I keep writing and rewriting this post, which is why it has taken a long time. Sometimes posts just fly out of me and other times they struggle. One of the things is that at times I think about who I’m writing to and then almost contain the words that I don’t think would fit that person, which seems a very interesting revelation to myself when I am wanting to write a post about being really free.
So yesterday I got myself a can of Dr Pepper and sat in a cafe looking out the window with pen in hand and waited to see what happened. And here are my thoughts
True freedom is about going with flow and not worry about what other people think.
True freedom is not about achieving or ambition or even having stuff.
True freedom is about being content in your own skin and knowing that what you’ve done is what you’ve done.
True freedom is not about being a success or about succeeding in a world that is always changing its boundaries, goal posts and rules of the race.
True freedom is about not caring what the race is or what the imposed boundaries are.
True freedom is not caring about what other people think so they will love you.
True freedom is not caring about who takes the credit for the success that happen with or around you.
Not caring is not the same as not loving especially if the love comes with strings attached.
True freedom is
Finally able to
Receive
Everything
Envy-free
Devoid of the ties
Of other people’s [and your own]
Motives and expectations
And, I believe, True Freedom can only be obtained when one loves oneself unconditionally and when one knows one is loved unconditionally – especially when one knows that unconditional love comes from the Creator of the Universe/The Universe. But I also think one will struggle to receive that love unless one loves oneself unconditionally and stops comparing oneself to others.
What do you do when things get tough? Do you retreat into the toughness and wallow there waiting for someone to lift you out? or do you see where life is going to take? Do you go with the currents of life and trust that “all will be well and all will be and all manner of things will be well” – Julian of Norwich
I’m sharing the picture above to encourage you to sign up to my friend, Rossie’s newsletter which you can find on her website if you click the link above. Here is a young woman who has walked through tragedy, sadness and defeat, but has found a way to journey through it. She isn’t one to wallow.
Many people, whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, other religions or none, choose between sliding into a pit of despair when something happens – big or small – that doesn’t reach their expectations, or rising above it and accepting it as life. This can the tragic loss of someone too young and too soon, or it can be a dream that didn’t come to fruition, a relationship that they didn’t want to end that ended painfully, an exam not passed, a job not got, etc. And I’m not saying these things are not horrendous. But some people choose to stay there and wallow, almost waiting for someone to pick them up and out of it – but it can often seem that no matter what is suggested they will find a way to stay where they are.
For each of us though there is a way up and out of it.
For Rossie it is her painting, amongst other things, – which she has now bravely gone and turned into her profession. For myself it is my writing – especially the free writing – but also chatting with people. I also love to help others find that freedom and release via writing. My writing groups are not “writing for well-being” per se but they are also not for people who really want to get a book published. They are for people to explore life, the universe, their feelings, etc, via the power of creative writing!
One of my biggies too is to be outside, especially by the sea, but my local park does the same. Just to walk and enjoy the simplicity of the natural world and all its wonders helps me to get outside my own troubles, issues, and disappointments.
Prayer and connecting with God is also another amazing way. But I do think to do that one has to want to trust God to be there, not to sort things out but to hold, to love, and to listen, for prayer to turn one’s heart around. Not the situation, but one’s heart. Too often, I think, there is a disappointment with God because he doesn’t sort things as the person praying would like – doesn’t heal, bring back from the dead, restore the relationship, make the dream work out as one hoped.
Healing via QEC is another one for me. I know others who’ve found a sense of healing through Sozo, talking therapies, and many other ways. But these things must be used as a place to be freed not to prolong things. The same is true is prayer. There is no point keep mithering at God that things didn’t work out as you wanted but, like with the above therapies, it has to be a way to be healed and to move on.
My point from this post is to say that my friend could have wallowed in her grief and despair, even whilst doing her painting, but she chose not to. [check out her photo on her website] But I know of many others who choose to stay in that place. And for some I think they stay, not because they like it, but because they believe the world is a scary place and so it is better to stay in their fear, anxiety, sorrow and loss, than to step out and get slammed all over again.
There is always a choice – to stay and wallow or to find a way out of that place.
If you check out my earlier blog – Diane’s Daily Thoughts – you’ll see I am talking from experience. And this blog from March 2012 only shows a snapshot of my journey through disappointment, loss and other shit. When someone read my Day of The Dead post they said “I didn’t realise you had dealt with so much loss”!
