We are just coming to the end of our 2 week stay in the Algarve with Tom's parents. It's been really lovely. 10 days of sun and a few of cloud (helping us get re-acclimatised to the UK no doubt!) and a bit of respite from the daily chores of UK life. It hasn't been what we used to call a holiday in the sense that we still have to care for Reuben, but a break it has been nonetheless.

Whilst here I browsed a couple of books: 'Living Water' by Brother Yun and another by a missionary called Jackie Emmens about her life in Brazil with her husband. Both great books. Notably they have renewed a burning desire inside me to live a life with God in its entirety, not just inviting God in to most of it. Jackie's book is full of a life lived like this and below are some bits from Brother Yun's book which I found poignant and I hope will illustrate what I mean. They are from the chapter on Hearing God's Voice.

'In Jesus I have a simple theology. I believe God speaks to His children all the time. We just need to listen and obey. When we start to obey His voice, we see His power and authority in us and operating through us...the main way that God speaks to His sheep is through the bible...but i also believe that the Holy Spirit guides followers of Christ by directing them and guiding them daily.

(in China) the house churches had problems when undercover agents came along to spy on the believers and see if they could gather information that might be used against them later. The Christians prayed and asked God what they should do. The Lord told them to stop announcing the place and time of their meetings and instead trust that the Holy Spirit would reveal the details to each person He wanted to come to the meeting. On the day of the next meeting, nobody except the leader knew where the church service would be held or at what time, but one by one believers began to turn up, all having been told by the Holy Spirit where to go when they were praying that morning.

I am convinced that one of the reasons many Christians struggle to hear God's voice is simply because they don't take time to be quiet and listen...to hear God's voice, you have to stop listening to your own heart and mind. You need to stop listening to the news and to people who love to air their worthless opinions. You also need to stop taking heed of the voice of Satan and giving attention to evil thoughts... He speaks in a whisper and only those who are willing to get away from the roar of the world will be able to hear Him speak. We have no right to be afraid of what people think or say about us. In fact, we have no right to even be interested in peoples opinions of us. we are meant to be dead to this world and everything that it represents. A dead person doesn't care what he looks like of what others think of him. All that matters is God!

It is time for more Christians to be like Augustine, who would read the gospels in the morning and then go out in the afternoon and put into action what he had just read... When you start to obey God and give your life unreservedly to His purposes, He will begin to share His heart with you.

On getting my nose pierced (again) and going back to work...

Two days ago I bit the bullet and got my nose pierced again. I had it pierced when I was younger from the ages of 19-around 28 and then took it out as I thought I was getting too old for it (and I wanted my mother-in-law to like me!). Ironically now I am 6 years older I have regressed and had it done again and oddly enough I feel much more 'me' all over. I must say though I didn't remember it hurting quite so much the first time round! The lady in the piercing place near our house did it with a needle rather than a gun (which are apparently illegal now) and it definitely made my eyes water! She was really nice though and we had a great chat afterwards about life, decisions, babies. It was good to be out of my christian bubble and remember what the world is like.

Talking of which, I went back to work today for the first time in 10.5 months. It hasn't actually been as bad as I had anticipated. It was yucky having to leave Reuben behind (but thankfully Tom is looking after him rather than having to hand him over to someone I didn't know) but it's quite easy to fit back into things here, see old friends and my favourite mug is even still here!

This is my current favourite photo...

(also: very excited that Nadal won! what a superb game of tennis!)

PS

Reuben now has his first two teeth through! bottom front. Very cute, although sometimes a little sad when he bites himself as he's not used to them yet!

We have now returned from our travels: Portugal, Scotland, Manchester and Cambridge, visiting all of our relatives and are now back in Bristol again. Now we are in Bristol until we leave properly, aside from a one-week camping trip at the start of August. It feels good to be home and settled for a bit. Traveling was great but tiring and Reuben was amazing but I think it's nice for him to be home and able to play with the girls in the house again.

Still waiting for the visa. This waiting/limbo time is a good process to go through: a necessary mourning, letting go and feeling really excited about new things. It also means that our friendships change but move into a nicer, more relaxed state of being rather than needing to cram 'quality time' in before we go. We were on our church's houseparty this weekend and Ros spoke about the parable of the sower and how lots is about patience and waiting for seeds to grow. It feels like we are in the germinating phase. That we have had things sown and now the are being watered and are sprouting but are yet to pop up out of the surface of the soil. It seemed quite apt.

As an aside today is the men's tennis final at Wimbledon. Generally I love watching Wimbledon but this year it is really stressing me out for some reason. I really want Nadal to win but after being 2 sets up and now in a tie in the final set I have a horrible feeling he may lose and I'll be sad. the adrenalin is almost too much to take!

On being in transition

Tom and I are moving out of our house on Saturday. It's a strange old time. We're very busy packing up our lives here but still without anywhere permanent to go as we still don't have a visa for the US. Tom finished work 2 weeks ago and we've been steadily boxing things up, getting rid of much, selling other things and holding onto sentimental stuff. We are moving just up the road to stay with some great friends until our visa arrives and we find ourselves in an odd place of flux - of wanting to make the most of the time we have to 'be' as a family, but also being unable to make concrete plans as we don't know quite how long we do have; of wanting to move onto our new place to do life but also not being able to let go of what we have here yet either physically as we still have to be here and emotionally as we love the people here; of living with very little but knowing that we have some things in storage; of knowing how much we have but feeling poor in worldly terms; of feeling unsettled and trying to let go of needing to know what's happening!

there. that's it for now...

(Barleycup post-script)

Tom has now joined the band wagon, come out of the closet and announced he is a secret fan of Barleycup too. 

Momentum is building. 

It could be THE cool new drink!! 

How very exciting!!

barley cup, barley, cup, ooh barley, barley cup 

(to be sing to the tune of lollipop by The Chordettes)

I have found a fellow afficionado on loving barley cup - hooray for Jacqui!

At the moment I am wrestling with remembering who I am in God and letting him again do some nice work deep inside. I am re-reading (again) one of the most influential books I have found and today am focusing on this bit:

"As the Beloved of my heavenly Father, "I can walk in the valley of darkness; no evil would i fear". As the Beloved, I can "cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Having "received without charge," I can "give without charge". As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved, I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as proof of my goodness. As the Beloved, I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved, I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving this life." (pg 39)

Nouwen is a good man.

A Brave Attempt

I found myself laughing very much today because of this news article. Can't really say much more about it except that it's always worth a go!

today I have got one of those annoying things on the tip of my tongue where one little bud swells up and is super, super sore. Very frustrating!

but the guys prayed for my finger last night at housegroup and it's not hurting anymore so that's very good!

our wee man has chicken pox! only a mild case but still a bit sad to see :  (

it has been a long while since i posted. life has been up and down but is generally moving up now, thankfully. thank you my wonderful husband and my friends for being such wonderful supports to me. community rocks!

"We find it absolutely totally unacceptable that somebody in our midst would be struggling with an addiction: despair, an eating disorder, drugs, alcohol, cutting themselves, financial hardship, and would  not have people around them to help them with it. It is absolutely unacceptable to us that someone would suffer alone. It is everything that the church is not about..."

A powerful statement (Rob Bell at Mars Hill) and one that made me cry and ask how much of that do I, as part of the body, hold as a value in my life, and how much do we as a body here hold as a value in community living. For something to be utterly unacceptable is a hard thing to achieve but I know, in my spirit, that it is, it has to be, a Kingdom value. So what to do about it?

A sad day...

Today one of our goldfish, Ginger, died. Now there is only Fred.

A sad moment.

A momentous day!

Today is a momentous day: for the first time since the wee man was born (11 weeks ago tomorrow) i have mopped the kitchen and hall floors. 

It is momentous for two reasons:

1. I HATE more than almost any other task mopping the floor (it is topped in my hatred stakes by hanging clothes in the wardrobe. I can fold and put them in drawers no problem but for some reason I have a psychological block when it comes to hanging...). I spent 4 months in Switzerland having to mop many many many many many corridors of floors and the idea of it fills me with dread now

2. I have enough energy again (although i will be sitting down with a coffee and a book now for a while while the man sleeps) to be able to do it. Recovery has been long and arduous, but this morning I managed to go back to sleep for a while and I think in fact I totalled 8.25 hours sleep (almost) straight last night and so today I am feeling cheery and good.

Praise God!!!!!!!!!!!!! Off for a coffee and a well-earned rest now :  )

I was reading through the books to the Thessalonians the other day and was struck by this verse:

"Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other." (1 thess 4 v9)

I suddenly realised how powerful it was: that actually God, the living God, had intervened and himself come and taught the people there. 

It made me think of the joys I have had when I remember that God truly is real, here, alive, when I have almost tasted his presence on my tongue. 

It makes me thirst and long again for Him, to live 'in communion' with Him, constantly in His presence, not just in a holy huddle, but in walking the streets, in having a coffee, in looking at my son. 

