Butterfly wings and big jumpers

The other day I was surfing aimlessly - I mean, writing something profound - and I was distracted  by a ping from my inbox. As every writer knows, a ping from the inbox requires immediate attention, so I answered the call.

It was an alert to say that there had been a message from the child we sponsor in Uganda.

His name is Brian, he's ten years old and he likes football and animals. He's doing well in school, and passed his exam last year. He wants to be 'an army man' when he leaves school. Or maybe a doctor.

***

Continued over at The Association of Christian Writers' Blog, which is called 'More Than Writers' I contribute on the 23rd of each month. 

Come and say hello and have a look around. 

Me and the moon: a conceit

I am the moon.

I look down on the world from on high - but all my light comes from you. I glow only because the you shine on me. When I was younger I thought that I was all the light that I needed, just me, shining brightly, but as I've grown older I realise that I have none of my own at all.  I depend on you.

You are the only light.

Sometimes, occasionally, people see and comment on my unique beauty - but that too comes from you; it's all because of you. Most often I am not bright enough for people to notice me at all. Without you to illuminate me I'd be completely dark; the world wouldn't know that I was there. Now and then when there's nothing between you and me to get in the way, that's when I'm best; reflecting your light. On those occasions I shine. Your light bounces from me - I am occasionally a source of inspiration, but always I fade and give way at sunrise.

Continued......

Read the rest, should you so wish, over at the Association of Christian Writers' blog, which is called More Than Writers. I'm there on 23rd of each month, so do come and say hello.

Broken Trust

My Trust is broken. 

It fell off the wall and landed awkwardly and even though it's been glued, it's wonky.

I can't help thinking that this is deeply significant. 

My word for last year was 'Trust', and, as I did the year before that, I had my word cut out of MDF by a gentleman who cuts things out of MDF for a small fee. 

There's a little space just above the wardrobe in my bedroom that is just made for fixing MDF words to - and so that's where my words live. 

I can see them from my bed, which is one of my favourite places in the world. I see them before I put the light out at night and I see them when I wake up in the morning. 

But 'Trust' fell off. Thud. It landed at an angle on the last 'T'. Bent, cracked, now glued, but (as they say in this neck of the woods) it's all skew-whiff. 

A metaphor for my life. I trust - yes I do - but it sometimes slips. I come unstuck, and on occasion I fall and land badly, and that hurts. I bruise. I mend, but I have scars. 

My trust in God is hugely variable. I wish it were not so, but I know that I do not have the staying power to stick closely to Him. When I am there, right by His side, holding on tight, I am safe, I am secure, I am right where I should be; but then I get distracted and I loosen my hold, and - there - I get pulled away and a gap yawns between us. When there is distance between God and me, it is easy to pick me off like a pack of hyenas with the slowest buffalo left behind by the herd. 

I am a slow buffalo, sometimes. 

However, good news. 

My Trust is back up there. 

It's been glued, but it's not quite straight. It will always droop a little now, following it's fall, but it's back where it belongs. The damage is subtle, but definite. However, because of the strength of the glue, it will never break in the same place; it's stronger than ever. 

Funny, that - the area of fracture is now stronger than the surrounding bits of MDF - a bit like bones. Bone callus is denser than normal bone and so it's rare for a fracture to take place where there's already been one. There are other weak points, but this one is healed. A little uglier now, a little smudgy, a little out of line, yet tough and resilient. 

My trust keeps taking knocks. There are days when I scribble urgently in my journal, 'I trust you, Jesus' and 'I trust you - I'm trying to' and there are days when I don't write in my journal and I forget to trust at all. Those are the days when my tenuous hold is weakening, weakening.... Lately there've been a few occasions where my need to trust has been overwhelming and yet I realise how poor I am at it. 

But, He is endlessly patient.  He soothes the hurts, heals the wounds and puts me back where I am safe. 

This year's word is 'Peace'. I've ordered my word in MDF from the man who makes things out of MDF but it hasn't come yet. I've been hoping peace will arrive very soon for quite a while, now. I am waiting for my Peace.

