Truffles definitely has the right idea for today. Another rainy day in Cape Town, with the rain not pouring down, but just drizzly, cloudy and grey, with showers. She was curled up in a ball on the couch and woke up when I took a photo of her…hello my sweet cat…
I don’t think she will go outside in a hurry. Warm and safe inside, with no wind, no threat of the horrid black & white cat that has tormented her lately and two humans for company. It certainly is a cat’s life.
So the book I was reading, William’s Story, has, as Julian expected, had an impact on me. William was dying – he speaks about death in his journal quite often. While he didn’t know he had leukaemia, he did know he had a blood disorder for which the medical world did not have a solution. Chemotherapy back in 1971 was not as well refined as today. He had one dose that was dreadful. That one application resulted in confining him completely to bed and keeping him there for a month, at the end of which he had lost every single hair on his head. It was the last time he had the treatment. He did recover to some extent and managed to return to university completely bald but with a great sense of humour and determination.
Life is fragile.
After his condition deteriorated, he resigned himself to needing to stay at home and rest. He began a journal and every day for the last 4 months of his life, he wrote. His final journal entry, written in his own hand, was the day before he called his parents to his bedside, quietly announced, “I think I am going”, fell unconscious and slipped into eternity half an hour later.
His journal is deep and profound, considering he was just 20. The suffering he had endured resulted in serious conversations, all hand written. There was none of this in 1970: – fast touch typing on a large colour screen, my hands racing across an ergonomically advanced keyboard sitting in a posture friendly chair. He wrote in a hardback journal, describing the antics of the birds outside, expressing joy at the power of the wind and the majestic sunsets that God placed outside his sickroom window. It was the little things that so often are overlooked that led him to remember that he was not alone. That God who made the universe, made him as well.
The little things took on significance and became objects of learning. He writes,
“Yesterday I saw an ant crawling over the rush matting in Pa’s study, which is my bedroom while I am ill. It was a great effort for the tiny chap. That’s how I feel. I pray that I could be more at one with God, with him the whole day, to be able to have the ability to see him and love him in everything. This should be my whole lifetime’s aim. I presume that is what life is all about, seeing him in everything and doing his will.”
As I watch the rain fall outside, let me see the Creator behind it and appreciate His provision for us here on earth. Let me see Him in everything and do His will.
These are the days.
Keep the smile going.
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