Categories
accepting adventure Airbnb being me calling change dog faith friendship glorifyingGod moving politics prayer relationships trust uncertain walking the dog

Life Moving Fast ….

4221396001_5030726696001_5030697883001-vsWe seem to be in a time of great political change in our country. For the first time ever we have an uncontested leader of our country. Is this right? Who can say. But it is a first, at least since the time of voting democracy. Watching satire programs in fascinating because by the time they are screen, having been recorded 24 hours earlier they are no longer news but old news. Things have moved so fast. All program makers know that there can often be items that are changing, like with an election coming up or a big football match – like the Wales/Portugal semi-final. Oh and as an aside – I thought it was great that the team that beat Wales went on to win Euro2016. Wales was beaten by the best not the second best 🙂 Anyway that is an aside.

Talking of that who would accept a team as champions if they had not had to beat anyone to win? No one! But we now have a leader of this country who is leading because her rival shot herself in the foot, so to speak. I find this hard to know how things will go when speed_of_lightsomeone is uncontested like this. But again it is saying something about the speed things are moving – within 3 weeks the UK is a very different place.

On a personal note things have started to move here. I came back from a lovely relaxing 10 days visiting friends back where we use to live and enjoying 3 days of a writing retreat but since arriving back things have not stopped. I came back to a full calendar of Airbnb, my mum and her husband staying followed by my mother-in-law staying, in a gap I went for coffee with a friend up here and in a chance conversation to someone who runs a local community centre am now in the process of building publicity to start not just one but 4 writing courses at the local centre, and also have my daughter’s graduation and a full summer. Things are moving fast here.

As I was dog walking this morning I wondered if maybe the world, or at least the UK, is moving quicker. I know time is a relative concept but within the scope of how our country is run has changed dramatically. But also within my own life too. It is a dramatic change. Yes I had put it out there – not prayed as such but mentioned in a post on a writing facebook page that one of my adventures I would like to do would be to run creative writing

canolfan-dewi-sant-centre
Canolfan Dewi Sant, Pensarn – the location of my writing courses

classes. I did not expect that to happen. I was thinking I could start putting feelers out come September but not start in September. But now the publicity is out there. I’m getting my public liability insurance and will start really selling it in 10 days time at the community centre’s open day. I am a person who doesn’t mind change which is probably just as well. Even within the thoughts on the change of direction of the UK and the whole political situation I do find it fascinating and something I can roll with. With myself and these writing groups I find it a challenge because there are things I need to do – like posters, go chat to people, get publicity out there, put a reasonable facebook page together. All of which I find challenging. Also there is that concept that sitting in my room on my laptop all day isn’t really work – I think this myself at times but also I know others do too. It is hard to say “I’m writing/thinking all day” so I do get lost in the whole thing of emailing friends, reading stuff, buying things that I know we need but maybe not yet. The whole writing phenomena, whether building up a facebook page, a website, or even writing my target of 1000 words for my novel, do seem to slide. And of course there is still the house cleaning to fit in.

Another fast moving things too is that a young girl – 2 days younger than my daughter – has asked if I will support her with Bible study. She says she needs an older Christian 6e4314dd3eb384859b9d1bdaa2e6a591friend and thinks I’m it 🙂 That’s good news but again it is faster than I thought. She goes to the Bible study group we sometimes go to on a Thursday evening. We are still at the point of trying to work out what church we want to connect with and get involved with but here is a girl who wants me to do the discipling/bible study/mentoring bit already.

We have not been here 6 months yet and yet when we went to the local carnival on Saturday we saw 4 people that we knew to talk to!!! And I am moving into that stage of knowing more. I think for me within in all this I have to trust that God is God and He knew before the beginning of time that things would move and happen as they are. That Theresa May is the undisputed leader of not just the Conservative party but the Prime Minister of the UK is not a surprise to Him. Neither is the fact that I’m going to be running creative writing groups and doing some discipling earlier than I thought.So for me I have to trust in Him and believe and pray and wait and see. And also get on and do the things hqdefaultthat I can do, the things I’m meant to do. Trusting God isn’t an idle time but a time of listening doing what He is leading me into – which at this moment means posting this and getting on with some publicity stuff 🙂

Advertisement
Categories
accepting Airbnb being me creativity Easter friendship God grief hospitality Introvert Jesus life moving prayer presenceofGod questioning trust uncertain writing

Easter Saturday

tumblr_inline_mkj5cj217t1qz4rgpEaster Saturday, the space between death and resurrection life. The hard place to be. For those first followers of Jesus it must have been so awful because they did not know for sure that Jesus would rise again. We do so we go about our daily lives, do some DIY, go shopping, eat, drink, etc. For the Christian now I believe that Easter Saturday, and often even Good Friday, has lost its impetuous. But in our own lives Easter Saturday can be very real.

