Who do I think you are?

Who are you, God?

Who do I think you are? 

I'm reading Margaret Silf's book on prayer again (The Gift of Prayer: Embracing the spiritual in the everyday) and all of a sudden I'm full of questions. 

Who do I think that I pray to? What is it that I think you're going to do? What do I expect of you? 

Who are you? 

Are we looking for a satisfier of our shopping list requests?

Are we looking for a fireman to rescue us from 

an emergency?

Are we looking for a parent figure to tell us what

to do next?

Yes, yes and yes. Sometimes someone who'll solve some problems for me in short order. Make people that I care about better. Make it so that we get home before my daughter is sick in the car. Help me get to sleep. Help me say the right thing in that conversation. 

Sometimes I want to shout for you and for you to come running, please. Like the Fireman. Or an ambulance blue-lighting me to hospital.  Or like Daddy when a small child wails with a grazed knee. 'Lord, something awful has happened! Lord, help me! Lord, I'm afraid! I'm angry! It's an emergency! Need you now'.  I want you to scoop me up and make it better. Make it un-happen. 

And then I want my Father to sit down and listen to my dilemma with rapt attention and tell me what the best course of action might be. So that then I can go off in peace and do as I'm told without the responsibility of it. Without having to be the one who made the choice in case it's wrong. If I'm doing your will, it will be ok, won't it? So tell me what to do because I'm afraid of making mistakes, of getting it wrong.

Of looking silly. Of doing the wrong thing. I don't want to use my brain, or try to work it out - I just want you to tell me. If you were to make it all clear, Lord, then the chances are that I wouldn't come running to you to put it right when it goes wrong, would I?  So easier all round in the long run. 

Do what I want you to do, when I want, will you? 

Do it quickly when it's an emergency. And I'll decide what constitutes an emergency, ok?

Tell me what to do next when I need to know. Of course, there are times when I already know, so if you could just incorporate what I think is best into your plan as well, we'll all be happy. Won't we?

How did Margaret Silf get in my head, then? How did she know that I think this way? Could it be that other people think this way?

Is God an operations manager 

who puts our plans into effect in the way we desire?

Oops. I think I just said pretty much exactly that, didn't I? Ahem. I didn't mean it quite like that...

Is God a policeman or a strict teacher,

always on the watch for us

to make a mistake

and lay ourselves open to punishment?

Clocking up our good and evil deeds

to decide whether we get through the entrance exam

for heaven?

Ah. Now this I can relate to. I know it's not right but sometimes I do find myself thinking that you're there to catch me out. That when I mess up it's a black mark against me and you won't forget. Even though I know that you not only forgive me but you have promised to remember my sins no more I still wonder if things happen to me that I deserve. Maybe it's payback time... maybe this is why this happened... what goes round comes round...

I am so glad that I keep coming back to your promise that if you wash us, if you cleanse us with your forgiveness, that we will be clean. Properly clean. Justified. Redeemed. Invited to approach you as friends. As your children. As heirs in the Kingdom of God. This doesn't sit well with the image of you as a nitpicking judge who is never satisfied with our behaviour. I know you better than that. 

Yet still I fall for it from time to time. Still the little insinuating voice of the other guy penetrates and I find myself wondering if I've blown it this time. If there's a way back. If I've offended you so properly this time that you won't listen to my prayers any more...

Or perhaps God is an employer,

who drains the last ounce of energy from us 

and demands our unpaid overtime

in our efforts to 'do God's will'?

Ha. This is the chasing my tail thing. The feeling that I'm a hamster on a wheel and I can't move fast enough for there is so much that needs doing; good things. Things that need doing, and I need to get them done. If I don't, then who will? And if a job needs doing, it needs doing properly, and if you want it done properly, best do it myself... 

I am slowly learning this lesson. I'm sure that won't stop me needing to learn it again every so often but at least it's still familiar. I know that you don't want me to be so busybusybusy that I never get a chance to stop and think. Stop and be. I am getting so much better at saying, 'No,' to things that I'm sure sooner or later you're going to prod me and remind me to say 'Yes,' once in a while.

Or is God the fixer,

who keeps us safe, 

solves our problems,

rearranges creation

too suit our needs?

Now I'm a bit confused. You are sort of like a fixer, aren't you? Is it wrong to ask you to keep me safe? When I have a problem I do come to you. Shouldn't I come to you? I'm not convinced about the rearranging creation bit, though I have to say that at times it might seem like a good idea to me. Bit like praying in a geography exam that Mt Everest might turn out to be in Scotland because I chose B rather than D.  Not that this ever actually happened, you understand.

So what if I got Everest mixed up with Ben Nevis? It's an easy mistake to make. Mountains, snow on top, you know.

Anyway.

You know what I think? I think that maybe you are a tiny, tiny bit of all these misconceptions. You do keep me safe. You sometimes fix things. You sometimes ask me to push myself more than I want to. You sometimes call me to account and let me know that I'm out of line. You do guide me and rescue me and above all you hear every last prayer that I pray, whether it's misguided or childish or perfectly formed and theologically on the ball.  I imagine you're still waiting for that last one.

To subscribe to any one of these misconceptions is to skew our view of you, I know. To believe that you are a policeman or a magician or a sticking plaster is to try to pin you down and make you small and understandable and to get it wrong. But hey, I'm human, aren't I? If I got a grasp of who you really are I guess it would blow my mind.

