Oh what a sleekit horrible beastie,
Lurks in yer bellie efter a feastie,
Just as ye sit doon among yer kin
There starts to stir an enormous wind.

The neeps and tatties and mushy peas
Start working like a gentle breeze
But soon the pudding wi’ the sauncie face
Will hae ye blawin’ a’ ower the place

Nae matter whit the hell ye dae
a’body’s gonnae hae tae pay
Even if ye try tae stifle
it’s like a bullet oot a rifle

Hawd yer bum ticht tae the chair
Tae try tae stop the leakin’ air
Shift yersel fae cheek tae cheek
Pray tae god it disnae reek

But a’ the efforts go asunder
Oot it comes like a clap o’ thunder
Ricochets arrond the room
Michty me! a sonic boom

God almighty it fairly reeks
A’ hope a’ huvnae shit ma breeks
Tae the bog a’ better scurry
Whit the hell, it’s no ma worry

A’body roon aboot me choakin’
One or two are nearly boakin’
I’ll feel better for a while
Cannae help but raise a smile

It wis him! I shout and glower
Alas too late, he’s just keeled ower
Ye dirty bugger! They shout and stare
I’m no tha’ welcome any mair

Where e’re ye go let yer wind gang free
Tha’ sounds jist the joab fir me
Whit a fuss at Rabbie’s party
Ower the sake o’ one wee farty.

Sunday I went back to church for the first time in about 2 months. In the afternoon, my Mum thought I looked ill (is this what church services do to me?!) so spent the afternoon snoozing and watching Without A Trace. Muffins and smoothie were made and I felt ready for the new week.

My alarm clock was the sound of a skip and builders arriving and knocking down the conservatory. Building work has indeed begun!

It has to be said that the difference drinking water, back on my fruit smoothies and back in the gym with my friend each week is huge! I feel so much better for it, and I’m pretty sure the days slowly getting longer is helping a lot too. It’s also nice to be in work with the knowledge that (God willing) I’m there every week for a while so I can get some momentum back into my work and planning. I feel like things are moving forward…it’s like I’ve been sitting on a train that isn’t moving out of the station for the last 4 years, and now…the train maybe finally leaving to reach it’s destination!

Here’s hoping anyway.

Meanwhile, I’ve learned that NCIS: Los Angeles is my American TV Drama of choice during periods of grief or high family drama. My life is so boring compared to the undercover special ops team in LA who get shot at about 50 times a week fighting terrorists all the time. And I doubt I’ll ever have a life so ornate or colourful as Henrietta Lange‘s… (I do love Hetty…!)

I think most of us have a fear of failure. I know that as a girl who got seriously used to being top of the class, I never liked to do anything I knew I’d struggle with.

I’ve discovered on reflection though, that key to facing my fears of failure, is to surround myself with people who I know will stick with me on the journey to catch me if I fall.

When I decided to return to high school for a year and apply to university a year early I did so with the knowledge that I had a super supportive boyfriend who was going to help me study, and friends that were going to drag me back to school on the days where I’d walked out.

When I went to Morocco, I was terrified of people getting travel sick on the planes or on the 12 hour bus ride from Marrakech to Zagora. I’d never done a school trip before because of my emetophobia. But I knew that 3 of my best friends were coming to, and we’d be in it together (and none of them get travel sick). Friends held my hand take off and landing (not from a fear of flying, I just know that tends to be when people are most likely to get sick). They hid me and turned me around and walked with me in the opposite direction when one of our teachers got really ill during our 12 hour bus journey. And, I in turn helped people through homesickness and lack of clothing and panic attacks from riding camels.

I sadly went to university and chose a degree I knew I’d find pretty easy. Why? Fear of failure. When I changed across to the medical school it was terrifying. I cried pretty much weekly trying to make sense of statistics. I was struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome too, so often couldn’t get to lectures. I was so thankful for a friend in the CU who was awesome at maths and a patient teacher who explained stats and equations to me in very very simple ways.

