Dependence- a new state of being.

You know, I wasn't sure how I was going to begin this post. Having felt prompted with the subject for the last few days, I knew what I was going to write but could not for the life of me, think of how to begin... so I googled "Dependence". And what came up was exactly what I hoped would not, but what I knew to be true and ultimately what this blog is about- our complete misunderstanding of what it means to be dependent.

What is dependence? There are so many types of dependence, good dependence, bad dependence, needed dependence, unnecessary dependence, deceptive dependence, and healthy dependence. By no means an exhaustive list, but hopefully an illustration of the spectrum across which "dependence" spans. From baby and mother, to deep, long lasting friendships.

My definition of dependence has adapted, grown, deepened and intensified since working in the substance misuse field though. Prior to my current job, if you had asked me to define dependence to you, I would have told you that it was a source of security, or contentment, of necessity- what you depend on is something that provides you with something that you think you need. It takes on negative connotations in our teenage years- it oozes a sense of inability, a lack, a flaw- dependency means you can't do it on your own. At least I thought it was teenage years that invoked this. I realise now that the source of that sense is far stronger and considerably more dangerous. It is our culture-our world.

I had understood dependence on a basic level to mean what we should have with God, but I didn't understand what this meant.

Humour me, and stop reading this blog, open Google, and type in "Dependence". Have a look at what the top 5 or so links show. Then click "images" and see what you think takes up the majority of the images.

Drugs. Pills. Syringes. Alcohol. Tragedy.

Independence is good right? We are taught to hold ourselves up from a young age, to walk on our own, to speak for ourselves, to stand up for ourselves, to earn for ourselves, to make our own way in life, to succeed at making our own way. And we try our flippin' best. Some of us are better at this than others. But independence can be poisonous if we don't understand the limit and pitfalls of it. It is important in us becoming our own person, in finding our identity, and most of all, in understanding who we are in our relationship with God, and making the decision to have that relationship for ourselves. But, if we let independence go so far, we lose sight of what independence means, and isolate ourselves. We run the risk of coming to a place where we think we our enough for ourselves, and go so far until we have only divisive and destructive tools to comfort and restore us because we think they'll fix things because in a temporary, troubling way, they do.

Complete independence must therefore be, ultimately, the severing of all relationship, thus any input of love.

What strikes me most about addiction, is that it has come from a place of such independence, that it has transgressed into severe dependence on something so destructive and so completely of the enemy. It is said that binge drinkers often are not physically dependent on alcohol, but suffer psychological dependence on it. The longer that this goes on, the longer the binges get, and the shorter the time becomes between them. It is at this point that the dependence transforms from one of the mind, to one of the body, it becomes biological. The matter in our bodies cannot cope without it, because it becomes a necessary part of our functioning. How frightening is it to think that it becomes a part of your physical being? That your ability to say, "no, I don't need it", disintegrates altogether until you cannot remember being without it? The addiction sucks the individual into a black hole, dark and frightening, isolated and cold. It pulls those around them in too, until their dependence becomes a relationally destructive hurricane. What is more upsetting, is the reality that those who love and try to support those struggling in the ways they have always known best, can sometimes be more destructive, because it feeds into the dependence. It can feed into accepting the behaviour, accepting that this loved one has become dependent and that they are never going to recover. That seeming free nature in a person's independence becomes toxic.

But consider, if dependence can be so powerful, to cause a person (who had found their independence, made a decision as to who they wanted to be, what they wanted from life, and what they would do to change the world;) to change their identity, hurt those around them and destruct all that they had constructed, imagine how much could we do to change the world if our dependence on God was as strong?

What is it that we need to understand about our heavenly father that will make us that much more dependent on Him? Dependence on a God that is only good, dependence on a God that is only love. I long for that.

Perhaps you're thinking, sure, don't go too far one way or the other- everything in proportion, etc etc etc. But that's not it at all. There will be other things, people that we are dependent on, simply for being human. My primary love language is physical touch- my husband-to-be, my friends, my family understand this- I suppose to an extent, I am dependent on people showing me love in this way to feel most loved, or perhaps loved most naturally. This however becomes unhealthy if I begin to believe that the only way to feel loved is physical touch, because as soon as this isn't fulfilled, like a drug, I need more to get the feeling of contentment from it and there is stemmed a destructive dependence on something that was so beautifully from God.


Do you know what the 12 steps of AA are?

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become
unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do
so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly
admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to
carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our
affairs.
Copyright A.A. World S

AA works because not only does it acknowledge the source of where we need to find our dependence, but it does it through having "sponsors",whereby a person who has experienced the same addiction will stand side by side with another who is struggling and fighting a real life threatening battle, to love on them and pull them through. I love how Rob Bell and so many before Him worded it, but it really does come down to the one solid truth- Love wins. AA works because it sees the person, not the illness. The illness is of the enemy, but the person underneath is still loved.

A relationship with God, and receiving infinite amounts of love from Him is one thing that I want to be addicted to for the rest of my life. His love is infectious in a way that fulfills me, contents me, deeply satisfies the thirst and hunger in my soul.

A friend and I had been chatting over the weekend about where we looked for that deep contentment, that sense of being in younger years, in our "fighting for independence" days. The truth of those apparent sources were that they were hollow, and that it wasn't long before we saw that. It is now time for us to fight for dependence. Fight to have dependence on our God, when so much in this world will push us the other way. It will try to convince us that we need only to be independent, and that this will make us happy- only to become dependent on something so far from what our Daddy wants for us.

The only thing I want to be dependent on, is my heavenly dad. Everything else is added bonus- knowing that He will satisfy my longing and hunger is enough. If we can get this right, we can obtain a healthy interdependence on one another, in our marriages, in our friendships, in our families. An understanding that one cannot fulfill the other, but that we will help each other to find the source of dependence that can, our Jesus.

Losing the sense of worship

It's been a difficult couple of weeks in the Lead Worshipper compartment of my brain lately, finding myself in a position where it has been hard to worship, hard to feel close to God, and so easy to let the enemy walk right in.

I was so fired up, in gear, ready to accelerate into God with all the torque I had in me; with two amazing lead worshippers beside me, we were going to knock on Heaven's door and have it opened, God's kingdom flooding the warehouse, flooding our hearts, and overcoming us, pushing me out of my own way. There had just been so much momentum, so much pushing into God and having Him push us with immeasurable force right back. The worship had a rhythm of its own that just seemed to mean that the first chord played was the "GO" button for people to release themselves into worship. I was excited, I was expectant. And yet it was like trying to cut wood with a pencil.

