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

Lost

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I am feeling a little lost in this post-Soul61, post-festivals, post-best-friend world... We're done with the course, we're back from the sixteen days of camping, and Daddy asked me to not talk to my best friend for the foreseeable. Last time He did this, I didn't see him for 5 months, but we at least got to talk once a week. I don't think that's an option this time.

I am trying to house-hunt and pack and move in with an aunt who doesn't want me for long and say all the goodbyes as people leave to start their new adventures. All I can see is the sadness at the end of the season, and none of the excitement at the new. 

Worship just brings up the tears and pain and grief, so I am avoiding it a little. I love Him, I do. I think I had slightly forgotten the cost of radical obedience in the concrete rather than the abstract, but here it is again. And it will come, again and again and again. But it will be worth it, to see the Kingdom come on earth. 

Week A

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The place I have been camping for the last five days looks nothing like the picture above, but it looks so pretty I couldn't resist... Much more glamorous than Stafford's showground, at any rate. And yet, I would much rather have Stafford and rain and wellies and the glory of God than any number of tents in trees.


This has been an extraordinary week. 


I am hoping to be able to draw out some stories as my brain settles and rests a little, but for now, the whole event is a bit of a blur. Highlights were the wheelchairs left empty as people were healed and got up and danced and turned cartwheels, the morning when His presence was so thick that the preach was chucked out of the window so that we could pray, the way the young people learned that they could pray and minister in Holy Spirit's power, the holy joy that was released as they prayed for their youth leaders at the end of the week, the phenomenal truth that was spoken to our broken girls - that they are covered with the blood of our Jesus, the Passover lamb, and that nothing that is life-stealing has a right to them. Death is not welcome in this place. 


Goodness, I am tired. Five rest days, and then to Shepton for three festivals in a row. 
Bring it on. 

What is saving your life right now?

I don't think I know what is saving my life... But maybe if I try and say-it-hot, write-it-hot, I'll find out. I often don't know what I'm thinking until I write it, but I rarely allow myself the grace and space to do that. No wonder I don't know what's going on.


I know what is trying to kill me, though. My uncle with terminal cancer, my friend who just had a miscarriage (my first godchild), the sometimes-feeling that no one would notice if I just slipped away, the ongoing battle to love food, to love my body (I couldn't write a love letter for a different synchroblog last week), the selfish, hurting little voice that wants to know when is it my turn? as more and more friends get married, have babies, apply to be foster parents, while I'm still just a rootless intern. 


There's the holy discontent of a life lived with more than enough, when so many have so, so little. This one got under my skin to the point that I was close to ditching everything and getting on the first flight to South Africa and going to Durban, to Amaoti, and finding the tinies who need to be loved. I just want to go, and to do something, and go to the places my spirit knows so well while my physical bones don't know them at all. But Abba, my Daddy, whispered balm to my soul.


Not yet, little one. Not yet. 


And then I got to pray for people. I got to watch as Holy Spirit brought them freedom. And then I got to have the kind of conversations where I can speak the words that come like fire to bring life and healing and hope, His words, His Spirit, my beautiful Jesus. There is life there, because He is the source of life in all its fullness. Tomorrow morning, I leave for week A of the festivals, and it feels like no surprise that I'm serving on the enabling team. We'll be there to pray, and to help the young people pray, and to teach them how to minister in Holy Spirit's power. So much life and fun and coming-freedom. 


He is saving my life. His voice is my lifeline. 


linked with Sarah Bessey for a synchroblog - what is saving your life right now?

Today

There is something heavy and holy about today, and I am afraid to step into it. It feels like something will happen, begin to happen, from which there will be no going back. Already it is coming, and cannot be put off.


The only prayer I can manage is to breathe His name... Jesus, Jesus, Jesus...

6 weeks later...

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Once again struck by how terrible a blogueuse I am. I think I have this idea that to be writing on here, I need to have something structured and relevant and complete to say. But Daddy reminded me that I wanted to use it as a place to write out my life, as a way of processing and documenting and understanding. Since very little of life is structured and complete, it makes sense that I rarely permit myself to write. It simultaneously makes no sense that I do not write, because using writing as an external processing outlet enables me to actually make sense of what I am thinking and feeling. The alternative is to carry it all around in half-processes, forever thinking and making no headway. 