That's another post, I think.  

Where the words come from

I'm very happy to be over at the More Than Writers blog today with a post about words - and The Word. I'll be posting there on the 23rd of each month.

Have a read by clicking here: Where the Words Come From.

More Than Writers is the official blog of The Association of Christian Writers (ACW) and I am very proud to be a member and to be contributing to this exciting new venture. 

There's a different post by a different author every day so do come and have a rummage around. 

Find out more about the ACW by visiting the website: 

http://www.christianwriters.org.uk 

or visit the Facebook page to find other friendly writers who are surfing the net, making coffee and eating cheesecake instead of writing. 

Pulling the buttons off

The power of words has been on my mind a lot lately; words that build up or words that destroy. It's an easy thing to understand that words spoken over someone can encourage or damage them; there have been times in my life when I've been crushed by things said to me, and times when I'd been inspired. 

Words, words, words.

But something else kept nagging at me, and I realised that the power of words also extends to things that are said about someone, when they're not there. And that's a different kettle of fish. 

Everyone knows someone who's constantly running down other people, don't they? Anyone who's ever stood for five minutes in a school playground at pickup time would be able to identify a few people who don't seem to have a good word to say about anyone. Whether it's the shoes, or the hair, the tattoos, or the latest pregnancy, or the frequency that their kids get headlice, or the latest photos on Facebook or...or... anything. We all know people like that. The ones who have sharp nails and rip someone to shreds just for fun. Who seem to love the cut and thrust of the school-run and turn up twenty minutes early to get in some good gossip. 

I'm not like that, you know. If I'm early for the school pick up, I hang about at the end of the road or wait in the car until the children start appearing, and then dive in, deftly scoop up my offspring and scurry off, waving a few times and smiling like a loon. I don't do playground bitchery, so I'm OK, aren't I?

(Interesting note: my computer autocorrect tried to change 'playground bitchery' to 'playground butchery' there. I think that's pretty much the same thing, don't you?) 

So - it's not my thing. But wait a minute.

An unwelcome thought came to me: I'm no better.  I'm just different.

I think I am much more subtle. When I say, 'I think', what I mean is I haven't really thought about it much at all, until lately. Some things have happened that have made me consider more closely what I say, and how I say it, and I realise that I fall into the same trap as ScaryMum at the school gates, even though I got there by a different route. 

I love words and I use a lot of them. If one day it turns out that there was a quota of words assigned to each of us for use in our entire lifetime, then my last decade or so is going to be pretty quiet. There's nothing I like more than a chat over coffee with a friend, and I think this is where I come unstuck. the more you talk, the more chance you have of using words for the wrong thing.

How easy it is to make someone laugh at someone else's expense, then clap your hand over your mouth and say, 'Oops, shouldn't have said that!'  Easy to boost your own stock in a subtle way by making oblique observations about a person.  Criticise someone's decision, make fun of someone's mannerisms, pull a face when their name is mentioned. Easy even to pass on gossip under the guise of being concerned about someone. There are sophisticated ways of doing what ScaryMum does up front in the playground.

Then there are the occasions where it's not even you doing the talking. How easy it is to sit and listen and sip your coffee while someone else's reputation is chipped away in front of you. To smile and laugh and encourage the other person to offload their bitterness or irritation, legitimate or otherwise. Then place becomes strewn with the metaphorical corpses of all the people whose characters have been assassinated before you've finished your cappuccino.    

I had a dream a while ago that I puzzled over for days before it became clear. 

I was walking down a road near where I live. I passed a crowd of people who were excited and shouting (a bit like they used to do when two people had a fight in the playground, remember?)  As I walked past, I heard a shrill female voice yell, 'There she is! I'm going to kill her!'  I caught the eye of another lady and I grimaced at her. This could be messy.

 I hesitated, but decided that I'd better turn back and see what was going on. I wasn't going to let this woman murder someone. 

