Approved Food Order

I have followed lots of other bloggers' example and have just received my first Approved Food Order. Generally, it is all very impressive. I have learnt

• If you buy six packets of Rockys-teenagers will need to be told forcefully that they are meant to last more than a week.
• The stuff that comes is really high quality and saves you
  a packet.
• I do need to be more careful about product sizes. The above teeny tiny product was a bit of a disappointment!

Dipping my toe back in the water

I have had a week off work and a deliberate week off blogging. Just didn't feel like it. Tried to make it a more spiritual reason than that but just didn't feel like it. Sorry - don't mean to be rude. We have all taken Lucy's loss quite hard. Thank you for all your kind thoughts and prayers. Thank you that no-one said "It's just a dog". We were all doing quite a lot better until we got a lovely card from the vet, expressing their sorrow and supporting our decision. Bit sobby again but getting there.
Also quite rocked back by a blog I read this week. A Christian had written that she felt that prayer was a conversation and a continuing closeness with God and that answers to prayer were more often about how your life circumstances turned out and the sort of person you are. Well I wondered and worried about this for a while and I am sorry - that just won't do for me. If my God doesn't do miracles - above and beyond anything that I can imagine then all bets are off for me. I might as well go and get a decent life coach and see how much I can achieve in my life. I'm not saying that God is my personal slot machine and that I get everything I ask for (are you kidding?) but the POSSIBILITY of the miraculous is essential don't you think? If God be God and all that. I'm sticking with petitionary prayer with loads of thanksgiving and seeing what God does. Otherwise some of my life circumstances have been so poo, if I couldn't expect God to intervene in some way, at some time, I would do myself a mischief! (RAMBLING! Sorry)

Other than that just leaving you with a few random things.

Went for day out in Newton Abbott. You know, I don't need the lights of Vegas and wilder-beast roaming across the plains but, I have to be brutally honest, it was a long way to drive for a big Asda, twenty charity shops and two buskers murdering Beatles' songs. Maybe I caught it on a bad day.

Had a lunch in Buffet City. All you an eat Chinese for the uninitiated. Always makes me want to come out and go on five day bread and water fast. Why do we do that to ourselves? And FOW1 was making a cheese sandwich about an hour later.

Foyle's War is back - if only for three weeks. HURRAH! Also, wish that he papers would stop hanging round the filming of Sherlock and taking random photos. If they give any clues away - I shall be very annoyed.

FOW2 to me during last week's Easter Morning service

"Mum, don't wave and shout 'Hello' to the chicken puppet. It isn't for you."

Outrageous! I prefer it when she sits with the youth. Just one more random thing. This is why Cosby is a genius  Think on young people.

Lucy

The Internet is awash this morning with Good Friday thoughts and meditations. That is how it should be. I am happy to point you to a couple. A reminder of a beautiful hymn from Tracing Rainbows and a wonderful meditation here

I am afraid that I am out of step with right thinking Christianity myself this Easter because we lost our dog this week.  Our lovely Lucy had a stroke and we took the horrible decision to have her put down. HOH had to bear the heaviest burden as he had to take her. She was only eight. We had not seen it coming but there was no choice. So as he stroked her and thanked her for the lovely time we had together and said goodbye as the anesthetic sent her to sleep, HOH said that he was overcome with love for this little, submissive, eager to please little dog and our hearts are breaking at the moment. 

This weekend calls to mind the most pivotal events in the history of humanity but, I am sorry. I am just not there. We have an empty box in the kitchen and some ashes to scatter on the beach, where she loved to potter and roll in seaweed when she thought that we weren't looking. 

I hate it at the moment. I hate that it is so much easier to walk one dog than two. I hate the money we will save on food. I hate not pulling them apart when they disagreed over the ownership of a ball. I hate not hearing her click-click of her paws on the polished wooden floors. I hate that another connection with my brother, whose dog she was, has gone. We know that we gave her a good life and she was very happy with us and eventually, I am sure that this will be a comfort.

Everyone I know who has owned a dog tells me that it is the same for all dog owners. That, as we leave the breeder's house with our puppy, we are setting ourselves up for heartbreak further down the line. Yet we all do it, because of what they give to us, with their unconditional love and companionship, as well as all the laughter. And I know that we will laugh when we remember her. Eventually. Just not yet. 

Good bye Lucy Lou. Our family is richer for knowing you and poorer now you aren't here. Thank you - for everything.

Men as trees

I love Johnny Cash. Well, when I say I love Johnny Cash, I can't say that I often think Ooh - I'll just put a bit of Johnny Cash on the old compact disc player. In fact, I don't think that I have ever thought that. I just really like who Johnny Cash was. FOW2 genuinely loves his music and has done for years. It can be a little disconcerting to hear your little girl cheerfully singing that she 

"Shot a man in Reno - just to watch him die."

But there are worse role models, I should think. Johnny Cash always seemed to me to be someone who was completely aware of all his faults and failings and was yet was still grateful to God for every last minute that he lived. Many years ago, when I was in our church youth group, we were all taken to a church hall  to watch Cash's film, The Gospel Road. If I am entirely honest, the film was a bit of a blur. Mixing with other youth groups was a rare opportunity to do a bit of "opposite sex sizing up" so I probably wasn't giving it my full attention.
As I remember, there were a lot of shots of Johnny Cash, in black, on beaches and on the top of cliffs looking mean and windswept but there are two images from the film that have stayed with me to this day.
The first was of Jesus laughing with some children as they played on the beach. This was a revelatory moment for me. Jesus having a sense of humour was not a facet of his character that I had been brought up with. As one of our elders once famously said "It says in the Bible that Jesus Wept. Not that he laughed. " Think on. Years later, when someone remarked, "So do you think that children, flocked to him because they loved his knowledge of Jewish Law?" it was a welcome revelation that people who lived at the time of Jesus would have heard him laugh. Jesus shows his back teeth. Love it.
The other bit I remember was  song called "I see Men as Trees walking" about Jesus'  gradual healing of a blind man. 
It's here - have a look.

I have often wondered about this.Why didn't Jesus just heal him the first time? Don't look at me -  I have no idea. Who do you think I am? However, I did find this, in Exodus, this week and wondered if it was a pointer. God is exhorting (good word - exhorting no?) the Children of Israel to press on and not be afraid of their enemies.

 I won’t get rid of them all at once lest the land grow up in weeds and the wild animals take over. Little by little I’ll get them out of there while you have a chance to get your crops going and make the land your own. I will make your borders stretch from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Wilderness to the Euphrates River

There was to be no lottery moment, no having it all at once. It wouldn't have worked. They had to get going - push forward, little by little, doing the right thing, making plans and seeing them come to pass. God would be working for them, giving them a chance to learn and to grow and giving them space as they pushed forward.

We are on a journey, a mission (like Star Trek) we are working together with a God who works miracles but our life is our story and I think that God wants it to be so. Blessings are delayed, sometimes for a very long time, life rarely seems to fall into our laps, (well mine doesn't anyway) and we need to learn to faithfully wait and push on. Dream and get going. God is still at work. 

Oh Happy Day

vickybeeching.com

So the first Christian Music Chart has apparently come and gone. Would someone care to give me a full explanation as to why this isn't there? Surely some mistake?

Happy. Happy Happy. (Bet you can't get it out of your head)