A constant challenge for me is that of success, money, status and what part those things play in my life and how much they shape my decisions and the way I live my life, partly due to my family, my education and having spent the last 11 years working in the corporate world.

I think, in fact I know, God is doing a work in me in this area firstly by removing me from the said corporate world, into the charity sector, which has meant a pay cut and the loss of lots of nice benefits, coupled with some pride issues, and secondly then having to explain to the said family why I have made such a radical decision. I think this work may be long overdue but no doubt costly and painful certainly meaning less new clothes! I don’t doubt for a minute it is the right decision, and I am really excited about all the opportunities that lie ahead, but I would lying if I said there were not anxieties about the future that come with such a decision.

As that challenge has come I know God has been turning upside down my thought processes and attitudes. A few weeks ago a very precious lady, who had been part of our community as I was growing up, died. This lady had not had an easy start in life going through a series of foster homes and children’s houses. She also had learning difficulties. I was unable to go to her funeral as I was away but I read the order of service, which told of her life story, and as I read it I cried. I was blown away. Her story was one of obstacles and difficulties, of loss and disappointments, but yet she was the most giving and generous and amazing lady. She always had a smile and a hello and whilst she did not have very much money at all to each couple in our community who got married she would give them a tea towel and when babies were born socks or bibs – I know that many of you reading this will have been the recipient of a tea towel and socks/bibs. On my daughter Lucy’s birthday 1^st birthday I remember a card coming through the door with £5 in it – I remember at the time it made me weep but reading again of her generosity to so many has impacted me greatly.

Apparently at her funeral there were bus drivers from the routes she travelled on and shop keepers from the shops she frequented and the service was packed.

In the world’s eyes this lady would have not been much to shout about, she was not successful in worldly terms, she was not wealthy with a long list of successes but I have absolutely no doubt she will have a mansion in heaven.

I cannot stop thinking about her – there has been a lot of change in my life in the last few weeks, with lots of challenge, teaching and input but it is this lady’s life that I keep coming back to, that has challenged me the most. She had such a spirit of kindness, of generosity and of friendship – she had it right in contrast to how I often get it so wrong. She knew what was important – she gave and gave from the little she had. She showed kindness without limits.

I have been reminded time and time again in the last month (and I am sensing that there may have to be many more reminders as I wrestle with this one) that God’s heart is not for the things the world puts so much value on, that he does not rate us or judge us or love us conditional upon those values – thankfully he loves us unconditionally which is a good job as far as my life goes, that he loves a generous heart, a heart that pours out love, kindness and compassion – that those things are so much more important to him than job titles, pay packets, reputations and qualifications, which I have no doubt feature right down on his list. I have no doubt that when I get to heaven God will not be interested in how many degrees or qualifications I had or what my house was worth but that he will want to know what I did to love and help the poor and vulnerable, how I used the gifts and resources he has given me to bless others and for his kingdom.

I know that the lovely lady whose story has impacted me so much in the last few weeks will have been greeted with the words “well done good and faithful servant” when she finally got to meet Jesus. She lived her life so well and I for one have so much to learn from who she was and the way she lived her life.

If only we could fully grasp the importance of values such as generosity, kindness and compassion, and give them the weight that God longs them to have then I have no doubt we would see massive change in our communities and in the world. If we could flip over our priorities so our spiritualty and relationships came first and foremost way above our finances, our careers, our reputations and all the other stuff we are constantly told is so important what would it look like? I am not saying that those things are not important, whether we like it or not money is a necessity and can do so much good, and intellect and successes are gifts from God and we need people in influence and power to be advocates for change, but for me it is all about my attitude and the importance I give to these things both in terms of the way I live my life and the way I treat/judge others. Think it may be an ongoing work…………..

Right now I feel full to bursting with gratitude – I have just had the most amazing holiday, seeing a gorgeous part of the world and having precious time with family and friends. I have also started a new job which in the first two days has had me on the verge of tears on so many occasions because I have felt overwhelmed with people’s kindness, their welcome and their words of encouragement, as well as inspired and excited to be part of an amazing work – in two days there feels like there has already been some healing of the crap of the last 6 months that was the legal world. I am thankful to God for his perfect timing, for his amazing provision of an opportunity which feels so right and so life giving.

I feel blessed and life feels good and exciting and there is so much to be thankful for, overwhelming amounts, but it feels like this time has been a long time coming – 8 years to be exact. Since John died I have lost count of the number of people who have told me I am doing amazingly, which has meant a lot, but the truth is that there has been a really ugly side to my grieving, a side I am not proud of and fortunately a side which is now long finished. However, in those first few years I went through periods of real bitterness and of self-pity. I got good at putting a front up so most people would not see it but behind closed doors I would blow up at my family, at John’s family and at my closest friends, so most people never saw it, but those that did I think I probably put through hell. I would scream and swear at them and lash out saying things I knew would hurt them because I was hurting so much that I needed to hurt someone else. I am thankful that they were patient and gracious and are still there because I have no doubt there were times when they would have happily washed their hands of me. During those times I felt anything but thankful – I felt incredibly bitter – I felt like God had forgotten me, that I did not matter to him because if I had mattered he would have protected my little family. If I am being really honest I did not even feel grateful for the basics of life that we take for granted, the things that most of us can still be thankful for, even when we face struggles in life, for health, a roof over our heads, food on the table, family, friends – because all I wanted was to die too, I did not see that there was a happy life ahead for me without John and I just wanted to go and be with him.

