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
let go of fear trust

Mountains

Looking across Loch Katrine to a lovely Scottish mountain. Photographed by myself September 2024

Jesus said, “… Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17:20

I was journaling around something the other day and was thinking of how one can let things on top you and then keep piling upwards – like fear, anxiety, uncertainty, worry, etc. This is sample of what I wrote

…you take today and yesterday and all your yesterdays and carry them into tomorrow allowing the pile to grow and morph, to cast shadows across your world

Each day the mountain grows, bigger, more substantial, more present

It seems immovable.

Then the above verse popped into my head and it was like a light bulb moment. Jesus wasn’t talking about physically rearranging the topography of the world, not trying to move literal mountains. I think he was talking of those mountains we all build within ourselves – sometimes called walls. Walls are like mountains but more regular in shape – and how we think they are immovable, or even that we should climb them to get to where we want or to be who we think we are meant to be.

How often do we hear “I need to get over my fear of …” or “I need to push myself to not worry about ….” Always that “I” word. Always that doing word.

Firstly I think we need to be aware of our mountains. Even though they are lots of them are big we have got used to them and think they are just “how we are” and that we need to just, now here’s an interesting word we use, “get over it” or those around us need to “get over it”. We think it is just the way we are whether due to personality, to upbringing, to present circumstance.

So many fears and anxieties course through me on any given day that I sometimes scarcely notice them. They’re just part of my blood.

Grant Faulkner – Practicing Lectio Divina

But what if instead we slow down a bit and noticed we have an issue with, for example, fear of money, fear of the future, anxiety about what other people think, anxiety about the way the world is going, nervous about going into a new place, or asking for something. What if we were willing to acknowledge that we don’t want to live with this mountain that we have to keep climbing every day?

Jesus says we only need a tiny bit of faith to do that. A mustard seed is a very small seed but is really important in Middle Eastern cuisine, the plant reaches maturity very quickly and can grow almost anywhere. A great example of something that can take the place of that mountain we thought we had to live with, thought we had to “get over” any time we had to go beyond our safe space.

I ended my journaling by writing – that even though Jesus can dismantle any mountain and throw it into the sea he will always need our permission to do it. And this is why, too often, we have to keep climbing that self same mountain because we don’t trust Jesus/God/The Universe and so don’t give them that permission to get rid of our self build mountains.

Renly climbing a mountain near Aber Falls March 2025 photographed by myself.

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Categories
fulfilment living water

Follow Up To Woman At The Well

Not totally relevant to the post but it was the look Renly gave me as I went “yes I get it” – taken today – July 2025

So after posting yesterday’s post I was feeling a bit “blah!” and then a bit condemned. There I’d written this post about being filled with living water and I wasn’t feeling excited and joyous. So I did what always works for me and journaled around my thoughts.

Ok first off there were things about why I was feeling “blah!” which were good to acknowledged, moving on to handing them all over to God – which I try to do regularly. But then came the bit which made Renly sit up and look surprised/impressed.

Being filled with God’s living water doesn’t mean I will always feel happy, or even content. I won’t always feel joyous or wanting to be with people or even happy. It is ok to feel disappointed, upset, grieving, nervous, scared, generally pissed off with the world, with family, with the moment. All that is fine.

Christianity isn’t all happy clappy claptrap. It is sadness and sorrows, and being disappointed and things not working out as you’d like, and of being hurt, misunderstood, not listened to, of people you love dying, of putting yourself out and not getting anything back. But the deeper magic, the living water, is about accepting things as they are and of not looking to outside things, people, experiences, that do not really fill you no matter how good they way seem.

Oh we all see sleeping around, drink, drugs, overeating, etc as bad for you and of “not putting God first” but there are other things too – jobs, volunteering, hobbies, relationships, even ministry. All those things can be put before allowing God to hold, to fulfil and to love.

The “living water”, the inner healing and fulfilment, is a gift, an unearned gift, and we need to stop looking elsewhere for it. We need to stop trying to manufacture the gift.

So I have pondered the things that have made me feel how I feel today and I have let God hold those things with me. And you know, together we can make plans on this. Together, with God’s living water, I don’t need to go do anything else.

