Great Christian Diaries

2003-11-29 - 10.55pm  previous entry  next entry

Oooh, SUCH a long time since I wrote!! Sorry! I kept meaning to but I had too many things I wanted to write about and for some reason that put me off (?!!) - well, normally that would make me write like crazy, but hmmm. Just run of the mill stuff, nothing amazingly exciting. The computer is still downstairs on the floor and my right wrist is really achy all the time since I played the Sims for hours on end! Ah well, it probably serves me right! But it's awkward typing at a funny angle, and more so when my wrist is hurting. But here I am anyway.

Thank you SO much to everyone who left me a guestbook message since my last entry!! There's too many to thank individually! Ah I feel so loved! :) In particular I am soooo thrilled to get a message from Jessie!! I don't know why, I just am :) Jessie wants to know where my diary entries are from the time I was housebound with M.E. and when God healed me. Well you can find the link at the very bottom of my older entries page, it's called "Jan-Nov 2001: Housebound with M.E." and if you click on that, it will open up another huge page of older entries, all of which are from that time when I was ill / getting healed. Or even easier, you could click on this link! :) Thanks so much for being all interested in me. It IS utterly amazing that God healed me.

After checking to see if my older entries were actually there, I stopped to read a few, and I was quite taken aback by what I was reading. How weird that I have come so far from how I was then, when it felt like a permanent foreverness at the time. Sooo weird to read it and think that, since reading those entries makes me remember exactly how it was, and exactly where I was sitting or lying as I wrote them. I read some of them out to Neil, in particular the ones from a few days after we came back from France in Feb 2001 when I relapsed, and again a few days after my birthday later that month. Some of them were actually hard to read. The main thing I noticed was how close to God I was at the time. I kept quoting verses from the Bible and they matched exactly how I was feeling at the time. Reading them back and then thinking how God answered my prayers and met my needs and healed me was soooo moving, I felt quite tearful. God has been so wonderful to me. I haven't been remembering him like I should lately.

I also haven't been remembering how bad it was to feel that ill, and how restricted I was. When I read some of it to Neil he seemed quite.... uncomfortable at the memories. It was a hard time for him too. I am just so so so so so so infinitely so grateful to be well again. Right after I read the entries to Neil, we were talking about how it was, and then Neil was doing something and I ran upstairs to fetch something for him, just because I could. I know, that probably sounds like a trivial thing to write about. He didn't need the item and he didn't ask me for it, but I hopped up the stairs and fetched it for him anyway. As I handed it to him, I said, "Isn't it lovely that I can do things for you now?" And he said he had just been thinking that as I came back downstairs. Ahhhh (contented and thankful sound that I can't put into words).

Well. I'd better get on with my newsy stuff, otherwise you'll be reading this entry forever!

It has been a whole week I think, since I wrote. Tsk! I wrote last Saturday and now it's Saturday again. Oh dear. So I'll try to briefly (ha ha!) update you on things I've been doing. It will not be very thrilling. But anyway, here's my week:

On Sunday we went to church. It was good. Fabulous sermon about anger management and being a Christian. Reeeally really helpful for both of us, not that we have anger that's out of hand or anything, but there were things we hadn't thought about before that were very interesting, and I can't wait to apply them to my life. Like self-centredness. I have waaaay too much of that in my life.

After church I talked with a lady sitting next to me who I have known since the beginning of my life as a Christian. I haven't chatted to her for a while. When I vaguely attempted suicide (years ago, don't worry!) and then walked to the local hospital and tried to check myself in to the mental health unit and they refused me (!!!), I found her phone number in my pocket, having just been a Christian and attending my new church for a few months, and I called her from the hospital and she came and picked me up. She took me home with her and we talked for hours and she prayed with me. I came off all my anti-depressants that very evening and have never ever had a single bout of real clinical depression since. Isn't God thoroughly totally amazing?! He is, really.

