I'm honestly confused.

I let a song play out earlier, I stopped it as soon as I realised that I was listening to it - which was after I had started to sing it. It took me straight back to the summer of '04 and... that was so long ago! It's been five years and I suppose it shocks me. It shocks me how my life looked and how it now looks, it was around then, about that time (whether physically or emotional I'm not too sure) that I spent several weeks eating and only eating Thornton's chocolate ice cream.

Oh heavens I know what sparked this. I shouldn't ask questions that I fear I don't need the answers to. In that question I took something up, something that I shouldn't take up - the fear that, the memory that - the way that... I can't tell the difference between memory and imagination sometimes. I recognised this years ago, in my head I can imagine a conversation with someone to a point where it's just as clear as the last conversation I had, often far clearer as I rarely remember what I've said or what has been said to me - unless there is reason and I think on it soon after. I knew this years ago and so took precautions to make sure that my mind didn't make up stories about my life that weren't true where I couldn't remember what was true and what wasn't - it scared me, a lot, but because I saw it for what it was, and how dangerous it was - I seem to have memories of things that I can't have from when I was incredibly young, but I doubt that they're real, rather the imagination of a small child. I know full well that I am capable and so I have to make sure that I don't let my imagination run wild, I'm glad that I keep it in check. I  keep it in check by one means and one means only, which means that when I'm not using this tool my head starts to get crowded and I can't think straight which has often lead to me retreating into a place of depression. To prevent this, to make sure the memories in my head have been actual memories for the last 14 (I think that's when I started this) years, I write. 

Mostly fiction, it began with a story about a girl who ate fruit from a tree by a pool and as she ate the fruit she became a mermaid and swam beneath the waves and went and met the king and queen of the mer people and had tea with them. Then there was my story based on Noggin the Nog which was all about Grolliffe the ice dragon - I remember that I even made an ice dragon from salt dough, it was pop-up story book that I made to go with that story. I discovered Greek mythology and reading Shakespeare about then, and Plato soon after, that developed into my love for by about 2000. I wrote some mad things back in those days, until I got so sick of my short stories and my love affairs with other people's characters that I decided it was time to write a book.

Yet today I was reminded not of that so much, but of those people who I could recognise who imagined stories in their heads and convinced themselves and tried to convince everyone around them that they were true. There were far too many people in our year like that, the effect that it caused on everyone was so horrid. I know people who are still dealing in the aftermath of that and it breaks my heart. I wish I could have saved them, like I saved myself from that, from the fiction to escape the truth, from the imagination that could never cease until it became life.

Only because I trained myself can I now dabble in that world without risking the lies becoming true in my mind, but it's not a good thing to do. The desire to have every conversation that I missed, to help people, to stand up for myself (though I do think that walking away was more powerful, I just wish that I hadn't broken down after and every time I felt the bruises on my back from the stones that hit me, I used to dwell in that - in what I'd say to them now, in what I'd do, but I can't live like that, that's NOT life and I know it deep in my heart - I lay it down and then every time something new happens I take it back up, I have to stop) and it's exactly from things like that which that comes and every single time I have to stop and say no. There is one way to control it, that is to write, I must write a story, work with people I love and know, work on stories that have been and stories that are not yet.

Now... I just did a mini CBT session, oh Tia would be proud! It's almost sunrise now... to bed or no?

A few days ago was brilliant, got a call from J ten minutes after I woke up, she came over and we had tea and prayer at about 9am, which was just God calling us to go out into the world as His. Suddenly I realise and see just how powerful it is to pray in fellowship at the beginning of the day - before we go out into the world, I want to do that once classes start up again, just have open-flat time in the morning, get people to come round for prayer/breakfast drop in before class in the mornings.

So first of all on Tuesday I went to starbucks to do revision, as I was finishing off a friend from CU walked past, and so he came in, and was telling me about the SU camp he'd just done, and just the way God was working so powerfully in that. We walked to the bus stop and I ran into a guy from TGC which was also really uplifting and powerful, just God speaking through these people, that I saw. 

After that I went home and had lunch and then just felt like I wanted to go and pray on Union Street, which was slightly crazy, I stopped and chatted to this homeless guy, and we were having a fairly simple conversation, then he asked me what I did and as soon as I explain what studying divinity meant he told me that he'd been considering going to this place to get help for alcohol and drug addiction, but they were Christian so it put him off. Then all of a sudden started to try to tear into me, but in a manic way, in a way that didn't make sense I just stood there, praying in my heart, and listened, he kept asking me questions and clearly wanted answers then wouldn't let me give them to him because of how manic-ly he was talking. That did scare me a little, but I knew God was in control so that it was fine, I was safe. Eventually I managed to calm it down, and somehow managed to leave him considering whether he should go to that place to get help, I'd stopped to talk to him because I felt as if I should, so I just pray that I've done some good in that situation.