Snowdrops hidden in the woods. Photographed by myself 26th Jan 2024. Spring is coming
What does Service mean? To you? To me?
In Josh Luke Smith’s latest email he says that we all want Meaning. Relationships. Service. I do agree but I think for years I got what service meant wrong. And I think I was encouraged to keep believing in the wrong either because other people had got it wrong or because it supported others.
Before meeting with God thirty+ years ago I pleased myself and I don’t think I really served others. Though I probably did. I worked in hospitality, had friends round for parties, meals, etc. But I thought I was just doing things that everyone did and that was it.
So when I met with God the church talked a lot about service and about serving God. Serving God seemed to mean doing something in church as a volunteer which for me was children or youth stuff. So I was always busy busy in church doing stuff and I would get fed up with it all and that, amongst other things, was what stopped me wanting to attend church. [Yes there are other reasons but I think this whole thing of feeling that to belong I had to be volunteering got me down]
But it wasn’t just church. Lots of places talk about serving which again seems to be doing things for nothing to further that organisation. But now I’m not so sure. And I would say as I read these daily emails I’m not the only one.
I’m not in regular paid work at the moment and will continue like that because I’m 62. That doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing though. But I have realised what I do day in day out is service. From walking my dog, looking after my home and feeding my husband, though to chatting with friends and acquaintances, to running the workshops I do, to reading books, to writing stories people may never read, to writing this blog. All these things are acts of service but, I think, because they are things I enjoy and they are not for some church or other organisation I don’t see them as service.
I am now thinking that service is actually me just being the truest me I am and allowing that to flow into the earth in the only way I can let it. So I clean up my act and get healed so my energy is purer, less polluted, less me expecting something from what I do – which I do wonder if a lot of our “serving” is actually serving our own ego! I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, to my gut, and only do what I am at peace with. And through that I am so much more than if I was serving for servings sake.
I believe again it comes back to that whole “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” [or as I like to see it “totally love yourself so you can then love others] and then you are serving in ways that others truly need with no agenda for yourself to be bless. But that does take some work to get to that place, some clearing away of traumas and other crap, and being fully free.
know the truth [about yourself and your motives] and the truth will set you free
I realised the other day, after reading a book about walking mindfully, that this is what I do most mornings. Yes it is a mix of pondering the day a head, chatting with other dog walkers, etc but also I am aware of God, nature, the Universe. And the words from Rich Mullins The Color Green always come into my head. I think it just says the amazingness of God and the complexity of the colour green. The above pictures of of various beautiful places in and around where I live and to me it is always the amazingness of the different greens. And God made all of them. Then it opens up to me how different we all are and how amazingly we are all made and how diverse. But also how if we show our true depth of God colours without our traumas, hurts, fears and needing to protect ourselves, how beautifully we would all look together, like the different colours green.
I decided google the song so I could listen to it again – as I seem to be listening to music again after a period of silence whilst I worked, played, etc. Listening to the song took me back to my early days of following Jesus – starting in 1992 and onwards. I had always been into music and used to organise venues for up and coming bands in my area so once I got into Jesus and God someone pointed me towards contemporary Christian music and Cross Rhythms.
Amazing how one song could lead to so many memories. I wonder if you are as old as me and if you know this song. If so I wonder where it takes you as you listen. What other songs do this for you?
Rich Mullins was an amazing influence in my Christian life. He challenged ideas that my small town, small charismatic church were teaching me. He was evangelistic, converted to Catholicism, worked with Native Americans, but then also was killed in a car accident because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
From him and many others that I came across via Cross Rhythms and others in the contemporary Christian circles I have also been challenging the things I am taught not just from the church pulpit, but within the books I read – both those that identify as Christian and those that don’t, the music I listen to, the conversations I hear around me, and even this relatively new concept of deconstruction one’s Christian faith. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one set in stone to deconstruct thanks to those like Rich Mullins, Cross Rhythms, Greenbelt and others. And that makes me so glad.
I’ve never been one for a bucket list. Much as my family teases me about writing lists, and how on my death bed I will be leaving them all lists of what to do, I am not great at doing that listing of things I’d like to do. My lists are things to do during today. But if I had had a bucket list of things I would like to do before I die one of those things I’ve realised I would have put on would be to have a painting commissioned for myself. Not just to buy a good piece of art but to have one that is total mine and mine alone.