These are caricatures of course,

and yet, how easily, how subtly, we slip into

one or other of these false and damaging images of God.

One or other, or all, at some time or another...

Because we are human, this will always be so, to some extent.

But to recognise the limitations of our images of God

is an important step to going beyond them. 

Sometimes I get a glimpse of you, Lord. Sometimes I get a second's sense of how vast and brilliant you are. How brightly you shine. The beauty of you. It leaves me reeling, but I'm not equipped to hold a thought like that for very long. So I try to bring you down to my level.

To ask you to do what I want you to do. 

I try to assert my independence even in prayer, don't I? 'Not my will be done, but yours...but if you could make your will a bit like mine that'd be great.'

Lord, forgive me when I try to diminish your glory. Forgive me when I want you to be something other than you are; for anything else is inferior. My imagination can't create anything worthy of you. 

Teach me to pray again, Lord. Help me to take it apart and build it in the way you would want it built.

Continued... next day....

Well, thank you, Lord, for a little word in my ear this morning.

We sang this song in church today and I love that I heard you speak:

You are For Me by Kari Jobe

So faithful, so constant and so true
So powerful in all you do
You fill me, you see me
You know my every move
You love for me to sing to you

So patient, so gracious, so merciful and true
So wonderful in all you do
You fill me, you see me
You know my every move
You love for me to sing to you

I know that you are for me, I know that you are for me

I know that you will never forsake me in my weakness

And I know that you have come now even if to write upon my heart

To remind me who you are.

Lord, yesterday I was asking who you were. I was exploring misconceptions that I fall for so often about you. I get it wrong. I make you into something less than you are. My image of you as my loving father gets all skewed and I get confused and scared and diminish you.

I wanted to see you and hear you and understand something of what you're like and today you told me, 'Alright then, this is Me'.

Faithful, constant, true, powerful, fulfilling, all-knowing, all-seeing, loving.

Patient, gracious, merciful, wonderful.

The main thing that I need to remember, though, my loving Father who smiles when I sing to you with all my heart - I need to remember that you are for me. You are on my side. You will never turn your back on me, no matter how wrong I get it.

I know that you are for me.

And when I wonder, when I search, when I look for you, you lean down and write on my heart.

To remind me who you are.

Love you, Lord. Thankyou.

Margaret Silf 'The Gift Of Prayer: Embracing the sacred in the everyday' 2004, Lion Hudson, Oxford, England. 

You are for me, Kari Jobe, 2009 Gateway publishing

(Edited and reposted from a while ago.) 

Letter to the Brave: No, I have the Lord

Dear Helen

Did you think I didn't see? 

I saw you gazing with such longing at the future version of yourself and I understood what you were going through. On your face I saw pain and envy and so much sadness. I saw the things you worked hard to hide, too - I looked into your heart and I saw the depth of your shame, and the bitterness that you still suffer while this woman is free. I see everything, you know. I see the hidden things. 

My daughter, I know you so well. You know that, but you still get angry with me sometimes because you think that I don't understand you. You ask me why I don't step in and sort out all the troubles that you hold so tightly in your fists and you question my love for you. No, don't protest - I hear you say that you accept my love but you think that love is a frail, pathetic, limited thing. 

I love you with a love that existed from before the beginning of time. My love has survived much greater challenges than anything you throw at it and still I go on loving. I am Love. You don't believe how much I love you because your capacity to give and receive love is tiny in comparison with mine. You limit it still further by refusing to believe the truth about yourself. 

I made you. I am the Lord, and I made the lions and the trees and the penguins and the pine-cones and all the things that you find so appealing, beautiful and awe-inspiring - and I made you. I made every bone in your body, every cell and hair on your head, and I was pleased with what I made. I didn't look at my daughter Helen and have the smallest regret. I smiled when I saw you, and as you sleep at night I gaze at you and I kiss your forehead and I smooth your hair from your forehead with the same tenderness that I see you doing with your daughters. 

I love you, precious one. I love you just as you are. You remind me of my Son; you're more like him all the time. Don't keep batting my love away with polite thanks and disbelief. Let it sink in and transform you. It will transform you, you know. If you were to grasp just an inkling of the breadth and depth of my love, it would change your life.

You do not disappoint me. I love you with a love that will not let go. Not ever. Don't compare me with the people who have let you down in the past. You don't have to be wary of me. You don't have to protect that sore place deep in your heart; let me in. When I touch it, I will heal it. I am the Healer. 

I know that you're not perfect, my precious one. I know that you've made mistakes and I know that you will make more. You can't put any of it right on your own - that's what my grace is for. Listen to me, there is enough grace to go round. My Son took care of that. There's always enough to cover you. I don't keep any record of the rubbish in your life; on the contrary, the things I pin on the walls of heaven are my snapshots of your face turned towards me, your hands reaching for heaven, your baby steps, your love-notes. Not one of those moments is lost - I treasure them all.

I grieve for the pain you put yourself through. I see how hard you try and I know how hard on yourself you are when things go wrong. You panic and lose your focus and if you can't do everything perfectly you are tempted to give up and not to bother trying.  You listen to the voices in your head when they tell you that you're worthless and inadequate and you believe the lies. One of those lies is that you would be more acceptable to me if you were thinner. My Spirit in you will soon teach you to hear how ridiculous that belief is, and you will take your first steps to being the woman you long to be, but there is more that we must do before then.

