Author: dianewoodrow

I married Ian in 2007. I have two grown up children, who I home schooled until they were 16. My son has just joined the army, my daughter has just moved to Cardiff.
I have a degree in History and Creative writing and a PGDip in using Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes.
Until Feb 2016 I lived in a beautiful part of England and now I live in a beautiful part of North Wales where my time is filled with welcoming Airbnb rental guests, running writing workshops, writing, serving in my local Welsh Anglican Church, going for long walks with my little dog, Renly, and drinking coffee and chatting with friends

Categories
hard outer shell made good

And God said it was Very Good [Gen 1:31]

This dog totally believe he is good, where he is is good and life is just good, especially if I am with him. Photographed by myself at Newborough beach, Anglesey October 2024

Renly believes that wherever I am is good and that he is good and that life is good. Did you know God is omnipresent which means God is with us all the time? So surely we could then at least believe that we are good – very good.

So Genesis 1:31 says God made humankind and said humankind is good; very satisfactory, our best, pleasant, interesting, better than anything else we’ve made. [paraphrase]

Meaning of “Good” thank to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/good

very satisfactory, pleasant, interesting, better, best

But do we believe it? Do we even get taught it in many of the churches we’ve been to? Too often we get taught that we are sinful, that unless we accept Jesus [whatever that might really means] we are condemned to eternal damnation, and need to repent.

I will go back to the whole idea that sin is just missing God’s mark, which we all do, but isn’t about not being made good.

Sometimes, I think, good can appear a bit of a weak word. A bit like nice. A word that is used more when things are not bad but not great, which is why I’ve added in the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

I think God looks at us and when they say good they mean more on the amazing side of ok than the “just got through” side. How about if we looked at that verse and realised that when God says good it means that we are pleasant, interesting, very satisfactory, the best for the Creator of The Universe to want to hang out with. And not just when God first made Adam and Eve but when God made each and every one of us!

But too often we get caught with the things we’ve done wrong, the hurts we’ve endured, the traumas we’ve picked up, the intergenerational stuff that hasn’t been cleared, and we look at ourselves through all this hard outer shell stuff and we forget that we were made good.

I also think it is this hard outer shell that can make us do horrid hurtful things to ourselves and to others.

I think the amazing thing about healing and learning to trust and hang out with God – whether this is through QEC, Sozo, Freedom in Christ, other trauma healing stuff from wherever, hanging out with friends who see through our hard shell and enjoy being with us, or even a phrase or sentence that slides into our hearts and chips away at that shell – is that we do see that shell for what it is; something that kept us safe from stuff that was going on around us but it is not us. And we will be safer without it.

So as we see the shell for what it is and even get to chip away at it we learn to see ourselves as was originally intended; without the “good/bad” judgements we and others place on us; without those epigenetic tags our ancestors and ourselves picked up; without the mistakes we have made. We start to see ourselves as good, very satisfactory, interesting, pleasant to be with, the best.

And I for one think that if the Creator of the Universe thinks I am good then who am I to argue????

Categories
hiraeth lake ocean

A Stake in the Ground

Llyn Idwal October 2024 photographed by myself

I feel like I haven’t blogged for a while and don’t have much in my head for blogging because I’ve been writing. But then I got a little nudge to suggest that maybe I share on here what I’m writing around and about.

My main project – which definitely has become a project thanks to my lovely ladies at the writing group I run – is fictionalising my teenage-hood. It was quite dysfunctional and traumatic and has had some long lasting influences, but recently I did some QEC intergenerational healing and that seems to have given a firm foundation to be safe writing from.

Then in Write Club – an online group I meet with at 8am on a Wednesday morning – we were commissioned to write something around lineage and our lives. So this is what I’m going to share because I feel in sharing it I am putting a stake in the ground to say “this is who I really am and I’m going to stop chasing something I’m not”.

So here goes

It is inspired by Memet Murat Idan’s phrase ‘not every lake dreams to be an ocean’, but also of discovering that my Hireath is not just a physical place but a heart place. It is as much about belong with the authentic person God created me to be as it is being in the physical place I belong. And it is from this places of belonging with the authentic me that I feel i can write about the things where I was trying to be something non-authentic – like many of us go through in childhood.

The poem is called “I am a lake not an ocean“

I am a lake not an ocean

Though for years I railed against this.

I wanted to be an ocean with a capital O

Roll with the big ships, change courses of people’s lives

Kick arse with the big boys.

Be part of the noticeable team.

I despised the majestic mountains that hemmed me in

Rolled and pushed at the wild flower strewn banks that encased me.