For a year I could not step into a church because I was so angry with God, because I just couldn’t fathom why or how or what. Why did he not step in that night and save John? How did John die of some freak illness in his prime when actually it is pretty damn hard to die at the age of 28? What sort of “good” plan was that for any of our lives and what good could possibly come out of any of it?

As I have slowly but surely emerged from the pit of my grief I have learnt some pretty important lessons about the power of being thankful and of celebration even in the hardest of times and the power and release that comes as a result. I knew that I did not want to stay in that place of bitterness, even when I was right in the centre of it and even when at times it felt like the safest and easiest place to be, so slowly I started to be thankful for the things I did have, for the people who loved me and fought for me, for a good job, for a beautiful little girl, for a home and financial security, for my health and in that place of thankfulness started to come healing – it was not instant but it was deep and thorough. When the feelings of bitterness and self-pity came I would allow myself to stay there for a bit but then would pull myself up, focusing on all that there was to be thankful for, and as the months and years went by those times of bitterness and self pity became less and less to the point where they are thankfully no more.

One of the things that was hardest for me in the early years was watching people having babies, on two counts, the first being that I knew that they had gone into the hospital together, as a couple, and gone through the experience of having a child together, with all the joy that brings, and taking that baby home together, when my experience of my child coming into the world had been so incredibly lonely and so far from what it had started off as and secondly because I did not get the chance to have more babies. Early on I knew that I had to celebrate with my friends, I made a point of being the one to organise the meal rotas, and of visiting and standing with them in their excitement and joy. I cried my tears in private and in public celebrated. Often they knew and I knew they knew but it was so important for me to share in those times with them because I love them and want good things for them but because I knew my heart would get hard and ultimately it would only mean more pain for me.

I would be lying if I said those times of the family/couple/baby issue hurting were behind me but the place I am in is so far forward from where it was 5 years ago and even 1 year ago. I still have to put those masks on occasionally but there are only a few people that see those masks go up and generally I know more contentment with where I am that I have done in a very long time. I can genuinely say that if I never have any more children then that is ok, I have one beautiful and amazing child, I love my cousins’ kids desperately, as I will any nieces and nephews I may have, and my life is full of gorgeous children, who make me laugh, who give me cuddles and make life so much better.

I have learnt the important of saying thank you, and of celebrating with others, even when that is hard, it lifts our eyes and souls upwards, it stops us being self adsorbed and stuck, it releases us and it brings healing. It reminds us that it is all so much bigger than just us and our stuff and I truly believe that whilst it may take time having a heart of gratitude, a spirit of thankfulness and a desire to celebrate leads us out of the tough places as it changes our hearts and our attitudes.

Today I am not only thankful for where I am right now, for all the good things that I have but for the journey I have been on, for all the lessons learnt, for the relationships that have deepened, grown and started. I am thankful for a husband who loved me, believed in me and cherished me and a Dad who constantly had my back, who scarified so much for me and in his own way loved me unconditionally – I am thankful that they had a relationship with their heavenly father and are now safely with him in heaven. I am thankful for all they both taught me in their lives, by loving me, but also in their illness/deaths.

Most of all I am thankful to a faithful and loving God who has picked up the pieces of my shattered life and rebuilt me patiently – still some way to go though!!

Families are something we all have whether we like it or not! And those family ties are so incredibly strong in both good and bad ways – no-one can make us feel safer and more loved than our families but no-one can hurt us more. 

I am fascinated by families, I love family trees and history, photos and family likenesses. A few months ago a parcel arrived from Cyprus for my mum which had been sent by my grandpa’s neighbours. It was various papers and photos they had found in his house. I was in total heaven – in amongst that parcel was a detailed family tree going back 5 generations and transcripts of family letters dating back to the 1800s, the originals of which are safely tucked away. I came to one photo and I was totally blown away as it was a photo of my great grandfather (my grandfather’s father) from the early 1900s and it could have been my dad – the resemblance was so strong.

I love the idea of 2 people coming together to create a new family and each of those individual histories, lineages and genetics combining to create a new life. 

It is true what they say in that during our childhoods are families are everything and then during our teens and 20s we make steps out on our to then come back – that certainly feels the case for me! At one point my family were the last people I wanted to spend time with but certainly now the people I love being with the most. 

