From the archives

While you were "wasting time", God still knew you, loved you, and had faith in you. He was with you the entire time and, when he called you to him, you came. God knew you wouldn't be who you are today if you weren't who you were then, and that's why he waited.

We have lots of cats and they all have distinct personalities and are three of them are, and then there’s Elvis. 

He’s super friendly to strangers and really loving and is a find companion if you understand that, when you’re both languishing on sofa, casually stroking his fir, at some point he will carve DONT TOUCH THE FUR in your peace bubble when he's done with your stupid hand things.  His weapons are sheathed though, always, and he’s fine if he can live in you. Just not the other way around. 

Elvis also can’t eat more than spoon at a time of his expensive elvis only food, provided as its the only thing he can eat without yarping, as long as it’s teeny portions a bazillion times a day. This is of course highly inconvenient and wildly expensive as his special twee food only comes in minuscule and expensive cans. Eight of them a day. If you try and switch him to another Big Tin brand or, god forbid, dry food, he can detect an atom of it in his ridiculous  He’s still wildly underweight though and constantly hungry and is very vocal about that.  He won’t hurt anything aside from your sanity but there is no doubt he's done, DONE (I tell you etc) with your Not Yet, Asshole food restriction bullshit so FEED ME. 

So yesterday I spent thousands of dollars to investors his idiot stomach and found out, what his, it’s furballs, scads of, that the vet observed but didn’t remove (wtf??)  for Levi’s was prescribed daily fur stripping (of my idiot car with the shortest of short fur so wth is up wit’ dat?) to which I replied, have you even MET Elvis?? And why didn’t you just removed the furballs while you were very expensively knee deep in his stomach with an endoscope?! His response was to lend me a fur stripper and wish me luck.  

ANYWAY  

After removing mostly his dignity via  repeated and otherwise fruitless enraged kerfuffles, I did discover - much to his joy - that when held down and firmly at the neck scruff point, that like most cats, Elvis goes all I'm A Kitten! I'm Being Carried! It's All Good! even when his laser beam eyeballs are saying I HATE THIS AND ITS YOUR FAULT and, job done. Fur stripped. Once. Im not sure enough Xanax exists in the world to repeat this EVER, much less daily, but our own stripper should arrive soon (that sounds interesting 🧐) so we can all enjoy this trauma together regularly and soon. I can't wait. Which is a LIE. 

Addendum; When I collected Elvis yestersay, The vet said, oh, we should have stripped his fur while he was here, and my aggressive little thought bubble was all YA THINK?!

Re depression

To be clear, I’m not depressed. My life does life suck though, unbelievabley, but maybe what helps me through the relentless suckinness might help, for an instant at least, your life sucking depression. 

It helps me to think of life as a series of moments. Of instants strung together that make our life - and when you think of an instant, a single solitary instant, it's perfect. Exquisite. No fear, no worry, no pain. So much can happen and also so little the moment the phone rings and you see it's someone you love. When your dog spots you after a day away from her. When you were handed your firstborn, and again your second. The moment you heard your husband say I do. Those things. Even in the midst of the dark, there is beauty in how dark it is. Sorrow and grief are only so because of love and belonging so the foundation of our depression is often based in something we valued and maybe even still have. When it's dark, it's hard to see the light, but it's there so let it spill into the moments that string together the next seconds, hours, minutes, days for it's these precious snapshots in time that make up our precious lives.  Xx

Thats not to trivialise your depression. I want to make that clear. Carving your life up into manageable split seconds of time that carry no fear, no pain, no doubt, but that stil do exist and are real, can feel like a life buoy though when you feel you're drowning in despair. 

Because no one calls their kid Judas

In the Gospel of Judas - a Gospel so deeply hidden since its  discovery some 1700 years after his shameful disgrace, it isn’t a part of Christian history, but must be rationally  conceived of first then searched for explicitly - a different story is told. In this Gospel, author unknown, Jesus tells Judas "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal...you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.'"

Jesus explains he must be freed from his earthly life to bring life to his reason for being and give everlasting life to those who believed in him. Jesus told Judas he wished this separation from his earthly life be done by a friend, not an enemy. 

Consider this; Out of all the disciplines,he asked Judas, his friend, to commit the act so horrific that, from that day forward, it would weight heavily in history as a treacherous betrayal, and portray Judas as a traitor for eternity. 

“You will grieve a great deal”, Jesus told him.

