So, this is the first of a series of posts that are basically my life story, I can’t guarantee that it will flow chronologically, or that it will flow in terms of readability.

Also, many of these details are picked up from very sketchy memories and recollections and as anyone who is a survivor of abuse will tell you sometimes we manage to so effectively block out the details of our abuse that we can’t actually recall the exact details of any one incident, it is possible that I will confuse details of and merge some abuse incidents in some way but this is a true record of how I remember now, many years after the event, my childhood being as well as how I came to where I am now, as an adult.

So I was born in the mid/late 1960’s the second son to my mother and father, I obviously don’t personally recall any of the incidents surrounding my birth and early years but from what my mother tells me the birth was traumatic, not sure of the details or why but apparently it was!

My mother also tells me that when I was a baby I didn’t want to be picked up and cuddled and would cry whenever she tried, but as soon as she put me down I would be quiet, she didn’t really want to pick me up either, she says I was ‘an ugly baby who no one would want to pick up’ I can’t recall when I was first told this but know that I grew up with those words ringing in my ears.

I would only have been about 2 or 3 when my parents divorced, again the details are hushed up but my mother’s story is that my father was abusive to her so she left him but my father, who I had some contact with a few years back, tells a different tale, it is possible that my mother had an affair with the man who eventually became her second husband, a man a few years younger than her but with a lot more potential to earn real money, being a Uni Graduate, as opposed to my manual labouring father.

Anyhow, they went on to have 2 children of their own, I believe that both of them were born before my mother was divorced from my dad, let alone re-married.

The man who I knew as ‘dad’ was in fact my step father and it is he who subjected me to sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

My mother was possibly not aware of the sexual abuse but certainly took part in a fair amount of emotional abuse and condoned the physical abuse at times.

What follows over the next few weeks/months, however long it takes is MY story, what it was like for me growing up in what should have been, and everyone thought was, a loving caring supportive family environment.

Anyhow, as you will be aware if you read that blog post I broke my years of refusing to paint with a painting I did as part of a journal I had to do on a course, this was a very difficult thing for me to do, following that I did actually sit with my daughter and we painted together, just messing about, which was a first and delighted my daughter, anyhow last summer I managed to paint our daughters room, something I could not have envisioned doing before that but that is as far as the painting went.

Although I knew I ought to pick the paints up again, I couldn’t bring myself to face it, I have a real mental block when it comes to painting, I think I can cope with decorating painting now but art painting still fills me with dread.

OK so how does this relate to the counselling session? Well, as I said, we were talking about this incident that triggered the paint phobia and as you will know basically I was in the middle of painting when my step father came in and wrecked my artwork, in a temper, and then verbally rubbished my skills.

During recounting this incident the counsellor was asking some detail, like what type of paint was I using? Well I knew it was Oil Paints, we had a bit of a discussion about different sorts of paints but then she asked what it was I had been painting, well I was stuck there, I just couldn’t remember what I had been painting it is like the actual subject had been completely erased from my mind, no matter how much I tried to recall the incident and picture what was on the canvas before it was ripped to pieces I just couldn’t it was just a splodge of colours.

Anyhow, the counsellor challenged me to try painting again, but I kind of brushed that off, then a couple of nights ago I had this most vivid dream of me painting and I can recall now so clearly what I was painting that afternoon as my step father came in, it was a beach scene of a couple of boats pulled up on the beach, I had this memory so clear, including the detail I had forgotten, that I was painting from a postcard I had got from somewhere.

The image was so clear, colours of the boats and all sorts of detail, that I thought I was just recalling a photo I had taken but after searching my photos I reconciled myself to the fact that I had not got a photo like that.