No family is perfect – ours is far far from it. Like most families there are plenty of characters, family arguments and history- there are broken relationships, geographical distances and long held hurts. I often wonder how I could possibly be related to half of my relatives and no doubt they feel the same about me. That being said though however much they may frustrate me or however different we may be they are the same flesh and blood and there is something very powerful in that. 

My sibling, my cousins, their spouses and their children are absolutely my favourite people. After spending time with my cousin’s little ones in Sydney I was overwhelmed at how much I fell in love with them. My mum is a legend who literally holds my world together and the absence of my dad leaves a big hole in my heart. I am blessed to have uncles and aunts who love me. So whilst my family is not what I hoped it would be, whilst I thought it may include a husband, more children with their Grandpa here to watch them grow, more and more I am realising how very blessed I am to be part of the family I am part of, with its warts and all.

I am though very much aware of the pain families can bring partly because at times I have experienced that pain myself but also because for the last 11 years I have worked day in day out with warring families, dealing with siblings that hate each other, parents and children who have been estranged for many years and step families where there is no love lost – I have literally been waist deep in dealing with the hatred, bitterness and sadness that comes with these broken relationships, for years, and it is incredibly sad and heart breaking. On nearly a daily basis my colleagues and I would voice out loud our wonder at how things could get that bad.

I know that families are not always easy to be part of and that sometimes other people make those family relationships all but impossible and I also know that for some the area of family is a deeply painful one. I am thankful that my earthly family aside I have a Heavenly Father and that where family relationships are tough he has those situations and is more than able to carry us in the midst of those pains, but also to turn those situations around. I know there can be healing, restoration and redemption when we let God do his work. 

Families need grace, forgiveness and a sense of humour but they are worth fighting for and investing in. And whilst I have said this before and I will no doubt say it again, because it is something I feel incredibly passionate about, for those of us that are lucky enough to have families we love we need to be sharing those families with people who are not so fortunate, to include people and welcome them into our families with open arms. 

In a few weeks time I am moving house temporarily which means I have spent the last month going through drawers and cupboards sorting through things. I am not a hoarder, I pride myself on my organisational skills and my neatness so in theory the job of sorting through the contents of my house should not be a particularly onerous or time consuming one but it has taken me hours and in those hours not a lot of progress has been made. The problem is that every few items I go through there is a letter, a card or a photograph I have not seen in years and it sets me off on a trip down memory lane and 95% of the times induces tears.

The other Saturday as I was going through boxes of photos and letters I was overwhelmed by the fact that each photo and letter represented a person, a friendship and a story and I sobbed – tears of sadness but also tears of joy and thankfulness.

Many of the photos I was looking at were from over ten years ago before the age of digital cameras and smartphones. I looked at the faces of people I loved and a strong sense of each of their journeys welled up in me – of all that had happened in their lives in the last ten years or so. I saw answered and unanswered prayers, successes, relationships, losses, opportunities seized, joys, disappointments,  babies, marriages, job triumphs and struggles as well so many memories.

Not only did the sorting of my stuff make me reflect back on each of those individual’s lives but on what part those individuals played in mine and how rich life is with all its experiences, dramas, highs, lows and even the mundane aspects of our every day. 

Then the other day I saw for the first time this CS Lewis quote “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different.”   That quote so resonated with me because most days are pretty normal, and you go about your work and your play with nothing being particularly out of the ordinary and then every now and again you have the chance to reflect and you realise in the ordinariness of the every day which often feels exactly that, ordinary, in amongst those ordinary moments there are moments of the extraordinary, which alongside life’s big events all combined together means life changes, we change and we are different people from the people we were ten years ago and the people we will be in ten years.

So as I reflected and remembered I was also full of thankfulness for all that God has done in the last ten years. I think often it is only as we look back at the past we get a clearer idea of what was happening and how God was working. As I look back I can see answered prayers and lives changed in ways that I could not see at the time those prayers were being prayed or those lives being changed. 

I love the idea, as cheesy as I accept it is, of our lives being like a tapestry with two sides, the beautiful picture on the front and then the underside, the mess of different threads, colours and patterns- the underside being the side we see as our lives in the here and now – the side that often feels messy and confusing. Then one day when our lives are at an end and we get to heaven we see the beautiful picture side and we gain an understanding of how what often felt messy and confusing was actually worked together to create a beautiful picture.

I totally believe that one day I will come face to face with my Heavenly Father and I will understand more of this life and have answers to the unanswered questions but I don’t want to wait until then to see how beautiful my life is. I want to get into the discipline of reflection – to be able to look back and see how God has and is working in the ordinary and the extraordinary, how he has answered prayers and transformed lives and not only so I can be thankful but so that I can be encouraged to keep on going. I believe that God has a plan for each of our lives and that he is a good God – it may not always feel like that when the tears come, when our hearts break and when things are tough but my testimony is that as I look back I can see that he has worked in amazing ways – that in the midst of the darkness the light has always come again!

