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Nametapes

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At this time of year, as I prick my fingers sewing nametapes into the children’s clothes, I ineveitably come back to thinking of this story. It’s one of my favourites, so I thought I would post it again for those who didn’t see it the first time around, and for those who did, but need to hear it again..

This is how I remember it… like a page in the much-loved story book of the children’s early lives… a moment that God used to touch my heart.

It’s more than ten years since my firstborn started school, but I still remember the day when I was battling through the pile of freshly-bought school uniform, dutifully sewing in the little white woven name tapes, and my four year old came to ask me what I was doing.

Now, I’ve read that the average four year old asks around 200 questions a day, and mine was maybe even a little above average in this department, so I cast around for an answer that would pre-empt any further questions and maybe even send him back to his lego:

“I’m sewing in little tapes with your name on them, to show everyone that these clothes belong to you; and then no-one can take them away from you and they can’t get lost.”

It must have been a good answer, because he just looked very thoughtfully at me and then disappeared upstairs to his room again.

A minute later though, he reappeared, dragging his much beloved (and slightly gruesome) Blue-Blanky. This worn and grubby cot blanket had been at his side constantly for the past three years (apart from one heart-rending moment in a motorway service station and some late-night under-the-cover-of-darkness trips through the washing machine…) and was a great source of comfort to him, and occasional stress to me!

“Sew my name on Blue-Blanky Mummy,” he said earnestly, “then everyone will know it’s mine, and no-one can say it’s not and it can never ever be lost, or taken away”

So I did.

About a week later I was reading Ephesians when this verse caught a hold of my heart:

“Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory” Ephesians 1: 13-14 NIV

I suddenly realised that the Father has done the equivalent of sewing a woven nametape onto my very heart and soul – he has marked me with a seal.

Isn’t that marvellous?… isn’t it wonderful?  The Holy Spirit is the irrevokable royal seal on your life that declares to the earth and to the heavens for ever and ever:  “This soul is MINE”.

When I look at this picture, I hear God whispering:

“Everyone will know you are mine, no-one can say you are not, and you can never ever be lost, or taken away”

I wonder if you do too?

cashtape

Uncategorized

Once upon a time…

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Storytelling can damage your health.

I realised this a week ago, in the shower, often the scene of epiphany moments for me.  I was getting ready for a lunchtime flight back to Cyprus and while I was washing my hair I let my mind wander off for a bit..

A few moments later, my heart pounding and feeling slightly sick, I realised that I had been telling myself a very stressful story about a security guard at the airport deciding my ipad was dodgy and trying to take it away, my older daughter melting down and the six year old pulling one of her disappearing acts…

In the space of a few minutes I’d gone from feeling fairly relaxed about my flight to having butterflies in my stomach and a racing pulse.

And that was my epiphany:  I was getting stressed about something that was entirely imaginary.  My brain was making up a story and yet my emotions were reacting as if the story was real and true.

I’ve always known that stories are powerful.

A story can explain something difficult to grasp beautifully simply, it can lodge in your mind and keep whispering its message for years to come.  The news that millions are suffering can pass us by, but the story of one family, or one child can awaken the compassion that leads to action.

And I’m a story-phile: I love, reading, writing, collecting and telling them.  But usually I think about the postive ways a story can influence someone. In my shower-epiphany I realised that these  little stories I tell myself, the ‘what-would happen-if’ stories, are making me stressed when I don’t need to be, and that’s really not good.

Of course it’s not just the what-would-happen-if stories that I need to take control of and force into the shape of the truth.  The even more dangerous ones are harder to spot..

Those stories that start ‘he thinks….’ or ‘she thinks’ and never have a happy ending. When someone does something that hurts or offends me, my brains tends to freewheel into storytelling… “He did that because he thinks I’m not important”,  “She did that because last week I forgot to phone and she thinks that I am not a good friend and…”, “Because I did that, he is going to feel really bad and then…”

Experience tells me that those lines of thought provoke a load of negative feelings- sometimes the really powerful kind that leave you in the bottom of a hole for a few days.  I wonder if some of you reading this also sometimes end up expending a huge amount of energy thinking about, worrying and feeling bad about something which you wrote yourself and isn’t even true.