Whole(broken)hearted has taken on a particular aptness lately. I have realised that I have been broken and hurting for so long that I have no idea how to be whole, or what whole looks like. I know that I am on a somewhat messy process of healing, but I don't know what happens when I get there. The brokenness is what I am used to, and there is comfort in familiarity. More, I am as scared of having real community as I am that my current aching loneliness will become a permanent thing. Being loved and being known has been an unusual thing in my days, and I honestly do not know how to handle it. I am scared to ask the Lord about the coming season (I can feel the change, but have been being ostrich-like and ignoring it) because I do not know if it would be more scary to do it alone, or to have people alongside me. All I can come up with is that 'perfect love casts out fear', and that means that all I can do is go back to Jesus and see what He thinks... Watch this space. 

Studying

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Someone recently suggested I look at some options for further study, and initially, I was *ahem* less than enthusiastic. I took a gap year before doing my degree, and have taken a year out afterwards, and thought of days of lectures and library for another however many years left me cold. I want to actually live life, rather than just learning about it. I love a tasty bit of academic study, I thought I'd reach the point where I wanted to learn from experience and making mistakes and learning from God what works and what does not. I want to be out in the world loving people out loud and building the Kingdom. 


But then I had to eat a little bit of humble pie... I did some research into the options for a theology MA, and found a Missional Leadership MA that would only have two days of teaching PER TERM. Not even I could complain about that. And then I found a course at Kings London that looks like someone jumped in my head, worked out my ideal MA, and made it. Theology, Politics and Faith-based Organisations looks at where church and culture collide, and trends in the modern church, and generally looks like a beautiful, cutting-edge course of study. Application process begins now...

Community [five minute friday]

I've neglected this little blog a while... But recently I prayed that I might find my own words again, rather than simply retweeting those belonging to everyone else. God told me that this writing thing is about remembering who I am and who He is and what He made me to be and how I'm in His image and a million other things. Also? He suggested I get my butt in gear and type.  


Five minutes of writing seems like a good place to start again. Gently does it. 

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I am hungry for community. So hungry it hurts, because it never seems to come. The never is maybe a lie, because sometimes it takes time. I get so tired of holding out my heart and having people not be interested. I want to have people to do life with, to share a joke and to share tears. I want to be able to love people and serve people and go for coffee and change the world. Love has to be the thing. (Oh look, there's my word for 2012...) Loving people and not having them love you back is a hard thing. Jesus has an abundance of love for me, and oh how I love Him, love Him, love Him. Is it so bad to want a hug once in a while? Just to be held, just to hold someone, their heart, their dreams, so that they can go out into the world and change it? 


Community with Jesus at its heart is a light to this hurting world where individualism runs rampant, and silently, slowly chokes the life out of all of us. We are made for relationship by a beautiful, loving God, and loneliness silently kills the soul. I pray for a loveplace that goes to the hurting and broken and lonely with open arms and just says, 'Welcome... We will love you.'


Stop. 


five minute friday with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama - come and play?

Restless

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Blogging after midnight because I have no peace and God sent me to my laptop. I was ready for bed hours ago, but He is keeping me awake. This is a novel turn of events - in the past, I have been in the place of desperate longing for sleep but being consistently either awake or in the grip of nightmares. Now, I would like to go to sleep, am indeed almost sleep-walking my days in the weariness that comes from a mind too busy. Too busy? That might be a lie. There is a lot that I am processing in terms of Jesus and His call and what it looks like to try to be more like Him and fall more in love with Him. The thoughts are timely ones, God-stirred I believe, so that makes a lie of the 'too busy.'


I am considering what it means to lose my life for His sake, in all its various meanings. If my literal death could lead others to Jesus, then so be it. But embracing that within the safety of this internship, this harbour, seems... Disconnected? Unreal? It creates a restlessness and a hunger for more of Him and His Kingdom and His love that there doesn't seem to be scope for in this season - this season to which I believe He called me, this place in which I believe He placed me. There is tension there, and that is not a comfortable place to be. Maybe if I stop fighting the tension of it and lean into it all that is coming will be birthed easier. Maybe I am supposed to be safe in this season? Maybe I need to stop and see what He is doing in the now, listen to Him in the quiet and hear from Him on what needs to be held in my heart for the future, and what I actually ought to be wrestling with in the now. 


edited to add this:


My Daddy is so good. He tweaks and pulls the chords of memory and leads back here...


