Having the first Covid jab

I’m not an anti-vaxxer and don’t go for conspiracy theories.  Some will choose to read no further.  This is my account of having the first Covid jab (AstraZeneca).

I only registered for the jab about three days before I had it.  Once I’d registered, I looked at the available appointments a short train ride from my workplace, and on the say-so of my manager, took worktime to go and get it done.  Took less than an hour all up.

The administrative process was slick and thorough and the nurse that gave me my shot was a laugh a minute.  She called me a sook.  “I know you big guys dressed in blue.  Look tough but you’re all big sooks!”  We both laughed.  I split my sides at her audacity.  She certainly knew how to get me relaxed for the shot.  “You’ll go off crying as soon as it’s done,” she said, and I responded with, “Yes, but I’ll wait until I’m well out of sight of you!”  All good-natured Aussie banter.  Funniest thing is she had to go to another couple of booths to get me my shot because she had run out.

I had the inoculation, and disappointingly there were no tears, just a 15-minute wait to make sure I wasn’t going to keel over.  Got chatting with someone in Health.  She dismissed some of the mysteries, shared a laugh and a personal detail or two with me in the ten minutes I waited.

I did start to wonder if there would be effects, given a couple of people in my team had had some minor side effects in the days previous.  I was already feeling tired before I’d had the shot, so I couldn’t blame anything like that on the jab for the rest of the day.

But I did toss and turn that night as I tried to sleep.  I found I couldn’t sleep in my left side as my upper arm and shoulder were a bit tender.  I woke early and found symptoms I’d not experienced in over a year — slight flu symptoms, the slightest achy body, lethargy, what felt like a mild fever but wasn’t (my temp was normal), and some very minor dizziness and disorientation.

I decided not to make the long 40-kilometre drive to the office and to opt to work from home.  I attempted to sleep some more and to take it easy.  I felt a little fluey until about early afternoon but was able to coach my team of seven and eight-year-old master blasters (cricket) that evening and was easily able to front up for a Zoom counselling session I provide every Friday night.  And I still also managed about six hours of work from home beforehand.

That’s it.  No other effects other than that.  I took some paracetamol and ibuprofen during the first 24-hours or so, but not since.  And it’s been another busy weekend and I still feel fine.

I expect you and the next person reading this may have either similar or different experiences receiving the vaccination.  We’re all pretty much the same but different.  You will have different experiences — some no reaction whatsoever, some worse than I.

I will aim to have the second jab in 10-12 weeks.

Photo by Steven Cornfield on Unsplash

For those who don’t dare to dream

Yesterday was the most amazingly negative day.  I hadn’t even noticed my sedate gait when a co-worker bounced up beside me in the photocopier room and said, “So, how you doing, Steve?”  Her joy just couldn’t be contained.  She said more than once, “Don’t let your light dim, Steve.”  I enjoyed the little pep-talk.  “Thanks, Hayley!”

Later in the day I was smashed with disappointment and a what’s-the-use kind of mood.  The first 24-48 hours after bad news I’m generally pretty fragile.  It’d been one of those days.

Then, as sure as if I’d heard it audibly, I got this: “Life is where dreams go to die!”

Wow, even as I slunk into my melancholic nothingness of blahdom, I was astonished as to the negativity of the revelation.  It made a lot of sense for me to promise once again, “I’m giving up on this stupid dream,” but my giving up never sticks, because I just cannot sulk for extended periods, and it’s a dream that refuses to die.

Then, today.  I understood the revelation:

Life.  Is where.  Dreams.  Go.  To die.

Life = truth life, the abundant life, the only life a truly spiritual person would want.  It’s the opposite of a living death of nothingness, of denial, of oblivion, and of the facing of lies and dissociation to the truth.

Dreams = too often they become idols and an end in themselves, and our chasing them ends in a nightmare of obsession; we face shattering disappointment, frustration and anger when they don’t materialise.  Dreams aren’t meant to torment us.  They’re supposed to be a good thing, a miracle come true, the stuff life’s made of.

Death = the Christian way of looking at death is paradoxical.  In Christ, there is no life without death occurring first.  Jesus’ death on the cross precedes his resurrection.  Frustration, disappointment and despair must die before the hope of a dream can come alive.  Death must come before eternal life — we must die before we can go to heaven.

Suddenly it occurred to me only one day after a vision that felt like, “give up.”

It wasn’t a “give up” vision at all, though I was convinced it was yesterday.

I had to step into a new day to realise something important.  Death must occur before new life can come.  The dream must die as an acorn on the forest floor before it can literally spawn much seed to produce many mighty oaks.  The dream as it is must die before it tears us away from life.

Don’t be afraid if your dreams appear dead.  They must die before they can truly come alive.

And when our dreams have died, we’re suddenly ever more realistic and ready for them to come into being.  A true dream cannot be crushed.

Image: Kylie Parker, by kind permission.

18 reasons to be thankful no matter where life’s at for you

Blessed is a grateful heart, and wiser people than I commend everyone to be thankful at all times.  Sure, it’s hard at times, but whatever we entertain as a possibility becomes possible.  Thankfulness expands our perspective.

Here are some simple things we can all be thankful for — no matter our circumstances:

1.             As living beings, we’ve been granted entry into life, and no matter how well (or not) our bodies and minds work, science proves we’re all living examples of the cosmic demonstration of the miraculous.

2.             Even in despair there is cause for hope, because circumstances bear the continual possibility of change.  When we’re full of hope, the abundant life is manifest in full bloom.