And so, we believe, he did. With with one single kiss, we’re told Judas killed Jesus, then immediately regretted it, returning the silver and taking his own life. 

In this story, for a token amount Judas exchanged his place as an apostle, a beloved disciple, hand picked by Jesus to spread His word and perform miracles in His name, for an act of greed that destroyed his reputation and forever exiled from the purpose he’d found with Jesus.

Could he even have conceived the eternal repercussions of his act, that without compassion for Judas*, we would, for eternity be appalled by his act of treason. 

But perhaps it was that Judas’ love was so great for Jesus that he’d sacrifice his greatest friend and lose all others, to see God’s plan for Jesus fulfilled. 

Jesus knew this would happen, God needed it to. 

Perhaps Judas’ only sin was his death, having handed back the fruit of his actions and unable to live with his grief, took his own life - but perhaps this too was at Jesus’ behest and a part of God’s plan? To accept a token amount, commit the act, then join Jesus in heaven at the right hand of the Father. 

Judas would have accepted his heartbreaking mission only because his beloved asked it of him. He could not have conceived the wholeness of being his death provided Jesus’ believers, for eternity. 

Without him, Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice could have been tainted by hate, derision, greed, and fear. Instead, faith and love lead Jesus to his inevitable death, planned by God and known by Jesus to be the sole purpose of his earthly distance. 

For us, Judas’ story has long been a treacherous one. How could he ever have loved Jesus when he so easily gave him up, but maybe between Jesus and Judas it's a story of love and faith in the man he called Rabbi, and perhaps this act reveals Judas’ deeper understanding of the Son of Man, why God sent him, and how we were all to be saved.

Without Judas, would we still have God’s voice in our hearts and love in our lives, or would the purity of our relationship with Him have been tainted by a vicious death instead of the loving one we can now conceive. 

We’ve long considered Judas as the worst of us all, but maybe he the best of us, a hero for all time. Maybe he too, saved us all, and without his sacrifice, perhaps we’d all still be wandering in the dark. 

*Jesus told us “Love one another as I have loved you” so as christians, we must love Judas and, even if we can’t thank him for his act, at least have compassion for him for, if it were a betrayal and not an act of love at Jesus request, he was seduced by the devil - but only because he couldn’t feel the purity of Jesus’ love for him and that, my friends, would have already have been hell on earth. 

We who are blessed with God in our life and Jesus in our heart are asked to forgive and to love the sinner of not the sin.  

I’ve cried many tears for Judas recently, his eternal fate as a betrayer of our Lord and maligned name weighing heavily in my heart. The grief I feel for him I believe is God wanting o reveal another side to his story and to maybe help others find compassion for Judas in their hearts, and to forgive him. 

Perhaps too, some can even entertain the idea that his historically act of treason could instead have been a treasured, hallowed and heart rending secret between him, Jesus, and the Heavenly Father. 

from the drafts folder

From my October 9, 2010

"I have to make you a picture because you'll love it. You'll so totally love it.". My son, this morning.

I have issues.

Since I was a kid, I’ve had trouble eating chocolate Easter bunnies from the ears down. Eating them from the feet up is just as bad  

Nothing much has changed but these days, once the foil’s peeled back and I'm about to partake, there’s the added bonus of my son’s voice, from out of nowhere, all "No, no! Not the ears!" or "No, you can’t start with the feet!"  

Of course it should always be: SNAP the head off first because, if you end it quickly, the poor little thing won’t even know what you’re about to do with his remains  

I imagine that's why god invented Easter eggs.  

OH HAI IT'S BEEN YEARS

So let's talk about the last two weeks.
Trip to Italy, cancelled.  No refunds. Thirty years of Can't Wait To Go Back,  paid for tickets just before Italy exploded into Coronacentrsl, agency cancelled twelve days ago.  No refunds.
Mood: dissociative disorders, they're not all bad.
  
Dog still alive. Baby grew up.
       
That whole pets looking like their owners? Yeah,  nah.

Dog is nineteen so every day her status check returns Not Dead Yet value is an all round hoo boy Nellie whoop whoop day of OHTHANKGOD and also, yay!

her name is truffles because of course it is

Discovered my vagrant cat was stolen by the lady across the road whose story does.  not.  add.  up, and now won't give him back.

Elvis nigella

Most people lose their cat and either find them or not.  I get the He's Not Lost And He Lives Less Than Fifty Feet Away cat story that ends up sounding like Liam Neeson 's already been cast in the starring role
 and now Nigella is missing too.

YFUN TIMES.