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Identity, Living the Life

Willow

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I’m a bit willow-ish – not willowy, that’s for sure – but willow-ish.

It’s about nine years since God told me I’m like a pile of sticks.  Words from God aren’t always easy, but sometimes the most difficult ones have the most value.  I was (and still am a bit) like a pile of dry willow sticks: brittle, stubborn, prickly, awkward, broken in places and very much in need of being bent into shape.

But God, because he is gracious, also gave me a picture of how I could be…

This is a basket made out of willow.  It can both hold a harvest and carry a feast. It is strong.  It is still what it once was, but also completely transformed.

God and I have talked many times about the process of transformation that makes useless sticks into a beautiful basket. And I always end up with these two ‘keys’ to becoming:

Soaking and Surrender

Willow must be soaked, preferably overnight, to make it flexible.  Otherwise when the weaver attempts to bend it or twist and wind it between the uprights it will simply snap.

Dry willow is brittle and inflexible: soaked willow is soft and pliable.

I need soaking.

I need to immerse myself in God’s presence and in his word.  I read once that we are like pendulums, we need to swing between abiding in God and working; worship and ministry; backwards and forwards.  Not spending enough time in God’s presence will make my heart brittle again, but time soaking him in will quickly soften it up.

And as he softens my heart I become more and more ready to be transformed into the shape he wants for me. But even then I need to be willing to let him.

In my willow-ness, most of my task is to surrender. Some of my stubbornness has been soaked out, but most of my determination remains.  I have to choose to allow the weaver to create whatever shape he has in mind for me and not to insist on becoming something else.  It’s so easy to try to second-guess God, to demand to know exactly what he’s doing, or even to come up with a ‘better’ idea.   It’s a challenge to trust him, to rest in the truth that he knows what he’s doing, but it’s necessary.

Soaking and surrender.

It’s great when God gives you a picture of how you could be, especially if he then reveals the keys to becoming.  It may take a long time to get there, but we have do some ability to speed up the process.

For me, and I suspect for many of you, a continual process of soaking and surrender is the way forward.

basket

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

Squeezed

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Ever feel like you’re being squeezed by life?  Yes. Me too.  Today I feel squeezed by little things and big things, important things and unimportant things. Things that need to be done right now, things that needed to be done yesterday and things that I have no idea how to do. All building up and squeezing away.  If you feel a bit like that this postcard might be for you too…

I’ve had the picture of an accordion in my head for a couple of days now.  It’s funny how different instruments or pieces of music can tug at a memory or make an association for us even if we’re not entirely sure why. For some reason when I picture an accordion I always hear the tune of ‘the Old Rugged Cross’ or ‘How Great thou Art‘ playing in my head.   I can probably blame my grandfather, Reg, for that as I’m told he played a concertina (similar to this) enthusiastically and rather badly for most of his adult life and apparently those hymns were in his repertoire.

I’ve found out today that this family of instruments, also called ‘squeezeboxes’, all work by compressing air with bellows and then forcing it over reeds. The reeds vibrate at different pitches creating the sound that we hear.  Depending on the combination of keys and buttons pressed by the player, the air can be forced over several reeds at once so harmonies, chords and a bass line can all be played at once.  The more pressure is created by the air, the more notes can be played loudly at the same time.

Pressure and worship.

You probably can’t avoid pressure in life, (and it probably wouldn’t be good for you if you did). But like this accordion player: you do have the choice about what you do with it.  On a squeezebox you can make an awful cacophony… or by pressing the right buttons you can turn that pressure into worship.  It still might not sound all that beautiful to listen to: but it will be worship.

My favourite example of this is Psalm 22. It begins with David under pressure and wondering why he’s been abandoned. His description of his circumstances is pretty colourful but my attention is caught today by this line: ‘My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs’ (Psalm 22:16 NLT).  I know that feeling. As though a hundred little things, and one or two really big things are snapping away at my heels. Stressful, painful, tiring, everyday pressure. And yet David seems to manage to choose to turn that pressure into worship. A few lines later he declares:  ‘All who seek the Lord will praise him, their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy’ (22:26).

