Thesis Update - Halo, Skyrim, Heroes and Saints.

As you may be aware if you are reading this update, I am doing my Masters thesis on biblical ethics and gaming (see link here if you want the low down).

I love getting into reading and trying to take what people have already said and apply it to what I am thinking about. Yes, I am a nerd. I am doing a thesis on gaming!! I think NERD is really an understatement.

Anywho, I have been reading aaaalllloooooooooooot for this thesis already and am really interested by the ideas that are coming out. And as promised, I am going to share my musings with you lucky lucky people.

Got your snacks and beverages? Ok, let's get this thing underway.

A am currently totally in love with the work of one particular ethicists called Samuel Wells. Particularly his book called Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (which can be found here).

Mind blowing stuff I can tell you.

The overly simplified version of his argument is that "ethics presupposes context, and an understanding of context presupposes narrative; yet if context is to be understood as genuinely communal, and ethics as genuinely interactive, then narrative must be understood as drama." (59)

So what he is saying is that ethics needs to be for people in a time and place, and you only understand that time and place if you understand the story that brought the people to it. You with me? So if that time and place is for a community (not just an individual) and ethics is something we do (not just think about) then the narrative is not just a story that people tell, it is one that is lived out and one that ethics has an impact on.

You following still?

He goes on to argue that for ethics to really really engage with a community (in this circumstance a Christian community that uses the Bible as Scripture) then the Bible is not a text that we memorise and then act out, as a drama would imply. Rather, it is a story we immerse ourselves in to the point where we know it so well we can improvise while remaining faithful to the text, to God, and to our community.

Like I said, this dude blows my mind! Loving it!!!

So even though that in itself is an amazing concept, it is not what I want to look at today.

What I want to engage with is Wells' idea that secular ethics is looking for heroes, while Christian ethics is about making saints.

Bear with me, all will be revealed.....

.....now.

Well's talks about how Aristotle, the Father of ethics, talked about virtues as the way a character of a human should be, rather than ethics being about decisions we make in crisis situations.

Virtues = character.

He held up as the pinnacle of a person who had mastered the virtues the idea of the 'Hero'. The Hero is someone who is strong and brave. They protect the weak and use their strength for good. They rely on their own strength rather than on the weakness of others, and if the fail it is catastrophic for not only themselves but the people they are protecting. The best death would be one in battle, as it takes the most courage to go out and fight so to die this way would be exemplary. 

The Hero = Superman (Christopher Reeves style)

On the other hand you have Aquinas, one of the early church Fathers. He liked the idea of the virtues but he changed them around a bit and said that instead of heroes, the biblical values built Saints. The Saint is someone who is serving of others, filled with the fruits of the Spirit (love peace patience kindness etc), and the virtues help them to follow Christ. 

For the hero the story is about them. For the saint it is about God.

For the hero the story is about celebrating their strengths. For the saint it is about celebrating faith.

The hero will die fighting in inevitable conflict. The saint will die as a martyr because they refused to fight for they believe that Christ has already won.

Hero = Soldier

Saint = Martyr

So this got me to thinking:

What stories are games portraying? Who are they honouring, the saint or the hero? What are they teaching us is the better thing to be?

If you look at any game you can see that it is the Hero that is celebrated. You need to fight well, protect others, be strong and courageous. Death isn't really wanted, but you can rejuvenate and better to die in a battle that to not battle at all.

Gaming loves Heroes.

Because really, what kind of game would it be if the main character was a saint who didn't fight!!?? It wouldn't sell, people don't want to be that character.

And I think that is the thing that most interests me about all this. That deep down we all want to be heroes. We don't want to not pick up a sword/gun/laser and not fight. We don't want to be seen as weak and pathetic. And gaming latches on to that need in all of us to be the hero. We won't accept that maybe only a few people ever will be real heroes, we want to be it too!! We won't accept that in this life there may not be opportunities to be heroic, we want it now!! And we certainly don't want to be told that we SHOULDN'T be a hero, that it is opposite to the biblical message.

So where this has left me is wondering if there is something to being a hero in games that is redeemable. Can we live out of a belief that would have us be martyr's but play games where we get to feed the fantasy of being the opposite?

Can we reconcile the Hero of gaming and the Saint of the Bible??

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.

God, Gaming and Thesis Writing

Last night I got the news that my Masters Thesis proposal has been accepted.

What this means is I get to start writing 40,000 words on my chosen topic starting now.

And my topic is (drum role please):

HOW BIBLICAL ETHICS IMPACTS THE WAY WE PLAY MASSIVE MULTI-PLAYER ONLINE GAMES (MMPOGS).

