n'est ce pas?

you give good gifts to me

i pray that i receive them well

so pass the cup of suffering

and let the oil of joy be poured

i'll say - 

god is good

god is good

we love your purpose, father

we want the glory to be yours,

so pass the cup of suffering

and let the oil of joy be poured

we'll say - 

god is good

god is good

i do like that song, very much

so..

..am thinking that it is about time i began to think about working towards possibly getting re-acquainted with the lord...am missing knowing him and being found in him, learning of and from him.....and missing seeing truth before me and having certainties that i can be certain of. 

lots of things are about to change in the next wee while, such as me hopefully moving back to bristol in february.....leaving my family coccoon...this house where i have been so tended to and held in these last six horrible months....

i cannot tell you how this terrifies me. and also how much i want to live in bristol. in an apartment. with my kitchen things and my friend, and in a city i so want to be friends with. 

but old fears quiet slowly and new fears ever slower.....

and yet i feel some new shoots...snowdrops are one of my top five flowers....they are not yet to be seen but in a few weeks, i will go for some journeys through the fields and woods of this shire and see them in their early-spring meaningfulness.....

i miss god. i miss knowing that he can be and wishes to be my all, my waking and working, my laughing and loving, he wants to be in all of it. and i am tired of being in all of it without him

i have not the first clue where to begin to look for him. i know he cannot be far because he has been quietly ever so good to me in the valley....has shown lights of hope and glades of green calmness. ...he sat with me in the small hours, when i have not exactly turned to him but have simply known he must surely be there. 

i also know he is real now more than i ever have. i know he is good because he always has been. 

if anyone knows the way, give a girl a hand...

+/-

so on the way home from fake london christmas yesterday i was thinking about how it was my worst and best fake christmas ever. i laughed more than i have before, the dinner was the best one we've ever managed and i felt honestly christmassy which was quite a feat given the earliness of it all....but i missed my boy, who at last year's faux noel was a newcomer, and who loved every minute of it...

and then while on the bus heading out through west london i was enjoying a song and grinning and tapping my toes and wishing i was driving myself in my own car so i could sing out loud to whatever it was....minutes later it was -covered in rain- on the ear-phones and i was doing the quiet-stream-crying that i have perfected during the hours of train-rides i have survived between here and the briz over the last few months.....and i realised that this is a fairly neat summary of the bizarre, other-worldly experience that grief starts you on and carries you through and semi-ruins you with...

there is simply no telling what may occur from one moment to the next. its like a very natural, hugely understandable form of something bi-polar, and i think that for me the balance weighing against the sheer devastation of it all, is the memory of his nose, his eyes, his skin, his shoulders, his children, his care for me, his speedy walking, his disehevilled appearance, his endless supply of trivial facts and his determination from day one that i was the one for him.

devastating, somehow equally....

i think that i have overcome my fear of it; i no longer panic at the ups and downs of it all. i no longer find myself gripped by the idea that it might never end. i know that it is not only unavoidable but that this mourning, this missing and this weeping is ultimately what will produce (and i think i may say tentatively, has already begun to produce..) the morning, the new skin over wound, the new scope for plans-yet-made...the new love for jesus who, it turns out, really does save....


i am still having the odd bill bryson night here and there (i read bill bryson and his tiresome, humourless anecdotes when i am unable to sleep...) but you know, advent is upon us, and you know how i adore advent...a time for expecting to hope again.....and again....and again...

sshhh

"Now - here is my secret
I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever acheive again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God - that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because i no longer seem capable of giving; to to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable fo kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love. "
by dear mr copeland, the final pages of -life after god-

now, can someone give me any just cause why a person would even consider writing a book, when this book makes me never even want to try, it is so whole and beautiful?!

so yesterday

i was nine years old in the lord
november 14th
wowsers

the threefold heart command..

so for the last three years or so, i have had a piece of green card stuck to my bedroom wall...the dream wall, if you will (if you are a maine road ex-resident..).....written on it in my artistic (ha, read illegible!) scrawl is a note-to-self, in black pencil, that reads as follows...

