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Showing posts from June, 2019

A Season of Grief

  There is one thing I have been most afraid of my entire life, I have had a fear of death…and not just for myself, for those who are closest to me. It’s not because I fear that there isn’t a God who promises life eternal in heaven or that deep down I don’t believe I’m saved. I think it’s more to do with a fear there will be pain in dying, and being a highly emotional person, I fear the brevity of my emotions. So when my sister was first diagnosed with stage four cancer, I was suddenly forced to grapple what I had long feared the most, the potential of loosing a loved one. The confronting realisation that all of us will die, our lives are in God’s hands, and none of us know how long we have to live in this world. It was taking an abstract biblical truth and then putting flesh and bones on it. A lot of big emotions ran through me on a daily basis, and at first I found it to be a very confusing time as my relationship with my sister was very close but at times complicated. Cancer in ...

Fixing

Currently, the common choice of music in our family is that of Coldplay. Whenever the kids are in the car and arguing about what to listen to, Coldplay is universally agreed on. So I’ve had the pleasure of many hours absorbing their lyrics. One song in particular has really resonated with me and how I’ve been feeling. It’s entitled Fix You and the song begins with the words, “When you try your best but you don’t succeed. When you get what you want but not what you need. When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep, stuck in reverse”.  The daily challenge of adapting to life with teens, has left me feeling like an utter failure. A repetitive and unhelpful thought has played through my mind, negativity suggesting that all my conscientious efforts in the toddler and primary years have amounted to nothing. It has felt like everything I’ve tried to instil has been crumpled up and tossed out; deemed irrelevant and outdated (a common teenage assessment of things). My motives, my values and ...