2012, coming to an end.

This year has been an interesting one! A lot has happened, both good and bad.

Tonight as I think back on the months that have passed, I am reminded of how God moves through every experience we encounter.

This year, I have learnt about care, about forgiveness, about patience, about love and about support. That's not to say that I have completely learnt them, but that I have been given a glimpse!

At the start of the year my family found out my aunt had a brain tumour. We spent the first few months of 2012 caring for her whilst she moved in with us, going into hospital with her and helping her rebuild her life after surgery. God through this taught me how to care. I'm not a particularly expressive person - or at least, not emotionally expressive. But there were many points in this period where God taught me how to be a carer, not just practically, but spiritually. Being able to talk to my aunt, to share a meal with her and to help her through day-to-day tasks, allowed me to see how God takes pleasure in our care and love for each other. It has been a year now since the news of her tumour. She is healthy. And God has used the tumour to open up opportunities for her to share the gospel with her neighbours.

In the summer time, we found ourselves in a period of real testing. My Mum was diagnosed with depression. In the lead up to this, our home became incredibly difficult to live in. I spent weeks feeling very alone, but mostly feeling very 'in the middle' of my parents. The stress of everything going on caused my Dad to have two minor heart scares. I cannot express in words how difficult I found this period of our lives. What I do know is that my God is a healing God, and that He does calm the storms. My Mum has improved so much - whilst she still has down days, she is unrecognisable now from the woman she was a few months ago.

My Dad however, will be seeing in the New Year with a fractured ankle and shattered tibial platform (the ball on the foot) after an accident at work! It will be 8 months before he will be able to go back to the normal life of walking and driving again.

It has been incredibly easy to turn around and ask God why on earth he chose this moment for Dad to be injured. But we have been so encouraged in seeing God open up opportunities for us to witness to our friends, lecturers and contacts through his accident.

The last month has also brought its pain in losing one of our close family friends after a struggle with cancer. We are so thankful that she has met her maker face to face, but still miss her company here.

This year though, rather than just focusing on the difficult, I have so much to thank God for. In particular, I have finished and handed in my dissertation! I have been overloaded with work for my business! And I have turned 21!

But it is through the hardest periods and the testing situations, where God has blessed me most.

We can easily blame God for the things we encounter in life. But God can do so much through our moments of despair; more than we ever think or imagine.

I am ending 2012, trusting God that there are new horizons ahead and knowing that whatever is ahead is exciting. I am believing that every difficulty I face, I face with Him at my side. And that He will open my heart up that I might love HIM more; enjoy HIM more and share HIM more!

'God is our refuge and our strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, and the nations quake with their surging, BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.'

20//

Went to Destiny Edinburgh this morning and it was such a blessing! I was in total need of a good service and it was exactly what I needed. The sermon was so apt too for everything I'm going through in terms of finding a church and being founded in Christ.

It was based on Psalm 92 and was all about trees flourishing and how similarly our faiths planted in Christ will flourish. There was lots to it - some really good stuff, but one of the points she mentioned was that one type of tree (can't remember name) that exists has roots that dig deep, but also intertwine with the roots coming from other trees surrounding it. Because it holds on to others for strength, it prospers and flourishes. She made links to it being like us rooted in a good community. That when we set our roots deep, we connect with others and become strengthened by them, whilst also offering support to them.

Its a really beautiful message and one that I'm definitely gonna find the podcast for and pass on!

I guess it makes one thing clear - that finding a church is absolutely a priority and I need to find one at home and here as soon as I can. I realise that not having a community has really not helped my faith, and I realise that God created each of us with the purpose of being rooted in a community of believers. Because when the storms come its never good to be planted on your own in the wild, when we were made to be protected and strengthened by a community rooted around us.

Such a good Sunday. Thank you God for your blessings! You are so good!

19 May//

Yesterday I spent most of the day in floods of tears, on the phone to my Mum trying to understand what on earth God was doing. For those that know me well, I never cry. I'm one of those people that doesn't like others to know I'm weak, and tend to be the one that keeps a strong face for everybody else.

Yesterday I went to go and pick up one of my essay papers I had had to write about a month ago for my honours degree. Over the last three years I've struggled so badly with essay writing, alongside a whole ton of friends on my course who find exactly the same things difficult. I've never got above a C, and in the last year have only ever got D's. Even after meetings with lecturers, they've never really tried to help much in terms of my writing. 

This particular essay I had spent a long time over and had really worked hard for. So yesterday when I went to pick it up and saw the familiar D- sitting on the feedback page, and the comments that were all over the paper saying that it was 'disappointing' and 'first year work', I completely broke. I spent most of the walk back to the flat crying and asking God 'Why? Why am I never good enough?'. When I got back home, I sat and cried out to God saying that I was tired of never achieving what I needed to achieve. And when I finally phoned my Mum, we sat on the phone for 2 hours. 

It was pretty obvious during our conversation that the issue wasn't actually the grade, it was the feeling of never being good enough in anything. For a quite a long time, I've known that throughout my extended family a lack of self esteem has riddled us. And I'm no different, in that my outlook on life is that I'm not good enough to gain what I want to, and therefore is there any point trying?

