Live Your Calling

today saw the arrival of a book i ordered a week ago and have been hotly anticipating! Live Your Calling by the Brennflecks is described as a 'practical guide to finding and fulfilling your mission in life', and i came across it last week whilst researching into christian careers services! having spent some time looking into this, i came up with very little in the UK. As both a christian and a careers adviser i have recently found myself being approached on a fairly regular basis by people looking for advice and guidance regarding what to do with their lives/ how to discover their purpose/ how to recognise God's calling and what their practical response should be.

It got me thinking that there are so many people out there seeking direction, purpose and for a bigger sense of meaning in their lives. Everyone has different priorities, giftings, skills, abilities, experience and passions and it can sometimes be really tricky trying to even identify these, let alone try and work out what these mean, and what life direction to take. Every day i meet with people who have reached some sort of crossroad or turning point, and need support (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) to work out what their next step should be! it is something i love doing and i guess this book got me excited because it appears to combine 2 of my main passions inside the one cover, a rare find thus far! so, as i begin to turn the pages i am curious and hopeful that it will have ben worth the wait...

fisharama drama!

well, i am sad to report that i have somehow managed to no longer own any tropical fish! despite investing a small fortune in equipment (heater, filter system, thermometer, lightbulb, weird fish tank hoover suction thing), decorative features (namely fake purple plants!) and countless tropical fish i am grudgingly havin to admit defeat!!! (see sad-looking, empty tank below!)
my husband let out a small shout of joy as i flushed away our final fish, who, despite having rented room in my aquarium for the past 6 months or so, has decided to move on to a bigger and better place!! now i'm not saying i am giving up entirely on my aquarium dream, as this may be in fact the perfect opportunity to look into getting the ultimate pet dream- aquatic frogs!! either those or terrapins!! altho i have heard thru the tropical fish owners grapevine that terrapins can actually live for like, 15 years, and i'm not sure how ready i am for that sort of commitment!! perhaps some further research is required...!

A Very Spiritual Starbucks!

A few weeks ago i was at a 'Light and Life' night in Starbucks, where there was the opportunity to meet with others and hear God speak thru different mediums incl. art, prayer, massage, music and dream interpretation. Having (typically!) arrived late most slots were already full but my friend and i managed to squeeze our names down for a spiritual reading and a hand massage! now, having been brought up a christian, and with a strong faith of my own i have always been slightly wary of 'spiritual readings' as there is always a certain element of risk involved when dipping into the spirit realm and i believe it must be done thru really discerningly seeking God, rather than attempting to go thru another channel. However, the nature of these readings simply involved 2 women praying for you and sharing what they sensed or heard God saying, something which i have experienced and been totally blessed by many times!

All i told them was my name and that i would like them to pray for me regarding my job. I did not mention what my job is or say anything more than that. As they prayed it was amazing as God really spoke thru them, they described many features of my job and re-assured me that i had no need to worry about the future of it. Now this interested me as i have been on a temporary contract since starting and a year down the line, when on my 3rd extension of it, i had just been summoned to a meeting to officially notify me of my 6 month contract end period beginning! they also encouraged me in different aspects of my life, mentioning specific areas of which i had told them nothing about, and i left with a real excitement and certainty that God is indeed very real and most definitely speaks today, as well as a calm reassurance about His plans for me!

So, skip on a few weeks to last Thursday! i had attended my meeting and was officially notified my contract would end in 6 months, thus began the back-of-my-mind deliberations about the future; sigh, what does this mean, should i start keeping an eye-out for new jobs, stress, stress, etc!! i know, i know,i can hear u cry, ' but what about what God said, have u forgotten already!?'. well, yes sort of. because ashamedly, circumstances can get the better of us and when faced with negative life happenings it can become all too easy to overlook God in it all, and return to our small, blinkered views of ourselves and our bleak outlooks!!

