How far is too far?

It seems like every time I write a blog post there is something new and exciting happening in the world of Christine and hubby. This month's instalment is that I have started my own business (Check out The Admin Company on FB or go over and look at www.theadmincompany.co.nz).

I have been loving this process. I am excited by the prospect of working for myself, of doing something I enjoy, of picking my own work etc. It has been a ride opening the business, making a logo, getting the company registered, and promoting myself.

But there is a really hard side to this that, though I knew about it, I didn't think it would be as hard as it is.

It takes time.

It takes time to build your brand reputation.

It takes time to get a customer base.

It takes time to get the word out there.

And time is money. It really is in this case. Because I work for myself now if I don't make money then my bills don't get paid.

This has meant that hubby and I are down to the wire with our money for rent and food. I can't get a business loan as I have nothing to secure it against. I don't want a loan shark loan. I am trying to raise funds on a funding website (check that out here) and I have looked into any help that can be offered by the government, but all to no avail.

This means that I am still looking (never really stopped) for any type of employment, even if it means I have to run my business in the evenings or weekends until it is economically viable.

But from a faith point of view this whole thing has been a roller coaster.

When my contract job finished 3 weeks ago, Luke and I both felt very strongly that God was telling us we would be ok. But job application after job application kept getting rejected. 

As I started my business I felt God very much behind it. But so far nothing has happened with it.

Luke did look at work, but we both were overwhelmed by God telling us that Luke needed to focus on his music, a career that has no income at the moment. This seems like pure madness to us but we both feel so strong that this is the right path for Luke, and we can't ignore it.

And now we have 1 week of money left and then we are really up the proverbial river with out a paddle.

Stress has now kicked in. I can be reduced to tears in a heart beat because I feel so overwhelmed. Though I keep telling myself that today we are ok, today we have a house and food, I still panic about the future.

And yet, the question "How far do you trust Jesus?" keeps resonating in both our heads.

Do we trust Jesus only until life gets hard and then give up?

Do we trust what we know God is saying to us, until we can't handle the stress and then do the opposite?

Do we trust God to provide as promised, until we don't want to lose our house and then do it our way?

Or do we keep trusting, even if we lose the house, even if we end up with no job, no home, and no way of paying for food?

Do we trust God even though it is hard and we don't like it?

Even though this situation is hard and frankly a lot of what we feel God is saying doesn't make sense to us on a financial scale, we both feel an underlying peace with what we have chosen. We both know it makes no sense to others around us, or even ourselves, but there is this sense of peace that somehow we will be ok. 

Our instinct is to do it our way, to run the show and to ignore what we feel to be right. 

But how far is too far when it comes to trusting Jesus?

Dear Jesus, please make me skinny!

Hysterical breakdowns are not an unknown phenomenon in our household. I live with four boys and at least once a month one of us five has a meltdown.

10 points for guessing who it is.

That's right, it's Luke.

Jokes, it's totally the one with the ovaries.

Despite the fact that I totally hate fulfilling a stereotype, I can't help it! The emotions, and tears, and snot, and sobbing just won't stay down, no matter how hard I try and suppress them. It's sooo embarrassing (especially if it ever happens at work....holla at me emotional ladies!) but it happens and I can't stop it. 

This month, despite trying desperately to channel the stoneheartedness of my testosterone fueled flatmates, I ended up crying like a wee baby about (yet again) my weight issues.

I have come to learn that I don't like being fat (shocker!). Like, I really really really don't like it. I don't like the stares I get in the street ( no jokes, I saw a guy driving do a HUGE double take once and, unless I am the sexiest thing going, the only conclusion I can come to is that he had in fact never seen a fat person before). I don't like people at work giving me tips on how to lose weight. I don't like having to avoid foods I like. I don't like not being able to fit some clothes.

So I decided to quit. 

I told Luke that I was over it and I was gonna eat what I want and get fat and die happy. And he found this hilarious. Apparently it was not the right day for him to laugh at that because I got rather pissed off and then cried lots.

See, as much as I want to be skinny, I sabotage myself all the time. In my concious mind I am working hard at losing weight. In my subconcious mind I am a scared little girl who is trying to protect herself from the world by creating a fat suit. 

As much as I want to be skinny, I more afraid of it than anything. 

I am afraid that when I get there I still won't be happy with what I have. I am afraid that I will get hurt by men again. I am afraid that I won't be able to maintain it. I am scared that I still won't be good enough.

Which is the fundamental problem.

It is not about the weight. Yes, I do need to loose it in order to be healthy. But focusing on the weight has meant that I have forgotten about the reasons I got fat in the first place. 

I have started idolising being skinny. I started to think that when I use to be skinny I was happy and will be again if I could just get skinny again. The truth is that it is bollocks. If I am not happy in myself now then I won't be when I lose weight. And I wasn't happy when I was skinny...which is why I ended up fat.

So I am trying to change my mindset from focusing on losing weight to one that is focused on being healthy and happy. This still means I have to avoid foods that aren't good for me, and I still have to exercise and all that, because that is part of being healthy in body and mind, but the outlook is totally different.

Still, as I write this, I am overcome by a sense of desperation and yet resignation. I am really struggling to understand how to keep going in the face of weight that is getting harder and harder to shift. The thought of this being a lifelong struggle fills me full of helplessness. 

I hate that I have done this to myself. I hate that I now have to battle everyday of my life in order to live well. It makes me angry and dejected. I say I don't care anymore but the fact is I really really do. It hurts a lot knowing that this is my fault.

I feel like I have tried every diet in the book and still have so far to go. Luke described it as running a marathon, where you get half way through and wanna die on the spot but you keep going coz there is no other way to finish. There is also a billboard on the way to my work that says "The pain of doing it is not as bad as the pain of regretting not doing it." Funnily enough it is a billboard for a gym!

