Better

N.B. I'm into writing lists. I'm always writing them - shopping lists, to-do lists, books to read lists, chores lists, things to pack lists... you get the idea. One of the lists I write less often are lists about my life, 'bucket' kinda lists if you will. 

At New Year I'm not really into resolutions as things you decree at midnight on 31st December to change half-heartily and then 12 hours later realise you've failed miserably and give up.) When I want to change my life I do so immediately (or at the soonest possible time.) But this year feels different to me. Not different as in I believe something magical is going to happen as the clock strikes 12, but that I feel the end of this year brings closure, to many things that have gone on over the last few years.

2011 turned out not to be the year of hope and new opportunities that I hoped it would. Although there were many very special and amazing times - it was also full of disappointments and heartache. Maybe I should have that sentence the other way around... Anyway, I'm not here to write about the past. This is about the future, about change. About wanting things to be different, better.

I have written a list of things I want to accomplish this year. Some of them may seem like certainties, some of them maybe not - but I'm not going to say which are which. And who knows, what I want and what God wants might turn out to be totally different, and I may not complete any of them - but hey, it never hurts to have goals in life.

Goals For 2012:

1. Return to The Philippines.
2. Get my knees fixed.
3. Invite more people round to dinner.
4. Sleep out on the streets to raise money for the Homeless.
5. Finish Bible In One Year.
6. Give more stuff away.
7. Graduate with a 2:1 (at least!)
8. Get a job.
9. See my friends more.
10. See my family more.
11. Start volunteering with Guides/Scouts again.
12. Get a Youth Band up and running.
13. Have some more 'time off'.
14. Do a 25 mile charity bike ride.
15. See something that takes my breath away.

“People don't fail because they aim too high and miss, 

but because they aim too low and hit.” 

Les Brown

Inside

N.B. The following blog is because I am reading ‘Do Nothing, Christmas Is Coming’ by Stephen Cottrell, ‘an advent calendar with a difference.’

It’s a strange Christmas this year: partly because my family are scattered across the country/world, and partly because it is the first Christmas since as long as I can remember where I haven’t been to church at all in the week leading up to Christmas. This year I am far away from church on Christmas eve, Christmas Day, I haven’t even attended a Candlelit Carol Service. I guess that’s why it doesn’t feel so much like Christmas.

But then again – this Christmas has reminded me more of my childhood. Back to the days when Christmas was exciting. When Christmas traditions filled me with joy, and the laughter and lights of the holiday season brought us together as a family. Over the last week I have seen many of my family, aunts, cousins, grandparents and siblings. I have been able to get to know people on a much deeper level than their Facebook profile – get the heart of what makes people tick and the things that are really precious to them.

Amongst all that, I have taken some time off, and not felt the need to answer every call for my attention. I am a human who needs to recharge, needs to accept my own weakness and my own downfalls, and remember that family is important. I spend a lot of time putting my family second to the demands of youth work/church. But at Christmas, as ‘churchy’ a celebration as we like to make it, I have chosen to reverse that balance. Tomorrow I will spend time with my sister Laura and her husbands’ family. Boxing Day I will spend time with my siblings. And I will not regret the time that I did not spend at Church. For I worship a God who is bigger than the buildings we so often attempt to confine him in, and I will instead find wonder in the day of celebration for the child who was born into the simplicity of a stable.

"May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May the Lord make his face to shine upon you,

and be gracious to you.

May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,

and give you peace."

Merry Christmas everyone.

DNCIC recommendations for today:

·      Now that all of the preparations are done – or at least now that there is no more time for any more preparing – stop, and find a place of quiet.

·  Be still. Get inside the Christmas story. Sit down. Make yourself smaller. In your imagination go  to Bethlehem. Bend beneath the lintel of the door of the stable and come in.

·       God comes to us in the vulnerability of a child. We can come to him in stillness. We can find him in silence. And Christmas can be put back together. And enjoyed.

“Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.” Ralph Sockman

Outside

N.B. All of the following 2 blogs are because I am reading ‘Do Nothing, Christmas Is Coming’ by Stephen Cottrell, ‘an advent calendar with a difference.’

Happiness: it’s what people think Christmas is all about isn’t it? And more than that – many people believe that they can buy happiness – with stuff and presents. Anyone want to volunteer an answer for how long happiness in stuff and possessions lasts with teenagers? How long before they are clambering, desperate, yearning: for the next game or the newest thing or the most recent music – otherwise they will be BORED!

If there is one word I have heard more than any other in all my time as a youth worker it is that one. Teenagers just don’t seem to be able to create things to do for themselves anymore. They need to be constantly entertained/in front of an electronic screen. It’s such a shame. I know my generation in general is almost as bad, but I remember days when my brothers and I would head off down the park for the day – and numerous occasions when the church youth group would head off to King George’s park and sit on ‘our bridge’. We would walk, chat, mess around, play football. Not a computer or games console in sight. I know it sounds stupid, but they are some of the happiest memories of my childhood. Days that were simple and innocent.

Nowadays, I only get times like that when I am over in the Philippines, at Joyland or Dacutan or Payatas: playing games involving a few scruffy flip-flops, and sometimes some even scruffier kids. When I am sad, I close my eyes and their smiles shine brightly in my mind.

