re-appearance

Hello lovely friends!

It's been a long time since you've heard anything from me. You might even have been wondering if I'd dropped off the face of the earth. I wouldn't blame you if you did! Needless to say, I've returned to the blogosphere at long last. Lots has happened in the time since I last wrote here. I'll be sharing about some of those things soon. But I'll be doing so from HERE.

a whisper

So I slipped off, into the quietness of rest. The beautiful sort of rest that is a season of hiding in Jesus. I'm not quite ready to come back. My heart is full of unsearchable things.

But I am coming back. I'm working on a relaunch of sorts. And I'd like to start off a little bit prepared rather than on a whim of my very flighty fancy. So keep an eye out.

into the quiet

Hello friends,

It's been a while.

In the time since I was last here, I've been swamped at work with nary a chance to catch breath before finishing for the holidays. On my final day at work I found out that another earthquake had hid my home town (again) and the airport had closed for two hours. So my flight was delayed and I spent an agonizing five hour wait hoping and praying that they would not cancel my flight. When I finally did get onto the plane and it was a thankfully uneventful hour in the sky. I made it home and I was so relieved!  All I wanted right then was just to be at home. I'd been counting down the days for weeks. Earthquake or no, it was good to be back.

And in the time since, I've done nothing more than what's been absolutely necessary. The rest of my time has been dedicated to reading, thinking, watching TV, sleeping, praying, sleeping, baking, sleeping, going on walks oh and did I mention sleeping? Seems no matter how much extra sleep I get, I can't seem to catch up. So even though my days have been my own, I've just not had the energy to think of writing here. The weariness of life has caught up with me and it's time to take a step back and rest. I've sensed this shift for quite some time now. Maybe you've noticed too. I've been more than a little quiet and my last post was about rest. You know, I'm always amazed when that quiet little something God whispers to me in the first place is exactly where he wants me to go. Silly how I complicate things and put it off and seek God about it when I actually already know. And at the end of the search I reach the same conclusion which I thought was just an unreliable feeling. But that's a tangent all of its own.

It does bring me to the reason for writing this though. I won't say outright that I won't be blogging anymore, but I won't really be blogging so much anymore. Actually, I'm not sure what this next season will look like. But I'd like to spend more time writing privately. Going deeper, exploring with an honesty that I'm not completely able to do here. As much as I enjoy writing here, my time is divided and I'd like to focus my energy on writing a little more introspectively. Which will mean that you'll be seeing less of me here. From now on, I'll be blogging if and when I feel like it.  However inconsistently.

So till next time, I'm going to slip unobtrusively into the quiet.

With love, Jo-Ann

rest

Whenever I even think about blogging, my words shrivel up and die an immediate death. My brain is working on overdrive and can't slow down enough to process and digest. Time to process and digest I think. While tings (yes, I did just write tings and I'm actually tired enough that I can't be bothered to correct it) around here have been rather quiet lately, life has been anything but. Sometimes I feel the need to pause everything and just stop for five minuets.  When did my life take on the desperate need for balance like so many others out there in the world? Note to self: Welcome to the life of a working adult with commitments and adult responsibilities!

Yet in the midst of the whirlwind, where it's so easy to get carried away, I need to keep focused. Keep my eyes on Jesus. Keep on fighting. Keep on walking. Keep on keeping on. Life doesn't stop. And I'm beginning to realise more and more how important it is to rest. Not just the kind of rest that means stopping what I'm doing but resting in Jesus. Pursue rest as actively as the commitments that fill my time. I've discovered that if I don't, I just don't rest at all which means that I can't handle the things that are on the daily to-do list and therefore take on the air of a slightly crazed woman who is paranoid 24/7. Remember to keep Jesus in the centre. Because even though everything is so busy it's crazy...

[God] is in the midst of the whirlwind and the storm,
and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
Nahum 1:3

Take some time to sit at His feet. Find rest for your soul. (Jer 6:16, Matt 11:29)

the daisy

I want to be a daisy
unassuming, humble,
Willing to share my joyful face
wherever I am found.