It was tough being a smaller band, but having had the most awesome time of prayer beforehand, really feeling like God gave each of us the authority to lead, the size of the band was no opposition to what God was going to do, and I was sure of it. In fact, the attention being drawn to how small the band was meant that I really felt that it was God's, it was His gig, and by no means mine. But half way through the second song of the first set, I could suddenly no longer hear the worship of my heart, but the crap playing on my guitar, how ropey my voice sounded, and how big and echoey the warehouse suddenly felt with no wall of sound to hide behind. I was so exposed and I could just feel comments like "what are you doing up here?", "this is stupid, you're lead worshipping but you're getting in God's way" etc... By the time the talk came I felt ready to cry, I just wanted to crumble under it, I felt so stupid being up there, like pride had taken God's place and condemnation and judgement had taken the place of grace.

I've been trying to understand it, trying to understand why so clearly I felt my authority being taken away. I have played with the thought for 2 weeks now, contemplating whether it was God moving me elsewhere, or if it was the enemy; but I came to the conclusion, naive or not, that whenever it's God, He gives you something else. He gives and takes away, but when it comes to His kingdom, He has a definite place for all of us. I knew then, as I do now that the enemy was right on top of me that morning, but what I don't understand is why. There are so many cliche answers like "well you were obviously doing something he didn't like, something that was good to God", and maybe that's true, but I had never felt oppression so clearly in the middle of a set before. In truth it frightened me a bit, and being away from church when I haven't been leading hasn't helped, because the other lead worshippers are on this pedestal in my head, as though it is something I can't ever quite reach. And I realize now that I need some healing, of my cynical heart, of my critical mind; states I find myself so easy to switch into when things go wrong and places the enemy is just waiting for me to resort to.

Finding God in those places is what I'm trying to do now, to find Him whether I think it's going well or not, and embracing His view of me, not my view. I don't know if worship leading is where God will want me forever, but I know this, I will always be a worshipper, and that is enough to keep me fighting the headwind, no matter how forceful it is, to know that I will not be moved standing in the footprints of God.

Finding God in the silence

A pronounced silence has penetrated the noise of my life in the last few weeks. Not the kind of silence that is barren or banal, but a pregnant silence, an expectant silence. It was at the prayer night a few weeks ago at CV when I really felt God ask me to listen for Him in the silence. Now if any of you reading this know me at all, you'll know that I am by no means a silent person, quite the opposite, and yet God asked me to wait for Him there. What is the significance of that? What is the relevance of not simply what God asks, but the way in which He asks it? Or the context in which He asks it? Naturally I laughed initially, at the sheer absurdity of what He was asking; but as the absurdity subsided and the laughter passed, I was left with the silence itself, not the silence I was meant to be expecting but silence which God was using to get my attention. This was a weird state to find myself in, just in silence, and just waiting.

I felt safe expecting God in a worship set, with the lyrics of How He Loves Us, or Holy washing over me; but silence put me in a state of fear. I feel vulnerable in silence, as though anything can touch me, good or bad and I will just be the victim of whatever will consume me in it, usually my thoughts. But God wanted that vulnerability, that was exactly what He wanted from me, sheer openness, no walls, no protection, naked. It was something He was using to answer a question I had been asking in my head and heart for a while, that being, "Why can't I always hear you as clearly as I want to?" He was telling me what I needed to do to hear Him as clearly as He can hear me.

On sunday I lead worship at CV and felt a transformed sense of expectation in the spirit. I know that I need to step out and risk silence in the worship itself, and that is the next step, but listening for what He's doing, where He's moving, and what He's saying. It is a challenge for any of us, to not want to fill the silence with jobs that we can be doing, places we can be going and messages we can be sending, but He is so worth the wait. Just wait for Him. He's waiting for us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdKfSINWyE4

The Nightmare that is Dreaming

Excuse me if you will, for coming to the conclusion, that if you are reading this, then either you dream, or you are frustrated or curious because you do not. This blog is for both groups, though I myself fall into the first category. I have found myself in the last two years learning and understanding a lot more about my dreaming patterns, and times/situations where I might experience nightmares. I am not here to discuss the complexities of the rhinal cortex and hippocampus, though there is much to be learned from the understanding of those; my purpose here is to explore a less scientific, perhaps more philosophical area, that of how dreaming affects us. Psychologists upon psychologists have and are still continuing to study patterns of the brain in dreaming, with particular focus on victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the activity levels in the various lobes of the brain. But that is not my purpose here, I presume neither to possess the intellect to tackle such a nightmare, nor to assume that I am worth listening to in the discussion of such a broad topic, but having been on the receiving end of both dreams and nightmares, I can assume the position of knowing what it feels like, of knowing how I am effected, and how I learnt to distinguish between what is concerning and what is mental porridge, so to speak.

My desire is to produce a three part series on dreaming, the first part examining nightmares; the second, dreams (those REM sleep ilustrations behind our eyes that don't frighten), and finally, why some of us dream and others do not.
The reason for selecting nightmares as the first part, is that I have been a "sufferer" of nightmares (sufferer in relative terms) of nightmares for as long as I can remember, and generally the dreaming that I remember most over the years has been the nightmares.

Hartmann (1984) defined a nightmare as a long, frightening dream that awakens the sleeper, and awakening from a frightening dream has been used as an operational definition of nightmares by others (as found in the article 'Nightmares and Bad Dreams: Their Prevalence and Relationship to Well-Being' by Donderi and Zadra). Interestingly enough, when I read this for the first time, I felt pretty perturbed at the fact that 'awakens' was part of the definition, as it is rare for me that I wake up, unless my nightmare is at about 9am in the morning when I'm more prone to waking up anyway. The thought of psychologists was that the intensity of a bad dream must equate to waking you up to be deemed a "nightmare", but it was found that when the waking criterion is used to distinguish nightmares from bad dreams among participants who experience both bad dreams and nightmares, approximately 45% of bad dreams are found to have emotional intensities equal to or exceeding those of the average nightmare. I have not ever taken part in a psychological study, but I reckon that I would be included in that 45%.

I suppose it would be so easy for me to say anything like that though and not be believed, as dreaming is such a personal thing, something only the dreamer can experience and understand (sometimes not even the latter). But I want to share a couple of my nightmares of the past that have physically effected me, though not necessarily woken me up, in order to illustrate how disturbing to sleep and life it can be. To me, there is a scale of terror, that nightmares produce, not distinguishable upon waking up or remaining fast asleep, but from one to five in terms of reality disturbance. 1 being low reality disturbance, 5 being high disturbance. Examples would be 1-dreaming that you'd found something (that in real life was still lost), 2- dreaming that you were having a conversation with a friend, in the same room, 3- dreaming that you'd broken up with a long term partner or fallen out with a best friend, 4- dreaming that someone close to you had died or tried to hurt you, 5- dreams about physical injury that affect you in reality. I could be tighter with examples it has to be said, but these are some of the examples of dreams I have had and so it easier to explain this way.

