Carpe Diem

                       

This week has proven to be a tough one for a whole manner of reasons, all of which have been thrown into relief by general fatigue. I am among many who are frazzled at this time of the year, and having reviewed my posts this last week or so, can see a pattern developing which I am keen to resolve or conclude.

I was at a military dinner this evening with the Air Cadets from the town where I live. I was their guest as I am in fact the padre to the Army Cadets, but enjoy a great relationship with this group too. They are well-behaved, funloving, motivated young people and an evening in their company has been a joy. In the course of a conversation, one of them piped up with the phrase "you have to live for the present", and before I had time even to think about it, retorted with "well, we are all dead in the future". Like something of a bolt, it just bounced between my eyes  - what we have is now. We have now to make our difference, make our mistake, learn our lesson, journey forth, hesitate fatally. This doesn't mean that I am suddenly humanist (God forbid), but rather that I will not languish in a self-applied state of abdication because 'God will sort it out later'. The moment, 'now', is a gift - nothing less.

Me sitting here and bewailing is a waste of that moment. Tiredness is as nothing compared to the burdens of some. As one week closes and another lies ahead, I will try to take with me this renewed conviction of the value of the moment. To waste one is a mistake, to waste more is criminal.

On a wholly personal note, I would like to thank those of you who have shown me care this week, through comments here and elsewhere. I really am a very lucky man - I cannot ask for more than I have in this life. Bless you all.

Tiredness

I can't remember a time when I wasn't tired. It is as normal and ever-present for me as the nose on my face and the ears that poke out of the side of my head. It has had phases, all bringing a different breed of tiredness.

Teenager Tired - late nights, perhaps the odd drink and early mornings required of life at college and the paper-round retained for years for the cash it provided.

Retailer Tired - heavy days of manual handling, unloading rolls of carpets, a couple of tons of rubber underlay - single handedly, extensive hours, the adrenalin of sales, the lack of time to eat a proper lunch (lunch is for wimps, apparently) and the compensation to appetite of gallons of poor coffee - all fed a tiredness that was more physical than emotional.

Parent Tired - the crippler! The unremitting needs of twins, disturbed nights, woefully early mornings, no stopping, high energy, high stress (in a good way when worrying and willing on little ones), high physicality born of much lifting and carrying, few moments to pause - all feed a tiredness that is now becoming more and more debilitating. 

Ministry Tired - the mind of a minister never stops. We are reflecting on things, reflecting on reflecting on things, praying for people, hoping and wishing the best - added to by the exhaution of carrying worship for others, carrying their hopes and fear with them, feeling what they feel, journeying alongside - all these things feed an emotional tiredness at times.

Tiredness is the thing I hate most about my existence on this Rock. I love my life and all those in it, but tiredness is, little by little, crushing me. My arms feel heavier, my eyes sting at times. I am normal, and my life is normal - the tiredness, though, seems unremitting. I am one who needs a Straight Eight at night, takes a while to wake - and getting a Mixed Six with disturbance and a fraught 'first-thing' - all these things cause me to feel stress simply through the act of waking. Tiredness for me is a weight around my shoulders. I am an energetic man, but in the background, there is a deficit. So often, I get to a stage where a gentle voice in my head yells 'please just leave me alone - just for a minute' - a moment before I shake it off and carry on. 

Ministry is a perfect joy, and parenthood too - for me. However, the combination of the two is at times problematic. I am so blessed, but I wonder if need bigger batteries. I seek no sympathy, just a place to call out, and this is the place. Life with my beautiful daughters is everything I could ask, but it never stops. Were anything else so constant other than these two perfect little girls, then I would surely have fallen over by now.

Double Yolk

I am a 'twin parent' which means that I am a parent to twins, not that I have a similar looking Belgian parent that I visit once a decade! Having my surname precipitated the nomenclature 'David Cloake, Double Yolk' - more especially in the early days of the wife's pregnancy! She informs me that I can claim no credit along those lines - but that didn't stop the Alpha Male from chest beating (and I am not referring to St Nicky of Gumbel either - he is quite another Alpha Male - and I wonder whether it is true that conservative evangelicals read the Alpha Mail?!) Anyway ...

