Struggling

Sometimes the struggle to cope with complex illness, or situations beyond your control, causes such stress that it is hard to feel or hear or trust that God is with you. This is where Faith can help, so even if you have lost your sense that God is with you, still your faith will tell you that it is so. It is also a time to reach out to others or to find strength in their concern and prayers which can sustain you if you feel unable to pray for yourself.

We are very much both struggling ourselves at the moment and the prayer support of others has been vital.

Yesterday, after a difficult hospital visit, the rain came followed by a massive beautiful sparkling huge rainbow tgat shimmered before us, a huge comfort and it felt like a sign from Hod reminding us tgat all, somehow, will be well. Amen

Grief and emotional survival

 

Here I am learning about limits. I am learning about grief. I am learning about emotional survival. Here I cling on, feeling far out of reach, on a vicious distant edge, that few, if any, care to know about.

There is no one to comfort or guide you.

Suffering reeks of despair. It feels endless and hopeless. It is painful beyond description. 

Yet there is a pathway you must keep finding through it, in order to find meaning and restore hope. Otherwise the suffering will consume you - initially, if not long term - unless you can find a way to see all, including loss and grief, as a path and somehow find crucial self-support .

Then you can find that it is possible to face your situation with dignity, you can find meaning and purpose, even in the most awful, indescribable circumstances and desolation even. 

(Adapted from "More Notes For Carers" https://stonebird.co.uk/morenotes/index.html)

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My world, a place of endurance and perseverance

 

PERSEVERANCE AND ENDURANCE

Impossible struggle forces you to ask “what really matters?”

Right now is an extraordinarily worrying and disconcerting time on so many levels. On a personal level I am struggling with not being fit and well in my body.

My wife, reflecting upon her deep suffering writes so wisely:

“My world, so empty of business, 
becomes a place of waiting, seeking inner peace and understanding.
The things I know are hard won amidst the decades of intense suffering.
The emptiness of action, is replaced by the stillness of pure being.”

“Stillness of pure being” ………….

How could anyone, apart from those who have experienced profound pain and the loss of ability on every conceivable level, begin to even grasp what “stillness of pure being” means?

I’ve gained some kind of insight, but frustratingly my words are clumsy. I just don’t have the vocabulary.

Nonetheless, what matters especially now, I think, is the courage to step up, to deal with what needs dealing with.

That, however, as my wife shows, takes the most extraordinary strength, perseverance and endurance:

Strength that comes from character.
Perseverance that comes from the never ending struggle to carry on.
Endurance that comes from Spirit.

It’s the latter that astonishes me most about my wife. I just don’t know how she manages to endure at all.

Only that she describes it as “Grace”.

Grace, surely, is what the whole world is crying out for, as never before.

Perhaps we need to look for lived humility and grace, not in the mainstream, not in celebrity, not in institutions, not in the ignorance of others, but in those who endure the greatest suffering without end, where the only choice is to seek something beyond or within the suffering.

Some place where you can find the grace to survive.

(Self portrait by Linda Crowhurst

A Prayer for healing

Come into the hurting places .... if you will.

Come gently ...into the hurting places of my body.

Bless them.............. if you will,

Tenderly heal them if you will.

Come now into the hurting places of my heart.

Release the many unshed tears....... if you will.

Fill my vulnerability with your strength .......... if you will.

Come gently now into the hurting places of my mind.

Touch each painful memory with love .......... if you will

Lift my thoughts to higher places if you will.

Come now gently into the hurting places of my soul.

Let your light pour into me ... if you will.

Give me gifts of your spirit ....if you will.

Come into all the hurting places ........if you will

and make me whole.

by Linda Crowhurst. 2000.

The Spirit is with me

 The Spirit is with me

When I am confused or lost and don’t know which path to take, I wait upon the Lord and find the Spirit is with me. He will bless me. He will guide me. He will always lead me on a path of love.

For I am wild as the wind and can trust that the breath of life lives in me and will lead me safely on, held forever in the Heart of Love - the total love of the Trinity.

Finding a Path of Peace, 6 videos on caring

 

Uplifting videos to inspire people who care.

https://holyway.my.canva.site/carer-thoughts?fbclid=IwAR0ali1czO2xQIpIaz_9kCes1X7GZSDsA9TR0OhORPlDZF56LKov501J7ec

What is a Blessing?

 

A Blessing is many, many things. See here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vul-GmRtT-4

Mercy

When forgiveness is a challenge or feels impossible, I turn to Mercy and rely on Gods grace and love to bring the necessary healing.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd0ChlJLbYY

New Song in honour of a dear friend who died.

 

This is a very moving song, written specially for a dear friend, no longer with us, to honour his memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FArH8cu0cLE

Greg writes about it:

THE LOSS OF A FRIEND

I wrote this song and drew the drawings for the accompanying video after discovering that a dear, long time friend had died several months ago, yet I had no idea.

This made us both so sad.

I very much wanted to honour his life and what he meant to me. It was he who first opened my eyes to the extraordinary hypocrisy that can go on in supposedly virtuous circles. I hope the echo of the song can be heard by him in heaven.

Sadly it has happened more than once that people we have had good friendships with for many, many years, have passed on and yet we have not been told. Our circumstances are so isolated that email and writing, exchanging gifts or connecting through social media are our only means of contact and sense of connection.

Our situation is very complex and hard to comprehend I know.

It is just that the pain and loss of a special friendship is greatly exacerbated if one has been given no information regarding their death and funeral.

The feeling that how important you were to your friend and how important they were to you, has not been recognised, leaves you feeling insignificant and irrelevant.

This must surely be the case for others too who live in isolated, difficult circumstances where physical interaction is limited or impossible.

It makes such a difference to feel included in saying goodbye to those you have loved.