New Forest ponies photographed by myself June 2021
Too often we put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse and wonder why nothing happens.
For instance we pray for world peace, for people groups to forgive each other, for people to consider the earth and the climate change issues, for people to stop abusing each other, yet I have realised that with the stories I read with my youth group Hagar and Gideon only changed when the had an encounter with God.
Hagar could only forgive Abraham and Sarah for their abuse of her and let go of her own anger and pride when she had met with the God who fully saw who she was. Gideon could only go and do what God asked of him calmly and without anger when he had met with the God who calmed his fears.
I think too often we expect ourselves and others to forgiven, to do just as God says and no more or less, to walk in peace and deep joy, when they had not had an encounter with God. I also think it often needs to be a regular different facet of God we encounter to fit with the things we are dealing with at the time.
So I am going to try to start praying for my friends, my family, world leaders, situations, and asking if these people will have an encounter with God. That sort of encounter that makes them feel fully known, as Hagar did, fully trusted as I think Gideon did, fully loved just as I am as I did and do regularly.
I also think that to be able to have those true encounters we need to be healed so we can truly see God when they come visiting. As you know I’m very pro QEC and also Sozo, but there are other ways of allowing those false beliefs of self-doubt, unworthiness, expectations of life, etc, changed and replaced by Godly freeing ways. For Gideon it was giving a sacrifice. For Hagar it was believing God say her.
So let’s get praying for people to have God encounters and then trusting God will change them, will speak to them, will be with them, in the way that is right for them and their situation rather than telling them and God what they should be doing.
Cobwebs interconnected. Photographed by myself Sept 2023
Hands up who has been upset when a church you attend uses the phrase “we are family” and then you feel shut out? I’ve been there. One of the most recent times was when the large congregation we were attended kept going on and on about how we were all family and then announced a very messy divorce by someone in leadership that those of us in “the family” knew nothing about.
My first thought was that surely if we were family then we’d know before it was too late so we could be helping, supporting, praying, etc. But this morning on my dog walk, out of nowhere, because I wasn’t even thinking about church and family, though was pondering what I should be putting in blog post today as it had been ages since I’d done one, I got this revelation that I felt I had to share. And it was that my disappointments and hurts over this whole “church being family” thing was because of my expectations. [I have pondered expectations before]
As I have found that God is the perfect parent, beyond my wildest expectations of what a parent could be, so I expected when a congregations says that they are “family” I expected something way beyond what I knew of family, something I had hoped and dreamed of. But it isn’t that at all.
My family is small. I don’t remember ever meeting any of my dad’s wider family, apart from a cousin and his children, and that was for a short time only and I thought he was very rude anyway. On my mum’s side I knew my grandmother until she had a major stroke when I was about 6 and then my mum’s uncles who came to visit my grandmother, but then I never remember seeing them again. My mum talks about a cousin and his children but I’ve never met them. My sister and I drifted apart as we got older and of course now she’s died well …. And her son doesn’t keep in touch and really I don’t keep in touch with him. So family and the mechanics of it I really don’t quite understand.
But as I was walking God showed me that this whole “family” thing that the church talks about has nothing to do with being close but has to do with being “related to”. In fact it goes way beyond just a congregation. It goes way beyond those who profess to being Christians.
If God made the whole world and everyone in it, if we are all made in God’s image not just if/when we say we’re trying to follow Jesus, then we are all God’s children. Thus, whether we like it or not, we are all family. Some of this family we will be close to, will get on well with, will spend time with, will know each other’s deepest thoughts and feelings, but others we just won’t.
My husband’s family does a good example of this. The parent generation all knew each other well and the cousins all played together as children. Then the cousins all drifted apart and got on to doing their own thing and not communicating. But the parents kept hanging out, kept phoning each other, kept in touch with each others lives. But when something happens, when there is a need, the cousins appear and help out, or the siblings form different cliques to help and support depending on their schedules, their needs, their space in their lives. So sometimes it looks like they don’t get on, don’t spend time together but there is always that thread of “family” running through.
Once one starts seeing the whole of human kind as “family”, as God’s family, then one does start to realise how much time we do connect and we are part of something. Like my friend who bought a homeless man a pizza the other day, she was just feeding her brother when he was in need and when he came across her path. I was deeply affected by the death of a fellow dog walker, went to his funeral and have been grieving his loss, but that is because he was a brother I got close to.
