I was in Southern England this week. I’d had a stressful day on Monday, as a ton of forms came in from delegates for the conference I organise every year. I was super thankful that I was able to leave work a bit earlier so I could pick up my train tickets for the next morning and still have time to get to Guides without being too stressed. Realising that I would have to pack a suitcase when I got home.

Only to discover that the key for the church hall, which only comes out my bag to open and lock the church hall, was not in my bag. Cue frantic texting, phoning, turning my Mum’s car and our house upside down. No key. Me and the Guides stood outside when it of course began to rain while our Unit leader went down the list of keyholders to find no one in. Eventually someone at the other church hall gave us a key.

And if you wanted to make that 24 hours anymore stressful, there’s nothing worse than getting to your seat on the train – you know with the super-advance can only be used with that particular reservation ticket – to discover that the label on it says it’s reserved for passenger travelling from Newcastle. Confused, you look at your ticket and booking confirmation print out and realise that yes, you are the dumb person who has clicked for a ticket for Monday not Tuesday.

Somehow, I made it to my friend’s house in East London that evening, and very early on Wednesday morning we travelled to Hampshire for the first day of the college course I’m doing. The course has been created by a charity I have worked with as a volunteer for a few years now and accredited through the Open College Network. I didn’t realise though, what was going to be involved. I thought I was training to be a tutor. In fact, I’m doing the course I might one day be tutoring. They want to make the course available to other practitioners who support people trying to make decisions in the face of an unintended pregnancy – and soon. And so I’m now learning about moodle. I’m trying to wrap my head around the news that I’m going to be doing assignments every single week for the whole of this summer.

As I get older, I understand more of how I work and what makes me tick. I know that I’m an extravert and so I need to talk a lot of nonsense to process my thoughts, and unless I’m around people I don’t always get a lot of work done. I go a bit loopy if left in the office on my own (I hate being in the office on my own). It took me a whole year to realise that studying alone in my room doesn’t work – I need to be in a library surrounded by other people also studying with fixed social breaks to keep me going (my grades improved drastically as a result). I know that I need to have several projects on the go, because if there’s only one to focus on I don’t have enough stress to stop me procrastinating. Since having CFS, I’ve become a person that needs to plan in advance. Spontaneous stuff doesn’t always work for me, I like to know what’s going to happen, and when so I can plan ahead and prepare for a plan B just in case it doesn’t work out that way. I get lots done on Mondays because they are stressful, busy and I have that routine down now.

In my head, my summer was going to be pretty chilled out. School holidays. No Guides. A time to finally catch up with friends and take days off work to do some fun things. So the sudden discovery that 10 hours of each week is now going to be filled with this course was a shock to my system. I didn’t plan for that. HELP!

I know that I can do it, but I also know it’s going to take me a while to get my head around this new plan for the summer. A little bit of grieving time may be required, and perhaps it’s a good thing because in term time I might not be able to manage 10 hours a week (though granted, I’ve got very busy weeks ahead until the end of term, sooo um, nothing like being thrown in the deep end with no warning).

Come September, I’ll have another trip to London under my belt and I *hopefully* will have completed a A Level standard Open College Network course in Pregnancy Choices Practice. And passed. And then, perhaps it will be time to start my Adult Education tutoring qualification.

So if my blog goes quiet over the next few months, or you wonder why I’m writing non-sensical rubbish that no one really cares about…know that it’s probably because all my brain cells are getting a work out for the first time in many years!

We live in a materialistic society. It’s just a simple fact.

It’s not even that we can say it’s just in the ‘western world’. I’ve been to many places, and it seems to be everywhere in one form or another.

A few years ago, myself, my sister and younger brother went from being the children of a millionaire to well…not. For me, it wasn’t a tough transition. I didn’t have the benefits of my father’s wealth growing up. He didn’t rarely paid maintenance to my Mum which was part of their separation and divorce agreement. I was not privately educated. I didn’t have nice clothes. My Mum drove an old fiesta we called Fifi (RIP Fifi – we still miss you).

For my siblings it was hard. They went from being spoiled and privileged to living in an apartment with bed bugs. Having all their stuff put into storage. My sister suddenly had to learn the value of money. She’d never had to learn before. A lot of friends gossiped about her. Stopped hanging out with her. Needless to say, going from having everything to almost nothing (materialistically) gave her a very abrupt lesson on who her true friends were.

