Category: trust

Categories
Father trust

True Fathering

From bbc.co.uk online news

The story focuses on Faye, a five year old girl, who climbed Ben Nevis in a blizzard to raise money for Glasgow Children’s Hospital. But if you read this and other articles they says how her dad, Craig, is an experience ice climber, meticulously planned the route and made sure he had all the necessary kit needed. This does not detract from Faye’s amazing achievement but she couldn’t have done it without good fathering. And I suspect a father she trusted, who encouraged her and who she’d done lesser climbs with beforehand.

This, to me, seems to fit in with the last two posts of mine. If we “yoke” ourselves to Jesus and trust God knows what’s going on we can scale any difficulty. God has done all things before us. Like with Craig, God isn’t surprised when bad things come our way. We just need to tuck in behind our perfect Father/Parent and know they will not let us come to any harm.

Looking at Faye’s face I suspect she wasn’t worried at all because she knew she could trust her Dad not to let her come to harm. I am suspecting Craig gave her words of encouragement to keep her going; words she could hear because she knew he meant it. Even though it was an arduous climb in bad weather Craig knew they had the right kit and the right stamina and knew they could do it and so he passed this on to Faye.

Too often we get to a place where the going looks too tough and we stop listening to the voice of God encouraging us. Some of that, I suspect, comes from parenting we’ve received where we haven’t been encouraged, where at times our parents are the ones who’ve put the limits on us, passed on their fears and worries, not walked that path so don’t want us to because we might get hurt.

I know as a parent I was guilty of doing that but that came from me not listening to God as I parented. So I put in my fears, my limitations, my expectations, etc on my children instead of trusting God with parenting my children and letting myself take on that easy yoke that Jesus promised.

We could all do with being more like Faye with our heavenly Father and trusting that they know the route, have got the kit that is needed, and hear their words of encouragement so we can make it to wherever we are meant to be going without fear.

Photo by Sonny Vermeer on Pexels.com
Categories
guided trust

The Yoke

I’d just read the verse “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” [Matthew 11:30] and the commentary around it was how Jesus, being the other oxen, takes the biggest load. I didn’t agree so husband and I were chatting about it in the car as we drove south on Sunday.

Most of the preaching I’d heard was around the idea that Jesus is the other oxen in a dual yoke, and talk of how a younger oxen used to be yoked with an older oxen to learn the trade and how Jesus was the older oxen. But my husband said he’d heard that the Pharisees teaching was called a yoke and that what Jesus was saying was that his teaching was easy compared to the Pharisees teachings. So the teachings were the yoke over the oxen.

Who puts the yoke on an ox? The ploughman. So this got us to thinking what is Jesus is the ploughman, which then comes back to The Greatest Sin post about letting go of control and trusting God. The ploughman knows where the ox needs to go prepare the land and then later to harvest the land. The oxen has no idea. Though I do suspect, like my dogs, they do know what they are doing after a while but still need to be guided.

So with this thought in mind we need to start trusting that Jesus/God is with us guiding us. Too often we go somewhere or do something and “invite God into the situation” with a prayer. But if we are letting God guide us then they are there with us and they have got it covered. It is them leading us to plough the furrow not us deciding which furrow to plough – if we are willing to let them. It makes it more than just acknowledging God in a situation but it means knowing God is fully in that situation and has led us that way so we are there.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/151245380/proverbs-35-6-trust-in-the-lord-with-all

Too often we do the acknowledging once we’re there but I think this is another one of those verses that should be read differently – as in “acknowledge that God is able to be trusted and is in control and that way your paths will be straight”, or something like that. Ok so it doesn’t scan quite as nicely but, for me, it makes more sense. Or maybe even “Wow God is in all of this because I let my heart trust them and let them take over“?

So it isn’t so much me taking God into a situation but Jesus guiding and leading me into the situations. Again it takes the onus off me to remember and lets Jesus be the guiding steerer to my life.

So much easier!

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
faith trust

Mary

Photo by Bich Tran on Pexels.com

I love working with children because they come with no presumptions about anything and are willing to listen and learn, but through explaining to them something we adults have known for ages I get a new perspective.

I’ve written a version of the Nativity story for the Christingle service for the church where I co-run the youth group because the young people who read the Bible verses last year wanted to act it out this year. It is bonkers and crazy and like herding cats but way more fun.