It is hard trying to put into words what it is like staring your own regret in the mirror every morning to people who may have never had weight issues. It is hard to explain how it isn't a just physical battle, it is a mental and emotional one as well. It is hard to tell people who say "just count calories in and calories out and you should loose weight" that it isn't that simple. 

I find blogging helpful. I hope it reaches people who. like me, want to lose weight and yet want to give up at the same time. I hope this reaches those who are so confused as to what they really want that they sabotage themselves and then hate themselves for it. I hope this reaches people who are losing hope.

Because at the end of the day, underneath all the pain and heartache, I do have hope. I have hope that it isn't always going to be like this. My faith in Christ tells me that one day every tear will wiped away and all pain will end. I believe that my pain about weight counts. And so I have hope.

For those of a different faith, or of no faith, please don't give up just yet. Please comment below and let me know so I can support you and in turn feel supported. Your battle with weight is no small thing and I understand the pain that it causes you and how little you feel understood.

We are not alone. even though our fat suits attempt to lie to us and tell us we are.

Just keep breathing, keep living, keep listening to the people who love you, and let's find a way to live a life that we dream of!

Family, Brokenness, and Acceptance

Wow, I just checked out my blog stats and I am nearly on 8000 views of this blog! A MASSIVE thank you to you, yes YOU, who is reading this and who keeps me writing. I am honoured by your presence here and the fact that you find me interesting enough to keep reading.

If you are new here I recommend reading my blog post 'My Story' in order to understand where I am coming from on various issues. I make a lot more sense with a little background knowledge going on. 

I have been pretty slack at these blog posts recently as I am currently writing my Masters thesis and that tends to take up a lot of my time. As well as that I run a small group for young adults (hence the various blogs with flowcharts) so the planning for that can (or should) take up some of my time too. But enough excuses, let's get on with the show.

I have up until today refrained from talking at length about my relationship with my family. This has been for several reasons.

1) I have felt that it is unfair to share my issues without them having a proper chance to respond.

2) Talking to a bunch of strangers (no offence guys) is perhaps not the best way to deal with some issues.

Yesterday however, I watched a Dr. Phil show that really hit a nerve. It was portraying a family of three children who were desperate to make contact with their dad but he kept making excuses. Though they all proclaimed love for their father they were furious at him and he couldn't understand why they kept yelling at him if they wanted a relationship.

That's not what struck me.

There was a young girl, 17yo, who said that if she could have anything it would be to be able to call her dad, talk about her problems, do fun things with him, and have him as her confidant. 

It was a heartfelt plea.

It was also a major cause of the problem.

I say this because I truly believe that the world has told us what a 'perfect' family should look like. I am not talking about a mum, a dad, and 2.5 kids. What I am talking about is the 'Simpsons' idea. 

Family is dysfunctional, the Simpsons tells us, but ultimately everyone will get along. By the end of the half hour dad will have realised his mistake and apologised, mum would've realised she loves the silly man after all, the kids will realise they are being little terrors and stop, and everyone will live happily ever after...well at least until the next episode. 

This is pretty much how every family works on TV sitcoms. It is what I grew up on, what most of my generation grew up on, and it has, I believe, warped our understanding of the nature of humanity.

See, people can suck. I mean really suck. The number of solo parent families out there would suggest that mum and dad, or partner, or whatever, don't always figure it out. The number of abused kids would suggest that parents don't always like their children. The number of runaways would suggest that kids don't always like their parents.

Because we are broken. Though we all yearn for the love of our family, we live a world where people are broken, where we are broken, and it isn't so easy to reconcile our differences. 

I love my family. Not a day goes by when I don't think about my parents. But I haven't seen or talked to them for two years. We have issues. My brokenness has affected them and their brokenness has affected me. My parents weren't perfect, but neither were they awful and neglectful. We just found that some of our difficulties were too big for us to be able to work through in a way that we both agreed on.

It breaks my heart that things ended up this way between us. I can't tell you how much I would love to pick up the phone and have a nice, happy conversation with my dad.

But that isn't our reality.

Our reality is that things are broken. There are no credits that will role after a family hug. There is no canned laughter that will play when we all realise that we misunderstood each other. There is no being able to run into each others arms in slow motion when we see each other again.

There is love, but it is a love tainted by our issues.

And that is what hit me about the young girls story on Dr. Phil. She had in her head this idea of what she believed was the perfect father-daughter relationship. But it was clear from the program that the father had no intention, or ability, to be this father. She wanted a fantasy instead of accepting the reality, no matter how painful that might be.

My mother-in-law once told me that relationships only work when we lower our expectations of people. We need to stop imagining what we want in someone and accept the reality of what our relationship with them really is. Sometimes it means walking away and letting the relationship go. Sometimes it means having to work damn hard at ourselves and at a relationship, but this is only possible if both parties are willing to try and work at it. And sometimes, in those wonderful moments, it means accepting what is and living in the love that is offered and accepted.

But let me get one thing straight: acceptance and forgiveness are NOT the same as reconciliation. We can accept the reality of a broken relationship. We can even learn to forgive the hurts and the pain that are caused within that relationship. But that does not mean that reconciliation will, or can, happen.

I have forgiven my parents for any hurt, real or imagined, that they caused me. I know this because I am not angry at them any more. For years I was. I was bitter and twisted about every little thing that I remembered them doing (or not doing). It ate me up inside. I would rant and rage against them for hours at a time. We would have screaming matches and things were said that I regret. Things were heard that I have now let go of. I learnt to forgive them and love them as human beings who did their very best to love me as they knew how. I pray for the all the time and hold them very dear in my heart.

But we do not have a relationship. The reasons for that I am choosing not to go into in this forum but I will say that it is because we have been unable to agree upon a 'safe zone' for us to work out our issues. Sometimes relationships need outside help, sometimes it is not emotionally (or even physically) safe to step back into the same situation without boundaries and safety being established first. Sometimes reconciliation doesn't happen. And that is ok.

