There are a lot of hard things we face in life.

Loss. Sickness. Divorce. Financial struggles. Singleness. Childlessness. Mental heath battles. 

Some of those I can’t even imagine others I am more familiar with.

The struggle I am probably most familiar with is being a young widow. 

I was 29 and 6 months pregnant when my life changed in the space of a few hours, with no warning, the future, hopes and dreams, my best friend there one minute literally gone the next.

And you have no choice, no control, there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Like anything we go through in life rarely can we really understand unless we have walked a similar journey and even then each story is uniquely different. 

People rally around you to begin with, the collective shock and sadness reverberates throughout your people and your communities – family, friends, work colleagues, church community, people who you went to school/uni with, people who know your friends, who have heard your story. When my daughter was born 3 months later I had to write over 100 thank you cards, many to people I didn’t know – she was one well-dressed baby!

But as the months go by everyone else’s lives go back to normal and why would they not. It wasn’t their life, their family, their future.

People don’t get it, and that is not a criticism. I don’t understand what it is like to have a child with learning difficulties, or a disability or to live with a chronic illness or to not know how I am going to pay the bills. 

Can I tell you some of the things that being a widow looks like?

In those first few months and years there is an agony that underpins everything.  You were one half of a whole and you are now just a half, that one flesh has literally been ripped apart and the pain is too much. Thankfully the pain doesn’t come all at once. There are times when you feel ok, or numb and I honestly think that is the way we are designed because when you face massive loss if you felt it all at once it would be too much. 

I would expect the phone to ring in the middle of the day just to say hi – it no longer did. I would think as if I was still part of a unit when it was now just me. I missed my person – I had amazing friends and family but they came in and out of my life, they weren’t all my life. I missed my best friend, the person who was for me and with me in everything.

I felt out of place wherever I went. To now have to walk into a room on my own was terrifying. Holidays no longer held the same excitement because there was no one to share them with. I didn’t belong anywhere anymore.

And the lives around me continued as if nothing monumental had changed. I wanted to scream, “how can you act as if nothing has happened” to a stranger walking down the street. I could easily be reduced to tears at the old couple holding hands because I knew I wouldn’t get that. Or I had very ungracious thoughts as people stressed about things which just really didn’t seem to matter. I felt jealous and angry that this had happened.

Kids. Precious, beautiful kids. Suddenly fatherless. You find yourself a single parent when that was never part of the plan. You have to deal with your own grief, your own doubts and questions but then you have these other lives that you are responsible for, when all you want to do is curl up and hide away. You don’t get that choice because they need feeding, they need to be ferried around to school, to activities. It is exhausting and it is lonely. Widows with little ones cannot leave the house after 7pm because they have run out of milk. If you can offer to babysit for a widow to give them a few hours space you will never know how much that means because those moments of space rarely come and yet are so needed. And not just in the year or so after the loss but in all the years that follow.

My personal story meant there would only be one baby, a beautiful baby who is now a beautiful 15 year old and even though this may sound like bragging she is probably the thing I am most proud of in my life because I think she is pretty amazing and I am incredibly proud of how we have not only survived but we have thrived! I did it on my own (well not quite – that army of people who stand behind us played a pretty big part!) and I did ok. 

My child though will never know her Daddy and I cannot even imagine how you work that out in your head. She regularly gets told how much she is like him and then she says to me but I never knew him and I will never know him. She misses the siblings she didn’t get to have. She struggles to answer the question “What does your Dad do?”because people aren’t expecting the answer “he’s dead”. I was talking to a friend who was recently widowed leaving her with little girls to raise and we shared how we often wonder who will walk our girls down the aisle if and when that time comes. Last night my daughter was on the phone chatting through some decisions with my brother, her uncle, who has loved her so well but she will often say to me “but he has his own girls I will always be way down the list.” Those moments break your heart.  

Then there is the sadness that the one person who loves these kids just as must as we do is not here to see them grow, to know them at the different stages of life.

Can we talk about the practical? The financial?

I am useless at the practical but I have to do it all on my own or pay someone.  If you know a widow or even someone who does life on their own reach out and ask if you can practically help them because it is hard having to do those things on your own, to make all the decisions and carry the financial burden.

Money. As a widow and a single parent you carry a heaviness/a weight of working all of that stuff out on your own. If I never meet anyone else will my pension provision by enough. Right now I am acutely aware I need to be putting money aside to pay for uni. I work full time and I have a good job, but it is still tough. I want to life generously and open-handed but equally our family is reliant on my income alone. 

I implore make sure your house is in order. We had just moved house and so whilst there was some life insurance there wasn’t as much as there would have been had we updated it. Please get the life insurance – money doesn’t make the loss better, it doesn’t take the pain away but it certainly helps provide a level of security which eases the load.

Emotionally even years on (and I am 15 years on) I have the triggers, the scars – the fear of loss, the worst-case sceanaroing (I am an expert in this one). The what ifs. The thing is the worst has happened and so you know it is entirely possible that the worst can happen and may happen again. 

After John died my brother listened to the song “Timshel” by Mumford & Sons:

“And death is at your doorstep

And it will steal your innocence

But it will not steal your substance.”

It steals your innocence. It gives you so much too. I passionately believe that loss and grief is one of the biggest gifts in my life whilst at the same ripping me apart. My life has been put back together, with plenty of marks and scars, but with a richness that I would never have known without death coming to my doorstep but it did steal my innocence.

This post is not a list to make people think “poor you” but to help people see life isn’t ok again after a year or so. Life is never the same again, it is irrevocably changed. Grief is hard, it comes to us all at some point, in different ways, but being widowed young is a hard journey to have to walk.