Anyway, this is the same lady I talked to on Sunday. She is feeling low herself, so I talked to her for a while. I wanted sooo much to hug her. I don't know what came over me, but my heart just ached and ached and I absolutely couldn't bear to sit there and not do something physical with how I was feeling for her. I felt so full of love for her, and so awful that she was hurting. She looked so sad and vulnerable, and that made me want to shelter her with my arms and protect her and make everything better. I guess that is God filling me with compassion for her and with a tiny fractional proportion of his love for her.

But we didn't hug till we stood up to leave at the end, so I made do with keeping on reaching out and rubbing her shoulder or arm, and generally feeling like a twit for doing so when I wanted to hug her instead. *sigh* She was so nice to me about Cameron, she said lovely things and was all focused on me having a hard time, which I wasn't at that moment, and I would far rather have focused on giving her love and encouragement since she was obviously hurting in herself. Urgh. Poor lovely lady. I have been praying for her which helps the feeling a bit, and obviously helps her too since God is faithful to answer my prayers.

At night when I can't sleep (which I still can't), I have been starting to pray again, more than I have been anyway. After the sermon on Sunday I was praying about God changing me at night, and suddenly I remembered how I felt like God was telling me he was giving me a gift a few years back. I felt as though God was making me an encourager. Somebody who was going to be gifted at encouraging other people. I am pretty sure this is a gift from God, because when I do encourage a person, it is the most incredible feeling in the world afterwards. Nothing else comes close to that feeling, except when I am caught up in worship to God sometimes. And encouraging people seems to come fairly naturally. I can still be lazy with my gift though, and I think I HAVE been for quite a long time now. So I asked God to forgive me and to give me opportunities to encourage people, not willy-nilly, but as he leads me to them. Everybody I come across needs encouraging, but I feel that God would want me to encourage specific people over specific things, at his specific timing, and with his words or actions - not my own.

This was on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, having completely forgotten about my prayer time, I went to therapy with Neil. It was so odd, because our therapist, Cheryl, is soooo professional. But she seemed a little down in herself this week. She didn't actually say - I just felt it somehow. At the end she briefly commented on how it was getting dark so early now, and as she did, I saw this "something" in her eyes even though she was smiling, and it made me think that she was feeling like she was going through the motions in life at the moment. I wondered if maybe she was missing her mum, who died earlier this year. I love Cheryl to bits, and that huge urge that feels like a tidal wave when I get it, rose up within me to make something better for her. But it's hard when we are all professional and being "therapist and client", that kind of thing. We got up to leave and she smiled and said bye and all that, and Neil went out ahead of me and Cheryl turned back to her notes. But I stopped and told her please don't feel too bleak about the dark nights, and that she is a bright spot in our week. She flushed and thanked me with a smile, and I left, feeling that wonderful "something" that means I did something God wanted me to. I don't know if it had much of an impact on Cheryl, but it felt right to say it anyway.

I hope God gives me more opportunities. I know there are opportunities staring me right in the face allll the time, but I want HIS opportunities - urgh, I'm not explaining this well! I know ALL the opportunities around me are ones that God would probably want me to act on. But what I mean is that I really want to wait till I feel that increasingly familiar nudge that I recognise as God poking me to take action immediately. Those times are the most effective for everyone concerned, plus I reckon they glorify God more probably :) And I like to do that where I can.

And now I'm feeling like I'm confusing myself and saying things all wrong, so I'll talk about something else!

Monday I helped my brother get some DIY stuff from his local (ish) B&Q superstore! They don't have a car, and they just moved into a new flat that needs SERIOUS DIY attention! So Bennie made a huge list, and I drove over there and ferried him to B&Q, where we spent the next 2 hours!!! I bought a curtain pole for the lounge curtains that I picked up from my parents' old house last week. And a weather-bar for the front door (at last!). But I forgot to take any money with me so Bennie paid for them, with the idea that I would pay him back asap, but when we finally got back to his flat he wouldn't let me pay him back! He's so sweet :) But I did do them an enormous favour, which we realised when all the shopping was done (!!), so he insisted.

