I wrote to you once before, do you remember? Of course you remember, you are all knowing, all remembering and perfect with names and faces.
I wrote to you when I found out my girl was addicted to cocaine, oh that was a terrible time and I remember feeling so helpless, so hopeless, so completely unable to cope with such a terrifying situation that I wrote to you and asked you to take that problem away from me. And you did. Just like that. The very next day her brother took her away, he gave her a job and a place to live and he watched her like a hawk, just long enough for me to get the strength and resources to deal with all that would come with a child who takes drugs.
I have learned, throughout the years that you don’t ever stop us having to deal with tough situations entirely, I don’t think anyone ever comes to you and says ” Oh Lord, I don’t think I like this challenge, I’d rather not do it and so, stop it please. Make it go away and give it to someone else, someone who CAN cope with it and who isn’t me. Thank you.” and finds that splendidly you did just that because someone else deserves that trial instead. I think however that you do know when a person really isn’t equipped to deal with some horror that life has thrown at them and I believe that when that happens, you will help when we ask you to. I have seen, that for me, that doesn’t mean you take it away it means that you have given me time and then the strength and understanding to deal with it.
I don’t think you make mistakes at all, not ever. I don’t think anything you do is a slip up or a result of you being a bit busy and not entirely thinking about what you are doing. I think you do it all for a reason and as frustrating as that may be, we won’t always know what you were thinking or why you do certain things. I am OK with that actually. As life goes on and I get through trials and tribulations, I see that eventually, it all comes out in the wash. If I hold on long enough I can almost always see the reason for things.
Sometimes there doesn’t appear to be a reason and for a control freak like me, for someone who always wants to know the whys and the wherefores, that’s a tough thing to accept without much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. My teeth are holding out though and even last week the dentist told me they are fantastic teeth for a grandma and actually, now I come to think about it, I have only ever had one tooth out in my whole life so there we are, gnashing of teeth doesn’t seem to be as bad as one would imagine, does it.
So, I wrote to you once before and you answered, not in writing of course but you did, you helped me and I am so grateful for that. You gave me time to get strong and you held my hand right the way along. I look back at those months now, now they are over and I see we did it, you and me and my girl and I can see how sometimes, when I was particularly wobbly and clueless you actually picked me up and put me down wherever I needed to be. How lovely. I can sit here today and say how marvellously I coped in that awful time, how string I was and how I managed to always know just what to do and say but really, what I ought to say is that I had the courage and faith to let you lead me. I know, I really do, that I would never have had the strength to turn my child away. I wouldn’t have been able to be here when she came to me crying but still have the courage to tell her she couldn’t stay while she was doing what she was doing and to stay still and quiet, to watch her and bite my tongue when she was on a course of self-destruction if it hadn’t been for you.
I can see that what I did, with my girl is what you do with all of us, all your children.
I understand that you don’t ever go anywhere, you are always where you have always been, you are always the same, yesterday, today, tomorrow, always the same and it’s we who move, who change who walk away. I know that you must stand and bite your tongue when we shout about how we don’t need you. I suspect you cry when you watch and see the way we march away from you telling you how we know best and you’re not the boss of us AND while we’re at it you don’t love us…do you?! I am sure you wish you could just hold us still and give us a good shake and MAKE US UNDERSTAND that we are doing this to ourselves and if we would just listen and study and learn, we would see the way you have shown us is the easy way, not the hard way. I see that whenever I need you, you are there. I only have to come to you and you hear me. I think of the picture of Christ knocking at that door where the handle is on the inside of the door. He can only stand outside and hope we open the door.
I came to you in desperation 2 years ago, when we got rats, not mice but rats and when we tried everything and they stayed, when they were eating their way through the thick plastic storage boxes we keep our food in, when they were running unafraid in front of us, like they owned the place and no matter what I did this house smelled like rat. While I’m here and we’re having this lovely chat, why did you create rats? How did someone as loving and kind as you come up with the smell of rats? I suspect it was that whole ‘ can’t enjoy the good if you’ve never had the bad’ thing, isn’t it?
