Tag: journaling

Categories
let go of fear trust

Mountains

Looking across Loch Katrine to a lovely Scottish mountain. Photographed by myself September 2024

Jesus said, “… Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17:20

I was journaling around something the other day and was thinking of how one can let things on top you and then keep piling upwards – like fear, anxiety, uncertainty, worry, etc. This is sample of what I wrote

…you take today and yesterday and all your yesterdays and carry them into tomorrow allowing the pile to grow and morph, to cast shadows across your world

Each day the mountain grows, bigger, more substantial, more present

It seems immovable.

Then the above verse popped into my head and it was like a light bulb moment. Jesus wasn’t talking about physically rearranging the topography of the world, not trying to move literal mountains. I think he was talking of those mountains we all build within ourselves – sometimes called walls. Walls are like mountains but more regular in shape – and how we think they are immovable, or even that we should climb them to get to where we want or to be who we think we are meant to be.

How often do we hear “I need to get over my fear of …” or “I need to push myself to not worry about ….” Always that “I” word. Always that doing word.

Firstly I think we need to be aware of our mountains. Even though they are lots of them are big we have got used to them and think they are just “how we are” and that we need to just, now here’s an interesting word we use, “get over it” or those around us need to “get over it”. We think it is just the way we are whether due to personality, to upbringing, to present circumstance.

So many fears and anxieties course through me on any given day that I sometimes scarcely notice them. They’re just part of my blood.

Grant Faulkner – Practicing Lectio Divina

But what if instead we slow down a bit and noticed we have an issue with, for example, fear of money, fear of the future, anxiety about what other people think, anxiety about the way the world is going, nervous about going into a new place, or asking for something. What if we were willing to acknowledge that we don’t want to live with this mountain that we have to keep climbing every day?

Jesus says we only need a tiny bit of faith to do that. A mustard seed is a very small seed but is really important in Middle Eastern cuisine, the plant reaches maturity very quickly and can grow almost anywhere. A great example of something that can take the place of that mountain we thought we had to live with, thought we had to “get over” any time we had to go beyond our safe space.

I ended my journaling by writing – that even though Jesus can dismantle any mountain and throw it into the sea he will always need our permission to do it. And this is why, too often, we have to keep climbing that self same mountain because we don’t trust Jesus/God/The Universe and so don’t give them that permission to get rid of our self build mountains.

Renly climbing a mountain near Aber Falls March 2025 photographed by myself.

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Categories
fulfilment living water

Follow Up To Woman At The Well

Not totally relevant to the post but it was the look Renly gave me as I went “yes I get it” – taken today – July 2025

So after posting yesterday’s post I was feeling a bit “blah!” and then a bit condemned. There I’d written this post about being filled with living water and I wasn’t feeling excited and joyous. So I did what always works for me and journaled around my thoughts.

Ok first off there were things about why I was feeling “blah!” which were good to acknowledged, moving on to handing them all over to God – which I try to do regularly. But then came the bit which made Renly sit up and look surprised/impressed.

Being filled with God’s living water doesn’t mean I will always feel happy, or even content. I won’t always feel joyous or wanting to be with people or even happy. It is ok to feel disappointed, upset, grieving, nervous, scared, generally pissed off with the world, with family, with the moment. All that is fine.

Christianity isn’t all happy clappy claptrap. It is sadness and sorrows, and being disappointed and things not working out as you’d like, and of being hurt, misunderstood, not listened to, of people you love dying, of putting yourself out and not getting anything back. But the deeper magic, the living water, is about accepting things as they are and of not looking to outside things, people, experiences, that do not really fill you no matter how good they way seem.

Oh we all see sleeping around, drink, drugs, overeating, etc as bad for you and of “not putting God first” but there are other things too – jobs, volunteering, hobbies, relationships, even ministry. All those things can be put before allowing God to hold, to fulfil and to love.

The “living water”, the inner healing and fulfilment, is a gift, an unearned gift, and we need to stop looking elsewhere for it. We need to stop trying to manufacture the gift.

