Slapped Sideways

It has been a trial of a week, truth to tell.  I found myself at the end of my working week sitting in front of the computer screen.  I had googled “signs of a nervous breakdown” half in jest and half in earnest.

Have you ever watched those tennis matches where one player is hopelessly outmatched by the other?  During those breaks in the match between games, they sit with the towel over their heads as the commentators dissect each point and ask questions about commitment to winning or assess the man or woman’s fitness levels. 

Yes, I watched the Andy Murray game against Nadal.  Yes, he lost and it was not his finest hour – there was no taking it to the wire.  It appeared that Andy had lost no credibility in the commentators’ eyes – it was only six months since surgery on his back; it was only the second time he had got to the semis in the French Open; Clay clearly wasn’t his preferred playing surface; Nadal was playing out of his skin.

I was Andy Murray last night! All week at work I have felt outplayed.  I had been slapped sideways on so many occasions.  A low point occurred Wednesday afternoon – something precious and mostly irreplaceable – a work of art of the written kind – was cut adrift into cyber space.  Don’t tell me that I should back things up!  I thought I had backed it up on more than one device only to discover I had only a first draft, not a nearly finished product.  It was a towel on the head moment.

Things just hadn’t gone as planned and I was aware that things will get more hectic rather than more settled.  If I wasn’t coping in a time of relative rest, I was certainly not going to cope in a time of busy-ness.

I scrolled through the list of nervous breakdown signs and none of them applied.  I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or robbed in some way.  

God snorted!

As if, He commented, I could be that close, when I had the Almighty on my side.  If only He knew, I thought sourly, that sometimes it is precisely because He is on my side that I feel close to the edge.  I had spent some of my week explaining to groups of young people some of the tough things Jesus said – like “turn the other cheek”. It’s just on the possible side impossible to make it almost impossible!

So, yes, slapped sideways described my week well.

I settled down to spread the week’s mess on the floor of God’s throne room ready for an autopsy.  No unsuccessful strategies, however, were pulled from the week, weighed and measured and scrutinised. 

I found myself reading Ephesians 3:16 “I pray (that’s Paul speaking) that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being,”

My inner man had taken a pounding and strengthening seemed like a good idea.

I went on to read the account of Jesus being tempted in Luke 4. There were things that Jesus knew to be true.  He knew himself to be the Son of God because God had said it out loud during his baptism.  Yet the enemy was poking holes and goading Him by saying “If You were…You would do this or that..”  

It is a sad day when out enemy knows more about what God’s word says than we do. 

Jesus didn’t debate the issue.  He knew God’s word – what it said and what it didn’t say.  If the word of God is like a two edged sword – the enemy has his own self-forged warped version.  The sword that Jesus wields is the true sword.

God reminded me that His word was deeply rooted inside me.  More than that – I knew the Author of the Word.  The trials of the week were not about poking holes into my boat and watching me sink.  The fact that there were no holes, and I didn’t sink, was proof that my boat was strong and seaworthy. 

Today was another morning of being slapped sideways – in a good sense. 

I enjoyed a morning of creative writing. It was a small gathering at the Breathe Chapel of writers.  Writing was a big part of it, as was sharing what we had written.

The first swipe came as a lady read out a poem about a broken chandelier.  At first read through I was just not getting it. Then, I don’t know what happened.  Suddenly the broken chandelier took on a whole new identity.  Memories of years of fertility treatment and miscarriages came back with all of the emotions I felt at the time. Asking why, not understanding, not being able to function afterwards.  My whole picture of “family” was shattered like a broken chandelier.  It couldn’t be fixed.  Poetry is about touching the emotions – and her poem certainly touched me.  It ended with picking up a broken piece of glass and handing over to God and seeing the rainbow of light glinting off the fragment.  It described so well what I did to be able to move on.

The second swipe, which was really the first swipe seeing as it came first, happened when another lady talked about the poetry of “Melanie Kerr” not realising she was sitting next to me. She had been to an open-mic evening at the Sunset Café.  She had picked up one of my books and shared a couple of the poems from it. She must have sat down to read more of the poems and liked them.  “Liked them” is perhaps too mild a reaction.  We will pass on the superlatives – my head won’t fit through the door. She really liked them.  I love my book and it never fails to amaze me that I wrote the poems. I really like them too. It was nice to feel appreciated.

When God encourages a person he does it BIG TIME.

 

An Axehead Floats - Mel's Alternative Version of 2 Kings 6:1-7

The company of prophets talked among themselves complaining that the meeting place was too small. There weren’t enough seats for everyone if everyone was present.

