THE OPEN WINDOW

This last few weeks have been weeks of discovery. The first main discovery is I am not as strong as I have always thought...wow that's a shocker for me. !! I am a  58  year old survivor of a pretty crappy childhood who together with Chris have morphed into an amazing family who at worst have got a little drunk and made messes of their lives but at best we have survived the teen dramas and  have now three amazing grown adult children who  all have  great partners and the true blessings of three wonderful grandchildren ..one from each..and we  can remember lots of fun family times over decades together and continue to love spending time together.

But some where along the last few weeks I have been a blip on the family landscape. Not going to go into details but have been doing a lot of thinking and asking questions of both myself and God and others too and my closest answer is wrapped up in the following story....you will need to read between the lines as its sort of allegorical in the telling.

Before we moved to England 29 years ago we lived in a rural cottage on a farm....no noise apart from chickens and the odd moo cow and then once a year the combine harvesters but we could leave our windows open all year round EXCEPT combine time as we then get covered with corn mites...tiny black insects that didn't do us any harm just covered everything.....so if we saw the combines then we made sure the windows were all closed.

Then we lived in Ashbourne in Great Hollands for 21 years.,...all our living accommodation eg living rooms and bedrooms were at the back of the house so we were shielded from traffic noise if the windows were open...as I insist nearly all year round. Seven years ago we moved again to Nutley and once more we had all the living accommodation at the back and little or no noise in garden as we backed onto a path and woods so again nice quiet and open windows.

Since moving to Sandhurst our living accommodation is still to the back of the house but we have a very busy road literally a few yards from the house and the noise is pretty loud. Last week we had tree loppers and they lopped several feet off the top of two trees and boy do we now hear even more noise. Its has got soooooo intrusive that I find I am having to close the windows on our apartment and then struggle with the warmth and heat rising situation.

I haven't had intrusive noise for many decades so find it hard to not let it bother me and I now open windows in day and close at night.

So why am I waffling all about opening and closing windows......For me my heart and my spirit is like an open window....
my heart says ...yes   its   okay its only a little "extra"...
my heart says ...yes..I am "okay "....No that's "fine" .
my spirit says ......yes I can  "pray for them " ,,
my spirit says ......yes I can "offer help"
my heart says ......yes I  can "volunteer"...
my heart says...... yes I can write this " assignment"
my heart and spirit say .....  yes I can do  " 10 /10  Preach "

Then I realise that I have OPENED THE WINDOW  and all the traffic noise is just crashing in and I reckon I have just got overwhelmed.....its too noisy in my head...too noisy in my heart ....too noisy in my spirit.

The best thing I have done over this last month is SHUT THE WINDOW and have now realised I need to prioritise the  " noises " in ...my job...my family...my relationships...my God.,...my entire life.Its not going to happen today..or tomorrow but I am working at it...I am re-learning how to live in a "noisy " place and how to get to the place where I know the noise needs to be deadened by the simple act of "shutting " the window