Breaking the Ice: Back to work after a decade

It's been a week of endings and new beginnings.  Strangely enough, the week we ran out of nappies and found out that Little Bun could sleep through the night without wetting the bed has also turned out to be the week I have started my first paid work after a decade of being a SAHM.  It's one day a week, within school hours, doing office admin for our church but it feels as though it has broken the ice.

After a decade of being at home looking after kids and doing volunteer work, thoughts of interviews, resumes and new work places take on daunting proportions.  I'm so grateful that God is using this opportunity to bless us and ease me back into more formal work environments gently. His mercies are new every morning!

Have a great weekend!  I'm so looking forward to taking up beautiful friends on their birthday present to the hubster - a stay in a lovely hotel in the CBD which includes overnight babysitting.  Thank you amazing friends, Thierry was over the moon talking about it last night!! You are such a huge blessing to us!

Where do you go in the face of disaster?

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Last night I went to bed seriously disturbed.  I watched the news and a current affairs programme called Lateline and three stories just stirred my spirit.

The Oklahoma Tornado: Utter devastation, it went from zero to it's peak in 10 minutes, the most heart-breaking images of the school that was hit while kids were still in class.  Shaking students crying as they looked at piles of rubble that had just been their classrooms.

The murder of Lee Rigsby in London: Unspeakable, terrible, horrific evil.  I can't even begin to process how someone could do this.

The sentencing of property developer Matthew Joyce in Dubai: You can read all about it here but effectively a man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Dubai and a $25 million fine that if he can't pay, will keep him in jail for the rest of his life.  All because of evidence that was already judged to be fabricated, false and unreliable and thrown out by a court in Victoria, the person giving it already agreeing that it wasn't accurate.  Mr Joyce has a wife and three kids.  My blood boils for the injustice.

How do you deal with disaster? As I listened to the stories on the news, my heart was repulsed by the evilness, particularly of the second two stories and I had to purposely remind myself that no matter how much evil is in the world, Christ has the victory.  He has conquered sin and evil and death.  Those things, no matter how the news might look, no matter what your circumstances, no matter how dark things get, those things do not have the upper hand.  Christ has the victory over evil, he knows the beginning from the end and the end is not here yet.

What do we do when things get dark? Do we give up believing that God is good? How do we deal with disasters of the natural kind? Freak weather, earthquakes, things we can't control. Do we ask the hard questions of God? Do we give him a chance to speak to our hearts or do we walk away and give up believing in him?

Last night and this morning heart just cried out to God, couldn't you have stopped it? Couldn't you have diverted all those winds? You who keeps the winds in storehouses, who holds the seas in the palms of your hands? What about those innocent children? 

As I cried out, I thought, but God, you are sovereign.  You are God and I am not.  I don't know why you allowed this.  I can't understand.  But you remain God and you remain good and I will not judge you.  I will humble myself before you.  I will believe that you bring good out of even the most terrible of circumstances.

How I long for God to allow only absolute good and only the things that I judge to be good.  I don't realize even a fraction of what he does to protect me or to bring good out of evil in my life.  I want to understand him or I threaten to withhold my approval of him, and yet, how can I understand the one who created more planets and stars and solar systems than mankind has numbers for? 

In my thoughts there came a whisper,  you think death is the ultimate disaster, the most terrible thing, the final totality, but I see it as a passing from one life to another better one.  Those children came straight into my arms.

How can I bring myself to post these inner thoughts, these workings out of my faith?  And yet these are the things that everyone asks themselves, struggles with.  How can I not?  How can I not ask God why he has allowed these things? How can I just judge him and not ask him directly?

I was reminded of a 'discussion' the hubster and I had over finances the other night.  I got cranky with him because I thought he wasn't giving me credit for all the good I was doing but only picking out the bad.  I felt the good far outweighed the bad.  As I thought about this parallel, I thought that often this is the way that God must feel towards us.  He does so much for us, a vast mountain of things but we don't pick up on any of those, we only pick up on the bad, the situations that are still a work in progress.