I guess that is what Living in the Kingdom is meant to be. 

It's so hard to write it down in words and often when you try to explain it to people you miss the essence of what you're trying to say. I guess it misses God - only He can give that taste of how good He is, that  feeling of wanting to constantly be in that place, of wanting more, of being utterly loved. 

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, o God. My soul thirsts for god, for the living God.

So come Lord, come.

Some ramblings...

Today I am giving myself the luxury of staying in bed for the morning. Reuben is happily sleeping next door and I am equipped with my book (currently 'The court of the air' by Stephen Hunt), a big cup of tea, my journal and bible, my mobile and the computer. What more could I ask for!! (Maybe my husband... but we have Fridays to be lazy together on). Today is a treat, a being nice to myself day. Hooray!

As a slight aside I saw a news article (BBC website) today about a French mechanic who has designed a car that runs on air. it could totally be the way forward! The cars are expected to be on the market sometime next year and will only cost £2500. The get up to 80 miles an hour and take only 3 minutes to fill up. Great news for the world!

Yesterday I was explaining to someone about the 'Lent  challenge' and realised once again what a good discipline it is to do. As a community within the church we have agreed to live on the minimum wage for our expenses (food, petrol (maybe air next year!), clothing, presents, going out). There are complicated sums to do to work out how much you get but it's roughly £60 a week. It teaches you great things about how you fritter away cash, how God provides, how community is so important (we eat together twice a week to save money and reap the benefits of building better relationships), about learning how a large group of people in the country survive. All round a very good thing to do. The housegroup we used to go to who introduced us to this idea are this year doing a carbon fast over lent, trying to reduce their carbon imprint on the planet. All a bit better than just giving up chocolate I reckon...

some new photos of our wee man... still as great as ever.

A couple of things...

Firstly something that happened the other day in Tesco (biggest supermarket chain in the UK). As I was at the checkout my card went into the machine to pay and all of a sudden an announcement over the tannoy said there was going to be a 1 minute silence for a young colleague who'd suddenly died the week before. People do have minute silences often, but it was remarkable to me for two reasons. Firstly that Tesco, so generally hated for selling out, so profit-driven etc, would do something so thoughtful - it made me remember that the individuals that work there are human and have feelings too, they're not just 'the corporation'. Secondly peoples' responses stunned me. It wasn't just that there was quiet for 1 minute, but also that everyone in the entire shop stopped for one minute: those working and those shopping alike, even if they had no idea who he was. Time was suspended and people stood in the isles like statues, suddenly coming back to life again when the minute was announced to be up. Then it was all back to normal, my card payment went through and I left. A weird but good moment.

Secondly I came across a good quote the other day from a man called Gordon Dalbey from his book 'Fight like a man' (I wasn't reading it, it was quoted somewhere else!). Sadly I can't quite remember what it was exactly but the sentiment was something along the lines of often man digs himself into holes that he is then actually unable to get himself out of. It is easy to look upon the man and judge him. However we shouldn't do - we should help him as a body of believers and friends to get out. The only thing to condemn is the lack of desire to be humble and accept help. I decided to give myself a bit of grace and stop condemning myself so much, to be humble and ask for help from those around me. The new man is growing...

with reference to my husband's most recent blog I can reveal that when he found the offending beast, upon enquiry as to what he did with it, he revealed this evening that he did in fact wrap it up in a tissue and condemned it to die a smelly death wrapped up in a soiled nappy in a bucket full of soiled nappies... Starting to feel slightly less sympathetic!

Today I have had a good day: some good praying over me, some nice times with friends, a sleeping baby (he had his 8 weeks inoculations) and a nice dinner. Everyone keeps saying one day at a time and that is proving to be very true!

Off to rescue Tom from a now not-sleeping-at-all-and-in-fact-very-grumpy baby...

Not for those who aren't into bodily stuff... 

Really...!

- Another motivated-by-tom blog in order to bring some smiling to my face where is has been feeling sad with the strains of coming to terms with being a mum -

I have been struggling to figure out how to use a breast pump. A friend kindly lent me one as I was interested in being able to go to bed early and let Tom give Reuben his last feed. So I took it apart and duly sterilised it. Sadly, when I put it back together and gave it a go I couldn't seem to get anything out. I tried on a few differeent occasions and then decided it just wasn't for me - I was one of those unlucky (?!) women who it didn't work for. Tom washed it up so we could give it back and suddenly realised that if you put the little star-shaped piece in the other way up then actually it works differently. So I gave it a whirl once more and managed to get 6oz out in 5 minutes!!! Oh yes, I am a milk-machine! (clearly this was a little too fast as I was quite sore afterwards but how was I to know you weren't just meant to hold down the handle if it was just coming out?!)

A good achievement for the day.

On another happy note the small, very, very pummelled new man won another david & goliath-type victory when I'd suddenly had a mustard seed of faith and decided I'd had enough of my bed not feeling a nice place to be due to not being able to sleep. We took communion before sleeping, the atmosphere lightened and I slept well for the first time in 3 weeks or so, albeit enhanced slightly by the doctor's help! Now I have a safe-haven. Nice. Thank you Lord.

On not being a super-mum...

I am finally coming to the realisation that being a mum is hard work, takes me totally out of my comfort zones and that I can't do everything. Hard for someone who by nature likes to be in control, do lots and, sadly, is a still a proud people-pleaser underneath.

The Lord has undone me and continues to show me who he is and who I am and I am once again in a wonderfully humbled and sat at his feet. Well getting there anyhow.

The 'old man' still wants to rule, to be in charge, to do everything. The 'new man', who seems so small at the moment and feeling quite pummelled by the old man, is living in the understanding that actually it's ok to find things hard and run the risk of falling apart and people seeing who he is underneath. BUT at least the new man is there and is letting himself simply 'be' before God: the only place for him to grow strong and outgrow the old man.

Today I listened to David Crowder and one of his songs is my prayer for the moment:

Take my heart, I lay it down
At the feet of You who’s crowned
And take my life, I’m letting go
I lift it up, to You who’s throned

And I will worship You, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You, Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have I’m leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And it’s just You and me here now
Only You and me here now

You should see the view
When it’s only You


On the up-side (not that being humbled by God is a down side, far from it, just it's hard), our little man is just absolutely gorgeous and is bringing me huge amounts of joy. One smile and I melt... Tom has put some new photos on his flicker account How lovely is he!!

On being a neurotic mother...

My lovely husband has said that I must blog about this and I guess he's right, if only to make me understand how nonsensical my actions were.
Last night Reuben had a meal at 9.15pm. It's an hour or so earlier than normal but he was really hungry and so he ate. Normally he would then wake up 4-5 hours later. So when I woke up at 3.15am and he still hadn't woken me up i sprang out of bed and dashed in to make sure he was ok. He was so utterly asleep that it was actually quite hard to make him move when I poked him to see if he was still alive. I then thought he'd wake up soon so lay down to snooze on the make-shift bed we have in his room until he woke up and waited... and waited... and waited. An hour and no more sleep later he still hadn't woken up so I went in to tell Tom (as he re-phrased it this morning) that our son was breathing and asleep. Not best pleased. So then I spent an agonising other 45 minutes waiting and waiting and trying not to get stressed and paranoid and fearful. Eventually I went to sleep around 6 and then proceeded to have nightmares when he's been abducted in a lorry and Tom and I were trying to find him before he died of hunger, having slipped into a hunger-induced coma and being unable to cry to let us know where he was.

I am very tired today and hoping that when he next decided to sleep that long (I'm sure 5 week old babies aren't meant to be able to do that yet) I will be able to rest assured that he has done it before and will be able to do it again.

Today I am resting in this nice place - a Vineyard song based on psalm 23. It fits with my general feeling of being a little like Mary, storing up things in my heart and pondering them as the day passes by. It's a nice place to be.

Oh Lord, my shepherd be
And beside still waters lead
And among green pastures make me lie
You are with me to the end
In the paths of righteousness
For the glory of Your name
Keep me safe, that I may know always
You are with me to the end
You are with me, You are with me
You are with me to the end
There's no other friend and Savior
You are with me to the end
For when the shadows fall
And the night is closing in
You are here, no evil will I fear
You are with me to the end

Well, after being wonderfully calm on Sunday and Monday, a marathon of endurance then ensued when my waters broke on Monday night and Reuben Jack Arthur Hope was born at 12.46pm on Tuesday. It was all round an incredible, traumatic, scary, painful, and yet truly wonderful experience. Tom's put some pictures on his blog and flicker accounts so you can check them out there rather than me repeating them all here.

Needless to say I am in love!

It must be stated for the record and so that I don't forget: during labour there was a moment when I felt the Lord so clearly in the delivery room, with His peace and His assurance that he really did know what it was like, with a profound new depth of understanding of the humility of the Creator of the Universe to pass through the birth canal in such messiness and noise and pain as a baby. Truly a life-changing moment for me.  The Christmas story seems suddenly more poignant for me, for us, this year as we relate much more now to what it all was like. Unto us a son is also born. Not the saviour of the world, but a glimpse of an aspect of Him...

