I'm finding moving a bit moving...!

Well once again it has been a stupidly long time since I blogged. Sorry about that... Usual resolutions re blogging more often have been made. But don't hold your breath!

The thing that's occupying most of my brain space at the moment is that I'm about to move house! Aaaaaaaaargh, etc. Exactly 2 weeks from today all my worldly goods will be packed up in a van somewhere and I'll be on the cusp of the most mammoth box-unpacking gig imaginable. Well, not quite the most mammoth - my friend's just become a Bishop. Moving into a Bishop-pad involves some serious unpacking!

Anyway it's not just moving house that I'm thinking about - although goodness knows that's stressful enough in its own right, especially when it goes hand-in-hand with moving job/church too. I'm particularly thinking about moving house on your own. And, obviously, as someone who's single, I do an awful lot of things 'on my own'. That's not a complaint, at least not necessarily, but it is certainly an observation.

Because of all the usual work/life/time pressures, I've been trying to squeeze lots of jobs into a too-short time frame. As you do. Saturday afternoon saw me in a mad dash to get to the carpet shop before it closed (after being blocked into my garage by a wedding guest and then getting stuck in football traffic). Consequently I chose carpets for 4 of the new vicarage bedrooms in precisely 8 minutes. I was delighted to find they could fit them within the week. Then on Tuesday I went to buy a new sofa, and again made a surprisingly speedy choice - only to find it'll be 5 weeks before it's delivered. Oops. Apparently I need to have made that purchase a month ago.

The new church have been completely wonderful in helping me to get ready for the move. They have done a quite extraordinary amount of work, and have somehow managed to paint every single wall in the entire vicarage, and to clean it from top to bottom. I'm very grateful. So my reflections on doing a house move as a single person are not particularly about the practical aspects - although if they hadn't been so wonderfully kind and helpful then that would definitely have been a complication to add into the mix.

No, my reflections on it all have been more to do with the emotional side of things. To be honest I've been surprised at how emotional I have found it all. I didn't think I was all that house proud, or all that bothered about the material 'stuff' of life (and it's not long after setting foot in my house that you realise I'm definitely not all that bothered about keeping things clean and tidy!) But as I've pondered everything from paint colours to sofa fabrics to curtain lengths to carpet thicknesses to fridge freezer size I've just found it all a bit overwhelming. There have been So Many decisions to make!

Now, please don't misunderstand me. I realise this comes very firmly into the category of #FirstWorldProblems. Please don't hear me as being ungrateful - I absolutely realise and appreciate just how blessed I am to have a home to live in at all, and especially one so lovely. I am fortunate to be able to make these choices - I know that such choices are a luxury that many cannot afford.

However, my thoughts and reflections here are simply about how it has felt to do all of that stuff on my own. I have a couple of lovely friends who have kindly offered to come and look round with me, and offer advice. But they haven't been able to come yet, and won't now, I guess, until I've moved in. So all of the decisions have fallen to me. Those of you who have ever argued with a partner over a colour scheme or a piece of furniture may by now be yelling "lucky you - I'd love to have the final say on all things decor-related!" And yes, I'm sure there are massive advantages to not having to check with anyone else before deciding on an orange colour scheme for my new bedroom!

I'm really not moaning, I promise. But I am pondering. Pondering how it feels to have to make all of your major life choices alone (you know what I mean when I say alone - God is always my Guide, Advisor, Counsellor and Friend - but, humanly speaking, alone).

In one way, there's huge freedom in it, of course, and that's wonderful. But I realise I also have a fear of getting it wrong - that's mad, isn't it, because what does decorating your house 'wrong' even look like?! I feel like I'm not quite grown up (and that's also a mad thing to feel, when this is the last year my age will begin with a 3!). In the sofa shop the guy was trying to sell me extra cover in case things get spilt on it. He was talking about pets and husbands and children. I had to clamp my mouth closed to stop myself from confessing to not having any of those things (don't get me wrong, I have parishioners who can make a mess, and a penchant for chucking soup on myself - I could do with the insurance cover). I feel like I did as a kid trying to choose which sweets I wanted and it all just being ridiculously overwhelming and wishing someone would just hand me a packet, any packet. Standing in the carpet shop, and the sofa shop, and looking online at curtains, I just really would have liked there to be someone else there to say "what do you think about this one?" (And I know there are friends I could have asked to go with me, but sorry guys, I love you, but it's not the same!)

