Thursday

On Thursday morning I published a now-deleted post about the first 5 days of this half term week. It was a post I desperately needed to write, for those five days had been a fairly intense emotional and spiritual journey in themselves: raising questions about both ministry and marriage within ministry, as well as highlighting the intensity and difficulty of managing both of those things within the current laws of the pandemic.

Writing that post was a necessity. Publishing it, however, was an error of judgement.

Up until this year, I have always been very careful to make sure that if anyone did trace this blog back to me and to Husband and our Church: I would be the only person to have anything to be embarrassed about! I am a fairly open person anyway, and though things like failing to flush a poo during a service is something I’d rather confine to the “anonymous” anecdotes of the internet, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if our current colleagues traced them back to me! That is the risk I take and, for the joy of writing and communicating and reaching out (and often comedy)… the risk has always been worth it.

This week, however, I took a risk on somebody else’s behalf. Something I have been flirting towards over the last few weeks, if I’m honest. Our lives and stories have become so intertwined that I was faced with a decision: to not write about it at all; to spend more hours than I have the capacity for, finding a more creative way to communicate the issues our week had raised without describing how they came up; or to trust the fact it probably wouldn’t get back to her anyway and write whatever I liked.

Unfortunately, I chose the latter, which was a lazy and selfish decision.

All I can say in defense is that I have come to enjoy my “safe and cosy corner of the internet” – almost like sitting down for a coffee with my regular readers, entrusting things to them- to you- that I wouldn’t have the words to say out loud. (I do read each post to Husband before publishing too, in case you were wondering! But on this occasion I think he was also still too fresh from the truth in those words to offer any other feedback!)

And so it is with gratitude then, that I received a message from a concerned reader on Thursday morning; someone I have never met and do not know personally, but who still took the time to both compliment my writing and advise that I use it more carefully. To give some professional insight and cause me to think through the very real possibility of being ‘uncovered’… and what the implications of that would be for both me and the person I chose to write about. He was right and I knew that instinctively. So much so that he shouldn’t have had to say anything in the first place!

But I’m glad he did anyway. And thankful, yet again, for this “cosy corner” and the fact that somebody in it would choose accountability over simply ignoring (or trolling) the bits they didn’t like. I really appreciate it. All I would ask in addition to that, is if anyone has the post in their email inbox, please would you kindly delete it? I’d feel better knowing it was as gone as it could be.

Thank you!

So. I guess Thursday found me mostly reflecting on creativity and what to do with it, whilst trying very hard to be the sort of person who shakes off a mistake and moves on without too much anxiety. I think I’ve got it.

Meanwhile, Husband was too tired to move.

A lazy, lazy, mopey kind of day!

Friday

Husband’s second day off and he finally manages to sleep! It is our first proper ‘family day’, just the five of us, since the Lodger arrived in December and Husband really, really needs it. So we wake him up at lunch time and… get on the plane!

Today… we are in Russia! It’s the first time we’ve fake visited a country that neither Husband or I had any desire to travel to in real life… but now we do. That’s a sign of a pretty good day, right?!

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We make Russian spiced tea and “Chocolate Salami”, Borcht for lunch and Stroganoff for tea! There’s nesting dolls to paint and ballet to watch- not to mention a “crazy Russian dance” video that we suspect is actually real Russian gangsters with baseball bats. We do attempt to send Yuri Gagarin into space on top of a coke bottle with a dose of Mentoes, but unfortunately that turns into a leaky disappointment…

Still… a happy day!

We do spoil it slightly by attempting to watch Anastasia on Disney Plus only to find that they have taken it down. There is a cartoon version on Prime, however, so we watch that instead… only fifty minutes! Winner! If only it hadn’t been fifty minutes of cheesy and biased storytelling, during which Anastasia’s completely innocent and wonderfully kind family are shot dead by the nasty, nasty poor people!

A moment only to be beaten by last night’s highly cultured showing of “I Want My Hat Back”, now streaming on The National Theatre at Home. During which the enraptured pre-school audience finally stop shouting, “the rabbit’s got your hat!”, when the Bear casually walks behind said rabbit and breaks his neck.

Yeah.

I mean, that’s the really great and lovely thing about having an intense and difficult week in ministry.

You just can’t WAIT to get home and traumatise your family!

Still. It’s just so lovely to be together.

Much love! Thanks for reading! Xxx