I’ve booked my flights for going to South Africa.
All 6 of them (3 there, 3 back). Gulp.
S. is back at work, and we had a really positive meeting with the centre’s trustees last night.
I’m behind on my random acts of kindness. Confused? Go to The Art of Joy website, or follow us on Twitter.
This scribbling comes at a poignant time, as this is my last week where I can say I’m in my early 20s. Next Sunday I’ll be an official ¼ of a century old.
Gasp!
My brother and sister have been telling me for a few years now that I’m ‘soooo embarrassing’ and ‘old’. And the following conversation with the son of my Aberdeen pastor when he caught me writing my age on a form at Imagine last year is ingrained into my memory for all eternity:
‘Are you really twenty-four?’ he said.
‘Yes‘ I answered (slightly amused)
‘Laura Anne, you’re getting OLD!’ he exclaimed.
Now I know most of my readers are older than me so please bear with me on this one. I’m not saying that 25 is old by any stretch of the imagination. But 25 has been an age I used as a ‘milestone’ in my younger years for certain plans I had for my life.
Like, I never thought I’d be living ‘at home’ at this age. To be fair, I have become a property owner, I just don’t live there for a variety of reasons (I miss you Aberdeen flat….)
I also had planned to be pregnant with my first child by now. Ok, so I’ve kinda already done that one, but due to circumstances at the time and a poorly made decision that pregnancy never went through to the end.
I planned to be married at 25. Again, had the chance of this, didn’t take up on the offer. That one was a good decision. But I’ve felt this pressure to be married very quickly in most of the relationships I’ve been in since becoming a follower of Jesus. I have since realised that the pressure on girls (particularly Christian girls) to be married by 25 is ridiculous. As I grow older and wiser I realise just how much I’m not ready to be in that kind of relationship just yet (if ever).
I planned to be changing the world in my job. Ok, I’m getting there a little bit, but it’s only on a part-time basis. I long to have a more steady working lifestyle, and a regular wage again. I know that’s not important, but at the same time it’s frustrating not to be able to see my family or do fun things with friends because I’m ‘relatively poor’.
I also look young for my age. I’m forever being mistaken for being in my late teens. People are always so shocked when I tell them how old I am. Sometimes that’s funny, but other times that can be very frustrating if you feel you are being patronised.
It doesn’t help that I have an incredibly child-like way of looking at the world. I don’t want to let go of that, ever. I love being amused at the little things in life, and I like tigger-bouncing.
And if you see me on a Sunday morning it’s not uncommon to see me pretending to be a monster, or running hand-in-hand with a 4 year old and hiding behind cars, doors and dustbins or wearing quirky accessories for the fun of it.
My sister and brother (you know, the ones who say I’m old) also continually sigh with exasperation or laugh at my frequent acts of silliness that they attribute to being like Phoebe in Friends.
But people can see all of that, and think that I’m immature as a result.
Actually, I’ve been through a great deal in my 25 years which has given me a lot of wisdom. If you’ll kindly notice and look past that silly exterior, that wisdom has stood me in great stead with the work I do with the 2 pregnancy crisis charities (where the vast majority of my fellow staff & volunteers are decades older than me) and in previous jobs where I was often training or supervising staff who were older than myself.
Age is no sign of maturity.
I’ve met many 15 year olds who are more mature than a lot of 21 year olds. I look back at my 16 year old self, and think that I was a lot more mature back then than I am now.
But most of all, I think I thought I’d have life ‘sorted‘ by now.
I don’t.
Wisdom tells me that on this earth, I’ll never have it sorted. As you go through life, new challenges will come.
You just gotta take them as they do, learning along the way.
And it’s ok to be silly. And we can learn a lot from being child-like. Not childish. Child-like. When I was told this story by my friends the other day, I was reminded of that even more. (Thanks for constantly challenging and inspiring us Miss S!)
HT: Our Creative Community Spring Challenge
I’m part of Our Creative Community. I joined in the hope that it would inspire me to be more disciplined about taking steps down a more creative path, because I’m a big scaredy cat really. Russ (I think?) challenged us to write about our experience of the creative process by answering the following questions. So here we go…(gulp)
What ignites that flame inside you to create?
