examining

Just a quick one to ask for prayer - I have three exams left and then my time at Moore College will be over. This week are the big guns - doctrine tomorrow at 10am and church history on Thursday at 3.30pm. There is so much to remember for both these subjects, and although a lot of it (especially in doctrine) is stuff that is already a part of my Christian fabric, so to speak, the challenge is to be able to recall information, form an opinion and write coherently! Next Monday will be my last exam, New Testament, which I am less worried about. Though perhaps that's a false sense of security.

So please pray that I would be calm and focused and clear-headed, and that I get a good night's sleep tonight! Please also pray that this stuff I'm studying will continue to shape and change my heart, and not just be information going into my brain and coming out of my pen. That sounds weird. You know what I mean.

so much to learn

It feels like those holidays were aeons ago.

Life's been pretty busy since we got back. Semester two started at college, and if I thought juggling last session's subjects was difficult, I honestly don't know how I thought I could cope with five subjects! (for the record they are Church History, Youth apologetics, Biblical Exposition and Exegesis, New Testament and Doctrine) All of them are wonderful, and I am greatly enjoying the thorough and faithful teaching. But it's relentless.

How do people do a full time load at college, including Greek and Hebrew? How do they do it? I couldn't even do a semester of Greek part time without feeling like it was all too much (I failed Greek last semester, but wasn't too bummed about it as I had already decided by that point to change back to the diploma, meaning I didn't need Greek to complete my studies).

I guess they don't have to work at the same time. But still. I am in awe of them.

I struggle every day with the feeling that I'm an imposter, that I don't belong at college, that there are so many more people there with such advanced academic skills...but this is not a new or unique thought. I know many people have thought it. And I know it's not true! God has brought me to this place, and he has much to teach me while I'm here. My constant prayer is that I will be humble and still and quiet enough to learn, and to let that learning change me to be more the Bec that God wants me to be.

My story

I gave my testimony this morning at Ashbury, that is, the story of how I became a follower of Jesus. I got a bit teary towards the end! But at morning tea, people kept coming up to me and thanking me for telling it, and being so honest about my life. Well it's just my story, I don't know how else to tell it! But I'm really glad people found it helpful, and it's why I've always wanted to be upfront about my background, and my current situation, so that it might help others in similar situations to remember God's love for them. One guy said, "that was basically my story...only I'd never have the guts to get up and say it", and a woman said, "me and my husband have depression too, and i was just so encouraged by what you said".

So I thought i may as well share it with you too!

_______________________________

I'm Bec, and I'm working my way part time through Bible college. I've been part of the team from Moore College that's been around the church this past week, helping out, meeting people in the neighbourhood and talking about Jesus.

I know it isn't always easy to talk about Jesus, and there have been times in my life when I was embarrassed to be called one of his followers.

But back to the beginning. I grew up in a Christian home. I can't remember a time when I didn't know who Jesus was, and that he loved me. We moved around a lot in my childhood, living in PNG and Singapore and going to all sorts of different churches. It was in Singapore, when i was 11, that I decided to give my life to Christ. Wanting to make a public declaration of faith, I got baptized.

And I lived happily ever after? Well not quite. Not yet, anyway.

We moved back to Australia, and i settled into high school. We went back to the church id grown up in, but i never really felt like i fit with my peers there. And slowly but surely, church began to lose its appeal, and my interest slipped away from the things of God as I found more acceptance and fun in the more worldly pursuits of my school friends.

Sadly, by the time I started uni, my family had disintegrated and my parents divorced. It was a time of huge upheaval for my brother and me, and we started to see church and Christianity as a relic from our former family life. although I never doubted God's existence, I pushed him further and further into the back of my mind until I was barely aware he was there. Sure, if anyone asked, I said I was a Christian, but I never willingly volunteered the information and I hoped no one would actually ask.

