Tag: holidays

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bonfire Captive

Take Every Thought Captive

Image from https://hgc.org.my/sermons/take-every-thought-captive/

It’s been a while since I’ve posted . Not because I haven’t had posts in my head but because it is that time of year – that time when one’s head if filled with Christmas stuff; what to get for who and when to send, and what Christmas cards to send to who and why, the whole food and drink thing, and what to do with the long enforced break for some. Head full of thoughts. I’ve also decided to start a Substack with my writing on it which I’ve told people I’ll post 2-3 times a week. I’ve done one week and got a growing following, including one paying subscriber so I probably need to do regular postings. Perhaps should have waited till the new year but ….

This post came from a picture on FB about taking thoughts captive, which I cannnot refind so can’t share the source of this thought with you but did find the lovely picture above. I’ve not read the post/sermon that accompanies it but do feel free if you wish.

Here is the whole Bible verse

We demolish arguments and every pretension …, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

How often do arguments occur because we have let our minds wander off on their own coming up with all sorts of scenarios for what the other person is thinking/feeling/intentions are? I’ve had it with the Christmas present shopping. Once I’ve bought something I go down the rabbit hole of “they won’t like it” “it is too much” “I should have bought X instead”.

I had a lovely challenge over the weekend. A friend had message to say she was off to the park and would meet me there. She was late and I’d bumped into another friend who’d suggested going to see the waves [it was the tail end of Storm Darragh]. Whilst I was on the beach with this friend the other friend phoned to say she was at the park. I told her where I was. It is a walk that leads back to the park but when I got back and phoned her she didn’t answer. I then messaged to say did she want to meet for coffee the following day. No answer. So my mind started its journey of “she doesn’t like me any more” “she’s scary when she’s angry” right the way through to “I’m not sure if I want to be her friend any more”. I then pulled myself together and started taking every one of those random thoughts captive. Because I like visual stuff I imagined these thoughts running like fish along the river of my mind [I think I’ve heard this in a sermon somewhere] and I speared them, gave them a quick look over, then throw them on to a bonfire. Eventually those random thoughts stopped coming and I was at peace with my decision to go to the beach instead of hanging around in the park and felt that all would work out as God/The Universe intended. The following day I got a text from her saying she wasn’t free when I’d said but what about later in the week. When we did meet she didn’t say anything about me going to the beach. It was all over.

How often though do we waste time on those random thoughts? How often do we take things and blow them up out of all proportion?

I could easily have built up arguments in my head about this friendship, built up pretensions. In a course I did about relieving stress this was called “fortune telling” – imagining a future when none of us know what the future looks like. Although this does seem to be what our media and much of social media focuses on – fear of what might happen. Capture those thoughts and throw them away. None of us knows the future. And we build up stress and stress leads of falling out with each other because we aren’t living in the reality that is now.

A couple of nights later I’d had too much sugar before going to bed and woke up with that whole worrying about X,Y and Z. I did the “taking every thought captive” and throwing it on the bonfire and as I did it I cleared the water of my mind, realised that it was a sugar rush going on, went to get a drink and accepted that this was what it was. I didn’t even do the “I shouldn’t have done eaten those sweets so close to bed”. Instead I just accepted that what was was.

I’m learning more and more to do this with other things. So with the presents and the Christmas cards I’ve written, I’m sending with love and a belief that they will be received with love. Because also all thoughts are not to be thrown on to the bonfire and got rid of. Some thoughts are lovely and need to be savoured. That is why it says to capture them but then make them obedient to the mind of Christ which is calm, peaceful, and filled with love.

River at Betws-y-coed September 2023 photographed by myself

Categories
christmas first world dilemma Uncategorized

Christmas Present Buying

Back in 2013 both Damson and Renly “helping” with present unwrapping!!!

I’ve a sister-in-law who thinks it is too early to mention the Christmas word but with food and family to think of it is floating in my mind. The shops are ready and it is starting to appear on mailing lists. But here is the dilemma – where should one get one’s presents from?

I will definitely not do commercial stores or plastic tat. I get annoyed with those last minute presents bought from a supermarket on Christmas eve. But there are still dilemmas!

Do I get from a local business and support them with their income? Do I buy from a charity shop and so give money to their cause? Do I not buy any presents but do those gifts where one sends a goat or blankets or whatever to someone in the developing or war-torn world?

All three of those things are viable and all three of them are supportive. But which should I do?

I must say I do love a good Christmas market and can come home with lots of soaps and jams and cakes and things. I do love seeing someone opening a gift I have got for them. But also there are so many needs out there in the world, not just at Christmas, but throughout the year.

