Soap for Jesus

I came home thoroughly discouraged today. I really get that doctors want to work normal hours too. But when you leave work late after a very bad day, practically run to the train on a wrenched ankle, have to buy a ticket only to miss the darn thing by twenty seconds, run back upstairs to the tram, have to work out which one is fastest, head back down to the train which will get you to the station right at your appointment time, have to upset your mom’s evening plans to request a lift so you can get there as fast as possible, upset your husband, and call the doctors to tell them you’ll be five minutes late for them to tell you they’ll leave a note for the nurse but you might have to rebook, they could be a little more forgiving. Also. They could allow you to buy tickets at the gate instead of having to rush halfway up the station. Also. The train was late by ten minutes and my poor Mom, who had to be in Newcastle-under-Lyme for 7:30, was delayed by a good twenty minutes without a w...

Once I thought I was going to do something big, not change the world, but make a mark on it for the good. Then I mucked up. Then I struggled back with the marks and the stains and the scars. Then I got married. Then I realised that my life was going to consist of losing/distancing friends, working incessantly, budgeting like crazy, a few hard-clung-to times with my new husband while realising more and more that family and parents are getting older, bigger, growing, moving on. There are new goals in life - saving money, buying a house, having kids. Social life reduces down to a few shared news articles, playing a few e-games people tag you in, and sharing other people's posts. Any significant news in your life may not want to be shared by another person, so you leave it in the quiet. People 'like' or 'read' your news in decreasing numbers. Your impact on life is minimal. And your days march on. I like change. Within a controlled or known measure. I don...

When I rededicated my life to the Lord in my late teens, I began what seemed to be a lesson a year. First it was love - God began to teach me how to love with His love, to see with His eyes, as I prayed for it. The next year was faith, and the following faith and trust. It wasn't like I picked these to work on - love was what brought me back to Him - a breakthrough from my friend Taylor W. - and faith and trust have always been struggles, partly because I like to understand things, and partly because I've never learnt to trust deeply, easily. Faith, as you know if you live by it, is a walk in trust. The two, though different, are deeply and intimately connected. To walk by faith is to walk in trust, and to trust fully means utter and complete faith. One of the joys of following Jesus has been to see His love through different aspects of my life - as I like to say, "God's love is of the same beauty and diversity as a many faceted diamond." First, I learned His...

Note: Trigger warning: If you're in a bad place, don't read this. If you think you can handle it...try. It may encourage you. I hope. :P Depression-exhaustion. It's one of the things I loathe most about a bout of suicidal depression. (If you need a definition of that, feel free to message me: fromselfharmtovictory@gmail.com) First there's a tiny grey cloud, a mood change...flashbacks...sometimes panic attacks...random crying spells...intense sadness over the lost things/people... Those can be triggered by, or exacerbated, by arguments, events (i.e., a person who dislikes/caused a lot of trouble for me married recently, and it triggered this bout because he was brought back into my life, albeit unintentionally, by mutual friends; aggravated by an argument this past weekend). Then it literally feels like my mind is being torn in two. There's the one part which seems to be out of control, and the other which is logical and takes the rationale. It knows I'...

I just finished reading an encouraging note sent to me by Sarah Beth regarding a question I'd asked about From Self-harm to Victory earlier in the day. I don't know about you, but messages of encouragement always make me cry. And feel guilty. As much as I publicise my weakness so that people see who I am and who Christ is, I still feel like a fraud. That I'm blazoning myself for glory and my actions as good works. That people still can't see the real me. They're suspicious of me, and so am I. And it's hard to carry on being me and showing so much weakness. Do you know how hard it is to be openly weak? To listen to others discourage you and to despise yourself for it? She praised me for humility and I could only cry knowing how much I fight with pride. Then I stopped and listened. Because Someone was telling me to let go of my guilt and shame and accept what she said. Not as praise for me, but as praise for Him in me. Praise from Him to me. No, I...

As we near the end of 2014, I once more pick up my pen...or more literally, tap at my keyboard, and attempt to search out a pattern of meaning in the old and mark a set number of steps in the new. And after such a long beginning sentence, I don't blame you if you've hit X. ;) It's 22:38, 10:38pm, on December 21st, 2014. Not sure about you, but I'm still having trouble typing 2014 instead of 2013. Maybe I left my brain as well as my heart in what is still, right now, last year. This year has been a year of new beginnings. Of false starts and many stops. Of broken hearts and despair. Of fresh hope and failed hope. Of a lost family and a new purpose. It's been, in short, a year. I started 2014 with the determination to keep an A4 sized diary, filled with the markings of how I spent every day, determined to use time wisely. That lasted til May. I was going to keep a jar full of the books I'd read. I lost the jar before I started. My journeys to and fr...

*grins* That's a Black Country term, so most of y'all probably won't know that. ;) So here's me, in sweatshirt, fancy necklace and Mediæval bodice fresh from work, earbuds dangling and still distantly playing Mandisa's "What If We Were Real" album, pj trousers on and perched on a chair, typing this while gobbling up some pumpkin soup - WITH CHEESE. Scrummicking round the house, getting fed and watered before settling down to work at home for the evening. Y'know, it's impossible to explain the joy and peace that's been here the last few days. The period I've just gone through has been the blackest, spiritually, I remember walking through in the past four years, since my backslide when I was 17. I don't remember what jolted me to actually fighting again. I was convinced God wasn't going to fight for me anymore, and on being told that He was waiting for me to say no to doing wrong in the weakest area of my life and wasn't go...

