Category: Prayer

A Social Experiment

I didn’t grow up in a church that ever really took much notice of the church calendar, apart from Easter and Christmas, so the season of Lent didn’t really come on to my radar until my early 20s. There was a period of time where it was fashionable in my social circle to give something up for Lent, and me being your typical Enneagram 3, I naturally wanted to prove that I could excel at self-discipline, so I gave up listening to music in my car for 6 weeks (which was harder than you would think).

I think there may have been another year where I gave up chocolate – but since I could still eat lollies, it really didn’t move me to any spiritual epiphanies. As a side note, fasting in general has never been easy/possible for me (blood sugar issues) – evidenced by the one time I decided to do a fruit and veggie fast for seven days, but after day 1, I was in such a hangry mess that I had convinced myself that hot chips, potato fritters, and popcorn were all technically veggies – but I digress.

This year, for various reasons, the Lenten season took shape and meaning for me, and I wanted to give up something that would be a real sacrifice. So, I gave up social media. For six weeks. Now, I’m not a huge poster on social, but I really am (was) an avid consumer. My guess is that I would pick up my phone at least every half hour to have a wee scroll through people’s updates and stories. I have no shame in admitting I was addicted and have been ever since I joined up about 10 years ago.

I got about three weeks into my social hiatus, and consciously thought that nothing much had changed – except my head was a bit quieter. Then, about a month in, Caleb and I were watching a movie, and when we got to the end, he was like, “Babe, I can’t believe you actually watched a whole movie!” And I was like, “Yeah – I guess I’ve just been feeling really present in my life lately.” I figured that after a couple of years, all the mindfulness, deep breathing, and sitting in nature had finally started helping me be more engaged in my life. But then the penny dropped.

Throughout the past six weeks, I have been able to be IN my life like no other time I can remember. I feel content, present, engaged, still and peaceful. Don’t get me wrong, I still pick up my phone a lot – checking my email, reading my Google feed etc, but a massive shift has taken place.

You see, I’ve discovered that when I’m constantly transplanting myself from my life to vicariously engage in other people’s lives, it’s just not possible to stay present in my own.

I’ve got a 100 different reasons/excuses why it would be fine, even beneficial, for me to go back to my previous social use – half of my friends and all of my family live across the other side of the world, I need the mental break in the middle of my brain-heavy workday, if I don’t, I run the risk of becoming socially irrelevant, etc. However, I have made the decision that as valid as these reasons may be, they are too high a price to pay for my peace.

Now that I have experienced what it feels like to fully inhabit my life, I am willing to forgo the benefits of Insta to keep it.

I know that someone reading this right now is thinking, “Aha, but you’re on social media right now!” – thank you, Sherlock, yes I am. I download the apps on Saturday morning, delete them on Saturday night, and give myself a window for posting and engaging with my blog. And it’s really working for me.

So yeah, this is not a big sell that everyone should follow my lead, or even a humble-brag about my impressive self-restraint – but I just wanted to let you know that what three years of trying mindfulness, breathwork, and solitude didn’t quite achieve, six weeks without social media, did.

Love you friends,

Deb xx

Beautiful Things

I rugged myself up with an embarrassing amount of layers to sit outside on the deck for some air and a wee pray this afternoon. It was a brisk 7 degrees (Celsius – don’t worry my Fahrenheit friends, I’m not that hardcore), and as I sat there looking at the sky and the trees, and breathed in the gloriously fresh air, an old Gungor song that I used to love came to mind. I started singing quietly:

You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us

Then I found the song online, and as I listened, tears sprung to my eyes as I felt an overwhelming surge of hope.

This time in humanity could be called many things – stressful, political, fraught, volatile, wearying…but I reckon ‘dust’ does a pretty good job of describing how things feel right about now. Like so many things have blown up and burnt down, and we’re sitting exhausted in the ashes, just waiting to see what else is going to catch fire.

And even in my own life, there’s definitely what could be summed-up as a dusty vibe going on (and that’s not just referring to the situation happening in the master bathroom). I find myself in a ‘what next’, survival frame of mind, on the defensive against the ‘rona, and the conspiracy theorists, and emails that let me know that my kiddo’s gotta quarantine from preschool, thereby stealing the few precious hours I had to work in peace this week.

