Episode 96 - 20/20 Vision

On Saturday something most surprising happened. It was sunny. Sunny enough to wear my sunglasses. I didn’t wear my glasses however, because it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be sunny enough for me to need them. Truth is I forgot I even had them. But it did start me think about how great sunglasses are, and in particular, how great my sunglasses are. When it’s too bright, too much light comes into our eyes and it becomes difficult to see – ironic huh? But Sunglasses stop some of the light getting to our eyes so that we can see more clearly. Genius! Simple but effective. Or are they? Whilst these kind of sunglasses help in bright conditions, they don’t do anything to help prevent glare from reflective surfaces. That’s why my sunglasses are so great! (Yes I know I’m starting to sound like a sunglasses salesman, but stick with me…)

The problem is that the light which passes through simple sunglasses like these remain incoherent. Uh huh, that’s right. Incoherent light. That’s a thing. I bet you wish I was being a little bit more coherent right now. Okay then, if you insist, let me grab my metaphorical geek lab coat and explain. When we see stuff, we can see it because light travels from it to our eyes. But that light doesn’t travel in a straight line, oh no, that would be far too simple! It travels in wiggly lines (that some boring people like to refer to as waves). Presumably it travels in wiggly lines because it’s following satnav, I don’t know. So instead of going in a straight line it also wiggles left and right. At least some of it does. Some of it wiggles up and down. And all of the rest of it wiggles at a variety of angles in-between the two. This angle of the light’s wiggle is known as its polarisation.

Any object that we can see has lots of light traveling from it to our eyes. All of the light coming from an object in normal sunlight will have loads of different polarisations – that is to say that although all the light will be travelling in the same direction, the wiggles will all be doing different things and it’s this which causes glare. What’s so amazing about my sunglasses is that they’re polarised, which means they act like a pair of bouncers at a very high end night club for rays of light, and only allow light whose wiggles are in a particular direction to pass through. As a consequence they reduce glare and allow me to see more clearly.

Sometimes life feels like it’s too bright and like all of the wiggles are pointing in different directions. There seems to be so much going on and there are so many voices speaking at the same time that I struggle to really see what’s happening clearly. Sometimes it’s hard to know what I should be doing or what I should believe. Sometimes I wish I had a pair of polarised lenses for life to make it all easier to understand. And as I thought about this for a while, I realised that I do, although not as visually obvious nor as easy to explain (yes that was the easy explanation). In the Bible, God promises that He gives His Spirit to all who choose to follow Him. And that His Spirit will help guide us when things get cloudy (or in this analogy sunny). I guess the truth is that too often it doesn’t occur to me that I need it or even worse I even forget that I have it, but life sure looks better when I’m wearing my Holy Spirit Sunglasses!

Episode 95 - Something from Nothing

Knitting is basically wizardry. You start off with a ball of wool and with nothing else other than a pair of sticks (I’m not sure whether these are best described as needles or wands…). Yet somehow you end up with a hat, or jumper, or a rabbit, or whatever else your heart desires. This week my mum finished knitting me a new jumper and I’m basically using this blog as an opportunity to brag about it. It looks awesome, it has cool little bumps (apparently these are called cables although they look nothing like any cables I’ve ever seen…), it’s super comfortable and it even has a hood!

I’m always amazed when mum finishes one of her knitting projects because quite frankly they never look quite like they could have possibly been made just with a pair of needles. This becomes ever more true having watched the process of the jumper being made. To be honest, there were times when it didn’t really look like it was ever going to become a jumper, a wind sock maybe, but not a jumper. To be even more honest there were times when I thought it had all gone wrong because the bumps just didn’t look right. And yet what looked like mistakes actually became beautiful detailing.

The journey of the wool intertwining with itself to create something unexpected and quite wonderful seems not unlike the journey of my life. I don’t always (read rarely) know where I’m going, and I often seem to be crossing over myself or going backwards, and there are many many bumps in the road, but somehow out of all of it, God makes something beautiful. Or at least that’s what happens when God is in charge of the stitches.