I hate typing up stuff like this, because it feels crazy and I feel shy about being crazy. On occasion. :P For the first time in two months, I have inexplicable hope in my heart. I'm starting to weakly seek after God again in action, instead of stumbling blindly, hanging off maxims and knowledge and repeating words that ring dusty in my mouth, groping for a truth that I'm too tired to seek. Satan sure knows the places to shoot the Lord's servants down. Without the shadow of a doubt. Two months of being shaken and too tired to care. Giving up. The motions were those of moving forwards, when everything in me wanted to sit down in the road, cross my arms and refuse to do. Spiritually, emotionally, I had, and was wondering exactly how long it would be before it became visible to everyone. Spiritual decline is very quickly visible. The last weekend away at the Lauser family's home in Ireland really...helped. To stop. To look. To listen...to be forcibly embedded in God...

Dear World, It's me. Well. Not really. You don't know me. To some I'm a clump of cells, or to others I'm a living being from conception. You've yet to meet me, but I'm a baby growing inside my mommy. I'm supposed to be born in a few months, but there's a word she's using. Abortion. She says it with a pained voice, but at the same time, it's disgust. Disgust towards me or the abortion? Doesn't she want me? I'm a girl! I want to wear dresses, run through the yard and tackle my daddy when he comes home from work, and pick wild flowers for you, mommy. I keep growing, and I'm moving too. I feel mommy's hand next to me and she sings to me. I can hear her and daddy's laugh. They sound happy for me to arrive. But why does this abortion keep coming up? Don't they want me? I just want to see their faces... Won't you keep me? Adella ~ Dear World, My name is Adella. I'm sixteen years old and am a survivor. O...

"A Twist in Time" "You want me to be evil? Fine, I'll be evil." I raised my hands towards them, the pink sepphalite now flickering visibly between my fingers, revelling in the release of the power I had chained back for so long. "No, we don't want you to be evil! We just want you to be good, to give you a second chance. Why lie to us?" Snow asked me, tears rimming her lids. "You know what your problem is?" I watched the light grow stronger. "It's not that you want me to heal. It's that you want me to follow your kind of healing. No matter how hard I try to be good, it will never be good enough for you, because there is a certain route you won't be happy unless I take. You want me to kowtow and bend, to grovel and you want to see your final victory - good vanquishing evil. The knight slaying the dragon. You want me to be completely destroyed, humbled on the ground, because that's the way every good fairytale e...

I'd love to travel around the world. To see unusual sights. To walk where history happened, see it with my own eyes, dream of what happened. I'd love to go on an adventure, have my own pilot's licence. To learn languages, to reach out to others. And I would love to climb mountains. In my dreams, I do. Sheer drops, clear sharp air, stunning views...sunset, sunrise, physical tiredness instead of mental weariness, good times with friends... But my body struggles with a twenty minute climb up a hill. It requires fitness, energy, resilience to be able to climb a mountain. A lot of training. Preparation. To be able to make it from that struggling, panting walk of twenty minutes' steep slope to scaling peaks. We face mountains in life. Rugged, stony, crooked mountains. And we get a lot of painful training beforehand. Never regret the pain you're going through now. You don't know what mountain it will enable you to climb in the future. Climb the hills with ...

Note: The way I live out my faith is...somewhat radical, because I believe in an intimate relationship with Jesus. So be prepared. :P I felt sticky, and ugghy, and grotty and bleh as I stepped outside of the office building where I work. It was another dragging high pressure day, and as much as I love my job, the atmosphere (and the worry) sometimes gets to me. Pulling my phone out of my jacket pocket as I began the twenty(ish) minute walk to the train station, I tried to catch up on a few people's posts, shielding the phone from the glare of the sun. A dear friend and sister posted about how some cruel people had laughed and called her fat before running off, and how broken she was feeling. Couldn't do much, but posted a quick note and walked off praying for her. It's been a beautiful day, in the between. And the between is what counts, isn't it? For right now, I'm in the brightness, the sun shining bright and the world glowing with colour and hope and beau...

Sometimes I think the world has a clearer grasp of right and wrong than we as Christians do, although they try to explain it wrongly. Christians tend to blur up the Bible in an attempt to accept everything they see around them. "Oh, God can't have said. God didn't mean." Well, maybe He did and you just don't want to accept it because you're putting your little code of what you think is right and wrong before His. While our faith is based on historical facts and logical processes, most of the day to day living is a sheer walk of faith. After all, isn't that why it's called our "faith"? Faith like a child. Trusting. Simple. Daddy loves me enough to catch me when I jump. Mommy loves me enough to keep me away from the hot iron and the cars on the road. Faith that while we don't understand and maybe never will understand God's ways or reasoning, He is right and just. Faith means grasping the simplicity of life and leaving the conf...

Believe it or not, this was actually a planned post over the last couple of days. Because I tend to preach things when I'm struggling with them; post encouragement when I'm in desperate need of it; write words that I know are true to make myself believe them, as well as you. I can't remember the original substance of this post, as hard as I'm trying to recall it and wind it in with what I'm writing now. I write a lot on Twitter; in fact, I'm more open on Twitter than on Facebook because I feel safer. My tweets get lost in millions of others, and only two specific people watch my tweets to see how I am. So I thought. I've received rebukes off people before for being too open, being too depressing. Watching my kids recently turn away from God and to despair added into the fact that I'm getting left behind by many of my friends as they enter college/leave college and-or get married was just part of the unconscious building up of "hard evidence...