Forgiveness does also not demand forgetting. The old adage 'forgive and forget' has done so much harm to people in relationships that are toxic. We CANNOT forget. It is impossible to forget. So what we are told to do is sweep our issues under the carpet and pretend they never happened. This leads to cycles of destruction in relationships. Ever wonder why an abused woman goes back to her abuser? Because she chose to ignore past behavior instead of letting it help her determine what will happen in the future. Sometimes the only way to find healing is to leave the environment that perpetuates old behaviors. And sometimes forgiveness cannot happen until we choose to NOT forget what has happened before and instead face it, address it, and, if need be, walk away from it until it changes.

It is ok to learn to forgive and not be reconciled. In a perfect world we could do that, but this isn't a perfect world and we are far from perfect people. We do what we can, we try as hard as possible, and then we have to learn to accept what is. And sometimes what exists is a relationship broken beyond repair. Or one that needs more time to heal.

You can forgive and learn to love without relationship being reestablished.

If you have a difficult relationship with your family members, you are not alone! There are so many of us out there who are longing for the love of parent/sibling/spouse/child. There are so many of us who weep for what we dreamed could have been and for the reality of what is.

We understand. You are not alone. 

My prayers are with all families. They are with every broken person who prays for a miracle and yet despairs that it will never come. They are with every person who misses someone they love because of the brokenness of their relationship.

May God give you peace and may you know God as your parent who loves you and comforts you. May you know Joy.

Someone to Hold, Someone to Blame

I was talking to some friends on the way home from church today and an interesting comment was made. It went something along these lines:

"It seems that the people who are suffering have more hope in God than the family members and loved ones that watch them suffer. It is the watchers that tend to blame God."

This comment came out of all of us recollecting various stories of people who had suffered and those that had blamed God. This is a generalisation but one that seems to hold true to various people in various circumstances.

For example, one friend of ours has a sister that is in serious pain and illness. She clings to God. He is angry at God for what she is going through.

So we came up with a hypothesis of why this is.

For anyone who has been in suffering for a long period of time, there tends to be a point when you know that it may never change. With long term illness or mental disorders, divorce, death etc, there is a point when you either accept that the pain will be there for a long time, perhaps forever, or you give up.  If you give up then this tends to lead to isolation from others, depression, and suicide or, in faith terms, ditching your faith and hating the world around you. Acceptance of the pain doesn't mean that you are ok with what is happening, but it tends to pull you outward, draws you into acknowledging that you won't survive this on your own strength. In faith terms, this tends to mean a deepening of faith.

This is because in times of weaknesses we need someone to cling to. When we are children and we are hurting we don't blame our parents for it, we cling to them because they are the biggest, strongest people they know and they may be able to fix it.

It is similar to faith at times. God is the biggest thing we know and so in times of struggle when our pain is too much for us to bear we cling to our faith, hoping that it will give us strength. 

The people who are not directly involved in the suffering but are affected by it (our friends and family) may not understand our need to cling to God. Because for them all they see is someone they love in pain. And they need someone to blame. They need to be able to get angry and yell at someone for the hurt they see us going through. It is often through witnessing pain that people lose faith in God and God's goodness.

Now the complete opposite can be true in both cases. The sufferer can lose faith because they reject what is happening to them and need to blame someone, and the watcher can have faith because it is the only thing they have left to lean on.

But, and here is my point, in times of suffering we all need someone to hold or someone to blame.

I find that really profound.

It speaks of a deep-seated need within us all for love and comfort.

It speaks of a desire for justice.

It speaks of God.

See, if we are all just random atoms that came together and started an evolutionary chain, why would we need justice in a situation that is outside of anyone's control? Wouldn't we just write it off as survival of the fittest and grieve, but not get angry?

I would argue that it is because at the very core of who we are we know that there is something wrong with our world. Children are not meant to die. People are not meant to suffer. Mental illness should not exist. And we know that, everyone of us, we feel it deep inside. So when we do watch a loved one in pain we get angry and the wrongness of it and need something to blame. 

We tend to blame God.

And yet we are pointing in the wrong direction.

It is not God's fault that this happens. It is because there is something really wrong with the world. It is called sin. We are broken. Creation is broken. I don't mean that because a child lies to their parents they then get cancer! That's ridiculous. Illness is not a punishment. 

What I mean by sin is that we as humanity, not just as individuals, have decided to not love God and not love other people and not respect creation. We have pushed God out of the picture and wanted to make ourselves God for millennia. We haven't loved other people and so rape, prostitution, porn, child abuse, theft...you name it... happens because humanity has no love for each other. We haven't respected creation so we have used and abused resources, so some kids die of obesity related illness while others starve. Carcinogenic are our fault, as is skin cancer from a depleted ozone.

Our desire to run this world our way, instead of God's way, has meant that creation has broken to the point where our own cells are in rebellion against us. Death is a part of everything, sickness invades our lives. And because it is all consuming, because it affects everything, because it is so huge, we point to the biggest thing we know and blame them. We blame God.

And yet it is NOT God's fault. God didn't want my friend's baby to die of cot death at only a few months old. God didn't want me to have schizophrenia. God doesn't want our friends sister to be in constant pain. God hates sin and death and proved it by showing us that it is defeated! God showed us that there is life after all the crap by dying first and coming back to life. God showed us by example.

In our times of deepest struggle God is there. God is breathing live and love. God is giving strength and hope. God is speaking a message of salvation and redemption that means even though we go through crap now it will not be forever. We will be renewed. We will live without pain.

So to all of those that are struggling...there is hope. 

And to all of those watching...there is hope.

And to all of us who get angry and confused and cry for justice...there is hope!

Don't give up, don't walk away from faith, don't lose hope. God was there, God is here, God will always be there.

Time to Run

(For those who don't know my story you can find it here. To understand what I am about to talk about it might pay to check that one out first as they are related)

I have been married to Luke a year now. We are very happy. I love him very much and love being with him.