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard” (A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh).

Change and goodbyes are hard – whether forced or chosen.

I feel like I have had to say goodbye to people I love too often and it doesn’t really get any easier.

When I saw this quote the other week straight away my mind went to a person who is so incredibly precious to me, to a friendship that started 24 years ago, a   friendship that means the world to me.

I cannot really think about my friend without the tears coming, because I am so grateful for her, so proud of who she is and the way she lives her life, and because she is such a big part of who I am. Other than my family there is no-one I love more.

Other than a few years living in different cities for university, and gaps years, we have always lived in the same city, and yes there have been periods where we have not been so involved in each other’s lives, but she has always been just down the road, she has always been near. However in a few months time she is going, she is moving cities and the likelihood is that we will never live in the same city again. I have not really let the enormity of that move sink in yet as I know when I do the tears may not stop and I am not quite ready for them yet.

That friendship started as 14 year olds in a tent in the Lake District and has grown through those teenage years, into our 20s and 30s – we have been each other’s bridesmaids, stood by the other as one lost a husband and the other a baby, we have laughed together, cried together, prayed together, eaten together, shared our hearts, our dreams, our worries and our struggles as well as our families. When she married I gained a friend in her husband – a man who has spoken so much wisdom, life and truth into my life, probably more than any other person ever has.

We had baby girls within months of each other, girls who could not be more different, one who is shy and sensitive, the other who is brave, confident and fearless but who are the best of friends.

My friend is beautiful inside and out, she is humble, kind, and gentle but at the same time strong, passionate and sold out to the things she believes in. She is not afraid to speak the truth and stand up for what she knows to be right. She is consistent and committed. She is real and honest. The way my friend and her husband do marriage and family constantly inspires me. They have made sacrifices for the other and supported and encouraged each other. They have taught me so so much.

Back in the autumn my friend text me to tell me she need to see me that evening, which in and of itself felt odd as it was slightly out of character, and once I had established with her I was not in trouble I knew. God had been preparing my heart for this conversation for the last few years, for the fact they were going to go one day. As I drove to her house I asked God to help me say goodbye well and to honour them in whatever was next for them.

I hate thinking that in a few months they will not be just round the corner, that I won’t be able to see them easily, without much planning, that we will no longer be part of each other’s lives on a day to day basis. To be quite honest it feels like it will be another grief because in the few moments I have let myself feel it the tears come and my heart aches. I am though so excited – I know there is so much in my friend to still come out, that God has awesome and amazing plans for her life, and that this move is a part of those plans coming to fruition. I am excited to watch from a distance as this new chapter of their lives unfolds.

Change is so important, to stop life becoming stale, for the new and better things to have room to come, to allow new people into our lives who may transform our lives in ways we could never imagine. But with change there is often the sadness of letting go of the old, the safe and the known. The excitement and the sadness sit side by side and that is ok.

So I release you my friend and your precious family, into all that God has for you all. I will always be standing right behind you, rooting for you, praying for you and loving you. I believe in you completely. Go in the knowledge that your time here has been marked with goodness, integrity and truth, that you have all blessed and impacted so many lives, and that you have finished well.

I love you x

The last four months have been tough.

God has literally picked me from the path I was heading down and placed me on a totally different and completely unexpected path. Although it was not as simple as that, as I don’t think in life it is ever is, it has been a period of feeling totally broken, scared, and incredibly anxious. Whilst it is has been horrible to go through I do believe it almost had to be this way for God to get my attention in order to show me that he had different things for me.

About 4 years ago I sat in a service where the leader of our church, Mick, said he had a word for someone there that God was going to ask them to let go of and step out of a career which had been hard won – my heart started racing and I knew it was a word for me, especially given that it was a service made up of predominantly students who had not even started their careers yet. Now at that point I was studying as part of my career progression and was happy in the thought that I would build a hopefully successful career in law, but that word never left me.

About a year later whilst cleaning the kitchen floor, on Christmas Eve, I felt again a real sense that God was asking me to step out of that career that I held so dearly, that gave me part of my worth and identity.

Slowly, gradually over the next few years I have prayed and thought about that word and those feelings and bit by bit I have become less and less satisfied with the work I was doing, increasingly questioning whether I wanted to invest my life in this work for the next 30 years.

Before Christmas some stuff happened at work, mostly out of my control, and I became consumed by anxiety – I could find no rest, no peace and no joy – I couldn’t sleep or eat. I had no choice but to cry out and ask God to help me, on an hourly basis, as at times it is was literally overwhelming. I knew that I need out of litigation and not because I couldn’t do it, because I had proved I could, but because it no longer gave me any peace and literally, without meaning to sound over dramatic, felt like it was sucking the life out of me.