I moved out on my own and got involved in a culture of hedonism - sex, drugs, rock n roll. I was looking for something to satisfy me, but found nothing much but dissatisfaction, loneliness and emptiness. I began to be aware that there was a God-shaped hole in my life, but try as i might, I couldn't fill it with anything. I didn't want to admit it, but living life my own way wasn't working out as well as I'd hoped it would, yet i was still too proud to turn back to God.

A long term relationship I was in dissolved, and I took it hard. This was the final prop that God removed from me, to bring me to my knees, and make me look up at him. And instead of anger and disappointment, I saw love. I saw a Father who lifted me tenderly out of the mess I'd made, and said "I've been here all along, and I never stopped loving you. There is nothing that you have done that could make me stop loving you, because Jesus has dealt with it all."

What a breathtaking, life changing realisation.

I started to go back to church. I learned that my mother had been praying hard for me all that time. God put some incredibly godly men and women in my life to help water the seeds he had sown, and he began to change and mould me.

It hasn't been a fast or easy process, and i still think God teaches and shapes me the most through suffering. For example, I've struggled with depression for a number of years, which is debilitating and kind of scary sometimes, but through it God is teaching me to trust him, to lean on him, and to find my only peace and satisfaction in him. I have no doubt now that God is the only answer and i can't wait to be with him in the new creation, where,as it says in Revelation, there will be no more suffering and no more tears.

But until then I am so grateful that he saved me from that life of despair. And now I'm not ashamed or fearful to tell people I'm a Christian, to talk about what i believe and how God is working in my life. In fact, I'm excited about it!

we're on a mission from God

(I think I used that post title last year, but since I *still* haven't updated my blog archives it doesn't really matter)

This week I'm on mission with a team from Moore College. The college does this every year, sends the entire student body, with staff and chaplains, to various locations around the city, state, and even overseas (this year's OS team has gone to Hong Kong). It's an exciting and exhausting week, full of big conversations and meeting heaps of new people. We do everything from up front preaching and stuff at church services and Bible studies, to helping move furniture and looking after kids.

This year I'm at Ashbury, a little suburb in between Ashfield and Canterbury, full of Catholics and Greek Orthodox. The church, St Matts, is in the middle of a residential area, but has a huge block of land and great resources. Now all it needs is more people!  If you want to read about what we've been doing, check out my posts on the Moore Mission blog.  Or if you have a bit more time, you might like to read about all the missions.

For my part, I am thoroughly exhausted already. Having come off a couple of fairly intense weeks that also involved some big mood drops, it's been a challenge to even turn up, let alone be a functioning member of the team. I'm sure I hide it pretty well to people who aren't close to me, but I'm trying to be upfront about it and have been encouraged to say when I need to rest or stop and not be worried about it.  It's at times like this I realise that pride is a big problem for me!  I don't want people to think I'm not capable or letting the team down.  But rest and being wise about it is more important than putting on a brave face (and of course everyone is great and understanding, and it's mainly in my own paranoid brain that people think I'm a lightweight).

So please pray for us as we work hard this week, and pray that the people we come into contact with would hear God's word faithfully spoken.

Flags

I've hit the Greek weeks wall. I still am excited to be at college this year, and even fascinated by the Greek we're learning. I am just so overwhelmed with all the new information plus all the new people I'm meeting, while the rest of life continues to barrel on.

The depression flags are starting to pop up. Extreme exhaustion. Inability to think beyond a few hours ahead. Forgetfulness. And this morning I started crying on my drive in to college, not because I was sad, or for any particular reason other than just being overwhelmed.

I need to pay better attention to the flags. So I went home at morning tea and slept til mid afternoon. I had to cancel something else later in the week just to get some space. I have to remind myself these things are okay; it's about being able to stick at this for the long term, so looking after myself in the short term is required.

management

So following on from yesterday, I do love college but I'm already feeling the effects of busyness and it's only the beginning of February. Starting to find that overwhelmed feeling bubbling to the surface, which I'm sure is the combination of massive amounts of information being poured into my brain, not sleeping so well, and feeling sick for the last few days.

