Month: January 2024

Categories
doors open/closed

Doors!

photographed at my friend’s house April 2022. I was the first one up enjoying the warmth of the conservatory and the bird songs and fresh breezes of the morning

Is this door half open or half closed?

Someone was saying about a sermon they which combined open and closed doors and was wondering about its meaning.

Well this got me thinking! Too often we ask for doors to be opened as a good thing and doors to be closed as a not so good thing. But I remember my sister getting her fingers caught in the back door of our house because the front door was open too and a through draft caused the back door to slam.

Along most streets front doors are kept closed. When I lived a back-to-back houses part of Belfast it was said that if the key was in the door [hence door closed but unlocked] you let yourself in and the owner of the house would make you a cup of tea, but if the door was open a slight bit that meant the person had gone out for a bit and so if you did go in you’d have to put the kettle on yourself.

On a metaphorical level not all open doors are ones we are meant to through. I realised this with my job last year. Because of the skills I have, and the need for people in that sector, I can walk into the sort of job I was doing with ease. But that doesn’t mean that I should go through it.

As with the doors in the area of Belfast I lived in, just because they had keys in or were left a jar that didn’t mean I could walk into them. I was an English person, a new person to the area. I was not family or friend of many years. It would have been presumptuous of me to just walk in and I never did. The same as if I had started that same custom with the keys etc the neighbours would not have just walked into my house because of our lack of longevity in relationships.

So I think not all open doors are a good thing and not all closed doors are a bad thing. We need doors to close so we don’t get our fingers caught in them, but also so that we can move on through the next door. If doors are always open we’ll be dithering about and not being sure where to go and what to do.

But also, I think, we need to fully know who we are – our love ourselves as we are and know our strengths, our likes, our weaknesses and things we are willing to say we don’t like. Then we can look at a door whether it is wide open, open a little bit, is closed with the key in or is fully shut, and decide if we want to really give it a try.

There are doors I have walked through because I have had metaphorical big boots open that actually I didn’t really want to go through but they were open a wee bit and so I pushed. Thankfully I’ve been able to get out of them by learning more about who I am and what I love doing – my passions and my “vocation” so to speak. There are also doors that stood open that I was afraid to go through for various reasons and some of that could have been that even though the door was open it wasn’t my right door at that moment in time.

So there is no good and no bad [back to those Two Trees in the Garden again] but, I think, there is a “know the truth and the truth will set you free” [John 8:32]. The truth of who you are and where you would like to go in your life. Then you can walk through the door with boldness with God, the Creator of the Universe who loves and cares for you unconditionally, and see what happens next.

Categories
Listen to my heart wedding anniversary

17th Wedding Anniversary

Photographed January 2020

This photograph was taken on our 14th wedding anniversary somewhere in Yorkshire [I think]. I’ve picked it because I think it symbolised marriage for me – a simple bridge over uncertain waters.

So we have made it to 17 years!! Neither of us has ever been a relationship this long, apart from with parents or me with my children. I am still amazed – not just that we are together but that we still do enjoy each other’s company on the whole.

We are very much not the people we married 17 years ago. I often thought, when I was younger, that when one reached middle age one’s personality and ways of being would become settled, etched in stone [I was 45 when I married my “toy boy” was only 38] but that’s not true. We have walked through many things since being married – untimely deaths of friends and family, my teenage children growing up and leaving home and all the stuff that went with that. We’ve moved house, got pets, learned things, got healed of things, made new friends and hung on to some older ones. Combined some of those friends so that they are “our friends” and kept some that are just our own. Our energy levels have changed too. We’ve changed inside and out. Sometimes in harmony and sometimes clashing. We’ve had times when I am surprised we are still together and times I couldn’t imagine us apart.

This year’s anniversary is different from the rest. Our plan, when we still had children living at home, was to take off on the nearest weekend to our anniversary and stay in a nice hotel, just the two of us, within a couple of hours to our home. Even when the children left home we kept up this tradition. Although last year we stayed at home. For me I think it was because I had just said goodbye to my dear friend Tessa, who died the day before our 16th anniversary. So the whole idea of going away when I’d just been away visiting her was a bit much for my heart. But we were at least spent it together.

But this year we saw each other briefly on the morning of our anniversary before my husband’s taxi came to take him off to the airport for a business trip and I took the dog out. It is not unusual now lockdown is a thing of the past for my husband to go away but it is the first anniversary we’ve spent apart.

