Soap for Jesus

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...

Recently, it was the birthday of The Dude. It was kinda a hard day, despite this place of constant peace and resting the Lord has provided. It took a bit of pondering, over the past few weeks, whether or not to send a birthday greeting. After all, he totally blanked (probably forgot, you know what men are like :P ) my birthday this year, in spite of our past friendship of seven years. The one part was going, "Well, I want to ignore him. He ignored me. Maybe I should just leave it to public holiday greetings from now." The catty, angry, self-righteous part wanted to send him a greeting, just to say to myself that at least I did the right thing. And both of them were holding back because, well, I don't want to give in to the self-righteous part. I want to love him right and purely. In the end, I sent it. Because holding back isn't an option. When you love, you give all, whether or not it's returned. It's a rejoicing day because someone is alive, someo...

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 ...

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...

Plaits. Jumper. Jeans. Trainers. MP3 player. Yep, about to do something I haven't done in years, since I started to go for runs with Gemma as a prelude to training for the RAF. (I never did train.) Go for a quick jog around the block, down the lane, shortcut across the fields, down the road, right wheel down another road and then back to the house. Started playing Battle Scars and fast paced down the road. I have psychological problems with running in front of visible people (got teased about running when I was about 6/7) so waited til I'd got a bit down the country path past the people before I began to run. I had a few issues. :P Not the least of which was, of course, being a lot out of condition. The problem, ignoring the breathing and the body heat, was the muscle pain. A lot of muscle pain. Which would normally involve limping and favouring my game leg. Buuuut...what was the point in running for three minutes and then giving up? Maybe I couldn't run, (th...

I laughed half of the way home. It had been a completely rubbish day. I should've been expecting it after the G+ Hangout OYAN prayer group starting up the night before, but somehow I keep forgetting that Satan attacks whenever we unite in spirit to draw close to the Lord, and usually (for me) in that way. I woke up at 6am to see my Mom off, went back upstairs, set my mobile phone alarm in CASE I fell asleep, sat down and picked my laptop up. Looked up at the clock; 8:30am. I have to leave the house at 7:30 to reach my two connecting buses. OUCH. I begin work at 9, in a city twenty to thirty minutes away by car. ....yeah. I threw clothes on at lightning speed, brushed my teeth in ten seconds, bolted down the stairs, tried to push the dog outside for the toilet but he didn't want to go, grabbed my handbag (Mom had done my lunch the night before), the nearest pair of shoes and my birthday money to buy a ticket with, locked the door and headed for the train station. Mom...