The crowd was shouting and screaming but I saw that the aggressive woman had hold of another, smartly dressed lady who looked frightened. The aggressor decided that she wasn't going to kill her after all, just 'rip her to bits'. 

'Ripping her to bits' meant that the angry lady was going to destroy the woman's fine clothes. The victim was wearing a designer outfit and the other woman was determined to ruin it. 

First of all she took her expensive shoes and snapped the heels off. The crowd cheered.

So relieved was I that there was to be no bloodshed that I decided to join in. I reached out for the victim's beautiful silk blouse and pulled it hard. It tore, and all the buttons flew off.

At this moment, I looked down and realised with horror that I was wearing the torn blouse.

And I woke up. 

I think that the dream tells me that when I collude with someone else to damage a person's reputation, I damage myself. When I pick the buttons off someone's life, or cut someone down to size I, too, am diminished. It might not be actual bloodshed, but wounds are inflicted nonetheless. And just as I pulled the buttons off her blouse, I exposed the nasty part of myself as well. 

I decided that I needed to be much more careful with my words. I mustn't score the quick point with a facetious comment at someone else's expense. I need to be careful what I say and what I listen to. I quickly realised how difficult it was. 

The newsreader had a new haircut and it made her look like a nuclear mushroom. A man interviewed in the street on the news had a painfully tenuous grasp of grammar. A politician said something that made my skin crawl and I couldn't resist making an unpleasant and personal remark back at the telly. And that was just in the course of the breakfast news. There was still an awful lot of day left to negotiate.

I have comforted myself by mentally pointing out to God that I'm not the worst. I know there are people who are much more vicious and open about their nastiness and gossip, but I know that it's no defence. If the pass mark for a test is 100% it doesn't matter whether you get 99% or 19%, you've still failed. I know that my sins have been dealt with my Jesus on the cross and that I am pure and forgiven in God's eyes, but the nagging thing for me is twofold:

1.  This is one of those sins that we tend to accommodate. We build it in and excuse it and we just accept that that's day to day life. Everyone does it. 

2. In the Bible, it says this:

'With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers (and sisters), this should not be.'  James 3:9,10

I don't want to be a person who sings praise to God and then is mean about someone over a coffee half an hour later. I don't want to be a person who writes a blog about living as a Christian and can be overheard in a cafe speculating about someone's private business. I don't want to be but I'm aware that I am sometimes exactly that person. 

We are held to a higher account, those of us that love Jesus and want to be different. We are looking for holiness. Our value comes from being daughters of God, not from other people's opinions of us, and if we need to bolster their view of us at someone else's expense, then we are doubly in trouble.

I was praying about this issue and trying to wriggle off the hook by telling God that it wasn't really a Big Thing, was it?  A picture came to mind of a fog. A swirling, dense, smog-like fog. Greeny-grey, and so impenetrable that when someone walked into the fog, they disappeared from view.

The fog is the business of talking about someone behind their back; using words to pull someone down. The whole gossiping, tale-telling, criticising, condemning malarkey that we all play at to some extent, from time to time. 

When you reach out to touch it, just to see what it's like, it sticks to you. The deeper in you go, the more grubby you get, until being dirty is the norm, and you've forgotten what fresh air feels like. 

You breathe in the toxic air, and if you’ve breathed it in, you’ll be dirty on the inside too and eventually you’ll breathe it out again, infecting those around you.

I don't want to live in the fog, Lord. 

I don't want even to play at the edges where I have the illusion of safety, but keep putting a hand in to find out how it feels. I don't want to be the sort of woman who feels better about herself by belittling others. I don't want to do this, but you have shown me how hard it is, how engrained in our culture, how petty meannesses and jokes at others' expense are considered socially acceptable. 

Father, I want to be different. (In a good way, please). I want to find positive things to say instead of giggling at the gossip. I want to hold my tongue no matter what the newsreader's haircut is doing. I want to bite back the clever remarks, even if they might win me a laugh. 

I want to build up, not destroy.

I want to encourage and inspire, not diminish and criticise.