'Lean into the pain. Stay there in the questions, in the doubts, in the wonderings and loneliness, the tension of now-and-not-yet until you are satisfied that God is there, too. You will not find your answers by ignoring, by living a life of intellectual or spiritual dishonesty. Your fear will try to hold you back, your tension will increase, the pain will become intense and it will be tempting to keep clinging tight.  So be gentle with yourself. Be gentle. Lean in. Stay there. And then the release will come.'


From Sarah Bessey, at deeper story.

Uncomfortable

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I have wanderlust or itchy feet or I'm just plain uncomfortable in my skin right now. 
My life feels too comfortable, too safe, inert. 
I walk to church, I walk to placement, I walk home. So little change. 
And in the midst of all that, God is busy healing me up and sifting out the crap and answering the crazy prayers I pray, and so I continue to wait. Wait on Him. Wait on the fulfilment of the words that He has spoken, and try to enjoy the today and not get caught in the worry of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but robs today of its strength and its joy (said someone.) I have to trust that I have done right and am doing right, for I have tried and continue to try to move in obedience to His will and His words. 


I just want to go and do something. I am reading Jackie Pullinger's Chasing the Dragon and I hear about incredible people all over the world doing incredible things for the Kingdom and I want to go and do something for the God I love so much. But apparently the time is not yet. I watch and wait and pray.

Empty [five minute friday]

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I read today that depression empties you, and renders you unable to absorb that which will satisfy. And that feels true, especially of today. I chose today as a rest day, a precious day off, and it has been grey and unsatisfying. No rest, just... Emptiness. I cleaned the house, contemplated some laundry, had a small theological discussion on my doorstep when two Jehovah's Witnesses came a-calling. There is a hollowness to today, and it creates an ache and hollows out my bones until all the strength is gone.


There is a paradox here, though. Because also? I pray for emptiness. That there would be less of me, less of my desires and the things that cannot satisfy, and more of Him. Of His love, His mercy, His heart for this world. I want to empty my life of the things that do not satisfy, and make room for more of Him. I must become less so that He can become more. Marriage and babies have often captivated my thoughtlife, but this week, heavy with revelation, has seen me lay that down. I can get married or I can not [regardless of the fact it often feels like it's not possible] but the point of my life is to bring freedom for the captives, cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead. That is what I am for, He is what I am for, and He is well worth being empty for. 


five minutes, no editing
linked up with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama

I found a lie

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I found a lie. And it was a sneaky one too. I was chatting to Daddy about Jesus about what I was processing the other day, and I came up against a particularly ugly realisation. I had put Jesus in a box and stopped talking to Him, because I had somehow started believing that He didn't love me. That I was just too unworthy for Him to remotely care about. I could believe that He chose to die for the whole world, but excluded myself from that. I realised that I had taken the evidence of the everyday, where I was (am?) feeling lonely and isolated and translated that onto the King of the Universe. Using experience of the world and using that to define God is never going to take you to a place of freedom and truth. 


The good thing? Now I get to fall in love with Him all over again, and find out again how He feels about all of us. And how incredible is that?

Bible Study

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Today was a ridiculous day.


I turned up for my day of teaching, expecting the normalnormal with Crofty - currently, systematic theology. Nothing like wrestling the big questions for a bit of a brain stretch. But NO. More than half of our Soul61 crew have gone to south-east Asia for a fortnight, so the syllabus has been placed on hold, and Crofty had us doing what he termed 'exercises'. He gave us 15 minutes to prepare a 20-minute bible study (passage of our choice - I went for the Sermon on the Mount) and then chose two of us to lead the aforementioned studies. I was one of the (unwilling) victims, chosen because I've never before led a bible study. And was silly enough to admit that. In all honesty, I've rarely come across them. Growing up, I was never much encouraged to read my bible, but even since I fell in love with Jesus, I've found the bible study to be a rare beast. The few I have encountered have registered in memory only as awkward affairs, partly out of my introvert-terror of being put on the spot, partly because they've just been awkward. 


