Update of last 6 months

Here's an excerpt of an email send to a mate in the States...

Things have moved on here at home. So here's the update.

Wife - 18 months into therapy and there are some significant changes taking place. It's been really really tough for her as she has worked through very strong and dark despair, fear and grief. It's been hard for her, and hard for me. But, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, and we feel that is what therapy is doing for both of us. What's so special is that the truth is applied or revealed with such grace. Grace. I feel like I am starting to understand through experience what grace is and does.

Me - apart from my own therapy which is really making a difference to me (see my blog), I have as of last week started a 3-6 month sabbatical. I will work at most 1 day a week - though in reality it will be less than that. The sales director is working out well, and I've promoted the guy into the operations director role. I've offered them share options provided they buy some of my wife's shares at market value. It's great being able to take some time out to recover!

Girls - 15 and 12. I still find it hard not to react in some of the ways my dad did, so some more gracious truth to seep into my being there. But they are doing well.

House - the project is almost coming to an end now (seven months!). I'm sat in our new garden room enjoying the log fire :) We still have to decorate and put floors down but the buildings works itself is complete bar some final finishing touches. It looks great! When the scaffolding is down I will send you some photos of before and after.

God - I paused as to what to write here. So much has changed in the last 8 months for me - much of which is on this blog. Needless to say I'm learning that I am not the saviour of the world (the fixer), the strong sense of calling I had was in reality my need for significance/approval, as well as a tonne of other stuff. A huge thing in parallel is grace. Moments of grace. Droplets of grace. Recognising them. Revelling in them. Basking in them. Grace. God's grace. All over, every where. And it's wonderful. I do love God so...

Church - Just before Christmas I decided that I'd had enough of the church we were attending, and for the girls too moved to the church we first started attending when we came to and the same church who had tried to support us when we were planting in . I'm impressed. They are around 350 strong on a Sunday morning with 3-4 church plants elsewhere. Mature leadership, preaching is good and varied, very family orientated. Now to get to know some people for real, so will be trying out a home group next week. My wife hasn't been to church for at least 18 months, but she came with me last Sunday night. Which was great. Her early experience of church was so negative for her (from 18 through our married years) that there's still some baggage to sort through. But God is good.

I sound so positive, and maybe that is a positive trait that can also be a negative one. My wife told me that me being constantly so positive was actually wearing and provided too high a standard for everyone else to live up to. So - I'm still struggling with many things. Just today I feel that I need a buzz/thrill - and it would be so easy to look up some porn later on to give me that. I'm a little bored - but then that's no surprise as I am not working - therefore not doing - therefore where does my sense of achievement come from? As my therapist says - we are human beings, not human doings.

I've still got stuff to work through. I still need more good friends. On the positive side, I have built a good friendship with a chap called here in my village. He is a non Christian - but God's on his case. As a couple we need friends - and we want to actively work on this without me taking over and dominating in some way due to my past templates. I want my wife to feel at home in the right church, I want our girls to really experience God for themselves - and make the right life decisions as a result. I want.. I want.. I want.. I want to be able to enjoy the moment that God has given me. I want to know true liberating freedom. In my every day life.