I am so very thankful that 15 years on my life is good – it does not look like how I would have hoped but it is good. I have so much to be thankful for. But it took a long time to get there. I had good people around me, a good God who has been incredibly faithful to us and I survived and not only survived but in many ways thrived. It was though a long and hard journey getting to this point.

I sat on a zoom call a few weeks with 4 other widows and it was so life giving. I came off that call and I realised I had never sat with other widows like that. It’s a club that no one wants to be part of but these are the women that get it. 

It reminded me of the power of doing the journey with people in similar places to us, the power of telling our stories, of being heard and understood by those people that do really get it. 

It reminded me of the importance of walking close with people in their pain, of sitting with them in the mess, there is nothing more beautiful and precious when your heart is breaking – of reminding them that they are not alone. Invite them to be part of your families,  your holiday times (holidays are hard), invite them for meals, remember the big dates and anniversaries, to say their names and remember the stories.  They need you, they really do. As a side note – single people too, they need it!  

It reminded me that we all need people in our journey who are a few steps ahead of us, who can cheer us on, who can say “I get it, I really do, I have been there, but it will get easier,  you can do this”. To bring hope. When John first died, and even now to a lesser extent, I was hungry for stories of people who had been widowed young but who had gone on to live again – I needed to know that was possible when I couldn’t see the way ahead. I needed to know there were people out there that had lived a good life following their loss.

I have known for a long time that God was stirring my heart for something new and I am so excited to begin working with a ministry in the US called Songs in the Night whose whole purpose is to bless widows, to support widows, to love on widows, to be a safe place for widows, to be hope, to help the healing process. They provide care crates to widows full of books, and little presents to bless. They offer support by way of zoom groups and retreats. It is in its early stages in the UK, baby steps and pushing doors but I feel so passionately about this. So please share because we would love to hear about young widows who would be blessed by receiving one of our care crates and might benefit from some support, in a faith context. And if you want to donate we need to funds to put these crates together and we have an amazon wish list. And if you are a prayer pray for us. I have dreams of what this could look like but ultimately I am trusting this into God’s hands, asking for his plans and purposes for it and for the beautiful hurting hearts out there.

If you want to know more drop me an email at songsinthenightuk@yahoo.com

Thank you xxx 

I am pretty convinced that one of the biggest gifts of this life are those friends that are actually more like family, those ones that know the good, the bad and the ugly but still stick close, the people that you sit round the table with or curl up on the sofa with and feel like home, that make you feel known, safe and loved. 

Despite all that life doesn’t look like that maybe I hoped it would have looked like I can say that I have a good few of those people, and that makes me very rich indeed. This week I got to go away with one of them and it was good for the soul. It was a reminder that whilst plenty of mess is going on around us, we don’t walk it alone and that we weren’t meant to walk it alone. That even in the midst of the mess there can be peace, joy and laughter in being known and being loved.

It reminded me again of a card one of my friends sent me, a few years ago, with these words in them (which hopefully she won’t mind me sharing!!!)

“Female elephants in the wild. When a Mama elephant is giving birth, all the other female elephants in the herd back around her in formation. They close ranks so that the delivering Mama cannot even be seen in the middle. They stomp and kick up dirt and soil to throw attackers off the scent. They surround the Mama and incoming baby in protection, sending a clear signal to predators that if they want to attack their friend while they are vulnerable, they’ll have to get through 40 tons of female aggression. When the baby is delivered, the sister elephants do two things: they kick sand or dirt over the newborn to protect its fragile skin from the sun, and then they all start trumpeting, a female celebration of new life, of sisterhood, of something beautiful being born in a harsh, wild world despite enemies and attackers and predators and odds. 

Scientists tell us this: elephants normally take this formation in only two cases – under attack by predators or during the birth of a new elephant. 

This is what we do when our sisters are vulnerable, when they are giving birth to new life, new ideas, new ministries, new spaces, when they are under attack, when they need their people to surround them so they can create, discover, deliver, heal, recover…… we get in formation. We close ranks and literally have other’s backs. When delivery comes, when new life marks its entrance, when healing begins, when the night has passed and our sister is ready to rise back up, we sound trumpets because we saw it through together. We celebrate and cheer, we raise our glasses and give thanks. “ 

I love the idea that throughout every part of the animal kingdom runs that thread of community, of protecting what we love, of fighting for our people. 

Ever since reading those words the elephant has been my favourite animal. 

I am pretty sure none of us come through this life unscathed, pain and suffering are part of the story as much as joy and love are, they go hand in hand, you can’t have one without the other. 

When the heartbreaks leave so many unanswered questions. When life throws its curveballs, when you sit there wondering how you ended up in this place, or when it simply doesn’t look like you had hoped or expected. When the door closes or that person disappears or the health that you have always taken for granted is no longer a given. 

There will always be a when. But when the whens come I pray there will be your tribe, your people, your safe places – we are not meant to do this alone. That is not the way it was ever meant to work. 

Every time my whens have come I have come out of the other side because I have been surrounded, I have been held up, I have been fought for. 

There is such beauty in seeing tribes closing rank until that person is strong enough to stand again, to walk again, to hope again. It grows deep roots, it pushes people forward, it heals, it restores, it births new life. 

So in this harsh, wild world I think those elephants have so much to teach us – it will be messy it, it probably won’t be quick or easy but oh the beauty it will show us.

Life is short. It is so very short. I can’t shake that feeling at the moment.

I am 44 this year and yet surely it was only a few years ago that I turned 30. My girl has just turned 14 yet surely she was only just starting school. I actually don’t know where the time has gone – I still feel 16. It has gone so fast and something deep inside me is telling me that it won’t slow down.

Life is so precious. There is so much beauty in it. So many wonderful connections. So many amazing memories. But how much of that do I miss by being distracted by the things that don’t really matter.