October 2024
Categories
fulfilment repentance

Woman At The Well

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/ancient-draw-well-arabian-village-uae-71733394.jpg

I’ve always related to the Woman at the well story in John chapter 4 because when I met Jesus I’d had a couple of husbands and the man I was living with wasn’t my husband. He wasn’t even the father of my child. And I met with God in this amazing powerfully tangible way that no amount of scepticism can ever take from me.

But the bit I struggled with was the “living water” thing. It was often preached that this living water would go stale if we didn’t keep giving it away and that, so long as we kept going to church, hearing sermons, doing stuff that needed doing in church and in mission, telling people about Jesus, etc then this living water was always going to be replaced. And that if we didn’t, well then the living water would go stale. It did appear that to keep this living water flowing there was a lot of stuff for us to do.

But I’ve just read Tim Keller’s book Encounters With Jesus and he thinks it isn’t quite like that. This living water is inner healing for us.

[Jesus] … is talking about deep soul satisfaction, about incredible satisfaction and contentment that doesn’t depend on what is happening outside of us

pp 26-7

The woman at the well wasn’t getting true inner satisfaction with her relationships. What made the change inside her was when she let God “quench her thirst,” let God fully fill her up in her inner most being, in that part of er heart, our hearts, that are longing for unconditional love, to be safe being ourselves, that place where total contentment comes from.

So doesn’t matter what our relationships are like, what are jobs are like, what our planet is like, etc etc, we feel this inner peace, this inner joy, this inner contentment. And we don’t need to do any of those things that church says to keep that inner healing, inner peace, that “living water”. It is a total free gift from God. In fact doing those things that some sermons tell us so that we keep that “living water”, so that we never thirst for deep contentment again, are actually us trying to sort out the outer situations when what Jesus promised is that inner deep place of our hearts; to be healed of the traumas and neglects of childhood, of other people, of misunderstanding something and so getting hurt by it, of a deep felt need for something. This is the living water, this place where we will never thirst or chase for it elsewhere.

I think the reason that the people of the town came rushing out to see Jesus is not just the words the woman said, but that they saw a change in the countenance of the woman. They saw something deep had change within her and now their husbands, sons, brothers, male relatives, were safe from her because she no longer needed a man, a relationship, to find her deep inner peace, her inner fulfilment.

Like many I do forget or am aware of that “living water” and might at times be looking to other things – relationship, a good writing session, being noticed and heard – to fill those spaces but really I need to stop. I need to remember where I was 34 years ago, remember the encounter I had with God, and allow the living water to touch that place within me again, to heal me again, to remind me again.

One definition of repentance is to turn 180 degrees and be facing the other way and whenever I’m feeling like I’m looking for something else to heal me, to give me fulfilment, to fill that hole, then I just need to turn around and stand in that living water again, that acceptance of Jesus just as I am. And remember I am loved unconditionally by the Creator of The Universe no matter what I do say or act.

Categories
taking initiative underserving

But Do They Deserve It?

Red Wharf Bay May 2025

I was reading some reflections about The Good Samaritan story in preparation for youth group tonight. One of the points I came across that struck me was that the guy that got beaten up shouldn’t have been travelling alone along that road with wealth. It served him right that he got beaten up because he should have been in a group or with guards.

Taking that on board this means that the two people who walk past were not walking alone. They would have been in groups. So it isn’t just a priest travelling on his own or a Levite travelling on his own. It is highly possible these people would have been part of a larger group who all just walked on past. Maybe the others in the group, whether fellow travellers or guards, looked to the religious people for guidance and so didn’t stop. The people listening to Jesus’s story would have known it wouldn’t have been a lone priest or a lone Levite. Perhaps another point Jesus was making, that we have lost in our age because we didn’t travel that road, was about how often we look at those we see as “in charge” and follow them even if we don’t think what they are doing is right.

But also it was this man’s fault. He should have had protection but he didn’t. He brought what happened to him on himself. Again Jesus’s original hearers would have known that.

So what, I think, Jesus was trying to get us to hear in this parable is not just “would you help someone who isn’t of your tribe?” but “would you help someone who brought their problems on themselves?” and “would you be willing to step out of the crowd and do something rather than wait for an authority figure to tell you to do something?”

Most of us are willing to help someone who is in a bad way threw no fault of their own but it is different if it is say they made a bad life call and life has beat up on them but if we think they could have stopped it but they didn’t.

So who is my neighbour? Not just the needy person but the undeserving person. Not just the person I am told to help but the person I can see needs help.

