What is one word that describes you?

`God’s’

That is the one word that describes me.

After many prodigal years I found that out by accident.

Killing time, staying uncomfortably, in someone else’s house

I read the Footprints in the Sand poem

which was in a clip frame in their bathroom.

I could hardly avoid it as I brushed my teeth.

I shuffled back unnoticed to the guest bedroom

in time to release a slow simpering sob in silence

at the words ascribed to Jesus in the poem:

“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,
is when I carried you.’

Today is the feast day of Saint Joseph

St Joseph the Carpenter accepted God’s will regardless of what their engagement seemed like to the gossips. Mary, his fiance, was pregnant and it all looked irregular. He loved, married and supported Mary and brought up her baby, Jesus. St Joseph is invoked for a happy death, patron of unborn children and people who work with their hands. He is loved by adopted families as he was an adoptive father. He knew hardship and about fleeing in the night to safeguard his family.

I was baptised on St Joseph’s day. My Godfather was Scotland’s Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray. My father’s first name was Joseph (though he used his middle name). My Godmother was Josephine!

These are the so-called `coincidences’ that matter so much to me now. Not the things I used to chase. Before sobbing at the Footprints poem and the other gifts of desperation I received then. Accepting being a child of God, being God’s, has put the lights on.

My husband is a Joiner Carpenter. He built a two storey extension to a relative’s house largely by himself. I would visit with sandwiches and enjoy the dry summer days when they came. It was really beautiful seeing a building come together. The concrete pour, the first fix, the windows, the roof.

St Joseph the patron saint of artisans would probably weep now. The lack of work opportunities and the obsession to computerise everything. From remote controlled lawnmowers to robot nurses planned for the future. Mind you there was a younger generation of nurses after me in the United Kingdom that earned the name `too posh to wash!’ Their emphasis was on the academic side of nursing, which was admiral. However, they often shunned hands-on interventions that yielded therapeutic conversations with patients and therefore the most comprehensive assessments.

`God’s’ is the one word that describes me. It is my core and my reason for being. It’s the strength that underpins all the other aspects of me that has to cope with a world that can be perplexing.