Friday 25th March

Faith in God, faith in others, faith in myself. All three of which I lost sight of a couple of years ago when my life seemed untenable. Yesterday I was at rock bottom. A mixture of disappointment in my health problems even after an operation I thought would change my life for the better, finality regarding my future job prospects, my need to increase medication, and the groundhog day that is my life at present just were too much.

Today has been a strangely calm day, my future plans were sketched out in light of all the answers I received this week.

All I can imagine is that by accepting my health limitations and choosing to work with what I’ve got, I can only be successful. I write every day and will continue to do so. I have a children’s novel completed, another in the planning stages, two short stories on the go, a wealth of articles on a few well researched themes and hope to one day write grown-up fiction too. I have plans for a self help book or two but as I know very little about them, I need to take that slowly.

 I do the best I can as a wife and mother – the mother bit I seem to be managing okay, not sure I’m great wife material anymore - I support my friends in any which way I can and I promise to develop those parts of myself which need nurturing. I turned my back on God as a teenager, then became involved in a lovely church community through a dear friend in 2000. When we moved away and I became ill, around the time of 9/11 and my father in law becoming ill with cancer, I couldn’t reconcile attending church each week with how I felt about God and so turned away.  I hope to find comfort in my faith now, but feel outside of the club somehow – not quite trusting of it, or believing of it enough. Not because of my illness, or the deaths my family have endured recently – if anything, I recognise that these are just part of the tapestry as it were. But where Buddhism recognises suffering as something to free ourselves of and death is the price we pay for our mortality, Christianity seems to dwell forever on this bringing us closer to the human God – Jesus – by dying – and I’m certainly not ready for that!. Not sure I agree. Maybe Christianity isn’t for me after all. I think I’m a seeker and searcher who draws from many teachings. One day I hope I’ll find something to help me.

Ramblings of a morphine addled thinker :)