There are 2 things. One is when I’m in a coffee shop on my own with my phone, pen and notebook. I’ll be sitting drinking a caramel hot chocolate, and suddenly my head is clear and I have millions of ideas, visions, dreams that gain such clarity. And I get excited.
The other place is when I’m outside or surrounded by a culture that is different to my own. I love to people watch and just find myself with open eyes, open ears and hear those whispers so much clearer than when I’m living a sleepy & frantic life.
What sparks that passion inside you?
I think energy. When I get an idea, I get this huge burst of energy, and it’s when I share it and talk about it with other people that I’ll get even more excited. I literally bounce.
No seriously. I really do!
How do you channel your creativity into a finished product?
And here comes my downfall. I suck at working on my own. I didn’t happen so much when I was younger, I had a lot of drive and much more discipline. But I think people’s negativity has sometimes hurt me, and now I get discouraged much more easily. I’m afraid of failure – I’d either want to do something wonderful or not do it all. To channel my creativity I need accountability – people to challenge me, to encourage me, to reassure me.
I wish that wasn’t the case, but at the moment it is.
I think that’s why I’ve loved helping organise The Art of Joy because it’s been so collaborative.
What do you do when you struggle to create?
I tend to take a break from it, and usually if I do, I come back refreshed and with a renewed energy and drive. I also like to gather a few like-minded people so we can keep each other going. If I’m going to ‘let someone down’ by not doing something then I’m more likely to follow through a project to the finish.
How do you celebrate your wins?
With chocolate brownie cheesecake
I’m from Scotland, and we tend not to win a lot of things. And I guess there is a British culture of ‘reservedness’ and ‘humility’ – we don’t like to big ourselves up, and as a result we don’t do very good at celebrating our own successes.
Do you enjoy your creative process?
Most of the time, yes. I love it. But there are days in which it can feel like it’s lost all of it’s fun, and I’m doing it on autopilot. I like to use all my senses in the creative process. A lot of myself goes into it, and it brings me to a very vulnerable place.
How do you share your creative elements with others?
Day 1: Be encouraging! Be proactive in complimenting the people that you meet today.
This was waaay more difficult than I thought it would be.
Firstly, I woke up with my Mum creeping into my room to check I wasn’t dead or something (she’d last seen me when I went up to ‘the attic’ when we got in yesterday teatime and was concerned because I hadn’t gone to church, which is out of character for me). I jumped out my skin and cussed in fright and realised I’d slept through 2 alarms.
Not a good start to the day.
So I wasn’t in the best of moods as I made the journey to work.
I did say thank you to the bus driver. I managed not to yell at any fellow road users. But I forgot to compliment the woman in the café where I picked up my usual ‘soup and bagel – to take away’, and one of our volunteers. And they are both so amazing!!
I did however manage to compliment some of the people I interacted with today. Finding things that I could encourage and compliment them on was not difficult, because it was all true. It’s working up the courage to say it, because I’m scared of sounding trite, insincere or worried they’ll think I’m winding them up or just a total lunatic.
Did any of you guys take some proactive complimenting/encouraging action today? What were your experiences?
Check into The Art of Joy twitter feed from Midnight (GMT) to see what the next prompt is!
So today is the first day of Love Out Loud fortnight.
Our smallgroup is kind of extending it with our venture The Art of Joy, and I’m so excited about what we’re doing. In fact I can’t believe that it’s really happening when it wasn’t that long ago we were sitting in around our friends’ table with some leftover wallpaper and felt pens dreaming big and not really sure what was going to become reality.
We’ve set up a facebook group which so far has 83 members. Wow! Some of you are LFS readers, so thank you so much! I love that there are joy bringers stemming from our wee venture in Edinburgh that are as far flung as Alabama and Australia! It’s so encouraging to see your names on the members list, and hopefully you can join in by spreading the joy.
Please, please consider checking into our Twitter profile each day where one of us (probably me) will give an idea for some ‘random acts of kindness’ you can do. It doesn’t matter where you live, it would lovely if we could all spread a little joy where we are.
