Purgatory

**Disclaimer: I tend to be pretty blunt in these posts, but even publishing these had me feeling a bit self-conscious. I've tried wherever possible to be as non-melodramatic as possible. This is just life's beauty and pain all mixed up :)**


We're waiting on change, but I don't know if it's coming
Waiting on change, but I don't know if it's coming
Brooke Fraser, New Years Eve


So things have been brighter recently, and then today hits like a huge grey storm cloud.

Within each moment I'm caught between a tantalising hope of what life could hold - normality; happiness; relationships; positivity - and the slow-burn dread that this is, if anything, as good as it's going to get.

I go about the weekend, and tasks are punctuated, sometimes by glimmers of hopefulness that this is just a bad day and actually everything's fine; sometimes by foreboding clouds that threaten me with my darkest fears and whisper that I'm not okay.

My mood has been a lot better of late, but today I found myself wondering yet again, whether it will simply be a case of gritting my teeth and waiting till the day of peace that lies beyond this world. In its bleakest form, waiting to die.

And thankfully no, I don't spend most or even many days at the moment feeling like that. But does anyone else out there sometimes feel like we're just killing time, trying to remain stable?

I have no desire to live like that, but sometimes it feels like the best option life is presenting. I swerve between the faith I've believed and the blurred realities I'm faced with. There should be transformation; but change is painfully slow and I continue to be the same old broken me. There should be hope and yet I no longer particularly know what I can hope for, other than paradise on the other side.

Ultimately, I wish I was different. My biggest fear is that I will remain in this purgatory for the whole of my life, sometimes tasting joy and beauty but always carrying these big old chains which occasionally plunge me into darkest night. Never being truly free.

And whilst my mood is okay at the moment, I hope you can see how easy it is to long for eternal life, which I believe promises joy, consistent peace, freedom for ever with my Father.

There is so much beauty out there to grasp. I want to live to chase it, to behold and marvel in it. There is so much to be seen and done. I want to squeeze every last drop out of life whilst I have it. And yet I know that I am just a thought, a chance moment away from dark shadows which cloud out beauty and hope and joy and replace all around me with one thing: fear. Dark; murky; soulless; joyless: an abyss.

I fear that I will spend my whole life balancing on this precipice called life, trying to keep it together, grasping for beauty around me, almost falling at so many points.

I fear that I will spend my whole life in fear.

Learning to trust

I was speaking to a good friend tonight and it made me realise something. 

She was talking about her future and spoke with a great faith that God would guide, do the unlikely and work wonders in her lifetime. 

Sitting opposite her I felt a poor reflection of what I saw before me. I realised that, partly without even noticing, my trust in God had diminished.  Growing fears and repeated disappointments have shrunk my view of Gods capabilities - or the things he will choose to do in my life. 

I still believe he loves me and is sorrowful in my suffering, but maybe I'm less convinced that he will actually do much about it. My view of God has gotten smaller. More limited. I find it easier to trust that he's got me saved for eternity, (and boy is that going to be great) but in the meantime (the next 60 years or so) I seem to have become less convinced that he will work the impossible for his glory and for my good. 

Do I believe God is powerful? Do I believe he gives good gifts? Yes, but. 

But. 

Yes, but there are a whole lot of people suffering on our planet. Yes, but God's power + God's love does not always = happy times in life. Just check out the early church and Paul's life for an example. Did he regret his decision to face suffering for Christ? No, I'm so sure that he didn't. But perhaps he was far better at trusting God for a reason for his suffering, than I am. 

Maybe my expectations are wrong? That's what I've been telling myself over the last while. The reason I feel pain and disappointment in current life situations is because I was expecting for the most part to be happy and healthy; things that I don't believe God guarantees us in this life. 

So as a response to this suffering and confusion I guess I've tried to reign in my expectations. Perhaps this has been a defence mechanism; but whatever the cause I realise that in limiting my expectations I have naturally limited my faith. I've subconsciously stopped expecting him to do amazing things, work wonders and miracles, and am less convinced that he has good plans for me. 