I have been married before. I don't talk a lot about what I went through then for a variety of reasons. The first and foremost is that it is too hard most of the time. The second is that my ex isn't around to ogive his side of the story and I feel it is unfair to talk about what went on without his side of it to balance it out. So as you read this please remember that these are my views only and it needs to be remembered that my side of the story doesn't include what was going on for him. Give him the benefit of the doubt, everyone is messed up.

My first marriage was messed up. I wasn't allowed a key to our front door so I couldn't leave the house when he was at work otherwise it was unsafe. The number of tampons and toilet paper squares I was allowed to use were counted out when necessary. I was used to play games on his friends without my knowledge or consent. I had nude pictures of me left on a computer that was given to a friend. I remember sitting outside our bedroom door and screaming and crying because he wouldn't open the door and talk to me and tell me what was wrong.

I lived in a state of anxiety and fear, partly because of him and because of my mental illness. It all came to a head when I came home from a two week stay in the psych ward and had my next door neighbour tell me that his current girlfriend (yes there was more than one and yes I knew about them) had been living at my house while I had been ill.

I left not long after.

Why am I telling you this? Why now?

Because I have finally come to the realisation that I cannot outrun these memories.

The last few days I have spent feeling angry and down and I wasn't sure why. I felt myself drawing away from Luke and not wanting to let myself tell him what was going on. So I did the opposite. I told him how I was feeling and we have spent a few evenings trying to figure out what is going on.

Today, I finally figured it out.

My first marriage left me with a sense of abandonment that stuck with me for a very long time. I was angry at him, but more than that I was destroyed that he didn't come looking for me. I was unwanted, unloved and I lost any self esteem I had left when that happened. I spent the next two years between separating and divorce trying to move on from the damage that had been done. I tried to outrun my pain.

When I got divorced I was terrified that I was now going to have to put myself on the shelf, that being divorced meant I couldn't get married again. When I met Luke it took months before I was brave enough to even go out with him because I was afraid that I was doing the wrong thing. The fear arose again when we got engaged. Since then I have been pretty ok.

We celebrated one year a few weeks ago. At that point my subconscious kicked in and all the fear I had of getting married again came up. Because I am afraid of the punishment.

Now bear with me, I know that God isn't vindictive and angry like that, but my heart hasn't clicked on to that fact yet. I am terrified of losing Luke and that, if I do, it was my fault for marrying him in the first place.

I am terrified of him leaving me, or him dying, or something hideous happening. My life doesn't get this good without something bad happening and so I am waiting for the proverbial to hit the fan. My old counsellor would call it PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), I would call it learning from my history.

And so when we turned one together all my fear started to resurface. Then he went away to parachute for 4 days and it was like I was being left all over again. I started to draw away to protect myself from being hurt. I didn't want to tell him what I was feeling in case he laughed at me.

Instead I told him. I then I spent the day with Jesus, listening to music, writing every thought in a journal and being honest with my words about what is actually going on with me.

The reason I write this here is because there are so many people who have been left and abandoned in their lives. Those fears go with you even when you think you have outrun them. The past makes us who we are and we can't blank out our minds to what has happened to us.

But there is hope.

It starts by being honest. By going against your instincts to run away and to take a leap of faith and trust someone who has proved trustworthy. If you don't know someone like that then go to see a professional.

Be honest with yourself too. You can't do anything until you acknowledge how deep the hurt goes. With me it is in so deep it took four days to come to light. Sit with it, even though it is uncomfortable, and figure it out. It's then that you can work it out.

Be honest to God. God is the only one who knows how hurt you really are and there can be peace that can really help you get through it.

But is our perceptions of God that can really mess up our issues. When I am scared my image of God seems to move from one of a loving benevolent father who wants to love me to one of wanting to punish and hurt me. And I am not sure how to overcome that yet. But I am going to try. Because once I can figure that out then maybe it won't be so damn hard to pray when I am freaking out.

And maybe then I won't blame myself when things go wrong. 

The Lie of Death, the Death of a Lie

I originally wrote a post with this title that was about a lady that was dying. It was a hard time for the family and they requested that I take it down. I honoured that request.

However, I still feel that a lot of what I had to say in that blog is applicable to many people. I am not gonna reference the same lady again but I still want to talk about the topic.

The topic is death.

I am writing an essay at the moment about euthanasia and the ethical issues surrounding it. It is a say essay to write; reflecting on the pain and dying of people doesn't exactly put you in the best mood.

But I also think that we as a Western nation do not talk about death enough. We are afraid of it and so try to control it. We buy things to make our skin look younger to trick ourselves into thinking that we are putting off the inevitable. Those of us rich enough get our body's cryo-genically frozen in the hope that one day we will live again. We use death itself to control death, committing suicide or euthanasia to dictate when we die rather than leaving it up to chance.

We are deathly afraid of death.

The thing is, we were never meant to die. We were never meant to face the fear of our bodies failing, of pain and dementia, of losing children and loved ones. Death came into the world because we invited it. Because we thought that we could control our own lives, and in the process destroyed them. 

Death is a force that destroys Gods creation. The price of humanity choosing to live outside of God is death. It is an unstoppable force that touches all of us and destroys all we hold dear. It lies to us and tells us that it is forever, that there is nothing after this life, that this life itself is meaningless.

Death is a lie.

The fear of death is so strong because we have lost faith in the one that is in control. We want to control our lives and believe that we are autonomous and so when faced with a force that is outside of our control, we panic. We don't want to think of ourselves feeding worms, but when we have asked God to stay out of our lives for so long, that is the only image we are left with.

And God knows this.

God knows that we fear that which we cannot control. God knows that we face the end with shaking and crying. And God wanted to save us from this. So Jesus put himself through it.

Jesus is God. Jesus died. This means that God chose to die, in an horrific and bloody way. God faced the fear of death with us. But something incredible happened. Jesus rose back out of his gave! God faced the lie of death and came out the winner.