And for many of you, it’s even worse. It’s family members who no longer feel able communicate in a civil manner with each other, it’s church families split down the centre, it’s marriages and families pushed to the edge with the added stress of loss of income or childcare.

And then there’s the weight of global warming, natural disasters, food shortage in poorer nations, and on and on it goes. It gets so heavy, and it’s so easy to find myself in a downward spiral of thinking that nothing’s ever going to get better.

But if I believe in redemption – which I really do, it’s my favourite word of all time – there is so much hope. Not that everything will turn out the way that I hoped and planned, but that out of this very dusty, very broken, very barren and wasted place, the Redeemer has plans to create a masterpiece.

The messy state of the world right now is not overwhelming or too much for Jesus (although heart-breaking, I’m sure) – He’s in amongst it all, like a faithful gardener, planting exquisitely beautiful seeds in the fertiliser made from our broken dreams.

You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us.

Love you friends,
Deb xx

A Battle Weary Soldier

There’s something about the past several years that has caused a callus to form around my heart; I miss the me that was more trusting, less cynical, and softer. I miss the me that expected the best from strangers, and was surprised at, rather than resigned to rudeness or aggression.

In the naivety of my youth, I carried in my heart such hope. My rose-tinted view of the future gave me something to look forward to, even in the gloomiest of seasons. I was going to marry a MOG (man-of-God – insert eye-roll here), become a minor, or dare I hope, major, Christian celebrity, travel regularly, and have a general air of importance.

In reality, I married a very good man, had two really schnoopsie, but delightful kiddos, and ended up getting a counselling degree and writing for a self-awareness app – a profoundly fulfilling job. But somewhere in the midst of this existence, which I may add is genuinely better than anything I could have dreamed up for myself, the reality of life has seeped in.

The kind of reality that is so often ignored in Pentecostalism, where the message presented seems to suggest that if you just plug your ears and hum a worship song loudly, the pain of life will eventually disappear.

The kind of reality that comes home to roost when your husband gets impaled when you’re seven weeks pregnant. Or when you watch a beloved family member struggle with debilitating mental illness for years and years and years on end. Or when you finally fall pregnant after several miscarriages only to get a beautiful baby boy, but with a side of chronic migraine that doesn’t go away. That kind of reality.

And added to this, along with general pandemic related stressors, I have felt a genuine angst about people of faith throughout this season. There was a time when I would assume that Sister Mildred, who always sits in the third row, believed pretty much the same things that I did regarding the outworking of faith and the Kingdom of God. But if this virus has highlighted anything to me, it’s that there is a massive disparity in the way that I understand what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and the way that some others understand it.

I say this not to point the finger at any particular points of theology, doctrine, or faith, but more to highlight the despair and confusion it has wrought within me to see certain people that profess faith, acting in a way that I just cannot align with my understanding of the way of Jesus.

All of these things, plus some I’m sure, have caused a defensive shell to form around my heart – it’s a spikey and sad fence, designed to keep me safe, but all it seems to have done is eat at the glow within me.

And I want it gone. I want the slightly naïve girl back – but perhaps with a side more wisdom.

I don’t know how to do this. But I do sense the soft presence of Jesus starting to warm my heart, and I am convinced that he is the key.  So, I’ll sit, and wait, and accept his warming presence, and pray that my battle-hardened shell would slowly begin to get absorbed by love.

Deb xx

The Weight of the World

It’s a stressful time to be alive. There’s no doubt about it. Being someone that absorbs the emotional atmosphere around me, I find my body buzzing with tension in the air almost everywhere I go. I feel it on the roads where it seems like everyone’s temper is on a tripwire, I feel it in the supermarket where I rarely see anyone attempting to smize above their mask any longer, and I most certainly feel it online.

The litany of bad and contentious news is overwhelming; COVID has worsened with new and more severe strains, Afghanistan is crumbling, Haiti is suffering, the Pacific Northwest of the USA is burning-up and drying-up simultaneously, and the climate report is projecting even worse decay than was earlier realised. It’s heavy.

I think one of the things that I feel the most at this time, is a collective sense of powerlessness. We want COVID to dissipate, but it’s gotten worse. We want people to do the right thing, but we have no power to change anyone else’s mind. We want large corporations to start showing genuine social responsibility, but we’re ants in a giants’ world. We want the world to be taken care of – fed, loved, sheltered, and safe – but we have trouble just keeping our house plants alive.

