2012

2012 has not been the best year of my life.

A little while back, I described it to someone as a 'year of loss'. There have been a lot of changes this year and, while they have mostly been good changes, they have come first from a place of loss, as I guess, many changes do.

There have been many times this year when it's been far too easy to get stuck in my little self-pity pit. Well, honestly, sometimes, it's just been hard to see the way out.

But that's not how I want to finish my year.

There are 10 days left of 2012 and I hope they're good ones, but even if they're not, I want to remember the good things, of which there have also been many this year. 

Here's a taster:

This is the year I've been able to write, actually able to get stuck into it. Able to clear my head enough to think about what I want to say and how I want to say it. Having the chance to do something that I'm passionate about, that makes me feel alive, there is very little I wouldn't give up for that chance. I now have something that resembles a book. I'm not sure what I'll do with it or if other people will read it, but that's ok. There was joy in that writing, and that's enough.

Although some friends have gone away, there have been new ones who have brought laughs, fun, margaritas, encouragement, food (a lot of food), Desperate Housewives, flights in small planes and support. It's hard to believe that this time last year, I didn't really know some of the people who are some of my best friends now.

Who would have thought this would be the year I would discover a love of fishing? Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration after one fishing trip, but when the trip yields a hundred and thirty something fish, how can you not love it?

What a treat to have both mumsie and pops come out to visit this year. You have to love a trip to the zoo with the dad and a trek up Te Aroha with the mum. Highlights!

Queenstown twice in one year - that's a bit greedy isn't it?  The year started with an epic 7s trip to Nationals and there was a little return trip in August for some snow banter! One of the best holidays I've been on - there was skiing, beautiful scenery, scary drives down mountains, cards, Olympics (weight lifting and diving became the new faves), games of sardines in the dark (seriously) and a few moments that will never be mentioned outside of Queenstown. Right S Club?

This was the year I went as far north and as far east as possible in New Zealand. Loved them both. I live in an amazing country! Next year - west and south?

I was going to say that watching the All Blacks play Ireland at the Waikato Stadium was a highlight, but it wasn't. Not even a little bit. You try being surrounded by hundreds of gloating Kiwis when you lose 60-0!

The new job all happened very suddenly. I definitely hadn't planned to move, but what a move it's been. For the first time since I can really remember, I'm actually enjoying being a physio and am motivated to learn and develop. For the first time, I can see a career in it. Good move, good move indeed.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a crappy year, but when I look at what I've just written, I wonder where the crappiness has been. Not that those things take it away, but it's almost like, when you see the good things, recognise your blessings, their light shines a little brighter and blocks out a little more of the darkness. 

I don't ever want to pretend that life is perfect, that I have no problems, that I feel like smiling all the time. That's not real, it's not honest and I want to be authentic.
Life may not always be good, but it is full of good things. 
2013 may not have any less darkness, but I'm looking forward to seeing where the light is going to come from.

I forgot about the stars

Up until I was 18, I lived in a biggish city. Our family moved house a few times, but we were always in and around Belfast. When I was 18, I left home to go to South Africa for 7 months. While I was there, I stayed on a farm in Oribi Gorge, which is now one of my favourite places on earth. It's beautiful. Thirty minutes drive from the nearest town, a place surrounded by sugar cane fields, trees, cliffs, bush and waterfalls. A stunning place...

                               ...but it took a bit of getting used to.

One of the biggest things I noticed was the darkness. As you look up at the night sky in Belfast, you can just about make out some blackness through the delightful orange glow. There’s nothing quite like the glow of streetlights…to block your view of the sky.

I don’t think I ever knew how many stars you could see in the sky until I went to South Africa. I remember one night when I got out of the car and looked up and just froze for a couple of minutes, because it almost looked like there was more star than sky. Everywhere I looked, there were clusters of light breaking up the black.

I loved it. 

In the months I was there, I stopped often to look up at the stars.

I returned to SA a year after my first trip and was walking down the gorge one night when I looked up and saw the stars,                                                   

                         stars that I had forgotten about.                                       Because it was only when it was pitch black with no interfering lights, no warm, orange glow, that I could see the stars. Pinpricks of light scattered across a veil of black, letting me know that sometimes things are there even when we can’t see them. When there’s a lot of light around, it’s easy to forget about the stars. They’re always there; we just can’t always see them…

Sometimes, when things are going well, it’s easy to think we’re strong and we are the reason that things are good. It’s easy to forget about God.

