So, this is the first entry on my new blog… how marvellously exciting. I did ask myself yesterday why I was setting up another blog (having had one i never actually used many moons ago) and I decided that along with the personal and work journals that I keep, I wanted to do a kinda mish mash of the two that could be accessed and read by people if they wanted. I guess it’s the fantasy of liking having people read what I write. I am simply a frustrated writer…so this is a middle ground. The hope that someone may read what i yabber on about… and also that I can get more of the gubbins out of my head and proseessed through.

I Guess that this want to really think things through and really understand what I am thinking and feeling comes off the back of the fact that I am struggling to find a point to the work I’m doing at the moment. Struggling to see what God is doing in the midst of this, struggling to even see where God is, and struggling to see what it is that he wants me to achieve this year.

I know, well I think I know, that this is where God wants me to be this year. It felt so right here when I came on my interview back in February; And it continued to feel right when I first arrived here in September. Even in the midst of struggles right now, it still feels right that I’m here. I guess, i just don’t get why it’s right and what that means for me.

In a place so full of need and seemingly so empty of hope, the thing it is hardest to find here is motivation. I realise (well i thought that i realised more than i probably did and now actually appreciate) the idea that in youthwork, especially with the nature of the project here, all I am doing is sowing seeds that I will NEVER see the fruit of. I doubt that in the 13 years that this project has been running that even Phil has seen as much fruit as he wants, and nowhere near the amount of “seeds” he has sewn. Which does make me wonder how he has managed to stay here for so long, working as hard as he does without going entirely mad and burning out to the point of no return. I’m not sure if it’s more admiration i feel for the work Phil does, or a complete lack of understanding and just believing he is nuts!!

Although I do understand the idea that youthwork, especially with unchurched young people, is a long term thing and I can’t simply turn up here for a year and expect amazing results when things haven’t happend like that in the last 13 years; I’m not any closer to being motivated for just knwoing that and repeating it to myself daily like a kinda weird, backward mantra.

Is it too much just to ask for one of my young people to show like they get and appreciate the work i’m doing down here?!? Perhaps it is, and this may actually be my problem…looking for eathly motivation when God’s encouragment should surfice?? Ah, I dunno!! Juts gotta hope that God will step in and change my heart and my thinking before I run myself totally into the ground!!

Lex xx