In a prairie of grass
Unseen,
And alone,
I will tilt my face toward the Son.

Bordered by peonies showy dresses
or the scandalous red of poppies
I'll not be intimidated.

I won't droop in the rain.

I will stand tall
and outlast them all.

I will pretend nothing

I will smile.

And be content to be me:                                                
A bloom,
A delight to my Maker.

I want to be a daisy.
Washed pure white
With a heart of gold.

Written by Kristina from A Joy Walk

Used with permission 

monsters under my bed

At the beginning of the year I felt a restless stirring, like something was going to happen but I didn't know what. My life was at somewhat of a standstill. I didn't know where it was going or what direction it should take. My life's season was changing and I felt scared and unsure of myself and of the plan that God had for me. I sort of felt like I was fumbling around in the dark really, like God hadn't really shown me the plan at all, let alone consulted me. So life was stuck in the in-between. Waiting, aimless, drifting, restless and filled with uncertainty. Yet my heart heard a quite whisper, a silent knowing that something was just around the corner. I was standing on the precipice of Unknown Possibilities. Anything could happen.

I sought God and questioned him. What was ahead? What was this year going to look like?
This is what came out of it:

Remember when you were little and it was night-time and the dark was scary? And you lay in your bed hiding under the covers when you really wanted to run to the safety of your parents but you couldn't because their were monsters under your bed? 

And now you’re grown up and you know that there aren’t really monsters. Your fears were unfounded, imaginary, childish. But why then, do you still know that feeling those monsters evoked when you thought they were hiding under your bed? Because they grew up too. They may look different but they’re still there. Now they have names like “Worried for a Job”, “Need Money to Pay the Bills”, “Can’t Do That”, “Not Good Enough” and “What Will People Think”. Despite the fact that we shouldn't, we live with these monsters. They scare us. So we imagine them away, we run away, we avoid them. We hide. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately. I know fear well. Fear had me tightly in it’s grip once. But I got to thinking how God had set me free from that fear and yet in spite of it, there are still other fears that I hold on to. When I started thinking about all the uncertainties ahead of me this year, I got scared. I’m scared of the unknown. Of the road ahead. I know it’s an unfounded fear, but it’s there nonetheless. 

I read about Ann naming her years. It resonated. I always feel like I have a theme for the year. I’ve just never named it. So this year, I am. I’m not doing it just because it sounds like a good idea but because my year already has a name. And it’s just a word. But it’s a word that shapes the year and the work God has already started doing in my heart. Perhaps not so coincidentally I also came aross OneWord.  

My year has a name. It’s one word.

"Fearless”

I sat down and wrote a short list of goals for myself for the coming year. I finished by saying, “Take risks, do things that scares you, live fearless”. Little did I know that God had it in mind to grow that little seed into my theme. But there it is: timely and in season. It’s the right word. Fear has stopped me doing so many things. This year, I will be Fearless. I will hide in Jesus, not from monsters.

God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him.

We stand fearless at the cliff-edge...

Psalm 46:1

(Message)

fearless

Isn't being fearless an unfair and unrealistic expectation? Maybe you've been wondering the same thing. Before continuing any further on this subject, there are a few things I should say about what I mean when talking about it:

First, I am not fearless. I want to be but it is a journey which I have only really just embarked on and I am only beginning to realise what it means to live a fearless life. Don't consider me an expert. 

I believe that fear is actually a good and healthy thing. It is a normal emotion. It is evidence of our humanness and a reminder of our desperate need for God. If you or I never felt fear, there would be no reason for us to rely on God for our needs and deepen our relationship with Him. It is when fear holds us to ransom from living fulfilled and abundant lives that we need to reconsider its place in our lives.  

I don't mean that by being fearless, fear is absent. In fact, in order to be fearless, fear has to be present in order for it to be overcome.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain - Mark Twain

weekend rambles

I'm tired. It's time to stop. Time to rest and rejuvenate and recharge my batteries.

