cuppa – Aspirational Adventures

Single focus dog. Photographed by myself Cardiff April 2024

This week I have been distracted by many things. I’ve got 3 workshops I am running with funding from Creu Conwy which seemed to have taken ages to finalise but now are imminent. The first two are next week! Also they are in the evening – one from 5-7pm and the other from 6-8pm, times when I am usually in that downward curve energy-wise and just want to mooch about and watch TV. Though I have had a few nights where I have been functioning after my 6pm deadline – once with a new churchy-style group that we’ve started in my house and a couple of trips to the cinema with hubby. But I’m panicking about these workshops because I will have to be the one who is fully alert.

It has amazed me how quickly I get distracted. I’m also doing an online writing course which is great but again is making me worry about that old adage of “not having enough time”. How many times have I written about not having enough. Perhaps I need to be reading my writings not just writing them??

But it also means that, even though I have been reading my Bible meditations and thinking I’ve not been thinking deeply. Not letting things penetrate into my heart.

This week’s Henri Nouwen thoughts are about Celebrating and how one needs to be in that moment to really celebrate, how lots of what and when we celebrate is a going through the motions rather than actually celebrating. So the event is something that sits between the stress of planning and the anticlimax after the event, but that celebration should be a lifestyle thing. I need to remember that I am to enjoy running these workshops and not just caught up in the preparation and then the feedback.

So once again I am like Martha [Luke 10:38-42] where Jesus says “Martha you are worried about many thing but the better thing is to sit at my feet like your sister“.

I was worrying about things. Ok not little things. These things are quite big – running these writing workshops, not being too exhausted because of the time I am doing them, getting the work handed in for the writing workshop I have paid for, and the having enough sleep, time, ability!

Interestingly the other night I was awake worrying about, of all things, having enough energy and enough time, exasperated by being awake from 3.30-5.30am. I had a full day in front of me and a long list of planning not just for the workshop but other things that I had to do. But, as you’ve probably already guessed, I got everything that needed to be done on the list completed and even managed to stay up till 10pm with my husband watching TV as well has having walked my 10,000+ steps. It was as if God was saying “look you can do it. All will be well”.

Also I do know I have the ability to run these workshops. I do an amazing job every Tuesday fortnight with my regular group and can pull things from the depths of my brain when needed. I know I can do it but I get distracted and once I get distracted I move away from God and also move away from celebrating the joys of being alive.

As I’ve said before though, there is an order for how this comes about. To really be able to feel I have enough I need to be at Peace. From that place of Peace comes a deep Joy and only then do I believe I have Enough. And what has gone on this week is that I had to realign my autonomic nervous system back to a place of peace – which does just take a few moments of breathing and looking at the window, of remembering what I have to be grateful for, and forgiving myself and others. For me going through the Lord’s Prayer but an Aramaic translation, helps me.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/88875792626618323/

Only then do I start to remember that deeper joy that is a bedrock not a happy feeling. And it is then that I feel like I have enough. Today it means I can say “I have enough time to do a blog post – with many pictures – before going away for the weekend even though my first workshop is Tuesday”.

My whole thoughts have been consumed by these workshops to the point where a friend asked me for coffee and I said I was too busy!!! And also nearly didn’t go south with my husband to see his Mum which has now turned out to be a trip to see my Mum too. Goodness me! Fancy me thinking I don’t have enough time to see family or friends! As well as the Lord’s Prayer I did have to have a chat with my covid-bird to be reminded that friends and cups of tea are important.

Picture first shared on Relearning June 2023

Happy To Be Second

No matter what this looks like it is definitely my cat saying she comes first.

I was reading 24-7’s Lectio this morning. Josh Luke Smith is looking at John the Baptist especially John 1:6-8

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Sometimes with known Bible passages we can switch off or tune into a familiar sermon about them but it was reading Josh’s comment ….

I’m a musician and I’ve been on many tours as ‘the support act’. People haven’t primarily bought tickets to see me, but to see the artist or band that’s headlining the show. My role on stage is to warm up the crowd and set up the headline act for success.

What struck me is how often many of us have wanted to be the headline act but that is not our job. But we get caught up in the shove and grind of pushing to the top. So we trample over others. We elbow our way through. Some do make it to the top whether they are meant to be there or not but because they can push harder, shove better, are louder.

As Josh goes on to to say

God wants me to be fully, creatively myself, without shame or passivity. There is no higher calling, or expression of who I am, than to point towards Christ

But I also think an equally high calling to to encourage others to get to where they are meant to be – whether that is leading a church, leading a group, being a great musician, writer, etc. And it is to say “look at them. Haven’t they done great” instead of feeling that quiet stab of jealousy and wanting to say “you should have known them when ….”

Am I willing to come second? I know I can be ok about point towards Jesus but am I happy about seeing someone in a similar field to myself doing well. Or what is often a biggie – seeing someone’s children “making it” [whatever that really means] when your own are bumbling along just being!

When I first had this amazing encounter with God and realised that, even though I was a mess in the world’s eyes, God thought I was awesome and loved me as I was, I was given a bookmark with “Be Still and KNOW I am God” Ps 46:10. Then when I was with YWAM Scotland one of those on my team drew me a picture of me lying with a cuppa watching the sun rise or set. But still I kept busy, kept elbowing, kept wanting to be more than God intended.

That picture from Mrs Kim on my study wall

After a turbulent year that I made more stressful by getting a part time job to fill a gap God has shown me that I am at my fullest for them when I am calm, resting, there for others.

Yes much as I would love to be a leader, run a ministry, work hard, my calling, my ‘fully creative self’ is being able to have time for others, to drink coffee with them, to listen to them, to be a safe space for them, to encourage them, as well as my writing. So 30+ years from that encounter with God in all their gentle acceptance I think I am finally coming to accept and realise that verse of being still and just knowing God. It follows on then with “and I will be exalted in the nations.”

God is going to be more exalted if I stop putting to be first, stopping pushing for the noticeable ‘ministry position’, that ‘accepted place in a church setting’. So hopefully I am going to enter 2024 being more still, more able to point towards Jesus, more able to be fully, creatively who I am, and just letting God rise into my nation, into those they have placed around me without me having to go looking.

So are you willing to come second?