So this afternoon, as followers of my Twitter and Facebook account will already know, I had a couple of hours free time, both kids and my wife were out various places, so I considered going out for a walk in the sunshine but in the end I decided to get the paints out an paint away, it is far from complete but I have done a lot of work on the painting which is something like the painting that I had done all those years back, not quite sure why I wanted to paint that but just feels as if something is breaking in me as I do the painting, anyhow I have got the painting past the stage where my step father had destroyed it last time and have put a lot of paint on the canvas but there is a lot of detail, which is the hardest (and probably most time consuming) bit, to add before it is finished.

I don’t think the painting is brilliant but I do think it is something I had to do, part of my healing journey and so for that it is an important step for me, still not sure how easily I can pick up a paint brush, it takes a huge amount of emotional energy just to get the paints out never mind actually do the painting.

Just in case you are wondering, I was using Acrylics rather than Oils, as I did with the last painting, simply because it has the same strong bold colours I like as Oils and it is forgiving like oils, if you make a mistake all you have to do is wait for it to dry then paint over it, yet it is water soluble like Water Colours which makes it a lot less messy, and mess is a big issue with the paint for me, still.

Anyhow, once the painting is done I will post it here but in the meantime I am afraid that you will just have to wait, not that it is likely to be much of a painting but I am not doing it for the skill of the painting as I said this is part of the healing journey for me.

Like my life has reached one big stalemate!

I feel as though I can’t go anywhere really, just stay put moving between 2 squares, back and forth, back and forth.

I wish I could move but there seems to be no real option for movement.

Some of this ‘stale mate’ is caused by me feeling emotionally empty, unable to reach into my emotions and connect with myself, totally cold to how I feel and think, it’s almost a numbness, like not sure what’s going on not sure how I should react and unable to react all at the same time.

Now, part of this is almost certainly a result of the medication I am on for Depression, I am on very high doses of 2 different Anti Depressants and these do have the effect of blunting your emotions, this is a good and important thing to keep you ‘safe’ but it also gets in the way of true ‘recovery’ and anything of a ‘normal’ emotional life.

But the added thing is that I have, by and large sub consciously, pushed my own emotions into neutral, and tried burying the issues that I know need dealing with, the things that are getting in the way of my recovery and moving on. Part of this, as I said is largely sub conscious, learnt methods of protecting myself built up over a lifetime.

In some ways I know I need to deal with this stuff and in order to deal with it I have to face the pain but at the same time I am protecting myself from the pain by burying it because I have to ‘keep it together’ I don’t have the opportunity to allow myself to fall to pieces, I have to keep myself together and get on with everyday life.

I have to admit I am scared of letting myself deal with this stuff as I am scared of what is there; most of it I already know is not very pleasant.

I am also scared of finding myself back where i was this time last year and for this reason am protecting myself yet in a very real sense in protecting myself I am probably making the possibility of a repeat far more likely.

I am going to counselling and yet we are only able to touch around the edges of stuff as I am just finding it too difficult to open up to what’s really there, what’s really going on.

It’s not even as if I am feeling pain and hurt inside at the moment, I’m not! People ask me how I am and I can answer in all honestly I am fine, I am OK, because I am, just don’t delve too deeply because you might find it’s not as good as it first appears.

I can handle life like this but it is very dry, empty and, well pointless, I can go through the motions, with no emotion, I can do but not feel, it’s not that life is falling to bits around me but the truth is it probably needs to be allowed to fall to bits but I can’t allow that, it wouldn’t be good for me to allow that, it’s too messy, I have a life, well existence, to live, I have responsibilities and I am not sure I can handle these responsibilities and my emotions all at the same time.

There are no ‘quick fixes’ for the kind of mess that lies underneath the surface and I am not sure there is the energy within me to go for the long haul, it almost seems better to just stuff it all back inside and pretend like it’s not there, but I know that in the long run it won’t do me much good.

Spiritually I can go through the motions, read my bible, do my bit but there seems to be no real relationship with God right now, I am not in the position I was in most of last year, certainly the first half of last year, where I hated God, but I just don’t know that I can have a real relationship with him.