It is this sense of powerlessness that can erode our sense of purpose and meaning in life. It feeds off our energy, and drains our emotional reserves. It’s like the totality of my resources is a wee krill, and the problems of the world are a blue whale – completely swallowing all I have to give.

When Delta came barging into our lives recently, I immediately recognised the feelings of angst in my body. My cells remember this feeling well. But this time, I decided, something has to be different. I’m not going to get through the other side of this never-ending story with my nervous system in shreds like I did last time.

You see, even though we feel so powerless, we’re actually not. We have more power than we realise. We have the power to make very practical decisions to ensure we preserve our emotional and mental health. Some of the things I have been implementing are:
– Muting friends that post a lot of information that I find stressful.
– Limiting my intake of news.
– Deciding that it’s not worth getting angry at people at the store not wearing a mask – it’s not going to affect change, and it’s only hurting me.
– Practising mindfulness – making set times throughout my daily routine where I intentionally focus on my five senses and being in the moment.
– Taking action. Doing what little things I can to make a difference to those around me – I may not be able to lobby corporate America, or house a thousand Afghan refugees in my spare room – but I can go out of my way to be kind to the checkout guy.

I actually think it’s been really important to remember what God has asked me to do: live in a way that exhibits the heart of Jesus in every little daily moment. He’s not asking me to singlehandedly fix the climate, or change the government, or carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. He’s only asking me to represent who He is in the limited sphere of my life right here where I live.

So I’m choosing to zoom in. I will be aware of what’s going on in the world, I will pray, and I will do what little I can to help, but I will mainly focus on the handful of people and situations that I do have influence over.

Here’s a little mantra I wrote myself for when the state of the world is getting me down, and maybe it will help you too:

I am just one person.
I have limits, and today I accept and honour those limits.
Even though the world is in chaos, it is not my responsibility to feel the collective turmoil.
And when I do, I will pray these feelings into my hands, and blow them into the wind, where they can be picked up by the One who has the heart that can hold them.
I am just one person.
And as one person, I have the power to love those around me, exercise kindness, patience, understanding and compassion.
I have the power to choose my actions and reactions today, and that is all that I can do.
I release myself from the obligation to do the impossible and I empower myself to do the possible.
I will stay in my lane, listen to my Guide, put one foot in front of the other, and let Him carry my backpack.

Love you friends, we’re going to be okay.
Deb xx

Deconstruction Discomfort

I usually have a reasonable idea of what I’m about to write when I start a blog – but today, I don’t have any anecdotes or well-formed thoughts, just the seed of a thought that’s been sitting with me for a number of months. So here goes.

I, like many of you, have over the past 15 years or so, been on a journey of ‘deconstruction’ (which, sidenote, is a word I’m so ready to be done with…perhaps we could give it a new name, something German sounding like ‘schnarffleffen’) – a process where I have never once questioned Jesus or God, but have unpacked the version of Jesus or God that was presented to me in my formative years.

Over this time, I have pendulumed between more liberal and orthodox views, and in recent years, I feel like I’ve reconstructed my faith in a lot of ways, and have come to a quite settled theological worldview. It is from this place that I am observing a wing of, what I can only call, ex-Christian spirituality. It’s a whole bevy of people that have come up through evangelicalism and have found that reality and their experiences don’t line up with the party line that they were taught. And as a result of this, they have adopted a spirituality that includes aspects of many religions, as well as still thinking Jesus is great.

I actually think I have a fairly open view of God in a lot of ways, in fact some would call me a downright liberal. Do I think that God is found in much more than the four walls of the church and between the two covers of the bible? Absolutely. Do I think that people encounter Jesus all the time but don’t know that it’s him? Yes. Would I be surprised to discover people from other religions and faiths having a relationship with Christ in way that they would describe differently to ‘Christianity’? Not at all. Am I okay with people referring to God as ‘her’? Sure.

But I think the whole ‘all spirituality is good spirituality’ thing sits a little uncomfortably with me for a number of reasons. Firstly, it all just seems so untethered. There’s no anchor. To me, Jesus is always the anchor – he’s the reference point, the bottom line, the litmus test. Does this mean that the teachings of Buddha or Confucius don’t hold some truth? Absolutely not. But everything gets run through the filter of Jesus.