Maybe from there you can link to each day’s prompt on your blog, your own Twitter profile or by texting or e-mailing friends?
We’d also LOVE if you could pray for us. One of our group has been ill last week, and as you know I’ve been having a rough time too. I am much better now though not 100%. I’m finding myself tiring easily and my digestive system is acting confused. I’ve got my latest ‘drug’ to try out (which comes in syringe form…), which I was supposed to start last week, but of course couldn’t get to the chemist to pick it up, or the medical centre to get it administered because I was in such a state.
Although on the funny side of last week, my friends have shown me some of the texts I sent while I was unwell. I think they can all be filed under ‘What planet is she on?‘ as most of them make not a blind bit of sense.
It’s good to be able to hold a conversation again
My older brother was asking me today about the whole Obama/bowling/special olympics thing. If you don’t know about it I’m not going to repeat it. My brother had heard about it, and was recounting the tale to another member of our family, and asked me if I knew exactly what had been said and what I thought.
My thoughts?
I was a little angry, very disappointed and saddened by such flippancy and ignorance.
You see, I’ve been blessed to have grown up with a couple of kids (now adults) who lived on my Nana’s street who had a chromosome abnormality. My younger brother and our cousin has Asperger’s Syndrome. I was a member of the Girl Guide Association for 13 years which is probably one of the most inclusive organisations (if you include Scouts as part of it!! lol) anyone could ever be a part of (the church could learn a lot there) and for 4 years I worked caring and supporting adults with learning disabilities.
Two people can articulate better than me a little bit about this…
1. Is a letter written by a lady called Melissa (RT: Pete for pointing me towards this post)
2. Is an interview with John C. McGinley (Dr Cox from Scrubs) on the Bonnie Hunt show I came across by accident the other week.
Please educate yourselves and open your hearts.
If you’d like to know how, just ask.
Well, it made me smile anyway…
Friday morning, driving to work. Stop at traffic lights on Lothian Road. In front of me crosses…
One tall, burly man wearing:
-White vest
-White boxer-type cotton-y underpants
-Child sized pink ballet tutu
-Fairy wings (complete with glittery/sparkly bits)
-Some kind of tiara thing (or it might have been bunny ears)
…not a sight I often see on a Friday morning. I suspect the dude was on a Stag weekend!
On the way home from work, I decided to walk back to my car and enjoy the sunshine (mistake: it took me 40 mins because walking still hurts a bit!). There’s a noise behind me, so I turn round…
One guy in his early 20s:
-with his eyes closed
-holding iPod
-singing loudly, passionately and completely out of tune.
He was walking behind me for a good 5 minutes and he was singing the whole way, completely oblivious to the people trying to walk past him as they made their way home from work. I don’t know if he realised he was singing out loud or not. But it made me smile.
Even if tunefulness did get a bit on my nerves because it made it difficult to try and work out what song he was singing along too!
Day of moments was completed by coming downstairs to discover that Brother #2 is visiting. That’s my stepbrother who is 18 mths my senior. Haven’t seen him since September 08 (or was it July 08?) but he greeted me by trying to trip me up and then kicked me as I tried to get past him out of the kitchen.
Some things clearly don’t change. lol
However, he’s sleeping in the room next to mine in the ‘attic’ and it’s freaking me out that I can hear someone else moving around, because I’m not used to people being up here.
AND he left the toilet seat up. Grrr.
Some of my friends and I have often marvelled at the sheer number of words we have in Scotland to describe being drunk (please excuse spelling)
Wasted = Drunk
Trousered = Drunk
Bleutered = Drunk
Bevvied up = Drunk
Plastered = Drunk
Pished = Drunk
Steamin’ = Drunk
Inebriated = Drunk
Smashed = Drunk
Slashed = Drunk
Hammered = Drunk
I’m sure there are others we use that I’ve forgotten (and I know not all of those are purely used in Scotland).
It does say a lot about our culture, as does the fact that alcohol related illness is one of the biggest drains on the NHS resources.