Did not appreciate who I was and what I was called to be.

Now? Now I can look clearly.

I see where I end and where land begins

Appreciate the flora and the fauna of experience that surround me

Relish in the mountains that contain me.

Remain in place though storms blow and buffet my surface.

Let the pebbles chatter and churn on my shores without trying to hold them,

can trust the process of the flowing in and through.

As a lake I am always here, but now I know where here is.

The waterfalls flow in and the bubbling stream empties onward to the sea.

I glory in it as I watch the sky change above me.

I can contain the storms and sadnesses,

know when to release the glories and the joys.

A boat is tied to the wooden jetty that reaches into my waters

My children, family and friends are free to use it when they wish.

They can rest or row or glide or sail across my waters

Even if the waves rise high from unexpected breezes

I am always willing to keep them safe.

I maybe a lake but what happens within me eventually changes the oceans of the world

if I am willing to release the flow.

When I read this to The Write Club group I felt something shift in the atmosphere as if now I had spoken it into the world something had shifted. I am now the most contented little lake ever with no desire be anything else

Some references –

Hiraeth is a longing for one’s homeland, but it’s not mere homesickness. It’s an expression of the bond one feels with one’s home country when one is away from it. The only English word that comes close to translation would be longing/longingess https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-English-equivalent-to-the-Welsh-word-Hiraeth-I-come-from-a-Welsh-speaking-family-so-I-know-what-the-word-means-in-Welsh-but-I-am-stuck-for-an-appropriate-English-translation

Find out more about Memet Murat Idan on https://mehmetmuratildanresmiwebsitesi.wordpress.com/

Categories
content safe place

Contented Little Hermit Crab

From openverse – hermit crab

My QEC practitioner did a podcast for our group about being a contented little hermit, exploring how for most of us the more we QEC the more we enjoy being on our own. Yes we still like people. We still like to connect but it doesn’t rule our lives.

Anyway this got me thinking about shells.

How often as a quiet, maybe shy, maybe introverted, maybe a deep thinker, were you told how pleased everyone was when you “came out of your shell” as though being in your shell was a bad thing?

Why is it a bad thing? No one would tell this hermit crab or any other shellfish to “come out of its shell”. That’s is home, its safe place.

We had visitors this week and at times there were things that I found hard work in the conversations. I found that I am now in the habit of ANSing myself [calming my autonomic nervous system and staying in regulation and balance] rather than reacting. But I also realised that I was no longer biting my tongue so I didn’t say anything. I was going into my shell, my safe place.

Inside my safe place I could be quiet, let the conversation flow around me, not have any desire to react to what was being said. I had space to breathe, to really listen to what was not being said too – the energy, so that when I did respond it was, on the whole, light, breezy and safe.

So for anyone who is getting a hard time about not “coming out of their shell” often enough ignore those people. They are jealous that you have a safe place to be to view the world when they aren’t brave enough to slide inside their shell.

Our shells are our safe places, are places to catch breath, are place to connect with ourselves and with God, which is where we should be on a regular basis.

Go on! Be bold and connect with your inner contented little hermit crab.

https://giphy.com/embed/xUA7bh63SnoXTl66Na

via GIPHY

Categories
pets St Francis

4th October – St Francis Day and Blessing of Pets

[A random selection of my dog, a goat and other dogs. ]

Today is Francis of Assisi day. The saint who was supposed to put animals in high regard. It is also around this time that many churches have services that bless pets – where people can bring their pets to church and thank God for them. [There was one with the church I co-run the youth group at but I was too lazy to go!]

Our pets are amazing. Where would we be without that unconditional love? that greeting when we get home? the hugs just when we need them? the adoringness? Or as I write this the loud snoring of my little dog under my chair and the loud scratching of the cat who doesn’t want to be missed out!

Because of dog walking I have made so many friends since moving up here. I potter round the park and say hello to some I have known just on the park for years, some who have become closer friends that I go to coffee and lunch with. My dog has open the door to friendships.

Did you know that when Mozart’s father died he hardly grieved him because they didn’t get on well [I understand that from my own father’s death] but when his pet starling died he had a funeral and a wake for it? Again I totally understand that. He had lost a being that he could interact with, that was there for him, that he had built a bond with.

Someone once asked me if there would be animals in heaven and I had to say I couldn’t not imagine it being heaven without them. Why? Because I cannot imagine God would have had mankind create such an amazing bond with animals for them to not be in heaven.