rend your heart
risk your heart
guard your heart

except on the card it has a big heart drawn on the right-hand side, which therefore it neatly substitutes the word 'heart' in each line, and until SOMEONE freaking invents a -heart- symbol on computer keyboards (as per the simon amstell-related petition on here many moons ago!) you will have to have the out-moded written version on here, and just picture the real-life version in your head...

i think that i could scarcely have imagined when i wrote that note-to-self and pinned it up above the fireplace, just how painful, how exhilarating or how constantly-challenging each of these three instructions from the bible would turn out, respectively, to be.

the rending speaks for itself. i have lost my bear of a man, his magnificent nose and his ever-loving heart, only weeks after we had agreed that we would one day soon get married. you have, i feel sure, read enough to make you weep over your cup of coffee (or all of a friday evening if you're sal) on here in recent weeks, and for that companionship on this particular journey i thank thee.

the risking was learnt in the build-up, in The Single Years - the now infamous valentines endeavour, the depth of attraction and attachment i allowed myself to feel to boy after boy who could not or would not return my attentions.....but the risk continued unabated, and jesus walked me through each and every one of these crashes and i learnt, ever surer, that i had been given a capacity for love and for loyalty and for passion that would one day represent one half of a grown-up relationship. i found faith in myself through these ups and downs, and faith in the notion that love, once chosen by both, would ultimately be one of the greatest additions to my already rather happy life......as you will recall, it was then the risk of sending that first text to the boy after nick's wedding, that resulted in me having him all to myself (notwithstanding his bright, hilarious and loving children!) on short term loan.....

the guarded heart still somewhat eludes me but i think that in all my miss-haversham-related musings over these last four months, i have begun to see that a guard that is generated by wisdom and not by fear, bitterness or reticence (sp?) is really a very precious thing.

i appear to have run out of words, for now. i realise this post is lacking in a conclusion. it might come to me, but i'm hoping sleep gets here first...night loves...x

soul diaspora

sorry for swearing

it is not an overstatement these days when i say that i don't rightly know where i belong.

i am aware of the idea, the notion, the dream of making one's home in jesus himself. john 15 to 17 being my favourite parts of the entire bible, i know that he wants me to join with him..to be with him...to live with him.

but my cds are in BS5 and my tired sorry ass is in GL1....

my best friends are in M14, M16, Uganda, Australia, that London, the north west....and my cold-ridden head is in GL1...

my coffee cups, my DUVET, my winter coats and my beautiful books are in a house that does not feel like home...and yet i am in a house that does feel like home, save for the absence of my coffee cups, my duvet, my winter coats...you get the idea....

my best-self is ten weeks ago, and my wet face, my tired eyes and my sorry heart are here, ten weeks later.....

nothing fits...nothing is where it ought to be. certainly nothing is where it was the last time things all fitted.

i can't find anything. i want to wear a certain pair of earrings, i look and realise they are 35 miles away.

i turn to look for those grey eyes, hoping to find them already looking at me...and they are nowhere....

nothing is where it ought to be...

on paper...

on paper its seven weeks today since the last time i saw him...well, since the last time i saw him when he was still fully him...

on paper i am doing ok, i have spent a week-and-a-half back at work, and its going really well. i love my job, it interests and excites me, and to be honest most of the working day, i still find myself thinking -i can't believe i get to do this for a living-

on paper i seem to have worked out the crying to an average of about twice a week. which sometimes strikes me as scandalous, like i ought to be crying everyday still....but really i know that it is ok.

on paper i have had a very relaxing weekend, tv, food, home, drinks in the evening (but not too many), me-time, people-time, midsomer murders, radio four, coffee and rain.....but in actual fact i do not feel very relaxed.

this is largely because today is, well, -on paper-, the paper (ie one year) anniversary of the wedding of nick and ang, my lovely brother and his lovely wife. at whose wedding reception i spent glad, happy, nervy and memorable time, more or less all of the party, with the boy.....after about seven years of not seeing him....and so today i am thinking, huh......how different it could all have been had i set my cap at another. had he not made eyes at me, had we not snuck out for cigarettes in-between the dinner-courses, has he not looked so lovely in his suit, had......well, had nothing happened.

