Back on the Mac!

There was something beautiful about starting this computer up again. It's been over five weeks since I shut it down, and it really felt like part of my life had been taken away. I don't think materialism is a good thing, I don't agree with it, I feel like we should be as detached as possible from our possessions, but this computer means more me, maybe than it should. It's my contact with the world, it's the music that inspires me to write, it's the keys that I can type 100wpm on because I'm so used to them. It's access to my blogs - both those I read and write, and often it's the ones I read that I miss more! It's what I use when I'm feel like I'm falling down and out, in the dark moments there are articles and music that just remind me of my identity, the truth of Christ in me. My computer is what allows me to express who I am entirely harmlessly, without consequence to anyone else, without limit, I can sit and write what I will, I can sit here and scream words onto a page and delete it straight away. It's my computer that allows me to have journals at the touch of a fingertip whilst I'm writing that ever vital essay, that allows me to format everything the way I like without question. Where I turn spaces on and off at will, where my dashboard has the times from Anchorage to Sydney, where I can tweet prayers and be praying, where I can know the weather, sunset and sunrise every day. It is on this computer that every key does exactly what I tell it to do. Where I can type in Greek or English, where the key commands are whatever I set them to.

So without that for five weeks I had to reassess... everything. I had to remember how to adapt to other computers rather than making computers adapt to me. I had to live my life in a way where I couldn't just get up and know what I need to know, I had to go and find the information. Where I had to fight through the migraines that came after time spent with those harsh computer screens. Maybe I was spoilt growing up with an SE/30 in the house. Maybe I take for granted that I live in the 'iPod generation' - at which point I'd like to note that I had an iPod before they were safe to carry around, October 2003, which had to be ordered from the US, my 15th birthday present, where I squealed at the sight of the Apple Logo as I opened it, back when OSX was new, something I'd not expected in my wildest dreams, and now... now the world has them.

There is a lot to do now, much to be done, and I must get on with some reading!!

Love

It is in the moment of stillness and silence that the voice of God speaks so clearly.

It is in that silence, in the moment where Jesus writes in the dust. The stunned crowd are silences, are brought to their knees because before them is the true law of God, embodied in His very incarnate being. A law that declares love primary.

Love because love is the very being of God, God IS love, and therefore to love is to reflect God and to love God is to live in relation with Him, in a unity that mirrors the Trinity itself. We can never really reflect the love of God in it's entirety, because regardless of the honour we are given by being made in the image of God, we are not God, therefore in every moment we must be striven to find that true love, to be that true love, because it is the least we can do.

If we really do love God, then that is overflowed to love every person on this earth, because as we are honoured, so they are also. How can we hold back? How can be not live in that place that is love? God's loved stretched so far that He was incarnate, He died and suffered a mortal death, and decended into the deepths of Hell - that place that holds are, that binds us, that place that he broke, broke through and conquered, for us... those who fall so short of His presence, so short of His promise - and He did it for love, for love of us.

So we are, by that awesomeness, we are charged to live in that place of love. What does that mean? It means that when we walk down the street and walk past the beggar sat there without thinking, without stopping to share a conversation, by judging them, we are ignoring that call to love. When we return home and complain of the rain or the cold, complain that we don't have enough sugar to put in our tea (I don't drink sugar in tea, but you get my drift), that we don't have enough food and are still hungry after eating a meal, that there isn't pudding or some such. We are throwing in God's face the love, the provision, the saving act of the resurrection, we are throwing that all in God's face and saying that it doesn't matter, that it doesn't matter that we are loved.

How dare we?

So the hecticness of life is something temporal, something changing. Though the busy time that surrounded my birthday weekend has shifted into reading and studying and finding time for devotion.

On Saturday I was walking into the city to go and sit in Starbucks and do some reading - old habits die hard! The healing on the streets team was out, and I stopped to chat to them, I'm studying Spirituality, Health and Healing and it's interesting to see some of the principles we're discussing put into action. So after a bit of a chat with one of the guys there a woman came over, she asked me if I wanted prayer/healing for anything, and after rebuffing the enitial suggestion, I kind of just went - yes, why not. People have been praying for me to be healed for a year with regard to my allergies, and I've been trusting God to do something, expecting that at some point He will let me live in freedom and without fear of being in a room with things that have almost killed me. Well as they were praying I felt this release, I breathed in the cold air and just felt this freedom.