Don't let the voice of the evil one overpower the hope that you have. You let that hope be eroded by self-doubt and self-accusation and perfectionism. I don't expect you to be perfect; I can use your imperfections! In your world people are desperate to give the impression that they are completely in control, but control is as much an illusion as self-sufficiency. Again and again I see the relief on people's faces when they find that they are not alone. Be open with people and show your struggles and triumphs and the things that you learn because it is in such honesty that people see me and believe.

You fear failure, but I am not limited by your definition of success. Every time you fall I reach down and offer my hand and every time you take it and get to your feet again the angels sing, and, my love, it's a beautiful, beautiful song.

Don't keep worrying about that other woman. I showed her to you to give you peace; to help you believe that I am not finished with you yet. I have a plan for you, my daughter, and I will not give up on you. There is so much that we can do together.  

Don't worry about what might happen tomorrow, next month or next year. Don't worry about the road ahead, because I'll walk with you. In good times we'll celebrate together, and believe me, I'm a good person to have at a party. In bad times I'll hold you tight and carry you in my arms, but you and me, we'll keep on walking. Don't look at the woman you'll one day be and despair of ever getting there. We'll do it one step at a time. I know you can do it. 

Be brave, little one. 

Here's what I want you to do. I want you to focus on joy. You have it in your reach but too often you turn inwards defensively and lick your wounds. You have all you need. You are fully equipped. If I think that you need something else, something new, then I will give it to you. I will never see you go into battle poorly armed. You have all you need, and I'm coming with you anyway. I will never leave your side; you are not alone. When the voice in your head tells you that you are lonely, overrule it. Again, I say, you are not alone. I am here. 

I am all you need. 

Let my Holy Spirit in your mind and heart take control and resist the worry, the anxiety and the fear. 

Say, 'No. I have the Lord.'

Say it after me: 'No. I have the Lord.' 

This is truth. 

With my love. Believe it. 

God

This is a response to a previous post - Letter to a Stranger. 

Linking up with Sabrina and Ruth, this time at Just Keep Singing for the second in the 'Letters To...' series. This week the prompt was 'Letter to the Brave'. 

A day in the life...

A while ago I entered a competition. It was to write something, 500 words or less, entitled, 'A Day in the Life of a Writer'. It presented a challenge on several fronts:

1. 500 words and I am only just getting started. 
2. I still struggle to identify myself as a writer, even with a small 'w'. It feels too dangerous; as if I'll invite a torrent of contradiction and ridicule. If in a conversation and I'm pressed, I might own up to ramblings on a blog somewhere but I have difficulty making eye contact at that point and rarely actually let people know where to find my ramblings, should they wish to. Not in a face-to-face real-life encounter; too scary. I usually say, 'I'll send you a link via email.' And then I er...don't. 
3. The competition was run by The Association of Christian Writers and every day that I hang around making humorous small talk with other procrastinators on the ACW Facebook page is another day that I risk being exposed as a fraud. Not the Christian bit, the 'writers' bit.
4. So, sending a piece of writing off to be read and judged by people I so admire; well, when I finally got round to tapping the 'Send' button, I was wincing.

At this point, I'd quite like to tell you that after all that angst, I won. I didn't. Someone else's piece did, and it deserved to win, but (drumroll) I got an highly commended, and also, I'm told, a round of applause at a Writer's Day where the winners were announced. 

Yes I did. Me. 

So I must have written something (and it has 496 words, in case you were wondering).

So I might be a writer. 

Well, inspired by several other people who have added their entries to their blogs, here it is: 

A Day in the Life of a Writer

I am not a writer.

I’m just someone who writes. I write because I can’t not write, but for a writer I spend a lot of time not writing. I write with a digit in Facebook. I write while peering over coffee. I write, but I gaze wistfully at those more clever or poetic or published than I who seem to have said it all, and said it better, and I think, I am not a writer.

I write, because it’s what I do.

I write in my kitchen, at the island unit, looking at the trees in the back garden. From here the kettle is a short stride away; I can reach the fridge without leaving my perch. The fruit bowl is at arm’s length and the biscuits are in the cupboard behind me. Well, they were. There are crumbs on the keyboard.

Mornings are for mentally smoothing out a blank sheet of paper on my screen and planning to arrange words to communicate, encourage and inspire. Yes!

No. Mornings are for gazing out of the window, fretting over blog stats, rejoicing over comments, comparing myself unmercifully with others and making more coffee.

Afternoons are for watching the clock as my peace and quiet ticks away before the school run.  Decisively closing all programs on the computer but the blank page and being struck by delicious inspiration at about two o’clock only to  gather it all into a jumbled pile in my head at three as I dash to the school gates.

Early evening is for sitting side saddle at my island workspace trying to retrieve and nail down the late afternoon magic while the children roller-skate around me demanding snacks and promises while tea bubbles and burns on the cooker (two and a half paces away).  

Early evening is for closing the laptop with exasperation only to find that my best ideas come from my children. We are all just kids on a long journey. Are we nearly there yet?

Nope, there’s time for another story before bedtime.

Evening is for delicious, cosy quiet when the children are in bed.  For angst about what sort of distracted mother would rather write down strings of words than play Twister, and for pouring out my feelings with my fingers on the keys. Evening is for debating whether to take my laptop to bed where my feet will be warm and taptaptap while semi-recumbent or to leave the unfinished masterpiece where it is and turn to my books and pillow for consolation, motivation, inspiration.

