City Wasteland

Local Cafe

“Do try to do some exercise”, said the diminutive & glamorous GP in front of me, “it’ll help”, yes, I said, and later invested a fiver in a skipping rope – figuring the one off lump sum would allow me to skip as much as I wanted (barring co-ordination & rhythm).

That was a good six months ago now, and I’m still ploughing through the same leaden fatigue. Grudgingly reflecting that it might be the impact of life events plus my work environment.

I feel submerged as I try to challenge work place bullying, – reluctantly trying to be grateful that I have a job in these stricken times and then the grind of not really having enough cash to buy tasty food, whilst the people I care about suffer extremes of anxiety & depression.

Sometimes it feels as though there’s not much out there for people like me, tired, broke, trying harder & harder to keep everything together. Who’s interested in you when your just trying to do your best?, Still, there is CoDA,

CoDA’s helped loads, it’s insistence on practicing ‘self care’ born out of witnessing lives wrecked by dysfunctional systems. Slowly CoDA’s upended many of my sacred rituals, I don’t feel so pressurised to keep trying.

If CoDA hadn’t lead me into a sense of happiness, I’d have thought it must be a cult group, so much of my thinking has inverted.

And with a fresh vantage point of recognising my need for God’s tender nurturing of me, and real enough contact to lead me, I found myself reflecting on the coming period of lent.

As Matthew recounts, Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert, as hunger hit him the Devil chirped in about transforming stones into bread, in His repost Jesus says “we cannot live on bread alone, but need every word that God speaks” (Matt. 4:4)

Though my own walk through fatigue, I know just how much I need the inspiration from God, – food, however tasty, cannot hold me together and set my feet moving forward. How come I used to read this passage as an injunction against an over attachment to food? Or missed the depth of compassion Jesus show’s in knowing our need for an articulate connection with God.