Hello my lovelies,
Many of you have rightly been nagging me to update this lovely blog for some time now. Well, I can assure you that there are many reasons why I have not done so.
Just to update you then:
Positives:
Twelfth Night Rehearsal began to really REALLY eat into my life, namely because I had recruited two guys from my class at college and therefore thought duty-bound to pick them up from Barnstaple (thus having to drop them off at the end of each rehearsal) every day. Meaning that I simply lived off sandwiches and spent my life in either the car, at the rehearsal or at college, with the odd break in my bed! I was so busy in fact I began to get quite ill, utterly jiggered.
College has been absolutely awesome and certainly one of the best things/directions that has happened to me in many moons. Surprisingly, I’m doing rather well in English Literature though freely admit with the Philosophy-like take on things History is proving to be not so easy! I’m also learning Maths with the hope of re-taking my Maths GCSE in 2008. Though I only need to bump it up from a D to a C to get anywhere in life...I’ve put a great deal of time and effort into it and would LOVE to get the highest Grade I can! Which may still only be a C as my brain just wasn’t cut out for Maths.
At the same time, I’ve also progressed a great deal in my singing ability. My voice being honed by a lovely American Opera singer who has moderated Exams at the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama no less! Yet another person who asked me if I was any relation to Keith B********n who is apparently the director. Oh how I long to be able to say a resounding “YES” to such a question! Alas no...we come from a mining background! But there must be some Mozart in our genome?
Anyway, akin to that, I have recently started to have piano lessons. These are somewhat cheaper given the fact that I give my Piano Tutor a lift to College 3 days a week so he’s training me for free! Can’t say fairer than that. Have only had 3 lessons and he’s flippin' starting me on Grade 5 pieces!!!! ARRRRRRGH.
Sadly though my friends (and this is perhaps the main reason for my not writing sooner) it has been a VERY difficult time for me. Drama was going extremely well (albeit very tiring) when on the night before my first performance, I got the terrible news that my much-loved Grandma had passed away. I had known she had been ill for several months, and she had been in hospital in the last 10 days of her life...but somehow, I never in my wildest nightmares could have imagined this scenario. In fact it is a sad fact that only after the absence of something do we as humans appreciate how much we loved, respected and even depended on it. It matters not whether all of you who read this can empathise with what it is like to loos a “a Grandparent” because she wasn’t’ just “a grandparent” she was “MY Grandma” And everyone created on this earth is as unique as their fingerprint. Thus is our relationship with them!
My brother formed a very moving and appropriate poem to read out at the Eulogy and I myself had recorder a song: “O God you Search Me and You Know Me” (a Christian Song virtually taken word for word from Psalm 139) and played that. It was a very special send-off, given with all the strength we could summon and I miss her incredibly and find her absence in the most unlikely of places!
It was during this that self-harm began to be of concern to my nearest and dearest. I will venture to say that even after anointing and deliverance ministry yesterday, I’m certain I have not yet seen the back of this Evil hold in my life.
Having moved light-years beyond a little scratch here and there with an open safety pin, to deep lacerations which are leaving dreadful and obvious scarring, I urge all who read this to send a prayer in my direction as I try and counter this.
Obviously the war between sexuality and God’s will has played a very significant part in the depths of my depression. And whilst I know I’m not the first (and certainly won’t be the last Christian male) to find this war difficult, it certainly has felt like the Evil One has won more campaigns than I have allowed the Lord to win recently. Irrespective of the knowledge that Christ has already won the ultimate victory, I am forced to acknowledge my inadequacies of people able to hold out in this war, at this time, with these people and these feelings for very long. Again – prayer appreciated!
What with Twelfth Night (I was able to go on stage that first night and go on to complete a further 2 performances before returning to Leicestershire for the funeral etc), the funeral week, the TfT Conference and the depths of despair, I honestly can’t account for the majority of November at all!
To end on a positive note, I have joined a fantastic church in the late summer and can honestly say hand on heart that I feel I could invite ANYONE to come along at whatever stage they’re at, even on a week I’m out of town, and am UTTERLY confident that he or she would be welcomed with open arms in the same way that I was and am. It’s of the Calvary Chapel denomination, and whilst they may not tick all of my secondary-theology boxes, a mature Christian knows that he or she must eat the meat and leave the bones when it comes to church. After all, isn’t the saying: “I hope you never find a perfect church because when you do, you will make it imperfect as soon as you join it” true? All I know with these people is...the Bible rules and that is certainly something I need more of in my life at the moment.
I guess I ought to end there really.
All my love and a very Merry Christmas to you all
D