So in ten days time I will be leaving the world of litigation and entering into the charity sector. Whilst the way it is has all come together feels like it is totally of God, and I am excited, that move does not come without its anxieties for me – am I leaving a potentially lucrative and secure career for a not so lucrative and secure one? Whereas before the future looked sure and certain now I have no clue what is ahead and I feel like I am stepping totally into the unknown and am having to hold tight to my father’s hand trusting that he will show me and he will provide for me. I have so many thoughts and feelings swirling round my head and my heart right now but I do know this is right and that this will be about so much more than a job and earning a living. I sense that this will also be about pursuing my dreams, about writing more, about finally being able to explore training as a bereavement counsellor and probably many more things I cannot even imagine right now.

What I have learnt through this time is that I am a worrier and that I need to work to let go of that worry – I need to replace worry with trust – to trust that God is my father, that he loves me totally and that there is nothing that he cannot turn around and sort out. That all I need to do is place my worries in his hand and trust him to work out the solutions in ways above and beyond my understanding and comprehension.

I am sure it is going to be a process as it is inherited, it is tied up in family expectations (so many times in the last week I have wondered what my Dad would say if he was here, whether he would agree with my decision- I guess however old you are you never stop needing your daddy’s reassurance), it is deeply rooted – I do not want to be a failure, I want to always do things well and be a success, I want people to think well of me – to like me and to love me, I want to have enough and then some, I want those I love to be safe and happy, I want this nation, this world not to be so screwed up and scary. So slowly I am learning to give the worries and the stresses over to the one who has the answers, to lean on hope and goodness, to keep trying to walk with faith and truth and to choose joy and life but also to accept that sometimes failure is part of the process and that those failures, if we let them, can teach us and humble us, to lead us to the successes.

I don’t know about you but words flow out of my mouth without thought fairly easily – I am an extrovert processor and have no problems with finding the words. Since reading a devotional about words a few weeks ago I have not been able to stop thinking about how I use them. Something that comes so easily out of our mouths can have a flipping massive impact both positively and negatively.

After losing John people said so many words to me. In my mum’s attic are bags of condolence cards – I was overwhelmed with people’s kindness and each and every card and each and every word helped make the whole thing slightly more bearable.

However I remember picking up one letter that had been written to my parents, from old family friends, who we had not seen in years, and in that letter they were saying how sorry they were but went on to say that a wife in their 20s could never get over her husband’s death at such a young age and what a hard thing I would have to bear for the rest of my life. Now I am not saying I am not grateful that they had made the effort to write, and say they were thinking of us, but those words crushed me. Those words, even though they came from the best of intentions, went straight to my heart and said “you will always be sad”, “your future is bleak” and “your heart will always be broken” – they fed into my brokenness, into my fears and sent me into dark places.

In my grieving I craved words of hope, light, life and love – I avoided conversations where the subject would be how hard it was to find love, about the difficulties of being a single parent, about how I was going to cope financially on one wage, among other topics. I needed words that kept me believing. My love language is definitely words of affirmation and so one of the biggest gifts that anyone gave me during those years after John was to say that they believed in my future, that they had complete faith that I would know love again, that it was not the end, and that there was good ahead.

I am sure we can all think of a million examples of how words have affected us. Work situations, parents in the playground, friendships, family relationships and sometimes even strangers. In a work situation one negative comment can destroy me for days despite numerous positive testimonials, and words of encouragement – it is the negative I focus upon.

Since losing my Dad me and my brother have been faced with the pretty horrendous task of sorting his estate out, the complicating factor being that my dad was not finished sorting out my grandpa’s estate, so lucky us we inherited that too! We were faced with boxes of unopened post, the good old HMRC, an accountancy business we knew nothing about and did not really understand, a property in Cyprus just as the property market in Cyprus crashed spectacularly – you name it it was there. In that time there have been some pretty stressful moments where we have both been pushed to our limits, both exhausted and we exchanged some pretty hateful and horrible words, words on both sides that were hard to forgive, words I for one regret – fortunately nearly all behind us now!

As I have thought about words I have also been thinking about the words I speak to my child and over her. What I say to her now in these formative years will go with her into her teenage years and adulthood. How she thinks of herself, what she values, her body image, her work ethic, how she treats others – all these things she will learn through me, by my example, largely through my words or lack of them. As for most parents I want my child to know she is loved and she is amazing and so I try to speak words of love, encouragement and affirmation at any given opportunity – I figure I only have a few years left to say these things before she tells me to stop! But there are times where those positive words do not come so easily, when I am tired, frustrated, irritated and stressed and I can snap and not be as kind.

As I have thought more about words I have been challenged to think more before I speak – I want my words to be truthful and honest but to bring love, life, joy, freedom and healing to people. I want to be slow to judge and slow to speak when I am angry. I do not want to use my words to put someone else down just because I am in a bad place and it makes me feel better.