In the last few years, I’ve struggled financially. My friends however, have really stuck by me. Until a few months ago, I could speed round to their house or take their kid to a dance lesson or drive round to babysit. Now…I can’t do that unless I can borrow my Mamma Bear’s car. I really wish I still had a car so I had more freedom to visit and provide some kind of service to my friends. Whether it is giving someone a lift home at night, heading over to smallgroup early to help with bedtime while my friends cook a meal for our friends or driving someone to pick up a parcel from some obscurely located warehouse. I’m thankful that’s not the reason my friends are friends with me!

I have friends that still let me babysit their kids even though it might mean picking me up and taking me home afterwards. I have friends that organise to meet me somewhere I can easily get a bus to. I have friends that will pick me up from the nearest train station so I can spend some time with them. I have friends that will pick me up on the way to a guide meeting with my many bags full of registers, paper, pens, glass jars, blenders (or whatever the equipment it is we might be needing on that night).

If I ever have a limo, I’d love to have them riding in it with me. But if that never happens and it broke down…I’m pretty sure they’d come pick me up, or stick around with me to wait for the AA to arrive.

A true friend is someone who loves you for who you are…not for what you can do for them.

All the extras are bonus gifts rather than entitlements.

**Update, thank you Rebecca for linking up for me, and oops sorry HodgePodgers – somehow the answers to the first 2 questions disappeared…that is now rectified!!**

1. May is National Blood Pressure Month…what sends yours soaring, either literally or figuratively? What calms you down? When did you last have your bp checked?

There are so many things that send my blood pressure soaring. Selfishness. People not taking the time to think of other people. Prejudice. But most of all….drivers who do not use their indicators on roundabouts. GRRRR.

What calms me down…watching one of my favourite American TV Dramas. How I Met Your Mother particularly calms me – I think it’s the happy carefree theme tune! I always bounce about and sing along to it!

I last got my blood pressure checked a year or two ago by my practice nurse, they’ve actually not bothered checking for a while which is probably not protocol! I’m on a drug called depo provera which gives you a risk of high blood pressure, but seen as how the last time they checked it was 89/60 (or similar) – bordering on hypotension – I don’t think they’re too concerned about me having high blood pressure!!

2. You just found $1-what do you spend it on? How about 10$ 100?

If it’s just $1 I’d probably stick it in a charity bucket that I felt supportive of. Similar with £10. If it’s £100 I’d probably be taking it to the nearest police station. That probably sounds really goody-goody – but it is honestly what I’ve done in the past (though it was £25 my friend and I found on the street – and because of some other things going on, we thought it might have been drug related).

3. Mandatory labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food has been proposed, but not enacted in the US. How much attention do you give food labels before you buy? Are you in favor of labeling if it means an increase in food prices? Is this an issue you’ve been following and feel strongly about, or is this the first you’ve heard of the controversy?

I’m very much in favour of labelling – I think we should all be told where our food has come from and how it has been grown. I try to stay well away from GM foods, and to be honest, would not be shocked if in years to come we find a link to GM and processed foods and learning disabilities. My friend Caroline has spoken about food a lot on her blog, since living in the UK and South Africa and now living back home in North Carolina, one of the posts she wrote when she returned to the USA which echoes my thoughts a lot is this one – The Price of (in)Convenience. One of the things I have found unpleasant and concerning on my visits across the pond is the size of the food (like how much hormones did they inject into those animals to get a slab of meat that big?), the processed nature of so many things. The amount of recipes which use packet mixes and concentrated tins of soup disturbs me greatly as a Health Scientist.

4. May 15th marks the birthdate of Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz. At this point in time, are you more in need of brains, courage, heart, or a trip back home? Explain.

I think courage. I feel like I’m constantly battling a fear of failure or rejection.

5. “There’s no place like home” is an oft repeated line from Baum’s book. When was the last time you felt the truth of that statement?

Usually whenever I fly back into Edinburgh Airport. Those Scottish voices and SMILING airport staff who are friendly as they seriously check your passport and luggage before you get on an international flight. In other countries, the airport staff sometimes simply don’t bother to so much as check your ID if you’re flying out of their country but treat you like crap as you arrive in (yes Newark Airport, I’m looking at you). I’m thankful to live in a country with decent gun control and though we may be a country of moaners and complainers, there is an empathy for the fact that how we live affects people elsewhere.

6.  Steak…yes please or no thank you? What cut do you prefer and how do you like yours cooked? Sauce or no sauce? Besides your own kitchen, where’s a place you like to go to get a great steak?