Nighttime is for scribbling in my journal - thoughts and prayer, hope and despair. It’s for leaving it all with Him; achievements and intentions, creativity and procrastination.  Nighttime is for trying to switch off the brain that won’t kick in each morning.

It’s for climbing back out of bed and padding down to the blank page on the kitchen island computer and filling it with words.

I am a writer. Sometimes I write.

A black eye and a taste of heaven

Well, thank you for another year, Lord God.

Yesterday was my little girl's eighth birthday and she was more excited than an excited thing. We did all the stuff; we did presents, we did birthday-tea-full-of-treats-with-little-nutritional value, we did balloons, we did singing, we did blowing out candles. We did hugs and we did great big smiles. We did reminiscing, Daddy and me. 

I gave birth to Elizabeth after a rapid labour against all the expectations of the midwives. I had a single paracetamol for pain relief at about half past eight because the midwife who examined me thought I had a very long way to go and assumed I was a bit of a wuss to be asking about it so early in the game. When I got hold of the gas and air I left teeth-marks in the mouthpiece and nail marks where I had it clenched in my fist. Daddy arrived at half past nine fresh off a train from London and walked in nonchalantly just in time for the punchline. 

At 10.16pm, Elizabeth Lucy took everyone by surprise and was born on a plinth in an examination room on the hottest day of the year 2005, and all the fans were in use elsewhere. It was warm work.

I held my little girl in my arms and I was filled with wonder. Long fingers, a mass of light brown hair, button nose, little chin just like her Daddy's and a big black eye. She was brand new, moments old,  with a lusty cry before she was even fully born. 

Red and bruised, head slightly elongated, one eye bloodshot and swollen shut, little rosebud lips giving us glimpses of a little pointy tongue, the sharpest of tiny fingernails. Beautiful? Well, yes and no. Or more accurately, no - and yes, breathtakingly beautiful. A whole person made up of half me and half Daddy. Two of everything down the sides and one of everything down the middle. Breathing, crying, suckling, waving, kicking, snuggling. Fragile and yet so strong. 

I can't explain it, that thing that happened that night. The way that I went in to the hospital someone's wife and someone's daughter and came out still those things but now someone's mother too. Everything changed that night. The world tilted slightly and never righted itself; it's strange that nobody ever noticed but me. 

Even after the midwife cut the cord, Elizabeth was attached to me. She always will be. I tell her that she's my baby girl and sometimes she snuggles closer when I say that and other times she stiffens and tells me in no uncertain terms that she's not a baby, she's a grown up girl. She has a little sister, also my baby girl, and Lizzie sometimes feels the weight of older sister responsibility very keenly. Lizzie is my oldest, my firstborn, my worrier. She's my vibrant, energetic, imaginative, complicated, softhearted, fearless dynamo of a daughter.  

We found out last week after Xrays at the dentist that Elizabeth's adult teeth have not formed properly and many of them won't be coming. The dentist talked me through her Xrays and showed me the spaces in her jaw where lurking teeth should be. Her baby teeth haven't been a great success as a few of those formed poorly before she was born and so we've been hanging our hopes on their temporary nature, but alas they're going to have to last. She's got a decade or more of intervention ahead of her, poor love, extractions, orthodontics and implants, just to work on a smile. 

Elizabeth heard the dentist say that there was a strong likelihood that at the end of all the treatment, as a young adult, she'd have a nice smile. Afterwards, on our subdued ride home, she asked me, 'Isn't my smile nice now?'

That's one of those moments that made me catch my breath. 

Oh, my little love. I remember the very first smile, wide and toothless. It was the most wonderful thing I ever saw then, and still is, at eight years old with gaps and unevenness and trouble buried beneath the surface. It will be at twenty when it's wide and white and even and the braces are off and the implants are implanted and she's buried the trauma of the season-ticket to the orthodontist. If I were only around to see it I have no doubt that it would take my breath away at ninety five when only those implants remain and there are gaps once again. 

My heart hurt for her. Things weigh heavily on my Lizzie, her self-esteem sometimes is tissue-paper fragile and we work and we work to build her up. This problem isn't going away any time soon. The dentist told me that things were not as bad as they could be; there are many worse off. Of course there are. It's just that I don't want my little girls to go through stuff like this. And to be honest I don't want to go through it either; holding hands, drying tears, whispering love and encouragement and support as they struggle, just wishing that it was me, because it would be so much easier that way.  

I know it's not the way to bring up a brave, strong woman, but I'd spare her every second of pain and hurt if I could. And since I'm no stoic myself, it's nothing short of a miracle that I'd do that, and do it in an instant. But a miracle did happen that night when I had my baby. I became someone different when I became a mummy. I'm still growing into that person; I suspect it might take me the rest of my life. It's not easy.

Not easy at all, but often wonderful. I sat on the side of her bed last night at 10.16pm and I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and inhaled the fragrance of her as she slept. When she was a baby I used to carry her with her head on my chest and I would breathe in her baby smell and I remember offering her to another family member to sniff because she smelled so beautiful. They smiled politely but they didn't get it. I wonder if it's just for me - some primal thing, some deeply profound connection just for mother and daughter? I don't know. I do know that from the moment I took my first breath as a mummy, it's my favourite fragrance in the world, matched only by that of her little sister. 

They say that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory - then maybe that's why. Last night I remembered like yesterday that night in the tiny room on the hard, high, narrow examination table, hot and exhausted and dazed, with my baby girl on my chest. 

Inelegant, undignified, undone. 

