Lynnette | Māngere Bridge
“I fell in love with my husband. He was, I had a list of things that I wanted in a friend, someone that would keep me company, and I had all these things, gentleness, kindness, all these things.
I forgot to put richness down. Rich, but anyway, all the things, he was this man, my husband is, and I’m very thankful to the Lord for him. He’s very much a servant-heart, and yeah it was just lovely to meet him.
Love, for me, is an overwhelming desire to be with someone, to be in their company. I very much feel the same way with the Lord, because I love the Lord too and just the same as I love my husband, and it’s the same feeling. It’s an overwhelming love that just wants to be with him, wants to share with him, wants to communicate with him in some way, and whether it’s through touch, through just sitting and being quiet, and it’s just being able to do things for somebody else as part of that love, too. Yeah love, doing things, yes and that’s very much a facet of love, isn’t it? It’s to give, not just take.
One of the lessons that I have received is that I’m progressing as a stroke person from five years ago. My progress is very slow, but I’m just thrilled. Every little movement that’s changing, every little progress I make is so, so good for me. It builds me up with confidence and encourages me to believe that I can do so much more and be so much better. I’ve now increased my walking speed. I’m now down to, I do my circuit from one end of the bridge to the other, of the shops, and that is now down to 11 minutes in each lap, and then I also do my swimming. I’m now doing half a km in the pools at Ōtara. Very good pools at Ōtara for people like me. It’s got a ramp and rails and also one of my goals was to climb up Māngere Mountain as far as I could go, and I’ve been able to do slants this year, for the first time, small hills, and I’ve been practising up and down the hills. Now I’ve just started climbing up the mountain, and this is just so wonderful.
I feel like I’m in the country. We’ve got a wonderful mountain here, Māngere Mountain, and I’ve done 13 minutes up and then I’ve turned to come down again, because I needed to check that I could actually come down safely, and I can. So, next time we go we’ll increase it until I can go as far as I can possibly go with my stroke. There’s no concrete on the mountain, so it’s very much root steps, but anyway, I’m loving my progress, and I’m very thankful that I can do so much, others can’t do with the same level of disability as what I can.”