However, on that same week, just a few days ago, my chin was lifted as half way thru my working day I received a completely unexpected email saying that my temporary contract was to be made permanent!!! Permanent!!! a small miracle which not only left me totally excited and relieved, but served as a reminder of Gods word to me of a few weeks before, and how silly I was to doubt Him! I am now doubly excited given the other areas he spoke to me about thru the 2 women praying for me in Starbucks and i am already beginning to see the first few buds of something else coming into existence!! so watch this space...!!

a busker's delight!

my little bro is a busking hero and now features in online cult busking magazine:buskerworld, your complete online guide to busking!! i know, its an awful lot of busking for one paragraph but it's a fairly exciting place to feature, and he is rumoured to soon star as busker of the month!!!

when i was in sydney in the summer i spent an evening busking with my bro in the delightful area of Kings cross (where i naively stood on a street corner, and kept wondering why cars were slowing down and men were shouting things at me from their vehicles!!!) regardless, it was a very entertaining way to spend a friday nite, and we even made $40, about £20!! and some new friends, albeit they were rather wasted and only paused for a few moments before staggering on!

so to buskers everywhere, i take my cap off to you...or should it be the other way round!?!

things i'm pretty excited about RIGHT NOW!!!

firstly, the fact that i am now blogging from the comfort of my own couch!! or actually, to be extremely accurate, from the chair at my table as my laptop is charging!! regardless, we have internet access in our flat!!! in fact, not just our flat, anywhere we go thanx to the handy little plug-in stick (black and pink, no less!!) from T-mobile! due to husband starting a post grad distance learning course internet has become a necessity, as attempting to produce top notch essays from countless hours in internet cafes is not ideal!! and so, i can now plug in and blog!

next up, i am ridiculously excited at the release of not one, but TWO of my favourite artists new albums! yesterday was hotly anticipated in my diary and i am now LOVIN the Kings of Leon 'Only by the Night', espec tracks 'Use Somebody' and 'Revelry', and the wonderful Jenny Lewis with her new 'Acid Tongue'!! mmm hmmm!!! what a joyful happening!

last but not least, i am in the process of becoming a Skyper!! i know, it's almost too much for one day!! lots of additional communication from this household!! and espec useful to keep in touch with various and numerous friends and family who are no longer just round the corner! soon i will be catching up with st andrews, sydney, london, bristol, japan, birmingham, arizona, and perhaps even my mum, who despite only living 20 mins away gets quite excited by the prospect of skyping and is just a little like me!! scary!!

so today gets 2 very enthusiastic thumbs up!!

peter pan no more!

having not blogged for a while it is quite nice to return to my very own blogspot and seek comfort in my old familiar love! i reckon my perspective on life has changed somewhat over the past year or so and havin now reached the grand ol' age of 26 i consider myself to sort of be a proper adult now! oh yes, the mid-20's are most definitely here, bringing with them a sense of actually growing up a little bit! my job involves advising people on their life decisions and future plans, which for a while rendered me feeling rather inadequate and not entirely sure i was up for that smidgen of responsibility. but as a colleague kindly reminded, careers advising is not the 4th emergency service and if i ever actually tell someone what i think they should do i'm pretty much missing the point of my role!

so 26 began with a wonderfully extended birthday wknd, incl an overnight in a treehouse lodge in Aviemore, an extremely fun party with 30 of my nearerst and dearest in Ashton Lane, a golden oldies tea party with my grandparents and great-aunt, a joint family birthday lunch with my bro-in-law (sharing is caring guys!) and then it was my actual birthday!!! fun fun!


so i do feel a bit more grown up now! however, we were in hong kong this summer and spent a day at disneyland there (only in phase 1- i'd hold off on a visit until there's more than one rollercoaster!!) and outrageously, there was no peter pan ride! it being my favourite i was fairly upset, and then felt perhaps it was time to move on... just a little bit mind!!

2 years on...

bizzarrely having not been much of a blogger recently i'v logged in tonite and realised it was about 2 years ago i entered the land of blog and initiated myself!! it's amazing how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same! changes incl:
- getting married
- moving out
- starting new jobs
- some amazing new friendships
- a new, definitively more mature approach to shopping
- getting involved at a new church
- falling in love with tropical fish!

