Some thoughts on food

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(i)
There is a paradox raging in my body. As much as I am fighting to eat three meals a day and love this God-given, God-made body, my body is fighting back. Food allergies and intolerances are making their presence felt, and it just seems so unfair. Strawberries are the latest addition to the list (which also includes nuts, lemons and dairy) - I chose them as a healthy treat yesterday, and what happened? HIVES.

(ii)
I was eating sweet tomato and saffron soup yesterday (the other options were Icky Mushroom or a chicken-y something with a load of double cream) and it was not nice. I ate the thing because I was hungry/don’t like waste, but it was hard work to the last spoonful. As I was eating, I could not escape the thought of how costly saffron is. As spices go, it’s the most expensive. Its colour is so beautiful, and it is somehow rich and beautiful and exotic, but I cannot stand the taste.

(iii)
At the weekend, I shared chocolate fudge cake (allergies be damned) and red wine with a friend. It was a holy moment, a communion-eucharist moment, an all-is-grace moment where I got to show her a little of how she is loved. And she is so loved, and so unaware. There is something elemental about the sharing of food. It’s a way of choosing to stop and see someone, and spend time with them, and honour them, and listen to what they are saying with their heart and soul and body, what their words might not be saying, but what they want you to know anyhow.

Storytelling

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I would call this week a Good Week. Yes, I skipped a meal here and there. Yes, there was that morning where the great grey elephant sat on my chest and I couldn’t get out of bed and ended up being late for work.

But

(and it’s a glorious but)

I ate three meals nearly every day. And when I didn’t manage a proper meal, I at least ate something. The day I was late for work? I was only half an hour late, and didn’t miss the day. Our church celebrated the first birthday of its Christians Against Poverty Debt Centre, and the stories and the redemption made me weep. More Lord.

I flirted with a lot of blue eyed boys (all aged one, no need to get excited)

I had dinner with a precious friend who is growing a person and buying a house and starting a business and raising two toddlers and is still laughing.

I submitted three funding applications at work, returned to our lunchtime clubs after the Christmas break and spent some time with our gorgeous teenage girls, and spent some time with a client so that we could bless her with the items she needed for her imminently-arriving baby.

I started learning some sign language and making new friends (one of whom is also growing a person - there’s a theme at the moment). I realised I find signing odd because I cannot write it down or make notes in any conventional sense, and it strips back the words we’d speak to make communication spare and beautiful. I love it, even if I can’t string together a sentence.

I was given a free cup of tea at my favourite coffee shop.

I started reading a flesh-and-paper book because I’ve taken against my kindle (for no sensible reason)

I found a house for the next six months, and the situation was pulled together by hands Much Bigger than mine.

I read this SheLoves piece by Kelley Nikondeha and it somehow gave me permission to breathe out. ‘The prophets, energised by the Spirit, never dreamed of anything less than a new world.’ I am allowed to dream of and pray in the Kingdom. Swords into ploughshares, baby. Prayer is powerful, and I choose to enjoy the secret prayers in the quiet place. One day, I might get to go to Amsterdam and Durban and India and New Zealand and Thailand and Israel and Cambodia, but for now, I will be a-praying right here.

I listened to Emily and Preston (having opinions). You should go listen too. They have excellent opinions.

A friend I’ve not seen since her wedding in July booked to come up and see me next weekend. ALL THE JOY.

I did not have blood tests or faint (marked improvement from last week)

My friend from Oop North made it down for a visit, despite the snow. She may, in fact, be snowed in here for a while. What a shame that would be.

In related news, today has become a SNOW DAY.

And that is my story this week. There is joy and grace in every day.

2013: Free

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My word for 2013 is Free.

It is for freedom that we have been set free.

The radical, grace-laden, completed work of the cross brings a freedom that cannot be comprehended, and one that I frequently devalue in my choices. There are broken elements of my life which I have laid at the foot of the cross time and again, but which I take back, pick up, try to redeem out of my own strength. It is high time I learned that this ransomed life should not be lived that way. Who am I to declare my sin too big for the cross to have dealt with? The hubris is enormous.

I struggle with depression, but that does not define me.
My family are broken, but that is not my identity.
I have a quiet presence and am softly-spoken, but that is not who I am.
I have never yet dated, but that is not the make-or-break of my life.
I struggle with low self-esteem, body image, food, anorexia, but I do not have to live in those.
I am a woman, and that in no way disqualifies me from Kingdom work.

