うるさい

 うるさい　(Urusai) = roughly translates to: "noisey" but more like "troublesome" or "annoying".

A short while ago I had an interesting dream featuring Ruth. She was actually nothing like the real Ruth that I know and love but regardless, in the dream, this person was "Ruth". And in the dream she kept on being uncharacteristically noisey. She was disturbing all kinds of people. I had to drag her away so she wouldn't annoy everyone.

When I woke, the dream was unusually clear in my mind. And I suspect there's a meaning here. 

I can't be sure, (after all it was only a dream, right?) but at some level I've reached a point where grieving over Ruth is in some ways うるさい. I just need to grab this grief, drag it off and keep it from annoying too many people (myself included). It might be time I took control, put my foot down and stopped this grief from being a pest.

Stepped Across a Line

 Sunday Sept 21, 2025 over a year and a half after Ruth died, in NEB church I finally took a significant step. Prior to this, every single time I sang: "All my life You have been faithful" or the equivalent, I would add in my head: "Except when You let Ruth die." It seemed to me that God was incredibly faithful. He was the gold-standard of faithfulness. By His standard of perfect faithfulness everything else could be measured as faithful or not. The death of Ruth was the one blip, the one exception to that rule. 

On Sunday, finally, I sang for the first time celebrating, proclaiming God's faithfulness without exception. Sure my mind went back to that event. I remembered that Sunday morning (Jan 14, 2024) in our bedroom where I was and she was when she died. Somehow though, this (first!) time I sang and meant that God was faithful even at that moment. 

I don't understand. I certainly haven't got it all figured out. I can't explain it. Having said all that, I've still taken a watershed step in the right direction. The details can come later. The intellectual specifics can wait. For now I have managed to trust God, ....even in this,....which has been the hardest thing to trust Him in in my entire life. 

I don't know how or why but Ruth was meant to die. Ruth's death at that specific time, in that exact place, is working in some way, for good. Even if it was a failure or an accident, at some other level, it was a positive step, designed by a loving God to bring about a positive end. It's up to me to step by step trust my way to that positive end.

Hindsight

 Oh the cruelty, the cutting clarity of hindsight. From where I stand now, looking back, things look different. I find myself making better choices. I have more hope. I have more objectivity. I have more compassion. I have more patience. I'm wiser. If I had it to do over again today I would do such and such so much better. This is the "advantage" of hindsight. 

And it's possibly, even probably true. 

The mistake of hindsight is to whip myself, to beat myself up, for not having that hindsight back in the past when I actually was confronting the challenge/the trial. Why didn't I.....!? If only I....! How could I not have seen....?!

But that's not fair. That's not valid. That is criticising myself on the basis of information and conditions I did not have. 

At that time in the past, under those conditions, given my circumstances, information, etc. I did the best I could. I didn't deliberately fail or perform substandard. On the contrary, if you were to pop me back into those identical crossroads under exactly the same conditions, even now I would perform/decide exactly the same and I should be content with those decisions. They were made from the best of motives. They were done with the highest intentions. They were "good". They were loving, honourable, courageous decisions.  Not perfect. But the best I could do. 

Now, when I look back, I have more information. I have more health. I have more time. I am not the same person that I was in the past.