In the last month of his life my Dad said to me that he had invested so much emotional energy in his work, he had spent so much time worrying and stressing, to build something, to provide and on many levels he was really successful at doing that but he said he regretted so much of it as it hadn’t been worth it to sacrifice the stuff that had really been important. That conversation has pushed me to make some big life decisions in the 8 years since he died and will probably continue to push me. 

I wonder whether I am hitting not a mid life not crisis but a mid life reflection point.

What do I want the rest of my days to look like? What do I want to invest my time in? What needs to go to ensure I don’t look back with regret? What needs to be picked up?

I have a pretty good idea of what needs to go and that may well take a bit of time and prayer to work that out. I have no idea of what it will all look like and that is exciting but absolutely terrifying at the same time. It brings with it a wrestle and those voices which say “You can’t do that?” “Choose the safe route because that is the comfortable route.” “ But what if it all goes wrong?”

What holds me back from making those choices? What holds you back?

Fear. Expectation. Uncertainty.  Confusion. Feeling overwhelmed. What other people will think. 

Someone said to me the other day that I was making choices that were providing external security but were robbing my internal security. That was hard to hear. Those words have got under my skin because I know it’s the truth but I like feeling externally secure. But is it worth the cost of the internal.

Does making sure the external is comfortable come at a cost to what has eternal value – connection, relationship, freedom, life in all abundance. 

Is feeding the external actually decreasing the internal? For me it definitely is, crippling anxiety has played such a big part of the last 6 months and I don’t want that to be the narrative of the rest of my days.

I have been telling myself that I don’t have a choice but I was gently encouraged this week that I do have a choice, I can make the changes.

Are there changes God is stirring you to make? 

Maybe it’s a job thing. Maybe it’s a place thing. Maybe its relationships. Maybe it’s a forgiveness thing. Maybe its community. Maybe its strongholds in us that we need to break. Maybe its thought patterns. Maybe it is picking up a passion.  Maybe its a health thing. For me it’s a mixtures of lots of those things! 

Be brave with me. Lets do it together. Holding His hand tightly. One step at a time. I am pretty sure most of the time that is how He works showing us one step at a time because the whole picture would be too overwhelming but in his gentleness he takes us at the speed he knows we can handle. 

I am not talking rash foolish changes but carefully prayed through, well processed changes. Intentional changes. 

Life is too short. Its so short.

Much of life we have no control over. But there are choices we can make. Good, life changing choices. Not easy choices but life giving choices. 

To invest in the things that really matter. The people that really matter. 

Life is too short to not fight for the things that matter, to make the changes.

And if those changes go wrong He still has us – I think the risk is still worth it. He will always make a way and none of it will be wasted. 

I don’t know what is ahead but I know the one who has gone ahead of me, and will go ahead of you. The one who never leaves or forsakes. The one who cannot be limited and who doesn’t want us to be limited. The one who works all things for the good of those who love Him. The one who came to give us life in abundance. 

Life is too short. I want the adventure He promises. I know we are not promised a life that is easy at all times, but we are promised life in all its fullness but we have a choice in that. And honestly right now I am not totally sure what those choices are or how to make them but I want to make them so one brave step a time. 

Life is so short. Lets not waste it! 

It is currently 3am on a Sunday morning and I can’t sleep. I have so many thoughts going round my head and so I figured my only hope of going back to sleep was to open my laptop, to write them out. The need to write for me is something that sometimes feel like a burning in me – something outside of me, something bigger. And as I have previously shared I hate it. My last post left me feeling so exposed and vulnerable, that total fear of what people think, that I would be seen as a total over sharer. One of my best friends told me that sharing your writing felt like running down the street naked and that is exactly how I felt this week but instead of just the street I felt like I had run round the whole city naked!!

The reason I cannot sleep is because I can’t stop thinking about a girl I haven’t seen for over 20 years. A girl I went to school with. Not someone I was close with but someone I have clear memories of. 

When my daughter started senior school I couldn’t get my head round the fact her year had 270 kids in it, as I had been in a year group with 90 other girls and I couldn’t imagine being in a school with that many people. I had a really happy senior school experience, after a pretty miserable time at junior school, and because we were a relatively small number I have pretty clear memories of most of those people. 

The girl I can’t stop thinking about took her own life last week over in the States where she has lived for the last 20 years, with her husband and children. This girl who was now a lady had clearly grown into an extraordinary lady, wife and mother – she was a writer and she had previously shared an essay, which has been reshared many times over on social media since her death has been announced. I had read the essay before but I read it again yesterday morning and it was hard to read, it was raw and vulnerable and painful but also so beautiful. She shared her battles with depression and she talked about the pain of her childhood years. 

I had known bits of the struggles she had gone through, the obvious losses, but had no idea of the extent of those struggles. It just bought home just how often we have no idea of people’s stories, of what they carry and how that history impacts their words, their actions and their futures. 

I no longer knew this lovely lady but my heart breaks for her husband and her girls – I prayed for them on and off all day yesterday, but her story has got to me. I needed to make contact with the girls I am still close with from school and I messaged them on our WhatsApp group and we chatted. They are such a precious part of my history.

As I have been lying here wide awake my thoughts went to a piece of writing I shared about 5 years ago. A piece about what was to come. Now granted none of us could have predicted that we would be living through this particular piece of history fives years on. 

I wonder whether right now it is helpful, it is important to look back, to remember, to reflect on what has gone before. Yesterday I was taken back 30 years ago to my school days, happy days.  The days we are currently living in are hard, they are hard because we are separated, they are hard because we don’t know how long they will last for and I am seeing people become more and more weary. 