My revelation was that I need to stop thinking small. Stop wanting to part of some small congregation, even large congregation, some clique where I can “fit”, and realise that I fit into this whole world and I need to be aware of the God prompts when I’m pushed to connected with a brother or sister. This isn’t always to give to them. Sometimes it can be to receive. Or in the case of the fellow dog walker, and with many of my friends, it is to give and to receive in mutual friendship. It is about being there for others but also realising there is a whole world of fellow “relatives” whether they say they are follow Jesus or not, who are there to support me too.
As I walked in the large open park, that is my special place each morning. I felt God was saying just look at the big because that’s what I’m part of, but then like with the spider web to also look at those small connections. Those small connections that make something strong.
Perhaps I need to be looking at connections rather than craving the impossible of some close knit family? Perhaps we all should?
Magic of a river in full flow after a storm. Abergywngregan August 2023 Photographed by myself
Did you know you could do magic? In fact you do it every day by the things you think and how you hold on to your feelings.
I tried to write this without mentioning the people concerned but realised it didn’t make sense otherwise so I’ve had to name the relationships. Bit of tough vulnerability here!!!
This revelation came to me whilst I was having negative jealous insecure thoughts around my daughter-in-law. As I was journaling and pondering and, I suppose, justifying my feelings, I got a picture in my head of the Snow White’s wicked stepmother. From that picture this came.
Snow White’s stepmother would have been a kind and beautiful woman when the Snow White’s father pick her as his second wife. He didn’t have to marry to have someone to look after his daughter after he was widowed as some men do. He could have had servants to do that for him. He chose her, I am sure, for her beauty and beautiful nature. But she had been wounded in childhood by someone so as Snow White grew into a young woman she got jealous. Then I am sure there were times when Snow White went off and did things just with her father. This would have exasperated the stepmother’s wound. I wonder too if she also pondered whether the father looked at his daughter and remembered his love for his first wife. All this added to the stepmother’s insecurities making her feel angry dark thought inside. She then chose to act on those thoughts and, if she had been successful, instead of helping her step daughter through teenagehood and out into the wider world, she as good as killed her.
It made me realise that we can choose what magic we use and how we act on our feelings. I had a choice – 1. to be jealous and angry with this person and to send out negative vibes. Ok not a poisoned apple but something close to that which would have killed our relationship and killed my relationship with my son 2. I could accept that this was how I felt but then let those feelings slide from me, know that my relationship with my son was not based on who they were with now but on some “deeper magic”.
I could trust in the depth of the relationship with my son and no longer be jealous of his wife then give life to our time, or I could spoil everything with my jealousy.
[I was going to say petty jealous but actually it was very real and I had to accept it before I could let it go. I think too often we dismiss our feelings and so they fester about because they haven’t been truly banished.]
The stepmother did not accept her jealous feelings, instead she acted on them and went into destroy mode. I decided to accept my feelings, let them go, go to my safe place of deep gratitude, and allow a better magic to flow.
And of course as you know the answer to the Snow White story so you can guess the answer to this story. Yes we all had a great time together. There was no negative animosity. I grew in love for my daughter-in-law and got some great times on my own with my son.
The magic I made was my choice, but it comes through the healing I’ve gone, my relationship with myself, my trust in God/The Universe to have my back and love me unconditionally. Without all that I would still have that wound and be wanting to hold too tight, to poison what was, not be able to enjoy what is going on around me.
Though sometimes I think we don’t realise we can do magic so we say things about a situation or person that are not uplifting or positive, we work towards a worst case scenario, and we are not disappointed. Snow White’s stepmother “knew” that eventually Snow White would be more popular and more beautiful than her so she had a plan on what to do with her then. If I had planned in a “I know this time will be hard work” I am sure it would have been. But instead, once I’d free wrote/journaled around it, accepted what I was feeling and accepted that this was not a good place to be, ANSed myself, etc then I could believe this was going to be a lovely magical time with my son and his wife.
Because it was deep magic from being healed and knowing I am an amazing person then it wasn’t a “trying hard” but was from a place deep in my heart.
We need to all remember we are all making magic every day by what we think, feel, do and believe.
Storm hits the beach – Dec 2021 – photographed by myself
Today the Bible reading in many churches is Matthew 14: 22-33 where Jesus walks on the water. This post is inspired by Lily Lewin’s Freerange Friday post on Godspacelight.com called Walking On Water
Lily’s Freerange Friday posts more often than not encourage imagining oneself there. So whilst I was out walking the dog today I thought about how I would have felt if I was one of Jesus’ disciples on that boat.
Remember not all of them were seamen. We always think of the fishermen and the “go and be fishers of men” line but we do forget that two thirds of the core group were not fishermen.