So, sometimes, it has to get a little darker to show us that he is always there.

When I got made redundant from my first physio job in New Zealand, it was a pretty dark time.  All around the country, private practices were losing business and physios were losing their jobs. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity around, which was worrying enough in itself, but I had the added problem of my visa depending on my job. So, when I was given my four weeks’ notice, I faced the prospect of having to pack up and get out of the country in a short space of time.

Everything pointed towards darkness, but I find it hard to even describe the light that I saw in that time. For a reason that I can’t explain, I felt more settled in Hamilton than I ever had done. That settled feeling had been eluding me; the search for it had been plaguing me for two years, and it was only when the darkness came that I found it. It was like my eyes were opened to see the friendships I’d formed, the church I was starting to feel at home in, the gold find of a flat we’d acquired, the chance I was getting to go to counseling and work through many of my problems. My eyes were opened to the light of assurance that I was exactly where I was meant to be.

In the couple of years previous to the redundancy, things had fallen into place pretty easily for me. I’d thought my job was secure, I lived in a good flat with good friends, I was working my way up in rugby physio circles, friends and family had come to visit me. 

And I got complacent. 

I didn’t ignore God but I definitely didn’t run to him. I thought, if not consciously, definitely at some subconscious level, that I’d achieved a good situation by some hard work and a bit of luck. I think I stopped listening to God, so I stopped hearing him too.

Those thoughts of self-sufficiency and security were fully eradicated when I lost my job, but something deeper and more incredible came from it.                    

                             My ears were unblocked.                                                         

Sometimes I felt God speaking to me so clearly that it was like he was standing right in front of me, holding me by the shoulders, looking me in the eyes and telling me he had this one.

I’m not saying that I love my life when bad things happen, when times are dark and difficult. Of course I’m not. But that time of my life was one of the most blessed in recent years and I can truly say I learned to appreciate the darkness and what it did, the place it took me to…

             that place of clarity, 

                     the place where I could see the stars.

Doing the impossible

Every Wednesday of this year, when not interrupted by rugby matches or skiing trips or a million appointments, I've been writing. Pretty steadily, ideas that have been in my head have gone down on paper and have turned into a sort of logical, hopefully coherent collection of sentences and chapters. Some have come easier than others. Some have been floating around my mind for years, others have been spur of the moment creations.

My dream is that this group of thoughts could turn into a book that has the potential to be published. It's been my dream for a long time. It is my dream that writing about my experiences, writing about what I've learned could help other people who are feeling the same things, or at least let them know they're not the only ones.

Lately, as the potential book has started to take more shape, I've been looking around at options of things to do with it when it's finished. And there is little that is more discouraging...

For a first time author with no major selling points (i.e. I'm not the president of the USA or an All Black), it's notoriously difficult to get published. It took JK Rowling 9 rejections before she got published. Margaret Mitchell got rejected 38 times before Gone With The Wind was accepted. And Chicken Soup For the Soul made it on it's 141st attempt! Maybe those figures should encourage me, maybe they will when the rejections start coming, but right now, they just make me think about what an uphill battle it is. This is what I've learned - most publishers don't even look at manuscripts that haven't come through an agent. Most agents, well, they aren't in New Zealand. Most overseas agents won't look at manuscripts from overseas authors.

I've tried to tell myself that if this is something God wants me to do, the barriers don't matter. Lately, it's much easier to wonder if I'm just kidding myself. And well, maybe I am, but I don't think I'm ready to give up just yet, so I've been trawling the internet for some unlikely victories and successes...

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield i.e. the makers of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, started by taking a correspondence course in ice cream making. They used their savings and a loan to set up a small shop and well, look at where they are now (mmmmm cookie dough ice cream)

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job because she was "unfit for TV".

Albert Einstein didn't speak till he was 7 years old and his teachers said he was "mentally slow".

In the Bible, Joseph was abused by his brothers, sold to Egyptians as a slave, a foreigner, got thrown into jail and ended up second in command to Pharaoh.

Impossible dreams. Success from failure. Trying again after rejection. It's hard to hold on, hard to believe, but what if I didn't? What if you didn't? What if, every time someone told you that it was impossible, you gave up?

