Today is a bonus day. I think I may set it aside for myself; have fun and rest. I have been enjoying the sunshine through the window of trof cafe, chatting with friends. Listening to birds as I walked in the park. Soon I’ll enjoy the sunshine with my frisbee and maybe a new pair of roller blades. One friend is giving me a pair for free and another used to be a roller blade tutor and says that he will get me jumping in them within an hour. I have been drinking less recently but realising that I do indeed like the taste of beer so have had the occasional sip of friends’ pints to savour the flavour. I still have fun out in the bars and clubs eventhough my sobriety sticks out in the foggy blur of drunkenness. I like to play around town. God wants us to enjoy ourselves, He loves to see us smiling and joins in our fun. To play is to celebrate that which is around us, it is to worship. To play is to laugh in the face of depression and frustrations, hurt and confusion; to oppose the dark symptoms of a broken world. To play is to express the joy that is present and is possible wherever you may be; it is prophetic.
The closest I usually get to a snowball is the roll-over big money question at the end of each weekly bar quiz in Chorlton, this week it has been a bit more literal. The snow normally ignores Manchester with preference for the hills and places like Sheffield, but as we were bumming around in the middle of the night yesterday we found ourselves surrounded by the white stuff. I love the sound of walking on freshly laid snow, that squeaky crunch it makes and clear footprints. We provocatively threw snowballs at the windows done the road until we got people out to play, completely oblivious it seems to the fact it had gone one in the morning. When we came in a while later I found myself yet again amazed by how God answers my prayers. With the spiritual and physical so respondent of eachother, and me asking for the tingling sensation of renewed feeling, I laughed with God and Andy as tingles crept up our hands and the numbness left.
As i pulled the duvet over myself last night I was sure that my body hated me. My body seemed to have got to breaking point on how much it would let me put it through: the crap diet, lack of sleep and frisbee. As the clear night sky got deeper and the air heavy with cold we went out to play frisbee under floodlights. As we started the ground was fine to run and turn on, however, by the time we got into a game the grass and mud had been penetrated by the cold and became hard. Inevitably I crunched and grazed myself several times. I ofund myself feeling sick, sore and generally most of my body was in pain. To rub salt in it, as I laid in bed failing to sleep I remembered the adage that pain makes you feel alive, that earlier that day i had been asking God to take away numbness so that i could feel alive. I remember going outside as i couldn’t sleep and loving the crispness of the night air, the clarity of the stars and the smell of a near by woodfire. God was there and it has been a while since I had last been aware of that.