I feel stirred up these three situations, my heart cries out for these families who are going through heartbreak and tragedy, I am grieving along side them, praying for them.  But even in all of that, I want my go-to place to be like Hezekiah who, when in trouble, ran to the altar of God, spread the threats of evil before the one who made the heavens and the earth and said See what people are saying about you, see the threats and the evil they are promising, come God, rise up and respond.  Come change things because you are God and there is absolutely nothing that is impossible for you to do.

Where do you choose your go-to place in the face of disaster to be?

Identity & Losing It

My brain is tired and my hands are cold so this might turn out to be a post that doesn't make sense.

Identity seems to be what everyone is searching for.  It struck me that growing up, I always thought I was destined for some fabulousness.  Fame must await me.  I would be the most famous dog handler/pilot/florist or fashion-designer the minute I set my hand to the task.  Random celebrities would spot me nonchalantly walking through a crowd in airport and say: Her! She'd be perfect for my next movie! Or my next date!  I would be plucked from obscurity and instantly recognized as pure genius.

Whatever my future identity, it would no doubt be great.

What a rude shock it has been to grow old and realize that each of us actually has to work, that talent doesn't just fall from the sky into your lap and bring you instant fame and fortune, that if my identity is in what I do or how I look then I am right royally stuffed.

I suppose if I'm brutally honest, I still think like that.  I still expect to have the words of my first (and widely acclaimed brilliant) novel pour unhindered out of my fingertips.  I still (half) expect for my every thought posted on my blog to go viral at any minute making me the next greatest phenomenon or for every thing I create to fly out of my online shop and sell like hotcakes.

In fact, not a lot I do has worked right.  There have been a lot of spectacular flops.  I think it may be because God in his kindness would rather I get a few things straight before I go embarrassing myself in front of a lot of people.

Those would be things like:

1. working at things is healthy
2. persistence is vital
3. my primary identity is that I am someone who is loved by God, everything else is secondary.
4. discipline and not doing things out of emotions is good for you
5. real success is not fame or fortune

It's humbling knowing God.  You begin to realize that instead of being The Main Character,  you are that tiny bit part actor in the background of the movie. It dawns on you that he really is more interested in your character and his (well-deserved) glory than in your glory and his character.  Could it really be that as the creator of everything he positions you to accomplish his will and not yours on the earth?  

gulp.

On the other hand, it's comforting to know that when your identity is simply as the one Jesus loved, it doesn't matter what else gets stripped away or what happens to you, you know everything is going to be ok. You could, like Job, lose absolutely everything and still have your identity in tact.

I've often thought the apostle John was a bit uppity in calling himself the one Jesus loved, I mean really, didn't everyone think they were the hot favourite? Perhaps though he one of the only ones who understood the key to identity: that the only thing that really matters in this whole question of who you are is that you are loved by The King. Paul got it too. He called all of his religious kudos rubbish in comparison to gaining Jesus.

What happens when you lose everything? When you fail at all the things you thought mattered most? When things don't go according to the plan you hoped would be your life? 

This morning I flicked back through my notes from a conference last year.  The speaker shared that we need to have the affirmation of others stripped away from us until we get to the affirmation of God that goes deep into the spirit.  

Affirmation.  Identity.  Who affirms to you who you are?  Who positions you?  Where do you take your identity from? I've been thinking of the Psalms where it talks about God who rescues and exalts the humble but brings low the proud. Often God has positioned me in places I would rather not have been in, he has given me jobs to do that have made me think I had an identity which I would rather not have had.  

It's tempting to think that God's plans for our lives aren't as glorious as the ones we have for ourselves but the truth of the matter is 

1 Cor 2:9 No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.

That means that God's plans are even wilder than my wildest, craziest imaginations.  It means too that as he gets more important in my life and I get less, the ride becomes more and more exciting.  I allow myself to get positioned by him to do the craziest, most adventurous things, things I have never dreamed of doing and I get the privilege of seeing the maker of the universe at work, a pretty incredible, jaw-dropping sight.

Losing my identity, becoming simply someone God loves who happens to do all of the other things that used to give me my identity, it's not so crazy, it's liberating.

Where is your identity located?

