The Wonderful World of Becca

Friday, January 08, 2010

People... God... me

So it's been a while, I guess I haven't felt the need to blog for sometime. However for the past 2 or 3 weeks I've been feeling like I need to blog-out some thoughts/feelings and haven't got round to it until now. But today something happened, I had a conversation with a wonderful wonderful woman and she got me thinking again...

I moved out of my parents on Nov 14 and since then I've been living in the green-doored house with Nic, Suzy and Cat. They're awesome, it's a lot of fun, most of the time. But sometimes it feels weird, having come into a ready-made community. They'd been living in the house along with Dan for 14 months prior to me moving in. So they know each other really well, likes/dislikes, they can read how they're each feeling; they know when to ask questions, when to comfort & when to just leave be, they have inside jokes, random sayings, mutual sayings and shared friends. They are so awesome, I do love living with them, but there are moments, and I admit they've been more frequent recently, when I wish they knew me and I knew them better. Times when I've wondered whether one or other of them is ok, but not known whether to/how to approach it. There's been times I've felt low, but not had the courage to share and they don't know me well enough to realise. Tough. But God is good... I feel making this move was right, and we have a real sense as a house of this place being a real place of community. I guess this is somewhat displayed by the fact next month Cat is going to Japan, so Harriet moved in with us this week and she's going to stay for 6 months. So that's our house...

I do have a bit of a vision for this house... based on the early church in Acts 2. During my year out with my church, I preached on this passage, and titled my talk 'Devotion'... I long for our house to be like the early church; to pray and worship, eat, share, give, minister together. And you know what? We are doing some of that... we eat together when we're in, we do pray and worship together when we can. And it's exciting. But I feel God's got so much more to do. We can become a much stronger community, we can be like the early church, not only as believers together, but we can reach out to our friends and beyond. That excites me right now.

Nic got engaged over Christmas... I'm so excited for her and Hamish. But perhaps selfishly I'm sad too. Sad that it means in 2011 she'll definitely be moving out of the house with the green door.

On a note of loss, I'm pretty sad about church right now... before Christmas we heard that Lou will be leaving us in April. I knew it would probably be happening in 2010, but hadn't really thought about it, let alone mentally prepared myself for it. So, when I heard the news I cried... I cried all through church whilst attempting to play the piano and gave up on trying to sing. I cried myself to sleep that night and was just so so sad. Those who know me well will know that I'm really not much of a crying person, so for me to cry that much was a bit mental really. It was obviously needed though.

I guess my reaction was again a selfish one. It seems that everyone I get close to at church moves on; the Powleys, Stuart, Leona, Nana, Rita, the Shuttleworths, Rach and now Lou, and soon to be Pippa. It's crazy. Why is it that I always build relationships with those that move on? It hurts. It feels like the people who care are here for a season and then move on. In my mind this all stems back to Lee and Kathy's separation...

That was tough... I struggled with friends at school, and I chose to confide in my Auntie, Kathy... she was cool about it, she never said much, but she listened and she was fun to be with. The day I heard that her and Lee was separating I was gutted. My head knew that what had happened was horrible and that she'd over-stepped the mark so much, but my heart immediately forgave her and still loved her. I tried to stay in touch with her in secret, but Lee found out and I was told not to contact her any more. That was that.

By this point Mark and Ailsa were almost on the scene. When they arrived at church I just clicked with them straight away... Ailsa was so caring and fun to hang around, Mark was very knowledgeable and wise and Jonah was just cute. As their time in Croydon went on, I delved into theology with Mark and tackled some personal stuff with Ailsa, I babysat Jonah and then Zach too and there were many good times. They became like a second family to me. And so when they moved on, I was devastated. I felt like I'd lost parents, the best friends God had ever given me, my support network and a massive chunk of my life.

But God's been good... I don't feel though he's brought me intimacy like that with anyone, but he's certainly provided me with wisdom, fun, friendships and support, although I really feel none of it has been as deep.

So Lou... our relationship was forced... forced by her immediately becoming my college placement supervisor. It started with talk about church and children's work, but soon it also became a relationship of support and accountability. Lou is wise, perceptive and good with words. There isn't a huge depth, and is, I guess, very one-sided.

I think God is probably trying to teach me something and my guess right now would be that he's asking me to rely on him. I need to do so much more about my relationship with him, I need to seek him, I need to rest in his presence, to pray, to soak in his word, to be a witness. Right now I don't really do any of that. I must.

God has provided me with Dee. She is awesome. I work with her, she teaches cello, has 2 children, one of whom I teach oboe. Over the last year or so my relationship with Dee has really blossomed. I guess for one reason or another I latched onto her and things went from there. I have confided in her a bunch, she knows a lot of my feelings, she knows when I'm struggling, when I'm happy, often what I'm thinking and always what's going on in my life. But what is more wonderful than that is she often shares with me too, she shares struggles with her parents, general work stuff, things with the children and today a concern about her daughter. I felt so privileged to be able to listen. I guess it made me feel good that someone actually wanted to talk to me about something going on in their life. I have such intense compassion for Dee, I love her like my own Mother, in fact I often talk about her as my surrogate/adopted mum!! And she gives the best hugs... hugs that comfort and make you feel all warm and fuzzy. Dee is one of the few people that has experienced a proper crying Becca and she's been great with me.

She shared some pretty deep stuff with me today, it made me well up. All I could do was to listen, share a few thoughts which included a bit of my story and to just give her a big fat hug. I've been thinking about the situation, I should probably be praying. Oh how I'd love for Dee to come to know the Lord. Many times I've prayed for her situations, but oh how I'd love to pray with her. Sometimes I've struggled to share things with her because she doesn't know God. Again, it's partly selfish to think that it would be easier to talk with her if she was a Christian, perhaps I could benefit more. But actually, it would be so awesome to share in the love of God with her. For us to pray together and worship together. Oh I long for her to know Jesus, to know his love, his comfort, his peace. I'm sure that it would ease things so much.

I wish I had the zeal about God to care enough to evangelise. I was thinking about this at cell group on Wednesday. We came to the 'witness' section and I was thinking 'you know what, I don't even want to share God with people. I'm embarrassed to talk about him, embarrassed to evangelise to people'. How wrong is that? Especially since Jesus commands us to go out and tells all nations about him. Why is this I wonder? Where is my passion? My excitement? My zeal?

As I think about wrapping up this blog, my thoughts are such as this... will anyone read this? Are there people I want to read this? I kind of want my housemates to, particularly Cat, so we can talk about it. But why is that? Do I want them/you to live my faith for me? Am I idle? Have I become someone else?