Don't look in the cupboards!

My surface tablet decided to take this photo of my messy desk all by itself! (Well, my wayward finger might have had something to do with it!) but it is in keeping with my thoughts for the day, in a messy roundabout sort of way.

I don't know about you, but when people visit my home it usually means there has been a frantic flurry of tidying activity on my part, papers, books, crayons, gelli plates (?) etc gathered up and thrown into cupboards and drawers, notice the emphasis on crafting bits and bobs! Throw into the mix a hasty stint at the sink washing up and a gathering up of clothes for washing from Ben's bedroom. You get the picture.

The visitors arrive and say how welcoming and lovely your home is and you can't help yourself, you blurt out, "Thank you, but don't open the cupboards, anything might fall out!"
Now at this juncture I must just say that since our well documented move to our new home six months ago this frantic tidy up is not nearly so frantic, chaotic, or even necessary! all that decluttering really has made a difference to our home and our lives.

The washing is gently placed in the dishwasher, the cushions on the sofa plumped up and we're pretty much good to go. Crafting and  journaling stuff can stay out if that was what we were doing prior to the visit and we're even totally happy to receive unexpected visitors without being wracked with shame at the state of our home. it feels good.

This got me thinking, last night when I should have been sleeping! This tendency to shove the clutter away in a cupboard, shutting the door firmly and hoping no one opens it, letting it all spill out is  I fear what some of us (me definitely) at some time do with our emotions and our faith. We show the world our hastily tidied, external appearance, smiling, saying all the right things when behind the closed doors of our hearts the clutter of pain, fear, doubt, anger, bitterness, resentment is straining to be released.

Now, I am not for one minute suggesting we all go around broadcasting every detail of our inward struggles and battles (visitors please don't worry, I won't unleash the cupboards) but, there is a time and a place when a spiritual and or emotional declutter is necessary even essential. A time when we make the decision to face up to those things that we prefer to keep buried. Sharing with a trusted friend(s) who can help you bring it to the Lord is perfect but there will be some for whom the wounds from the past are so deep they need the help  of a professional counsellor or even doctor. Prayer is obviously our greatest weapon and tool for healing, recovery and hope for  the future, we are blessed that we can ask for prayer without even needing to go into specifics , we have the Holy Spirit to guide our hearts and words to respond, and we have Jesus Christ Himself as our intercessor.

I can honestly say that the effects of decluttering practically and spiritually and emotionally are freeing, uplifting, and liberating. It costs; it hurts, it challenges and it drags us out of our comfort zones and our protective shells but it is worth it. 2 Timothy 1:7 says "For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline."

So, the next time you have visitors, throw open the doors of your cupboards (just provide protective helmets if there are any sharp or heavy objects that might fall!)   

Jolly hockey sticks!

This is posh me! Rarely spotted in public, timid and prone to flight when challenged! I'm not naturally a smart, sophisticated sort of female (much to my Mum's disappointment!), dressing up to go out is the opposite of a treat for me, I just feel out of sorts, uncomfortable and not me. I'm at my happiest in jogging bottoms or jeans and a tee-shirt! However, when looked at in relation to my life that is not altogether inappropriate.

Ben was scrolling through posts from the 2016 Olympics when he  came across pictures of the women's hockey team, we both remembered our increasing pride and excitement as our hugely talented ladies progressed through the tournament, we watched every match avidly and  I have to confess we both danced and cheered around our living room when they won the gold medal.

As a school girl (more decades ago than I choose to share) hockey was my sport, I loved it, I played for school and was hockey captain and I played for a local ladies team and a mixed hockey team, our school team even won the Cheshire Cup for the first time in sixty years while I was captain and my college team won the British Colleges tournament while I was there and playing. I was passionate about my sport and practised pretty much every day outside my house. 

When I was sixteen my P.E teacher. applied for me to go on a long weekend advanced hockey coaching camp at I.M. Marsh P.E. College in Liverpool.  I was simultaneously excited, thrilled and more than a little bit terrified. Firstly I travelled on my own (first time ever) then when I finally made my way down the hugely intimidating drive to the imposing main building and found my way to the registration point I discovered that I was the youngest on the course (by three years) as all the others were students at college, university or teaching in schools. Panic alert! I think nowadays what ensued would be described as a meltdown! I took myself off to the toilets and broke my heart.

Once I was able to breathe  without risk of imminent collapse I made my way to the lifts to find my room in the halls of residence. I did not ( and do not ) like lifts but my room was, if I remember correctly on the sixth floor, they were no ordinary lifts, they were door less and moved continuously, you had to leap in and out at the appropriate time unless you wanted to go up and down for eternity (always assuming you got in in the first place) The first night was not easy, pretty much everyone knew everyone, except me. I spent the evening sitting in proximity to but apart from the fun.

I strongly suspect that if mobile phones had been around then my Mum would have received multiple texts requesting (no, begging) that she got my Dad to come and take me home. Sadly, or happily, no such method of communication was available in those days. I was stuck there till Monday!

I have to confess that the weekend got better, once we got into the drills, passing, tackling and  shooting practices everything fell into place. I became part of the group, made friends, had the time of my life, loved every minute and didn't want to go home on Monday. We even had a seven aside tournament on the Sunday afternoon on the hottest day for a decade, and my team won!

Sometimes God sends us into situations that are at best daunting and at worst terrifying, He gently pushes us out of our comfort zones ( doesn't feel gentle I know) and into the place where all we can do is keep pressing on, step by timid step trusting He is there guiding, upholding, equipping and cheering. If we hold our nerve and stick it out it can turn out to be just what we needed, and a great experience.

if your're going to be a tree, be a palm tree!

Palm trees! They just conjure up images of gloriously balmy, sunny, sandy beaches and crystal clear blue seas. An extra comfortable beach lounger, a cool drink and of course, a good book. Oooh, beam me up Scotty!

Palm trees are for many of us part of happy memories of family holidays, things of some beauty and beneficial shade; but, there's a lot more to the palm tree than immediately hits the eye. Palm trees as a rule grow in sandy, rocky places, with lots of sun and not too much rain. they have to dig deep for the nutrients they require to grow.

Fact 1  you can chop into a palm tree and it won't die, unlike most trees where their nutrients are stored just below the surface of the bark, the nutrients of the palm tree are stored deep within.  

Fact 2  the root system below a palm tree is always considerably higher (taller) than the actual tree you can see.  Its roots stretch down to the depths to find the water and all they need to sustain life.

Fact 3  when a tropical storm hits, the palm tree can bend to the ground from one side to the other time after time but it will not break. In fact a palm tree is stronger after a storm has passed over!

The palm tree is deceptively strong, it is resilient, it cannot be broken by the rigours of daily living. It digs deep in order to feed and nourish itself and sustain itself when life gets rough.

As Christians we should be like the palm tree, we should root and establish ourselves in the presence of God, in His Word  in prayer and fellowship with Him and with  our brothers and sisters in the faith. Our root system should be bigger than our visible selves and that strength will protect us and sustain us against attack and the world when the storms hit. We may be bent, wounded, beaten down but we can and will bounce back and stand tall again.

In Ephesians 3:17 -18 Paul prays "I pray that out of the riches of His glory, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of His love." 

I can't think of anything better than being rooted and grounded in the love of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit!

I'm a luddite!

It's confession time! I'm a reluctant convert to modern technology, I love to see all the modern technology and I'm awed by the amazing things that can be produced from something as tiny as a smart phone; but, if I'm honest I'm an old fashioned soul...

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This is my preferred method of putting my thoughts on to paper, I have quite a little collection of fountain pens and I use one daily. I use different ones to make sure none of them are neglected or, horror of horrors, dry up!

This is how my preparation for meetings, talks, Kid's Club, Café Church starts, it's how the first half of "Joel, an unexpected hero" was written. Its great for someone like me who corrects as I go, its so easy to cross out, add in an extra line indicate with arrows the change of position for a sentence or paragraph because whatever I do I can't inadvertently press an innocuous looking key which has the power of a Storm Trooper to delete, destroy or lose forever that which I have laboriously written.

However, I am actually writing this directly onto my little tablet, editing as I go (very carefully) because I've come to accept that in certain cases it is a ludicrous waste of time to handwrite something only to then rewrite the same thing on a computer.

This was indeed my first computer! When Ben was about five we visited a small museum while on holiday, it had (to my delight) a small but interesting display about the development of writing, scrolls, parchment, codex, pencils, biros, fountain pens right up to typewriters one of which children could play on. Ben  delighted the elderly gentleman (seemed that way then, now, not so much!) by innocently asking where the delete key was!

Our first home computer was an Acorn Archimedes. a large, unwieldy, stubborn and highly uncooperative piece of technology bought solely to access some language programmes to help Ben, it hardly used because it was so unreliable and took such a long time to set up, and ben really didn't want to be bothered when he could look at a book! My current is a surface tablet (generation 1) Its no bigger than an iPad but it does pretty much everything a desk top or laptop computer can do, the only problem is that its petite design makes the screen very small!

Where is this going you ask, (I'm asking myself the same question!) Well, I realise my reluctance to embrace new technology, my distrust of it and my negative attitude to it can be sadly echoed in daily living. How many times in our Churches have you heard the words "But we've always done it this way!" Like technology new ideas, new ways of doing things are challenging our safe, tried and tested ways of doing things. As with technology  we must embrace change, we must be willing to try new things and accept that what was good for the fifties, seventies, nineties, even the noughties is not necessarily good for the teenage years!

I'm not advocating that we don't respect tradition and I'm not saying that the old ways are all bad or inappropriate, simply that I personally need to be open to changes and other ways of doing things as I'm learning to technologically.

God equips us, He gives us the very best in order that we can do our very best, who are we to ignore or reject His offerings?

I'm a big fan of Dr Who's explanation of time, its a sort of timey wimey non-linear progression, it's not always a straight line! Well I'm not exactly sure that true but I am sure that timing and especially God's timing can be hard for us to understand.

