Soap for Jesus

I'm angry. Stone cold angry. My temper is one of the worst things I own. You know the phrase see red? Well, I literally see it. Another well known one is don't mess with a red head. There's a reason for that. It's caused me to flare out in tempestuous ferocity in defense of those I love and end at least one friendship terribly; one lifelong regret and a source of no ending trouble for me since. Last night I got confirmation of something I had suspected for a long while from the freezing out I'd received from several people I genuinely liked. My respect for them is now below zero. What it was is not important. Why I will deal with, because as little as I expect them to read this, I want it out there in case they do. And my anger is cold. Which is half a good thing and half a bad...good because it means I'm not flapping angrily. Bad because it's a cold fury and will therefore be the cynical, sarcastic side of me. The main two complaints, as I und...

Oh yeah. I hate this. This...thing. This trust thing. I tried to trust. I tried to make myself trust. Through a year, I endeavored to force myself to learn trust. I kept giving my love back to God. And it hurt. And I cried. And etc. There are times God teaches you something. And there are times when God prepares to teach you something. Last year, He was preparing me to learn to trust, but I wasn't ready. This year, I started pursuing surrender. I wanted to know what it really meant to surrender your love to God, because I was at my wits end. Sorta. I kept finding ways out. Spending days thinking through it, thinking I'd found another resting spot, another course forward. Then there came a time where I was at my wits end. Totally. Nearly a month ago, now, surprisingly. I was...numb. Dead. In tears a lot. Completely. Dried. Up. I was advised a course of action over a three month period, and I prayed - and took it. I'm not going into too much detail at this p...

Blackberry picking is one of my favourite times of year. A nature reserve, with tangles of thorns and bushes, longish grass, steep paths and a river, is where we have gone from times immemorial to pick the fruit - originally for jam, then for my brother's Ketogenic milkshakes, and also (especially recently) for apple-and-blackberry crumble, or pie, or... Clear blue sky and bright green grass meet, the horizon line fringed with the dark shades of hedges and trees. The hot sun beats down on us, clad in long sleeves and long trousers, protecting the bare skin from the thorns as we reach deep, deep into the heart of the tangles, trying to pull the nettled leaves with their surprising thorns apart to look for fruit underneath. It's quiet, apart from the birds singing, the occasional distant bark of a dog, or the rustle of the two bags, which doubled and tied into one because of the thick dark juice that ends up dripping from them as the pressure of the mass of berries crushes...