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
I went for a long walk on a very windy beach to ponder this one.
I get the first bit – that God anoints me as his special person, his ruler, his one who can rule in his place. I am anointed and special to God even when I have to make peace with the enemies without and within, even when I’ve walked through horrid, depressing, dark, death-like things, even when I’ve been made to lie down in a calm place and do nothing. In all those things God says “you are anointed. You are important and special to me”.
It’s not what I do or don’t do but it is all about God’s unconditional love for me. See I’m back to that again. This does seem to be the crux of everything – God’s unconditional love for me in whatever situation – good, bad, busy, still, being important or not being noticed – in all of those things I am God’s special anointed person that they love for who I am. Amazing.
And I think it is once we realise that then are “cup”, our lives, our way of thinking, will overflow with blessings and gratitude. But, I think, we need to be willing to let God lead us wherever they want always knowing we are loved unconditionally, that God sees as us awesome, and that God has our backs and we can trust them with our lives – however good, bad or indifferent our lives are at the moment.
lovely wine bar in Cardiff that used to sell oysters on a Tuesday along with toasted cheese sandwiches. Photographed by myself Sept 2023
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
Psalm 23:5a
What does table mean to you here? Too often we’ve been told by the preacher that it is a food table. And yes The Message version of the Bible does say ” You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies” which actually sounds a bit smug!
Of course being told it is a meal table conjures up images of having to be hospitable to your enemies, or smug to your enemies because God is feeding you and they are just looking on. But what if this table is a table for parleying around, a table for making peace around, like used to done between kings to end battles? What if it is for inviting in those things that are against you – your fears, your needing to be loved, your needing to “get it right”, your needing to believe you have “enough”, your lack of trust in yourself and in God, your issues and traumas?
It comes right after the shadow of the valley of death and before being anointed.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Psalm 23:5b
I think we presume it to be a food table because of the “cup” line that follows. I wonder how often we forget that the Psalms are poetry and are to be read as such. And not – as I am doing – dissecting them line by line.
At the house group we’ve started my friend pointed out that verse 5 is where the psalm changes from God doing [He] to becoming more personal [you]. But this gets missed if we don’t read it together.
It’s almost like a “yes yes I can understand with my head that God leads me and I don’t need to fear” but then switches to “oh my goodness it’s you leaving space for me to make peace with my issues and fears”.
LLandulas beach 1st July 2024 Photographed by myself
This little tree appeared after a landslide took down the nearby cliff which had two large conifers on it. The thought is that this was a seed from one of them. When we had huge storms here in April all this coast was under water, with the stones being thrown on to the coastal path. This little tree, because it is on its own, was unprotected, covered in sea water, and yet it has survived.
Do you sometimes feel like that little tree? Not in your true environment, alone, drowning, covered in something that is toxic to you? That dark valley place? Well as we saw in part 4 God understands and David says in his psalm
I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4
I’m not sure about you but I fear lots of things. I know I shouldn’t because I’m comfortably off, have my own home, have enough money to not only eat well but to go away on trips, to run a car, to have friends round, to go out for meals. I have a good husband that I get on with and we can have a laugh. I get to write, to walk my dog safely, and to grow as me. I live in a safe neighbourhood where crime is reported because it is rare. But I do fear.
I can fear not being liked, not getting these posts “right”, not having “enough”, worry about my children, my mum, my in-laws, my friends, what I should be doing with my life. Sometimes I even wake up in the night worrying about what to cook for eat and will those eggs have gone off! Oh yes that’s a genuine one.
But God says do not fear many many times in the Bible and here it comes right after walking through that dark valley, which is much worse than what am I going to do with the eggs in my fridge!
I know when I fear that I am not trusting God – whether that is with the eggs in my fridge or my children and the things they go through. If I fear then I am trying to hold on to control. I am trying to keep things in my ways of doing and being and not handing them to God who can then do as God knows best.
Why then follow the fear line with the rod and staff line? Now I’ve heard all sorts of sermons about the rod and staff being discipline and guidance but this morning, whilst I was pondering what to write, I felt God say that the “rod and staff” are the tools of a shepherd’s trade. No shepherd in the Middle East would go out without his rod and staff.