Another thing that I find uncomfortable is the very important distinction between ‘God lives in me’ and ‘I am part-God’; a subtle but very important difference. In ex-Christian spirituality, I have observed a thought that essentially says, ‘I am Divine’. A lot of this is probably a knee-jerk reaction to the teachings of the church that have wrongly hammered into us that we’re all ground-dwelling worms that feed on the excrement of pond-scum. I guess the way that I think of it, is that I am not essentially ‘good’, but I am irrevocably loved and valued. I was created with love, care and intention, but I am also, let’s face it, almost incurably selfish. A lot of the ‘good’ things I do are at heart a mixture of wanting to follow the example of Jesus, and because I have learned that doing good things pays really good dividends…in friendships, reciprocity and good feelings. I am deeply loved and held, and I am also not Jesus.

My heart isn’t to throw anyone under the bus; I recognise that the undertaking of a deconstruction journey often results from the wounds inflicted by our church experiences and is deeply intertwined with our views of self. I also believe that such a journey is a necessary one. I guess what I’m trying to say here, is that I believe it is possible to deconstruct (schnarffleffen) our faith, while still remaining tethered to Jesus, and fully reliant on the pure goodness that only comes from him.

I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this one!!

Love Deb x

Losing my Rag

I am writing for work at the moment on the theme of ‘Mother Guilt’ – something from which, thankfully, I have always considered that I do not suffer too readily. I have always kind of figured that my kiddos will pick up a mix of good and bad from my parenting (hopefully more good than bad), and that they will have their own issues to process and work through as they grow up; issues which, as they process them, will make them more empathetic, resilient, and grounded human beings.

I already see large parts of my personality in Judah, my oldest. The insistence on knowing what ‘the plan’ is for any given day, the motivation to do just about anything for a lolly, and the inability to let things go – or the ability to persevere no matter what, depending on which way you look at it. I also see less of my personality, but more of my quirks in my little Mason – who knew that chewing those little bits of cheek/inside lip (what are those things called?!) is an inherited trait?

Although I don’t fret a lot about how my mothering is going to stuff up my kids’ lives, today I found myself huddled in the corner of the kitchen, sobbing, while waiting for the kettle to boil. You see, with the ongoing ups and downs of chronic health issues, I will sometimes find myself roaring at the kids over something reasonably minor. I know it gives them a fright – and you know what? It often gives me a fright too. I don’t often realise that my body is depleted and my margins are paper thin, until I hear just one more little argument about that stupid fidget spinner.

Because I’m a big believer in the importance of one’s intentions, I can so easily brush off my infractions by explaining to my inner-critic that I never meant to upset anyone, and I’m only edgy because I feel like crap. But explain that to a couple of kiddos who never know which version of their mum they’re going to get today…or a husband, for that matter.

I guess I find myself at this juncture where I feel a sense of responsibility to not lose my rag at my kids, and not be a grumpy presence in my home, coupled with this sense of futility and the thought that it’s just so bloody unfair that I have to try and practice self-control, when I just want to sit in the corner and wallow in how gross I feel.

That’s the thing though, isn’t it? Living in the way that Jesus demonstrated doesn’t come with caveats as to how one might be feeling at the time. He doesn’t command us to love our neighbour, only when we’re feeling good. He doesn’t teach us to put others first, but don’t worry about it if you’re facing stuff.

I don’t for a second think he’s standing there with a big stick, reprimanding me with a stern look on his face. No. I get the sense that he’s gotten down to my eye-level, with compassion in his eyes, and an invitation to lean on him, and borrow his love and grace for the people that I live with. My margins may be non-existent, but his are everlasting.

So friends, if you, like me, are facing struggles of some sort (and who isn’t?), and it feels like you don’t have anything but the scum of your personality to share with those around you, perhaps you will join me in resting in the love of Jesus, and allowing his love to permeate your frailness, and drift through you to your loved ones.

Love you friends,

Deb x

COVID Ramblings…

Scraps of paper

Before the world went nutso grando, I was all set to embark on the next glorious phase of my life; Mason was enrolled in daycare three mornings a week, I had taken on 17 hours a week of writing for Thinkladder (which BTW is excellent, and free, and you should probs download ASAP), Judah was at school every day, and I was enjoying working at my local Starbucks several mornings a week, sipping my coffee and being child-free and all profesh.