I want the words that come out of my mouth to bring you glory.


Prayer:

Lord, shine your light to dispel the fog and show it for what it is. Burn it away so that it no longer stops me from seeing. Open my eyes to see it all around me and show me the danger of flirting with it by messing about at the edges. 

Send your Holy Spirit to give me the wisdom and strength to walk away from the fog. Make my words kind and gentle. May I speak your truth and nothing else. 

Amen

One hundred: It's all for you

I don't know if you're counting, Lord God, but this is my hundredth post. You've listened to me whinge and whine and grumble and sing and dance and laugh a hundred times as I've been sitting at my computer. For me it's flown by - maybe now you'll tell me that it feels like the two hundredth! 

Still.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to give it back to you again. This has been my emotional outlet, a sounding board, a platform for getting things off my chest and a way of exploring what I really think, and what you really think. That perhaps should have been the other way round, but you know what I mean. But I suspect that it's changed into something else and I just want to check that it's ok, or get back on the right track. I love this blog. I love that I so often start out feeling one way, and end up feeling something completely different. So often I've started out angry and hurt and worried and finished up more peaceful, and that's entirely because of you. Sometimes you speak to me through what I write - sometimes I'm quite sure I don't give you a chance. I write and run.

On the first of January I said that I wanted you to sit with me as I did this, and I want to thank you that you have never left my side. I want to thank you that you're here now. I'm writing this waiting for dinner to cook and I know that you are here; you can smell the garlic and you can hear the pans bubbling and you can taste the wine. I know that you have your hand on my shoulder and that you care what I say. I know that it's only because of you that I am able to do this; indeed anything.

If at any point I have started to think that it's me that writes this, I give it back to you, Lord. I know that what I do I do through you, who gives me strength. I know that I have no inspiration, no way of understanding even the little things, no way of working things out unless your Holy Spirit shows me how. I know that I would have no faith to lean on or talk about or investigate if you had not given me this most precious of gifts. I know that I would not be able to express myself and share my ideas and worries and wonderings if you didn't enable me to do it.

I want to give you the glory, Lord. I don't want to be the one who writes the blog, I want to be the one who points to you and says, 'He does it.'  It's all for you, Lord Jesus. It's all for you.

Lord, forgive me for my vanity and my selfishness and my pride. Let me reflect your light and beauty so that people see me and see you. Let my words be your words. Guide me and teach me so that I can sit here and notice, and understand, and reflect, and worship. Give me wisdom so that I can write wise things. Give me perception so that I can notice. Give me discernment so I can tell the difference between your voice and the voice of my own ego. Give me faithfulness to write what is true. And again, give me wisdom so that I can recognise truth when I see it.

I'm asking you to show me the way forward, Lord. Show me if you want me to do something different or if this pleases you as I'm stumbling along. Show me when I get too self-conscious or too inward-looking. Show me when I'm going on too much. Give me the words, Lord.

I want to do what you want me to do.

So I'm off to see if there's another glass of wine in the bottle, Lord. I'm going to raise a glass to you, my Lord and my God and my Friend. And then I'm going to press 'publish' for the hundredth time.

Here's to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Thankyou for so much. May my little offering be pleasing to you.

Amen.

The ninth commandment and me

I was lying in bed a while ago sleepily reading my daily bits of Bible on my iPhone and, I suppose, looking more for inspiration than conviction, when something Bill Hybels said in one of his incredibly perceptive pieces stopped me in my tracks.

He said:

'The ninth commandment makes it clear: don't give false testimony. In other words, don't lie. So the only reasonable choice for an of us is to stop lying. Now. Completely. If we have even the slightest tendency to distort the truth - and who amongst us doesn't? ..... Enough. No more half-truths. No more exaggeration. No more verbal twisting of reality. No more lies!'

Ah. I'm not liking this. I read it through a few times, even pressed the button on the iPhone that puts a little bookmark in it so I can find it again, and then I got on with the day and didn't do anything about it.