Of course you can’t just pick up an Accordion and instantly know how to use it.  You have to learn, and then you have to practise.  But it’s a challenge isn’t it?  To take whatever is causing stress, pain or pressure in your life and choose to learn how to turn that pressure it into worship.

 

accordion

 

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In amongst all the everyday stresses something rather wonderful happened this week. Postcards from Heaven – The Book was published on January 22nd.  Already I’m hearing stories of God speaking life and grace into people’s hearts who have received a copy as a gift. So a huge thank you to those of you who have bought it and given it away!

If you haven’t got one yet:

If you’re in the UK I recommend getting a copy direct from the publisher here

or those of you in the US or Australia can buy a copy here

If you’ve already read the book and  it would be really helpful if you have time to find the book on Amazon or Waterstones and write a review!  Thanks

 

 

 

 

Identity

Ordinary beauty

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This morning I painted a teaspoon.  Not a fancy one, or one of the cheap, bendy ones I reserve for putting in the kids’ lunchboxes,  but just an ordinary one from the kitchen drawer.

In fact that’s the word that comes to my mind when I look at this spoon – ordinary. 

Useful, certainly; ready-for-action, definitely; but resolutely ordinary.

So I’ve been reflecting today on what it means to be ordinary.   Which is, by definition, what most of us are:

or·di·nar·y    – With no special or distinctive features; normal.

It’s unfortunate that ‘ordinary’ has come to be an insult.  Our culture finds it hard to honour the everyday and tends to despise (or ignore) the ‘unexceptional’.  To be significant, the media tells us, you must be exceptionally rich, or attractive, or talented.  It’s sad to say but I wonder if the church often does the same.

And yet, in the Bible it seems that God doesn’t only use people who are exceptionally talented, or exceptionally rich, or exceptionally beautiful, or exceptionally strong or exceptionally clever.  On the contrary he mostly uses normal, faithful, obedient, available ordinary people.  Moses and Gideon, Esther and Mary, John and Peter. All unexceptional people to the untrained eye, mostly living very ordinary lives until they encountered the living God.

Like this spoon, which was surprisingly difficult to paint because of the intricacies of the ever changing reflections, light shining onto these ordinary people lifted them into the extraordinary.  Though they must receive honour for their obedience and willingness to serve, the glory of what God did with their lives belongs to him.

I also struggle sometimes with the ordinariness of life.  The snapshots I see of other people’s lives on social media look so much more interesting than mine!  Even though I know that they must also have to go to the shops, cook dinner, do the laundry, help with homework and a million other everyday things; I still get frustrated with the proportion of ordinary in my life.

But the whisper I’m hearing today through my teaspoon is : Don’t despise the ordinary.

It took me an hour of looking and sketching and painting to realise how complex and beautiful this little spoon actually was, and how its scratches and dents make it unique. I’d dismissed it in a second as ordinary and uninteresting, and yet on closer inspection found that the light dancing across its surface was so complex that it was both lovely and too difficult to capture.

I wonder if this is a good way to react to the ordinary? A good way to react to ‘ordinary’ people and to my frustratingly ordinary life?

To choose look for the light of God as it plays across the surface.

His light, his fingerprints, are all across my ordinary life if I stop to search for them.   Beauty hidden in the ordinary, blessing waiting for me to find it. I just need to take the time to look.

 

spoon

 

 

 

 

Living the Life

Echoes of worship

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I’m often surprised by the things that God uses to speak to me… This week it was a science podcast which I listened to on an aeroplane in the hope it would help me to get some sleep, but which turned out to be really rather interesting.

The piece I was listening to featured a man who, having become blind as a teenager, has developed the ability to sense the space around him – walls, doors, objects – by a form of hearing called echo location.  Either by the sound of his footsteps our by making a clicking noise with his tongue he was able to sense the shape of a room, location of barriers, and a clear way forward.  It’s apparently not uncommon for people with impaired vision to be able to do this, and it can even be learned by sighted people.

A few days later I felt God whispering to me about this ‘super sense’.  Was there something in this picture about how we can learn to walk by faith and not by sight?  Could we develop a greater ability to sense the presence of God, of barriers and of safe ways ahead?