Nobody tells you these things about having a baby. Nobody tells you the true horror of the sleep deprivation. Nobody tells you about the dilemmas of high temperatures and endless crying and inoculations and school selection. No-one teaches you how to untangle baby-fine hair or comb for nits or do a French plait because that's what all the girls at school have. No-one tells you what to do when your baby girl is bullied, or bullies, or doesn't get on with a teacher. You play it by ear. 

It's a good job you don't get a glimpse of the soul searching that goes on when your baby girl has no confidence, or loses sleep to anxiety, or cries too easily when things go wrong. Was it me? My inadequacy complex was genetic? Or have I criticised too much, encouraged too little, corrected too forcibly? Crushed when I should have coaxed? Demolished when I should have built up?

Don't get me started. I'm eight years in to this motherhood thing and the truth is that I don't know what I'm doing any more than I did that night in June eight years ago. There's no instruction booklet and no map. I just feel my way. Sometimes we skip along at a lovely pace, everyone smiling, and the scenery is wonderful. I take lots of pictures and get very sentimental with souvenirs. Other times I get completely lost. I hit dead ends and unexpected detours and I have to crawl my way back. I ask a lot of questions and cry a lot of tears, inwardly and outwardly. 

 Nobody tells you how to do it. I think that's pretty normal, isn't it? 

But the most breathtakingly powerful thing that nobody ever tells you is that the whole world changes. 

The whole world changes. So much that I'll never forget a single detail of 10.16pm on that evening eight years ago and when I look down at the long, lean frame of my beautiful sleeping girl, arms flung out in her birthday pyjamas, my head fills with memories of first breaths, first smiles, first steps - and my heart swells.

Nobody tells you how much you'll love them. 

It's a little taste of heaven.

Letter to a stranger

Dear Stranger

I hope you don't mind me calling you 'Stranger'. I know that you are familiar but you're so different from me that you might as well be a new person. I recognise you because you look a bit like me in some ways, but in all the ways that matter, we're miles apart. 

You're me, a year from now. Or maybe two years, five years...ten years? I hope not as long as that because I want to be you, and I don't want to wait that long. You would know how long it's been, but I can't ask you, because I'm way back here. I just get a glimpse of you from time to time.

I know you must be older than me but you don't look much older. Your hair has more grey than mine, but you still do it the same way. A quick blast with the hairdryer and you run your hands through it; it's good to know you haven't come over all salon-fresh in the years that have passed. I can't decide if you have more lines round your eyes - I think maybe so, but it's not what I see when I look at you. I see a woman who smiles more. A woman who cares as little as she ever did about grey hairs, but it's as if the things she did care about have gone. The stuff that engraved those deep frown lines between your eyes - that's gone. It's gone!  You're transformed. 

Where are those lines? I can see them still, but they're not obvious. They're reminders of the days of worry and anxiety, but now when you look at them you don't try to smooth them away; you smile as you remember how hard it used to be to lay down troubles with God. How you used to hang onto your anxiety and how tightly clenched your fingers used to be.  I look at your shoulders now as you walk and you are relaxed, at ease with yourself. You're not tensed up like I am. You're swinging your arms, comfortable in your own skin. I see you've lost that habit of clutching your cardigan defensively tight around you as you walk. I wish I could do that, but I need to cover myself up, you see. 

I know you see - you have been where I am. You don't feel the need to hide any more. 

Here's the big question, and I'm trying to make up my mind. Are you thinner than me, future self? I hardly dare ask you, because right now, where I am, I hate the way I look. I hate it so much that it's taking over my life. I have an idea that God has something for me regarding my body image, my self image, my self esteem, whatever I should call it, but I don't know what it is, or whether I have to somehow work it out. I know that God doesn't want me to live like this, and when I see you so free and unselfconscious, I feel tears in my eyes as I long to be a woman like you. 

I look at you and I know that God has done something. Whatever precious gift He gave you, you took it, you unwrapped it and you put it on. You never took it off, did you? You're wearing it still. 

It looks great on you.

I think you are a bit slimmer, but it's hard to see. Somehow it's not what's important, is it? You walk along and your head is high and there's a contented smile on your face. You're happy being you. How do you do that? Where did that apologetic feeling go? How did you get rid of the long- held conviction that you are not worth the space you occupy? I want to know how you did it. 

Oh, it's such a comfort to me to see you like this.  I love it when I catch sight of you. 

You are a different woman. I know you intimately, I don't know you at all, but I want to know you because you look like the kind of woman who could help me. You look like the kind of person who would stop when you saw me watching you with despair in my eyes and you'd sit down next to me and tell me it's going to be alright. You'd confide in me that you haven't always been like this, and if things can turn out alright for you, then they certainly can for me. You've got a big smile, and although your teeth are just the same as they always were, you don't care any more if people see them. 

You've learned that your smile is more important than your teeth. You've learned that who you are is more important than what you look like. You've learned that food will never give you the comfort and reassurance that you've been looking for for almost all your life and you've made your peace with that, because your comfort and safety are found in God. I can see what a huge thing this has been for you. 

You've learned that you are precious and unique and loved; so, so loved. You've learned that your worth doesn't come from what other people think - and those lessons have been absorbed deep down in your soul. It's not just head-knowledge any more, not just theoretical. 

You believe it. You found the Truth, and it has set you free, hasn't it?

Finally, you're free.

I'm envious of that confidence that I see as you slip out of my sight again. I want to be where you are, but I don't know how to get there. It seems like a vast mountain to climb and there are days when I just can't imagine that it's possible. So when I see you and it's clear to all the world that you've made it over that particular peak, it gives me a bit of strength. 

I don't know how to take even the first step, but I know that in time, He will show me. I think - I hope - that it's going to be soon. 

He won't leave me behind. 

Thank you for giving me hope, stranger. It's been nice to see you. 

With love

Helenx

Linking up today with Ruth Povey at Letters To... 

In Christ Alone

In Christ alone my hope is found

He is my light, my strength, my song

This Cornerstone, this solid ground

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease

My Comforter, my All in All

Here in the love of Christ I stand

Amen, amen, amen. 

I know that this is true. 

How can I know? When faith is believing what we can't see? I don't know. Perhaps I don't really know it. But something inside me reaches for you when I sing these words and I think it's my soul. It's not a conscious reaction; it's instinctive. It's profound. It tells me that these words are truth. 

You are my solid ground. 

So many times I scrabble about looking for hope and light in other places but I come back to you every time. I lean on someone else only to find that they shift and they stumble too. I cast about for help, for advice, for support, for love  - and find that it only reliably comes from you. 

How often I fail to recognise that you are the only solid ground - other areas sometimes seem solid but turn out to be quicksand.

You remain firm. You never change. You stay put. You never let me down. 

You are eternal and everlasting and immutable and all those long words. 

The only problem is me; sometimes I forget. Sometimes I don't even forget; it's more stupid than that. Sometimes I just stop believing it for some reason and I try something else. I look to people for comfort, or to food, or to books, even to sleep.  But it never satisfies for long. I'm sad and worried all over again, I'm hungry again. I still have questions despite the texts. I am soon weary again.

But you are the One who stills fears, who brings peace. 

I stand in your love.

In Christ alone, who took on flesh

Fullness of God in helpless babe

This gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones He came to save

'Til on that cross as Jesus died

The wrath of God was satisfied

For every sin on Him was laid

Here in the death of Christ I live

My God, what did you do for me? You gave up glory in Heaven to come and be one of us down here. You ate and laughed and wept and taught and loved and did all the things that you did and then you bled and you died. 

As if it were not enough for us to kill you, we mocked you as well. Insult and injury. No, we didn't know what we were doing. You were dying for each and every one of us and we either turned away or spat at you. Even your friends ran and hid. Your own mother watched you die. I don't have the capacity to understand fully what you did but the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end every time I sing this verse. 

You were light itself but you allowed the darkness to engulf you. You knew what would happen but you came and loved us and did it anyway. You, who never did anything wrong, who could at any point have called down lightning from heaven to stop the whole thing and prove your deity. 

You did this for me. 

For me. 

You love me so much that you would come yourself to do what was necessary to 
bring me home. I can never deserve what you did for me.

There in the ground His body lay

Light of the world by darkness slain

Then bursting forth in glorious Day

Up from the grave He rose again

And as He stands in victory

Sin's curse has lost its grip on me

For I am His and He is mine

Bought with the precious blood of Christ

I am so thankful that your story doesn't end with your death. Many stories do end like this; someone does something noble, selfless; he gave his life for his cause, and those stories are wonderful, inspiring, even... but only one ends like this. 

You rose from the dead. 

You came to life again. If even death is not the end, there is nothing that can defeat you. And because of your amazing grace and love for me, I can say that death is not the end for me either, nothing can defeat me. 

There may be many battles but you have won this war. 

You bought me with your blood. You paid the price that needed paying and I am yours. 

Oh, my God. 

Nothing can stop me from one day being with you, because of what you did. You, the living God, the creator of the universe; you, who can see history from the beginning to the end, you, who are the context of everything, the thoughts and dreams and hopes of all your children - you made me free. 

'If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.'  John 8:36

Amen.

No guilt in life, no fear in death

This is the power of Christ in me

From life's first cry to final breath

Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man

Can ever pluck me from His hand

'til He returns or calls me home

Here in the power of Christ I'll stand

Oh Lord God I so want to live this way. You took away my guilt and yet I keep trying to take it back. You banished fear and yet I can't help hanging onto it. I am quite sure that the power of Christ is somewhat muted in my life, but each day I am trying to let more of it shine through me. I need lots of help.

I am a work in progress. I know that I'm not finished yet. I know that I'm not what I was. I know that I will be better, and most importantly I know that I am loved just how I am. You will never give up on me. You'll never shake your head impatiently and say that if I haven't learned by now then I'll never learn. You always, always, reach down and gently help me to my feet.

Try again. I am loved, imperfect as I am. 

Nothing can separate me from your love. 

Nothing can prevent me from being with you. 

I am saved and I am safe. 

No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from your hand. 

No power of hell. If you are for me, then who can stand against? I am yours and nothing can change that. All the rubbish that goes on in my life, all the mistakes I make, the voices in my head that tell me I've really messed up this time, it's no good, I'll never amount to anything... nothing matters. 

Only you. And your voice is the one that tells me, 'I am loving you, my daughter. You are precious to me. I will never let you go.'

The other guy? He'll never win. He can cause me no end of trouble but he can't win. I am loved by the true and living God.

I am amazed.

Whether one day - tonight, tomorrow? At the ending of the world? When it's time, when it's all over for me down here I will go home to be with you and I will see you with my own eyes. What a day that'll be. I will be bowing very low on that day. And I believe that you will lift my chin until I look into your eyes and I won't see any condemnation or reproach or disappointment. All there'll be is love;  I'll see how much you love me. 