and in fact as you know, nothing did happen....we just spent the day and evening hanging out. its midnight now. at midnight he came and told me he had to go. his lift was leaving. and i was devo. my night kind of ended. i mean, it didn't, the rest of us went in our bridesmaid dresses and suits to the pub and stayed out til four am. but when me and emily got home to my house and she stayed in my room with me i could not sleep for talking about him. she listened and made all the nice responses you want one of your best friends to make when they've seen you with a boy and you're trying to figure out if he might actually like you...

on paper: a piece of green paper that has been on my wall for several years, it has a picture of a heart, drawn hastily with a black thick pencil. and the words

rend your heart

risk your heart

guard your heart

when i wrote it three years ago i knew that this was where god was calling me, towards risky love; to all-out extravagant love; to brave and nerve-wracking and terrifying love....(the risking)...and to the bearing, the mourning, the sacrifice and surrender of love....(the rending)...and to the caution and preservation of love, where the well-spring is surrounded and covered and maintained...(the guarding...)

the latter is where i now find myself, guarding my heart, i hope not in a scared, closed, hard way, but in a hopefully, sensibly responsive way. i am trying to listen to my own needs and respond to them. its difficult when i had finally got to the point of needing him. of allowing that fragility in myself, that openness. and i'm kind of left with it now. i need you, now. as i did before, but differently...i need your phone-calls, your emails, your prayers....and i need jesus. i haven't quite figured out how to tell him that, yet, but i'm pretty sure he knows. and i have (not just on paper) known the reality of his response to my need of him more in the last seven weeks than ever before. what a gem.

father-like

he tends and spares us, 

well our feeble frame he knows,

in his hands he gently bears us,

rescues us from all our foes...

amen?

a dear friend of mine brought this to my attention this evening...thanking you...xxxx

ours is not..

to reason why...

on the day that it happened, i remembered certain things very clearly that helped me both immediately and on the following days, to make a very clear decision.

i remembered how i felt in the months after my uncle died suddenly of no found illness, aged 53.

i remembered how i felt seeing ben and louie searching around for answers, even small clues...

and so i made the decision then and there, that i was not going to ask god why this happened.

i gave up my right to ask the question.

i honestly think that grief is compounded, approximately a million-fold, by the fruitless repetition of this question to god.

don't get me wrong, i'm not for a second saying that people shouldn't ask.

but i was and still am quite resolute in my conviction that for me to ask would not come to any good.

no-one has ever received a satisfactory answer to that particular question. faith can be lost over it. sleep, sanity and love can be lost over it, and i for one am ripe to lose all four in one swift move, if i do not check myself in time now. by that i mean that i am not going to ask. i am going to trust that only god knows, that only god can know, because my mind is far too small to take it in.

i truly think that he should be allowed to know some things that we don't know.

i'm letting him win on this one

however, in return, i had hoped to be able to sleep....not tonight, mes amis....

lady in waiting

how ignorant and heartless my previous posts now appear, in the light of this week....its a horrible feeling knowing how wrong you were.....

no-one can think thoughts about death and the afterlife and sickness without needing god as much as you need air....least of all me.........its just so baffling....

it makes you want to not love so you don't feel the pain of knowing that people you do love will die 

it makes you not want to get old, realising the many and varied ways in which age can wreck you.

it makes you want to spare others who have chosen the folly of loving you, the horror of having to watch you go.

it makes you want to ask god about a million questions.

it also makes you realise once more that he's the only one who has a right to know the answers...

it is the most universal and yet the most personal thing. like god. 

so i'm going to ireland tomorrow as it seems my grandmother does not have long left til she will go on ahead, as they say...

my grandmother's name is eithne o'brien. she is 91. 

she gave birth to six children, saw five of them into adulthood. saw one of them go before her five years ago. 

she was married to george o'brien for oh i don't know! yonks! about 55 years i imagine...

she campaigned for the rights of local traveller people. she called them itinerants.

she campaigned for people to be able to own their council houses

she got a computer when she was about 75 and went to computer class

she wrote a poem about wheelie bins when the 'corporation' introduced them in Clonmel. it was published in the newspaper.