Now it is as standing joke in my family that I don’t like being too close to the water. These are just two of the many tales I could share! When I was 17 my first proper boyfriend took me for a romantic punt on the River Avon. We did the whole dressing up, had the picnic, we even got the tranquil sunny weather. I was in the boat for less than 5 minutes and I was screaming “take me back. I hate this“. End of romantic day out! One holiday my husband really wanted to go to see the puffins off the Northumbria coast. Out and back and round was a total of an hour on the boat. He’d check it was dog friendly so it was no excuse. Well I was terrified and I’m sure the man driving the boat deliberately hit the waves so we bounced more than we had to. I do have to say that it was worth while though. Puffins are awesome! But I was nearly crying and holding anyone who was close enough the whole way out and back.
So there I am one of Jesus’ disciples. We’ve had a busy day of healing and feeding and crowd control and just need a break. Jesus tells us all to get on the boat. Now I know weather if not the water and can see clouds gathering. So I suggest to Jesus that I’ll just stay behind with him. He’s already said he’s going to pray. I say that I’ll leave him be, explain that like him I need some time out. I need to introvert for a bit. I don’t think it would be good for my mental health to be on a boat with the others. It won’t help me refocus, get grounded. Also the place needs a bit of a tidy up and I’m more than happy to do that. But no Jesus insists and well … he is the rabbi and I am honoured to have been chosen by him so I reluctantly agree.
Well we all know what happens next. The sea starts to swell. The boat starts to rock. It is scary for the sailors, the fishermen. Imagine what it is like for those of us who don’t sail and are terrified of being “too close to the water”. I know I would be so cross this Jesus. This was his idea. He didn’t even come and here I am terrified. Even on that little boat to see the puffins I was sure I was going to die. So I’m imaging being on a smallish fishing boat in the big lake, big enough to be called a sea. And Jesus sent me there.
Along he comes. The storm calms. Peter does his bit of walking on the water. And so all is fine and dandy? Not for me. I’m cross with Jesus for showing up after I’m scared and have made a bit of a fool of myself. Also I don’t get out the boat because I know if I realised I could walk on water I would have just kept on walking back to the shore and not looked back.
This got me thinking – how often have any of us felt like God/Jesus has sent us somewhere and we don’t think they are coming with us. We cannot see or feel a physical presence. How do we feel? Also, and this maybe just me, do we do something stupid because we feel scared and alone and then Jesus comes to us after we’ve done the stupid thing? Are there times when we’ve felt like we’ve stepped out and even Jesus isn’t watching our backs/taking care of the storm around us? Have we ever felt like just getting out and walking away even when Jesus turns up?
I do wonder if too often we’ve allowed this story to be filled with passive characters and not allowed the disciples to be three dimensional, have not allowed them to be fully human. I wonder too if we’ve not let ourselves fully feel how we would have been in this situation. Ok so we know the end of that part of the story – the resurrection, God’s omnipresence, the infilling of the Holy Spirit – so we can react differently. But too often we don’t know the end of our stories or even what is happening in the next part.
I think it is ok to be scared, to be angry with God, to want to walk out and not come back. All those are real emotions. The brave thing is to stay; to stay with God, to forgive Jesus, to learn and grow in faith.
The question isn’t would we have stayed in the boat like the majority of the disciples or got out like Peter, I think the question is would we have obeyed Jesus and got in the boat in the first place even if we were terrified of boats and could see a storm coming?
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.
Berries on a tree in my local park photographed by myself
This photo shows Autumn is coming
I haven’t posted for a while, and it is interesting to realise that my last post was about People Pleasing. After I’d posted I then went on holiday to Cornwall for a week, then the week I came back I had signed up with the Professional Writing Academy to do a week of podcasts to do with the craft of writing, which made for a very full week around everything else I was doing. I still have to catch up with some of the podcasts I missed. And then the Queen died so the blog posts I had in my head haven’t yet been written.
It is hard to know what to write when according to all UK media the nation is in mourning. I am afraid I’m not. Well not in mourning for the Queen anyway. I do feel for her family and I think she did some awesome things. I am probably nervous that it is another change. The end of an era. I very much think it should be marked. But I am not sure if this is the right way when so many are fearful and wondering how they will keep their homes warm this winter.
I, personally, am sad that the Queen felt that she had to work right up until two days before she died. I am not sure if this is a good example to others. I think we are often pushed too hard into working a lot, into even when retired still doing many things. That this is where are identity comes from in what we do. There is even a group called. Rest Less which is about making sure you keep doing more as you age. I often wonder if it would be more beneficial for the country, for the world, if we learned to actually do less rather than do more, if we could accept ourselves as we are and not have to rushing about doing things.
