Open

I want to live my life with my heart and arms wide open, and that gets hard and hurty and painful. I want to live with my eyes wide open to all the injustice in this God-with-us (not god-forsaken) world, and have it go straight to my heart so that all I can do is love and love and love until somehow the pain ceases. I want to be open to His will for me, for my life and not fight it, but sometimes I think that I know best and I want to fight what He says. I am in a time of pruning again again again and it hurts and would probably hurt the less if I stopped fighting. I know that pruning cuts out what is bad and leaves open space for new growth, healthy growth, something stronger and better, but still I am fighting it. I want to be open to Him, not my will, but His, and submit like a young girl submitted to bearing and birthing God-with-us over 2000 years ago. That is how I want to walk out the last days of 2011, and walk into 2012, and I am terrified.
Linked up with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday. Won't you join in?

Loved.

Source: fyeahtattoos.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

Once in a while comes a night so extraordinary and God-breathed that it must be recorded, despite heavy eyelids and and a longing to sleep. I am nearly five weeks into a leadership course/internship at Soul Survivor Watford, and this evening was a 'Women in Leadership' event for the 23 girls on the course - the aim was to spend some time hanging out with each other and with God, and to have some teaching on what it means to be a woman involved in church leadership. So far, so normal. But... 


The boys were asked to cook us dinner; they took that idea and ran with it. They decided on a three-course meal, and divided themselves into teams to facilitate the cooking. They set up one of the church warehouses with candle-lit tables, set in blue and silver. They compiled a playlist of youtube videos they thought we'd enjoy (laughing babies, sneezing pandas...) and arranged the sofas invitingly. We entered the warehouse, where we were met with the sight of a pink, candlelit walkway leading to the main space with the tables. We were all personally escorted to our tables, and had our coats and drink orders taken. (The boys were resplendent in shirts and ties, by the way.)


We had dinner (pea and coriander soup, then roast dinner, with chocolate brownies to finish) interspersed with teaching from the lovely Ali Martin. She talked about our need to be secure in Daddy and His calling for our lives, our need to be authentic and to lead as ourselves, as women, how to grow without a mentor, how to be a mentor, and Jesus' model of servant leadership. We had a time of worship and ministry, during which Ali went to check on the boys; she was perturbed to find only five of the 16 of them doing the washing up. Where were the others? In another room, praying for us, their sisters, while Daddy ministered to us. 


We girls returned home and all over facebook are the same stories, of how loved we felt, how blessed we have been, how we felt like princesses. 


He is stirring things in us, and there are broken hearts being restored. And we are only five weeks in.




The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, 
because the LORD has anointed me 
to proclaim good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim freedom for the captives 
and release from darkness for the prisoners,to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour. 


(Isaiah 61:1-2)

Five minute Friday: Remember

Five minutes. No editing. 



These are the days I want to remember. There is much being made of this new start, and all the excitement and change that will follow. Having just moved to Watford and started Soul61, there is currently a magical quality to the proceedings, that seems to say that all things are possible and we are in a land of infinite wonder. Partly this is the honeymoon period... We are getting to know each other and this new place, and things have yet to get 'real'. For me, at least. I am building relationships and that is all well and good and beautiful, but I have not yet felt safe enough to be vulnerable. 


This will be a year to remember. A year of challenge, of stretching, of pushing far beyond my boundaries. It would be a travesty to treat this any other way. Why then am I still aware of the darkness on the edge of my vision? The somehow constant threat of falling back into that place of pain and rage and hurt? My Daddy is good, so good, and He has brought me to this place. His strength is made perfect in my weakness, and I will hide in Him and I will be safe. That is, my heart will be safe with Him as my protector. The rest I will risk for His sake...

Space

I have not been in such a precarious position of newness in over three years. New house, new people, new church, new room-mate, new housemates and so much chatter, and somehow there is also deafening silence. It is a struggle in the midst of this to let myself be my introvert-self. One-on-one coffee and chat is what my soul craves, and deep connection with Daddy, and for that, I need to have space. I struggle without specific space to call my own, but I think that is going to have to look different now. But Papa is good in any and all circumstances... 