A state of peaceful calm, encapsulated by psalm 131:

My heart is not proud, LORD, 
       my eyes are not haughty; 
       I do not concern myself with great matters 
       or things too wonderful for me.

But I have calmed myself 
       and quieted my ambitions. 
       I am like a weaned child with its mother; 
       like a weaned child I am content.

Nicola Jane, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.

on trying to be a woman of faith

father it feels very hard sometimes to trust you: that you're real, that you're acting, alive, here, now, in me around me.

but I want to. 

I want to live life in a way that is good for us: beneficial for me in lack of stress, a good witness for you, and a means by which the times you have given me here on earth are inextricably linked, joined, merged into you and loving you and being loved by you.

please help me to become, carry on with, grow deeper into being a child who lives like this: of not being overwrought with fear and lack of trust and of not being able to see how on earth you're going to sort out this next thing; of being someone worthy of being written into the testimony of the great cloud of witnesses; of loving you with all my might and letting your returning love banish fear, uncertainty and anxiety from my being.

a high call some might say but i reckon it's do-able - with your help. so please help me.

thanks x

Today I was reading Matthew 18 and found myself wondering about the part where Jesus talks about what to do when there is an issue between two people and one has sinned against the other: you go to them yourself to see if they'll repent, then take 2 others if they won't,  then take it before the church. Then if they are still unwilling to say sorry you should treat them in the same way you would do a gentile or a tax collector. 

I know historically, and undoubtedly correctly, this is interpreted as needing to treat them as an outcast, a breaking of the fellowship between you. The thing that came into my mind today though was how Jesus is the one who comes for the outcast and lost and rejected and spent his time when he was on earth hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners and that the proceeding passage is about the shepherd, aka the Father, searching for the 1 lost sheep. I think there are probably lots of avenues I could take this down but I think I will content myself currently with the thought that Jesus is a mystery! I like how we will never really know what he was on about until we get to meet him face to face, the only sad thing is that we end up arguing so much and hurting so many people in the not knowing.

(I quite like the thought of actually maybe Jesus was being funny - that in casting them out (and protecting the body etc etc) they are then the very ones that we need to go searching for)

Pregnancy Insomnia

I have given up trying to be asleep for a little while. i have found that when I wake up, normally for some pregnancy-related thing and can't get back to sleep straight away I can either lay in bed for a few hours and get stressed about not being asleep, or I can get up and have a nice warm drink and read a book, or in today's case, enter lots of competitions online to win things and read the news. Pretty sad eh! But I guess it may get me in good stead for when the baby arrives and I have to be up at all hours. I hope so anyhow.

In life otherwise nothing much going on except sleeping in the afternoons a bit, seeing a lovely friend from Sweden who's over, going for autumnal walks and attempting to get Christmas presents sorted out now so that I don't have to think about them at all later on. In fact, I may just start writing the cards now - yet another good way to pass the middle-of-the-night awakeness...!!

So in a moment of utter boredom (on my part) the other day Tom insisted that I watch a little bit of the promo video thing online for the iPhone. He has been pretty obsessed recently and I have thus far spurned all attempts to interact with me on the hypothetical notion of him purchasing one. This hasn't really changed much, BUT whilst watching the promo I was absolutely blown away by the technology of the phone. It really is, and this from a non-gadget (except maybe ones for the kitchen) person, quite an  amazing piece of equipment. So I can now understand a little more of why he wants one. I don't think it's going to happen though!!!

On a different note, I had fun at our Sunday gathering yesterday, seeing God being very real and active with people, of him reminding me of who I am and of working alongside Him to bring some of his kingdom into hurting peoples' lives. It's what, if I could live my ideal life, I would spend every minute doing I think.

I have just finished reading a book which I really enjoyed. It is called 'Two Babushkas: How my grandmothers survived Hitler's war and Stalin's peace', by Masha Gessen.  It's basically as the title might suggest: a history, written as narrative, of two Jewish women who lived in Russia through the 2nd world war and then through the Communist regime under Stalin, with a bit at the end of their lives from his death until the present day. For anyone who likes history and likes reading it as prose it's a good one!

On a slightly different note I am finding life to be a bit strange this week. I have lots of time on my hands and have a few things to do and process and plan, but am generally too tired to do very much. It feels quite frustrating, like I'd like to muster up the energy to go and see friends in the evenings but can't quite bring myself to do it as I know that I'll be falling asleep by 9pm. It's good to have so much time with my lovely husband (who relishes introvert time and me not arranging our usual frantic social life!!) but I feel extremely anti-social with regards the wider world! So for any friends out there who are reading this, I am still alive and we do still love you! Please be patient, or drag us out early!!

Today on the BBC news website there is a link to a really beautiful display of nature. It's one of my favourites of the season generally and one that I can easily spend very much time watching. As it's not a direct link, have a look under 'Starlings' spectacular autumn display' on teh right hand column of the page.

Today I was having a lie-down after lunch (oh the luxuries of being pregnant - if only everything didn't ache so much as to necessitate it!) and was reminded of this mini-sermon by Dr SM Lockridge.

I did in fact think it was another one where the speaker goes on to list how Jesus is represented in each book of the bible, but remembered that I had heard it before anyway and it was a nice refreshing thing to listen to. It's wonderfully pentecostal and not at all my usual style but still sends shivers up my spine! Worth a listen!

I was going to blog about last night's halloween events, but my lovely husband has got there first. Needless to say, it was very amusing!

So, on a recent trip to see some of Tom's family in Edinburgh I discovered a way of helping me through the what can only be described as miseries of late pregnancy: Calvin and Hobbes. 

Having been a great fan for many a year imagine my happiness when  I discovered that Tom had a stash of C&H books stored in the family flat in Edinburgh. So we transported them back home and I have laughed my way, rather hugely and loudly to myself, through the last week. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience, making the aching hips, lack of sleep, kicks in my ribs from a potential world-class judo champion and generally feeling like a whale much more bearable!

Today I am feeling very lethargic. It is, I think, due to a combination of the weather being cold, grey and dreary, of being super tired after driving with Tom to Edinburgh and back in 2 days and of there being only 5.5 weeks left until I am meant to be giving birth. All in all a day to stay in bed!

Sadly there are lots of things to do and my over-sensitive sense of duty leads me from my warm, cosy bed to tidy up, put some clothes away and get dinner ready. Boo. Sometimes I wish I could just be a total, non-caring slob!!!

On being a transparent freak of nature..

Today I am quite tired from being uncomfortable when trying to sleep, the baby doing circus-like acrobatics all night and then me waking up hungry, trying to go back to sleep and then finally succumbing to the need and going to get some cereal (see point 1 under excited by). Tom claims to be even more so due to my pregnancy-worsened snoring which has developed into something resembling a low-flying aircraft from the way it was described this morning! I think it's to the spare room with him!

I also have a gazillion thoughts to process, which means that this has now been re-written 3 times. Too much going on inside my head! Here's a condensed summarised  version...

Excited by:

1. my re-found love of Special K red berries cereal - bought haphazardly because it was on special offer and now making a welcome return to regular purchasing.

2. our housegroup: last night a select, very special few went out to the train station in the city centre to give out free cups of tea and coffee to taxi drivers (I stayed in due to knackeredness). they had a great time and met the people who God gave them pictures of beforehand and chatted with them. Most of the taxi drivers around last night seemed to be muslim believers and cool conversations about God were had. So good.

3. autumn freshness and crunchy leaves to walk through

4. being on maternity leave

Challenged by:

1. the notion once again of God's utter reality, that although theologically he is with us, that he actually REALLY IS WITH US, here, right now, interacting, challenging, loving, changing. really. here.now. ask him and i'm sure he'll let you know!

2. the subsequent consequences in my life of this being reality.

3. a talk by Rob Bell that I just listened to about being who God made us to be, even if that means challenging the norm and pushing for what other people might not want and being truly authentic, transparent and the freak of nature God made us each individually to be. My favourite phrase of his talk was 'are you smoking what you're selling?'

I like that phrase. How can we tell possibly conceive of telling people of a loving God when we don't know we're loved; or a healing God when we've never let ourselves be exposed to his healing; or a God of grace and mercy when we beat ourselves up; or a God of Life when we aren't free? Clearly everything is a process and we're never going to have it all totally figured, but we can at least be on the road. 

So an exciting and challenging day of thinking and living and interacting ahead. I'm off to go swimming - and it's only 11am!!

For those of you who know me a little bit you will know that I am a big fan of the 'old school' vineyard worship songs. I re-found this one a couple of days ago and it feels like it's my song of the moment. This is the God who I know and love:

Father I come to you, lifting up my hands

In the name of Jesus, by your grace I stand

Just because you love me and I love your Son

I know your favour, unending love

I receive your favour, your unending love

not because I've earned it, not for what I've done

Just because you love me and I love your son

I know your favour, unending love

It's the presence of your kingdom

as your glory fills this place

and I see how much you love me as I look into your face

nothing could be better, there's nothing I would trade

for your favour, unending love.