Of course, as well as making us feel bad and messing up our relationships with people around us, all these stories also occupy us very nicely and distract us from the many things that God would like us to be thinking and caring and feeling and doing something about.

Or some other stories that need rewriting (particularly just now): more or less any that begin ‘that person doesn’t deserve my compassion because…’ or  ‘they don’t deserve the freedom, safety, stability or shelter that I have because….’

All stories that need rewriting

I’ve decided that this week’s challenge is to stop reacting to those imaginary tales and to learn to stop telling myself them.

So, here’s my plan:

To ask God to show me every time I’m telling myself a story.

To ask him to show me the truth – what the real story is.

Finally to spend some time thinking about this:

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.  2 Corinthians 10:5

 

Dealing with Change, Living the Life

All about change

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August seems like the perfect time to send a holiday postcard, so here’s one from the week my family and I spent traveling through Shropshire, Cheshire and the West Midlands on a canal boat.

Water doesn’t like to slope, so when the great engineers who built the canal systems encountered a landscape that needed to be climbed, they built amazing water-filled lifts called locks. Each lock is a chamber with heavy gates at each end which can be filled up or emptied of water so that the boat can rise up or lower down to the level of the next stretch of canal.

To fill the lock you use a turning handle to wind up heavy paddles in the gate which let water into (or out of) the chamber at a tremendous rate creating a huge amount of noise and splash. We quite enjoy working the locks but there’s no denying that it’s really hard going! Pushing the gates open against the weight of the water, closing them again, winding up the paddles, waiting for ages for the lock to fill then pushing the gates at the other end open is slow and heavy work, but it’s amazing to witness the extraordinary power of all that water moving from one place to another.

And it’s necessary: without these powerful level-changers it would be impossible to travel through the ups and downs of the British countryside.

I’ve written before about the seasons we go through in life, being a child, being a parent, being a parent of children who have grown up, living in one place or another, working, retirement…

Often it’s the shifts between seasons that are the hardest to deal with. The parts where you’ve said goodbye to what was, but haven’t really stepped into what is next. Those times, like the minutes that the boat is in the lock, can be turbulent, a bit scary and slow in passing.

The locks reminded me this week that change, even good change, like getting married, having a child or starting a new job, can be really hard work.
Like traveling through a lock, there is a cost to change which is measured in effort and in unsettling turbulence but there is also a sense something incredibly powerful is going on somewhere below the surface. The other hung it’s reminded me is that change is also really necessary if you want to continue on with your journey.

I often describe myself as being change-intolerant, a natural settler. But I also really want to keep pressing onwards towards what’s ahead and like water, life doesn’t slope, so there are bound to be locks ahead.

The challenge to me is to willingly step into times of change, to accept the turbulence and scariness with faith, because I’ve realized that even if the only way forward is through locks, that’s the way I want to go.

Remind me of that when I’m complaining about it 🙂

Surviving Tough Times

Full of holes

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There have been times this past week when I’ve felt rather like a colander, full of holes.

It’s all very well standing before God and asking him to fill me up again when I feel like a bucket. Even if I’ve run completely dry and empty I can gather together the faith that the Holy Spirit is good at filling me up with his presence, peace and power.

But this week it was harder. We’ve been camping at our church stream’s Bible camp and although the teaching, worship and fellowship were great, the weather was a bit challenging! Putting up an enormous tent in driving rain was not ideal, lying awake and shivering in our sleeping bags at 3 am was a bit wearing, but when rain gave way to gales, and the marquee housing the prayer space that I and others had worked hard to put together literally blew away, it was quite a struggle to keep hold of my sense of humour!

We salvaged stuff and rebuilt the space somewhere else of course, but I was left feeling just like this picture – like tiredness, stress and disappointment had knocked out lots and lots of little holes. And asking God to fill me felt a bit hopeless. I mean, how do you fill a colander?

His answer was simple.

Call on me more.
I can fill you faster than you can leak.
Even on colander-days.

Actually I suspect that I’m a bit colanderish on more days than I realise. I get the impression that God is not as surprised by my state of leakiness as I am.

So if you’re feeling full of holes today, ask God to fill you to overflowing. Don’t fall for the lie that there isn’t really any point because you’re a bit broken and full of holes. He is more than able to fill you faster than you can leak.