Some movie theaters are just better

A free ticket that had to be used before the end of May meant we took the kids up to see The Croods at Fox Studios Hoyts cinema on Saturday.

It might have been the nicest cinema we have ever been in as well as the emptiest and the cheapest!  With $10 tickets and only four or five other people in the theater we had the run of the place! Always a good thing when Little Bun can't sit still for a whole movie but insists on running up and down the steps.

I'm thinking that with an art deco theme, this is going to be the place to see the Great Gatsby in a couple of weeks time.  Part of it was apparently filmed at Fox Studios here.

Anyone in the area up for a girls night out at Fox to see this movie?

Vive La Resistance

I've been thinking about resistance this morning and remembering an experience I had a year ago.  I was feeling pretty beaten up spiritually and emotionally not just for months but several years and I was exhausted.  I felt like one of those boxers who has recognized that their opponent is just too strong for them and they are curled up on the floor protecting their faces and vital organs while being violently kicked and beaten to a pulp and the ref is just standing by letting it happen.  I wanted to hang in there but I just didn't know how long I could last and it looked like it would never end.

Friends would try to encourage me but we didn't understand each other and it was just frustrating.  The damp blanket of hopelessness hung dripping over my head and nothing would shift it or take it away.  Any breakthroughs or good news I had would bring a temporary spring in my step only to be replaced with a feeling of residual sadness and despair.

Just like a nasty zit, things came to a head and right after some messiness, six little words were whispered into my spirit.

You're not resisting the devil...

I know the rest of the verse.  It's James 4: 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

It was my aha moment and a moment of repentance.  I felt like as I was lying curled up in a ball being beaten to a pulp, Jesus was on the sidelines of the boxing ring shouting Get up! Get up! Get up and I will do the rest!  Pull yourself together woman, I've won the victory for you but you need to get up and start resisting.

And it was that simple.  I didn't know how exactly to resist but every time I started feeling awful I would say 'I resist this feeling of xx in the name of Jesus'.  Slowly things started to change.  Hope started growing again.  Sometimes it would be something I could shake off straight away and sometimes it was a habit of the mind that I needed to break and make new ones.

The other day I caught myself believing lies again.  Several (more or less) innocent comments people had made made me start thinking that I was a bad Christian because I didn't know the Greek meanings of the original Biblical text or because I'm not studying the Bible academically 24/7.  I caught myself realizing the thoughts I had slipped into subscribing to so I listed them down one side with the truth on the other.  The truth is:

• God made his word accessible to everyone, not just academics, so that everyone could have a relationship with him.
• The first people Jesus called to start following him and teaching other people were fishermen, not synagogue leaders.
• Yeah there's amazing things to find if you know the original language it was written in but there are also equally life-changing things to find if you simply read it as is and apply it to your life.
• God is faithful, he loves us (me included) passionately and he will never let us get too far off course but keeps bringing us back if only we keep our ear trained on him.

How do you resist?

• pinpoint the lies you've been believing or the things you've been struggling with.
• declare the truth of God's word over your life.
• declare out loud that you are officially resisting what is bringing you down.
• start turning your thoughts towards God and how incredible he is and thank him for all that he has done.  Nature and the NASA app are great places to start.

Have you had to learn how to resist? Have you gone through a long hard slog you thought would never end? If you're in the middle of one now where it seems like one hardship after another, I'd like to encourage you to just keep getting up one last time.  Submit yourself to God, resist the devil and he will definitely flee.

An Un-Self Revolution

The other evening, the hubster and I stumbled on a TV show called  Don't Tell My Mother where journalist Diego Bunuel takes a look behind the scenes at 'dangerous' countries around the world.  The one we caught was on Venezuela which, before watching the programme, I wouldn't have thought was a particularly dangerous country, but having seen it... well, let's just say I'd be visiting it rather cautiously.  Featuring fist pumping, gun-toting, Che-quoting, vehement anti-capitalists, land-seizing, schools in the streets, food shortages, rationing, petrol-smuggling socialist revolutionaries straight out of 1950s Cuba are alive and well in Venezuela according to Diego Bunuel.

