You don’t have to be religious …

… To work out some things in life just cannot be explained.

When I was a kid, back when I had to run away from dinosaurs and there was no McDonalds or Sainsbury I had some really crazy wishes for a kid growing up on a council estate.

  • I want a 4 bedroom house
  • I want a new car
  • I want children
  • I want to be happy
  • I want to see Disneyland
  • I want to be married

Let me tell you how that worked out:

  • I have a 5 bedroom house
  • I get a new car every three years
  • I have 4 children and 4 grandchildren
  • I am happy
  • I have been to 4 Disney parks (some many times), just two to go!
  • I have been married to a lady, I have been civil partnered to a man, I am now married to a man

Now, what I had in mind as a kid is not how it worked out. To my immature mind I thought we just aspired to something and there would be no cost, there is always a price to pay and those who know me, know some of those prices I have paid.

Every parent says the same “I don’t care what they are as long as they’re healthy”. Well, mine were not healthy, they all have problems, some more than others but, I am grateful for having them. I got the house because not all my kids were healthy. I get a new car because I now am not healthy. I am happy because what I have outweighs what I suffer. The Disney parks, well, they’re just a huge bonus, even I wonder how that happened. Being married, yes, I also got divorced and dissolved (eww) but, that’s OK as we’re still friends. For sure there was a lot of intervention for me to find Dennis, it’s not like our eyes met in the store! He lived 7000+ miles away!

I wrote something earlier, read that:

Sa bata pa kita gisultihan kita nga mosalig nga ang Dios mag-atiman kanato
Samtang nagkadako na kita, ang mga katingad-an nga wala damha nga mga butang mahitabo
Mga butang nga dili nato mapasabot sa bisan unsang paagi gawas sa, nangutana ko sa Diyos ug nahitabo ra.
Samtang kita adunay mga anak, ang Dios nagbilin kanato sa pagpadayon niini
(Kinahanglan naton ang responsibilidad sa usa ka butang)
Samtang sila nagtubo siya mibalik ug diin kita nagkinahanglan kaniya, siya anaa.
Sa panahon nga kita moretiro na ug modawat sa pagka senior
Makataronganon ang kinabuhi
Atong naamgohan nga ang mga importanteng butang sa kinabuhi atong naangkon.
Nasayud kita nga gibayran nato ang bili sa Dios alang niadtong mga butanga ug, OK ra.
Nakakat-on mi nga magmapainubsanon.
Nakakat-on kami nga magmapasalamaton.
Ang akong nahibal-an labaw sa tanan mao
Kung kita naghunahuna nga ang Dios maghatag sa atong kinabuhi sa mga ganti
Sayop mi.
Ang iyang gibuhat dili kaayo klaro apan kini mahitabo.
Dili perpekto ang kinabuhi pero, nakakat-on ta gikan niana.
Usahay ang kinabuhi lisud, kini makalilisang, kini makalilisang
Naglisod mi
Kita makakat-on gikan niana
Unya kita molingi ug, ang atong kinabuhi mao ang kinabuhi nga atong gipangayo.
Bisan kinsa nga naghunahuna nga ang Dios walay bahin
Nagtuo ko nga mahimo nimong gimingaw ang usa ka daghan sa dalan!

When we are young we are told to trust that God will take care of us

As we get a little older, strange unexpected things happen

Things we cannot explain any way other than, I asked God and it just happened.

As we have children God leaves us to get on with it

(We have to take responsibility for something)

As they grow he steps back in and where we need him, he is there.

By the time we get to retire and accept being a senior

Life makes sense

We realise that the important things in life we got.

We know that we paid God’s price for those things and, it’s OK.

We learnt to be humble.

We learnt to be grateful.

What I know more than anything is

If we think God is going to pave our life with rewards

We are wrong.

What he does is never so obvious but it does happen.

Life will not be perfect but, we learn from that.

Sometimes life is hard, it’s awful, it’s terrible

We struggle

We learn from that

Then we look back and, our life is the life we asked for.

Anyone who thinks God played no part

I think you may have missed an awful lot along the way!

Things I know.

  • If there is no God, how can there be an afterlife and, I know there is because I have witnessed it. I saw my granddad after he died, clear as day, when my mum was alive she told me that her old landlady promised that when she died she would make something move which didn’t usually move and they would then know, she was OK. Soon after her death a hot water bottle hanging on the wall, moved. When my mum died, before I knew she was dead, weird stuff happened. She was in hospital, I didn’t even know she was that ill. Her crutch which had stood at the top of the stairs fell over. I went to pick it up and her dressing gown fell off the door behind me and on a door I had not walked past. Those delays forced me to stay home an extra few minutes at which time the phone rang to tell me to get to the hospital. She had died just before they called me.
  • I overdid it with two of the children back in the 1980’s. We walked too far, I mean, miles further than we should and ended up on the wrong beach in Spain, the one which had no way to get back and it was really hot. I could see no way of getting back so I did a hail Mary, well, in the non religious sense and I prayed. Within a few moments a very random Spanish lady who spoke little English approached me and asked, was I OK. I don’t know how much she understood but she gestured for us to follow. She squeezed us into a tiny little car with her kids and drove us back into town and then drove off before we could say thank you. Intervention of a divine nature? I choose to believe that, yes.

There have been many similar experienced throughout my life. Everything I ever asked for I got. I say God has a wicked sense of humour because he did. This would be an example and a tiny one. I ask for a lottery win and, low and behold, I win the lottery. Sure, it’s £1.75 but I wasn’t specific!

