Sail Away

Letting go of responsibility is not always easy. I’ve just had a really enjoyable break away from home, with only myself to please and no firm commitments. It was so wonderfully relaxing with little pressure to do anything at all, unless I chose to. Which I did. In some ways my life is always like that, except that there is always stuff to sort out. It feels as though my feet have barely touched the ground since returning home on Monday… driving a couple of hundred miles should normally have demanded a few days of rest for this M.E. afflicted man. But actually I feel pretty good, at least in my head which is a good starting point. Ok, I still have little stamina but with careful pacing I’m doing quite a lot. Like driving to Loughborough to visit my daughter and grandson. He’s great! Then my lovely daughter played her newly written song and showed me the most amazing sharpie tattoo all over her Taylor guitar. Ok she did get a first in Fine Art at Uni so it may well be value added to a rather expensive instrument. And I’m almost tempted to ask her for a similar work on my collector’s edition Ovation which cost substantially more than her Taylor.

After my weekly shop and a visit to my parents, I kept my eldest grand-daughter company after school… she didn’t believe my tablet OS was called Jelly Bean, until I showed her the Google sculpture garden of man-sized Gingerbread, Ice-Cream Sandwich and all the rest of it. So eventually I remembered to check my answer phone, and discovered my house-group was re-starting after the summer break so ‘would you bring your guitar and lead a time of worship?’ I’m not organised yet, but no real problem, apart from M.E. pains in my hand which make it painful to use double barre chords. Ah well. So today, after sorting out my house and also motorhome, I had the cat to sort out with a trip to the vets. My wallet says ouch! Yes my rather elderly mog has apparently scratched his eye and needs treatment, poor thing. He’s also quite deaf and has a heart murmur, but otherwise doing ok. Attending the surgery was quite educational… I can now spell Chihuahua after the receptionist asked an owner for help. You’d expect her to have come across that one. But then again her co-worker tried to insist my cat’s eye ointment should be inserted into his ear every evening. What?!? And somehow I have to find time to go visit my mother-in-law who’s just been transferred to a community hospital. Busy, busy, busy… doing nothing but normal life, which is what I really need to be thinking about. Yeh, what to do with the rest of it. Maybe I can just sail away and leave everything behind, find space to do my own thing? Problem is I like all these beautiful people, they’re my family and the most important people on planet earth. And in a bizarre sort of way I almost feel attached to the cat, even though I’m not naturally a pet person. I keep remembering him sitting on Jane’s lap, for year after year after year… he still howls because she’s not there anymore.

Jeremiah 6:16 ‘This is what the Lord says: Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it.’ (NLT)