NaPoWriMo prompt: What are you haunted by, or what haunts you? Write a poem responding to this question. Then change the word haunt to hunt.
I’m not haunted by anything, except possibly the possibility of regret. I would hate to find myself regretting something I’d done or not done and now can never put right.
Maybe this is why Christ’s forgiveness, and mandate of such, is so all-important, central to me?
FMF prompt word: LONELY.
I won’t do another FMF, but will write a Haiku to link haunt and lonely.
Haiku 1
I think the only
thing that could ever haunt me –
if you were lonely.
Haiku 2
Many are my fears
but the one that would haunt me –
my lack of courage.
Haiku 3 – inspired by Martin Niemöller’s famous and important words
I will speak speak for you
when you face persecution.
Will you speak for me?
Haiku 4
To not hear the words
‘Well done good, faithful servant’ –
on reaching heaven.
Haiku 5
Haunted or hunted,
they would never come for me.
I’ve nothing they want!
Haiku 6
To sum this all up
about what would haunt me most –
t’is to have regret.
image of huddled boy, lonely and afraid
NB: To see other responses to the FMF prompt, LONELY, see below
The word respite took me straight to a specific time and place in my life – that of the blessing of occasional respite care for my mother.
Let me explain:
Mammy had early-onset Alzheimers. She received her diagnosis in her early 50s and was already just turned 60 when we moved her in to live with us.
It was a momentous undertaking for all of us – for mum to leave her beloved Orkney Island home; for my husband and children to have this needy stranger suddenly living with them; and for me, to become a full-time carer for a mother that I felt had rejected me.
It was a sacrifice and a privilege that I am grateful to have accepted.
However, as anyone who has been a carer knows, one needs to be super-careful not to overdo it!!! When one is looking after another 24/7, one tends to forget to look after oneself.
I was caring for my mother, but still had to attend to my husband and 2 young teenagers! There was little energy enough for them, so self-care was neglected.
This is when I discovered the benefits of respite care.
Respite care means taking a break from caring, while the person you care for is looked after by someone else. It lets you take time out to look after yourself and helps stop you becoming exhausted and run down.
The dictionary describes it as RESPITE: ‘a short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant’. But I describe those breaks from caring as necessary breathing spaces for sanity to resume, for me to see my children and myself uninterrupted; time to go away for a few days together and do the sorts of things we used to take for granted, like camping, hill-walking, or meals out, without constant risk-assessment and stress.
Of course the word comes from ‘respire’, which means ‘to breathe’. It also has an archaic meaning which is equally relevant here – ‘to recover hope, courage, or strength after a time of difficulty’.
Jesus invited me to take frequent respite with Him.
He invited me to come to Him, casting off my cares and leaving them in His care; resting in His loving embrace; resting in His Peace. He knows that when I do this I too will recover hope, courage and strength in my daily experiences and battles.
He invites all of His children to come to Him and receive His peace and that turbo-charge that we often so desperately need!
Respite care at that time of being a full-time carer, was a real God-send for me. For Mammy it was mixed; sometimes she would be delighted to meet people and equally delighted simply to see us come to fetch her home again, whence she immediately forgot where she had been; at other times she would spend the time away feeling abandoned and grumpy.
But for my sanity and ability to care – and therefore ultimately for Mammy’s well-being too, we used respite care whenever we could afford to just take a break by ourselves.
We would resume caring refreshed and appreciative of Mammy and of each other.
This morning I read, ‘Do not conform yourself to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ 1– and it reminded me that last weeks FMF prompt word was ‘pattern’, so I want to tell you a little about a pattern that Open Doors have noticed emerging ever more strongly across the church.
I learned more about this last night as I joined Open Doors in an evening of prayer, following the launch of this year’s World Watch List (The World Watch List explains which countries are most dangerous to live in if you are a Christian and why).
The pattern is that the more the persecution of Christians increases, the more the church grows!
Is that not a surprising pattern?