It is strange because I often say that I don’t “do our anniversary” but with him not here I realise that I miss not being able to “not do” this time. It made me think of all those other anniversaries that sometimes our bodies react to but our minds forget. Those times of loss, of celebration, of trauma, of something unexpected. And as one grows older there are more and more of them – both grief and celebration, both sadness and celebration – and too often we try to just push through.

I’ve wondered why I kept yesterday’s Josh Luke Smith email but I think it fits with what I’m saying here. We need to take the time out to listen to our HEART, our BODY and our MIND so that we can “locate where we are, give ourselves all we need to be as truly ourselves as we could be in that moment” –

IN THAT MOMENT – not forever, not for tomorrow, but just for this moment when we feel what we feel, when we aren’t sure what’s going on because we are trying to push through things, push things down, push things away, push onwards and yet feel lost in and of ourselves. It only takes a moment to check in and only then can we know where we are, why we feel as we feel, accept it all and then be our true and authentic selves.

So a dog walking friend saying to me yesterday “you don’t seem yourself” made me check-in with my heart, body and mind and made me realise I miss my husband not being with me for an anniversary I didn’t realise I was that bothered about. But my heart, mind and body did.

After doing all this QEC I’m always amazed that I don’t tune in more often but being the complex creature that I am sometimes I need to hear it from another source. And God in God’s great wisdom knew exactly how to do that 🙂

Categories
Love truth

Service

Snowdrops hidden in the woods. Photographed by myself 26th Jan 2024. Spring is coming

What does Service mean? To you? To me?

In Josh Luke Smith’s latest email he says that we all want Meaning. Relationships. Service. I do agree but I think for years I got what service meant wrong. And I think I was encouraged to keep believing in the wrong either because other people had got it wrong or because it supported others.

Before meeting with God thirty+ years ago I pleased myself and I don’t think I really served others. Though I probably did. I worked in hospitality, had friends round for parties, meals, etc. But I thought I was just doing things that everyone did and that was it.

So when I met with God the church talked a lot about service and about serving God. Serving God seemed to mean doing something in church as a volunteer which for me was children or youth stuff. So I was always busy busy in church doing stuff and I would get fed up with it all and that, amongst other things, was what stopped me wanting to attend church. [Yes there are other reasons but I think this whole thing of feeling that to belong I had to be volunteering got me down]

But it wasn’t just church. Lots of places talk about serving which again seems to be doing things for nothing to further that organisation. But now I’m not so sure. And I would say as I read these daily emails I’m not the only one.

I’m not in regular paid work at the moment and will continue like that because I’m 62. That doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing though. But I have realised what I do day in day out is service. From walking my dog, looking after my home and feeding my husband, though to chatting with friends and acquaintances, to running the workshops I do, to reading books, to writing stories people may never read, to writing this blog. All these things are acts of service but, I think, because they are things I enjoy and they are not for some church or other organisation I don’t see them as service.

I am now thinking that service is actually me just being the truest me I am and allowing that to flow into the earth in the only way I can let it. So I clean up my act and get healed so my energy is purer, less polluted, less me expecting something from what I do – which I do wonder if a lot of our “serving” is actually serving our own ego! I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, to my gut, and only do what I am at peace with. And through that I am so much more than if I was serving for servings sake.

I believe again it comes back to that whole “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” [or as I like to see it “totally love yourself so you can then love others] and then you are serving in ways that others truly need with no agenda for yourself to be bless. But that does take some work to get to that place, some clearing away of traumas and other crap, and being fully free.

know the truth [about yourself and your motives] and the truth will set you free

John 8:32]
Categories
january time

January

Found this on many sites of internet with no source so …

I was pondering why I think January seems to last “forever”. I’ve managed to read 5 books already in amongst planning workshops, walking the dog, have a room redecorated in my house, writing some, meeting up with friends, etc. So I’ve not been idle but I’ve fitted it all in in the last 25 days! And really we were still in Christmas holiday mode for the first couple. Oh and I’ve also watched 3 Netflix series and blogged some. So why does it seem like January will never end.

As I was googling I did find this piece in the New York Times which is worth reading – The Scientific Reason Why January Last Forever – Though without sounding too pedantic I’m sure if it is really scientific it should say “feels like it lasts forever”. “Lasts forever” is a bit of a fact. January really doesn’t last forever it just feels that way.

