Kingdom Calling Blog…

My last blog, Living in Technicolor, was about me looking back over the last 3 years of my life and reflecting on how I’ve changed. I thought it would be a good idea to find out what those closest to me thought….

So, stand by your beds here is my first ever guest blog…by the Lovely Mr B…

Sleepless in St Pancras

So, it’s Thursday night just before midnight and like every Thursday for the past 3 years I’m sat in my car outside King’s Cross, St Pancras waiting for Mrs B to arrive from Bedford. Regular readers of this blog will know that Thursday night for her is TSM night and for me it’s when I turn into an unpaid Uber driver!

I won’t lie when you get back home just before 1am and have to get up for work at 6am it can be tough (esp. as for the last 3 months Mrs B gets a lie-in as she no longer works Fridays). When people find out about my regular late night taxi-ing I usually get the same question, what a star, why do you do that when you get nothing out of it?

Now, when Mrs B asked me to contribute a guest blog my brief was to answer the question how has she changed in the last 3 years? When I turned my mind to that poser I realised that it was inextricably entwined with the first question and the answer is we have both changed a lot in 3 years! Let me explain!

There can be no doubt that I originally agreed to my role in the TSM adventure out of love for my wife. When you love someone you do selfless things right? Well while that is true it can only take you so far. There comes a point for all of us I suspect (unless you are a saint) when kindness fatigue sets in and in my case it would have been easy to say to Mrs B I’ve done this for a whole year, isn’t that enough? So why didn’t I do that?

The answer is simple, the benefits to me and our family to her continuing to be involved in TSM are massive and if the price I have to pay is a late Thursday night and a tough Friday morning then I will not only willingly pay it but do so with a smile on my face.

So how has Mrs B changed since starting TSM? Well she’s always been kind, sensitive, loving, compassionate and selfless, that hasn’t changed, she’s just more so if that makes sense. As she has discovered more of God’s love for her and he has worn away the insecurity and lack of self-esteem these qualities have been magnified and brought into sharper focus. It’s like comparing the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6. Both are great but one is a much improved version. (Did I really just compare my wife to a phone? Gulp).

So that’s one thing I get out of TSM, I get to see my beautiful, amazing wife realise more of the potential God put in her and live out the life he wants her to live. What kind of husband wouldn’t want to participate in that?

To be honest that on its own would be enough but I personally have gained so much more, as even though I’ve never attended TSM, save once as a guest it has changed me by osmosis.

Every time Mrs B finally gets to Kings Cross we have about an hour in the car just to ourselves and invariably it consists of her recounting her evening and the wonderful revelations she has experienced of who God is, how much he loves us and what a great father he is. When you hear those kind of truths on a weekly if not daily basis (yes TSM is not just for Thursday’s folks!) you can’t help but absorb them and receive fresh revelation of God’s love for you as his son.

Now my earthly dad was a wonderful man, a wonderful father and when it comes to selflessness I am a pale imitation of him. He was the kindest man I’ve ever known, selfless to a fault and when he died last month it was like my world got darker. It was at this lowest of low points that all the truths I had been hearing from Mrs B about how much my heavenly father loved me kicked in. You see my dad was a man of faith and because of the love my heavenly father has for me I know my separation from my dad is temporary. The true enormity of John 3:16 hit me, probably for the first time if I’m honest. I realised that God so loved me and my dad that he gave his only son that we might both have eternal life. So the good news is that one glorious day we get to be reunited. Now that to me is selfless, when it comes to love that is the gold standard. My dad loved me with a fierceness that was tangible but over the last 3 years I’ve come to realise that God my heavenly father loves me even more and that growing realisation is what has helped me deal with the pain of grief.

So, the answer to question 1 is Mrs B has changed tremendously, into a bright shiny new version of herself and I love that. The answer to the second question is that I do get something out of all this, not only because of the change in Mrs B but also because it’s changing me. You see the real heroes in this adventure are Mrs B and most importantly God. Me? Why I’m just the driver.