Soap for Jesus

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...

I was thinking about some of the people I've bumped into over the years who struggle with depression, anxiety and/or suicidal tendencies. As I've been going through the counselling process with C., I've also come to realise that while it might trigger the "growing up" bit I missed, and is definitely help me link things together and providing coping techniques to override my body's now-natural patterns of worry, freak out, withdraw, not deal with issues, invert anger and stress until overload, it probably never will cure my depression spells completely. My man tries to reduce all stress levels for me wherever he can and says he thinks it can be healed, but I don't know. Whether it is a "mental illness", (which, while I am coming to accept the term, is one I dislike due to its connotations of limited capability and inferiority) or whether it's some switch tripped by the years on the rough path, as I subconsciously recognise the symptoms o...

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'...

"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...

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...

The lovely Katie Comstock posted this on her blog recently and sent me a link. Now I share it with you, and pray that those who need to read it will read - and listen to - it. This is an anthem for the homesick, for the beaten, The lost and broke, the defeated - A song for the heartsick, for the standbys, Living life in the shadow of a goodbye. Do you remember when we learned how to fly? We'd play make-believe we were young and had time on our side. You're stuck on the ground; got lost, can't be found. Just remember that you're still alive. I'll carry you home; no, you're not alone. Keep marching on - this is worth fighting for. You know, we've all got battle scars. You've had enough. But just don't give up. Stick to your guns; you are worth fighting for. You know, we've all got battle scars. Keep marching on. This is a call to the soldiers, the fighters, The young, the innocent and righteous. We've got a little room...

This past weekend, I attended a Youth Conference (along with one of my UK besties, Stephanie, and my twin, Joseph) at Bethel Free Baptist Church in Birmingham. What I was expecting ran something along the lines of: 1) Listen to preaching and be fed 2) Sit awkwardly on the sidelines and fail miserably at interacting 3) Spend the weekend watching and listening What actually happened was totally different. God moved this weekend. I watched young people recommit their lives to the Lord. I recommitted my life to the Lord. I gave Him the burden of my broken heart and prayed for release. It's still broken, but He's got the burden of it now and the joy is...unspeakable. I watched my Stephie change from a girl who is shy and self-controlled, though happy, start singing in public - something she would never do even if I begged, though she'd do anything else. I watched as she stepped out on the streets to witness - which she was scared sick of. I watched her cry, and go to ...

IT'S PAINFUL! Oh, God, it's so painful. Why should I suffer like this? What have I ever done to deserve it? I've tried to follow You. Tried to do what You say. I've gone through my memories and I can't think of any sin I haven't repented of. So why am I going through this? Those cries sound so familiar, echoed in the cries of those not born again..."If God was good, why do good people suffer?" And through the story of Job. Maybe you've cried them. I know I have, guiltily. And you know all the usual defending comments; that we are all sinners, that God grieves with us but that this is part of the curse. Yes, He could stop it. Do you know why He doesn't? Because when you're living the easy life, how often do you turn to Him? How often do you seek His face, to grow closer to Him and learn of Him? How much is the value of earthly things to you, when you are in pain? Because, to quote one tweet I read earlier: "The t...

There are two things I have learned through this long and painful walk; that God does not fill all voids and God does not heal all wounds. I wonder why? I think He made us deliberately to have voids He doesn't fill. Which will of course be filled when we reach Heaven - the same as we cannot be sinless now, but will be when we reach Heaven... Voids to be surrendered to Him and for Him to give us peace over, but not necessarily to fill... Carissa: *thinks* I have felt that, too. I am not sure exactly how to put this, though.... one thing is that I think He does heal all our wounds--but that doesn't mean the scars are gone, or that it stops hurting, only that He brings redemption. It still hurts, and honestly I don't think it will stop completely till heaven. About the voids... I don't know. I think maybe it's more that we don't realize how sufficient He is... that He is there, and He is enough. Yet... there is still the longing for human friendships that He...

Father's Day. Used to be a day when I'd go out and find a card and a present. Heh...dads. Men. They're so difficult to buy for. We'd usually buy him a tie. Socks. A shirt. Then this "Best Dad in the World" mug. Blue and white thick stripes with a "Forever Friends" bear face on the front with this blue bow tie. Then I grew older. I realised that my Mom had a lot of truth in what she said to my dad. I realised a lot of Dad's faults - and they weren't "general weak" faults. It grew harder to find a card for a man that wasn't...a real good daddy. But that showed caring and respect without eulogising him above the stars. Then everything exploded three years ago. I wasn't buying cards any more. I wasn't buying presents any more. Suddenly, I didn't even have a daddy any more. My flight lieutenant was the closest father figure I had and was very supportive during that time. But I had to handle Dad's birt...

DO. NOT. LOOK. AT. THAT. FLOWER. Do not admire it. Do not appreciate it. Do not even compliment it. After all, it was designed by a Creator. And we should only thank the Creator for making the flower. "That flower is pretty!" is NOT an acceptable comment. "What a beautiful scent!" is also totally wrong. Does that sound acceptable, or do I sound like an idiot? ;) Would you agree that most of the time, the acceptable way to appreciate natural beauty is to praise it AND praise God for it? Oookay. So let's move from the third day of creation to the sixth. And...not to the animals. To humans! Recently, there's been an argument put forward that it is wrong for a guy to compliment a girl. It is that subject I'm attempting to address in a fashion today. Okay, so maybe the flowers don't have feelings that can be affected by such comments. If they did hear them, in association with praise to the Creator for them, do you think they would feel p...

