Are there things that always get on your nerves? Things that drive you crazy?

I imagine the answer is yes, as I haven’t met anyone yet for whom that isn’t the case.

For me at the moment, the ‘thing’ is me!

E got a rather bizarre text this morning telling her that I didn’t send her an email last night. The email was written when I couldn’t sleep, but I never sent it.

Throughout the last few months I have been one of those people posting photos of beautiful autumn leaves, but I currently feel like the one in the photo above. Holding on, recognisable, but broken, and not complete.

This was essentially what the email to E was about, it really wasn’t a happy email – and I didn’t come out well at all.

E did tell me that I could send her the email, but I deleted the draft. Why? Because when I read it this morning, I realised there was nothing that anyone else could do, it had to come from me.

This was then confirmed twice throughout the day, at lunch when the mother in law shared some advice she’d been given that when it’s the same thing that is ‘getting’ to you then how are you going to change the way you approach it. And then through the joy of social media an alternative version of the serenity prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.

It is very easy to come with excuses for why I am not the person I think I should be, medications, brain issues, changes at work, but the only one who has the capacity to change my approach to the things I don’t like about me is… me.

I, however, am also so aware that although I am the one who needs to recognise the problems (possibly the most important), and make the changes. I am not alone. That leaf may look battered, bruised, and broken, but there is still that element of green, of life because it is attached to the tree.

I may feel weak, but I have been promised that I can be changed through the power of the Holy Spirit, should I choose to ask.