It's all relative

I found this lovely analogy on the web...

"We are all humans that are all really after the same thing. However, we all have different points of view, and because of this are divided as to what the "meaning of life" is....it's like if you took a million painters and put them in a circle around a large mountain. While it's true all the painters would be painting the same mountain not all of their paintings would look the same."

Whilst I am horrified and have huge empathy by those affected by the monstrosities being carried out around the world, the violence, suffering, loss of life and devastating illnesses I also feel equal devastation by the suffering of my daughters too. Please don't judge me too harshly for this, I know the girls have a roof over their heads, have health care available (although limited applications to their illness) and we are not in a war zone, however I feel that suffering, no matter where it is, is relative to your situation.

This past week the girls have been particularly unwell, their ME symptoms are at their worst ever since they were diagnosed and both are needing the assistance of wheelchairs to cover any distance. So we decided to go to our caravan on the Yorkshire coast.

First stumbling block was first born daughter who decided she would rather stay behind and house sit to trial living alone for the week, she is hoping to move out early next year providing she can secure a job.

I don't know if it is just me but a small piece of me began to mourn the loss of my first born child as she takes these first steps towards flying the nest and establishing herself as a young adult in the world. I am also enormously proud of her but it seems too soon for me to be letting her go, time has quite literally flown and it hardly seems possible that she is an adult now.

So we agreed she could stay behind and I whizzed around the supermarket to refill the fridge which we had allowed to empty and left some cash for further supplies for later in the week.

We then packed the car for our week away, wheelchairs = check, blue badges = check, dog paraphernalia = check, slankets and other such necessary items = check, and we were off.

I simply love our place on the coast, I may have mentioned that a few times previously, the change of scenery, the smell of the clean fresh air and the view of the sea ~ which makes my heart lurch with excitement as I catch a glimpse of the it as we draw closer to our destination. The girls travelled in their pj's with seats reclined with pillows and slankets to make it less exhausting for them and the dogs had their own special bed in the centre of the car to snuggle down in for the journey.

Once there the girls collapsed on the sofas whilst Dave and I unpacked and the dogs had a run around the decking before we walked them ~ which resulted in us both becoming soaked to the skin as we were caught out in a dramatic flash storm with thunder and lightning and torrential rain. It was quite energising, once back under the cover of the caravan we started to steam in the heat, once we had dried ourselves and the dogs off the storm just stopped and the sun came out (typical).

We had taken games, xbox, videos, art supplies and loom bands with us to occupy the girls. In order to achieve our goal of taking the girls to the beach we had to ensure they rested for a couple of days and watched the weather forecast to select the perfect day ~ which arrived midweek.

We were only out for a couple of hours but in that time we manage to get the girls onto the beach and have a paddle in the sea, along with the dogs who are slowly overcoming their fear of the water ~ this time round they actually went into the shallow waves and paddled a little with me instead of running away from them. 

It was a wonderful couple of hours but the girls found it extremely tiring and so as soon as they had rested on the beach and allowed their feet to dry we bundled them into the car and drove up to the Starbucks on site and bought them a cold drink before heading back to the caravan. That, sadly was all the girls could manage this holiday, the excursion to the beach knocked the energy right out of them and they had to rest for the remaining few days of the holiday.

To be honest, this blog post isn't really going anywhere is it?

I'm really not entirely sure what I am hoping to share with you either but it felt important to recognise the fragility of life and to say grab those precious moments when you can no matter how short they are and put them in your memory bank so that you can pull them out during the dark days and remember that the darkness doesn't last forever, chinks of light will probe and distort the darkness ~ with luck and hope those episodes of light will become longer and brighter until eventually the darkness is banished to the shadows and no longer has the grip on your life it had before.

This is called hope.

~ Blessed Be ~

x~X~x