Just a cup of tea

I am back to drinking tea again after a long Lenten period without it.  The last section was the worst.  Joyously though, I seem to have broken my sugar addiction in tea and I am happily drinking it without 2-3sugars.

2 sugars is 23 calories.
2 sugars x 7 cups (minimum) = 23 x 7 = 161 calories, daily.
161 calories x 47 days = 7567 calories.

7567 calories = 2lbs of fat.

Except it wasn't about that.  As a by product I am slimmer in the waist (it would take a miracle to shrink this backside!) and I am more lively, less prone to needing to sleep in the afternoon/early evening and so on.  As a byproduct.

So what was it about?  After all, it's just a cup of tea.

I haven't regularly attended church in about a year.  In fact, a year last month, when I had my arthroscopy last year.  I don't know why I haven't been.  Some of it is to do with being away every other weekend.

A lot of it is to do with struggling with my faith after the aftermath of Rich's accident.

In a way, I could deal with his death, I could manage to assimilate that, and see the rightness of the ending of his physical pain, his mental pain, and love the idea of him being with God. The powerlessness of his brother taking his ashes, or the She-Ex refusing to tell me anything about the BG unless she wanted something, or the complete lack of contact from his family, just made me despair.  How could God want us just whitewashed from his life, like the AC and I never existed?

The continuing fallout and stress caused by things like DVLA, like the banks, like Dairy Crest bills from when he was living with the She-Ex (seriously?  £450 to Dairy Crest?  HOW do you do that?) led me to question my view on the world.  His family were family for the good bits, for the showy bits, but wanted nothing to do with the actual hard work of him being dead.  His brother's big words of "let me know what he owes and I'll sort it out" turned out to be smoke and mirrors, which was the same with most of what he said.  But I dealt with it, occasionally *still* deal with it, and am proud of the fact that I have managed without them, thus proving everything Rich said to be true, and validating why I'd never met them in all the time we were together.

The ongoing pain of realising that he and I would never have children together, that I would never have more children with anyone, that the AC is the sole child of my flesh, is difficult in the extreme.  It isn't just that I wanted a big family, or that it was a dream for both of us, that we valued each others parenting styles and skills, that we loved each other, it is deeper than that.  It is part of who I am, and my ability to get pregnant, but inability to carry past 6-8 weeks makes me feel as though I am less of a person.  After all, as I have said before, 15 year olds on a council estate can do this, why can't I?  Am I that much of a bad mother that God's choice is for me not to?  Or is it that He knows something I don't? (Obvious, but true lol!)  Was it better for Rich and I to lose those we started, than to raise 2 grieving children?

The continuing, but changing, pain of living with his loss, and living with the child who knew him and loved him and was bereft by his death, of answering the questions, of holding the sobbing body, of coping with the outlet of emotion and reassuring him in all the ways I can, is exhausting.  Trying to find ways to talk him through what happened, at his own pace, without badmouthing Rich's brother or the She-Ex can be a task of diplomacy in itself. (My opinions are mine, and expressed on here for my own sanity.  He doesn't need to hear them, he can make his own mind up later on.)

There are other reasons, better reasons.  Sometimes I miss communal worship, the feeling of being all in one thought.  Other times, I am glad to be in a field, watching the lads fly planes, and glorying in God's creation without the walls of Church.  I am glad to be in the open.

My non-attendance at Church doesn't mean that I don't believe.  I could no more stop believing in God than I could fly under my own power.  I am open in my prayers to Him, guilty of not spending enough time with Him, know I don't read His Word as much as I should, and need to get better at all of those things.  I have spent a long time being unhappy with Him, not trusting as I should.  I struggled to see the bigger picture - of how the pain my son and I were going through, caused by his death and the aftermath, made sense in the plan.

I am slowly coming towards an acceptance, but not an understanding.  OR rather, an understanding that it is ok not to understand, it is better just to accept, and appreciate what is here, rather than picking old wounds. After all, picking causes scars, not smooth healing. (All our mothers said things along those lines)  Whether this will lead me back to church, or to a more insular faith for a while, I don't know.

So, for me, every time I wanted a brew and didn't, it made me think of God, and what He was prepared to do for me.  It made me aware that I had made a promise to God, and that I should keep that promise.  And that He has made me promises, and kept some and others are not "not-kept" but more "yet to come to fruition".  It has been a physical reminder of my faith.

It's just a cup of tea, but it is so much more.