Beyond

Five minutes on 'Beyond'. Go.
My dreams take me far beyond myself. My dreams both sleeping and waking. In my sleep I traverse relationships and continents and see faces and places and people who are crying out for prayer. China and Thailand are high on the list right now, and I can't explain it but I know I know that these people are longing for God, for the Daddy I love to fall in love with again and again. The prayers that spring from these dreams are desperate and raw and from deep within, from a place that has no words. I don't know what Daddy wants for these people, but He knows, and that's enough. Prayer echoes in eternity, and these prayers are a simple Amen, Amen, Amen to His heart. Some of the faces and relationships are people I recognise and know and love, and sometimes they are not. Always, I pray. Such nocturnal adventuring does not make for restful nights, so I long for sleep, and when I sleep I dream again and pray again and still find myself not rested, but building in energy and passion and am being filled anew with His Spirit. 
Stop.
With thanks to Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Fridays. Won't you join in?

Love for Kate

Dear Kate,


My prayer for you today is joy, and love, and friendship, and that you'll find people to hold you and understand you. Depression is a bitch, and the battle to break it is a tough one. I thank God for the green and yellow pills I take every day, but I remember too well the initial feeling of failure after my diagnosis, the feeling that I should have tried harder, as if the trying could fix it all. In a way, I know how you feel. Trying to balance the dark days and the panic and the anxiety and the obligation to work and do your coursework, and how that can make the thought of another day impossible. But equally, I know how isolated you probably feel, particularly if you don't have many people to talk to about what you're going through.


Please keep going. Please. You are precious, and loved, and not alone. The incredible thing that is Lovebomb will show you that. Take it a step at a time, and celebrate your victories. You woke up today. Celebrate that. If all you manage to do some days is breathe, then that's great. Celebrate that. I want to tell you that you are brave, that you are incredible, that you are loved. Please don't be afraid of asking for the help you need, and sod what other people think. This is about you. I (and I'm definitely not alone in this) can love you and pray for you from far away, and the people who love you close-to will support you through anything, particularly those you've had the amazing courage to talk to about what you're going through. You are incredible.


Don't give up. This will get better. You are loved, you are loved, you are loved. 


Stevey xx


This post is part of a Love Bomb Mission to send love to Kate, who is suffering from depression. Remind Kate that she is loved and join the mission: http://dropalovebomb.com/love-for-kate-mission

Source: None via Stephanie on Pinterest

Catch

Friday is fast becoming my favourite day of the week, because someone (namely Lisa-Jo over at thegypsymama.com) tells me what to write about. The subject today? Catch.
Go.
What is it about your mama's words that catch on your heart so? The barbed-wire-word that catches on your skin and scrapes a little bit more deeply than nearly anything else. It cuts so deeply when she mentions the 'bit of podge' that's crept around my middle over the summer, regardless of the fact that I'm still a UK size 8-10. How can she not know how much effect she has? How has she not noticed the years of skipped-meals and self-hatred? The (whisper it) almost-anorexia? Her perception of self and beauty is so ingrained into the way I think. Whilst at university I managed to talk about it to close friends who held me accountable meal by meal when things got rough. It's a battle, still a battle and a dark, dark place to which I do not want to return. What I want to catch is Daddy's vision of me. I want to love myself because He shaped me and formed me, and I am fearfully and wonderfully made. There are those incredible words again. In-credible. I cannot believe them. 
Stop. 

Unexpected

There is something unexpectedly glorious about coming in from work, sitting in bed, eating chocolate and drinking a mug of cold milk, whilst all the other occupants of the house are asleep. That is all I have to say on the matter. 

Five minute Friday: On Ordinary

Remembering to do Five Minute Friday on the right day ftw! Last week, I was the second-to-last linky post, which is something. (I'm not sure what, but something.)So... Go.
I'm not sure I believe in ordinary. Which is interesting, because I don't think I knew that before I typed it. I don't think there is anything ordinary about any of us, because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. What in the world is ordinary about that? Rien du tout. The Daddy I know is everything and is in everything and every moment, no matter how banal or ordinary we might believe something to be. Doesn't that make every moment extraordinary? The fact that all things are inhabited by an all-loving and incredible DaddyGod robs anything of ordinariness. Or makes the ordinary extraordinary. I think. I am beginning to tie myself in knots. I do not have an 'ordinary' life. Things change (things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world - thank you, W.B. Yeats...), seasons change and Daddy is in all. 
Um... Stop. 