Yesterday, we discussed the option of leaving this year having achieved a bachelors and not achieve the honours. This year I have to write a 10,000 word dissertation, to me, it sounds like the greatest nightmare anyone could ever have. Even though I have a subject planned that I'm interested in, I'm absolutely terrified that I will waste a year of study that will cost me in time and in finance and come out with an embarrassing degree.

I realise my God is good, faithful and that He knows me and my academic (or not so academic as it seems!) mind well. I also realise He knows what I need in my life right now and what way I should be going. I'm sitting tight waiting to hear Him speak on which way I should turn.

I do know this though, that even though self esteem problems have riddled my family over generations, that they are still sin. And the way I look down on myself is an insult to the way God has created me. I do know God has blessed me and given me gifts that I'm humbled to have and I'm so thankful for them. I don't want to let that sin riddle my life and affect my relationship with my Saviour.

I realise the more I look down on the things I can achieve, the more I hinder my God from working in and through me and using the gifts that He has blessed me with. 

I follow a Saviour who is beyond my understanding, and I want to freely allow Him to move in and through me, even in my weaknesses, to achieve the things He wants to achieve through me! Not what I tell myself I have to gain, but rather what He would want in me. Because, what could me more important than His glory?

18 May//

"See I have engraved you on the palms of my hand." Isaiah 49




It's such a well known verse isn't it? One we've heard so many times and that carries the message that we are so familiar with - we follow a God who loves us and cares for us. I don't know how many times you've heard that message, I would imagine for me it would stand in the region of thousands.Yet, even after hearing it so many times, I so often need to hear it again. 


In Isaiah 49, we see a beautiful prophesy of the Messiah who will come. A snapshot of Christ before He even came to bring salvation. The salvation story can often become lost in our hearts because we become so familiar to it. I know for so long it has become like that in my own life and I've not tasted the reality of the Gospel over the last weeks.


Without this Gospel story though there is nothing. Without Jesus, there is nothing. Christ brings hope, brings blessing, brings salvation and brings grace. What is so exciting about Isaiah 49 is that before Christ even came, the salvation and Messiah that were promised, were already being made personal. 


Today, as I start a new day, I want to be refreshed in a new and real understanding of the Gospel. I don't want it to be a familiarity but rather for it to be constantly unfathomable and utterly breathtaking. What is so incredible is that Jesus took concern in me and engraved my name on his palms. He gave himself up to allow me to have that relationship with God. More than that, He believes I am precious! He knows my name and knows my heart better than I do myself. 


I'm encouraged today that God gives grace anew every day and that He loves me. Unreservedly, unconditionally, He loves me. 

"Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It's way over our heads. We'll never figure it out. Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice? Everything comes from him; Everything happens through him; Everything ends up in him. Always glory! Always praise! Yes. Yes. Yes."

I picked up this blog again yesterday, after a whole two years has passed. Little scary to think how quickly time can pass and how much we forget the things that have happened to us. I realise that a lot of my previous blogs were really grounded in stuff that I was experiencing as a teen, among other things my posts are mainly about evangelism and my real sense of a calling from God. It's funny that I came across these blogs again, because over the last two months, I've been so distant from God.

 I'm now finished third year at Napier University, Edinburgh, which means I'm now a Bachelors Photography Student and have one more year left to gain an honours. I've been incredibly blessed by God. There aren't any other ways to describe the last three years, my God has blessed me. In first year I was given the opportunity to serve on the evangelism team in the Napier Christian Union, by second year I was voted forward for the committee as Prayer Secretary and Small Groups Co-ordinator and in this past year I've served on committee again as Vice President. I've been so humbled to serve in these roles, strengthened by the fact that every year I wasn't actually expecting them. God has given me the opportunity to lead a group of young Christians into getting excited about the Gospel and the impact that it might have on their university of thousands. What excites me most is that the little things I've been able to move the CU towards will cause effects for the years ahead of me. There's no doubt that being on committee is difficult. In fact, I'd say it's been one of the hardest things I've ever done. But God stayed faithful the whole way through, and I found myself realising that actually instead of believing that everyone around me was wrong all the time, that it often was and is my heart that is in the wrong. I guess the last three years, I've seen God mould me, mature me and open my eyes to see that I am a sinner and that I need His grace, there is no other way.

 Coming off committee was easier than I expected, but it leaves you wondering what is next. For me, I've been struggling with not having a church over the last few months and its had a big impact on my faith. Not having that community in a city that still doesn't feel like home has been really difficult. When I logged onto blogspot yesterday, I was expecting to just have a little laugh about how much I could write, and about how I used to write about the most random and silly things. But I began to read from blog one all the way up to the most recent and realised that the heart that I had for God and for his Gospel was real, living and on fire. I was in so many ways, far more black and white and far younger in my thoughts, but I was real with myself, with people reading and with God.

 I've decided that it's time to change. I want to get stuck into God's word properly, not just reading tit-bits and thinking that my daily routine is done. I want to search and yearn for God's wisdom to influence my own heart and mind. I want to praise Him through the day and give Him the honour that he so deserves. And I want to get excited for evangelism, being probed by a heart welling up with a love for God and over pouring into a desire to bring people to his throne room.

 I want to start blogging again, to start looking at pieces of God's word that are influencing my life. So I guess you'll hear far more from me on here. I'm excited to write again, but more excited to push forward into a new stage of my faith.

 It's time to be real with God.