If I enter into much of a relationship with him he will only begin to open the wounds that are there, exposing the hurt and pain and I can’t allow that so it’s better to keep things on a flat empty level.

If I allow what’s inside of me to bubble out I know I will just fall to pieces, I will not be able to handle it and at the moment I can handle it, just about, I can just keep it inside and ignore it, that isn’t sorting the problem at all but it is saving me from the short term pain and the risk of the serious swing in my emotions I experienced last year.

I am afraid of letting my mind stay out of gear for too long because when it does all sorts of things surface, things that need to be kept under the surface, things that are best buried and hidden out of sight, the same applies at a spiritual level, I am afraid of opening up to God because it leads to my heart, it leads to the stuff that buried coming to the surface and I can’t do that.

It is so tiring and draining to live life where you can’t allow your mind to relax, where you can’t allow yourself to drop your guard and unwind, where you have to keep your brain active and mind focused on something, anything, as long as it’s not on yourself.

Now most of this is sub conscious thinking and behaviour, as I said before, learnt from a lifetime of having to protect myself from further hurt and I can’t easily change this even if I wanted to, and I am not sure whether I do want to.

How do you move forward when every move you make is going to lead to you loosing? How do you get from this place of being trapped and empty to a place of freedom? The only way of achieving it is via the route of PAIN and I am not sure I am ready for that, yet living the life I am right now is tiring and could so easily lead to the tinderbox that is my buried emotions blowing up big time.

So there you have it, I am not sure what else there is that I can easily and usefully add, I am struggling to make sense of all this myself, well not really struggling because I don’t want to make sense of it, if things remain as they are I suspect that I might as well stop counselling as it isn’t really going to resolve anything, part of me WANTS to resolve things but another part of me doesn’t, part of me wonders HOW I can resolve things yet another part of me wonders how I can keep it buried and prevent it from all blowing up on me.

If only someone could just say some words and make things better for me, but I know that isn’t going to happen, it’s not likely that God will just come and sort things out over night so that I wake totally better, there is a process that has to be gone through but it’s a process I am not sure I am ready for, not sure I ever will be ready for, in the meantime, life will trundle on, I will continue to exist and don what needs to be done, until I fall to pieces again. But as long as I can keep my mind from straying into undesirable territory I should be able to keep going for a bit longer.

Anyhow, it is just over a year since my first suicide attempt, and approaching the aniversary of the second one.

I thought it was an appropriate time to review where I have been over the past year.

Well, loads has changed, primarily in my own outlook on life and how I feel about things in general but this is helped in no small part by the huge ammount of support and help that has been arround for us over the past year or so, the love that I have felt and we as a family have felt is incredible.

I am now nowhere hear as depressed as I was and yet at the same time I know I am not far from the doors of depression, I am far from out of the woods but certainly I am beginning to recognise the triggers and things that drag me down and work round them where possible, life is pretty full on in our lives, as it always has been but I am still able to take a break when I need to because I know it is neccesary and there is no point in trying to fight the tiredness or feelings of need for space.

I think it wasn’t until the middle of the summer that I began feeling anywhere near ‘normal’ and lost some of that hopeless despair that surrponded me 12 months ago.

In early December I was dischared from the CPN (Community Phsychiatric Nurse) I am still under the Phsych and reviewed every 3 months at the moment but I don’t see the CPN at all now, which is good because it shows progress but I did get on with her, she is lovely.

I am still having counselling, usually weekly although I have 2 weeks break from it at the moment as the counsellor is away for a couple of weeks, the counselling is going well too, its not as difficult as I had expected it to be. But it does leave me drained, mind you I still feel tired really easy at the moment, and I am finding it difficult to talk about whats going on in counselling, which I know my wife is struggling with but thats the way it is, its a journey I have to make on my own/with the counsellor, I am not sure sometimes where we are headed but things seem to be unraveling and getting sorted, counselling itself is a very different experience to what I had imagined it to be its really strange but it works.

