A - Z Challenge - H: Home

Well, I'm behind already. I suppose it was inevitable. But still, onwards...

This is an edited version of an old post that I wrote in answer to the question, 'Where's home?' and 'What does home mean to you?' Bit of a lengthy answer; it's more of a potted biography I suppose. But home is many things, and not always geographical. 

Home

I am from Derbyshire, a town with a crooked spire and Roman history, celebrated market and too many Tescos. Peak District hills and dales and moors and crags. I am from the county furthest from the sea in a small, crowded island that can sometimes feel big. 

I am from 1930s bay window, back garden photographs, chunky legs and a scowl in front of the conifers in the garden, tiny then, towering last year, now gone. I am from endless summers, droughts and ladybirds, watering the vegetables with bathwater. From snowmen and snow-in-your-wellies and cocoa in blue and white striped mugs. 

I am from bucket and spade, hunt for seashells, run from seaweed, cool wind off the North Sea beach holidays. Caravans and car journeys and endless photographs. I am from pub-lunches and motorbike rides and leapfrogs and awful school dinners. 

I am from 'Jesus' sandals, sensible shoes, gabardine raincoats, falling down white socks, wonky fringe, cheese and beetroot sandwiches, skipping ropes, grazed knees and space hoppers. From shoe buckles snagging on the sofa cushions, wax crayons and writing stories in tiny notebooks. From beans on toast, pikelets with melted butter and canned fruit and blocks of ice cream in the freezer compartment. My mum's rice pudding; the best in the world. 

I am from Sunday lunch at Grandma's, chicken and gravy and endless grown up conversation and rhubarb-from-the-garden suet pudding (lines your stomach). I am from rocking chairs and setting lotion and cigarette smoke and bags of sweets and leaving my blanket behind and insisting that Daddy goes back to fetch it. I am from please-and-thank-you, kiss-it-better and it-won't-always-be-dark-at-six and if-at-first-you-don't-succeed... I am from reserved and English and stiff-upper-lip and a-smile-costs-nothing.

I am from Enid Blyton and Helen Dore Boylston and Nancy Drew and Jill's Gymkhana. I am from Bunty magazine, and my brother's Beano and then Just Seventeen and Mizz and Cosmopolitan. From shopping with Mum, saving up for things, giving things to Dad to mend rather than buy new. 

I am from Listen with Mother and Magic Roundabout just before the news with Dad and Andy Pandy after lunch with Mum and Mary Mungo and Midge. From longing for a Blue Peter Badge and from (the innocence of) Jim'll Fix It and Why Don't You...? Jacques Cousteau's Undersea World and the dull bit at the end of The Two Ronnies that grown ups found the funniest. From staying up late on New Year's Eve watching The Sound of Music for the very first time. 

I am from eager to please at school, english lessons easy and maths lessons hard. I am from too much homework and ice on the inside of the bedroom window above my desk. 

I am the bullied, the insecure, the prize-winning, the fearful, the prefect, the distrustful. I am from adolescence in the company of boys, not girls (much more straightforward that way). 

I am from hotbrushes, big hair, hairspray and Sodastream. From rolled up jacket sleeves and 'Flashdance' and 'Pretty In Pink' and 'The Breakfast Club'. From Slinkies and Sindy dolls and Pippa and thinking that ET was not remotely cute and being unmoved when he nearly died. 

I am from Atari tennis blip-blip electronic games and wishing for a Donkey Kong. From three TV channels and no video. From the girl with the teddy and blackboard and the National Anthem when the telly was finished. I am from the days when we had our first phone installed and it went bring bring and we sat on the stairs in a draught to talk. 

I am a teenager in the middle of a crowd on a hot, hot day listening to an evangelist talk about Jesus Christ. I am the only one there. I am lost and I am found. I am one of those stumbling past rows of knees to get to the aisle, self-consciousness forgotten, to turn my tearstained face upwards and say yes, please to the One who really saw me. 