The last few days have seen a poorly twinny - and it made me think once again about the specific demands on twin parents. I will list just a couple so that you can gain an insight to this rather odd world (privileged and arduous in equal measure)

1. We were expecting two kids, sex unknown, and we had to have four names. Two girls were born so we were left with two girl's names. Which baby gets which name? On what basis is that choice made? That was an interesting thing an hour into their life.

2. Being twin parents is like being two cohabiting single parents. We each have one of our own to look after, as it were - especially in the early days.  Each has a nappy to change at every round, each a bottle to feed (only the bravest of twin mothers do the boob thing, which aerates the breast-feeding lobby no end). No rumpy-pumpy either, not in the first few months ... no time, too tired.

3. In the event that one of us was alone with both babies - and both cried, how could we fully comfort both? Lifting one floppy infant is tough enough, let alone two howlers. For the first few times that hurt - really really hurt.

4. So they are growing and developing apace. Watching two children who are in all but the smallest details the same, developing and finding their way in the world is simply amazing. Watching their first interactions with one another; watching them play together now; listening to them imagine; seeing how very different their personalities are - manna from Heaven to me!

5. Twins are not singleton babies 'plus' - having two passing the same developemental stages at the same time is interesting, let's say. Two weaners, two potty-trainers, two kids that even yet have not mastered whole night sleeping (at the same time), two lots of chickenpox and barf - tiring doesn't even cover it. 

6. Receiving the first two Father's Day cards that they have ever made [today] - priceless.

It is a relatively rare privilege being a parent to twinnies. Jessica and Rebekah are a constant joy and root my life so firmly on the ground that I nearly have flat feet. The admiration of passers-by (and the silly questions: are they twins? [no love, I clone babies]; are they both girls? [no, I have clothed the boy in a dress to skew his self-image]; awww, double-trouble I bet ['BOGOF' - breed one get one free]; where does the red hair come from? [the local twin wig shop, don't you know it?]; are their twins in the family? [yes, these ones, silly - plus the nine other sets we keep for special occasions] ... and so on add a quality to my life that is magical. So, Happy Father's Day to those of you for whom that applies - although the day itself it is a bit of an invention, no better job exists than that of 'Dad' if that is who you are called to be.

Time to go to our newsdesk ....

Curate's Desk Roundup

1. Sarah Ferguson: why why why why why why why why why, why oh why? Jeremy Vine is on the Radio at the moment and has posed the question about whether we should feel sorry for the Duchess of York?

Should we feel sorry for a woman who sold her family for a hand-full of shekels? Should we feel sorry for a woman who wasn't savvy enough to know that this was probably too good to be true?

No mate - she has acted like a Right Royal Pillock and the got caught. Sympathy to her beautiful daughters and sympathy to her ex-husband who in the spotlight under which he exists may well have thought that the mother of his children might not have been the place of his vulnerability!

2. Spending Cuts: So, we have our coalition. (By the way, didn't the LibDem negotiators do well in the Cabinet?!)  The LibDems have gone back on their election promise not to make cuts this year. Gideon Osborne has cut Child Trust Funds, so I think we have a flavour of how life will be. When all those whose jobs have been costed into obvlion this morning stop spending cash in the shops, how will our economy take to that? Yes, cut waste, but jobs will have been lost this day. Finance bods and Unionists are this day worried about it all.

3. Nose Despite Face? The good folks of British Airways are striking because of pay and conditions, perks and the like. They strike, BA loses hundreds of millions of pounds. I have discovered that one of the perks at the heart of this is an up-to-90% discount on the face value of tickets - but the greater issue is this:

...BA haemmorrhages millions of quid while the folks strike. Perhaps BA collapses, and all the folks are made redundant - and then they all have to pay full price for flights with the pennies that they have left after becoming jobless. Yes, fairness in the workplace - and honest day's pay for an honest day's work - but let us not forget that BA staff are paid appreciably more than any other in the industry, apparently. 

So, Farv, why bother with all this when you could be sat outside with a Pimms? 

It feels that the world is going bonkers at the moment. Maybe it's me, and maybe it is sun spots, but there seems to be an evapourating of sense. I can't shake the feeling either that the news is filled with ways that the Gospel imperatives are being fractured. I get days when I get world-weary, and today is one such day!

....though the bigots who ring in to comment on Radio 2 are a source of some rather macabre entertainment