Now, my dreams of freedom have imploded on themselves, and I have not one, but TWO little boys at home, and I have to try and navigate 17 hours of writing while forcing my reticent-Reginald to do his schoolwork. All that to say, you can see why it’s been a hot minute since I wrote anything…

But here we are, and while I’ve had a few thoughts over the past six weeks, there are none that I can be bothered putting into one cohesive blog, so let me treat you to my COVID ramblings – a mishmash of the infancy of several of my musings of late:

I really don’t like online church. Please hear me out – I am fully committed to always being a part of the church, I used to work for the church and would like to again one day, but one thing that I have had significant struggle with is the performance aspect of church; that haunting feeling that we’re putting on a show to appease aspects of people’s spirituality, without asking them to engage in a way pushes them toward discomfort and spiritual growth. Online church feels like the epitome of performance church. I know pastors are just trying to do their best, and do what they can at this time – this is in no way a criticism of these beautiful people that are just doing their best – it is, however, a series of questions for the church as a whole…what is the church really meant to look like? When we remove the queen from the chessboard (Sunday Services), how does the game get played in a functional and healthy way? How are we reaching, engaging and discipling people in an authentic and meaningful way outside of Sunday? Has Sunday become a giant crutch, bearing more of the load than it was ever meant to carry?

Another of my COVID musings is to do with facemasks…or rather the way they smell. Or perhaps, more correctly, the way my breathe smells in one. It took me about three weeks of shopping in a face mask to discover that the funny (not bad, just a bit odd) smell in my face mask wasn’t the mask, or even my breath…it was my NOSE! Did you know your nose has a smell? I can’t think about it too much or it makes me queasy. And if it’s made you queasy too, my humble apologies.

And along with thoughts on sinus scents and the church as a gathering, I’ve been giving some thought to my personal faith journey also. I have been on a journey of deconstruction of my faith for around 10 or more years. It was a necessary journey, but funnily enough, I’ve almost come full circle in my conclusions of so many things regarding faith, but I kind of needed to unpack everything to understand properly how it goes back together. When the pandemic started getting serious, it really struck me that in times of crisis, it really forces you to face the pointy end of your faith. Questions like, ‘Where am I going when I die?’, and ‘Do I really trust God with my life?’ are shoved in one’s face, and there remains in that moment not much room for ethereal armchair theologising. I have, along with my love of puzzles and desire to rollerblade, discovered the more simple, anchoring faith of my childhood that puts my hand in the hand of Jesus.

So there you go friends, there’s some thoughts for ya. Caleb always tells me that my mind is a scary place, so I hope you enjoyed a few minutes holiday in Debsville (since you can’t go anywhere else right now). I genuinely hope that you’re doing okay, and please feel free to message me if you’d like someone to pray for you.

Love you friends,

Deb xx

Pandemic Panic

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Frankly, being in the middle of a pandemic is really bizarre. I vacillate between, ‘It’s totally fine, it’s just the flu, we’re all going to be fine,” to envisioning life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I begin chastising myself that we didn’t buy a 5-acre self-sustaining plot instead of this suburban dwelling where, if we had to live off the land, we’d probably survive three days on dead grass and the scraps of decaying afternoon snacks left behind by the boys.

I haven’t succumbed to the bunker mentality…yet, but I must admit, while I haven’t stockpiled the loo paper, I would be lying if I said I didn’t add a few extra cans of beans and some hand sanitiser to this week’s shopping list (if we do end up having to live off what’s in our cupboards, let’s just say the meals are going to get less and less yummy by the day).

I experience a level of generalised anxiety on a day-to-day basis, due to varying factors, and this situation has definitely turned the volume up, as I’m sure it has for many of you. And while I can remind myself that this is unlikely to take my family out, and we’ll survive the economic fallout as we have before, the reality is that a worse case scenario is always a possibility.

What amazes me in situations like this, is how it highlights where my trust truly lies. It first came to my attention five years ago when we first moved to the States; I was thrown off-balance by realising that my safety-net of a familiar government that would take care of me if I was in hospital or we lost our income, was no longer underneath me. I was forced to intentionally put my days in the hands of God – a place where I had previously thought they were.

Once again, I find myself feeling off-balance. The comfort of relying on the conveniences and necessities that I do everyday suddenly seems less certain. The assumption that all is well, is, well, not so well.