Somehow that has been fudged out of the story. I hope I can bring that in for my youth this afternoon. I also hope I can bring it into my life and not just say “well that serves you right” or as I remember being told once when I was in mess “well you made your bed now you can lie in it”.

Categories
Holy Spirit Listening

Really Hearing

I bet you can hear the lapping of those waves. It is the tidal pool at Cellardyke and if you look really really hard there is a tiny speck in that pool which is my husband braving the waters!!! Photographed by myself June 2025

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken

Acts 2:5-6

Ok so I know the chapter starts with saying the disciples spoke in different tongues but it is this piece about each person hearing that struck me. Although we don’t actually know what the disciples were saying in these different tongues because the people then say “what does this mean?” And Peter stands up and does his spiel.

What struck me was how often people, including myself, think we’ve heard something, let it run through our own perceptions, our own filters, and then presume we know what the person meant. It seems very rare that someone will says “what does that mean?”/“what do you mean by that?” because we’ve already decided we know. It is why couples fight because both presume they know what the other is really saying. It is a reason why nations fight – because they cannot really hear the peace talks, why people walk out of meetings or get upset in them, because we don’t really listen.

It is said that the majority of the time, when in conversation, what we are doing is waiting for an opportunity to step in and tell our story, even if it is to empathise, we are still half hearing and waiting to get our bit in.

Though for some people answering that question, “what do you mean by that?”, can be a hard one to answer because that involves us listening to our hearts and trying to understand why we say what we really mean by what we’ve said. Often, I think, we say things that we think will please others, that we’ve heard other people use, that we think we should say, rather than before we speak asking of ourselves “what do I really mean by that?”

So something happened, I think, when the Holy Spirit fell in Jerusalem at Pentecost, something that caused both the disciples to speak deeply and for people to hear deeply, caused people to stop talking and to fully listen, be brave enough to know they didn’t understand and to want to know more.

Yes there were those who said “they’re drunk” but I think those were the ones that didn’t hear properly, weren’t touched by that desire to really listen but had already made their presumptions.

Maybe we could all do with a dose though of that Holy Spirit power that would make us only speak what needs to be hear, listen fully and be willing to ask what someone really means rather than jump to conclusions.

Categories
faith simple

Why Do We Have To Make It Hard?

St Monan’s, East Neuk, Scotland. Photographed by myself June 2025

A little rant!

I’ve just read two blog posts by two people who are big in the Christian mover/shaker scene. I rate both of them which is why I get their posts but in both of them they talk about how following the Christian faith is hard work, and you know that bugs me.

I’ve been a Christian over thirty years now and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Ok sometimes I forget how amazing it all is and get grouchy about it but really it is amazing and it underpins so much of life in general.

For instance – we all know, whether Christian or not, that forgiving others and ourselves is beneficial to ourselves, often more so than it is to the others, who often don’t know we’re mad at them. We all know that to let go of things is so much easier, even if, whether Christian or not, we struggle sometimes to do that. We all know its right.

In fact most of us know, whether Christian or not, that it helps to believe in something/someone that is bigger and more encompassing than we are. Those who attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous or other organisations like that say that things change when they give their addictions to something/someone bigger than them whoever they identify that or call it. The main difference for me from my reading of the Bible is that I call my bigger being God and believe they love me unconditionally.

It is this unconditional love bit that for me makes being a Christian easy. I don’t accept the rules and regulations that religious streams try to say one should do, say, act like, believe. I just know that I am loved by something so much more amazing than me, some being that created the whole universe.

So if the Creator of the Universe loves me unconditionally then why should pottering along making mistakes, forgiving myself, getting hurt by others and forgiving them, doing my best to be kind, supportive, encouraging to others be hard? Why should the whole thing of trusting that all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well, to quote Julian of Norwich, be such an issue?

I remember going to one gathering and the leader said that he was the leader of the church there and that Christians were a broken people and he was more broken than any, and thinking to myself “well I’m not going there.” I want to go somewhere that’s led by people who are confident that their God loves them unconditionally, that they are forgiven and so can forgive others, that they can be generous with themselves, their time, money, hearts, because they have more than enough, that they have no fear of lack. I don’t want to go somewhere where leaders find it hard work, where they struggle with their faith, where they are “broken”.