“Words can inspire. And words can destroy. Choose yours well.” Robin Sharma

One of my favourite verses from the bible is from Philippians 4 vs 8, which says “…whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” No I do not profess to say I get my thoughts or words right all of the time, in fact most of the time, and it is a massive challenge for me, but I want this verse to be my standard, my benchmark for my words as they flow from my thoughts.

What a legacy we could leave through our words alone!

As I was thinking about what to write about and asking God what to say next I felt I had to tell a bit of my John’s story. It is a story I have gone back to a lot over the last few years when I have felt forgotten and have questioned whether God still loved me and had a plan for my future. As I looked back at John’s story and our story together it has always helped me to remember that God worked so much in John, and in our relationship that surely death, grief and sadness could not be the end of the story and has helped me to keep going in the knowledge that God is not finished with me or my life.

I remember the first time I met John Bukowicki (later to become John Forder so I did not have to become Becky Bukowicki!). I was working at HSBC at the time and was moving teams. John was on that new team and he helped me to move my files. Over the next six months I worked alongside John. Now I was never one of those girls who had a list of the qualities or characteristics I was looking for in a husband but safe to say if I had written a list it probably would not have described John. Whilst I had grown up in my nice little Christian environment, going to youth group and summer camps, in my private school education, John had come from a broken family, his father was no longer in his life, he had grown up in a very different family background, and had spent his teenage years clubbing and holidaying with his mates in Ibiza, drinking and dabbling in drugs.

Those years working at HSBC were very social, with people spending a lot of their free time together. I had just moved back to Sheffield from London and had few friends around so would spend a lot of time with my work mates many of whom were in their 20s like me and many of whom are still some of my closest friends today. John made me laugh from the start and other than one other person (you know who you are!) he made me laugh more than anyone I had ever met. We would talk about travelling and all the places we would like to visit and he would question me a lot about my faith and what I believed in – I think for John I was very different from anyone he had every come across and I think I intrigued him in terms of my faith.

John then left HSBC and went travelling for a year round the States, Australia and NZ – I would get the odd email hearing about various drunken antics and then one day I got an email saying he was coming back to the UK and was going to try and come back to work at HSBC, which he subsequently did. I didn’t see John much over that next year as he was working on a different floor but then he moved to live near where I was living and he started to pop in as my house was on the way to work.

We then ended up working back on the same team. John started to question me more and more about what I believed. One day he said to me he saw something in my life that he really wanted in his life and asked if he could come to church with me. By this point I was starting to feel a little uneasy about what I felt, what he felt and wondering what exactly was going on.

I grew up knowing when I got married I wanted to marry someone that shared my faith and I was very black and white on that to the point of being very self righteous and sanctimonious at times. Suddenly here I was on the brink of starting something with someone who was so totally different from me in every way – as my dear friend, Hels (there you go!!) would often tell John I made him boring!

So I arranged to take John to church with me on Easter Sunday evening. That day some of my friends came with me to my parents for lunch and were telling my parents about this boy who was coming to church with me later on that evening. After lunch my uncle went into the kitchen and said to my mum that that boy was going to come to faith. John came to what was a very lively service which completely freaked him out given that he had never really stepped foot inside a church in his life.

What followed was a tough couple of months as our feelings for each other developed and we wrestled with what that meant given our differences. John was amazing in the way he threw himself into situations which were very much out of his comfort zone, and as he faced difficult questions from his mates for getting involved with this weirdo religious girl! John’s step-dad’s reaction was that a religious girl was marginally better than some girls he could have bought home and to remember that the collection plate was to put money in and not take it out!

John met with my friend Jon in a curry house, having never met him before, to talk about Jesus, he spent time talking with vicars and did an Alpha course. I couldn’t pinpoint an exact time when John committed his life to Jesus but by the time he died he was miles ahead of me in his relationship with him.

John’s dad walked about on John, his mum and his brother when John was about 13 years old and after a few very painful years John ceased to have any relationship with him – he is someone I have never met but am so thankful John had made peace in his heart about it and had forgiven him by the time he died. I came from a very privilege, nice background where divorce didn’t really play a part in it, my parents were married until my dad died and my friends’ parents were all still together so I had my fears (totally irrational and unfounded) that maybe history would repeat itself with John if I went any further into the relationship. By rights John could have been very screwed up by that situation but he was one of the most together people I every known. I will always remember him turning to me one day, out of the blue, and saying “God can break the past can’t he so that history doesn’t repeat itself and so that I do not turn out like my dad.” I was blown away by quite how obviously God was working in his life.