Well, to start, we wouldn't have Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream or Harry Potter...

Going East

Things I learned on the journey east...

• 1 car + 5 people + 7 hours - coffee + Diana Ross CD on repeat = sore butt + tired head + feeling of wanting to rip off ears.
• when Tuwhakairiora is the shortened version of a name (Tu-moana-kotore-i-whakairi-oratia), you can't really complain about Philippa.
• how to say Tuwhakairora
• when sleeping marae style, ear plugs are your best friend. Next year...nose plugs!
• the skirting board type thing that goes between the wall and the ceiling is called a scotia. 
• when scraping wallpaper off with your fingernails and you get a big chunk, it can be surprisingly satisfying.
• a  l i t t l e  h a r d  w o r k  c a n  g o  a  l o n g  w a y.

Te Araroa is about as far east as you can go in New Zealand - the first place to see the sunrise. Every year, for the last six, a group (mostly from Hamilton) has driven the windy roads along the wild coastline to spend Labour Weekend serving the small community. Incedo, who organise it, are 6 years into a 30 year relationship with the area. 

 When the idea of taking a group of people to do some projects there was first approached, the people who know the community best, said something along the lines of - we don't want you coming up here to spend a weekend making yourselves feel good, then leaving and never looking back. If you're interested in the community, we want a commitment for 30 years...

 The commitment was made and year 6 rolled on. This year, the project involved Uncle BoBo and a house in desperate need of some love. The plan for the weekend? A new roof, new insulation, a repainted exterior, a repainted interior, a new ranch slider and two new decks. Day one: sanding, sanding outside, sanding inside, sanding high, sanding low, lots of sanding. Then a bit of exterior painting, taking off the old roof, laying some pink batts, and putting on as much of the new roof as possible before...


Day two: rain, wind and a bit more rain. Not a great combination of things when you're up on a roof. Thankfully, just the one fall off the roof. Thankfully soft landing (well, maybe the guy he landed on was not so thankful). Thankfully, lots of indoor jobs to be done - painting on the wallpaper, stripping the wallpaper when the paint caused it to peel off, repainting after the wallpaper had been stripped. Some carried on well into the night, but by the end of day two, the difference was huge and the house was ready for BoBo to come back.

Though there wasn't a whole lot of spare time, some was made for the important things - the eating, the gathering together. Each night, we'd come together in the wharenui to talk, to build relationship, to pray. Apart from the smell of wet feet, it was a pretty precious time. From three year old kids to much older adults, everyone was involved. There was togetherness, there was appreciation for each other, there was unity. Unity despite differences. Coming from Northern Ireland, being pretty much as far from home as I could be, I found it pretty remarkable, pretty valuable.

I've been involved in missions before in a few different countries, but this one was different. It wasn't about the project, it wasn't about achieving a goal and standing back to admire our work and giving ourselves a pat on the sore, tired back. It was about the people, people coming together, none better than the others, none less valuable than their neighbour. People, worth our time. People worth our hearts. People changed. People blessed

(I was trying to come up with some wise crack about wise men coming from the east, but the cliched cheesiness made me want to throw up a little bit, so I won't bother.)

Stop

Yesterday was my last day of work. I have a week before I start my new job, so, for the first time in, I don't know how long, I have a few days off. So what did I do with my day? Well...

I got up at 5a.m. to go to rugby training, then I went straight to the gym, then had an appointment at church, then a physio appointment (after hurting my Achilles at the gym), came home and made lunch for Abby, had lunch with Abby, did my laundry, washed my sheets, tidied my room, cleaned my bathroom, vacuumed the lounge, made dinner for the flatmates, cleaned up after dinner and then spent the evening making a photo book that I've been meaning to do for weeks...

I'm pretty exhausted, but more than that, I don't want to stop.

This year has gone at a hundred miles an hour. Yes, I've had my Wednesdays off, but on an average day at work, I've been treating 15-20 patients. 
           In the average week, I've had rugby trainings on two mornings and   one or two evenings, plus games on Saturdays. 
           In between all of that, I've fitted in a couple of trips to Queenstown, weekends in the Coromandel, trips to visit friends in Auckland. 
           I've moved house twice, joined a home group and prayer teams at church.
           I blinked and all of a sudden it's the middle of October.


