a big fat 3 good things

The checkout assistant waited whilst I rummaged through my handbag for my purse. Not surly, gum-chewing impatience, just a quiet, all-the-time-in-the-world patience. As I inserted the credit card in the machine she said ‘You do like butterflies and turquoise don’t you?’ It hadn't even occurred to me that I was all matchy, matchy and I was genuinely impressed with her attentiveness and observation.

This weekend just gone we visited our son and daughter in law for the last time before they move south, taking them and our grandchild-to-be an extra 2.5 hours away. I have mixed feelings about them being so far away but I know they have heard and prayed about the God-whispers calling them into a new chapter of their lives. (And should you southerners not look after our grandchild there will be wigs on the green.)

We attended morning service at the church where D has been working for the past few years. We have been there a few times before and in different contexts. The prompt to recount these things is strong. It feels good to be thankful, but I know in tiredness, vulnerability, and motorway traffic jams, gratefulness will easily evaporate.

*****

26 years ago we attended just the one service in the same church when D was a baby himself. We stayed with the minister and his wife. She observed me with him and suggested I might have depression. She was the first person to ever mention it. Then I had no idea, but now I am grateful to her more than she will know. Young motherhood was one of those pressure points which made the depression rise to the surface. It is not until much more recently that I have accepted depression as part of who I am, not just another sorry episode of failure (except during the tired and vulnerable moments.)

Thankful she noticed.

Much more recently we went to another service at the church as a family, a rare free Sunday when we could all be in the same place with all our grown up children. The speaker was talking about times when money was tight for him and his family, when their children were growing up. Hand-me-down and severely price-slashed winter coats, familiar to ours in the years when we were still a clergy family. 

At the end of the service D turned to me and said to me ‘You gave up a lot so you could spend time with us when we were little and we always had everything we needed’ (Rough translation ‘almighty cock ups notwithstanding I think you did an alright job’ - I’ll take the compliment). I know that whichever way motherhood had been done, stay at home or working, the way would have been littered with mistakes on all sides.

Thankful he noticed.

And on Sunday just gone within those same old stone walls we sang these words:

You are my rock in times of trouble

You lift me up when I fall down

All through the storm, Your love is the anchor

My hope is in You alone

I was overwhelmed with thankfulness at what God has done with, for and through us over the years. In spite of all of us really.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us” 1 Samuel 7:12

*****

This morning as I left for work a butterfly was gently flexing its wings on the wall by the front door. And then in the revoltingly overcrowded, standing room only train my nose was pressed up against the blouse of the woman in front (unobtrusive evidence and truly honestly not a selfie)

last (5 minute friday)

Joining with the writing flash mob that is Five Minute Friday at the home of the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. #FMFparty

Five minutes on last

One of the perks of being a clergy family especially when working in a small church is that wedding invites tend to come around quite frequently.  And the opportunity to share each part of the a happy couple’s day.

This perk has something of a double edge when it comes to the seating plan for the wedding breakfast because the clergy family are usually quite far removed in the pecking order from immediate family. Sometimes you are planned to be sat beside the people that the family are never quite sure who to put them next to (and yes I own up here, sorry Rev Pete that’s what we did at our wedding to you and your lovely wife.)

This was another one such wedding. We were seated on the periphery of the plan with our youngish children. Whilst waiting (as you do at weddings in general) our kids had cleaned out the favour bags  and were getting high on e-numbers.

The buffet had been organised by an Auntie who was enthusiastic but had little catering knowledge.  So most of the food was snarfed by strapping young men at the front of the queue, close relatives of the groom and you’ve guessed it, by the time the last got to the table there were essentially crumbs left. The bride was truly mortified for a while...

But that said, it made it a memorable day for different reasons and as if the tale of the reception itself were not enough, one of the children had to vomit in a hurry on the way home in the car (pay back for super speedy ingestion of sugar earlier.) The nearest vessel to hand was the box that had earlier carried the bridal party’s corsages (yep clergy tidy up after wedding services too!)