My daughter once helped out with the Cats Protection League and the way those older women cared for those cats was amazing. If we could all care for our fellow humans in that same way then there would be no more wars, etc. Although I was listening to a podcast today about how the opposite of Love isn’t hate but fear. Fear then leads to Shame which leads to Control which cycles round to Fear again and so the circle tightens. So humankind is fearful of others humans and so seeks to control them by wars, etc. So maybe there is something else involved here that I might explore in another post!

Anyway I digress!

Today let’s celebrate the animals in our lives whether they are our pets, someone else’s pets or the wonderful birds, squirrels and others creatures in the wild. Thank you God for all creatures great and small.

Just as I wrote that last bit two Magpies just settled in the tree opposite and the man who was picking weeds from his lawn just stopped and lazed up at them. And as we all know from the rhyme “One for sorrow, Two for joy”. So I pass onwards to you the joy of those two magpies.

Categories
epigenetics sin

Sins Of The Fathers

‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

Numbers 14:18

Until Friday I’ve struggled with this verse. How could God be forgiving and abounding in steadfast love yet still visit the sins of the fathers on their children? Friday, whilst doing some QEC with a small group around inter-generational trauma beliefs it dawned on me what it all meant.

Sins is always a word we get hung up on. Too often it is seen as “wrong things” we have done and then someone decides what is wrong and what isn’t. Like gossiping and even covering over misdemeanors is alright but fancying someone of the same sex or sleeping with someone you aren’t married to are “sins”.

Years ago I heard a sermon saying sin was just missing God’s mark and God’s mark is to put God in the centre of all things all the time. That’s how the apostle Paul can say “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23]. Since hearing that this has always been my way of looking at “sin” and I will read it that way, even pray the “Lords Prayer” that way –

Forgive me when I don’t make God’s mark and do as God would for myself, others and the world, as I forgive those who hurt me by not hitting God’s mark for me

[forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us]

So what are the sins of the fathers? I think it should read “sins of our ancestors”. These are those traumas that stay in families and become norms. But they are inherent traumas that effect our mind, body and also our DNA. This can be anything from the belief that “all my family die in their early 70s”, “all my family have arthritis/diabetes/are anxious/don’t do birthdays/add your own” to saying “this is what we’re like as a family”, “it is in my DNA/my make up” as if that is it.

Did you know that there have been studies around genetics and when mice [whose DNA is really similar to humans] experience traumas epigentics tags are added to their DNA which then get passed on to their babies and grandbabies. Do use this Wiki link to read more and use the references to go further Epigentics Ir is totally amazing and for someone like myself who’s been exploring and noticing this sort of thing for a while it makes so much sense.

So back to Numbers 14:18 whether we actually know our ancestors or not, just looking at our recent history shows the traumas that have been faced; The Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, fear of nuclear attack, plus racial abuse or fear of being “over-run” by “others”, fear of lack, of not having “enough”, the education system of having to get good grades, hospital waiting lists, etc and we’ve all experienced untimely deaths and fears of untimely death. So take all those in the last 100+ years and that is a lot of shit that’s happened which, of course, has led to lots of trauma, real and imagined, which has led to one’s DNA adding these epigentic tags to keep us safe.

These, I believe, are the “sins of the fathers”. But, from doing QEC and other inner healing things I know I can get rid of these tags, can be free to be who I am intended to be.

And also forgive those in my past, whether I knew them or not, for accepting those traumas and not being healed from them, and forgive myself for passing those traumas on the my children.

Then I can truly live out the New Creation [2 Corinthians 5:17] God promised I’d be, but I do have to do a bit of work to get there!

Categories
content

Content Right Where You Are

Small dog at the top of a mountain content right where he is. Above Loch Katrine September 2024 photographed by myself

How often do we wish we were somewhere else? Ok when things are really rubbish that is ok but how often do we do it when say we’re in a beautiful place but it isn’t quite where we wanted to be so we wish we were somewhere else? We’re on our walk with God and they’ve got us in the valley when we’d like to be on the mountain top. Ok we often rationalise that into a “this is God’s plan so I’ll go with it” but really we’re not happy.

I’ve spent years chasing after something else, wish I was this big person in Christian mission stuff, chasing after it and it not happening, trying to rationalise it into being “God’s will” or pushing against it because it could be “of the devil” why I don’t get on.

The other day I was reading this is in Beth’s blog

‘not every lake dreams to be an ocean.’ –

memet murat ildan

And I realised that even though I had dreamed of being an ocean in fact I was really a lake and could be content being a lake. Like I can be content walking on the lakeside rather than climbing the mountain, content to have the dysfunctional family but surrounded by inspiring friends.

