Antidote to anxiety

Soberly speaking, I suppose that nine years ago I didn't expect to have seen yesterday - yet another birthday. When I was diagnosed with "a motor neurone disorder", I foresaw a life of a couple of years ahead of me. After all the average life expectancy from diagnosis with MND is 14 months. However, here I still am, fortunate in having the extremely rare and slow variant and grateful for every new day and every year to enjoy this remarkable world and the life God's given me. It's not always comfortable; it's not, I suppose, what I'd have chosen. I do feel bereaved; I miss my independence; I don't like continually calling on others for help. I often feel frustrated, and, yes, I fall into self-pity. And yet...

Dependence, I'm learning, is a good state. We weren't meant to be alone. We're meant to "bear one another's burdens" - which is an easy principle to subscribe to in good times, reduced to something like lending a sympathetic ear (on occasions, just what's needed of course). The rubber really hits the road, however, when you're confronted with acute need, such as a child born disabled, a parent having a stroke, a wife contracting Parkinsons or MD, or a husband diagnosed with MND or Alzheimers, a friend losing a loved one, or a neighbour losing their job, or an asylum seeker asking for help. And although Jesus said, "It's more blessed to give than to receive," there's a sense in which it's also blessed to give someone else the opportunity to give, to be the reason for another's being blessed - if you see what I mean! I truly believe that to say being dependent is undignified is nothing but a lie. It's the opposite. It's the essence of being human. Even the non-Christian poet, Epimenides (c 600BC), knew that, "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17.28).

That's why, in the end, when "all other helpers fail", St Peter urged his readers, "Cast all your cares upon him, for he cares about you" (1 Peter 5.7). It's a great immutable, incomprehensible truth that our Father God ("Papa" as my friend Nicky Temple calls him; "Abba" as Jesus calls him) cares not just about, but for us. And he loves giving us what we need.

Kevin Mayhew

I had a lot of kind messages and cards yesterday - and some nice presents too. One was an impromptu gift. Lynn, a friend from Cambridge days, popped in for tea after a break in the Cotswolds. On learning that it was my birthday she wracked her brain for the nicest thing she had in her car, and came up with a CD of quiet music by Margaret Rizza called Fountain of Life. At the moment my favourite track is based on her setting of words from Psalm 131. The only YouTube version I can find is a very short version: "O Lord, my heart is not proud". If you do that sort of thing (and if you like something more reflective than "There is a day"!), I suggest you download the full version from iTunes. These are the words:

© Ozpics 2011

O Lord, my heart is not proud,
nor haughty my eyes.
I have not gone after things too great,
nor marvels beyond me.
Truly I have set my soul
in silence and peace;
at rest, as a child in its mother's arms,
so is my soul.

I guess that's the place to end up with our self-pity, frustration, confusion and grief.