I feel like I have been in that place between death and resurrection life for a long time; probably since I finished my job in December

3025867
Found this picture when googling for “liminal space”. Wonder if this is why God’s put us so close to a beach?

2014 and got to grips with dealing with my grief and pain and reordering my life without sister, father in law and some friends. Even with this house move I have blogged about being in liminal places, inbetween times. I do pop my head above the surface at times, like a crocus, but then it stops again. Actually that space between the end of something and the resurrection of the new isn’t a clear one day thing as it is in the Christian calendar. I believe for each of us it is a long slow journey. I was journalling all this when I checked my emails to see Day 50 of 100 days for 100 years of history, a prayer for Ireland initiative. Steve Cave says so much better what I am feeling but he says it for a land that I was only praying for last week:

Here are some quotes:

I can’t help but feel we are still living in Easter Saturday here; we know something significant has happened with the transition to politics instead of terror, but we haven’t yet experienced resurrection to something new. We’re still fighting, albeit it is usually now just with words.

we’re still in between what has happened and what we still long for – it’s still Easter Saturday to an extent and we’re waiting for resurrection.

For me, for us, so much has happened but when Ian says “what are we here for?” I have to vulnerability21answer honestly “I’m not sure.” Yes we started our Airbnb rentals yesterday. Yes we have had friends and family up. Yes we have met up with some people here that could be friends. Yes I did feel my heart get majorly lifted and healed last week whilst we were praying about hearts in Ireland. Things did change. I do know something significant has happened, that I am in transition.

What do I long for? I often wonder if I am ready to ask that of myself? I do want to write, but am struggling to do much more than blog and write emails to friends. I do want to get back into praying for the land of Europe but can feel that is a “wait” word. I do want to run a hospitality house but I find it so hard at the moment and find that things can really gallery_write_gallerystress me out. Like with these first guests – it turns out that the radiator in the Airbnb room doesn’t work. Ian sorted them out, got them to move rooms, etc but I was upset by it all and couldn’t come up with a solution. I still feel weary; weary that I don’t want to do anything at the moment. I am down to start work with an agency doing temporary schools work, but I’m not sure if I should.

I do feel like I am still in between what has happened, the healings and the moving, but am still in that waiting place. It is very much that whole thing, as I have blogged so much before, of waiting, not pushing, but letting God. It all goes back to trusting Him. A wonderful learning curve!

Categories
accepting allthingsarenew being me change familiar God hospitality moving prayer vulnerable

Missing the Familiar

quote-aziz-ansari-one-of-the-big-things-i-miss-60676
similar thing

Whilst not having any internet last week I did some therapeutic writing about what I was missing having moved. From it came not that I was missing anything major but that I was missing the trivial and the familiar. I was missing knowing the names of dogs when I was out walking, knowing where to buy certain things, being able to recognise someone from a distance by the way they walked or what they were wearing. I missed knowing where to buy the things to make up my home-made muesli, or where to get an organic veg box, where to get biodegradable dog poo bags, and even where to buy a hat stand. All these things I would have known where to go and what to get but here its all new. I did also miss not having the car just outside. At the moment as it is our only car Ian is taking it to work as he finds that less stressful than going by public transport, and it’s an easy drive whereas the public transport is harder. Mind you not that I would have gone anywhere in the car because I didn’t know where to go, where to park once I got there and all that sort of stuff.

Since writing the piece my daughter came to visit, which made me happy as I hadn’t seen

ls
this is the butchers 🙂 

her since 1st January. Then we got the internet and so I’ve been able to google and get an organic veg box delivered, find that we have health food shop in Abergele which I have just visited. It isn’t as extensive as the one where I was but I’m sure I can make it mine after a while, but it did have the basics I needed. I went to my butcher, who I have been cultivating since arriving, and as well as being able to get the chicken wings for the dog he also had rabbit. Now I can’t remember how much is was in the local farm shop near where we were but I know it wasn’t cheap. Here it was £5 a pound and the butcher could tell me who’d shot it too if I wanted to know. The familiar is coming together.

