Here Ends A Small Forever

It’s been a small forever since I last updated this blog. Sorry about that. I have missed you all. Much. And much has happened, so this will henceforth be known as ‘the catch up post’.

Lidia Update:
Lidia has returned to school! It is sooooo completely amazing that the doctors, who told Lidia’s parents 10 times that she would surely die, are describing her recovery in terms of a miracle. And it is. We know it. We see it as she swings upside-down on the monkey bars, as she draws us pictures and writes ‘I love you. Lidia’ on the bottom of the page. As she talks and laughs and runs and skips and plays, our hearts do likewise and we know this is a miracle performed by our Almighty God. Our God who cares and loves and never ever withdraws. Praise Him!

In other news,

I crashed my car last week.

It was rather spectacular. I was tired, sick and stressed and as I approached a row of cars banked up at a set of traffic lights I made a very bad braking decision: I accelerated. Hmmm. Not the best choice to make but despite my repeated attempts to find the brake, I just couldn’t and only ended up planting my foot more firmly on the accelerator, the result being my car ploughing into the nice new Mazda in front of me to the accompaniment of a cacophony of grating metal and smashing glass. Our cars ended up entwined in some kind of grotesque embrace, causing passers by to slow and stare, creeping by as if tiptoeing through the shards of metal and glass littering the road.

I was on my way to a meeting I was dreading and found the crash somewhat satisfying. The noise, the impact, the disruption all seem a fitting reflection of how I was feeling, of how I felt the meeting would go and to have it played out so graphically outside my tormented heart was comforting. It was a good crash. It felt like, in some Shakespearian sense, the world understood and empathised. The crash is a symbolic marker ending a significant time in my life. I feel like now, a new episode has begun. I emerged whiplashed but fine.

The people at the accident were lovely. So nice and gracious.
“Don’t worry about it. You’re ok, that’s all that matters,” said the guy whose nice new car was now a mangled remnant of its former self.
“It was an accident,” comforted the smiling woman in the car in front.
Their grace too is like a harbinger of the good to come, a peaceful ushering in of a new time.

I’ll keep you updated.
How have you guys been?