And gosh, this is all before I've got to the new place and have to work out where to put everything!! Aaaaaaaaargh, etc. all over again! My friend recently moved house and tweeted that she was picking up each ornament and wandering around the house whispering to it, asking it where it wanted to live. It might take a while, but in the absence of another human person to consult with, this is the approach I intend to adopt with all my belongings.

I know they say moving house is high up on the list of the most stressful things you can do. Moving jobs must be up there too, so vicars have a permanent stress-double-whammy going on when we move. Anyway, as so often when I blog, I feel like this is more of a journal-entry-reflection that I happen to have shared with the world (maybe that's all that blogging ever is?!) Thanks for reading, if you've got this far. Maybe share some of your moving house/decor decisions stories with me if you like?

Here's a photo of the new garden. It's beautiful, although I do fear it may never look this good again, as I am a genuinely terrible gardener...

Kindness in action

Here's another blog from me about 'The Five Love Languages' as described by Gary Chapman - http://www.5lovelanguages.com/. This time I'm thinking about what he calls 'Acts of Service'. In a way this one's the opposite of 'Words of Affirmation' which I described last time, because rather than appreciating kind and positive words, someone whose Love Language is Acts of Service appreciates kind actions - things done for them, to help them out and bless them.

I appreciate people doing nice stuff for me as much as the next person, and I'm certainly never going to say no to anyone who offers to do some gardening (I HATE IT!), but Acts of Service come right in the middle for me as far as Love Languages go. Words of Affirmation (see blog on 25th June) and Quality Time (still to come) are much more important to me.

As a single person living on my own though, there are LOTS of times I can think of when Acts of Service would be very handy indeed.

A few years ago I ordered a new fridge. It was delivered by a nice man in a big lorry. However, the nice man carried the fridge approximately 6 inches inside my front door, put it down, and was driving away in his big lorry before I could say "oi, you can't leave that there!" There was a great deal of pushing and shoving, a fair amount of sweat, and one or two slightly naughty words involved in getting the fridge from the front door to the kitchen...

When I moved into the Vicarage here, I decided to get a new dining room table and chairs. I ordered them online, and they arrived as flatpack. I decided to be a grown up. I could absolutely do this by myself. I am woman. I make table. It took the entire day. I broke some nails. But - a wooden table and 6 lovely chairs were duly created. I did it ALL BY MYSELF! (Yes, one of the chairs is seriously wobbly. Really, don't sit on that one if you come round. My dad mentions it every time he walks in the room. It does my head in. But what's a wobbly chair between friends?).

On that occasion I did feel pretty proud of myself for stepping up and doing it. Sometimes it's fun to play at being a grown up! But it isn't always possible, or there isn't time, or it's just a job that needs two people. I waited months for a blind to be fitted in my dining room because it just wasn't a job that could be done by someone with only two hands. (To be fair it was also because I'm terrified of using a drill. Not quite that grown up yet). One friend helpfully offered to lend me a drill, but I didn't want to borrow a drill. I wanted a person to wield the drill too.

Maybe I'm just an idealist, but I really think as Church we should be able to help one another out with this stuff. It's obviously not just about single people needing stuff done, and other people helping them do it, though I guess from my own perspective and that of this blog I'm thinking about that side of things more. But we all have different interests/gifts/skills etc and so it makes sense that we would help each other out when we can. It's like a giant, ongoing, free (well maybe cake instead of money) promise auction.

It's not like I want all the Acts of Service to be done for me, of course. I need all the help I can get with DIY and gardening, as you can see, but I can be relatively useful myself. If I can, I'll baby-sit, pet-sit or granny-sit. I'll happily lend books, shoes, car, household items or anything else I have that someone else would find useful. I love cooking and will make meals or puddings or cakes as requested. I'll do your shopping for you. I'll give lifts.

And surely - surely! - if we all just mucked in and offered the stuff we like and are good at, and asked for help with the stuff we can't manage, things ought to work out ok, didn't they?