The Apostle Paul tells us to be content in all circumstances [Philippians 4:11-13] and I think, too often we take that as good times and bad times, hearing preaching on how these things are transient, changeable, and that we can endure because we will pass through them. But, for me, I’m coming to realise that some things will not change. I cannot change my family or that I’ve never done some of the things I’ve done, that I will always be a lake and not an ocean. But I can change how I see things. I can be content to be a lake, to have lived the stories I have, to have had to walk on the lakeside rather than climb the mountain, to have missed out on things, to have at times be really uncontent and angry at how things were. I cannot go back and change but I can now change how I feel about those situations.

So I can be content in all things past, present and future knowing always that so much I cannot change but I can change how I feel about things, how I view things.

Categories
jealousy lineage

Lineage

Binchester August 2024 photographed by myself

[expansion of thoughts from over the summer]

When I was at my friend’s helping to declutter I was struck by jealousy. Jealous of their lineage.

As we went through the loft they were refinding clothes from the past. Not just their old wedding clothes but their parent’s wedding clothes. In one box was the birthing gown worn by my friend’s grandmother and mother. Seven children of two different generations had been born under this gown. But it wasn’t just that. My friend was going to gather her daughters and granddaughters and they were going to talk through who would inherit these. It made me think how one day this birthing gown would be living 5 generations on from the original owner!!! Wow!! Now that is lineage.

They are also genuinely close to each other. When it was my friend’s 75th birthday party you could feel the closeness of the 4 generations. [They are great grandparents now] It is a closeness that they can all open out to others too which is great. What they have is special.

For myself my family are a bit dysfunctional. The only grandparent I ever know was my Nan and she had a major stroke when I was about six and never spoke again properly. I do have some photos from her but as my mum, who was only in her late 20s when my Nan had her stroke says, she had not got to wanting to ask her many of the things she wishes she had. My parents divorced when I was 18 and my dad died without me knowing until 10 days later. So as you can see we don’t go back far. My children are in their 30s and there are no grandchildren on the way, which I am fine with as that is their choice. We’ve never done the family parties like my friends.

I was struggling this when The Write Club that meets on line at 8am on a Wednesday put forward our first commissioning; to write about our “lineage”, meaning as much what you have read as what your family influences were. I refused to let the jealous and a bit self-pitying take over and so allowed my pen to hover over my journal and see what happened.

Well …. I was amazed at the things that came from it, of remembering older people who had passed through my life that have influenced my reading, my writing, and my ways of thinking. People from beyond the constraints of blood ties, many of whom have died, who have opened my eyes and my mind to so many different ways of thinking and doing things. It is amazing.

Would these people have entered my life if I had a strong, large, close-knit family? That I will never know. But this writing has taken me from focusing of what I didn’t have to wayyyyy beyond that.

Once we move beyond what we don’t have our eyes are opened to the well of ideas, to the stories that are us, that come each time we truly listen to our lives.

Categories
Believe ego

Ego in the way

Rhos-on-sea beach gathering lugworms photographed by myself Sept 2024

How often were you told as a child not to get “too big for your boots”? And you knew what that meant. It meant you were being proud, boastful, stepping up a gear, and that was not approved of by the adult who was telling you to be “more humble”, when actually here humble meant to not say you were good at anything.

Someone I know is doing a very brave and loving thing [long story so won’t give details but just know she is being so amazing, so trusting in God and so humble] for her son. I was praying and saw her as this amazing Warrior Woman and told her so. Her response was that she needed to get her ego out of the way so she could believe that.

That got me thinking of how often we see ego as being “egoist” or too big for our boots, boastful, prideful, etc whereas I heard from her that her ego was herself thinking she wasn’t up to the job, that she wasn’t a warrior woman, even though The God who Created the Whole Universe had just told her so.

Too many of us have had too many times when we’ve been put down rather than lifted up and have passed that onwards to our children and others we know too.

I loved working with Americans when I was in YWAM because they were not afraid to say what they were good at or had done well at and would tell others when they thought they had done well. Very unlike us Brits can be. Brits can be very quick to put down ourselves and others, to root for the underdog unless they start to win.

So I say … let us kick into touch those sayings of not getting too big for our boots. As my friend says “get our egos out the way”. And pull on those great big kick-arse boots that are waiting for us to go out and change the world with.

And changing the world might not be solving world peace or climate change but it might just be a kind, encouraging word, or as my friend is doing just supporting her son in a big things, or as another friend did and just obeyed what she felt she’d heard in prayer, or any of those many things that come naturally to us.