A day. It's an incredible short space of time. I paused for three seconds just and listened to the clock tick them. Three seconds of my life. Gone. Isn't it so short a span of time? Faith. Hope. Trust. Three things that God is trying to teach me and I am struggling with so greatly. Stop and read those words individually for a moment and think about what each of them means. We tend to bind the three of them together so easily. Think about the end of 1 Corinthians 13 - faith, hope, love, abide these three - but the greatest of these is love. Do you stop to separate the meanings of them out? I fail to, very often. But faith; hope; trust. Bound together by love. Love is the greatest of all. Notice, when one of them fails, the others weaken. Interesting. The last two weeks have been a haze of pain for me. I go through a couple of days (on a usual cycle) where I rotate through riding on faith, hope and prayer and preaching it, to allowing things to smash through th...

You cannot love God unless your spirit is alive. The world approaches love in one of two ways - body and soul, or soul and body. It's based on physical attraction or emotional compatability. There's a third aspect which no one considers. Every religion recognises something that most non-religionists don't. Man has an inbuilt need to worship. That is caused by the spirit. The spirit is dead until Christ enters it when we are born again and it comes alive. Christians should approach love from the other end of the triangle - top down. Spirit, soul, body. The world recognises marriage as a union between people who want to spend the rest of their lives together, but it cannot recognise the reason it is so powerful, why it is so attacked, and why it is being so twisted and perverted as it is. Because it is one of the most powerful demonstrations of the love of God to man, of the union between Christ and the church; the most liveable of all loves. And the second that...

There's four projects currently running in the call centre. Two of those are the People First project, which most of the guys are working on - an intensely pressured job on which the target is 5 a day and you must get at least 4 a day or run the risk of being laid off; and Women in Leeds, another highly stressful task because of how boring it is. Most of the responses are no replies or answer phones (now we have cleared out the horrible unobtainables and withheld numbers which shrill piercingly down your ear and one after another are torturous) as most women are out at work during the day. When people actually do answer, there is an incredible amount of refusals, men answering to say their wife/partner isn't there and won't be until gone six pm, or people hanging up in the first sentence (which is quite emotionally knocking, for me anyway). I'm sitting here writing this as I'm dialling in an attempt to keep my poor brain occupied. I'm an outdoor person, stim...

I guess it's a pretty well known fact that I don't trust guys. Even though I love my brothers, (I really do. You guys are awesome!), I still can't trust most of the guys I know. (That not being entirely your faults; often it's mine, in that I feel I can't trust you because you don't know how bad I am. :P) There are a few that made it into my closed, barred, walled and icy heart. Because when it comes to trusting, that's exactly what I am. Remember I said that was what God was working on next? :D Those few (four/five in total) have faced every kind of backfire you could possibly imagine from me. And they still care about me. They're pretty amazing guys. God's...God works so clearly in them and through them to the people around them. To me, they're the epitome of Unconditional Love. God's Love. It was 5am GMT, and 11pm CST, when one of these guys was up chatting me one night. I won't name him to spare him embarrassment, but he'...

We cheered on the Olympians, and still more the Paralympians, with pride in our countries and awe at their amazing achievements. Those guys (and gals) sacrificed years and time and money and strength and purpose to one goal - to compete here. As Christians, we have our own Olympics to run. Our goal - which is Heaven, our struggle - which is life. And we are commanded to run in such a way as to win the prize - the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. I went to the opening of the Baptist Bible College in Telford area today. The guy who preached was Pastor David More. He talked on running the race. But not so much the beginning, as the ending. We need to end well. Many people, he said, start off enthusiastically and with zeal. But not so many end up finishing well, because they didn't run with dedication and purpose. We need to set our sights on Christ and following Him. That must be our goal. We may change immediate goals and our lives turn around in the me...

Today's praise and thankfulness list! Tomorrow is Friday! We get to dress down, so I can wear a t-shirt and denim. :D I'm going out with Mom almost every Saturday to places all over Britain. This Saturday we're going to a castle and the beach in Wales! God put good friends in my life. :) Friends who mentor me, encourage me and try to heal my insecurity without shunning me because of it. My new fantasy novel, which I'm intensely intrigued by (it was started by a dream as I had a nap on my desk at work). I've just applied to a singing concert in Solihull, thanks to my sister's Auntie Chris who knows all the right places to go. :D I just have to pay and show up! I have my 425 Squadron hoodie and my 196 Squadron t-shirt. *happy* I'm getting better at dancing with Mr. Invisible. ;) Work is going well at the moment and my bosses are happy with me. :) Dreams of going for flight attendant, depending on how things work out. Plans seem to be m...

It doesn't matter in the end. Whether friendship or love is reciprocated. Both are based on God's love to man - a model of it. We are to love unconditionally. It took a lot for me to let go. Still does. I'm still letting go. Constantly. And fighting it. But walking away from the bus, I couldn't help but smile. I've wondered so often about my friend (the only one I really have in this area in Britain) as our relationship has really gone up and down. From stuff he says sometimes, I wonder if he even counts me as a friend at all. In the end, it doesn't matter. It's hard when we extend our friendship, or give our love, and don't have it returned. Indeed, most times the reaction is to hurt, retreat and close down on the pain until it's faded or gone. The world teaches that if you get hurt repeatedly, in the end, love and friendship dies. So it does. Unless you're loving with Christ's love. When He fills you with His love to love out, when ...