Anyway I was trying to get some method acting into it and was telling the 10 year old girl who was playing Mary why she was scared to tell Joseph she was pregnant – the whole thing about being stoned to death if he didn’t believe her [yes I’m a no holes barred youth worker :)] .

What struck me as I was telling her was that actually Mary, if we take what we are told in the Bible, is the only human being who knows how she got pregnant. The Bible doesn’t mention anyone else there or anyone overhearing. From that point onward the main characters in the Jesus story believe what Mary says to them but none of them know for sure.

Over the years there have been many preachers who have filled in the gaps, said how people “knew for sure” but all of it fits in with the last two blog posts around not knowing for sure what people are thinking, etc – of mind-reading, fortune-telling, presuming.

But also it talks of trust and faith. Mary knows what happened. Joseph trusts her and the dream he has. Luke, the only one of the gospel writers who mentions the virgin birth, obviously trusts whoever told him or believes it by faith as do then many the people who read it from then onward

.[There are also many people who choose not to believe and that is something I might pursue in another post? Maybe!]

How often have you trusted what someone has said because they are trustworthy? Even things like when you make an arrangement to see someone both of you are trusting that the other people will turn up. You trust them because when they have said they are going to be somewhere at a certain time they do. We all also have people that we have learned not to trust because what they say they often don’t mean. And of course we need to take captive those thoughts when we try to mind-read as to why they are like they are. Sometimes we just have to say we don’t believe what they say but not turn them into monsters.

I think Mary must have been a very trustworthy person for Joseph and others to believe what she says. Try to forget all the icon images we have of her as something special. She was just an ordinary teenage girl – though with an extraordinary trust in God – but she wasn’t any more holy than you and I.

Who do you trust when they tell you something extraordinary and why?

Categories
restoration trust

Busy!

For those who know my dog he does sleep as well as he does busy. Though for him busy is sniffing on a walk, having a shorter and shorter zoomy with his doggie friends as he gets older, and rushing to find a treat. He then does rest and recover very well. So why can’t we as human beings desire more and more to do this.

I am sooooo fed of reading things that will make me more efficient with my time, will make me more productive and thus will give me more money to do more things with. But this seems to be what too many human beings think they want. Rest and recuperation, are things that get timetabled in rather than a priority that we work around.

I read somewhere that to be truly creative, not just in one’s writing, painting, etc but in coming up with solutions on how to live your life, how to find out how to stop climate change, how to change the world, one needs to sit about doing nothing. Not as in a “planning to think about” exercise but in a “letting ones mind drift and see what the universe drops into it.” Apparently all the great inventors spent time just staring into space, getting into those alpha ways, getting tuned into what might just be floating around.

But we encourage each other and our children from an early age to be busy, to look busy, to be productive, to not waste time, to be doing something. So we all grow up with a fear of staring out the window, of wasting time.

I’ve a couple of friends how actually do just that. When the weather is like it is now [pouring with rain] if they have no work they don’t get dressed, they don’t see anyone, they don’t do anything. I would like to say that they then achieve great things but they don’t. But they do enjoy their sitting around being time. Interestingly both of them get led to pray for things that surprise them because they hadn’t planned to. So really then one can they that they are following God’s lead on what God wants prayed about.

But busyness gets rewarded. I was at a meeting the other day in which it got down to people boasting about how busy they were, how they gave their time for free for the good of whatever, how they had so little time. And then they got “rewarded” by being given more to do. And they all looked so pleased with it.

Interestingly I didn’t get given anything. And what little it looked like I might be doing got taken away from me. I suspect it is because I am now sending out those vibes, that energy, to say “I only want to do what I’m meant to do”. Also I no longer need other people’s affirmation that what I do with my day is worthwhile. I know it is whether it is staring out the window, cooking tea, keeping house, running a writing workshop, finishing a story and bravely sending it out for a competition, reading a book or watching TV. All those things are my worthwhile day.

Why? Because they kept me healthy – because I’m not needing someone else to affirm me. But also because what I do I can do to my full energy and give it my all because I’m not planning on the next thing.

In this meeting some had leave early because they were off to other meetings, some were doing other work during the meeting, and like I say many of them were saying how they had just rushed from something and had more to do.

So I want to live out the rest of my life to the full but I do not want “the full” to be busy busy busy, but to have time to chill in front of the TV, read books I like, chat with friends, be flexible when the weather halts things, be free to stare out the window and watch those raindrops falling and to see they joy in them because ….. just because

Categories
different trust

Trust Is The Key

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
time trust

Time Poor?