How could a God like that not be someone to fall in love with and to give a life to?

Now all I need to do is try to learn the guitar chords for it and I'm away!!

Last night, as I attempted to extract myself from my bed to get something I'd forgotten, I realised that I couldn't actually get up properly anymore and that I had to kind of 'roll' myself into a sitting up position in order to effectively get out without falling over or injuring myself.

My lovely husband was in hysterics and said I looked very much like a weeble...

Hmmm. The joys of pregnancy are upon me. ha. ha.

Today a work colleague showed me some photos of her trip last weekend to Switzerland where she is getting married in January. Alas, although they were lovely and I am so excited for her, it has also stirred the annual misery of being stuck in England and a yearning to live in the alps again. It's been 10 years now since I left (!!!!!) and every year it's the same. They do something to you the mountains, get in your blood. It's not even the skiiing/snowboarding, it's just being there. Darn it!!

Today there is a definite 'nip' in the air. Autumn has arrived. It seems a bit of a shock to the system, having not really had a summer and only recently there having been a bit of warmth and sunshine. It seems too early. BUT, in the great veg shop around the corner the autumn english apples are arriving (red devils being a new favourite!), along with celery and root vegetables. It's time to start making stews and roasting things more. I am happy. Times in kitchen are going to be fun for me in concocting!

It also means that I can go for brisk walks in the park and enjoy coming back inside, having had the nice sensation of your face going a bit numb, or wearing scarves and hats and walking through nice crunchy brown leaves.

It's all great!

There is a website that some friends of mine have set-up: it's a search engine (running through yahoo I think) which, when you search through it, it automatically enters you into a prize competition! It's quite a cool idea and by you signing up for it (they don't make you have any emails or anything) they enter me into the draw as well - and I love winning things!

SO...
If you follow this link it all gets underway:

http://www.wabbadabba.com/join.aspx?friend=Y8UE1N8X219

cheers!

today our new broadband service started at home and i am enjoying the flexibility of being able to wander round the house and use the computer wherever i want to. what a treat!

I listened to the golden hour again today and although the music wasn't as good as yesterday I did manage to guess the year correctly today (2001) and it brought back some happy memories of life-gone-by and made me think of some friends I haven't been in touch with for a while. maybe some emailing is called for...

(and no, Tom, I didn't put my leg warmers on yesterday, BUT i did jiggle around in the bed and did some of the cool foot shapes form the beginning sequence of the film whilst lying in my sick bed! Maybe today will be a day for wandering up to the video store and renting the film out! Just the ticket for when you're feeling sick and it's rainy outside.)

Today I am not feeling very well so have stayed in bed - just a head cold and sore throat but enough to make you feel grotty.

BUT on the upside of this grotty-ness, it meant that I go to listen to the 'golden hour' on radio one which they have reinstated for a short period to mark their 40th anniversary. Today I got the delights of Prince 'When doves cry', the theme song from Footlooose, Ray parker Jnr "Ghostbusters' and many others. I was loving it. There is a quiz attached in that you had to try guess the year they are playing music from - I had no idea but found my self knowing all of the words to the songs and being transported back to happy childhood times. Then they announced it as being from 1984!!! Man i am getting old. Admittedly I was only 1o so either have a good memory or came a cross the songs a bit later on, but still - 23 years ago!!

This has been a week of family visiting: my mum for a few days over the weekend and for Tom's birthday and then Today my dad and his wife came for a night to drop off a shed that my dad has made for our alotment. what an amazing achievement! Very impressive.

Other than that life is ticking on by. Today I got blown away by Simeon's words in the first few chapters of Luke. No idea why. It just strikes me that my Jesus is amazing and singular and I love him very much.

Life is good.

Today I went to see the midwife and found out that I have o- blood. I am a rare breed...!! Sadly this means I have to have some injections which are never nice but good if I don't become alergic to my baby!
I also have horrible backache so if there are any praying people out there if you could pray that it wouldn't hurt and that I could sleep really well that'd be lovely.
Thanks!!

Why I love the Orpheus...
Last night Tom and I went to the Orpheus cinema in Bristol. It was a wonderful step back in time to when I was a kid and the cinemas were small and a bit cronky but wondeful. On entering, you paid a lady who wrote down figures in her ledger, you could buy popcorn and crinks in normal sizes (sadly no lady with a tray round her neck selling things by torchlight - muist ahve been her night off!), then you handed your old fashioned ticket (from a roll, not a machine) to the man on the door who ripped them in half (no perforations) and in we went to the screen (1 of 3) and were given 100 seats to choose from. It was GREAT! The pictures started rolling (you call almost hear them whir!) and shortly, after a few ads, there was an intermission when the lights came up for a few minutes and then the film started. The atmosphere was cosy and felt quite community-like.
When the film ended I made up my mind to try and go there as muich as possible from now on.
AND it's way cheaper too!

Tom and I have just got back from a rather wet weekend taking the Via team on their last retreat together. You can read about it here.

My favourite bit over the weekend was being on the beach with Tom: exploring rock pools (we didn't find much but Tom gave himself an icy bath in one (we forgot our towels) and I enjoyed sitting in the sun whilst he did it!); watching the waves; praying that we would know the love of God like the relentlessness of the tides; finding green sea glass - produced by that well known sea creature... A truly wonderful time with my man. (Andrea also made me laugh an inordinate amount...!)

The course finishes next Sunday and so does the leading of it by Tom and I. It's not going to run in the autumn due to both lack of applications and a 'coincidental' desire in us to start pushing into trying to connect more with our local community and exploring what God has for us in terms of next steps (clearly next steps are always the same steps of making disciples in all contexts, but it's the specific focus on context we're looking at exploring).

Along with it comes a need for change in job for Tom: the course doesn't run, he doesn't have a job! So we're praying and looking and asking around about this. It does give us some time to rest a bit though and I am certainly looking forward to having our house back to urselves again for a while. No longer will I have to spend time searching for scissors which have been put back in a different place, and I will have a big cupboard free again. (Little things for...)

It feels strange: exciting but also sad. It's odd when your lives for the past 3.5 years have totally revolved around designing, building, running, altering, delivering a course which takes up most of your time, energy etc, not just 9-5. Then suddenly it stops. Just done. HOWEVER, it also feels super-exciting: to be exploring, expanding, putting what we've learnt into practise in different areas.

Change is good and hard all at once.

Today it is raining lots, which is fantastic for our alotment which has been dry as a rock. I am also enjoying it as I have a lot to do around the house before my lovely husband comes back tomorrow from his 2-weeks-without-me stint in Ukraine with the Via team and I am not at all tempted to shirk off and sleep in the sun! It has been a long, quite sleepless two weeks for me and I am very very much looking forward to seeing him again.

I have done some good things whilst he's been away though: seen lots of friends for dinner, done art with my wonderful neighbours, watched dvds and had many many early nights. I also got to spend some nice time with God each morning which I don't normally have time for, but since i hvaen't been sleeping I had got up early and managed to worship a bit before work. It made such a great difference in my attitude towards a day without Tom! I am also learning again (and again and again) how much I am controlled by fear of things happening. Very unhealthy, but thankfully God won't let me stay like that and keeps bringing it up, either through discontent with how my heart is feeling, or through friends saying poignant things which bring out my true feelings, or simply him speaking to me. He's a very good God.

I had a niced conversaiton with my dad the other day who seemed much lighter and less burdened with life than he has been recently. It made me happy.

Work is getting really busy and from next week, although I have already been doing some extra days I will be working full time for 4-5 weeks. Boo! But it does mean that I get to take it off in lieu later on, so I can then spend the sumemr sleeping in the sun!

I also had some great news that a friend of mine from a long time ago and her family are moving to Bristol to radically follow the calling they think God's given them. I am so excited on 2 counts: 1. that they really have given up everything in pursuit of God and 2. that I will get to see them all the time, rather than once or twice a year! Great news!

That's it for now. More cleaning to do!

This weekend we are in Manchester visiting Tom's brother & his wife and our two lovely nieces, one of whom is 9 weeks old. It's a lovely break from being in Bristol and being away makes me realise how many habits i've fallen in to and out of. It's a good jolt to the system to wake up again and not let routines lead me into complacency anymore.

I saw something funny the other day, another little commentary on quirky life-things and I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Annoying as I remember at the time thinking that I should bllog about it. I guess older-age brings with it loss of memory, which can be inconvenient at times (and convenient at others!).

Next week Tom and I, along with the rest of my dad's side of the family are off to the south of France for my dad's 60th birthday. I am very much looking forward to speaking French, being warm and generally chilling out, let alone being able to eat some lovely food! Good, although busy, times.