she researched both sides of her family tree, her mother's side now goes back to the year 637. she worked on this history for years and years. she used to take trips on to dublin on the train to go to the library...

she was quietly formidable, and quietly caring. 

had she been born in a different time she would have done a job like i'm doing now, i think. or maybe been the prime minister. 

and now she's waiting her turn. i hope to be there before she sets off. x

hand on heart

i think my post last week was a bit odd

i've made the decision to leave it there, but i think it was a bit odd...

i did not mean to imply that i no longer need god.....that's just crazy talk.....

but i think that what i meant, refers to the dynamics of that need, the impulses and responses that heighten and isolate that need.......these have changed.....i do not right now feel as i felt before, and the ongoing flaw in my theology, is that it hinges in this bizarre and incalculable notion of feeling....

a wise man said to me last summer, that he believed that my (then) sadness and fear were being compounded by the problem of my having experienced a very 'personal' salvation', as aforementioned, however many years previously...

by this (and he may be reading, so he can correct me if i'm wrong...!) he meant that my version of jesus is based on who is is to me, not on who he is just because...who he is as the firstborn in all the world, the one who chooses to let us keep on living on our spinning axis everyday, the one who fails to falter...who cannot change.....that one.....

he eludes me...

if i'm crying, weak, lost, hurting, fearful, confused, aimless, feckless, loveless....he is there, as vivid and as real to me as i could possibly ask of him.......

yet it seems i cannot let him just be...

which is rude, really, because he lets me be!!

anyway. seriousness over, back to silliness in the episodes to come...!

many loves....x

theological conundrum...

so, i've never been too hot on theological matters...

i pretty much figure - love the lord, be nice to people, explore your surroundings, use your talents, give what you have, and love bravely....

what more is there, really...?!

thing is, if theology is one's view of god, or the unmovables about god, or the cumulative ideas of 2008(?!) years of deciphering the word, or all of the above, then at the end of it all its still just about your relationship with god, right...?

so, my theology - my relationship with god....

thing is, that for me has foundations that were built on total despair being met with huge expectation and shocking hope......i had an actual conversion, one pin-point moment, where i chose to live......and then the hard work started.........and that hard work was god's work, convincing me, one relentless fear after another that only he could cross them off, rub them out.....replacing abject fear with unbelievable truth....i cried every day for about the first year, fretted everyday for about the following four years.....and since then, have moved from mildly unsettled, back to hideously fearful, and then to, well, then i moved into falling in love....

and now i find myself, quite literally, happier than i have ever been.....and well, my condundrum is this:

how does one, at the ripe old age of 27, begin to imagine a god who wants to be involved in the flirting and the planning and the missing and the misunderstandings and the giddy grinning of a fledgling romance....?

the answer, i know, is that he instigated such love, he instigated this love, and that all love comes from and is sustained and enhanced by him....

this much i believe......but in practise it is proving rather difficult...not because the man in question is not a friend of the lord, but because of my second question....

where, in a relationship with jesus that is built out of a desperate, overwhelming need in me, for him, do i find a dynamic that moves me to need and rely on him, when i do not feel that same sense of lack? of course i do lack: i lack love and kindness and patience and all the other things that we all lack, but, i don't know......i have not wept for my want of god in quite some time, and truth be told, that's how i know him.....its why i know him.....its how we relate.....or was....and now? 

now, i wake up happy...i sleep better than a baby.....i do not grimace when i look at my own body....i have tiny seed-like hopes for a life in the future....i grin alot...!! there is a man who makes me laugh everyday, loves me selflessly everyday.....

once more pals, answers on a postcard....

less=more

so right now the leaves are giving up on the trees. they're falling away, and leaving the tree behind..they gotta go...and they go so beautifully. there really wasn't any need for god to make it so, was there?

