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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
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Appreciate family friendship

True To Self

My local park 1st August 2022

I love walking round my local park, though I realised how easy it was to just go into auto pilot and not notice things so now I am making sure I say focused and present. I take my phone so I can take photos. I now don’t just love it I appreciate and enjoy it too.

Anyway as a follow on from the last post, what I had written got me thinking deeper. about being who we are not who we are not. For instance Princess Leia could not be anything other than she was. Even when we get to know Luke Skywalker we know from that opening scene that all he wanted to do was be a star-ship pilot not a farmer. It was in his blood to be something more than.

I have been reading “My Fourth Time, We Drowned” by Sally Hayden and as well as feeling angry at what is going with the UN and the refugees in Africa, I also feel pretty inadequate. Here is a woman publishing stories that should shock the world with the inhumanity of privileged humans to vulnerable humans, and of what trauma does to people. But then I had to realise that I could not be a Sally Hayden. I can only be a Diane Woodrow. I cannot be what I am not.

If you watch a lot of Pixar and Disney as I do one of the key themes is the main character trying to be something they are not. It is a reoccurring theme and often, no actually always, makes me cry. I cry because too often we push others into being what they are not, or are pushed ourselves. It happens too often yet we either let it happen or do it to others.

Going back to the marriage theme from the last post – as well as sometimes grieving the changes that happen to us in marriage the that we are not the younger people we were when we first met, I think sometimes we try to manipulate that other person into being what we would like them to be. And depending on how they responded to that as a child how they then respond to that as a spouse.

We do all do it a little bit with our friends to fit in with them. We allow ourselves to be what they would like us to be, but then we get frustrated and angry, or accept that mold and forget who we really are.

So I started this post with a photo of my regular dog walk and of how I am trying to be more present there, trying to see it more as it is rather than ignoring it. I am also trying to do this with my friends and family. I am trying to accept and be present with who they are and enjoying them for what they are and not for what I think they should be. I am also learning to be more “me”, doing more of what I want, being more of who I want to be.

Hopefully from this I can appreciate, enjoy and love my friends and family more and more.

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Reset

I seem to have got into pondering prophetic words that have been shared over the past few months. And in this blog I am going to look at “RESET”.

Reset is another of those prophetic words that has been banded about since the start of the lockdown. But what does it mean? To me? To you? To society?

I’ve a friend who has done a lot of research into his nation, and for him “resetting” would mean going back to how things were nearly 1000 years ago. That made me think of what that would mean to my country – England and Wales. England is my country of birth but I am very much a Celt at heart and have adopted North Wales as my native land – even if I cannot speak the language! But to me that means looking at a time before 1066, before Norman invasion. And I was happy with that until I read about book about the Viking/Saxon invasions of 550AD and then there are the Romans. So where do I go for my country’s reset?

How about the planet? And global warming? Can we reset our air quality back to before the Industrial Revolution? That’s only 3-4 hundred years ago. Do we really want to go back to how life was then? It would be fine if you were white, male and well-off but not if you were female – death in childbirth no matter what social class, not financially independent, education minimal!! And if you were poor or of an ethnic origin? Well!!!

How about personally? Could we all reset to that time before life messed us up? I know I cannot go back to whatever I was like when I popped out the womb because a lot of who I am now is shaped by the things I have experienced, but the decisions I have made, and also where I find myself now. I cannot, and don’t want to, get rid of my children, my home where I am now, my husband, my friends, the things I do now. I even don’t want to get rid of the things I have learned during lockdown. I want to go forward not back.