Here's the thing; I don't feel as if I have a big problem with lying. I haven't!  I'm not a liar. I don't habitually invent things, mislead people or practice acts of deceit. Generally speaking, if asked a question, I come up with an honest answer.  I like to think that my yes is yes and my no is no. Or at least mostly.  And there's the rub.

What about all those occasions where you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, so you skirt around the truth?  What should you do then?  What about the little white lies that seem so inconsequential but sort of smooth over those tricky situations?  These are the occasions that I have in mind when I find myself using words and phrases like 'generally speaking' and 'mainly' with reference to my own truthfulness. But there isn't much you can do about those times, is there, Lord?

And then there's the story telling aspect of it. I suspect I am prone to exaggeration. Just a bit. If it makes a story funnier, more dramatic, more interesting, which of us isn't?  It's very hard. And it's hard not to try to justify it.  Or those times when you just sort of re-interpret something to make it what you want it to be - maybe more comfortable, or more in keeping with how you see things?  I love words and it's usually easy to make them do what I want them to do; and sometimes things come out slightly differently from how they might have technically, actually been ... is that lying?  Maybe it is.

What do politicians say - they are 'economical with the truth'?  As if there's only so much truth to go round so cutting corners and skimping now and again is ok. Frugal, in fact. Virtuous, in some ways. You make things fit if it helps you make a point.  Now when it comes to journalists and politicians I'm definitely critical of such manoevrings but I bristle when I read that Bill Hybels might think that I do the same thing. I'm not a liar.

I don't want to be a liar. I don't want people to think I'm a liar, and I don't want you to think I am. But it is unavoidably true that only you are the source of all Truth.  Being a liar seems a sort of binary position if you think about it in those terms; you either are, or you're not. And since you are the only one who isn't, by virtue of the fact that you are God, and thus perfect while the rest of us fall short, then perhaps it's time to face up to the fact that I'm not perfectly honest, one hundred percent of the time, so that makes me in the other camp.

Feeling disgruntled about this. Feeling a bit reluctant and narky about it in the same way I felt when I started to realise that you wanted me to give up Facebook for Lent. I was lying in bed not properly woken up and feeling comfortably complacent and I don't want to be challenged about something like this. My reaction is a negative one - can you tell?  I don't want to think about this, much less do anything about it because I don't particularly want to change anything.  Not anything that will make me feel less comfortable, anyway.  But look how you blessed me in my Lent efforts and look how I've been so sure that it was the right thing to do. Sigh.

That was a heavy sigh. A resigned one. I'm not grasping this new awareness with alacrity and exclaiming in eager anticipation of the next lesson you have for me. Hooray! Turns out I'm not as honest as I thought I was.  Hmm. I've got to think some more about this. Be gentle, please. I don't like being criticised. Show me what you want me to do, Lord. What you want me to think about. Draw my attention to the bits of me that you want to change.  Help me to think more about what I say so that I speak the truth.

I want to be worthy of people's trust. I want to be an honest person. I want it to be known that if I say something, then it's true. I've always assumed that this is the case with me but perhaps it's not. I don't want to be the one whose words are taken with a pinch of salt, or examined for alternative meanings or motivations. I want to be honest. Trustworthy. Even if everyone else in the world believes every word that comes out of my mouth without question, you will know if I bent the truth, or exaggerated, or played with words in order to mislead.  I want to be worthy of you. I don't quite know how this will pan out in those delicate 'white-lie' situations that crop up so often, but I'm hoping that you'll show me how to get it right. And while I'm at it I realise that I need to say sorry that I let you down so frequently. Just another one of the ways, hey.

So, here's what Bill Hybels says I should say:

'From this day forward I purpose in my heart, with the help of God, to speak only the truth, always and in every situation, for the rest of my life.'

That sounds quite a claim. I feel as if I might be messing it up right now as I say this with doubt in my heart that it's possible, but I want to be better at this. I want to get it right. I have no doubt that getting this right will improve my relationship with you so I want to do it. I'm just going to need your help.

What a surprise.