Where should I give my money? And who out of those I give gifts to should I get what for? Because I do know a few who would prefer something in their hands than something for someone else. I do know friends who run their own businesses who could do with me spending money on their stock.

Or do I just by lovely things for myself and decide I am the one who needs good cheer?

Categories
Rest

On Holiday

Mug from https://www.joshualukesmith.com/ – dog is mine 🙂

I know I’ve not been posting too much recently – since the end of Psalm 23’s run – but I’m going to be posting nothing for a while as we’re going away. And as the mug says “this is the main event” – hanging out with my family in different permutations for a week in different places. Then back for a few days, when I might have time to post, before going off to help friends declutter their house before they move across country. Then it is holiday time for just me, hubby and dog. So if things are quiet on here for the next month just remember ….

Thank you to https://media.tenor.com/3hbFmn5Qt_YAAAAC/coming-back-ill-be-back.gif

Categories
holidays Remembering

Remember All Things Can Change

Photographed by Diane Woodrow on her 61st birthday
Isle of Kerrera 2nd May 2022 taken by myself

We’ve just been away on a week’s holiday up in Scotland which is why I haven’t posted for a bit. It was lovely to hang out together, walk, talk, eat, drink and just be. One day my husband went off up a mountain and the dog and I stayed back at the cottage, did a couple of little walks and I wrote. The reason for going away this last week was that it was my birthday.

Birthdays are great times of remembering, of noticing the changes, of connecting. Last year on my birthday we were sat on a more touristy beach in mid-Wales watching jet skiers buzzing about and listening to children asking for ice creams. This year we were sat on top of a hill looking out to sea. It was peaceful but I’m sure when the castle was built there it saw its fair share of noise and mayhem. And then two years ago we were trapped in our house on lockdown enjoying the back garden and quiet of our town as next to nothing was driving about. How things have changed in these last couple of years. Now our town is back to its normal noisy self.

It got me to reflecting on seasons. So for now this castle of the Isle of Kerrera is a peaceful walkers destination, but once it was the site of a major battle towards the end of the Jacobite wars. But even before then it would have been a home not just of a nuclear family but to the entourage that goes with castles.

We also visited Hadrian’s Wall which is now a peaceful deserted haven for walkers, but I do wonder what it was like 2000 years ago when it was filled with Roman soldiers defending the borders of the empire.

Photographed by Diane Woodrow
Part of Hadrian’s Wall at Millcastle photographed by myself 7th May 2022

So from looking back on 3 years of birthdays to 600 years of Scottish history to nearly 2000 years to the Roman Empire it got me to thinking how we hold so tightly to the now as being the full reality.

And I know in mindfulness we are encouraged to be in the present and not to worry about the past or the future, but sometimes I think it helps to know that this present we stand in is not how it always has been or how it will always be.

There was much talk about yesterday – 9th May – Europe Day – which marked not only the end of the Second World War but also Schumman’s speech which led to the founding of the European Union. The world has not stood still over the last 75+ years. And as we see war in Europe again with the Russian invasion I think it would help to see that, awful though this is, it is just a phase that history is going through and hold it lightly. Who knows what things will look like in a year, in two, in ten, in twenty, in a hundred?

I’m sure those standing guard on Hadrian’s Wall or in the castle on the Isle of Kerrera when it was being besieged would ever have imagined their land being a place of tranquility but it is. I’m sure at the time they prayed for peace and now it has come.

So let us pray for peace in our world and know that one day it will come.

Categories
2020 Abergele accepting adventure Airbnb anniversary Barefoot At The Kitchen Table being me belief Books boundaries change choice christian coronavirus Covid-19 dog expectations faith family friendship future God GodspaceLight heart hope horse hospitality Jesus joy joy of the Lord life lockdown mixed emotions new normal pandemic peace plans QEC rabbit reading trust truth walking the dog writer writing

2020 Review

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Normally I would do my end of year review to coincide with Christmas cards I was sending, whether physical or electronic, but this year I have decided to wait until 31st December to post, and am even tempted to wait until midnight just in case. It is not that I am fearful but this has been an “unprecedented” year.

At the time I would normally have done this post I was still laid up with bruised ribs from falling off that horse though was starting to plan what I would write, and I suppose even Different Christmas was a lead up to that. But then just as I was in the planning stages for that my husband got shingles and has been very sore with that. Then on Saturday 19th Dec Wales announced that all was change for Christmas and we were going into lockdown again – though from the volume of traffic I would say that only means that pubs and cafes have now closed. Not sure if I can see much other difference on the roads. It is definitely not back to April’s sparse traffic volume. But then on Sunday my daughter announced that she had tested positive to covid and so, even though she wasn’t coming up here for the holidays it did mean she was going to have to spend it home alone! All this in just a week!