And then I'll stand in the warmth of your presence with my arms raised high, surrounded by everyone who has ever loved you down through the ages and we'll sing this song until all of creation joins in. 

I can't wait.  

You are my God and I am your child. 

Thank you.




In Christ Alone 
Words and music Stuart Townend & Keith Getty
Copyright 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

Linking up with Tania Vaughan at Monday Ministry.

Give me Jesus

God, I'm exhausted. 

You know what this week has thrown at me and it's no surprise that I'm ready to call it a day. I'm tired and tearful and probably hormonal and at least I know that you're the one person who won't roll their eyes and put all this angst down to hormones; you invented them. You know what they can do to a person. 

Lord, it's been a crap week. Not to put too fine a point on it. Sorry.

I haven't even got the energy to tell you all about it - but that's alright because you know already. You were there. You think I can handle it. You're probably right, I suppose - what choice do I have? But I'm going to need some help. 

I came across this picture on the Internet. I love it. It's a beautiful picture of a sunrise and the caption is:

'In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus.'

It turns out that it's a quote from a traditional spiritual song that I don't know which was famously arranged by a lady called Alma Blackmon. The words are very simple, and beautiful and the refrain: 

'You can have all this world

Just give me Jesus'.

That's about it. 

There have been a handful of times in my life, Lord God, when I've run out of... well, everything. Energy, ideas, patience, peace of mind. This week is pretty much one of those times. Bad news has piled on top of bad news and anxiety and worry linked arms and barged their way back into my head where they set up camp and made themselves comfortable. Fear crept in quietly and ominously and now huddles with them round the camp fire and depression and defeat are waiting in the shadows for an invitation. 

Give me Jesus. 

Lord, give me Jesus when I rise, and before that, when I lie in bed and stab at the snooze button and try to stay asleep because it's easier being asleep than awake. Give me Jesus when I come downstairs and start to nag the children about eating breakfast, brushing hair, brushing teeth, getting dressed, finding bookbags and finding shoes. 

Give me Jesus on the school run. Give me Jesus as I walk away into the grown-up bit of day which this week hasn't been a whole lot of fun. As I spend time with people I love, give me Jesus so that they can see Him, not me. 

Give me Jesus as I collect the kids and make tea. Give me Jesus as I run baths and find pyjamas. Give me Jesus as I put them to bed and then do it all over again. And again. 

Lord, Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, just give me Jesus. 

Lord, you can have all this world. I don't want it at the moment. It's a world full of broken marriages and pain and illness and hospitals and doctors and X rays and bad news and low self esteem and tears and waiting on hard chairs and lying awake at night not-knowing and filling the gaps with imagination that just loves to paint everything bleak and grim. 

It's a world full of shadows that are so dark that sometimes it's hard to see you.

It's a world where you are visible in the huge extravagant beauty of the first poppy blooming in my garden and in the promise of the flowers on the tomato plants and in the baby radishes peeping potential above the soil. It's a world of purply-grey stormy skies and lashing rain then watery sunshine and subtle rainbows and the smell of wet dusty ground. 

It's a world where those that have eyes to see and ears to hear can find you all everywhere - and all that's just lovely and great but right now it's not enough, Father God. I don't want to discern you in subtleties, I want to run actually, not figuratively, into your real, solid, faithful arms and feel the weight and strength of your embrace. To let my legs go as wobbly as they feel and let you pick me up effortlessly and hold me close like a little girl. 

Daddy, I'm tired.

I don't want to be strong. I want to give up. I want to stay asleep. 

I don't want to keep trying to communicate when I don't have words. I don't want to persevere with the goals you've set me, I want to sit down and not move. I don't want to make decisions and I don't want to explain bad things to small children and I just don't want to do any of it any more. 

I don't want to run the race, I'm tired and I want to rest. 

You can have all this world. Just give me Jesus. 

Amen. Just...amen.

Back to basics

Morning, God.

I've wondered what to say. I've been sitting here long after my coffee's finished and I've been reading the brilliance of other people's thoughts and ideas and feeling totally inadequate and I've been chewing the side of my left thumb until it's bleeding and I'm not going to mention that to anyone here because hubby hates my finger-chewing and little Katy has started doing it too and I'm held responsible for that bad habit. 

As inspiration and good grammar are concerned, that was a pretty duff start.

I'm going through one of those phases (this is the second this year) where coming here and talking to you has become a difficult thing. I'm not sure why. 

Part of it is that it feels a bit as if I have nothing to say, yet too much all at the same time. I know that you've been speaking to me recently and I'm trying to translate some of those words into something that I can talk about and clarify and develop, but I'm finding it hard to nail down. Some is deeply personal and very important to me and I need to sit for a few hours, just you and me, and try to understand. I know that you're waiting, patiently for me to do just that. 

Thank you, Lord, that the invitation to talk, to listen, to lean, to sink a bit deeper into you doesn't expire. Thank you for not taking umbrage and withdrawing your offer of help and healing just because I'm too wrapped up in things to take you up on it. 

My train of thought is still boarding at the station.

I have a myriad of reasons and excuses; the children have been on holiday, my husband is working from home, the (somewhat unwelcome) change in my routine (oh, my precious routine. I read somewhere that routine can become an idol, and I found myself wincing...) All these things have disturbed my rhythm and I'm finding it hard to get it back.