So, it's sad, but probably good to have realised this. It means I can pray about it, asking God to give me the courage to trust him again, to know and trust him more deeply and not on some level resent him for recent struggles. 

Only thing is that I'm not sure HOW to do this, whilst still managing my expectations. It's somewhat of a cliche to talk about the 'now and not yet' of the kingdom, but in all seriousness, how do people manage to hold these two things in tension?

It has become apparent that I have focussed on the 'not yet' and have limited my faith as a response to this. But I've missed a key tenet of this concept: 'not yet' doesn't mean God is impotent, insensitive or too busy to answer me. And it doesn't mean he will answer in the same way for every other area of my life and the lives of those around me. 

It's hard to pray for the healing of others, for miracles or good weather or guidance, when you're struggling with God being far away and seemingly unresponsive to suffering. 

How do I trust God to do the supernatural, whilst accepting my current circumstances and their difficulties, WITHOUT believing untruths about my father? I guess, as my friend suggested last night, it comes from spending time with him and truly getting to know him. My prayer is that I will become more attuned to him and his heart, so that whether I am dealing with seemingly unanswered prayers, or praying for miracles, I can do both and erstwhile still praise Him. 

Painfully / Honest

I sat in the bar, chatting with my sister. Being able to lay my heart and mind open without self-censorship was healing in itself. We were discussing how to go about talking honestly with people about our struggles.

My take on it is this: I have absolutely no desire to make people uncomfortable, and I know that there are appropriate and less appropriate times and ways to share stuff. But I cannot be part of communities where we are obliged to hide our brokenness. Maybe it was possible for me at other times, but it’s not right now. Pretending that everything’s fine is a lie, and one that’s too painful to carry on top of the other stuff. I would rather be without community than be part of one that is not real. 

During our conversation, we also talked about my frustrations with being ‘that person’ again, the one who’s not okay yet again, the one who’s still crying despite the fact that we prayed for her the last three weeks. 

The imposition. 

My sister said a hundred wise things that evening, and my memory is too poor to remember many of them. But one thing she said spoke to me so deeply. 

‘We are all broken. And that is okay’.

And it wasn’t said like, ‘that’s okay for now, but you should probably sort yourself out sometime soon’. It was from a place of complete acceptance and peace with all of our broken bits.

Some of you reading will, I imagine, feel mega-uncomfortable with all of this kind of talk. Emotions and vulnerability and being exposed etc.  But whether it’s a relative’s death or depression or a broken relationship or a secret regret, we all have our little broken bits.  Yes, mine are more obvious at the moment. They feel more like gaping sores than little scars. But that is okay. I’m still alive; I’m still valuable and loved. I still have worth and can still contribute, in the midst of and despite of my brokenness.

I’m not saying I want to be allowed to wail loudly during sermons. I don’t need people to ask me in-depth questions about the things I am struggling with. I’m just suggesting that there are things we can all do to make our communities places which welcome people who are not ‘sorted’, a space for people who are hurting as well as those who rejoice.  The Christian faith sums up perfectly the bittersweet paradox where sorrow and joy sit alongside one another. I would love for our communities to be the same.

With thanks to my little communities who accept me as I am :-) x

New Year, Old Me: a strategy for positivity

New Years Eve: so much excitement, joy, wondering about what 2015 will bring… 

Y’know what I want to say to the girl in those NYE photos?

“YOU’RE A FOOL! IT SUCKS!”

Okay, apologies, not the most cheery way to start a blog post (and my first of 2015 at that). But it is based on these two key points:

a)      I was really excited about a new year, making the most of every day, doing a new photo challenge (oops) and finishing 2014’s photo challenge ( …oops again). This was the year everything was going to be epic, full of growth and good things 

b) It took approximately three days for the new year’s high to wear off, and to wonder when January would be over. 