I have had a couple of bad dreams in the past couple of weeks, which I have not had really for a long time, but these are strange in that I dont recal what the dream was about after the event, I am aware of a restless night and feelings of fear but not a single recollection of what the dream was about, my wife knows I am having them because I tend to talk out loud when having them, the last one had something to do with a Rabbit but I don’t have a clue what it means, I just don’t know whether this is my brain  processing stuff and dealing with it or just unprocessed stuff surfacing that will need dealing with, I hope its the first but suspect that it might be the latter. I guess time will tell.

I started back to work in September, initially just Monday, Thursday & Friday, I have now addd Tuesdays to that, I only ever did mornings in the office, Wednesday mornings I have counselling, usualy, so I use the day to get things clear in my mind, I am back to dealing with things at home during my out of office times and even, last week,a ttended my first church leadership team meeting for over a year, I didnt minute the meeting this time and not sure I will do next month but the fact that I am back at the meetings and coping, is a good sign.

In terms of how I feel about life in general, I am not too sure at the moment where I am up to, I still get huge feelings of failure and struggle to have any sense of worth or value in and of myself, I still feel as though I just scraped into God’s kingdom in error, like I went forward at the Crusade and prayed the prayer and God just looked at me and said ‘oh you came as well did you? OK I will let you in’ theologically yo could argue with me and say that I have got it wrong for a number of reasonsbut that still wont change the fact that I do feel that way.

I am a lot more positive in outlook than I was a year ago but not quite sure why, nothing much has changed around me other than the way I feel, perhaps an effect of good counselling.

I am not sure what the future holds, I can’t even guarantee that I won’t get back into a real bad cycle again or that I wont get the suicidal kind of feelings and thoughts, all I can hope is that I will be more aware of whats happening before it gets that bad and seek appropriate help, mind you I did seek help last time but it only came rather late on, however now that I am with a better GP and have a background of having attempted suicide I suspect that I will get the support and help put in place pretty quickly.

I know that whatever happens I need to keep myself safe because whatever else I feel about myself my wife and kids love me to pieces and will be seriously damaged by me trying to kill myself, and I can’t put them through that, I love the kids and my wife, they mean so much to me and give me a purpose for living, I owe such a huge amount especially to my wife who has stood by me through these very difficult times but also to some really good friends who have been there for us and helped and encouraged us in so many ways. I really do feel so fortunate to have such wonderful friends and hope that I wont do anything to let them down.

So, the future, its a walk into the unknown, lifes not as difficult as it was but its still not easy, tiredness is the main issue but there is so much going on in my brain that I just can’t express or communicate, leaving me feel rather foggy most of the time, we will just have to see how things unfold in the comming months, I think that I am going to begin using this blog to write a bit more about my experience, or rather my memories of my experiences as a child, my experiences of abuse, in all its forms, some of the posts are likelly to be recolections of specific incidents others much more general background stuff but I think I am about ready to start putting soem of this stuff down in writing and am sure it will help, certainly it is one of the things that my counsellor has been encouraging me to consider doing.

I guess I am not the only one who hasn’t had the easiest year during 2009, certainly the first half was really lousy and things picked up from there but only slowly.

I am not really going to review the year as such, the bad bits are well enough documented on here and other places, I would rather gloss over the rough bits, but the thing that has shone through for me over the past couple of years actually is the commitment and loyalty, as well as love and care, of my/our friends, as things got tough it is true to say that some of our ‘friends’ effectively ignored us but there are so many who stepped up to the mark and were there at every turn, helping and supporting in so many ways, we have such wonderful friends and it would be rude of me to allow the old year to pass into the new without thanking those friends so much for their continued love and support.