After pondering this, then doing a google search and getting a lot of sermons and church sites telling me about restoration and resetting, I went for a long dog walk. It was on this walk by the beach that I realised we have got all this totally wrong. It is not about going back in history or going back personally. I believe it is about resetting to back to the original plan in the original Garden of Eden. Not the actual Garden of Eden because, again like going back in history that isn’t possible. But it is about going back in our minds, hearts, souls. It is about walking naked and vulnerable with our Creator. Not actually no clothes on because well … it is a bit cold where I live to have no clothes on. But it is about not hiding ourselves away from our Creator or from each other. It is about knowing there is some greater being that we haven’t boxed into any type of religion at all, who loves us for who we true are. We may not even know our true selves until we walk with our Creator because we have learned to be good at hiding behind “clothes”; masks, careers, roles, hurts, abuses, addictions, the “that’s just who I am” statement and more. (Add in your own “clothes” that keep you hidden from who you truly are)

I believe “RESET” means resetting back to that place where we can live without fear, no matter what is going on around us, in true relationship with our Creator who loves us just as we are, even when our blemishes are visible, and we can love ourselves fully. And as I have mentioned in other blogs – once we can really love ourselves only then can we really love each other. Totally reset to the original plan!

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accepting being me change God gratitude mindfulness movinghouse relationships trust vulnerable

Honouring!

vessel-of-honorA friend of mine writes extensively about honouring and I have tried for years to put it into practise. This morning though I was praying and meditating over some questions from Abbey of the Arts around starting the new year’s journey and what giftings one would bring, etc. I was happily listing mine and what I would share with others and how much I encourage and support people when I felt a gentle God nudge. I really felt I had to email my solicitor and say sorry for being rude. And once I got that nudge it wouldn’t let up and I couldn’t get any peace. So at 7.30am I was emailing the solicitor to say sorry for being rude but also felt able not to justify why I was rude but to explain why I was struggling with things.

I felt that the way I had behaved yesterday to her had not been honouring to her. In fact I’d almost been threatening, in a very low key way. Passive daab236dfa666f58eb8f024c4af3a0c9aggressive! It really was a case of looking at her as also a person in my world that I need to be kind to, to encouraging and remember that she is also made in the image of God, as are we all, or so I believe. Made in the image of God doesn’t mean that all people have to believe in God, Jesus, etc, but if I am to believe God made people I have to believe that He made all people, even my solicitor.

Well I was not expecting anything really back but I did get a response and in it she explained about the process that goes into buying a house, why it does take so long and what stage they had got to, and also that she was hurrying things along. Did I say sorry and act honouring to her to get a good response? No I didn’t. But through honouring her I got that response.

32ea802da3852cbb7404799e48eec0cdIt made me think of another exercise I am working through with Brene Brown around Trust. The first exercise is to look at things you put in your “marble jar” that help you trust people and what things hinder that. It dawned on me that I trust people who are open and honest to me, but also people who let me be me. and also those who admit when they’ve made a mistake and let me make mistakes. In the correspondence with my solicitor I broke down the barriers that were stopping me from trusting her. Yes I had to make the first move to get a marble in my marble jar but that was worth it.

As always Richard Rohr is on the same page and puts thing so succinctly:

‘Intimacy is another word for trustful, tender, and risky self-disclosure. None of us can go there without letting down our walls, manifesting our deeper self to another, and allowing the flow to happen. Often such vulnerability evokes and allows a similar vulnerability from the other side. Such was the divine hope in the humble revelation of God in the human body of Jesus.’

So for me the people who put marbles in my marble trust jar are people who behave trustfully and tender towards me and who disclose somethingvulnerability2 of themselves, but who also trust me and see me as tender and accepting, as vulnerable yet wanting to share. And I suppose this is a bit of what I did with the solicitor; not just saying sorry and leaving it at that but saying sorry and explaining why I was uptight.

Sometimes we are told to just “say sorry” but often, I believe, it is more helpful is we can explain why. So not so much “I’m sorry but …” but “I’m sorry for my behaviour and here are my fears/concerns which made me behave that way.” It is still keeping ownership and not saying the other person is to blame but it is also saying that I have a reason, however unreasonable, for my behaviour. It is not to excuse. In fact by saying “sorry and this is the reason” it makes one more vulnerable and allows the other person to be vulnerable. And vulnerability builds up trust but also is honour because it is about being open. If I am open to say how I feel but give room for the other person to say how they feel I am honouring them.

vulnerability21So one could say that I did have a good reason to be snappy with my solicitor but it was not honouring, but in saying sorry and explaining my side I have given space for her to explain and honour me too!