I want to live and thrive in the freedom of what God speaks, rather than crumple under the weight of the labels and burdens I have taken up for myself.

There is a choice in this, and there is a commissioning. There have been hard things to deal with in my 24 years, but I choose not to live as a victim of those. I choose to believe the words and the encouragements (more in faith than fact right now, but it’s only January...) that have been spoken, and I choose freedom from the lies. I choose to repent of believing the lies of being unlovely, unloved, unlovable. I choose instead to believe that I am wildly loved and wildly free, and I accept the commission to love as Jesus loved, to be His hands and feet, to run through the world fire-filled and hungry for justice and mercy.

I have a voice. I have fire and passion and compassion, and my heart bleeds with it.
This is not easy. But I am pretty sure it’s worth it.

In the dying of the year

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It has been a grey and heartsore kind of day. This afternoon, we went to visit my grandma in the home where she now lives. She's a shell of who she used to be, and it breaks my heart to see her and the women she is surrounded by. Dementia is vicious and insidious. It steals the people you love from before your eyes, leaving behind a ghost of who they used to be. My grandma used to be capable and loving, and a voracious reader. She loved cooking and baking, and I was so looking forward to having her share the recipes and secrets that had to wait until I was old enough. Now, she cannot hold a cup of tea in her hands without someone supporting her, and even then, she cannot remember what she is supposed to do with it. She won't eat or drink of her own volition, because in her mind, she has only just eaten. At one point today, one of the women got too hot and stripped off her shirt and bra. I looked around for a carer, and another woman told me off for looking around because she wasn't talking about me. The confusion and hopelessness are palpable. 

I feel so bruised and vulnerable. It seems that 2012 has thoroughly kicked my butt. My heart has been broken again and again, for loving God and His people and His world. It seems I prophesied better than I knew when I named this blog. I chose 'love' as my one word for this year, and I've still barely scratched the surface of what that means. I might love well, but I am so very bad at being loved. Maybe that means I don't actually know love that well at all? This could become either very existential or very convoluted, so I will stop. The idea of one word for the year was never to build a rod for your back, but to lean into God and see your life changed by Him, through living intentionally and with commitment. All I have learned of love is that my heart is not my own. In giving it intentionally to Him, I have given permission for Him to direct my passions and my feet. I want to live His heart for the world, and this world is hurting and that means my heart hurts too. Days like today leave my heart physically aching in my chest. 

I do not know very much about what next year will bring. A still small voice whispers that it is the year when everything changes, but guessing on what that means probably will not yield much in the way of revelation. I could probably guess until the end of days and still get it wrong.

I love the Agatha Christie quotation at the top of this post. That is what I want to speak into my life. Hurting and broken I might be, but I am alive in the world where my Saviour walked. I know Him a little, and He knows all of me - the good, the bad, the ugly, the hidden. I think we are walking in momentous days, and it is of no use to wish that this lot had fallen to someone else. We must simply live the days we have been given, and do what we can with them. (As if there were anything simple about that.) We do what we can, we offer our loaves and fishes, and then watch as He makes a miracle. 

Leaving the ivory tower

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I am trying not to be afraid of the blank page, and I am trying to do things that bring life. Writing and reading are both life-practices, and I’m doing a little better with one than the other. Reading is a lot less vulnerable – I can react and process in the quiet of my mind, and I can learn things, safe inside my ivory tower.

I think Jesus asks more, though. I don’t think He’s the biggest fan of ivory towers.

There’s no point reading a book about intercession if I’m not going to engage with the call to intercede. There’s no point reading (and breaking my heart over) Half the Sky and not beginning to act. You can’t read about becoming the ‘you’ God intended, nod over all the wisdom, and then not act. You can’t read about overcoming an eating disorder and pretend you’re not still fighting your own.

I can while away the hours of my life by watching Grey’s Anatomy or playing on pinterest [both of which are fine in moderation, right?] or I can try and be brave and get vulnerable and meet new people (how?!) and live the life of intentional, incarnational community that I dream about. I can read all the Kathy Escobar and Jen Hatmaker and Sarah Bessey and Ann Voskamp and Danielle Strickland I like, but at some stage I have to get off my butt and do something and not just sit in coffee shops with the books and the blogs.