Last New Years Eve, I rather hastily wrote a new years resolution, also available on here, you will have to look for it if you want to see what I wrote, I have to say that I failed pretty spectacularly at keeping any part of that resolution, within a very short time of posting that resolution I gave up on it, and on so much more, this year I am not going to attempt such a resolution but I am entering this coming year in a much better  place than where I was at last year, things are much more positive in so many ways, not least because I now have the right care and support in place and am working through some of the stuff that is at the root of the depths of my depression, so hopefully things are going to be very different over the coming year.

Anyhow, No New Years Resolution, no looking back and regretting, I can’t change what has happened all I can do is to try and make sure that I don’t repeat the mistakes of the past couple of years and also to commit to be there for my friends when they need me like they have been there, and continue to be there, for me.

Happy New Year to all my friends, old and new, may this coming year be a year of fulfilment and joy, of  love and peace, of all that is good and may good shine through everything.

It was about a year ago now, after I had been chatting to my mother, or more accurately she had been talking at me! Anyhow, that aside, she mentioned, as she had a few times before, about having been to our old house, this is the house where we moved to when I was 10 and I stayed there till I moved out, my mum stayed there after my step father left her, until she married her third husband.

It is still owned by my step father although he now lives in another country, Australia or America, not sure which!

He has rented it out a few times but it is currently empty, my mother was telling me about it being a right mess, all overgrown and going to waste.

As she spoke I felt that God was speaking to me saying that the house had been bound up and would never be a happy family house until I released the stronghold that had bound it up, I shared this with my wife and said that I felt I had, at some stage, to go there and pray around it, anyhow, we left it there and events overtook me a little.

So no more thinking about it until the other week when, by a chance number of things coming together I ended up in the car, on my own, in theory heading home from dropping our son into school late, with little to do for the rest of the morning, I went past the turn that took us to where I used to live, its a few miles from where we live now, in another village around here.

Anyhow, I suddenly realised that I hadn’t gone past the turning for where we used to live but had taken it! before I knew where I was I had arrived in the road where the house is, I parked in the lane, its a very quiet private road, the house is set well back off the road down a 100+ Yard drive, out of sight, I got out of the car and wandered down the drive, suddenly there it was, the house, standing jsut as it had always stood, except that the garden was rather overgrown.

I continued up the drive and stood on the front door, I knew it was empty but still rang the doorbell, which didn’t work, so I knocked the letterbox instead, just in case someone was lurking around inside I didn’t want to end up with the police taking me away!

So having got no reply I wandered around the property, the back is accessible without any problems, had a look in where I could, most of the curtains were drawn, but I saw enough to be pretty much drawn back in time, what I saw the place was still decorated with the same wallpaper, same carpets, same colours, same everything, that it had when I left over 20 years ago, and it needed decorating when I left!

Pretty spooky really, it was almost as if someone had shut the door after I left and it had just been left, but the garden was so overgrown, in places shrubs, some 4-6′ tall, had taken over about half the garden, the garden is, or was, about an acre in size so that’s a lot of shrubs.

Anyhow, the patio which went round 2 sides of the house (its a large 6 bed house so its a lot of patio!) was looking as if it had seen better days, sad really as I had laid most of those slabs.

And the grass, what was left of it, was so pitted and rough, it used to be a reasonable lawn but I am not sure how it goes from a normal well cared for lawn to resemble something you might see in a marsh land, really strange.

I wandered up and down the garden and all the way round the house, looked inside the garage, where most of the sexual abuse took place,  it was as frightening a place as it always was, I then begun praying, praying for the life to be breathed back in that place, praying for the evil that had been done and any spiritual forces that remained to be lifted and cast out, praying for those who had lived there since that time, praying for those who would live there from now on, praying for my step father, and my mother and siblings, I really don’t know how long I was there but as I stood there, by the window of the garage I suddenly felt as though something lifted, something lifted from me that is, I felt as though all of a sudden I had been released from some of the pain and hurt, I looked back in the window and realised that it didn’t look anywhere near as terrifying as it had done a few minutes ago, it just looked like a normal garage, OK a few cobwebs but then my garage has a few of them, except it wasn’t like a normal garage because it was nearly empty, I could see, what I hadn’t noticed before, a few toys in there, a bike, a scooter, a cuddly teddy, a box that I recognised from my childhood as containing some of my bits and pieces, suddenly it dawned on me that ALL the toys in there, there were not many, were MY toys! strange! then i noticed also, the lawnmower, the shear and a variety of tools, spade, gardening fork, rake etc, these were also the tools that I had used when I lived there, I had been expected to do a fair bit of the gardening and other work round the garden as a child, but the things in the garage were all things that I had used! how strange, 25 years on!