On friends

Five minute Friday, four days late. Standard. Go.So I have a friend who is falling in love. She longs to be loved, and cherished, and known, and so she is falling in love. With a man she terms a 'complication.' It is perhaps inappropriate to post on here the exact details of the complication, so I won't do it. What I will say, however, is how it breaks my heart that she cannot see that she is worth so much more than what this complication will offer her. I can speak truth to her, but it seems to do no good. She is beautiful and warm and compassionate and caring, but these qualities somehow carry no weight. Why are so many of the stunning women I know unable to see how incredible they are? The world teaches lies (and I learn those lessons too) and the gentle words that say we are fearfully and wonderfully made go unheeded. Stop.

Just Write

As part of my attempts to just write instead of making sure everything is just right, I am linking up to Heather at The Extraordinary Ordinary, who is developing an online community where people have the freedom to just write. She is wanting us to understand that there is meaning in everything, and that the extraordinary can be found in the ordinary. 


Heather offers writing prompts to aid this free-writing exercise, and her recommendation is to write what is happening around you as you write. So that is what I will do...


As I sit here, I am waiting. I am waiting for maman and lil sis to come home from work and school, I am waiting for the sun and the air to get a little cooler so that I can walk to the shop without getting burnt, I am waiting for something to happen, I am waiting to hear from a friend, I am waiting to be able to move to Watford. I am impatient for the next phase of my life to begin, and I am so sick of this waiting. No matter that the caterpillar has to wait to become a butterfly, no matter that my character is not yet developed enough to be able to fulfil all the dreams that are on my heart, I want it all now. Waiting seems passive, and that is something I struggle with. I am very much a doer. For years, I developed a pattern of feeling that I needed to be doing things in order for people to love me. This past year has been a year of unlearning that and breaking the lies that trapped me in depression. (The horrible d-word. I don't write or speak it over myself if I can possibly avoid it.) But still, nothing-doing makes me restless. I want to be doing something more active than waiting - waiting is a verb, a doing word, but that is belied by its seeming passivity. 


I can feel the beginnings of a call to make my waiting more active, by waiting on Him. Investing in my relationship with Him, focussing on my identity in Him and just taking this waiting-time to rest and recharge and renew. Maybe this time is a gift? How often do you get given the gift of a month? I can soak and dive into the Word and go deeper and deeper; this is an opportunity, not a curse. It is too easy to complain, and I become a broken record that even I am bored of. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Halt. Stop. Go back to where there is life. 

The Vicar's Wife

In a month, I start an internship at a church. All year, as graduation approached, I have had to field questions about my plans for my immediate and long-term future, and there have been those who've understood my answers, and those who haven't. It seems that there is something counter-cultural about not having a Five Year Plan. I know that the next year will be challenging and transformational and will help me set my roots in God as I work out how to live out the radical love of the gospel. For me, that is enough. I do not need to know exactly what I am going to achieve, and exactly where I will be in a year's time. When I make plans, Daddy always changes them anyway...


That was a roundabout way of saying that I do not need everyone I meet to approve of the choices I'm making as long as I am being obedient to Papa G. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut there are definitely some people who made/make me a little cranky. The ones who somehow only see my value in the fact that I might marry a vicar and be a vicar's wife. They don't think I'm enough by myself, either because I'm me, or because I'm a girl, or because they don't know the reality of a God who can use anyone (including me, apparently) to change the world. I got angry the other day when someone (in the bizarrest social situation I've been in for a while) a) implied that he doesn't think women are fit to lead church and b) thought that the point of following Jesus is having people come through the door of your church. I had a rant-filled post rolling around in my head for a couple of days, but then I read this (written by Dorothy L. Sayers, and quoted by Jo Saxton in her book Influential: Women in Leadership at Church, Work and Beyond):


Perhaps it is no wonder that women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as 'The women, God help us!' or 'The ladies, God bless them!'; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind or no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as He found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel which borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about women's nature.


And then I read this, by Mark Twain:


Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too, can become great. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition, it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.


And having read those things, I took a step back from my fairly self-righteous indignation. I am following Jesus, and He loves me and knows the plans He has for me. The people in my current daily life may not be ones who are currently 'designing purpose-filled lives', but I can be that kind of friend to them. And furthermore, I am not alone. I am in a relationship with an incredible and all-loving Daddy who is the absolute authority on purpose-filled lives.  


There is grace in this season, not just to see us through, but to renew us.

One thousand gifts...

The fact that I'm writing this post on a Monday means that I could claim it as being on time... However, this could more accurately be described as being a week late. Then again, I'm not sure that matters. The important thing is that I am being grateful.