Notice that the higher they are rated, the more emotionally concerned they are. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that strong emotion towards something in reality can affect dreams exponentially; however, I have found nightmares (for me at least)all fall within the higher range. 4 and 5 have been the worst for me. Why is that? Mostly because for me, there has been a serious correlation between fear and the comparison or relation to reality that the dream portrays.

Dream 1. When I was 7 years old, I lived in Uganda, in a lovely massive 3 bedroom detached part bungalow, with a garage under the house. The garden was huge and with 2 dogs I used to play with them outside regularly. I had a dream one night that I walked out of my bedroom (which was my bedroom at the time), and screamed so loud that nothing came out of my mouth. I knew that a man was hunting the house and grounds outside to find me, to kill me. I had no idea who he was, or why, but I just knew that he was. I was panicking, trying to think of where I could go, and the next thing, I was running with all the strength in my legs to (what my dream had composed as a combination between the offices in different countries) the office looking desperately around for my parents. People I knew from the ugandan office were there, and they told me that my dad was in a meeting, but mum saw me and ran to me. She said she'd come back to the house with me and stay with me until I was asleep. She sat on my bed, and I was beginning to feel better, but as I looked up at my window, two glowing green eyes appeared at the corner of my window.
The scariest part of the whole thing was that I still lived in that house, still woke up in that room, and for weeks I couldn't look at the bottom right hand corner of my window because I was terrified. It was how close the dream fit into my then-present reality that made it so terrifying. I don't remember having a strange emotional state at the time, only remember the nightmare and the fear. I did wake up from the one, shaking and crying a little.

Dream 2. This was much worse. And I can trace this one to where it may have sprung from. Only last year, the week following the funeral of my grandad, "Bikey". It was a whole week of these terrors when I slept. But I will discuss the one that disturbed me most here. (For the faint of heart, stop reading now, it's pretty horrid). It was short, succinct, and terrifying. The long and short of it was that I was talking to someone, they told me I was dying, and as I looked down at my chest, the left side of my chest was hemorrhaging. I was dying from internal bleeding, and I was watching it kill me. I woke up almost immediately hands holding where the bleeding had been, and crying. After that I was terrified of going back to sleep.

I wanted to embrace insomnia, I felt safer holding my eyes open than to fall in the horror behind my eyes. The most interesting thing is that I never experience these horrors after a scary film or programme, or a violent news programme. It is almost always emotional. I carry the baggage into my sleep and my mind has just got too much to handle because I didn't get rid of it before bed. From a young age I would pray "God, help me to sleep without any bad dreams or nightmares". Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but those times that it didn't now have made me appreciate the importance of unloading whilst I'm awake. The things going through my head, my worries, my concerns, my stress; I just put my ipod in, let the worship in me take over, and by the time I'm ready to sleep, God is so close and has taken it off me completely. Different methods work for different people, I also run to unload.

For those of you who dream, don't underestimate the importance of that unloading, it will make your sleep that much more peaceful and God filled. Chances are, most of the time our nightmares are our own doing as we carry this stuff God waits for all day for us to give Him. Give it up. It's His to deal with, and don't forget that God made the world from rest. Rest is the default position, NOT the other way around.

God intended us to work from rest, so appreciating that rest in its fullness is crucial. I remember a wise friend of mine told me that it is not the enemy that creates these dreams but our own emotions, the enemy just jumps on the back of it because you're vulnerable when you sleep. I don't understand why we have nightmares, and why some people have them and others doing, but this is my two cents.

Feminine Fingernails and a Fender Telecaster...

How funny, I face a dilemma all the year round when I look at my bitten-down fingernails and think, "hmm, why on earth can I not just let them grow?" but I'm grateful for the fact that my fretboard on both my gorgeous Takamine and Fender are protected from the sharp cutting blades of my fingers when I play a simple D-chord. But with more time on my hands, less immediate stress, and a feminine feel, my nails are beautiful. Painting them regularly and filing them down, looking at them occasionally, optimizing what it means to be a woman (apparently)...and then, like a haunting memory from the past, it niggles at me from the early hours of the morning to the late hours of the night and into the earliest hours of the next morning. Creeping into my mind with words, and causing rapid palpitations of my heart, I can't sleep for fear of forgetting, and I sleep with my phone at my side to record anything that I might otherwise miss... You ask what it is? The rare beauty of a beast that they call songwriting.

Mark Knopfler once said Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing. Hysterical and totally rock and roll, what a legend. It made me giggle and brought to my attention the sheer complexity of what it means to song-write, but possibly one of the most fantastic lines I have ever found, was from Tracy Chapman, who said Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control. This is something that rings true I think of all song writers. In truth, I feel massively naughty writing this blog, I am no famous musician, not even a professional one. But I love music, my heart beats to its rhythm, and I long to create, just to create.

It has to be said, song writing has never really been my fort-ay, and neither do I think that I will ever consider that it is, but lately I have found my beating heart for creating these songs is keeping me up at night. Some of my most beloved musical inspiration arises from lyricists like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Kim Walker, and Missy Higgins. Varying capacities for different things, but all brilliant all the same. I have listened to all of these artists, often asking myself the question, "how on earth do they do it?"- This wonderful ability to transform emotions into words with melodic prose, seemed to me to be a gift that I would never possess. The majority of me argues that I still do not! But it does not and can not take away from the feeling of utter contentment in doing it.

It ebbs out of me, a pulsing iambic pentameter of emotion. I have to rein myself in from rhyming, and often have to re-erase several classically cheesy lines that have worked their way in there, but I can't seem to stop myself from coming back to it again and again. Even now, I sit here thinking, hmm, would rather go and pick up my telecaster and create! But I have already worked on it a little tonight and thought I'd share some thoughts on it...

I am feeling a little impatient at the moment, so desperate to finish my degree and get editing; unfortunately, I am aware of my need to accept criticism better in order to mould these songs into the sculptures that I can see in my head that maybe aren't coming out on the page. It is terrifying to think that something which has sprung so much out of your heart, has the potential to be torn to shreds with others' opinions. However, I can't wait! I am so looking forward to making these little scraps of creativity into something that might be worth something, like perhaps extracting diamonds from rock or separating the wheat from the chaff (and a lot of it is chaff!)