Lately my life has been really full. Full of busy, full of never-ending work loads and ever-growing to-do lists. It's just been really full of stuff that makes my days feel longer than they should but with never enough hours to do the things that need doing. It feels like pushing on and barely making it. As if my eyes are being help open by match sticks at the end of the day. Fatigue is setting in. I'm anticipating next weekend when I'm away for three days. I know that's not long but I'll be leaving my life and its normal routines and responsibilities for the comfort and familiarity of home.

I've wanted to write more and be here more than I have but reality has a way, in spite of my best intentions, of changing my carefully laid out plans. So, there are lots of things I want to write, ideas that are currently floating in my head that have yet to make their way onto the page. Feelings of failure creep up on me but I remind myself that I have no rules here. So take me or leave me. There are no guarantees. Don't always trust what I say. For now, I'll be slowing down and resting for a little bit.

On a side note:

It's spring. Finally...winter is definitely over.

I went to pick up a package from Amazon today. I got this, this, and this. Can't wait to start reading.

I've been doing art this week. I'm so proud. Don't know why I feel the need to include this but hey!...

Remember I spoke about brokenness recently? I read this today:


There may be legitimate cause to bend, to break down, to remain hard, hurt, a victim. There may be a thousand reasons to stay in your grief, unwilling or unable to let go. We can stop there, if we want to. We can live in our world-mold and be right and lonely. And yet. Whole only comes after broken. Healing only comes after wounds. Are we willing to go a bit further and see?

“By his wounds we are healed. But they are our wounds, too; and until we have been healed we do not know what wholeness is. The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort toward wholeness …

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

You can read the full post here.

fear

He's that familiar specter lurking in the dark shadows of my mind. With whispers so soft. So enticing. It's easy to fall. Even before danger is realized and reason fights back, his grip holds fast and firm. Not easily shaken. Fear has won many a hard fought battle. I hate the power he holds over me and I fight to loosen his relentless grip.

Fear creeps up slowly and before you know it, he becomes your closest friend. Who tells you lies that you start to believe. And in spite of what you know in your head, (that this is irrational) Fear tightens his ever increasing grip around your heart and tells you terrible things. Depressing and dejecting things. Things that break you and bind you. Things that wound.

But what if we could say goodbye to Fear? Live without his limitations and accusations? What if we sought freedom?

What would it be like to be Fearless?

--------

So begins my series entitle 'Fearless'.  I'll leave you to consider the above question. Tell me in the comments what you'd do if you had no fear? If I had no fear, I'd try telling people the really important things that make our lives meaningful instead of skimming the surface of relationships with small talk.

October

So it's October. And I'm so excited. Because it's spring and oh my word, it's only a few months left till Christmas. And I go home at the end of the month. Yeah, mostly because I'm going to be at home for a long weekend!

October also brings the return of the 31 day series by Emily of Chatting at the Sky. I've been looking forward to this for a while. This year her series is entitled 31 Days to Change the World. Wow, I'm so there! And the series has been opened up this year to anyone who wanted to write a series for 31 days.

Here are a few of my favourites that I will be keeping my eye on:
31 Days of Worship
31 Days of Change
31 Days of Telling your Story
31 Days of Rest
31 Days of Hope

I was very tempted to entitle my own series 31 Days of Fearless or something of the kind, but reality come to bite me in the backside. Work has been so busy lately it is insane and I didn't want to set myself up for failure. But...

October will be for being Fearless. I will be sitting down and writing my heart on living fearless. Hope you'll join me.

i mislaid my master plan...

and don't really know where I'm going. But that's all good. I've got my hand in His. He knows where we're going.

And because things have been pretty depressing around here lately (sorry about that) I'm playing this song on repeat.

Happy Monday, friends :)

brokenness aside

I cry and You begin to bind up the broken places. I cry and You renew my hope. I cry more and You come and put Your loving arms around me and whisper secrets into the depths of my soul. I weep and You pour a healing balm on my injured heart.

It's not over. But hope returns and grows. Darkness is surely turning to dawn and joy comes in the morning.

You are the Saviour and you take brokenness aside and make it beautiful.

the thing about brokenness

I ran away today. Escaped reality. 