No steak for me. I have an intolerance to red meat sadly. A lot of people mistake me for a vegetarian, but I’m not. Though it’s true that I’ve never managed to eat lamb or veal because pictures of cute fluffy lambs that I like to go ‘awww’ at when I see them in the countryside come into my head!

7. When was the last time you were in a genuine hurry?

I feel like I’m always in a hurry. Mondays are especially hurried – if I don’t leave work bang on time (or early) and get a bus straight away, it causes a huge problem. Usually I only have a 20 minute turn around from arriving home to when I have to leave to open up the church hall for Guides. In that 20 minutes I have to cook my tea, eat my tea, unpack my work bag to put whatever I need for Guides in its place and get changed into my leader uniform.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

Last Friday I had to farewell my beloved car, Cassie. It was a sad moment, but I did have fun clearing out my car on Wednesday afternoon. I found so many random things – passes for the Christian conference festivals I used to go to almost every year in Somerset (about 400 miles away!), the magnetic red nose Cassie sported for Comic Relief in 2009 all the way down to my South Africa training in Watford (350 miles away), mixtapes – my friends all had their ‘favourites’ they’d request. Cassie was very beloved by friends and family too, shown by the fact that my youngest brother who hasn’t spoken to me in over a year suddenly appeared on my facebook when I posted that my car had been taken away. “What’s happened to Cassie?’ he messaged, followed by the comments that Friday was indeed, ‘a sad day for motoring’. He might not thank me for a birthday present or wish me a Merry Christmas or Happy birthday. But my lil bro loved my car! Ha ha!

Cassie with her red nose somewhere between Edinburgh & Watford in March 2009

Filed under: General Tagged: Wednesday HodgePodge ]]> http://learningfromsophie.com/2013/05/15/wednesday-hodgepodge-round-30/feed/ 4 Laura Anne IMGP3009 http://learningfromsophie.com/2013/05/13/gone-soul-cybersurfing/ http://learningfromsophie.com/2013/05/13/gone-soul-cybersurfing/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 21:41:04 +0000 Laura Anne http://learningfromsophie.com/?p=6595 ]]> I’m headed down south tomorrow for work, but I thought I’d leave you with a link to a guest post I did for the Soul Surfers blog.

Check it out over there.

Because I was working a late shift yesterday, I had to clear out my car on Wednesday afternoon. People who’ve been in my car will know that I’ve always got random crap in there from road trips, stuff people have left in it and I’m always dotting about here, there and everywhere trying to squeeze everything in! My car always looked like it had been hit by a hurricane!

I imagine I’ll be blogging about Cassie for a wee bit because my friend asked if I’d share some Cassie stories on my blog to mark her ‘passing’ (a true to testament to the outreach of Cassie is the fact that I know as much as my family and friends tease me for the way I refer to my car…a lot of them were fond of my wee corsa too!). But this video I took on my webcam when just before I began to clear out all the random stuff from her on Wednesday. I ended up sitting in the car for about an hour just marvelling over what to anyone else would seem like junk and rubbish, but to me symbolises lots of memories!

There are two reasons that I ended up choosing this quote for the week. Firstly, off the back of what I shared on my blog last week about what I left behind when I left Aberdeen I ended up sharing about some of the after-effects while chatting with my friend in the car. Secondly, an amusing misunderstanding when one of my friends messaged me in a panic after I posted this on facebook to thank my friends who’ve been collecting Active Kids vouchers for one of my Guide units…

…she thought she had missed a major event in my life. Due to the fact the webcam takes a mirror image photo it looks like the ring I always wear on my right hand, is being worn on my wedding finger. It took me a while to realise why she was apologising that she’d missed my wedding. I’ve missed it too I thought. And then as I scrolled my facebook page to try and understand where this information could have come from, I suddenly realised…!

A conversation into the night revolved around singleness and dating after we had clarified that I hadn’t gotten married, or engaged. I’m almost proud to say that I’ve been single now for 6 years. There have at times been flickers of potential boyfriends, but it’s not something I actively pursue! Or ever have done really. I’m content now being single – and that was a journey for a wee bit, as an extravert loneliness is a huge big deal. But I realise that being single and being alone doesn’t have to be the same thing.

There’s another element too. I’ve learned what love is really all about in these last few years – and trust me, in my job you really get reminded how important it is to make wise choices when it comes to love.

Someone who loves me is going to care about me.

Someone who loves me is going to be for me, rather than against me.

Someone who loves me is going to respect my boundaries.

Someone who loves me is going to understand that my faith in God is the most important thing in my life and not try to change that.