People see how difficult it is to be a Christian and yet they see the joy, love and hope in those persecuted and they choose to follow Christ, knowing the suffering that probably will await them at the hands of the world.
This pattern seems difficult for us in the Western World to comprehend – it certainly does for me! I love my comfort and I run from pain and hardship. I am always challenged when I hear the heart-rending stories of cruel violence, oppression, torture and imprisonment suffered by so many of my brothers and sisters – 365 000 brothers and sisters are severely persecuted in this world – and I feel so humbled… I also feel ashamed that I am often scared to speak out and suffer a little mocking or just disinterest from those around me.
I sometimes wonder if I would even be ‘accused’ of being a Christian in company of those who would persecute!
But this is an acknowledged pattern. It happened right from Jesus and His first disciples. But in places of persecution, the church grows, and in places of relative ease, the church dwindles in complacently.
This is a pattern I acknowledge and I ask for mercy. Mercy for myself and for those of us who slip into complacency.
I ask the Lord to give us courage and grace to declare His goodness in the market-places and homes we inhabit.
Oh that my love would be again fanned into flame and I would sing His praise from the rooftops, unashamed, unabashed and to the glory of my first love.
Is ‘attempt’ a positive, negative or neutral word to you?
The word ‘attempt’ is a good example to me of how positive or negative associations can become attached to words according to experience.
To me it was a negative word – like an ‘attempt’ was not good enough – it felt inferior to doing something properly, almost like I had signed myself up to fail.
image of electrical circuit showing failed attempt
Attempt in my mind meant ‘failed attempt’.
I used to find myself saying, ‘I’m going to try to make… or try to finish… or try to clean/write/draw…’ and felt already defeated before I started.
A well-meaning friend used to remind me – ‘You’re not going to try, you’re going to do it’. And I would mutter a half-hearted renunciation of the words, but not really believe it.
The most positive maxim was ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again’.
But I wasn’t really sure what success even looked like.
But now I see the word very differently.
I see life differently.
I see success differently.
I am now happy to attempt something – to me an attempt is a sign of life, hope and courage to try something new.
It is a sign of me embracing life, trusting Him who gives me life.
Now I will excitedly attempt to paint, or plaster a wall, or write a story, or cook a meal, knowing that I will try my best and that my attempt will be good enough.
Now I can try something new, have a go, and make mistakes and learn.
That is success.
Every attempt is an act of courage, perseverance, patience and hope.
Hope that the next attempt will also teach me something and be good enough.
Now it is fun to attempt something new – sometimes a bit scary, sometimes I get nervous, but if I inform myself and prepare as well as I can, the chances are that my best attempt will be worth something and it is an adventure.
Life is a series of attempts – attempts at work, at creativity, at relationship, at service, at worship, at play and at understanding the meaning of it all.
You my see my attempts as mediocre and inferior, but to me, my attempts at life bring me great joy and purpose.
Jonathan Bryan has severe cerebral palsy, a condition that makes him incapable of voluntary movement or speech. He was locked inside his own mind, aware of the outside world but unable to fully communicate with it until he found a way by using his eyes to laboriously choose individual letters, and through this make his thoughts known. In Eye Can Write, we read of his intense passion for life, his mischievous sense of fun, his hopes, his fears, and what it’s like to be him. This is a powerful book from an incredible young writer whose writing ability defies age or physical disability—a truly inspirational figure.
This June 2022, I had the pleasure of meeting 16 year old author, Jonathan Bryan and his mother, Chantal. As Jonathan cannot verbally ‘speak’ to us in a conventional way, his mother read to us excerpts of Jonathan’s stories, his poems and told us of his journey.
I then bought his book to read more from the depths of his incredible otherwise hidden experience of the world.
I marvelled as he painstakingly, letter by letter, using the only part of his body that he can fully control – his EYE – and a spelling board, he carefully shared his frustrations, his loves, his understanding, his faith and experiences of life, education and God – which are a real encouragement and delight to read – and his journey towards finding a way to communicate his voice with the world.