So why do I think so?

For us as a couple we spent time during our 10 days Christmas break planning things for 2024. Not resolutions, not even what we want to achieve, but holidays and seeing people. So, including husband’s work trips, we have 5 trips on the calendar. One each for the first 5 months of the year; a trip to see my son and his wife, a holiday for in May to a place I’ve been wanting to go to for a couple of years, 2 walking/climbing trips for husband and the 1st work trip for him of the year. I’m also wanting to slide in trips to see my mum and my daughter. It is all about looking forward not being in the moment.

Even things like looking forward to the days getting longer, the weather warmer, is all not being in the moment but waiting for a better day!

There’s also the “healing of the credit card”, the Dry January, the Veganuary, and all those other things people give up after Christmas, which come with a “waiting for January to end so one can get back to drinking/eating meat/spending/etc” Again all looking forward and not being in the moment.

Added to that not everything has restarted. I didn’t restart my writing groups until the middle of January. A church group I want to join doesn’t start till February. Even with doors open for me to run workshops they are all for later in the year.

January is a dormant month but we don’t do dormant. So much in society tells us to be planning for the future that we don’t relax into hibernation mode. We are pushing, hoping, waiting, for the next thing. Perhaps if we could hunker down and allow the season to unfurl around us maybe then it would not seem like it was taking so long.

I nearly wrote “to get a move on and get over itself”. I think too often we see January as a month to endue and not to enjoy. Perhaps we need to learn how to enjoy January – and we all know when you’re enjoying something time flies past!

Categories
repent Trust God

Natural Order

I’ve ponder the idea that there is a natural order to things on You Don’t Need To Do It and a bit in Trust Is The Key. And I think this is the same for repentance.

Before I met with God I did many things that were not good – out of survival, though my own wounds, through self-centeredness, fear. Probably fear was a lot of the reason. So when I had this big encounter with God – which really needs to be heard rather than read! – I wanted to dive into this whole repentance thing. I got a friend to show me all the verses in the Bible that mentioned sin so I could make sure I repented of everything. I was amazed at how many I needed to repent of one way or another.

Although this was before I found this lovely prayer in the Anglican service

we have left undone those things which we ought to
have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to
have done

That really does cover most of our lives!

But I thought even then, even in my zeal for meeting with God, there was a natural order of how it worked for me.

Firstly I was accepted by this group of lovely human beings who had got together to evangelise the housing estate I was living on. I was accepted [belonged] to their coffee morning before I went to their Sunday church.

Secondly I had to meet with God and realise how much God loved me unconditionally. And boy was it an amazing encounter. Only then could I start on this journey of repentance. So I had to trust God, believe in and about God and Jesus, and feel I was important to God, special. If I’d been told on that first coffee morning I ever attended that I had to repent and believe I would have high tailed it out of there.

Thirdly though I had to believe and trust that God and Jesus had forgiven me. Actually that was the easiest bit of it. The hardest was going through the journey of forgiving myself because I had done things that had hurt others a lot. But I know I did it because I trusted in Jesus and God to walk with me and leave me high and dry.

Also the whole repentance/forgiveness thing is a totally ongoing thing, which is probably the fourth part. If I believed it was a one off thing and I couldn’t keep coming back to God again and again and again and again and saying sorry and forgiving other people then, I think, I would be a disappointed person.

So daily I ask forgiveness for “those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which we ought not to have done” and I am truly sorry. And I forgive those who hurt and upset me whether they did it on purpose or by accident.

But I cannot do those things if God and Jesus are central part of my life, if I don’t trust them moment by moment, don’t rely on them moment by moment.

I do think that repentance and forgiveness should be much a part of our lives that we don’t need to say it but it is in our actions. It is seen when we don’t bitch about people, don’t hold a grudge, don’t worry about things, aren’t fearful, etc. As I explored a while ago, looking at how sinning is really just missing God’s mark, just missing God’s best for us. And anything for holding a grudge and saying bad stuff about people to fit in with others through to worrying and being fearful are the “sins” most of us do. Very few of us murder or steal, but too many of us don’t trust.

I believe we shouldn’t need to tell people but we should be living it day by day – which is what I felt my youth group were trying to tell me and which I shared in Trust Is The Key

Natural order – Trust that God is there for you and loves you unconditionally then repentance and forgiveness will just flow naturally. Or at least I think so.

