No Time To Read

Being a dad (obviously) involves sacrifice. One thing I realised recently that I’ve sacrificed is reading. I enjoy reading and there is so much I want to read right now. I’m actually in the middle of a number of books as you can see from my Shelfari Bookshelf.

I just don’t have the time for reading books anymore and I feel frustrated about that. My time is taken up with Toby, and if he’s in bed, spending time with Mary-Lou or sleeping – all wonderful things I wouldn’t swap!

I used to have subscriptions to National Geographic, New Scientist and Ethical Consumer but stopped renewing them over the last year because I wasn’t able to read them in time before the next magazine arrived.

I have trays in my bedside table to organise the things I am reading, want to read and have read which need to be put back on a shelf, but we are moving the trays to the kitchen for filing bills etc. because I just don’t use them anymore because I’m not reading anything.

That’s not entirely true, I am reading things on my iPhone, mainly tweets and some interesting pages they link to, but this does not take alot of time. My reading has become bite-sized, and I don’t like that. I like a meaty read which makes me think and learn and change opinions. Twitter rarely does this!

So I’ve resigned myself to the idea that I just can’t read a book anymore. If ever I find time on a holiday or something, that will be lovely, and it will have to be a brilliant read. So please feel free to recommend a book or two in the comments below!

Temporary Identity

It’s been 5 months since I last blogged here. I feel bad about not having blogged about alot of stuff I’ve thought over that time, but one of the things I’m learning is that most things are temporary, especially when you have a baby!

It was around 5 months ago that I had a bit of an identity crisis. The root of this clearly stem from losing my daughter Amy over 2 years ago, and coincided with my son Toby being born. His birth threw up a few things for me including who I am. I’m now Toby’s Dad, and I’m Amy’s grieving Dad. The joy and delight I have in Toby has left little emotional time to dwell on my grief and the tension between a grieving and joyful Dad has left me a bit confused.

It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong. 

So I began getting busy, not knowing at the time that I was searching for an identity, something I could point to and say “This is what Ben is about, this is what he does”. I started Guerrilla Gardening in Moss Side. I started helping a project collecting fruit from Manchester gardens to distribute to the poor and hungry. I got funding for a High Definition Camcorder to record Asylum Seekers telling their stories. I started a podcast exploring the implications of Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”. I became co-ordinator of my street’s Home Watch. I started planning the Parliament Protest. I got pretty busy all of a sudden and had less and less time for Mary-Lou and Toby.

In the end I gave some of that up, cut back on others, and finished the rest. I’m not as busy as I was (outside of work) and I’m looking forward to discovering routines and patterns (temporary of course) of time and activity with Mary-Lou and Toby.

I’ve not discovered my identity, I’m sure I’ll be figuring it out the rest of my life. But for now it feels good and proper that I rest and invest in the place I have as Mary-Lou’s husband and Amy and Toby’s Dad.

Toby Jacob Gibbs

It’s been a while.

And in that time Mary-Lou and I have had a son – Toby Jacob Gibbs – on April 1st! So that has been messing with the thoughts in my head and the desires of my heart.

Many other thoughts have also been going through my mind having read some interesting books, heard some challenging people and had some good chats.

I hope to be able to share them here more regularly from now on. I’ve still got alot to say and even more questions.