25. rainbow birthday cake
26. a book left in a station for me to find
27. beginnings of love for a step-sister-to-be
28. raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake
29. Hersheys kisses - a gift from Abigail
30. a £13 round-trip to Coventry
31. Here on Earth - the Torwalt album
32. JesusCulture European tour...
33. my 18-year-old's birthday joy
34. a cuddle with maman
35. laughter at work
36. the flying pig over Battersea Power Station
37. the smiling waiter who brought my coffee
38. a giggly train journey with lil sis
39. weather for wearing my favourite boots
40. weather for wearing my flips
41. nachos and veggie chilli with Dave
42. coffee with John
43. cuddles with Arun
44. chats with Becky
45. catch-up with Kat
46. cuddles with Sarah
47. lunch with Clemmie
48. wings
49. an empty house so I can sing

Growing

It's that time again. I haven't blogged all week, because it's been a crazy one... I'll catch up with myself soon (please, Daddy?) but for now, five minutes is all I can manage, so... Go.
I don't know what I can say about growing, except that it's something I don't feel I'm doing at the moment. This desert season, this pruning time, this dryness... That is what I see. It is something that I'm finding hard, because this has followed a rich season. It was a season rich in pain, but it was also rich in life, new life, and love and relationship and Love. Even this five minutes feels hard, and too raw. I cannot concentrate, and I want to abandon this and weep. There's vulnerable for you. Pruning is necessary for new growth, and growing-time will come again, and probably sooner than I think possible. A precious friend had a word for me that God says springtime is here, with bluebells and daffodils and new lambs... I love all those things and have a growing love for Spring (I used to be an Autumn girl all the way - I love Daddy's colour palette for this time of year) and all I want to do is fly away and find a Springplace. Wings and feathers are all that I can think about. 
And stop. Enough.

Five Minute Friday: Joy

This is my first Five Minute Friday post. Joy is a beautiful topic for it, and a word I need to pick up for this season. I believe that heaven is filled with Joy, and if I want my life to be about seeing heaven-on-earth, then Joy is what should characterise my daily living. That is not where I am at the moment. I have come to a place where laughter is a surprise when it happens. There is not a lot of joy here. And OH there should be. I am loved, and saved, and so so blessed. At 22, there are so many paths and open doors that I can choose. The world is at my feet, no? I think there is a talk by Jenn Johnson that I have heard where she speaks of a friend who was showing her that there is more joy and beauty in sadness than she could ever have imagined. Why can I not live that? There are sadnesses that I face, but how does that make me different to anyone else? We are all facing sadness, and great battles. The difference that I live has to be Joy. The troubles of this world are fleeting, for all their realness. 

In which I have been ungrateful

Being grateful is hard. It needs to be a heart-attitude as much as a head one, and my heart is stubborn. I leave for Watford six weeks tomorrow (which is a slight blow - I thought/hoped it was five), and I am stuck focussing on what I do not have. How my relationship with God has become hard, how my friends are scattered across the country (the world, in fact) or gathered in Coventry, how emotionally demanding it is to just be living with my family... Things may be hard at the moment, but that does not change or reduce the greatness and goodness of God. It is not that I thank Him for the bad times, but I can still praise Him in them.
I pray that this will be my song:


Audra Lynn - Yet Will I Sing

Desert Song

This is a day late, but I'd rather do it now than wait another week... I am reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, and it is messing with my head in beautiful ways, and challenging my attitude to the life I am living. She talks of learning how to give thanks to God and find His grace in the bad times, the hard times, the dry times. I feel lonely and spiritually dry right now. I do not feel known, and I had not realised quite how much comfort there is in a feeling of knowing that you are loved, regardless of how you feel about yourself. That you are loved by someone who knows your brokenness, knows you at your worst, and still finds you beautiful. My family home is defined by caprice and quick offence; it is uncertain ground. Sometimes, there is beauty here. Too often, however, there is not. 


I am lost in a desert. I cannot find peace in Daddy, I do not feel safe and loved by those around me and, in turn, I cannot love others. I am not doing well. Yet at the same time, these feel like First World problems, vanities, and I do not want to validate them. I have food enough, and a roof over my head, and my health... I have so much. And so I am going to learn thanksgiving. It is going to be a discipline and I am going to be aware of living under Grace in the face of all the lies the world tells. (Please God?) I am going to fall on my face and weep and intercede for this world and the brokenness I see. I am living in the victory won by Jesus, and I cannot afford to ignore that, for there lies the path back to depression. I will find the joy in the small things, and know that there is joy and love in my bones, even while I grieve for the friend who died yesterday. I will count one thousand gifts. And then I will keep going.


