Things Too Wonderful

Disappointment is not sin.

Definitely not.  It is hope deferred, which the Bible says ‘Makes the heart sick’ but it is not sin.  Which of us doesn’t get disappointed once in a while?  We live in a fallen mess up world and bad things happen and sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers in the way we expect (or hope) and we are bound to get disappointed once in a while.   We don’t like to admit it, because, well we just don’t,but sometimes even as Christians we can get disappointed the way life is working out; Continue Reading »

My car is dead.  It was a terminal case of head gasket and cracked cylinder and a few other things (mechanics not being my best thing I am unable to supply the details)  but it has driven its last journey.  Needless to say, this was unwelcome and expensive news, given our current circumstances.   I need a new car. 

I don’t think I mentioned here that a couple of months ago, a very polite gentleman drove into the back of me while I was driving Steve’s car.  At least, I wasn’t driving it at the time so much as Continue Reading »

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times this last couple of years: “You’re coping really well”.

I appreciate the encouragement but actually I’m fed up of ‘coping’. 

I want to live again, without this constant feeling of having to battle all the time with the consequences of ill health in the family, the financial difficulties that has brought, the pressures of trying to hold it all together and the many other things which just seem to come one after the other.  I know that there are lots of people reading this who feel exactly the same, although your actual situation might be different.  ‘When is all this going to come to an end? Continue Reading »

Don’t you absolutely hate it, when you are going through a really tough time and some well meaning christian has all the answers for you?!  Maybe that’s never happened to you.  Bless you! It happened to us - more than once.

When Steve had been struggling with ill health for over a year - one thing after another - and all the prayers and laying on of hands an anointing with oil seemed only to have led to disappointment (and I believe 100% in all those things - but I’m telling it like it is: for the longest time nothing seemed to happen) it was hard sometimes to keep trusting.  We had some amazing support, and the people who helped most were the ones who didn’t have all the right answers for us, but the ones who encouraged us to keep going regardless.

The problems came with the ones who thought they did have the answers for us: the ‘Job’s comforters’ as we called them, because he had some too.  These were the ones who knew exactly why Steve wasn’t being healed, and it was usually his fault: “You’re obviously not seeking God enough” , “There must be some sin in your life.”, “There is some sin in your life, Continue Reading »

When everything started going horribly wrong, we were about a thousand miles from home in the South of France.  Steve had collapsed in agony and we didn’t have a clue what was wrong.  We called an ambulance and they came and took him away - I didn’t know where to or how to get him back!  They did leave me a receipt, but the desolation of watching that ambulance drive away with my delerious husband in it, leaving me alone with two small and tearful children was quite indescribable.

I did track him down again - with the help of the wonderful people in the next door tent.  The hospital had diagnosed food poisoning.  It wasn’t.  His appendix had ruptured and although we didn’t know it at the time, he was life-threateningly ill.

Continue Reading »

My son was in an inter-school cross country race yesterday.  He’s been training for it for ages and building up his stamina and perseverance and he was really excited.  With eight year old enthusiasm he planned his tactics all the way there in the car and prayed that the rain - which has been falling for weeks - would hold off. 

He made a reasonable start - although he was three rows back at the starting line - and was steadily moving through the field when: disaster!  A small hill and an enormous patch of mud, churned into a quagmire by a hundred little feet from the race before, and one by one, the thirty or so boys in front of my son went flying and he had no way of avoiding it: flat on his Continue Reading »