Another Rough Week

This week has been as rough as last week but for a totally different reason. Miss 3 has been sick. A high temperature, vomiting kind of sick. For 3 nights I had broken sleep due to the need to change sheets. With everything else that has been going on I have felt very picked on - that it's all very unfair.

I prayed and prayed and prayed that she would be fine and then her temperature would soar again and I would be cleaning up more vomit.

In that respect my faith took a bit of a hammering. My girl hadn't done anything to deserve being this sick and surely will all the messing around we've had to go through for what is considered a fairly routine operation she could surely be cut a break. It's totally not fair and I was feeling that I couldn't catch a break either. To be honest I feel in some way abandoned. Many have been healed, Christ even raised some from the dead. Why then could my baby not be healed of her fever?

I've tried and I've prayed and my faith feels a little shakier this week.

I want to believe. I want to hold on. But sometimes it's hard when you see others around you seem to have every little thing go right for them. They ask for healing and get it. They ask for __________ (fill in the gap) and they get it. Then they get to enjoy big holidays and job promotions, or even have people throw money at them so they can pursue their dreams.

Me I struggle. I want to believe. I have believed so much that God wanted us to do a certain thing that I have put my money on the line. yet we were never blessed like that.

In these moments it serves me well to remember those who are missing their children through no fault of their own; or those who have lost everything in fires, floods or quakes. No I'm not where I want to be and yes to be honest I'm pissed off that we still haven't achieved what we believe we are meant to do. But I do have a loving family, with a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs and food on our table. So that puts me in a pretty okay place.

Borders...

Well it has been an interesting week and not for good reasons. On Thursday, Redgroup (who own Borders) went into voluntary administration. they told us not to panic and that it would be business as usual. That I could cope with, I knew it was coming. Someone I work with said it was a relief to finally have it happen. I'm not sure I felt relief. I was definitely sadder than I thought I would be, but working on the theory that they cold take a few months to sort their stuff out I wasn't too stressed.

That is until I got to work on Friday morning and was informed we wouldn't be honouring gift cards, or at least not without the customer spending twice the cards value. honestly I couldn't even say if it was legal though I guess it must be.

So anyway, yesterday was hell. In the end it was the nice customers who got to me. And I totally broke when someone asked me if I was a full-time employee and wished me the best. I was so pissed off with myself. It is just a job and here I was crying over it. Unfortunately it was a job I fell into - kid's books - and I really love it - when I'm not dealing with crap management decisions.

those kind of crap decisions continued in abundance yesterday, firstly with the gift cards, then with the store manager not being there for the first 3.5 hours the store was open, then with the regional manager getting pissy with me for answering the phone with 'good morning Borders P**** yes we are open'. Apparently it was negative, not helpful and we should be acting as if everything was business as usual. He didn't know who I was because I don't use my name but did mention it to the line manager who took the call. My response was 'he can kiss my ass'. It clearly wasn't business as usual and I cut a bunch of people off at the pass by answering the phone the way I did. I couldn't begin to tell you how many calls I answered asking if we were open.

Then there was the customer abuse - I found out today that after I left they ended up calling in security guards, and someone in one of the store was spat on. I can understand the anger but why take it out on us, we didn't make the decision, couldn't do anything about it and don't know how long we will have jobs.

I wanted nothing more than to go home and sit somewhere quite with a big glass of wine and try and forget. Not really an option when you have two little children. They don't want to understand and I don't want to stress them out. So I tried to act as close to normal as I could. I went for my run a little earlier so I could play in the spa with them.

Now it was my run that was a bit interesting because that is when I try to talk to God. I deliberately don't take music with me for that reason. I walked on to my driveway and asked if He had anything for me and the reply I got was 'come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest'. I laughed and told Him he was very funny. I don't know what's going to happen with my job and He says to rest.

Needless to say I don't rest well. I've tried that and it's never gotten me anywhere. Then again 'blessing the work of your hands' hasn't seemed to work any better. Sure I like my job and it pays our bills but I come home and write and seem to have gotten nowhere. I put in a lot of extra hours reading and researching for work and while it's appreciated it doesn't help financially.

Later in my run I admitted I was scared. The response I got was 'I've been scared to'. That almost made me stop. I struggled to get my head around it. I thought I was hearing what I wanted to hear. I can't ever remember hearing someone preach that before. If that was the case I though something in the Bible should back it up. To which the response was 'I came to be a man and experience everything a man does'.

Whoa, what a thought. If I'd been the one going to the cross I'd have been pretty scared even if I was sure it would work out alright. Who in their right mind wouldn't be scared to suffer like that? It is important to note here that people confront their fears all the time so I will try not to worry about the things I have no control over and walk a balanced path between resting and not sitting on my butt being lazy.

Story From The News

Switzerland are having a gun control referendum. They aren't doing this because of many gun crimes and it does fly in the face of their national history. Here's what I got from the story I read and I will freely say this blog comes only from that not some extended research, one of the reasons they want such massive changes is because they have a high suicide by firearms rate. So I found myself asking, really?

Do they really think removing guns from the equation is going to solve the real problem? Yes I suppose the easy accessibility to guns means if you feel the urge to kill yourself you can probably easily find one and pull the trigger, this however ignores so many aspects of suicide. Guns are not the problem, nor are they the only way to kill yourself. Suicide is indicative of deeper things in society than gun legislation. Of all the things I could list here I don't think legal gun ownership would make my list.

Please we need to focus instead on the underlying issues and not the method of execution. If someone is down enough to contemplate suicide they will find a way. So let's see instead if we can offer a hand to help them up, a shoulder to lean or cry on and the words to show light and hope to those who feel trapped in the darkness.

Seeing The Why

Life has been busy the last few weeks. In some ways you wouldn't have thought so, what with so little going on at work. However I'm sure they would frown upon me sitting in a corner somewhere writing. So instead I've done things like alpha the colouring books. Sure there are plenty of books I could order if they let me, I'm not even half way through putting my wish list together and it's four pages long. Work isn't where I've been busy, it is just something that takes up a bunch of hours every week.

Truthfully I realised some stuff during this time. Most notably that God sometimes allows us to see the why of something.

So to give some vague info to put that statement into context...

There is a friend of mu hubby's who I don't get along with very well. A while ago he said some really harsh things about me, I want my hubby to get in his face and tell him what he said was unacceptable. Sure I can fight my own battles but that's not really the point, sometimes you just want someone to take your side. He didn't. I understood his reasoning for not saying anything but the message it sent me was that he valued his friends possible hissy fit reaction more than my feelings. Unfortunately understanding his reasons didn't make the feeling go away.

It all came to a head last weekend where we had to attend an even together. He apologised to hubby for the things he'd said and done and hubby told him he should never have said those things in the first place. I wasn't directly involved in the conversation but found I didn't need to be and now after a bit of discussion the air has been cleared between hubby and me. The other guy still isn't my fave person but it bothers me much less now when the guys get together.

Then this week something really bad happened and my hubby's friend really needed him. I'd hate to think what this guy would be going through without hubby being there for him to talk to and I don't begrudge the friendship. While I was out running it became clear to me that if I'd pushed the issue the situation would be quite different. I'm not sure that would be a good thing,

So sometimes we need to choose to go with the wisdom of someone we trust even when we don't like it or it hurts us because in the long term it is what will work out for the best. The thing we need to remember is that sometimes we don't get to see how it all fits together like I was able to in this case.