I think back to where I was when I wrote that piece five years ago – I wrote it about the child in my sister-in-law’s belly who had not yet arrived, about knowing that someone was coming who would probably be one of the greatest loves of my life but who I had not yet met. I couldn’t get my head round knowing I was going to love someone so fiercely but yet I didn’t yet know them. Well she definitely is and will always be one of my biggest loves. I could never have imagined I could love so deeply a child who was not my own. Alongside my own child, her and her little sister fill my heart and have my heart. I didn’t know either of them 5 years ago but now couldn’t imagine my life without them. 

Five years ago I had no idea I was going to fall in love hard with the most wonderful man. I didn’t know him. I had no idea that I was about to go on a rollercoaster of a journey with him, a journey that bought deep healing, that gave me the closest friend, my person, that has had the divine threaded into every part of it. A journey I had hoped and dreamed would last longer but a journey which will always be one of the most precious gifts I have ever been given.

Some of the people I am closest to now, I didn’t know five years ago and yet they are the people I do life most closely with now. They are the people that know my stuff and I know theirs, they are the people I laugh with and cry with, but yet five years ago they were strangers. 

Five years ago I wasn’t doing the job I am now doing. Five years I didn’t have all the new opportunities and possibilities I have ahead of me right now. Five years ago I didn’t know all the lessons I was going to learn.

The last five years have bought so many experiences, memories and emotions but I had no idea when I wrote that piece of the depth and richness of what was to come. Often though in the hard bits, in the normal bits, maybe especially right now when our days are so different it is hard to remember that. We have no idea what is to come. Who is to come. Will it include loss, tears and struggles, without  doubt YES, those things are the reality of who we are as humans, but just as those things are guaranteed, so are the good things, the love, the joy and the beauty, in the big and the small.

So as I sit in bed typing this in the middle of the night I am thinking of all that has gone before, of the history that binds us to people, in the most precious of ways, that our stories are so beautifully complex, so many different threads, and that remembering propels us forward, to a hope and an anticipation of all that is to come, all the possibilities, the potentials, the maybes.

I am not sure my 3am thoughts are that coherent or that they flow into each other in a very clear way but I am remembering all that has gone, thinking of a lovely lady and her life lived with so much richness as well as struggle but remembering there is always more to come, however, tough it gets, whatever we face there will always be more ahead. New loves, new friendships, new memories.

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” C S Lewis

I don’t think there is any doubt 2020 has been a tough one and certainly a crazy one. I still can’t get my head round how the world can be bought to its knees so quickly. It messes with my head a lot! 

It has put pressure on us all in different ways. I have watched friends lose loved ones, battle with illness, and struggle with relationships. And one of the hardest bits has been not being able to be together properly in the midst of it all. It’s been hard. 

For me personally this year started off with so much hope and expectation, excited about what was ahead. It is ending very differently to how it started. Sandwiched in the middle has been loss and heartbreak – this year has taken from me something incredibly precious. 

Yet in the midst of all the tears and sadness I can feel something rising, something more – hope and anticipation. Maybe 2020 might just be one of the most significant years yet. 

This summer I knew God was cementing in me what my passion was. I think I have always been someone who has wondered what my passions were and what my calling was, never quite sure what it is all about for me. I am a lawyer, and some days I feel like I do pretty well at that, other days definitely less so, but am I passionate about that? In all honesty most of the time I enjoy it, but it doesn’t set me on fire. It pays the bills and I have met brilliant people through it over the years but it’s a job. For a while now there has been a more in me but I haven’t been sure what that more was.

Early on in my adult life I knew I wanted to be intentional about loving well. Now often I get that wrong, and sometimes that is easier said than done, but I knew that I wanted to get to the end of my life having loved well. And so in part that is part of my passion but I knew there was still more.

So as my heart broke this summer, we did a road trip through Scotland, and as I drove through beautiful landscapes the tears flowed. I didn’t want to lose again, I wanted to fight to hold on to it, I didn’t want to have to let go. Deep down I knew it was right but it didn’t stop it hurting. I also knew that if I didn’t lean into God I was going to lose hope and the thought of losing hope felt even more painful than the broken heart. 

I stumbled across a website called “Nothing is Wasted” and if you have faith, and even if you don’t, I would recommend checking it out. It is a ministry started by a pastor in the US, called Davey Blackburn, whose pregnant wife was murdered in 2015 leaving him a sole parent to a one year little boy. From the outset he was determined not to let any of the pain be wasted and the choices he made were incredible and have impacted many. 

On that website I found tens and tens of stories of heartbreak, loss, tragedy, illness, abuse, infidelity, infertility, addiction, abortion, racial prejudice, rejection. The hardest of stories, all so different, but one common thread running through them, that those hard stories were never the end of the story. That God heals, he redeems, he reconciles, he restores and he transforms. Those stories were the hope my battered heart needed but I also felt something stirring. 

God reminded me of so many lessons already learnt, but this summer he bedded them down. 

1. He gently and kindly reminded me that it is ok to feel sad, to lament. 

Lament – to express sorrow, mourning or regret.

It is ok to say this is hard and this hurts, to wrestle with God as to where he is in it all. I know without doubt he is big enough to take it and wants to hear it. I think it is a really important part of the process of processing the hard stuff, the disappointments and the losses. I think it is an essential part of the healing.

But I also think it one of those tension places. The more I go through life the more I see those tension places. I am convinced that the healthy place is to grieve, to allow the pain to exist but at the same time to voice that it doesn’t get to have the final say. And don’t get me wrong I know there are many moments where you can’t declare those things, when the pain is all consuming. I don’t say these things lightly I spent many years letting that pain dictate, for me it became my home and my identity – there was almost something comforting about being known as the girl whose husband had died when she was pregnant. One of the most powerful moments in my life was when I realised that I was stuck in that place of lament because it had actually become a familiar and safe place to stay. In that moment I knew that I didn’t want to spend another moment there and everything changed. It was an incredibly powerful and transforming moment.