The (recent) Times Rich (in life) List..

sleep - good..isn't it...? finally...almost two weeks of good sleep now...and i'm tired, alot, because the floodgates are opened, and the months of awakeness are stamping down my door telling me i owe them sleep....the sleep baliffs....and i give in....its good...

wedding - good..i officially love being a bridesmaid..i have never been hugged so many times in one day..never looked so hot...never grinned so much..never drank so much wine...never been to the cafe rene til four am in a posh frock before (yeah we bridesmaids and ushers snuck off to our local after it was all over and rolled home when we'd had enough...)

friends - good (in a crisis, you can rely on hawkes and sal for movies and wine, at work i can trust in the support and encouragement of friends, in the shire i can know that friends love to see me arrive back..some far away friends are happier than i have seen them ever, and some closer to home are nesting, or nursing black eyes, or falling in love, and each one of them surprises me a little more ever year that passes....)

the anticipation of christmas - good.....a little early perhaps, but the nights are darker, and while that means fewer balmy evenings (although i think we had about four of them all 'summer', at last count!) it also means mittens and red starbucks cups and the markets and the delicious joys of advent....can't wait...

god - good (this is not exactly breaking news, perhaps, but reminders are ever-helpful)

family - good (i adore them. i love how collectively happy we were at the wedding and either side of it. my dad beaming, my mum giddy, fiona the belle of the ball, jimmy in tow who was quite the hit, and nick and angela as happy as children, just pure happy...)

skirts - good (its a late end o'the summer campaign to bring back skirts..)

men - good (well, just one..and he's more potentially good, rather than confirmed as good...we'll see...)

'mark watson makes the world substantially better' - good (radio four late-night comedy and my new favourite comedian!)

work - good..just good..

manchester being sunny in september like we've been holding out for - good

hanging out with denno - good..been chuffing ages..worth the wait...

john simpson books - good

the holiday - good..jack black..what a guy..

wallet getting stolen - not as bad as when phone got stolen

nicely painted nails - good

new frizz ease conditioner purchased with advantage card points - good

i think i'm done...

sorry its been so freaking long....i've missed this!!love you x

ok, ok.

whoop

sleep cometh..
thanks guys...
i feel so quietly sure that something truly changed
may the lord be praised..

sunrise...

So I didn’t sleep well again last night
Its averaging out at about once a week now.
And it always, but always, happens on a day when I’ve said the words ‘oh, so much better these days, thanks.’ In answer to the question ‘are you sleeping any better now?’
I call that a kick in the teeth, amigos, don’t you?!
a friend of mine said to me the other day that she loses about one night’s sleep in every three or four. And no its not a friend who has babies, just a friend who much more humbly and noiselessly gets on with her own part-time insomnia and doesn’t go round moaning about it like I do!
But it freaks me out, and I know that that’s half the trouble – that on a school-night, I lie there and am a)freaked out by being awake on a school-night and therefore will end up struggling at work the next day (although god almost invariably comes up trumps for me with an extra abundant helping of energy and patience on the post-no—sleep-days…) and b) by the notion that there must be something inherently and irreparably wrong with me and my psyche and my wretched nerves and my sheer ability to obsess and fear that can only be described as my mother’s greatest genetically-bequeathed gift to me…
(And I love her for it, obviously….!!)
lately I have seen a friend emerge from years of having a rubbish time, and by that I mean grief and depression and fear on a scale you should never have to go through, into a life where things are colourfully possible…and has done all that without yet knowing jesus….
And more lately still I have watched as another friend decided to get some help, opt for sanity and work his way out of the hole he was in….
And me, I’m just cycling in my cycle of night-terror and sunrise dread…..no-one should fear the sunrise…but on the nights when you have the hungry hoards to feed the next day, the sunrise isn’t exactly your best friend….its a sure-fire sign that all hope of sleep is gone…I reckon I beat it by about two minutes last night, probably getting to sleep around four, four-fifteen…wait, what time is sunrise round here these days….?
Checking…
No actually I beat it by quite some time, seems it doesn’t really hit us til 0548…slacker…
The amazing thing is that everytime this happens, I freak out less and less….and am learning to trust god with my sanity…and with work the next day, and with the idea that it may not always be like this, but that even if it is, if part-time insomnia is to be some sort of thorn in my side, then a) I had jolly well better get on with learning how to make that time count and b) I will still be alright. i will always be alright.
God’s sneaky
Its win-win when it looks like lose-lose.
And that, my friends, is my own unique and soon-to-be patented summary of the gospels of our lord jesus…amen…
Hope you have a lovely day xxxx

four simple rules..

