The Life Giver...

I wrote this some time ago back in February. This is my picture of how I have seen God in my life. He has been the Nurturer and the Life Giver and I am forever changed by Him.

God planted the seed (me) into the dark warm place of my mother's womb. The seed was made up of many parts of my mother and father but it was unique, never before created. The seed grew taking shape and form in the mysterious quiet of the womb becoming more and more recognizable.

In due time the beautiful work of God was ready to be birthed and brought forth into the world. From the moment I was born roots were put down and the tiny sprout was visible. As I grew in height a solid brown trunk held my being. My roots entwined deeper into the earth below me.

I was watered by my mother's love and strengthened. Branches sprung sturdy and green with leaves. I grew and grew and grew. Yet as I got taller and my roots thickened my mother's love was not enough nourishment. I was missing something crucial, something life-sustaining. So I stopped growing, the leaves gradually began to wither and turn brown, some even dropped off. My branches became brittle and were delicate, easily broken. Some began to break under the pressures and demands of the world. What happened to the beautiful seed God had planted?

The life was being slowly starved from me. I was hungry for that living giving water...so hungry. The branches that were left were not my own, they were disconnected, broken and weak. One final blow was the discovery that within my branches I carried a life destroying disease formed in my seed and given to me from my father- the absent father who had not watered me with his love and instead had withheld all love at all.

How was I to bear up under this new knowledge? I had already grown so weak, so broken, who could help me now? Just as every last drop of hope drained away from me I looked up and saw Him who I had longed for. I almost felt like saying, "It was you all along who I was missing. I was hungry and nothing filled me but you" and He sent His rain of love upon me. I breathed. I was badly damaged and it would take time to restore and rebuild.

He asked me, "Do you trust that I can rebuild you?" I answered, "Yes". He said, "You will be a new creation and will have eternal life". I sighed, a deep sigh of peace. From that day forward I breathed in His air, I was fed by His love, watered with His grace. Some of my branches were pruned so that new could grow, dead leaves fell away and I was bare before the Lord. Some days were hard as I became impatient to see what God was doing.

Then it happened! I saw a tiny green bud and a nodule. New life was forming! God smiled at my joy. One tiny bud of hope, of life. I thanked Him. My faith was ever increasing as His love abounded me. My tree had been so barren, so empty.

Over the days, months and years many more green buds sprung up all over and new branches were created in place of the old. These new branches were thick, strong and connected firmly to my tree. My tree stood sure in the soil my Father had given me.

My Father told me one day, "These branches I have given to you are the branches of Jesus. All He is is yours. He is my Son and you are my Daughter. Your inheritance is eternal life." I was in awe, "But Father why do I deserve this?" He said, "You have not earned it. It is given to you as a gift of my love. Your old branches are gone. The diseased and broken and dead and I have given you Jesus' ones".

Still Alice, tears and letting go...

**Warning contains major spoilers!**



I have just finished watching the movie Still Alice and after crying literally through the whole thing I felt I needed to write a blog post about it. Although Alice is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease every part of her story I could relate to. Alice realises something is wrong when she begins to forget very important things such as getting lost on her daily run and forgetting what she was talking about in one her lectures. So she goes to the doctors thinking it might be a brain tumour and was shocked to discover a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's was what was stealing her memory. 

This wasn't the only discovery she made though, after further tests her neurologist discovers that it is a familial form of Alzheimer's. Therefore her three children had a 50/50 chance of being a carrier and if they were positive, a 100% chance of developing symptoms. One of her daughter's Anna had been trying to start a family with IUI. Two of Alice's children tested, her son was negative but her daughter Anna was positive. Her other daughter chose not to get tested. 

