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1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear…”

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I am one of the most blessed girls out there but sometimes I forget this. I forget how good God has been to me, and how awesome He is, because I get so bogged down by the little things in life. I focus so much on how I don’t like my temporary job, or how the doctor prescribed me antibiotics that don’t work, or how I’m just not happy with how life is going right now. But I forget how He healed up my heart and bound up my wounds, I forget how He loves me more than is humanly possible, I forget how beautiful His creation is, I forget who He is, I forget that He has better plans for me than anything I could ever come up with.

I keep a prayer diary and in it I write all my fears and worries because I know Jesus is the only one who can really change them, who can really take them away. His perfect love drives out all fear so I don’t need to be afraid of anything.

Sometimes Jesus likes to remind me of all the beautiful things in the world that my eyes have witnessed to show me how good He is. It’s like He says, “Look, if I can do this, if I can make this with my hands, I can heal your heart too. You have no need to be afraid.” It makes me smile when He tells me that.

So I made this silly little video montage full of really bad quality clips of beautiful, inspiring places that I’ve been to, backed by a song that is on the soundtrack to the perfect road trip movie. It may only be a few minutes long but it’s full of times and places that made my heart smile, places where I knew I could see Jesus so clearly and where I knew He was good; I like to watch them to remind myself of that truth every so often.

PS All the clips are from the grand old US of A, extra points for those of you who can guess where they’re from!

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Being free.

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My name is Annie/Marianne (just pick one and go with it) and I am a free spirit.

A couple of days ago I talked to a friend about how I love travelling and how I love who I am when I travel. When I travel I don’t stress out, I’m chilled, and most importantly I adore life and living. My friend asked me why I can’t be like that here, and told me that it’s important that I’m not always waiting around for the next big thing, and that it’s important to be content where I am.

The past few days I was off work sick and I loved it. Not the being ill part, but the part where I got to just hang out at home and think about where I am in life, who I am, and who I want to be. Last night, while spending some time thinking about my travels in 2011, I came to the conclusion that, if I can stop stressing out about the small things, I can be as care free here as I was when I was travelling across the United States on planes, trains, and auto-mobiles. That attitude does not, by any means, have to be kept for travelling.

I’m ready to embrace it all. I’m ready to get stuck in at work, to put more effort into engaging with people, to hang out with Jesus more, to use my free time wisely, to eat more healthily, to exercise more, to read more books. Before you graduate you spend your whole life living through massive chapters, high school is horrendously long, and university for me was four years, but now there’s so many mini chapters to look forward to. Come September I’ll be starting a whole new chapter, and I can’t believe how far I’ve come in the past ten months. Nothing has been what I expected but it has been entirely what it was supposed to be.

Below you’ll find some photos of the more care free, wonderful time of my life. Enjoy!

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Pacific Beach, CA and Not Taking Photos.

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In summer 2011 I spent eight weeks working at a summer camp in West Virginia before doing some travelling. The last stop on my list was California and when the day for me to fly out of Pittsburgh International Airport came around I couldn’t have been any more excited. I was going to stay with some lovely friends and knew it would be a brilliant week, to say the least. My flight was mad; first of all, we got told we were going to be delayed but then they gave us another flight’s plane so we got away on time, but it had the wrong crew on it so we had to hang out for a while; I’ve never seen a bunch of more chilled out people on a plane. There was a Dad wearing a Hawaiian shirt  sat next to me, a girl brought her dog with her, and across the aisle there was an orthodox Jewish family with 4 small children and a baby (this baby was adorable but did cause me to end up wearing ear plugs, as every time I had just dropped off to sleep it would start screaming).

It was dark by the time we flew in over Los Angeles but this gave me the most gorgeous view of the LA skyline, the few skyscrapers that the city has claimed as its own standing out in the darkness.

I could bore you with all the details of the entire trip but I’ll skip to the last day. We headed to Pacific Beach and parked on what I now know is called Oliver Street. Half way to the beach we passed a house where a girl was sitting outside and asked for some directions. I, being the seasoned traveller, made a quick judgement, decided the girl was trustworthy, and asked to use her bathroom as I was absolutely bursting for a wee. So I hopped over her wall, followed by one of my pals, and used her bathroom (don’t worry, my pal didn’t follow me in there…) before we were on our merry way again.

I can’t lie, Pacific Beach isn’t the most stand up place in Southern California, I’d even go as far as saying it did seem pretty trashy. But it was my last day in California, the sun was out, I was with my pals, and we were having a blast.

Sometimes, when I get bored, I look up places I’ve visited on Google Street View, and today I looked up Pacific Beach and found the exact route we took back to the car. I found the house we stopped at, and the original route we had take to get down to the beach.

I didn’t take any photos the day we went to Pacific Beach. I think we get so bogged down in technology that we forget what things feel like, we don’t want to put in the effort to remember, and we spend all our time just looking mindlessly at photos. We don’t take ourselves back to the smells and sounds of a place. We focus so much on thinking, “I can’t wait to upload this to Facebook!” Why? Why on earth do we do that? Is it so we can make people think we’re living an amazing life because we know they don’t see the days when we spend every waking hour just sitting on our bums watching bad television and eating junk food? Facebook could be used for really great things, like sharing music or important news articles, or things we create, but instead, like spoilt children, we use it to say, “Look at what I did, it’s far better than anything you’ll ever do!”

It’s so horribly sad.

Even if that’s not what we intend it’s just so subconscious. “Look at my life!” we shout, “It’s going so well!”

I adored the time I spent in California. Yes, I did upload photos, but my favourite thing is the memories I made there, the things that happened that changed me, that became a part of me, that I can’t document in an image. I’m still the carefree, fun girl who used a random strangers bathroom in Pacific Beach, but there’s no way for me to post a personality trait on Facebook. The best things we do with our lives will be the things that make us who we are, the things we put time and effort into, the things that make us grow, the things that we don’t feel the need to tell everyone about because they shine through us.

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I Will Not Be Ashamed.

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Sometimes I worry that my faith is too much for people.

That I should tone it down or pretend like I care about it less than I do so as people don’t think I’m so crazy or irrational.

But that attitude only makes life harder, it only means I spend all my time denying the fact that my heart leaps for joy any time I see God’s love in every day life, any time I feel His love surrounding me.

Before Jesus was crucified Peter, one of his disciples, denied him three times. But now, with the true knowledge of what happened at Calvary, I cannot deny my Jesus. My rock, my Saviour, my strong tower. I can’t pretend that I’d be happy to date a man who doesn’t love Him, that I’m okay with my behaviour when I gossip, that I don’t notice when I gradually spend less and less time praying and reading my Bible, that I don’t think it’s important to engage with people (because people matter).

The truth is that any time my heart aches, any time I’ve had a bad day, any time I want to curl up in a ball and hibernate for a few weeks, I take it to Jesus. I lay it all down at the foot of the cross because that is “where grace and suffering meet”. That is where I’m reminded how much I’m loved, how much He understands my pain, how much I am forgiven.

That is where I’m reminded that I am safe, and that I have hope, because of Jesus. Because of what He did on that cross.

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Leaving the desert.

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When I graduated university I entered a really intense desert period with Jesus. During the summer I read Job and I felt like we were kindred spirits, meeting thousands of years apart, fully understanding how the other felt about having the rug pulled out from under us and having everything (almost everything for me, any way) that we knew and loved taken away.

I have spent so much time in the past ten months crying out to God (literally and figuratively, and sometimes with actual tears), not having a clue why I was doing this alone or, really, how I was managing it. I frequently tell people, “I don’t know how I coped. In fact, truthfully, I didn’t cope at all. I didn’t cope.” And I didn’t. I turned my back on God at one point, angry that I was so lost, but eventually came running, nay, sprinting back to Him because I knew He was the only one who could truly fix things.

In Church, before Christmas, the sermon theme was ‘stepping out of the boat’, and the truth that you can’t walk on water if you never step out of the boat. It was as if Jesus was standing in front of me and shaking me, shouting at me to listen. He doesn’t often yell things right in my ear but this time he did. But, since I’m super smart *intense sarcasm intended*, I decided to ignore this until I reached breaking point this week. Usually Church was enough to keep me going, even if I wasn’t getting any fellowship, but I hadn’t gone for two weeks and I was becoming really weak. I had started to realise a lot of things about myself, the way I was treating people, the words I was using, etc., that weren’t making me happy. I had been in touch with a friend about joining the house group that he goes to (if you’re not sure, house groups/cell groups are small gatherings of people from the same Church who get together once a week to have fellowship on a more intimate level than normal Church, to discuss the Bible, pray, and have yummy food and amazing banter) but had chickened out last week. This week I was so in need of fellowship that I had no fear at all; I needed to go this week and nothing was going to stop me.

Being in that sort of environment again, for the first time in almost a year, just tore my heart up (in the best way, of course). I was quiet, yes, but I felt accepted and welcome and loved. I was so encouraged to know that I wasn’t the only one there who worked in a secular environment and that I have the same worries and stresses about the workplace that these people do. It was great to share my fears with them and to tell them that I was glad to be with them and that it truly meant a lot to me. Mostly, the discussion we had reminded me of how important it is for me to love my work mates, and to pray for them. I could go on and on about the way those two hours encouraged me immensely but I won’t bore you (hopefully I haven’t already).

What I’m trying to say is that it’s always darkest before the dawn. Monday evening was only the first night of getting to know these wonderful people, and sharing my life with them, and there are so many more nights to come. The desert can’t last forever and, eventually, you will reach the ocean.

All that’s left to do then is stepping on to the water; trust me, you can do it.

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Learning.

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In January I passed my driving test and was really excited to finally gain a bit more independence, not having to rely on people to always give me lifts or always using public transport. However, the longer I’ve been driving I’ve noticed one very frustrating thing: society doesn’t leave any room for people to learn. I noticed this when I first started my job too. Every so often I would be speaking to a rude customer and they would say, “Are you new?” As if their frustration was completely down to the fact that I was still learning how to do my job and that being new and still learning was a bad thing. In regards to driving, I may have passed my test but tonight was the first time I’d driven to Belfast, and all the lane changes were quite confusing.