I want to scream. Or cry. Or go back to bed. 

What I should do is just lay it all down - there - and leave it with you. 

Right. Here's back to basics. Profound insight is beyond me. Intricate word play also out of my reach. Humour - no, not so much, today. So, then, what shall I say?

Someone once taught me the structure of prayer, years ago, and it sort of stuck on a basic level. 

ACTS.  Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.

When in doubt...

Adoration

Lord, it's a beautiful day and you are everywhere. 

You are in the sunshine and shade, the birdsong and the neighbour's cat stretched black and glossy, lazy on our garden bench. 

You are in the vivid, improbable green of the trees and leaves, chlorophyll singing health and new growth and bright June potential. 

You are in the church bells chiming ten, reminding me that one of my favourite places in all the world is just down the road from here; worship is not just for Sunday, but here, now, in my back garden, at this keyboard, in that greenhouse, that shed, that kitchen. 

You are in the blue sky, the pompom white clouds, the daisies and buttercups and irrepressible clover that makes my lawn very unhealthy but oh, so soft to bare feet. 

You are in the beautiful faces of my two girls smiling at me from last year's school photo propped against the fruit bowl and you are there in the sheen of ripe pears and apples. 

You are in the wind blowing the washing on the line and you there in the fragrance of clean sheets. 

Oh, my God, you are sitting on the spare stool to my right and you have your arm around my shoulders and you care not a bit if my words are profound or well chosen or even spelled correctly; you just revel in the fact that your precious daughter wants to talk to you. 

Lord, I do. I do. I love you.

Confession

My heart sinks when I realise that I don't know where to start. 

Alright, how about yesterday when I was so angry with my oldest daughter, seven-going-on-fourteen, who sulked and grumped around on a beautiful treat-day out and did her best to spoil it for everyone? I cajoled, I encouraged, I sympathised and eventually I threatened. I said things that crushed and wounded and I'm sorry. 

I can make excuses by saying that I don't know what I'm supposed to do when faced with incessant whining and whinging and rudeness, but it's no defence. 

I was mean, and I'm sorry. 

I'm sorry for the things I thought as well; I demolished her in my head. I'm sorry for the things that are in my head that nobody knows about but you. I stoke up the negative things in my mind until they glow hot and spill over into words. 

I am full of self. I'm sorry that I turned my back on you last night when you waited for me to come and chat at bedtime; I said, in a minute, in a minute, while I checked Facebook and Twitter, then my email, then Facebook again. I played a game on my phone, read the news headlines and dipped in and out of YouTube until I was slouched so low in bed that sitting up with my journal and a pen and comparing notes with you was too much for me. Maybe I always knew it would be. 

I'm sorry. I don't understand why I do that because I know for a fact that meeting with you at the beginning and end of each day makes things so much better on every level. 

Thanksgiving

So, so much to give thanks for. 

For days like today when the view from the kitchen window is full of colour. 

For the days when it rains so that I don't have to go round with my watering can in the evening. 

For bees and garden chairs and books and notepads and ideas. 

Thank you for my girls' painted handprint pictures that freeze in time the smallness of their palm-prints for sentimental people like me. 

For the nothing-like-it feel of a small hand in yours as you walk along to school. 

For sausages for dinner and for mayonnaise, because there is no food that is not enhanced with the addition of mayonnaise. 

Thank you for your faithfulness, for your mercy, for your fun; thank you for swings and roundabouts and shouts of joy. 

Thank you that as I sit here with the windows open I can hear the sound of children in the playground at Katy's school; it's a happy sound. 

Thank you for all the blessings of our comfy existence - for education and freedom for children to play and not have to work, for running water, for plentiful food and for medicines when we need them. 

Thank you for being there, always, no questions asked, without fail, always loving, always forgiving, always loving some more, asking from me nothing and everything at the same time. 

Supplication

Right now, what's it to be? What should I ask you for in the state of mind that I'm in right now? 

Peace.

Help me to find peace whatever the circumstances, will you, Father? 

I know that true faith and trust in you would mean that I'm not at the mercy of the prevailing mood of the household, whether that mood emanates from me or anyone else. I want to depend on you so absolutely that it doesn't shake me or throw me if someone else is walking round with a thundercloud of discontent or anger. 

I want to be someone who has her own microclimate of peacefulness and calm. Is that too much to ask? 

Unlikely this side of heaven? Surely not. 

Lord, help me get a better grip of the things I say. Irritation and bitterness spill out of me sometimes and I can't stop it - or I choose not to. I talk to other people too much and to you not enough. 

I read somewhere recently one of those little illustrated ideas that do the rounds on the internet and it said:

Have you prayed about it

As much

As you've talked about it?

...and the answer is no, rarely do I pray about things anywhere near as much as I talk about them. And on the odd occasion where I put serious prayer (by my standards, I note your wry smile), I realise that prayer does change things. 

So change me, Lord. Teach me to control what goes on in my head so that I can control what comes out of my mouth. Help me to grab onto you when I want to grab someone by the throat. 

Help me cultivate calm and find peace, rather than stoking up my temper and doing the devil's job for him, for I know that he would have me constantly irritated, annoyed, criticising and lashing out. 

Above all, don't let go of me, for without your hand on me I'm in freefall. 

Don't stop talking to me. Make me listen. Remind me, call me, tug at me. 

Make me more like you. 

Amen. 

Let it be.