One thing both our friends over the Irish Sea and us have in common is our love of drink. For the Irish it’s Guinness, for the Scots it’s whisky (not whiskey). We’re apparently known for it throughout the world too…
An old work colleague of mine told me a story from when he spent a year at a college in the US a few years back. Apparently this college had a specialist sports programme, and if you got 12 demerits you got chucked out. So one night he and his friend (both under 21) got hammered. When they came back onto the campus, they needed to ‘go see Mike’ and so both of them started peeing on a tree in the middle of the courtyard. Along comes a big dude – another student – who happens to be a wrestler.
You can’t do that man. That’s not right.
Of course, the 2 of them being drunk decided to give the dude some lip back, and a fight ensued. Others joined in. The campus got trashed.
They got something insane like 43 demerits. They thought, oops, we’re outta here as they got brought up before the Dean.
The Dean however, looked at them, gave them a long talk about why such behaviour could not be tolerated, but finished with:
We’re not going to expel you and just going to give you 3 demerit points. We understand that being drunk and fighting is just part of your culture, and therefore you couldn’t help it.
Um, yeah?! Wow. Good to know. So next time I get drunk and start a mass riot*, I know what my defense will be.
Sorry, I can’t help it. I’m Scottish. You trying to mess with my culture?!
I’ve abducted my Mum’s laptop as have had to take residence on the sofa so I’m downstairs.
I really don’t like being off work. Or being stuck in the house against my will (why is that when you have choice to do something it’s fine, but if that same thing is forced upon you it feels unbearable?) Spirits are low, but I do know things will be better in a few days. I’m hoping that this will be the last time I feel like this for a very long time.
On Monday Love out Loud fortnight begins. I’m hoping as the good ol’ painkillers kick in and take effect I’ll be able to get a list of random acts of kindness for each day right up until April 13th at least! These will be posted on Art of Joy Twitter feed each day. I will be using some of the great ideas some of you have given me. Thank you!!
I have had one discovery of encouragement that will sound strange though, apparently I’m less likely to need pain medication in childbirth because I’m so used to the pain. I’m all for using pain relief in childbirth, only if I ever was in a giving birth situation I confess that I’m terrified about being given…
1. Entonox (gas and air) because it can make you throw up
2. Morphine because it can make you throw up
3. A caeserian section, because afterwards they give you morphine and yes, you might throw up.
Is it any wonder people are FOREVER telling me I should get prayer for this ridiculous phobia I have? Lol. We were actually asked to voice out some of our fears about going to South Africa on Saturday afternoon. Some people sounded very spiritual about the whole thing, and then there were others like me who have fears like missing their connecting flights and so on. I confessed to the 270 people there that my biggest fear is that someone will throw up on the plane. I did get a very strange look from Mike P. until I explained that people puking freaks me out and if it happens when you’re flying in a plane, well, I can’t get off the plane can I?!
Yes, everyone did laugh at me as he said ‘well, no, I wouldn’t advise trying to get off the plane if that happens’. Thankfully I do see the funny side to it too.
So while most other people are afraid about not being transformed by God, or disobeying God or feeling numb when they see things that would break God and other people’s hearts….I’m afraid someone will puke on the plane. I’m not even afraid about the plane crashing! In my bizarre-o mind I know I’d rather die in a puke free plane crash than be sitting near someone who has to use a sick bag.
And I mean that in all seriousness, even though I know how ridiculous that probably sounds to you.
It’s been a tumultous 4 days. So here is Part 1...
I was too sleepy on Sunday to post, and yesterday was very busy. I woke up and had to get caught up on all the housework I’ve let slide over the past couple of weeks. I left in a rush on Friday morning – it’s when I travel somewhere that I really miss my Aberdeen flat where everything had its place. At the moment I have boxes piled up containing my photo albums, books, travel gear, towels, bedding…you know all the stuff that would usually be on shelves or in your hall cupboard…
Watford was well…yeah…interesting. In terms of the South Africa side of things, I’ll write about that in due course on our SA adventure blog! Soul Survivor are very much believers of the power of the Holy Spirit, and part of the day included times of worship, prayer and just waiting, being still before God. Wow. It seems so long since I’ve done that last part in a corporate setting. It can be unsettling though, particularly if you never seen or experienced it, because it’s difficult to understand something that you can’t really explain.
