You give and take away...my heart will choose to say...Lord blessed be your name

i struggle with blogging. I don't normally blog...i started one purely because I was doing some work abroad in Kenya and didn't have the time, money (or bandwidth!) to send lots of emails home with updates on how things were going. Then, on coming home, I tended to just write when I heard about something that really piqued my curiosity or infuriated me for some reason. It became a way of organising my thoughts...more for my own cathartic purposes than for anything else.

This week i've had a bit of a milestone: I have been given a diagnosis of a condition called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). It falls into the ME family which is basically a family of conditions for which there is no defining diagnostic test and for which there is no cure. On a basic level, sufferers get very fatigued and experience a lot of pain...thus impacting their lives quite significantly. I have had diagnoses before - fibromyalgia was the one which really stuck for quite some time until a consultant told me that couldn't possibly be the case. To be honest, I'm not really bothered about the label because it doesn't make any difference to my everyday life or the symptoms I experience. I guess with a thing like CFS though it will make it easier to explain things to the relevant people at university and when I get a job. It’s good that it’s also a google-able term so when I tell people I’m feeling and tired and need to go home, they’ll know I’m not just a spoil sport!

Over the past few months my health has deteriorated - at times my housemate has had to lift me out of bed in the mornings and sometimes im so tired it feels like a huge effort to even get words out in a conversation. Waking up feels like a fight to come up for air when you've been swimming. Except that someone has also hit you round the head with a sledgehammer and been punching you all over your body. And you feel hungover. And this is despite turning the lights out at 11pm and waking up at 8.30am.

I didn't understand really what the term "mental strength" meant until the past 4 months...but now I'm starting to get it. Life has become a fight. It's a fight to wake up. It's a fight to get vertical. It's a fight to get to class. It's a fight to stay awake. It's a fight to socialise. It's a fight to pray. Everything is a battle and when you're battling all day...it's pretty draining. You need a lot of stamina to keep going! And you need stamina to not let the fight consume you. I am not my illness. I am not my fatigue...there is more to me than that. But at the same time, I do feel like I've joined this community of people that I never really noticed very much before. Recently the government announced its spending cuts which included ending the mobility allowance for disabled people in residential care. Ever since my pain has progressed to the point of me having to have special equipment to do my work and the fatigue has progressed to the point where I need either my own car or a lift to get around, I've started to take more of an interest in some of the stories which hit the headlines about disabled people. I really feel for the people who won’t be able to get out now because of that cut. If you have severe physical disability it's like being a prisoner in your own body – so to be denied the chance to get out of the house must be devastating. I remember sharing a link on Facebook where a disabled person talked about that particular cut... I got to comment of “yawn!” from a friend... and I was surprised at my reaction. I was furious. It nearly made me cry. It felt like someone was mocking “my" people!

But at the same time, I have to fight to conquor the desire to wallow in my own situation. To conquor the jealousy. When I look at those who are my age and my contemporaries...they work demanding jobs with long hours and lots of pressure, they are climbing the career ladder, they are partying at weekends, they are going out and meeting people, they are leading ministries in churches and seeing lives changed. And before I know it I've turned into this big ball of green envy, salivating over the life I would like to live!

And I start to ask myself - how are you going to handle this because this is your life and like it or not, it's the only one you've got. I don't want people's pity - of that I'm sure. Once a lady I know came over to me and greeted me by saying "poor Becky, you always look so ill." I'm not sure which was worse - the pity or the you always look so ill bit! One thing I know for certain though. I'm not just going to curl up in a ball and let this take over. Yes I may not be able to stay out until 2am but I can still go out for at least a little while. Yes I may not be able to study for 10 hours solid but I can study for a little while. Yes I may not be able to go on a walk in the Dales - but at least I can take a little walk [and have a drink at a pub whilst everybody else is sweating away!] Yes I may not be able to play football but at least I can watch it and get excited when Utd stuff Chelsea! Yes I may not be able to have my dream job but I can still make a difference in peoples lives in whatever job I end up doing.

I do get worried about what people think. Colleagues, friends, family, the doctor... that I'm a flake out, a fake, a kill joy, a drain, a downer, that I'm ignoring them...But someone reminded me that the person whose opinion counts the most is God’s. I'm a member of the worship team at church and a few weeks ago we took a look at what the Bible says about who we are as Christians. Some of the things we realized we could say were that:

• belong with God. I am important to him. I benefit from his love, attention, care and protection. He is thinking of me, working in me and through me and plans for me.
• I am a child of God, his heir and co-heirs with Christ
• I am precious, honoured, glorious in Christ! I am not a mistake, but designed by God for his pleasure
• I am competent and strong in Christ, gifted for a special function and involved in God’s great purposes. We are citizens of heaven!