“We need somewhere bigger to meet. An auditorium or something, with surround sound and a big screen to project the words onto.”

“Elisha is the leader…He is the one that makes those decisions.”

Eventually one of them brought it up in a meeting. Elisha frowned.

“Come on lads. It wasn’t so long ago that you were hiding in caves. I admit that there’s quite a crowd…but the numbers will drop when the novelty wears off. Besides, the Jordan River is not safe. Those woods are full of wild animals. Let’s not bite off more than we can chew.”

The prophets looked a little downhearted, but Elisha was the boss.

“Oh all right then,” said Elisha, “Go build your bigger meeting place. But don’t expect me to come with you…it’s your idea…you run with it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea…but…I mean, have you really prayed about it? Are you sure this is the direction God wants you to take?”

In the end, Elisha did go with them. He thought he should be there to pick up the pieces when everything began to fall apart. He wasn’t going to take an axe though. Cutting down trees was not his ministry. He had not been commissioned to do that.

The auditorium turned out to be a bad idea. They didn’t have enough money to hire a builder. That meant they would all have to chip in with the work. They weren’t really builders either, but how hard could it be to build a big shed?

And then it happened – as Elisha predicted it would. An axe head fell off the end of a handle and into the deep water of the Jordan River.

“Oh no, my lord!” someone cried out. “It was borrowed!”

The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, Elisha asked if anyone had some string and a magnet on them. “We could tie the string to the magnet…” but no one had string or a magnet.

“What about wading into the water then?” They looked at the rushing river, deep and churning and decided it might be a little dangerous.

Elisha wondered if this was the time to look for a miracle…but it wasn’t that important. It wasn’t a matter of life or death. It was just an axe head.

“It looks like the axe head is gone. Maybe your friend won’t ask about it if you keep quiet. You could say someone stole it. Ah well…I guess that puts paid to building a meeting place. I guess it wasn’t God’s will after all.”

The prophets sadly nodded their heads in agreement. They decided that they weren’t really all that good at hearing the voice of God. That kind of thing was Elisha’s gift. They should have listened to him from the start.

With drooping heads they went back to Gilgal.

It's sad that for many Christians my version of the story tends to be their reality - and mine too. Much better to live in the reality of the orginal story in 2 Kings 6:1-7

Skeleton Stories

Week 5 of my on line writing course has moved on to skeleton stories – bare bones stories. No subtleties, straight forward motives, a linear narrative and morality seen in black and white. A beginning, middle and an end and not too much fleshed out, I guess. I wrote my story and posted it.

As a writer you invent people all the time, or places or objects. What is especially great is when the things you invent are convincingly real. I can remember in a Faithwriter’s challenge describing a sculpture in a gallery. So convinced were the readers that they wanted me to either post a photo of the sculpture or tell me which gallery it was in so they could visit. It didn’t exist in real life and, yet again, I wished that I had a more tactile talent so that I could actually create it.

Here’s my skeleton story – If you think you have read it before, I did borrow the story idea from a past Faithwriter’s challenge. Don’t you think my ibby worms are gorgeous?

The Laughter Thief

Zandrick woke up one morning to discover his deep throated belly laugh, the one that made his side ache and his eyes water, had gone missong. He looked under the chairs and around the table. He checked the books on the shelf, all sixty two of them. He even looked behind the tapestry above the fire place.

From noon till dusk he visited some of his favourite places to see if he had left his laugh somewhere. He checked beside the bench beneath the chestnut tree in the village green. He had been watching children stamping in puddles and joined in their laughter. He searched carefully but his laugh wasn’t there. He walked beside the river, watching the sun wink at him on the water. He’d laughed at butterflies and the summer sunshine warm on his back. His laugh wasn’t in the grass by the bank. He looked under the bridge where the men in the barges walked their feet along the low curve of the tunnel roof but his laugh wasn’t there either. Finally, he went the hat shop on Briant Street. All the ridiculous hats he had tried on were still on their stands. The mirror on the counter was still there. He opened a few of the drawers, stuffed full with ribbons, just in case his laugh had somehow fallen inside, but it wasn’t there.

Head hanging heavily like a millstone, Zandrcik walked wearily home. He stopped off at the shop to buy a small pork pie.

“Not another one that can’t raise a smile!” said Picclalet from behind the counter. “I do declare we must have a laughter thief in our midst!” Counting on his fat sausage fingers, Piccalet listed all the people he had seen that day who had lost their laughs.

Now, Little Couton, just beyond the bend in the river, had been plagued by a laughter thief last spring. Someone had snuck into people’s houses and stole their laughter while they slept. A good thief could make a great deal of money selling laughter to people who had nothing to laugh about.

