Well what a year 2010 has been! Lots of rubbish stuff but lots of amazing things too. The year started at a busy pace but with a few resolutions to do things a bit differently, the intention being to give ourselves a bit of space. We spent a lovely weekend in London for Jon’s 30th birthday in February. And then in March everything was brought into very sharp focus by Jenni being rushed into hospital with severe anaemia for a blood transfusion. It was a shock although not as much of a shock as what came next. My apologies for those who haven’t heard this story before and perhaps for those who have heard it all too often! Four days after being admitted to hospital the medical people ran a test which showed them a cancerous tumour on the wall of my bowel, and all of a sudden the world stopped.
The next weeks passed in a total blur of waiting, waiting and more waiting while the Multi-disciplinary Committee (which I likened to the Council of War!) met to decide what the best course of action was going to be and then a flurry of tests and other meetings with the consultant, who is a very nice man, and suddenly a date for surgery. I went under the knife on 8th April and by 10th April both boys had gone down with Chicken Pox and Jon was suffering with a bad Chest Infection! We were all feeling the stress. The following month everything seemed to slow right down as, with the help of my fabulous parents and many other people, we were able to stop doing anything much other getting better. Jon went back to work and I took a lot of time to do even the smallest of tasks. But it was a real lesson in taking time and leaning on others.
My birthday at the end of April was a good day and many of the days that followed were also good. The decision about Chemotherapy hung over us for a few weeks with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. However after one particular Sunday service I felt that the message was ‘Make the decision and then trust Me’ and after that we were able to decide I wouldn’t have chemotherapy, and with that decision a real weight was lifted.
In July Jon’s Grandma sadly passed away. At 90 she was ready to go but we miss her very much. We went on holiday shortly afterwards and so the funeral was postponed while we did this. The peculiarity of the situation is that we ended up having a week in August which started with a funeral, ended with a Christening and had a wedding in between! It was an odd week.
It was about this time we were considering putting our house on the market. I had a few misgivings about it, so I prayed; before I’d really had time to think it through! In my head I said to God ‘If this is the right thing for us to do [to put our house on the market and buy something else bigger] then the first people to view the house will make an offer’. And less than a week later they did. Remarkably! And yet why was it so remarkable?! We were utterly blown away by such a clear, obvious, exciting, positive answer to prayer. And so began another whirlwind few months! In a housing market where nothing much was being sold and not many people were moving, it was a day short of 10 weeks from putting our house on the market to moving into our new place. 10 weeks!!
So, this year, of all years to date, has been unexpected, tragic, exhilarating, expensive, amazing, and awe-inspiring. In amongst it all the boys have grown, becoming more independent than they were a year ago. They continue to be a blessing in many ways.
And of course God is unchanging, unfathomable, uncontainable and yet interested in us and what makes us tick, loves us with an ultimate love impossible for us to see the end of.
Truly this year has been God’s year.
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