A Thousand Gifts (1-24)


1. reading my seventeen year old sister to sleep with Shakespeare and Jane Austen
2. a phone-call with a best friend
3. the watery gold of autumn's evening sunshine
4. forgotten music found on the ipod
5. a small girl's smile through a coffee shop window
6. fluffy clouds and sunshine painted on nails
7. dreams of being a Mumma
8. old men politely trying to let each other on the bus first
9. young men giving up their seats on the bus
10. chocolate fudge brownie with ice cream
11. getting to pastor and speak peace and see a new relationship flourish
12. making lil sis laugh by being a hungry laptop monster
13. Wispa chocolate
14. Caffe Nero coffee
15. new black pumps with flowers on the inside
16. Arun
17. conkers!
18. one red-leafed tree when all the rest are still green
19. Pride and Prejudice
20. pulling a gorgeous-looking pint of Guinness
21. home-made triple-chocolate cookies, a blessing from the adorable Lana
22. windy, rainy days when I get to stay inside and snuggle on the sofa with cosy blankets and all the weekend television I missed by being at work
23. lil sis' giggles
24. apples from my Grampa's tree

Stage fright

I have been trying to hide from writing today. I have played around on pinterest and discovered  all manner of tasty recipes and potential craft projects and read all manner of blogs and mainly saturated my brain. I think I will be lucky if I manage to put together any coherent thoughts, and there have been so many thoughts today. So many challenges to my attitudes and ways of being, and through fear, I have allowed them to whisper away. I shall try and make a list.


1. Thankfulness, and the way it can open up a life to the discovery of joy and glory in the everyday.
2. Prayer, and its power, and the fact that by prioritising our routine and busyness over it, we are making an idol of self.
3. A question of endings and beginnings and the two going hand-in-hand, and Christ winning, whatever the situation. 
4. Grace.
5. The terror that lives in surrendering all to God. And the feeling that everything will be infinitely worse if I resist it.
6. This.
7. The superpower that is forgiveness and grace (again), and the way words can set people free.
8. Joy. 'If you are saved, inform your face.' - Unknown. Via (A Holy Experience)
9. 'I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.' - Perks of Being a Wallflower.
10. What's in a name? Am I Stephanie or Stevey? Does it even make a difference? 


Yup, I definitely did a very good job of trying to break my brain. 

A challenge

I have been reading about blogging, and what it might look like to be a blogger in the Upside Down Kingdom. There is a button that I could add to take us here but I have no idea how to make it work, which is frustrating in the extreme. It is about a cry for truth and for Truth. For meeting with the Spirit of God in the writing and the reading of posts, and finding healing therein. It is a call for a blog to be a place of service, and a place of worship. There is something of worship in an act of creativity, and what is writing if not that? There is no point in this being another place of wearing a mask, or building a wall, or presenting a front. I have stopped practising being vulnerable, and withdrawn into a place where I believe I have to be strong for myself, because there is no one else to do it for me. Isolated though I may feel at the moment, that does not mean that I am alone and abandoned.



This was driven home for me yesterday. I had been trying to ignore the slow leaching of the joy from from my bones. I had been trying to ignore the thief who is after my laughter and my ability to fight. The creeping feeling that maybe it would be easier just to stay in bed. It's not me who can change the world. That must be a mistake, because world-changers don't get stuck in bed, feeling as though someone has stolen their spine. Through my desire not to worry those who love me but are far away, I did not articulate what I was feeling. I think I stopped short of flat-out lying to anyone, but barely. Where did that lead me? To a tear-soaked pillow, on my knees before a God whose voice I couldn't hear properly. Even then, I struggled to ask for help, through a wrong-headed stubbornness and pride that I let myself get away with. It was only when I realised that the tears were not going to stop that I did what Daddy was telling me to do, and phoned one of my best friends. 


He came alongside me, and helped me talk out my fear and my loneliness, and prayed with me and helped me fight. He reminded me that I'm never supposed to fight alone, because I have a Daddy who can always be strong for me when I can't manage it alone. And he reminded me that community isn't necessarily defined by physical proximity; he's a 100 miles away, but really only as far away as my phone is from my fingertips. 