The other thing I would have put on my bucket list if I’d done one years ago would be to have a room of my own. A room that is totally mine. I’ve lived in rented accommodation on my own and when a single mum, or I’d lived with parents or with a partner. And even though I do take charge of the decorating in this house the rooms are still “ours” not “mine”, whereas now I have this study; a room that is s totally my room.
Anyway my friend, Rossie, started getting properly back into her art a while ago as her family’s time running Ywam Bristol was nearing an end. It is funny in wondering why her family moved to Bristol with this wonderful vision then things went awry, I do wonder if they were there so that Rossie could connect with some from the art scene there but also to be strategically placed to rekindle her art.
Anyway in May she wished me a happy birthday and something pinged within me and I asked her if she would paint me a picture because I felt it would fit perfectly with the new colours in my study. She asked me what I wanted and I just said for her to do as she felt.
Well as we all know I’ve been doing a lot of “work” on myself via QEC etc and I think the biggest thing to emerge is that I am being able to more clearly say what I want, when I want and how I want. I am being released from people pleasing, needing to be loved, from needing to complying, from my guilt of my past, etc, etc. Well guess what Rossie felt to call the painting??? “Finding Your Voice”
Finding Your Voice is often used in writing as in finding your writing style. But as I gaze at this painting I know it is more than just that. It is being able to know that the still small voice of your heart is clear, is you, is safe, can be trusted. It is knowing that the voice you hear is clear and true. It is hearing it within the clutter of shoulds and oughts and conditioning.
Over the past few years I have been finding that true heart voice, that voice that is truly me, that voice that can cope with the difference facets of myself without fear or criticism. Interestingly too as I’ve found my own voice I have been able to decorate my study as I like it, put in bits and pieces that I like, turn my desk so I’m looking out at the world rather than at a wall, added a comfy chair, a floor cushion, coverings, etc that I would not put in a shared room in the house. As I have found my voice so I have also found my space. I think too I’ve found my space within the wider world too without having to push myself to fit in with a clique.
So this painting is not just a something from a bucket list I didn’t have but it is something that says something about my journey. It has also come just as I was ready for it.
Unfortunately the photos do not do it justice. I messaged Rossie and told her that it is like trying to photograph a feeling. It doesn’t quite work, doesn’t convey what it says to me.
Please do check out more of my lovely friend’s painting as www.rossiehb.art and on social media on @rossiehb.art
And even the dog’s floor cushion matches the decor. The cushion is from Gill’s cushions, who is also someone I know. I’m slowly filling my space with personal things!
Woodland walk. just me and my dog. A space to think. April 1st 2023. Photographed by myself.
I was going to write a post about another thing that keeps niggling at me but I felt I wanted to revisit Forgiveness before I can really let it go.
I’m not sure if it is forgiveness or the things that one needs to forgive that start to loom large once God hooks one onto a topic. But just recently it has felt like there are things with spikes, like those seed cases that stick to one as one walks through a wood, or have to be tugged from the dog’s fur, things that I thought I’d “dealt with” via various QEC and inner healing journaling stuff but that nip at me when I’m not quite noticing.
A thing that not only QEC but other inner trauma type healings talk of doing is to be aware of one’s vagus nerve and how one is reacting – fight, fight, freeze, fawn – and how to bring it back to feeling calm, peaceful and filled with deep joy. Not happiness but contentment and something 100 times deeper than happiness.
But these little sticky seed cases aren’t heavy. The dog can continue his walk when he has them. They don’t slow him down. But these small sticky things that I need to forgive for the millionth time do slow me down. They make me grouchy, which makes me tired, which makes me uncreative. And I really don’t like to be uncreative.
And that for me is my awareness; when I feel uncreative, when I don’t want to write anything at all. Sometimes I write angry pieces which I don’t share but that helps me look at what I need to forgive so I can move onward. We each have different things that show us we are out of sync with the calm, peacefully, pure, safe joy we should be working if we are aware of ourselves. So when we don’t enjoy or want to do the things that make us who we are that is the time when we have to stop, reset our vagus nerve, breath, and forgive – often ourselves for still reacting with that hurt as much as forgiving the person who hurt us.
Forgiveness is NOT something with sharp teeth, which is what I was going to write. Forgiveness is the the true MUST DO that is the only things that is going to keep us in good relationship with others and with ourselves. If I don’t forgive me then I forget who “me” really is.