This has been the strangest of years. Even to the point that our cat went from eating biscuits to demanding that we feed her cat meat from a tin. She now has meat twice a day and ignores the biscuits that sit waiting for her to be hungry enough. If it hadn’t been for the local cat rescue places being closed all the tins that had been in the cupboard for the last few years would have gone to them but now she’s eaten them all.

Talking of pets – our crazy rabbit died in the summer, happily of a possible heart attack whilst he was sunbathing before begining yet another digging project. He was buried inside his own warren of tunnels that he had constructed over the four years he had been living here. He is still very missed and the amount of veg peelings in our food recycling bin has increased.

As with everyone 2020 started normally enough, though it was odd for us because my husband chose to stay home for New Year’s instead of going to a youth hostel with old university friends. So actually even the start of the year was different for us with us being together when we woke on 2020. We went away as always for our wedding anniversary at the end of January, which was followed by my husband going off for a week of intensive Welsh learning on the Llyn Peninsular. He managed to get away climbing with friends in Scotland at the start of March, but by the time he went away then things were starting to change and covid was being muttered about. We had two Airbnb guests, both in the medical profession, who went from saying it was nothing to worry about to slowly getting more and more concerned about it, to our guest from Burma having to cut short his stay so he got home before all airports were closed.

I was supposed to go on my regular March writing retreat but felt uneasy about going which was just as well because suddenly things got serious. So instead of being in Gwynedd I went Cardiff to bring my daughter to stay with us when the pubs closed. We bought her some walking boots the day before the country went into full lockdown. We thought we were going to be walking all over North Wales, but then the 5 mile rule was introduced and we finished up doing lots of walks around where we live. We have seen my daughter more this year, probably a good 4 months of the year, than we have since she went off to university about 7 years ago. I picked her up yesterday, now that she is over her coovid isolation time and will spend New Year with us and stay until this lockdown lifts. So even though we have seen so much more of her this year when it comes to everyone else – my son and our mothers and our friends – we’ve seen them less than normal.

My husband changed jobs at the start of lockdown and has now been working for his new company for 8 months and never seen the inside of his office or met any of his colleagues face to face. We are so grateful for our lovely big house and him being able to work upstairs in his own office. But his is the only work going on in the house because, with all the guidelines and restrictions, it is not safe to run our house as an Airbnb rental home for the time being. Read more about that on Humility. And since not having guests coming and going it has changed how I see the house and what it is for. For now I’m not making any decisions how things will look regarding Airbnb and room rentals in 2021, but I do know I see this place much more as a family home now than a business.

We did manage to get away for a flying visit to Somerset to see our mums and a couple of friends at the beginning of August and my son and his fiancee came up to us for a long weekend in mid August. Both times we were blessed with great weather. And we managed 6 days in Northumberland in late September, though because Northumbeland went into tier 3 we were not able to see one friend who had moved there a couple of years ago, and also a friend’s 50th wedding anniversary party was cancelled. But we did manage 6 days of walking, reading, and resting together.

As well as Airbnb all my work has stopped – no more writing groups, no more schools work, no more workshops in the library. All very strange. But I have been doing a lot of my own writing and a few of my blogs from here are being published on Godspacelight.com which is quite exciting. I have also been working with a young illustrator and we have a book called The Little Yellow Boat which is with BumbleBee Publishing in the process of being put together and published later in 2021. I will tell more about that once it is out in the big wide world. My plans for 2021 are to work on more short stories and other ideas and of course to blog more. I do not want The Little Yellow Boat to be my only publications. I have also been working towards an MA in Celtic Studies and have loved the modules about the Mabinogion, especailly the Four Branches. I am thinking of doing some stores around the women from the Four Branches.

Every year we do not know what is going to happen, but I think 2021 is probably the one where we have the least idea. Will the vaccine prove effective enough to bring back “normal” life? Will we have enjoyed some of the changes and not want “normal”? For some their business will never be the same again. Many will be bankrupt. For others there plans will be delayed and will be able to move forward a year or two later. But also within that not knowing are things we do have control over. I plan to continue with the Quantum Energy Counselling healing work I’ve been doing. I will work on my own writing and develop a body of work and look at being published. I will meet up with people when I walk with my dog and have great conversations. I will email my friends. And I will carry on reading. All these I have control over. As to whether I’ll start Airbnb rental again or whether I’ll be able to restart writing workshops and schools work, that I have no control over, so will hold lightly. Also I do have control over how I behave towards what is going on around me and I hope I can hold Joy and Hope in the right place and walk as God wants me to through whatever is thrown my way.