Someone who loves me is going to accept that I am who I am, and encourage me to be the best version of myself.

All the other stuff – looks, hobbies, football teams, music, films, tv shows, where we come from, how much we earn or what kind of jobs we have – all that is not invalid, but really isn’t the big stuff and shouldn’t really matter even half as much as the stuff in the list above.

Lauryn Hill, you may have been prisoned for not paying tax this last week, but the words of your song still remain true.

Love is respect and devotion, greater than planets, deeper than oceans…

I’m sure they will remember facebook, the TV programmes they watched, the fun (or rubbish times) they had with friends and family. I hope that the kids in our country will remember the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

2. National Teacher’s Day is celebrated in the US of A on the first Tuesday in May, this year May 7th…share how a particular teacher positively impacted you.

In high school, I had a geography teacher from my second or third year to fifth year of high school. He was definitely my teacher for at least 3 years. I remember this teacher was one of the few that took time to find out the story before yelling and handing out punishments. He respected young people (not a lot of teachers do sadly). Like I remember one day he caught me kicking a door. I was angry  that my friend had been suspended for something that wasn’t really her fault and the other girl involved in the incident had gotten off with no punishment at all. Basically the other girl was a ‘teacher’s favourite’. He told me off, but then afterwards went ‘Why are you so angry? What’s the matter?‘ when I explained, he empathised, said it was not an excuse for kicking doors and said he’d try to do something about it and apologised for yelling at me on first reaction. I also remember him letting me and my friend hide in the store room cupboard so we could chat and have a cry. He gave us harder work to do because we’d always have our stuff finished well before anyone else. He was the only teacher who didn’t try to talk me out of leaving school early and when everyone kept saying it was silly to expect to get an ‘A’ in my first year of doing Highers, he said to me “No. I’m putting down an A as your target grade, in fact I expect for you to get a A (band 1).” He rarely yelled and laughed along with us when we called him ‘Basil’ (we thought he looked like Basil Fawlty) and he was a massive Monty Python fan – we got to watch it on last day of term each year! He taught me that not all teachers need to be on a power trip, the difference it can make to talk to people who seem to be expressing feelings in negative ways, to be flexible on ‘rules’ and to encourage people to work hard to reach their full potential.

I’m pretty sure it’s because of him and one of the other geography teachers (who is sadly now retired) that I went to university with the intention of becoming a geography teacher myself.

3. What’s a dish your mama made, that if set in front of you today would whisk you right back to childhood?

Blue eyed soup. Actually just vegetable soup, but it makes your eyes go bluer when you have a bowl of it.

4. Mother May I was a game we played when I was growing up…no pieces, parts, or plugs required. What games from childhood do you remember loving that were also pieces, parts, and plug-free?

Red Letter. Sharks (basically tig, but for some reason my friends and I decided we’d pretend the playground was shark infested waters. The person who was ‘it’ was a shark). All the pattacake songs ‘My boyfriend gave me an apple...’ ‘Pepsi Cola‘ ‘Down, Down baby‘ and clapping!

But the best games had simple parts – I loved skipping with a giant rope. Elastics was from my Mum’s childhood and she spent ages collecting elastic bands from work  to have my own ‘elastic’ so I could teach my friends at playtime. ‘Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, Inside, Outside, Puppy dogs tails‘

5. Besides your own mother, tell us about a woman who influenced you as a child?

I guess my Nana. She was one of the kindest and  nicest people you could meet. She was always calm when something happened, but the rest of the time she’d be worrying about what could happen or what people would think. At university she used to send me stamps or money for chocolate, and my friends loved me to read her letters out loud because they were so ‘granny-like’. Tales about how the phonebox up the road had been vandalised or how the council had missed the rubbish collection day! another time, she had misread my letter and thought I’d dressed up as a car for Hallowe’en. (I’d dressed as a cat). I miss her dearly and a huge sadness is that she never got to see me graduate university. She was so proud of the fact I’d gone to uni.

6. Mamma Mia! What’s the best play or musical you’ve ever seen?

Les Miserables. I’ve seen many great musicals, but Les Miserables is beloved and popular for very good reason.

7. What are three smells that make you feel nostalgic?

Horlicks. I remember my Nana and Mum making this disgusting malted drink at night when I was teeny tiny. The smell just makes me want to boak!

Sexwax. This is the brand of wax you use for putting on surfboards. The smell takes me right back to Australia. I love the smell – it’s almost like strawberry bubble gum without being sickly sweet.