I carried on walking, ran into a friend, had a coffee and a nice chat - a far more relaxed catholic/protestant doctrinal differences debate, saw another friend who I walked part of the way home with and just had to pray for as we were walking which was awesome, it really was a day when I was just called to pray again and again, and through that pray came action.

Then I got a call, from a friend who happened to be in the direction I was walking, and she called at the moment when I could have walked towards where she was or towards my flat, seemed obvious enough, so I decided to go and find her - she didn't ask me to, but I felt prompted, and there was good reason. She was in a bit of a bad way and so we just had a long chat and pray - and she got obviously a lot better, she changed and God really spoke. We walked to hers and I felt as if we had to not leave it there - there was something that was just saying "don't let this go, you have to carry on, you can't leave her tonight, there's something I need you to do", so i completely bullied her into coming over to mine for food and then a worship session. As it turned out, there was stuff she needed to deal with, which she hadn't realised, but was why she was in the state she was in when she called me. In this brilliant way, that only He can do God just came in dealt with it all, it wasn't easy, these things never are, but that clearly needed to happen, and happen then. 

We claim things we shouldn't claim, and refuse thing we should keep. We have to remember that even the most faithful person can chose to refuse the truth that God is speaking over them, and take up the lies that the devil uses to drag us away from that awesome relationship we have with God.

So here it is, I want every day to be as God focused as that one! Let my eyes be fixed constantly to heaven, that my feet are guided and my mind is clear.

Yesterday became quite a strange day.

I had felt amazing because I actually managed to speak some Mandarin to the girl in the supermarket. It was vaguely conversational, and a little broken, but it was nice, I understood what she was saying to me, so that made things fairly easy.

Then I cooked a lovely dinner for F, I made black bean sauce with vegetables and some chicken in sauce, and some egg fried rice. I really should update Chocolate and Venison with it, it's mostly things I came up with myself, so would be nice... 

Then went to the park with F, and had an amazing time, I'm going to miss that girl! She's AMAZING, and God uses her so much. It was a nice last day with F.

Then ended up going to the beach, awesome time with people I didn't know, who were camping there, we had a bonfire as it got dark and I tried to look at the stars through the clouds... Praying in the car on the way back was eventful, the words - not my words! Then we discovered that J's keys were inside her flat! So she slept at mine! Which was fantastic. Had some awesome chat and tea and then a good sleep and up nice and early-ish (no where close to early for me, but some people would see it as early) which was great, more tea and more prayer. I really have some great sisters out there.

So, I should probably work out what I have to do today... I was thinking I should measure something so I can make a dress... but I think revision is the primary objective today. After of course the priority of prayer and scripture and focusing and re-focusing on God... oh, ebay! (Yes... that is what I get from focusing on God, there is a reason why... hum... mendicare....)

 Yet again I think to myself, I started this blog as a tool to help me, yet... have completely abandoned it, which isn't necessarily a good sign. It means that God's working a lot and so I don't feel I need this outlet as much as I need, but there's the key phrase 'as much as I need' and it's also because I've not considered using it when I need to, so... lets do this. 

It may also be a sign that I've been using twitter fairly oft. Twitter is amazing, especially for prayer circles, it's brilliant. Oh, and of course that my computer is immobile! It's just a pain to have a laptop that can't be moved around. Then again I've had this computer several years and it was second hand, a couple of years ago it was one of the fastest computers around, now with regard to iPlayer and such things it's SO SLOW. I don't mind, it's just nice to have some TV occassionally, when without a television and my DVD player doesn't work. Though the some of the films do play... but they all happen to be ones that I either know by heart or have read the scripts of!

I have an exam in less than a week, and lots to sort out today. I think maybe it's time for the joys of a list.

Or lets scrape that... I did task one, and heck that was horrid!! Try talking to a guy in brum on the phone about overdrafts and.... banks asking for money that I don't have... conversations like that when it takes the tiniest thing for me to burst into tears because of the amount of pain and medication I'm on.... it's all sorted now, he's lovely, I just feel bad that I cried down the phone...  huh... why is RBS based in brum....????? 

Now everything else feels so much less important.

I think it was because that letter came with the letter from uni saying 'you have not yet done your resit, you are not yet accepted into third year' and... is completely fine, but is slightly depressing. I think I'm going to go and do some writing and agonising over exams papers and maybe just relax slightly by picking up Buffy Season 8, and getting some ginger for dinner.