I always wanted to be different, right from as long as I can recall. My questions were answered years later. I was gay, I was mostly deaf, my eyesight is shite, I was born with really short legs, my teeth have always been terrible. So, yes, my feeling was correct and I am different. Perhaps I shouldn’t have wished to be because, this isn’t what I meant when I asked to be different.

I am no bible basher. I have no respect for any organised religion, absolutely none. I honestly believe they are all power hungry, dangerous and corrupt. But, just because they created their own version of things doesn’t mean that the basic of those things are wrong. What they are based on was pure. Things like us all being God’s children, us all being in his image and created equally.

None of those things sit at all well with my being condemned to hell for being gay. Nothing pure demands me to show pure devotion to the organisation with gifts of money.

No, I believe in the pure being, that the church is all around us, freely created. That we can speak freely, there are no rules on how to speak to God.

You know what? I also believe that we are here for a reason, we are here to learn to be better, to live a life we do not understand or accept. The homophobe must live life as a gay man before he can be reconsidered entry to eternity. The murdered must live life experiencing tragic loss … indeed, until we understand how to be good people without prejudice, we just keep living one life after another until we finally get it. I think I might still have a few more to go as I know I still have some prejudices I need to resolve.

Anyway, until than, thanks for reading

Feelings

Today is a bit of a stressful time.

My health is low, as it generally is but, everything I can try to do to ease things off a bit are unavailable to me right now. I am dealing with some really serious shit trying to help out my disabled kids and, then a few days ago I discovered my ex father-in-law had died, he was 84.

He is my ex father-in-law because I got divorced from his daughter in 2001, we’d been married for 14 years.

Her parents factually became my parents in 1986 and, to me, even post divorce they remained that way, I still kept calling them mum and dad, it wouldn’t have felt right doing anything else. But, with divorce comes consequences and I am feeling those now more than ever.

Let’s go back a bit.

I first met them in 1985 which was a time in my life full of trauma. It was when my mum was really ill, family connections were breaking down all over the place and my parents split as a result of my dad having an affair. On an even more personal level I was struggling with my sexuality. I knew I was gay but, in the 1980’s, where I was living, that was not acceptable on any level and I therefore conformed, picked a girl and got married. In so many ways I wish staying with my boyfriend who I loved was an option but, circumstance was against us.

Kay & Geoff were kind and loving toward me. An oasis of peace and security in amongst my emotional storm. Sure, we’d argue sometimes but, all families do that. She particularly was a very stubborn lady so was he but he was also sensible enough to do as he was told. When home life was driving me nuts, there was safe.

It was them I went to when my mum died in 1986, them who made our wedding happen just three weeks later and gave me the strength to keep going when my blood family deserted me. except for my dad who I wish would have taken a step back! It was her who held me through my tears of sadness on losing my mum and then that I realised my feelings for them as my ‘in law’ parents was at that level a relationship can get when we think of it as special.

When our eldest was born, again, it was them I went to. Kay cooked me an amazing dinner and Geoff took me to the club to be congratulated by the men. No one had ever fussed so much and it was so special.

Going over there with the kids, the Sunday dinners, the use of their spare room so I could sleep and get ready for the drive home. It was all so special to me.

When we decided to divorce I was worried this would all stop but, it didn’t. I’d still take the kids down there and, this carried on when it was my kids and my grandkids I was taking and, again, I’d sleep in the spare room and it was all so lovely and safe as it always had been.

Geoff never spoke much, not to anyone. No matter the company he so rarely fully engaged so I was honoured to have conversations with him. Then Kay died and everything sort of fell apart. It was right during the covid period, he couldn’t even bring himself to go to the funeral and we tried so hard to make it safe for him. I never got to meet him since she died.

I would write as often as I could, send pictures and update him on the goings on but, the relationship went with Kay and he was obviously just waiting to join her bless him.

Since he went I have personally felt lost and isolated. I am just the ex son-in-law, no one really any more. When my mum died, I was likewise ignored except by Kay & Geoff. My dad for some reason felt he was still important because of how long they were married to hell with that he broke her heart. Everyone else rallied around my nan because, my mum was her daughter, I was told her feelings counted more than mind and everyone should be there for her. So, here I am again, everyone else wanting support for their grief (and they’ll get it) and me alone, feeling how I feel and, I am ‘with feelings’. I need to get through this but, I am alone on the whole. I can be given sympathy by friends but, in reality, I am not family any more, I am not qualified to feel this way. I have my role and that is what I am expected to do, be the strong one.

I will be but, the timing is absolute shit. Meetings, meetings about meetings about meetings be it in person or over the phone. I’ve had 2 important, essential phone calls this morning, responded to two further email. I have had one long meeting today. Tomorrow I have another meeting. I’ll be honest, much of the time my brain is struggling to remember who I am talking about.

I’ve got buried emotions in a crypt built for way less than I am putting in it.

Very soon I will need a complete and absolute break and if I don’t choose to do that, I feel life is going to make that choice for me.

I cannot take a break, parents are parents for life, it is what I will do as long as I am able for all my kids, there are none I don’t worry about, none of them and my grandchildren, always seeking ways I can make their lives better and likely screwing up in the process but, at least they can’t say I am not trying and, I am sure they very often thinking I am trying!

So, rest in peace ‘Dad’. I will miss you as I have since mum was so suddenly taken from us.