I have a small Ford Fiesta. Somehow we crammed huge plastic tubs of paint, tins of wood repair stuff, sackfuls (!!) of nails and screws, a wallpapering table, a massive workbench, 2 weather-bars, one curtain pole (with rings), a sack of mortar, and eight planks of wood measuring 6ft 8in long (!!), and two 7ft strips of wooden moulding into my car, amongst all the zillions of items I can't remember anymore. The planks were the troublesome things. I think I might have been slightly illegal on the road after we packed the car full. Which is awful :( But it was that or take it all back in to the shop and arrange an expensive delivery, and Bennie was off work that day and the next day to use all these things to work on the flat. Plus we made sure I could see and all that!

In the end, we had the back seats down, and we ran the planks for the bottom back corner of the car boot, between the front seats and up towards the mirror at the top of the front windscreen. I ummed and erred for ages, but we made sure that when I was sitting in the driver's seat I could see out of every window and mirror, even if I had to look under the planks or over them. I know, I know, not ideal. Bennie said, "What shall we do?" And I said, "I'm going to pray and then we're going to go!" Heh. I like that because I never get to talk about the fact that I'm a Christian with my brother (who absolutely ISN'T one). I prayed silently ALL the way back to his place, which took almost an hour because of completely solid traffic on the roads. We had sooo many drivers shaking their heads at us and giving us condescending looks. I hate that. Even when I deserve it! I just tried to look like I was ignoring them. I mean, what could I do about it at that moment in time?!! Nothing. So we kept on. I just prayed and prayed that we would be safe and nobody would get hurt, and we wouldn't get stopped by police or anything!

And we made it back! We were both soooo relieved, when I parked the car we kept on letting out these big sighs and saying how thankful we were! Me to God of course. He answered all my prayers. I helped them unload the car and then drove home, and just as I pulled out of their road, a police car drove past me, though I hadn't seen a single one in the whole journey with the car full of stuff. God is good to me. Phew!

So that was Monday. Tuesday I can't remember. I didn't go to housegroup. Somewhere I did a load of housework, can't remember when.

Wednesday we had therapy which went very well :) I wanted to visit Cameron's grave on Wednesday but there wasn't time in the end. On Thursday it was the last day that my family owned my childhood home :( So I went round there and picked up the last things - 2 plants, which now live here :) And a few bags of things for the charity shops, a tall glass pasta jar (which Mummy says was a present from a friend at work when she was pregnant with me!), two phones (!!), and my bookshelves. I have been debating over whether to bring my bookshelves here, since they're long and I didn't know where we'd put them. But they have great sentimental value, as well as being quality pine (like the rest of our furniture) and extremely useful when we don't have enough storage for our books anyway. They are sentimental because they were built for me when I was a toddler, when my parents had their first ever collection of children's books in their house, and realised they needed a nice low bookshelf to store them on, rather than their big adult bookshelves downstairs. So my shelves were built - not individual ones that you put up on the wall, but a proper unit. Mummy can't remember if Daddy built them or if it was the neighbour who did carpentry for a living.

Anyway, I brought them home, and today I have spent the afternoon unpacking my books out of their boxes, and happily reuniting them with their old bookshelves :) I don't care that I'm 27, my bookshelves are still full of Ramona books, Little House on the Prairie, Enid Blyton, and things like that which I never get tired of reading. I have grown-up books too, but they are more boring. Less imaginative. Most of my other books are factual or Christian. And half the factual ones are pregnancy or parenthood related.

Someone's taking their clothes off on the telly. Tsk. It's another war movie that Neil's watching. Tsk again.

Okay so back to the house - It was so sad to leave it :( Soooo sad. It was so empty after I loaded the last things into my car. I made sure I went when it was daylight this time. I went out in the back garden and looked at everything, even inside the empty shed and the outside loo (it's an old Victorian house, but yes, we did have one inside too!). I loved the outside loo. Nothing like peeing in the fresh air on a summer's day, whilst stll having the luxury of a real flushing toilet with lockable door! :) Heh. I was in that toilet for a while on the morning of my August wedding, for reasons other than peeing. Hmmm! Was somewhat nervous at the time! I heard my bridesmaids arrive in a state of utter "eeeeeeeeeee!!!" and my dad telling them they were to pull themselves together because I was very nervous and everybody was to make things as calm as possible for me. Ahhh, my lovely Daddy. And they did as well.