I am from church youth group, boyfriends, church camps in the Lake District, exam-passing, teacher-pleasing (mostly) and the first in the family to go to university. I am from Bronte, Hardy, Clare, Keats and Shelley. From Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jonson, Rosetti, Milton and Byron. 

I am from churchy, goody-goody, black and white, right and wrong, finding out about the grey the hard way. I am from broken heart, church work disillusionment and faith on the back burner. From broken friendships, loneliness and confusion. I am from knowing what I want, not knowing what I want, changing my mind, changing direction, worrying my parents. 

I am from leaving the country, seeing the world, running from decisions, backpacking, bewildering long haul flights and sleeping on coaches, brushing teeth out of a window, getting by with language, camping under the stars; geyser fields and sunrises, waterfalls and air so thin it's hard to breathe. Condors and sloths and llamas and butterflies and cockroaches. From the beauty and the grime and the wonder and the riches and the poverty. 

I'm from Derbyshire, Newcastle, Liverpool, London. From old friends, new friends, new town, new university, new dreams. Anatomy, physiology, sociology, psychology. More exams, romance, wedding magazines, diamond rings and flowers. I'm from happy, holding hands, holidays and freedom. I'm from uniforms, paperwork, hospitals, making splints, holding hands, mending bodies, teaching skills, ticking boxes, climbing the ladder, striving, achieving, trying so hard but wondering what else there must be. 

I'm from sentimentality, memories, diaries, journals, fragments of stories. Creative writing, photography, bereavement, childbirth. I am from fractured sleep and crying babies and confusion and despair. I am from post natal depression, lost and lonely and fearful, and then found once again and comforted and held tight.

I am from coming home to church and finding that it was not God who went away but me. I am back to live in the house with the beautiful back garden with the people who mean the world to me. 

I'm from middle age and aching joints and calorie counting and calorie ignoring, comfort-eating and exercise regimes started and discontinued. I am from self-conscious and struggling, from the land of low self-esteem and distorted self-image; but I am awake again to the truth of how much I am loved, and I want to tell the world: if I am loved like this, then you are too. 

I am from gratitude and awe and tearful thanksgiving. I am from hands-in-the-air worship and head-bowed in prayer. From day-by-day, hour-by-hour keeping going, carrying on, doing my best, starting again, not giving up. 

I am from closed-fist to open-palm, from rags to riches, from darkness to light.

I am wife and mother and daughter and sister and friend. 

I am a child of God. 

A-Z Challenge - B: Breathe

This is a bit of a cop out as it's a repost from 2016, (seems a lifetime ago!) but it's as relevant to me now as it was all that time ago. Funny how I never seem to learn. 

The year I posted this, My One Word for the year was 'Alive'. This year, it's 'Breathe'. Once again, I have been underwater too long, and I feel as if I've just surfaced and taken a huge breath. It might be dark and cold and featureless here, but it's so much better than down there. It's enough just to be able to breathe, isn't it? 

Or is it....?

'Alive' and 'Breathe' 

This is a thing that happened in my head while during a one-to-one prayer session a while ago. I don't really know what you might call it - a vision? A picture? A prayer-journey? All I know is that it was real in my head; I watched it as if I were watching a film. Some of it was from my perspective, and other parts were from a camera overhead kind of filming the action. Close-ups and panoramas. 

Just my imagination? Well, yes and no. When someone asked Joan of Arc if the interactions with God were just her imagination she said, 'Of course. How else would he talk to me?' I had driven past a reservoir on the way to this prayer meeting so perhaps it came from there, but I am convinced that God used the tools in my head to tell me something that I needed to hear. 

I had just said, 'My word for this year is 'Alive' and I am anything but.'  The lady praying with me suggested we asked Jesus why I don't feel alive.

This is his answer:

I am cold. I don't know why I'm cold, but I am cold. I don't feel properly alive, and I say so. I feel stifled, suffocated. I long to breathe deeply but I can't. 