So I have pondered the things that have made me feel how I feel today and I have let God hold those things with me. And you know, together we can make plans on this. Together, with God’s living water, I don’t need to go do anything else.

October 2024
Categories
jealousy lineage

Lineage

Binchester August 2024 photographed by myself

[expansion of thoughts from over the summer]

When I was at my friend’s helping to declutter I was struck by jealousy. Jealous of their lineage.

As we went through the loft they were refinding clothes from the past. Not just their old wedding clothes but their parent’s wedding clothes. In one box was the birthing gown worn by my friend’s grandmother and mother. Seven children of two different generations had been born under this gown. But it wasn’t just that. My friend was going to gather her daughters and granddaughters and they were going to talk through who would inherit these. It made me think how one day this birthing gown would be living 5 generations on from the original owner!!! Wow!! Now that is lineage.

They are also genuinely close to each other. When it was my friend’s 75th birthday party you could feel the closeness of the 4 generations. [They are great grandparents now] It is a closeness that they can all open out to others too which is great. What they have is special.

For myself my family are a bit dysfunctional. The only grandparent I ever know was my Nan and she had a major stroke when I was about six and never spoke again properly. I do have some photos from her but as my mum, who was only in her late 20s when my Nan had her stroke says, she had not got to wanting to ask her many of the things she wishes she had. My parents divorced when I was 18 and my dad died without me knowing until 10 days later. So as you can see we don’t go back far. My children are in their 30s and there are no grandchildren on the way, which I am fine with as that is their choice. We’ve never done the family parties like my friends.

I was struggling this when The Write Club that meets on line at 8am on a Wednesday put forward our first commissioning; to write about our “lineage”, meaning as much what you have read as what your family influences were. I refused to let the jealous and a bit self-pitying take over and so allowed my pen to hover over my journal and see what happened.

Well …. I was amazed at the things that came from it, of remembering older people who had passed through my life that have influenced my reading, my writing, and my ways of thinking. People from beyond the constraints of blood ties, many of whom have died, who have opened my eyes and my mind to so many different ways of thinking and doing things. It is amazing.

Would these people have entered my life if I had a strong, large, close-knit family? That I will never know. But this writing has taken me from focusing of what I didn’t have to wayyyyy beyond that.

Once we move beyond what we don’t have our eyes are opened to the well of ideas, to the stories that are us, that come each time we truly listen to our lives.

Categories
being real magic

We Can Do Magic

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.

Categories
choice lifestyle

Lifestyle

Isle of Bute May 2023 photographed by myself

Since doing QEC I have come to realise that it is the things you do regularly that become your lifestyle and it is what you choose to be healed of that helps that lifestyle. Also sometimes, I believe, you hold on to things because actually you quite like them – whether that be a way of looking at life or what you do.

The apostle Paul says about “praying continuously” [1 Thess 5:17] and I remember thinking how that must be impossible. That was because I saw prayer as something set apart, as being something one does with ones eyes closed. But once I worked out that prayer is just a jargon word for chatting with God/being with God I realised I could do this all the time. It has become my lifestyle to know that God is with me all the time and that I can talk with them or not as I feel. And sometimes it is things like “did you just read that text/email/hear that conversation with X? Can we focus on that a wee bit? Can you work with that?” type of conversation. But actually that is no different to conversations with friends, family, spouse, where we can be together talking or not talking and then the conversations veers towards something specific. Same thing.

So one part of my lifestyle is to know that God is with me all the time.

Another part is that I am working on the whole thing of The Lord’s Prayer and specifically the “daily bread” and the “forgiving self and others” parts. So when I feel myself getting anxious or into planning mode I breath, bring my autonomic nervous system back into regulation, and remind myself that what I really need for today will be there. Ok yes I forget but I am working on it.

I’m also after an argument or a time when I’ve done something wrong/upsetting/not right or when someone has done that to me I forgive myself and them. This clears the slate for me to carry on.

