Letting go

OK, this is the thing, I started off writing a blog last week on what I will miss and not miss when we actually start walking.

The piece was going to say how most things are actually easy to do without for a while and that what you do miss will surely be small compared with the gains. I was then going to talk about the real things that are hard to give up.

Interestingly, I wrote one blog and then had to go somewhere before loading it up onto the site. The next day, I reworked it then other things led me to leave it unpublished. I went back to the subject at the end of the week on my office computer rather than my netbook and re-wrote it with a bit more vigour but other things got in the way and it is still on that computer tapping its electronic fingers with growing impatience while I write this one on my netbook.

Perhaps, you might think, I am either going soft (I don't miss deadlines – ever!) or perhaps the subject was not worth writing about but both ideas would be mistakes. No, the fact is that these delays are perfect illustrations of what is going to be hardest to leave behind and probably my biggest challenge!

What, you might ask, causes these delays and diversions? Family responsibilities, I answer. For example, this weekend saw us helping Rosalind and the girls (daughter and twin granddaughters) at various times. On Sunday and part of Monday that extended to helping Rosalind deal with two 14 month old girls suffering with the norovirus. What little tough cookies they were, too, real stars – they handled it fantastically well! I speak of this with deep experience as Alison, Rosalind and I have all, subsequently, gone through that very personal hell which is the norovirus. Phew, is that some bug! It picks you up, shakes you all about and puts you down pretty fast but it is one seriously unpleasant ride.

So, putting aside further reflections on nasty bugs, what do I conclude?

Well, I feel that can handle a variety of discomforts, especially if I know they are for a limited period; I can handle not having my own space or my own bed, I can deal with the walking, the different places, food, pains and faces, etc all for the same reason (come to think of it, it doesn't sound very bad to me at all) and especially when I can experience them while walking through three great countries (in fact it all sound pretty good, really). But my problem is how do I let go and not worry or feel like I am letting people down? No I am not Mr Indispensible, but I am a father and grandfather and it does feel like I am doing the abandoning.

This trip will see Alison and myself step out of the normal things in our lives and will give us the space and time to reflect, pray, discuss and learn.... so the things I will have to try to let go of are not those comforts, etc, but much of my responsibilities and family cares/life. I know Alison will have to do the same and will also have the burden of being the (absentee) Chief Executive of a charity (Housing Justice) to deal with, too.

Those are going to be the hardest things to let go of.

This is how it is.