Death. Suffering. Sickness. Creativity. God. No, those words and concepts really shouldn’t belong on the same line, but this has been my month. Really. Really. There has been terrible loss. Lots of sickness. Insanity inducing LACK of sleep … and as a working professional I need to ‘put that aside’ and get on with my work. As a creative professional this is profoundly more difficult since our sorrow and suffering sits right there on the bench next to our happiness and creativity – in fact they seem to hold hands, laugh and enjoy regular coffee and even an occasional bottle of wine. Yes, it’s frustrating and confusing this magnificent golden fireball of an idea …
The death came in the first week. An old friend’s 3 year old daughter drowned in her pool at home. Devastating. Inconceivable. Unbelievably close to home. I am still brought to tears at the thought of her having to deal with what I can only imagine as a huge black hole in her soul while traversing other mundane daily tasks plus the massive responsibility of the aiding in the healing of her other children and family. My daughter of similar age brought me to tears every time she moved, smiled, hugged me, twirled in her dresses or said, ‘I yup you mommy.’ I found myself praying, a lot, asking, pleading, talking to God more than i have in a very long time.
Week two brought the suffering. Our dear nanny, part of the family for 36 years, fell really ill and couldn’t walk. I insisted she come in to work so i could take her to my doctor to see what the problem was. A frenzied few days of doctors, blood tests, X-Rays and repeat brought to light a major fail in our public health care system. Yes, we already know all this, but the extent is too much to bear thinking of. It turns out she was impossibly close to a deadly stroke! Once again, thank you God for giving me the ‘let’s get this sorted’ gene. In this same week, of course, the other young lady who i’d been employing to ‘help out’ / help her out decided, for the last, time to let me down through a complete lack of … I want to say ‘giving a sh!t’, but I’ll put it down to basic ‘cultural misalignment of values’ so she wasn’t available to help out in the absence of our Dear. My amazing friends came to the rescue for a few days and thereafter put our collective ‘feelers’ out for some more domestic help. Thank you Lord, I have some!
The end of week two, right through week three and now into week four there has been so much sickness. Our whole family and many friends we know have been affected by a horrible virus that creeping through our community at the moment. Yuck. So two sick children and zero sleep culminated in me sleeping my own sickness off for the last four days. It has been a difficult reminder how horrible it is to actually be really sick – so extra future empathy for my kids, while I still remember at least – yet again, I found myself thanking God for the help I had, including in the husband He gave me because the last few days would have been worse hell without him.
Week three and four, in my research and ramblings, brought a need to find and create something beautiful amidst the horrendous out of control mess around me … I needed to find a centre, a happy place, a distraction … and I did. I began an online course in Surface Pattern Design. I am officially an addict. I found a new love in the middle of this storm and it’s beautiful. It’s useful. It’s going to be a life-long affair. Again, I thank God for the reprieve. It was a bit of a ‘reprieve under siege’ situation, but it was exactly what I needed.
Then only last night I found myself being trolled by a super angry atheist for commenting, ‘He is!’ in response to a friends status, ‘God is great.’ I had to just smile. After the month I have had, and the fact that I am still standing, albeit a bit week still, I have to believe the goodness in people comes from somewhere. I have seen it. I cannot explain anything, but through faith. I’m not super outspoken about God. I think this is probably the most I have written, but I don’t care what ‘you’ think, He is definitely there. In each smile, hug, helping hand, healing word …
But this isn’t finished … because today Dear resigned with three months notice and my heart is broken. Thank you Lord for planting me. Now please help me grow, grow grow!
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