So today, I took advantage of the lack of definition in my days. I soaked for an hour (listening to the wonderful United Pursuit) before I even tried to get out of bed. And do you know what? My peace is returning. God has a plan...

Oh man.

There's nothing like managing to get a little sorry for yourself for bringing God crashing into your life to shake you up a bit. I've been feeling lonely and isolated and bored and cranky and destructive... I could go on, but I probably shouldn't. I started believing that God does not have a plan for this season I am in. I have two months until I start Soul 61 at Soul Survivor Watford, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Not a clue. This does not mean, however, that the Lord is similarly clueless. I think I maybe got an inkling of what He's up to today, in that I found a church to be at, which is GREAT. And they're at a point of massive transition in terms of how they're shaped, so maybe this two months is about serving them in any way I can. (This brings us back to the standard question of 'who am I to be doing anything for the Kingdom?' I think I may need to get over that one.) 


So yes. Daddy has pointed out places I need to be accountable, lies I need to stop believing, and situations where I'm just being an idiot. And this stuff is hard when the community you're used to is over a 100 miles away. I have not been doing well. But God is enough, and through Him, I am enough. My Daddy is not about denying His kids the things they need. Maybe this is a desert season, in which I'm supposed to learn (again) about depending on Him. I guess you gotta prune the plant if you want it to be all it can be... 

Drama, drama, drama...

Part of me wants to delete yesterday's post, or at the very least hide it away, so that only I know where it is. It seems an embarrassment, a weakness, to be seen to be vulnerable. Allowing myself to be vulnerable is one of the things I'm worst at; I avoid it, and hide my vulnerabilities. I have a compulsion to appear perfect at all times. No one else should have to deal with my mess and brokenness, right? Right? My pastor's heart will always, always have time for someone in need. But, OH the cost to my pride when I need someone there to look after me. 


When my head becomes as messy and confused as it has been for the last couple of days, I try and hide. I'll hide in a trashy novel, I'll hide with a DVD, I'll hide on the internet, or I'll just plain fall asleep. I have yet to learn the discipline of always running straight to God. Somehow, I struggle to dive into His Word, or just simply be and hang out in His presence. To complicate things further, I pile guilt on myself, knowing that He should be my hiding place and wondering why exactly I'm not going there. But God speaks, even in the midst of all my hiding. He comes to where I am, and speaks through the places that I allow to speak into my life. Yesterday, He spoke to me through this. The excellent and wonderful Jamie the Very Worst Missionary is aware of where she's not sorted, of where she makes mistakes, but in the midst of that she knows her identity. She knows that she's a child of God, and that her Heavenly Daddy is the only one who has any right to judge her actions. And she has found freedom in that. The point she makes here is that in Eden, before the Fall, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. God calls us to be who He created us to be, and to be unashamed in that. As Jamie says, 'Who told you to be ashamed?' Not my Daddy. No, sirree. 


I am broken and I am unworthy, but nonetheless I am loved. Jesus bought my freedom, and who am I not to live in that? 

Of Bad Days, or, Loving Too Much

Today, I find I cannot believe that I can change the world. Is that sin? It's definitely unbelief.


Today, I began to believe that the boy who loves me does so too much. Would it be better for him not to love me at all? I cannot work out if the loving me or the not loving me could break him more.


I am not having a good day. I am struggling to hear my Daddy's voice in the midst of the maelstrom.

Momentum

So I've just come back from a week in a field with friends and Daddy God. It's a sign of how tired I am that, as I wrote that first sentence, I expected my laptop to do the same predictive text wizardry that my Blackberry provides. It's been an incredible week of some immense teaching and worship, and realising that I was hanging out with 5000 people who could see a generation changed through their passion for Jesus. It's been a week of beginning to believe that little me could be instrumental in seeing injustice banished and captives set free, freed from slavery, the sex trade, addictions, abuse, depression, fear... You name it. 


'For I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.' (Phil. 4:13)


At the same time, there has been a realising of the cost of being sold out to Jesus. There has been a laying down of certain could-have-beens, and grief as a season ends. But as one season ends, another begins, right? 


This is a woefully incomplete post, but I wanted to write something in the immediacy of returning home. Something that might have to serve as a spark if my fire goes out.

A question of labels and body parts

So today I spent time with a family I love - a guy, a gal and a baby. Great.