Jesus put to death death.

Through his actions he showed us that death is not the end, that there is life after it. We follow a God who we know will give us life after death because Jesus went through it first. Death cannot be final in the face of God's love and power. The lie of the permanence of death is over.

So now we can face death without fear because it is not the end.

I know people who have died. I have watched two people die in pain from illness. One was a believer, the other was not. One went knowing that her pain would soon be over, the other went in fear of what lay beyond.

Do not underestimate the amount of influence that your view of death can have on your life. It tells you the worth of your life now. It tells you what awaits you after. It leads you to fear getting older and leads to things like YOLO (you only live once) and FOMO (fear of missing out) mentalities that promote selfish living and stupidity.

You need not fear death, you can experience the freedom that comes with knowing where you are going. 

And if you are a believer and afraid of age and death, then look at where your hope is found, why you are scared, and know that your God has already put to death the lie of death.

A Good Christian Never Doubts?

Doubting.

Let' face it, we all do it, about everything!

I doubt that anyone will actually read this.

I doubt that the weather forecast for tomorrow is actually correct.

I doubt many things.

And one of the things I doubt the most is...

...God.

That's right people, I said it. I, a Christian who would argue and die for her faith (you may doubt that!) actually doubts God.

Sometimes I doubt that God hears my prayers. It happens when I am really needing God to listen and yet I feel that the prayers I send up are probably being ignored.

I can even doubt the very existence of God! I mean, come on, it's not like I have seen with my own eyes any attribute of God.

I am like doubting Thomas some days; the disciple that wouldn't believe that Jesus was raised from the dead before he had touched Jesus' body with his own hands. Fair call too! If you went and told me that some dude has just come walking out of a grave I might have a hard time believing it too without some physical proof.

At the moment I know I am doubting God.

You see, it doesn't come across as doubt all the time. Most of the time, for me anyway, it comes across as fear.

Lemme explain.

I quit my job the other week. I was put in an impossible situation where on one hand I was being asked to show no compassion and empathy in a situation that called for it or I was to lie to my employer about how I had acted.

Rock, meet Hard Place.

And so, without any clue as to where I was going to end up, where I was going to work, and being the sole bread winner of our small family, I handed in my notice.

I did it believing that I was following what I knew to be the Gospel. I knew in my heart that I could not do either of what was being asked of me without seriously compromising my beliefs and ethics. I believed that God would honour that and would provide for me and Luke.

That was two weeks ago.

I have three weeks left in my notice period and I still have no job. To make matters worse work is now becoming unbearable as attitudes towards me have changed drastically. This is causing so much stress that I have come down with migraines and had to take time off work for which I am ineligible for pay and so we aren't even saving that much in my weeks left.

In short, I feel like I have made the biggest mistake of my life!

Gone is my belief that God will catch us! Gone is my sense of dignity and morality! Out the door with any peace of mind!

I am doubting that I did the right thing, that I will come out of this ok, and to top it off, I am afraid that I have just made our lives unlivable in the near future due to my actions.

Sometimes I think it would just be easier if I didn't have a faith, if I just, as Buddha puts it, "found my own light" and went with what was easy for me because if I did that I really wouldn't be facing not having any income of any sort because of my own faith!

Dear God, what have I done!!!

*Big Breath*

Sometimes 

Ok, so slight freak out happening over here. It would really be so much easier if Jesus himself turned up and told me which jobs to apply for. Or at least showed up at prospective employers offices and told them that they really really need to hire me!

It is fear, fear of the unknown and the unknowable, that causes me to doubt. 

And that makes me angry...at me!

2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that God has not given us a Spirit of fear, but one of power, of love and a soundness of mind. I have lived by these words for many years and I am not about to give up on them now.

See it wasn't in fear that I quit.

It was with the power of knowing what was right and what was wrong that I handed in my notice.

It was my love for the people I work with and for that I refused to do what was asked of me.

It was my love for God that made me stand firm to my beliefs.

Now I am just waiting for the soundness of mind!

Just jokes, it was with a great sense of peace that I handed in my notice, knowing that I had acted in an honourable and Gospel way.

The fear I feel now is not from God. It is my own low self worth that tells me that I am not good enough, that God does not hear me and that Jesus does not care for me.

I don't have the luxury, as Thomas did, of demanding to touch Jesus with my bare hands.

But I do know the Truth, sometimes I just need reminding.

The Fear

Today it hit me while I was waiting at the bus stop.

It's been known to sneak up on me while out with friends, lying in bed, shopping, working...pretty much just about anywhere.

It stalks its prey silently, deviously, and waits until they are their most unsuspecting and then...

...WHAMO!!!

I know it's got you too before.

The chilling little voice in your head that paralyses you with fear.

The voice that says "Is there really any point to this?"

So there was I, at 6:50am, waiting nonchalantly for my bus, quite at peace with the world and all that dwell in it. Two seconds later I was in the grip of an epistemological crisis and questioning the reason for life, the universe and everything.

All because a little voice asked me if there was really any point.

I don't know about you but this type of thinking can really scare the pants off me! I am a fairly imaginative, deep thinking person anyway, so get me started on a topic like this and I start jumping from one scenario to another and soon I am ready to quit my job, leave New Zealand or, failing both of those things, run back to bed and hide under the covers.

Because, really, at my core, I do question the reason for everything. I guess my life has taught me that the one sure thing that will happen in life is that it will bite you. At some point, life is going is going to get hard and you won't know why, you won't know if it will change, and somehow you have to find meaning in all of it.

So colour me pessimistic but I haven't seen a lot that changes this opinion. Crap happens. All. The. Time. To everybody, everywhere.

So what is the point of life if all I am doing is getting up at 6 to go to a job that is full of angry and stressed people to try and work and not getting angry and stressed at the same time? What is the point of earning money just to see it disappear every week into someone elses pocket?