So life, as always, got kind of crazy again. My most true and constant friend these last eight years in hospital and tbh I'm scared, if I lost him that would just be too much, so I call him as much as I can, see how he's doing, I'm supporting him by knowing that I'm there, but I'm paying a price. It's been a long time since a phone conversations made me cry too sleep... it's been 12 years since that, like then it's because my heart is breaking, but unlike then it's not for myself, it's for him. I stand back and try to take my own advice, remind myself of who I am, that ultimate identity I have that is beyond this - that I belong to God. I would sacrificing my life for him, but right now I'm sacrificing something far more precious, I'm sacrificing my focus on the Kingdom. I was living like that song "I say goodbye to my father and my mother, turn my back on every other love and press on" I'm not living like that anylonger, I need to fall back in love with the King, because if I don't have that I'm lost.

A year ago I sat hear wondering how to regain my life, how to take control, and not long after I discovered it was not control, but surrender, not regain by recommit. To take all the wanderings and know God again, but not in a half hearted way - where I tried to remain in control, to keep the pain, to let the ghosts haunt me, in an entire way. I have been a Christian for more than a few years, yet I am still learning and re-learning to run to Christ first and foremost. To take away the vices and lean on the only crutch that completes the broken person. As a human being in Imago Dei I desire so deeply and innately that relationship with the Trinity that is God, how do we also run so quickly from it? Hiding and manipulating true gifts from God?

I look out at the gardens, a reflection of both God and man - God's ultimate creation, our humble ways of caring for that creation. How unworthy and made worthy are we! How so very blessed! How dare we destroy such amazingness! In every step we should mimic Jesus and be guided by the Spirit, never falling away from this. 2 Peter 1:10 for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall!!!! Why don't we follow this list : faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity. We need all of those, heaped one ontop of the other!

Thoughts on Worship

I spent a lot of time looking at and considering what 'worship' means and is over the summer, the forms it should take and the forms it appears in. As created beings the act of worship is normal, the first of God's commandments to Moses in Exodus is about worship - we are called not to be idolaters and worship anything other than God. Worship of God is integral, because if not worshipping God we're worshipping something else. That said, here are my initial thoughts.

In my mind the purpose of 'worship music' is or at least should be to inspire the worshiper. There can be no doubt that the creative arts are employed well in this endeavour (there is a reason my ballet shoes are put in my bag whenever I leave for church). 

Primarily worship is to glorify God, but I find the only way of truly doing this is through surrender. To fully worship God you must surrender and sacrifice everything to Him. My favourite prayer "take everything that I have, be everything that I am." If I'm in a place where I'm constantly praying that, every moment is worship without hesitation. 

An amazing form of worship is prayer, using words to open our hearts to God, and to praise Him, to bring ourselves and the world before Him. Though to me, worship is a love song, now that song doesn't need to be an actual song, but it's the easiest way of describing it. It's my heart that's singing. A year ago when I managed to have a fantastic accident at Soul Survivor Church in Watford and fractured my foot whilst dancing to the song... Undignified... with ribbons (which I will never touch again!). I was also suffering from prolonged writers block, and had a really bad chest and couldn't sing. I was suddenly in a place where everything I used physically to praise God was stripped away, within a few weeks I ended up with... nothing, and it really felt like that, I had no song, no poetry, and no dance. During that time I began to fully understand what it was to worship God, my life was falling apart and there was only one thing that could save it, to surrender my will, to surrender my control. Not an easy thing to do, and it took months before I got there, but I had relied on creativity to worship God, but that's not what He needed, or wanted. He wants each one of us, in a new way, to see and experience Him. As I said the creativity is important, but can't be seen as the only thing! I didn't realise this until my entire life was stripped down to nothing, sometimes it takes us a lot to learn these things.

Moving on, times of focused communal worship are stunning because God's people gather as a family to give Him praise and glory, now that can take many forms; written 'liturgy' (another misnomer), hymns, teaching, going out into the community together or just simply sitting down and eating a meal together. Currently the trends focus hugely on songs, surely because of the inspiration this provides, but unless everything else is seen as worship we are missing something vital. 

I want to get distracted for a moment by 'liturgy' I'm not sure why... the word itself just means worship, yet, 'the liturgy' probably more correctly, is power and amazing. I grew up in a place where this created the structure and was the entire communal worship for the week, with the exception of rare occasions. My favourite words have always been "therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name evermore praising thee and saying: holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory." To gather every week and repeat the same words may seem monotonous and boring, but it's the opposite, to fill yourselves again with those truths of God, to know Him better, the excitement in that is amazing, through it there is so much. I worry that it becomes too much of a comfortable tradition for some, but the purpose is to take out those truths and that worship into every day, and every moment and let all of it become worship because it is with you.

As I hope I've communicated, worship is vital, but we cannot rely on one simple method of worshipping God, we must consider that every day is worship, and know Him better through it. We must employ the extraordinary and the mundane. We must completely surrender ourselves to God in every breath and each moment between every breath.