Someone somewhere once said that part of growing up is leaving the coffee shop and actually doing the things that for so long you have talked and dreamt about with grand idealism. There are stories to be lived and told, with all their disappointment and hurt and hard work and hope and glory and Kingdom. I’m sick of disqualifying myself and seeing only my inadequacies and brokenness. While I might be inadequate and broken, my King is not. His strength is made perfect in our weakness, and it is only Christ in us that gives us hope of glory. Inasmuch as this is about me leaving the coffee shop and doing something, the beautiful paradox is that really, it’s all about Him. 

Broken Hallelujah

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The lesson about the beauty of brokenness is one I am trying to get into my bones. But my word, it does not come easy. Offering Him a broken heart, a broken body, a broken hallelujah seems poor recompense for the grace and mercy He pours out, but that is all I have to give.

My latest relapse into anorexia made it so hard to praise Him, to sing my hallelujah. I pretended for months that I was fine, and then had to fight so hard to eat when I stopped pretending. All that pretending and fighting absorbed everything, and it was a miracle I made it out of bed every day. It was a miracle every time I made it to work. All my fight went into trying to eat one meal, two meals, three meals a day. I'm still not back, and it's such a bitter thing. I hate it.

This time around, I realised that I starve my body when my heart is love-starved. It is a silent, desperate cry for love, but so often, no one notices anyway. I sometimes manage to remember that He sees and knows and loves, but our invisible God has invisible arms and how is that supposed to work when a girl just wants to be held and loved? 

In refusing to nourish my body, I lost the ability to recognise or receive the goodness of God. He became insubstantial and far-off, and the familiar litany of lies had a field day. The labels that I slap all over myself got so numerous that they were all I could see. Broken/ugly/unloved/unlovable/invisible/voiceless/unworthy/not enough... And I could continue ad nauseam.

A shift began to happen, though. My manager took off her manager-hat and asked me how I was and helped me find a mentor. (We won't mention the fact that God told me to ask C about being my mentor months ago.) Through some Holy Spirit mystery/mischief I was able to strip off my mask the first time we met up. The second time we met, we both ended up crying in the corner of the pub. There is a redemption happening here, even as I was completely redeemed by Love Incarnate 2000 years ago. 

I am standing bare before my Daddy in full acknowledgement of my brokenness, and learning to sing out that broken hallelujah again. I am in pursuit of the wholeness He gifts, and I am walking on holy ground. This advent season is one of waiting and dreaming and learning, and there is something new coming. I am reading Isaiah and listening for His whispers and writing a journal of gratitude and trying to return to my first and greatest Love. A broken hallelujah seems like a poor offering for Him, but it is all I have to give.

Linking with Prodigal and SheLoves today. 

Awake

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With every day that passes, I long to be more awake to the sound of His voice and the beating of His heart. More, is my prayer. More of your heart, Daddy. More of Your heart for Your brokenbeautiful creation. I do not want to sleepwalk through my days. Jesus does not ask us to sleep; He asks us to raise the dead.

Raise the dead, Daddy, please. Raise all that’s dead in me.

I read Half the Sky and wept and prayed and raged over the ways my sisters across the world are held down and devalued.

I used Slavery Footprint to see how many slaves work for me, and the number echoes in my head thirtytwothirtytwothirtytwo and breaks my heart open a bit more.

I go to work and try to raise my voice for the teenage girls who are told in a thousand silent ways that they are too fat, too tall, too, small, too loud, too quiet, too fierce, too wild, too much... I want them to know that they are too precious to listen to the lies.

I go to work and my heart breaks for the women who are unexpectedly pregnant and terrified, or who had a termination and need someone to come alongside them and love them and whisper grace.

I talk to my friends, precious women who are hurting and blind to all the passion and fire and power they were created with, and I pray that they would be able to see.

I sponsored my first Compassion child (Yonah, from Uganda) and there's so much joy in that, but he's still a world away from here.

I am awake to it all, and then I have to ask - now what? I can choose to exist in the pain of the knowledge, with nerves raw and strained as I try to feel it all and bear it all. I feel like a small and lonely warrior, standing a prayerwatch and pushing on a rock that is far too big for me to move. Sometimes I believe the lies of weakness, and self-medicate with a (fairtrade) coffee, a book, a music download, and I hide from it all. I try and sleep away the knowledge.

But I can’t.

My soul is awake, and I cannot un-know His heart. So again, I start to pray:
More of your heart, Daddy. More of Your heart for Your brokenbeautiful creation.
Amen, amen, amen.

Written for the Shelovesmag synchroblog for September