Thankfully real Grace comes in equal measure no matter where we are in the queue. 

hockey sticks and that comparison habit

A number of people have written recently about the realities of struggles, mess and doubts of daily walking with Jesus. I'm adding mine here because I am weary from carrying it around for so long and it is a major element of the clutter part of the blog title. It often happens without warning and in unexpected places...

*************

We went to a church meeting last week. It was a good meeting. I had led worship and the songs seemed to fit well with what was being said and with what was prayed. Good things were shared. Yet I still came home feeling rattled.

Why?

Actually that thing when people share prayer answers or pray earnestly for someone else was happening, so good yes? Except when there is a tiny spark of comparison in there and I start to shrink and shrivel because:

• I have similar needs that are not being answered in the same way
• I don’t pray quite so earnestly for something, so maybe that’s why I'm not getting answers for that thing
• I have reluctance to share a particular struggle with the rest of the church and feel guilty for it 

So by the time we got home my inner critic had already made a précis of these thoughts and was furiously scribbling a checklist on a clipboard:

• Rubbish at prayer - check
• Not praying enough – check
• Don't get the answers that others get – check
• Don't share enough with others – check

I also had to phone someone when I got home (the sort of person it is not necessarily good to talk to when I’m already feeling a tad vulnerable.)  So now these thoughts had been through several cycles and negativism had been reduced to the lowest common denominator:

Not

Good

Enough

Eventually I did sit down and scrawl my heart out to my heavenly Father. All the negative thoughts accumulated in that short space of time pencilled onto paper. Warts and all. As I wrote gradually the weight of invalidation lifted and a healthier perspective came back into focus.

Some time ago I either heard a speaker or read a writer who referred to a hockey stick to illustrate how the Psalmist pours out His heart to God, plunging low with his feelings and doubts. Having spent time in God’s presence the Psalmists feelings are turned around by God at the point of meeting in the crook of the J shape of the hockey stick. Not the world's greatest illustration but it has stuck with me (maybe because a major part of my school sporting legacy was to be dumped from the school hockey team..)

photo credit: chelmsfordblue

Confessions

It would be great to avoid the palaver of even getting into this position of inner-self-beating in the first place over small-things-that-become-big-things because it is difficult and more than a little depressing

A lifetime of thought patterns learned in childhood, slowly germinated along the way and deep-rooted

For the times when prayer is not the first port of call in the refuge of the storm and thoughts are given permission to fester because that is easier, especially if a raw nerve has been trodden upon

Consoling the hurt I feel, feeding it and giving it sympathy rather than acknowledging it and handing over the burden to my heavenly Father

For the times in the past where this cycle has been overwhelming  and has multiplied into the beating of a thousand tiny hockey sticks in the mind, developing into full-blown periods of depression

Grief for these times where happiness has been completely crushed and overwhelmed

All consuming seasons where the comparison habit has unwittingly leaked sharp fragments into the tender hearts of my own children

That is great sadness

But never ever venturing down this unhealthy route of absorbing negative comparisons again is highly unlikely. Many lessons have taught me that I know that these warped perspectives are truly and fully met head on in the very act of praying, wrestling or handing over before God, however we do this part. Something then cracks open, allowing the divine exchange of His love to take place in our hearts. I do not know how, but I know that it does, figuratively speaking between the heel and the toe of the hockey stick.  

In willing hearts I believe God is in the business of breaking the cycle of the comparison habit wherever and however it manifests itself. And He in His grace still chooses to use me to do His work while the work is in progress. The very antithesis of what comparison tries to tell us.

Processing thoughts when others lay their weakness cards on the table gives us two reactional choices: 

• to listen and hear them out, walk away from comparison and enter into the mess, with grace
• invoke the comparison, inwardly roll our eyes, tut and say to ourselves 'thank goodness I'm not like that', ignoring the fact that THAT with maybe a different face is looking right back at us eyeball to eyeball

The stupid comparison habit is out on the table, or in this case out on the field. I am more than happy to keep knocking seven bells out of it with a hockey stick when it's needed. And on days when I'm not so successful at stopping those comparisons carousing I suspect there will be a team of you who have my back and will be waiting on the benches ready to help me out with your hockey sticks.

It's game.



Is this something you struggle with?

Are you able to nip comparison and negative thoughts in the bud before they start running riot on the field?