Sweat, soft leather, polish – I think. There’s just a smell that dance studios have. I remember it well. The smell got more potent after we steamed up the windows of the studio after hours of practice. ick!

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

This weekend I got to travel up to Aberdeen AND THE SUN CAME OUT!!! First of all, my friend (who works for Hilton) arranged for both of us to get rooms at an incredible rate so we could drive up the night before our ‘Soul Sunday’ where a whole bunch of us were meeting on the beach. He knew the staff and so they wanted to do something fun for us. This is what we found in our rooms. We’ve been told they were named Nellie (M’s elephant on the left) and Dumbo (my elephant on the right).

I also got to try out skateboarding on a longboard really for the first time. I was terrible but had a lot of fun trying, and hope to do more boarding soon…

Yep, that was the sleepy blondish koala this morning with some serious bedhead going on. Actually it was probably partly ‘beach head’ from yesterday! Can I hear a ‘Hallelujah‘ for Bank Holiday Mondays that coincide with school holiday Mondays? (Amen.)

It’s actually the first time I’ve ever had a Bank Holiday Monday that has been a school holiday with no religious festival theme to it (ie Christmas and Easter). Late Saturday night, my friend and I drove up to Aberdeen and stayed in a hotel. We arrived just before 1 a.m. – and because he knew the staff we discovered they’d left out some cool stuff in our rooms!

For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to watch a movie, and finding that there were no good movies on TV at 1 a.m. we resorted to watching Edinburgh Comedy Fest Live from 2012. And went to bed at 2.30 a.m.

And got up at 7.30 a.m. (at least I did).

Being in Aberdeen over a weekend is rare for me, and it had been a few years since I’d been able to visit my old church there. For me, City Church Aberdeen is a spiritual home. I went there for the first time the weekend I ‘became’ a Christian, and the folks there stuck by me through some pretty tumultuous times. I was baptised there in 2003, I was part of the worship team, learned how to sing harmonies, lead and wrote songs with my friends there amongst many other things. A lot of the friends I had there have since moved on for various reasons and scattered all over the world now, but some remain in the ‘deen and are still part of the church. The church has grown hugely since I left – they do things differently which is great. And so the opportunity to go check it out and hopefully see some old friends was too good to miss! We headed to the 11 a.m. service which weirdly was held in a school I worked at as part of my first Comm Ed job aged 19. We were even in the same room where I held the workshops we did on Thursday lunchtimes! They also now have a church plant in the community centre where I worked full-time after I graduated uni. It’s a bit freaky.

Of course the afternoon was spent at the beach. Some surfed, some just picnicked in the sun, some of us got ice cream, some of us skated, and others went to A&E. Before you ask, it wasn’t a sporting injury. One of my friends somehow managed to sprain his thumb while sitting down on a picnic blanket. I think I’ve been a bad influence on him – it usually me injuring myself doing everyday things like that!

One of our new surfer friends invited us for a cup of tea, before a bunch of us returned to City Church again for their evening service lured by the promise of their toastie bar. There more friends there, and the surprise of one of the girls I knew from doing youth ministry at a church in Edinburgh being in the worship band that evening! I forgot to mention that in the morning, I met 3 of the ‘yoof’ (all now grown up students living in Aberdeen) I had gotten to know from helping out at Youth Weekends, singing at Powerpoint and being part of the Youth mentoring and Youth prayer ministry team at MBC (now Central). It was lovely to see them all settled into Aberdeen life and it was encouraging to see they’d found a ‘home’ at the church that had been my home as a student. You always hope when youth ‘graduate’ to work or being students that they’ll find church homes in the places they go.

And so we returned, arriving back in Edinburgh exhausted, but encouraged. A little sunkissed and with achy muscles from boarding all afternoon in one way or another.

Once again, I climbed into bed well after Midnight so glad for the awesome road trip we’d taken.

Campfire song of the weekend? Without a shadow of a doubt, it was ‘Alice the Camel‘ which the Mini Kahuna now knows very well. He likes to decide how many humps Alice is going to have, and his favourite number is ‘no humps’ so he can sing/shout ‘because Alice is a LORSE!’ (that’s ‘horse’ to those of you who don’t speak Mini Kahuna lingo).

Look out for more photos of our Sunday on the Soul Surfers blog soon…

Speaking of, Soul Surfers one of our crew has started a blog documenting a challenge he has set himself of ‘365 days of stoke‘ – basically spending at least 5 minutes of every day on some kind of ‘board’ (surf, skate, indo…) for the next year. Do check it out! (And welcome to the blogosphere dude!!)