It was then that I felt that something was lifting from the house, that it was as if the weeds that had been choking the place were being liberally sprayed with weed-killer and was dying off before my eyes.

Anyhow, I prayed some more and had some tears as I remembered what had gone on in that place it was painful but the fear had all gone, I wasn’t afraid any more of being in that place, and the house had taken on a very different appearance, as I looked around it didn’t seem as grey and miserable as it had been, even the garden didn’t seem as bad as it had been when I first arrived, I looked around and thought well it only needs a little TLC well quite a lot of TLC actually, and it could be a lovely garden.

Feeling that my time there was over and I had done what I had come to do I headed back to the car, by this time I  was starting to get those ‘why did you allow this to happen?’ questions, referring to the abuse I suffered not the mess of the garden/house, getting back into the car I felt compelled to the parish church, strange place for me to go but there we go, as I was driving up there I remembered that I used to cut the grass in the graveyard when I was a teenager, not sure how I got into it I think the vicar was using it to keep me out of trouble, anyhow I rolled up at the church and wandered up to the doors, assuming it would be locked up, but it wasn’t so I went in and slowly made my way down the aisle to a pew at the front of the church, I am not usually drawn to churches as a place to pray so it was rather strange that I was this day, anyhow, I went and sat down it was as I sat down that I had a touch of de-javo OK yes I had been in there a few times, when I first became a Christian it was where I went until I fell out with the vicar over his theology (that’s a story for another day, and probably for another blog! but this wasn’t the reason it seemed so familiar, it suddenly dawned on me that when I used to cut the grass in the graveyard i would sometimes come into the church and sit right where I had sat this time, in front of the altar, and cry out to God, asking him, if he existed why was he allowing this to happen to me? I realise now how I had come to the conclusion at that stage that there is no such thing as God because he was being so cruel to me in allowing me to be abused the was I had been/was being, anyhow, today I felt as though God was speaking to me, he was drawing me there for a purpose, he started to unravel stuff in my heart that I am still not able to express very clearly at the moment I think there is more unravelling to do, more tears to shed and more healing to be done before I am able to vocalise some of it. What I can say now is this, a couple of years ago, when I was having nightmares/flashbacks, of the years of abuse, in each of the flashbacks/images I had this impression of someone else being in the room, another person being present, I had always been confused over this as I had no recollection of any of the sexual abuse happening in the presence of any witnesses, that morning I realised, probably for the first time, that the 3rd person there was actually God, he was there with me, not standing by allowing the abuse to happen but actively restraining my step father from doing worse, and taking on himself some of the pain and hurt that was mine.

I think I am going to stop here for now, there was more but I am not able to write or express it at the moment, suffice to say it was a very significant morning to me and I felt it has broken the demonic spirits that have bound up that house as well as breaking something in me.

On 8th September I wrote a post entitled Mother Issues I won’t go through the details of that post, you can click the link to see it if you wish.

Anyhow, My mother went to Ireland and said that she would call us on her return so we awaited her phone call, several weeks went by and we still hadn’t heard from her, I chose not to make contact with her but to hold her at her word, its not unusual for her to forget to ring us when she said she would, she is usually too engrossed in her own world and more concerned to contact her friends to be bothered with her family.