*sorry to all those who have noticed I’ve been a bit less regular posting over the past few weeks! Canal boating is a great get-away-from-it-all holiday, but low on opportunities for internet connection! Back on dry land again soon! Ellie x

Living the Life

Lists, lists, lists

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It’s official – I am drowning in a sea of lists… In the past week I’ve flown to England (sorry there was no postcard last week!) and am now getting ready for camping with the family and preparing my son for a trip to Africa. Packing for a six week trip in a country which has unpredictable weather always stresses me out a bit, and I always get it wrong (too many pairs of shorts, not enough cardigans..) and the camping/vaccinations/visas are pushing me slightly over the edge 🙂
One way I try to keep that stress under control is to write lists.. Lots and lots and lots of lists.
I have lists of clothes, of medications, of jobs I have to do before I leave, of items that need a charger, things I need to tell my husband, emails I need to write and pictures I want to paint. All of them scribbled on the backs of till receipts and envelopes, mostly never to be read again. Lists are slightly taking over my life.

My husband, who has a much more orderly mind than mine, just can’t understand why I write so many lists (especially as I tend not to read them again). But I find the process of writing them really helpful for three reasons:

Firstly, it helps me to prioritise; to focus on those things that need doing.

Secondly, it changes my perspective, and changes my heart (so that I calm down and panic less!)

Thirdly, it actually helps me to remember, to bring to the front of my mind all the things I need to remember.

The lists which are collecting on the fridge and in the bottom of my handbag and back pages of my sketchbooks remind me of a list I’ve been writing recently, and which is important for all the reasons above: a thanks list.

A friend challenged me a while ago to write a list of everything I have to be thankful to God for. I’ve been working on it for a while and as you can imagine it’s turning into something of an epic.

Strangely, just like I don’t really realise how many jobs there are to do until I start writing the list, so I didn’t realise just how many reasons I have to be thankful to God until I started to write them down.

More importantly, I can feel it changing my heart. Writing the never-ending list is pushing me deeper and deeper into a sense of ‘I have’ instead of ‘I need’. And even though I’m really only at the beginning of this particular journey, I’m experiencing a wonderful unfolding revelation of what it means to say that God is my provider.

So this week’s postcard is simply an encouragement to write lists:
a list of prayers you’ve seen answered
a list of all the people you love
of all the good books you’ve read
all the ways God has provided for you financially
all the positive influences in your life
all the spiritual blessings that are yours in Christ
all the material things you take for granted
all the necessities and all the luxuries
all the songs you love
all the paintings that have lifted your heart
all the things that make you smile
and all the best moments in your life that you can remember…*

*if you have any more ideas for sub-lists of things to be thankful for, put them in the comments!

Living the Life

What does Freedom look like?

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I’ve been wondering this week what freedom looks like.  I’m painting a piece for a prayer room around the theme of finding freedom, so the question has been bubbling away all week!  One picture that comes to my mind is this hot air balloon, breaking free from the ropes that held it down and heading into a vast unexplored sky.

Freedom is finally becoming all that you were always meant to be.

The balloon is beautiful.  It is a joy to watch it become slowly inflated with warm air, to see it grow out into its shape, to watch it as it eventually strains against the ropes that tether it to the ground.

At each stage it is wonderful, holding all the potential to become truly itself, to fulfill its purpose, to be all it can be.

And yet, it is not until it is released from the ties that hold it down that it is able to be truly itself, to do what it was designed for.

I listened to a talk recently by one of my favourite authors and speakers, NT Wright.  In it he mentioned about how when people have been sick for a long time we sometimes say that they are ‘a shadow of their former self’.   But, he says, to a follower of Jesus you can say ‘you are only a shadow of your future self, because as you become more like Jesus in the way you think, feel and behave, the more free to be truly yourself you are.

I love that idea so much.  Just like this balloon, being slowly filled and then being released one rope at a time – through your choices you are transformed into his likeness, through his Spirit you are filled with power and as you are cut free from the things of the world that hinder you, you will change,  becoming more like yourself than you have ever been before.

So this postcard is an encouragement, firstly not to lose hope when the journey seems long, but secondly, not to become too accustomed to life on the ground.

Strain towards what is ahead.