Meanwhile, this past week I had to take my friend’s Guide Unit for the night, and I made sure to teach them ‘the Surfer Style’ verse of Boom Chicka Boom. Do you think I could exchange skills during the CS weekend in Polzeath – surfers teach me board skills, if I teach them campfire skills? Mini Kahuna is already working on ordering me into the waves as he declared last Sunday afternoon ‘Laura Anne take her glasses off. Laura Anne go surfing‘ while talking about going to the beach in June!

3rd May 2007 – getting ready to return home to Scotland

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.“

-Robert Frost

It’s tough to believe it’s been 6 years. 4th May 2007 was the day I landed in Edinburgh, jet lagged, still a bit nervy from a girl who had got travelsick on a long haul flight from Singapore. I had no idea what would happen next. And it was not the easy path I had chosen. It was the unknown one.

The previous summer I had graduated from university. A graduation five long years in the making. But for the first time in a very long time, I was contented. I had finally settled in my Aberdeen life. I had a great family of friends. Things with my blood related family were better than they ever had been. I’d begun a relationship with a Christian guy who I first thought was on the same page as me. I split my time between Edinburgh and Aberdeen working some weeks as a care worker, others as a receptionist or clerical worker in NHS hospitals while I looked for a job. I’d been rejected from my applications to study medicine and midwifery. I was about to start re-applying and looking to study some of the qualifications I needed to do medicine. My boyfriend convinced me not to. Instead, I started applying for jobs, and got a temporary contract as a Community Education Worker. I was thrilled. A proper wage (I now realise the pay was AWFUL) and the hope of a permanent contract at the end with the promise of them paying for me to do my Community Education diploma while I worked.

In those seven months, I worked myself into the ground. I was out of my depth. I was asked to lie to people. Or at least to me it was lying. My boyfriend brought the worst out of me. He discouraged me from doing things I was scared to do. I don’t know if it’s possible to forget the first time I led worship at my church. Afterwards he told me he thought I should never do it again. Every time I’ve led worship since (and those times have been few) I’ve heard his words and seen his face in my memory. In March 2007 I was invited to reapply for my job to get a permanent contract. I prayed about it, and felt like maybe I was to go back to Edinburgh. I told him so. He broke up with me.

Relief.

It was however an upsetting day. He stayed in my flat for an hour and wouldn’t go away until I went to work. I went through my day, and when everyone else went home, I locked myself in the Senior Community Worker’s office. I called my friend and started bawling. That day I made the decision – I was returning home.

The plan was sensible. Finish my contract til March 31st. Get the flat ready for selling, and live there until I sold it or found a job in Edinburgh. My Dad and stepmother offered to financially support me until I was able to do this.

Only it didn’t happen like that. That night, I went home after that evening’s youth work meeting. I cried on my friend’s shoulder. And then overnight I developed a fever and by the next morning I had the flu. I lay on a mattress on my living room floor for days. Friends came in and out. I prayed to God, and the answer I received was clear audible one: It’s time to go home. And I’m not going to tell you what you’re going to do when you get there. You’re going to have to trust me.And then I call came from Los Angeles.

It was decided I’d go out to Australia to meet my friends.

And then I’d come back and look for a job and sell the flat.

Only it didn’t happen like that either. The day my friend walked with me to STA Travel to make sure I  booked that flight, we bumped into my (now ex) boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend. They desperately needed a flat to rent that they could afford. And so I said ‘why don’t you rent mine?‘

And suddenly I realised that I had 3 weeks to move out of my flat. And when I came back from Australia I had nowhere to live, and no job to go to.

I did let my friends at the respite home I’d worked at know I was coming back to Edinburgh, and I was grateful that they had said ‘yes’ to putting me back on their pool staff team. That put me at ease a bit as it made it all sound better when I was explaining to people what I was doing, why I was leaving so suddenly.

God did a lot of work in me during those 4 weeks in Australia. It’s why Australia means so much to me. I feel like Australia gave me my life back. It made me myself again. All the rubbish that had been spoken over me and into me began to fade away. Courage and confidence I thought I’d lost forever, I found once again. I returned home, still unsure, but very much at peace.

I realise I could have followed the sensible path. I could have stayed, sold the flat, never gone to Australia and waited to get a job. Or I could have applied for a permanent contract and perhaps I’d have that all important piece of paper that says PGDip in Community Education that I need to get a full-time job in this city.

But would I have learned so much, been as brave or met the friends I know now?

Most likely…no.