I fully believe I have been made whole by Jesus, can write my life story and all the crap that’s in it knowing I am forgiven and I am forgiving those I write about, and knowing that, through God, I can trust my heart, enjoy being with myself.

If God thinks I am amazing and worth loving unconditionally then who am I to question them????

my dog chilling after being carried in his new old dog’s backpack knowing he is safe and loved just for being him. Photographed by myself June 2025

Sometimes we all need to be more like my little dog who is accepting his limitations, allowing himself to be carried when need be, and relaxing into the safety of being loved by his two humans.

Categories
peace solitude

Content With Solitude

This is where I was sat when these thought came to me. I’m going to try to work out how to get them onto photos but just wanted to share them today

Also want to link this to blog from Deepak – Choosing Happiness in all the Wrong Places because I think we are saying similar things with different words.

Solitude – a place where you can sit with the chattering monkey thoughts and let them slowly settle to the river bottom; where you can stay in that place of peace and wait to see what rises again to the surface

Diane Woodrow – June 2025

Being alone doesn’t mean that all that random “monkey chatter” isn’t there. You don’t feel instantly serene and at peace with yourself and the world. But, I believe, if you don’t sit alone for long enough and allow those monkey thoughts to settle, then wait and allow what God/The Universe wants you to consider at that moment, you will never reach peace with yourself.

So to me when I sat by the sea, just me and my dog, I let the thoughts that were bubbling in me about various things rise to the surface then fall to the depths. I didn’t try to pick any out to think of but waited to see what rose up. I then gained some interesting insights into myself and why things unfold as they do and also about a project that looked like it was failing but was going the wrong way. But I had to sit without an agenda, without people pleasing, and trusting to listen to my heart.

Solitude is a place where you can be fully in love and fully trusting in yourself and just being

Dollar Glen, Scotland – June 2025 – photographed by myself

Solitude is glorious when you can see and know yourself in all that you are – your strengths and weaknesses, hurts and joys, mistakes and triumphs – and know that you like and love yourself just as you are at this moment in time.

Solitude isn’t a place of loneliness. Loneliness can happen in a crowd, especially when you are trying to be someone you are not, when you are trying to please others, when you are afraid to reveal who you really are, when you don’t feel like you fit in.

Solitude is a place of calm, of peace, of being, of knowing who you fully are, of knowing what you fully want to do.

Solitude, I believe, is something you can take into a crowd and enjoy who are you with because you are being fully you with no agenda for yourself or for those you are with. Things don’t have to go a certain way because you are calm within yourself for all that time of being alone.

But this can only come about if you are willing to take time out from the noise and hassle of the life we lead, can let go of those monkey chattering thoughts and listen to your heart.

Solitude can be glimpsed through a porthole. Lady’s Tower, Elie, East Neuk, Fife. Photographed by myself June 2025

Categories
decisions democracy

Local Elections

Renly outside our local polling station.

Today was a local election. Not even a county one. Just a town one. But because it is an election I believe it is my moral duty to all those people, not just the women, who fought so that everyone could have the vote, not just a selected few, that I need to turn up at the polling station.

But that’s where the dilemma comes. I have been a socialist, as a teen and young adult I even joined the Communist party for a while and subscribed to The Morning Star. As time has passed I’ve become more and more disillusioned with politics. They all seem a bit same old same old and not really in touch with day to day life.

So the choices were – a local lad of just 19 doing a politics degree in the capital four hours drive from our town, someone from Reform UK and then I noticed a name I recognised, a poet I had worked with 7 years ago.

The nineteen year old was keen and knocked on doors, handed out leaflets, but then he was funded by the local Conservative party who have money to spend on campaigning. He was lovely to chat to, very keen, very enthusiastic. And he was the only one to knock. But the bit I struggled with was the Conservative party rhetoric of it almost being every man/local area/community for themselves whereas I’m more of a global person believing what we do here does affect people across the world.

The Reform UK guy might have come round but his leaflet came when we were out so who knows. But then I find the whole thing of blaming immigrants for the ills of our country is not the way to look at things. Again to me it that global thing that we all need to be working together, supporting each other. I also believe that most people who migrate to another country do it because their own country isn’t safe to live in. I think most of them would rather stay at in their own lands but cannot do it for fear of so so much we’d never understand int his country.

The poet guy I know didn’t appear at all. Or if he did we were out. And he didn’t drop in a leaflet so we don’t know his views on anything.