It isn’t easy forgiving but it is essential but too often we get used to those sticky seeds, to those sharp teeth. Too often we are afraid to brush them off, to release ourselves and others. Fear stops us doing many things but most importantly it stops us being ourselves.
So as we enter into the season of Easter, into Holy Week, whether that is your faith or not, just ponder some of the things that are recorded of what Jesus did – the Ultimate Forgiver.
Walk by river at St Asaph taken by myself August 2022
I am blaming The Naked Pastor for bringing my attention to the difference between saying you are broken to that of saying you are wounded from a trauma. He says, and I think I agree, that if I am broken then I need fixing but if I am wounded then I am ok but have parts of me that need to be healed.
Here’s a quote from David’s last newsletter and a link to the cartoon relating to it:
When you set out to ‘fix’ yourself, you end up changing the person you are and causing extra hurt and extra trauma.
But when you change your mindset to one of healing, you begin to realize that you were never broken and that you never needed fixing at all.
I’ve just done a Biblegateway search of the words “broken” and “healed”. Broken only applies with something physical, like bread or bones, or branches of unbelief. But Jesus does loads of healing and if fact Peter says of Jesus:
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Not broken but wounds. And for transgression read “all the things we’ve done wrong, had done wrong to us, our traumas, hurts, fears, physical, emotional and spiritual.”
Yet last night I was at a meeting where the host, who was the pastor of the church where the meeting was happening, said that the church was for broken people and that he was the most broken of them all. See now I don’t think that’s a great boast. Why would I want to be part of something that seems to be proud that people are attending and being led by someone who is more of a mess than they are. What I love about QEC is that not only does it help me to be healed of my hurts, fears and traumas, but also gives me tools that I can then do this for myself. I don’t need to keep seeing my therapist to go over stuff. I have been healed, set free. Oh yes it does sneak up and bite me often but I know how to recognise it and deal with it.
I am slowly growing towards being the person I am meant to be. As Naked Pastor says we aren’t broken and needing put back together as if there is something wrong with us but we are hurting and wounded and need healing. And this is what the Bible tells me Jesus died for and yet why is this church, and others, saying that it is ok to be broken and to want to stay that way?
I am so grateful that when I met with God I was in a total mess and got filled with a great reassurance that I was loved unconditionally just as I was. Yes I have gone on to be fixed but have learned that it is about being healed not fixed. I am not broken and don’t need fixing. I am awesome as I am but need to be healed so the real me can get out into the world. And I am learning to do this with a mix of Jesus, Holy Spirit, God, some great friends who like me as I am, and also [and I know I keep publicising it but it is awesome] with the help and support of QEC and the tools that come with it.
A view to the Llyn Peninsular taken on a day out with my daughter July 2022
I cried when I heard the result of the RoevWade outcome. How could a country that calls itself civilised take such a backward step? Not only is it saying that women cannot choose but that it is saying women are not able to choose. Then I hear our government saying that abortion doesn’t need to be on The Bill of Rights! Again a major step backwards.
There is that big argument that the child that is aborted could grow up to change the world. Well what if they don’t? What if the child that does not get aborted is brought up in a household on a low income with many different partners in the mother’s life? What if the child is brought up and hated because of what the mother could not do? One cannot talk of “what ifs” when one does not talk about choice.
Did you know it is only recently that Christians believe a person did not become a living being until God breathed life into them at that moment of birth
“I think we know that prior to the Lord putting breath of life into Adam he had a heart, he had a brain with vessels, and these vessels and heart were filled with blood just as the vessels and heart of a fetus are filled with blood. However, Adam did not become a living soul until after the Lord breathed into him the breath of life.
—Robert L. Pettus Jr., MD, As I See Sex Through the Bible, 1973
And “Rabbis have long written that the soul enters the body at birth, with the first breath. For breath is the gift of life from the one who created us. From the God who is both our origin and our destination.”
–
I know medical science can now keep a baby alive from very early in gestation. I have had friends who have been blessed by this new technology. But that was their choice and that choice has effected their lives since.