So that I night, not knowing what God had done in that moment, but knowing He'd done something I was at my friend birthday party, in a room surrounded by pizza and still breathing, and well, and so, I just felt like seeing how far this had gone. I looked over at this slice of pizza and just kind of went... I want to try this, after a while and grabbing my med bag I did, I ate a bite of pizza and... I was fine... I waited an hour or so and I was still fine... I didn't react, my two strongest allergies, things that have landed me in hospital on numerous occasions and... I was fine. So I ate more... and discovered that that day, God had healed my allergies.

God HEALED my allergies... a bit like the moment my depression left I just felt so free. Like singing and shouting and glorifying God. Which I have been doing, because really... how can I hold back my praise from a God who is SO merciful, so gracious as to give me this freedom, to heal me, to give me back food, food which I love, which I know the true value of!

I'm going to write up everything at some point, write up how amazing things have been, but right now I must return to my reading, return to learning more about God, about disability, about pastoral care and the theological response.

All I can really say, God is SO good! I love Him with all of my being, and that... that will never end.

I need a plan, a serious P-L-A-N.

Madonna, madonna, madonna... give me leave to prove thee a fool.

Did you worry about your health when you were 13 and collapsing every day? When the heart palpitations started to scare you? Not really

When your doctor told you she could hear a murmur, when your potassium levels were off the charts then you worried... but to no avail - you were fine.

You have nothing yet, nothing to worry about. So you need to stop!

I'm scared - why am I scared? Because my imagination runs at fifty miles an hour? Because I want to know what's going on? Because I started getting used to my allergies, my asthma and my wrist problem being just there and there was nothing else wrong, then suddenly it feels like there is...

Part of me is also expecting to be plunged head first into grief again, this is the longest period since I was 16 where someone hasn't passed away, but within that I got into the mentality of waiting by the phone expecting the next phone call. That was a hangover from before Grandma died, from when Nanny first got really sick, before she recovered from death's door five times... when I was as used to the Hertfordshire hospitals as I was the corridors of Stantonbury - I was 13 when this started, for 7 years it's been something that... is just a kind of constant, fear, worry, grief, preparing for death, not knowing what to do - waiting for the next phone call. Between October 05 and December 08 there were 6 deaths among friends and families. So when I wrote that phrase "Grief's home my heart!" last summer it spoke more than I knew, and two people have died since then.

I want to remember the first two of that number though - they were men who held something remarkable in their character. I wish I'd known both of them better, but I was young and didn't consider the constraints of time and opportunity. I considered Maurice something special, I saw in him the eccentricity and passion that I felt in myself, he was the living image of my Grandfather and I still savour the last memory, though a silly one - my jacket fell from my shoulders, I hadn't noticed, he picked it up and handed it to me, I hadn't said hello yet, I didn't even realise it was him, I was startled, its a strange half memory from years ago, but I had a love for Maurice that earned myself the nickname of his 'girlfriend' (from his wife I might add) though it was admiration for someone who's character I recognised in myself and gave me a confidence to live to that and not care for the world's condemnation of it.

Then there was Jon Jon, now there was a man who lived for the Kingdom of God, who could captivate a room and the first person in the world who had more words than I ever did, I'd wish that his stories would go on forever and they could! I remember sitting cross legged on his sitting room floor eating rice crackers and hearing the most amazing stories of Japan. He lived to share his life, to show the world a love that it had forgotten, very beautiful - living an almost mendicant life it seemed, one day to the next. I remember the last day I saw him as well, he was concerned and had come to see Papa.

I can't live in this memories. Part of me was thinking of deleting this, but I need to let it stand. Before my heart breaks again for the things I cannot help, before my heart breaks for the grave.

This made my day.

"omg ur like the nice hippy sister i want"

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.