New Adventures

I have been thinking about the challenges ahead in this New Year. I would very much like to play the ostrich with them and stick my head firmly in the sand and hope they just go away. That’s not likely to happen though.

I occasionally do some of the Facebook quizzes but rarely post the result unless it really impresses me. A recent one was about abstract paintings and you were to indicate the colours which most attracted your attention, an emotion you sensed or some such thing. It was supposed to explore your subconscious mind.  Apparently my character trait turned out to be “courage”.  Quite how they come to these conclusions I don’t know and for the most part I take them with a pinch of salt. I could run a hundred scenarios through my mind that would demonstrate the lack of courage – but deep down there was a resounding “Yes, I am courageous!”

I thought back to my move up to Inverness.  It was more than 25 years ago. I had taught abroad for a number of years, returned home to discover the education system had gone through too many changes for me to feel I could catch up. I wasn’t a happy beanie.  I was in a church where the women were all mothers and met in the afternoons for Bible studies and prayer meetings.  Their lives revolved around homes and husbands and babies and – nothing whatsoever I could relate to. I though the solution was to find a husband and have lots of babies and become a proper woman! Sadly that is how some churches deal with women.  Find them husbands. That wasn’t God’s plan.  A year spent on a gospel outreach team was His plan – not mine at all.  Door knocking, street drama, days of intense prayer, fasting – not my cup of tea I thought but it turned out to be totally me for that one year. The rest of the team might have been full of angst and soul searching and deep repentance or whatever, but I was having a ball.

The outreach year began at the end of September with a team-bonding week in a stately home mid-way between Newcastle and Jedborough. Our team was one of a half dozen or so. After that we all piled into minibuses and headed off to various towns and cities around the UK. My pastor at the time, Steve Petra, had recommended I be placed in Inverness – the furthest north he could place me. He wanted me to be as far away from Rugby as I could go, so I wouldn’t keep coming home when things got tough. He severed the spiritual apron strings and kicked me north.

I thought I was making a big mistake. I wasn’t a sociable being – still aren’t. I wasn’t particularly vocal about my faith. I had heaps of baggage from the Plymouth Brethren Church I had been attending for years and had issues about the role of women. It just seemed such a bad idea but I’d handed in my notice at work, raised the relevant funds to get on the team and I was carrying the best wishes of a church I had been a part of for barely two years.

We stopped somewhere along the A9 – possibly to let me out of the van to be sick.  I have never been a great traveller by bus. It was night time and the middle of nowhere.  It’s quite possible we did the holy thing – praying before arriving in Inverness and giving the year over to God – like you do on gospel outreach teams.

There was no light pollution.  The sky was cram-packed with stars. I remember looking up at them and being able to identify the few constellations I knew. They were like familiar friends.

“Just as the stars in the sky never change, I never change either,” said God. “I am the same God, yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

My life was changing.  My place of residence was changing. The things I would be doing each day were going to be different from anything I had ever done before but God was still the same. I felt courage seep into every bit of me. I squared my shoulders and stood up tall – as tall as someone who was four foot eleven inches could be – and I climbed back into the minibus with something approaching joy.

Years later I wrote a poem. I find the words are speaking to me again, reminding me that whatever the challenges ahead I am fixed to the truth of an unchanging God.

New Adventures 

Broad sky above her

Peppered with stars.

A road winding northwards

Empty of cars.

Uprooted and moving

To pastures unknown.

Friends left behind her

Feeling alone.

She traces the patterns

Of stars in the sky,

Fixed in their places

Shining so high.

Some things are certain

They always will be;

Like sunrise and sunset

And tides of the sea.

God never changes,

This much she knows.

Fixed to this truth

Onward she goes.

Out of the Rut

I have come to the conclusion that my life is far too predictable.

Except for the times when the supermarket has a serious shelf shift about, I can almost close my eyes to do the weekly shop. I know the shelves where I have to stand on my tip toes to reach a bottle of this, or a tin of that, or start hunting about for a tall person to reach it for me. I know which products I will pick up, carefully examine and put back on the shelf because the price tag is too high and I don’t really need it. I know the contents of the trolley, and can almost have the exact money in my hand before I reach the checkout.

I live in a rut!

This morning I climbed out of my rut most reluctantly. I was in town, visiting the usual shops in the usual order, buying the usual things when I noticed a new shop. It was a gallery of arts and crafts. I am usually inclined to go in and have a peek about, but this particular gallery was up a flight of steps and would require more effort than I was willing to expend.

I had walked past the door, having glanced at the array of crafts in the display window either side of the staircase. I have learned from experience that the absence of a price ticket somewhere usually means it is out of my price range.

I stopped just outside the boarded up window of the next shop. Shops going out of business seem to be common place just about everywhere. A shop opening, one that isn’t another discount store, is rare and should not be passed by and ignored – even with a flight of stairs.

There were a number of things that I really liked. There was a single rail of clothes each item very unique and not mass produced. There was a wonderful cream shawl that looked like it was constructed from spider’s webs. The price tag was a heavy one and beyond the contents of my purse…or my bank balance, come to that.

So, yes, I climbed out of the rut…and then climbed back in!

Earlier this week I bought a book. It doesn’t claim to be a book, with the title “This is Not a Book” although it looks like a book. The opening page tells me I am about to embark on a journey. It contains a series of tasks designed to make use of your imagination. I knew what it was when I bought it, and I bought it because I knew what is was.

There are two hundred and twenty pages of challenges to do. Some of them appear rather pointless like holding the book over your head for as long as possible and recording the time on a dotted line on the page. Other tasks are perfect starters for getting the creative juices moving.

I am vaguely happy to do a lot of things as long as I can do them privately – drawing little stars on a page every time I enter a room, or picking out random page from an encyclopaedia and a random topic and doing research and becoming an expert.

Some of the challenges encourage you to involve other people, strangers even, and I find myself not really up for that. And yet, those challenges are probably the ones that I really need to do to expand my world and my thinking.

Living out of the rut is living exposed to the unfamiliar. There are no comfort zones to wrap around yourself.

It's a challenge to live out of the rut.