I ask Jesus why I am so cold. 

I realise I'm at the bottom of a lake. Not drowning, just sitting. The water is cold and murky, and the lake-bed is sandy and stony. There are a few wisps of weed and particles floating but there isn't much to see. Everything is grey and brown, bare and barren. Only a little light penetrates to where I'm sitting, knees drawn up to my chest. I sit. My feet are covered in sand.

I'm not afraid, just inert. I am not awake, not asleep. It's a half-life.

I realise that Jesus is there with me. I discern a light near me and I realise that it's him. He tells me that I can move if I want to. I show him that my feet and ankles are buried and I say that I can't. 

Jesus gently replies that I can, but I am afraid to push off. 

Jesus sits down next to me until I'm ready to try to move. He is patient and does not hurry me. In time, with his encouragement, I make a big effort and I push off from the stony bottom of the lake and swim through the grey murk to the daylight above. 

As my head breaks the surface I take in huge lungfuls of air. I gasp and cough and laugh with the exhilaration of breathing again after so long underwater. I breathe deeply, sculling with my arms and kicking my legs to keep afloat. Looking round I realise that I am in the middle of a large lake high up in some mountains. The lake is surrounded by hills covered in heather and bracken. The sun is not shining; there are heavy clouds, although it's not raining. There is little to see, barely any colours other than grey, brown, dark purply undergrowth. The only sounds are the splashes I make. 

I become aware that I am still cold. The water is cold and the air is cold. A wind blows. I move to float on my back and I laugh again as I breathe the fresh air but my laughter is a little forced. I look at Jesus, treading water next to me, and he smiles at me. He understands my confusion. I am happy to be able to breathe but I am still not at ease. I smile and turn away and look up at the grey sky. 

Is this all there is? 

Jesus quietly tells me that when I'm ready, there's more to see. 

I'm not ready. This is so much better than the place in the darkness under the water.  There's air to breathe and I can lie back and see the sky and so perhaps I should stay here. Better than before is enough, isn't it?  I splash about in the lake and Jesus stays with me, waiting. After a while he begins to swim towards the head of the lake, beckoning me to follow. 

I am reluctant to leave my spot in the middle of the expanse of water, even though I'm cold. I don't want to be rude, so I swim slowly after him, wishing he would stop. 

We get to the top of the lake. There's a gap between the bottom of two mountains rising above us and water is flowing down into our lake over a cascade of boulders from a source higher up. Jesus holds onto one of the rocks and turns to me. 

He wants me to follow him up the waterfall. 

It's only a trickle, not a torrent of water. There are plenty of rocks to hold onto and easy footholds, but I shake my head. I don't want to leave the lake. I know this lake. It might be cold and murky and dull but now that I have come up from the depths and I can breathe, it's so much better than what I had before that my impulse is to stay here. It feels safe. 

Jesus says there's another lake at the top of the waterfall, and it's so much better. 

I look doubtful. He says there's no hurry. 

Jesus takes a few steps up the waterfall and turns to me. Follow me, he says. 

I really do not want to. I am familiar with the lake I'm in and afraid to leave it behind for the unknown. I do trust Jesus but.. but... 

I climb after him. It's not a difficult climb, although I'm trembling. He does not get too far ahead and he is encouraging me step by step. I am slow and anxious but he is patient. 

Jesus gets to the top of the waterfall and he is standing on the last rock, which is broad and level. As I approach, tiny step by step, he crouches down to take my hand. One more step, he says, and I will be able to peer over the top of the waterfall. I take another faltering step, clinging onto the rock with my right hand and Jesus with my left. My eyes are level with the water and as I straighten, I see a beautiful scene in front of me. 

It's another lake, but so, so different from the one behind me. This lake is clear and reflecting the blue of the sky ahead. The sun is shining and the water is full of silver sparkles. Around this lake are still mountains but instead of the featureless brush and bracken there are flowers of all colours and meadows of lush grass. There are birds and butterflies. A warm breeze stirs the leaves of trees and carries a wonderful fragrance that makes me inhale deeply. 

