School plays.
Did you love school plays? Even if they were just plays for your year or your class, did you like them? I liked them. I remember doing ‘There’s A Hole In My Bucket’ at Infant School – but that is a vague recollection of my first performance.
I remember the school plays when I went to secondary school. I really got involved then. Loved it, I did. My English/Music teacher encouraged me in the first year and I got involved in at least one a year since then and even did the Drama GCSE so much did I love acting.
Recently my first-born was involved in a school production. I got to see her in it and I felt chuffed to see her. She is under no pressure to fulfil the things I never did, so I’m not looking to live through her (or be vicarious, which is your word for today). It was just good to see her having fun in her play.
Now what does that have to do with the topic of this blog? It was around this same time last year that I saw Deborah and Abigail in another school production. Except this production was at the school they attended in Stoke-on-Trent. I have the recollection of enduring the play and then not long after that we packed ourselves up in the car and it was the last time the girls would go to that school, because it would be the last time we would be in Stoke-on-Trent as residents. That very evening saw us virtually complete our move to Little Hulton.
It is one year since we left Stoke-on-Trent.
Really I believe I left Stoke-on-Trent finally in October last year. After a year of internal wrangling and contemplating the things happening to me and my family we had finally reached the conclusion that it was time to move on and from the moment we made that decision and explained it to those who needed to know, that was it. It made the months after that a bit odd. Like a disembodied experience. When I agree to something – especially moving on from something, that thing is stuck. It was tough enduring those months especially considering the amount of time spent agonising over the decision.
Yet having made the decision there was the necessary process of finding where to move to and those logistical arrangements. So sorting that by November and arrangements in December meant that by the end of the second week in that final month of the year we were prepared to complete the move.
One year on then and how do I feel? This morning I blogged on how Jesus is a healer and what needed to take place was a great deal of healing – more than I had given accounted for previously. It’s amusing reflecting on how things are coming together at the moment – tentative steps in engaging in Christian community, making more connections in the area, being activated to ‘find and occupy my place’ here in Bletchley. It is almost as though it has taken a year for me just to begin saying I think I’m beginning to settle down. With what has happened in the year, however, I think its perfectly understandable that I’m in that position.
Do I miss Stoke-on-Trent? No.
I went there in November and it was good seeing a few people, but being there brought home to me that it was the right decision to move on. Not in a bitter or superior manner – just in the sense that something that needed to change happened at the right time. I remain appreciative to God for the experiences of Stoke-on-Trent, but I also am grateful for what He has done since then and the job He’s on with me whilst I’m here in Bletchley.
It has been a traumatic year with the initial move, the birth of Zoë, then another house move and the associated challenges around that. God has shown Himself to be incredibly gracious and hugely caring and loving in His provision for our every need in tough situations.
There are still things to be learnt from the decade in Stoke-on-Trent that I am in a better position to learn this side of the experience, that will be applicable for what we will go through in this time.
It is good to look back and consider the journey that has happened. It is good to see things in a light you’ve never considered before. It is good to know that the same God who was faithful to take you up to this point is faithful to take you the rest of the journey home. That goodness about how the past helps the present is why I can relax a year after Stoke-on-Trent and know that even brighter days are ahead. What makes them brighter is how much more of Jesus Christ I know about as I traverse through life. The more I know of Him, the brighter my life becomes.
Thanks Lord for Stoke-on-Trent and here’s to what you’ll be doing in Bletchley in the life of the man Christopher Dryden.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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