The Waiting Room

We have two local doctors that we go to when we need one.

One is our GP who we know quite well now and who knows our family. She doubles up as a local politician and her husband is the suburb mayor, heaven only knows how they get any kind of family life.

To see her we usually need to make an appointment a couple of weeks in advance so if we need quick treatment, we also visit the no appointment clinic with rotating overworked doctors who do crazy long hours and to whom you are just a faceless patient.

In the latter clinic, as with my hairdresser, you turn up, take a number and wait. Sometimes for hours and hours.

When you’re waiting, it can seem like an eternity. The second hand on the clock seems take a whole minute to flip over and it as if you are being tortured.

Sometimes your partner drops by or sends you a text.

Any news? How many people are in front of you now? How much longer do you think you’ll be?

Only six more people you tell them, but the last one took 45 minutes.

And then you look up and suddenly there is only one more person in front of you. Or you’re next.

I was thinking this morning that there are seasons of our lives that feel like that waiting room. Even though you know that time will eventually pass, things will eventually change, you feel like you are waiting for God to move, to respond, to speak, to say anything, anything at all.

And it can seem interminable.

In fact in a weirdly parallel way, in any one life, there are things that are moving and changing and yet inevitably there is also a list of things that we are waiting for to change.

How do we wait well? When there is uncertainty, how do we hold that uncomfortable tension and wait for the fog to clear?

When there are painful situations or grief, how do we wait without a running away or housing or distracting ourselves with sorting out another?

When we don’t know what to do or how to do what is in front of us, how do we wait well for the answers?

What happens if others come in the midst of our waiting and all is what’s happening or what we are doing there or even did we get it wrong?

I’m not asking because I have the answers, I’m asking, wondering if you do?

I realise just how bad I am at waiting, how I use all kinds of distraction techniques, how I hide from facing the uncomfortableness and do everything I can to think about something else while I wait.

And in my waiting room, sometimes I realise that I thought I was there for one purpose but it turns out God had an entirely different purpose altogether.

What do you do when God changes the game plan on you but other people still think you should be on the old plan? How do we reconcile God’s expectations with other people’s expectations, our own included?

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-and-white-chairs-on-white-floor-tiles-Ujj6iKN4WoQ?utm_content=creditShareLink&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash

In a cultural pickle

This week, a woman in her early 40s in the UK was forced to announce to the world that she had cancer and ask millions of people to leave her and her family in peace

On the other side of the world, another younger woman publicly apologised for liking and dating someone, disappointing fans who demanded that she remain single.

And let’s not even get started on the rising tide of identity crises, mental health issues,   insane pace of life and stress of being overwhelmed with information and impossible expectations.

How did we, society, get ourselves into this cultural pickle?

How did we get to a place where we encroach on others lives, sometimes when we don’t even know them personally?

Where we dictate how others should live? Or we allow others to dictate how we should or shouldn’t live?

How did we get to the point where virtual line becomes more important than real life and where we invest our interest in people we have never met?

Last week I came out of the weekend and into the working week exhausted. I faced my to do list at work and took a deep breath, pushing down the indigestion of panic.

We are at the end of March and with both of our full time jobs with increasing pressure and growing responsibility, interviews, endless drs appointments, people who are on my heart to pray for, some new commitments at church, and more, it was all a bit much.

I have reached a breaking point in the past and now when I feel myself getting close to that edge again I take certain actions. I know that once that thing in me snaps, it’s a place that takes a long time to come back from.

I asked God for advice, a strategy:

I booked myself an emergency Friday off and extended my Easter weekend break by two days.

I stopped contacting all but a few people to see how they are doing because I was concerned for them.

I drastically cut down on social media.

I started planning to do things that I know renew my soul: gardening, organising things at home, cleaning, creative activities like writing a blog post, going to the hairdresser, walking the dog and picking wildflowers on the way.

I closely watched my thoughts,  asking the Holy Spirit to help me stop thinking about work problems or worrying when it was not working hours or in the middle of the night.

A few weeks earlier I had already stopped watching the news and any Netflix series that had negative, spiritual or cruel aspects to them.

And I refused a couple of last minute invitations where there would be people to socialise with.

Everybody has a different make up of their character. What is good for one person is not necessarily what is good for another.

As I get older I get to know myself better and better.

I realise that I am an empath and that I have a pastoral heart, meaning I care for others and naturally want to help them and pray for them. I easily take on other people’s burdens but they weigh me down and I cannot easily stop thinking about them. News items with people constantly suffering can be overwhelming.

In short, social relationships drain me and when I am running on empty I need to refill before I can continue.

I am ambivert, meaning that I enjoy and need social interaction but it needs to be balanced with time alone for me to reengergise.

I am created to be creative, I am a planner an organiser and a thinker. When life becomes too rushed for too long and I can’t find that time to do these things, I need to stop and make time for them before I go on.

My heart is to help others and to see them liberated by God into the things he has for them and I love social media. Sometimes, I need to be reminded that first and foremost I am too experience life with God and enjoy him forever.