We need to acknowledge the hard stuff that has gone, to feel it but at the same time to not get stuck there.

2. This summer also reminded me how powerful and important telling our stories is. There is a big part of me that hates sharing like this, it feels uncomfortable and vulnerable. I wonder what people will think of me. Always I have to remind myself that the only person whose opinion really matters is His, and if I feel like I am responding in obedience then it is ok. And what if in that moment of discomfort and vulnerability someone else hears words that they need to hear in their hard moments, then surely it is all worth it. 

I want the pain of my story to have a purpose. I have lost my two big loves, my lovely Dad is no longer here, my career has been a bumpy ride at times – it has been a hard road to walk at times but that isn’t what defines me, it is not the only part of my story and it certainly isn’t the end of my story

3. Pain, struggle and suffering are part of all of our stories, there is no way of getting around that – not one of us is exempt from it. God never promised an easy life. If this year has taught us anything I don’t think we can deny that we live in a really broken world.  But I have learnt I think what will be one of the most important lessons of my life through it all, another tension, that pain and beauty sit closely alongside each other. I wouldn’t trade the pain for the beauty, or the lessons learnt. 

The hard places, the heartbreak, the losses, those times when it feels like the bottom has fallen out of your world are never the end of the story. I believe that passionately and whilst I know it is not easy to hold on to that when the pain is great I know it is the truth. Grief and loss are never going to be our final story. 

God is absolutely about restoration and redemption. 

I hate the brokenness in me, but at the same time I have grown to be incredibly thankful for it. I know in this season when all I thought was going to be my future has gone I have no choice but to surrender the mess to my Heavenly Father. In fact I think surrender will be the word for this year for me. The other day I heard someone say that the other side of surrender is the miraculous. Bring it on Lord – I am so ready for the miraculous, in my own life, but in the lives of those I love, in the city I love, in this nation. 

I am though very aware that I also have to surrender what my expectation of the miraculous might look like. He works differently to us, his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways.  I know that the miraculous doesn’t always look like healing, it doesn’t always look like happy ever after, in fact it rarely does but there will always be His beauty. I really don’t say these things easily. The longest night of my life was in a hospital room crying out with all I had asking God to save my love but that was not his plan.  

4. We always have a choice in our response. I have definitely chosen the victim role in the past and I have certainly had moments in this season but I can see the lessons I have learnt showing a different response to me to what went before. This time rather than saying “Why me?” “This isn’t fair” I can hear a louder narrative of “Come on Lord, if not that, then what have you got for me.”

God is writing a redemptive story in our lives. He is a restorer of the broken places in our lives. He is all about filling the empty places. God has a beautiful plan waiting for every single person that has walked through tragedy, disappointment and devastation – but we have a responsibility in that to pick up those broken pieces and give them to Him to create something beautiful. We have work to do in those places, not avoiding them, not fighting against them but embracing them, the pain and the process.  We need to do the hard work.

5. Our healing, in part, comes from both gratitude and blessing other people.

Refusing to be stuck in the loss and the pain but to look up and around at all we do have. This year I can see so much to be thankful for – for closer relationships with my neighbours, for nature, a slower pace, time to read, endless boxsets, for beautiful friendships. Through thankfulness He can usher in the new things. Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools we have.

And in looking outwards and looking to others I am convinced God changes us, that he brings healing. Whilst I don’t know why we go through the things we go through I know God uses our pain to bring healing to other people, that our stories can release power and authority for other people. We aren’t meant to do any of this alone. 

So this year I finally know what my passion is. I am passionate about brokenness. I am passionate about the hope of a divine story being written in each and every one of us. I am passionate about seeing healing and freedom in people’s lives, whatever that may look like, knowing that in the mess are the miracles. 

So 2020 you have been a bag of **** on many levels but a little something tells me I might just look back and be incredibly grateful to you. 

Where are you?

In the fear, in the anxiety and in the struggle.

Where are you?

In the loss, in the heartache, in the agony and the tears.

Where are you?

When the future feels overwhelmingly unknown and scary. When it doesn’t look like you thought it would.

Where are you?

In the loneliness, in the separation and the rejection.

Where are you?

In the chaos, in the deafening noise and the mess.  When you know one more look at the news will send you over the edge.

Where are you?

When we aren’t quite sure which way to turn, or how to make a good decision.

Stop for a moment. Be quiet. Be Still.

You are still there. You haven’t gone anywhere. In the big and the small. Maybe in these days, these days that are long and at times feel like an eternity, we need to search a bit harder for you but you are still there.

You are there in the text that says, “I love you and I am with you, I have your back.”

You are there in the flowers and brownies that turn up on the doorstep.

You are in the little boy that shouts over the fence to come play Moana or who wants to sword fight.

You are there in the Instagram feed filled with promises that are true throughout the ages, that pop up at just the right moment.

You are there in the many many walks, in the woods, the rivers, the trees and the wildflowers.

You are there in the presence of friendship, those who have many years of memories and those that are just beginning, in those moments of connection, of understanding, of caring.

You are there in the love of family, that lets you cry, that cries with you, that keeps wanting and believing for so much more.

You are in that small voice that whispers in the middle of the night that this is not the end of the story, that there is still so much to come, that wills you to hold on.

You are there in the heat of the sun on our faces and in the rain as it pelts down on the roof.

You are there in the quiet times where it is just you and him, where it is only his voice and his words that stand.

You are there in the moments where hearts are full; music is turned up loudly and there is dancing.

Your are in the tears and the laughter.

You are threaded throughout it all.

You remind us of all the ways you have come through for us in the past helping us to know you will do the same in the future.