Some songs are out of extreme levels of emotion, but recently I have found mine arising completely from God. And I think that is where all my creativity lies. To be honest, I reckon God just has a massive drawer of creative resources, waiting for me to delve into it and pull it all out, mixing it into all the little capsules of imagination from the shrapnel of creativity that I have in me. My heart is for new worship songs, to spring out songs from my heart which resound the same wavelengths as other hearts to increase people's capacity to feel close to God. Song writing as a release is amazing, but I'm less talented in that area, but I find myself so happy to just listen to God talking at me and try to write this stuff down. To horribly quote Aerosmith, "I don't wanna miss a thing"...haha. Utter cheese I know... But it captures it well! God talking at you, who would want to miss that?

So there it is. A naive, child-like song-writer, new at the whole gig, but looking forward to diving in, with the assurance that my desire to project comes from the harmonic heart that God has delicately placed in my chest. The slightly erratic rhythm of it, is just me getting used to it, trying to rein in those cheesy lines and cliche beats. Time to cut those fingernails to bitten down, guitar playing shortness... sigh!

Meditation- a misnomer for the resting place of the Spirit

This could be deemed the second part to my previous piece on the imagination. Perhaps this may seem a controversial title for a blog coming from a Christian, especially when meditation is so generally used in the context of religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and New Agist schools of thought. However, I feel that the controversy surrounding this area is because of a misunderstanding of what it means to meditate. Yes, it is something completely different from Prayer, and separate too from just thinking. But my reasons for discussing this and exploring what it means in more detail, arise from two things; firstly, I recall an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine, Rachel, about meditation and what it means; and secondly, reaching a very busy time in my life with approaching the final exams and the dissertation of my degree, I find myself regularly needing to put my mind in a place where God can just invade and give me a sense of peace and well-being.

Princeton wordnet defines meditation in two ways, the first being (continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature) "the habit of meditation is the basis for all real knowledge"; the second being contemplation of spiritual matters (usually on religious or philosophical subjects). I think I have found meditation to be a combination of the two in all truth. I however do not find myself to meditate on deep subjects, in fact quite the opposite. The root of the word in Latin, is that "med" in fact means to measure, examine or consider. But under such a definition, so too could philosophy fall. I neither think that it necessarily be profound thought. Contemplation of religious matters may be perhaps a category under the definition of meditation, but I do not think that it can be the definition in any way whatsoever. Perhaps to give a little more insight into what I find meditation actually is, I will attempt to illustrate where I have found myself doing it.

Art, songwriting and running are the three places where I find some peace from my own head. It is not an issue of using the imagination to escape, but a matter of putting yourself in a position, doing something that actively takes your mind away from where you are busiest and the most stressed, even if it means being busy doing something else. It is not a matter of burying the crap under more crap, it is a matter of putting it to the side by being in a place of total mental rest, so that when you look back at the mountain of work/stress/worry, you suddenly feel you can conquer it. But this is not from your own strength to do it, it is because in doing that activity, whatever it may be, you distract yourself in a way that gives God space to move in and join you in that.

I found it quite emphatically in two places doing very opposite things. The first was in Devon, up on a hill behind where my granny lives that looks over the sea and over farms across the Devonshire countryside. It was about a 10 minute trek up this rather steep hill, but it was completely worth the climb just to see the view. The funny thing about it, is that now, when I think back to that time, I think it was that the climb up the hill was actually clearing my head (in the same way that running does), so that when I reached the top of that hill, God was waiting for me, waiting for me to just go and sit with him, and just appreciate the sheer beauty of His creation. I always would leave that hill (having gone up after dinner) feeling ready for anything, it was a place where I just sat in God's company, as though I had left my problems at the bottom of the hill, and after sitting with God a while, when I walked back down, the problems had gone.

The other time I realised this peace was when I was painting. Singing along with Kim Walker, praying that God would somehow give my fingers the imagination of my heart, and in the midst of doing it, there was just nothing in my head but peace and the company of God.

Meditation is that place of finding peace from the business of life, where God waits. Communication is prayer, but His comforting and peace abounding company can be found in the things we love doing most, because where we are doing what we love with the gifts God has given us, He wants in on our enjoyment, He wants to spend time with us in the same way you want to hang around fun, happy people because they're infectious as is their laughter and enjoyment of life. I just really look forward to finding more places that God is waiting for me to discover where I'll love every moment of it, and find Him in that.

Imagination and the Wilderness of the Mind

So, the above may rub some of you readers the wrong way if you perhaps don't enjoy Jim Carrey, James Cameron or Matt Damon...But bear with me, these are from of my favourite films, and will help, I hope, to help you see a little bit into me and the madness of my little weird and wonderful world of imagination...And more importantly, shall hope to illustrate the importance of mind, memory and imagination, three of the most potent elements associated with all three films.

When I was eight years old, in a little international school in Kampala, Uganda, at the end of the school year, I was awarded a certificate for "The most vivid imagination". From that point on, I felt astonishingly proud of my imagination, I had been awarded seemingly for my ability to imagine another world, to imagine weird and wonderful creatures, to be the best in my class at escapism! What a fantastic time of life that is, where you are encouraged to escape life, which even at that time put little strain on me, deciding as to whether I make a den out of chairs or boxes. (I usually used big boxes). Things change a little as we get older though it would seem; imagining another place, another world, another life, can be stamped "childish" and plastered with comments like "someone needs to wake up to reality". There is such a pessimistic attitude that runs through society, concerning how tough reality is, how hard and trying life can be, well my job for now is to show how this is so definitely not the case whatsoever!

C.S. Lewis said that "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." (Till We have Faces). Now here was a man who understood the cross over between reality and the imagination. The very placing of imagination in our minds is a God given gift, and a choice to let go of the burdens that life can sometimes put on our shoulders. There are two purposes I believe for the imagination which we are given, firstly to escape. I cannot deny that imagination can be a haven of peace for the busiest among us, or a world of adventure for the bored and restless among us. But secondly, and more importantly, it is so evident that we have been given this imagination to preeminently see the way God's world could and should be. But in looking at both, we will see how both are gifts in themselves.

A world of Adventure and a sea of Tranquility
Avatar was a controversial film, two groups of people generally on one side of the spectrum or the other, love. or hate. But 3 oscars to its name, 25 other awards and 56 nominations had to have accounted for something. Perhaps the more cynical among us will attribute it to the fantastic CGI effects, others to the fact that it was a film of James Cameron, but for me, I attribute it to the way in which the world of Pandora (in James Cameron's head) was spilled out onto the screen, creating a world in which every human being would want to exist if they could. The colours, vibrancy and the abilities of the avatars to connect with their world composes this total haven.

