Friday, Lord. I don’t want to sound hard to please or anything, after being desperate for the school holidays to be over, but I find myself strangely looking forward to the weekend so that Andrew will be around to help shoulder some of the load of keeping Cameron entertained. Hopefully it will also give Andrew the chance to look at my car that has started making some strange sounds. I’m quite sure Caroline’s BMW has never given her a moment’s trouble while mine has a secret crush (I am sure) on our mechanic and spends much of its fallow time coming up with new excuses for another visit. I simply can’t understand how you can drive a car one day, then go to start it the next only to find a whole new set of symptoms have appeared.
As you know (!) Andrew worked late again last night so I found myself having to entertain Cameron who seemed to be in the mood for chatting – including right through my favourite television programme time. Having that chance to talk has cast new light on my suspicions that all is not well I must say. He talked a bit about his last relationship and subsequent break up and how it made him realise that he had papered over some of the things that had happened to him during his younger years, and how those things were affecting his adult behaviours. I only know in part about some of the things that Cameron endured at the hands of his abusive father, who ruled the roost with a rod of iron and dispensed justice with both fists.
Cameron said he had realised that in moving to Australia he was trying to fool himself that he had put the past behind him when in fact he had taken the past with him in some sort of invisible suitcase. For a while, with a new and glossy life, he thought that he had found some semblance of peace and had prided himself of being able to get away and show people what he was made of. Instead, he was beginning to realise that this was the coward’s way out and that the only person he had really deceived was himself. It reminded me of the novel “Great Expectations” and a quote I read in that years ago.
I tried, subtly, to ask Cameron what had happened to his faith. He and Andrew became Christians at about the same age but it seems clear that you have not really featured in his life for years. One step at a time, Cameron told me. Maybe he thinks he’s had his chance with you, Lord, and that chance is over. Maybe his mind and heart are so chaotic he has no resources left with which to pray. I don’t know. So maybe I will pray for him instead, Lord, in case he is not able. I suspect (rather nervously) that he has a big mountain to climb, Lord, so I pray you would help him take the next steps, and that we would know how to support him.
Anyway, better go. I commit this to you in the name of Jesus…Amen.