As my desk diary says for June “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today” For me that works by forgiving myself and others and by knowing my daily needs will be met.

Another thing that is not a chore/a job to be done is the ANSing. The getting my autonomic nervous system into regulation and balance whenever it flips out. And let me tell you once you get aware of this it happens quite often. Before discovering this whole ANS thing when I felt anxious/fight/flight/freeze/fawn/angry/etc I used to try to do an analysis of what was wrong, what was upsetting me, who had said what and why – very much looking with my logical mind. The more I’ve done with QEC the more I’ve come to realise that some of it I might never know. I might have been a gesture, a smell, a taste, a word, that set off a memory buried in my subconscious that made my adrenalin race and it was so buried that I would never find out why. Or I was just overtired or hungry or both. Very often I would finish up either blaming myself for losing it or blaming the other person for upsetting me. But now my lifestyle choice is to ANS, forgive and let it go.

I am not perfect and I do forget. But what I’ve realised are these are not “things I ought to do to make me a better person” but things I chose to do and how I want my life to be.

My QEC practitioner talks a lot about self-help books and how she sees them as not helpful because there is a lot of psyching someone’s self up to “be a better person” and I agree. But also I think if in reading these books one picks up something that one chooses to become a natural lifestyle choice, not something you feel you “have to” do [remember I am against have tos and ought tos and should dos], then go for it.

I journal because it frees my mind. Although I used to journal to figure things out. Once I let myself run free then it was just another way to get my ANS into balance.

So for me ANSing, forgiving, believing God/The Universe will supply what they know I need daily, and allowing myself to be in a place of constant communication with God/The Universe is not something I have to do but something I just do. It is as much a lifestyle choice as walking my dog, drinking beer in the sunshine and hanging out with my friends. All of which keep me sane and at peace with the world. But also I think it only works when one does it as an “enjoy doing” rather than a “have to”.

Categories
heart

Heart Of Flesh

Photograph of my dog contemplating the sea on the Isle of Bute 17th May 2023.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

I have heard this verse preached many times, and probably spoken on it myself, but just recently it has made sense to me. Sense in that way that God doesn’t wave a magic wand over us if we show willing and then all is fine and one get one’s “heart of flesh rather than heart of stone” or all those other things that God promises to do. It is a two-way thing. One needs to do more than just say “here I am Lord“. Each time someone in the Bible says “here I am” there is then something they have to choose whether to do or not. And I think it is the same with being able to get this heart of flesh, this malleable heart that can feel God/The Universe’s ways.

I’ve mentioned this before in Heart of Flesh/Heart of Stone but I feel this post is how I saw my practical outworking and how it fits in with the things I’ve been working through around Forgiveness. I’m not sure if it is the same with everyone but with me God/The Universe starts with thoughts and ideas and then has to pop in a practical to make it all make sense fully to me. I’ve always preferred sermons that have a practical application.

There have been some issues recently that have upset me and I could feel myself backing away, going into protection mode, keeping myself safe. But then I got a picture of how this was myself building walls, solid walls, in my heart. A heart of stone isn’t how we are born but is grows in lots of little compounds of hardness as we get hurt and don’t find a safe place to deal with those hearts. I do also think we get taught to hold on to hurts, etc, often by learning how to blame others.

So there I was journaling away around some of the things that had upset me recently writing things like of “well that just adds on to all hurt/rejection/misunderstanding/abandonment/etc I’ve had before which of obviously why I have acted/reacted to others/friends/family/etc in this way.” Almost a “it’s not my fault”, a blaming.

Then my pen brought me up short. Slowly, as if God/The Universe was speaking in that still small voice, I felt let to forgave myself for feeling this way, for adding on a serious of hurts to other hurts, to blaming both the most recent person who had hurt me with all those in the past and using it as a reason for my behaviour. So I forgave myself for my behaviour which then seemed to mean that I no longer had to forgive others because it was my heart of stone which was the issues. Also realised I had to trust God/The Universe that as I forgave myself for adding things up all those hurts which when made it ok for me to think I could react a certain way it was safe for me to become more vulnerable.