You remind us that we are never alone.

You remind us that there is ALWAYS beauty even in the hardest of places and times.  ALWAYS.

You remind us that light always outshines the darkness, the love is greater than hate, and truth wins over the lies.

You remind us of what really matters, what is worth fighting for and what to invest in.

You remind us that best is yet to come.

But you also ask of us too.

You ask us to be that light, that love and that truth for others, to carry them when they can’t stand.

You ask us to speak you into the lives of others, into brokenness and pain.

You ask us to be carriers of healing and restoration; you call us to be generous.

You ask us to live out the joy that is so entwined with your character.

You ask us to believe for more, to fight for more, to speak out for more.

HOPE.

Along with love and faith you are my favourite.

Thank you that you are the greatest of things and always will be.

HOPE.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.” I Corinthians 13 vs. 13.

Well this has been quite a week hasn’t it?

I am not sure what I feel – I swing from being absolutely fine to being consumed by anxiety to being totally terrified. I can’t actually get my head round what is happening.  It is the craziest of times.

And I think one of the craziest things about is that normally when you are going through a tough time it is normally just you or your people, it is your journey to walk and those times are often unique to you. But this is everyone! Our whole city, nation and world – there is no-one who isn’t impacted. Now that blows my mind.

We all have our fears and struggles in this midst of this.

For me they are having to leave my mum and uncle alone in their own homes for goodness knows how long, not being able to be physically present with my Irish one and worrying what this will look like work wise and financially.

Again I think all our fears at this time run along similar lines.

My close friend has been in hospital nearly a week fighting this crappy virus, and his wonderful wife is in isolation. I have friends who are self-employed whose work is slowing right down and who are exhausted with worry. It is heart breaking.

None of us know what this will look like the other side.

I have had a few sleepless nights this week and so I have turned to prayer because actually for me in times like this I absolutely do not know how else to respond and each time I do that the fears subside and a new perspective comes.

What if family relationships are deeper, healed and changed? I have never spoken to my mum so much as I have done in the last few days. We are probably going to have a little bit more time on our hands than normal – time to connect in a different way. Last night my daughter read to her 18 month and 4 year old cousins, us in Sheffield, them in London, with Granny joining in from another part of Sheffield.  We are still a family.

What if this forges friendships that are so much stronger than they ever were before? I lay in bed yesterday morning talking to three sets of friends all of us still in bed but it was nice to start the day with them, to see their faces, and in fact we ended the day again, a day that had felt quite stressful, with different friends sharing different struggles, talking and praying. Thank you God for technology. My friend in isolation, not able to be able to see her sick husband, has said she has been overwhelmed at the messages, the care packages, and the love. I had a twenty minute conversation with her through the window, another friend prayed with her through the letter box. New and different ways of doing friendship but what if they create something more beautiful that we could have ever asked or hoped for.

What if we let this take our marriages and relationships to a deeper place? I had a virtual date on Friday night, me with an orange and lemonade him with a mars bar. If this goes on for a long time this part will be the hardest part for me but my prayer is that actually maybe we can look back on this time and see it as a really significant season for us.

I think we will see tough times ahead. Without a doubt. But there is always hope, always.  I think it will mean a simpler, stripped back life for many people but  maybe that may bring a freedom with it. Financially who knows how this will impact our economies but maybe it will teach us that we actually don’t have as much control as we think we do and that actually money, things, holidays are not the things of substance in our lives. Maybe for some of us it will be a call to be sacrificial and generous in ways we have never had to before – going without those luxuries for a while, giving our excess income to those who have lost theirs, or to those where this throws them into even more dire straits than they were before.  Maybe we will learn to do community in a whole new way, in a way that makes us all richer.

I think when we are forced to let go we often find things we could never have imagined.

I am not for one minute trying to downplay what is going on. I know for many the mental health implications will be massive. People will grieve and I know given the circumstances of isolation and social distancing, that process will be even harder. People will struggle to feed their families.

But for those of us who are able maybe this is a time in history where we get to choose a different way. A less selfish way.

I know for me personally this will put my faith to the test. But whatever wrestles and struggles come I know he is bigger, that he is mighty, that he can always make a way and that he loves us. We may not understand everything that is happening in the course of the weeks and months ahead but I know he still has a plan and a purpose, that we still have a future. I can’t do this without believing that.  When everything I know and love is temporarily taken away from me, other than my home and child, he is it. He should always be it, but I am so easily distracted, life gets busy and so I know this is a time where all of that changes and so it will change my relationship with him if I let him. And that can only be a good thing.

So if you pray this is a time to pray hard and if you don’t maybe give it a go. Each day make time to say thank you for because we still have so many things to be grateful for. Sing – I intend to play show tunes each day because a good show tune makes everything a little bit better. Dance. Play. Laugh.  And love hard.

And know that whatever comes, whatever is taken, you are still loved, nothing can take that away and that will see us through.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13 vs 13

So the last few weeks for me have felt quite hard. A real struggle trying to keep anxious thoughts and feelings at bay.

Generally I am not an anxious person but every now and then it comes and it overwhelms and terrifies me consuming everything. I struggle to engage properly and in my head I take every situation/part of my life to the worst case scenario from death to jail (irrational I know!) to losing my job.

90% of the time it is triggered by work, which is in a large part rooted in the past (litigation is probably not the career for you if you are prone to worry!!!), but it then spirals into every other area of life. A few weekends ago after a lovely weekend away we drove home and within hours I had convinced myself I had not locked the cottage up that we had been staying in so in the middle of a crazy storm I drove all the way back to find that yes of course I had locked it up but that on the 45 minute drive back I felt all the stuff of the past – the loss, the fear swirling under the surface.

