Alternative fail??

This year I decided I would do an alternative Christmas much to the dismay and worry of my friends and family. I decided I would set myself apart from all the familiar trappings of Christmas and draw a line over 'fitting in' to other's plans because I lacked the courage to make my own. I decided that joining the tables of other's would feel like being a 'cuckoo in the nest'. Joining something that was 'theirs' rather than something that was mine. If it sounds selfish and ungrateful, it probably came across like that too. That wasn't my intention at all.

Also, being around the beauty of what kids and family brings was also too much to see in the face of what was lacking in my own life and the absence of what this year brought.

As the only single sister in the family, I normally just tagged along with my mum and dad and their plans for Christmas festivities and when mum died, I became my dad's plus one, keeping him company and trying to fill the void of mum not being there. This year we lost dad too and it just felt like their was no one to tag to and perhaps it was time to use the pain of absence to draw a line and create my own traditions.

There were many pleas not to hide myself away and be alone. Worry at the potential destructive nature of doing so given a long personal history of anxiety, depression and love affair with melancholy. Their concerns were well founded and not without merit but I really believed there was significance in separating myself from the familiar.

I was astounded and deeply moved at the several offers to sit at alternative Christmas dinner tables and the welcome people extended towards me. That in itself restored my fractured sense of being wanted.

Plan A was to relocate myself out of my physical environment to a beautiful little cottage in Cushendall where I could reconfigure my emotional default of running to people and using them to distract myself from the perpetual drone of a million thoughts running round my head and as a diversion from the impact of many emotional shit storms of my life.

Many of you that know me will know that I am extremely relational as a person but the down side of that is that people can become 'empty wells' and places to run instead of running to Jesus. I planned to try and address this too, removing all possibilities by planning alone time with only me and Jesus. Walks on the beach listening to worship music, singing my heart out and talking to Jesus, asking those profound questions I've been too afraid to contemplate, hoping that with the security blanket of 'people' removed I might actually stop avoiding Jesus.

Unfortunately, Plan A didn't happen and I didn't have Plan B.

One week before said planned retreat I got sick. Very sick. I spent the week prior to going, sick in bed but determined to push through. I got in the car during a perceived lull in coughing and travelled to Cushendall. It seemed everything was to be an uphill battle and after arriving 4 hours later than I had planned only to find an issue with gaining entry to the cottage. Another 30 minutes and I was in, offloading half my house that I brought with me "just in case" including art supplies, books, food, writing, most of which was never touched!

The next day, Christmas eve, I planned to go to Causeway Coast Vineyard for their service. Big mistake..... silly, silly me! I arrived on the dot, the place packed out and eventually managed to get space near the front aided by the very helpful usher. I then took a cursory look around and everywhere I looked were families and babies and people clearly deeply connected. It was then, just then I felt absence, hope deferred, disconnection and loss. The sense of missing out was tangible. I drove home a little more numb and anaesthetised.

The rest of the time away consisted of lots of sickness, staying in bed, confusion between day and night and never once left the house after that day at CCV. It's been a long time since I've been so sick and was bemused at the poor timing.

So, I packed the car once again and headed home, dejected, lost, and feeling like a complete failure.

My car, being the place I process most stuff and do my deep thinking in is where I had my first poignant conversation with Jesus. It was on the way home and very simplistic. It asked the question "Is this it?" "Is this all there is for me?"

I felt hopeless and more than slightly distraught at the seemingly emptiness I faced in a thing called "life". I wondered what it was all about and felt disappointed at my options that didn't seem very much like choices.

As I executed these utterances into the air hoping they would find the ear of God and that He would be listening, I felt a response drop into my spirit. It said "Jan, you are asking all the wrong questions?"

It is not what this world has for you that is 'purpose', but what you bring to this world? You do have choices. You can choose what you bring. You can choose what abilities, talents, posture and representation you bring and you can choose the legacy you leave.

It's your choice. That's the challenge.

A Journey Into Thankfulness

As I sit here, tears betraying my mask of resilience with my heart a touch too sore to bear, I know I have to choose thankfulness. No matter the season, the storm, the sheer overwhelming everydayness of what I should do, what I could do, what I should be, what I could be, I know that He sees, He knows, He is faithful, He is for me.

Yet, let’s not sugar coat the rawness of the facts. Life has been one huge storm for me in the last few years. Every time I think that nothing more can possibly happen – I get surprised with yet more to journey through. Really – I can cope a little while without an existential crisis! I eagerly try to glance past what is my “now” in the hope of a preview of something new, something life giving and something that brings an abundance of joy.

