For a while, but definitely since the “Unite the Kingdom” marches in London on Saturday, I’ve been wanting to write a post with my thoughts around it. Then this morning I read this great piece by Messy Nessy about the 13 Things they’d found on the internet recently and the first one, the Truth Window, jumped out at me.
A truth window is an opening in a wall surface, created to reveal the layers or components within the wall. A small section of a wall is left unplastered on the interior, and a frame is used to create a window which shows only straw, which makes up the inside of the wall. The possible vulnerability of a truth window to moisture intrusion is sometimes raised as a concern.
For me it is that idea of being able to see what something/someone is made of and this idea of being vulnerable that I found exciting and interesting and much needed. We all need to know what is really going on inside people, inside ourselves, and be willing to be vulnerable both by what we show and what we see. Too often all we see, and all we show, are those outer walls that we have build and thickened and made strong because we think it makes us safe when it is our vulnerability with each other that truly makes us safe and truly makes us united.
I hope as I share on here and on my Substack I show a little of my truth window, my vulnerability. But also I hope I am willing to notice other people’s truth windows and see what they are really made of inside and not what they have plastered themselves over with in the hope of staying hidden and supposedly safe.
“Come on. Let’s go this way!” Photographed by myself July 2022
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
Psalm 23:6a
One of the things public speaking teaches is that if you make something visual people will remember it. Well about 20 years ago at Cross Rhythms Festival, even though I don’t remember who the speaker was I do remember the great skit they did about this verse.
The speaker got two young people from the crowd up and got them to follow him. He called one Goodness and the other Love or Mercy [some bible translations have “surely goodness and mercy will follow me …”]. These two people followed him as he wandered round the tent where we were gathered. His point was that whether we went, the right place or the wrong place, going where God wants us or off doing our own thing, God has promised that goodness and love/mercy will be right behind us.
Often we don’t realise it because we don’t look. We career about on our own thinking we are totally alone and that it is all up to us. Or we are so fearful to “get it right” so we get God’s goodness and mercy that we don’t realise they are with us all the time anyway.
How much different would your life, would my life, be if we truly believed that whatever we did and wherever we went God’s goodness and love/mercy were hot on our tails, were there ready for us to fall into, were there to protect and support us?
All we would have to do is stop, rest by those green pastures – because often even though God leads us into those green pastures and beside still waters we don’t see them because we are rushing past to the “next thing”. What if we stopped and let God’s goodness and love/mercy hang out and minister to us?
So first we need to believe they are there. How do we know that? Well … because God promised us. Maybe we don’t believe really that God promised it to us too. Maybe we think we need to do something more to get God’s goodness and love/mercy and probably also God’s unconditional love????
It all goes back to that thing that if you don’t believe God loves you unconditionally and you don’t believe God has your back – which we see here God does because it says his goodness and love/mercy follow us, which means they watch our backs. Duh! – but if you don’t believe that then you maybe don’t notice the still waters, the green pastures and don’t believe that all that love and goodness are with you in those dark places?
We got our cat, Damson, on 1st January 2010. She was a rescue cat and the rescue centre said they thought she was about 6-8 years old. The vet says she has a juvenile personality which is why she still plays like a kitten rather than the old lady she should be. So she is between 20-22 years old, roughly! She can’t jump like she used to so she climbs on to the furniture with her claws out sounding like someone climbing with crampons. It also means her claws get caught occasionally and she is just left hanging!!!
Because she is an indoor cat in our three story house she has lots of fun and exercise and when we go away someone pops in to feed her and empty her litter tray.
She misses us when we’re away and, instead of like cats I’ve owned before who will ignore you for a few days when you’ve been away, Damson charges at us meowing loudly and wants so much attention.
Well it also means that instead of sleeping at the foot of the bed she has decided over the last four nights she needs to be close to me. So she claw-climbs up on to the bed and then presses herself as close to me as she can. For the first two nights she was sleeping under my chin. Temperatures have risen in the UK so this is not a good place for me to get a good night’s sleep. Also if I turn over so I’ve got my back to her she climbs across my back and chest so she is back curled close to me.
So whilst I was not sleeping the other night I got to thinking. We often talk about there being a God shaped hole in our hearts that we fill when we let Jesus in but I got to pondering as to whether God has a “me” spaced hole in them that needs to me to snuggle close to. That God’s desire is for me and you and all of us to snuggle up under their chin, close to their heart, in the warmth of their body and rest there.
Once Damson is tucked up close to me she purrs away loudly and contentedly. Perhaps that is God’s desire for each and everyone of us. Maybe too we would feel like my cat – safe, loved and content and would not feel like we have to do anything to claim that love of God apart from to be close?
The phrase “you need to get out of your comfort zone” has always bothered me and I seem to be hearing it more and more especially within well-being self-care type settings.
As you can see my dog looks happy and content in his comfort zone. He is calm. He can sleep well. His heart is regulated. In our local park if he sees a dog he is nervous of he will rush around barking loudly. He is out of his comfort zone and so he isn’t happy. Though actually he is less frenetic within our park than if we see a big scary dog somewhere he isn’t used to.
So if we see this with animals why do we think we should push ourselves out of our comfort zones? What is wrong with being comfortable?
I can hear voices shouting “but you won’t reach your full potential” as if that is the most important thing to reach. Whereas reading some of the Henri Nouwen’s meditations he says that to know you are loved unconditionally by the Great Creator is the key. And it is from that place that you can test the waters as to what your giftings and talents are. From that place you can explore your comfort zone and see what it truly is.
I know I write at my best when I’m content. In fact a lot of info on how to write well is to make sure you are in a comfy place and are regulated. Then it gives your deepest thoughts a space to flow. If you are out of your comfort zone, in an uncomfy place, then it is hard to be creative. Always when I run a workshop I make sure people are comfy first. In fact that is my key to running good creative workshops, and probably why I run them in my own house. That way I am comfy to start with.
So why this thing of saying we need to “get out of our comfort zones”?
QEC is all about getting you from your uncomfy place, the place where your fight/fight/freeze/faun nature is running on autopilot, to a place where you are comfy with yourself, with your past, present and future, and can work from a place of calm and safety. QEC is all about “getting into your comfy place“, of no longer running from that place of fear, of unsafety, of haves and oughts and shoulds, away from that place of if onlys.
I used to do prayer days with someone who was very good at staying in her comfort zone. She did do a hard job and was very clear on her hours of doing extracurricular things. She never did the early or late sessions. She was a great intercessor, a great one for helping come up with ideas, but she did it all within her comfort zone. It was a safe creative space for her.
I do wonder, after having read things like The Myth of Normal and other books like that, if we have, as a society, come to believe that to be at peace, to be calm, to not be running at speeds beyond our comfort., is not “normal”. But that “normal” is that we should be pushing ourselves all the time, be achieving all the time, be doing something different, something “worthwhile” all the time. With the unfounded belief that this is the only way to “leave a legacy.”
People like Einstein, Da Vinci, Curie, and others great inventors, achievers, etc spent a lot of time thinking, a lot of time doing nothing and allowing their brains and hearts to be open to new thoughts and different ideas. They knew that the way the best ideas came to them was by not thinking, by walking, by just being. Interestingly too each one of them stayed within their comfort zones of knowledge rather than trying to be all things to all men.
They achieved great things by staying within their comfort zones and exploring them.
How will I, how will you, how will any of us, know what the deepest desires of our heart are if we keep pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones?
This is a photo from April 2015 when the dog and I were off on a train to see my daughter in London but he still has that same excited face whenever i start to pack.
My husband can go off on trips and the dog doesn’t seem to get so excited by it, or nervous. But if I put a bag of any kind – whether holdall or suitcase – but my side of our bedroom and start to add clothes to it Renly gets clingy and won’t leave my side. He knows something is going on.
Well this week we aren’t going far. It is my first trip to see my Mum this year. We left it would be good to leave it until the storms of winter had passed so it was safer driving down. The last time I went in December I had a storm follow me down the M6/M5 most of the way. Well tomorrow we travel down in the aftermath of Storm Kathleen, which I think is the first storm since the one I drove down in at the end of the last year!!!!!
If it rains I have to pray more, not just for my safety but because my faithful traveler, who used to enjoy a good road trip, has got scared of the noise of the swish of the rain under the car as we drive along. So it will be 4-5 hours of the radio up loud and me praying that angels calm my dog.
To me honest last time it was only the praying that angels hugged my dog and kept him calm that stopped him barking not the £15 calming spray I lathered the inside of the car in!!!
Again it seems a bit of a lesson still being learned – Pray sooner!!! Hopefully this trip I will learn that and trust that God and the angels will travel with us and keep my road-trip companion calm and quiet.
So even though I’ve got a growing list of things I have ideas for blogs on they are going to have to wait until I return next week and see if they are still ideas I want to pursue or whether things have moved on.
Last night this little man was not very well [This is not a photograph from last night :)] He woke about 10.30 and we were up and wandering the streets till about 1pm with him with a squiggie tummy. Thankfully I live in a very safe area and did not see a soul whilst wandering about. And also the promised rain did not appear during the times I was out.