Ooooohhhh yeah, I get to study gaming people!

Unfortunately, due to the size of a thesis it is impossible for me to look at gaming in general, so I had to narrow it to MMPOG's only. But this includes things like World of Warcraft and Second life, both massive virtual worlds with thousands of players.

And you, you lucky people, will get to hear about it as I go along. I would love love love ideas, feedback, thoughts and musings on this as I go. I know there are a lot of gamers out there, tell me what you think about my stuff as I write it up. It may really help shape where I go with it.

The reason I picked this topic was really a bit of a journey for me. See, I am not a gamer!! I don't play video games or partake in online virtual worlds (apart from facebook games, but do they really count). It seems rather odd for me to focus on gaming when I have nothing to do with it. 

But I do through my husband, friends, church, and facebook friends. I know so many gamers. There are those like my hubby who play any game and don't care about whether it is right or not to run down a prostitute in GTA (grand Theft Auto) with your car as it is all only pixels anyway. Or there are others, like a friend of mine, who only ever play the hero first time through a game because they don't like being the 'bad guy'.

This resulted in many conversations. I questioned the use of violence in video games, and asked whether or not someone could justify violence even if it was on a screen. Debates ensued and this thesis topic was born.

See, where I come from is if Jesus is Lord of all, then he is Lord of all worlds, virtual or not. And if he is Lord of the virtual too, then surely the standards and ethics that we follow as Christians apply to the virtual as well as the real. If that is true, then surely we as Christians must critically engage with gaming and establish an understanding of biblical ethical conduct within the virtual world.

The reason that I have decided to go with MMPOG's is because they are where community has been redefined. Actions within MMPOG's affect other players, even if it is their avatars who are being directly involved. It is in these games that a separate reality, not a false reality, has been formed. I say this because for many people, these worlds are where they have their friends, community, social life, and sometimes businesses. The virtual world is their reality.

Because these worlds are reality for players, then there must be a way that a biblical ethical theory can apply to the actions within the worlds.

I hope all that made sense.

The big question that I usually get asked is "does this mean that gaming is bad?" or "are you going to say that Christians shouldn't game?"

Not at all! Just as there are some bad movies out there doesn't mean that Christians are banned from watching movies. What it does mean is that Christians need to be aware of the messages that are being portrayed. It means critically engaging and thinking through the issues that they portray. And, in extreme cases, using wisdom and not watching what is bad for you!!

The same goes for gaming. This is a fairly new industry and yet it has over taken the movie industry in sales and viewers. This means it is prolific in our world and should be taken seriously. As every (!!) NZ home with children under 18 has a gaming capable machine in it, it follows that the church engages with this and thinks about it very seriously.

Because if Christ is the Lord of our lives, then there shouldn't be an area where we can act contrary to what we believe.

The other section of my thesis is about forming a biblical ethic that engages both our actions and our thoughts (ie love God with your heart and mind and strength) and then applying that to gaming. I haven't really got to work on that part yet so that will be the musings of my next post.

See you next time :)

The Death of YOLO

For those of you who are older than 30, YOLO is the new expression for justifying pretty much any behaviour that lets you live for the moment. The reasoning goes “you only live once so go out and have fun”.

This video clip from a girl called Kesha that really exemplifies this life style.

We see here the belief that to live in the moment is to get drunk, have sex, cheat on our partners, party wildly, vandalism throw away responsibility. This song tells us that if we are going to die young then we may as well live it up as best we can now by not feeling any shame or guilt for the way we act. Rebellion against the established order is also shown through anti-Christian symbols. Did any one spot the pentagram, sign of witch craft, and the upside down cross?

There is another way to view YOLO though, and this video clip that shows this understanding....

Ok so this is obviously meant to be poking fun but it really does have an interesting view point. The idea of YOLO, you only live once, leads to a fear of death. In fact both clips show this.

The second clip shows it in an extreme way, telling us that we really need to lock ourselves away in order to live a careful life and preserve it at all costs. The first clip doesn't seem to be showing fear of death, but think about it this way. It is only fear of not living long enough to fulfill all our dreams, or have enough fun, that fuels a lifestyle like this. It is the fear of missing out, or FOMO, that comes from the fear that if this life is it then we really have to milk it for all its worth.

So what do we do with this? What is the alternative to partying it up or hiding ourselves away?

Surprise, surprise, but the Bible actually has A LOT to say about YOLO!!! Who would've thought it! Here we are 2000ish years after this book has been written and it can speak directly into a situation that they had never even heard of!

HEBREWS 12:1-4 (MESSAGE version)

 Do you see what this means - all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running - and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. 2 Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. 3 When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! 4 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through - all that bloodshed!