Just a little bit scary was the Venezuelan guide's warning to the American students Bunuel had temporarily buddied up with who were told not to do anything to attract attention to themselves, not to flash cameras, money or beer or even to wear a watch as they visited the poorer areas.

It was truely strange taking a look into a country that I had never really heard much about before and to see that it has such a radically different culture to much of the rest of the world.

Revolutionaries.  People who turn radically from one type of life to another. People who do things completely differently to how they did things before.  Reading Acts and hearing the early church described, it was probably a bit like that.

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I wonder what would happen if we lived like that today.  I'm not talking about living together in a commune but if we started living with freely open hands and hearts, completely unattached to money so that if we had extra we just came and put it in a central pot or if we had needs we could let someone know and needs would be met.  If we spent time with each other, just hanging out, chatting, eating together....

It's so very easy to go to church or a conference or spend time with other and come away feeling tired, even exhausted.  Sometimes we feel as if we need a rest from being refreshed.  But what if you did it every day? For months or years on end?  Did they get sick of each other?  Did they start to get resentful of other's demands on their time?  I like the 'glad and sincere' hearts bit.  They weren't faking it.  They didn't have to force a smile and pretend with each other. They did it because they genuinely enjoyed it and felt relaxed with each other.

It must have been a bit of a socialist revolution in it's own right.

The iGeneration needs an Un-Self Revolution.  I need an Un-Self Revolution.  I find myself willing to give of myself up to a certain point but then I need to step back, I need some space and when people ask favours when I'm in that place of having over-given of myself, it's a case of Girl Behaving Badly I'm afraid to say. Perhaps no one else sees it but inside I'm having a little tantie-party resentment bash all of my own.

Practice makes perfect piano teachers are reknown for saying. Do we get out of the practice of being kind, of loving even when we don't feel like loving, of living in community when quite frankly we'd rather be on a desert island by ourselves?

My own personal un-self revolution challenge means:

1. Doing something for someone else not because I have to but simply to bless them.
2. Giving things away.
3. Inviting someone round.
4. Listening and giving my full attention.
5. Doing something 'unnecessary' that my kids want to do.
6. Random Acts of Kindness

I don't do all of them regularly but I'm aiming to.  What does your un-self revolution include?

Ageing well

Last week the hubster passed over from one decade to the next.  It sounds odd but we haven't had a passing over since just before we left the UK nine years ago.  A month ago we decided that the best way to mark the occasion would be to have good friends over for a bbq.  His besties and poker buddies were the first on the guest list and because they (mostly) all have families and because we love to include as many people as possible and because we're not afraid of packing the house to the rafters, we invited a good number of people to rock up.

We were so blown away by people's generosity towards him.  His favourite card was from our friends James and Lizann and read...

It's tempting to slip under the radar with these birthdays.  Even though I love holding them to celebrate other people, I'm the first one to duck out of celebrating my own milestones. There's something funny about celebrating moving into the 40s.  Everyone who's in them or gone through them say that they're the best years but before you get there it seems that daunting I can never turn back moment.

My favourite moments from the party were watching the hubster being told by Evelyn and Bob, two senior citizens, that he was 'just a boy' and then watching everyone crowd into our living room to sing Happy Birthday to him.  It was very touching, especially as these friends are our second family in the absence of our extended family.

To celebrate or not to celebrate?

It occurs to me that we as a human race don't like to age well.  We want to stay forever young instead of fully enjoying the day we're living in.  When did we go from delighting in our birthday and being a year older to dreading it?  As I think about my own passing over next year I'm thinking I need to get ready to embrace it now.  I want to age well.  I want to enjoy every moment and every new season rather than grieving the passing of the old one.

Do you celebrate or grieve birthdays? How do you celebrate?  As  a family?  With a party?  Quietly and significantly? Or do you ignore them?  Whether the past ones hold good memories or bad ones, future birthdays can be ones of great blessing and joy but it often depends on how we embrace them.  Interestingly I notice that we often (myself included) celebrate our kids birthdays but not always our own.  Do you do that?  Our kids were so excited this year to be able to take the day off school so that we could do something together as a family on the hubster's birthday day and then at the thought of having a party for Daddy.