27th June

I did a little too much over the weekend and so today felt M.E. beginning to bite again. My lawns needed mowing, but after about 10 minutes I was absolutely exhausted and had to leave them for my son to do later in the day. Being, at best, on the verge of chronic fatigue all the time is so frustrating as I hate having work that should be done left almost untouched. In the big picture though I‘ve enjoyed some small improvement in my personal health over the past couple of months so I can’t complain. Over the years I’ve often felt somewhat better as we move into summer and I get outdoors more, but the challenge is to keep a hold of that improvement through the winter months. And that has yet to happen.

So despite the glorious weather and the good intentions to get outside working I ended up back in admin-world on my laptop for half a day. And that took me back some years when I decided to sort out some music from an album I’ve been listening to for some weeks. In recent years I’ve always managed to source a chord and lyric sheet off the internet almost instantaneously whenever I needed one. For some reason the Christian music industry is increasingly at pains to restrict free access to sheet music, even home produced arrangements, which is puzzling when the wider music world really seems to ignore such copyright infringements. So I had to do it the old fashioned way by copying the words from the album insert and then working out the music myself. Ah, the memories of seeking that elusive missing chord come flooding back!

Unfortunately my days are interrupted with far too many memories of the life I’ve now lost. My sister called round this afternoon for a coffee and a chat and she talked of her enthusiasm for being a new grandma… Jane would have been far more engaged in that conversation than I ever could be. One of our church leaders from many years ago also popped in and again I thought of some of the really happy times we spent at that church... it feels like yesterday and yet my 23 year old son was only 7 when we left and can barely remember it. I received a wonderful sympathy card from some friends in the states that told the story of how Jane had been really kind to the newlywed wife come to live in a foreign country introducing her to the delights of shopping in Derby. And so I’ve been crying all day thinking of how good Jane was for so many people… but especially me.

Isaiah 43:18-19 ’But forget all that— it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.’ (NLT)