This is, hopefully, just going to be a short post. I have post-Easter lunch dishes to do and should really get some proper rest and a cup of tea before long as well. I am, however, emotional, a little overwrought and just kind of desperate to keep connecting to something that has passed and so I can't be held fully responsible for the length this post reaches...

Easter has come and that means Lent is over. I can return to Fiction. I no longer have to deny myself the way I have for the last month and a bit. This is fantastic news in many ways, and yet, apart from reading a chapter of a story a friend is writing (and cruelly posted just after I had started my Lent - kidding!) I haven't really availed myself of the opportunity. I doubt this has anything to do with piety. It's mostly because the day has been busy enough with things of its own, and it's also because I'm in a really weird place emotionally

I'll tell you the story.

So, a little over six months ago I committed to joining the Aberdeen Passion 2014. I've mentioned this before. In that six-month period, as well as having ups and downs in 'the real world' with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl, the departure of a much-loved cat, and a fair degree of uncertainty over what I should be doing with my life, I bonded with my fellow cast members (some again, some for the first time), grew into a part I wasn't, in many ways suited for, and fell in love, once again, with acting out the events of that first Holy week.

And then came Lent. I started this blog and set aside something that meant a lot to me in order to take up things I knew needed to mean more. I learned a lot, I changed a little and all the while there was this new family of people who were (some of them at least) following that journey alongside me. They weren't the only ones, nor were they the most important family in my life by any means - but they were welcoming and accepting in a way those you weren't actually raised by, or with (or married to) aren't always and I saw them more and more often as the weeks went by.

And then there was last week. A sudden, final, furious burst of activity to get the Passion play finessed and ready for the stage: the final rehearsal in our old rehearsal space on Palm Sunday, the technical rehearsal in the venue on Thursday night, the full dress rehearsal on Friday afternoon and then, one after the other, with only one night's sleep in the middle, the three performances. What a ride! What a rush! What an incredible experience to share with these wonderful people I had come to love - without even really knowing many of them. And it was all to the glory of God... and yeah, we had a bit of the glory too. How could we not with people telling us after each performance how great they thought the whole thing was, how moved they were, how one actress had set them off crying, how another actor had really made them think about that character in a new way. It was a profoundly intense... and in a sense, profoundly intimate experience to share.

And then it was all over.

It had to end, of course. Today's Easter Sunday and we wouldn't want to perform it again on such an important day. We have our own families to spend time with and share the joy of Jesus' resurrection all over again. And we carry on in the blessed afterglow of all that we've experienced too - such an amazing high, such wonderful new insights into God's love for us, such potential in the friendships we have made!

But there's a hole there now. For a while life was sparkling and strange and just so unbelievably fresh, that to return to life afterwards, especially knowing that work - that world of dreary normality, where I don't really even know who I am anymore - is just around the corner.

I've had my ups and downs all day: celebrating Easter, and yet mourning the Aberdeen Passion - because that's what this is... it's grief. Grief at the loss of a one-off experience. Grief at the separation of relationships. Grief at the ending of a dream.

But this isn't the end. If there's one thing I've been reminded of time and time again this weekend it is that that Easter Sunday nearly two thousand years ago was not the end! It wasn't the end then and just because we've finished one way of telling about it, it's not the end now. The same saviour we crucified on stage, the one our characters hugged with joy at the end - He was actually present with us the whole time we were performing. We could tell. We could feel Him strengthening us. We were encouraged by Him when things got difficult. It was He who brought us all together and it is in His nail-scarred hands that all those relationships and experiences rest.

This isn't just the day when we celebrate Jesus' resurrection. This is our resurrection day too. If we believe in Him then we died with Him and were raised with Him. My life is constantly being renewed in Jesus Christ!

So, I may be struggling a bit just now, but I know that my life was not that one play, and nor was my experience of its glorious subject, my Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, the man who was God, who bore the sins of the world, who is the one and only way to the Father and the gateway to eternal life - He is with me now and He knows the plans he has for me, for all of us. I can't wait to see where He takes me next.

God bless you all and may you all have a Happy Easter!

The last few days have been very tough, for all the reasons listed in my previous blog and more. I have felt cold and empty when I should have felt joy, and lonely, even when there have been many people around me (and people who love me very much right beside me).

Last night, in the midst of all this I felt the desire to write a Psalm. I have never tried before, nor have I really wanted to, but I started it right then and worked on it again this morning. It is probably still a work in progress, but I wanted to share it, for, in writing when feeling low and in focussing on God as I did so - in crying out to Him and praising Him - I find my heart very much lightened. I hope it might be a blessing to others also.

One final thing. Psalms have a tendency to be melodramatic and, it has to be said, so do I. That tendency has got a lot worse this week - leaving me feeling guilty every time I express myself - but here, in the context of a Psalm, it seems only a magnification, not a distortion. I hope you read it as such.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul?

My enemies outnumber my friends.
They are locusts stripping my fields,
They are an army of ghosts sent to haunt me.
Their helmets shine like gold,
Their raiment like the sun at noon,
But they hide faces pocked with decay,
Their flesh is the flesh of the grave:
To rally to their call is to die.

Why have you let them come to me, oh Lord?
Why, when victory seemed so close at hand,
When I basked in the glow of your triumph,
Was it snatched away, so cruelly?

For I have seen your Holy city, Lord,
I have tasted the wine of Zion,
And drank with the family you had given me.
The air was cool and sweet,
Like honey on my lips,
Like nectar on the tongue.
Your people welcomed me
With olive branches and laurels,
With fruit and fragrant wine.
We sang and danced and rejoiced together.
My cup was overflowing with joy.

But it did not last, Lord.
Like a dream, it vanished in the morning,
Like a fox, it ran with the dawn
And I was left alone.

Alone, I face this army in the desert.

Was it merely a mirage?
Did my mind deceive me?
Or are these ghosts the deception,
Sent to waylay me on my pilgrimage?

For I am not alone.
Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul,
When the one who holds the banquet
Walks beside me?

The Lord will be my shield.
He will be my armour and my sword.
His word will be the light to guide me,
The path which I must follow.

We march for home,
For the city on the hill,
Where the banquet yet awaits
And the doors are thrown wide
For the return of her Princes.

I will sing to the Lord,
And put aside the vanity that haunts me.
For the triumph was yours, oh my God,
The tears,
The sweat,
The blood,
But I rejoiced in the gift
And not in the giver.

[Selah]

It was not a dream,
For I have not yet awoken.
The city was not a mirage,
For the desert is the lie.

You have prepared a place for me,
Oh Lord, my God,
And though phantoms assail me,
Though I am faithless and weak,
You will not give it to another.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul?
For the Lord is my rock and my salvation
And I will sing,
Though worlds collapse around me
And tears wear gullies in my cheeks.

I will sing.