sitting just now with drago, too late for a school night, but we had
worries to air...and i found myself remembering to seek a reminder
that the god of all peace wishes to sanctify us through and through..
and as on so many fretful occasions in the past, i turned my attention
to the precious book -the imitation of christ-
it never fails to bring counsel and fresh thought...tonight is no
exception...get your eyes and hearts round this, me hearties, and let's
set said together on that tranquil ocean of good sleep and sound
faith...

chapter 23
on four things that bring peace
resolve to do the will of others rather than your own
always choose to possess less rather than more
always take the lowest place, and regard yourself as less than others
desire and pray always that god's will may be perfectly fulfilled in you

amen x

only got one..

that is the name of a song by frou frou, which i like alot.
today on the bus back from london i was listening to it and thinking about what that means, you only have one life, its your life, make of it what you will...i wondered what it means for me, when lately i am faced with some fairly stark choices, or at least the beginnings of choices, about where i choose to prioritise the time that this one life affords me.
do i choose to marry for love? do i find whoever will have me and see how it goes? do i sell out to the man and go corporate, wearing suits, learning to walk in heels and laughing, certainly, alot less than i do during my current working days...? do i sit to the side of the forces of change, looking on, feeling glad, occasionally applauding, or do i pin up my action slacks and wade on in...? do i pay heed to the fears inside me that keep me awake some nights (less frequently now, you will be pleased to hear..), or do i lend my ear instead to those faithful psalmists who speak of god in the way that reminds me in who it is i put my hope? do i look around and feel envy at the loves, successes and joys of people around me, or do i accept the invitations to join in their loves, to add to and admire their successes and revel in their joys?
i guess none of the above are particularly hard questions, really..they have really quite obvious answers..but not necessarily the answers i can choose at 3am when still awake, or in the changing room at dp when nothing fits...not so easy when i feel frustrated at work, by the limitations of my own skills and experience, and by the lives i see before me everyday in whom i can only play such small a part...not half so easy as you'd think, when i at times feel i may still be waiting outside certain doors with a hope that should long since have died, but that silently persists, even when the door has been quietly but decidedly closed to me...
i do know however that i can trust in jesus to quicken my decision-making, as he has already over the years..
now though, i choose decaf tea, a hot bath and the joys of bed-time radio four...
night loves..x

friday i'm...at home..

when we were about seventeen, me and nick were walking home from the pub, half-cut and meandering. i looked and saw he was walking down the middle of the road..'nick' says i, 'why are you walking down the middle of the road?'. 'because i can...whenever anyone asks you that question, the answer is always 'because i can' repeat after me..'because i can, because i can..'etc etc....'
i love this apartment..
my friends are in a barn, chilly and playing games and catching up..
but as per the last-but-one post, i have again shied away from the gaggle..because i can.
god is here, as well as in the crowd, and i know that right now for sure..
a friend today seemed to intimate that god, once lost, however temporarily, should probably or could maybe be chased down with tears, and travaille...
i know that feeling. he's so far, just so horribly far sometimes. and so disinterested, unmoved. unapproachable
another friend owned to me today that god is nearer now to her than at any known recent time, that weird things are happening, that faith seems vivid and honest once more.
i really think its just when we think we have fathomed our place with him, near or far from him, as we perceive it, that's the second he decides he's going to prove just how wrong we are. not out of spite, or out of us needing to be put in our place (although clearly we do need that..) but just because he delights to. and because he can.
i have lately been stirred to simply ask for the new.
a week ago i sat in here, in my lounge with da costa, and talked of how stale things feel, not that things were awful, but that vibrancy was lacking..urgency, news, coloUr, discovery...all dried up...and so later, in my bed with jesus listening, i asked, 'something new please'..and a week later:
new friends. check.
new sleep levels. check.
new prospects and ideas for the future. check.
new ideas of things to write about. check.
and these are no small things, friends, this is the stuff we're always on the look out for, connections and pathways, challenges to the ordinary, assumed and aged.
ask for the new. its not that hard. 'something new please.'