Zandrick quaked at the thought of his own deep throated belly laugh booming out of someone else’s mouth, making someone else’s sides ache and someone else’s eyes water. What he needed was a plan to catch the thief. He stared at a tiny spot just above Piccalet’s left eyebrow. Then, he had it!

“A large can of ibby worms, please!” Zandrick tipped a pile of coins onto the counter.

Ibby worms, hailed as the fishermen’s friends, giggled hysterically when tossed into water. The fish swam close to see what was so funny, and all that was needed was a net to scoop them out of the water. Everyone knew that fish caught smiling tasted so much better than one’s caught with a line and hook.

Zandrick threw his worms into a large bucket of water, and ran behind a stack of wood beside his back door. The worms began to giggle. Raucous laughter spilled from the bucket filling the air.

Suddenly a dark shadow slipped in through the open gate drawn by the laughter, just like the fish in the river. Zandrick was upon him, engulfing him in the folds of the tapestry taken down from above the fireplace.

The scuffle was short. Zandrick struck the thief solidly on the head with a piece of wood and began to peel back the folds of the tapestry. A wiry little fellow with thick bushy eyebrows was clutching a big black bag. The thick material of the bag muffled the sounds inside. Zandrick opened it, careful not to spill any of its contents. There were a dozen light titters, a loud ho ho, a playful ha or two, a sprinkling of mirthful hee hees and a couple of snorting honks. There in the bottom of the sack Zandrick could hear his own deep throated belly laugh, the one that made his sides ache and his eyes water.

The Pen in Your Hand

I caught the tale end of the news on Thursday evening after I had come home from a meeting.

It was an update of the situation in China. Days after the earthquake, rescue personnel had made it to the epicentre of the quake. There was lots of footage of the rescue operation. Planes flying overhead were discharging parachutes – some with men strapped into the harnesses, other with boxes of food and water. On the ground, men were shifting piles of rubble trying to reach those that had been buried. Watching as one school was being excavated, were parents looking for their children. I had forgotten the Chinese government had restricted each family to one child – and that one child was now buried under a pile of concrete! It doesn’t matter, I suppose, whether there is one child or a dozen in a family, the loss is still there and the parents are just as inconsolable.

There is one image that has caught my eye and stayed with me, and I have searched the net to find it, without success. It is of a school, or the remains of one. All you see is a single hand, uncovered in the rubbish. A child’s hand clutches a pen. I wasn’t listening to the narrator, just looking at the hand clutching a pen. I am sorry that I wasn’t listening properly. Something else came to mind, that at the time seemed to matter more.

As I said, I had been at a meeting. Some friends in another church had been over to Florida to be a part of whatever it is that Tod Bently has become involved in. I have perhaps muddies the waters of my mind by reading a selection of reports of what is happening over there – some enthusiastically rubber stamping it, and others calling it a false revival. I don’t know.

The couple reporting back were very enthusiastic and many people in the meeting caught their enthusiasm. We went into a time of worship and waiting on the Lord – as you do at some of these kinds of meetings.

The worship was excellent. The worship leader was really gifted and his song selection was just what I wanted to sing. I was in the zone. My heart was absorbed, but my mind was also at work. I have been to many meetings where the emotions run high, and people are whipped up into a response that isn’t always helpful. I wanted to be built up and not hyped up.

People shared pictures of what they thought God was saying or doing. I experience these things too, but I am never sure that it is not just my imagination! The picture that I had I didn’t feel was a shared picture.

I had the sense of being in a room with a whole load of presents. They were all shapes and sizes, colourful wrappings and ribbons, and very clearly labelled. I was walking around picking them up and not finding one that had my name on it.

To some extent I think the impression or picture was in response to how I was feeling. I didn’t feel qualified to be there. Many of the people there were involved in lots of “missional” things like healing on the streets and street pastors. They were buzzing with enthusiasm. I was feeling out of place – hence the idea of no present for me. You can see where I am coming from, perhaps.

I was getting rather dispirited about not finding my present when I had the impression of God speaking.

“There isn’t one.” My heart took a deep dive – It was like confirming that I really was in the wrong place. Then He went on to say, “I have already given you yours.”

I looked down at my hand and I was holding a pen.

“The pen in your hand is my gift to you. There is nothing better than that!”

I am not sure if can I convey the sense of profound privilege I felt. I am never more at home than when I am writing! To my mind there is something incredibly powerful about the written word and the written word read out loud.