The thing that really struck me about this sense was that it involved both making a noise and also a deep form of listening, so deep in fact that the person doing it wasn’t aware of it as a sound, but as a ‘kind of change in pressure’.   I’ve spent time before thinking about the importance of stillness and listening in sensing the presence of God, but not much of the part that could be played by the sounds I make with my mind and my spirit.

I wonder if this explains something of why I find it easy to sense God’s presence when my heart is worshipping?   My worship has an echo, perhaps only barely audible – which helps me to sense his presence.

So I’m choosing to worship just a little bit more.. To take a few minutes, every now and again in the day to tell God how wonderful he is, to list through his names, to call out the praise that rises up in my heart.  I’ll let you know how it works out!

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If you love postcards from heaven, or you know someone else who would love it – you might be interested to know that a book of postcards will be published on Jan 22nd 2016!

You can preorder it from Amazon here

 

 

 

Identity, Living the Life

Superhero Socks

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I don’t know about you – but this time of year really brings out my inner superhero.  It’s probably exactly the right time for this post, on the destructive power of impossibly-high-expectations, to have another airing! Enjoy x

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This is my sweet five-year-old, dressing up in her fifteen-year-old brother’s superhero socks. He has a wide collection, and likes to wear them mismatched as a tiny but significant (?) piece of rebellion against the oppression of school uniform…

I’ve decided that having an impossibly high expectation of myself  in any situation is like being quietly stalked by a Superhero.  This SuperSomeone tiptoes along behind me, like a malignant imaginary friend, waiting for  the moment to point out my inadequacies, show me how I could do things better, or encourage me to aim ridiculously high.  Next to her, I always feel pretty rubbish really.

Now, while it’s perfectly OK to enjoy a good superhero story, and even (in some circumstances) to wear the socks; I’m sure you’ll agree that to believe that you can be a superhero is a dangerous, possibly even life-threatening delusion.

But, we all seem to do it. We all seem to invent a ridiculous, superhuman version of the role we’re in, and then expect ourselves to be it : SuperSomeones.

My loudest and most powerful Supersomeone is ‘SuperMummy’. She stands in the background of my life, ever ready to rear her (very beautiful and perfectly made up) head at any opportunity. For some reason she is most likely to manifest the night before the children’s birthdays, or Christmas, when she ‘forces’ me to organise beautifully themed birthday parties, ice cakes until 3 in the morning and try to make everything  ‘just perfect’.

If I ever take my eyes off Jesus and let them settle on SuperMummy, I’m done… I come to a few days later, confused and exhausted, wondering (again) why on earth I thought I needed to do all that stuff.

You see SuperMummy always wears make-up, is slim, has beautiful hair, can wear scarves stylishly, bakes perfectly, has a beautiful home (she found that piece of furniture in a second-hand store and distressed it herself) and a high-powered career, is amazingly spiritual, never shouts, and can preach in high heels without falling over. SuperMummy reads bedtime stories to all of her children every day, never forgets the PE kit, or shows up with kids in uniform on Mufti day, can instantly find a protractor the night before Maths exams, runs the PTA and never misses a dentist appointment…  Gosh, she can probably service the people carrier as well.

SuperMummy does NOT exist… But do you know what? if I let myself be conned into trying to be her, I may not exist for very much longer either.  Trying to be a superhero is exhausting and dangerous… and not what Jesus has asked us to do.

Whoever you are, and whatever stage of life you are at, I bet you
have a SuperSomeone.. A SuperPastor, SuperDad, SuperFriend,
SuperDaughter, SuperWorshipLeader, SuperChristian.  Walking
quietly beside you, whispering over your shoulder, “You need to be more like me”  Do you know what? –  You need to get rid of them, right now, whatever it takes.

SuperWhatever will distract you from what God is calling you to be and to do, he or she will suck all the life out of you, exhaust you, whisper ‘try harder’ over your shoulder until you can’t manage another step and then show you all the ways you’ve failed.

Whatever you think about what he has written or said since, a few years ago Rob Bell, in a very popular book called Velvet Elvis had a moment of pure genius. Writing on this subject he said:

‘KILL YOUR SUPERWHATEVER… ACT NOW… SHOOT FIRST!’