When I came to the end of my undergraduate degree, I felt a very strong call from God to apply to study medicine. A few things terrified me. 1. Having to study chemistry 2. Dealing with my emetophobia 3. 5 more years of university. I didn’t get in. I wonder now if actually it was God trying to help me deal with my fear of failure. I found myself not that upset, because I went into a job in Community Education soon after and I’d wanted to do that anyway!

It’s ok to be afraid, I think. It’s when you let it stop you living that it becomes a problem. Yes. I was afraid of failing. There are a few things I regret not doing – one of them is studying abroad, which I didn’t do for fear of losing friends or not making friends when I got there. But I look back on these other decisions and I’m thankful that even though I was afraid – I still did it.

I went back to school. I went to Morocco. I went to Sweden and worked as a dance teacher for a week. I passed my exams first time and got into university. I went to university and lived in halls despite being only 17. I asked my friend if I could go to her church. I trusted the voice I heard was God when I got baptised, when I changed degree and when I moved back to Edinburgh. I went to Australia. I went to South Africa.

I would have missed out on all of that if I listened to my fear of failing.

Is there anything you really want to do but aren’t doing because you’re afraid you’ll fail at it?

Recently, Oli wrote this post entitled ‘The Wisdom of Children‘ on his blog which resonated with me. And it reminded me of this little quote on my wall.

Grown ups rarely understand anything. And it is tiresome for children to always be explaining things to them.

- The Little Prince

One of the reasons I love being around my friends’ children is that I’m constantly learning from them. They keep things simple and they are really bad liars.

So many times I remember with my smallgroup we’d be debating something a few of us (or all of us) felt challenged by. And then Miss Sweetroot (my friends’ daughter) would say something or do something later that week that would floor all of us and just nail it on the head quite matter of factly.

You see children and they are constantly trying new things and living in the moment before we teach them to over analyse everything. If you see me with my godson – who has no fear at all and buckets of never ceasing energy – you’ll hear the same 2 words over and over again coming from my lips:

‘Be careful!’ 

How often to we laugh at the dreams of children because we’ve become so cynical, squashing their creativity and maybe preventing them from living out exactly what they are called to do?

They explain things to us again and again, and the edges of our lips start to curl as we try not to laugh.

I’m reminded watching interviews with gymnasts in the lead up to Olympics of parents who speak of how when their kid watched the Olympics and turned to their parents and said ‘Mummy, I’m going to go to the Olympics one day and win a gold medal’. How many of us humour our kids with a ‘uh huh, of course you are‘ instead of going encouraging them to work hard to make their dream come true?

What have you learned from children in your life recently?

After a few draining days, we travelled up North to be with friends.

This morning, as I entered a chapel at the Aberdeen Crematorium, the first thing I saw was a coffin.

A coffin with the body of the man my childhood friend had grown into.

It was totally surreal.

It still feels like there’s a chance that one of us might bump into him in the street like my Mum and 2 friends did last Autumn.

It was the most difficult funeral to get through. His death was tragic, and there will be no justice.

Tonight, I’ve ordered Pizza (the amount of takeout food I’ve had this week is gross!!) and I will be so happy to wrap into my duvet and dive into a world of American tv drama. Tomorrow I hope my head will start returning back to some resemblance of ‘normal’.

Whatever that means

Thank you to everyone – your texts, e-mails, tweets and facebook messages  have really meant a lot. Community is what brings us through…

It occurred to me that they might not realise I was not her mother, and then I realised that I look (and am) old enough to be her Mum.

It was one of those ‘Oh my word, I feel old’ and ‘Beam me up to Neverland, I don’t want to grow up!‘ moments.

Later, I reflected that if things had been different I might have been taking my own daughter to a hallowe’en party at Brownies. I reckon with my background in guiding that Sophie would have be one too! With some more mental arithmetic I realised that I’m old enough to be the mother of some of my Guides as well.