But I guess maybe that's the problem. Maybe we don't offer help enough, because we're too busy doing our own stuff, or the thought never occurs to us, or it does occur to us but then we forget all about it, or we don't want to patronise, or we just can't be bothered, or 101 other things which are reasons but also excuses. And maybe we don't ask for help because we think we can probably do it so we'll wait and we'll do it, no, we will, one day soon... Or we're not sure who to ask, or we asked once and someone said no or didn't turn up so we're scared to ask again, or we don't want to seem needy, or probably more like 1001 different reasons we make in our heads.

Perhaps a good rule if we want to ask for help and that soundtrack is in our head, is to remember "not to say someone else's no for them" - that is, just ask! What's the worst that can happen? If we all try our best to be grown ups (no judgement intended there - I find it hard myself most days of the week) then we might get to the point where we can ask for help when we need it, and we can offer help when we're able. And maybe a lot more Acts of Service would get done.

And maybe my garden wouldn't be somewhere you could lose a small child in for a month...

Beauty and graffiti

A few months ago we decided to establish a little 'community garden' across the road from church, on a patch of wasteland. It was mainly the idea of Rach, a fab member of our church, who heads up our work with young people. She approached the council, who own the land, and they agreed to let us use it, and even helped us out with resources, funding and workers. We worked with them, one of the local RSLs, and a nearby youth centre. A fabulous artist came and did sessions with the kids and young people producing 3 huge murals featuring all their favourite Liverpool landmarks. They were bolted to the wall, and a big flowerbed was sunk into the ground. The nursery class from our church school came over to do the planting. We had a launch event with local community groups and it was lots of fun. Seeing the garden every day makes me smile. It looks lovely, a ray of sunshine in the middle of a patch of derelict and deserted ground.

Or at least, it did look lovely - for a while. Because after only a few months, I went past one day to discover graffiti sprayed all over the murals. There were huge letters drawn in thick black paint. I couldn't see how it could be repaired, but Nicola, the amazing artist, came and worked her magic and it looked as good as new. Phew!

Until last week - when I drove past and suddenly realised I couldn't see the boards. When investigated I found that all 3 of them had been ripped off the wall. 2 were damaged 'just' from being ripped off - they had holes where the bolts had been (the bolts were still attached to the wall). The third was more badly damaged - it had 2 big tears across it, and large pieces knocked off at the corners. I gathered up all the small pieces although I doubt they'll be able to be repaired. The boards were too heavy to move, even when I gathered a couple of helpers, so we left them there and hoped for the best. We're currently waiting for someone to come and put them back up.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few days. I was absolutely devastated when I first saw what had happened. The boards looked such a mess, and as if that wasn't bad enough, they had also trampled all over the plants in the flowerbed. I can't understand why anyone would want to cause such damage and destruction in such a wanton way. I'm not naive, I know vandalism happens - a lot! - and I've experienced it many times when my car, house and church have all been damaged in various ways. For some reason, though, this seemed even more wantonly destructive than normal. Maybe it was the fact that all we'd been trying to do was make the local area look a bit nicer. Maybe it was the fact that it had been local kids who had done the painting themselves. It just made me so sad.

I started to wonder, if we found out who it was who had done the damage, and if we asked them why, and if we were able to genuinely have a conversation about it - about what was in their minds as they did it, and what they hoped to achieve - what would we discover? Would it be that they were "just bored"? Understandable in one way, I guess, in an area with few resources - and something we're trying to remedy by creating activities they can engage with. Or would we, I wondered, find out something more, something deeper, if it was even possible for it to be articulated?

You see, I wonder whether there's something about us not being able to cope with beauty, somehow. I wonder if in some way that's what sin is - turning away from God, and from his goodness, and from his right, perfect, beautiful way to live, because we simply can't handle it. There's something about us longing for beauty and truth and goodness, and yet suddenly turning around and randomly destroying a beautiful thing for no apparent reason. I feel like that's sometimes how I live and behave. I destroy beautiful things. I damage what is good. I vandalise what is holy.

God's way, and God's will, is about good not evil; about light not dark; about hope not fear; about beauty not ugliness. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the church in Philippi - "you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious - the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse."

I want to be someone who seeks out beauty in God's world, and who speaks and acts in a way which creates beauty, rather than destroying and damaging it. 

When I started out writing this post it was going to be about how it's hard to keep on going when obstacles come along, but it's turned into something completely different! Maybe I'll write that post another day...

This is how our lovely garden looked when it was first created. Recently the flowers looked gorgeous!