OVERWHELMED AND INADEQUATE

The window is open. I can hear the trees rustling in the park as the summer breeze tickles through them in the gathering darkness. There are trains far away, on their way to Oxford or back to Reading I suppose. I imagine their brightly lit windows flickering by as they rattle happily over the sleepers. A distant dog barks through the stillness and then suddenly everything is quiet, even still.

I'm hot. Buried under the weight of the duvet, I lie pinned to my scratchy sheet. The clock ticks and my eyes grow heavy while I contemplate it all. But it is hard to contemplate.

Up in the church office earlier, Mabel asked me how I would describe the last week or so. My eyes flicked up to the fluorescent strip lamp and then round the room for inspiration.

"Overwhelming," I said after a few moments, "It's the only word I've got."

"It's a good one," said she in her Northern Irish way. I nodded. I've never heard of, seen, or felt anything like this - over five hundred people responding to the gospel in just a few days, in Britain, in our town, in our church! Not to mention the incredible times we've been having in these evenings. It almost seems an injustice to try to write about it.

"I think I feel quite inadequate," I said to Mabel. "I don't think I have the tools or experience to deal with the shift that's taken place." I certainly don't; I'm still processing. I don't have the songs, the music, the words or the strength to capture it - everything I've ever leaned on for strength was based on something from a different season, and nothing will do now - nothing; this is all new. It is all overwhelming, and we're all just figuring it out.

I think it might be raining out there. It sounds like leaves but something is gurgling  - a gutter or a drain singing happily in the light scattering of rain. That's how it happens sometimes - it just starts raining and the thirsty earth sings to the sky. I wish I were out there, spinning through the long, wet grass, throwing my hands up as my face glistens in the lamplight. When it rains I get the feeling that everything is changing, everything gets wet and nothing is quite the same again. It's true for all of us, and right now, overwhelmed and inadequate, I need that to be true for me too.