Categories
being Doing

Being Really Human

Photographed by me on Christmas Day 2023

This is a follow on from yesterday’s post on how Deborah and Jael were most powerful by being in situ and not trying to fill their day with many things. Yet this is so often what we do even as Christians.

We pray as an activity rather than as a just being. But often if we try the just being we then need to tell someone about that. Or to fill in time we read a book. It becomes another activity. We got to church. We join a club. We meet with others. We do things all the time. We rarely just sit about “wasting time”.

Like I said Jael could have been somewhere else being busy but instead I like to think she was at the entrance to her tent maybe watching the battle unfurl in the valley below. She wasn’t waiting for God to use her, which I think we can often be guilty of, but she was just being.

I have been amazed at how many fitness apps and organisational apps and books are being advertised as something to “fit into your busy life” as though being busy is the important bit. And not being busy is wasting time. When we see someone they are “what have you been up to?” and rarely ask “how are you?” And even if they do ask “how are you?” that is quickly followed by “what have you been doing?” And a young friend of mine once showed me how people ask younger people “What have you been up to?” and even “what have you done at school/college/exams are you taking/doing in your future?” and rarely ask them how they are leading to that conviction that doing nothing is not a good thing.

As you know I’ve been challenged on this recently and I decided to do some QEC around it. Turns out that, for me, and I suspect for others, I worry about what other people will think. I feel that to justify my existence I should be doing something., that I should not be wasting my time and that I should be productive. So I get busy busy busy and then don’t have time for what really matters – being me.

I am now in my 6th decade and there are those things that pull to say “time is running out” and that one should “do something with one’s life“. Now Jael was just being by her tent and because of that God could use her. She may have been young. She may have been old. But she was there. And I don’t think she was sitting there going “God use me” or even bargaining with God that if she learned how to be then God could use her.

Also I am learning if I am not busy doing then I have time to think. Not think about what I can do but just ponder life. I probably pray more as a chatting with God thing than an activity. It is a longer process. I also read a lot more which gives me more things to think about.

We live in a world, whether sacred or secular, that tells us we should be doing. And not just doing but being seen to be doing. We need to have something to tell people. But I am finding the more that I am just being the more I can listen to people because I’m not tired, not stressed, not wondering what I should be doing to fill my time. It means I have time to walk the extra round of the park to find out how someone is, time to go for coffee, time to listen to my husband, my children, my friends, to God.

I don’t know if I’ll even be expected to drive a metaphorical tent peg through someone’s head [whatever that means in 21st Century North Wales terms] but I do hope I am sitting by my tent to do whatever God wants of me if God ever does. And I also hope that if I spend the rest of my life hanging out by my tent and am never used I will also known and trust I have been in the right place.

Categories
Trust God Wait

Jael – Judges 4

From Bryn Cannon’s Pintrest – Ancient World Bedouin Tent

Last Sunday at church we were asked to pick our favourite Bible stories. This story from Judges 4 popped into my head!

Quick summary of Judges 4 – King Jabin, a ruler in a kingdom in North Galilee comes down to attack Israel. Deborah is a prophet and leader in her own right [Yes God is ok with women leaders!] She summons Barak, who we are led to presume is an army commander. She tells him God is going to give him victory over King Jabin’s commander, Sisera. But Barak is a bit of a woose and says he won’t go off to fight unless Deborah goes to. Deborah prophecies that because Barak isn’t going to trust God in all of this then God will give the defeat of Sisera to a woman. When the battle commences Barak, or God, manage to frighten not just the regular soldiers but Sisera as well. Sisera runs away! His entire army are destroyed. Sisera goes to the came of Heber, a Kenite, a descendant of Moses’ father-in-law. Sisera does, what he thinks is a sensible idea, and goes straight to Heber’s tent seeking refuge. Now Jael is Heber’s wife, or possible one of his wives.

Now this next bit, I think is where things get a bit sketchy and are left to the imagination. It says that Jael invites Sisera into the tent. Now we don’t know at this point where her husband, Heber, is, or where the rest of the Kenites are. As you can see from the above picture this isn’t a one man tent.