Ok, so it doesn't mention YOLO or even FOMO or anything like that.

It might not mention those directly but look at what it is saying. It is telling us that somehow other people know what we are facing, that Jesus knows what we are facing!

But before I go into it too much I want to give you a little context. Before this particular passage the author has just had a huge talk about all these other dudes who show up in the Bible. They talk about what they got up to and how they trusted in God. They pretty much sum up the Bible story in terms of individuals and their walks with God. So at the beginning when they say “all these veterans” what they are talking about are people who have gone before us who had to put their faith in God too, even when it got tough.

This author knows what it is like to live a hard life when being a Christian. Christians weren't exactly the favourite people in those days. In fact they were pretty hated. They were abused and laughed at and seen as kind of weird for living differently to the rest of society.

I don't know about you but that sounds awfully similar to what it is like to be a Christian now who says no to going to parties or having sex before marriage and all that stuff. People think we are strange. They think we are party-poopers, kill joys, fun sponges. Anyone else find that sometimes?

This author doesn't tell us that, actually, we should try really hard to fit in because it is better if you live in such a way that people don't know your a Christian. They don't tell us that they understand how hard it is and really it is understandable that we give in every now and then because we want to have a bit of fun and don't want to miss out.

Nope. Look at what they do say.

They tell us to start running and never quit!

 I am trying to loose weight at the moment and I tell ya, going to the gym every day is NOT my favourite thing to do.

Anyone who has had to train in anything knows that it is hard. It is brutal. Making yourself get up every day and do the same thing, to knowingly have to push yourself through pain, is sometimes just the opposite of what you want to do. Some days there is a pay off and you feel good afterwards, and some days you just feel more tired and exhausted and you just want to give up and never do it again. 

Usually at those times you will have a goal that you want to achieve that pushes you to keep going. Maybe it is a gold medal, or in my case a weight I want to achieve. Whatever it is, in your mind you keep your eye on the prize because there are days when that is the only reason you have to push through.

This author is using that analogy. They are saying that life isn't about wild living that ignores the pain in the world. It isn't about instant gratification that makes us feel good. Nor is it about quitting, running away and hiding from everything. Instead it is race.

We start the race when we accept Jesus into our lives, when we go “yeah, Jesus, I want you to be the head of my life because really, I have done a crap job up until now”. That day when we ask him to lead, that is the day we start running.

And we keep going. Everyday. We study how Jesus lived his life so we can train in the same way. We look at the love he had for others and the complete submission he had to the Father and we practice that in our own lives. We look at the pain he went through, the suffering, and we know that we can face anything with God beside and inside us. We read the stories of other people who have gone before us. We see that at times they fail, but they do not give up, and it is those stories that give us strength to keep going.

And above all we see that for Jesus the race didn't end in death. We don't run this race for nothing. Our prize at the end is that we don't only live once. We live again, in an eternity of God's rest. We will see this world renewed without the pain and the heartache, and we will finally get to see the man that we were running for. We will get to see Jesus.

 But there is the question of how do we train for life? It seems like a rather strange thing to ask us to do really when we have no idea what life will bring. How do you prepare for something that you can predict?

There are 3 easy steps that I think can help us all train in Christ for whatever may happen in life.

1. Read your Bible's. Now I know this seems like such the obvious Christian thing to say right now. But I am talking about more than just picking up the book and saying “Jesus speak to me today” and then hoping that we get it right in what we read. No. I mean study it. Get books out on how to interpret the verses. Get a good daily reading plan that helps explain the verses. Talk to people who have studied it. This church is full of leaders who have study the Bible. Use them, utilize their knowledge. Because the Bible doesn't start “Dear Christine” and end “Love from God”. Not everything is clear and we may get it really wrong. But we need to train our minds with Scripture if we are to know what it says.

And this leads to my second step:

2. Once we actually know what the Bible is saying to us we need to obey it. There is no point doing all that hard work of reading the thing if we are going to ignore it. Once we have trained our minds we need to train our actions. This becomes easier as you fill your minds with good stuff. Our conscience becomes more clear when we are doing things that might not be good. We start to analyse tv programmes, video clips and books better because we do it through the lens of the Bible. We start living more like Christ and loving God and people. And the more the do this the easier it becomes to
   
   
   
   
   
3. Persevere. This last step is about training no matter what. About studying the Bible, analysing our thoughts and feelings and actions through it, no matter what happens, no matter what life throws at us. Because there will be times when it is harder to do than others, and it is only training in 1) and 2) that will help you with 3).
   
   
   

Now I know that this doesn't sound fun. Things like study, training, perseverance, obedience aren't exactly words that make us jump up and yell “sign me up. I so want a piece of that!”