The twist in this first exercise was Crofty's surprise ingredient: he gave each person in the group a role to play - new Christian, angry guy, the silent type, the girl who's obsessed with relationships, the super-spiritual guy, etc., etc... It was in this environment that I had to lead my first ever Bible study. It was a challenge, to say the least. One guy was so determined to lead the discussion away from anything useful that he asked if I thought Jesus would have used Twitter. (Cue the joke, 'It depends how many followers He had...' Haha.) The consolation I was offered was that no future bible study I lead will ever be that bad. Please Jesus.


After that, Crofty then gave us 20 minutes to write a 7 minute talk on how to give a bible study, and picked two of us at random to give our talks. I have honestly never thought so hard about the practicalities of studying the bible. I like to plop it open and see what I can learn, or pick a book and study that, or drift through Psalms, or spend time in the gospels, or the letters, or... Wherever. I love the Bible. A lot. I love being taken by surprise by some fresh revelation to which Daddy opens my eyes. It is a rich and beautiful text, and one which I will turn to all my days. There is comfort and truth and promise and hope there, as well as things to grapple and wrestle with. And I believe that that is okay. We are not mindless automatons, who blindly accept all that is placed in front of us. We are called to love our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and part of loving Him with our mind is about engaging with His word and working through the hard stuff. No one ever said this was easy.

Single

This might be a bit rambly, but there are thoughts I need to get out of my head so I might just write for a bit whilst I'm waiting for my laptop to finish charging the last 1% so that I can unplug the thing and put it all away and go to bed without worrying about accidentally setting us all on fire and killing us all as we sleep. By this time of night, my logic-filter is all but asleep so accidental fire becomes a genuine fear, and it seems more sensible to sit here on the sofa and type than to actually go to bed and sleep.


I have been feeling for a while now that something is missing. For a while, it felt like my husband was missing and I should have met him by now. That feeling went away for a while, but recently it has come a-creeping back whilst I have been steadfastly trying to ignore it. It seems like sin to believe that Daddy is not enough for me. I get lonely and have such a longing for a best friend, and to admit out loud that I'm not having that need met by Jesus has been a shade too vulnerable. I've not wanted to admit it even to myself. Today, however, I had a chat with one of the wisest women I have had the fortune to meet. We teased out how I think about God; more specifically, how I relate to the three persons of the Godhead. We established that I have a chatty and beautiful relationship with God the Father - I love how I can run to Him with anything, big or small, and know that in Him, I am safe. I have a LOT of fun with God the Holy Spirit - the gifts He brings to my life are a wonder and a blessing. Moving in the prophetic, praying for healing, seeing people be set free as I invite Him to move... I love those things. Completely and utterly. But where does Jesus fit in to that? On an intellectual level, I know who He is and what He did and what that means. 


[At least, I know in some measure. I'm still learning and learning and I thirst for knowledge, but the more I learn, the more I realise I don't know.]


I know that Jesus is redeemer and friend, Lord and King of my life, prince of peace, and the most perfect man to ever walk the earth. He was and is entirely human and entirely God and He became the perfect sacrifice. I know that in His name, there is freedom. Against Him, nothing can stand. And yet, I do not have a relationship with Him. I love Him completely, but I have somehow placed Him in a box. And that is why I am lonely. There are challenges with people and community, yes. And yes, I have a longing for a husband and children. But the heart-deep ache that characterises the days I am walking is not about singleness. It is about missing Him. I am in love with Him without really knowing who He is. Without really understanding that He loves me. Relationship with Daddy and Holy Spirit is not enough, for no one can get to the Father except through Jesus. 


The wise woman with whom I spoke today told me that it would be a tragedy for me to have a man in my life in this particular season. This season is for Jesus and me, and He is calling me. That is the call I must heed, and He is the one on whom I must focus. This year of Soul61 is a unique one, and the focus must be on Him. The rest will come. 


linked with Heather at The Extraordinary Ordinary

Grit: Five Minute Friday [Wednesday]

five minutes with no editing...linked with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama
It sometimes requires grit, this loving God and loving people thing. It is not an easy thing to face the reality of a Kingdom battle that fights from victory and yet still has the losses and the casualties of a war not yet won. A prophetic whisper tells of what might be, and it is hard to bear alone. This burden is not mine to carry - it is His - but still I must hold it and pray it. I am not alone never ever, but knowing that God is there is sometimes less comforting than a hand that I can hold. I cannot and do not want to live a life separate from God and His love and the sacrifice that that demands. He did not compromise when it came to me - Jesus saved me and restored me and (beyond my comprehension) loves me. Wholly. Walking away from my calling [a calling I cannot yet entirely articulate, beyond a deep yearning to change the world so that it is His will and His love that rules and reigns, so that hearts are healed and made whole and people are set free from all that binds them] would be a compromise. Where else would I go? Where else could I go?

