This stretch has been h a r d.

A serious lack of hugs, connection hindered by rain and cold and patchy internet, even more change and still with the looming fear of catch or no catch and what will or won’t be.

Fear and anxiety have flowed more than ebbed and the tidal undulations of thoughts and feelings become more of a rollercoaster car on a closed circuit track that has got stuck in a dip.

King writer of words that describe this very journey, David, calls it overwhelmed. Literally to be covered over with darkness. Like a shroud that obscures or the reducing fading vision when you faint; when weariness and need to escape literally overtake and unconscious nightime envelops.

Whatever language you put round it we’ve all felt it.

So back at Christmas time when I read the story of a young girl being overshadowed, something inside of me quickened as I tried to grasp how and why the story of good news began with being described as overshadowed. Enough with the darkness!

And then I found something beautiful.