I like to picture it like sonar – I go through life sending out pings and getting my equilibrium from hearing the reassuring returning sounds from the places I expect things to be. When all is as I expect it to be, I swim through life with a sense of safety and certainty. But in times this like, it becomes all too clear that my requirement for peace relies heavily on external things – the certainty of health, ready access to food and utilities, a guaranteed paycheck.

I hear an invitation in the midst of all this uncertainty. It’s an invitation to surrender. An invitation to relinquish control – the control which feels so important for my survival, but in reality, is only an illusion. An invitation to remember that a certain quality or length of life on earth has never been promised. An invitation to remember that my hope lies in eternity. An invitation to remember that Jesus sits right beside me as I type this, and his love and presence is as close as it ever was. An invitation to accept the unknown.

So, if you’re cool-as-a-cucumber and feeling not a worry, good for you. But if you’re a red-hot mess quivering in your apocalypse shelter, maybe, just maybe, something really beautiful can come out of this for you. Maybe this is the start of a peace you never knew was possible. So why not join me as I pray, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Love you friends,

Deb x

The Importance of being Important

(Originally published on Sheology.co)

Important blog

From as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be important – like celebrity grade important. The best way to achieve this, of course, was to become a popstar; and what better way to understand the inner workings of the popstar world than being the president of your very own New Kids on the Block fan club? (Full disclosure, there were only two of us in the club, and yes, I took the attendance register each meeting).

I know that being famous is probably every second kid’s dream, but for me it signified something deeper and more painful. I really did think that I needed to do something to achieve significance. Despite my parents doing the very best that they could, I never felt very important in my childhood years, and this led me to believe that if I could only minimise any negative feedback by being as good as possible, and maximise any positive feedback by doing what I thought others would praise, then finally I would feel like I was noteworthy.

The desire to be important became a major driver in so much of what I ended up doing. As a teenager and in my early-20s I had a group of friends that were like family, and we spent years together doing youth ministry. Every six months or so, a new hobby would take a hold of the group, and a bunch of people would suddenly be into touch-rugby, tennis, Settlers of Catan, 500, etc. In an effort to tick all the right boxes I ended up doing things that, upon reflection, were just desperate attempts to feel significant; things like, running, for example. Marathon running had become the flavour of the day, and despite my janky knees and near-death feelings when I run, I started training for a race (I made it to 10ks before sanity finally took hold). I also bought a half-set of ladies’ golf clubs and starting ‘playing’ golf, purchased a tennis racket despite my obvious lack of talent in this area, joined a gym and became an aerobics instructor, feigned an interest in music that I really didn’t like, and no matter how awkward, I also tried to wrangle invites to social events, because being seen as significant mattered that much to me.

On top of this, I became a pro at recognising what spiritual attributes would be most lauded in the church I was part of. Read the bible in year? Sure, I’ll read it four years in a row. Go to the early morning prayer meeting (at an hour so ungodly I don’t think even Jesus was up yet)? I’ll be there smiling and radiant. Attend church morning and night? I wouldn’t skip it for anything (except perhaps a ‘both ends went in the night’ situation).

As I left school, my drive for significance followed me everywhere I went. When I was at bible college, I had a part-time job in the office at our church preschool. It was the perfect job for me. I loved every minute of it; my cosy corner office, the best boss in the whole world, admin tasks that filled my love of order, treasured co-workers, and the glorious background noise of playing children, made even better by the fact I was not responsible for a single one of them or their poopy nappies. But when I finished bible college and was asked to be the Worship Pastor, I decided that it really would be best if I went full-time at the church, despite the fact I could easily have filled the role in three days per week. Because it was surely more important to be in full-time ministry. I have thought about that job and regretted that decision so much more than I can convey.

Fast-forward through a wedding, a counselling degree, and a change of cities, I found myself pregnant, and determined that I would work from home once the baby arrived. Except he arrived with health difficulties and literally couldn’t nap without being bounced…which meant that my hands were only ever free for long enough to stuff some food in my face, or push the pram for endless hours around the streets of Christchurch.

Then, once we had emigrated to the States, I developed chronic migraine during my second pregnancy, which continues to this day, and it meant that I spent the better part of two years in bed, yelling at my kids, using the TV as a babysitter, and trying somehow to convey to my friends that if I went out for an evening, I would pay for it by spending the next two weeks bedridden.