There are a whole lot of things going through my head at the moment...a whole lot of things. But right now, most of all, it's fear. I'm scared to stop. As well as all the things I've done, the responsibilities I've had, a lot has happened this year, a lot that I have pushed to the back of my mind. It's only as I have a bit more time that I'm beginning to realise that my busyness has distracted me, that maybe that's even why I've stayed so busy. So, what happens when the busyness eases...

It scares me, actually it terrifies me...what if the only thing holding me together is the momentum? What if I stop and all the things I've been avoiding thinking about overwhelm me? What if I'm forced to deal with the things I've been hiding under the stuff? 

What if I stop and it all falls apart?

But what if I don't? What if I keep going? What if I keep myself busy with cleaning, with looking after other people, with new things, with routine things, with work, with distractions? I just don't think I can.

I've always been pretty into reflecting. I've always liked looking back, analysing, working out what I learned, what I could have done differently. I have a ridiculous number of old journals. But lately, not so much.

But I think it's time...time to stop. 

Maybe I will fall apart, but I don't think I'll fall too far. I have stuff to deal with but I don't believe I will be given anything I can't handle. God knows what load I can bear and He doesn't leave me to bear it alone. And what I know, what I need to keep focussed on is that, 

                if I fall apart, 
         it's only so He can put me back together, 
                          a little better than before. 

Waiting

I've been pretty frustrated lately. 

I'm at a stage where I feel like I'm waiting...
                   Waiting for something to happen...
                                          Waiting for the next thing...                              
                                                             Waiting for change ... 

I don't hate my life right now, but I just get the feeling that there's more to come, that this isn't it. The frustrating thing is, I feel like I've been waiting for and praying for the same things for a long time now. F o r  y e a r s . And sometimes I wonder if God has heard my prayers, if he's just ignoring them, if he know how frustrating this is.

Christians say a lot of annoying things. I know their intentions are good and I know I sound ungrateful and cynical when I say that, but one of the most frustrating things they say is "it will all happen in His time". I know it's true. I absolutely know it, but these words, meant as encouragement, are not encouraging. 
Instead of feeling that, yes, God is in control and all I need to do is sit back and have faith, those words make me feel...well, they make me question what I am doing wrong. It makes me wonder what lessons God is teaching me and why I seem to be refusing to learn. It makes me wonder what is wrong with me. It makes me feel like they know something I don’t. 

Waiting is hard. Faith and hope are hard in times of waiting. Frustration is much easier than faith is. And the frustration is so much worse when you see people around you getting what you want. It can make you feel like a five-year-old stomping your foot, pouting and saying, “it’s not fair!” And the words ‘in His time’ are about as effective for your heart as they are for a five-year-old when you tell them that they just have to wait. 

I guess  this is where it comes down to faith. Faith that God has the best plan for my life. And I think the worst thing I could do would be to passively wait for that best plan for my life to start. Because God’s best plan started 28 years ago for me and has kept going through every joy, every heartache, every triumph, every failure, every success, every fear. 

His timing has been perfect up till now, 

in a few ways that I have seen and a million ways that I haven’t. 

That is what keeps me going, that is what keeps me believing in His timing. Not because I can see the future, but because I have lived through the past. I remember that time He provided me a job in the perfect time when I lost mine. I remember when He provided me with a friend at work when one of my best friends had left the country and I was so lonely. I remember when I moved to New Zealand and He provided me with Lee and Sarah, who were also far from home and understood me perfectly.      

I was reading a bit of Isaiah the other day, somewhere deep in chapter 30, and I read this:

But the Lord still waits for you to come to him 

so he can show you his love and compassion. 

For the Lord is a faithful God. 

Blessed are those who wait for him to help them.

It wasn't a verse I remember ever reading before and I was just struck by it. God knows what it is to wait. And the thing he has to wait for is me getting over my stubbornness. He has to watch while I look everywhere else for love and compassion. He has to watch me get hurt because I look to other people for the love and compassion that only he can give. He has to watch me pout and stamp my foot and say "it's not fair"when I realise that people can't give me perfect love. And all he does is keep on showing it to me, and wait for me to open my eyes and recognise it. 

Waiting....with faith

      waiting...actively

           waiting...not because I see the future, but because I've lived through the past

For now Part 2

When I grow up...