Anyway, I'm getting off track. So I said goodbye to everything outside, in my thoughts that is. Then I went everywhere inside, and lingered in my bedroom for the longest time. I opened the window and leaned out on the windowsill like I have done so many countless times before. My bedroom faces west and I used to watch the sun set regularly. I romanticised it greatly. It was my only high point in the day a lot when I was suffering from depression, I don't know why. Plus America was out that way, and for many years America was my rose-tinted-glasses haven of escape from feeling miserable in my life where I was in England. I had been to California for the most wonderful holiday in my whoooole life when I was 15, and it sort of stuck with me.

The sun was actually shining at the time (it has been cloudy and rainy here for a while now!), so I stayed till it set, just to see one last sunset. It was beautiful, a perfect last sunset with a clear sky, and planes high up coming in to land at Heathrow, flying over where the sun had just set so that their bellies glinted red at me for a moment. I always loved that.

My room was all echoey without any furniture, so I sang and sang and sang for 15 minutes without stopping, standing in my doorway looking across the room out of the window (after I closed it of course!). I love to sing. And I liked the echo. I sang till it got kind of dusky, and then I left my house for the last time. I felt like I would cry because it seemed so sad. I have such ties to things like homes, buildings, etc. Things that have meant something to me, or where significant things have taken place. I don't know WHAT I'm gonna do when we have to leave a house where I've given birth. If I get to have homebirths that is. Which I am totally determined to do.

Well I left my lovely home. I left the keys so I could never go back again. I prayed in there one last time, and then I closed the front door behind me and left. I chatted to the neighbour briefly before I went, which was nice, as they've known me since I was five when we moved there. And yesterday a new couple moved in. I don't know if they've got children or not. I think they are older, maybe they have grown up children? Well anyway, it's not my family's home anymore, for the first time since July 1981. But yesterday a new phone book arrived for 2003/2004, and I looked us up in it, just because I like to do that! We're there, me and Neil, being all grown up. And then I looked up Cameron's parents, just because, I don't know. They are there, but of course without him. Not that the phone book would have mentioned him, but anyway. Then I looked up my parents, and they are still listed at the old house! :) So something in me can still pretend it's ours till the next phone book arrives in 2005 anyway! :) I'm silly.

Yesterday and Thursday I soooo wanted to visit the cemetery, like Wednesday only more so. I haven't been since..... not this Monday just gone, but the one before. That feels like too long now. But it feels pointless going at the same time, so I haven't been. I feel like, if I'm feeling okay that he's gone, what's the point of going? I don't know. I can't figure out how I feel so I've been ignoring it instead. I sometimes haven't written my diary simply because I felt weird not having been to the cemetery yet, and I didn't want to write about that. Weird.

But on Thursday I planned to go after my last visit to the house, but I ended up staying there till after the cemetery closed. And yesterday I did stuff around the house and then realised I needed to go food shopping, and it was too late to visit the cemetery again by then.

I sort of feel okay that Cameron is gone now. Like it's normal, and my brain thinks it makes sense now, becasue of what Sharon said about being so lucky to have him for as long as we did.

But at the same time he is on my mind an awful lot. More and more as this week has gone on. I think maybe that's why I have felt increasingly like I need to visit his grave. Or maybe it's the fact that I haven't visited when I wanted to that's made me think about him more? Anyway, he is in my mind at night when I can't sleep. I think about him in the day too, a lot, but on and off. I remember things about him all the time. One of the things that I can't switch off at the moment is sort of reliving the time when I went to see his body at the funeral chapel. Every detail about it is fresh in my mind's eye. I don't know if I could describe it as disturbing, because mostly I don't mind seeing it all again, but sometimes when I want to stop seeing it, I feel slightly panicky when I can't switch it off very easily.