This may surprise you, but I can actually knit too. Okay, no I can’t. I have knitted, but that’s not quite the same thing. Unlike when my mum knits, when I knit, the bumps that form are not cleverly crafted details, they’re just bumps. And there are holes where there aren’t supposed to be holes. And the whole thing is structurally quite unsecure and falls apart at a slight tug or even a stern glance. This too is not unlike the journey of my life when I try to direct my life the way I want rather than the way God wants. Unfortunately I can’t always immediately recognise the difference between cleverly crafted details and straight up mistakes. Fortunately there isn’t a blunder that God can’t repair.

God’s knitting prowess doesn’t end there. In knitting there is something called Fairisle (that’s right, I know the fancy knitting terminology – even if I’m not certain that it’s a real adjective). Fairisle knitting is where a number of different coloured strands of wool are knitted together to create cool looking patterns. And that’s the amazing thing about God. When He knits the story of our lives, he doesn’t just knit them individually, but He knits them all together.   He perfectly Fairisles the stories of the whole universe together so that every strand meets and intertwines with one another at just the right place and at just the right time. I will never be able to fully comprehend just how amazing that is. And when God’s able to perfectly knit together the whole universe, why would I ever possibly want to be knitting my own jumper?

Episode 94 - A Blank Canvas

When I was ill, I felt trapped in my circumstances. I felt like my life was fixed to a pattern that I had no choice about.  But now that I am well, I feel completely free of restriction. There are no fixed ideas that I have to adhere to nor a paradigm that I had to follow. I get to make the rules for my new life. And even now as I’m starting to try to piece together what my future life might look like, I have almost complete freedom to choose. I have nothing tying me down, and no obligations to meet. In some ways it’s really quite daunting to have so much freedom and so much choice. It can be hard to know where to begin. But it is most certainly a gift, such freedom to determine my own tomorrow is rare isn’t it?

But is it? Why is it? As I think about how constrained I felt by life during my illness and the wild freedom I now experience by comparison, my thoughts drifted to other times in my life. Times when it seemed that I had complete control of my life and yet seemed fixed to a set direction that life had somehow determined for me. In a way I felt constrained and trapped into that life, particularly compared to now, feeling that all paths are open to me. But why?

That’s not how God works, nor how God made us to be. God is not bound by circumstance or fate. With God all things are possible. He can easily turn our lives and our circumstances completely on their head. Something I have experienced first-hand a number of times now. No matter how hopeless or stuck rigid our circumstances seem, God is able to change them. He is completely free. And Christ came to earth so that we might have that freedom in Him too.

The funny thing is that as I look back on those times that I felt life had become stuck and unchangeable, and I felt trapped by my circumstances, I wasn’t even unhappy with my situation, I just felt aggrieved because I felt like I had no power to change it. But I guess that’s the point – I can’t change it. Not on my own any way. The frustration comes when I try to determine my own future without the guidance or help of God – who knows what is good for me and what is bad, and knows what weighs me down and what sets me free. And I realise that the times I’ve felt the greatest freedom in my future has not just been now I have no constraints at all, but anytime (even when it seemed ultra-repetitive and every day was the same) when my life has been bound and fixed on God and I have trusted Him to determine my future.

Episode 93 - Mental Fitness

I think I understand the idea of fitness, it’s quite a simple concept. You can only do so much stuff until you can’t do any more. The fitter you are, the more stuff you can do before you need to stop. I particularly understand the idea of physical fitness – it’s easy to grasp because its effects are quite visually apparent. You don’t need to be very fit to walk two minutes to the shop but you need to be extremely fit (and a little insane) to run two marathons back to back. My lack of physical fitness is the reason that I get out of breath if I go up the stairs too quickly. And pushing myself beyond my current fitness level leaves me tired, worn out, achy and needing to rest in order to recover. All of this I understand quite readily. After I was healed I felt like I was completely back to my old self – fitness levels and all, but I wasn’t. However, despite this new found condition, I was not only able to quickly realise this but also able to quickly realise where my fitness levels were and what I needed to do to improve them.

Mentally however, not so much. Physical I understand, it’s something that I was taught in school and that has affected me most of my life. The physical is also something that (for me at least) is much more easily interpreted. The mental and emotional aspects of life are far more complicated to unravel. It all seems kind of airy fairy and cloudy and open to interpretation. As for mental and emotional fitness, well that’s just not a thing is it?

