I feel there is wisdom in me, and greater power than I sometimes realise.
I am also aware than my dressing gown is slightly damp, but I can't see a reason for that.

Writing the Order of Service this evening, and composing the prayers that I will read during the service on Friday have no doubt helped to both focus and calm my mind. All around me are signs of the philosophical and reflective state in which I find myself, counterpoint to my wife's stress and anxieties.
I slept an hour ago, for twenty minutes, and then awoke suddenly, aware that my ten-yearold daughter wasn't in the house and that she hadn't returned from Brownies. Of course I was mistaken, and Tx wouldn't be sleeping beside me were that the case. Nevertheless, I felt an urge to get up from my bed quickly and look in to their bedroom, just to convince myself that she was in bed, safe and sleeping. My son was there too, with whom I spend so little time. He has developed a skin condition on his elbows this last couple of weeks, a kind of mild psoriasis, and complained tonight for the first time that it was itching him. I applied cream, and considered its cause, having seen similar in others induced or exaggerated by stress. He has said and expressed so little about his grandad since he did, and I fear I have given him very little opportunity to do so. Not just him in fact, but all of them.
Relationships and time with people, enjoying their company and the simple pleasure of association is one of the greatest joys of life, and one that we seldom indulge ourselves and each other in sufficiently. My thoughts turned to my own father, and his father before him, with whom I spend so little time during the last years of his life. true to the addage that we only come to regret things that we don't do, and that all the choices we make are determined by NOT doing whatever it may be, I will go to my grave wishing that I had gone to my grandad's 90th birthday.
It occurs to me that, once this period is over, when the dust has settled on the family and when the business is calm again I will take a week away from work. Two weeks, to include the half term in mid-February. This will give me time to go up to Northampton one day and visit my parents - to do nothing other than be in their company for a few hours. I can spend the afternoon then with Kink, and perhaps enjoy a meal with her and make the overdue introduction to her boyfriend. I still maintain that he is wrong for her, and her lack of fundamental knowledge about him is a concern. My only real sketch of him comes from her sister, and her image is no doubt clouded by some prejudice and frustration. I think also that it is not without some truth. He is 34, and while the twelve year age gap between them is not the problem, the fact that he has no house, no possessions, no family and no job at that age is more of a concern. He must have a history of some kind, and his habitual 'research' is unconvincing. In June, when he first moved into the converted garage they share - without water or windows - he was 'researching something' and anticipating a pay cheque at the end of the month that was going to be enough to put down as a deposit on a flat. The money was not forthcoming - or the work was not completed - and he is still 'researching' on a freelance basis, but has no computer of his own and no bank account. He does not write, or submit anything, which I'm afraid adds to my suspicions of him.
It is a similar source of frustration that all I know of Kink's adventures recently are what come to me third hand via Biscuit - she tells me nothing herself, even when I ask during our increasingly regular telephone calls.
So I feel absent from her, detached too much, and wonder now if I am experiencing that too with Stan.
We will do something about that this weekend, some talking and prayer time, sharing the grief they must be feeling and likely cannot express.
On the window sill here is a slate picture frame with a picture of me in it, black and white, holding a week-old Nora in my arms and gazing thoughtfully into the back of her head. I have called this picture simply 'Seven' - it will never cease to amaze me how I have come to be so blessed, and how recklessly I underestimate the value of my role as a father to so many. Irreverence is a strange bedfellow - a double edged sword. Useful in dealing with higher than average levels of stress, and bestowing upon me a degree of stoicism that occasionally impresses people, and yet at times detracting me I'm sure from situations that require more composure and maturity than I present.
This evening's tide of calmness has helped to formulate the required action at work in the wake of the business being torn asunder by my partner's impatience and complacent arrogance.
His insistence on taking contracts other than those that relate directly to his own operations is a sign I think now of a lack in confidence in his own ability and in the value of the ideas he has. They are very good ideas with significant potential, and the plan for their development is well-thought out and diligently made. The opportunities he has created for himself are enviable, and I am genuinely proud of his achievements over the last eighteen months. He really needs to believe in them and himself as much as I do, and perhaps needs more encouragement from me to help him to do so.
By looking over the business accounts and identifying projects that take x, y and z profits to transfer to his new company is detracting him form the imagination and independence required to make his own plans work. The company as it is now is acting as a crutch, a security blanket - but will ultimately tie him down and hinder his own development and that of the project.
He also has a habit of late of asking me difficult and sensitive questions at the wrong moments, like this afternoon as I was dressing to leave the office. I left annoyed with myself that I was unable to be as assertive as I need to be, and in front of JC too I feel rather disappointed in my lack-lustre reaction. But now, with this evening's reflection and prayer, I know my argument to be stronger and more sound with each revelation that comes to me.
Tomorrow morning I need to return to that conversation, to talk to him about these lessons, to pass on some of the wisdom and strength that I feel growing inside me. It needs to be fundamentally hard for him to leave so that he truly believes in why he is leaving and where he is going. I need to fight for what I want as well, in order to prove my conviction to it to myself and the others. 'Fight' is the wrong word, but I need to assert my position, which after careful thought I now believe in,understand and which is fully developed in my head.

Grant me the same peace of mind tomorrow Lord that I have felt in your presence this evening
Let the patience and understanding you have put in me take on light and that I may stand firm in your arms and in the wisdom of your name

Amen