 Waiting is not something I am good at, and its something that isn't high on Ben's list of achievements either, mind you that isn't helped by Ben's somewhat fragile and fluid concept of time where seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, even years are used interchangeably in a single sentence!

As children we can be quite demanding, we want it and we want it NOW! I fear that as an adult Christian, dare I say mature? my childish expectations  can (and do) rise to the surface, I pray, I tell God what I need, I ask Him to meet my need, and I expect my needs and desires to be met NOW! Sometimes, our needs are met and answered almost instantaneously and that is wonderful and exciting but more often than not there is a delay, a period of waiting.

Thirty four years ago I was working in Trafford as a teacher of children with Special Educational Needs. I attended a wonderful vibrant Church, I had a lovely flat, I was never out of work, but...I couldn't get a permanent job. For five years I moved from one temporary position to another, I had interviews for several jobs (even jobs I was actually doing at the time) but  never got the permanent position. My Church would pray fervently for me on the Sunday before any interview, the Elders would meet and pray for me during the week but inevitable I would have to make the call to say I hadn't got the job. many tears were shed, and not just mine.

But... on Thursday November 29th  1990 I received a phone call at the school I was working in at the time, it was a phone call that changed my life (and my parent's lives) forever, I heard a distant voice telling me that I had been approved to adopt a four month old baby boy called Harry; I was to travel to Bath on Saturday December 1st  to meet my new son and prepare to bring him home on Tuesday December 4th!

I was able to resign and leave my job on Friday November 30th because I wasn't in a permanent contract! I did indeed travel to Bath on December 1st (with my parents) and I met Ben. All the years of waiting, hoping, struggling with disappointment, frustration (even anger) suddenly made sense, God had known long before I did that I needed to be available to be a Mum to the little boy He had chosen for me.

I still struggle with waiting on God, I still get impatient and want things now but, I just have to look at ben and I am reminded that God's timing is perfect!     

I'm sitting at my desk, the books are overlapping, pens jostling for attention, glue sticks, scissors and  crayons haphazardly strewn across the surface.I'm musing on my first post yesterday and I'm determined not to fall off my gently rolling wagon.

I'm a little obsessed with punctuality, my Mum always said if you were only ten minutes early you were late. I can't bear being late and I suspect my propensity for arriving early is extremely irksome to many of my friends. However, when it comes to getting things done, especially paper work, letters, housework (ugh) I'm very much a "deadline" sort of gal. if I can put something off I will but when it comes to the point where I'm absolutely down to the wire I can rattle off whatever is necessary in a matter of minutes.

For someone who doesn't really cope well with stress I somehow seem to function best when my delaying tactics have raised my stress levels to the maximum. I waste time worrying about the past, focussing on what happened last time, who said what or did what  months and even years ago. I'm even more adept about worrying about the future I spend weeks running through all the things that might happen when I submit a form for Ben, I worry about money and what will happen if, when...so,

by the time I finally get round to doing it I'm really up against the clock and I have to buckle down.

 

The past is called the past for a reason, it has passed, it's gone, I can't do a single thing to change it, the best I can do is try to learn from it and not repeat the same mistakes. The future is even more of  a waste of time, only God knows what tomorrow will bring and  His Word promises me that He has a plan and a purpose for me, and that He is with me in all things and in all situations. Which leaves...

 

The here and now, today, the only time I can do anything about. The present is indeed our gift from God, and its up to us to unwrap it exuberantly, hopefully, enthusiastically, to live in our present abundantly and to the glory of our Creator God .

 I somehow doubt that I am alone in devising myriad methods of putting things off. If they gave out academic accolades for this skill I would almost certainly have earned  a master's degree, a PhD at the very least. I am a black belt, seventh dan, maestro of the art of procrastination.

Proverbs 6:4-14 has something to say about this, "Don't put it off; do it now!...take a lesson from the ants you lazybones...but you, lazybones, how long will you sleep? When will you wake up?"

The New Testament Matthew 24:42-44 says "Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming...you must also be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Putting things off  is not recommended! we none of us know what tomorrow will bring, or indeed even if we will have a tomorrow here on earth. Sneaking an extra ten minutes in bed might mean we miss the glory of a beautiful sunrise.

 

But...putting off resolving an argument might mean missing out on telling someone you love them. I need to bite the bullet and get on and do things, especially those things I really don't enjoy or find easy. I need to stop reading, checking facebook, watching TV to listen to Ben and engage with him there and then and not tell him,  "later". I need to play scrabble, listen to him play his ukulele, watch Star Wars! now, because  the opportunity may not be there for ever. 

 

If you keep saying you want to spend more time in prayer, more time reading your Bible, journaling in your Bible then do it, find the time, make the time, don't delay!

 

Sarah Anderson set up this blog page for me today, my natural tendency would be to leave it, say  "I'll think about it and do something next week", by which time id have forgotten how to find it never mind how to post something. So  Sarah, this one's for you!