A man's promise

A Man’s Promise from Christopher Beaudoin on Vimeo.

A prophetic word spoken word for the hearts of women.

Naturally Supernatural

We are currently in the process of recovering from a four-day conference that happened at our church - Naturally Supernatural. We had some incredible, truth-filled teaching from Christy Wimber and we saw God move in power and might, and mercy and peace. We saw physical healing and a beautiful depth of emotional healing, amid an outpouring of His Spirit and under the glorious weight of His presence. There were tears and there were hearts breaking for the brokenness of the world, and I would rate those four days as being among the best in my life to date. 


I completely love getting my hands on people and seeing God bring healing and anointing - it speaks to me of what church is about. We are there to worship God and have fellowship with one another, and to be made whole through those things. The church needs to be a people of hope, pursuing wholeness and healing, so that those who don't know Jesus yet can see something about us that is different. Yes, we are broken and we mess up, but we know that there is grace for that, and that gives us hope. The gifts of the Spirit are for the church, yes, but they are also for the church to take out into the world. Describing the blessing that a prayer, a word of knowledge, a word of encouragement, a word of Yes, I see you could bring goes beyond my ability. We are called to move in the power of the Spirit inside the walls of the church, and out of them. Maybe it'll take a gust of Holy Spirit to take down those walls once and for all and see the people of God released into the world to bring light there. Light and truth and love. 


The conference was amazing; that I have no qualms in saying. There is something about conferences, though, that gets me a little itchy in my skin. At a conference, faith and expectancy levels are high, and they rise, and Jesus walks in the room, and they rise some more. The moves of the Holy Spirit build and lives are changed, and then the conference ends. So-called real life beckons and we return to the normal of praying-for-a-headache-and-not-expecting-anything-really. The sneaky lies that God does not want to heal come back, despite the fact that I want to see that lie smushed. I want to live out the point of the conference - to live naturally supernaturally, and to know that His heart is always to heal and restore, and to always expect Him to move. This is not about four days. This has to be about life. 

A somewhat belated Valentine's post

As part of my internship year, we have the opportunity to go on overseas trips with Mike P, who spends around 6 months of the year travelling. The options this year include Australia (twice), Cambodia and Malaysia, Canada, and Holland (also twice). The trip I can't get away from (and can't remotely afford) is Canada, and I am steadfastly praying for the trip's estimated cost - £1060. Last Tuesday, two extraordinary people in my life told me that, because of what Daddy has been saying to them, they'll match my money if I manage to raise half the costs. Since then, I've been given a further £100. How's that for a Valentine? An I love you, I love you, I love you from the One whose love stands undoubtable. 

Words from a not-yet Mama

A letter to my babies.


Dear babies,


As I write this, I do not know that I will ever get to meet you. I'm not dating, let alone married. I have a sincere hope that I will one day get to hold you and love you, and at the same time, I worry that I could never be a proper mama to you... I want to live sold-out to Jesus, and I worry that I will leave you neglected and broken. I released my best friend, a precious man with whom I fell in love, because Daddy told me to. I lean into the pain of it and rage and weep, but I am obedient. So what if He tells me to walk away from you? You, my flesh, my blood, my heart walking outside my body? What then? Or what happens when He calls you to love His people, away from a place and space where I can see you and call you 'safe'?


The only answer is to trust Him with you. 
(And honestly? It is a fight, on this, and so many other things.)
I have to trust Him. Now, while you are dreams and whispers, and then when you are a wriggling bundle of newlife in my arms, and then when you are grown and can run wild and Spirit-filled into the world to be salt and light and love.


The only way to not get hurt is to numb your heart and not feel at all, and I am too far gone along this openhearted journey for that. I practise my Mummalove on those around me who need it, about whom Daddy whispers to me and asks me to be His hands and feet and arms. I nurture and protect and fight and pray and  speak His truth where I can, and I wait breathless for the day when I can tell you about Him. I wait, and I pray. Always, I pray.