Don’t fall for the lie that it’s better to stay safe and uninflated on the ground.  Don’t fall for the lie that you are all that you will ever be. And don’t fall for the lie that some chains just can’t be broken.

You are only a shadow of your future self.

You are designed to fly.

hotairballoonfeat

For Your Journal:

If you’re filled, but not yet flying, maybe you’re not quite free.  Even one rope can have the power to keep you close to the ground.  Take some time to ask God to show you if there are any ‘ropes’ in your life that he wants you to deal with..  Then ask him what it will take to deal with them.  If you need to, go and find someone you trust who can pray with you.

Living the Life

Umbrella.

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I seem to spend a lot of June and July under an umbrella.  Not because it’s raining, but because my fair, freckly, northern-European skin makes me fundamentally unsuited to the Mediterranean sun.  So,  a shade-junkie, I dart about between patches of coolness, clutching a bottle of water and wearing a big hat.

Because I appreciate the shade so much, I love these verses from Psalm 121:

The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
 the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

Sometimes, even a big hat isn’t quite enough.  The first time I saw someone carrying an umbrella like this in brilliant sunshine, however, I thought it looked very odd indeed.  Where I come from umbrellas are sold in the autumn when skies are ominously grey and then blow inside out on arctic railway station platforms.  In my mind, unless it’s enormous and anchored to a lump of concrete outside a cafe,  an umbrella is about keeping dry.

But in a Cyprus summer it’s not uncommon to see an umbrella on a blazing hot day, carried by someone who needs a portable pool of respite from the harsh sun.

God is speaking to me today about the shade he offers, about his promise to protect me day in and day out, about his constant presence over, around and next to me.

Firstly, like this umbrella, his shade is portable. I don’t have to dart from prayer meeting to church meeting, from quiet time to worship CD to experience his protection, his presence.  I can carry it with me all the time.  There is truth in the words that he is always with me, and his intention is that I should experience it.

Secondly, God’s protection is at work in season and out of season.  It may be that you are used to experiencing God’s help in one area of your life, but it has simply never occured to you to ask for it in another situation.  Perhaps you haven’t seen that an umbrella can be as helpful in sunshine as it is in rain.

Lastly, I also notice that there is room under this shelter for more than one person.  One of the great advantages of an umbrella is that it moves with you.  You can take it into places where it is needed and then invite others to walk alongside you for a while.  As they walk with you, they too can experience the shelter of God’s love, the nearness of his presence.  Today’s postcard is an encouragement to me to invite others to walk beside me, to learn to let other people step into the presence of God that I carry with me.  I’ll have to let you know how I get on with learning how to do that.

God is always with us. But it is possible to carry an umbrella in all kinds of weather, and yet never put it up, never stand underneath it and benefit from its shelter.  Perhaps today the Holy Spirit is calling you to step under his protection, to stop trying to brave it out by yourself and to ask for some help.

Whatever God is saying you today, I hope that you will enjoy the shade of his presence as you draw close to him.

Living the Life

Diving for Treasure

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“Just throw them in one more time Mummy, pleeeease!”

I’m on holiday, so I spent the morning throwing diving toys into the pool over and over again. ‘Treasure’ for my six year old mermaid to retrieve from the bottom of the deep.

After a while I observed a technique developing. I would throw all the toys in at once, and instead of diving in immediately, my sweet sun-bleached mermaid would stand on the edge of the pool and wait for a while, looking.

Of course I asked her what the pause was for,
“Mummy, you have to wait for water to stop being wiggly before you can see where the treasure is… then you can dive for it.”

The water of my soul has been a bit stirred up lately. A load of things have had my mind busy. not bad things on the whole, but there has been a lot of end-of-term activity, a lot of summer things that need planning and a few slightly stressful jobs lurking at the back of my in-tray, and the water has become churned up. The treasure that I’ve been looking for has been difficult to see, like colorful smudges on the bottom of the pool.
so I heard God speak to me today – you really need to let the water settle.
I went back to the pool later, when the mermaid had gone inside to eat watermelon and watch High School Musical for the hundredth time, and it was still. Every toy was as visible as if it were already in my hand.

Stillness matters.