Again, I know this is all very negative. I try to be a positive person. I love the idea of cherishing life and living each day to the full. But when each day seems to bite you on the bum, it gets hard, y’know?

Pretty much most of 2015 so far, I’ve not been in a great place. I kind of forgot about hope and joy and all of those things, and a grey smog came down. I don’t know why it’s been like that. I think it’s partly the weather and the come-down from Christmas, some difficult conversations and the small fact that I have an anxiety disorder… but I’m not a fan of this life-hating me. 

I’m not prepared to drag myself through each day, from one anxious episode to the next, staring at the clock and looking forward to bed time. Life is too precious for that. 

This thing I’m fighting is a monster and a lot of days it feels like it’s winning. But I’m not going down without a fight. 

(Excuse the corny action-movie rhetoric – it’s true).

There’s a lot of stuff I can’t fix on my own on a Monday night, like why I get anxious or terror threats or the fact that it’s freezing and work is stressful.

But, there are little things I can do in the fight for hope – my Strategy for Positivity. 

There’s a disclaimer before I list them. I know from my own experience that all these little frivolous things will not make you feel okay if you are in a bad place. (That’s why I haven’t been able to write this blog for the last two weeks). 

But once you surface enough to find the energy to fight, like I appear to have done this evening, then little, frivolous things can bring light where gloom has set in. 

My personal list includes (in no particular order): Clearance Christmas chocolate; nail varnish colours; watching box sets (I would highly recommend New Girl); making a list of reasons to be positive/reasons to keep fighting; central heating; trying new carb-a-licious recipes (even if they don’t turn out well). 

And as for the real, less frivolous stuff? Talk to someone. Spend some time (once you’ve got the energy to) working out a plan of action, what help you might need and how to go about getting it. Get some exercise (even if it’s only on an exercise bike in front of the TV), get some sleep. If you’re a Christian, remind yourself (or get someone else to remind you) about the unshakeable hope you have in Jesus. And if you’re not a Christian… maybe now is a pretty good time to find out about that hope.

:-)

Here’s to a Happier January.

A long overdue letter to a friend

It’s been so long since I last wrote, I can barely remember what life was like at that point. The world now looks very different: different home, neighbourhood, job, office, flatmate, commute…. a lot of different.

As I write this now looking back on 3 months, it’s like looking out to a nearby mountain peak, with a small chasm between. I feel like I’ve been crossing rockier terrain to get to my new look-out. But it’s nice here. Just different. 

I’ve been reminded of things I thought were behind me; fear raises its head and looks for a new home. But I’ve also made stronger friendships; relationships built on lazy evenings watching television and drinking tea.

I’m convinced that there has been growth; I now use both my brain and my heart at work, which is a privilege (although sometimes doesn’t feel like it on a sleepy Friday morning). I feel as though God has brought me to exactly where I longed to be for the past year; and yet it all looks so different from how I imagined it.

There has, undeniably, been loss in different forms. Freedom. Friendship. And a godmother who so faithfully prayed and cared for me, remembering every single baptism anniversary and birthday, constant in faith and always believing that I could be, that I could manage, that I could achieve.

However, I’ve very slowly been learning, something that’s probably taken me far too long to grasp.

Life – any life – isn’t meant to be all roses and happiness and sunshine. Well, perhaps it is, the other side of death. But right here and now – the crap times aren’t just crap times that we must skip over, hurried through ‘til we get to the next good bit. The crap times are also life. And yes, sometimes it’s easier for me to say than others. 

But I’m slowly realising that I can’t wait until all the chains are broken and all the cancer patients are cured and all the rifts are healed before I embrace this thing called ‘life’.

I’m realising that ‘life’ is not just waiting for the happy bits, rallying against the crap and wondering why this storm is getting in the way of our day of sunshine.  Life is broken cracks as well as the sunny days. 

When I next feel low or anxious or fearful, I can assure you I won’t want to embrace life. But this is it, right now. In all its glory and beauty and sorrow and brokenness. This is what I’ve got.