I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you that life with Jesus is sunshine and roses. In fact life may get harder for you as you live in the world but as someone who lives differently to it. There are times when you will want to throw it all away and party and forget the hardship of life. Trust me, we have all been there. Talk to anyone who has been a Christian for a while and they will tell you that they have moments where doubts creep in, where temptation is strong, when they wish they could just walk away.

But here is the amazing thing.

You don't do it alone.

You aren't a marathon runner who is out there pounding the streets alone. You have a great cloud of witnesses, past and present, who have gone before you and who cheer you on. They help you with their writings and sermons, the things that they have learned. And you have Christ, who has showed us the way and modeled how to do it.

See we run for Christ, to Christ, with Christ, and through the strength of Christ. We run to be like Christ, so we train under Christ, because we stand firm on our foundation which is Christ. And as we keep running, it is the story of Christ that renews our strength and faith when we feel it failing.

We are coming up to Easter now, a time when we remember that Christ died and rose again. We remember why we are running the race in the first place. We remember that we follow a God who not only went into the grave, but came back out of it, and promised us the same.

We remember that we don't only live once. Don't live waiting to die. Don't live as Kesha would tell you to live, so scared that you will die before you do anything fun that you go wild. Don't live as Lonely Island tells you to live, so scared of something going wrong that you barracade yourself away from the world. Both of these types of people are living waiting for death. Death is what shapes and forms their lives. In trying to hide from it, in reality it is ruling them.

Christ on the other hand brings life and life in full. He frees us from sin. What that means is we don't have to live afraid of death because we have no hope in anything after it. It means that he gives us strength to say no to things that are bad for us. It means that we don't carry around guilt or shame for things that we have done. It means having the weight of the world, of fear, of shame, taken off our shoulders because he already carried it.

The Christian churchy way of saying all this is that we die to ourselves. It's a kind of hard concept to grasp, I mean how do we actually do that. It is easier if I give you some examples than to try and explain it in words.

Dying to self is when a young 17 year old man fails in a suicide attempt that he tried because his life was meaningless. When he came through it he said to God that his own attempts to fix his life had failed so now he was going to give God a chance to sort it out. Since then he has let God direct his path, has fallen in love with Scripture, and has a meaning and purpose that he never had before. He died to himself by giving up his own wish to die, by letting God take control. He gave up what he wanted and listened to what God wanted instead.

Dying to self is the 16 year old girl who had a moment of passion with her boyfriend and ended up pregnant. She went to church and was a sunday school leader but had fallen into temptation that changed her life. She wanted to get an abortion but on the way to the clinic changed her mind. She pulled the car over and prayed that God would give her strength to raise a baby even though she was a child herself. She died to self in that she gave up her own fear to God, her desire to remain young and carefree, and the shame that she would feel in facing her peers. She raised that child to follow God and thanks Jesus everyday that he is in control and that he gave her strength to keep her baby.

Dying to self is the 20 year old who looks at porn everyday. He knows others do too but it is destroying him inside. He feels so ashamed and dirty every time he goes to the websites but the temptation seems too strong and he feels he can't stop. He has tried praying and reading his bible but he fails over and over as the desire takes hold. In desperation he asks God to help him overcome his shame and he reaches out to a friend for help. He died to himself in that he gave it to God, he gave up his desires and his fear of rejection and, with the strength of God asked others for help. He still fails, it is still a struggle, but he gives it over to God every time and dies to himself everyday.

See, if you really believe in Christ then it is time to start living it. Because if we don't live out what we believe then the grace we have been given we are throwing in God's face. We are saying that Jesus' death wasn't important enough for you to give up drinking, drugs, sleeping around, downloading music illegally, watching porn...whatever it is. You are saying that your happiness in that moment is sooooo important, that it is more important than what Jesus did for you. You are saying that your sin is more powerful that his love. That you would rather be a slave to culture than free in Christ.

It is time for the death of YOLO. Stop living as if you are waiting to die. Die to yourself, your own selfish desires and sin, so that you may live in Christ, that you might live forever.

Watch this clip!!

God Slapped

It seems that February is a month of revelation for me.

This year is a decision year for Luke and me. At the end of it we both finish studying (for now) and need to have some idea of where we are going and what we are doing. I like to have things sorted well in advance so I started asking God about it around the turn of the new year. And boy oh boy has God been talking back.

It first started with a conversation that Luke and I had with friends as we celebrated the new year midnight hoohaa. I was asked by one of them what my word was for the coming year. What he meant by this is what do I really want to focus on with God over the next 12 months. I came up with perseverance.