At the moment we fell into his arms and surrendered to him, God our father gave us a gift to help us defeat the Supersomeones. An enormous endlessly supplied water cannon, filled with… grace.

There is grace enough to cover ever one of your imperfections… and mine. There is grace to not to have to be perfect, to be a superhero. In fact, Grace says “you aren’t a superhero, I didn’t make you that way”.

Of course, our kids, work colleagues, churches, friends, families, need us to try to be ‘good-enough’, but there’s a loooooong way between that and a superhero.

So there’s my challenge for you for the week: ask God to shine his light on your inner Superwhatever; ask him to show you where you have ridiculously high standards of yourself and then apply a ridiculously generous amount of grace…. Shoot first.

superherosocks feat

 

 

 

 

Dealing with Change, Surviving Tough Times

Shaken?

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My smallest girl was so excited yesterday unwrapping our Christmas snow globes.  She gave each one a little shake before she found a place for them on the bookshelf and watched the swirl of white glitter surround the figures within.

This time of year is a bit like living in a shaken snow globe.  All the busyness of school plays and concerts, shopping, cooking and trying to get everything done is like a huge swirl of glitter celebrating yet surrounding and sometimes obscuring the message at its heart.

At the centre of my advent snowglobe there’s the extraordinary miracle of a newborn king laid in a manger, Almighty God constrained in weakness, a world changed forever.  I desperately want to celebrate it, to marvel with the shepherds at the miracle of the incarnation, to be soaked in the reality of God-with-us.

And yet there are days when all I can see is the snow, and however hard I try I can barely make out the outline of the new parents cradling my lord and my saviour. This postcard is exactly where I’ve been for the last few weeks, struggling to get a glimpse of Jesus through the snowstorm.

When I started to pray about this picture I was certain that God was going to talk to me about finding stillness,  about making space for the glitter to settle so that I can see clearly.  And that would no doubt be a great plan.  But I was wrong, he wanted to say something quite different –

 Know

Just know it.  Even when you can’t see it, know that he is there, at the very centre.

The shaking of our snow globes doesn’t remove the figures inside, just obscures them.

Know

This Christmas, even when you can’t see for glitter, know that he did invade the world that he created.  Know that he brought his Kingdom to Earth and that, in spite of all appearances, the increase of his government and peace will not end.

Know

Know that however much the snow globe of your life is shaken, and by whatever means, he will still be there. Even when it feels as though the world has been turned upside down and the storm is at its most suffocating – nothing has changed… he is still there.

And it is possible to reach out through the storm or the glitter and catch hold of him, not seeing perhaps, but touching the miracle of the God who loved us and came to pitch his tent among us.

He is still there

God with us.

 

 

 

 

Living the Life

Bigger on the inside.

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I don’t often dig out old posts out of the archives… But I think this one deserves another airing.  If like me you’re already drowning under tinsel, star-shaped cookies and costumes for the Christmas show, you might find this helps restore some of the wonder!

 

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If you’re reading this in the UK you probably don’t need me to tell you what this postcard is, or why I associate it with Christmas… but for those of you that aren’t:

This is the TARDIS. It’s from the long running UK TV show Dr Who and it’s a time-travelling spaceship. It’s become something of an iconic image and because of the unmissably excellent Christmas Day special episodes, it doesn’t seem entirely out of place in the jumble of jolly santas, cherubic angels and sprigs of holly.

Apart from that, all you need to know is this: It’s bigger on the inside.

On the outside it’s the size and shape of a 1960’s British Police telephone box (a regular sight on UK streets when this series started, ten years before I was born!), but on the inside it is apparently vast (there are even rumours of a swimming pool.)  Ask any Dr Who fan to describe the TARDIS and that’s what they’ll tell you – ‘it’s bigger on the inside’.

Think of how you would gasp in awe and wonder if you were to walk through that little blue door and discover that it is so much more than it appears to be.  Think of how you would run outside again to check and double check what you were seeing.  Think of how much your mind would be expanded!

Wow!

Awesome!

