Tag: easy

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
house Inner Healing

I Am Not An Onion

Photo from October 2023. These were the last locally cut flowers of the year

The reason for the photo is because it shows the inside wall of my house which is in need of redecorating. We’ve been in this house for eight years now and the hall is one of the rooms I’ve not yet started on.

I have just booked another session of QEC counseling/healing for next week and was free writing around it. As I did that more and more things came up and I started to feel a bit fed up with it. I have been doing this “inner healing” stuff for soooooo long now. Not just QEC but other forms. And yet still there is more.

Someone once compared inner healing to taking off the layers of an onion; that just because you had taken off one layer there were still more to come. I’ve never settled well with that analogy because if one kept on with the healing and taking off the layers soon there would be nothing left.

I know that can be a Christian way of looking at things – to get rid of “me” and just be Jesus. But don’t think there would be verses in the Bible like

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:29-30

if we were meant to be in the picture at all. I think Jesus is saying that the whole healed me is walk in tandem with the whole Jesus and it won’t be a big deal.

So I am not an onion where eventually there will be nothing left of me.

Whilst free writing this morning what came to me when we do QEC or similar types of healing is we are stripping off the wallpaper that we have used to cover up the walls of who we are. Often whether in the Bible, in dreams, etc “house” or “home” represents ourselves. So what we often do, or let others do, is paper over things in our lives to make us seem more acceptable, to fit in better, to keep us safe. But to be wholly me I have to strip those walls right back to the original plaster and see what cracks are there. Then not paper over the cracks but heal those cracks.

Have you ever stripped wallpaper from an old house where previous occupants haven’t done it? That old wallpaper paste was more like superglue than modern wallpaper paste is. That stuff is rock solid. Sometimes too you come across old newspapers which for some reason were used as lining before putting the wallpaper on. That is then like trying to remove papier mache. It was meant to stay.

Sometimes some of the things we’ve put in to keep us safe after childhood traumas, or even grown up traumas, we’ve put on to last. We don’t want to revisit that. But it makes a bulge in the walls.

So I go back again and again for more healing not because the first lot didn’t work, not because I am an onion, but because I am an grand house that is being renovated room by room.

Categories
Begging crowdfunding

Crowdfunding or Begging

Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

Last week I went down South to visit my mum and catch up with some friends. My chosen companion whilst driving is Radio 4. So I drive for about 5 hours listening to various things, some of which stay with me and some I just forget.

One thing that stayed with me was an article about people who were struggling to pay their bills who were putting up pages on GoFundMe or similar crowdfunding pages. The one woman that they concentrated their feature on was a young woman who had only just gained an MA in journalism but was now out of work. She had set up a page to pay her rent and bills until she got the job she wanted. One of the reasons she was on was that she had raised more than she had asked for. At one point in the interview she said that she knew she could take any job but that she wanted to wait to get into her chosen profession.

What I wanted to know were her thoughts to the homeless person she probably walked past regularly, the beggar on the street, the tramp. Did she and those that had given to her campaign see those people as valid? Would they give as much to them?

I think too often we judge by the cover. So people will give to the pretty young woman who has fallen on hard times but not to the smelly dirty person who is on the street.

I also think that by giving on one of these crowdfunding sites one can distance oneself from the cause. It just takes the push of a Paypal button and money is moved to this woman’s account. I do remember my daughter saying that when she was in London more and more buskers especially were getting these free credit card machines and it did increase their takings. None contact. None involvement.

Whether it is the pretty young woman who wants a top job and isn’t willing to be a part time barmaid or supermarket worker or the long term homeless, is it that we really do not want to know the why of how they got to that place? Are we willing to slow things down, get into a dialogue, find out what is really going on? I think I am as much to blame. It is easier just to push that campaign button, that easy give button, that “sign here” button, than it is to slow my life down, work out what areas of live I really do want to focus on and really dig deep into what is going on here.

Just an aside – when I was planning this post it was going to be very much about berating the middle class aspirations and how no one cares about the downtrodden, but as I have written, as often happens with me and writing, I have changed my view point. I am now pointing back at me and asking what would I really do? Am I similar to what has gone on? Sometimes I think it is good for all of us to have a real look at what we are saying and whether we too are hiding behind something.