Tag: God

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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
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
Lord's Prayer Trust God Uncategorized

Whose Will?

So two posts in quick succession. This is because I’ve been enjoying my daughter’s company and not had time or headspace to blog.

But I have been praying. And again am stuck on working with The Lord’s Prayer. And especially the line “Your Will be done“.

It made me think of how often we mither [check out the link as it is a north of England expression] at God to do what we think is the right thing. With many situations, whether it is Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, getting things done in my home town, illnesses with people I know, there is much more going on under the surface, hidden histories, that we know little or nothing about, hurts and pains we don’t understand, and so often what we are “telling” God to do is ill-informed. I think this is why Jesus’s advise was telling us to say to God “look I see this situation. I’d love you to be involved in it. Your will be done within that.“

Now I had an interesting thing happen after I was praying for God’s will to be done about a certain person. As me and this person were walking and talking they said something that I could almost see God highlighting for me. It was something very deep with them and shared in a way that I felt led me to ask God if that was a way I was to pray about it. I believe now that God has given me their direction in praying for this person and that God and I are yoked together in this.

I also had another time when I did the “ok it’s your will not mine here” as I was finding certain things with another person difficult. I was also trying to avoid that person. But again God had other plans. There I was walking round my park on my own and they were walking the opposite direction. They greeted me warmly and we walked together. Again I could hear that still small voice saying “this is My will that you walk along side them.” And it was like there was nothing else I had to do but to walk with them.

I can be an organised, planning person. It is a family joke that I like my lists. Often of an evening I write a list of what I want to do the following day as part of my unwind before going to sleep routine. But I also find that I can get into doing this with praying for people; the list with an idea of what each person, situation, etc needs. But this takes away the “your will be done” part of the Lord’s Prayer. I wonder too if these things interfere with the “give me each day my daily bread” part.

So this year I am going to just let God’s will be done, not my will, in how I pray and who I pray for, and just trust and see what happens.

Categories
Main Event ordinary

Defining My Year

Colwyn Bay 6th January 2024 photographed by myself

It is that season where we look back and look forward. A time when we talk about our best times over the last year and our worst times. A time when we talk about and make plans for the future.

I’ve been reading Josh Luke Smith’s thoughts which he has been sending out each day since 1st Jan. This verse struck me from the poem he shared

We must not define our lives by our worst days, and neither should we by our best; most of life is in the middle.

Joshua Luke Smith – This is the main event

This photograph I’ve shared is from a walk my husband, daughter, my dog and myself did yesterday. It was an ordinary walk along and ordinary beach. We talked about ordinary things then went to the pub. Ordinary

Neither of my children could make it up for Christmas. 2nd January was the first time my daughter was able to come and has managed to be with us for the whole week. But she’s tired after working all through December, over Christmas and over New Year in hospitality. She’s tired and needs a bit of family downtime. We’ve done a lot of sitting about and chatting. One afternoon her and the dog fell asleep on the couch whilst I was reading. We did one day where we went out to lunch so she could get a new coat. But it was all low key. All ordinary. It was life lived in the middle point between best and worst.

But as Josh says in all his writings for this year – and it is a phrase he uses often – it is the ordinary that is the “main event”. If we spend our time waiting for the amazing or even wallowing in the awful we will miss out on so much. God promises to be with us ALL the time.

Yes God promises to be with us when things get tough and life is awful and when we need to be enfolded in their loving arms. God promises to rejoice with us when things are amazing and shout with us. Though often in the great times, and even in the good times, we forget to acknowledge God. But God is with us ALWAYS.

With this in my head it is helping me realise to just acknowledge God in the washing up, in the deep cleaning the kitchen which I did this morning because husband and daughter have gone for hike in the sunshine that has miraculously appeared over North Wales. I have got good at remembering to praise God for the beauty in my local park but this whole thing of remembering that actually it is the life we live day in day which is our “main event“, which is our lives, is something to be grasped

I suppose it is what mindfulness is deep down, but often that has been turned into a “thing.” – eg “I am being mindful” or whatever. But this is just knowing that all my life, whether good, bad, indifferent, whether mindful or forgetful, all of this is my life. All of this is the main event of my life.

Dog enjoying the beach. For the dog each moment of every day is just what it is!

Categories
enough joy peace

You Don’t Need To Do It

My dog’s biggest decision/resolution for any day of the week is what toy shall he play with from his two new ones. And each decision is “new every morning”

On a Facebook group I’m part of my QEC practitioner suggested instead of feeling like we are being forced into New year resolutions – that most of us feel guilty about breaking by mid-January – why not QEC a vision of Peace, Joy and Plenty for 2024. This is working with that principle that what we believe will come to pass will come to pass. This isn’t a “pollyanna” “pie in the sky” way of thinking. This isn’t saying that we will be protected from bad things happening. But it is saying that we will ride through them with peace, with deep joy [not the silly giggles but something deep and fundamental] and that we will know we will have plenty/enough of whatever we need to see us through.