Today I was shopping in the local supermarket and I had a bit of a shock - I saw a vicar (purple-shirt-and-dog-collar-wearing) buying loads of booze: wine, vodka and the such. I'm still trying to figure out why I had a shock - that the stereotype in my head of what vicars should be like was offended, or that in fact I had a different stereotytpe and it was confirmed as true. Both of which could make me look again.
Interesting to self-examine in the middle of a supermarket!

Today I finished reading an amazing book called ‘My name is Asher Lev’, by Chaim Potok. It’s a beautiful insight into the world of the Jewish people, their customs, struggles, views. Actually I have read a few of his books now and where some of them repeat the same things I find that I am more and more drawn into the aspect of ritual that observant Jews live by.

I was sitting in my kitchen this morning, bathed in sunlight and warmth, (potentially very misleading warmth as it was like the artic yesterday), reflecting on the notion of ritualistic Sabbath. I don’t know much about what observant jews actually do on Sabbath aside probably from what I’ve read, but one part of the book talks about a time where the son and father are disagreeing over an issue and the father tells the son not to disrupt his Sabbath or to defile the Sabbath table. I was very struck by the holiness of a day/extended period of time in a day of remembering, in a ritualistic fashion, what God has done, who he is, what he is doing now and that that was to be preserved against interruptions which could be saved for another time. I reflected on how little time we have as families, communities, of ‘holy’ uninterrupted time outside of a Sunday morning service, which for me is rarely peaceful and reflective, when the focus really is solely on God, a celebration of God. I thought how nice it would be to try and incorporate some of this into the life I lead with Tom. I may investigate it further.

Chaim Potok is a very interesting person. It’d be well worth the time to read some of what he has written.

On another totally different thread, I have been meaning to write for sometime about the way in which people everywhere are creating their own theme tunes for life. If you walk down any street you will doubtless hear music being played, whether out of a phone, an i-pod, or some other clever device, or you will see a group of people walking together, talking, but then notice that half of them have their earphones in, listening to music as they walk as well. And I began asking myself why people had started to feel the need to have music on all the time. Please understand that I love music, am not against music in any way. It’s just this particular way of listening to it that has begun to strike me.

It made me think of films and how there are very few silent films, by which I mean to which there is no soundtrack. Castaway is one I do remember. Soundtracks depth to the pictures we watch and heighten the senses. It made me think of something Tom and I have talked about in people needing drama in their lives to make them feel alive and how music with you as you walk, talk, brush your hair, can make you feel more alive, more caught up in the moment, than it would normally do.

It made me feel sad that life isn’t enough as it is. Because I think I have always been very much caught up in the drama of the world and have been made to feel alive by the very fact that God has made me alive, that I can spend hours wondering over the make-up of a flower in my garden, or pondering over the little people I know and the great way they fling themselves at life, no holds barred, or marvelling over how my husband can love me so intensely when I am an emotional rat-bag.

When there is so much longing for life to have greater depth and meaning and excitement and drama, surely it is time those who know him helped people to encounter the One who created it all in the first place and gives true meaning to everything. It sounds corny, but I have a feeling it may be true.

There are upsides of having D&V! Oh yes. Tom and I are currently doing the Lent Challenge, whereby we live off the minimum wage for the period of lent and experience what it is like to have less and then get to give away all the cash we've saved at the end of it. SO, when we didn't eat last week due to being ill, we saved some money which we could then put towards treats which we couldn't otherwise afford - like going to the theatre this staruday night with some cheap tickets which come through a work social club!! Great news!

The last few weeks have been packed with many varying excitements, stresses, watching sad life-things in other people. but the best thing was getting up and about on Saturday after having spent a week in bed with D&V. Tom and I made the most of a gloriously sunny day and gardened in our little patch out the back, chopped down a big spiky bush and tidied up. It was so good to be outside again!
The second best thing was being able, following my ankle operation, to finally walk to work today. It was a bit achy in teh ankle region and my leg muscles are very unsued to working, but it was GREAT to be free!!
I have been thinking about lots of things recently: how to live a life free of worry, how to make the most of where I am, how to be a better friend, wife, helper, how to hold on to Jesus with all that I am, every minute of the day. A slow dawning is coming over me that the latter is crucial to grasp as it seems that when I don't, things very clearly fall apart around me! I guess when you have a big enough vision for something it causes you to take any action possible to ensure it happens. that it what i am working on at the moment. Jesus, open my eyes!!
I am talking at church on Sunday about Jesus as the Good Shepherd. There's so much I could say, the hard part is knowing what is most helpful to say and what would he have me say to our people at this time. Some work is to be done on it on Thursday - the getting down into a coherant form all of the thoughts i've been thinking and mulling over it over the last 6 weeks or so. We'll see... His sheep are apparently meant to be able to hear his voice, so Jesus, open my ears!!

A very quick blog. it might snow this week which feels me with hope and anticipation. I love snow!!
Last week we were at a conference for Vineyard church leaders. It was so great to get away, gain some perspective on life again and let God answer some 'who am I , what am i for' questions. I love our God.
Yesterday I cycled for 2.5 minutes on a bike, which was a great breakthrough in the ankle getting better department. i should be able to cycle for a little way on flat ground now (which is mighty hopeful in a city of hills). I am very happy.
This weekend we're off to ireland to hang out with the Causeway Coast Vineyard guys for a Via teaching weekend. Should be great - so long as I can get rid of this miserable cold that i picked last week!

My wonderful husband (http://pellucid_2.blogspot.com/) has designed me a new blog layout. Nice eh?! thanks lovely man.

What has happened over the last few months? well, let's think.
I had an operation on my ankle in november to fix an old skiing accident. it is still getting better slowly and not being able to exercise or drive or even walk very far (and definitely with no speed if i do) is starting to drive me nuts.
Christmas happened and was generally a relaxing time. we saw lots of friends and ate really nice food and gave thanks to our great God.
i bumped into an old uni friend on gloucester road who's just moved to bristol - great to see him. another lovely friend has moved back from france. my friend claire is coming to visit from australia in the summer - yey!
i have fallen more in love with my husband than ever. how thankful i am that i have married a man who searches hard after our God, in spite of how hard it can sometimes seem.

i am feeling stirred by God to search after him - it's a good stirring of 'where do i fit?'. I don't want to get hung up on 'call' as i am particularly un-fond of that word and the stress and inaction that it provokes in peoples' lives around me. i know i feel super-passionate about teh marginalised and for discipling (the 'gospel' encompasses both i reckon) and i guess i just want to be figuring out how best i can take action in these areas in this life. easier said than done but it's happening, which is a start. god forgive me for taking so long at getting round to being more intentional and for speaking os many words and knowing your prompting but not doing anything about it.

today i am having a bad day: i woke up grumpy and feeling tired, having had too much in our diaries for the past 3 weeks and God doing lots of clearing out of me, leaving me a bit washed out. i was late leaving for work, my chain fell off on the way and i got really oily trying to pull it out of where it had got itself jammed, then i got stuck in traffic behind stinky polluting buses, then my gears didn't work properly. i finally got to work almost laughing at myself because of how grumpy i was.
i spoke with a work colleague who thankfully made me laugh. i am on the road to recovery... hopefully!!

a lovely guy from our church has written such a great report back from his time away that you have to see it. It echoes woderfully the first time I encountered Jackie Pullinger - mainly the way he describes the interraction with god that goes on and how they seem to actually understand that god is real and give him the respect and space to be so.
I love how he's written so humbly and how it's handy he's done it as I have been unable to without getting frustrated and cross and now I can just point people to him!
Thanks Andy!

when hard things come along in life it's a strange realisation to think that when you were young and your parents had hard stuff come along you'd look at it and feel safe that they were 'adults' and so would know what to do and be grown up and sort it out. As i get older I realise that actually no-one ever 'grows' up - your parents didn't ever really know what they were doing, it just seemed like it to the little people around them. They just muddled through and hoped (and prayed in some cases). hard times now just mean being more and more like a little girl again and trying to just let myself fall into the lap of the one who really does knwo what he's doing.

Another reason to avoid Tesco:
So I was shopping in Tesco a couple of days ago, for white wine vinegar which my three local supermarkets didn't have for some reason (!) and whilst i was there i thought I would save some time, of which I was rapidly running out, and buy some eggs. I went to the egg section and hunted around for the free range ones. There weren't loads left but I thought I'd take some - checked them and found they were all cracked inside the box. I tried another and the same - this then happened 5 times. The last box I tried I opened to find a dead chick inside which i gues smust have hatched and then died being unable to get out due to being packed into a big stacking crate thing. Yuk yuk yuk.
I subsequently went to my local greengtocers where I usually buy my eggs and got some free range ones there, for cheaper and which were bigger and fresher. Just goes to show local is generally much better than national!