Also this morning I got coerced  into going to a prayer meeting for my lovely Interweave friend. Yes I did sort of want to go but again that lack of the familiar was making me feel shy and a bit scared. Well God was doing the coercing. Firstly a lovely lady phoned me up and said she would meet me on the bus as she got on a stop or two before me. I agreed but was going to chicken out when another lady knocked on my door yesterday and said she would be round to mine at just after 10am to pick me up and take me. It wasn’t so much pressured as God making sure I was going to go. Well I went as I had no choice and the funny thing is that the familiar is in prayer meetings. Everyone wants to hear from God and pray for the person. It was a well set out one too. I loved it and I remembered that actually I am an intercessor. I like to pray. And I’m a bit good at it 🙂 The lady who had given me a lift was going on elsewhere but the other lady was going to show me how to get

82e06994e322e49fc4f39713dc701dae
the second hand furniture shop and cafe

back on the bus but first of all we went for lunch because she was going on elsewhere. So she took me to a lovely cheap little cafe that does great snacks but also has a great second hand furniture store incorporated in it. There was some lovely stuff there and I will definitely drag Ian along on the weekend 🙂 So she introduced me to the familiar.

When moving somewhere new, even if it is the right thing and feels like home there are still so many things to have to sort out, so many things to miss. Sometimes you just need a friendly had to guide you, point you in the right direction, be a bit firm about things. Goodness we have only had the keys for this house 3 weeks on Friday and have only been living here for 2 weeks and 2 days. It all takes time, but knowing where to get certain items makes me feel much more comfortable and settled.

Categories
accepting adventure God moving relationships trust uncertain

… and Things That Are Unhelpful

I would have written this yesterday but we were doing the final packing of the house and driving to our holiday cottage.

m5_closure-960x600Well after the great one line help from Martin Scott – which actually was very appropriate for the actual journey because the main motorway we had to go up was blocked and we had to do a pretty major detour through the middle of Wales, adding 2 hours to our journey, and then also made an error of judgement on a junction adding more to the journey. As always it was a struggle to enjoy the detours 🙂

Also I was really tired because I’d hardly slept the night before because of a chance comment from a neighbour. I’d popped round to ask our next door neighbour if he could put our recycling bins out on Monday and he just said that he was surprised how quickly our sale had gone and normally they take longer! Now I know that nearly everyone I know had said they thought it was taking a time, but we’d had this “picture” from someone about us going too fast. Ok that was back in October/November time but in the middle of the night it jumped and “attacked” me. I got caught up in the whole thing of timing and sugar-molecules-playing-when-youre-not-sleepingwhat if we’d got it all wrong. And that we shouldn’t be moving now, that we should stay put and wait. Oh and even moved on to worrying that I was abandoning my children. Ok they are 22 and 24 but it was 3am!

Oh and also he said about how expensive storage was. I then got down to the idea that I’d read the email from our removal company wrong and it was £72 a day not £72 a week. Well that was me gone. I had to get up at one point and have a cup of calming tea and pray. But as soon as I got back to bed the “demons of the night” came back to sow their doubts.

It amazed me how easy it was to go from certainty to doubt. But then that is what faith is all about. If we were certain all the time when we would have knowing rather than faith. Faith is being sure of what we aren’t certain about. Ok a bit of a paraphrasing there, but I do think that. If I was so sure of things then where would the steps of faith be? Faith certain of what we aren’t sure about!

trustAnyway I expressed by doubts and fears to Ian as we journeyed up. He was great and said about how it felt right to be doing this but actually even if we are doing totally the wrong thing in the wrong timing that’s ok. We have to work from where we are. And then he teased me to remind me that these were my words that I had said to him before 🙂

Categories
adventure being me christmas excited glorifyingGod gratitude Jesus life Love moving movinghouse vision vulnerable

Trust and Vulnerability

86I’ve been chewing over this post for a while. It’s really about living in the liminal place, which sounds so cool when you talk of it as that spiritual place between earth and heaven but the word means inbetween place. And this is where we are, living in that place between places. Our possessions are packed in boxes. We have done our round of goodbyes. We’ve finished our jobs. But we cannot take up new jobs, sort our new house out ready for the whole hospitality thing, can’t get to know our new neighbourhood. It is an odd place to be.