What if he dies too?

What if I lose my job and can’t pay the bills?

What would I do without them? 

How do I keep her safe?

I know none of these things root in anything of any substance, because life is in a good place, but in those times a darkness comes which I can’t shake and whilst I sit and rationalise still those feelings of panic feel bigger.

A few days later a colleague said to me “What is going on because you are not ok are you.” I was honest with him and said I felt really anxious and he simply responded saying “It is ok. We all have these times.” It helped!

Now I am fortunate because it always passes, and peace returns, there are always people there who will listen, reassure, speak sense, pray for me and with me and I have arms that hold me tight and don’t let me go. Those things help but they don’t take it away.

I am a big believer in speaking things out loud, that by saying the words the fears and worries somehow lose some of their power.

I am learning to handle these times better when they come because actually I know there is only one truth that makes any sense in the midst of it all.

I AM NOT ALONE. HE IS BIGGER. HE IS GREATER. HE MAKES A WAY WHEN I FEEL LIKE THERE IS NO WAY.

A couple of weeks ago I was getting ready to go out for dinner but I could feel the panic swirling in me and I knew I had to get my eyes on the only one who could calm me, so I sat with a journal looking back through my phone at things I had saved last time I had been through this and just wrote and spoke these truths out and over me:

• God is fighting your battles, arranging things in your favour and making a way even you don’t see a way.
• Shout Hosanna over every fear.
• “He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge.” Psalm 91 vs 4
• God loves me (and he loves you). God is on my side (and he’s on your’s). He is coming after me (and you too). He is relentless.
• “Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.” Isaiah 41 vs 10.
• “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5 vs 7
• “THE LORD WILL FIGHT YOU; YOU NEED ONLY TO BE STILL.” Exodus 14 vs 14

The truth helps. It brings hope. It brings safety. It brings peace.

I know life at times can be a battle and sometimes that battle feels harder than other times but I also know the battle is won, and that the one who is victorious is on my side, for me, making a way for me – the one who created the world, holds me in his hands. I may not always get it, I may not always understand how or what or why, but I know he will never let me go, that he is faithful.

Then I worshipped because in the hard moments it is sometimes the only response I have – it is again a way of surrendering it to him.

Then I wondered whether maybe today someone else needed to hear these words too. That you aren’t alone. That it will be ok. That it will pass. But above all that he loves you, that he’s bigger than it all and that he will make a way.

I want to say thank you to you.

Thank you that you came. Thank you for what you brought. Thank you for what you changed. Thank you for what you did.

I actually think that you were one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever been given.

I didn’t always feel like that though. I hated you at times. I fought against you. I resisted you. I swore and screamed at you. I would have done anything to make you go away and to never see you or know you again. I wish you had never come.

You have been the hardest and yet the most beautiful thing.

You are the biggest tension – you steal but yet your presence brings with it so much, you hurt but because of you there is joy, you are pain and love all at the same time. You are death but from you comes life.

Without you I am not sure I would have known so much richness and depth. You have grown my capacity to love, to feel, to care. You allow for vulnerability, for faithfulness, for tenacity, for integrity, for kindness and so much more – things I have been given in abundance from those around me because you came to visit.

You are inevitable. As surely as we take each breath you are somewhere, you are everywhere. I hear of you every day. I see you in the eyes of people I love and of strangers. I recognise you so clearly in their words, in their tears and all over again I hate you but know you will weave into those stories unimaginable beauty.  Or maybe beauty is just always close on your heels – I am not quite sure and certainly not clever enough to fully comprehend exactly how you or it work. I know you are part of a divine story where you are a main character but never the winner.

You are mystery. You leave your scars, and your marks, they don’t go away and when knocked those scars can hurt like it was yesterday but yet I look at those scars, mine and others, and am overwhelmed at how beautiful they can be.

I want to make your presence easier for people – to be the hope when you shatter and destroy because despite the destruction you leave in your wake you make way for that hope. Yet another mystery of who you are and how you work.

So thank you, thank you for all the lessons you have taught me, all the love and kindness that came because of you, all the places you took me and where I am now because of you.

I only hope when you come again, and I know you will, I can remember what I know now so that somehow I can learn to embrace you harder. I hope I can be braver next time knowing that however much you hurt you are never the end of the story, you will never have the final word, but that with you will always come with the promise of more.

Just over four years ago I felt like God was saying I needed to start writing and set out my story in words – it felt incredibly vulnerable, there were a lot of “what will people think” moments but the words flowed and I felt like there was much to say and most of all it was the start or at least a key part of an amazing journey of healing.

Four years ago I was pretty broken, I am not ashamed to say that 8 years on from losing my lovely husband I was still struggling, that that grief still weighed heavily, as did the rawness of losing my Dad. I was in a job that was sucking the life out of me and without meaning to sound over dramatic I don’t think I was that far off a bit of a breakdown.

I haven’t really written for the last year and party because of time and energy, or rather lack of, but also because I haven’t had that much to say. Not that life hasn’t been full or good but there has been no burning desire to set words to paper. There has however been a little bit of me that has missed it………so here goes again and maybe this will be a one off and maybe not. We shall see!

Christmas marked the 12 year anniversary of John’s death and my friend, also a John, asked me how I was feeling. I told him that actually I felt good, that it all felt like a lifetime ago and that actually I felt overwhelmingly thankful. And whilst I would never have wished John to die in a way I felt an immense gratitude that it had happened because of the story, all it had given me, all it had taught me and the ways in which it had changed me.

I know that I have known a totally transformational healing this last four years – I don’t recognise the girl from those first few years  (can 8 years be classed as a few?) of loss and grief.

I came into 2019 not really having thought about the year ahead – I didn’t have any feel resolutions or aspirations – I was a little tired and weary after a tough few months at work at the back end of 2018 and was just thankful to be coming out the other side of that.

