Bad and good....

The bad is that for yet another month, my wife is being put through the roller coaster of emotion. She feels pregnant, has all the symptomns of morning sickness etc, but no blood spots on the day of expected implantation. She tries to get used to the idea of not being pregnant but the feelings continue to increase until the day of her period, when of course she does get a small flow. But then the flow stops and the preganancy feelings increase, until she plucks up the corage to tell me that maybe it was one of these cases where you do get a small period early in the pregnancy. But as soon as she tells me, the full flow starts.

If she knew from the start that she was not pregannt, it would be OK, but she is always teased by these sensations.

We think that what is happening is that fertilisation is taking place, but that the embryos are not implanting -and that makes her worry that she is just not up to it any more. I reminded her about Abraham's wife Sarah, who was promised a child but had to wait till her eighties. THis was intended as encouragement, but missed the mark!

We do believe it will happen, but in God's time, not ours.

On the good side - reading again the small print of the tax credit guidance notes, we are entitled to include the losses from fostering in the assessment of income regardless of what they told me on the phone, and have sent off the forms accordingly. We shall wait and see what happens.

Decisions decisions

On a more positive note than the last post........

Bumped into an ex employee of my company this week. He now works ona contract basis, and wonders why he had never doen it before. Reckons he gets 30% - 40% more for doing the same work only with greater flexibility.

I wonder if he has done his sums right and accounted for holidays, pensions, etc. But it has set me thinking. Also - he may have been underpaid before, wheras I secretly suspect that I get paid quite well compared to others doing my job, and so if I went on contract I might even get paid less!

I had a chat with the guy who sits next to me - also a contractor -and he reckons that in the long runs it evens itslef out. BUt all the other contractors in the office, when the heard me muttering about this, chorused "DO IT!"

30% to 40% is very significant. But is it real?

So its something to think about and pray about during the holiday.

They have to grind you down

Found out today that the massive loss incurred in fostering last year will not be considered in assesseing income for child tax credit his year. Thus they penalise you for trying to contribute (albeit unsuccesfully) to society. You try to help vulnerable kids, you try to reduce your own dependancy on tax credits, and his is what they do to you.

Moan moan complain complain!

{ I feel better now that I have got that off my chest }

Quiet

All quiet today. A sort of anticlimax after the panic of recent weeks, and now that the blog is up to date -having squeezed moths into each of my last posts - I feel I have little to write.

Definately no pregnancy this month, judging by the force of PMT last night. I do love her, honest!

Need to tie up loose ends at work as I am holiday next week.

Encouraged by people reading this blog, and even saying it is interesting!

A new question is looming in life at present. I have been working as part of the staff of my company for four years, and for a local authority for 15 years before that. Now the idea of working on a contract basis has become more attractive, following a conversation with a former colleague who has gone that way. Some say it is much more lucractive and free to work as a contrator, others say you have to weigh up the disadvantages of security and not always having work close to home or at convenient hours. Plus in some ways I need a steady income, if small, rather han a bigger but more peaky and unpredictable income.

The picture is just to remind you that I am a civil engineer specialising in hydraulic modelling of wastewater infrastructure.

Personally I don't mind which I do, but I would like to know if this idea has come about by God prompting me, or if it just a wild idea.

Manga

My son can do Manga pictures. Good eh? Might put it in my profile instead of my photo.

Thanks! (I mean it)

My thanks to all who prayed for me for assistance in my Anabaptists project. I delivered the final presentation last night, in the context of our house group. My wife and eldest son came for support, and there was a good number there even though most of the church is away at camp this week. We had some healthy debate without coming to blows, we had a good laugh, and every body went home feeling uplifted. Not least me, since the feedback was all positive.

So, thanks everyone!

Execution of Jean de Leye,
leader of the Münster Anabaptists,
in 1536German engraving
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

This means that i have finished the academic part of my course. In September I start a three month placement at an Anglcian Chruch of a different tradition to my own. I have chosen a local 'Oxford Movement' church, which will be very challenging for me. Apparently they use the liturgy properly there - at my own church we rarely get it off the bookshelf. Then I will have a couple more year group meetings before my licensing ceremony in march next year.