Well as it turns out, yes, it seems it is. After I was healed I felt like I was completely back to my old self – I hadn’t even considered mental and emotional fitness levels because I mean, what’s that? But I wasn’t. Since getter better, I still get mentally and emotionally drained far quicker than I ever did before I was ill. And that’s okay. Just like my physical fitness it will take time to build up again. The trouble is that whilst I understand the paradigm of physical fitness and recognise the signs, this mental and emotional fitness seems like a whole new language to me. And that’s okay too, I’m quite happy to slowly learn the language and learn to look after myself better. But that right there, is the real lesson.

I realise that I haven’t been looking after myself properly. Not just since I got better, but always. I’m used to looking after myself physically – I keep fit, eat healthily, and if I’m ill I go to the doctor. But it’s always been too easy to ignore my mental and emotional welfare. As it happens I’ve so far been very blessed and more by good luck than good management I have for the most part kept very healthy in this aspect of life, but I realise that I should be taking more responsibility for myself and for those around me. Not speaking the language is not a terribly good excuse. So now with my eyes open I will take this opportunity now to learn these things better and pray that God can help me make good use of these lessons throughout the rest of my life.

Episode 92 - Party!

So unfortunately I must start this weeks blog with a confession. I'm afraid I haven't written a blog this week, but it is for a most wonderful reason. This weekend a two friends of mine got married (to each other). To be honest, only a few weeks ago I really wasn't looking forward to it. Being ill and looking in on your friends from the side-lines whilst they have fun can be hard no matter how happy you are for them. So now that I'm better, being able to really be part of the celebration has been incredible. To be able to come down early in the week and help prepare for the celebration whilst catching up with old friends has been quite incredible. I have been able to connect with people in a way that I haven't been able to for so long. And as it turns out, I'm also able to party in a way that I haven't been able to for so long too! So I'm sorry that this isn't a proper blog, but here's a rare picture of me dancing to make up for it! And no, I'm afraid I still no good at dancing!..

Episode 91 - Everything Old is New Again

When a baby is born into the world, everything is new. Everything. Every sight, every smell, every moment is a new experience. To begin with it all mixes together to form an overwhelming cacophony of newness until eventually things start to become familiar and normal. With every new experience there is new delight (or sometimes disgust) to be found. In some ways I can very much relate. I like to think that I’ve always been one to enjoy life, but having spent over a year sheltered away through illness, now that I’m re-emerging into the world everything seems to have a new brightness to it. Things I had forgotten about and didn’t even realise I missed come back in vibrant technicolour. Everything from bird song in my ears and a cold wind against my skin to being able perform a cheeky little skip when I think no-one’s looking (not that I’m admitting to doing that…)

It’s a good reminder that life is amazing and beautiful. Although though it’s sometimes hard to understand, or sometimes even just plain hard, even then it is still amazing and beautiful. And God is at work in it at all times, and He always gives good gifts to us. I can only hope that this moment and the lessons from this journey can last. I pray that when life starts to seem mundane again and the colour begins to drain from it, I might then remember this time and the colour would begin to flood my world again. Because God is always good. If only I would remember to remember that a little more often!

This week has been the first full week that I have been better and it has been incredibly exciting (in case you hadn’t picked up on that already). I’ve wanted to do everything imaginable! But I haven’t. I have been surprisingly self-restrained. When I got better I felt very strongly that it was important to keep this first week apart from everything else and reserved just for my family and for God (so if I haven’t replied to your email yet, I’m sorry but at least now you know why!) I wanted to save this time as both a mark of respect and an act of love and devotion. And because selfishly although I wanted to do everything and spend time with everyone, they (my family and God) were the people I most wanted to spend my time with and I really wanted to reconnect with them. And I’m very glad I did. Apart from achieving all that I’d hoped for, it made me realise something else very important.