Having said that, it’s that ‘unexplainable’-ness that makes God, well, Yahweh. As he said to Moses (?) “I am who I am”. You cannot rationalise the process of the miraculous into hows and whys, if you could it would just be ordinary.
Can I just say right now how much I don’t like going forward or standing up for prayer ministry. I LOVE praying for people, and am (now) perfectly happy to ask people to pray for me when I’m not right there with them.
But I also find it difficult to ignore God. I feel sooo bad when I do.
They told us the day would begin with a time of worship (fine) and maybe some prayer ministry.
Meanwhile, I’m propped up against the wall, with delayed exhaustion from my 4oo mile drive where my left leg had become really sore and painful, topped off by the night at the Travelodge where I’d been kept awake by a guy trying to knock down the door of a hotel room telling ‘Sarah’ to open the door or he was going to call the police … and then the 2 of them (I presume) having a screaming argument in their room at 4 a.m.
and all I can think is I’m TIRED, and my leg is still sore. I don’t WANT to sing. I just want a pillow so I can GO TO SLEEP! And I definitely don’t want PRAYER, I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE.
Uh-huh. Great attitude LA. Cue ‘The Lord‘ telling said SS leader that ‘someone in the room has got a problem with their left leg…‘ even going as far as to describe exactly what kind of pain, where it was etc.
How did he know?!?!?!
Embarrassed, I stood up. Jud and another girl prayed for me. Nothing really happened. Until we realised later that my leg stopped being sore and I was much better driving back on Sunday.
Surely, that would be the end of it right?
Oh no.
Before we finished, we had another time of worship. I sat down in the middle just hearing God prompting me to read Psalm 31. It’s the first time this year I’ve opened my bible voluntarily (ie not to prepare for bible study of some kind). We stopped singing, and just sat/stood and waited. Then 2 of the leaders spoke again, feeling that there were some people God wanted to ‘commission’ in particular for going out to South Africa.
Remember how I told you about the gum infection and those who have been on worship team with me over the last few months will also know about the problems I’ve had with my jaw as a result (although it took my jaw to swell before I noticed the gum infection part that was causing it!)
The same leader (I think) felt there was someone in the room who had been having problems with their jaw recently. Specifically their left jaw, and that it had maybe stemmed from some kind of gum infection on the the left side of their mouth.
I felt slightly sheepish as I went forward to admit ‘um, hi. yep, I have a jaw and gum issue – that just might be me you’re talking about…’ Was I some kind of weird prayer ministry junkie?!
3 lovely women (who I don’t know but one of them is now a facebook friend!) came and prayed for me. It was strange, the left side of my mouth and jaw got really warm and tingly as they prayed. And it was like this peace just flowed right through me. Then for the second time in my life I had a Toronto blessing style moment where I fell backwards (why backwards and not facedown like in the bible – I don’t get that?!) and as I did I got a very clear vision of a person (who I’ve never met) and gave me a name and a few details about this person.
Can I say two things?
1. I’ve never heard of this name in my life. So I googled it. The only people that it came up with were South Africans.
2. I’m not sure what to make of this, but I wonder if this is an actual person that I may meet in South Africa. Will I know? And if I do what do I say?
Hello, Yes, I saw you in a vision while I was lying on the floor of an industrial unit in Watford?
Maybe not.
Anyway, I also got a really encouraging picture given to me by my new facebook friend which is a challenge. I know that I’ve been hiding in my little box since I came to Edinburgh, because, well, I can get away with it much more easily in the big church that I’m currently member of. I don’t have the same people really pushing me into the deep end like I did in Aberdeen. Quite frankly I hated that at the time, but now I’m grateful for it. I wonder now if without those people pushing me (actually more like throwing me) in the deep end, I’m not growing as much. Another part thinks well, I’m not a ‘baby Christian’ anymore and what I really need to do is discipline myself to step out of my comfort zones without the need to be pushed/thrown.
Hmmm….a lot of pondering to be done….