I think my health is something I very much took for granted. Before I broke my ankle, I took for granted the fact that I could take free kicks in football, smash a backhand in tennis and doodle on the guitar for three hours at a time. Even when those things went, I still took it for granted that I could go out with friends every night of the week and go after the career I wanted to do.

But the fact is that my health is a gift -- like every good thing, good health is a gift from God. There's a song which says “you give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.” Every day I pray for healing. I did give up for while, but a friend of mine who has had a bit of experience in the area of ill health himself, encouraged me to keep praying. So every day I pray for healing and ask God to restore my physical strength. But at the same time, my heart has to make a choice – am I going to praise God in the meantime or am I going to resent him and push him away? It is a conscious choice that you have to make I think. And a choice that you have to keep on making on a daily basis. To be honest, I feel much happier when I am praising God -- when I delight in him, I feel at my strongest. I'm a Christian hedonist! But despite this, there is such a temptation to wallow in the pain, in the fatigue, in the loneliness, in the self-pity. So I think it has to be a daily choice, a daily decision, daily vow to love and serve him... which is renewed consciously. The fact is there are lots of people in the world who are a lot worse off than me. I work in a sector which reminds me of that every day. Loving God means loving others...which means I’m not focussing on my own situation 24/7...which is actually good for my health!

I know the choices I should be making. All the same...its not always easy to make the right choices.

Passion

I have been mulling something over which I read in the Old Testament and thought I’d share.

I know you’re not supposed to bring your work home...but this week I was actually pretty glad to have had a chance to do something at work which really hit home – and stuck in my head. I’ve been preparing a talk on the theme of legacy and was listening to a sermon about Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a Jew who was serving in the court of Artaxerxes, the Persian King, as his cupbearer. The Jews were in exile, apart from a select few who had made the 900 mile, 4 month trek back to Jerusalem and started building their houses there. But the temple remained destroyed and the wall of Jerusalem in ruins. When Nehemiah was told this by someone who’d just got back from Jerusalem he reacted pretty strongly to the news – he was very upset and mourned and fasted and prayed. For 4 months! Then he went to ask the King if he could go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple – and he asked for help to get the materials to do it! And as you read on through the book, the rest is history. A legacy of a city rebuilt, even in the face of opposition and intimidation.

I was thinking of my reactions to bad news and comparing them to Nehemiah’s. We’re similar in that he mourned and I often cry or feel like crying when I hear bad news. But actually, we’re not the same when it comes to mourning. Because when I cry, I more often than not cry for myself – whilst he was crying for others, for Jerusalem. The preacher speaking said in his sermon that if we had two bottles – one for the tears we cry for ourselves, and the other for the tears that we cry for others – the former would likely be to the fullest bottle by the ends of our lives. But praying and fasting as an automatic reaction? I’m more likely to be trying to find ways of making the situation better, thinking about what I can do to solve things and getting stressed about it all. But his knee jerk reaction was – turn to God. Acknowledge his greatness and goodness, plead with him...and for quite some time. 4 months in fact. As it wasn’t until 4 months later that he asked the King if he could go back to Jerusalem.

One thing was clear though. Nehemiah was a passionate man. No one reacts in that way if they don’t feel strongly about something. I have gotten frustrated with myself in the past for feeling strongly about things, for being passionate, for caring about things and people until it seems to hurt. It’s very inconvenient as you end up getting caught up in issues and with people when it would have been so much easier to bury your head in the sand and keep quiet! But I guess there is a good side to passion...it isn’t just a feeling. If it’s for the right thing or person – then it’s an action...and eventually...a legacy. No one will have a legacy if they don’t have a passion. And the nature of that legacy will depend on the object of that passion.

I think everyone is very passionate about at least one thing. Ourselves. I am passionate about ME! We love ourselves very much and are very passionate about the way we look, the careers we secure for ourselves, the way other people think about us and the image we project. The problem is if the only passion is me then that’s a misdirected passion. Nehemiah’s passion was God - as his knee jerk reaction was to pray and fast. God was the first person he turned to. I think that says a lot for how much he loved and trusted God. If something really great happens or if something really bad happens – the person we feel like turning to first, I would have thought, is one of the people whom we love the most. It’s like it’s something out of our control – it’s a gut reaction. My mum, my best friend or my sisters are my knee jerk reaction I think. But what if I were to reach for God first, rather than reach for a person?