I am astonished. Jesus laughs at my wonder and pulls me to stand on the rock with him. We gaze around for a time and then he asks me if I'd like to swim. He puts his toe in the water and then he is swimming for the middle of the lake on his back, telling me to come on in. I want to catch up with him.

I dive into this new lake without hesitating. The water is pleasant and as clear as crystal; I can see all the way to pretty pebbles on the bottom.  It tastes sweet and pure, not like the brackish water of the lake that I have left. As I surface in a mass of sparkling bubbles I feel the sun warm on my head and back.  Out in the middle of the lake we stop and float, enjoying the sunshine, the beautiful blue sky, the sound of birds singing, the fragrance of blossom. I don't ever want to go back to the other lake. 

And yet I'd have been happy to stay. I didn't want to be left under the water, but breathing again was so much better than before that I'd have settled for staying the first lake. I was content with greyness, coldness, colourlessness. I was reluctant to follow Jesus even though I knew he could be trusted. I resisted and hung back. 

Jesus tells me that this is what trust is, sometimes. It might not be dramatic and daring or even decisive. It might be incremental, cautious, even fearful. I did climb the waterfall, step by step, without knowing what lay at the top. I may have been hesitant and doubtful but eventually I did follow him. it's not always easy, and he doesn't expect me to be enthusiastic all the time. He is patient. He will hold my hand.

I was stuck in sand, blind and lost deep, deep down under the water, dark and cold.  Jesus came to find me, brought me light and helped me to surface, but he had so much more for me than that. I would have missed out on so much if I'd stayed in the lower lake. I would have lived and breathed but that was all. I would not have experienced the beauty and vibrancy of the upper lake.

He doesn't want me just to be alive.

'The thief comes to only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come so that they might have life, and have it to the full.'
John 10:10 NI

I sense that there is yet more to see, but this is where Jesus has brought me. 

He is here with me still, as I laugh and splash and swim and explore to my heart's content. The sun is warm on my face and I am relaxed and happy. 

Images

Light and water DSCF0268.JPG by Ryudei2442 from Morgefile.com with permission

Sun and sky my own photograph.

One for the To Read pile - 'Undivided Heart' by Lucy Mills

Today I'm delighted to let you know about a book written by my friend and fellow ACW member, Lucy Mills.  It's on my To Read pile.  Having enjoyed and been challenged by her first book, 'Forgetful Heart', I didn't hesitate to order myself a copy. 

Lucy has a wonderfully engaging style of writing and has an eye for finding little nuggets of truth that you may not have noticed in passages that you think you know well. And the best bit is that she's gentle, honest, wise - and most important, very readable.  

Here's what her publisher has to say about the book: 

Undivided Heart is a book about identity and what drives us to do the things we do. Lucy explores what motivates and inspires (and worries) us, what we really want in life, and what makes us who we are. Along the way, she discusses a wide range of topics, including fear and pain, doubt and trust, possessions and money, hope, suffering, encouragement and expectation, ideas of heaven, and the nature of love. 

She looks at helpful and unhelpful patterns of behaviour, the concept of fixed and growth mindsets, how ‘labels’ have the ability to make idols or prisons in our lives, and how the selfie culture and age of instant feedback brought about by social media can encourage us to project selective images of ourselves.

As someone who suffers from M.E. and chronic fatigue syndrome, Lucy knows the importance of pacing herself and taking life one day at a time – and realising that things don’t always turn out as you had expected or hoped. 

In this wonderfully honest and open book, she draws on her personal experience, alongside Bible passages, quotations from a wide range of writers and her own original poetry, inviting the reader to join her on the journey to ‘reassemble the far-flung pieces’ of our hearts. 

Here's a taster:

 'Undivided Heart'. 

Recognising the risen Jesus

Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).