I went to a spot by the sea and sat on a park bench overlooking the city. I tried to make out familiar landmarks on the other side of the water. I watched boats pass. I saw two little girls comb the beach for shells and watched their faces with fascination as they lit up with each treasured find. I heard a few words pass between them but mostly the wind caught their voices up and carried them away. I sat and pondered life and questioned God and searched my heart and the sky for answers. I didn't really find any. But I left with a peace that I didn't have when I got there. Sometimes it takes a moment away from life to enable us to continue in it. A pause. 

I spoke about brokenness the other day. I still feel broken. But a purposeful brokenness. Contradiction? Well maybe, but as much as I hate how this season feels, I just know that it has an important purpose. I don't know what that purpose it, just that there is one.  

Brokenness is the deep heart surgery that God performs on us to make us more like Him. It's the sweet aroma of the perfume called sacrifice. Brokenness is beauty. It doesn't feel like beauty or smell like it or taste like it, but it is. Because it costs something. Something of me. The somethings of me that need to die and be filled with more of Him. To live is Christ and to die is gain. How beautiful to pour ourselves out at the feet of Jesus. It is worship. Brokenness acknowledges my deep need for Jesus and only Jesus. Because I am not enough. I can't do it in my strength. I try and fail. But he is enough when I don't have it all together. And right now, I don't. It makes me run deeper into his arms and closer to his voice. Because I need him and because he is big enough and strong enough and just enough.

broken

I'm not going to lie. These are hard days. They're grey and cloudy and rain threatens more often than not.

My heart is trepidation and anticipation. I'm on the brink on something. But what?

I can feel something stir. An unease, a restlessness.

It's the knowing. This is my fight. There are battles ahead.

Will it be worth it? Will I come out unscathed? Or will I be broken?

What if I am wounded? Scarred? Will I be made whole?

I just ran out of bandaids. I can't pretend anymore. I don't even know where to start.

You can bandage the damage but you never really can fix a heart.

Can I trust Him to avoid being hurt? What if I get hurt anyway?

Can He make that beautiful again? Maybe more beautiful?

Will He take me, broken? Just broken, incomplete and unworthy.

Can I risk something when I don't know how much I'm risking?  It might be everything.

It's dark. I journey this on my own.

It's dangerous. I stand to lose.

Can I trust Him?

sometimes real life is ugly

It's quiet, the house has gone to sleep. And so I sit in the stillness of night and think. I'm tired of the unrelenting emotions that pull me back and forth between hope and hopelessness. Between life and despair. I'm overcome with the toll of the inner war raging in my heart. It's misery and torment. God, when will it end? Where will the energy come from to pick myself up and keep moving on? It's too hard. When will the days go back to being whole and joy-filled and beautiful? I'm spent from crying ugly tears that come out of nowhere and without any warning. I laugh and talk and smile happy smiles but underneath I'm dying of a broken heart. It's not ok. I'm not ok.

And somehow I'm ok with saying that. It's freeing.

coming in october

Think of the deepest, darkest, scariest thing you could possibly imagine doing. And then doing it. 

What if...
we did the things that scare us the most?

What if...
we did the things that scare us...
because they scare us?

And not just the things that sound scary...
but the ones that strike fear into our inmost being?

What would happen if we lived like that?

-----

This is so close to my heart. I have so much to say and I there are inadequate words to tell what I'm learning about being fearless. But words do come. Ever so slowly they come. I'm writing about fear, I'm writing about living fearlessly, I can't wait to share with you. Soon...