So, the house smelled like rat, which is a heady mix of sewer, dead things and wet dog and I reached a point where I felt I had done all I could do and I stood in my bathroom and sobbed ‘Please help me’ I’m not sure if we are supposed to do it that way, try everything we can and then say ‘Help me’ or if we are supposed to come to you right away and say ‘ I have an idea what do you think? So, what I do is what I expect my children to do, after all you are my Heavenly Father, my dad, my father on earth would always expect us to try to work things out for ourselves and if we got stuck we’d go to him and he’d help us by asking us what we were going to do about it and then say something like ‘well done, off you go then’ which is really not helpful at all is it? Apart from being supportive and encouraging, the clever thing is how when we did work it out and fix it, we’d feel all clever and capable and less worried about the next time. That’s a good dad , isn’t it. So I suppose that you would rather like us to do the same, try to work it out and when it doesn’t work come to you so you can encourage us to try something else and then let us feel all smart and independent when we’ve done it.
I have flip-flopped about with this whole housing business because we have had such a terrible run of luck with housing, we don’t have the money to buy a house, that isn’t at all an option and we have to rent privately with a pitifully small selection to choose from. So we find what we can afford, move in and hope for the best. I love homemaking, everything about it. I can make almost anywhere into a home and love every minute of doing it. Rats spoil that. Over the last 2 years I have gone from making a house as home to just keeping it in one piece. Making sure everything is as rat proof as possible, extra vigilance with food, with crumbs, with kids who eat snacks and then drop half of it behind the sofa or eat in their rooms. We double bag things, pack things in airtight containers. I put drier sheets in the radiators because they smell nice. The cupboard under the stairs is where the worst smell comes from so we keep that shut and the gap under the door blocked up.
I have lost count of the times I have prayed to you for a home. Am I getting on your nerves a bit? I suspect I may be but I know you love me and would rather I came to you to too often rather than not at all. I’m a little embarrassed that I used to ask you to win the lottery because I simply could not see any other way for us to get a house that would be ours, that wouldn’t be sold from under us . I did think, while I was praying for money for doing nothing, that the chances of you making that happen were slim but I do read the papers about how someone would buy a ticket with their last £1 and HOORAY multi millionaire overnight, no more worries about money for them, so I was covering all bases which is what any self-respecting poor person would do ( wouldn’t they?)
I stopped being specific, about a year ago I just started to say ‘ Please, somehow get us out of here and into a home we can stay in, one with no rats, one that makes me exhale as I walk in, rather than tense up and breathe through my teeth so I can’t smell it. ‘
I think you’re answering my prayers. I can see as I stand back and take stock that the last couple of months I have been doing things I hadn’t thought of doing myself. Writing letters, sending pictures, making complaints, involving people I wouldn’t ordinarily have thought of in this rat infested, hot waterless, pooh smelling house we live in. I haven’t had to think of what to do and who to see, I have woken up with the idea and gone with it.
When I went to the council offices last week with our letter of eviction, I was sent into see a lovely lady called Hannah who said ‘ Oh I have just been reading all about you, Mike and Bill have filled me in on all the horrors you have been facing’ Which was incredible. My name in on their minds, the pictures and emails I have sent stood out, a week later I got a phone call telling me that we are now in Band B which is as high on the list of priorities as you can get without living in a cardboard box with no arms or legs.
This seems to be happening so quickly and effortlessly which is unheard of. I have been trying to get on this list for 4 years, I have filled in forms and sat in meeting and been told that there isn’t a hope, don’t think about it, find a private rental, help yourself because the council can’t help etc.
We have been told that 4 bedroom houses are very rare and that they can’t promise us that they will be able to help us even though we are in Band B but I somehow feel as though, with you on our side, I don’t have to worry about that because you’ll see to that. I have felt less stressed and less worried this past 2 weeks than I have felt for the past 2 years. I feel, for the first time in years that all I have to do it be still and let you pick us up and put us where we need to be. I know you know what we need and it may not be what we want. I can deal with that. I just hope it’s got a garden and a driveway. At least a place to park by the house that isn’t constantly blocked by selfish neighbours. At the absolute very least can we not have rats please? I am sitting here now listening to them crunch their way through a wall. My nerves are in tatters but I am holding on because I know you’re dealing with it and all I need to do is wait and act on any inexplicable impulses I may have ( unless they are to run naked through the streets screaming that the aliens are coming, I might fight that one quite hard)
I am so grateful for the internet, not only did it get me a lovely husband all the way from America, it has found me so many glorious friends that have brought so much joy and laughter to my rat filled life but it also allows me to write to you Lord and I don’t even need your address.
Yours, quite literally and very faithfully. Mrs.