Bond, James Bond. Love them. All of them. Definitely a film for the restless in this world, every man wants the suave, the walk, the sharp fighting ability, and the charm to capture beautiful women of Bond; every woman wants the beauty, the sense of danger and being rescued of a Bond girl. Okay, maybe not every girl, but I have certainly found myself feeling alive and pumped with the adrenaline that courses through my veins when watching a Bond film.

And last but definitely not least, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A film about memory removal for fear to face reality. I love this film, possibly my favourite film of all time, as it follows the relationship between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as it falls apart and Carrey goes to have her removed from his memory. Undoubtedly many of us have experienced a time or experience in our lives that we would like to erase from our memories, but this would definitely escape the reality that we cannot.

This wonderful sense of escapism is beautiful, anyone who dreams or daydreams can appreciate how when it reaches half past 2 on a monday afternoon in the middle of a maths lesson, there is nothing better than a bit if imagination to run away! But it can be a false sense of peace, a place to run to when things become scary or intense. This is when the imagination can be a dangerous place. The imagination is a place created by conscious thought being put towards an idea; the problem with this is that if we stay far from God in our thoughts, this imagination can be manipulated, and soon that escapist walls can be formed around our thoughts locking God out, and not letting ourselves breathe. Our thoughts, good and bad, and every aspect of our imaginative capacity needs to be given over to God.

Seeing God's world through our Imagination
I think often the reason that we feel a tendency towards wanting to escape at all, is to do with the hopelessness of reality. I must thank Tom Hardwick for his fantastic blog on the monsters in life (take a look at http://tom-hardwick.blogspot.com/)and for drawing it to my attention, as in reading his blog titled "If you're not scared, you're not paying attention", he addresses those monsters and how scary they can seem without God in the picture. Imagination is the bomb shelter from this life, but there is something so much more beautiful that it was intended for- seeing God's creation and the design for His world. We need to allow ourselves, and in fact push ourselves to examine how perfect this world could be, if everyone would come into relationship with Jesus. Imagination can invoke us to act on what we see in our heads, and how fantastic would it be if everyone in relationship with Jesus would be so excited to introduce their friends to Him, that transforming His world would become a reality more vivid, more vibrant and vastly superior to anything in the mind of James Cameron (no offence).
I desperately want to pray that God infiltrates my imagination with His spirit, overtaking every one of my thoughts and transforming them into seeing His kingdom on earth. I hope that the very imagination that I was awarded for would be a resting place for the Holy spirit, reminding me again and again of the vibrancy of His world, His earth, His kingdom.

Rebellious, Wished-for, and a Sea of Bitterness- You can call me Mary

Try though I may, to avoid the blood rushing to my face turning me a rather beetroot-esque colour, when I tell people my middle name and wait for them to hear in their head how the combination of my first and middle name sounds; it dawned on me throughout easter, the blessing that lies in a name. Catherine Mary. That's it, the most Catholic name a christian girl, from a christian family, could ask for, perhaps with the exception of Mary Catherine. I remember when I was about 7 years old, that I disliked my name, I wanted a "cooler" sounding name, like Rebecca, or Rachel or Laila. Catherine sounded too old, too traditional. So in an attempt to make it "cooler" (in my head at least), I varied in the years between 1997 and 2003 with Cathy, Cath, Cat, and I seem to recall being called "caffee" by one of my friends (though granted, she couldn't make the 'TH' sound, and so what was meant to be Cathy became Caffee, and eventually "coffee" as a joke"). I had decided Cat was the coolest way that I could get my name to sound, even though a number of my closest friends had still called me "cath", and it stuck like glue! Catherine is now a name that I adore and am so grateful to my parents for thinking of (despite being called Jake when they thought I was going to be a boy...their bad?)!

The name Mary however took me some getting used to, and ashamed though I am to admit it, it was not really until this easter that I began to find a real appreciation of what it means to share a name with one of the most Godly and awe-astounding women of the bible- Mary Magdalene. Granted, Jesus' mother too shared the same name, but for me personally, there was a resounding joy in the knowledge of Mary Magdalene's relationship with Jesus.

The first we hear of Mary is in Luke 8.2, where it talks about how Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Mary (called Magdelene) from whom seven demons had come out... Perhaps one of the most astonishing things that struck me when I read this was that at various points throughout the bible you read about people being healed, demons being cast out, and the blind receiving sight, but these are miracles in themselves, where people experience God through Jesus and then believe, but the following of Jesus is an internal understanding, not necessarily involving an external response. Yet Mary, through this awesome purification commits her life to following him. Scholars have described her as "a part of Jesus' ministry", and having been listed with the Disciples not only in Luke, but at the time of the Crucifixion, it is clear to see how loved by Jesus she was, and she loved him as her Saviour.

Though as striking as this is, what resounded with me this easter was her relevance and presence from the death of Jesus to His resurrection and her importance in everything that was to happen. John 19.25 says that near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. It must be noticed the significance of her relevance as being the last mentioned, and being the only one mentioned as an individual in her own right. Jesus however only speaks to John and His mother when He is on the cross, and this seemed so unusual to me considering her commitment to him, in following Him and her very presence at His crucifixion. However, that was before I had read how He had loved her so that she would be the first person to whom Jesus would appear after His death, and in His resurrection. She was the first to find the tomb empty, and the first to see Him. How sickened the Disciples must have felt to have missed that moment!

John 20.10 says Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the food. I love how easy it is to read the bible and just respond in such a way that you bypass verses like this, thinking, "ah yes, well seeing the odd angel wasn't unusual in Jesus' time"... Utterly ridiculous. This would have been a mind-boggling, ground breaking experience for Mary, in her position I would have imagined that the grief would have stricken so deep causing hallucinations, but I suppose that is the way of the unbelieving creature, so eager to rationalize everything away. Yet Mary did not. She was in fact engaged in conversation at two points by the tomb- asked the same question, giving the same response. First from the angels, second from Jesus. "Woman", he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?". So gently the way Jesus approached her, realizing she was blinded by her grief from losing her Saviour, that He would ask her, and simply wait for her to figure it out. He only has to say her name, and she realizes. How awesome she must have felt knowing that her relationship with Jesus meant just as much to Him as it had done to her. Everything that she had been with Him through, her loyalty, her whole being living for her God, meant that she would see Him, face to face, and be the first to do it.

This is nothing new to those who spend a lot of time in their bibles, but revisiting this made my heart beat with a new found love for Jesus, in the realization that I often find myself feeling so broken and unworthy of such an amazing relationship with the One who saved my life, and you only have to look at Mary to realize that He's waiting for you to see how He loves His relationship with you vastly more than you could even try to love your relationship with Him. His Grace Changes Everything.