As I've probably said before, I need to work out how to balance a fuller load of college than last year with church commitments (church on Sundays, growth group on Wednesdays, looking after music at Wild Street @ 5, meeting one to one with a friend to read the Bible, youth group attending). I also haven't heard back from Centrelink yet as to whether I get Austudy or not...if I don't, I'm going to have to factor some more paid work in there as well. And this doesn't include time with Lachy, time with family, time with friends, and SLEEP (all of which are vastly important and without which I would definitely go under).

I need prayer for wisdom, my friends. This juggling of time was part of my problem last year, and I resolved to learn from my mistakes!  I would like to:

• make sure Saturdays are carved out for rest time (as Sundays are essentially a work day). I need to reinstitute the 'only one commitment per Saturday' rule. Actually I never managed to institute it in the first place, so maybe now's the time.  No packing things in.  Allowing time and space for spontaneity.


• not be anxious.


• take time to read God's word, reflect and pray on my own - and not just fall into the trap of thinking that because I opened the Bible at church or at college, that that is sufficient.


• do something creative that isn't college or work focused.  And I need to not feel guilty about it.


• go to bed earlyish and wake earlyish


• make a timetable and stick to it.  It's the last part that's tricky...I am very good at making beautifully colour coded and logical timetables and then completely ignoring them.


• understand my own limitations more and be able to say no to things.


• understand that time turners are fictional, that even if they were real I probably couldn't afford one, and I need to make good use of the time that I have.

Newness

I'm lying awake when I would dearly love to be sleeping. The problem is my brain is running a million miles an hour and I'm having trouble switching it off. I think i might have fed it too much today...

Had my first Greek class at college and loved it! I even eagerly did my revision this evening and downloaded some iPhone apps to help me study. I seem to have fully embraced the nerdishness of pursuing language.

And now I can't go to sleep. I have letters of the alphabet and random bits of vocab scrolling across my mind, like a news ticker on TV. You'd think it would help, but it's starting to get annoying. Like a news ticker on TV.

Okay brain, I'll do you a deal. Let me go to sleep and I'll give you more Greek tomorrow. How does that sound?

grillage

Had a great dinner at Dave and Lisa's last night.  In true Dave style, he grilled me on all sorts of things, namely what the next few years will look like for me, what my plans are during and post-college, etc.

I do enjoy these sorts of conversations with him, because I know he is trying to help me think through the big questions and clarify my motivations for things.  And he also gently points out things he is concerned I haven't thought of (he doesn't think he's gentle, but he is pretty good at this and Lisa's around to soften the blows if required).

The main things we were trying to think through is what to say yes to and what to say no to, where my strengths lie, and what ministry might do to someone already struggling with depression.  I have the problem of negotiating the tension between 'this is what I'd like to do' and 'this is what I will have the energy to do'.  I tend to look at each prospective 'project' in isolation, instead of seeing the big picture and how everything fits into that, and although this sounds ridiculous, I tend to forget I'm dealing with depression and forget to factor it in.

So I think "hey I'd like to get more involved in youth ministry so I can start putting some of what I'm learning into practice."  And I notice there are gaps in the youth leaders' team at church next year.  So I volunteer to do youth ministry.

But I'm also still doing music ministry for church.

But I'll also be doing college almost full time.

And I haven't factored in non-lecture study time, plentiful rest time, exercise time, etc.

There is so much good work to do.  But I don't have to do it all!  And as Lisa pointed out, just because I say no to something now, doesn't mean I'm saying no to it forever.  It's just for this time.

Still chewing this over.  But I do greatly value the people God puts in my life to help me along in my walk with him, and to help me think through how best to do the work he has for me to do.

Busy busy

So I got some work! Thanks to a contact from the delightful Elsie, I'm now doing 30 hours of website content writing work per week. If you read that and went "30 hours? I thought she was at college", you would be echoing the sentiments of my brain, which is quietly battening down the hatches in the case of total meltdown. But I really needed to be earning some better money and contributing more to my household, and this job is only til early December.