Safe is such a big word that maybe one day it will get a whole blog to itself!

I got a picture of this place in my heart that had built this wall around the hurt so I could keep the hurts safe and keep going back and giving them a poke. Then as I got more into forgiving myself and asking for forgiveness for holding on to this hurt so I felt my heart relax, and I watched this stone wall fall and disappear. Interestingly too I looked on my Fitbit and my heart rate had gone down.

Over the last few days things have happened that have been blessings, which may or may not have happened anyway, but because my heart is open rather than closed I can see those blessings for what they are, been able to enjoy them and feel good about them.

I do now wonder if the whole line of “forgive us what we have done wrong as we forgive others” is so much of us letting go of how we hold on to hurts and build our walls and then use that as an excuse for our behaviour. So if I forgive myself the blame I have placed on my behaviour so I forgive that other person.

Makes you wonder if that line in the Lord’s Prayer should be “help us forgive ourselves so we can forgive others”.

Are we willing to say “here I am” to gain our fully malleable hearts with all the pain that could come from having a soft, fleshy heart?

A well built wall slowly coming down. Do we fear that the storms will come to drown us if we let those walls crumble? Photographed by me August 2021
Categories
NHS respect

Respect

This view from my window this morning does not show the magnitude of the rain or the ferocity of the wind

This is a bit of a ramble from my thoughts this morning. I might do something more coherent in a few days! Maybe!

I was journaling around this word “Respect” and about the strikes and a WhatsApp conversation I had had with my son last night around him leaving the army this morning as I listed to the rain throwing itself at the window and the dustbin men emptying this bins at 7am.

He is leaving the army, along with many others, because he does not feel respected. When one really listens to the NHS staff on the picket lines, as in really listen, the main issue is the lack of respect. When we used to do Airbnb, because we lived within five miles of our local hospital, we had lots of junior and trainee doctors and nurses along with other hospital staff staying, and all were struggling with the lack of respect they were receiving – from their management and from the expectations of the public. One instance was when there was a call for doctor’s to be working all over the weekends, and one young woman told us that for that to work the doctor’s canteen would need to be open, the laboratories would need to be open, and there would need to be more doctors to cover all this.

A friend who worked on the railways was saying that most rail-workers contracts include having to do overtime and that most contracts are Monday to Friday and very few for the weekend and yet people want to catch trains on the weekend.

It made me think of the line from The Jam song “Going Underground” – “the public gets what the public wants” and I do wonder if this is what is going on. The government are so desperate for votes that when those they see as important voters ask for something they get it whether it is supporting the people who work in that area or not. But it is all done without respect for the workers – or even for how much it costs.

It is this respect that is the big thing though. I remember my Mum saying that they would always give the tradesmen – dustmen, postmen, milkman, paper boy – a tip at Christmas. Ok so I do remember her saying that with the dustmen it was more for fear that they would not pick up their bins in the new year but it was still done. It was till saying “thank you for being out there in all winds and weathers to do a rubbish job. I appreciate it”.

I know there was the clapping for the NHS during lockdown but then all was expected to go back to “normal” after a few weeks. And actually normal, as I had heard when doing the Airbnb prior to lockdown, was overworked staff, was ambulances outside hospitals for hours, was someone who phone for an ambulance for her father having a heart attack being told to get the town’s defibrillator and then drive her dad to hospital because the ambulance would not be there for over six hours. The news about all this is not news. It has been going on for years and years.

But I believe it is from years and years of lack of respect. I don’t think it is money really that is wanted. Though a decent wage for a hard job would be a start, but I think it is the need for those in power, and for us the general public, to show respect to those doing these jobs and stop expecting more than they are able to give.