Sunshine

I close my eyes in slumber,but sleep I cannot find
This sweet melodic memory plays out behind my eyes
I feel my heart a flutter, And weightlessness consumes,
I search within the darkness to find the shape of you.
I'm wandering in this blindness, hoping your face I'll see,
But behind the veiling blackness are two large Cedar Trees
They seem to form a gateway, a path to some unknown
Labyrinth of imagination, just like I find my own.
Tall and of authority these trees stand out to me,
but it is not the trees themselves that draw my curiosity
It is the figure in between them, stood firm, eyes locked with mine,
And I realise my heart has changed its beating time.

My love he stands before me, strength and love he bears,
on his shoulders are his worries, which one with me he shares.
My soul is bare before him, everything of me he sees,
My heart synced to his rhythm carried along the breeze.
Walking towards him slowly, he takes my hand in his,
and draws me close against him, gently grazing my lips

My love with you I feel safe, from your calming voice to your tight embrace
You are sunshine to me, the warmth and glow upon my face,
Even in the darkness, your love brightens as though the day.

Film scores in all their magnificence

Today I found myself captured in the beauty of John Powell's composition. I am not a classically trained musician, far from it in fact. I can read little music, though I know the theory behind it, it does not come naturally to me and would take some intensive practice to speak music like I can english (although by anyone's standards that knows me, that would be difficult). I can only play the guitar and sing a little, but my appreciation of music spans broadly.

Always having been a massive fan of films, I noticed today as I was listening to John Powell's score for the Italian Job, that music can speak louder than anything visual. Asked when I was younger whether I would prefer to lose either my sight or my hearing, I had always said my hearing. Naturally I love having both, but it is a curious consideration. Why did I wish to have my sight so much? True, seeing the colours of The Birds of Paradise flowers, the elegance of a crested crane, the fantastically green eyes of the love of my life, they are all things which I so much take for granted. But it occurred to me today, how different would my life be if I could no longer see, but could still hear? My appreciation of what I considered beautiful would be transformed. I do not mean to say that I wish I was blind, that is not it at all, but I no longer wish to take any of it for granted.

This seems all very off topic, but to bring it all intertwined into the same context, what I wish to illustrate is how in the same way one would trust a guide dog to take them the safe route to wherever they needed to go, the score of a film tells the story without necessarily needing the visuals to elaborate. Although the same can be said of orchestral pieces composed by the fantastic Beethoven and Mozart, I find a fascination and a connection with film scores. It is not mainstream, often with no vocals at all, it is the layering of the instruments and the heightening of various emotions through emphasis on strings perhaps to portray sadness, or brass instruments to suggest cunning, or perhaps drums to build up to a climax of adrenaline. Whatever it is, the film scorer is a crucial part of the film making process which cannot be undermined in the slightest.

If I were able to read and write music, this would be my ideal job. A film without music is like a play, it is all in the spoken word, the portrayal of those words by the actors involved; yet, finding a perfect match for the (until now) "play" with music creates a complexity and tiered effect of emotion within the story that causes the audience member to connect that much more. Given the choice, I would always choose the music over the viewing of the film. I choose to put my trust in composers such as Howard Shore, John Powell and Michael Giacchino to take me on a magnificent journey that carries me into another world entirely.

To this day, the scores for the Italian Job, Lord of the Rings, Up, and Battelstar Galactica (Bear McCreary) send shivers down my spine, and it is a place where I find total escapism and relaxation.

A knight with His armour

My dark knight, you rescue me from myself
The depths to which I would go in my mind to not surface again
Never remain unchallenged
You look me in the eye and without a word I disappear from myself
Lost in the translation of your thoughts and the love in your eyes
You hold back the branches which would otherwise swipe me down
Only to help me see the path I walk
Hands intertwined, you grip and pull me onward until I keep the pace of you
We run, we jump, we look skyward, embracing the risk that we may fall
But keeping our eyes ever fixed up and our hands ever bound freely
We are kept on our feet
The terrain turns upwards, the rocks tumble down
Yet we continue just to climb on the ground which though not visible is the earth upon which our safety is sound.
A breathing moment to take a rest, I see into your eyes, and soon we are on our feet again running for our lives
It is not what we are running from which is that which keeps us going
But that which we run towards, that keeps our beating hearts synchronized.

My dark knight is a gift from whom I owe my whole life to,
Who has given me everything I know, and could take it away too.
But trust I found has lit my way, and given me this heart
That has its own hearing too to beat the same, though apart.

The Dark light

The desires of my heart span the fathoms of the deep
Yet I still cannot find what I'm looking for
There is something in the darkness that follows me
Wary of its predation I flee

I'm kicking and pushing but it is soon that I find
The desires of my heart that I knew
No longer are found surrounding my being
But have disappeared in flight of the predator too

Desperation freezes me in a transcendent high
No more kicking or screaming, just a silent cry
It's coming too quick, I cannot escape
The purpose it seeks, to take me away

Though wait, it seems here is a predator not,
But a curious presence, who waited and watched
For me to see the outside of my heart,
To realize that the depths I have known, were not all dark

And light had diminished the darkness I knew
This presence was a friend, that showed my heart's truth
I could not have missed it, It was obvious to see
That I had been swimming without any ease

Now there was a companion, a friend guiding my search
I could suddenly see the creatures, the surface, the earth
It had become my homeland, I had become a true heir
Of the creator's kingdom, He had apportioned a share:

The whole of the kingdom, in all of it's glory
But it is not here yet, my mission, His story.

A broken world

Oh God my world is broken,
My God, your world is lost
We know not what you've given us,
or considered what the cost

For us you were forsaken,
For our sake you were crushed
It is wholly because of you
That we are not mere dust

You have shaped our hearts,
You have made us whole,
Our chains have been broken
We have found our soul

But God let not complacency
Be my sinking sand
In knowing that the Rock
Has made so firm our stand

Let us rise above it,
To soar on eagles wings,
To live life as you intended,
And to use the songs we sing

My heart God is your worship,
Your kingdom come on earth,
Revealing to the world,
that your death is our birth.

Consciousness

Oh sleep leave me be, if your sole intention is to trip me
Into the thoughts that lead me astray and leave me weak

Like a feather on the breeze is your breath on me
A reminder that I'm alive and that this is not a dream

Oh sleep, leave me be, this is too beautiful for your dreams
That I fear leaving this reality and facing the deep

Like a whisper on the sea is your voice next to me,
some sensation, some elation, a melody deep in me

Lift me out of the darkness, bring me into the light
Let me see your true colours, reflect them in my eyes.

Feeling inspirationally stumped

Feeling a little drier than I like to be, I decided (wise or not) to release some older work...

