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...