But as the weeks have passed I have thought about the overwhelming thankfulness I had felt at John’s anniversary, about how the immense transformation that I know has happened in my life blows me away and how I stand here today a very different person to who I was 12 years ago, to who I was 4 years ago.  Today I no longer feel defined by being the girl whose husband died when she was 6 months pregnant, or by being a single parent whose child did never and will never know their father, – I know life again and a freedom from those tragedies, I have made peace with the past, with my God who I don’t always understand (I know I am not meant to understand him but oh I did I try for a long time to) but who I have learnt to trust in a much deeper way.

That being said I still prone to irrational anxiety at times, which I can see is clearly linked to the past. My child’s text to tell me she had arrived at school doesn’t arrive and I go into a crazy panic that she has been abducted. A close person, is unwell, and they don’t text back to answer a question, and in my head I am already at their funeral and imagining life without them – on admitting this crazy thinking I am met with eye rolling!! I am working on those anxieties.

What I do know though is that I have known transformation in my life in a very significant way and I know that this year I want to see it in the lives of the people I love and people I don’t even know.

So as I stand in this place of immense gratitude and a longing for change, for more healing, to see miracles come, to see situations changed and lives bought to life again I am believing and trying live out these truths:

 

1. No situation is beyond hope or beyond repair.

A few years into losing John I was at a social justice conference in London. It was at the end of the conference and I probably hadn’t engaged that much given at that stage I was very much still wrestling with God and faith. I was sat a good few rows back from the front and everyone had dispersed to get prayer, have a drink, to chat and I was sat on my own, disengaged and probably miserable. This young girl, in her 20s came up to me, and said she had had a picture of me – I had been sat in my life, nice and safe, with what was like a glass cover over me. When she said that I sort of saw me and my life inside one of those glass cake covers you find in a café. She said she could see that something had happened that had smashed that glass cover to many many pieces, that it felt like it was all so shattered that it could never be put together again. This girl had no idea who I was or what had happened in my life over the few years prior to that moment. She said she felt God was saying to her that he was going to take those broken pieces, that felt beyond repair and rebuild something beautiful.

I have not thought about that conversation in years but it came to me a few weeks ago as I was reflecting and I thought WOW – he has built something so beautiful, and by that I mean the story he has woven in my life, the significant moments, the people (so so precious – I am a blessed woman to have so many people that are such a special part of that story- I love you all), the passions and compassions he has set in my heart, the desires, the fight, the strength – the things that actually I can’t actually put into words because I don’t really know how to explain them.

So I don’t know where you are today and what is going on for you. Or maybe it is a heavy heart for someone else. I have those heavy hearts for people I love, for situations I don’t understand, situations where I have prayed and prayed and prayed some more and the answers haven’t come as hoped. I do know though that these times pass, and it may be a month or in my case 8 years, but they will pass. Healing and transformation are possible and probably the story will not look like you hoped or wanted but nevertheless it can be beautiful. God is good. As a precious friend reminded our church in his sermon last week, God is the beginning and he is the end, it starts and ends with him.

I am praying for more healings, more transformation this year because I believe passionately that it is never the end of the story, and that there is always hope and always beauty however messy and broken it all is, feels or seems.

 

2. We are all in it together.

If its too hard, if it feels too much, too overwhelming – be honest, be real and be vulnerable.  I know it feels so hard to do that but I believe passionately in bringing the darkness into the light. That by speaking those battles out loud it takes some of the power out of them. And I know it makes you feel weak to have to keep saying its hard but we all get to those places at some point in our life and we will all probably get there again numerous times before we get to the end and there is no shame in that. It is part of life and I don’t believe we were meant to do any part of life alone let alone the tough parts.

If you are watching someone breaking in front of you – listen, pray and fight – please don’t give up on them. My people never gave up on me and I promise you they would have been totally within their rights to. Eight long years they stood by my side and I will be eternally grateful because they were so significant in that transformation.

I heard someone say the other week that “loved people love, healed people heal” and my soul said a loud amen. I know love transforms but I also know that it can be a long drawn out, messy process but again it can be the most beautiful of processes, one which I am so thankful for in my own life, so many times over.

 

3. The lessons to be learnt in those dark, difficult places are the most precious.

As I have touched on already I had a few months at the end of last year where I was struggling with a few things work related and the anxiety was all consuming. It felt reminiscent of old job stuff and it scared me. This time tough it was different – I knew it was a battle that I wasn’t going to let win. I spent a lot of time praying, I had key verses on my phone which I looked at 20 times a day, I just kept asking God to show up, I chatted it through with a few safe people, asked them to pray and it slowly started to pass.

Weirdly though some part of me didn’t want it to pass (although I am very thankful it more or less has) because I felt close to my heavenly father in a really precious way, in a way that perhaps isn’t always as easy to find when all is fine and that desperate need for him isn’t quite as strong.

I know that God will always turn up, will always change us, and will always do the impossible, the unimaginable, the miraculous and the wonderful if we let him. For me it is about surrender, perseverance, and a willingness to trust that He is good and He has it – not that I always get that right or do it well.

 

4. Pray, pray, pray and pray some more.

Say thank you for all the good things. Acknowledge how great He is. Tell him how you are feeling – your fears, your hopes and dreams. Tell him where you have messed up, what you want to change, what is breaking your heart.

It’s so powerful. It has the power to change people, situations and our hearts.

Pray on your own. Pray together. He doesn’t need big eloquent speeches; he just wants to hear your voice.

 

So those are my thoughts as I have sat down at this laptop tonight – I am thankful for the one who brings hope, who brings peace, who brings joy – for the one who never gives up on us.