Drive me away, oh drive me away
From this place, I cannot stay here.
The fondness I find from deep inside
Is gone, has vanished I fear.

Take me away, oh take me away,
let me be gone, let me be free
Free to write songs, free to write words
of lyrics and sweet poetry.

Give me the map, please give me the map
Let me show you a place we can go,
A place of just light, no darkness in sight
A place where inspiration grows

Follow the road, just follow the road
Yp ahead is where we should be
To enjoy the beautiful surroundings,
To think and be inherently free

But wait, just wait, it seems that we meet
A fork, a choice, a potential defeat
where logic and passion at rivalry head,
Must leave me abandoned to weep

Had I taken that road, had passion won me over
Little can I see where I'd be
A mountain? The sea? Or quite possibly
Holding on to a four-leaved clover.

"It is not about luck", I heard a voice say
"It comes from within you, in a heavenly way"
I shivered and shook at the thought that I
was the only one who knew what to say

"But please, oh mercy" I cried to the voice
"Why give me the chance? The impossible choice?"
"I have given your gift", the voice replied,
As to how you should use it is what you decide

"But please oh please, what if I make the wrong choice?"
"You won't my daughter" the voice had thundered
"I have given you reason and passion besides,
the balance you choose is what I have wondered"

So I embraced rationale and passion at each side,
A thought, a breath, a word,
And question how I may be able to ride
The eternal sunshine of my spotless mind.

Changing Rhythms

I long to strip away the ill desires of my heart, so that it beats only for you.
To know your death in love for me is the only real truth
To understand what you intended is not the life I know, but a chance to grow and flourish and blossom the seeds which you have sown.

Oh God my wretched heart is dry and soon it will be crumbled, if I cannot learn to find the heart that makes me humble.
This world oh God is not the home for which I was meant to rest, but the frontline of the battlefield with my armour against my chest.

But rescue me my gentle father from being overrun, from the traps and falls which flood this life, that I am not overcome.
So that very soon I find my heart, beating to the rhythm of Yours, and can rest in assurance that your grace and love has made my purpose sure.

Frustrated

I currently have all the materials and research that i need to write a 3000 words of a research proposal about the political shift from Thomas Hobbes to John Locke. Yet I can't.... this does not constitute a blog- just a cry of frustration at my lack of productivity!

Worshipful hearts

As anyone who attends Canterbury Vineyard will know, Jim likes to mention why we use music to worship God, and how it "reaches into the deep". I just want to explore why that is. I am not a technically brilliant musician, in truth, I am very poor technically. I can only play one instrument and I can't read music. But God still chooses to use those of us less musically talented by giving us HEARTS FOR WORSHIP. Worship can happen in so many ways, and this blog isn't designed to belittle those methods of worship, but the focus of this blog is to explore the use of music in worship.

Music has always been a very prominent element of my life from a young age, and I suppose that has a lot to do with how important music has been to my parents. My taste has changed greatly over the years, including everything from the Spice Girls, to Led Zeppelin, to Audioslave, to the Fray, to Tiesto, to Sufjan Stevens and Mat Kearney. I can't say why I necessarily found connections with such differing types of music at different stages in my life, but what i can say is that I am SO glad that I did!! I am able to appreciate everything now, and to see how music not just speaks into the deep places, but comes from those deep places in its origin! I love Hip Hop and rap for its lyrical beauty, the rhythm and rhyme of Jay-Z and Eminem is something that I can respect greatly, and is something that I just don't have the skill to do! Granted, an english white girl might look a little silly singing "without me" but it can't be undermined, the sheer skill it takes to write those songs. Trance, techno and electro have a tendency to just be passed off as cheap dance music with bad connatations of what goes with the music, but I think people are missing the appreciation of the music. True, it is synthetic sound, and not from musical instruments, but the pace and the rhythm are what the music is about, it is about the pulse that you feel running through your body when you hear it. It makes you want to dance and move! I have left Rock, blues, Jazz and Singer songwriter music last because it is my favourite collection of genres, and they all share one common element- they arise from the heart.

Blues is completely emotion driven music, and i love it! The beauty of it can only be found in the melodic and lyrical synthesis, the combination of how melancholia and sadness can be combined with a combination of guitar riffs and lumbering beats to portray this whole mood in the music alone. Jazz follows this to an extent but my response with jazz is that it is almost more natural- I cannot say that it COMES naturally, there needs to be a large amount of skill in being able to play jazz, but the fact that it creates its own art with no need for a pattern or set of rules to govern it gives the listener a sense of real freedom to take their own interpretation out of the music!

As for rock and singer songwriter music, these both intertwine with different levels of emotion i think. Anything from "ain't no sunshine when she's gone" to "Syndicate". The stories behind this music are what make so much of it for me, knowing where in the heart it came from, tragedy, frustration or surreal happiness.

The desire that burns in my heart, is that the walls around worship and what worship has to sound like would just be so severely transformed. There are signs that we are beginning to move towards that with bands like Kutless which cover the heavy metal christian influence and Reliant K with the Pop-Rock genre, but I so desire to see all of these genres of music exploding with christian musicians exploding into their styles with worshipful hearts. Worship music is designed to be accessible for praising God, but I think that more hearts will be able to worship when the accessibility is wider than what is in the US christian charts, when people feel like they can create music that won't be frowned upon because it didn't come from Graham Kendrick (I love him by the way, but you catch my drift).

Everyone has a worshipful element of their hearts, and for some people that doesn't mean it coming out through music, but for some it does, and for those people, I would just encourage you, put it all down on paper! Get playing your instruments, begin to play out what God is putting on your heart- a rhythm of worship is going to take place in this nation, we need to be listening out for our part in that!

The importance for a woman's mirror to be God's eyes

This topic has been something that naturally as a woman, is something that I have been trying to learn and understand from my own perspective and experiences; but the more I look around, the more I see how the broken women in this world, the ones feeling crushed emotionally, perhaps physically, and certainly spiritually, are suffering from the same cause- a broken mirror. This may apply to men as well, although I would not be so brash as to apply it directly to men as I cannot speak from experience! Now this blog isn't a feel-good piece, aimed at making women feel better should they come across it; but I aim more to help women to perhaps explore the reasons as to how they've broken their mirrors and the ways in which we can feel freedom like never before if we will allow God to give us a new mirror entirely.

There are any number of reasons that a woman may feel broken, and it may be anything from a bad relationship to abuse in childhood, but regardless of the reasons, once the damage is there, there is a tendency to bury it. Granted some women deal with it in a much more effective way than others, but I can't say that I have ever dealt with it effectively, at least not until I realised where I was slipping up.