And then if I have time after that I can write or post about it. If I never do, that’s fine too. It’s not because I don’t say it outloud that it’s not true or didn’t happen.

Not everything needs to be expressed to others.

And as I thought about this time blocked out away from the world, I realise two things:

1. How even though everyone needs this emotional space, still society doesn’t allow it. How if you say to someone that you blocked the weekend to do nothing but be on your own and not see people, it is still seen as atypical and not acceptable.

2. That Jesus often, very often, went away on his own to pray and be by himself with God. And how people were constantly searching for him, not understanding why he needed to get away

Relationships are wonderful. We are created for relationship with God and with others.

Social media is not a bad thing, it can be an amazing way of connecting with other people.

But it is a tool and and not our master. And it is a broken mirror that easily distorts reality and can distance as much as it brings people closer. And it can cause us to confuse actual relationships with false relationships.

We desperately need the discernment of the Holy Spirit to be able to take the good in the virtual and apply it so that we engage in real life better.

I love Matthew 11:28 which says Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

https://bible.com/bible/116/mat.11.28.NLT

The tiniest of flowers found on the walk with the dog, there were a cloud of them on brambly weeds.

Go where the wind blows you

Photo de Saad Chaudhry sur Unsplash

There’s a crack up line in the movie How to lose a guy in 10 days where Andie, a writer for a fashion magazine has a conversation with her editor Lana :

Lana: Congratulations. This shows me you’re ready to be unleashed. From now on, feel free to write about anything.
Andie: Anything?
Lana: Wherever the wind blows you.
Andie: Even politics?
Lana: Well, the wind’s not going to blow you there.
Andie: What about religion, poverty, economics?
Lana: This wind is really more of a light breeze.

https://www.ranker.com/list/how-to-lose-a-guy-in-10-days-quotes/movie-and-tv-quotes

The hubster and I often use this line jokingly on each other because it’s so true. We invite people to feel free to do whatever they want but in reality there are limits to what we’ll allow.

I had an interesting conversation at work a couple of weeks ago. ChatGPT the AI programme that is sweeping the internet was the hot topic of the day. I had seen it advertised on social media targeting students writing dissertations and essays.

If you haven’t come across it before ChatGPT is an online tool which uses artificial intelligence to formulate the answer to just about anything you could ask it and to learn from your responses to it so that it gives more and more precise answers as you go along. For example, it can write your literature essay for you complete with quotes, real life examples taken from across the internet. Or it can put together a computer programme for you or a fitness programme that is worthy of a highly qualified fitness instructor.

At Uni 30 years ago we studied basic natural language processing, or teaching computers to formulate grammatically correct and socially appropriate responses. ChatGPT is that, but on steroids. As one of the guys in office said, it is as big of leap in AI evolution and revolution as the creation of the internet.

Clearly the obvious downside is that it will do away with a number of jobs.

Who needs computer developers if people can simply pop in your needs and AI writes your programme for you?

Would you pay for a fitness expert when you can get a tailored programme online?

Why would you go to church to hear a sermon when you can type in what you want to hear into a programme and it writes a perfectly formulated theologically sound message for you that avoids everything you don’t want to hear? Ahem.

As the AI is learning, who is harvesting the information?

Will machines take over the world and oppress us?

Are we continually being manipulated by subtle marketing?

Are our phones listening to us and targeting us with ads online using the conversations we have while they are sitting innocently beside us on the table?

As we talked over the implications together of what this development might mean for the future it became clear that in the wake of all the global changes that covid, expansionist policies, wars, earthquakes, political reform and the rising cost of living has brought, this one is going to provide an existential crisis for hundreds of thousands of people.

And yet.

And yet, as we talked, the thought came to me that this could actually be an opportunity for us to use our collective imaginations and could be something that we use to leap off of to do something that nobody has ever dreamed of. Used correctly as a tool, AI could free our time to do other things if we could just imagine what doesn’t yet exist.

Before cars were invented, nobody knew what a mechanic was or a panel beater. When cottage industries were replaced by factories, nobody imagined one day there would be research and development teams, or robot manufacturers.

This leap in AI evolution is not a new leap that we haven’t done before, it’s just an exceptionally big leap and people, as they always have been, are anxious that they will be replaced and not find their place in the world.

Honestly, I am excited. This is a huge opportunity for collective imagination to get to work and for calling things into existance that do not yet exist.

I wish in my conversation I could have said what I was really thinking but couldn’t say because the incomprehension was already too great.

I wish I could have said that God gives creativity, wisdom, imagination to people if we ask him, that he has a hope and a future for humanity and it is a good one, that he is our secure place from which we launch ourselves into a world wobbling from uncertainty, that he is our rock when we feel like everything is crumbling around us.

I wish I could have told them about his incredible goodness that makes us courageous and brave to face the future because he holds us securely in his hands and he protects us.

I wish I could have said that the winds of change bring new life, that they spread seed across the land into places we never thought life would come.

