This week has felt a bit of a trudge.  Maybe it's something about the halfway point on this stage of the 'long distance walk'.  Maybe it's the effect of events that I am choosing not to post (if you can't say something good, say nothing).  Maybe it's just an inevitable part of adjustment to what is happening.  Maybe it's the fact that it has rained a lot and the days have been grey.  Maybe it's a bit of all of them.  Anyway, a fair few posts have been drafted and deleted along the way trying to work it out.  I said way back when this began, that I needed to be able to be honest, not twee or pious, but I also have responsibilities to guilty and innocent alike, so some things remain unsaid.

It's been a trudge, but it's had it's lighter moments, like wayside flowers surprising the walker with tiny glimpses of unabashed beauty.  I love daisies (I used to hate mowing them in my lawn) and have inherited my Dad's fondness for dandelions; I marvel at tiny blue forget-me-nots, enjoy the brightness of buttercups and celandines whilst pig/cow parsley is a reminder of childhood.  A card that arrived on a particularly trudgey day; an email with an emoticon hug that was a cross between Mr Happy and Mr Tickle; an incredibly creative planning meeting for an Advent service; coffee with some from the Union... and other little things, each lightening the dullness of a trudge through rain.

Not been a great week emotionally, but God's grace is seen in the little things... a smile, a word, a photo.

Someone at church put up a poem about the wonder of flowers (as distinct from blossom) which have now obvious functional reason to exist, yet God created them (or allowed them to evolve or whatever).  This week, when the lovely real flowers have been consigned to my kitchen because they make my eyes itch and nose run, I've been very grateful for the metaphorical ones.  Thank God for wayside flowers.