Categories
dark light

Equinox

Beach on Thursday 19th September photographed by myself

Today is Equinox, the day when the hours of daylight are equal to the hours of darkness – or at least would be if it wasn’t pouring with rain here and just looking really bleak and wintery, which is why you get the photo from Thursday when the sun had only been up an hour or so.

My journaling this morning was that we can see equally the light and dark in our world. Sometimes what we really want is it to be all light and wonderful, blissful and good stuff. But life isn’t like that. Though neither is it all darkness, grief, dreariness and gloom.

So my prayers were for our media that can balance their stories of doom, gloom, wars, rumours of wars, death, the lack of care, and show that there are great interventions going on our world to help with climate change, with caring for each other, with peace, with support, with “holding the door open” type of stories.

But also I pray for social media which can be filled with the perfect couple, the perfect children, the perfect life, and so one can be left feeling inadequate, craving something unobtainable, or even not realising the pain the those FB “friends” because they think they can only post the extremes – the huge highs and for some the hidden lows.

I pray that our conversations will be filled with the truth – which is a mixture of light and dark, of coping and struggling, of joy and grief, of wanting to be noticed and of wanting to notice others.

I do think there are times we either try to ignore or overly focus on the dark because we don’t know what to do with it. Our subconscious is still dealing with fairy tales where the dark was where the evil monsters lay and the knight’s job was to defeat the dark. But if there was no dark when would we sleep, when would we dream, when would the plants have time to regrow. We need to darkness of the night, of grief, of sadness, as much as we need to light of day, of growth, of joy.

May today be filled with openness and honesty, truth and love, light and dark in all its facets.

Categories
prayer technique

Doing It Properly?

I’m sharing a photograph of my dog at the writing groups I run because one of the big things I keep saying to the group is “there is no right or wrong, just write” when they ask me how to do things “properly”. It is all about finding your own voice and getting your words out there.

At the Upper Room Friday we got on to chatting about prayer. And on thing was how do we do it properly, as in what is the “right” way to pray.

Here’s a quote from Richard Rohr which even though it is about contemplation I think it applies to prayer just as well

When we emphasize specific practices too much, contemplation can become a matter of technique and performance. We fall back into self-analysis: Am I doing the practice correctly? The revelation of God, who always wants to enter the material world as our image, cannot possibly depend upon people sitting silently on a prayer cushion twice a day. That would mean that 99.9% of people who have ever lived on this earth have not known God.

It is possible to get too caught up in the “how to” of prayer and miss the whole point of “why”.

Why do I pray? Well for me it is to chat to God, to build relationships – so as much listening as talking, as much sitting with as doing with. It is to ask God to help me through things, to change situations for friends, to ask God to get involved with the lives of those I know and love so they can feel that deep inner contentment even when life is shit. It is also the same reason I write – because it is what I have to do to know what I’m thinking.

Often my prayers are more like letters in my journal than talking. Often God then speaks through my pen and gives me answers or directions or reminders. Often the outcomes of these times of chatting or writing with God can lead to unexpected answers.

One of our Upper Room friends had an amazing unexpected answer. She had to get her car to be MOTed and needed a lift there so she phone her son because she knew he went that way first thing in the morning. He was a bit short with her and even though he agreed to it said he wouldn’t have time to hang out. In other circumstances she would have found someone else but she felt God say that this was the answer to her prayer about getting back from the garage, so her son picked her and her husband up from the garage early. Instead of speeding off down the dual carriageway the son had to get off at their junction. As he slowed on the slip road of the junction his tyre blew out, the car shuddered and he fought the wheel but was only going at 25mph so all was fine. If my friend hadn’t heeded God’s response to her prayer her son could have been going at 70mph when it happened and who knows what the circumstances would have been.

Now I don’t think my friend did any special prayer technique or if she did I don’t think she’ll always expected that the answer to her prayers; an disaster averted. So it was not the technique she was thinking of or even her son at that time. All she did when she prayed that time was to ask God how to sort a lift back from the garage and her son popped into her mind. Next time, even next time to the garage, it might be a totally different response.

So I don’t think there is a “right way” to pray. I think it helps if we say we’re sorry for trying to do things our own way and not God’s way and that we do so want our hearts to be open to hear God not ourselves. But I don’t think we have to. I think there are times God answers prayer just because God loves us – whether we admit to loving and trusting them totally or not. I think it helps if we do love and trust God but then I think that helps with peace in our hearts thing rather than whether God will answer or not.

So let’s stop worrying about technique whether in prayer, contemplation, meditation, writing, our friendships, our jobs and more and just get on and do!