It is no longer feeling like I can't believe Cameron is dead, or that I can't bear that's he's gone. That was a really hard thing to feel, but that's not really there anymore because I seem to have finally accepted it. Sometimes, just for a moment, it's back again, but mostly I seem to have completely accepted that he has died and he isn't coming back. But I'm not sure where that leaves me, with my feelings, that is. Not sure what the next stage is, or where I'm at in myself right now. I feel "better", that's for sure, because that absolutely unbearable deep pain is not hurting me like it was, which is an immense relief, but something is still there. Only I'm not sure what.

Tonight I was cooking a roast dinner with Neil in the kitchen, and I was all feeling bubbly and cheeky, and I suddenly started to sing a song from somewhere in the mid 90's - it just popped out from nowhere because it was upbeat and catchy. Don't know what it's called, but the words to the chorus go: "Boom boom boooom, now let me hear you say eh-oh-oh (eh-ohhh)" Okay so you probably haven't got a clue what I'm on about but oh well. Anyway, I sang the chorus and then stopped suddenly, because I had forgotten that it's one I used to sing with Cameron. He can't have been more than 2 at the time. His mum used to sing it with him, and so I started to as well. Just a silly little thing, but we used to go, "Boom boom boooom, now let me hear you say eh-oh-oh -" and then he'd go, "Eh-ohhh!" in this cute little toddler voice. Ahhhh, he was the most enormous sweetie ever.

So I stopped, because the sudden rush of the memory made me feel weird. Like sweet-and-sour. Bitter but sweet at the same time. Which was a new feeling that I hadn't expected, so it made me stop in my tracks and just "feel" it for a moment. I told Neil about it because he wondered why I stopped so suddenly and made an "ohhh" sound.

Cameron was such a lovely kid. Soooo precious. And I miss him ever so much. But I don't feel it in my chest like I did before. Even when I try and focus on missing him, the pain isn't there in my chest. Nothing is ripping through me and hurting, and my eyes don't well up. I don't feel like I'm supressing emotion at all, it's just different now. But I don't know if I like it. It feels sad to have such.... neutrality, where Cameron is concerned. He has been dead for ten weeks on Wednesday. I nearly wrote "gone", but sometimes that word annoys me, because it sidesteps the difficult word, "dead", which is the truth. Sometimes I want the truth all up in my face and splashed around angrily for everyone to see, but other times I want things to be softer and more cushioned and safe. Blah. I'm starting to talk.... what's a nice word for testicles? Ah well, it's a good time to stop writing now anyway. I think I've said most of the stuff I wanted to, and this entry is probably ridiculously long. Plus the time box says I started at 10.55pm, and it's now 12.34!!!! Yikes!

Ohhhh yes, we have a faulty modem. Which of course I suggested to AOL a week or two ago, but noooo, that couldn't be possible. Grrrr. The BT engineer came round and was thorougly fabulous. He even left us his ethernet modem to use till AOL send us the replacement, which is sooo nice of him. He only lives round the corner, so I can drop it back to him when the other one arrives. So this means I am online easy-peasily, and can check diaries and email as normal again, hoorah!! Let's hope the next modem doesn't give us problems. If it does I am buying an ethernet modem. They are MUCH better than other types in any case. AOL have been so rubbish, I am sorely tempted to leave them and set up with some other ISP. I have told them this too, rather crossly, in a very long email! But I have had the same email address for 3 years and I really don't want to change it. It's as bad as changing house addresses, with notifying everyone, blah blah blah. So hmmm, I am thinking about it. I'm happy with AOL when we can actually use it. It's great. But it just annoys me how pants they have been over this issue.

Anyway, boring again, so I'm off to bed! Night night :)

Recent entries.....

Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24
Update - 5th Anniversary and other stuff! - 2004-08-16
Church picnic and being happy and things :) - 2004-06-27
Barbeque at Cameron's house... - 2004-05-18
To Tara... - 2004-04-19