Recently, the storm has raged, and I’ve felt a little lost at sea. It has been a really difficult time for us as a family. We have spent the last 2.5 years surrounded by illness, death or preparing for death, with it claiming 5 of our family in that short time. We had the curse of watching 4 succumb to the grip of cancer. Watching the familiar routines happen around us with no ability to change the outcome. Watching as my mum fought so hard and lose her battle in this world but yet enter the freedom of Heaven and being with Jesus. It feels like the grim reaper is chasing us down one by one and in October we stood in the corridor of death waiting for the door of death to open once again – this time my dad. He too fought hard but chose the greater option of being completely free and with my mum.

It's a very different dynamic when both parents are gone. I had to reassess where I am anchored, who I am, what defines me. You realise how much they anchored you to the wider family and how they influenced most of what you do or don't do.

It's a very strange time! One with many complicated decisions to make.

One of the things I had to consider recently was a possible relocation to Co. Armagh where all my sisters live. This would've meant leaving my church in Belfast as it wouldn't be possible to be a fully committed part of the church as I would like. I'm an "all or nothing" kind of girl and it would mean things like lifegroup, being part of worship, attending social and church events so much more difficult with a 100 mile round trip up to several times a week. I didn't think this would be wise to try and keep a foot in both camps, living life in two locations.

Even though I doubted I could move back to a place I no longer had roots or community (other than my direct family), I did have to give it serious consideration, which gave me an opportunity to reflect.

I suddenly realised how anchored I was. This was a realisation that surprised even me, having spent a long season feeling "like an outsider", like I didn't belong, feeling unanchored completely. Yet, when I thought about it. When I considered relocating, I start to count the cost of making this decision. What that would mean? What I would lose? What I would miss out on? (FOMO), the people I wouldn't see so often, or get to be a bigger part of their lives. I realised the cost was too high to uproot myself. It was too much to miss and it made me feel really humbled and grateful for those people that have journey this season with me.

Thankful is not something I am particularly good at most of the time to be honest. I am a typical sceptic at heart and I am always wondering "what's the catch?". An immediate springboard thought that has been learned over many painful experiences. So, I rarely have an expectation of good. That’s what makes it so interesting that it’s in a season of darkness where it has suddenly dawned on me I have such a lot to be thankful for.

So…..

Thank you to those of you who have journeyed this with me and who are willing to continue journeying with me. Thank you for your intentionality, your kindness, your practical help, your willingness to let me cry and just sit with it. Your willingness to pray for me, pray with me, meet up with me, have coffee / lunch, the list is endless. You were few but you were mighty!

You just came alongside, were willing to stand in that awkward gap or not knowing what to say or not knowing what to do, or me not knowing how to respond. Willingness goes a long way and you had the willingness to push past that awkwardness. There are no great profound words, or christianese but the really, really comforting thing is that you cried with me, were compassionate towards me, embraced me (so important to me with touch being my primary love language). Often asking what you could do even though I couldn't respond at times. I didn't really know what I needed or what I wanted but just being around people, just being part of something, just being included was comforting. I'm so grateful for that. I'm so grateful for people not assuming that I was too upset, or too worried, or had enough going on to communicate with me but were invitational and willing to allow me to make decisions for myself. Thank you for those who point me to Jesus and help me get there instead of trying to be Him for me.

On a side note, for those of us that are tactile, like myself, hugs are the best medicine ever, especially those hugs that are from the heart that gather you really close tight in and really say "I don't have the words, but I'm here, I'm showing you that I love you, I'm showing you that I'm here for you, I'm showing you that I'm walking with you”

It hasn't gone unnoticed and has been very much appreciated especially because I've really struggled to ask, and even when I have asked, it hasn't been very coherent. Thank you that you were able to see between the lines and weren't afraid to be in a hard, awkward place with me that had no rules or structure, on a path that wasn't easy to follow.

I just really feel so grateful and really in the midst of something so difficult and so much loss, yet there is so much discovery, so much revelation, and so much realisation of the fact that it is not an end but it's the start of something new. It's the start of something containing absence but one that that contains hope that much more is to come.

Hopefully, sowing seed and taking all of the goodness of what mum and dad gave to me and go forward with that. Taking responsibility, being accountable and on a journey of becoming the best I can be, the best version of me. Not because I need to perform, not because I need to earn, but because it’s an opportunity to grow, to stretch myself, become more, cultivating intimacy with Jesus that will release me into freedom that I've never known.

It reminds me of Psalm 23 where it says "He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul”

I feel this new season is one of Jesus making me (or inviting me to) lie down in green pastures, saying "don’t run away". Teaching me to lay down the cycles of avoidance and stop running away. To stop being fearful of being close to people. The green pastures to me are a symbol of health, vitality and life that only come through a life of connection. Sometimes (a lot of times) it hurts. Sometimes people hurt you and sometimes you hurt people but navigating this arena and loving people well is where the freedom is found and is the reward for being willing to do the hard work.

Thank you – I’m so grateful.