Tag Archives: the wall

The Wall: beaches

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Remember my wall? I realised as I was looking at it the other day that there was still lots on the wall to be shared. So today, I’ll share not a quote but some of the photographs on the wall.

The picture there is of 2 pictures. The one on the left, my friend took of me just before I was about to attempt a cartwheel on the dunes of Balmedie Beach at sunrise on the Summer Solstice. The picture on the right, I took a few weeks later at the White Sands of Morar.

Beaches mean a lot to me, and I’m not entirely sure why. I can’t remember ever being on a beach and not being able to gain a sense of clarity over mixed up emotions or thoughts. They have always been a place where I feel most alive and a place where I feel more able to communicate with God.

During my years at university, I began a quirky tradition where I would always try to cartwheel down a beach (I have never once been able to properly cartwheel). In fact, that I know of, this is closest thing to a decent cartwheel I’ve ever done:

Balmedie Beach and the Sands of Morar have particular significance for me. Balmedie was about a 20 minute-ish drive from my flat in Aberdeen. There were times while I was a student where I felt such huge anger or stress and I needed a place to vent that was better than my previous tactic of taking sharp objects to my arms or stomach. So at night I would get in my car, put on my ‘angry’ music mix tape, drive to Balmedie, get out of the car, run up the sand dunes and yell my head off. Sometimes I’d just scream into the wind, the way some people scream into a pillow when they are frustrated. Other times I’d yell at God and tell Him exactly how I was feeling and why.

It feel good to let it all out.

Morar has a different kind of significance. The Lochaber area is where I went to hide from my exam results after I’d quit high school. At the time, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d already decided against going to a boarding school to do A Levels. While I was there, I reaggravated an ongoing  back injury I’d hidden from my dance teachers the previous term. When I had the abortion, I went back up there a few days after. I was feeling awful at the time, but somehow the peace gave me some kind of comfort. The day the picture was taken was several years later just after my graduation. Again I was feeling pretty bad from symptoms of (suspected) endometriosis, and was awaiting an appointment at the hospital for further testing. I’d been told a few months before that I probably would struggle to have children. Again, being in that area gave some kind of peace and comfort. It was like a place where I was able to get space from the normal everyday city life, think, reflect and gain some courage to go back and face things head on.

Now when I look at those pictures, I use them to help me imagine being back in those places.

Putting the emotions and thoughts out on the table.

Regaining clarity.

Receiving courage.

Leaving the rubbish behind.

Coming back stronger.

And if you’ve never taken the time to cartwheel down a beach…trust me, you can’t do it without smiling. Even when you end up falling in the sand. Next time you find yourself on a beach, do/attempt a cartwheel…then let me know!

 

The wall: to bring pleasure or pain?

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“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world”

-John Steinbeck

2 years ago, I quoted those words reflecting on the death of Eva Markvoort, a blogger who had a huge impact on me and thousands of others across the world. I found myself deeply affected by her death, which came as a shock to me for two reasons. Firstly, even the people who I’m very close to that have died, I’ve rarely broken down in tears as a reaction to their death. Secondly, I had never met or even spoken to Eva.

I think Eva epitomised those words from Steinbeck. Eva knew her life would likely be shorter than most of her peers. She could have chosen a very different path of bitterness, anger, resentment. Instead, she chose to live a life of love. She chose to battle her CF and chronic rejection with everything she had. She chose to take risks. She chose to be vulnerable allowing a film crew into her and her family’s life at one of the toughest times of her life so that others might understand what life is like for someone waiting for a transplant and how it affects those around them. She found ways of living life and making a difference to those around her in very creative ways. When life said ‘no’ she’d fight for a ‘yes’.

Her death brought no pleasure on the world.

I was watching an episode of The Mentalist, where a guy was the intended target for a car bomb and everyone thinks he’s dead. The CBI decide to let people think this is the case in the hope it will help them find the murderer. During the investigation the guy gets to hear what people say and think about him. Let’s just say a lot of it wasn’t positive.

Quite the wake up call.

I really wouldn’t want people being relieved or glad that I’m dead – apart from the ‘LA is kicking it with Jesus now‘ factor wearing her heavenly pretty shoes that don’t give her blisters* singing songs to God that sound nothing like music made by Coldplay with lots of freaky creatures with wings and tons of eyes** doing the same thing. :)

The main thing is – we’re not going live here forever and at some point we’re going to die. So we have two possible courses – live to bring pain in the world or live to bring pleasure in the world.