What is the point when where you are and where you wish you were in life are so different that you can't even see the connections to get from one to the other?

How, in other words, do you stop getting so miserably depressed at the thought that all you are going to do for the rest of your life is work a 9-5 job (if your lucky!), save for your retirement, maybe have children who you will break over everytime they hurt, and then die with nothing to show for it, that you don't go and throw yourself off a bridge somewhere and meet God early?

Yup, that's what went through my head early this morning.

At that moment a song came on - "You Are Holy" by The Digital Age - and I had an epiphany.

There may be no point in working!

But it's ok, because work was never meant to give meaning to my life!

If work is what defines me then I am screwed! Bring on death I say! Take me from this hell hole we call consumerism!

It defines so many people's lives though, it makes them who they are, teaches them their self worth and then when they retire we wonder why old people are so depressed and grumpy.

it's because they have lost the reason they lived!

Life is not about work.

Granted I cannot live without my paycheck and Luke would not be too impressed with that as an excuse if I quit my job tomorrow and lived off the dole.

But there is something more to life than just the same old stuff we see around us.

There is hope.

Not "hope that one day I will be in heaven so HAH! to all you suckers I am outta here" hope.

No, true hope comes from knowing that one day this, this stuff all around us, the world and all we see, the famines in Africa, the plagues and dtroughts and storms and miscarriages and diseases and homeless people and child abuse and rape and deforrestation and global warming and greed and anger and stress.....all that stuff...

one day it will all be made ok again.

One day we won't have our hearts broken by what we see and what we have done to us and what we have done.

One day we will see this all as it is meant to be.

One day Jesus will return and the crap will stop.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is my hope.

That one day it will all make sense, it will all be healed and we won't have to struggle to find meaning or fight off the fear or anything because it will be as it was.

I need this hope like I need air.

Without it my world would collapse and I would be the most depressed person ever.

With it I find joy in the little things, hope in the big things and love in everything.

And it makes me realise that after all the crap I have been through, I am still here! My life is good; I have a steady income, a loving husband, a nice place to live and food to eat. I have more than I need in accumulated stuff and I live like a Queen compared to most of the world.

The fear is really a construct of my own pig-headeness and desire to be autonomous. I want to be able to quit work when I like and still get paid, still live as I do and not have to work for it! That is selfish and self-serving and yet that is where the fear is based; in the fact that I can't just do what I like and have what I want for nothing.

When it comes down to it, when I focus on what he has done, and what he will continue to do to his glory, and I pull my head out of my arse long enough to breathe in the quiet morning air and stop focusing on myself, I see that, honestly,

 the Fear pales in comparison to Love.

What is the Point?

This weeks theological musing has been one that I have come back to time and time again, in my own mind and with others in conversation.

The question is:

What is the point of it all?

Or to put it another way, what is my purpose, my calling?

It is something that I find is a particular struggle with young Christians who are trying desperately to find their place in the world. They know that they are not meant to find their meaning in their work or relationships but what does that leave them to do?

I have had many conversations that go something along the lines of this:

"I really want to go and do .......(insert dream here)...... but I don't know if that is the plan that God has for my life. I don't want to do something different from his plan for my life and I am just not sure that this is the right path that he wants me on. What do I do? I really love......(dream)..... but I don't know if I should go for it."

There are so many things that upset me about these statements that I am not really sure where I should begin. 

*Big breath* ok here we go.

Firstly, the God made you. He put your gifts/talents/dreams in your head! He wants you to reach for them. Sometimes they will blow up in your face, sometimes they will take a turn you didn't expect, and sometimes they will go exactly where you wanted. To deny these things is to deny who God made you to be. The people who see what they dream come to fruition are those that try damn hard to make it work, even when it seems impossible. To not do anything out of fear it may be the wrong move means that you will stay still and stagnant and that is NOT what God wants for you.

Secondly, the only real plan that I see in Scripture that can be applicable to everyone's life is that we are to love God and love others. We are to do this in every circumstance in every moment to every person. Whether we are in a crap job that we hate, or not sure what we want to do with life, or if we are retiring and have no idea what that looks like! God's plan for your life is to love him, to love others, and to live out of that love. That's it!!! The rest can be shown by the person he made you to be (see above). If you are living out of your talents and striving for where you want to be and in all of that you are loving him and loving others, then that is the plan! You succeeded! You haven't failed him or his plan for your life! And that is such a freeing thought don't you think?

If you take the stress of trying to take every step on this rigid plan that you don't know and have to figure out then actually life becomes a joy to live and there is such a freedom in living out of love. You want to know why I am so joyful? It was realizing this.

Granted, some people have very specific callings on their life, but if you look at the Bible, those people were NOT the norm, they were a very few specially selected people who were told very clearly what to do (and a lot of the time hated what they were asked to do!). So if you haven't had a burning bush/vision/voice from heaven tell you a specific thing you need to do then actually what he wants is for you to let go of the fear that you aren't living up to his purpose.

Fear is the antithesis (opposite) of love. 

And God loves you.

He created you to love.

If you are afraid of taking the wrong step then ask you two questions:

Will this step mean I can love God more?

Will this step mean I can love others more?

If you answer 'no' to either of those questions then DON'T DO IT.

If you answer 'yes' to both of these, and you have talked with others who you value you the opinion of, then don't be afraid of going for it!

And if it blows up in your face, it may not be God smiting you, it may just be that life happens like that sometimes. None of the people who got famous, like Einstein, got there on their first try.

God loves you. He wants you to live in freedom.

Ask yourself, are you living in fear of doing the wrong thing?

Or are you living in the freedom that God's love brings?

My story

I have been asked to tell my testimony a few times to various people and each time I have been humbled by the response to it, but I have always been to scared to say it on a blog because people might judge it or think I was making it up.

Today I am feeling brave.

Today I want to share my story with anyone who wants to read it.