Anyhow, it has to be said that we were enjoying the peace and quiet and after the things mentioned in the last post we were not really in any mood to see, or speak to, her so the longer she took the better.

Then out of the blue she called on Friday, 24th Oct (6 weeks since we last heard from her) she was calling because my dads wife (they speak to each other from time to time, I guess my mum calls her first husbands wife more than she calls her son. Anyhow, my dad’s wife is now on Facebook and had picked up from there about my wife having hurt her back a few weeks ago, which she then mentioned to my mum.

OK so my mum calls out of the blue, she says something like, you haven’t called me recently so i explain that I had assumed that she was still in Ireland as she had said she would call on her return, she says that she had assumed that I wasn’t talking to her coz i was upset with her, I guess that in truth she wasn’t calling me because she was upset at me!

Anyhow, she basically takes off from where she left off, she tries justifying her attitude towards my niece and my sister, I just say I really don’t want to know or get involved but I think she ought to speak to my sister and sort it out, as she was after all her mum!

OK so we leave that pretty much at a stalemate, it’s a long conversation of going round in circles! now my mother has made contact we ought to see her so my wife and I agree that we would see her the next day, Saturday, with the kids, I really didn’t want our first contact since the issues raised last time to be when the kids were around but as it was the beginning of half term and the kids were around all week and I really didn’t want to leave it any longer than necessary because of the thought of the barbs etc, we decided that seeing her with the kids was best.

It was never going to be easy to see her again but leaving it would only stretch out the difficulty, at least with little time to get worked up it should be easier.

We picked her up that afternoon from her house and took her to a garden centre near where she lives, experience tells us that a neutral venue is usually best.

I had decided that we had little to loose and I wasn’t going to take any nonsense from her, if she started on at us I was just going to give her an earful, i think I have reached the position now where I think if there is too much silliness from her I will just cut off contact with her, simple as that, well its not really that simple I think its still very difficult to come to that decision even now but I think it is necessary and knowing that is where we have got to means that in a sense we don’t have anything to loose, but she does.

I drove there, its about half an hours drive, I wasn’t feeling great all day but by the time we were at my mums I was feeling really sick! It was nerves and anticipation, by the time she got into the car I couldn’t bring myself to even talk to her, I chose to ignore most of what was going on, easy enough to do when I was driving anyhow.

The afternoon wasn’t as bad as it could have been, my mum didn’t mention the issues to do with my sister and niece, she also avoided saying anything aimed at me or the family, conversation was initially rather strained but we soon got chatting about her trip to Ireland etc, she was still focused on herself but not as bad as she can be sometimes.

She displayed, as normal, her inability to understand or listen to what others have to say but again not as bad as she has been, we are still unsure whether she is suffering early signs of some form of dementia or just playing games but we are choosing to ignore most of it at the moment.

Anyhow, we dropped her back off home, thinking well at least that’s out of the way we can now get on with enjoying half term with the kids, knowing that wasn’t hanging over our heads all week.

My stomach and sickness improved pretty quickly once we had seen my mother.

A Portrayal of the last supper by people with Downs Syndrome

I know that my wife gets frustrated that I am unable to communicate where things are at with the counselling but its just so difficult I need to get things sorted in my own head.

I thought I might at least be able to communicate in writing, as I have usually been able to at even the darkest times but I just don’t seem able to express in any way what’s going on inside me, its not a shutting down of emotions or cutting people off emotionally, its just, well its rather strange, a feeling of things are happening, the healing is happening but I am unable to express or talk about what’s going on, but there is less pain inside me than there was before I started the counselling, the events of the abuse are still clear but the pain of it is not as acute as it was.

I am managing to cope pretty well with every day life at the moment, I have got back to work 3 mornings a week, plus a far bit of extra stuff from home but I am having to be very careful not to over do anything, even things I enjoy, as it has the potential to tip me over the edge, although I am getting far better at realising when I am close to the edge and forcing myself to stop and rest.

