven't thought of this talented if not tortured man very much in the last 10 years. However I was only talking about him this time last week when we were at the O2 arena in London. There were adverts up all over the place about his upcoming 50 date tour. This had prompted a conversation between my husband and myself about whether we felt he would ever be able to complete all 50 dates.

So where is the link between memories and Michael Jackson. Well it was a trip to see this remarkable man at the Milton Keynes Bowl in the late 1980's that proved to be the beginning of a relationship that ended with much pain. It was a time before I became a Christian when I was searching for my place in the world. So the memories I am having today are not great ones, I feel very sad at the thought of that relationship and I also feel very sad that this talented man never appeared to find a place in this world and just hope he has found his place now.