Note I am not against doing things but I think too often many people are busy doing rather than being so that they don’t have to catch up with themselves.
The Queen has now been replaced by King Charles who is 73 years old. He should be settling into a nice retirement where his grandchildren come first, fun holidays come second and pleasing himself comes next. But he will be expected to work until he too dies. Is this really a good example?
There is much I could say about privilege, entitlement, the cost of the country, this economic time, but I won’t. As I have said on and off during my posts, I have had to deal with grief of various kinds and I am also grateful that I never had to do mine in public. There was not going to be a headline if I laughed when I was expected to be sad, or did things that others thought were not right during their own period of grief. So for that I will not say anything. And I also think the media should get on and do something else rather than following this grieving family.
I do think this country needs to mark the end of an era, needs to pray about what comes next, but also needs to let this family deal with losing their matriarch. But also remember she was 96. She was an old lady.
The loss of the Queen is a thing but it is not like losing a child or a friend who died do young. Or even of grieving the loss of a relationship, a dream, a home, a job, etc.
Perhaps we need to put the loss of a 96 year old head of state into its right place?
I love walking round my local park, though I realised how easy it was to just go into auto pilot and not notice things so now I am making sure I say focused and present. I take my phone so I can take photos. I now don’t just love it I appreciate and enjoy it too.
Anyway as a follow on from the last post, what I had written got me thinking deeper. about being who we are not who we are not. For instance Princess Leia could not be anything other than she was. Even when we get to know Luke Skywalker we know from that opening scene that all he wanted to do was be a star-ship pilot not a farmer. It was in his blood to be something more than.
I have been reading “My Fourth Time, We Drowned” by Sally Hayden and as well as feeling angry at what is going with the UN and the refugees in Africa, I also feel pretty inadequate. Here is a woman publishing stories that should shock the world with the inhumanity of privileged humans to vulnerable humans, and of what trauma does to people. But then I had to realise that I could not be a Sally Hayden. I can only be a Diane Woodrow. I cannot be what I am not.
If you watch a lot of Pixar and Disney as I do one of the key themes is the main character trying to be something they are not. It is a reoccurring theme and often, no actually always, makes me cry. I cry because too often we push others into being what they are not, or are pushed ourselves. It happens too often yet we either let it happen or do it to others.
Going back to the marriage theme from the last post – as well as sometimes grieving the changes that happen to us in marriage the that we are not the younger people we were when we first met, I think sometimes we try to manipulate that other person into being what we would like them to be. And depending on how they responded to that as a child how they then respond to that as a spouse.
We do all do it a little bit with our friends to fit in with them. We allow ourselves to be what they would like us to be, but then we get frustrated and angry, or accept that mold and forget who we really are.
So I started this post with a photo of my regular dog walk and of how I am trying to be more present there, trying to see it more as it is rather than ignoring it. I am also trying to do this with my friends and family. I am trying to accept and be present with who they are and enjoying them for what they are and not for what I think they should be. I am also learning to be more “me”, doing more of what I want, being more of who I want to be.
Hopefully from this I can appreciate, enjoy and love my friends and family more and more.
The shoreline is always a place of transition. Taken by myself May 2022
I’ve just read this great article from Godspace about Transition and creating healthy boundaries for it. Whilst reading it I got a bit grumpy about how easy it is to create these boundaries when you are in control of the transition – which is not what the article says but what my brain decided to put in to wind me up because there had just been a transition within our family that I had not been brought into the discussion about and which, though not out of the blue, had wobbled me a bit. Only a bit.
But then actually if one reads the article without that grumpy, poor me attitude then it is about having things in place for when transitions come so one doesn’t get wobbled by them. I won’t go through each one but to say that it was the last one Transitions cannot be rushed that really got to me. But once I had calmed down – which involved taking the dog for a walk in the rain. And I do think there is nothing quite like North Wales drizzle to sort one’s mood out. Or at least it always works for me.
I came back realizing that even though the family members appeared to be rushing the decision they had probably been talking about it for a while. Just because my counsel had not been sort for whatever reason – and that is another thing – don’t go second guessing other people’s reasoning for asking or not asking for you counsel. That is very much a “grow up and get over it” that we have to say to ourselves and our attitudes when it comes to our children, I think.
Another aside – why is that often we find it so hard to see that our children have grown up and don’t need us to ‘parent’ them any more? Thoughts for another post one day maybe!!!
