Here we are Lord

You bring us here

You have given us purpose

A reason

You gave us a teacher

Who showed us how

But what can we do now

I see so much wrong in this world

I just cant understand

And on occasion Lord

I’m not just sad but I’m also mad

It becomes hard to see you

Harder to lean on you

Harder to serve you

It becomes tiring

So tiring Lord

I stumble weary along this road

My light growing dim

I just want to be honest...

I just want to be honest...

Some times all it is, is a brave face, please remember that.

Packing

It so odd returning to places. My home when I was there no longer felt like home and returning to cliff feels like I've never left, it's enough to drive a girl a little insane. Its definitely tough though, I thought this when packing, its one of my least favourite task that I ever have to do. Whats even more disconcerting is that I forever seem to be packing. This year alone I packed stuff to go to work, to go to a friends to return to cliff, shopping. Ou lives involve so much packing and unpacking we don't even realise it any more. It makes me sad. I do it so obliviously nowadays that it can't be good. How many worries, dreams, hopes, and disasters have I packed in these bags with them hoping that they won't re-appear. It's not so bad when you pack in a hurry, your thinking more oooh what if I forget this, but when you have the day or have to take what has been your home down with you, you remember all the things that have been packed away in bags for to long, old friends, memories of different camps or homes or places.

There is a lot in this packing and its just to tough.

I worry that one day I will literally and metaphorically pack everything away in a bag and leave. Leave what I know, what I love, what I dream, what I despise, what makes me cry. What if I pack up God? What happens then?

Who am I

339 days have gone buy, 126 thoughts have found it on to the page. Change of location, change of ideas, new friends, new list of music, new year, new traditions. New Person?

Who am I now. Well my name is Rebecca Elizabeth Belshaw, although I am commonly known as Bx.

I am no longer studying for A levels, but rather the first year of a degree at Cliff College.

I no longer permanently reside in Norfolk with my family, but have residence at Uni in the beautiful land of the Peak District.

I still have a job but have moved out of the kitchens and on form the hours of breakfast cooking and waitressing and into the late shift hours of bar work, which means I can pull a successful pint whilst working out the price and talking to the customer about the snow.

I, after many years of escaping it, know what it is like to sit in a real A&E (and not a field hospital) for myself having more than one visit for myself in 2009, and a further three visits for other people.

I became a worship leader for the Methodist Church, after three years.

I became very close to completing my adult leadership as a Brownie Leader, just one more section to go, I also abandoned all hope of doing my D of E.

More first for the 339 days:

• first drive on a motorway
• first summer camp as a leader
• first drink in a pub
• first game of poole
• first crash
• first battle of the bands
• first amazon order with my own money
• first car gone
• first disaster on a motorway
• consequently first sermon

I have learnt a lot of things this year, like pricing strategies are important, how to hold an interview, how to take part in an interview. I've learnt a bit (the progress is on going) about Audio Visual Aids, a bit about evangelism, a bit about subjects I didn't think I would ever understand like Amos and the Old Testament. I have discovered new ways of study, ways that people complain and worry about but it works for me. I've learnt about knowing when to keep quiet, and that laughing at people really does freak them out when your not actually laughing at them but the grapes.

I've let go of things to, control, friends, things that bug me, an ideal, I let go of my odd colour converse in pink and blue, but for them I did find a replacement.

Some things don't change though, I'm still clumsy, if not even more clumsy, I still like to sing around a camp fire and I still am willing to make a fool out of myself. I still like to write but no longer feel it is all that is keeping me sane. I have some good friends for that now, as like ever my time seems in short supply and I still struggle to say no, and then struggle through.

I still have amazing friends, some maybe new but I will tar them with the same brush for now, and I still know that God has a plan for me, I think I have stopped asking what now, even though I still have no clue. As tomorrow is a new day, and soon it will be over, and the next appeared, worrying about the one after that is hardly going to help today.

So who am I, I am the author of this blog, 18, a Christian and holding fast to light, I should also be revising Amos, this is Me!

Organic growth, I say pah to that

I have a particular sorrow going round my head today. It hasn't been a great day, I've been grouchy and annoyed, but in the midst of the work that was started very late on in the afternoon I can't help feel sad over an incident that happened before I left for Cliff. Before I had the knowledge of what I was trying to voice.

I was sat in a meetin which was open door to any church member and anyone else that wished to attend could have done. For a church meeting it was well attended their where a good 35 plus people. The meeting was about the worship life of my church. There where many points that I wasn't sure I agreed with.There where many points I did. There where many splits and divides in the group. Then there was this statement:

"our church will organically grow"

I remember it well, I started out confused - what did this mean, then I was more, it's hard to explain, I think I was annoyed as I knew this really wasn't going to work. As a church we needed to be in our community. People die staying in their house an never venturing out, they miss out on the food and the fellowship that make us grow. Moving in a community outside our church makes us grow. We grow when we face people who have different values to us and make us rethink our position, we grow stronger as a church, and a s a local community, withering and dying behind our walls because we have no sunlight, no mix to make us grow, because we decided to be 'organic' is never going to help. My church doesnt feel like a dying church on a sunday but sometimes I wonder it might, and I worry I can't stop that. They are lovely and I love my church, but a few seem to have lost the fight. That keeping to their pews on a Sunday will help, but as a church we don't need to be seen to be doing any formal outreach. I didn't know how to speak.

I'm not sure I know how to speak now; but more than ever I feel we as a church, not just my small church in town, but as a church of Christ, we should be doing something!