Counted

This is how it works.

I have no idea how it works.

With 2 tiles to go dad is 181 points ahead of me and close to beating my all time high score. On his first game. Did I mention his first ever turn on Scrabble was a bingo? Or that bingo is an anagram of boing? (BOING: rebound, making a noise, BINGO: gambling game in which numbers are called out and covered by the players on their individual cards).

I will beat him next time. Or perhaps the time after. (AFTER: at a later time).

I feel like I count again. Here are some ways in which God has enabled me to start looking up and beyond the abyss. After several days avoiding society at home I found that we were needed at a children’s birthday party. Explaining that we couldn’t go would have been pathetic and unfair to Lily, so we went. All four of us. In the end she had her face painted and I chatted with people about some useful topics.

Straight after this I went to a friend’s wedding, because I could not have forgiven myself for missing it. Roger is the most lovely, humble, funny church secretary you could ever hope to meet. He was widowed a few years ago and has grown up children, who are equally lovely, humble and funny. Roger married Gillian who is also a church secretary (at a different church) and a truly wonderful lady. The church was packed (two churchfuls plus extra family, friends, colleagues). It made for amazing singing and a joyful and loud service. I went without my husband and children but felt truly part of something special and that God was loving me through the event, as well as blessing many others. I am so excited for Roger and Gillian. The wedding was a good chance to see some folk who’d moved away or who I hadn’t seen for a while, which also lifted my spirits.

On my walk home I walked part of the way with an elderly lady who invited me to see the garden she’d been working on. Experience has taught me never to refuse these kinds of invitations; they cheer the elderly up enormously and you don’t have to say too much if they can’t hear you. She was lovely and even though I had to look her up in the church book at home (it is a large congregation), I was pleased to have met her and chatted about hollyhocks and moss on the lawn. I learnt when the street was built and that she used to be able to see right through to the ring road from her kitchen. I do hope I cheered her up.

So I had hoped to avoid people and I found my day full of people. All of whom taught me useful things about humility and my value to others.

Today I wasn’t sure if I could manage church, but I went along as we had agreed to go straight on afterwards to mum and dad’s. And what a service. God has been trying to get through to us about stepping out of the boat multiple times in recent years. Again the sermon, by a visiting speaker, was on Peter stepping out of the boat and walking on water.

Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.

It is less of an abyss, more of an atoll. I still ache, but the aching is part of the healing, and tomorrow I get back to responsibility and reality. (REALITY: state of things as they are).

And in reality, I believe that I count. And am counted.

I have no idea how it works.