Here’s a quick summary of what happened:

  • I realised, at the last minute, that I needed to change lanes.
  • I had checked in my mirror, was certain no one was coming up behind me, and went to move over.
  • All of a sudden someone beeps their horn, but they don’t just do it briefly, they held it down for what was about 5 or 6 seconds (actually a reasonably long time).

It came across as very aggressive and actually had me in tears because I got so panicked by it all. To add to the trouble, in Northern Ireland you have to drive with ‘R’ plates (restricted) for the first year after you pass your test, allowing everyone on the road to know you haven’t been driving for very long. My issue with ‘R’ plates and how they do more harm than good in causing other drivers to think this means it’s their job to “teach you a lesson” or put you through some sort of sorority/fraternity style initiation is a whole other post, so I won’t bore you with that now.

It just really bothers me that every single person who has a driving license in the UK has been through the same process as me, but eventually something inside them goes, “Okay, you’ve been driving long enough to treat people like crap because you have no patience. Yep, that’s fine.” It’s the same in work: every person I speak to had to learn to do their job so why am I not allowed to learn to do mine?

It’s the same in so many situations; if you’re not perfect straight away you’re not good enough. I think it’s something to do with selfishness and self-entitlement, but I’m not too sure. Mostly I think it’s just a bullying tactic, to make yourself feel better because you’re not new to whatever it is you’re doing, or, in regards to dealing with customers, to make the person feel like they’ve failed at their job somehow because you haven’t got the response you wanted. We don’t laugh at people in school or university who are learning about a new subject for the first time, so why do we do it in other areas of life?

I think bullying is a big problem in society, to be honest, and not just between school kids. It happens at university, in the workplace, in day to day interactions with strangers, on the roads… And yet we’re all shocked when we hear stories of teenagers killing themselves because they’ve been picked on so terribly by their peers. The world is a harsh place but it appears to all be fun and games until someone gets hurt. But, as I’ve learnt through a job in customer service, adults are more immature than six year olds. I have said countless times that I would rather work with small children than adults because children use more logic than a lot of the people I’ve spoken to. If we don’t want our children to be bullied or be bullies we have to start acting like adults, not mirroring the negative attitudes that we have given to our children, because children learn from the people around them and, for most, those people are adults.

People need to learn, and I wish more had the opportunity to learn from responsible, mature adults. We need to give people space, we need to encourage them, and we need to build them up, not bully them and make them feel small. Being a bully only makes you look like an idiot.

 

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No Borders.

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Isaiah 60:15-22

“Although you have been forsaken and hated,
with no one traveling through,
I will make you the everlasting pride
and the joy of all generations.
You will drink the milk of nations
and be nursed at royal breasts.
Then you will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior,
your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
Instead of bronze I will bring you gold,
and silver in place of iron.
Instead of wood I will bring you bronze,
and iron in place of stones.
I will make peace your governor
and well-being your ruler.
No longer will violence be heard in your land,
nor ruin or destruction within your borders,
but you will call your walls Salvation
and your gates Praise.
The sun will no more be your light by day,
nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,
for the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.
Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
Then all your people will be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor.
The least of you will become a thousand,
the smallest a mighty nation.
I am the Lord;
in its time I will do this swiftly.”

I’m so tired of this world and our politics. I’m so tired of borders and divides and governments attacking the poor instead of picking on people their own size. In the UK David Cameron has recently introduced the bedroom tax, meaning that anyone on benefits can’t have a spare bedroom, this even applies to married couples, one of whom has a disability, and they need the spare bed room to store medical equipment or for their partner to possibly sleep in at times. Yet Cameron hasn’t introduced any sort of millionaire’s tax, meaning that while the rich are left to their own devices, the poorest people in the country are having more and more of their freedoms taken away from them.

As it was recently reported in The Telegraph, the gap between the rich and poor in the UK is one of the widest in the developed world. I don’t understand how on earth David Cameron can think his attitude towards the poor is okay, that it’s acceptable to take more and more away from those who have least and keep giving to those who have most. Lowering benefits (and we’re not just talking about job seekers allowance here) will not create a fairer economy and forcing people to move out of their homes is taking away freedoms that everyone should be allowed. At least 660,000 people will be affected by the bedroom tax, a number the housing market simply can’t deal with.

This, my friends, is why the Bible passage quoted above is relevant. I can’t wait for Heaven, when there are or no borders or divides, when those who were treated terribly on earth are given the respect they deserve. I want to see the weak and poor lifted up, I want to see them next to their Saviour, who helped them to carry on even when politicians tried to beat them down. I’m tired of “first world problems” and self-entitled people complaining about minor issues, I want those who are truly broken to be pieced back together. I want wars and famine to end, I want everyone to have enough and no more. I want greed and hatred and selfishness to end, I want the wonder of God light up our skies every day and for everyone to continually be singing His praises because He is our King and He will reign for eternity.