When I was fifteen, I went on my first overseas mission trip. There were about 10 of us, from what I remember, who, along with three leaders, spent two weeks in the north of Portugal. During that time, we participated in a teenagers’ camp, helped run a holiday club in a village, visited an orphanage and some local churches and ran an outreach service on the beach. 

When I told people that I was going (good, Christian people), it often felt like they wanted to do a double take and ask, “what can a 15-year-old do?” Most of them didn’t say it out loud, but it seemed like that was what they thought. And maybe a little of rubbed off on me. I was a scared teenager – scared of travelling, scared of speaking in front of others, scared of being away from home, scared of big cockroaches. What could I do?

When I grow up...when I have more money, I'll start giving it to people who need it. When I get married, I'll start having more people round for dinner. When I have a stable job, I'll start figuring out what I really love doing. When I have kids, I'll start being creative...

If you're always waiting for the future before you start living, 

you'll never really live. 

As Pope John Paul II said, "the future starts today, not tomorrow". If you're always waiting for tomorrow, you're going to be waiting a very long time. 

I know are some things that have to wait for the future, some things that need money and secure relationships and solid jobs, so I'm not saying that you should Carpe the crap out of every Diem recklessly and without thought of consequences.                                                                                                      What I am saying is that, if the absolute only reason you have for not doing it now is that  

y o u ' l l  d o   i t  l a t e r ...maybe it's not a very good reason.

For now Part 1

Put your past in your behind
       (The Lion King)

I am the sum of my story. 

Who I am today is a result of each day that has led me to this point. 
                 Births
  deaths                                 hurts
                             joys                             celebrations 
               tears                       victories                          mistakes 
                     choices                     places
   people                         lessons

...these things have made me me.

But what if I decided that that was all there is? That the things that have happened were the only things that mattered. What if I lived longing for the happy times that once were? What if I let the hurts determine my attitude.

I've struggled with living in the past, with letting it define me. I've given myself labels - 'child of divorce', 'runaway', 'rejected friend'. For a long time, my tag line, the thing that described me best could have been "I have issues". I can't count the number of times I told people that. And it was true. I did have issues, but the biggest issue I had was that I didn't want to let go of my issues. I held on to them tightly, until they became so engrained in me, that I didn't have a clue how to deal with them.

I don't think I'm alone. 
The guilty live bound by the mistakes of their past.
The bitter live trapped by the injustice they've suffered in the past. 
The self-pitying live under the weight of past hurts.
The disappointed live clinging to past hope that has been lost. 
The hopeless live fighting with past failures.

But the wise, they live in the light of the past, letting it explain but not define who they are. Looking to the past can be a powerful thing if we use it in the right way. Who you are now may bear the scars of the past, but that's ok. A scar is a memory of a healed wound. It is part of you but it does not affect you like a raw and tender open wound. There is no shame in a scar, but just make sure you don't keep picking the top off the scab, not allowing the wound to heal. 

The past happened. 
      Now it's time to heal. 
 It is up to you what you let 
                          define 
                              control 
                                    bind you. 
             Don't let it be something which is no more.

Makes you think...

I had just come home from a university open day. My friend, Kirsty, and I had got the train to Jordanstown, had a bit of a look around, decided that yes, we probably did want to study physio, and then got the train home. We had a good talk on the train. I wasn't in a great place and Kirsty was listening to my pain and my ranting. 

Seemed like an insignificant day...

I got home and turned the TV on while I pottered around my room. I was casually changing channels, trying to find something other than the news to watch. It wasn't long before I realised that the news was on every channel. Something was going on. Something pretty big. 

I wasn't a very emotional person, I didn't cry easily, but I remember standing in front of my TV, watching the Twin Towers collapsing after the planes flew into them and I remember tears running down my face. Something about watching those reports was so real. The reporters standing there, trying to report this tragic news, all the while, in shock, not really sure what was going on, not knowing where or when another attack might come. 

I wasn't directly affected by the attacks, not like so many people were, but eleven years on, I remember those feelings. The world changed that day. I was 17, I had lived a pretty sheltered life, but all of a sudden, nothing really felt secure any more. People started talking about another world war breaking out. People were scared to get on planes. Airport security went crazy. 

It made me think. Made me reassess. What was important to me? What was I scared of? What was I scared of losing? What mattered? Who mattered? I think those are pretty good questions to ask every now and then. I hope it doesn't take a tragedy like that to make me ask them again.