It was over this five-year period that my drive for significance began to unravel. It’s really difficult to prove your worth when your hands are constantly occupied by a screaming infant, or when you’re a useless lump of pain languishing in a dark room with an ice pack strapped to your head. It’s not easy to use your body to signify to the world at large that you’re disciplined with food and exercise, when you take a drug that gives you the gift of an extra 20lbs that doesn’t budge.

I will never forget one night, lying in my bed in between sessions of throwing up and howling at the moon, racked with pain and feeling desperately low, when I suddenly became aware of the unmistakable presence of love in the room. I was, by all objective measures, the most useless I’d ever been since I was a toddler, but the richness of love, the colour of scarlet, filled my room, and for the first time, I began to understand that my value is not based on my performance.

It took some really, really hard life circumstances for me to begin to understand this message. And I wish I could say that it’s a fait accompli, lesson learned, doneskies. But I can bet you that I’ll be 95, living in a rest-home, and finding a way to let Ethel and Bob know that I can still make it onto the loo by myself. The deepest and longest held beliefs are the most likely to be lifelong lessons, but I am so relieved to find myself somewhat freed from this strife for importance. My current job, for example, is writing for a counselling app, where every day, thousands of people read the words I have written, but nobody knows it’s me that wrote them – and it brings me so much joy!

I am slowly learning that my innate value cannot be judged, or measured, or earned, or rewarded. My worth was a gift that was sown into the fabric of my being when I was created.

Love you friends,

Deb x

PS. The irony of writing a published blog about wanting to be important is not lost on me, so you know, feel free to comment, or share, or wait…..no, maybe not….

What if Freedom isn’t all it’s Cracked up to be?

Product-ConstraintsI have been eating up the work of John Mark Comer and Mark Sayers lately. They have a Podcast called, ‘This Cultural Moment’ (I HIGHLY recommend) in which they look at what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus in our current cultural climate. In the episode I listened to this morning (at 6.00am while hiking up our local mountain – which has to be mentioned, because I forgot to take a selfie) they mention that for human flourishing, three ‘tanks’ need to be full; freedom – as in freedom of choice, individuality, expression etc., meaning, and community. I’m sure one could argue for other tanks, like food for example, but at the risk of indulging my contrarian nature, I shall digress.

They go on to say that in our current Western climate, the freedom ‘tank’ is full to overflowing, and as a result, the ‘meaning’ and ‘community’ tanks are suffering. This got me thinking about how true I have found this to be in my own life. Parenting is a prime example; it is, as I often say, the very worst and the very best. In this framework, you could say that this is because while the freedom ‘tank’ is totally plundered by my tiny baboons, the loss is well made-up by the massive deposit in the ‘meaning’ tank…but you can’t have the meaning, without the loss of freedom.

Another example of this is prayer; I have found a liturgy of prayer to be extremely meaningful and peace-making in my life, however I feel the restraint of sticking with it and am legit tempted to grab my phone at regular intervals. My free time is, by my own choice, being used towards a discipline from which I reap substantial benefits, but it takes the loss of small freedoms in order to achieve the reward of meaning.

The point that I take away from all of this, is the reminder that the constraints we face in life can actually be for our benefit. I know that sounds like some form of heresy given the world in which we live – a world in which unlimited personal freedom is Mecca. The problem is that we so often can’t enjoy the beauty and simplicity that God has provided for in this life, unless we have something with which to contrast it. I have never enjoyed sitting in my back yard, breathing the clean air and watching the trees so much as since I have battled with chronic illness. The restraint of physical symptoms has allowed me to find meaning and beauty in things I once took for granted.

Creativity is another such area which flourishes under constraints. We have a buddy that wrote and produced one of the most creative, intricate and peaceful albums I have ever heard using just his voice and one old electric guitar. The limitation of instrumentation brought his creativity to a remarkable place. Similarly (although not comparing my cooking to the aforementioned album), the elimination of grains, sugar and carbs from my diet due to health, has caused me to get really creative with inventing meals that are within the confines of my diet, but still taste delicious…(well, I think they’re delicious, however getting Caleb to try one of my keto ‘treats’ is like pulling teeth – and I gave Judah some of my keto ice-cream once, to which he responded, “Mum…is this an actual treat?”)

So, let’s be encouraged today friends, that whatever constraints and limitations we find around our lives, it’s possible, just possible, that our lives wouldn’t actually be as meaningful without them.

Love you,

Deb x