Eventually we crawled back into bed again and he wrapped himself around me like a child with a bad tummy needing a hug. It was then that I prayed for Jesus to heal Renly’s tummy and for me to get a good night’s sleep – what was left of it. Of course Renly was asleep in seconds and slept in until gone 7 and I was asleep not long after and woke when the next door neighbour started his car to go to work just before 7.
What struck me was why didn’t I pray sooner?
From the moment Renly woke I work through a range of emotions. Some of which were: resigned that this is what I had to do; being mad at him for eating some that had upset his tummy; being angry that once he was outside he seemed more than happy to be going for a walk on a street light pavements; gratitude that we live in a safe neighbourhood and do have grass pavements; fed up with myself that I kept getting dressed and didn’t just make him go in the backyard rather than the street; to just a bit fed up with it. Nearly 3 hours it took me before I thought of praying!!!
How often do we all do that? Especially if it is a situation we can cope with? We take the “I can handle this on my own” attitude rather than “Ok Father I need someone to lean on”.
It wasn’t lack of faith or lack of trust because once I prayed I truly believed God would heal my dog and give me the sleep I needed. I just took a while to get there. Perhaps it comes from something deep seated about not wanting to worry God about trivial things when there is so much else going on in the world?
I am grateful that even though I was independent to begin with God didn’t tell me I should have asked soon. No God just got on and healed my dog’s tummy so that we could both sleep.
There’s no reprimanding with God. No blaming. No if onlys. No “you should have asked sooner“. God just always turns up when we turn to God and is there for us. And for that I am more than grateful.
And I only hope I can remember this and pray sooner, give the whole thing to God sooner, and be able to rest in the situation. And not think that my stuff isn’t important ‘enough‘ to bother God with!
Reminded me of a bridge a didn’t cross! Isle of Bute May 2023 photographed by me
After writing Saturday’s post I was reminded of something I regretted. Something I did not take on board as a lifestyle and I wondered why.
Over the course of my Christian life I have done various Christian healing courses – Freedom in Christ, Sozo to name but two. Yet when I started with QEC I was dismissive of these. I must say I just thought it was because QEC was a better fit for me, and at times was maybe a better tool. But I realised recently it was me.
I was expecting someone to “fix me”, to do the work for me, to be my ‘parent’ in all this. Even when I started QEC I wanted my practitioner to be that person I could turn to, be my ‘best friend’, be the one to remind me of what I had to do and when things went wrong I could go to her and she would sort things.
The longer I’ve been doing QEC [4 years now] the more I’ve realised that in fact it is about me not about my practitioner. This whole QEC stuff will not become a lifestyle unless I take the responsibility – not my QEC practitioner, not the Freedom in Christ book or group leader, not the Sozo facilitator, not the person who prays with me, not my church leader, not my husband, not my friends, etc, etc. In fact not even God/The Universe.
All this came about from something that was triggered the other day from something on Facebook of all places. It has made me realise how the things I did with the other healing type ministries were stepping stones to where I am now and I am grateful for that. And grateful for the style of those healing ministries. But also I realised that QEC and ANSing have been working for me because I do not expect someone else to take responsibility for me. I have. somewhere along the line, let go of needing to be a part of something, to be something special in the group, expect someone to care about what I am doing.
I looked back just now on the emails I have saved from when I started QEC and I was having to message in between sessions to say how I was doing. I do now WhatsApp my practitioner but there isn’t quite that “need” now.
So I now realise that I did not get the full benefit from those other forms of healing, not because they weren’t as good, but because I was not as ready to be solid, safe human being and know that working together with God/The Universe and the tools from these healing type things I could stand on my own.
That isn’t in an independent “I don’t need anyone” individualistic way. But in an “I am a whole person and these are things that are helping me become more whole and solid myself”
[This blog is inspired by a Jane Evans podcast on Facebook from this morning]
I used to be a mega planner. I’d have everything down to the last detail and would stick to it. Unfortunately I’ve passed this on to my children, especially my son.
Why do I say “unfortunately”? Because I am discovering, the more I do QEC, that arch-planning isn’t a good thing. It leads to stress.
As you may have caught on I’ve been enjoying being caught in the lines of the Lord’s Prayer for a while now. It has become my “go to” with the lines “give us today our daily bread” and “forgive us as we forgive others” being key lines.
