I knew what to do. You had told me everything that I needed to know. You said that you believed in me. You said to trust you.

I stepped. Within moments I'm gasping. My head is under. I'm disorientated. Confused. Afraid. Panic. The water is everywhere. I'm going to sink. I don't know how deep this goes, but I'm struggling to keep above it all. Arms and legs desperately reaching and kicking. My mind is blank. I can't remember a thing you told me. Doubt. Despair. What was I thinking stepping from there? I'm shouting out, but in all the wrong directions. Helplessness. Fear. Where are you? Why can't I remember?

After panic is defeat. Overwhelmed and exhausted. There's no more effort. Sinking. I'm not awake anymore. Losing what it means to feel alive.

There are no cries left. Just heaviness. Could you even reach this deep? Hidden. Unseen? Would I be worth retrieving? I got it all so wrong.

He reached down from on high and took hold of me
He drew me out of deep waters
He brought me out into a spacious place
He rescued me because he delighted in me
He shows unfailing kindness.
Psalm 18.

"Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim, swim. Oh ho ho, how I love to swim"...

Insipring words from Dory the Fish.

Hope based on anything else would be in pieces by now.

'Constant, enduring, steadfast, equable, consistent, unfailing, fixed, imperishable, enduring, invariable, lasting, permanent, perpetual, unchanging, rigid, same, permanentstabile, static, unchanged, unfading, unfluctuating, continuing, uniform, unvarying, even, continuing, durable, everlasting, fast, indestructible, lasting, abiding, persistent, persisting, steady, changeless, immutable, eternal'...

"I can do everything. That's because I'm three.
(But I can't reach the flowers on the window sill)."

One of my favourite small people said that.

Brilliantly uncomplicated and honest. I like her attitude!
There's no stopping some people. (Except for the occasional window sill).

I think laughter is one of my favourite things in the world. It feels so healthy.

Apparently there is such a thing as 'laughter therapy'. According to teehee.com (seriously) there are three reasons to laugh...

1. It strengthens your immune system.
2. It makes your cheeks sore.
3. It increases your intellectual performance and boosts information retention.

I think that number two is a little dubious, but I was already convinced anyway.

Bring on the sore cheeks, I say!

Depending entirely on what they're reflecting, even puddles can be beautiful.

If the sun is out, there are some amazing things inside puddles and bouncing off them.

A lot of potential in a pool of muddy rain water on the pavement.

I like that thought.

I know he's just a log, but I liked him. We became friends over Christmas. I brought him into the house one day because I felt sad about the snow on his nose. He made muddy footprints on the carpet.

'We need to maintain our internal stability in the face of ever changing external influences'.

I found that in my physiology notes yetserday.

Anchor: A rigid point of support. A source of security or stability.

Sometimes the world seems too beautiful to ever begin to express. Moments of seeing something far beyond what could be captured in a photograph, a painting or words. It's about being there, being in it. And it's the contrast of those precious moments to everything else that surrounds it. The absolute peace of it. I had one of those moments last week.

The sky was an enormous blanket covering me, and the most beautiful thing I could imagine. The colours looked brand new. And the clouds seemeed to have been placed delicately and perfectly in incredible lines and shapes and patterns that went beyond where my eyes could reach and seemed to hint at something bigger and wider, more all-encompassing and timeless.

And then, in a moment that made me draw in a breath, birds appeared from somewhere, I couldn't even guess how many, and they were forming v-shapes, moving together as entire shapes, changing and dancing until the perfect formations were made.

This needed to be taken in, not glanced at. I longed to take it in, and then to be able to express it. There was frustration at knowing that if I had time and stillness and the openness to let it fully be absorbed then I would be overwhelmed by it's awsomeness. By His awsomeness.

But there is peace and delight at being able to glimpse just a piece of it. At being taken in and held for a moment by the beauty. At hearing a voice in it all, a reminder of what is always there and is forgotten and ignored.

The moment isn't meant to be the end. It's not meant to be stayed in. It's to be taken into the everyday and the ordinary. To be internalised. To allow myself to be changed by it and then to move on. To come back down, but to remember how things looked from the peak. I longed to remember. To stay with that perspective.

To begin with.

I'd like to be one of those people who can remember quotes. I've been struggling to remember one recently. I wouldn't even attempt a paraphrase of it. I think it was from a novel. It was a piece of advice given to somebody, the gist of which was to stop holding back from doing whatever it is that makes you feel alive. One of those things for me is writing. That's where this page came from. I was going to try to justify writing in this space, but I have decided that no further explaination is needed!

I hope that quote pops up again somewhere. I'll write it down this time.