I’d just like to end with this that I saw on Facebook this morning which I think sums things up

Thanks to Gaz for sharing
Categories
joy peace

True Peace, True Joy

Sunrise over my local park. Taken by myself Oct 2022

There is some stuff going on in my life and I spent half the night planning my speech to say what I really thought, talk about my hurts, my fears, etc. I felt I had a right to say this. Funny how we are brought up that way. And then go on to do some self improvement stuff which talks to us about firm boundaries, being honest, our rights, etc.

Well for me about 5.30am I felt an almost audible voice asking me why I felt the need to say what I felt, why I needed to put over my point of view when in fact no one has asked for it. So I chewed this over, noticed a few repeated patterns that I thought I’d dealt with, and then asked what I could do to change.

What came to me was Philippians’s 4:7 “The peace of the Lord that transcends all understanding” So being me I journaled around that.

What came up was that that real joy and real peace are there for us no matter what is going on in our lives, no matter what we are feeling. It doesn’t mean that we deny our feelings. Often living in that total joy and peace of God/the Universe we can be more open and honest with ourselves about how we feel. In fact I googled an article around this and the writer said how they go walking with their anxiety rather than trying to hide it, and this was from a piece that started with the Phil 4:7 verse.

How would I describe that total joy and peace? I don’t know. All I can say is that I know it is there. I know I can tap into it whenever I want to, though often I don’t try to – which is when I say what I shouldn’t or do what I shouldn’t and let my fears, issues, self-righteousness, hurt others.

The whole point of something “transcending our understanding” is that it transcends it, which means we cannot and should not try to understand it. What would be the point? It makes no sense to be fearful but at peace, to be grieving but feel deep joy. But then what would be the point of understanding everything?

It is great to have mysteries and as a Christian I do not want to understand all that is God. I do not want to be able to figure God out. Well what would be the point of that?

I have to trust in God with all of my being, not understand God with all my being. I have to let go of my need to sort it all out, of my need to be right all the time. I think if we all lent into a higher power of some sort, let go of our need to control each and every situation, let go of our need to figure the whys and wherefores of everything and just accept that somethings just are.

So today I am accepting that no matter what is going on in my life I am going to walk in a place of peace and joy that is bigger than I am, that I don’t understand, and that is ok.

Categories
Castle Security trust

Castles!

A castle in Gwynedd, North Wales, photographed on my husband's birthday in June 2018. Taken by Diane Woodrow
Dolbadarn Castle. Taken by myself June 2018

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

Down on the Abergwyngregan coastal path. Photographed by Diane Woodrow
Categories
journaling writer

Looking Through The Garbage

Photo by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas on Pexels.com

About three weeks ago I had a QEC session and my counselor challenged me on journaling. She said it was like putting all your stuff in the rubbish bin and then going back to check what you’d put it. I have journaled on and off for most of my writing life. I would say that it is where I explore my thoughts and feelings and with my pen come up with a plan for what to do with what I feel. Her challenge was that a feeling is a feeling and a situation is a situation but that with QEC we’re putting new beliefs into my world about how I am.

I have been going off on walks, just me and my dog, to places where I won’t see people to chat to, and I write. Some of which I have written up and can be found on My Writing page under the heading Artist’s Date Inspirations. From these random writings I come up with interesting realisations.

Yesterday I had been upset by something and reached for my journal to unload but stopped myself. I decided instead to use a postcard and write a short story which I have called “Autumn Foretells”.

Here is the postcard I used which is totally disconnected from anything that was going on yesterday

. Through this I was able to vent how I felt, explore thoughts and ideas and come to a point of being calm and relaxed. It is an interesting story and can be found on My Writings if you wish to read it. Note it is not true

So I did not look back through past events, did not explore how I felt and why, but took myself off on a creative writing route that did not “look through the garbage” and I felt much fresher and freer afterwards.

I must say when my counselor mentioned I did only slightly agree with her and also did not want to break a habit of a life time. But of course that is what QEC is all about – breaking those life time habits that we have brought up so we can be free to truly be.

I wonder what I’ll use as a prompt next time??