So, apologies again for my lack of communication, I will try and post as much as I can when I can, I am sure that you all understand this.

In the meantime what I really need, and am valuing, is your ongoing support, in prayer and in practical ways, as well as just in knowing that your there for me when I need you.

Title: Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow

Author: Nancy Guthrie

Publisher: Tyndale

ISBN: 978-1-4143-2548-4

When I chose to receive this book to review I choose it because the write-up suggested that this was not simply a ‘nice book’ that would seek to placate the reader or give the reader ‘nice’ verses to hold onto or the cliché lines I have come to know over the past few years but would instead turn to the depths of scripture and seek to provide honest real answers to honest real thoughts, emotions and problems. Just goes to prove the old saying ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ is still true.

I was really disappointed when I opened the package and saw the book as, based purely from the cover, it looked like it was just going to be full of sickly verses and clichés, just what I didn’t wanted! However that disappointment didn’t last for long as I got stuck into the content of the book it touched base with me at many levels.

This book is written for those who have been through, or are going through, tough times in their lives and who need to hear Jesus speak into their situation, Guthrie is a woman who has experienced tragedy and sorrow in her own life, this tragedy and sorrow has caused her to turn to the scriptures and dig deep to find meaning in the situations she has faced.

Having lost 2 children to a rare genetic condition, both less than 2 years old, she has experienced some of the most difficult pain any mother, or father, could imagine, yet she has come out of it with a stronger and more balanced faith than ever, what could so easily have crushed her faith has enabled her faith to grown and blossom.

I read this book at a time when I was going through, just coming out of, a very severe bout of depression, one which was just about as serious and deep as it gets and almost cost me my life.

Reading this book has not been easy, there have been times when I have felt that God was piercing my heart with some of the truths revealed in this book but I believe that the perspective this book has given me has played at least a small part in helping bring me out of depression, re-focusing my minds and giving me new perspective, in ways that I had not expected.

Because of my depression, my concentration span has not been great recently however I have not found this to be an issue with this book, it is the kind of book best read slowly, a chapter or 2 at a time, to allow the truths to sink in and each chapter stands on its own so there is no loss of thread to contend with.

This book is written from a very deep and theological perspective and yet I feel can be read by anyone as it touches the reader on many different levels, as I went through the book there were a number of theological issues it raised in my own mind and yet at this stage I felt unable to delve deeper into these matters but not delving did not in any way detract from the book, at some stage I will go back over the book and pick up on these themes at a much deeper level.

Guthrie turns to the words of Jesus to seek answers to the big questions raised in her own life, questions that I have no doubt are common for anyone who has suffered loss or pain, but she does not turn to the scriptures that you might expect, she finds her source of encouragement and comfort in scriptures which you might least expect but expounds them very well and brings her depth of theological knowledge to these scriptures to really give the reader something to think about.

At the conclusion to each chapter there was a ‘letter’ written as if from God to the reader, this ‘letter’ is a paraphrase of several (mainly well known) bible verses put together in a highly readable format, this could have ventured on the cliché and well meaning words of comfort and indeed still could do (in my opinion) if taken out of the context of the preceding chapter, however I felt that she walked the balance here just right.

I for one want to thank Guthrie for writing this book and Tyndale for giving me the privilege of reviewing it (not the kind of book I would normally have picked up, especially from the cover) as it has impacted my life.

I will conclude this review with one paragraph from the very end of this book ‘In the midst of your heartache, Jesus will hold you in his arms, he will teach you, and he will speak into your sorrow. Hear his promise to be there in the days ahead to help shoulder the load of sorrow in your heart’ it is my belief that this book will enable you to realise those words in your life.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has know what it is to suffer, to experience deep sorrow to suffer pain and loss, if you are seeking answers to the difficult questions in your life this book will not answer them all but it will point you in the right direction and enable you to change your perspective and your thinking in those areas..