I have just read a great article by Nadia Bolz-Weber entitled Stories>Opinions [basically our stories are greater than someone’s opinions] In it she tells her own story of her own abortion, which is very similar to mine, except that she did have a partner with her and friends supporting her. For me, I was in an odd place, sleeping around and did not know who had fathered my child. I was, like Nadia, on a low income and also not in a place to have a child. [I once told this story in a Christian youth group and got cross questioned by the young people, which actually was great because it made me think about what I had done, and I know I did the right thing at that moment in time] Would I have been a good mother then? Who knows. But I chose not to be a mother then.
Later I got my life a bit more sorted and have since had two amazing children. Children that actually I would not have had if I had not aborted the earlier one. Strange that. As someone in my writing group once told me “each choice we make determines where we are today.”
Jon Kuhrt wrote a blog piece a while back on Francis Spufford’s book “Perpetual Light”, which is a story about the children that died in a WWII bomb on a Woolworth’s in London, and what their lives would have been like if they had lived. This got me thinking about what my life would have been like if my first child had lived. I don’t know but I know it would be very different and I know I would not have the children I have now, or the husband I have now, or the life I have now. It would have been different.
When people say about the life of the aborted child they never seem to talk about the life of the mother who has that child, or the father who has to decide what he will do. Also too often the mother is seen as the enemy, as a bad person, who isn’t really thinking properly. I do not know of anyone who did not think through their decisions carefully and how it would impact them and their unborn child. It is not a decision to be taken lightly. But then I did not take it lightly to keep my next two babies. But having an abortion is a taboo subject very rarely talked about in Christian circles openly. Why is that? God knows what I’ve done and still thinks I am amazing. I know this because my first God encounter was of being covered in what felt like a warm, visceral glittery substance and being told I was loved just as I was – unmarried mum who’d had an abortion. I’m not sure what my church would have thought of me if they’d known. I wonder if I will now be asked to stop helping with the youth group that I volunteer at now?
Please can we stop being ashamed of what we’ve done. Please can we start being open about every part of our lives and not just keep God for the clean and tidy bits and pieces. God is the God of the whole of my life – the good and the bad, the times I’ve got it right and the times I’ve got it wrong – and I am loved by God no matter what. That is totally amazing.
And now let us stand together and support those who have had an abortion, who are thinking of having abortions, and also those who think the whole this is an anathema. We are all made in the image of God no matter what we’ve done or what we think. And are loved because of and in spite of all that.
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
Abergwyngregyn nature reserve taken by myself on 19th January 2022 at 9.15am
During my QEC session we talk a lot about not having boundaries but being in alignment to the world around you and your energy. I’ve been pondering a lot about it because it is counterintuitive to a lot of what one gets taught. How often have we all heard about “having clear boundaries” or even about “having boundaries that are flexible“. I attended a lovely workshop once around looking at boundaries – a fallen down fence, a brick wall and a wall with a gate in it, with the wall with the gate in it being what we should aim for. All sounded really good. Then I get this spanner in the works and because I trust so much else of what I’m doing through QEC I have to work this through.
As you can see from the wall above when a storm comes, or when it isn’t cared for, it falls and the sea rushes in. This is what we’re encouraged not to do – not to let the sea cascade in because …. because we could come to harm. So we spend a lot of energy working on those walls, even making sure the gate is in the right place and is well maintained. But alignment is a totally different thing.
I had gone through a bit of an issue with someone I was working with where I felt out of alignment with them and felt I was not getting the justice I deserved. Whilst pondering around this I was also doing some meditation around focusing on Jesus and the Cross and Healing what came to me was that “healing is once the pain has gone and the wound is clean” But how does that happen?
What I realised was that to get that healing I had been coming at it from a “your will be done” but wanting God’s will to actually match up with mine. So it was much more “my will be done. This has caused me thinking about my boundaries and what I wanted rather than what would being peace in my world.
As I let God/The Universe take over my niggles and need for my justice I felt myself calming, felt myself coming into alignment with God/The Universe’s peace for me. And that is the only word I can use to describe it – “peace“. I would say I got “healed of needing to know the bigger picture”.
So I may not look to the cross every time I feel discombobulated by something but I will learn to relax into alignment with a bigger will than my own. Once I can do that then there is no need for boundaries; no need to know what comes next; no need to even know why. There is peace. There is freedom. There is trust.
I know this will be an on going thing because I have been brought up for too long thinking I’m only safe if I’m behind a boundary but in fact I am safer when I am aligned to God/The Universe’s bigger picture and trusting God has it covered.
Aspirational Adventures 