youth group – Aspirational Adventures

Blurred picture of a white egret in flight over Conwy Beach as the tide recedes on spring day. Photographed by Diane Woodrow — Egret flying over Conwy Beach Saturday 18th March 2023 Photographed by myself

Last Sunday I was leading the discussion for our Church youth group. We are working our way through The Lord’s Prayer. [If you go back through some of my posts you will see I am a bit “into” the Lord’s Prayer] This week’s couplet was “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

As always the young people are much less religious than adults and have reach a point of trust with me and my co-worker so they aren’t saying what they think we want them to say. There were some great things that came out of them about the closeness of God’s kingdom and the ease of doing God’s will.

I will paraphrase one girl but it was the bit that stayed with me. She said something along the lines of “God’s will being about trust and if we trust God then we can just do it, just go out and believe that God will make what we do God’s will.” Basically trust that what we feel in our hearts is God’s will. Too often we get into weighing up and judging and then disbelieving, sitting back, not doing.

Of course there are things we should not do, things we should run by those we love and trust – and that means we do need people in our lives that we can be open with and trust with our dreams, our desires, our hopes. So I suppose firstly we need to build up those people around us.

But at the same time as doing that we need to build up the trust in our own hearts. I am getting more and more to a point where I trust my heart and am aware when I’m not “feeling it”.

With these words of this wise thirteen year old girl in my head and a feeling in my heart that I had a space that needed filling in my day I went on Indeed to job hunt. I wasn’t overly serious because I had set myself quite firm criteria – children/young people and afternoons. Well up popped an job in an after-schools club in my town. I scrolled on past but couldn’t get it out of my head so in the end applied. I’ve got the job. I start next week. But when I was at the trial afternoon I felt my heart settle for being there, felt that it was a safe place that I was going to for the right reasons.

Then yesterday I was telling the vicar I co-run the youth group about the job and about how much this girl’s words had impacted me and I realised that this job was totally of God. It stops me from taking on too many things because I will be tied to work every afternoon but also if I want to write I won’t be able to do much during the day. I do have a couple of commitments but that is ok too.

So I did trust my heart, trust that my heart was hearing God/the Universe’s will for my life and I “just did it” and then it appears that I was given a reassurance that I had done right.

So yes it will be tough fitting everything I want to do in to my morning, and will be odd being committed every afternoon and only have weekends and holidays to roam randomly. But that doesn’t mean it is wrong to do. In fact it all feels very right.

Sometimes we do just have to trust and do it

I was doing a writing exercise with HerStories, a US group of mid-life women writers, about our Champions. It was an interesting follow on to one that came from one of the workshops about thinking about who you imagine you are writing for. Some of those you imagine are champions but some are negative detractors. We all have voices that we hear from those who often love and care for us but who tell us writing isn’t a “proper job”, is a “nice little hobby”, and even with life about how that “oh that’s nice dear” can sound so condescending.

This lovely friend was one of my champions and of course is sorely missed. I have a couple of other friends who have died who used to root for me. But it is easy to miss things too. I was talking with my husband saying I had applied for a part time job and his first response was “make sure you still have time for your writing”. Sometimes with a comment like that one can see it as a negative; you won’t have time, you are doing too much, etc, etc, etc. But that is that bundle of negative voices hassling around in your head that can miss it so easily. So sometimes we have to listen properly to our champions.

Champions come from all sides but we can miss them so easily. Those that have hurt us at times with a comment but who have changed their ways and really do want to support. But what we remember are those voices of the past and so we are wary of what they might “really mean.”

I think to have good champions in our lives we need to take what is said at face value rather than weigh it with what has been said before.

With my church youth group last night we were looking at what God’s Kingdom was like. And I would say the bottom line from all of them was that it is inside of us and is that place of safety and calm. Yes I know from the QEC work I have been doing and reading about traumas that this is not always easy. But the exciting thing I have realised is that it is deep inside each one of us and we need to unwrap it from the hurt that has been done it to.

So as we slowly unwrap our hardened hearts we can see that we have that place of safety, calm and peace to be our own champions and to hear those encouraging things that people want to say to us. It takes time and it takes wanting to but it will come if we do that work.