Anyway just because someone else is transitioning doesn’t mean that I have to go so fast. I can sit and ponder their decisions, their transitions, and I can slowly allow their changes to seep into my consciousness. And also though their lives are changing mine is staying the same and slowly but surely as I adjust to their changes I can allow their transition to become my transition.
I found this all very exciting. Sometimes though I do wish I didn’t have to have a grump beforehand. Though, and I know I keep pushing it, since I’ve been doing the QEC work around my issues, hurts and past traumas so I have found the grumpy times are getting shorter, the wise voice is coming in sooner and the peace is deeper.
So now as I process this transition – among the many other transitions that have gone on in these last couple of years – I feel a profound sense of peace. It is not my decision to decide someone else’s lifestyle choice, whether they are family or friends, and that really does give me enormous peace.
Jesus said “my peace I give to you” and as Naked Pastor said about love so I think is true about peace. It is all around us and there for anyone but we do just have to open ourselves to it. And being grumpy does stop that peace.
So as I transition into my family transition so I lean into that love, take it slowly and all that “peace that transcends all understand “to guide my heart and mind [Philippians 4:7]
So I am steadily getting further and further behind with these prompts and loving them more and more. These two clash, contradict and I think compliment each other. One is based on the horrors unfolding in Ukraine and other other was written Easter Saturday morning whilst we were staying in our friend’s house.
So this one from Day 6 was inspired by Laurie Wagner’s poem Things I Didn’t Know I Loved For me this has an even more poignant feel after I’ve read the Joel News report from Ukraine. Joel News’ remit is to show the good news that is happening in the world, to show where God is moving. And yet this week’s one talks of the awfulness of the war in Ukraine and of the coming global famine. It makes one ask “Where is God in all this?” But also one of the things I’ve learned with QEC is that to keep aligned and not get into high stress I need to be grateful. So really this poem is about what I realised I was grateful for and often take for granted. I’ve also called it Things I Didn’t Know I Loved.
This next one from Day 7 comes from a poem by Catherine Smith called Hero, about a bus driver really. But one of the prompts was ‘Where would you go to if a bus driver would take you absolutely anywhere?’. I did the prompt whilst we were staying down south visiting mothers and friends. It was a busy weekend and I was up early with the dog sitting in our friend’s conservatory enjoying some time out – something that I realise I do need to add to my “Things I didn’t know I loved” poem. So here is “Where would I go if I could go anywhere?” This one also comes with photos of the view I had.
As Brits we can have a perchance for moaning about what we do not have. Sometimes it is good to remind ourselves what we do have, but also then to remember to pray for those who do not have. We must never get smug and complacent, but I think that by being grateful one can learn to not be complacent and also to pray others can have what we too often take for granted.
Photograph of my sister doing what she loved best, being with horses, probably over 30 years ago!
Today is the 10th anniversary of my sister’s death. She was working as groom at an event, went to the bar that night, had a few drinks, took the wrong exit from the bar. It was pitch dark and she feel into a drainage ditch. Why she went out the wrong way and why no one stopped her going that way are questions I know I have often asked.
But my sister was no saint. She wasn’t one of those people who with all honesty we could say, as you see on too many headlines, was the “salt of the earth”, “made everyone happy” and those other sugary headlines. My sister was hard work. I have memories of her telling me off for rolling cigarettes in a pub on the edge of Virginia Water. I was in a grunge phase at that time. She would tell me I was bring my children up wrong.
When she died she was going through a very public and acrimonious divorce which she was conducting on Facebook accusing her husband of many things. True or not true we will never know. She would also phone me up and scream at me down the phone telling me what an awful wife I was being. She was hard work.
I think observing other women who hit menopause and go suddenly really strange that she was going through some major hormonal imbalance due to menopause which no one ever picked up. Or if they did she never told us. I have other friends, who are no longer friends, who just changed personality in their 40s, totally altered their belief systems and way of living, accused their partners and others close to them of the strangest of things. Something odd goes on.
Again I do believe that with a lot of “women’s issues” that they are dismissed, not looked into closely, or like many things that involved our minds and emotions, are feared and not looked at as they should be.
I do believe we need to start looking at the menopause and the change women go through at this time in more details. There needs to be real help available and we need to talk about it. Though as I know from my daughter it is only now that we really talk about periods and the changes that go on in adolescence.
So we need to get this conversation out in the open. We need stop hiding behind what appears to be some medieval superstition about menstrual blood. These are major changes that go on not just with a woman’s body but with her mind and emotions too. Let’s get this out in the open. And I’m afraid ladies that is going to be up to us to be more open, honest and real about the s**t we go through.
Aspirational Adventures 