The In Between

I was asked for a short bio today and I couldn’t think what to write. It’s for a repost from my previous blogging/writing life and I was thinking… who am I now? I’m not a blogger. I’m not a writer. I have a job but it’s not my identity, it’s something I currently do. I don’t do what I used to do and change is coming so we are currently laying down all that we are and all that we have done. One thing is wrapping up and another new thing is about to start but it hasn’t yet started and it is still just a faith dream.

I am in the IN BETWEEN.

 

The IN BETWEEN is humbling. It’s that place of total God dependence where you give up things you love for the promise of things to come but you don’t exactly know what is to come. It asks you to wait patiently, to be ok with not knowing the details, it asks you to trust God with your future and to step boldly out of the boat and into the water to do things that you’re not even sure you can do yet.

It is a place that is terri-citing – simultaneously terrifying and exciting but strangely peaceful too because while we might not know specifics, we are holding onto the promises God has been speaking into our hearts and continually reassuring us of.

The IN BETWEEN is a hard place for others to understand too. What’s happening? When will we know? What’s God calling us to? To be honest, we don’t know and it will happen when it happens. All we know is it will happen and when it does, we’ll let you know. We’d love you to be patient with us, to pray and press in on our behalf, to love us in the meantime and help us transition well.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  These are words that take on profound meaning when you’re in the IN BETWEEN. The things we hope for aren’t yet a reality and in a world where seeing is believing, we are asked to believe and then see. It’s counter-cultural and people secretly think you’re nuts.

The IN BETWEEN though is such an important place to sit and rest though. That place of waiting is where things ripen and mature, where they go from tasting a bit howyagoing to deliciously perfect. Instinctively I know that rushing the IN BETWEEN comes at my peril.

I think I’m coming to the point where I’m ok with being in between. I’m currently working on holding the tension between the things I can do, the things I want to do and the things I feel guilty about not doing. I”m working on reviewing what my priorities are and not worrying about what other people think of what I’m doing.

Are you in an in between place? Are you rushing the process or patiently waiting? Do you love change or hate change? As the end of one year approaches and a new one begins, what do you see new on your horizon?

Silencing the accuser

At last. A Monday to blog. It’s raining outside. I’m sitting with a hot water bottle and a cup of tea snuggled up in my bed, which is my thinking place. And amazingly, my laptop is cooperating with me. I believe that’s called serendipity, if there was such a thing.

So much has been going on here. In my head and in our family.  Dreams are being dreamed, plans are being tentatively made, we’re seeking God, abiding with him, doing life with him. It’s that feeling of exciting scary.

In all of that though, about a month ago, I had started to notice that a good 75% of the time my thoughts make me feel really really bad. I started taking them out and unpacking them to see why I felt so yuck all the time and and I realized that around three quarters of my thought life consists of condemning or accusatory thoughts towards myself – things like beating myself up over things I’ve done or said, reminders of the way I’ve treated people, things I regretted not doing that I should have and the way I handled different situations.

I love how in an instant, God can convey several concepts that form a cohesive idea or thought in your mind.

Two things popped into my head at the same time – first the verse in 1 Peter 5:8 that says Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. And the second was when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den and he tells King Darius the next morning My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. (Dan 6:22).

The devil is called the accuser of our souls and I realized that he’s been yakking away and I’ve just let him instead of shutting him up.  Sometimes just us telling the accuser to shut up doesn’t work but we can ask God to shut his mouth on our behalf just like God did for Daniel in the lion’s den.

As soon as I started asking God to shut the mouth of the accuser, my thoughts were a whole lot quieter and I’ve been enjoying life A LOT more. I’ve got more peace, I’m able to enjoy things more and worry about mistakes less. I know too that the beneficial effect of not having to listen to all that toxic condemnation and accusation is going to be mean that I try things that I wouldn’t have tried before, that I step out into new things and am not crushed before I get started, that I don’t succumb to self-doubt as much.

There’s an extension to this as well in anxiety and fear that niggles around in the back of my head. It jumps up and down persistently like a very annoying child on a couch but I’m realizing that it doesn’t have to. I can live life differently.

I find that interesting and really quite wonderful. It’s not new knowledge but it’s a new application.

 

A new start

Here we are, after ending my seven year old blog 18 months ago, I’ve decided to start blogging again under a new title, on a new blogging platform and with a clean slate.

I like the new start.  It’s like breathing fresh clean air in and letting go of past blogging mistakes and feeling my way blindly around the blogosphere.

It makes me think of that verse in 2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  

This time around I’ll be blogging mainly about faith with a few other life things thrown in.

I’m new to wordpress so bear with me while I pretty things up and fiddle around a bit.

I’m blogging mainly for myself so that I can get my thoughts down on paper and if you’d like to follow along then hey, that’s a bonus.

My theory is that everyone goes through the same things in life but they don’t necessarily talk about them. We walk around thinking that we’re the only person going through it or thinking these thoughts but if only we told each other, we’d find out everyone else is battling the same thing.  Sharing is caring people. Don’t do your journey alone.

I’ll keep it simple, keep it encouraging, be as honest as is healthily possible and above all develop my faith in Jesus.

If you’d like to join me on the journey that’s wonderful, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please keep it clean and respectful.