I suppose that I might have dismissed the whole thing as just my imagination except for that one image of the child with the pen in their hand.

I can be Jonathan in this one thing! This I can do!

I did it!

I did it! I said I would do it and I did! When I got home from school I wrote out a query letter, something you send to a publisher inviting them to publish your work! I say letter – it was an e-mail. I attached a selection of poems and sent it off. So the worm is in the water and I am waiting to see if the fish will bite!

Part of the conversation I had with my friend at the Bible study related to a meeting a number of years ago. I can’t remember where we were, but there was a prophetic element to the meeting. Words of knowledge were being tossed out to various people. It was very casual. There were a number of leaders present.

The word of knowledge for my friend was something along the lines that it was time that she wrote the book. Now, if the leader had said that to me, it would have been the perfect word. I had discovered that I had a talent for writing. The church was in need of a newsletter and I wrote one. For four years, every three months, I would harass people for articles and play around with fonts and columns and things. I was an explosion of words just waiting to happen. All I needed was someone to put a lighted match – or in this case – a prophetic word – and I would have been away. My friend just looked blankly at the man. Was there a book inside her, just itching to get written? She wasn’t sure!

I waited for the word of knowledge that was coming my way, and it was about stepping out and being confident in the prophetic realm.

Because he didn’t say anything about a book to me, but he said something to my friend, and as he was one the “big boys”, it was as if he had pricked a balloon and burst my dream of writing a book. My line of thinking was “Well, if he didn’t say it to me that must mean that I am not supposed to be a writer.” My confidence really took a dive. I did not stop writing, I just didn’t dream big any longer. I allowed what he didn’t say to colour my thinking about things. I am not quite sure exactly what i did with what he did say!

That was a long time ago and I have written a lot of things since and shared a lot of things too. Maybe what I just needed was time and it is only now, after all the FW challenges that I have confidence to believe that I am marketable!

Digging up and dusting off my talent

I made a decision on Monday.

On Monday night, the teachers/preachers in the church met together to work out the programme for the next month or so. We are hoping to base the next series of “sermons” (I hate that word but can’t think of another one) on the church described in Acts 2. It wasn’t about encouraging the congregation to drag their friends to a church meeting, but equipping the church so that they could take Jesus with them into their friendships. The phrase that I came up with – or rather, the Holy Spirit suggested – was “Take it home.” We have to work out how to take our faith outside the church setting and into our everyday lives.

Somewhere in all the chat of the evening, a friend told us a testimony of a woman. I can’t remember the details, but it was about doing what God asked you to do, not what you thought He might like you to do. It was something to do with a missionary, who had been on the mission field and seen lots of people come to a saving faith. However, God was not impressed because what He really asked her to do was to bring up her children. To be the missionary, she had put them into a boarding school and it was really left to someone else to do the bringing up.

I was convicted! It is not a case of “What if I am not doing what God asked me to do?” The week before, during the Bible study I have with a friend, the same thing came up. The study was about the value of work, and knowing that you were doing what God had set aside for you to do, and being fulfilled in that.

How many clues does a person really need before they catch on? Evidently, if you are me, then it’s quite a few! It was Tony Howson’s book that started it. My friend pointed out something at the end of the book about the publishers of the book being on the lookout for good Christian material to publish. Knowing that I have a passion for writing, my friend suggested that I might want to take them up on the offer. If they were looking for material to publish, and I had material just sitting around waiting to become a book – hey presto!

I also have the phone number of a publisher of Christian poetry that was passed on to me at a recent writer’s workshop. I am planning to attend another of the workshops later on next month. To have someone pass on a phone number, and for the person you passed it onto not to make use of it, you have to question the seriousness, or the hunger of the writer to want to see their stuff in print.

I am convicted that I am like the man with the talent that digs a hole and buries it. I could agonise about whether my writing is good enough – so many people have said that it is (and my friend has said she will buy a copy of the book when it is published!). I could also agonise about whether there is a market for Christian poetry books – apparently not if you were to go into a Christian bookshop and ask for poetry books! It is not about agonising but about obedience. If I have been given a talent then I it is not for just playing around with. There is an intention to use it and for the gifting to bear fruit. The fruit is not about me getting lost in my own private heaven for an hour or two – but about using whatever talent I have to reach out and touch people.

I read my stuff and I get touched.

So my intention is to dig out my poems, phone up the publisher and see where it all takes me. That is my weekend plan.

“And about time too…” I hear some of you say. I am making myself accountable. Feel free to nag me if you think I am playing chicken! I seriously cannot bear for God to say to me, “I asked for a poetry book, Mel. Where is it?”