John 20:15-16

The risen Jesus was both familiar and unfamiliar. He revealed himself with a word to Mary Magdalene; in the speaking of her name, she recognised the rabbi she loved.

On the Emmaus road, Jesus walked with two of his disciples. They didn’t realise who was speaking to them until he gave thanks and broke bread (Luke 24:13ff). It was an action he had made to feed thousands; one he made in the upper room, mere hours before his arrest; an action he had, presumably, performed with his disciples in a myriad of mundane, marvellous moments.

Was it that Jesus in his resurrection body was changed in appearance? Or was there something different going on – a kind of deliberate hiddenness and then unveiling, a picture of a journey from limited knowledge to full understanding?

Continuing in Luke’s account, after Cleopas and his companion rushed back to Jerusalem, Jesus then appeared to his gathered disciples. They thought he was a ghost, even though he had already ‘appeared to Simon’. In their worldview, a physical body could not just materialise. Jesus responded to their fear and disbelief by saying: ‘Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ His body was corporeal – it had substance. He then ate some fish to reassure them further (Luke 24:36-41).

In John’s gospel, we’re told of Thomas – poor, heartbroken Thomas – who wanted to follow Jesus anywhere, but had missed seeing his risen Lord. How would that feel? He was already living with the fact that he who had said he would die with Jesus (see John 11:16) had, instead, fled like all the others. So deep-set was his grief and incredulity that he refused to listen to the others proclaiming they had seen the Lord: ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

These are the words of a grieving man. I dislike the term ‘doubting Thomas’ – for he was not the only disciple to display doubt in Jesus. Jesus, all grace, met him on his terms, offering his wounds for Thomas to touch – but in that moment all Thomas can do is fall at Jesus’s feet, proclaiming: ‘my Lord and my God!’[1]

Such is the worship engendered by an encounter with the risen messiah. We remember Thomas by his doubt, but he has such a stunning line in the story – my Lord and my God.

No longer just his Lord. His God.

There is another account in John, a beachside encounter where, again, the disciples do not initially realise who it is they are seeing. Jesus is recognised in the act of provision – a catch of fish, where they had previously caught nothing. ‘It is the Lord!’ Peter yells, jumping out of the boat and splashing to shore – although he does pause to put some clothes on first![2]

We may grieve, like Mary, as we search for our living Christ, then find him standing next to us, calling our names. Like those on the road to Emmaus, we can have our eyes unveiled, our hearts set aflame, Jesus revealed to us.

We may not ‘see’ as Thomas did, but we are called to a deeper belief in our resurrected Lord. We learn from Jesus’ response to Thomas: ‘You believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who believe but have not seen…’ (John 20:29, NIV)

We can splash through the waves as Peter did, delighted when we recognise our Lord. This Jesus – this crucified and risen Jesus – is the true definer and motivator of our lives, calling us from death into life.

---

[1] John 20:25- 28

[2] John 21:1-14

Amen to that. I think this is going to be worth a read. 

*

To get your copy of 'Undivided Heart', check out Lucy's website:

www.lucy-mills.com/undivided-heart 

You'll be able to find a copy of 'Forgetful Heart' there as well. 

Empty hands

I had coffee last week with someone who has just finished treatment for cancer. 

It was an incredibly uplifting conversation. It's clear that God really can bring something wonderful out of the most depressing and ominous of circumstances. The cancer was stage three - it had spread to lots of lymph nodes and the doctors have no way of knowing whether it has crept further on still in the bloodstream. Time will tell. 

Isn't that the human condition? Time will tell. We don't know. Technology doesn't know. Modern medicine doesn't know. The best that we can offer is 'time will tell.' And we think we're really clever. 

And yet, in that inexplicable way that we hear about occasionally, it's not all bad news.

The cancer has brought this lady closer to her family. She understands her body more than she did before and has learned to listen to its needs with more care. She has been forced to reassess her priorities; both in terms of tasks that need doing with limited energy, and also on a larger scale, not knowing what the rest of her life looks like; what is really important? She has been in receipt of such care and kindness from the people round her that she now knows that she is loved after years of doubting it. 