It says Jael “covered him [Sisera] with a blanket”. Now this is often led to be that they had sex together. I’m thinking, from things I’ve read about soldiers, when they have been fighting their adrenaline is up, their sex drive is up. And here is a woman of interminable age inviting him into her tent. And we know they are alone because of what happens next. I think Jael willingly has sex with Sisera. Not because she is enamoured by his status but because she knows this is the best way, along with the drugged milk, that will cause him to fall into a deep sleep. Remember she is a woman, and maybe a youngish woman but we don’t know. And Sisera is a strong fighting man. She needs him not just drugged but totally sated.

The text says that after covering him with a blanket, then him asking for water and her giving him the milk she covers him with a blanket again. At this point he is exhausted and falls into a deep sleep.

According to the text Jael then takes a hammer and a tent peg and drives it through Sisera’s temple. Now Sisera went to Heber because they were on friendly terms with Jabin and he thought he would be safe. What possessed Jael to kill him? That we will never know. But kill him she did thus fulfilling Deborah’s prophecy.

Why do I like this story?

Well firstly is is two women who are the stars of it all. Even though they are at either end of the status scale – Deborah a leader, Jael possible one of many wives – both go with their strengths. Both of them live out who they are. Deborah doesn’t keep God’s word to herself and hope that Barak, because he’s an army commander, hears God. No she goes and tells him. She does reprimand him but still goes with him into the battle.

But it is that key role that Jael plays that would not have happened if she had been somewhere else. If she had decided that she shouldn’t just sit around in her tent but was off, say, tending the goats, looking after the children, staying close to her husband so she looked like the better wife, or any number of things that a woman of that time, culture and status could be doing. No for some reason she stayed put. For some reason she was willing to entice Sisera under a blanket twice and then kill him. She was willing to be waiting in her home to be used by God, used to bring a victory to a battle.

Also Deborah trust that God will outwork this as God knows best. She gives the prophecy that victory will come by the hand of woman but she doesn’t then go and round up a bunch of women to go into the battle trusting that God will keep them safe. No she says the words, supports Barak, but waits to see what God will do.

I like this story because it reminds me that waiting is good. Not this weird active waiting that seems to be said at times where one isn’t really waiting but is doing things, but just being in situ and seeing what happens. It reminds me too that often I pray for others and get a “word” but then I need to just sit back and let God bring it to pass as God knows best.

For me this is a story of being willing to be in situ and be willing to be used rather than rushing about trying to make things happen.

Categories
different trust

Trust Is The Key

This is a regular beach walk of mine but often, when there have been big storms, of which we had many over the last few months, the stones and gullies have been changed. It can be a very different walk. I need to remember that we are all different as people depending on our personalities and maybe too the storms we have ridden.

Last night was youth group night. It was a new group and I didn’t want to presume that just because they had come to a church youth group that they all believed in God so our first question of the year was “Would you identify as a Christian? If yes why? If no why?”

Only three young people came and all said they would tell their friends they were Christians or that their friends knew this already. It was the “why?” question that challenged me the most.

For myself, I had a very powerful experience which brought me to really want to follow God in the big way. I would say I “became a Christian”. So for myself it is all about the experiential experience. One of the group said that when she prayers she can feel a presence sat beside her. But the other two, and the vicar, all said they just believed and struggled to say why they believed. The answer from all three of them was “I just do”. No wavering. No changing.

When we talked about what things it meant to be a Christian the main one was that God was centre of our lives. We didn’t get into tenants of faith. Nothing about what you had/had not to believe or do to be a Christian but just that God and Jesus were a major presences in our lives who encouraged us to think and behave in a different way.

The first church I attended, and many others I have been to that have shaped my beliefs, have been very much of the ilk that to be a Christian one had to do and say certain things, believe in certain things, accept certain things.

I’ve also studies not just the Reformation but many of the points in history where Christians have persecuted Christians because they have done things in a different way. Things we would now see as trivial. But as the vicar reminded me, even now [and I experienced in other churches] though there may not be actual burnings at the stake, there can often be judgements against those not have “prayed the prayer”, been “properly” baptised, and also the issues of gender and sexuality, care for the planet, who leads the congregations, etc, etc.

What struck me greatly was that we are all different in who we are but that makes us all different in how we approach God, how we behave about God and with God. For me I needed that experiential experience, something tangible to hold on to as I unraveled and rebuilt my life. But for others it is just that believing and that knowing that that is enough.