We were in Guildford for my nephew’s wedding over the bank holiday weekend and the line that came to me before leaving was “I am loved unconditionally each moment of every day, I am safe because I can trust God/the Universe to meet all my needs day by day”
I repeated this as we hurtled down the motorway with huge lorries thundering along. I said it was we were rushing to meet up with my Mum the evening before the wedding and then was ok when we only saw her for 10 mins before she was whisked off it meet her grandson’s new family. The big one was then on Saturday morning when I got up with the dog and he couldn’t open and eye and was refusing food. For Renly to refuse food is a biggie. Well this is where I saw God/the Universe had my back. Our Airbnb host had dogs so recommended her vets which was the only vets in Guildford that were open as normal on a Saturday so no huge emergency fee. We got an appointment for 10.30 which gave us time to go, give the drops to the dog, pick up my daughter and walk to the wedding venue on time. The Airbnb hosts then popped in on Renly during the afternoon and messaged to say he was doing great. And now he is back to normal.
Each time and change of plan, each curve ball thrown, would at one time have sent me into a downward spiral of angst but instead, when I felt my panics coming I calmed myself, brought my autonomic nervous system back into a place of calm and repeated that “I was safe and I could trust God/the Universe to sort things as they knew best”.
On a lesser note today things looked hectic and I had prayed into them and found a calm way through. Then a friend had to cancel our morning meeting. Now again at one time this would have made me angry that they had cancelled because I had spent so long making plans but instead I took a breath, repeated that I “knew the plans God/the Universe had for me” and then waited. Suddenly I had two hours spare in my morning so I asked my heart what it wanted to do. Well what surprised me was the urge to clean the kitchen and wash the kitchen floor. Now as we all know this is often a “have to” chore. Well today it was a joy and a blessing. I finished feeling proud of my gleaming kitchen but also knowing that I had followed my heart.
I know why I used to have to plan. I did it because I needed to feel secure, to feel safe. Now I am secure within myself and the outside world can spin around me and I latch on when my heart leads me to.
A couple of years ago I wrote a piece called Freelancing, in which I extol the virtues of “going for it as a freelancer”. But it was a lot of a pushing for doors to open, for people to notice me, of getting upset when they didn’t. In the last couple of months that has changed. I felt led to take on an afterschool club job four afternoons a week and from there things just seem to have opened up. Those things I was pushing for are coming to me – working with young people, leading writing groups, etc. I think it is because I have stopped planning and pushing for them. Now I am open to see what comes and how it fits into the things I am doing. I am also sure that because I didn’t plan to take the afterschool club job but went because my heart led me that this is why I am happily enjoying it.
Since stopping planning I feel so much more secure than I ever did before. So go on give it a go. Explore those things that hold you back. Trust your heart. Trust God/the Universe.
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
There is a saying in a lot of churches that we should encourage people to “Belong” before they start “believing” but on a walk with a friend the other day we got to pondering this. I might not get all the conversation but I’ll put down some of they key points I remember and that have got me thinking not just about church but about the town I live in and the projects I’m getting involved with there.
Would you want to go to someone’s house if you did not know who they were? And what if you did go but didn’t know the etiquette? Would you want to go back again? Also what if someone took you to someone’s house but they didn’t know the way you were to behave because they didn’t know the owner of the house, how would you both feel?
A sample of the questions from our conversation on Saturday
I think that if the person who takes someone to the House of God knows God really well they can help and support that person through the intricacies of who they are meeting with. They know what to do. They ease the way. They can make things feel safe. But if that person doesn’t know God that well, or even has had a tiring week and wants to just curl up with God, then they may not be able to help their visitor through the spaces needed. The visitor comes away having had an ok time but they still haven’t come close to meeting with God, meeting the being whose house they have entered.
My thoughts are that if I bring someone to meet with God I have to have a relationship with God and be in the right frame of mind to want to share that relationship.
I often think we try to rush that whole process. So we are encouraged to get people “through the door” so to speak so they feel like they belong to the community, when in fact they are just going through the motions but not meeting the being of God. Instead we need to slow things down, deepen our relationship with God and then get others to meet our friend, our creator, our lover, the one who thinks we’re awesome even when we screw up, the one who loves us unconditionally.
When I was doing Qigong this morning Mark, who leads it, was talking about fire and what we need for fire. We need a spark, we need kindling but to keep the fire really going we need a solid seasoned log that won’t burn up quickly, will keep going for the time needed.
Qigong might not be Christian per se but so often God speaks through it [because if God is as big as we are taught then God is in all and everything anyway] And for me that quick way of getting people to belong in a church community is the quick kindling and if we don’t have the solid seasoned log of our relationship with The Creator of the Universe then the belonging may never become believing because belonging fits all the component parts that that person needs.
Aspirational Adventures 