On Wings Like Eagles

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Something of a follow-on to my earlier post, The Years The Locusts Have Eaten, although rather different in style.

Every year when I do my tax return I have to deal with 'dead weeks' - weeks when the chronic fatigue has been bad enough that admin just doesn't happen, there's nothing left. I have learnt to deal with this by ensuring that there is always enough other information available to recreate what I need, but it is a reminder that energy is a scarce resource and sometimes I run out.

The above quote, from Isaiah, has always seemed to me to be tailor-made for CFS sufferers. The promise is that one day, whether in this world or in the renewed world of the resurrection, we will once again "run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint". Roll on that day!

But it's not just CFS which wears people out. Depression is well-known - I hope - to be not just about sadness, but about debilitating weariness, hopelessness, loss of motivation and interest, amongst many other symptoms.

Other chronic diseases also often include overwhelming tiredness, weariness, stumbling and falling amongst their symptoms ... including that most chronic of all: old age.

One of my symptoms is a fuzzy memory, and as I look back over the past 19 years I sometimes wonder whether the CFS is improving or not (actually, only over the past 17 or so years, the first couple were grim and I've definitely improved on that), and how far current symptoms are exacerbated by the fact that I'm getting older.

The reality is that all of us, at some point over our lives, go through times when just the next step is difficult, and imagining a better future feels like fantasy. At those times we all need a little hope to cling to. Maybe a picture of ourselves flying on powerful, secure wings, and imaging how that will feel, seems a strange promise and an odd thing to cling to, But I find it helps.

As a kind of a postscript, if you click on the picture above you will see that it is not just the weary who find hope in this image. God's promises are for all, whatever their need, just as his love is for all of us.

Frustrated Ramblings

Irritated! I had a post about Jesus' ascension ready to go (last Thursday being Ascension Day). Then, when it came to actually typing it ... all gone. Mind a total blank. Especially annoying because it's now a fortnight since my last post, and I had been doing quite well at getting them done weekly. When it's a habit it's so much easier.

Time for a ramble then - bits and pieces without necessarily any overall shape and destination. I've always felt the best way to get to know a new place is to go out and get lost there for a while. It's a lot of walking the first few times, but you soon build up a mental map which helps in the future. Rambling: purposeless wandering ... with a purpose ;-)

A few follow-ups to earlier posts would do the trick, I reckon.

My last post I said I was expecting to take a hit from overdoing things ... I did. It was still worth it.

There was an interesting opinion piece on the BBC website today about disabilities and quality of life: in most cases it is no worse, sometimes it can even be better. A challenge can lead to a re-evaluation of what is really important, and a focus on that. One point the article makes is the importance of context, particularly in terms of social environment and relationships: simplistically, people matter more than circumstances. The article is well worth reading.

Before that I wrote about Kristin Cashore's young adult fantasy, Fire, which I found engrossing and moving. I am now about halfway through the next book in the series, Bitterblue, which is equally stunning. Themes include confusion and disorientation, so getting into the book at the beginning is not as easy as in the earlier books. The initial situation in which the heroine finds herself  is confusing and disorienting, deliberately leaving the reader without much clue as to what is going on. It's very well written.

Whilst I felt that Fire has a subtext of what it is like to be a young woman growing up; Bitterblue seems to allude to being a young abuse survivor growing up - hence the disorientation and the focus on the slippery nature of truth and lies. I'm only half way through, so I don't know if she can keep this quality of writing up all the way through, but so far it is an amazing book.

Actually, I am finding Bitterblue a touch more confusing than it really should be, as I am having trouble getting my head around the cast of characters. It adds an extra challenge to reading books when you can't remember half of what went on before.

Which was a part of the source for my Easter post, Alzheimer's At Easter. But the main trigger for that was the question of what it is which defines a person's identity. Is it their memories and their patterns of life? If so then I guess it is true that dementia in general, and Alzheimer's in particular, strips the person away to leave a shell behind. But if there is more to identity than the surface stuff, if a person's essence is deeper and subtler than just memories and habits, then the loved one remains and is to be respected as a fellow human being.

As the BBC opinion piece I mentioned earlier points out, assumptions about quality of life in difficult situations can be wrong. The evidence seems to be that having company, someone to talk to them and sing to or with them, can be really helpful for people with dementia.

As a final follow-up, looking back two years, I have been thinking about a post I wrote about my plans to lose weight. As ever, life got in the way of those plans. For most the past two years I have been half a stone down on my starting point (against a target of a stone). The past couple of months I have stabilised at three or four pounds higher than that, as CFS has clamped down.

What has struck me though is a possible answer to the age-old question of why it is that some of us could eat what we liked as teenagers and still remain thin, yet in middle age the pounds pile on. I suspect that I was probably putting on weight back then too, that probably hasn't changed. What has changed is how long I have been doing it for.

If I have been putting on roughly a pound a year throughout, then as a skinny teenager I was not going to notice any effect over three or four years. But over thirty or forty years is a very different matter: forty years at around a pound a year is near enough three stone - enough to take me well into 'overweight' territory.

To round off, I am now a big fan of West Berkshire Brewery. My daughter got me a mixed case of their beers for my birthday: absolutely delicious!

Alzheimer's At Easter

The morning mist hangs

shapeless, without detail,

but clearly there,

 like the memories

which peel away to swirl

about me like a shroud.

But I don't mind

my life has been good,

by and large,

my memories are warm

and colourful, misty,

comforting around me.

I hear a voice,

in the distance,

very like mine,

swear words and crudity,

unwanted anger.

So I stay in here

where the small light shines

warm and comforting

like a candle

pushing back the dark.

Who was it who said

"I'll be back"?

I don't remember