But for me, it doesn’t seem to be enough to just say ‘be still, my soul’. I actually have to do something to pull all those stirrers-up out of the water or at least to stop them thrashing about so much… So I did what I know how to do, I sat down and wrote a list of the things that help me find stillness.

Going for a walk, or a long swim
Listening to certain kinds of music
Writing a list of all the things that are stressing me, and then praying about each one.
Reminding myself that stillness isn’t a reward for those who are super good, or super spiritual, and that it is not, therefore, out out of my reach.

Living the Life

Haybales and farewells

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It’s June, and around here that’s the season of rising temperatures, goodbye parties and little round haystacks.

The haystacks sit rolled up in fields inside and around the city, straw-yellow rolls on a landscape of parched stubble.  The swaying grass has been cut, rolled up and now waits patiently in the sun for the day when it will be piled up precariously on a back of a truck and taken away.

I’ve been thinking about these haystacks a lot as I’ve watched friends pack up their homes and say their goodbyes this week. They too are experiencing the end of a season and wondering what the next one will be like.  Their lives have been cut down and rolled up, and they sit now in this field, in the odd period of in-betweeness, waiting, and saying goodbye.

One day it will be my turn.  For now, my heart is aching for the friendships that will be missed – empty fields in the landscape of my life.

The haybales that I’m seeing everywhere mark the end of a season, it’s ok, right even, to be sad that the grass no longer ripples at the touch of the wind, green from the winter rains or white from the spring sunshine.  It’s ok to be sad, but it’s also a time of year to be hopeful.

Because God’s word for us at this time of year, for the leavers and the left-behinds, is this: the goodness is not lost.

The goodness is not lost.

The grass is cut and rolled up because it’s made it to the end of its season.  If it were to stay in the field it would dry out, and the goodness stored up in it during this season would be lost forever.  But the haybale keeps the grass inside it fresh.  The goodness and growth is locked in so that it can be of use in a new season.

All that you’ve learned, all that you’ve grown, all the love and grace and hope that you have received and then given out to others… all that is not lost.  Somehow it’s just rolled up and put away for another season.

I’m sure I don’t completely understand this picture. But even as the cumulative grief of friends leaving is catching at my heart, so I can feel the hope in these haybales.  God knows what he is doing – the goodness will not be lost.

FullSizeRender

Living the Life

Sailboats and Rowboats

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I’ll start with a confession…  I wasn’t going to post this week, I’m so tired that I was going to give myself some grace and not write anything, have a day off..

But then all day this thought that I read about in someone else’s blog* has been in my head, and it’s ministered to me so much and so deeply that I thought I’d share it with you, just in case you needed to hear it too…

“You are designed to be a sail boat, not a rowing boat”

I love this so much.  I love that all the power to do anything God asks me to do comes from him.  I love that I was never meant to serve him out of my own strength, out of my own effort.

My job is to put up the sail, his job is to provide the wind –  so simple, and so true.

No-one who has ever sailed a boat would want to row it across the lake instead.  No-one who has felt the exhilaration of catching the wind and feeling a boat suddenly accelerate across the water would prefer to slowly drag heavy oars.  It’s not that sailing is effortless, but it is less effort than rowing, and so much faster and so much more fun!

I know this.

And yet when I am tired, when life seems overwhelming, when everything is a bit too much – that’s when I start rowing.

True.

Honestly, how sad is it that I pronounce myself too tired to put up a sail and then pick up the oars?  That when I have no strength, that’s when I start trying to do things in my own strength? I’m smiling as I write this, partly because it is just that ridiculous and partly because I can hear the theme of what God has been saying to me for weeks echoing in the words.  I’m clearly a slow learner.

When you realise your hands are empty, when you come to the end of yourself – that’s a good place, that’s when he can begin.

So this is my new piece of advice to myself:

Whatever you do, don’t try to row.

Grab hold of whatever strength you have left, and use it – to walk into his presence and to put up your sail.

sailboat

And if you find there’s no wind today, no power to help you move forwards, don’t panic – it just means that today is a day to be still. To be still and know that you are you and God is God.

and that’s OK.

*This postcard was inspired by a great blog I follow written by theologian, teacher and asker-of-awkward-questions, Ian Paul… I painted the picture straight away and put it on the wall because I knew it was such an important bit of life to me –  you can read the original here.

Words and Pictures to help you hear from God