All these things are precious gifts. I wonder, is it possible to receive these gifts without the imperative of grave illness? 

I found myself nodding in agreement as she spoke of priorities, of understanding the important and the trivial and learning to tell the difference, and yet I wonder if it's really possible to see such things as they are from a position of full health (as far as I know; time will tell). 

Is it? Is it possible?

We spoke of those moments where something that you've always 'known' becomes real heart knowledge - the moment that the penny drops. The eyes widen slightly; something falls into place. You turn to another person and tell them of the mini-revelation you've just had and they look at you, bemused, because yes, they've known that too, but they don't see like you do. It's obvious... and yet it suddenly means something wholly different and more profound. 

The realisation that this is not all there is.

This life can be full of joy, or full of pain, or a mixture of both and many other things, but when you're in a place of grief and loss and fear and helplessness, it's a tremendous comfort to know that this is not all there is. CS Lewis said in his Narnia book 'The Last Battle', I think; this life is only the cover and the title page of the story of our experience. It's only when we reach heaven that the real story begins. A lifetime seems long (though only time will tell) and yet it is just fleeting in comparison with eternity, where the story will begin in earnest, and each chapter is better than the last... 

The realisation that any sense of control we have in this life is an illusion.

When all is well and life is trundling along uneventfully, we think we have everything sorted. All is well. I know what today is like, what tomorrow is likely to bring. I have plans. I know what I'm capable of, and I am full of hopes and dreams and expectations.  I want to be in control more than anything. I want to be able to decide what I do, what will happen and when.And then... I am not well. The doctors will do their best and my body will do it's best to handle the medicine that might be worse than the illness itself, but suddenly tomorrow is not guaranteed after all. Suddenly the hopes and dreams might have to be shelved. Suddenly I can do nothing about any of this. I am even too weak to climb the stairs unaided. 

When I open my hands to Jesus because there is no-one else, and nothing else to do (because I've looked around for something else - anything) I find that my hands are empty. They've always been empty. I've been grasping tight in my fists... nothing. Holding on to something that never existed.

My hands are empty. 

I am trying to be fit. I am trying to lose weight, to eat healthily, to get exercise to feel and look better. I think it's working a little bit - last night at swimming I paused at the end of my lane to catch my breath and I put a hand on my heart and felt it beating so, so fast - and I thought to myself how grateful I am that it can do that. I ask it to pump oxygen around my body faster, faster, more, more.... and my heart rises to the occasion. That is a miracle, and I can't do a single thing about it. One day it will stop beating completely, and I can do nothing about that either.

(I hope I'm not in the pool at the time.)

I'm not trying to be morbid or focus on the inevitability of death, though I imagine perhaps that's how it sounds.  As we had our coffee and my friend told me how different the world looks when you have a diagnosis of cancer, it was not a pathetic, frightening thing, though both fear and sadness were things we discussed. The 'penny-drop' moments that she described made me realise one thing, and it's a good thing, a reassuring thing, a very, very precious thing. Really, it is. 

Our lives are in His hands. 

In His hands, and there is no safer place. They are not our own, and we take every breath because of Him. 

I read somewhere one of those pictures with inspiring words on it that someone created, and it said, 'When Jesus is all you have, that's when you realise that Jesus is all you need.' 

When you have no certainties left - when your very life is threatened, none of the things we chase after in our affluent western world; wealth, position, influence, comfort... those things don't seem important. Not even the good, wholesome things like health, family, love. None of them will help when we glimpse death, and told that he might be coming soon. No, only one thing comes into clear focus, and that is Jesus. 

The only decision we make that truly matters is this. To open our empty hands and lift them to Him. And, as my friend testifies, the treasure that He fills them with makes us realise that we have never before known true riches.

That's what's real.