That really would be amazing.  To see something that so defied my understanding of how things are, how they work, of what is possible.  I’m pretty sure that I would be bursting to tell people about it but might also struggle to find the right words to describe how that discovery makes me feel…

All this reminds me of another image I associate with Christmas day:

A new-born baby.  Small, soft-skinned and helpless. Wrapped in a cloth and lying in a straw-filled manger.

And when I look, I hear God whisper,

“Can you see it?… Can you see what the shepherds saw, what the wise men travelled to see?”

“He’s bigger on the inside”

This is the extraordinary miracle of Christmas for me, perhaps even more amazing than the Easter-miracle of the resurrection:

Our God who spoke the universe into the existence and holds every part of it together; our God who said “let there be light” and who is the light;  our God who is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely creative, infinitely loving, infinitely big; everything that he is is somehow contained inside that tiny cloth-wrapped package in the manger… Astounding.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him

Colossians 1:19

Take a moment today to let that sink in again.

Take some time to be awestruck,

to marvel.

and don’t be fooled by the tiny, helpless, sweet-smelling, soft-skinned baby in the manger…

He’s so much more than he appears to be.

Seriously bigger on the inside.

tardisfeat

Identity

A New Name?

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Should I be Brown Owl or Fluffy Owl?  I need a new name as I become a Brownie leader, and I apparently I get to pick my own…

Names.

The thing that keeps rising in my mind is that the Bible gives so much weight to names.  They matter, and not so much the names that parents give to their children, but especially the names that God chooses to give to people… names that mark out something of their identity and destiny. And I especially love new names.

Abram- exalted father, became Abraham – father of a multitude.

Sarai – quarrelsome, became Sarah – princess or noblewoman

Simon- God has heard, became Peter – the rock.

I’ve known for a long while how important it is to step away from  negative names that other people sometimes ‘give’ me.  Even if they’re occasionally true about the way I behave – they’re not my name, and they don’t define who I am or who I’m going to be. Walking free of those names is important. But God isn’t just in the business of taking negative names away, he always wants to replace them with something new and better!

A while ago I started asking God what his names were for me.  I’ve waited a while for an answer and then tried to step out and live in the truth of what I’m hearing.  Some of those names I share with all of you who follow Jesus : Beloved, Precious, Righteous, Daughter (or Son), Princess (or Prince) and many others.  They’re our family names. Our shared identity and destiny.

But I believe that God also has personal names for each of us, and that it’s OK to ask him about them.  For example, one of the names he gave me, surprisingly through someone who didn’t really know me at all, is Map. It seems that one of my roles in the kingdom is to be a treasure map. Hunting out treasure and directing other people to where it can be found.  Knowing that Map is one of God’s names for me has given me the courage (and sometimes the determination) to keep writing and painting this blog.  It’s sometimes been about choosing to live in the truth of that name.

Thinking about and praying about and journaling about this name and others has been really powerful for me.  So my question for you to ponder this week is: What new names does God have for you? You can make a list of ‘family’ names and ask him about them, and you can also ask him about personal names.  Of course the only way to find out those is to ask him and then to listen!

 

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The other names that are on my mind this week are from Isaiah 6 –  The the names of identity and destiny that God the Father gave to his son, hundreds of years before he was born on Earth, but which resonate with so much of what our world is longing for right now.  Miraculous wisdom, strength, love and peace. Come Lord Jesus.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given

and the government will be upon his shoulders

and he will be called

WONDERFUL COUNSELOR

MIGHTY GOD

EVERLASTING FATHER

PRINCE OF PEACE

and of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Identity, Living the Life

Cactus Flowers

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Let me first admit that flowering Cacti always make me giggle.

My husband once gave me a tiny flowering cactus for an anniversary gift, cheekily claiming that it was a much better picture of his love for me than a short-lived bouquet of greenhouse-grown shop-bought flowers.  He also told me his choice had nothing to do with the fact they were on special offer at the petrol station, or that he hadn’t remembered the date until after the florist was shut.