This photograph of my dog has no relevance to this post – apart from him never being time poor or time rich – but it for one of my readers who told me how much she loves my posts but especially the ones with photos of Renly, who she knows personally!

I was a meeting the other night and there were people there who kept saying they were “time poor“. I had heard the expression before but not really engaged with it. I think what they meant was they were doing lots of things and so were busy.

I response in my head in the meeting was to think that maybe they should be thinking about what they are meant to be doing and asking their hearts if this was what they should be doing. And then my next thing was to want to boast and say that “now I’m healed/healing I am time rich“. But then I realised that both those responses are wrong. I am comparing and being proud. Neither of which is being respectful to the people I was with who are working really hard for my little town.

As I pondered it and did some journaling around my thoughts I realised I often panic that I don’t have time to do things and that this is what is stopping me getting some work that I should have because I’d be great at it. But I am also worried that I won’t have that allusive “enough” time to do all I think I ought to be doing. So in reality I was no better. I still think I could be “time poor“.

So more listening to my heart, listening to God who Created the Whole Universe, listening to the Universe. Then I realised that if I listen to my heart then I do have enough to do each day the things I am meant to do each day – whether that is keep house, run workshops, visit an ill friend down south to relieve her husband, see my mother, have coffee with my friends, be in school to do the things I am great at doing there. I will do what I am meant to do with the energy and time I need to all that.

So not “enough” as in the worrying that there isn’t enough but trusting that each and every day what I choose to do from listening to my heart will be what I am meant to do, and that I will not do too much or too little, will not be too busy, too time poor, but will glide through calmly knowing that I am being what I’m meant to be with enough time, energy, resources, experience, etc that I need. And then like my little dog I can enjoy the moment, seize the day, and live life to the full of who I am and what I love to do.

An aside – too often we see “living life to the full” as being super busy, but I am finding that the more I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, the more I am filled with deep joy, deep contentment, deep peace and a freedom to trust, the more I know that I am living life to a fullness that I never had when I was busy.

Categories
dog trust

Lessons From My Dog

Renly enjoying the beach. Cornwall August 2022

My dog is now 11 years old but he doesn’t realise it which is why you can see him leaping around like a puppy here on the beach. My dog, like most dogs, loves life and makes the most of things.

It struck me on New Year’s Eve how much I could learn from my dog. Renly is frightened of fireworks and has got more scared as time has gone on. But he never worries about it in advance. Around the beginning of November he sits cuddled on my lap as the world explodes outside and then goes to sleep. Because I’ve been full of flu I was in bed at 10pm on 31sst December, with the dog asleep by my side. We woke at midnight to the fireworks going off. He trembled next to me. The fireworks finished and he went back to sleep. He did not stay awake and worry about whether that was it, whether there would be more, whether things would be more scary. He went back to sleep.

There are other things he is afraid of – like big dogs. He was attacked twice by big dogs and so when he sees them he barks loudly at them. But he isn’t anxious before he goes out worrying about who he might see. Every time we go out he is so excited to be going. There is no fear of being attacked, of seeing someone he doesn’t like. Yes he is fearful when he sees a dog similar to the ones that attacked him but it is only in that moment.

So Lesson ONE – don’t be anxious about anything.

Lesson TWO – only worry about what is happening at the time. Deal with the moment and then move on.

Even when out he doesn’t stay nervous after seeing a big dog, or after hearing fireworks, or being frightened by some noise. The fear is in the moment, dealt with and then he moves on to the next part of the adventure.

Lesson THREE – is trust the one who cares for you. With the fireworks Renly fully trusts that if he snuggles up close to me that I will look after him and even though I don’t make the noises go away I am there for him. On walks he can be loud and barky towards these big dogs because even though there were two occasions when I didn’t manage to step in in time every other time I’ve been there for him. And even with the two occasions I did stop things getting horrid. I need to be trusting God and the Universe like that. Knowing that yes sometimes bad things to happen, but that I can snuggle under God’s wing and be protected by them. I don’t have to sort the world out on my own but can just stay safe and out the way.

So my intention for this year is to become more like my dog – to live in the moment, to not be anxious about anything, deal with things as and when they are happening but not outside those times, and to trust that God/the Universe has my back and that I can trust in my heart in all things, leaning into God when I need to and knowing they are there for me.