Today my daughter might have been 10 years old, and she would likely have been leaving Brownies to go up to Guides this term. I’m pretty sure with her DNA we would be starting to deal with a lot of hormones kicking in as we entered the ‘pre-teen’ years and I would be talking about puberty, sex and relationships with her. Not to mention bras. And having to buy new clothes to cope with the growth spurts. Slamming doors. Melodrama. Tears.

It’s funny to think that I’d be ahead of all my friends on the parenting front, as this year a lot of my friends have started families or are talking about starting families. And I would have been through it before them. Crazy.

I think this may be the first year on the ‘Birthday anniversary’ that I’m thinking ‘thank God I’m not a parent!‘ as I’d be entering into probably the toughest phase of parenthood – the 10-16 years!

And I expect that tonight there would have a sleepover. Or to give it a more apt name: an ‘awakeover’.

I have no idea if you have awakeovers in heaven, perhaps you don’t even need sleep in heaven, so it’s one giant awakeover? I don’t know, and really I have no need to know (though I am curious).

The one thing I do know is that it’s very strange to think that I might have been watching my kid turn 10 today. 10.

Yes, that’s right. TEN.

Somebody pass the anti-wrinkle cream…

16th January always makes me smile, because I know that Sophie has left a legacy…

16th January 2008 – my first time running a sex education class on dealing with unplanned pregnancy to a group of fifth years (the year I was in when I got pregnant).

16th January 2009 – my first appointment with my post abortion client who I supported through a recovery programme.

16th January 2010 – the first day of my first time running a pregnancy crisis counselling course.

I have no idea what this day will bring, but I do know that this coming weekend we’ll be running the first pregnancy loss support training course in Edinburgh since Sarah & I became managers. Sarah’s head honcho for this course, but I’ll get to do a couple of the training sessions which I’m really looking forward to. The resources available to help people grieve after having a termination have improved so much over the last couple of years, and I’m really excited about that.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight…and never stop fighting. 

-E.E. Cummings

This is my favourite quote. Ever. In fact on every personal e-mail I send out, you’ll find this quote at the bottom of my e-mail underneath my name and contact details.

I was always quite happy being myself. Until I was 10 and I started getting bullied at school. I was so relieved when I got to S3 and you got to pick your subjects and also got streamed according to academic level. Of course there were still mean horrible teenage peers to put up with, but it wasn’t what I call ‘bullying’. Just meanness. And I felt more comfortable with who I was as a person, and just thought ‘I’m just going to be myself, and I’m not just going to be like them‘.

I had the misconception that ‘being yourself’ would be an easier choice as you got older. I now realise – it’s not. It is a continuous battle. The pressures of how people want you to be, the expectations of others are constant.

Over the last few weeks, my blog friend, Holly has hosted a fabulous blog series called ‘Godfree bloggers‘. I’ll be honest, a few things said in those posts really got to me. I do have a belief in God. Yes, it is an intrinsic part of my life and my values. Does that make me unintelligent or stupid or crazy? Some people clearly think so. And I get it, because I used to think people who believed in God were off their trolley. I found it interesting reading the posts and I found it sad to hear that some people stopped following Holly’s blog as a result of the series. But a few things said in some of the posts I felt hurt by, which is ridiculous when they weren’t directed at me personally. Basically I wanted not to be me for a moment because I wanted those bloggers to like me.

When I decided God was real, there were noticeable changes in my life. But really, I became more ‘me’. I stopped hiding behind my diguise as the bacardi queen (my friends will tell you that aside from the crying that me on bacardi is not to different from me on a sugar or ‘silliness’ high anyway).

The book that was hugely influential for me, was one written about a girl who was killed in the Columbine shootings. In it, there is a quote from her which ties in with the wisdom from Mr Cummings…

It’s really easy to end up leading different lifes and hiding bits of yourself depending on what environment you are in. For a long time, I would return to Edinburgh and try to do all the ‘old Laura Anne’ stuff afraid that I’d lose my friends if I shared about my belief in God too much. And when I was in church I didn’t want to share too much about my Edinburgh life for fear that I’d lose my friends at church.

