walking the tightrope between doubt and certainty
This Lent, which starts today, Ash Wednesday, I aim to blog forty times, once for each of the fast days. Some of these blogs will be in the form of testimony, about what my faith means to me, some will be theoretical and some more humorous. The common factor is that God features in the content somehow.
Some of the content will be new, some I have published elsewhere, and some will be by other people, who I shall do my best to credit.
So that’s one down, 39 to go.
So the glue was dry.
The next stage was to make a snare.
The snare was a snare wire from a normal snare drum, cut in half and fitted on a cross beam so that it rests against the front piece of thin plywood.
Then everything was glued together, with the exception of the front which was screwed on, and the whole thing was painted.
And that’s it.
Sorry to bore you all with tales of shopping. But what is a straightforward task for most can become complicated.
The complication is orthopaedic insoles. To help with the pain of an artritic foot I have strange foot distorting devices I wear in my shoes, which makes buying shoes a less than simple task.
Out are the discount shoe shops with rack upon rack of cheap shoes. Out are the shoe selling shelves of supermarkets. Out in fact is any kind of discount.
What I need is a shop where there is individual service, where the staff know how to deal with semi-cripples.
So what can be a difficult task for most people, all those shops, all that choice, becomes a simple one for me. I have the choice of one shop, I won’t advertise, but it is the one a lot of parents use for children’s shoes because they have all the measuring stuff and different width fittings.
So now I am the owner of a new pair of leather shoes.
(Trainers are easy, any which lace all the way down I can make my own fitting.)
…to be continued.
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 1 June ’11
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
Almost two weeks ago I asked for healing for the arthritic ankle.
It was after taking communion at our church’s weekly service, where we have an opportunity to ask for healing, hidden away, whilst other people are still receiving the sacrament.
But I still feel pain.
In my prayers I’ve been asking why.
Why does God allow me to be in pain whilst others are healed?
And I’ve been apologetic, saying sorry to God for asking such selfish questions.
The answer I’m getting, if it is from God, I have trouble discerning that too, is that it is OK to ask.
So whilst that has settled my mind a little (but not too much, I’m still asking) the main problem still remains.
The ankle still hurts.
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 14 March ’11
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
Five years ago today I was in an accident.
Cycling home from work I was helped to dismount by a driver turning into my path, which led to me enjoying a stay in hospital, and not enjoying hospital food.
A lot of time has passed since then, but I still have to use a stick if I need to walk for any length of time. I have good days and bad days. On the good days I walk OK, on the bad ones it is painful even resting.
So how does it feel to be a Christian living in pain every day, does God not heal?
Despite all that I am going through I would say, “Yes, I believe that God can heal.” It times passed I have received healing through prayer, and have even seen people healed through my praying for them (though this was rare). So why not this time? Has God stopped loving me?
No, of course he hasn’t. I still see the Lord working in the lives of others and sometimes feel his presence when meditating. I believe God loves me just as much now as he did before, in fact I have become aware that God is present with you through suffering in a way that I was missing before. But I wish the pain would go.
(To keep things up to date, September last year was another steroid injection into the talonavicular joint of the right ankle.)
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 14 March ’11
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
Eddie Cochran was right, there ain’t no cure.
This last week I’ve been to the hospital twice, both about the bad foot. Routine visits on both occasions.
The first, on Tuesday, was an appointment with the consultant, who twisted the foot around saying things like, “does this hurt?” I was tempted to say, “No I just like visiting hospitals,” but didn’t. I said “Ow” instead.
Then the X-ray. Basically that involves the radiographer twisting the painful joint into the most uncomfortable position they can find, then asking you to hold it still. Three times.
When you visit a clinic with foot pain expect it to hurt more when you leave than when you arrived.
The second visit, two days later, was to get some insoles for my shoes. I now walk with feet contorted into strange positions.
Whilst I was there I picked up a leaflet about arthritis, the condition I have, and read the following…
The first page contains he phrase, “While the is no cure…” The second page says it again, “Although there is, as yet, no known cure for most types of arthritis…” Looks like I’m stuck with it.
The rest of the advice ties in with my experience, The pain can be different on different days, you have good days and bad days, and people will see you on a good day and think you’re better. That has happened.
The problem is with the description of osteoarthritis, which I have. It “does appear in more females than males and often starts after the menopause.” Great, so it’s an old woman’s disease. It’s only two pages later, at the end of the section, that it says, “Arthritis sometimes develops after an injury that damages a joint.”
Anyway, there’s an injection guided by X-ray into the joint to look forward to next month, followed by the excruciating pain for two days afterwards. Lucky me.
But for people who saw the title of the blog, and expected something other than me moaning about my aches and pains, here’s Eddie. Summertime Blues
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 19 April ’09
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
Last night, or rather this morning I went to bed late, very late.
Pain is the reason, spending time at work when you have an arthritic foot means that it has a tendency to hurt in the evening, even on those days where I feel good in the morning. It is also the reason I watch really bad films such as “Yeti: Curse of the snow demon” on the SyFy channel, a film that manages to be even worse than its title.