In one of my regular emails this came up:

Have you found your own, unique sense of purpose for your life? Do you have a vision of what your life might encompass if you chose to live it from your deepest desires and yearnings, from the place of that which you value above all else? What would your life look like if you lived it in accordance with your authentic self?

See now this whole thing of purpose and vision I sort of looked at over October and November when we put the house up for sale and found the new one. For me that whole Patchwork quiltbit of know the vision and the why were sort of easy. Ok not overly but they were things God had been brewing in me, and in my husband, over a number of years, both together and individually. The thing is though they involved moving and place. These questions from Abbey of The Arts actually says about what would my life look like if I lived with my authentic self, not what would it look like if I moved to the right place. It caught me a bit unawares this morning but as I pondered I could see that what I have been doing is saying to myself and probably to God that I can be all the things He has said in the vision once we move to Abergele. This mornings questions say can I live it now?

 

The above paragraph was what I was going to explore but actually I am wondering if maybe we are not meant to be living the vision yet but are meant to be living in the liminal place, in that place of neither one thing or the other, that place of not planning. There was something said at church yesterday which I interpreted as people wanting to see how we lived though uncertainty and change. It wasn’t that the world wants answers but that they want to see how we really live. How am I living not in my vision but in my place between places?

hidingbehindwall-1I think often what is seen by those who don’t go to church is a load of people going to church services, pretending everything is ok, and yet hiding something. I do think in our modern church services we’ve tried too often to show God as the answer to everything when in fact He is the supreme being to hold on to, to shout at, to be hugged by, to be vulnerable with. God is about relationship in life not about answers to stuff we don’t even know the questions for.

Today I woke up all excited like a child on Christmas morning. Does this mean we are moving this week? Who knows. That isn’t in my hands at all to say, but what I do know is that even in this inbetween place I am excited about moving. Last week I was so caught up in wanting to know and then of wondering and angsting about trusting God that I lost my excitement. We are moving. It will happen. When? We don’t know but it will happen and I i-can-t-be-calm-i-m-too-excitedwant to hang on to the excitement of what will come; the walks on the beach, having a room of my own for writing, the guests we will be having, the new stuff, the spa I want to join.

As I wrote that I wonder too if we have forgotten the excitement of heaven, of Jesus coming again, whichever we get to first. It is going to be so amazing, but we have got lost in living in this inbetween place, this life on earth. We’ve either got worn down with the cares of life or of wanting to gather us to come with us but in fact we, as Christians who know what is to come – even if we don’t know the details it will be living with God for ever and ever and eternity. We should be like small children filled with that buzz and excitement.

Oh I love the fact that God can take my situation – moving – and turn it round to make me look at Him and what is to come. Wow!!!

Categories
adventure glorifyingGod life Love moving oneyoulove

Back To The Future Day

I wasn’t going to write because I’ve got too much to do and also I’m not feeling great but felt compelled to. As the quote says “Back to the Future will now take part entirely in the the past”. I saw all 3 of the Back to The Future films in the cinema and then on TV. Never sure why I liked them but ..

And as Sally Ann says today 21st October is significant in the use of the number 21 – the coming of age number – and I quote:

To me 21 denotes a breakthrough and the number of maturity when young people historically got ‘the key of the door’… Daniel in the Old Testament fasted for 3 weeks – 3×7=21 – and an angel appeared to him at the end of that time: now that’s what I call a breakthrough!

So today, the 21st day of October we got breakthrough – in that we sold our house, offer totally accepted, and had the offer of our new house accepted – and it feels a bit like maturity – because now we step out into the unknown but as grown ups. We are breaking ties, gaining something that is ours totally (as in this house will be in joint names whereas the house we are in now is just in my husband’s name). And also it was 3 weeks today that, after getting back from Wales, our estate agent came round and put this house on the market. Another of those 21 days! And also from now on we start writing our future, a future that is ours, that is different, that we cannot predict at all.

Something interesting too – often when I can’t get to sleep I daydream about having a room of my own that I can decorate and also being close to the sea. Now it doesn’t help me to go to sleep because the dream is becoming a reality. Our future is standing like a blank page waiting to be written. You know it feels like it did just before we got married – that tumbling excitement of stepping into the unknown with the one you love 🙂