With love, and a heart that aches to know you,


Your Mumma-to-be


xx

linked with the lovely Sarah for the 'Practices of Parenting' Carnival

In which...

...I want to run for the hills and find a way to soothe my aching heart. Any suggestions?


Please?

Tender

Five minutes, no editing. Linked with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama
Go.
Living tender in this world is a tough thing to do. It is a hard, hard world, so full of brokenness. It is so hard to live with a heart exposed to the sharpness of the world, hard to write out my heart, my life, even in the hidden place that is this blog. I haven't written in weeks because there are healing places that are tender and that I don't want to expose. I am falling more and more in love with Jesus as I get to know Him better through the stunning teaching I am being blessed with as part of my Soul61 year. The more I love Him, the more I want to run out into the world and talk about Him, extraordinary freedom-bringer that He is. I want to pray for my brothers and sisters and see them freed and equipped to run out into the world and take on the injustice that runs rife and breaks my heart as surely as it breaks the heart of my heavenly Daddy. I want to shape the church so that it is living loved, and can love living, running wild and free and Spirit-filled. I want to live the tender years of youth through all the ages to the days when my knees creak as I bow in worship, entirely tender-hearted and on fire for Him. 
Stop.

Roar

I am woman, hear me roar.
The image that brings to mind is that of a mother lion, protecting her cubs, fiercely and fearlessly. There is something in that that I identify with, deep in my spirit. I want to protect those I hold dear with a maternal fierceness, and I can't fight it. I want to bear their burdens, hold their hopes and dreams, and kiss and pray away their hurts. I want to speak life and be a source of comfort, a safe place to which people can run. I want to be able to build up and to nurture and to send my beloveds out into the world, knowing that they are loved. 
But there is more. The lion in my heart wants to roar at the world and see it changed. I want to fight injustice, and leave the bad guys trembling in the face of my strength and sharp teeth. I want to lose my fear of the fight, and see people set free to fly and be the precious people they were created to be by the One who loves us all and sent His one and only precious son. I can do none of this alone. 
Without my Daddy, I am just a little cub, mewling in the dark. 
Written for Five Minute Friday, with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama.

'I can hear your heart.'

God is love.


That is what we read in 1 John 4:8.


Today I saw that truth in action as I opened up to one of the newest people in my life, and she gave me permission to be sad and to weep as Daddy closes this chapter. I prayed that someone, just one person, would hear my heart in this, and she repeated back to me the desperate words of my prayer and told me that she was here for me. That is love.

Source: bippityboppityboo.tumblr.com via Jetty on Pinterest

'Love' is my word for 2012.

A word for 2012: love

Source: getcrazybitch.tumblr.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

For 2012, I choose the word love. I don't know what that will look like, but I want to explore love as a verb and as a noun, how I am loved, and how I love others, and how I love my Daddy God and how He loves me, and what I will do for that love. Radical obedience and surrender and excitement and passion and family and friends and writing and reading and living... Looking at love seems to cover all that catches at my heart. For that, love is the perfect word for 2012. 


(That, and the persistent whisper from Daddy that this word is His choice for me.)


I have begun this year by surrendering to His will, by releasing to Him a person that He asked of me. A dear and special friend, gifted to me by Daddy for a hard and dark and redemptive season, someone whom I love with the whole of my aching and broken heart. Someone whose dreams I got to hold and speak life into, all while he held my hands and spoke life into me. I thank Daddy for him each and every day, and I am giving him back. I will hold him in my heart and my prayers, and I will see what Daddy does with us. It feels like a radical pruning - a rose bush may produce beautiful flowers, but the master gardener knows that sometimes it must be pruned back until it could be mistaken for dead, so that something more beautiful and more precious can come with the regrowth. 


I am finding it hard to explain my heartsadness to those around me, because I cannot find the words to say what has happened - it is too deep, and too heavy. I am longing for someone to hear my heart and walk with me and just say, 'I know.' For the past year, the very person I have just let go is the one I would turn to. For now, I will weep in my Daddy's arms, obedient for the love of Him. I will seek Him, and see what He does with me. 

Source: kristynam.tumblr.com via Stephanie on Pinterest