lindsay

These past eight days have been a spiritual and emotional rollercoaster that have broken, humbled, strengthened and liberated me all in one. My opening prayer at Emerge was to see myself through His eyes so that I could address those aspects that didn’t quite come up to scratch, tear down any barriers, and just grow closer to Him in some shape or form. That way, I figured, I’d be better equipped to figure out what my purpose was, and where I sit in His grand design in terms of the whole “what do you want me to do next” thing. A pretty good prayer, I thought. But in retrospect, rather flippantly put out there.  

My flatmate's just found out that her boyfriend's visa to work in the UK has fallen through. He packed in his job in the states six months ago to find work in London so that they could be together, finally found a good job in November, set for starting in January, and only just found out that his application for a work permit has been denied. They're even more frustrated by the fact that it was denied because some sort of beaurocratic red tape. So basically I was hoping that anyone reading this would keep Ams & Ray in their prayers, and ask that God help them find some sort of solution that will allow them to actually live in the same country and be together, because they're both a bit lost and heartbroken at the moment. I'd also appreciate your praying for open hearts, that somehow God use this situation to draw them to Him and help them realise that if they trust Him with everything then that's already half the battle won.

For some random reason, one of the partners at work had us fill out this questionnaire for them to use in some shape or form at our office christmas do. You know the type, one of those peppered with questions like "what's your favourite colour/food", "what was the name of your first pet", "what was your mum's maiden name" and "what's your (real) hair colour ?" Even though it was blatantly never intended to be more than a bit of lighthearted fun, I did find two particularly harder to answer than the rest, and slightly thought provoking. Specifically: "If you were a celebrity, who would you be?" and "If you could ask for one wish to be granted what would it be?". 

I just had a really interesting conversation on the train ride home with someone I’d only met earlier on that evening at a friend’s house, and a new friend I met through alpha. One of those random conversations you don’t see coming but leaves you with food for thought. The subject in question? Relationships and knowing when a potential partner is or is not right for you, the whole “how do you know” thingy. My view for the past year has been that my ideal partner would be a Christian who loves God with his whole heart and who will help rather than hinder my walk with Christ; but because beggars cant be choosers I thought I could quite happily be with someone who wasn’t quite a Christian yet, but was open to my faith and passion for God, because that openness might one day lead him to Christ himself. I figured everyone’s got to kiss a couple of frogs along the way; maybe a couple of those frogs would wake up and realize that God was someone worth paying attention to through me. Since being in London I’ve done the random dating thing, as you do, but there’s always the niggling doubting questioning feeling in the back of my head going, if he doesn’t tick the Christian box, maybe you just shouldn’t go there. And inevitably after the third meeting it’s usually a case of “you’re a really nice guy …but!” and back to square one for me. Anyway on the walk home after the whole train conversation thing I realized that, bottom line, actually, I can’t fight the fact that I’d like my partner to be committed to walking with Christ (quite a scary thought, given the secular city I’ve decided to plonk myself in). And that doesn’t make me judgmental, or too picky, just determined to keep Him at the centre of every aspect of my life, which to me by extension means being able to drop Him into the conversation, talk about Him and just generally grow in Him with someone special without worrying that the only reason that person is open to God is because they’re doing their best to impress or appear engaging to me. So there you have it, a mini revelation on the tube. God works in mysterious ways.

A couple of friends have been pestering me to get my first blog in for a while now. My standard comeback has always been: “I’ve nothing worthwhile to plonk on there!”, coupled with the usual cliché about not being very big on the whole blogging thing in general. Their standard reply – stop being a kill joy, just introduce yourself and where you are in your life at the moment, and take it from there. So in the interest of making them happy (and shutting them up once and for all), and because there’s an important day coming up in my spiritual calendar (more on that later) that I thought special enough to actually warrant writing about, I’ve decided to have a go at throwing a couple of sentences about myself together and posting them for all to see. Bit daunting, the thought of just putting my life out there, but I figured it cant be too bad judging by how many other people do the same! Anyway *big breath* …here goes nothing…