This line is to remind us that God always goes out with the tools of their trade – whatever that happens to be at any given moment. We aren’t always compared to sheep in the Bible. Sometimes people are compared to fish, coins, eagles, wheat, weeds, etc. and the tools of the farmer, fisherman, housewife, etc are all different to those of the shepherd but God is more than able to change tools as the metaphors change.
But in all this I have to remember that if I am fearful then I am not trusting God and probably not believing God loves me unconditionally. or that God knows what the right tools for this situation are. Perhaps when I am fearful I am trying to be god????
Photographed by myself Jan 2022. A lonesome tree on the top of the hill
How often do we feel like that when we are going through something awful? Something tough? Like we are exposed and alone?
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley
Psalm 23:3b-4a
Do you know we only split the Bible into chapters and verses because some bishop decided it? The divisions started to happen in the 9th Century but really came into their own in the 13th Century. David, when he wrote this Psalm would have just written it as a poem with the lines as they are but to be read as whole.
For some reason this jumped out at me – of us being guided along the right paths for God but that sometimes they would lead us through a dark valley – through the valley of the shadow of death, as it says in the NKJV. For those who have gone through dark times, whether the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a redundancy, a lost opportunity, etc, it can feel like walking in the shadow of death. I believe any time of grief is a time of death – death of a dream as much as loss of a person.
Someone I care about deeply is going through a dark time but, standing back a bit, I can see that if they don’t go through this dark valley they will never be freed from certain things. This dark time for them will cleanse them.
I can’t find it but in one of this last week’s Henri Nouwen meditations he talks of how grief can be a place of growth. In Richard Rohr’s blog someone talks of how in our culture we try to ignore grief and dark times and run away from them. That we just want to get over it. But here if we run these verses together and don’t allow for the verse break it says that God, our Shepherd, will guide us this way. So does this mean that it is good for us?
Perhaps this is why we we are lead in those calm quiet places first – so we are refreshed but also have developed our relationship with God. Dark times are hard if we don’t know we are loved unconditionally and don’t know that God “has our back” so to speak. We need to get to that place where we can trust that we are being led – that we will be led through not left there. But that in the going through we will …
I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4b
Maybe then we can support and lead others through their valley of the shadow of death at God’s pace rather than rush them through because we don’t like them being sad and depressed.
God lets people grieve so should we – and that includes ourselves.
A day break from working through Psalm 23 because yesterday was election day in the UK. It has been a tough choice.
How many people left like this yesterday? A little bit confused and feeling on their own? Photographed my myself 4th July 2024
Do you vote with your heart? Or your head? Tactically? Or just closed your eyes and put a cross?
I can’t tell how many people voted but I’m hoping its a lot because we need to vote. In this country all women did not get the vote until 1928 and it was only in 1969 that the voting age was dropped to 18. This is a democratic right we should all use. At my polling station they were pushing the votes deeper into the box with a big official looking stick so I hope that means lots of people turned out.
The results are nearly all in and in the UK we have a change of government and have moved fractionally to the left. Even if, in my opinion, the UK Labour party are not as left wing as they used to be.
love bit of graphics from Aljazeera news at 8.45am 4th July 2024 with most of the seats in
As you can see it is a great time for those who play with computer graphics. I’m sure if they added some council funding and a few creatives we could go crazy with it.
But seriously what happens now? How much will change? What difference will it make?
The Bible says we are to pray for those in authority. Remembering that when most of the New Testament verses about this were written it was at a time when the Romans were persecuting Christians. Actually before the Romans the Jewish authorities were persecuting followers of Jesus. Even the Old Testament verses about praying for those in authority are written when the Jews were in exile.
So we don’t pray only when we like the government. We don’t pray only when we get the rulers we’ve prayed for. We pray for whoever is in a place of authority.
It doesn’t tell us what to pray which I think we forget. I think there is often a misconceived idea that we can manipulate our leaders by our prayers. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray that they see the poverty on our streets and eradicate it, or see the mess of our health services and our schools, and our welfare system, and the greed of many. Yes we should pray about that. But I think the big one we need to do is to give them to God and trust that God can speak to them.
For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Romans 13:1
I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
1 Timothy 1-3
So all institutions exist because of God but we are to pray for them with thanksgiving so that they know how to govern so we can lead peaceful lives.
Now to be honest I think that’s much easier than having to tell God what these governmental leaders should be doing. Of course in my nice comfy house in a quiet North Wales seaside town I think I know best. But like most things, whether ruling the country or knowing what’s best for my family all I can do is give them to God.
So with this new government I am hoping that I can also enter a new phase not just in my prayers for the government but in the prayers for my family and friends and can pray with thanksgiving giving them to God and trust God knows best.
River walk at St Asaph. Photographed by myself April 2024
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
Psalm 23:1-2a
If I was being good and doing things in chronological order this one should be part 2 but hey ho! This is how I do things. Like I say I don’t promise to even do the whole Psalm but you never know. I am learning to be me more and more and more.
When we were talking about this at our house group last Friday one of my friends said something along the lines of “God leads us, we just have to follow. We don’t have to go hunting for our own food stuff“.
How often have we stressed and pondered and angst to know where to go and what to do when all along we just needed to stop, listen to God’s voice – which we are promised as his sheep we will hear [John 10:27] – but how often do we stop and listen to that voice? How often do we think we know best? Or that we don’t really hear that voice?
Perhaps we don’t trust that God cares enough about us, that we aren’t loved unconditionally. That’s a lie of the enemy! God loves each and everyone of us unconditionally and knows what is best of us. God knows where the best grass for me is – hence quite forcefully nudging me to put a very vulnerable prayer request on a WhatsApp prayer group I’m part of. But God knows that will help me as much by articulating it in WhatsApp as getting my dear friends to pray about it.
My lush fulfilling grass and yours or someone else’s won’t be the same because even though we are compared to sheep we aren’t really. We are uniquely made human beings with different personalities, different needs, different past hurts, different expectations, different skills. But all of us need to stop angsting and start trusting that the Creator of the Universe wants to lead us to the best grass for our needs because God is our parent, our carer, our maker, and our friend and wants to best for each and everyone of us no matter what circumstance we are in.
So just
STOP/WAIT
LISTEN
TRUST
and believe the Good Shepherd knows what is best for you.
Close to where I live. Take 1st July 2024 by myself
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul.
Psalm 23:2-3a
So the sky was grey and it was too cold for the first day of July and it wasn’t where I intended to walk. Do you ever get it when you are driving along and you take a turn because you go there often but really you meant to go somewhere else? This is what happen in 1st July for me. I turned down a regular route and then remembered I’d intended to take the dog somewhere different. Well we were here now so I thought we’d walk anyway. This helped with the pondering about being lead by God.
It was very much God led me to this spot, a spot I do love, but still I was led. And you know what it did refresh my soul. I took photos. I prayed for some stuff going on that hurts a bit. And I let God refresh my soul.
Note in all these it is God who lies me down, God who leads me, God who refreshes me. It isn’t that I go where God leads and am refreshed, lie down, go beside, but all the while I am being taken.
But I think to gain the refreshment we do need to let God do it and we need to go willingly. I think it I’d done this walk begrudgingly then I would not have received the refreshment. If I’d done this walk thinking that it was a place where I could place all my burdens and issues on to God I still don’t think I would have been refreshed.
There is a lot of talk about mindfulness now, about being present where you are, but I think that I had to be present, be mindful, during this time of being led by still waters and green pastures to fully receive my refreshment.
We’ve just started a house group in our dining room. One thing that stayed in my mind from last time was Psalm 23. Yes we all know it off by heart but I thought, for myself as much as anything, I fancy doing some short [maybe] blogs around it.
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
Psalm 23:1
As a child I remember learning it as “the lord’s my shepherd I’ll not want” from the hymn. And did think it was odd that we were singing about someone we didn’t want. Though now I do think that often we do not want God to lead us through quiet calm places but want them to lead us to our “ministry”/”our calling”.
Now as I read this version from the NIV I know that it means that by allowing God/Jesus to lead me as a Middle Eastern Shepherd would I have enough.
That word Enough again. I have enough of everything I need always and forever and I will not be “be in want” of anything else.
And here is another quote to help us remember that with God we have enough, that we want for nothing.
“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”
One of my passions – encouraging other people to enjoy creative writing – whether adults in libraries or community centres, or children in school. Check out more of what I do with writing groups on my Barefoot At The Kitchen Table website
In Christine Sine’s newsletter to those of us who write for Godspacelight she talked about writing into her passion. This is probably one of the bests prompts I’ve had in ages. I have tried writing what I ought to write. I even set up a Substack account to write about writing for well-being but it’s failed. Why? Because, much as I love free writing for my own well-being, I wasn’t writing into my passion. I was trying to be something I wasn’t. I even tried putting in a regular structure to when I blogged but I’m afraid that isn’t me.
How often to do we do that – try to be something we are not? Whether it is in what we write or what we do? I think of many times when I have done something – job or ministry – that is so significant but isn’t me. Too many times to remember. It could even be something I’m good at, have talents in, but it isn’t my passion. I suppose if one jargoned it up I could say it wasn’t “my calling.”
As I’ve got older I’ve learned more and more not just what my skills and talents are but what I am passionate about. I love people, though I need time alone with a book too. If I’m honest my perfect day would be to go for a dog walk, coffee and breakfast with a friend or family member, have a rolling, random conversation that covers deep and meaning as well as trivial and silly; come home and write a blog piece on something that either the conversation has trigger or that was buzzing in my head; and finish the afternoon on the couch have a read of a good book, then maybe some intense Netflix drama with a glass of red wine to finish the day. Somewhere in that I’d like to ponder writing a short story or flash fiction, though maybe never get to write it; I’d like to email someone I enjoy writing to; run a writing workshop where I encourage others to get the most from putting pen to paper; and probably free write or journal myself.
But I can get into thinking I “ought to” write X, Y or Z; I “ought to” be connecting with a certain person or group and “ought to” be doing something with them. But that is my “oughts and shoulds” and not my passion coming through.
I’ve just read Timothy Keller’s The Prodigal God in which he talks of the older brother attitude being the one that says “its not fair” when God doesn’t do as we think they should do because we were “good Christians”. My “ought to” comes, I think, from a place that is where I’ve decided what a “good Christian” or a “good writer” would/should do. It isn’t coming from a place of my passion.
I think for all of us there are times when we do not run with our passions for many reasons; a need to fit in, a fear of missing out, having been told by a parental figure that life isn’t meant to be about fun, or whatever. I’m sure we all, if we allow ourselves to really hear our hearts, can come up with many reasons why we don’t follow our passions in work, in writing, in church stuff, in life in general. All of them have some truth in them but remember the devil goes around like a angel of light. The one who keeps us away from our true selves does it subtly not overtly. If it was overtly we would notice and rise above it. But it is filled with limited truths and comes from people who do care for us and want the best for us. But it is still lies if it keeps us from our passions and our true selves.
I’m grateful to all the healing that I’ve received so I can hear God clearly, hear my heart clearly, and be bold enough to step out into my passions. I’m also bold enough now to walk away from when I’ve try to do something that looks good but isn’t me; when I’ve done an “ought”. But this has come about because I know God loves me unconditionally all the time – not just when I get it right/write 🙂
Below are some pictures of some of my other passions. I do need to take more photos of coffee with my friends too
When is something deemed vandalism and when is it seen as art?
The first article made me smile at how cross people can get about things. I’m sure remembering the war and those who were in those gunneries is not a bad thing but they do look very bleak up on the hillside. With the art work on them I think they look brighter and more interesting. I think they are well painted. Nothing rude on them. And nothing war related or political. Apart from not asking permission what is wrong? [Read the article and you can see why some people think it is wrong]
Then this next one, greeted maybe not with joy but with positivity. Why? Well probably because it looks like a “Banksy” and Banksy can do no wrong. Again no permission was asked and no one knows who did it. It also does not depict anything rude, political or war related.
No wonder young people get confused. We venerate Banksy and their crew of random graffiti artists who do seem to see any wall space as fair game. In my county of Conwy some of the Leveling up money sent to the local councils is being spent on 5 murals for the 5 main towns in Conwy county. And lots of money and time is going into going into schools and “liaising”. The council will decide where it is going and we will have to be happy with it.
The difference between the one on the Great Orme and those in the five Conway towns seems to only be that the councils have decided that these are a good thing. I know in my town they will have to go on a historic building because all of the main part of the town is part of a conservation area where we cannot change the fronts of ours houses, etc, without filling in huge forms. But it will be ok to do that. And I am sure it will look very beautiful when done.
But again my question comes back to, I suppose, judgement. Who are we to judge what is art, what is a bit of fun and what is vandalism?
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Aspirational Adventures 