I was never a particularly emotional child, I saw myself as the ultimate tomboy. But as I grew older, I noticed an emotional development, not simply to the extent that I felt things on a more personal basis, but that I became rather reflective about why I am the way that I am. I don't consider that this was ever a bad thing, as it meant that I felt things in a stronger way, a sense of empathy became a part of my emotional response to things and I have learnt to become so grateful for that gift. But the downside of it was that I did begin to feel things a little too much. Constructive criticism became insulting rather than helpful, I became an emotional sponge.

Everything that was getting absorbed became a part of me and distorted what I could see of me. It distorted the vision that God had so delicately put together. I began to dislike the reflection that I could see because I had put expectations on myself, that I should be more physically beautiful, that I should be better at sport, better musically, life had effectively become a sport and everything was a competition. There is a very thin line between these expectations and regret, and regret is not a path worth the effort. It causes more damage and pain over things that we cannot control, and the worst part is, that we think we have some sort of power over this, but we truly don't.

What we have a tendency to do, is to get better at hiding our disappointments, at hiding the shame we have in ourselves, and we just begin to create an internal black hole. It seems perhaps like a nice idea that these disappointments go somewhere that they can no longer be found, but in fact, the black hole only expands to accommodate the increasing disappointments in ourselves. And this black hole is visible, not in itself, but in the way that the enemy uses it. Jealousy, resentment and pride begin to take shape in our identities and it is like throwing car oil over a beautiful painting, it is absorbed and we cannot remember how the painting looked before the damage.

It was exhausting and the only way I can think to explain it is like running a marathon without the training. You can't handle it, you're not equipped to deal with that kind of pressure, because the only thing you are equipped to deal with is what God has given you, and He has designed you so that you CAN handle that without burning out. What I have seen in myself and many other women, is that we are so busy focusing on what we don't have that we don't stop to think about what we do.

The first stepping stone has to be forgiveness. Of ourselves. Forgiving others for hurt and disappointment can only be done if we can forgive ourselves the way that God has forgiven us. Chances are, most of us are the ones in our own way to finding His forgiveness and grace. It is not something to feel ashamed of, it is something to embrace that God's grace makes it worth it all. His eyes burn with flames of love for us, we just need to look Him in the eye.

Then only can we begin to show appreciation at the beauty God has given us, our hearts will soften and the beauty that others see in us we will begin to see in ourselves, and as this process continues, we may be able to focus so little on ourselves that we can help others to show them God's vision of their beauty. That is the ultimate aim i believe, is to find our beauty and understand our beauty in Jesus so much that we don't think about ourselves at all and not out of worry that we won't like what we see, but in understanding that God has made us the way He has for amazing reasons. What blocks this is that we cannot possibly understand what these are. Quite simply, the way to find our beauty in Him is to ask Him! He so desperately wants us to see and understand ourselves through His eyes. The more beautiful we find ourselves in Jesus, the quicker that we can get out of our own way and God's, to see the beauty in others and to help them find that too. Our relationships will take shape in a new way because we will have been completely transformed.

Women are a beautiful creation by God, made not just to follow, but to lead; God has not made us as an after thought, He made us as a joint one. I feel that although Eve was created after Adam, it is a crucial point to notice that she was made FROM him, she was already one with him before her creation. Man was not designed to be alone, and neither was woman. But finding the beauty in ourselves mean that we can understand that oneness better, that our relationships flourish and that we do not feel that our identity is found in mislaid expectations, and disappointments, but in forgiving ourselves we may find the beauty in ourselves that God intended for us. This freedom cannot be taken for granted, 'it's not a sprint, it's a marathon', but this time, we will be trained, and God will keep topping us up if we will just seek His eyes and His heart for us, to become His true daughters and powerful women of God.

This is not a quick fix scheme, it's somewhere to start.

Hope vs Optimism

The secularization of our society has incurred an ever increasing rise in our tendency to view hope as mere optimism. Hope defined in the Cambridge online dictionary defines it as "something good that you want to happen in the future, or a confident feeling about what will happen in the future" (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=37879&dict=CALD).
Now, note the same dictionary's definition for optimism: "being hopeful and emphasizing the good part of a situation rather than the bad part; the belief that good things will happen in the future" (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=55769&dict=CALD). Now, please understand that the purpose of this blog is not to undermine positive thinking and optimism, I am very much a glass-half-full person; however, the purpose of this blog is to illustrate that hope and optimism are not one in the same thing.

Consider the definition of hope, as this is where I find the flaw causing our confusion. Naturally, on the basis of an individual learning english, this is an accurate definition, but consider this from a spiritual angle. Notice how it is something you want to happen. This has become an unfortunate default for us as Christians living in a secular society.

Our hope has become a desire for God to fulfill a promise that He never made, and when we perceive that God has failed by not fulfilling our "hopes", we become caught up in disappointment and self-pity. We lose sight of what God IS doing, and set our eyes and hearts instead upon what He hasn't done, and what (in our increasingly cynical ways we perceive) He "probably won't do".

We are not in line with God's hopes for us. Some people may argue that God doesn't "hope", He controls everything; but one should be quick to notice how eating from the tree of knowledge was a choice made by Eve. It is not to say that God couldn't have His way if He wanted to, only that He chooses not to be tyrannical, but kind, loving and gracious as a true father. Thus the furthering of His kingdom is an inevitability, but our roles in that is something which God hopes that we will choose to commit our lives to, something that we will intentionally choose into rather than sitting back on the sinful default.

It is an issue of being hopeful of the fulfillment of God's heart for this world, a place where our hearts should also be. This does not mean forcing yourself to desire God's kingdom coming, nor to become hyper-spiritual over something that does not ignite you inside. It is an issue of wanting to desire His kingdom, it is an issue of asking for His grace, so that the hard parts in life have a purpose, and that achieving the purpose is worth its difficulty while in the knowledge that God has put you there and therefore that He will overcome. The desire of our hearts when all else is stripped away is the true painting of our hope in Jesus. The mere act of asking for Him, asking for the hunger and desire, is in itself a hopeful act. Knowing that God HAS fulfilled, and subsequently WILL fulfill is our starting point. Disappointments often (though not always) arise from selfish desire. It's time to start looking out of the body and into HIS heart.

"With vision, comes God's provision" - James Denison 04/01/2010. May we begin to see the vision God has for our lives, that our hope may be in line with His purpose for us. May the sense of God fulfilling His promises ring in our lives, in our relationships, in our homes. But may we also remember that this is a battlefield, there is a spiritual war going on every second of our lives, and God is fighting for us, and He will win, He will overcome our giants, if only we'll get out of His way.