Not satisfied with having a voice, this courageous young man has made it his mission to make sure that all children, who are labelled PMLD, or regardless of any disability, have the same opportunity to be given full access to education and to find and use their voice.
To accomplish his mission, he has set up a charity called ‘Teach Us Too’.
As an educationalist and a writer, this was one of the most moving stories I have encountered – both in meeting Jonathan and in reading his words in this perfect book.
It made me see how much I take for granted and how limited special needs educational understanding and provision currently is. It also made me see how undeveloped and lazy my own vocabulary so often is!
His story is so profoundly important to us all and his heart is beautiful.
What a remarkable story!!
You can find more information about Jonathan’s charity, ‘Teach Us Too’, here
Click here to see a video of him from 2018, when he was 12 years old.
When I think of people that I admire and those whose company gives me much joy, those people, I notice, have one certain character trait in common – they are encouragers!
This week I was at a thanksgiving service for a dear soul who was a great encourager. Whoever met him would leave his presence with a smile on their face and a song in their heart.
I want to be like that. I want to lift others; come alongside others; speak joy and hope to others.
A person who encourages is one with whom one feels one’s own spirit lifted. They do not use flattery or shallow, people-pleasing rhetoric, but they see what is good, what is true, what is possible, what is excellent and they focus on those things.
I have often said of myself that I am very easily encouraged and equally too easily discouraged. I am not proud of this. I wrote a poem some years ago, called ‘Emotional Rollercoaster’ because of this unpredictable powerlessness I had over my emotional state!
And it is still true of me. My emotional response to circumstances can fluctuate so rapidly, with the next change of the winds of fortune and opinion! It is not a healthy way to be and it is something that my growth journey of the last seven years has had me constantly aware of and working on.
It is a battlefield in the mind, as Joyce Meyer expounds in her excellent book with that title.
We are called to be transformed, by the renewing of our minds. Thankfully my mind is changing and being renewed slowly.
The key is in the word, courage.
When I am discouraged, I lose courage and become fearful. Such fears are rooted in rejection, punishment and limiting beliefs about myself, lies that say I deserve nothing, that I am stupid and that I am worthless.
When a circumstance changes and an obstacle arises, or a person shows hostility or opposition to something I hold dear, then the negative thoughts in my mind can trigger the fears and leave me feeling powerless and without courage or hope. I sink rapidly into a pit.
When I am encouraged, it feels like the world smiles on me; I feel accepted; I feel okay and I have the courage to believe that I can do something worthwhile. Encouraged, the sun shines and I can look for solutions to obstacles and I have courage to believe the truth and to stand against opposition with truth and resilience.
The trouble is that I still rely too heavily on such encouragement from other people.
Though I am working on ‘re-framing’ those internal scripts, that say I am rubbish, and contradicting them with true facts about who I really am and the truth of who God says I am, still I am too easily swayed by the opinions of others and the obstacles that appear in my circumstances.
Likewise I can choose to focus on the speck in the eye of another and the plank in my own eye, or I can be grateful for the goodness in that person’s heart and in the growth in my own life.
I am a work in progress. I have to constantly contradict the lies from my internal critic; have to constantly be mindful of the truth about the present reality; have to remind myself of what God says about me in His word; have to build myself up in faith and stand with courage on the faithful promises of God.
I need to build my house upon the Rock, not upon sand.
And I need to do this for myself and not rely on the opinions and acceptance of others. For transformation, I have to remain alert and keep up the housekeeping in myself. It is a daily practice of hope, as essential as sleep, food and water.
However, it is also my mission to my brothers and sisters.
I remind myself that today I will only say and do that which build another person up, in the truth.
I will not criticise, gossip or speak doom and gloom.
I will see all that is lovely, all that is good and true and excellent.
I will focus on those things and I will point them out to myself and to my fellow warriors who battle with their own minds.
I will be an encourager, a light and a smile to others, wherever I find myself.
Will you encourage and give hope to somebody today?
dawnfanshawe 