My Story 10 – my Eureka Moment

After my turning point moment when I experienced God’s loving acceptance, I felt that my first priority was to find a church. God had other ideas: ‘Look after your family and your new baby, I’ll find you a church.’

And he did!

A few months later a neighbour invited me to a coffee morning at a local church. I seem to remember that she asked my twice as I had another appointment the first time.

The minute I walked through the door I felt at home. I felt that the people at this church were genuinely interested in me. It was the same feeling as I’d had with the students of the Christian Union at university.

J needed a feed, and I didn’t feel comfortable breast-feeding in the main room, so I went into the kitchen which was doubling as a crèche. The pastor’s wife was minding the small children whilst their mums listened to the speaker. We got talking and I gave a potted outline of my life. M began her reply by saying, ‘Now I don’t want you to come under condemnation…’

It was as if a light bulb had been switched on! At that moment I understood what had been happening during those dark years. What I’d thought of as conviction from the Holy Spirit had been condemnation from the enemy, satan, the accuser of the brethren. Yes. I hadn’t been living a godly life; but that wasn’t the point. Godly sorrow over our failings should draw us closer to God; worldly sorrow and feelings of condemnation drive us from him. We feel we’re not good enough, so draw away.

The point is, none of us are ‘good enough’, and we never will be in this life.

In Christ there is no condemnation [Romans 8:1] – because of Jesus’ death on the cross, taking all our shortcomings upon himself, we can draw near to Father God with confidence, not trusting in our own goodness, but in the goodness of Jesus. This realisation was so freeing. And I’ve not looked back since.

Yes, I still mess up. Yes, there are still issues to be dealt with. Recently, I’ve been very conscious of how far I still have to go; I’m still very much a work in progress. But as with Paul in his letter to the Romans, I’m convinced that NOTHING can separate me from God’s love [Romans 8:38,39] – because God’s love is truly unconditional and does not depend on anything I do or don’t do, it’s totally dependant on him.

[You may note that I’ve quoted from the first and last verses of chapter 8 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. May I suggest you read that chapter, and meditate on it (that could take several days, there are gems of hope in almost every verse).]

You can find earlier posts in this series at: http://delemares.wordpress.com/category/my-story/

learning crochet/teaching crochet

My youngest son asked me to teach him to crochet. He works nights as a security guard – those nights can really drag.
What to teach?
I started with chain stitch, but that can be boring. So I showed him how to make chains into flowers by doing a few chains (say 12), joining with a slip stitch, then making another 12 chain, joining with a slip stitch in the same place and continuing to make 12 or so ‘petals’.

He made several flowers the first night. What to do with them, were there other stitches he could learn?
So I taught him how to make a granny square. Starting with a magic ring, working 4 groups of 3 trebles (double crochet in US) separated by a chain into the ring, joining with a slip stitch, 3 chain to start the next round. Then continuing to work groups of 3 treble into each space, with two groups in the corners.
By the end of the week he had made a small blanky, with the flowers attached, for his daughter’s first birthday.

What simple pattern would you recommend for teaching crochet?

My Story 9 – Repentance, it’s not what you think

‘Most people think of repentance as a heavy, sombre religious duty. In reality, authentic biblical repentance is a life-giving art, renewing the entire soul.’ (John Mark Comer, ‘My Name is Hope: Anxiety, depression and life after melancholy.’)

In my last post in this series I gave repentance as one of the reasons for God coming as he did. There had not been much repentance about my initial conversion – but after that I had almost 17 years of ‘worldly sorrow’ [2Corinthians 7:10]; times of severe, suicidal depression. I believe that somehow God kept me alive through all that.

One day, as I stood in my kitchen, tears were streaming down my face and I thought ‘there must be more to life than this.’

And that was the beginning of my turning – not even a prayer as such, yet I believe that that was when God started the process of drawing me back to himself. He answers prayer, and often it’s my most ‘rubbish’ prayers that get answered!

It’s all about grace – God’s outrageous, undeserved favour. He longs to bless us, the jewels in the crown of his wonderful creation.

He is only ever a prayer’s breadth away. As we turn to him, be it ever so slightly, he turns to us and lavishes his blessing.

We were created to have relationship with him. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had an intimate relationship with God, which one act of disobedience destroyed.

At the Fall as it’s called, a great fault-line ripped through the fabric of the entire universe. Maybe that’s when entropy started – the tendency for everything to descend into chaos. We have the job of trying to reverse that tendency: from weeding the garden to cleaning and repairing the house. Houses and gardens don’t stay ordered for long without effort on our part to keep them ordered.

From Genesis 3 onwards the bible is a record of how God hasn’t given up on us. He revealed himself to Abraham and Moses – and people still messed up. So he sent his son, Jesus – and look what happened to him.

And still God loves us and gives life – life with a capital L, Life in all its fullness (John 10:10) – to those who turn to him.

He revealed himself to Paul, who was on his way to Damascus to persecute Jesus’ followers. Paul, the man who thought he was doing God’s will when he held the coats whilst they stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

And he’ll reveal himself to you if you ask him. I challenge anyone who really wants to know if God exists to say something like ‘God, if you’re there, show me.’

I don’t know how he’ll do it, or how long it might take, but I believe that he will speak in such a way that we will know it’s him – he will speak in the language of our hearts. He knows what buttons to press to get our attention.