If you would like to contribute something on this subject, please get in touch with me about guest posting. This is an open offer, with no specific deadline. Seriously, I'd love to hear from you.

i will need a hammer

Today was another long and agonizing day. Dejection has become a rather frequent visitor lately. I sat down at the computer during my afternoon tea break. Only an hour to go before I could go home. And the clock was moving somewhat slower than usual. I opened Facebook. I hardly go on there anymore.
But I found this:

"When God has given you a promise (when you really know it's God) and all the doors start closing and you start doubting if you heard him or not. Don't be discouraged because it probably means you're on the right track and it's just time to either smash some doors or make holes in the walls"

Funny how just when I'd almost forgotten it, God reminded me that I'm not so crazy to trust him.  And that really, when it feels like there is no hope, I'm on the right track. It's darkest just before the dawn, right?
I was in the car on my way home this afternoon and there was just the faintest rainbow visible in the sky ahead of me. So thin and wispy that it hardly seemed real or there at all. I had to take a hard look before deciding that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. A rainbow is a symbol of His promise to us, right? Is He trying to say something to me? Could it be that He brought me to a city frequented by rainbows for a reason?

So -

Does this call for a few holes in the wall?

i grow here

I saw a photograph of one lone flower - a weed, to be honest - 

growing all alone in a cracked and mossy street, nestled up against the curb.

There were no cars, no foot traffic, and no fellow flowers.

I saw myself in that flower and though: I grow here.

I grow here, sometimes utterly alone, but here I grow.

I feel like I've been plucked up by the roots from my very cozy pot and replanted in a vast and rocky terrain. Away from all the comforts and familiarity of home I've been doing pretty well - all things considered.  I've had to rely on God in ways that have stretched and grown me in my relationship with Him. And He has shown me his unfailing love and faithfulness in ways I've never experienced before.  But in spite of all the good, all the promise and hope in this new season, I feel alone. I am far away from my family. That was hard at first, but manageable. I was coping well with the change. Or so I thought. A few weeks ago I fell headlong into a terrible pit of despair and homesickness. I'd had enough of doing things on my own, living on my own, being cold on my own, cooking on my own, just being on my own. Usually that is not a problem for me. I like my own company - probably more than the average person. But it just sunk in one day - "This is permanent". Ever since then, I feel like my heart has been dying a slow and painful death. As much as I want to tell God to take my burden away, this is a season to surrender and relying on Him completely. I have never realised just how much I have needed to learn from being on my own until now that it is my reality.

So here I am. Growing. Alone but nonetheless, growing. Isn't that the most amazing thing about seasons? Even in the rough ones we are capable of growth. Maybe even more so than in the seasons of ease and comfort. And as long as I am rooted in His love there is nothing else for me to do but to grow evermore closer to Jesus. Because truthfully, if I didn't, I'd shrivel up and die. And amidst the heartache and the loneliness (yes, that is an ugly word but it's the truth) I live in hope. Although hope battles with despair most of the time and life with death but I know, even though I don't feel - God will not abandon me to the grave.

-----

This post is my version of an original work entitled 'I grow here' written by Marian Green.
It can be found at Ungrind.

something for you

I was browsing through my photos tonight and got creative and made a calender for my desktop. I like having a calender handy. So here's one for you too.

we all have them

Three words: day. from. hell.

Sorry to put it so bluntly but really, it's been terrible. I'll spare the details but today ranks right up there with one of the worst days I've ever had since starting my job in April.  Yeah today makes all of two really memorable and truly awful days at work. The worst being when I woke up ten minuets before I was meant to start. Then I killed a bird on the way to work and got stuck in traffic because of an accident. Things only got worse as the day went on. Not to mention that I just wanted to curl up in a little ball and die of homesickness.  So yeah, that was a really horrible, horrible day. 

And so was this one. Maybe not so dramatic. But there were lots of little things that, when combined, made my day so unbearable that the only solution was to pour a glass of red wine and eat courgette with lots of cheese sauce and baguette with dip and camembert cheese. It is quite possible that cheese is the answer to all my problems. I also may have called home and spent an hour speaking to the wisest and most encouraging person in the world. Ever. My mother. Wouldn't you if you had a rugby ball hurled into your face and still be the least of your concerns for the day?

I might possibly have a black eye in the morning. Let's hope not. Well, here's to headaches, unreliable emotions, encounters with rugby balls, good food, chocolate, a good night's sleep and bad days in general.  On that optimistic note, time for bed. I need that good sleep I just mentioned.