Nehemiah’s passion was also others as he was really moved by the situation in Jerusalem. I was trying to think of the last times I’d been deeply moved, when my emotions had been in upheaval, when I’d felt very sad. Again, most of the situations were rather me-orientated, with my own personal experience dominating in the immediate past. However, I know the earthquake in Haiti definitely moved me, particularly as I had to read through updates and stories at work a lot during January so I was prepared to speak to the media – but I don’t think I shed any actual tears over the hundreds of thousands of people, the hundreds of thousands of souls that were lost on that awful day. I know I can be moved – I’m an emotional person. But I need to be moved, to be passionate about more than just myself. God needs to be my passion, he needs to be the one that stirs something inside of me, and stirs me to feel more for those around me – and those beyond the borders of my own immediate world. I wish God was my passion more because if he were, I wouldn’t get so unnecessarily passionate about all the things that don’t really matter. And believe me, its easy to get upset about things which don’t matter. Phone companies who leave you on hold for ages, someone taking a long time in the queue at Tesco, someone having continuous phone conversations on the train, crying children on public transport...just some of the things I have been unnecessarily annoyed about in the last 5 days alone! Imagine being more passionate about these things than I am about the need to sort out my own sin?!

Nehemiah prayed, mourned and fasted. And he waited on God for four months. But then he actually did something. He went to the King and asked for permission to go to Jerusalem – and then went and rebuilt the wall. So his passion turned into action. So if I’m going to say I’m passionate about Christ and then have a life that is completely unreflective of that, who am I trying to kid?! If we think God’s given us a passion for something or some people – for kids work, for the poor, for music, for mission, for social justice, for hospitality...what ever it is that really gets you...then that means you actually go and do that thing. You pray for that thing, for that person, for those people. Otherwise its just words. It’s just a pointless feeling of no benefit to anyone else. So if you’re passionate about doing something – then do it..and if you’re physically can’t do...pray! If you’re passionate about a group of people – then be amongst them, serve them, pray for them.

And don’t be scared of showing it. Having a passion for others means taking a risk. It will probably mean hurt and disappointment at some point along the road. But that passion for others is made possible by a passion for Christ. As there’s no risk there.

Big churches and little churches

When I was growing up, I used to go to a small church. The church meets in a school and its made up of around 20 people, maybe more if they're at absolute capacity. Every couple of months they'd do a special event and people used to get excited when more than the average 20 would turn up for the service. "We had 50 show up" was a typical comment reflecting the feeling that the event had been a success because it had been well attended. At the time I used to really wonder whether there was any point in them continuing with such a small number of people - they may as well pack up and join a church of a decent size, with decent music, and more young people.

But on recent reflection, I think I was wrong to have considered smallness a bad thing. And I think the church leaders were wrong to be measuring the "success" of their church by the numbers of seats filled on Sundays or at special events. Because looking at the Christian communities in the New Testament, I think my old church's small "togetherness" which has been nurtured over years of a small group of people meeting together to worship God and support each other is pretty close to the types of things the Bible teaches about a church community.

I was listening to a talk on small group togetherness - so many things came out of it which made me think..and some of the things I really don't want to forget so I'm going to write them down. One of them was that church is so much more than a Sunday worship service and a mid week meeting. There are some churches which attract thousands of people - Hillsong in London, Assemblies of God in Bradford, Renewal Christian Centre in Solihull, Hope City in Sheffield...they literally have thousands of people streaming through the doors every Sunday. Young people, people who you normally wouldn't expect to see in church. At these churches you can expect a service which has the same level of production as a well produced West End show -they have all the components...a theatre like venue with a large stage at the front, a highly professional band with amazingly talented and inspiring singers and musicians playing songs which are easy to pick up and sing along to and have lyrics which move you, a Pastor or group of Pastors who are famous for their teaching or for their inspirational example or presence, a large congregation. But the thing is - a church can have all these things and still be in terrible shape. Because Church is more than having a brilliant and uplifting experience once a week.

I'm not saying that all large churches are little more than the producers of great shows - it is a great thing to have a gifted worship team who can really lead people into the presence of God, a Pastor who can teach what God is saying in the Bible clearly and in a way that hits home...and to be honest that kind of service can be an incredible boost once in a while...but these aren't the sole marks of a healthy, thriving church. If you dig a bit deeper into the lives of these large churches, the real mark of their health and their pursuing God's heart can be seen in the way they equip their members to live out their Christian lives 24/7, in their neighbourhoods, families and communities and how much people meet together in smaller groups to encourage each other, to allow the Holy Spirit to work through them and learn more from each other. Hebrews 3 talks about encouraging each other daily, Ephesians 4 talks about bearing with one another in love, about being joined and held together by every supporting ligament and the way Pastors and teachers prepare us for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up (so its the body of Christ which builds itself up - with some equipping from the pastors.) And this is the just the start...there's loads of stuff about how churches which live out community that comes from Christ look in practical, real life.

