Forever

(a look at commitment) 

With the Women’s World Cup featuring heavily in the news and media last week, it reminded me that my husband and I first found love on a football pitch. Over 40 years ago our love first ‘kicked off’. We already had a mutual love of the game, and then we found love for each other. It was a match! 

Believe it or not, I was reasonably agile with a football in my younger days. My dad had three daughters and most Sunday afternoons we were to be found at Hazlehead Park practicing football moves and skills with him. Both my sisters were also pretty nifty on the pitch. My youngest sister actually won a football (soccer) scholarship to university in the States years later.  

Anyway… in my own university days, I attended an amazing church with many other Aberdeen students, and afterwards, each Sunday, the pastor and his wife hosted lunch for us all at their home which was in the countryside. After lunch we all used to go to the local field to play football and some of us took it quite seriously 🙂 It was great fun. 

Many of those students, now scattered worldwide, are still our close friends to this day. Those years were formative. Commitment, love and care were modelled so beautifully to us through those pastors and other young families there. 

My husband and I were married in 1984, one year after my graduation. And here we are, almost 40 years later still doing life together. There have been all kinds of ups and downs and we have weathered them all together. 

After my hospital training, I started GP work in 1986. When I first joined the practice as a trainee, I remember the senior partner saying to me ;

‘General Practice partnership is like a marriage. It should not be entered into lightly and requires that same level of wholehearted, lasting commitment’.

That is why I chose instead to remain salaried for so long. I knew that if I had children I’d want to prioritise them and I wasn’t yet ready to commit to being ‘married’ to my job even though I loved it and the whole practice team dearly. I continued to work regular sessions there for the next 17 years and it was only in 2004, once my boys were grown, that I finally felt that I could commit in that wholehearted way and I formally entered into GP partnership. 

Work can have a way of swallowing people whole – I have witnessed that. The caring profession is such a demanding one. Plus, in General Practice all the additional responsibilities to ensure the smooth running and management of the business-side are complex and time consuming. 

Nowadays GP partnership is viewed as a more fluid affair, with doctors often switching practices several times in their career. Perhaps a reflection of today’s more transient way of life and also the changing shape of the NHS. 

Commitment is a challenging word in this day and age where life is so fast paced and things are made to purposely be disposable. Relationships too have more of a temporary feel to them. Society is so mobile and many jobs uproot and rotate people on a regular basis, often purposely, to keep people fresh in the workplace. Life presents so many choices and options nowadays and we can shift sideways with much more ease and less judgement than in times gone by. 

So, how is commitment defined? Broadly speaking, dictionaries cite it as;

          ‘A promise to bind oneself to a person or a cause or an action’. 

The word ‘covenant’ has a similar meaning but feels more weighty and tends to be used more in a relational and personal context. To me, it conjures up a sense of ‘stepping forward’ – of actively choosing to make a promise to someone for the long haul without condition. It often holds feeling and emotion, which one could describe as ‘heart’, and likely involves self sacrifice as common goals are worked towards. 

In my life I have been blessed to know and feel commitment from friends and family through thick and thin. I have close friends dating back 40 or more years and we have experienced and endured so much together. I value being committed to and covenanted with others. To ‘being with’ people in the trenches and the triumphs of life. Remarkably during these years of very limited activity and energy due to my health, I have been given the opportunity to forge a few new rich friendships, developing heart relationships which run deep. Life-long covenant connections. 

My husband is the embodiment of covenantal compassion. He has had to embrace many limitations due to my health conditions. This has included missing his own mother’s end days and funeral in the States, due to my being especially unwell post-operatively at that time. He has adapted to our present life in countless ways, supporting me through multiple emergency hospital trips and challenges way outside of his comfort zone, as well as day to day care and company. And he does this with a cheerful, non complaining heart. Faithful self sacrifice in action.

I have also been amazed by the genuine care and commitment of medical staff towards my healing. It has been a bumpy road, with many unforeseen and unusual complications, but they have stayed with me on the journey, wanting the best for me. My Angel nurse deserves special mention. Her intuitive selfless compassion has brought me to (happy) tears many times over these months. She has accompanied me during some of my most challenging times, carrying me through them by her cheerful, calming constancy and care. Fully engaged in supporting me. Committed to my well-being. 

I feel very grateful to love and to be loved. To be part of a wonderfully eclectic rainbow of passionate people – a vibrant representation of God’s promised ever-watchful covenantal arc of care over us. 

And so, the most beautiful game of all continues – LIFE- our daily gift to enjoy. Let’s make it our goal to do it wholeheartedly. 

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