For the first eighteen months after John’s death I moved in to live with my parents so I could have support with a newborn baby whilst I grieved. I then sold the house John and I had bought only a few months before he died and bought what is my home now. When John died I had to pack our things up quickly so that I could rent the house out. On moving into my new house my friend, Hels (twice!!!), was helping me unpack and we came across some handwritten notes, which I had never seen before. They were notes John had made of the stuff God had put on his heart about working with youth (he wanted to work in inner city areas similar to the one he had grown up in and use football coaching to make a difference to kids there and he was working towards his FA coaching qualifications) and also reaching blokes to show them God was relevant to their lives. I was again blown away – if I needed any reassurance that John’s commitment was real and personal and not just about me I had it in those notes of the vision John had for the things he wanted to commit his life to.

John was a very different man when he died to the one I first met – not that he wasn’t brilliant when I first met him – but he had grown up and allowed God to change and transform him into a Godly man. My dad and John always got on well but John would say to me that whilst he knew my dad loved him he also knew he wasn’t who dad would have chosen for me, given our differences. One day not long after John died I heard wailing and sobbing coming from my dad, who had locked himself away, and I heard him say over and over again “I was so wrong” – my dad had realised the true depth of who John was. John changed my family in so many positive ways, in both his life and his death and the precious gift he left behind, in his little girl.

One of the biggest lessons I learnt was to let God have his way because he knows much better than me – I would never have put myself with John but God knew he was all I needed and we fitted together in ways that could only have been God given. He was like a ray of sunshine and was so easy going as a contrast to my stress and worry, whereas I like the nice things of life and had no issue with spending money he was the most unmaterialistic person and pretty tight, he was kind and funny, patient and loyal, totally secure in who he was and committed and was all I could have asked for and so much more. My biggest sadness in life is that he never met his baby who is so much like him in so many ways, that they were never together on earth at the same time is something that I will never be able to get my head round but I know that in the last 4 years of his life God worked in amazing ways which means that one day we get to see him again and I hope I am present to see him and Lucy reunited in heaven. I miss him every day but I know he is safe in heaven with my heavenly father and my earthly father. I will always be grateful that he was mine and I was his.

This morning in church we sang John’s favourite hymn “Before the throne of God I stand” – in the past it would have made me cry but this morning it just felt like John was saying to me I am here with God in heaven and God is with you and so we will always be joined.

This story has been the hardest to write so far, and has made me shed tears because today is one of those days where I miss him and not because I miss having a partner around me, but because I miss the person who was John but again this story reminds me that God was there in our relationship, in John’s life, in his faithfulness, and that faithfulness will continue in my life until the day I get to go see John again.

During the last 8 years I have had a pretty large helping of pride, at times, pride in the fact that I have coped in the face of tough circumstances, that I have held down and done well in my career, at the same time as being a single parent and studying for exams. I not suggesting it isn’t important to believe in ourselves but for me there have been moments when it has led to self reliance and maybe at times some arrogance and judgment.

Only a few months ago a few people in my life were struggling and I will ashamedly admit that inside I reacted strongly feeling that if I could cope then surely they could – I have subsequently said my sorrys!! Then suddenly without warning the ground beneath me shifted and due to various circumstances, some out of my control, others not, I felt overwhelmed and had to say I couldn’t keep going and had to stop for a bit. It was so hard to make that decision and has felt like real failure – I am a coper, I am made of stronger stuff, I always keep going – I have beaten myself up repeatedly, partly because I knew me stopping for a bit impacted on lots of other people (who have been incredibly kind, gracious and loving) but I think I almost had to get to that place, that place of weakness and vulnerability, for God to get my attention, to show me my ways were not always the best ways and my plans not always the best plans.

Sometimes I run out of words, I don’t know how or what to pray or how to articulate what I am thinking or feeling and this time has been one of those times. Often during those times it is other people’s words, usually through song, that fill my heart with hope, that I cling onto and which help to move me forward.

Over the last few months pride, expectations, failure and fear are the mixture of feelings that have been consuming me and I have struggled to know how to talk to God or others and fully explain what is going on. In the midst of this there has been two songs that I have played over and over again which have reassured my heart, set hope in my soul and reminded me of the promise that this too will pass.

The first song I was introduced to at the thanksgiving service of a very precious lady in January. Betty was 86 when she died having lived her life so well. Betty was very special to me even though our paths had only crossed in the last few years of her life but she showed me such kindness and wisdom that just seeing her across the room made my day happier. One of the songs we sang that day was a song called Sovereign Over Us (Aaron Keyes).

“There is strength within the sorrow

There is beauty in our tears

Your meet us in our mourning

With a love that casts our fear

 

You are working in our waiting,

Sanctifying us

When beyond our understanding

You’re teaching us to trust

 

Your plans are still to prosper, you have not forgotten us

You are with us in the fire and the flood

You’re faithful forever, perfect in love

You are sovereign over us

 

Even what the enemy means for evil

You turn it for our good

You turn it for our good and for your glory

You’re working for our good

You’re working for our good and for your glory.”