All this is what God says to us through the Bible – that “the joy of the Lord is our strength” [Nehemiah 8:10], “my peace I give to you” [John 14:27] and Matthew 6:25-34 which tells us not to worry about anything because God has it all for us. God has what we need in abundance. Though too often we do not see Christians living this out so find it hard to believe. But it is there!

But I realised as I was free writing around this that there is an order to have this happens. I felt that one couldn’t just dive into believing there is plenty/enough/an abundance because it is so hard to believe. It is why we have to QEC things and put in new beliefs so we can start on that journey.

  • But that QEC journey starts, I think, with us having peace with our past, with our upbringing, with our mistakes.
  • From this place comes deep joy that we are such amazing people, even if that has been lost in things that have been said to us as children.
  • Then once we are at this place of deep joy and gratitude, then we can believe we have plenty for what lies ahead each and every single day.

To succeed with this we need to be like those who go to Alcoholics Anonymous believe, that what we have this for each day and we rejoice in the dailiness of it and not have to stake it up for longer than today.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
…
Amen.

The Serenity Prayer

Note the “living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at at time” or as Lamentations 3:23 says God’s blessings are “new every morning” because “great is your faithfulness”

By not trying to put it in resolutions – that we aren’t doing at the moment anyway and so won’t stick to because there are reasons why we didn’t start now – but listening to our hearts and going day by day doing our best to live in peace, from which follows joy and gratitude, givings us the hope of living in plenty/enough then we can move in harmony with ourselves, with God, with The Universe, and with each other.

Categories
Cross Lighthouse

To Steer By

Looking towards the end of Ynys Llanddwyn, Newborough, Anglesey. Photographed by myself 26th December 2023

A friend was telling me how when people say to her that it is Jesus is just a crutch she responds with “too right because I can’t do life on my own” [paraphrase]. I found this an interesting response because too often I have heard, and also my response has been, to defend myself, to say that Jesus isn’t a crutch and that we, me and Jesus that is, are walking together equally yoked etc. So her response got lodged in my mind.

Then when we were out on our yearly Boxing day walk, this year accompanied by picnic, to Ynys Llanddwyn with half of the North Wales population, I was struck by the lighthouse and the cross being on the headland of the island. Yes I have seen them before but I don’t think I’ve walked along this path before and got the same view.

How often does that happen that when God wants to highlight something we are lead down a different path way? Often with some phrase or expression or bible verse hovering round our peripheral thought.

I was struck by how no one would mock a sailor who said they were guided by the lighthouse, that they relied on the lighthouse to keep them safe. Yet I wonder how often we are mock for saying we are guided by the cross, that we rely on the cross? Also how often I might keep quiet about being guided by the Cross but openly say how my SATNAV keeps me safe. Or how often we check the weather forecast trusting that but don’t check in with our hearts/the Universe/God to hear where we should be going.

Note to self – be willing to let others know what guides me, but also make sure that guide is the Cross first. Nothing wrong with being guided by lighthouses, SATNAVs or weather forecasts, or all those other things that we use to help us along the way. But make sure that first and foremost it is the Cross the guides and leads us.

And not to be embarrassed by that.

Categories
Looking well-being

Looking Up

My dog is always lifting his head up to me 🙂

Belated reflections on St Stephen’s Day, which was yesterday. 26th December. Interestingly it fits in with, what I felt was a bad BBC drama, Vigil. In one episode the main character has been captured by suspected Middle Eastern terrorists and the British soldiers come with their drones to rescue her. It is only when someone looks up that there can be a positive identification made by facial recognition software. Someone facing downwards, side-wards or anyway other than directly up cannot be recognised.

Now here’s the verse from the story of Stephen that struck me. Do read the whole story if you don’t know it.

54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

Acts 7 54-56

Now I know God knows us all whether we look up at them or not [which actually those back viewing the drone footage knew everyone anyway] But with those viewing the drone footage they needed this full on head upwards facing the camera identification to either rescue or destroy.

After reading this passage about Stephen I wonder if God needs us to look up to be able to fully show us things. Interestingly if you walk with your head upright on your shoulders then your breathing and your digestion are improved. If your head is even down a little bit then this makes it harder for your body to digest or your lungs to work to their full capacity. But perhaps it is also easier to worship God if our heads our upwards.