But what came out of if for me is that however we experience God and however God is out worked in our lives, that important bit is that we keep God and Jesus central and trust them enough to lean on them no matter what is going on around us. Through that can we show God in our lives to others. Then when we take God’s love to others it is something tangible not something we are just saying.

Categories
house Inner Healing

I Am Not An Onion

Photo from October 2023. These were the last locally cut flowers of the year

The reason for the photo is because it shows the inside wall of my house which is in need of redecorating. We’ve been in this house for eight years now and the hall is one of the rooms I’ve not yet started on.

I have just booked another session of QEC counseling/healing for next week and was free writing around it. As I did that more and more things came up and I started to feel a bit fed up with it. I have been doing this “inner healing” stuff for soooooo long now. Not just QEC but other forms. And yet still there is more.

Someone once compared inner healing to taking off the layers of an onion; that just because you had taken off one layer there were still more to come. I’ve never settled well with that analogy because if one kept on with the healing and taking off the layers soon there would be nothing left.

I know that can be a Christian way of looking at things – to get rid of “me” and just be Jesus. But don’t think there would be verses in the Bible like

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:29-30

if we were meant to be in the picture at all. I think Jesus is saying that the whole healed me is walk in tandem with the whole Jesus and it won’t be a big deal.

So I am not an onion where eventually there will be nothing left of me.

Whilst free writing this morning what came to me when we do QEC or similar types of healing is we are stripping off the wallpaper that we have used to cover up the walls of who we are. Often whether in the Bible, in dreams, etc “house” or “home” represents ourselves. So what we often do, or let others do, is paper over things in our lives to make us seem more acceptable, to fit in better, to keep us safe. But to be wholly me I have to strip those walls right back to the original plaster and see what cracks are there. Then not paper over the cracks but heal those cracks.

Have you ever stripped wallpaper from an old house where previous occupants haven’t done it? That old wallpaper paste was more like superglue than modern wallpaper paste is. That stuff is rock solid. Sometimes too you come across old newspapers which for some reason were used as lining before putting the wallpaper on. That is then like trying to remove papier mache. It was meant to stay.

Sometimes some of the things we’ve put in to keep us safe after childhood traumas, or even grown up traumas, we’ve put on to last. We don’t want to revisit that. But it makes a bulge in the walls.

So I go back again and again for more healing not because the first lot didn’t work, not because I am an onion, but because I am an grand house that is being renovated room by room.

Categories
Lord's Prayer Trust God Uncategorized

Whose Will?

So two posts in quick succession. This is because I’ve been enjoying my daughter’s company and not had time or headspace to blog.

But I have been praying. And again am stuck on working with The Lord’s Prayer. And especially the line “Your Will be done“.

It made me think of how often we mither [check out the link as it is a north of England expression] at God to do what we think is the right thing. With many situations, whether it is Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, getting things done in my home town, illnesses with people I know, there is much more going on under the surface, hidden histories, that we know little or nothing about, hurts and pains we don’t understand, and so often what we are “telling” God to do is ill-informed. I think this is why Jesus’s advise was telling us to say to God “look I see this situation. I’d love you to be involved in it. Your will be done within that.“

Now I had an interesting thing happen after I was praying for God’s will to be done about a certain person. As me and this person were walking and talking they said something that I could almost see God highlighting for me. It was something very deep with them and shared in a way that I felt led me to ask God if that was a way I was to pray about it. I believe now that God has given me their direction in praying for this person and that God and I are yoked together in this.

I also had another time when I did the “ok it’s your will not mine here” as I was finding certain things with another person difficult. I was also trying to avoid that person. But again God had other plans. There I was walking round my park on my own and they were walking the opposite direction. They greeted me warmly and we walked together. Again I could hear that still small voice saying “this is My will that you walk along side them.” And it was like there was nothing else I had to do but to walk with them.

I can be an organised, planning person. It is a family joke that I like my lists. Often of an evening I write a list of what I want to do the following day as part of my unwind before going to sleep routine. But I also find that I can get into doing this with praying for people; the list with an idea of what each person, situation, etc needs. But this takes away the “your will be done” part of the Lord’s Prayer. I wonder too if these things interfere with the “give me each day my daily bread” part.

So this year I am going to just let God’s will be done, not my will, in how I pray and who I pray for, and just trust and see what happens.