By this time I was completely undone with crying and it brought back a lot of memories of when I got diagnosed with Huntington's disease. Alice's character reminded me a lot of myself before my diagnosis and it runs completely parallel with the journey God has been taking me on. This quote particularly made me smile:

"But on my bad days, I feel like I can’t find myself. I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of me and I can’t reach them and I don’t know who I am and I don’t know what I’m going to lose next"

I always used to define myself by my articulation and my intellect but God's been showing me more and more how that had just become another wall to my true self within. I thought it made me who I am but it just became a barrier to who I really was. 

Later on in the movie Alice makes a speech to the Alzheimer's society. She begins her speech by saying;

"The poet Elizabeth Bishoponce wrote: 'the Art of Losing isn't hard to master: so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.' I'm not a poet, I am a person living with Early Onset Alzheimer's, and as that person I find myself learning the art of losing every day".

Again I find it easy to relate to this as through this diagnosis in becoming broken God has been showing me to let go of so many things in my life. I am learning more and more there is beauty in brokenness. I didn't like being broken, I kept wanting to go back to the person I used to be. So I did everything I could to cover up the brokenness and hid all the cracks but God doesn't want that! He wants me as I am! So I find myself daily learning the art of letting go. It doesn't seem to make sense but in letting go I become whole. It is the complete opposite of what we are all trying to do.We think we are losing not gaining. We all want to advance, to progress, to move forward! 

“My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment!" 

This movie truly captured my heart and allowed me to see another part of myself that I had been longing for. Sometimes I fight so hard to forget about my diagnosis, other times I believe that I should be focusing entirely on being healed but in both ways I always feel like I am clinging on so tightly, either in shutting my eyes to it, or believing it will be gone entirely. Yet perhaps God wants something even greater than that for me- perhaps He wants me to let go... 

Fighting with anxiety...

It's become quite obvious to me now that it's time I wrote about the anxiety which has been plaguing me strongly since the end of last year. It is time to declare this anxiety as being very small which it hasn't felt like as I have quietly fought with it. Doesn't something always feel so much larger when it is kept within the walls of your inner world? Yet when we lead it out into the open, into the bright stark light we see it for the first time in it's true size- tiny!

This anxiety has been a stranglehold at times, choking the life from me. It came with a suddenness into my life but with time spent in counselling I have seen how deep the grain of the anxiety lies. It had been hovering under the surface of my life for many years just below my conscious. With it being tucked away and hidden from sight it might have surfaced a little sometimes but still not enough to make me aware of the destruction it would cause.

After a series of events in my life of difficult times, illness followed by a generational disease, culminated by 3 rounds of failed IVF and this year the tearing open of an old wound by the reemergence of my father in my life - all had a snowball effect upon the fear seeded in my heart. Suddenly fear broke through strong and hard, the surface was cracked and it was released.

Anxiety attacks began after the last failed IVF round and I entered this new year with a burden I didn't want to carry. I didn't want people to see me suffering with this anxiety and would hide it as much as I could trying to push it back into that secret place it came from but it would not go back into hiding! Soon my husband became aware of the anxiety and I caved in and told him all I had been feeling. A small part of me felt relief in releasing it from myself to another. This happened on Christmas Day last year and I started then on a whole new journey of now learning to live with this risen anxiety.

At times I sank into deep pits of despair and would feel so ashamed of the fear I was carrying. I found myself crying more often and my heart felt tender. Yet something became clearer with each attack a revelation would follow closely behind from God. The attack would bring such confusion and everything would feel completely foggy and unclear but usually straight afterwards a truth about myself would be revealed. Layer after layer was being peeled away and God was restoring light into my life. Every so often it would feel so dark but again and again God would shine through with the burning truth. He never left me, He was by side and walking through it with me. This process was painful but there was something in it, something more than what my eyes were seeing. God has been taking me on the journey of fear so it can be replaced, so it can be reinstated with Faith!

He is revealing more and more to me every day and my journey is taking shape and form as I see what true restoration really means! I have so much more that I could write but I breathe a sigh as I let go of the words onto the page...My heart feels lighter..

 I must thank all those dear friends who have been walking this journey with me.