At least the hard part of gruelling study is passed and I can say hello to my wife and children again.

Thanks again for your prayer and support.

God's humour

As part of my training in th Church of England I have had to do a study on the Anabaptists. My roots in the Brethren and charismatic house churches owe their heritage to the anabaptists. They were a group of Reformers at the time of Luther and Zwingli, who wanted the church to be separate form the state and to baptise only believers (well, they HAD read the Bible!). Unfortunately some of them got a bit carried away, took over a few cities and set off the Peasants war and preached communism and polygamy and discredited the whole movement. But my heritage is with the more moderate ones who simply followed the Bible despite being burnt at the stake by the Catholics, the Lutherans, and by Zwingli's reformed church.

The comical thing is that in our moderate days, with that heritage and strongly holding views against infant baptism and state control, God has put me into the Church of England - controlled by the state and practicing infant baptism. Its not what I would have planned at all. the final irony is that when I finish the course I will be licenced by a magistrate- complete with wig! This is so bizarre I can't get my head round it.

But God is laughing loud!!!

Still down

Well, no blood spots yet, so very down. There is still two days but then we will be out of the window of opportunity.

The trouble is, each mnth she gets the sensations that would indicate fertilisation has taken place, but these feelings drop off suddenly at the time it should imlplant. So we think that eggs are being fertilised, but just not attaching themselves.

This is unhappy in two ways: -

Firstly, she gets all the excitement of thinking this is it, and then it isn't - a constant roller coaster of emotion which we could do without. We will now have to go on holiday and cope with the family in a small caravan while she is feeling upset and irritable.

Secondly, it implies that her body is indeed showing signs of age, and this measn that even if she does concieve properly she will be anxious about it right to the day of the birth.

A lady at church did have a 'word of knowledge' that God's plans for us would be fulfilled in his time, and that is encourageing, but we can't hang too much on it because it might have referred to all sorts of stuff apart from our desre for a pregnancy, and any way its easy to come up with a general sort of word like that, and the proof will be in the evidence.

I'm sure we are not alone in all these problems, but I od find it cathartic to be able to blog anonymously about it.

Roll on, the day when we can announce a pregnancy publically!

SShhhhh!.... Don't tell anyone our secret!

So I’ve got it made.

Fantastic wife.

Four fantastic sons.

Two Fantastic daughters

Big House

A car and a minibus

Excellent church

Good job – secure, reasonable money, enjoyable.

It’s great!! ……… for me.

My wife languishes a bit. While I have been doing well, she has felt rejected by employers, didn’t hit it off with the church’s children’s work, and failed at fostering.

The return of the mid-life crisis.

But on her birthday – just as we were recovering from our (hopefully last) post-fostering row – she seemed strangely content. Her face was glowing - her smile more deep and genuine than I had seen for years.

She was feeling strange things in her belly, and sick in the mornings.

She felt pregnant!

She felt like this for a while, not telling me till she was ready. Then she took a test – negative. Big downer.

She took me out for a walk and poured out her heart to me as we walked. And I – even thick old me - understood at last.

But she still felt pregnant, even though all other signs were negative. We decided that the tests must have been wrong. We took another test – negative, and this time the feelings started to pass. She must have just had a prolonged tummy bug.

Yet the seed had been sown in her mind. Another baby!

I should point out at this stage that I had had a vasectomy after our 6th child when she was up to her eyeballs in rheumatoid arthritis and its medicines. Now, through the grace of God she was off medication and living a relatively normal life. But I was still officially infertile. We had decided on the vasectomy because we knew that it could fail and that if God so wished he could give us another child – hence our belief when she seemed pregnant.

But now we prayed earnestly – was it God giving us the idea of a pregnancy, and telling me to get the vasectomy reversed? If it went through smoothly we would see God in it, but if we had to push for it, we were probably pushing against God. I went to the doctor. When he had finished laughing loudly, he told me all of the risks and ethical issues involved in vasectomy reversal and pregnancy in ‘older’ women. But he still referred me to the consultant. This was to be done privately – the National Health Service would not cover it. The consultant was much more optimistic [optimism is great when you are being paid for it] and booked me in in a fortnight. I had a little trouble getting the time off work, but it was OK.