3.             We’ve been given people to love, and in loving others we receive a portion of love that rebounds back through the design of life.  Evidence of this is the joy we feel when we’ve blessed someone.

4.             Achievements beckon through the capacity for work, for diligence through acts of integrity brings a wealth of spiritual blessing.

5.             Whether by eye or ear or touch or taste or smell — or all or a combination of these senses in symphony — we experience the known created world.  It, like us, is an ever-changing celestial miracle.

6.             Memories furnish our past, and though dark memories taint vision for the present, healing stands again as a possibility.  One of the gorgeous things about positive memories — (and all of us have at least some positive memories) — is they enrich our lives more the older we get.

7.             The world and every part of existence is so large yet so intricate that there’s enough experience to fill a million lifetimes and more.  Boredom ought never be a problem.  Natural stimuli everywhere.

8.             The hope that persists in recovery — whether it’s ours or others — prevails over the lie that people are static.  Any of us can change, because our hearts are malleable.  A surrendered heart will always grow.

9.             Humanity has the capacity to learn.  Have you thought about the majesty of that paradigm?  Thought is progression, and growth, if we want it badly enough, is inevitable.

10.          The simplicity in this hope: the sun rises on a new day.  Everything starts afresh.

11.          For any and all of the needs that are being met.  For any and all of the needs that have been met over the history of each of the days of our lives.  For any and all of the needs that will be met in future.

12.          That beyond having some or most of our needs met, the hope present that unmet needs may be met today or tomorrow.

13.          To complete the thoughts of points eleven and twelve, that it is possible to be content and even thrive when some or even a lot of our needs are not being met.  Resilience in a word.

14.          For all the kind, patient, gentle, compassionate, gracious people in the world and in your world.  Sure, there are many who exemplify opposite qualities, but our attention is best directed to those who deserve our recognition.

15.          Acts of random kindness can be given and received in any moment in time.  It could happen to you in five minutes’ time.  Or you could do the deed.

16.          That despite the very little a person may be afforded in a Third World country, there is still the capacity for love, for teaching an ignorant world beyond it, and for impetus for change, the hope that poverty would one day be annihilated.

17.          You and I are more beloved than we can possibly know.

18.          Though many may think this is a bittersweet blessing/curse scenario, we truly are very blessed to have the capacity to feel.  Yes, even pain.

I hope you resonated with a few of the items on this list.

Photo by Mike Palmowski on Unsplash

Reconciling the irreducible pain of child loss

Since my first experience of world-shattering loss nearly 18 years ago, I’ve been a student of grief, of traumas associated, of the mental illness that visits and often stays for a prolonged period.  I found my way through via the grace of God, but there are still so many factors in loss that are irreducible.  Many things about loss just never change.  The concept is so intransigent that the grief out of loss is meant to undo us; it seems so cruel.

Add to that the concept of child loss.

It’s not the normal flow of things that children die before parents, just as the death of dreams brings a gaping hole into the presence of a living person.  I know so many people with children who have severe or profound disabilities, who are reminded weekly if not daily what they and their children have missed out on.  Then there are those people who suffer the loss of children they never can have.  Finally, and most tragically, there are the parents who lost children they knew, who they loved, and could never love more.  But equally there are those who lost partners who watch on as their children seem eternally lost in their grief.  And then there are the prodigals for whom parents wait, tragically cut off from their lives.  Still there are more.

There doesn’t seem to be any space for parents such as these, who continue to go on being faced with those peers of their children whose age will ultimately weary them, years and decades from now.  And the hard thing about this, is it’s often easier for others who haven’t suffered loss to not go there; to not validate the existence of a pain that continues to ebb and flow through the grieving parent’s lifespan.

Other times it’s those of us who have lost a child who would prefer no more interrogations. “Okay, you don’t get it.  Leave me alone now.”

Guilt always plays a role in loss, even when there’s nothing to be guilty for, because there are always things we could all have done better; none are perfect, yet it wrecks us to think we weren’t.  Guilt is a cruel taskmaster.  But its redeeming feature is it can be the vehicle into lament, for tears are healing even if for the temporary.  Let guilt carry us to sorrow, a much cleaner emotion.

I often think of loss as a parent as that feature of living where existence is courage.

There are so many forms of life that are lived for extended seasons — two years, three, five years, 15 and 20 — and even entire lifetimes, where merely existing is courage.

Those who’ve been horribly abused, those who are persecuted, and those who have suffered losses for which there is no return.

It is barely any compensation, but the validation for being courageous is sometimes enough to be of some encouragement, to keep stepping, to keep going about our daily activities for the loved ones and friends who remain.  And what a miracle if there’s a reason for joy.

Somehow, out of loss that breaks us, we find a softening occur in our hearts, where empathy swells and expands.  Such a softening makes us much more sensitive to the wiles of a rough-and-tumble life.  But we have a fresh purpose in being shown what we can never now deny.  There are people who will need us; people who are destined to walk a similar if not the same path.

As we have needed guides, they too will need guides.

Reconciling the irreducible pain of child loss is never a list of ‘do these 10 things and you’ll heal.’  It’s a search.  Loss teaches us to search into faith that we may find something to reduce the pain, or to make out of the pain some worthwhile purpose or meaning.

It’s surprising how much pain we can bear when we know there is a purpose for it.

Suffice to say, the pain of child loss reaches the realms of the inexplicable, and I’m comforted that as a pastor, the Bible speaks of such pain the same confounding way.  So many times, pain calls us to silent and reverent responses, because there are no words.

Yes, silence with presence; a grieving parent knows all too well.