The last couple of month have been pretty hectic. Managed to get through the exam period ok and now have lots of time of in lieu to take so I can have a relaxing summer. Then I went with the Form team to Syria and Lebanon to pray and chat with people. It was a very amazing experience and deserves a full blog of its own, which I will endeavour to do at some point soon. Then Tom and I went to Ireland for 5 days for a Form centre-leaders meeting with the other guys who run Form, or its equivalent, around the globe. It was really great to hang out with some like-minded people, exchange ideas and feel inspired for the future. Now all we need are more formettes for next year. Oh, just so you can start getting your head round it, Form will be no loner so-called from September. We, in the Vineyard, are branding ourselves as 'Via' (meaning the Way). It'll be fun to put a Vineyard swing on things.
Briefly, things I have been thinking about and challenged on:
Israel and Lebanon - gutted. Many have mentioned how glad we must be to have got back just before it all started. To be honest Tom and I are actually more overwhelmingly concerned for those we have left behind. Thankfully 3 of our closest contacts have managed to leave already. I can't help thinking of one woman though who told us how glad she was that Syria had finally left and Israel was no longer there, having grown up in the war and lost many family members and friends to it. She felt really free and energised and happy. Now I guess things are back to the way they have always been for her. Just gutting. Please do pray for a solution to come up, that justice would be paid out by God and not by man.
Healing - we're looking through the topic of healing in housegroup at the moment and it's super challenging to try and figure your way through it, trying to figure out what is experience and fear and what is God. We met some of the people who head up the healing on the streets at Causeway Coast Vineyard whilst over in Ireland and were really inspired. They see it - every Saturday!!!! How can that be denied?
Time Management - what to do with my free time. I only work part time and I have spent time asking god what he'll let me do with the other 2.5 days a week. I could easily fill it with many things but want the best. I feel challenged at the moment to make time to sit in cafes and pray for prophetic thigns for people. I have longed to see it happen for such a long time but have now felt quite strongly the push from god to actually do something about it myself!

I am now in the middle of the exams i have been organising. It's an interesting challenege to stay calm and peaceful in the middle of absolute chaos!

Today on the way to work i saw a little boy, about 5 or 6, running round in a Mr Incredible all in one suit, with padded fake muscles in the right places. It was very cute and he was fully in his own Mr Incredible world battling away at the baddies. I think there's some kind of analogy to find there with Go and taking on the spiritual realm but needing to remember to take our suits off from time to time to remember who we are, but can't qute get it clear in my head though. The thing i do have clear in my head is how much fun that little kid was having being something he wasn't, but who he thought he could be.

Here's to the next 3 weeks being finished and life returning a little more back to normal (whatever that's supposed to look like!)

The last two weeks have been ones of being very busy - cooking for people: housegroup lent meals, families with new babies or people in hospital; of visiting hospitals, of praying with friends, of making new friends, of going on walks, of busyness at work... It's funny how you can only work part time and yet still be super-occupied!
How to be a busy person and have a relationship with God is an interesting one. I have tried to fit in short little spaces of time in my day which has been good and then have tried also to make the most of my hour slots here and there between things. I still think part of it is, as a friend and i were talking about, making room for a sabath time regularly. I guess this needs to be quite flexible as there ARE times in life which are busier than others, but trying to prioritise some time each week where i can have two or three hours to be is good food for the soul i think. I know Tom starts to notice when i haven't spent that time being refreshed by spending time with God and remembering who i am, what life is about and who God is - my emotional side comes shooting out and i'm either crying or being grumpy much more than normal! Poor tom. So i need to do it for his sake as well as my own!

A big waffle to not say much apart form what is filling my mind today.

A very very speedy blog (you will be able to tell from the atrocity of my spelling) as i'm about to go home from work.

Just got back yesterday from a really great weekend away with some lovely friends in the Brecons. I'd never been there before so turning up to a load of snow and beautiful hills has made me fall in love with the place hugely.

God's still doing lots of stuff in me, kind of like being deconstructed i think! I did have some really nice times over the weekend though: one whilst worshipping and realising that for the first time i was coming to God not because i wanted something, or to prove something, or to be approved of, gain etc, but just to worship and love God because i'm loved and be with him. No other agenda. It felt so totally freeing and GREAT!!! The other was though a book i skim read whilst there that someone lent me about being like a child - stripped away of the fears, anxiety, habits, constraints that the world puts on and really just being free. It felt good to know that and has rooted itself somewhere inside.

Next week pastor's conference - rock on! Can't wait to see what god has in store there!

i am trying to think of the most significant things that have happened recently to be able to put on this site. there are so many - friends getting pregnant, God providing money for us, being able to stay in our house for longer, a lovely retreat day with my wonderful husband. i think most of all though it's the continued attention of God to helping me become whole. i, with the help of a very helpful counsellor lady (I would thoroughly recommend it - so good for the soul!), have been working my way through a bunch of stuff, a lot of which has to do with living up to others' expectations and seeking approval from other places apart from God, even when not really wanting to - just not being able to escape it. it's so hard to face up to some things you don't like apart yourself, but so important in order to be able to fully begin to live the life that God offers you. i am beginning to realise how much i have missed out on already and how much i don't want to miss out on anything else. Lord help me, more, please. thank you for being so merciful and gracious towards me - you blow me away.

i have also been reading 'Disappointment with God' by Philip Yancey as i have some friends,as well as trying to figure out what i think about the healing thing myself, who are struggling with feeling as if God hasn't answered their prayers. it's a very good book and sheds some helpful light on a good perspective to take on things. wel worth a read!

I am so glad that the last 6 weeks have come to an end. it seems like it was a constant blur of things to do: applications for jobs to fill out, CVs to compile and send off, sermons to write for church meetings, weekends away with the leadership team and then with Form, working two jobs for a few weeks which meant 6 day weeks of total busyness and on top of all that trying desperately to fit in Christmas preparations. PHEW!
Tom and I are currently at my mum's house in Cambridge where it snowed last night leaving a wonderful blanket everywhere. I love how sound is muffled when it's snowed. It makes everything so much more serene and calm, something which automatically affects my mood in such positive ways.
Christmas was fun - spent with wonderful friends. New year should be fun too, and with a nice relaxing, doing nothing week in between I think I’ll feel prepared for some fun and frolicking!
I feel like I am still under scrutiny from the Lord, which I am also trying to run from with parts of me. I have succumbed to the temptation to hide myself in TV and food and books. So silly. The other day, in my quest to push on with the figuring out the healing issues, I picked up power healing by John Wimber - a book which has sat on my shelf for a couple of years unread. It's a good one, worth reading, but still didn't answer my questions totally. I then picked up 'the problem of pain' by cs lewis and turned to the chapter on human suffering. I read it and didn't really like it too much. I find him quite a struggle to get through sometimes - it's very intellectual and very modern in its approach. Later on whilst spending more time ranting at the Lord about it all, I felt a prompting to stop being so impatient. I turned back to the book and began reading from the start. I turned to the first chapter and read this:
"If God were good, He would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy and if God were almighty he would be able to do as he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness or power or both"
I was almost thrown into the back of my chair. It is almost exactly what I had written in my journal just before. Tom, upon my subsequent reading of it to him, then asked me what the problem with the statement was. My first reaction was to say that God isn't powerless or lacking in goodness. But then realised that it is the start of the sentence where the enemy would seek to trick us: that God wishes his creatures to be happy. I'm sure it's good if we do feel happy. But I don't necessarily agree that that's God's aim. Or at least not our idea of happiness. One to chew on. It did instantly break some of the bubble I have been living in about what my rights are and what God wanted. It's so scarily easy to believe lies when they are told to you enough by a whispering subconscious and lying enemy. It gave me courage to go and keep reading, whilst starting to trust again in a God who wants the 'best' for us...

Tomorrow i have a job interview for a part-time job which will either suppliment or replace my job at the cafe. I think i'm actually quite keen on getting it, which is quite contrary to how i thought i'd feel. I think most of all though to be shortlisted for interview is significant in that i wasn't sure if my CV really added up to much at first glance - working in a cafe and lots of years working in churches doesn't strike me as being the best things that employers are looking for. Selling myself isn't one of my greatest characteristics so i think i've let God do it for me a bit - and of course he's come up trumps.

At the moment we are trying to figure out, as i imagine are most fo the country, what to do for Christmas this year. We are planning on going over to my parents' respective houses a couple of days after xmas, but whilst here what to do. Thinking currently is that we will invite people round to ours and just have a bit of fun and lots of food. Hopefully it'll work out. Christmas is such a tricky thing. It's meant to be a time of happiness etc but so often works out as a political nightmare trying to please everyone and making sure people don't get left out. I think it will only get trickier when Tom's parents move to Portugal rather than living in Dubai as it means they'll be within easy visiting distance. That's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong (who could complain about having parents-in-law who live 10 minutes drive form the beach on the south coast of Portugal in a beautiful big hosue in the middle of an orange grove!!). i guess it just adds into the mix of what to do, who to see when!