The other thing that makes me truly happy is being in the outdoors. I was a Guide as a teenager, and I just loved going on camp. I had a few amazing friends around me, and being a tom boy – making fires and putting up tents and running around in a field for a few days was so much fun. I was reminded of this earlier in the year when I went on camp with some Uni mates. It was easily the best five days of this year – I felt free again. Free to run, scream, listen, sit, and become one with nature and the trees. God’s beautiful creation, and being a part of it, is one of the things that make me happiest of all. In the woods, it doesn’t matter how much money you have if you can’t make fire. It doesn’t matter how big your house is if you’re stranded in the middle of a forest. I love the outdoors life – and I just can’t get enough of it.

DNCIC recommendations for today:

·        It’s not what you have, or don’ have that counts. It’s what you do with it that counts.

·       So forget about what you don’t have; let go of the things you no longer have time to fit in. Enjoy what you do have instead, and make the most of the time you have now – after all it is the only time you possess with any certainty.

·     And why not start manifesting a few other crazy signs of happiness and goodwill. Say hello to the people you pass in the street, smile a bit more, and laugh at your adversities. I once read a survey comparing the number of times a child smiles each day compared to the amount an adult does. The difference was alarming. Children’s smiles outnumbered adults by about ten to one. Let’s bump up our average!

“People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.” Ogden Nash

Homeland

N.B. All of the following 3 blogs are because I am reading ‘Do Nothing, Christmas Is Coming’ by Stephen Cottrell, ‘an advent calendar with a difference.’

I have been thinking about the Philippines a lot recently. I mean, I think about it all the time, but I have been thinking deeply about it lots more than normal. I miss it so much that the core of my body actually aches some days. I look at photos to remind me of those precious memories – some that I have shared and some that I never will, but all of which I hold dear to my heart. Almost within the first few days of being there, the very first time, I felt as if I was finally at home. It is a hard feeling to describe to people, especially to people who feel that my home should be here in the UK, either with family or close friends. I do feel ‘at home’ in many places, but the feeling of my heart being filled with total peace and joy has only ever really occurred in the Philippines.

And as the season for sharing good times with loved ones is fully upon us, I can’t help but dream of the days that used to be… the days that could have been. I know, deep down, that my heart will never truly be settled in this country. And I’m not overly sure what I’m supposed to do about that. I have family and friends here. What a sacrifice I would be making, to move to the other side of the world. I cannot lie, and say that it has never crossed my mind. But I am hoping, in my heart of hearts, that if and when that time comes, God will help those I leave behind to be gracious, and understanding. I hope that he will give my life full purpose, so that I knew that I were not sacrificing in vain.

That’s all I’m going to say today. Lots to do, God bless everyone. x

“Another winter day has come and gone away,

In even Paris and Rome, and I wanna go home

Let me go home

And I’m surrounded by a million people I

Still feel all alone, oh, let me go home

Oh, I miss you, you know”

[Michael Bublé – ‘Home’]

DNCIC recommendations for today:

·         What things bring you the greatest joy?

·         What moments in your life are so inexplicably wonderful that you cannot comprehend them without using the language of the soul, the heart, the spirit?

·         OK, so your heart is just a big muscle pumping your very necessary blood around your very mortal body; but it is also something else, something that cannot be defined or understood without another sort of language, that seems like an echo from another life.

·         Get out the mistletoe – who do you want to kiss?

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.” Anne Frank

Decisions

N.B. All of the following 4 blogs are because I am reading ‘Do Nothing, Christmas Is Coming’ by Stephen Cottrell, ‘an advent calendar with a difference.’

Today is the three-year anniversary of when I became an Auntie. Happy Birthday Layla. I love you so much. xXx

Sometimes I wonder why so many spend so much time debating the rights/wrongs of believing in God. I just don’t get it. Wouldn’t it be much better if people made up their mind, and then lived according to their beliefs? If you do believe, especially in Jesus etc, then live like you believe, and if you don’t, figure out what you’re here for and live by that. If all the energy people spent arguing with others who don’t believe the same as them was put into solving world poverty, I pretty sure the world would be a much less povertous place.

So many people spend so long working out if they truly believe or not that they miss the life they could have lived in the mean time! As for me, I don’t want proof. Proof would deny the meaning of the faith that I have in Christ. I feel in my heart and my soul and the depth of my being that God is there, but that doesn’t mean that there are not doubts that cross my mind. At the end of a hard day, I sometimes wonder if I am wasting my life away. But there are hundreds of things that keep me going, that show me that even if God was false, it would not change the way that I want to live and love. Love is given meaning by God, and those who truly love experience God himself.

Anyway, I’m rambling. There isn’t really much I wanted to say today. Except this:

“My memory is nearly gone;
but I remember two things;
That I am a great sinner, and
that Christ is a great Saviour.”

John Newton (1725-1807)

DNCIC recommendations for today:

·         Will you go to church this Christmas and test out this hypothesis of love?

·         What for you are the biggest obstacles that get in the way of believing?

·         How might you be able to remove them? Who could help you?

·         What could you and your family do to find out more about the Christian faith?

“In Jesus the whole test passing, brownie point earning rigamole of the human race has been cancelled for lack of interest on God’s part. All he needs from us is a simple Yes, or No, and off to work He goes.” Robert Farrar Capon