Waves, breakers…and hope

Part way through Psalm 42 it reads, “…all your waves and breakers have swept over me”. There are times when those words feel like ours, and this week has been one of them with deep troughs like an open ocean. With what seems like one difficulty after another to face, we’re feeling pretty tired and very much hoping that there’s not too much more round the corner.

Sitting with Ben last week, he thumped his head down on his pillow and exhaled in tired tones, “I’m so bored with all this”. He’s reached a point – almost a tipping point – where he’s become so frustrated and weary with his perceived lack of progress that it’s getting him down and robbing him of the willpower to keep going. Whilst he can be quite lucid and clear, confusion appears regularly in his speech and his thought processes. His ability to walk and do many normal things seems both to him and us to have flat-lined. It leaves us all, Ben particularly, feeling at times overwhelmed and anxious as to both where it’s all leading and how much progress we should expect. Even on Monday, taking him from the rehabilitation centre to the main hospital for a specialist appointment and an MRI scan, it was a wheelchair all the way from when we arrived in the hospital carpark. The prospect of standing up out of the car and swivelling into the wheelchair was almost too much for him. I can’t help but compare him to the younger Ben who loved practicing ‘parkour’, urban free-running, jumping across walls, rolling over obstacles and climbing nimbly over fences. Having now got to this point of stalling improvement, we want to invite as many as possible all around the world to join with us in a weekly day of Prayer and Fasting on Mondays for the next four weeks (or whatever day suits you) for Ben. It’s something you can do from where you are and as you go about your day, either skipping a meal or two and using it as a time for prayer and particular focus, or spending regular spots each hour, lifting him before Father and asking for some breakthrough.  We simply feel that something needs to “budge” in his situation, and would be so grateful and encouraged to know that a concert of prayer to Father in Jesus’ name, was going up for him, for us.

While we live with the ongoing apparent lack of progress in Ben’s situation, our plea to the Home Office for a change in Dabi’s immigration status is now at a crucial point. Having sent off a pack of letters, reports and supporting statements a week ago via special delivery, we heard on Monday morning from London that they had not arrived even after seven days. I processed the news feeling quite anodyne about it, but possibly because there was a deeper mental process going on causing a strange combination of despair and steely resolve, almost a “bring it on…what’s one more thing to deal with?” going on in my head. To add to it, the message about the missing post came just after Simeon had received some very difficult information in that morning’s mail which open up some big issues that’ll need my involvement to help him sort. Within a short time however, the message came from London that the missing post regarding Dabi had in fact just arrived. It’s now been sent to the Home Secretary and will be considered by the relevant official as a matter of urgency. We simply hope that with Ben so unwell and needing his wife with him, there’ll be some compassion shown to her, to them both.

Living with the implications of early retirement has hit us in different ways in these last few days as we variously feel at peace about it and struggle to make the figures work financially both for our house purchase specifically and ongoing living costs. They often say that buying and selling homes is a stressful thing. Mix it with an unexpected retirement, and we don’t wonder why we have a cocktail of emotions that come and go. Wanting to explore further options, we’re seeing the Church of England Pensions Board Housing Officer later today, but even that doesn’t present any easy alternatives. It sent me on something of a downward spiral earlier in the week. “How is this going to work?”, I thought. A benefit I thought I’d be entitled to (equivalent to the state pension which is only payable on retirement at 67) I now discover is not available as it’s means tested – my early-retirement church pension would wipe it. However, I’ve always seen ‘retirement’ for the Christian (ordained or lay) as being spelt ‘re-tyre-ment’ – a new set of tyres and on a new track, still serving Jesus Christ, but in different spheres. Life serving Jesus for the Christian never finishes, and that while my health allows and I’m able, I can hopefully take on some lighter ministry and other things. Catherine’s already got her eye on the possibility of a Saturday job in her favourite shoe shop in Exeter, to go alongside her full-time weekly Teaching Assistant role. It’s all been a strange thing…when you know something seems clearly to be the right thing to do before God, and you even feel you’ve been led to do it, so there are still those moments when we struggle with the implications. I guess I see that in the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as he struggled with what was to come in the hours ahead on the cross…‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ There, Jesus’ humanity was struggling with the implications of where his divine nature, where Father, was leading him…just in the same way that any follower of Jesus can struggle in lesser things with the call and leading of God, despite knowing it’s the right path. Catherine has been such a rock to me, so much so that when I was at my lowest this week, she picked me up, encouraged me and on Monday evening as we sat on the sofa together, prayed for us both. But it all came at the end of a few days when I’d been on the verge of going back to the hospital due to some signs of a possible change in my condition – signs which seem now to have eased – but signs that regularly have me wondering if I’m standing on the equivalent of Mt Nebo. That was the mountain on which Moses stood as he looked across, beyond the Jordan, to what was to be his people’s new land – Canaan. But it was a place he himself would not enter, as he died before they entered it. 

In the middle of this though, there have been some wonderful signs of life, of Father’s goodness and the future which continue to spring up. Last Saturday, Josh and I had a great day together exploring God’s call on his life as he and I spent time at Moorlands Christian Theology and Training College near Christchurch, Dorset for their Open Day. We both came back full of excitement and seeing a potential next step for him there. We met with some amazingly supportive staff who understood that Josh would perhaps come to them in September next year, but who also understood the implications of my illness on him and what it might mean for him in the future.     

The previous day, it was wonderful to have two friends from Exmouth, Benedict and Ian – both pastors – come and spend part of the day with me, to pray for me and anoint me with oil. Ian, from one of the New Frontiers family of churches, wonderfully reminded me of the lavishness of Father’s goodness as he draped a towel over my shoulders and then poured – and I mean poured – a beaker full of oil over my head as he prayed for healing, for God’s anointing and blessing. No half measures. “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over”. I sensed as they prayed, as the oil seeped through my hair, down behind my ears and over my face, that if I’d had a cup to collect it, it would have overflowed. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”  (1 John 3:1)

On Thursday week, I receive the results of last week’s crucial CT scan. In the meantime, I journey on and even if breakers and waves do sweep over me, I know that my Redeemer lives and that He once stood on the earth and walked on the water. He one day will again stand upon the earth and continues to walk on the waters – the waters of my troubles and fears – and that keeping my eyes on Him, I’m prevented from going under, but more than that, we can know His peace.