I am still loving the fresh frosty morings. We had some amazingly beautiful cobwebs that seemed to be spun out of diamonds in our garden yesterday. Tom was out snapping away first thing. I so got into the autumn spirit that i went into the garden and pruned everything, including a huge tree, which was once only a small bush and had grown way out of control. I fear i may have gone slightly overboard though. Tom was a little stunned to find simply a few stumps left this morning when he looked outside. Hopefully it's very robust and will grow back int eh spring. If not i'll be in big trouble with the landlords!!

Thoughts and ruminations from the past week or so include:

1. how god truly is amazing at planning things. So many times recently both in my life and others we can look back both short an dlong term and see how 'GOd works all things together' so that his plans work out in us and for us and through us.

2. that we have been looked after and provided for financially more than i could ever have expected. Truly humbling and inspiring

3. that my husband is fantastic. every day at the moment i am a bit more overwhelmed by how much of a blessing he is in my life and how thankful i am for him. It's coming up to our 2 year anniversary and it's incredible to think how much life has changed since then, how much better it's got, how much wholler (?) i am

4. that once again i love autumn/winter and frosty mornings and wrapping up warmly and sweeping my feet through leaves and putting on hats and long coats. i really hope i can spend the rest of my life with each season being fresh and new eaach year again.

5. that God is determined to help us be the people he originally intended us to be even though sometimes that hurts. I have been struggling my way through the 'why don't you heal' questions over the past few weeks, finding that the usual answers you can tell others aren't sufficient on yourself and in this phase of being honest with God and him sorting out hidden fears, that i have to bring the big ones to the table and really start to thrash them out into some workable theology for myself and not keep living off of others' thoughts and working-outs. I was brought up short for not following though on my comments the other day by a lovely friend, how i can easily throw big thoughts out there but never finish thinking about them. i will try harder this time as i know it's something that God's not going to let rest in me.

Back to looking after some children for some friends for a few days now. Such fun to be around people who get a kick out of sniggering for ages over realy silly things and for whom a sticker is the most valuable thing in the world. Oh for uncomlicated ignorance!!

This is a quick post as i'm waiting for Tom so we can go for lunch. Still trying to figure out what to do about the job and am in the process of starting to look for other part time jobs that can either rplace it or work alongside it. Wait and see i guess. God's come up trumps in providing us with cash though just with a whole bunch of random finding money in pockets, some in bank accounts we'd forgotten about extra. Some may call it coincidence but it's not often that i wake up thinking about money, remember to pray and then feel totally peaceful about God as total and utter provider and then find heaps of cash.

Last weekend we went away with our lovely neighbours to the cotswalds. we walked lots, ate lovely food, and endured HUGE amounts of rain and wind. All in all a great weekend : )

Husband's here so i will dash...

Today i had some frustrating news: Mike, owner of the cafe, is probably going to be closing it on Tuesdays and opening on Saturday nights and sunday lunchtimes in order to make it all more cost-efficient. This means, if i want to keep hold of my marriage(!), that i may well have to start to look for another job : ( Saturday is the only day i get to have off with my lovely husband and then sundays are church days so i couldn't do those anyway leaving not much time to earn any money. Not good. Hmmm...

(NB This is a very quickly written splurge of thoughts as i'm in a rush so if it sounds rash and brutal in places i apologise for not hvaig fully digested my thoughts before committing them to the world for analysis)


Had a great lunch with my wonderful girlfriends last Monday, had the formettes round for a take out on Tuesday, saw some of Tom's old work colleagues on Wednesday for dinner, chilled on Thursday and Friday and then spent Saturday in Winchester at a Vineyard Leaders' day (not leader's day as written on the advertising brochure as i think that make John Mumford sound slightly egotistical!). It was nice to see some old friends, great to see God working in the formettes and for them to be praying for people. In the evening we then totally vegged at the cinema watching Wallce & Gromit. Very very funny and totally a must to see at the cinema rather than on DVD.


Sunday was the church service, in which Andrew did a great job talking about spiritual warfare and some cool ministry stuff happened at the end. Then we babysat our very lovely god-daughter for a while and then headed off to a party for the 1 year old daughter of my boss at the cafe. She was also getting christened that day so we had some interesting chats with the 'godparents', none of whom actually believed in God at all but thought that it was important to have good values and morals in life. They talked about how they found the church where the servcie was held to be a place where there was a really welcoming, caring community. I thought that was a good thing. I guess whyen it comes down to it you either believe in God or you don't and you can't try and persuade people into it. Slightly candid maybe but i've always thought that 1. seeing who God is working in and 2. showing them who he is thourgh practical demonstration is always a much easier starting place. Maybe just the way i work. The kingdom always works its ways round peoples' intellects anyway. Phew! We also chatted for a while to a muslim woman who was looking into Christianity. So interesting!!!

That's it. I have to dash, things to do, poeple to go and see.

so another month has sped by and it's now the middle of november. much to my delight the leaves are changing colour and the autumn winds are starting to blow. I love days that are nice and blue-skied, leaves blowing around your ankles and a fresh wind. It makes me feel so alive! Last weekend in fact we went to Westonbirt arboretum and checked out some of the amazing maple and acer trees there. It was like walking in a green world with bglazing red torched to light the way every so often.

The cafe is going very well still. My feet have stopped hurting so much and i'm really liking the people. I got to pray with one of the gusy there a couple of weeks ago when he was sick. Fun to see God come and him to be touched!!!

I've been doing a lot of sorting through myself and have felt God begin to open up some doors which have been shut for a very long time in my inner house, so to speak. It's so good to have him sweep through, although a little painful having to feel the thigns you've hidden in there because they hurt too much to feel. It's such a good palce to be when you're simply vulnerable and wholly you before God and other people. With that and the leaves i am feeling simply alive and good at the moment.

Hooray!

so i have now succecssfully left working for Bristol Vineyard (although i'm not sure how you could unsuccessfully leave!) and have got myself a great job at a cafe just round the corner from where i live. I work four days a week with a bunch of really fun friendsly people, running around serving and making coffee. i'm loving being around people who aren't into God and of having the opportunity to be able to start being Jesus to them. It's amaxing how, if you ask teh right questions, people will totally open up to you, maybe moreso than others who i have met in the church who you would normally expect, inour christian culture of 'sharing' to be very au fait with it. In essence i love being 'in the world'. it's so much fun to have oppoprtunities all the time to try to be Jesus and theyr eally are there all the time wherever you look for them!

on friday morning i decided that we were going to go camping. this isn't because i am a tyrannical wife, simply more that we're both rubbish at making decisions and someone needed to take a step forward. So we packed up the car and headed over to Wales to the Gower area.

We stayed at a little campsite next to Oxwich Bay, which was really full and quite slopey but nice still. having set up our tent we managed to eat some nicey campstove-cooked food, then slept. Or tried to sleep - the man next door snored like a trooper, a large slope which meant we kept sliding down to the bottom of the tent and there were screaming, sacred-ofthe-dark kids everywhere.

The next day was rainy and so we went to watch teh Tri-nations rugby in Swansea, which was good and i got excited enough to shout at the TVs once or twice, (which was midly not great as i was the only girl in a pub of men). lookeda round Swansea when the rain stopped and then headed off to beaches for a windswept exploartion of some great rock pools. Slept a bit better (figured out to not slip so much) then on Sunday took a long walk along Rhossilli bay which was gorgeous. Then, after paying an extortionate fee to park at a beach we weren't going to stay at very long, we ate chips, drank tea and tried to be bravely warm during a couldy sky we came home. All in all we had a lovely time. Good for me as i love to be outside and felt so alive all weekend. i think it was ok for Tom - he got to eat 2 fry-ups anyway!

I also found 2 nice shells : )

goodness me, what a long time i've been away. It's been an interesting 4 months of total exhaustion necessitating lying down for endless hours, thinking and then having to not think as i was thinking too much, praying, letting go of control, a slow return to work, a trip to America and France and now looking to the end of my role here at Bristol Vineyard in 8 working days' time. It's all a bit too much to go in to, but needless to say it's been an interesting journey. I am currently thinking about a few things:
1. what i am going to do next with my life - what kind of job i shall do, full time, part time, training, intense, light and easy etc etc
2. what Tom and I are going to do next in our lives - tom is finishing his work in law and is taking over my role in the church running Form
3. how much i need God
4. how much i don't need my ways of doing things
5. how much i wish i got it right more of the time so i could avoid the last 4 months!

i guess over all it's a weird time of being happy to finish one thing as it feels as if God has released me to do something new, yet at the same time not really knowing what he's released me to do. I don't feel overly anxious about it all - i think i have lots of things to think about, new times coming to worry, which is good. i guess i just want to move into what's going to be most profitable for the Kingdom.

on a slightly more mundane, earthly note, i just need to say how happy i am to have lovely friends here. Cheers you lot!