I went into hospital, and came out a new man (having had my bits handled by more people than I care to mention). Managed to stop the kids from jumping on my delicate bits. It was all rather gory. The stitches felt like I had a giant bull-clip attached to my bits for a month. It still feels tight!

Had to wait an agonising month before we could test the new toy.

And here we are, four months later – and I hope that when I go home tonight she will tell me she has had blood spots (sign of implantation).

It is hard each month when it comes out negative. The Lord is using these months to give us a hint of how people must feel when they are unable to have kids at all, and it makes us grateful for the six we already have. We are also sharing experiences with a friend of similar age who is trying for a baby after her previous 5 year old child died from a harrowing congenital illness.

This is a story that God has not finished. Watch this blog to see what comes of it! Our friend deserves to get pregnant first. Pray for us all!

(PS to avoid any ambiguity – our friend has a husband of her own – she is not relying in any way on MY vasectomy reversal!!)

Training to Serve

In Changing Churches (3) – the Anglican Church I hinted that his move had worked out well for me, and in Victory over Sin I talked about how this had taken place while preparing a sermon on Repentance.

While I was at the Charismatic House church I learned a lot about living in the spirit, and I was content there, if rather inactive and overlooked, but I was too busy domestically to be worried – I couldn’t have taken on more responsibility. My wife on the other hand, having known only that church, was keen to move on. As described, we went to the Anglican Church.

I can remember the Vicar coming to our house to discuss our role in the church, and uttering the immortal words “Tea, Vicar?” From my background it was hilarious to hear me say those words, but I’m not sure he understood why I was laughing.

Anyway, he asked what my gifting was, and I said that people seemed to appreciate my preaching. He arranged for me to preach a few months later. Bear in mind that people told me that if I moved to an Anglican church I would have no opportunity to exercise my ministry!

My first sermon was a nightmare though. He had given me a subject, but with to much free-church influence I ‘sought the Lord’ and came up with a very different sermon. On the morning of the day I was due to preach in the evening, he asked how it was going. I said fine and outlined my sermon. His face would have been comical of it hadn’t been so serious. He did not like the fact that I had changed my sermon topic. So I sent the day re-writing it, in a total panic. As the evening service approached, he asked for another outline. He still didn’t like it and needed another serious redrafting.

By the time I stood in the pulpit I was a total wreck. I actually spoke quite well – because it is my gifting – but I came down from the pulpit still feeling absolutely terrible. I could not face a line of parishioners saying ‘well done’ and so I ran home as soon as the service ended without speaking to anyone.

But the Vicar actually liked what I said in the end, and arranged another date for me. He also asked me to assist as a deputy warden in the church – taking my turn to open and lock the church and keep opportunist thieves at bay during Sunday services. To occupy this role I would also be elected (one party one candidate!) onto the Parish Church Council.

So I went from being just a shadow in the corner of the Charismatic Church to a senior role in the Anglican Church within 12 months!

Also, to capitalise on my preaching gift was well as to meet church rules, I have been put onto a Reader Training course, and am just at the end of the second year. This course has been really fantastic. The first year was spent going through the Bible which I thought I knew, but had my eyes opened to vast areas of knowledge and debate that I had been ignorant of. The second year has been church history – again a massive eye-opener. My preaching can now be from a position of having actually studied these things, and will be more effective as a result. Next year I have to complete a placement at an Anglican church from a different tradition to my own, and will be going to a church where the Oxford Movement is the model. I will find out about how the liturgy is supposed to work (because we barely look at it in our own church), and will no doubt come into contact with more Universalist doctrines and stuff that will cause a lot of soul searching to find where the truth lies.

So this post is primarily to show how the move to this church was a call from God to start my ministry.

In the meantime my wife has languished in many areas – as described in other posts below. She feels that God has rewarded me for graciously accepting her desire to move, but has put her in backing her place for thinking the grass is greener on the other side.

I trust that she will now come through this phase, and that her time to shine will come.

And his brings me to the present, and my next post will start up-to date blogging in the real sense.

Ciao!