For me, he’ll often speak a single word. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post in this series – my Eureka Moment.

How about you, has God revealed himself in a special way to you?

[P.S. – it might seem that I have got off the track of repentance – but repentance isn’t what we think it is. We think it’s feeling sorry for what we’ve done – and it is partly that – but it’s so much more.

Since retiring, I’ve been catching up on a lot of reading and have come across a lot of references to repentance and some very different ways of describing it:

‘going beyond the mind’ – Cynthia Bourgealt, ‘The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind – a New Perspective on Christ and His Message’.

‘to change your way of thinking’ – Rob Bell, ‘What we talk about when we talk about God’.

‘to think about the world in a new way. To view the world in a different light. To doubt your doubts and trust the way of Jesus as true reality’ – John Mark Comer, ‘My Name is Hope’.

‘acceptance of being found’ – Kenneth E. Bailey, ‘The Cross and the Prodigal: Luke 15 Through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants’.

From the above it would seem that it was not my repentance that led to God’s coming as he did, but rather his coming (and letting me know that he accepted me as I was) led to repentance, the renewing of my soul.

As Paul wrote to the Romans, ‘God’s kindness leads to repentance.’ [Romans 2:4]

What has been your experience of repentance? Do please share.

You can find earlier posts in this series at: http://delemares.wordpress.com/category/my-story/

On All the Sentimental Stuff and Clutter

This post is so relevant to my recent post – hope I can put at least some of it into practice: http://bemorewithless.com/heartstuff/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BeMoreWithLess+%28Be+More+with+Less%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

Some Reflections on My First Year of Retirement

My first year of retirement has been overshadowed by preparing for my Mum to come and live with us. It has involved sorting out a lot of stuff:
Clearing stuff from the room for her
Clearing stuff from 2 cupboards that were converted into a downstairs bathroom for her
Clearing stuff from Mum’s house: some to make her room ‘home’ for her with familiar objects that she valued; the rest in preparation for selling the house.

So much stuff to sort!

Alongside this, to preserve my sanity, I was catching up on a lot of reading, I started this blog, and followed lots of other blogs. In particular, I followed blogs on de-cluttering and dealing with procrastination – the two seem to go together.
I have great admiration for my patients who were able to use the skills I was teaching. It’s a big ask to change the habits of a lifetime. So often I’d think, ‘physician heal thyself’ – I don’t practice what I preach. [see here for a post on this: http://delemares.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/physician-heal-thyself-treasure-in-jars-of-clay-soul-fast-update-1/ ] Why can’t I set about de-cluttering mindfully and just do it? As one of our psychologists said to a patient, ‘maybe things aren’t bad enough yet’. Ouch!!! – do things have to get a lot worse before I really start sorting things out?

Aside from the physical stuff, there was all the emotional stuff. Clearing Mum’s house made me realise how similar I am to her – I had to keep reminding myself that ‘I am not my Mum’. Whilst this was going on, Mum was being looked after in a lovely care home near me. (Mum’s house is some distance from mine, so to get much done I have to stay overnight).
Eventually, Mum did come to live with us, but only for a few weeks – she had yet another fall, went into hospital and then declined quite rapidly and died last November.

The past 18 months or so have been quite an emotional roller-coaster. Feelings of guilt – could/should I have done more? Feelings of frustration with myself – I still find it stressful sorting clutter, which leads to procrastination. All mingled with feelings of joy and thankfulness. Thankfulness for the values Mum has taught me: valuing friendships (Mum kept in touch with people from her early days, old school friends and people she had worked with before marriage – people from all stages of her life were able to attend her funeral which I am sure she would have appreciated.)
Sadly, Mum often said that her happiest days were when she served in the Women’s Land Army during WW2 – was there nothing good about the 60+ years since then?

And yet… in her latter days she responded with interest when she saw her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The latest addition, my first granddaughter, she called ‘my little pumpkin’ – odd because Mum was not a ‘baby-person’, often saying it wouldn’t have bothered her not to have had children: she was quite happy with her dogs! Maybe that was yet another sign of the dementia that had been developing over the past 2-3 years.

I hope the above goes some way to explaining why I’ve not been very active on this blog in recent months. Thank you to those who have kept faith with me and continued to keep in touch.

Please share any thoughts on bereavement, de-cluttering and/or procrastination.

On The Death Of Brennan Manning

Reblogged from Big Circumstance:

I was sad to pick up the news today about the death of Brennan Manning. His books, with their radical embrace of God's grace, have meant a lot to me in recent years. I recall someone once saying that you have not truly preached grace until you are falsely accused of antinomianism - well, if that were ever true of anyone it was true of Brennan Manning.

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the ego - a concretization of God-forgetfulness and a #mindful remedy

Reblogged from Shaun Lambert:

Dorothee Soelle has a beautiful phrase, 'the ego is a concretization of God-forgetfulness.' Not only that the ego is a concretization of other-forgetfulness, of creation-forgetfulness. We live in an ego-dominated world.

Whether it is what Manfred Kets de Vries calls the destructive egotism of narcissism characterized by 'self-centredness, grandiosity, lack of empathy, exploitation, exaggerated self-love, and failure to acknowledge boundaries.' (The Leader On The Couch, p.

Read more… 257 more words