They are a family from a church that a falling-in-love-with-Jesus ago, I would have called home. He was a priest, but fell in love and did the brave thing of stepping out of a church that wouldn't let him marry her. They are trying to build a life but because of the labels attached to him, they are struggling. There is joy in their family life, but there is also a strain, some of which is evidenced in the way the guy cannot find a job. His past as a priest is keeping him out of employment, both in ministry and out of it. He has so much to offer, but refuses on principle to consider a position in the Anglican church. He is being kept from his calling, from being the person he was created to be by labels and semantics and warped perceptions. 


This is one of the things that gets me cross with church, and makes me want to turn my back on it. I can see so much brokenness within the Body, and on my bad days it makes want to disassociate with it entirely. I'm only little, just a kid, a baby follower of Jesus - what am I supposed to do? But then Daddy speaks, and reminds me that the Body needs its eyes as much as it needs its feet. It needs its heart and its kidneys and its hands and its nose and... Everything else. I can no more leave the Body than I can expel any part of it. 


Better to be a force for love from within, than a detached eyeball left on a dusty road, right?

On wanting to fly away and hide

From the wonderful Rob Ryan

Maudlin

I am in great danger of giving in to a fairly spectacular bout of self-pity today. My head aches, my joints ache and I am developing an impressive smoker's cough (I don't smoke.) So far today, I have had no one to talk to as my family have either absented themselves from the house or locked themselves in their bedrooms (and the aforementioned aches make it impossible for me to leave the house and go in search of people. Naturally.) And then beneath these surface irritations lies the fact that my city, my country currently exist under a cloud of fear of riots and looting and fire and violence. Beyond the fear, there is rage and the advocation of the death penalty and the desperate question of Why? Why is this happening? 


I wish I knew. There is no single easy answer, but a lot of hard ones as we see scenes across Britain that are being described as the worst since the Blitz. We are living in a war zone and where is God? I will admit to feeling cross and angry and frustrated at the futility of prayer as the violence did nothing but escalate. I barely slept Monday night, feverishly refreshing Twitter and BBC News for the latest updates. The scaremongering on Twitter got to me and I became fearful and despairing. That tapped very nicely into my anxiety issues from the past, and could have stopped me leaving the house for a week that would have seen me sink ever deeper into a black hole of gloom and depression. I was focusing on the storm, which is far too easy to do. It felt like Jesus was sleeping and everything was hopeless and nothing happy would ever happen again. But then...


Then then, oh glorious THEN, riotcleanup starting trending on Twitter, and thousands took to the streets to clean them. Something of love in the form of community and helping one another came to the fore, and I received a stern lesson in not giving up hope. In the face of that, what am I doing feeling so sorry for myself?

Beautiful Secret

Your secret from Jean-Sebastien Monzani on Vimeo.

Living with a broken heart

There have been boys (and men) who have broken my heart through not loving me the way I wanted them to, but that is not the kind of broken I am writing about here. There is a line in one of my favourite worship songs where we say to God,


'Break my heart for what breaks yours.'


Isn't that a terrifying incredible prayer to pray? We are asking the all-loving creator of the universe to leave us weeping in the face of all the injustice in the world. It's a tall order, and one I struggle with. I mean, I'm just a kid with a heart for intercession. How can little me make any kind of difference, when I get caught in the thing of having family members with cancer or being in rehab, or a friend's dying mother, or a friend who lost a baby, or a divorce-broken mama? And then I turn on the news, and hear about famine and war and oppression and murder and a girl with a bomb strapped to her neck. How can I make a difference? Because I want to. So much. I want to see the world changed and redeemed and learning how to love. (Can something break your heart if you don't love it? That might be a question for another day...) I get caught in the lies and the self-pity of being too small to change a thing. 


Thing is, it's not up to me to save the world... That's not an abdication of duty, but a fact. Jesus already saved and loved the world. He is the ultimate model for living a life of radical love, and changing the world simply by loving it. So He's the one I'm going to follow. I'm going to continue to refuse to believe that I'm too small to change anything, and love the world one person at a time, and pray the big prayers, and see what He does with me. 


Love never gives up.
   Love cares more for others than for self.
   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
   Love doesn't strut,
   Doesn't have a swelled head,
   Doesn't force itself on others,
   Isn't always "me first,"
   Doesn't fly off the handle,
   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
   Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
   Puts up with anything,
   Trusts God always,
   Always looks for the best,
   Never looks back,
   But keeps going to the end.


1 Cor 13:4-7 (MSG)