So I'm grateful to God for throwing this opportunity my way, and now praying he'll give me the energy and stamina to make it through! Also that I'll remember how to play well with others - first time in 18 months that I've worked in an office (for 15 of the 30 hrs each week). And that somehow I'll have time to study too...and do church stuff leading up to Christmas...and...

I'd better go to bed!

loss of joys

I gave a talk to my chaplaincy group at college the other day about what it's like to have depression.  I've been sick all week, so it wasn't the most coherent of chats, and thankfully it was very informal and relaxed.  I am always happy to answer questions about depression and what it looks like for me, as I feel that if I can at least contribute to peoples' understanding of it, then it will have been worth something.

One of the things I talked about was the loss of things that give you joy, and I've been reflecting on that a bit more since I gave the talk.  It took a long time for me to realise that two of those things for me were reading and writing.  Well, I kind of understood the reading thing; depression can make it really hard to concentrate, and I know my mum talked about being unable to even read the newspaper when she was going through a period of grief.

It took longer to come to terms with the writing thing.  Writing had been part of my identity for so long, and expressing myself with words was what helped me sort out my thoughts and emotions.  It came easily and what came was reasonably polished straight onto the page, even without editing.

I definitely took that gift for granted.

When the creative writing slowed to a trickle and then eventually dried up, I didn't want to admit it.  I thought "I'm just being lazy" or "I'm just stuck on this stupid novel".  People would lovingly try to encourage me by telling me how much they looked forward to reading my book, how much they loved my writing, how talented I was.  But I wasn't writing.  Can you be a writer if you don't actually write?  If you suddenly have no love for the written word?  If the thought of finishing your novel fills you with dread, rather than elation?  If you think you have nothing to say that anyone would want to read?

I didn't want anyone to know this.  I didn't think they'd believe me anyway.  But especially when I was standing up in front of people at events like The Faithful Writer and giving writing advice, what a charlatan I'd appear if they knew I couldn't actually write anymore!

I'd say that every writer goes through periods like this.  But it took me so long to link this with my depression, to see it as a symptom of the black dog's presence in my life.  That my joy was being stolen.

The decline in my writing seemed to coincide with the ascendancy of my graphic design skills.  It's almost as though I lost the ability to express things in words, so found the immediacy of images more suitable.  I have struggled with feeling confident in this area too, thinking "I don't know what the rules are", "I never learned this stuff", "someone's going to find out I don't know what I'm doing".  But I realised the other day when I saw some books I'd designed for sale in a bookshop that I was actually proud of my work!  Seeing them on the shelf alongside other books for sale made me realise that my work stands up well.  And suddenly those negatives can be seen in a more positive light - "I don't have to stick to any rules", "I can make this up as I go along", "I taught myself how to do this from scratch!"

I think I am getting better.  Very, very slowly.  Each day has its own challenges.  But the fact that I can be proud of my work and positive about my skills is a huge turning point.

Maybe one day the words will come back too.

asymmetry

Was running very late this morning. The problem with this is that then there is no chance of getting an all-day parking spot and I have to keep moving the car in every break we get. I’m also sitting here, in the break between Biblical Theology lectures, feeling a bit head-swimmy.

Today Peter Bolt gave a paper on complementarianism: appreciating God’s designed, delightful differences between men and women. I dislike the ‘equal but different’ tagline that is floated around a lot, but I do like ‘designed, delightful differences’. It casts the whole thing in a much more positive light. Equal but different just sounds defensive.

I like this reminder of God’s created order and getting glimpses of how the world would work so well if we all lived according to God’s design. In this case, creation is a hierarchy. God created man, a helper was needed for man but the other created beings (animals) weren’t suitable, so the woman was made from man. Men and women are two parts of a whole, and complement one another. This forms the beautiful hierarchy or asymmetry of order that goes God->man->woman->animal. This hierarchy (though it’s seen as a negative term these days) allows for a responsibility of care – this is amongst people (men and women) who have equal status before God, however there is a definite order and asymmetric of responsibilities. The man is required to care and the woman to submit to that care, and men and women both are to care for the rest of creation.