But late nights don’t really matter, I work late shift, from 2 to 10 PM so I can always catch up on sleep. Or so I thought.
This morning though the sleep in was shattered. 7.30am the sound of the Stihl saw was heard from the street outside. If that wasn’t bad enough it was followed by the even louder sound of a pneumatic drill, they are laying a new gas main.
Oh great.
So here I am, tired and grumpy.
And the foot still hurts.
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 5 August ’10
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
(Note: the first two paragraphs relate to the site StPixels.com where this blog was first published)
Inspired by a thread on Badger culls, the P2PD long term sickness group, and some words Mark spoke recently on the Struggles Dialogue thread, I found a blog on the Roman Catholic site, New Advent which sort of tied them all together.
So here it is. My thoughts about my own long term pain and a mash up of the above four sources. This was the talk I presented at the 9.00pm BST service on 9th June 2010 in St Pixels, and it will probably be the only time you see a sermon on the theme, “Do not eat rock badger.”
Reading from Deuteronomy 14: 3-10 ESV
You shall not eat any abomination.
These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep.
Every animal that parts the hoof and has the hoof cloven in two and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat.
Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not part the hoof, are unclean for you.And the pig, because it parts the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.
“Of all that are in the waters you may eat these: whatever has fins and scales you may eat.And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.
-o0o-
When was the last time you felt like eating rock badger?
When we look at the dietary requirements of the Old Testament we can look at how primitive they are. We are now enlightened, we know how to cook pork and shellfish without causing poisoning and even death. We are so more enlightened than those poor Old Testament people groping in the dark.
But that would be a hasty decision.
You see the OT ritual is not about disease control at all. Disease control is a consequence, but it isn’t the main concern of the teaching.
There is still a yuck factor, to be sure. It hasn’t gone away since we learned how to cook pork.
How many insects have you eaten today? When was the last time you tucked into a delicious plate of brains, or snake.
So even in our enlightened times we still have taboos about food.
And that is the point of the dietary restrictions, the biological yuck factor relates to the spiritual yuck factor. It is all to do with how God sees sin, so yucky things like touching corpses, effusions of blood and leprosy and other diseases, relate to the yuckyness of sin.
The image of things too yucky to touch and too yucky to eat is an image of how God sees sin. It is a pollutant. Eating pork, or rock badgers, pollutes the Jews ritually in the same way that sin pollutes us spiritually.
In the same way sickness is seen in the Scriptures as an image of sin and not a punishment of sin.
Living in constant pain does not mean I am a greater sinner than those who are fit. But the frustration I feel at not being able to do as much as I’d like gives me an insight into the frustration God feels towards sin in the world.
That’s in the good times.
In the bad times, while the pain is not a consequence of sin it can lead me into sin, I get angry too quickly, can be impatient, uncaring and hasty.
Thankfully God isn’t like that.
Sin is something that needs to be got rid of.
And thank God that through the death and resurrection of Christ they can be removed.
Now where can I find a butcher who sells rock badger?
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 9 June ’10
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
“Man survives fatal accident,” is a genuine headline, according to the a advert the BBC are running for the satirical/comedy show Russel Howard’s Good News. While I have not survived a fatal accident, at around 7.45 this evening it will be exactly four years since I survived a near fatal one.
How am I? The forehead scar is almost invisible due to wrinkles lining themselves up with the scar tissue. Ageing provides its own cosmetic surgery.
The ankle is not getting any worse, I still spend as much time as possible on a weekend with my feet up to recover from a week on my feet. A busy weekend means an uncomfortable following week. But worst are the lungs, having a cold is not so bad for most people, but someone who had lungs damaged in an accident and commutes by cycle it can be a problem. Fortunately I work in the valley and live part way up the moor the hills are on the way home, but it’s a jolt to my pride to get off and walk up hills, especially as I was good at cycling hills not that many years ago. But the exertion of cycling uphill is causing pain down the side of my ribcage, so doing it the slow, easy way is the only option.
But I’m alive and in reasonably good health.
Things are good.
Edit to add:
I’ve been reading through the old entries from four years ago. Some of those were written when when I was still on opiates for pain relief. The writing style is bizarrely different to the way I usually write.
I also noticed that I failed to blog that the compensation claim was settled in the late summer.
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 14 March ’10
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories
This is a supplemental entry to the last blog entry.
Another long solicitor’s letter, and another form to fill in.
The solicitor has received the doctor’s report and has worked out what the level of compensation should be. Those who have been following this tale of delays from the other side’s legal team will not be surprised to hear that the first offer is on the low side.I have been recommended to reject the offer. Which is what I am doing.
There is an amount of compensation that would have been paid by the government had the accident been a hit and run and the driver not found. This is considered by the soliciors to be the minimum that should be accepted.
When will it all end?
…to be continued
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 19 April ’09
To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories