The quote that entitles this post came from a 5 year old that comes along to our weekly Secret Agents Club. It was another moment that brought me very close to tears and broke my heart for this little guy and his 8 year old brother.  They had turned up at the club the week before too and had been a bit late being picked up by someone who could have been anyone from an older brother to their mum’s new bloke. This week though it got to half an hour after the club had finished and they were still about waiting to be picked up, and they didn’t really know who it was that was supposed to be picking them up either. We tried their mum’s phone, no answer. We tried their someone Else’s phone, no answer. It was 6:00, already very dark and this 5  & 8 year old were completely prepared to walk home on their own; I’ve come to not be shocked by things like this anymore in Weston…it’s just the way things are. But what happened next really affected me.

Phil said that he’d give them a lift and I went along in the car too. They live down in one of the really big tower blocks by the shore,  and as we drove it became clear that it was highly doubtful that their mum was in because she was shopping in town; but still we thought it was worth a try. So we pulled up and they hopped out and stood ringing their buzzer for a few minutes with no answer so they came running back and said that Mummy was, as we guessed, not in.

They then told us that “James”, who i am presuming is the guy that had picked them up the week before, was round at a friend’s house and that they could be taken there. So we drove back through the estate to this guy’s house, just before we pulled up outside was when he came out with the title’s of today’s post. Nobody said anything in reply, but I think we were all silently hoping that the lights were on. They were on, and again they hopped out of the car and ran to this house, they banged on the door for a bit, and it was a real “please be in, please be in, please be in” moment. The older one then started yelling at the upstairs window at which point his brother had discovered that the front door was actually unlocked… with that they ran in and disappeared.

We don’t actually know if “James” was there or not, I’m really praying that he was and that those little guys journey home was done for that night.

That moment when they were banging on the front door was the closest I’ve come to a “You’re not safe. I want to take you home and make you safe” moment. And I really doubt that it will be the last time I have one of those moments.

It affected me as much in the way I wanted to reach out to these boys as in the way that I learnt something from them too.

It was clearly not the first time that they had been in a situation like this because they were completely unfazed by it all; and sadly we all know that it isn’t gonna be the last time either. And yet, this little 5 year old still manages to come out with something that shows he believes in them, and doesn’t doubt them at all.  Despite the fact that he was left to find his own way home and effectively forgotten, he didn’t doubt his mum loved him or would be there for him in time in any way. It never once crossed his mind that he could be alone and unloved, it was just that he hadn’t found where the person that loved him was yet. And that spoke to me so much about my relationship with My Father God.

In times when I feel like a tiny forgotten child on a cold dark night, left to find my own way home, it is so easy to get angry and God and blame him for seeming invisible and distant. But I want to be able to live, learning from Thursday’s experience, to have the faith in My Heavenly Father’s undying love to believe that he is there somewhere. To have the faith to carry on searching and seeking. The faith to know that when I find the house with the lights on, it means that he’s home and that I’m safe.

Father, I pray, give me the simple faith of  a 5 year old,

Lex xx

So here we are, as promised, three days worth of blogging in one mammoth installment!!

I have spent the weekend in Eastbourne with tons of other youthworkers from around the country learning lots and having the chance to “deepen” our souls, thus making us happier youthworkers and making us more effective in our ministry. Has this conference had the desired effect on me and my ministry? I guess I’m still mulling things over and processing stuff through, but at least I can tell you about some of my musings and thoughts….

FRIDAY 21st NOVEMBER

I guess I was looking forward to this conference so much more than I have done in the past because it was a chance to spend he weekend with folks form SMB and spend time with friends who I never see anymore. I also knew it was going to be cool as this was my first conference as a full time youthworker and the first conference knowing that I want to do youthwork full time, long term…Making it a hundred times more needed, useful and relevant!!

Mike Pilavachi was the speeker on the first night, which was good, it isn’t like his talks are massively original anymore and alot of his jokes and funny stories can be recited along by most people who have been to Soul Survivor a couple of times; but part of knowing what kinda talk you’re gonna get is that you know you’re not gonna be disappointed. 

The theme of the main sessions this year was King David, the first night being his call, anointing and the fact that him messing up made him so effective in his role. He was a guy that was after God’s heart and yet knew what it was like to completely mess life up and have to be entirely reliant on God’s abundant grace.  Mike told a really poignant story about a little girl who’s favourite toy is a porcelain doll. Her dad accidentally breaks it, tries to fix it but it just doesn’t look right. He tells her that he’s sorry and that he’ll get her another one; she says she doesn’t want another one, she wants her one. Her dad asks why as her one is broken, and the little girl says to her dad that “just because she’s broken doesn’t mean I can’t love her.” The story really spoke of grace and the ways in which God loves us, that just because we’ve messed up and we are broken it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us and want to use us in so many ways. It really spoke to me about the days when I’m feeling rubbish and wonder why God has called me to youthwork, I am so broken and have messed up royally so many times, I do ask why he wants me to work for him a lot of the time. But I felt God saying that being broken doesn’t affect my ability to work with young people, and he loves and wants me to do this regardless.

SATURDAY 22nd NOVEMBER

So the only full day of the conference was a bright but freezing day that made it painful to sit on the beach for too long, so I didn’t, which is a bit of a bummer. It’s always easy to find God on a beach, and it has become a conference tradition for me to go and pray on the beach for at least a little while. But as I now live near the shore, it’s not a complete disaster!!

I went to the first session of a set of three done by Steve Chalke and Jill Rowe in the morning, I’ve heard both of these guys speak alot before and they are both fab and as the session description was quite woolly this was the main reason i chose to go to it! This session was on how there isn’t such a thing as “spiritual” life, as God is spirit and he is in all of life. And to call some things spiritual is to try and get rid of the God out of the other things. Which is wrong, there is God in everyone and true christian youthwork is to see that and catch up with what God is already doing there!!

It made me feel really goodabout the work we do here at the project, some people in the church around the country may try and tell us that what we do here isn’t “christain” youthwork because only 2 of our 8 weekly groups have a teaching slot in them and we are not constantly trying to shove Jesus down the kid’s throats!! But what we try to do, is build relationships with the young people, show them that we are interested in their whole life and not just converting them so we can get numbers!! (It goes back to “planting the seeds and never seeing the fruit” which makes this work so vital and yet hardgoing and painful at the same time) But this session did make me remember that when I’m blue cos it seems I’m not managing to talk about God to these guys, that’s my problem, that’s when I’ve got my perspectives screwed up again. I need to rememberto find where God is in sitting and playing guitar Hero, and catch up with him and delight in what he’s already doing here.

The main evening session was about David’s “Dark Side” (use the force Luke… :p). It was an amazing talk about how everyone has a dark side and as youthworkers we do need to address our dark sides and journey to work through the issues at their heart with God, but we need to be honest about them and because of our jobs we need to be accountable to our kids. Letting them know that it’s ok to talk to us about their dark sides because we have been honest with them about ours and shown how we have dealt with it. It was a really hard talk to listen to at points and has stirred alot within my heart that I am still thinking through. It ended with a time when people could come forward and be anointed with oil as a sign that they were choosing to take that journey through their dark side from that point on; I didn’t go forward because I really didn’t want to make any promises to God and myself lightly and then feel really disappointed at myself if I didn’t manage that journey. But what I can say that it is now really on my heart and mind, and I know some point I will be ready and spiritually mature enough to really address my dark side; Because as much as I’d like to say that I am spiritually mature, it’s talks like that make me see that I’m not and I have a long way to go!

SUNDAY 23rd NOVEMBER

The final morning of the conference always comes all to soon, and there is always that wondering of if you have really got all you can out of the time you’ve had!! I’m still not sure if I can say that I did this year!! But I know I have got  alot!

The final main session was about the storms of life that come and what happens to you relationship with God and your ministry during that time. It was familiar stuff having been through a few “storms” in the last few years, and it did make me think about the good it has done my relationship with God which is now so much deeper and more honest since the storms. Sometimes you do need those things to come and shake you, so you hang on tighter.

It also got me wondering about this year. When I planned my gap year I thought it would be a year of non stop fun, making tons of new friends, and really feeling like  was making a difference for God’s kingdom. I’d be lying if I said I felt all or any of those even once a week most of the time!! Things are testing and tough here, It has made me try to cling on to God so much tighter because there is simply nothing else I can do!! Perhaps God’s decided that another storm and “desert” year is what my faith needs, to really make me press on in and drive me towards my call to full time ministry. And oddly, much to my suprise, I’m 100% ok with that. Any crap that gets thrown my way, in the times when all I can do is curl up and cry, on the days where I really wonder where God has gone; I know that he is there watching me taking faltering steps, willing me to carry on in his strength and to seek him with ever more passion. And that can only mean an ever deeper realationship with him, which will prepare me so much better for my ministry.

As I drove home on Sunday, a song came on my Mp3 player that I have heard before but never really listened to the words of, and it totally blew me away that it was completely how I view my year here now. I have decided to put the lyrics in at the end as they can say things so much better than I can.

So I guess to sum up this HUGE entry that has taken me about an hour I wanna say that, while I probably have come away having more on my mind than when I first went with, and coming away knowing that things are gonna be hard for the foreseeable future, this weekend’s conference was so needed and has has brought up all the right things.

My prayer is that I continue to seek God in the mundane and ordinary, to find the right point to start that journey through my dark side, and to press on in to God in the desert and storm.

Lex xx

 “Desert Song” Hillsong

This is my prayer in the desert
And all that’s within me feels dry
This is my prayer in the hunger in me
My God is a God who provides

Verse 2:
And this is my prayer in the fire
In weakness or trial or pain
There is a faith proved
Of more worth than gold
So refine me Lord through the flames

Chorus:
And I will bring praise
I will bring praise
No weapon forged against me shall remain

I will rejoice
I will declare
God is my victory and He is here

Verse 3:
And this is my prayer in the battle
And triumph is still on it’s way
I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ
So firm on His promise I’ll stand

Bridge:
All of my life
In every season
You are still God
I have a reason to sing
I have a reason to worship

Verse 4:
This is my prayer in the harvest
When favor and providence flow
I know I’m filled to be emptied again
The seed I’ve recieved I will sow

…That’s what little boys are made of.

I am writing a blog today about men folk of all ages and varieties. I apologise now if I offend any of the lovely guys that I love by writing this..I will really try not to. It isn’t meant as a moan, more of an observation and ponder.

Men are really funny things…and boys are just slightly less funny things in training. But even a little boy has one thing in common with a grown man (and no it’s not what’s in his pants, don’t be rude!!) It is that they are undeniably blokey!

Personally at the moment I am really failing to understand guys at all, and am sersiously considering giving up on them entirley for a wee while to give myself a break!! Or maybe give up on them completely and become a nun/lesbian/mad cat lady!! And also the other “man in my life” Chris, the son of the vicar I live with, is driving me bananas right now and I do wonder what is in his head. As I type this, he is downstairs giving me the third rendition today of the only 3 songs he knows on the piano; they are both very loud and not very good!! This is after being on his Xbox 360, yelling at the americans who he was playing over his head mic, yesterday until about half midnight…and trying to eat the salt dough I had made for a craft today!?! I’m not gonna make a generalisation about all men eating everything in sight and being in love with their games consoles…(or am I?!?)…But he is not the first guy to display these characteristics and he sure as heck isn’t going to be the last!!

However, this constant wondering at what is going on in guy’s heads has made me think about the young guys that I work with. There is a little boy (Bradley) in my year 3 class that I am slowly really getting to like. My first few weeks there my thoughts were “I have never met a naughtier boy in my life!!”. He drove me mad, and his name was the first I learnt because I was forever yelling it down corridors after him. But as I’ve worked with him and talked to him (cos that’s what he’d rather do than work or do his reading) I’ve realised that he isn’t just naughty, he has something severely wrong with him; and it would seem that the school have only just really worked that out and sorted out the kind of one on one support he needs. Now, as I’ve grown to know this tiny little guy (he just about comes up to my hip) he has become one of the raesons that I enjoy going into that class so much. He’s got a wicked sense of humour, he has the cheekiest little face, actually knows my name and likes to talk to me, and working with him even small things are achievements that I can help with. On monday I sat with him for about 10 minutes while we did a page of work togtether, which was probably more than he’d done in a week, and then we trotted round the whole school showing all the teachers because he was so proud of himself. Yet another moment where i stopped feeling like I’m a spare part down here.

But this year 3, as small and young as he is, has some of exactly the same sterotypical male characteristics as another guy (Liam) who sticks out in my mind. This guy is 17, he’s already been in jail for three years, so while being so much older than his years in some ways in other ways he’s really immature and seems three years behind his peers. I have only seen him once when he hasn’t been high on something or other; he has left drugs in the church toilets; He isn’t allowed into youthie most weeks becuase he is too drunk to be safe, so spends his time drinking outside the door yelling at us through the window; and last week he smashed a window in the church hall. Despite all of this he is really funny, comes out with some hilarious remarks and keeps the younger ones in check cos they are all so scared of him. 

But both of these guys are the same when it comes down to it. They both have a really macho swagger that is part and parcel of living in Weston; they both love the ladies; they love their computer games; and they are straight talking and don’t bitch about you behind your back, if they don’t like you they won’t beat about the bush!! And it is SO similar with the majority of the guys I work with here right from 5-18!!

Which in so many ways makes the guys easier to work with (honestly never thought i’d hear myself say that!!). You can strike up a conversation or realtionship just by picking up a playstation controller or having a game of pool with them; in the kind of work we do here those conversations, however small, are vital and sometimes all we can hope to get.

With the girls there is so much variety in how they can be. Even in age groups there is about 4 different “groups” we get here…and with some it is impossible to just strike up a conversation with them without getting dirty looks and then knowing that you are being bitched about. There is no real easy in, because there can be no assumption that they like anything. With the female species there is no one shared thing that we all have in common, and that is just one of the things that make this job tricky!! Even the 14+ girls that I see and work with three times a week are only now, two and a half months after they first met me, starting to use my name and actually acknowledge my presence. But ah well, it’s the beuty of youth work, huh?

So what am I trying to say in this post, apart from sharing tales of my work here. I guess it is addressing the many mysteries of men folk… The one’s I work with I seem to be able to understand perfectly but the ones outside of work I don’t have a clue about!! I guess I can’t win them all, and I should be grateful for the Bradleys and Liams of this world, the guys who make me laugh and are the only ones I go into work for sometimes!!

But Lord, I do pray, If it’s allowed…can the conundrum of men be unlocked, even just a little bit?? Please??

Lex xx

As I sit here typing away with my big mug of tea, tunes blasting out of my laptop (the most favoured position to blog or scribble ideas down in) I am comforted by the knowledge that at least a few pople will be giving this a read. Which, following the title of todays bolg, brings me to the first level of gratitude I wanna talk about. I’m grateful to you, yes you, person who is reading this! I thank you that you are interested enough and obviously care enough about me to read my latest ramblings, it makes me feel cared for, loved, valued and thought about even though I am many miles down the A34. It also satisfies the frustrated writer inside me, so thanks for that too!!

As you will all know, I’m sure, it was the Children in Need campaign on Friday…What less of you will know is that Weston Church Youth Project (where I work) recieves the majority of it’s funding from Children In Need. It is, therefore, so wonderfully ironic that on the night when people all over the country were pledging millions of pounds to projects like us; The kids at our project, recieveing so much of people’s hard earned cash were the worst behaved I have seen them yet!! Now I’m not blaming them, it goes with the current time of year, we get lots in to all the clubs in the winter months which inevitabley means more trouble. And they weren’t doing it out of spite or irony at all, they don’t know where any of our funding comes from so they are intirley oblivious that they can come and play on the playsation 3 every Friday because of Sir Terry Wogan and Pudsy Bear. And to be honest, I think it’s better that they don’t know where our money comes from because im sure a few of the older ones would get quite offended if they knew they were considered a “child in need”; even though they so obviously are in need! So regardless of what the kids were saying, I want to say a massive thank you to anyone who pledged money on Friday or did anything at all for Children In Need. Our project is grateful, because without that money we couldn’t run.

It has got me thinking though, about where I recieve the gratification for the job I do from. My first week here I knew it was not gonna be coming from the kids any time soon. There is no thanks from them for anything we do. Even though Phil has given up his life to work for these guys, they really don’t seem bothered. There is just an assumption that it will happen. An assumption that they will get all this brand new stuff to trash to their heart’s content. An assumption that week after week Phil will open up his house to them and let them do whatever they want. An assumption that they can abuse us without getting anything back. An assumption that we will work and work, and prepare endless things for them to do in the knowledge that we expect nothing in return. Funnily enough though, I’m not having a go, or moaning. They wouldn’t be the same if they thanked us all the time; if they felt like they had an obligation to be polite then they wouldn’t be as honest with us and tell us exactly what’s on their mind or ask us the questions that they actually want answered. Them assuming so much of us is such a good thing, it shows that they trust the project enough to assume all of those things. So I don’t get gratitude from the kids, and am working with no thanks from them at all, does it matter?

The answer’s no. I know that Phil values me being here, because they didn’t have a Careforce worker last year I think those feelings of gratitude from him are a little heightened. It’s like he forgot how good it is to have someone around helping out. And I’m getting the same feelings from the church as a whole. They realise how much it benefits the project having a careforce worker that really fits. But does it even matter that I’m getting thanked by them? Is it them that is keeping me going when I want to run away back to MK? (because even though I am starting to feel more fulfilled, ofcourse it is still a massive task down here and results in me wanting to run away A LOT!!)

No, It really isn’t. Ofcourse it’s great to be thanked and feel valued by my boss and the church I am part of. But I am no longer working for gratitude…I’m working out of gratitude to the Big man.

In all I do, in the life I live and the job that he has called me to I want to thank him and show my gratitude to him. For the grace he has shown in giving me the gifts that I use for my job. For giving me such a clear desire and call to what I am supposed to do. For giving me such obvious pointers to where he wants me. For remaining faithful in times when I haven’t seen those pointers. For giving me amazing opportunities. For the awesome privilege that it is to work with the young people of his church. For being all that I have ever and will ever need.

For all of this and so very much more, I live and work out of thanks and gratitude to my Creator Father.

Lex xx

The quote above is the quote that begins chapter 3 of “The Shack” (by the way, I know everyone is raving about it…but I have only just started it and I am already raving!!)

I read that quote on Sunday evening and didn’t really pay it a lot of attention, I agreed with it even then, cos it’s true. There is something that is so refreshing, and yeah healing, about being with a child. Their innocence, trust and sense of fun is something that is so very absent everywhere else in this messed up world!! But in the work I’m doing here i don’t really get to work with anybody i would call “children” considering the descripton that I just used. It’s heartbreaking and really really wrong, but even some of my 5 year olds I would class as young people or “youth”. Because of all the things that they have seen and had to deal with in their short lives; they’re not innocent, they don’t trust anyone cos they’ve been taught not to and they don’t have a sense of fun cos life round here is tough! They have to be tough and forget their childish ways as soon as they can, which is just messed up!!

But I had such an awesome Monday, that this quote came back to me and I really understood it on so many levels, and I dunno i had a renewed “THIS is why I do what I do” moment.

I go in to the local primary school on a monday to help with a year 3 class. They are a relativley nice bunch, but as with any young people round here there is alot of behavioural issues and more need than any school, teacher or youthworker could ever hope to address fully. I usually just hang around, chat with the kids, do some reading with them and am on hand if the teacer needs it . On monday they had a substitute, so they were even more crazy than usual and I was having to help WAY more than I usually do!! All afternoon two of the girls had been getting at eachother, one of them coming to me and telling me that the other was being nasty followed by the other telling me exactly the same!! I wasn’t gonna get involved and was telling them to ignore eachother and get on with their science. All of a sudden one of the girls jumps up sending her chair flying, throws her work at me, whacks the other around the head with her jumper and legs it out of the class…at this the substitute is standing there looking useless so I go on a mission to find out little escapee!!

I almost walked straight past her cos she was sat under all the coat hooks, curled up in a tiny ball in the corner. I sat down next to her, in the middle of the corridor (we must have looked quite odd) and she was in tears…honestly crying so much for such a small girl!! I was abit confused to start with, cos she wasn’t the one who’d been whacked round the head. But then as we started talking, which she took some persuading to do at first, my heart was breaking for this little girl. It turns out that she has always had a real problem with contolling her emotions; and when she gets mad, boy does she get mad!! In her infant school they did lots to help her with this but now she is in the juniors they have kinda left her to sort it out herself. Apparently last week, she had a really good week, had managed to control herself really well and she’d been given one of the “star of the week” spots. But now, she was SO angry at herself. She was SO disappointed and was scared of letting her parents and new teacher down. She was saying that she wished she’d never got this award last week, cos all the things she was feeling now was so much worse than all the anger she had ever felt towards anyone. As she was telling me all this through her sobs, i was close to tears myself. Here’s a girl who’s school career has pretty much sucked so far,she has recieved one award in 4 years…and she’s wishing that she’d never even got that!!

She is so confused, so angry all the time, hurting so much…and so innocent in what she’s feeling. How can my heart not go out to children like her? It’s kids like her that I delight in doing my work for. I felt like actually I did something for her, cos I sat and listened to her and took the time to show her I cared (if the substitute had gone out I know he would have just sent her to the headmistress!!), in that moment I stopped feeling pointless.

And then later on that evening, i was at Phil’s (my boss) house waiting for our Monday group to start. I was there longer than I usually am, and so got more of a chance to play and spend time with Lucy his little eighteen month old. She is goregous and so good, but spending just over an hour with her and sitting with her while she ate and then entertaining her while Phil was working just gave me such an awesome feeling. All my young people were once this little, once this innocent, were once this vulnerable and trusting of everyone, and once upon a time they were all this easily amused!! All of those forgotten things (the innocence, trust and fun) are all still there within them…they’re just buried so deep because they have to be growing up in a place like this. Which means that if we put in enough time and work, take the time to show we care enough and just be there for them that these things can be found again!!

If there is that kind of promise and potential in my work, how can I feel that what I’m doing means nothing? How can i not burn with compassion for these guys? How can I not love them?

The answer is I can’t. Which makes my job a lot easier, but harder at the same time…cos caring so much and getting so emotionally involved hurts like hell!!

But after such an amazing start to the week I am relishing things. Give me all the hard, badly behaved, “horrible” ones. Give me all the drunk and high ones on a Friday night. Give me the ones who don’t listen to a word we say and just abuse us as the thanks for the work we do. Because inside every single one is a little, curled up, sobbing, confused child sitting under the coats crying out for someone to sit and listen. There is so much potential!!

Lex xx

I do realise that writing this post will put me at the very high risk of sounding like a grumpy old woman and not the “hip and happening, down with the kids” spiky haired, pierced, baggy jeaned youthworker that i truly believe I am. But when, oh when, did it become common practice to call your friend a C**t ?!?

It’s not like I’ve arrived here and never heard swearing used as the normal way of communicating before, and ofcourse I wasn’t naive enough to come here thinking that as bad as these guys were they weren’t gonna use rather choice langauge as a normal thing. And it isn’t like I haven’t been around people who swear at their friends; I went to a normal English secondary School, my school friends are not christians…so I’ve been sworn at in a completely “harmless, jokey” way quite regularly, but never to this degree. Is this just what the new generation of young people have had thrust on them? Forced into more extreme behaviour and language, simply because it seems compulsory for the next generation to be more outrageous than the last?!?

If so, then what is the “youth of today” going to look like in five or ten years?? Or more specifically what are they goign to sound like?? When I was a wee nipper at primary school c**t was the “worst swear word in the world” and in my  mind it still is, it’s a disgusting word and my friends know that as tollerant of their choice of language as I am if they use this particular term in my hearing then they will get a slap upside the head!! What are teenagers going to do in a few years when they run out of the “worst words”, will they just make up new ones so they can out do the young ones of today?

Perhaps I am actually just chatting out of my arse (see once upon a time that would seem extreme, but now I wouldn’t blush saying arse in church!!) and teenagers have always sworn at each other to relate to each other in a way adults can’t. Especially in an area of economic need, like the one I am working in, where the kids use these words because they aren’t leaarning any more advanced vocab at school (I’m blaming neither the schools or the kids, it’s just a fact) so swearing just becomes what is accepted. Maybe it is just society that has changed; mild swear words that would have once upon time been taboo are now heard all over the place and the young people are just going to that extreme level because that is what it means to rebel and be a “teenager”.

So, rant being over there and having put the world to rights: Do i hear swearing here more  than back home? Yes. Do my young people have sewers where their mouths should be? Er, yeah, most of them! But does it put me off working with them? Hell no!! Does Jesus carry on  loving them inspite of them calling him every name under the sun? You bet your arse he does!!

I guess what I’m trying to sum up is that, yeah swearing isn’t great. I’m not gonna argue and say that is, and I do believe that Christians should try not to swear as much as they can. But should it stand in the way of reaching out to young people who are so obviously hurting?? Would it have scared Jesus off from doing his earth saving mission?? If a Christian looses control of their tongue a bit sometimes is it gonna get them kicked out of heaven?? And is swearing, infact, the biggest problem facing our church today??

Ofcourse the answer to all of them is NO…and so maybe again it is just a change that needs to happen within me!!

So, Lord, I pray… teach me not to be shocked by anything i hear, cos you sure as heck weren’t!! Amen

Lex xx

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