- not having a computer of our own, thus spending more time than is normal in internet cafe's!!

which leads nicely to me finishing this, as in 4 mins i will be charged an additional £1 for another 15 mins of their time!!

so, in the words of a wise man called jamieson, that is all.

nothing in life is certain.

so, tonight it suddenly hit me all the changes that are taking place just now. in 7 weeks i am getting married! MARRIED! what a huge life-changing event! that also means that i will be moving out, for the first time, in a few weeks time... which is indeed about time! we were trying to choose things for our gift list over the past couple of weeks and its so hard cos we a) dont know where we'll be living or what our home will be like, or how much space we'll have; b) are not entirely sure of all the things u actually need, e.g. does anyone ever really use a slow cooker, or a george foreman grill, or a picnic basket!? c) have differing tastes and ideas of what will look nice! to be fair most stuff has been relatively easy to agree on, other than the phone (he won), an amazing vase (I won) and a picnic set which neither of us could agree on (no-one won)!

in the past few weeks i have lost my job, got a new job, been for another interview, didnt get that job, been offered another job that i dont want, and find myself back at my original job where i started out all those years ago! which has been great, for now. but what is going to happen in the future? nothing is ever certain. i've recently become addicted to watching Grey's Anatomy and have observed that no-one in that hospital ever expected to be there. who ever expects to get sick? or to need surgery? or to have your boyfriend's wife show up (thankfully i am still referring to the show!).

i have no idea what the future holds. i have ideas based on all the plans and decisions i have made. but things keep changing, making me very aware of the fact that because nothing in life is certain it's important not to miss opportunities. and not to put all our hopes in one person, or one job, or one single event.

Present day Persecution

tonite at Deeper (at St Silas) the focus was on persecution, and the ways in which Christians in the UK have been subject to this, despite it being a free country here. A lot of it is indirect, jokes, sneers, comments from people, nothing too drastic compared to the suffering undergone in a number of other countries and cultures. Africa, Central and South East Asia, the Gulf, Latin America and the Middle East are all areas identified where Christian believers are tortured, imprisoned, abused, and killed. Where bibles are burned, families are ripped apart and people have to go into hiding and meet secretly in order to spend time with other Christians and have fellowship together.

I was inspired tonight to do some more research into the persecuted church worldwide and the various ways that we can actually provide support, encouragement and help. Open Doors is a Christian charity, originating in 1955 when Brother Andrew secretely smuggled a suitcase of Bibles into Eastern Europe. His passion and ministry grew enormously and now Open Doors work to meet the practical and spiritual needs of those living under threat of persecution, or indeed those being persecuted. There is information on how we can get involved, on a small or large scale and can be as simple as sending an email to encourage those who are suffering.

It becomes so easy to forget that not everyone has the luxury of freedom in faith, speech and actions, and i remember reading the book 'Jesus Freaks' by DC Talk when i was about 15 and feeling incredulous at the reality some Christians are facing around the world, even in our modern day and age. But the passion and total conviction these people had, their faith in God and the amazing things they had seen Him do were so inspirng and have never quite left me.

So take 10 minutes out of your week and say a prayer, or send an email, or contribute some money to pay for a bible that someone will appreciate more than we'll ever know.

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40

oh how the tables turn

well here's a twist of irony. the honeymoon period i revelled in at work is well and truly over, and as of last week i am officially unemployed. how totally crap. this whole week i'v been trying to stay positive about it all, but now, in the harsh reality of 2 in the morning, it is just crap.

we ended on surprisingly positive terms. i'm getting a full month's pay, glowing reference and the assurance that if anything guidance-based comes up i'll be first in line for the job. the past 6 weeks have been hellish. i cried almost every day after work for the last 2 weeks and spent my evenings job hunting for a new job more suited to what i really wanted to do. which at the end of the day is to help people work out what they want to do and how they can realistically get there. what i did not want to do was to shove people into jobs for the sake of hitting a few targets, even if in my professional opinion it was not in the persons best interests. i did not want to create false information in order to claim outcomes that we had not actually achieved, or be forced to offer people false incentives to register with us so we could get their details and claim them as a target. it goes against everything i believe is true, and useful, and person-centred. so in theory i am happy to be out of there. i just hate that it was them that let me go and not the other way round. and i know that's my pride taking a hit, and i know i can deal with that. and i do know that something better will come out of this and that i'll probably look back and think, yes, what a blessing in disguise that turned out to be. but for now, in this moment, it is officially crap.