In a church of 20, the church is a small group in itself! Everybody knows everyone - it's pretty hard to sneak out of the back of the church when you make up 5 or 10% of the congregation! Anonymity isn't really an option! The thing is, if you see the same small group of people in your church often enough, if you pray together and wait on the Holy Spirit together, if you put yourself in a setting where you end up talking to them about life, about God, about the world, your experiences, problems...that kind of bearing with each other in love and supporting each other like ligaments starts to become a feature of your relationships with those people - and therefore of your church.

It's pretty impossible to nurture relationships like this with loads of people - there isn't the time nor the energy for it...but is it better to have lots of superficial "hi hi" relationships with loads of people who you see on a Sunday morning, or to spend some time working on a few deep ones where "hi" won't really cut it, where you check in with that person if you don't hear from them in a week, where you can enquire after the health of their soul and not feel like you're being intrusive, where you can be a support and allow yourself to be supported. To be honest, the idea of having vulnerable "talk", conversations of depth with a small group of people from my church on a regular basis has a lot of things which would put me off - I'd need to invest time and energy and commitment, I'd need to give up some Facebook time to make time for the people, I'd have to open up about my weaknesses and the things that make me angry, my faith would start to take on a corporate as well as an individual characteristic, people might tell me to my face when I do bad things or criticise some of my decisions or behaviour!...and I'd have to get over my judgemental, proud self and deal with people who are different to me. Who I perhaps would not normally choose to spend time with.

But then I think this kind of talk, this kind of support network is needed. We actually pay people (professional counsellors) to listen to us and talk to us. With a counsellor its great as you know you have their undivided attention for at least an hour, that they are totally focussed on you, that they won't answer their phone half way through the conversation and ditch you, that they won't just wait for their turn to speak, that they won't judge you for telling them the truth about what you are thinking or what you've done. There are some problems which most definately need counsellors...need therapy specific techniques...some deep rooted, long lasting hurts and issues which need a specialised "talker" to have some quality conversation to bring them out and help healing. But maybe also, us as small groups of Christians in our churches, could improve the nature of our talk - so that we don't have to turn to a stranger for support.

I guess the founding principle of all this would be the love and acceptance and strength we have in Christ. With him as a foundation, making us whole...it enables us then to seek him out in the context of a group of Christian friends...and to allow them to speak into our lives...and into our faith. In Ephesians 4 it says that "from him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work."

I guess there's a place for Big Churches and Little churches. But I think if the big churches want to be more than an impressive worship service and a mid week prayer meeting or bible study, there needs to be lots of little churches amongst them, building each other up and growing in love.

Female, single and Christian

I'm single.  I'm 25 years old and I do not have a boyfriend...let alone a husband! It's nearing the end of May which means that wedding season is beginning to loom. This is becoming a season which holds more and more significance for me each year...as more and more of my friends seem to be getting married.

In practical terms it means I'm desperately trying to buy the most affordable thing on wedding lists and becoming more familiar than I had ever intended on being with the home living sections at John Lewis and Debenhams. It means I'm going to have to hit the charity shops to buy a wedding outfit as I've worn the dresses I reserve for weddings and special occasions a number of times during last year's wedding season. As there are a number of people whom I only ever see at weddings they may begin to think I only ever wear the same item of clothing all year round...so I may be forced to find an alternative (with the charity shop offering an option where I might not completely bankrupt myself in the process). It means that at the weddings I attend I have to remind myself to keep focussing on the happy couple declaring their everlasting love for each other and to celebrate with them, NOT to allow my eyes to wander across the congregation of family and friends, wondering which of the men might be single...! Yes I said it... and if you're a single woman and you've been to any weddings recently, yes you've thought the same thing! 


