Now…you can normally jig a merry dance around me when I am asleep and I’d be none the wiser. I normally sleep like a baby (whatever that means!). But here I am at 3am wakened. I’ve been asleep for three hours, but then Ben wakes and moans about something, Tracy gets up to check him, Ceitidh is rumbling around, I’m awake and my throat is sore and in need of some water and a Strepsil…not to mention a touch of indigestion from some lovely duck fajita’s from Chiquito’s from our celebration of Tracy’s birthday last night!

And, of course, even the smallest hint of awakeness encourages the brain to engage the possiblities that lie in the certain envelope which will be landing on the doorstep in about 6 hours time!

Where could we be going?
Who will be coming here?
Will it be a joyous revelation or an ‘oh dear, lets pray!’ ?
Will we have the joy of seeing our children having a good Scottish education or will I still have to continue to work out why on earth Church of England Schools bother to exist?
Will I be picking up daisies in the countryside or will I be picking up used needles with a sharps box in an alley way behind the hall..or both?
Will I be lounging around in the luxury of a newly built hall or frantically trying to hold an 1800s citadel together?

So many questions. But there has been a, what I suppose you could call a prayer, going round in my head for the last couple of weeks. I think it is a methodist sort of liturgical thing (which is an unusual thing to be floating round my head) but I’ve always liked it nonetheless:

The Methodist Covenant Prayer

I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty,
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.

And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

..and Amen!!!!