The other song that has been really key for me is “My Lighthouse” by The Rend Collective:

“In my wrestling and in my doubts

In my great failures you don’t walk out

Your great love will lead me through

You are the peace in my troubled sea

You are the peace in my troubled sea

 

In my silence, you won’t let go

In my questions, your truth will hold

 

My lighthouse, my lighthouse

Shining in the darkness I will follow you

My lighthouse, my lighthouse

I will trust the promise

You will carry me safe to shore

 

I won’t fear what tomorrow brings

With each morning I will rise and sing

My God’s love will lead me through.”

I so grateful that other people are willing to make themselves vulnerable, to use their giftings and pour their hearts into writing these words which have given me (and no doubt many others) strength and hope.

I guess some reading this may not believe the same things I do and may be of the view that the God thing is a crutch but for me it is a crutch (as well as being many other things) and I do not apologise for saying that – I could not get through the tougher times without knowing that there is a God whose plans and purposes are bigger and better than mine, who gives me a hope that is not only eternal but also for the here and now, that he has not forgotten me, that in his presence there is no fear, and that if I let him he can turn all things for my good.

So right now I feel pretty vulnerable and a little scared about what the future looks like but I know that God can and will turn it all around for my good, that there is hope for the future and he will carry me safe to shore.

If I had to chose one social media forum it would be Instagram – I have always loved photographs and have always been nosey and so can spend hours looking at other people’ s lives/experiences/families. I saw this quote the other day which just about summed it up “Start looking through someone’s insta next thing you know you’re on their cousin’s brother’s wife’s profile looking at pics from Barcelona 2010”.

The flip side of social media is that it paints only the positive/happy/exciting aspects of people’s lives. I have lost count of the times I have had conversations with people about how social media can make them feel rubbish about their own lives as they get a glimpse into other people’s lives. In fact only the other morning I saw an article on facebook about how facebook can cause depression for those very reasons. I have at times had to sign off social media for periods because seeing other people’s happy family shots was just too hard. In reality those pictures/statuses only show a part of people’s lives and often not the harder bits but yet when we are in our hard bits it is tough to remember that reality.

The other week Lucy turned to me and said totally out of the blue “Mummy you are pretty but you are not as pretty as Lois.” Lois is her adored aunt and my sister-in-law. Laughingly I told her she was welcome to go and live with Lois to which Lucy replied that even though Lois was prettier she loved me more (although I don’t doubt Lois comes a close second). My sister-in-law is a very beautiful lady and so I was not too shocked by Lucy’s statement save that maybe I expected slightly more loyalty!

A few years ago Lucy saying that may have sent me over the edge emotionally. In the midst of my grief my brother fell in love. I struggled so much that they had something I no longer had that for the first 9 months I could not meet my sister-in-law to be, driving my poor parents mad, and in fact had to force myself to meet her once they were engaged. People would say to me I should be happy for my brother and could not understand why it was so tough for me. I was happy for my brother, I wanted nothing but the best for him but at the same time my heart was broken and I wanted my happy ever after back. During that period I spent a lot of time feeling like a failure, here was I the messed up one barely surviving at times, and here was what appeared to be this perfect couple with great, worthy careers and their bright shining future ahead of them together. Basically I was comparing my life with theirs and I was jealous.

I did eventually meet my sister-in-law, and by God’s goodness and grace, had the privilege of being one of her bridesmaid. I love my sister-in-law dearly and am grateful for her patience with me over the years.

Over the last decade I have watched as friends’ families have grown, as careers have developed, incomes increased and larger family homes, in nicer areas, have been purchased. I have really struggled comparing my circumstances with those around me, at times being slightly embarrassed at inviting Lucy’s friends over to play to our much smaller house.

I have learnt the painful way that comparison is truly the thief of joy, as Mark Twain said it is the death of joy. It is an on-going process but I am slowly learning to accept who I am, to be thankful for what I have and to compare down instead of always comparing up, to see just what I have compared to so many in this world and learning that I am not defined by my bank balance, the size of my house or my career successes. Every comparison I make robs me of life, of truth, of relationship – it sows seeds of doubt, of bitterness and jealously and it means I miss out on all the good things there are for me because I get so tied up in focusing on what I do not have or how I could be better or different or what could be better or different.

I refuse to waste anymore time or energy comparing myself to others. Yes I have failed at times, and will fail again, maybe I will never be able to afford a bigger house and maybe I am not always as together as other people around me – I would love to have been one of those people who acted at all times with dignity and grace but I am who God made me to be with all my emotions out there for the world to see and I am learning to be grateful for that. I cannot try to be someone I was not made to be because to do so is essentially sticking two fingers up at God – he made me, he delights in me and he loves me unconditionally as he does each and every one of us and I know he wants us to live in the freedom of those truths.

Our lives are our stories unique to each one of us and I for one want to get on and live each chapter of my story, with all its ups and downs, without thinking I should be a different character in my story or that I would rather my story was actually someone else’s because otherwise I will get to the end having wasted so much time, and so many opportunities and experiences.