So our biology matters, gender matters, the way we’ve been created as male and female matters. The hierarchy is not imposed on us by the Fall, it is part of God’s good creation, but post-Fall it causes us pain. This can be seen when women refuse to be led by their husbands, or by wrong abuse such as a man dominating his wife through strength or violence. The problem we have is not the created order, the problem is our sinfulness.

I love getting glimpses into how things are supposed to work, and seeing God’s generosity and wisdom in creation. Makes me long for everything to be put right, because we just get it so badly wrong.

ramble

I keep opening this screen, intending to write, and then just stare until I give in and shut the browser down. A lot has been happening and yet not much at all. There’s lots of stuff going on that I feel isn’t appropriate to discuss in this space - which will shock you, I know, given some of the other stuff I’ve written about. But I guess it’s not prudent or kind to talk about situations involving other people ...well it’s gossip really, I suppose.

All I can say is how I’m feeling at the moment.

I’m feeling simultaneously encouraged and burdened by life and relationships, which I guess is how it goes. I have had a period of a few weeks where I’ve been finding things more of a struggle than normal. Have been just really tired, really emotional, really anxious. Have gone up a step on my medication in the hope that it will help me even out a bit (the doctor said I could). It hasn’t quite stabilised yet (these things often take about three weeks to really kick in when you go up or down with anti depressants) but hopefully I’ll feel the effects soon. All I’ve been wanting to do is sleep the past week, but when I do sleep it’s not especially restful. Weird dreams and unexplained waking up. Yesterday I slept for 13 hours but still felt exhausted (I know that often happens when you oversleep anyway, so that doesn’t help).

I led singing at the Wild Street women’s day yesterday with George and Tamara. The day’s theme was ‘Wholehearted Faith’, so one of the songs we chose was Great is Thy Faithfulness, which I haven’t sung for years and years. I was doing fine with it until the last verse, which I’d even mentioned in my intro:

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

I just got all choked up by the third line and started to cry. Encouraged by the truth of it and also broken by acknowledging how much I need God. Broken and thankful. I don’t know, it’s very confusing. But then I could sing out “Great is thy faithfulness!” with great gusto, even if my voice was warbly and cracking (I put the mic down so no one else would have to hear it!).

Thankfully I have finished a lot of the paid work I had over the last several weeks, so I can concentrate on Wild Street and college work now. College has been immensely encouraging, but at the same time very draining. It’s hard being around people so long every day when I’ve been mostly on my own during the day for the last year. I find morning tea and lunch times quite hard because I actually have to (gasp!) talk to people. But they are generally such lovely people, and I am so grateful for people like those in my first year group, and some of the lecturers and chaplains who are very supportive. I think I’ll get over it eventually.

Anyway I just want to let you know how I’m doing. And ask that you pray for me, if that’s something you do. Thanks!

decisions

I don’t know why I haven’t been blogging. I want to. But words aren’t coming. There seems to be too much to think about, too much to do, that sitting down and blurting out my thoughts seems indulgent somehow, even though it actually would probably help me sort things out in my head.

My biggest news is that I’ve decided to do the Bachelor of Theology in youth ministry at Moore, which is a 3 year course. I’m currently enrolled in the Diploma of Bible and Youth Ministry, which is a one year course (though I’m doing it part time). But after mission week, I just thought and prayed and realised that I really do want to be well equipped to...gulp...work in full time ministry. What a turnaround! I have often felt like Jonah, running in the other direction from where God has called me to be. But as I am continually humbled before him to trust him and accept that his plans are good and wise, and I feel he is very much leading me in this.

Anyway so that’s where I’m at currently. I’m juggling two days of college, one day of church work, and every other spare moment trying to do design work. It’s a lot busier than I anticipated. Your prayer would be appreciated!