Today i felt a bit sad. I went out to Joe's - the great bread shop round the corner - to pick up some bread to make sandwiches and on the way i walked past a really big snail, fully outstretched, slowly making its way across the path towards a garden. I thought to myself that i shuld maybe pick him up and move him in case someone stepped on him, but then reasoned that no-one would be so cruel to step on such a big snail. Sadly, then on my way back to work again i walked past the same spot and found him freshly crushed... People are quite mean sometimes.

I had last week off work which was a godsend. I was so tired both physically, emotionally and spiritually that i was really to collapse! It led me to a lot of soul searching and a lot of asking God what was going on on, why i was so tired, etc etc. I was reminded of two totally key life verses that i had temporarily misplaced in my brain:
Isaiah 30 v5: "In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and rest is your strength"
and
Isaiah 40 v28-31 "28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. "

I spent a lot of time thinking about what it really means to be quiet and to rest before God and a lot about waiting on God. Waiting on God is really linked in the bible to having hope in Him, who he is, the expectation that he can do something. I don't know if it's really the passive thing that i usually think of. Quite often it should also mean that i act out of a place of knowning who God is and what he does and will do.

I don't know if i came up with many conclusions apart from needing to find time to rest, both physically and spiritually in ways that really do refresh me. Working from a place of rest seems to be the key phrase around church at the moment.

It also led me to begin asking God again what i am really for. I don't want to be doing the things that exhaust me when there are things that i could be doing, which are just as much what God has in store for me, which would give me life. I think it's ok to want to be satisfied in life, but i'm not sure if that satisfaction comes from what you do, simply for what it is, or if it comes from knowing that you're doing what God wants you to do. Probably the latter, which then facilitates the former. I think i'm asking God again what i'm made for. Interesting!

Tom and i spent some lovely time with Matt & Anita, a couple over from New Zealand, on Saturday. They have come from a cafe-church background and it was really interesting to hear their experiences of coming to 'regular' church. it was good to hang out with people who are so chilled and yet so passionate about God. Fun fun fun : )

man it's been ages since i put anything up here. I have been thinking about things, just writing it in my journal instead. Once it's poured out of my head i find it hard to then regurgitate it anywhere else.
Today it's snowing wonderfuly outside. i love snow. it's not settling yet but i am praying that it will. It does make me a bit nostalgic of mountain times though. i miss being in the middle of surroundings so huge that it reminds me of how small and insignificant i am, of how we think we rule the world and yet a loud noise can make a ton of snow fall and squash a village. weird hey.
At the moment Tom and I are looking after Andrew and Ros' children for a few days while they're away at a conference. It's quite good fun, doing ponytails and plaits in hair, putting on coats, making dinner. Not quite sure i'm ready for it properly yet but it's fun at the moment. It makes me realise what an amazing dad Tom will make one day. He's brilliant with children. Hopefully we might be able to have some of our own one day. Fun!!
I am thinking about God quite a lot today too, which is always good. I have been challenged recently by the passage in Luke 9 ( i think) where Jesus' disciples try to cast out a demon and can't and then Jesus does and tells them it can only be done through prayer. I've always been a bit intruiged by that one and heard a cool explanation of it the other day - that having a deepening relationship with God, talking with God, ie praying, is the means by which we find out who we are in God and therefore begin to grow in spiritual authority, thus being able to kick out demons and see people healed more. I know that God uses everyone and anyone as he likes, but it's a clear example of people not being able to do something. I find myself frustrated so often that nothing happens when i pray and yet when others do, who i know to have a very deep relationship with God, stuff DOES happen. I feel challenged ot go for broke with God, but have no real idea of what that looks like. I guess i can only start where i am and see what happens. If nothing happens, then i've tried, will have grown closer to God etc so how can i possibly lose?!

Ok, so I’ve had a few days in Oman with tom and his parents, which was amazing. We went to the top section, which is actually separated from the rest of Oman by a bit of the UAE and went to a hotel in the mountains. We went on a day’s trip on a Dow, a fishing/transporting people boat around a local type of fjord. We saw dolphins, swam in nice water (apart form the tiny weenie little jellyfish which prickled you a bit) and saw these ridiculously small villages (10 houses and sometimes a population on 25, in the capital of that area!) which you can’t get to apart form by boat. Crazy people. Anyway, it was very restful and let me see what a wonderfully creative God we have. I think some would find the landscape of grey and brown mountains slightly boring and there was no lush forest to walk through or paths to stroll up, but the majesty and strength you could see in the was phenomenal. I love this sort of landscape. It seems so old for some reason!
I had a longer think about what I wrote previously and tom and I chatted about it some more. We discussed how fundamentally although you say that you hold other denominations as equal, when they say something which makes you bristle, it is usually because you think they’re wrong. This must therefore mean that you think they are wrong and you are right, therefore making them unequal at a deep fundamental basic level of your consciousness. We then talked about the notion of needing to be right about things – an interesting human characteristic. It made me think about how different theologies might be right for different times and different places? Liberation theology works a bit like this I think. It makes me feel quite humbled in my views of Christianity around the world and challenges me about the in-built presumptions, beliefs, prejudices and biases I have. Can it be as equally right for me to believe one thing about Christianity as being the most important, non-negotiable and for someone across the other side of the world to believe something totally different, yet still believe in the same God. It makes me wonder what we can learn from other parts of the Christian faith that we ignore – we are all in the same stew after all.
We have a new digital camera – a fuji 440, which is brilliant. Once we manage to get some software on a computer somewhere we can download them and you can see some of where we were.
Ps Jacqui – the fish stank, there was no way you were going to get it anywhere near my mouth!

i really like coming to to Dubai to see Tom's parents. It's always a refreshing change to be in such a different, non-western environment and always challenging to see how Christianity works itself out differently in different cultures. It reminds me of something someone said recently, having spent some time at All Nations college where there were over 50 nations represented at once and noting how each would see something different of Christianity as being the most important and yet when they came otgether to worship they were all in one family.
I think in the Vineyard we talk often about being the turnip in the stew and that there are lots of other 'vegetables' which make up the whole. I do wonder though how much validity we give the other vegetables. I was so challenged today by Tom's mum telling us a story of the different ways in which different denominaitons of churches have embraced the tsunami tragedy - the church of england church is very much grace to all, explaning children dying in the waves as a natura;l tragedy due to the fallenness of our world and sending aid to everyone; and the churches of other origins, from Sri Lankia and Indonesia see the whole thing as God's judgement on the immoral behaviour of the muslims in the country. they are therfore sending the aid mainly to the christian churches, claiming that aid is being denied to them by the authorities. Her statement of 'how can a church of england minister know what really goes on in the countries and who doesn't hear the stories of fishermen forcing children to desecrate churches and stamp on cruycifixes as he doesn't spend time with these people, know what God thinks?' made me think. Her pastor has just gone out to the andaman islands for two weeks to a church he has links with to see what longterm aid they can offer.
There have been a few things in the ways in which prophecy and interpretation of scripture have been done in churches here recently which have bristled all of my natural instincts too, seemingly so wrongly translated and read. yet we see nothing but growth and God doing amazing things in those churches and through the people in them. It makes me wonder if we in the west take our theology, meaning the interpretation of scripture, too narrow-mindedly. I'm sure this will cause many to disagree, but it's just a thought. We get so caught up in dismissing things because they wouldn't stand the rigourous testing that we place scripture under and yet i wonder if maybe in doing that we are throwing out lots of God stuff. I know that the other denominations aren't perfect and they too have many disagreements about scriptural things (currently over whether or not Jesus turned water into wine or grape jiuce in one church here appreantly), i guess i mean as an overall whole i could be less anal in over-analysing things? Probably very badly put... i'll have a longer think and try to rephrase it.
On another notes of the tsunami side of things, it's been very good to get involved in the actual hands-on side of sending things out to the countries affected. Last night we were packing boxes of salted fish, and then loading them onto a truck ready to be collected to be put in the container, today counting money collected and this evening labelling bags of rice. I appreciate so much the aid organisations' efforts in western countries and being able to move so fast in delivering what is needed, but it feels good to actually not just give money, but also to help put the money to use in a practical visible fashion.
that's all for now. i will think longer on what i have said and reajust things accordingly...

well, the weekend went better than i thought it would, so that was good!
it feels like God has given me some new lenses to see everything through in terms of my dad - ones which, although he did do crap stuff, i can appreciate that he is human and therefore from that point of view i can forgive him and stop expecting him to be perfect.
it means that i can rely on and trust in my perfect father and let dad just do what he does and let it wash over me more.
it also felt like i don't need the big show-down with dad as it won't achieve anything really. God is more than big enough to heal hurts and bind up wounds. as for telling dad some stuff, i think that will happen but don't know how or when. that can be up to God.
thanks for praying!

so, a quick one for all of you praying people out there who want to pray. this weekend is the 'seeing dad' weekend and i'd really appreciate some prayer for it, mainly on Saturday, as it's not going to be easy - i guess simply that i would know so truly that my heavenly father is with me. i don't want to grit my teeth and get through it, i want to learn and grow and forgive and i think some of that has to come from hard things.
thanks lots!