Breaking up the day
My niece phoned this morning to find out if I was alright and to have a chat. It meant the world to me because there was a different voice at the start of my day. When I enquired how she was she had hours of work to do (she’s a schoolteacher) but she had decided to break her day up to lighten the load. I thanked her for giving me the title for this blog. My thinking from yesterday morning had to be encouraged on very positive lines. Lockup can cause us to be incredibly restrictive in our outlook. Some of the titles I had pondered using were ‘Fresh as a daisy’, ‘Dry as the stale crust of a loaf of bread’ or ‘Flexible structures’. (That was my husband’s intellectual idea!)
I took myself to task yesterday morning as my own company was rather demoralising and decided to hear my own voice for a change, rather than listening to my thoughts. I read the scriptures out loud, I did the same with my memory verse and prayer time, I sang a psalm, albeit quite tunelessly, and finished by reading one of John’s Insights out loud. To make the process more enjoyable I visualised reading out loud to someone else by using much expression to make it more interesting. The whole process took much longer but it did me good, and the listening to my thoughts afterwards was much more wholesome.
That is only one of the new things I’ve introduced in this week. There are always little jobs to be done no matter how restricted we are in our movements. There will always be somebody new to make contact with. My daughter is teaching GCSE and ‘A’ Level maths online in a Spanish school. She and her flatmate share a small flat with no natural light or a balcony. One day, after enquiring how I was, I told her I was suffering from boredom. I meant it light-heartedly, but she took it seriously. We usually can spar, tease, joke together, make wise-cracks and have a really lovely relationship. Her answer was, “Mother, don’t even tell me you’re bored when you have a lovely garden to sit in and walk around.” Oh dear! Mother had to very sensibly take the kindly rebuke with, “Thank you very much for reminding me how fortunate I am”. We had a good laugh as we always do and thanked each other for loving each other.
There is still encouragement amidst such troubling times. We need to keep ourselves on track.
I took myself to task yesterday morning as my own company was rather demoralising and decided to hear my own voice for a change, rather than listening to my thoughts. I read the scriptures out loud, I did the same with my memory verse and prayer time, I sang a psalm, albeit quite tunelessly, and finished by reading one of John’s Insights out loud. To make the process more enjoyable I visualised reading out loud to someone else by using much expression to make it more interesting. The whole process took much longer but it did me good, and the listening to my thoughts afterwards was much more wholesome.
That is only one of the new things I’ve introduced in this week. There are always little jobs to be done no matter how restricted we are in our movements. There will always be somebody new to make contact with. My daughter is teaching GCSE and ‘A’ Level maths online in a Spanish school. She and her flatmate share a small flat with no natural light or a balcony. One day, after enquiring how I was, I told her I was suffering from boredom. I meant it light-heartedly, but she took it seriously. We usually can spar, tease, joke together, make wise-cracks and have a really lovely relationship. Her answer was, “Mother, don’t even tell me you’re bored when you have a lovely garden to sit in and walk around.” Oh dear! Mother had to very sensibly take the kindly rebuke with, “Thank you very much for reminding me how fortunate I am”. We had a good laugh as we always do and thanked each other for loving each other.
There is still encouragement amidst such troubling times. We need to keep ourselves on track.
Merle Sparkes
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