Categories
Flexible trust

Flexibility

Photograph taken by Diane Woodrow
View from a walk taken by myself

I had a plan on Friday. Sarah from Everyday Words had just started her series of prompts for Write a Poem a Day in April because April is National Poetry month. My plan was to write from her prompts each day and post them through out April on both this website and my website, Barefoot At The Kitchen Table, which I use to promote my writing workshops to get a bit of footfall through there. Well as you can see that did not happen.

Instead I got a job!!!

A friend of mine works in a local pub and is going to be off work for 4-6 weeks for a much needed operation. I’d been pondering about asking if I could do some shifts whilst she was off as things are quiet with regard to writing workshops, and was hoping maybe if my time was more focused I might just write more. Anyway I never got around to asking. But on Friday morning her and I were off out for coffee. She was having a quick chat with the landlord of the pub about something else when I turned up at her house and said “need to go as Diane and I are off for a coffee”. She was on speaker phone and he shouted “Diane, do you want a job?” So instead of going for coffee we went to the pub where I had a quick interview and started work that self same evening.

It meant that my head was in a bit of a different place and also I had to get done those things I wouldn’t have time to do. But mainly it was because I was really nervous about starting.

Funny isn’t it how I’ve been doing all this trusting in God/The Universe to sort things out for me and yet when they do it all of a sudden I go into a bit of panic – adrenaline. But also I did not go into sorting out my autonomic nervous system [ANS] but just allowed myself to be in freeze mode for a bit.

What this has showed me is that one’s ANS goes into fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode over change as much as over good/bad things. It is always there to protect us from the perceived dangers out there – which is great because I don’t want to be eaten by a lion – but also don’t want to be in high alter mode just about starting a new job.

Some of the panic was also because I had already planned what I was going to do Friday night and had to change that. No matter how much I talk about having flexible boundaries, of being aligned rather than set in hard stone, of trusting and going with the flow, I still like my safe routines, my knowing what is going on.

So once I had worked that out I was then kind to myself about how I felt, let expectations go and was able to really enjoy Friday night – even though some very drunk man decided to kick off and I got a pint of larger poured all over me.

I so love that life isn’t settled, that it is a learning curve and as Beth commented on another post “we are only human after all”.

So I shall enjoy learning, enjoying being human, enjoy making mistakes, enjoy knowing that I don’t have to stay in a state of anxiety and can more on.

Also with this job I am going to have to learn to go with the flow because it is Sunday morning and the landlord still hasn’t sorted the rota out for next week so I will just have to trust that it will all be fine 🙂

[Post for the Everyday Words prompts will start coming as from tomorrow 🙂 ]

Categories
Castle Security trust

Castles!

A castle in Gwynedd, North Wales, photographed on my husband's birthday in June 2018. Taken by Diane Woodrow
Dolbadarn Castle. Taken by myself June 2018

Last night I had two dreams with castles in them. I have looked up what “dreaming about castles” means and there are many different interpretations. Then I journaled around and about castles for myself.

I’ve had a few things going on recently that have left me a bit insecure and I think that might have been the reason for the dream. I want something safe and secure – for myself and my loved ones. But being a medieval historian as well as a writer I know that castles aren’t as secure as one would like. It is a perceived security not a real one.

A castle could be besieged; wall dug beneath and weaken or surrounded and wait for the occupants to stare or throw in contaminated meat and poison the occupants. Castles weren’t as safe as one would have liked them to be.

So I wonder whether sometimes we try to build things like castles – boundaries, walls, barricades – in our hearts, lives, work, relationships – to try to keep out the things we perceive to be bad and keep in the order of things we perceive to be good. And it is our order we can contain within our castle walls – when not being besieged. But all we are doing is exerting our control because of our fear and lack of trust in ourselves, others, the Universe, God. But all of these things need lots of maintenance and effort. And all can be destroyed.

Even though I think in my heart I want to build strong castle walls to keep myself safe and to exert my control on the things I know, even though it looks strong that it is in fact fragile. Instead I need to be in the open, be free to the changes of the seasons, trust in those around me, trust in God/the Universe, let go of fear.

If I do this I can be free to run in open meadows not trapped within castle walls. It may seem more scary out there but in fact, if I can trust then I can be free

Down on the Abergwyngregan coastal path. Photographed by Diane Woodrow