Total madness.

It took me about 4 years before I found who I was, and stayed in my true colours in all environments.

I hope I never have to learn that lesson again, but I know that the battle to continue being the person I was created to be is one that I’ll have to keep fighting for as long as I live.

But it is definitely a battle worth fighting.

How do you fight the battle to be yourself instead of everybody else? What do you struggle with in relation to this?

It’s filled with pictures and quotes that encourage and inspire me. Or remind me to pray for people or certain things.

At 27, I felt maybe I was too old for sticking things on my bedroom wall. Surely by this age, my walls should be blank except maybe a few framed and properly hung pictures.

But I’ll say it.

I love my wall.

A few days after I found out about my friend dying, I took what remained of it from my old room, found other bits and pieces of it on our clear out and put it together again.

Definitely one of my better ideas, as each morning and night I often walk over and stop and pause beneath it to take it all in. It’s been a real comfort, and it’s driven me on.

So I’m going to share pieces of it with you. Some of it may already be familiar depending for how long you’ve ‘known’ me, and how much you pay attention. Other parts of it probably won’t be familiar to you.

But I hope it will stir up something in you like it has done me…

Today they kicked some serious ass at the Olympic Test Event (the final qualifying round) and won the team competitition by almost 8 full points. The score they got today would have qualified them 4th to team finals in Tokyo. If that wasn’t enough my star of Tokyo (behind Kohei Uchimura of course), Daniel Purvis won the all-around, plus 2nd and 3rd place also went to British Gymnasts Kristian Thomas and Daniel Keatings.

All I can say is a HUGE well done. This is the first time since 1984 that Team GB will have sent a full mens AND womens team to the Olympics (and due to the Cold War the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were boycotted by several countries who were pretty unrivalled in gymnastics).

I am soooo excited, and the fact that I’m not going to live my dream to see the competition in person when it’ll be just south of the border makes me want to cry.

Max Whitlock made his debut as a Senior at this event, and ranked 1st on Pommel horse – even ahead of his team captain, 2008 Olympic & 2011 World Bronze Medallist, Louis Smith. Go Max!

These parts haven’t been quiet due to some lovely blogging friends who have been sharing guest posts throughout the Christmas period. Thank you EVERYONE who took part in the Christmas Blog Party! Of course I’d planned to be fully back into blogging as usual once 2012 began, but a few things have brought about an unplanned blogging break.

Firstly, my friend’s death. Next week we’ll be having our friends (his family) staying with us and then there’ll be a funeral. Yes. 4 weeks is a long time to wait for a funeral. Please be thinking and praying for us, because it will not be an easy time for any of us.

Secondly, building work. I woke up on 2nd January to discover chaos had arrived in our home! An extension that has been a good number of years in planning is suddenly about to become reality. We’ve spent the last week doing major clear outs (thankfully having already had many of these in the last 5 years, my task wasn’t too bad…just had to go through about 2 years of unopened mail!). We’ve now got furniture moving all around the house. Fridges in the hall, freezer in the dining room. And after our guests leave it will all be joining me in my attic.

Thirdly, work. In the next fortnight I’m back in schools, helping with a training course, seeing centres move to new premises and trying to plan a conference that usually would all be set and ready to go by now.

In the midst of all of that, I’m battling my winter blues. Staying awake is a battle during the day, and trying to sleep at night hasn’t been going well. It doesn’t make me too efficient, and it certainly doesn’t make my blog writing too eleoquent or well articulated.

So I hope you will excuse my sporadic blogging. I love ‘Learning from Sophie’ and the opportunities it has given me to share about things I love (and things that bug me), but most of all I love the community that has developed. It’s totally awesome.