Fat Fowl, Bradford on Avon, where we often meet for coffee, chat, cry and laugh
Last Saturday I met Belinda’s new man. He is really lovely. She is really happy. I am really happy for her. I came home and cried.
Here is a man who has given my dear friend hope for the future, who last year had no hope and actually I was worried on how she would survive. I wrote this poem for her 30th birthday in December:
Zero years
Her birthday’s here, the big 3 – 0h.
She wakes alone on this auspicious date.
A brief moment of solitude,
Is that him she can hear in the shower?
But no, the quiet rushes in.
The bed is cold,
the shower silent.
The realisation comes flooding back –
This will be her first birthday alone,
her first birthday as a widow.
The tears are shed, the pain remains,
She is empty like the zero of her years.
Will anything ever fill her life again?
She rises and steps in to the shower on her own
And now she’s got this lovely man, who knows and understands all she has journeyed through over the last few years, because with Jon it wasn’t just the last few weeks but there had been a long time of problems and issues. His had been a mentally disturbed life, which we could all see when we looked back over it with hindsight. Now here is is with hope, still with tears and still with pain, but there is hope. She is not journeying alone. Her brother is getting married next weekend and when it was announced she was dreading it but now she has a lovely friend to celebrate it with. She has someone to step into the future with.
We all don’t know how long the relationship will last but whatever happens she has hope, hope that she can have a relationship, hope that she can stand tall, hope that she is normal.
But I cried. Why? Because lovely though Alex is he’s not Jon. It brought back the most amazing bitter sweet feelings. I’m so pleased for my lovely dear friend but so miss my other lovely dear friend. It hurts.
And also selfish as this sounds it made me miss my sister more. I know Alex isn’t Jon but I know that Belinda now has a partner/boyfriend/maybe husband in her life, and yet I will never have another sister. That is gone forever. A friend of mine has just had her parents die within 10 days of each other. Her and her siblings are clearing out the family home. I will never had a sister to do that with. It is self-pitying but often I think grief if like that. We do grieve the person who’s died but we grieve for ourselves and the loss we have to carry. I’m sure I’ve said before about the young friend who is dying of cancer unless God intervenes. Tabitha asked why if we believe God is so awesome and being with Him is the most amazing thing why we want this lovely young woman to live longer on this earth and not be with God in Heaven. Why? Because we are selfish and don’t want to have to face another loss.
So I’m pleased, oh so very very pleased, for Belinda. So much so I feel my heart will bursts but I am also selfishly sad for the losses I have to walk through and the gaps that are in my life.
Here is a great quote from George Mueller that all us Christians could do with learning to live by. His wife, who he loves dearly and who he says is his greatest delight is dying and he says:
…if it is good for me, my darling wife will be raised again; sick as she is. God will restore her again. But if she is not restored again, then it would not be a good thing for me. And so my heart is at rest. I was satisfied with God. And all this springs, as I have often said before, from taking God at his word, believing what he says
That isn’t to say that he didn’t pray for his wife to be healed but that his trust was in the fact that God knew best and would heal or take as He (God) saw best. How many of us really trust God that much? How many of us really want God to do the healing thing and keep that promise, but not the ‘works all things to the good for those who love Him’ (Romans 8:28)? God isn’t a magician. He isn’t a ‘tame lion’. He is wild. He is awesome. And in all that He can be trusted. I want to get to that place George Mueller was at where I can trust God even when He doesn’t do what I want.
So for now I wrestle with being so pleased for Belinda and yet so sad for my/our loss.
My daily thoughts 