christmas Archives - Called To Watch

What can we trust in this Christmas?

This year at Called to Watch we’ve explored what trust looks like in the context of chronic illness, and why it can be so difficult. We’ve uncovered what it means to trust others, to trust ourselves, and to trust God. For me personally, and I’m sure for most of us, this year has given us many opportunities to trust. The more uncertain life is, the harder it can be to trust, and the more important it is!

I recently read a poem by Anne Carson, titled The Glass Essay. This part stood out to me:

You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that?
And I said, Where can I put it down?
Anne Carson

As we enter the holiday period, after a long year of Watching and living, are you holding onto too much? Take a quick assessment – are there worries you didn’t know you were stockpiling, frustrations you’ve swept under the carpet, resentments you thought you’d grown out of?

We all carry these burdens. But are you looking for a place to put them down?

I am.

Let us go together, to a baby born in a manger 2000 years ago. Let us go and place our ‘too much’es before Jesus.

Trust can change your life

We do not have to be enough, and we do not have to hold onto everything. Of course, it’s difficult to lay our burdens down. It’s a terrifying act of trust – will God be enough if I don’t plan for every eventuality, if I don’t have my anger to protect me, if I stop and admit that I’m exhausted?

He will be – the Bible promises us that – but we will never know that he is, until we lay down our burdens in trust. God doesn’t give us future strength for future problems in the present. He simply gives us what we need for each moment.

Choosing to trust can be life-changing – and what better time to let God change your life than Christmas, when the world was changed forever in the twinkling of a star and the startled cry of a new-born?

Missed out on our Trust series?

Stepping into 2021 with Trust

The Beautiful gift of Trust in Chronic Illness

Are Trust and Chronic Illness really compatible?

5 Ways to make Trust a Habit in Chronic Illness

3 Reasons to Trust someone with a Chronic Illness

3 Reasons to Trust God in Chronic Illness

What do you do when Trust is Broken?

Help! I’m not sure if I can trust myself!

Missed out on my Memoir?

3 Reasons I wrote a memoir about Chronic Illness and Watching

Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour – My memoir on Watching

Looking for a Christmas present for the Watcher in your life (or yourself!) – please consider purchasing Two Sisters – so that it may continue to bless many readers.

Check out the reviews here!

May your holiday season be a trustful and open-hearted time lived at the feet of Jesus.

Thank you for joining me on the Watching journey this year.

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what-can-we-trust-in-this-christmascaregiving-spoonie-faith-God-Hope-chronic

A Christmas gift to you, dear Readers

What. A. Year. It’s my prayer that you are all able to take some time over the holidays to reflect, grieve and rejoice over 2020. I am planning on doing so soon. But for now, let’s all take a deep breath, and celebrate!

I promised some exciting news before I left on my Sabbatical-Which-Didn’t-Happen. Now it’s time to deliver… and what better time than Christmas? My heart longs for my exciting news to be a gift to you all, dear readers and fellow Watchers. It has certainly been a gift to me. A gift of God’s kindness, a demonstration of his faithfulness.

For a while this year I wasn’t sure I’d even have this gift to offer you, so uncertain was life with COVID and other circumstances. But because of God’s goodness and generosity, I can – and so I pray you will join me in celebration.

Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour: My Christmas gift

What is this mysterious gift, I hear you ask?

It’s this: Next year in August, my memoir, Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour will be published by Elephant House Press!

It is the story of my sister and I, the tumour which changed our lives, and the God who saved them. In 2015 my younger sister was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and my life was irretrievably altered. We went on a tumultuous journey together, and this is the story of that journey – the tears, the laughter, the crazy, quirky things which happen when you’re in hospital for 3 months, and the many kindnesses of friends, family, and strangers alike!

If you’re anything like me, you find ‘hospital stories’ rather depressing, and sometimes dry! I give you my word, I’ve done my best to make sure this story is anything but that. Rather than coming up with a list of ‘lessons learnt’ Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour is simply me opening up the window of our lives for three months, and inviting you along on the journey.

I’ll be sharing snippets of the memoir on the blog up until publication, so here’s three little snippets from the first chapter as an early Christmas gift!

Excerpts from Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour

A beginning

You can read an x-ray and tell someone they’ve broken their wrist.

You can glance at a CT and tell someone they may have kidney stones.

You can’t study an MRI and tell someone they have a brain tumour.

Even if it’s true.

I haven’t quite finished my final year of radiography, but I still know this much.

**

A phone call

‘Jasmine had her MRI today. You know, the one the doctor -’

‘I know.’

‘Anyway, they gave us the printed out scan right then! All the pictures. Is that normal?’

I shrug out of habit. ‘I don’t know. So there’s no report yet?’

‘No just the pictures, and Emily, I think she has something.’

‘Has something? Has what?’ A brain? Unexpected, certainly, but hardly worth a phone call. I crane my neck. Or a missed bus.

‘I don’t know, I can’t read it properly. I just looked at the brain and there’s something there, and I thought you’d be able to read it. When are you home?’

A reassurance

The back of the graffitied bus shelter rubs against the high wall of Rookwood Cemetery. It’s the largest burial ground in the southern hemisphere, according to Wikipedia. Ironic, really. A Health Science University campus, dedicated to saving lives, across the street from an overgrown, sprawling reminder of death.

Annoying little sisters don’t have ‘things in their brains’. The MRI will be normal.

I relax on the metal bench. It can’t possibly be otherwise…

*end excerpt*

Want to read more? For updates and more snippets throughout the year, add your email below.

Don’t worry, I won’t be flooding your inbox. Neither of us have time for that!

New monthly posts will begin again next year, and for now here are some of my reflections on Christmas, the New Year, and holidays in the context of chronic illness:

Christmas + Travel

New Year

May you have a refreshing and blessed Christmas. Thank you for Watching, and for joining me on the journey.

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I’m also on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram & Twitter! Meet me there for more interesting reads, resources and community.

Expectations and why they’re good: Christmas

Did you know that it’s impossible not to have expectations?

Try it.

However vague, we always have some sense of what an event or a holiday or a job or a coffee-date will be like. Often, when we say we had “no expectations” what we really mean is we had “low expectations”.

Christmas and the holiday season bring a lot of expectations.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “Christmas”? Food, fun, community, isolation, stress – whatever connotations you have, they will form part of your expectation for the season.

Christmas and the good thing about expectations

Chronic illness can make expectations necessary.

Continue reading “Expectations and why they’re good: Christmas”

Christmas & Chronic Illness… friends or enemies?

Chronic illness or Christmas? Which would you prefer?
I know which one I’d choose. But too often we don’t have a choice – and this is very evident during the holiday season.

Over Christmas we often spend more time with family, and for many of us, that means spending more time with Chronic Illness.

Chronic Illness doesn’t go on holidays over Christmas…

While the shops and the media try to convince us that by November 1 we have entered into a ‘new world’ of perfectly laid tables, wrapped gifts and dizzying heights of tinsel – most of us know that’s not quite true.

Nothing’s really changed.

Certainly not our loved one’s health struggles.

The rest of the country may be feeling care-free and relaxed – but often our Loved One’s have more cares than ever before. Continue reading “Christmas & Chronic Illness… friends or enemies?”