Flowering cacti make me smile because just a few days later I discovered that the bright pink flower – the living parable of my beloved’s love for me –  was in fact a dried straw flower, stuck onto the tiny baby cactus with a glue gun.
Apparently I’m not the only one to a have fallen for this trick! The dried flowers can even sometimes still open and close as humidity levels change, giving the impression they are alive.  It’s only when you turn them upside down that the big blob of glue gives the game away.

This picture speaks to me about choosing not to join in with the worldwide game of pretending to be something you’re not.  Cacti are amazing, they can survive the heat and drought and make use of the rain when it comes. It may take years and years for them to come to maturity, but when they do the flowers are spectacular, eye-catching and extraordinary. Every bit worth the wait.

I found out about the great flowering cactus scam while listening to a special edition of Gardeners’ Question Time on the radio.   It was then that I reached out, turned my love-cactus over and discovered the glue-blob of truth.  (Sometimes it takes a moment of revelation and the willingness to ask ourselves an uncomfortable question to make us realise where we’re faking it.)  After I’d recovered from the shock I listened to the rest of the program to see what I could do to get my cactus to produce a genuine flower.

According to Bob Flowerdew, the answer is to give it as much sun as you possibly can, and then wait… maybe for years…

Don’t settle for faking it.  You are a person who is meant to flower.  In your own way, and in your own time you will unfurl into a hand-designed, individual bloom. And that flower, whatever it looks like, will bring glory to the one who created it and has always known how it will be.

Until then, sit in the light.  Know that every ray of it you absorb will go into producing an incredible bloom.  Much better than a stuck on dried flower could ever be.

 

 

 

 

 

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

Three Bears’ Prayers

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I was in a prayer meeting one morning last week with a few other Mums from the girls’ school.  We pray for a lot of different things in that meeting, from strength for the teachers to protection from illness to air conditioners lasting for one more season. But at this point we’d been talking about how hard the middle school years can be and were praying together especially for the christian kids in year 7, 8 and 9.

A prayer was forming in my head along the lines of the kids surviving those years with their faith intact when next to me my friend Shannon started praying for something altogether bigger and more beautiful.  She prayed that each of those kids would grow to have their sense of identity, of self, so grounded in their identity in Christ that they would be immune to the pressure to be anyone or anything else.   Wow! Even as I write it again I can feel my faith stretching.  How great would that be?

As I sat there in the prayer meeting and felt my faith grow and expand to fit the bigger vision of Shannon’s prayer I thought to myself, ‘we just went up a size’.

It felt as if Shannon had prayed a big brother prayer to the one in my head.  Not one that was more important, but one that stretched my faith to the next size up.

And just in that moment, this postcard popped into my head, with the words:

‘Now go for the Daddy Bear Prayer’.

For once, I understood exactly what God was saying to me – Baby Bear has a little bowl, a little chair and a little bed; Mummy Bear’s things are middle-sized; but Daddy Bear’s bowl is huge, his chair is huge and his bed is huge – so, a Daddy Bear prayer must be huge.

Sometimes we need to get hold of our faith and pull at it until it fits something bigger.  Fortunately, faith is stretchy and it grows when it’s under tension like skin for a skin-graft.  So I asked myself, ‘what would be a huge, faith-stretching prayer to pray for our year 7-9s look like?

So, I let my faith spread out a bit and I prayed that they would be not only protected, with their identity rooted in Christ, but that they would become equipped and empassioned for mission, transforming the culture they live in, seeing their friends and teachers come to faith, changing their world. Not individual beaten-up survivors but a strong united victorious army.

Now that, for our little beleaguered bunch of Christian kids, is a faith-expanding prayer… I’m so going to keep on praying it.

The point of this postcard wasn’t to get you to pray for middle-schoolers (although please do, they need all they can get, bless them), but to ask you, ‘What are the three bears prayers for your situation?’

What’s the little prayer that is easiest to pray?

What’s the medium sized prayer that stretches out your faith?

And what’s the massive Daddy-Bear-Prayer that your faith only covers a corner of, but which puts it under the tension it needs to spread out and grow?

Write them down now, then get out your faith, give it a stretch and pray some big prayers into your situation, and into others’ situations.

Let’s release a volley of Daddy-Bear-prayers and see what our faithful God might do.