I know heaven isn’t “up there” and hell “down there” but I do wonder if we look upwards as we go through life, whether walking, talking with friends, working, etc whether we connect with God more so.

I know that there is prostrating prayer, bowed down prayer, but how often do we encourage prayer with heads raised? Would Stephen have seen that amazing vision if he had bowed his head and accepted his lot?

I wonder if he lifted his head in defiance to the anger of the religious leaders. [For those who don’t know he then gets stoned to death] I don’t expect he did it to receive that vision. I do wonder, as I spend time with this story, if God blessed Stephen because he was bold enough to look upwards, to see the sun shining, to hear the birds singing, to graciously rather than fearfully accept his fate.

As 2023 ends and 2024 is coming I hope that I can lift my head more to God, to the wonder of my world, to the joy of being, and for the health of my body, and no longer allow the pessimism that can so easily engulf to drag my head downwards thus hindering my well-being.

Do you fancy giving it a go too???

Categories
christmas turkey

What is Christmas all about?

As this is Christmas Eve this gives me time to wish you all a Peaceful Christmas, a time of rest and reflection, and a sense of acceptance, whether you are on your own, with family, having to go through tough times or enjoying life.

I’m off to be part of my favourite service of the whole of Christmas. The Christingle service. I love the words. I love the symbolism. I love that it is a service for children without being cringy and overly child focused. For me it is staying the true meaning of Christmas

Check out what it all means from this post from The Children’s Society who started the whole thing.

But I also wanted to fill you in on a bit of a family joke about me and turkeys. One year we did a road trip to see my husband’s family. I thought I was going to eat turkey till I burst but each household we reached informed us they had done their turkey the day before hand. We even caught up with my son and his then girlfriend in a pub to be told that they didn’t do turkey between Christmas and New Year because people were fed up of. Not me!!

I was quoted as saying “Christmas isn’t Christmas without turkey” which from someone who had never written hard hitting Christmas plays about the true meaning of Christmas would have be amusing but from myself who has spoken on the true meaning of Jesus coming into the world this is hilarious. And of course the phrase has stuck.

Well this is now where God’s amazing sense of humor come in. This year at the Christingle I am part of a group performing Benjamin Zephaniah’s Talking Turkeys.

I am doing the first long verse and saying

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

At the same time as having roasted my 10lb+ turkey that only myself and my husband are going to eat as both my children aren’t able to make it up for Christmas. A slight touch of irony there.

Whatever your “must have” at Christmas is do enjoy it no matter what amazingly fantastic poets have to say about it 🙂

Categories
positioning Trust God

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?

Categories
Feminist Roles

What Does This Really Say?

This is a joke that does the rounds regularly at Christmas and we all have a bit of a laugh about it. But this year after reading books like Laura Bate’s Everyday Sexism and some about the ignored achievements by women by Sandi Toksvig I didn’t find it funny.

Why would women not have trusted the ancient prophecies? Why would they want to clean up? Why would they want to cook? Why be practical? The gifts the wisemen brought were prophetic and practical.

I find this whole “joke” puts both men and women down and puts them in a box that many of us for years have been trying to get out of. I find it even sadder when something like this is shared with a group of women who are not being fully who they could be because they are keeping house, looking after children and grandchildren, doing the “ought to” things that women feel they need to do, whilst their husbands and/or children get on and do the having a career, a purpose, a role in society.

To me this, and other things like it, say that a women’s true job it to the one who keeps things going by making sure things are clean and tidy and everyone is fed. Then if there is time she can then do what she wants.

What I really hope in the story of the Wisemen visiting Jesus is that there were prophetic women in the group that said “yes this is what the stars say and so this is where the new King of Judah should be” and were then willing to say they had made a mistake. I hope when they got to the stable with Jesus in it that they were so blown away by seeing God Incarnate that they didn’t give a sh*t about whether the stable was clean or dirty, whether Mary had had time to clear up, whether there was a good meal. I really hope they just feel flat on their faces and worship the King of Kings. I really do hope that, like the men in the group, the were blown away by what they saw and just wanted to praise and worship God.

So my hope this Christmas is that women stop trying to keep the house together, stop trying to make sure everyone is alright and well fed, stop worrying about what other people might think of their house if they enter it, stop trying to look like “good girls” and will fall at the feet of Jesus.

Also getting on to the last part – it isn’t up to the women or the men or anyone to bring peace on earth. God will do that if we stop trying and just worship them with everything we have.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Mark 12:30

And stop worrying about what people will think, about whether the house is clean, about whether there is food, about anything. Then you, then I, will be at peace and so then Peace can truly reign on earth. But it has to start with individual people who can then join to become a whole.