But going to all of these weddings does remind me of my present state of singleness and makes me think about it more than I normally would. I have actually been thinking quite philosophically about my singleness these past few months. Being single was never something that really bothered me until last year...then I realised that somehow it had to started to bother me too much. A few years earlier my aunt had ever so kindly told me that statistically speaking, with there being 4 girls in our family, one of us would probably end up alone. At the time I just laughed and marvelled at how on earth she could think this was an appropriate thing to say to me, but after my younger sister got married and popped out a kid and my elder sister had twins, the words started to come back and haunt me! In this world there's already more women than men, but as a Christian and therefore, being part of a community which is dominated by females, the odds of getting married become even more stacked against me. Added on to this, circumstances mean I haven't and don't meet that many men (working for a charity which has mostly female employees, before that studying on a course which was 80% women and before that teaching in an all girls school).

So where does that leave me?  How do I put the future to rest and accept the very real possibility that I might not get married eventually? That I may end up without a husband. This is no easy thing to do. First of all, we're bombarded by messages that marriage and relationships are the best thing and that that is the only way I'll be truely happy/fulfilled. Adverts for deodrant, cheese, banks and cars tell me that if I buy their product I'll attract a great man, or have a family, or have a fulfilled relationship i.e this is what I should be aspiring to obtain and the way I can obtain it is through buying these products. Political parties tell me that marriage is better by offering to give tax breaks to married couples, or by promising to promote traditional family values (because if you're not married your values are evidently not up to scratch and don't merit being given a tax break...) The best selling books and films are based on romantic relationships (which either work out well or with one partner dying knowing the other one loved them more than anything;). Seems if I don't follow the story of the book, the film or the advert...then I've failed. I don't have a chance at having a happy life. I'm going to be alone and miserable..and to follow the stereotype get cats and start talking to them. It doesn't help that within the Christian community, I'll often in the course of conversation with a young person who I've just met, hear them refer to their wife and then look at them in bewilderment as they barely look old enough to go to university, let alone be married! 

I was listening to a talk on a long car journey recently. The speaker made a couple of points which made me think. First of all he was talking about how this life is only a temporary state. We're only here for a couple of decades and then we'll spend forever after with God. All marriages end at death...there won't be any married people in heaven. So we can help ourselves deal with our singleness by not focusing on the crust of dry bread that is this life and all human relationships when there is a never ending banquet to feast on with God in heaven. This is hard to accept completely when I see seemingly very happy married people and when I play with my gorgeous nieces and wonder if I will have my own mini Beckys in the future...but I guess I can't compare my Maker and Saviour with human beings and if I do, I risk replacing him as the only one that I worship. 


The speaker also made the point that in the Old Testament, the survival of the Jewish nation depended on Jews marrying and procreating. The Jews grew by giving birth to more Jews! They grew by growing their own families - in a biological way. The thing is, in the New Testament things changed. The Christian family does not grow by us getting married to other Christians and giving birth to Christian babies. The family of Christ grows by people from all walks of life being born all over again into that family, by them being adopted by Christ and welcomed into his family by existing members. So we are all husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, sons, fathers....to each other. Even Jesus said it himself when asked about his family, saying, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice."

Somehow I think that if this was how we, the church, operated, I wouldn't be half as scared of singleness as I am. If I were all of these things to my spiritual family, and they were these things to me, marriage would seem like just another option in the book, rather than the best and most superior option available. Right now, albeit admittedly unwillingly, I'm walking the walk that Jesus chose to walk, the walk that Paul praised to the skies, the walk that affords the most opportunity to dedicate my life to Christ - the walk of an unmarried person. It's a tough and often lonely walk but I think I could make so much more of it if it were recognised as a good thing, as an opporunity for great good. We congratulate people when they start a relationship and we celebrate their marriages - and rightly so - I'd be bouncing off the roof if I were to be getting married. But on the otherhand, there have been times when I've witnessed the end of what have been quite frankly unhealthy and co-dependant relationships which have sucked the life and personalities out of the two partners, and I've felt like congratulating them on becoming single! I would love it if my leaders, my spiritual family, my biological family, would also get excited about single people and all the amazing stuff they can and do, do...with all that spare time, money and energy! To get excited, to recognise it as a good thing, to encourage people in whatever situation they're in.


I don't think I've put the future to rest. I'm not sure I ever will. I struggle with loneliness and the doubts about God that it brings. I struggle with that sense of failure from not finding a partner, I get annoyed by that feeling that some married friends and family are feeling sorry for me and assuming I'm lacking something in my life...I'd be lying if I said that I had it all sorted as I sincerely don't. But I think it makes sense to focus on building the family of God, strengthening my spiritual family and opening myself up to being strengthened and supported by them...by allowing God to love and change me...and by being a sister, a mother, a daughter to others. This way I'm better equipped to being not sorted. Better equipped for the single life...