But then at the last general election we only met our Labour candidate though knew a couple of the others because they were local – so we knew them and their blemishes too.

So who to vote for? It is so hard especially as there seems to be such a lackadaisical approach from those who were standing – apart from the Conservatives and their budget to campaign. But still I made my way to the polling station with my dog and put my cross where I felt it was right to put it and walked away hoping I was helping to keep democracy ticking over.

Categories
confident playing more strings

Strings To One’s Bow

From Openverse

This post came about from an interesting conversation in which when I said something like “as you get older you get more strings to your bow” the person hearing thought of the strings on the instrument not the bow. And interestingly when I did the search using “strings on a bow” I got lots of pictures of violins or guitars. But the bow is the thing you play the instrument with not those strings you run the bow across.

I wonder if we like it to be the instrument because that is unchanging whereas the bow can gain strings, can change how it plays, and also, if I remember from my long-ago violin playing days, the bow was the part that needed regularly waxing so it moved smoothly across the strings.

I do think it is true that as we get older we do gain strings to our bows, with experience, with learning, with exploring, and with healing. Confidence grows. We just know more stuff.

For instance I run writing groups for both adults and school children. I do them mainly with some basic notes but am continually pulling things from the depths of my brain, altering, changing, rehashing, being able to answer questions, etc. This isn’t because I am super intelligent but it is that I have been around a lot. I’ve read a lot. I’ve been to lots of other writing groups. I’ve listened to others. I’ve a love of learning. Things are just in my head. And I have gained confidence in myself that I can do this. They are the strings to my bow.

Interestingly I’ve been doing some emotional support work in a local school via an organisation using their tools but the whole time I was finding I was “playing a scratchy tune.” I wasn’t playing cleanly. It was not good. In the end I gave up on their tools and went back to having a rough plan and going with the flow – allowing my bow to flow smoothly over the strings.

I’m not saying I am better than the organisation but to play a tune that was harmonious for me and the lad I was working with I had to use my own bow, so to speak.

My husband has just gone for a new job and what he found at the interview as that as they asked him about certain things he was able to say “I’ve done that with X that I used to work with”. He has gain strings to his bow over the different jobs he’s had, the different things he’d been involved with, the different people he’s worked with. His bow has grown fuller.

Even now as I grapple with a new laptop [mine died on holiday. Thank goodness for ‘the cloud’ that stored all my writing] because of the experiences of setting up other laptops over the years I have skills and this time it didn’t take as long [apart from getting solitaire up but then maybe that is the gods of laptops telling me I don’t need that!!!]

So let us all enjoy our bows as they gain their strings and allow them to flow smoothly over the instruments that are placed in front of us.

my daughter and my son about 20 years ago at my mum’s enjoying a jamming session one Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately neither of them has continued playing an instrument
Categories
Flexible interesting

Be Flexible

https://dailyverses.net/2025/6/3

I know I’ve written about being flexible before but I love it when a Bible verse pops up in my inbox that is so relevant to my day.

Today looked like being a full day so I journaled how best to fit everything in, had my plan ready, and then the day changed shape. Firstly those who come to the writing groups I run steadily cancelled one by one so that now it looks like there might be just one person but she hasn’t got back to me just to confirm. But even if she does running a writing group for just one person is very different to running it for 5-6.

Then I drove up to school where I’m doing some emotional support work with a lad to get told that someone was in from SEN to observe him and after some discussion between myself and the deputy head we decided that it would not be beneficial if I took him out of class.

Change! Change! Change!

I know at one time I’d have been really angry about things and also not sure what to do, but today yes I did have a little “oh my what shall I do?” moment but was able to ANS [realign my autonomic nervous system], breath, and thank God for this space in my day. Not that at the moment I need great spaces because life seems pretty chilled at the moment – with even a holiday approaching on Friday.

Again at one time I would have panicked that I have all this free time and I should be filling it but now I trust to God/The Universe that they know what’s going on and that it is ok to just be rather than do.

And to also remember this from Matt Kelland

So now today I’ve done this post. Then I will do some more major decluttering of my study because I bought 3 wooden crates on Sunday and am having a revamp. It looks good but there seems to have been an explosion of paperwork from somewhere, which probably needs recycling! Either that or I’ll sit in the garden and read a book!