I hope it brings hope to those who need it. It is all true and it is from my heart. Please feel free to share with anyone you think may need to hear it.

*Big breath in* and here we go:

I grew up in a Christian family. I went to church every Sunday, was baptized at age 10, and generally loved God. I was, in essence, the typical child you find at church. I appeared happy, sung the songs loudly, and got upset with anyone who swore.

Unfortunately things at school were a little different.

At school I was bullied relentlessly. I was called fat, ugly, cry baby. I was accused of stealing someone's lunch and was told off in front of the class. I was bullied for being a Christian and found myself alone most lunch times. Eventually I was labelled 'the loner" and would spend breaks alone in the library, reading, knitting, or playing with the younger kids. After discovering that people would get annoyed if I read the bible at school, I did it all the time. I was proud of my faith but I was miserable. I would cry at night and pray that God would send me a friend. I would daydream about a young girl coming to school and wanting to hang out with me. I found solace in my day dreams and fostered a healthy inner life that would keep me entertained while I was alone.

Unfortunately, my life was also affected by sexual assault - twice, once by a young male friend (age 5) and once by a strange old man (age 7 or 8). These events really shook my faith in people, and had the adverse affect of sending me into a guilt spiral. I believed that these events were my fault. This feeling was compounded by the fact that my parents did not talk to me about this - an action I misunderstood as them being angry at me but was in fact them trying to protect me from reliving a situation that I appeared not to be affected by. I began to hide my feelings from people, believing that they were disappointed in me, and guilt, helplessness, and fear got a stranglehold on my life.

At age 12 two things happened that had a major impact on who I was, what I believed, and how I developed. First, my eldest sister fell off a cliff while drunk at a party that she wasn't meant to be at. I was woken up at 2 am by repeated banging on the front door. As my bedroom was closest to the front door and, believing it to be my sister coming home and wanting to save her from getting in trouble, I answered the door and, consequently, I was the one who first saw the policemen on a front step. I had to wake up my parents and stood in the hallway as I listened to what happened. Though it was in no way my fault, I took on responsibility for this event, believing that I could have stopped it if I had tried, and the guilt of having failed my sister, my family, consumed me. I read in her every action afterwards disgust and anger, and in turn I began to hate her for the fear and guilt I carried with me.

Second, my home church, where my only friends were, fell apart due to some inconsistencies in the pastor's lifestyle. My parents were part of the group that brought it to light and as a result I was told that people I loved, who I had called 'aunty' and 'uncle', were no longer part of our lives. I didn't get to say goodbye to people I had grown up with. The worst part was that I watched my parents crumble and the passion that they had for church fade. No matter what church we went to after that, I never felt at home in a church again, or that I could trust church people again.

As I started high school I was desperate to be popular and I would have done anything to achieve it. Age 13 I started to smoke and hang out with girls that were influential and harmful. By age 14 I was sneaking out of home to get drunk with my friends and boys. I would sneak out, walk down our street in the middle of the night and then stay the night at boys houses. There were times that I was so drunk I have no idea what actually happened with the guy I was with, and I look back in horror at the people who I knew that passed out when drunk and were then left unattended to "sleep it off". At age 15 I was forcing myself to throw up in a vain attempt to control something in a world that made no sense to me. I was lying at school and to my parents about friends dying, being pregnant, and having sex with older boys.

Yet at the church we now attended I was a youth leader! I lived this crazy double life of trying to be 'cool' on one hand and on the other trying to be the perfect Christian, the perfect daughter and the perfect student. I lost weight and was praised by my father. I studied and was praised by my teachers. I lead youth group and was praised by my youth leader. I got drunk at parties and was praised by my peers. I felt like such a fraud and the guilt became overwhelming. Depression overtook me and I numbed my feelings anyway I could. I drank in secret, binged ate in secret, self harmed in secret...anything that would justify the pain I was feeling.

At age 16 I was sexually assaulted again, this time by a youth group boy. I was on a youth group camp as a leader and he was friends with my ex-boyfriend. I remember the fear I felt when it happened. I had been kissing him privately earlier in the day, and then later, in a fairly public manner, he decided to take more. He then spread it round school that I was a 'slut', and that I had given him what I had refused my ex - namely sex. I was pushed down stairs at school and into the mud as a result. I said nothing to anyone about how I hadn't willingly participated in the event until years later. I was ashamed and felt like I was to blame. I even told my sister that it was consensual - though I think at the time she found it suspicious. It also triggered a struggle with my own sexuality and all that meant, an issue that even now can raise it's ugly little head when I am not paying attention.

In my last year of high school I was determined to 'act right' and to leave behind all the people who had hurt me. So I began to study hard, all hours of the day, and I went to the gym for hours at a time, but my drinking had become a private, secret thing and I would perform sexual favours to guys at the gym who would buy me alcohol and keep it for me. Even writing those words makes me grimace with shame, but this was the sad reality of my life.

At age 18 I left school and went to Bible College in order to 'find' God. My teachers told me not to, told me I should pursue a different career, but I felt my life had gone so far off track that I didn't know who God was, didn't know who I was, and needed to find that again. Instead I found a husband. We were going out within the first week of the school year and engaged only 3 months later. My depression, instead of decreasing with joy, became worse and worse and I began to self harm and hear voices telling me to do things that I won't even begin to describe. I would see things that weren't real and I ballooned from a size 10 to a size 26 in three years. I argued that I didn't have an eating disorder if I wasn't vomiting it all back up again, but the binging increased and so did my weight.

I am ashamed of how my relationship started. It was mainly physical, with many elements of mental and emotional manipulation on both sides. We were both young and broken and unable to see that we were mutually destructive. My parents, perhaps seeing something we couldn't, begged us not to get married, but unfortunately we believed that they were saying that was that I wasn't good enough for him, which just made us even more determined.