I want to persevere with relationships with friends that have left college and I don't see on a daily basis. I want to persevere with my study and get my Masters degree. I want to persevere with my marriage and continue to grow with Luke. I want to persevere with my relationship with God and learn more about the wonder of the Trinity. I want to persevere in my preaching and look for more opportunities to preach and serve at church. So perseverance became the word for this year.

So I have been praying that God would teach me more about perseverance and give me opportunities for me to grow in that area.

To let you understand the enormity of what comes after this you need to know something about me.

I love the spotlight.

I love to stand up in front of people and preach. I love being the centre of attention. I love telling people what I think and why I think it. As Eminem is to rap, I want to be Preacher to the church. I have daydreams about standing in front of thousands and having them convert and praising God/Me because of my words.

It's a problem. Humility has never been my strong point.

So over the last couple of months I have been thinking of what to do next year. My ideas ranged from getting a scholarship to do my PhD at Oxford University, while writing a thesis that changes the face of theology, to becoming the youngest ever and first female principle of Laidlaw College. I also thought about going overseas and doing youth work, working with women in the sex industry, or becoming the next Joyce Meyer. There was just one problem,

Luke is in a band.

A Metal Band.

Don't get me wrong, I love the band. The boys in it are like family to me and I love that Luke is doing something that he loves and makes him happy. But a metal band in New Zealand isn't going to go anywhere fast, make any money, or even draw massive crowds.

In short, I wrote it off as a hobby that could be sacrificed to follow my dreams.

And then God started talking back.

I was sitting on a bus from Taupo to Auckland listening to Lecrae, a Christian rapper, and talking to God about the fabulous plans I had for my life that he should make work for me, when I realised how unbelievably selfish and self centred I was being. I wasn't interested in what God wanted for my life, I wasn't even thinking about how I could serve him. All I was thinking about was how I could get recognition. I didn't even consider the fact that God was using the band, had called the band members to it, and was working through them. I was thinking only about how God could serve my desires. 

I was God slapped.

And it hurt. 

I felt humiliated and ashamed that I had pushed my own agenda and wrapped it up in a bow called 'God's calling'. It took about 4 hours and everything I had planned for my life was broken.

I am a blind woman. I don't see the world as I should, but through the darkness of sin. I need to hold on the arm of my Saviour so he can lead me. And as he leads me he tells me about the world as he sees it. He describes the beauty and the glory, and he weeps as he tells me of the brokenness. And all the time he leads me gently in the best path for my feet.

But I am stubborn. I don't want to be lead, I want to run ahead. So I do. I leave the safety of his arm and walk by myself, even though I fall in potholes and trip on rubbish. I try to tell him what the world looks like by the limited things I can feel and foolishly believe that this proves that I am not even blind, that I can see just as well as he.

I am a blind woman. God give me sight.

Perseverance is a word heavy with the implication of struggle. I struggle with myself and my own ego daily. If I really do want to follow God and preach the Word then why am I not doing it right where I am? Why does it need to be on a stage where people can see me and know who I am? 

We all have our own individual weaknesses that get us in a sneak attack and we don't even realise that we have shifted our gaze from God to ourselves. This is one of mine. I am still working through it, still praying about it, but I am so grateful that God made me aware of it! 

I will persevere, even against myself.

Killing Ourselves Slowly

Fighting the Flab is back in progress. Just a quick update to let you all know where I am at.

Christmas for us, as with everyone else, is an absolute killer when you are trying to loose weight. We pretty much put everything off for a few weeks as the fun and frivolity took over. Perhaps not the best thing to do but there you are.

So Luke is an amazing husband and has stepped up to the mammoth task of helping me out on this front, or there is no way weight loss was never going to happen. 

Every morning we are going to get up and workout for an hour in the gym (30mins weights and 30mins cardio). We have done it twice now and I am sitting here in so much pain that I will only move for essential issues. My arms hurt, my legs hurt, my abs hurt....everything hurts. Luke is pretty much in the same boat.

We also went through our cupboards and freezer and fridge and gave away (to our all too willing neighbours) all the food that would be self sabotaging. Out went the peanut butter. Out went the heat and eat lasagne. Out went the fizzy drinks and Raro drinks. Oh, and the cheesecake. It was a sad day, we are still wearing black in mourning.

But we are determined. We are even giving up fizzy drink, fast food, chocolate and desserts for lent. 40 days of none of our favourite foods in order to remember what God did for us. Every time we get a craving hopefully it will remind us to pray and think of God.

So back on the treadmill we go. If you don't hear from us for a few days check the gym at Laidlaw: we may have collapsed and haven't been found yet :)

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.