Feeling uplifted at last

Another Monday.

I have been surveying at a wastewater treatment works this morning. It is nice to get out of the office for once – even if it is a bit smelly. Today’s discovery – not only was the measurement flume installed so badly that they had to give up and use a measurement weir instead: the weir is also substandard. And so when I go into the control room and it tells me the flow, I have no real way of knowing of that is the correct flow. I think my project report may include a phrase along the lines of “rip it out and start again”.

I am feeling much more uplifted this week.

This is partly because trying for another pregnancy involves certain activities which are actually rather fun, even if I am getting a bit old to perform as frequently as requested.

But also, I felt much more comfortable at church. I felt that I have got over the grieving and stopped being angry at God, and started to worship again. And I was able to sing “I love you” without gritting my teeth.

After the service, someone went out of his way to come and tell me how well my son had done in a competition in the children’s work the previous Sunday. While he was talking to me, his wife spoke to mine and encouraged her very much. Then a potentially difficult conversation with our cell group leader went very smoothly. People are still coming to me with positive feedback from my sermon last week – so if they can remember that far back it must have made some kind of impact!

In the evening service, we had a homeless man come in – one of our regulars – reeking of alcohol. He sat at the back, after he had noisily moved a chair. He sat down to read the Bible that he pulled out of his bag, and lifted his head every few minutes to swear loudly at the congregation in general and the pulpit in particular. Then he saw one of the people from the homelessness project and went to sit near her. There he found one of the flags we use in worship, and was waving it half-heartedly but surprisingly well for his drunken first time, vaguely in time with the music, and it was beginning to look good, marred only by him pausing to point the flag angrily at random people and swearing at them. Later he drifted across the front of the church and sat on the front row. Another homelessness worker sat with him and calmed him down, and later when the man stomped out followed him and chatted in the foyer. Apparently his main frustration was that while he was trying to read his Bible the person leading the service had carried on talking.

We (the church) are reading a book by Paul Scanlon in which he points out that a church where it is safe to leave your handbag under the seat while you go off to chat to someone is clearly not reaching the lost.

After the service I managed to avoid Archie {name changed} who has learning difficulties – always wants me to come to his home for a tea and I’m really not up to it yet. Someone asked me to put my name forward for election as a warden in the next annual parish meeting. I’m flattered, but lack the essential skills (e.g. knowing what day of the week it is). I failed to avoid Jane {name changed} a young lady who always wants me to escort her home through the sometimes dangerous streets. Jane is deaf, and so publicly shouts an opinionated, limited and repetitive conversation at me as we walk home. Normally she is telling me off for having too many children, or complaining that the Vicar is not as good as our former Curate. This time it was about a friend getting an arranged marriage, which she thinks is ‘a bit odd’ even though he is from India.

On another subject, I am trying to re-arrange our mortgage to raise funds to fix the [slightly] damp basement walls where my sons sleep. This means loads of form filling and frustration. I have to include a photocopy of my driving license, which I obtained a new copy of recently having lost my old one. So while searching for another document, I found a driving license. “Ah, I’ve found my old driving license. I will have to send it back, now that I have a new one. But I am too busy to send it yet, so to stop me getting it confused with my new one, I will write ‘superseded’ in black ink across this one”. Fantastic – I am getting organised for once….oh, dear, that IS the new one, which I have just ruined with black ink! AAARRRRGGHH!