He thought he could handle my mental illness. He was wrong. Soon after our marriage began, it fell apart. I won't go into details because it is unfair for me to talk about him without him being able to give a defense. Let's just say that we both couldn't deal with what was happening to me in appropriate ways, and we couldn't deal with the baggage each of us had, and our marriage became destructive.

During our short three years together I was in and out of psych wards as well as intensive care for suicide attempts. My medication dose went up to 12 pills a day, I smoked two packs a day, drank copiously, and I spent most of my time in my own little world talking to figments of my imagination. I was eventually diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia; an illness with no cure and no hope of recovery.

After three years I walked out of the hell we were both living in. I can only say that God gave me the strength to leave as there was no conceivable way that I could have done it by myself. It was one of the most harrowing times of my life, and yet also the most freeing. I ended up back at my parents, suicidal, depressed, schizophrenic, divorced. My mum chose to quit her job to look after me full time, a sacrifice that I am still humbled by. I was told later by someone that they were considering changing their wills so that I would be able to go into a home if they died because I was unable to look after myself.

8 months went by as my parents cajoled, argued and forced me out of bed each day. My mum made me go walking with her every morning and I began to lose weight, I just didn't care that I was. I was waiting to die. All I wanted was an opportunity to be alone so I could kill myself. They never gave it to me. I owe them my life. Finally my mum reached out to the church asking them to do something, anything, for the daughter she was watching self destruct.

Enter the little old ladies of the prayer team.

The funny thing was they didn't pray for healing, they prayed only for the peace of God to still my mind.

I wanted them to shut up and go away.

They kept praying.

And in less time than it takes to write this, I was healed.

I can't really explain how. All I can say is that one minute I felt like I was drowning and the next I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to be ok. It was like a really heavy wool blanket, one soaked in water, had been on me so long that I didn't realise it was there until it was lifted off. I knew in that moment that I was loved, I was healed, I was cherished by God! I knew I was forgiven and that he had cried for me and with me. I knew what it was to be free. My whole life changed in that second and I began to laugh. I was sane! I was healed! The little old ladies were shocked to say the least, and my mother wasn't sure what to make of it. I guess laughing and telling people you are healed when you have had issues like mine is more worrying to them than anything.

The next day I went to the psychiatrist and was met by the line "what's wrong with you, you're smiling!" I told her I was healed and that I was happy. She was skeptical to say the least! But by the end of that session she was crying to me about her worries for her cousin, even apologising and telling me that she never did this. I ended up counselling my counsellor! After several more sessions and one mental health class over the period of a month, I was taken off all drugs and was in full time work for the first time in my life. Three months after that I was living by myself in Wellington and working. Four months after that prayer I was an independent, clinically sane, employed women.

But God wasn't done with me yet.

I still had a lot of anger and hate towards the people that had hurt me so badly in my past. I was angry at God despite what he had done for me and I was still drinking heavily. I was messed up in my head and heart  and I tried to find love in all the wrong places, sleeping with men and drinking away the nights. I became so dependent on alcohol that if I slept longer than four hours I would wake with the shakes, so I slept with a bottle under my bed.

I was so angry at God that when my boyfriend of the time became a Christian and started going to church, I dumped him because I didn't want to have all that 'crap' in my life anymore. And yet God STILL wasn't done with me.

I moved back up to Auckland to be with my boyfriend (a different one this time) and was dumped by him the day I arrived (welcome home!). In my despair I went on a bender only to have a very good mate of mine, a youth pastor no less, confront me about my drinking. While he was talking to me I realised that I didn't need alcohol any more. All my reasons for drinking, all the anger and guilt and pain, had slowly been being healed over the last year. It was a crutch I no longer wanted and so I decided to sober up that night on his couch. A week of withdrawal left me shaken and weak but I haven't touched a drop since.

This same friend then invited me to his church to met his vicar, and I went, but only in order to applying for a job working with the music group. God had other plans. As soon as I saw the minister I felt the overwhelming desire to rip his throat out with my teeth and watch him die. I felt like a wolf. Little did I know that this man had a ministry in setting people free from demon possession. Before this moment I didn't even realise I had an issue in this area, but it became apparent as I physically reacted in ways that I had no control over. Three weeks, four prayer sessions and 7 deliverance's later I finally felt free. I was washed clean by God and he had given me my life back completely.

It was 3 months after getting sober and being delivered God told me to go back to Bible College to finish my degree. I was terrified. All the old professors were still there, people who knew me and my ex-husband, who had been at our wedding! I felt the old shame and guilt well up inside me again, but this time I did not let it conquer me. I went, kicking a screaming all the way, but I still went. On my first day, in my first lecture, my professor was asked what the worldview of a person with schizophrenia was like. He responded that no one knew because all the people who knew what happened in a schizophrenic's mind were in no shape to explain it. In the break I went up to him and told him that I was a healed schizophrenic and that I could tell him what the worldview was. He said "great, tell the class after the break is over." So on my first day I stood in front of a class of 200 people and told them about my struggle with mental illness. I discovered my love of teaching and preaching that day and also discovered a passion for God's word and for ministry that I never knew I had.

3 years went by with many highs and lows (mostly highs) and then I met Luke. After all the men who had used and abused me I finally met someone who loved me completely, who was funny and kind, and who would listen to me cry about all these memories I have that still haunt me. He was, and still is, the most Christlike man I have ever met. He always loves others, cares for me unconditionally, and  always puts God before everything else. I am so blessed to know him and to have him in my life and he is a constant reminder to me of the blessing and love that God has poured out on my life.

After a rough start I have found joy through suffering. I have been changed. I am a new person. I can love and know love. I have been forgiven and have learnt to forgive. And all because of Jesus. He met me where I was at; he didn't expect me to reach a certain standard of character before he loved me. He met me as a drunk, demon possessed, angry, hurting woman and turned me into a loving, caring, happy woman.

And the cool thing is is that he is just waiting to do it for you too.