70 Not Out!

My sincere thanks to all who sent greetings, cards and messages yesterday on my 70th birthday. I am so grateful for the blessing of your friendship and the privilege of knowing you all. But I am also thinking deeply about the amazing fact that I am still alive to see this date! I very nearly died when I was 45 during my first brush with acute hemorrhaging pancreatitis and then on other occasions too over the 22 years that followed. On more than 100 times I was admitted to hospitals in Cardiff, Guernsey, Southampton, London and Newcastle, during two decades of battling one of the most painful conditions known to humanity. By all rights I should not still be here, but there must be something for me to do!

One of the effects of a long fight with pain and frequent hospitalisations is a sense of gratitude for any relief. I am so grateful for the cutting-edge transplant surgery that transformed my life 5 years ago, and am happily living without a pancreas, spleen, gall-bladder or bile ducts. But I am free from that dreadful, gut-wrenching, tearing, red-hot agony of pancreatic pain, thank God.

In my book Through the Storms: a manual for when life hurts I deal with some of the other issues that arise in long-term pain or distress of any kind. Fear, loneliness, post-trauma disorders, all complicate the already fraught matter of physical recovery. Added to that, for those of us who know that God is our loving heavenly Father, who only has good plans for us, are the questions that the writer of the Psalm might have had in mind when he coined the phrase 'deep calls unto deep'. 'How long, O Lord?' and yes - 'why me?' 

I don't have the answers, but I do know someone who does. Hope is spelt J-e-s-u-s and he has been faithful to me throughout this long ordeal. Today I am privileged to continue sharing life with my lovely wife, Diane, and with Matthew and his wife Chula and our precious grand-daughters. Life is good, but I don't take it for granted. The very air I breathe is a loan, and I know that it will be called in one day. Till then, I am going to share the good news of hope and life in Jesus as widely as I can. For me, that's what 'many happy returns' really means!

Happy Birthday to a Great Lady!

What a day and a weekend it has been!  Diane has celebrated her 60th birthday in style.  Last Saturday evening she thought she was going to a quiet family meal out with Matthew, our son, and Sarah his fiancée.  As they welcomed us into the hotel they led Diane through a curtain to where they said their 'table' was.  Behind that curtain 35 relatives and friends lay in wait to greet her with cries of 'happy birthday' and 'surprise!!'  It certainly was a surprise.  Diane and I have never had a secret (except one other - remind me to tell you about it some time) so she turned to me with an exclamation that could have been mouthed by Hattie Jacques in the sixties sitcom 'Eric Sykes' - 'Oh Eric!'  I wondered if I would be spending the night in the shed.  It was very cold that night so I hoped not, and as it turned out all was well!  She was delighted and blessed by so many people who are dear to us both and we spent a wonderful evening just being grateful that we are both still alive!

Today (the 17th Jan) is her actual birthday and so the house is full of flowers, cards, balloons and gifts.  Some very dear friends, knowing her love of all things homely and made of china, gave her this tea set in which each piece is labelled 'joy' 'hope' or 'peace'.  Others have clubbed together to give her a travel voucher, so I don't know where she will end up!  All in all a tremendous experience and a great start to a new decade.

Our forties were really hard, marred by my serious ill health.  Our fifties were just as tough as we laboured together through over 60 hospital admissions and countless operations.  Boy are we looking forward to our sixties!  (You realise, of course, that I married an older woman - but not by much!).

Happy Birthday wonderful lady!