I would like to choose the latter course.

*this is not mentioned in the bible, but I’m hoping in the new heaven & earth that there will be gorgeous shoes that don’t bring you pain to wear like the ones here on earth.
** Confused? See Revelation 4&5 for more details. Apparently heaven is not a peace and quiet kind of place. It sounds like it be quite the musical gig and the reserved religious types might be a little uncomfortable with the worship there.

The wall: Love is respect and devotion…

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“Father you saved me and showed me that life was much more than being some foolish man’s wife, showed me that love was respect and devotion, greater than planets, deeper than oceans.”

from I used to love him -Lauryn Hill

When I was in high school, I loved Lauryn Hill. I listened to her album ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill‘ many times. I didn’t really pay much attention to the lyrics of her songs though until the summer when I was stuck in bed with post-viral fatigue syndrome. It was then I discovered how much of her own story was in her songs – as I guess is the case with the majority of songwriters.

I do not have a good history with guys, and when I became a Christian I felt a huge pressure and expectation that to be a successful person I needed to be married. Preferably soon after graduating from university. I met several girls in the Christian Union who told me that the main reason they were at university was to meet their future husband. I remember a conversation with one friend about what we hoped to do after graduating and she said ‘Well, I plan to be married’. As if that was a definite and that was her full identity.

I began to wonder if maybe my independent ways were wrong. I never really sought out relationships, but they seemed to find me. I remember going out with a guy soon after I became a Christian just because he was interested in me and I thought ‘oh well, this must be God bringing my husband to be into my life’.

Yes. I was nuts.

I soon realised that it was indeed crazy.

But as I entered my last couple of years of uni, I let guys treat me really poorly.

I still remember going to a retreat with my church and our pastor’s wife praying for me. She told me that God was saying that I had been disobeying Him and I needed to do what God was saying I should do. I knew exactly what she meant – I knew God had been telling me to walk away from a relationship I was in. My faith and self-esteem were taking a beating and I think the only one who noticed was one of my friends (and I think she’ll know who she is). I went back and this person said it was like I had life back in my eyes again. I felt after that weekend that I had been brought back to life. We needed to talk I said. He said to me ‘God told you to break up with me, didn’t He? I was really scared you’d come back from that weekend and break up with me‘

It made me feel guilty. And so I didn’t do it.

I was a fool.

Eventually things escalated and he told me he didn’t want to be with me.

I felt such peace.

Did I bawl my eyes out later that day? Yes. As soon as I was at work alone I locked myself in an office and burst into tears calling several people. I got home that night and called my friend who came round with a box of tissues and let me sob into her shoulder for the longest time. I came down with flu that night and was off for a week. It was a horrible time.

But there was still peace deep down underneath the fear of being alone, the anxiety of the next phase of life.

I feel like I was saved though, I realised how much I had not been with someone who knew what love, respect or devotion really was.

And now I know.

Life is so much more than being a foolish man’s wife.

It’s not that I’m against being married, if a wise man came along who loved me and who I loved, who I believed shared my core beliefs and values, who I could see a compatible future with…then yes. I would be happy to become his wife.

But life does not depend on that.

And I’m not alone, because I have friends and people around me who know that love is respect and devotion, greater than planets and deeper than oceans. 

Those are the wise people I choose to have be a big part in my life.

The foolish ones are no longer allowed into my inner circle.

:)

The Wall: Don’t wait to live…live now

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“When I grow up I’ll…”

I’m beginning to realise these days that I am already ‘grown up’. It feels like it snuck up on me. So many things that I put on hold for a year.

And then another.

And then another.

And then time ran out.

How many of us are holding back from doing something we’d love to do because we’re waiting to be more sorted, wiser, older, more ready?

The things, we never know how long we have here on earth. As I’m forever saying ‘I could get runover by a bus tomorrow’. It’s so easy to think we have all the time in the world.

Maybe we do.

Maybe we don’t.

I just know that I don’t want to die with my music still in me.

It’s why I don’t what to live fearing failure. Or fearing rejection for that matter. Waiting for me to get just that ‘bit more sorted’ before I step out and do something.

What are you waiting for? The world wants to hear the music that’s inside you…

The Wall: Failure is a part of life…

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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?

The Wall: Children helping the grown ups learn…

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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?

The Wall: Be yourself no matter what the world tells you to be…

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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?

The Wall

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This is my ‘wall’. At least it’s my current wall – and it’s a very poor photo of it taken on my webcam…

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…