Strangely enough, the whole world looks a lot better now that I'm not working 50 hour weeks in the run up to a major deadline at work. It's still not perfect but it's a lot better than I thought it'd be. I've just found and posted the beginnings of several posts that were floating around in draft form, even if I can't remember where they were going because they are still important thoughts that I was having at the time.
The hardest thing over the past week has to have been Sunday afternoon. I actually miss half-heartedly trying to do housework while distracting Gav from whatever he was attempting in the way of writing or playing obsessively on Facebook and deciding to talk to the lizards instead.
At some point over the next few weeks, I'm going to have to sit down and work out what I really want to do with my life. What do I want to do with my spare time? Where do I see church stuff going? Am I really going to become a handicrafts whizz or should I stick to baking? What about decorating the flat? What about that OU course I started in a fit of enthusiasm back in the summer. What about work? Am I happy in the team that I'm in? How can I adjust my work to make me happier without the prospect of going up a grade? I think I might take a day off work and go and spend the entire afternoon in one of the local coffee shops with my iPod and a large stack of paper and do one of those stop/start analysis things on my entire life.
Church is variable at the moment. It all seems so easy and then, all of a sudden, it isn't. Admittedly, last night, the fit of bad temper and tears was almost certainly directly due to having asked God to let any excess pain out rather than me wallpapering over it because everything was "going well". So, I spent the next few minutes (silently) screaming and shouting at God and swearing lots. I felt much better with it all out of my system and without shouting accidentally at someone for no apparent reason.
I've been doing the Lay Pastoral Assistant training at church over the past few months. I'd love to get involved in youth work again (I think) but I discovered the other night that the other two people running the group this time are a pair that I find very difficult to work with. Yes, Welcome is as important in it's way as Word, Worship and Witness, but it's very difficult to feel part of the team when Welcome sometimes takes up nearly an hour of an hour and a half long session and they're all talking about school stuff. Particularly activity days when I have no idea what the activity day was all about in the first place, let alone who Mrs So-and-so is and why it was so amazing/awful that she did x, y and z. The closest I've ever got to their school (where one woman worked and the other had both her daughters attend) is outside the gates to drop my goddaughter off one morning. I'm more than willing to try to keep up and remember teachers and class/house/whatever names and the major events that are coming up but it's not easy when the conversation just keeps flowing on as though you're not even there!
Oh yes, reading back on one of my previous posts, I mentioned a while back, that I thought my relationship with God was shrinking. It wasn't until I was rolling out some marzipan to decorate Christmas cakes with that I realised that my relationship with God isn't shrinking at all. It's all being pulled in together to be rolled out again into a different shape. It's just not obvious to me as I can't see in the same dimensions as God can. It's amazing how philosophical you can get about stuff while in a sticky, marzipanny, apricot jammy, crumby mess and dancing and singing along badly to "Rumour Has It" by Adele.
I could also do with getting my head straight around a situation that's accidentally come up. One of my (male) friends was told by a mutual and much respected friend that, with everything that's been going on in my life, that I need hugs and that he should not feel embarrassed, awkward or downright English about hugging me. This was A Good Thing in the beginning because I was sorely lacking in hugs and this friend gives very good hugs. You can see where this is going now, can't you? Yeah, there's a bit of a crush going on there now. Of course, he's also married with two lovely children. Urgh, I honestly believed that I'd grown out of teenage-style crushes. The normal, friendly big hugs are fine. It's the ones where, God and everyone else knows, it's been a tough time and all the support that he says he doesn't have the words to speak all goes into one great hug. These would be the same hugs that always make me think, "this man is amazing," and that is, in my eyes, a really inappropriate thought. It might be easier to deal with if it wasn't for the fact that I never ever get hugs of any shape or form from him if his wife is anywhere around. Hmmmmmm. This always makes life feel distinctly odd.
There must be a better way to end a blog post rather than just to stop writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment