It’s been a big week here in the UK. Unless you have been living under a rock, you will have by now heard that our beloved Queen, Elizabeth II, died peacefully at Balmoral on Thursday, after 70 years on the throne. Her passing brought more than a few tears: I was indeed a big fan….
Category: Faith
The Invoice
Hello, it’s been a while. You could be forgiven for thinking I’d run out of things to write. Truth be told, there was just too much going on and all of it a bit too “people-y” to disclose. Working out how to report the drama of the year and the many refections it offered was…
All of the Answers
Last week we had a ‘vision day’ at Church; a kind of prolonged period of prayer, presentation and reflection that meant that the building was open for most of Saturday. Now, the thing I love most about doing this sort of stuff in an architecturally beautiful, historical building is that people do just wander in…
The Availability Factor
Those who followed the Lockdown Diaries may remember a whole series of events through which God challenged my felt uselessness with an instruction to ‘be available.’ As a project-driven extrovert, I found many of our bubble-restricted days in limited locations difficult, and thought ‘availability’, aka loitering without intent, a sorry excuse for a vocation! Then…
Diary of ANOTHER Lockdown: #11
Saturday Husband seems to be working alot more this weekend. Either that or, now that the kids are back in school, the lack of family time is even more noticeable. (Or, even more probable, the fact he went to bed exhausted at 8pm last night when we were supposed to be ordering a curry is…
The Big Needle
So this post is intended to be the promised follow-up to my previous instalment Needles and Haystacks (#1); an attempt to make sense of my messy mind and the glimmers of sense I think I might have found there. However, a few more days, weeks or months- who knows, is it still 2020?!– have passed…
Needles and Haystacks (#1)
First off, I apologise for the lazy, cliche title of this blog post. It is my way of saying that any attempt to draw something sensible and coherent out of the last few weeks is about as challenging as locating that illusive shiny spindlette from a very wiry, very messy haystack. So there’s no chance…
Going to Town
Yesterday was a bad day. We are in between settling into our new home (yey!) and going on holiday, where we will also see my family for the first time since December, (extra lockdown restrictions permitting). Aware that the new school year is set to start days after we return, we put some time aside…
Giving God the Grumps
I’ve been keeping a weekly lockdown diary on this page, (miracles do happen!) but felt this story was a little too good, (not to mention long and detailed!) to share within that. So, here goes, I hope it encourages somebody as much as it has done me! Yesterday was a bad day. In fact, the…
The Stuff That Stuck
Over the last few posts, I have been attempting to convey how and when the invisible cloud began to lift; how I went from one pretty dark year or so, to the light I increasingly sense now, with little more than a retreat in between. There are some big, obvious factors in this; namely, our…
Out of the Hole
A couple of months back I was at a conference for church family workers and volunteers, attending a seminar about Perinatal Mental Health. During the seminar, the speaker showed this video by Brenee Brown, explaining the difference between Sympathy and Empathy. In it, a little fox is alone in a dark hole. An empathetic bear…
The Overflow
If you are a parent of any number of children, you will most likely have heard the phrase, “you’ve got your hands full there!” Several (hundred) times. A day. Personally, I don’t mind it. It’s not a tut, or a put-down; it’s a generally positive encounter with another member of the public, who takes the time…
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