At the beginning of this week I felt like I could do anything, and I mean anything. And I’m not talking Mathew 19:26. At the beginning of the week I think I probably thought that I could climb Everest whilst carrying a rhino and playing a kazoo. I can’t. Playing a kazoo is surprisingly hard. Okay, so I was never very likely to try to do any of that, but I think I would have very gladly booked up every second of every minute of the rest of the year and been convinced that it wouldn’t have been too much. I was wrong. My lovely physio pointed out this week that I had done virtually no exercise whatsoever for over a year, which meant that it would take time for me to regain my physical fitness no matter how great I felt. Not only that, but the same applied to my mental state too. He told me that I need to take things slowly and the even just a twenty minute walk would leave me feeling worn out. He was right. A fact I unwittingly proved shortly after the appointment. So I will follow my physio’s advice and realise that this advice is for much more than just this one time in my life.

You see, this isn’t the first new chapter in my life and looking back I can see a pattern. In the excitement of the new beginning, the new direction, the calling I feel from God, I want to respond instantly. I want to do everything at once. I want to dive straight in and do everything right away. Which just isn’t possible. And all too easily I can find myself overwhelmed with everything happening at once. And then all too easily the important things in life can get pushed out by the urgent things in life. Things that only exist so quickly and so urgently because I rushed in too soon. Life is a marathon not a sprint. Not even Roger Bannister could win a marathon in the first mile. So I will take this new beginning slowly and ease myself into this next chapter of my life. I hope that from now on whatever new chapters come my way, I will always take time to pause and let God be my pace setter.

Episode 90 - Healing Hand

Some things in life are easy to explain, like the offside rule or why balancing my phone on top of my glass of water was a bad idea. Other things are much harder to understand, like Bitcoin, Modern art and how to fill in a tax return. In many ways, my past year or so is firmly placed in the latter category. I became ill for seemingly no apparent reason. Along with many other peculiar symptoms, I suffered from a strange tension like feeling inside my body which expressed itself outwardly as uncontrolled movements in my arms and legs, I got very bad headaches, had very little energy and lived with a cloud over my mind so it was hard to think clearly, converse or really do that much at all. It began quite mildly but continued to get worse as time went on. The Doctors looked and looked and performed their tests but were never able to form a solid diagnosis.

But during this time, prayers from hundreds of people from all over the world have been raised to God on my behalf. Thank you so much if your prayers are in that number, they not only mean an awful lot to me personally, they are also powerful and effective – even if we don’t see their results immediately. If the course of the past year had been hard to understand, then what has happened in the last week has been nearly impossible to get my head around. Fortunately, it’s as easy to explain as it is difficult to fully comprehend.

Last Sunday, Becky (my Girlfriend) felt prompted by God to pray over me. She realised that though she had facilitated lots of prayer for me, she had never actually prayed over me herself. In truth, she easily allowed herself to fade into the background because she felt unconfident in her own prayers, particularly when surrounded by so many people with great experience and eloquent speech. But on Sunday night she really felt that God wanted her to pray over me, particularly over each part of my body in turn. And so she did. She didn’t pretend to know what was wrong with me, or even to know what to say. But she knew that God knew what to do and so she prayed.

As she started to pray I began shaking violently all over, which is something which happens with my illness sometimes. She started with my head and she prayed over it. Then when she had finished praying over my head she prayed over my neck. Then my shoulders. Then my chest and my back. You’re probably getting the picture, you know what the human body looks like.

Then she prayed over my upper arms and as she did, I started to realise that they were shaking less until they were completely still. Then she prayed over my forearms and the same thing happened again. And then again with my hands. And my whole upper body was still. But my legs on the other hand, they were still flailing around like they had a life of their own. So she prayed over my thighs and they became still. And then my calves and they became still. And then my feet and they became still. And my whole body was completely still except for my toes that were still wiggling away. So finally she prayed for my toes and they became still. And I was completely still. From my head to my toes. For the first time really since coming back from Papua New Guinea.

Over the next few days we continued to pray and many people prayed with me and for me, and by Wednesday morning, all of my symptoms had gone. The tiredness, the shaking, the headaches and the fog over my mind. I felt completely transformed, like I was a new man! It feels amazing in a way I can’t really describe (but that I’m sure I’ll attempt to over the next few blogs as I get used to having myself back). I’m very much still getting used to it, but it is more wonderful than words describe. And I don’t think that there is much else I can say other than praise God for He is mighty and wonderful and He has healed me! And to thank you for sharing in my journey by reading these blogs. For sharing in my frustration and pain during this time. And that now I hope you can share in my joy too! Praise the Lord!