"Stop dulling your roar"

For a few days now, I've been needing A Good Cry. I've been moody, I've been so grumpy even in the face of niceness, I've been short-tempered with colleagues and friends. I've been having Big Doubts, with capital letters, about a lot of things. And I've not been able to have the good cathartic sob I felt I needed.

And then I opened up My Clippings on my Kindle, and while listening to Crowder's Come as you are, I found 2 highlighted passages of Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist, and finally had a good cry.

 "The Kingdom of God will be better with your voice, your hands, your experiences, your stories, your truth. You can go where I cannot go, and someone needs to hear your song. You are someone's invitation. Rest in your God-breathed worth. Stop holding your breath, hiding your gifts, ducking your head, dulling your roar, distracting your soul, stilling your hands, quieting your voice and satiating your hunger with the lesser things of this world."

Yes. Stop dulling your roar.

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in in, under its roof."

Yes. Live inside that hope.


I currently have no idea how; but I know that everything will be okay.

Thank you, Sarah.

Resolve.

I realise I'm at least 7 days behind all the New Year's resolutions posts, but it's more that I've not made any of my aims or hopes for 2015 available to all to see.

This entry is where I change that.

In 2015, I would like to:

1. Waste less. Save more.
December 2014 was unexpectedly a very expensive month. Not because of Christmas - though that has made January 2015 a rather expensive month - but because on the 29th of November, the electrics in my car failed. The car thought its doors were open all the time, but they were locked, and so the car alarm kept going off. Also, it kept beeping at me whenever I dared to drive above 6 miles per hour. As it turns out, car alarms can't be deactivated entirely - as this would be too appealing for thieves, I imagine. So I had to replace my car's motherboard, basically. It was unfortunate, and I found out how much it cost at the end of a long week on a very long job, and promptly burst into tears. In front of, give or take, 5 work colleagues. Not my finest moment.

And yet once I got over the frustration at not knowing if my garage was taking me for a ride - or rather, once my sister shook some sense into me by reminding me to breathe and that, hey, sometimes stuff happens, and that I did have cash to pay for it - I relised that December needed to be a frugal month. I had a one-digit figure available to spend a day on food & drink.

However I am also incredibly fortunate in that I also had pretty full cupboards of staples. Things like flour, dried pasta, some couscous, dried chickpeas, lentils, and so on. I had just become used to not needing to cook every day from scratch, and realised how much I relied on making my store-bought lunch my main meal each day, or stopping at the store for fresh food each day to cook an evening meal.  I was wasting so much food.

I had to cook meals from scratch in December. I became very acquainted with Aldi (love it!). I ate a significant amount of lentils (dahl, soup, some form of baked thing) - much to my sister's chagrin. And it truly brought hom how much money I could save if only I actually cooked more, and it made me realise how much food I was wasting. Not on purpose, but say I bought a lettuce on the way home, it was not unusual for 1/4 of it at least to eventually go off. Or milk. Or whatever it was.

So, in 2015 I am aiming to waste less. More specifically, I aim to cook and pack lunch to take to work, at least 4 times a week. In the process, this will help me save more cash.

2. Run.
I injured myself this year. Not a running injury, but a my-body-giving-up-on-being-wonky-for-25-years injury. I've not been running in 4 months, since September 7th when I ran the Great North Run.

I loved that. Not just the environment and lovely weather; but the distance. I may be weird, but I really like running. I like listening to music and running off steam. There's nothing quite like the sound of thousands of pairs of feet pounding the road surface at the same time during a race. There's nothing like running mile sign posts, and mentally high-five-ing yourself. I like how I feel strong when I run. And, because clearly I'm very mature, I find myself, aged 25, thrilled at being able to picture myself turning around to my PE teacher from high school and going "HA! SEE! I AM NOT USELESS."

I've been feeling so much better from my injury. I am no longer taking strong pain killers during the day, though still having a bit of pain depending on what I've been doing. But when the physio discharged me at the start of December, I asked if a half marathon in April-ish seemed like a reasonable goal. When he said that physically there was no reason it wouldn't be, but to take it easy and see how I felt, I thought: Bring it on.

 I'm going to sign up for a 10k in March - the first one I ever ran, last year. I'd like to also run the 10 miler in Edinburgh which I did last year.  I've just signed up to the Leeds Half Marathon, on May 11th. And, importantly, I have also just signed up to run the Yorkshire Marathon on 11 October 2015. I have wanted to run a marathon, and have been talking about running a marathon, for years. I had entered the London Marathon ballot, and was disappointed to not get a place. I was about to sign up to run the Barcelona Marathon (which is in March) the 3 days before I hurt myself. By the time I even thought of getting on a treadmill, it was December, and 3 months is not enough time to go from zero to 26.2 miles. 10 months, on the other hand is.

And if 2015 is the year of Thriving; it's certainly the year to stop talking about goals, and to start achieving them.

3. Travel more.
Day trips at weekends. Weekend adventuring - pondering glamping with L and the dog at some point. Short visits to school friends who live all around the world. Try to get to the US to see my people that side of the world.

I am resolving to say yes to spending money on travel, because if you can't spend money on doing something you emjoy, to spend time with people you love; then what good is it anyway.

4. Other goals and hopes.
- Qualify. I am one exam and about 48 work days short of being a chartered accountant, and I intend on qualifying this year.
- Proactively church hunt. Keep track of the churches I go to, and reflect on what it is I don't like and do like about them. Stick around somewhere long enough to figure it out.
- Read more... So far I have read a book in 2015. This means I could feasibly do a one-book-a-week challenge, which would go hand in hand with...
- ... less screen time. I don't want to spend time on my phone or laptop when I am around other people (lunch, dinner, meeting up with people, etc.) Or in bed.

And that's pretty much it.

2015: bring it on!

What are your New Year's resolutions?

One Word 2015: Thrive

If 2012 was the year of "forward", 2013 was the year of "surrender", and 2014 was the year of "follow through".

2013 required letting go of things past in order to make way for the new. 2013 required letting go of my need to control when I would successfully move forward; letting go of my need to be in control; letting go of the carefully crafted image I was building about who I was.

2013 required surrendering to God and trusting that He was in control, that there was a plan for me. That I was allowed to stop trying so hard and just learn to follow the rythm of my life, no questions asked.

"There's a wave that's crashing over me

And all I can do is surrender -

Whatever you're doing inside of me

It feels like chaos, somehow there's peace.

It's hard to surrender to what I can't see;

But I'm giving in to something heavenly."

- 'Whatever you're doing', by Sanctus Real

 

 

In 2013, I went on a number of dates which left me deflated, feeling like there was no point in trying to meet new people. I'd meet someone nice, only to have them decide that it just "wasn't the right time for them". It was only when I stopped trying so hard that I got to meet L. It was only when I went on a date with no expectations, surrendering to the evening, that I got to know L. It was only in seeing one another again and again over the summer, just spending time together, enjoying getting to know one another, that we realised that it was a relationship we both wanted to let happen.

So 2013 was a good year, but it was not the year in which my carefully thought out goals for myself - of finding a Church; running a half-marathon; cooking more - were actually achieved. It took me surrendering to God to find myself. It took surrendering to God for me to end up on a path which would allow me to follow through with more specific goals.

 

Because 2014 was the year of follow-through. Of actually setting out and finding that my specific but unspoken goals from years past were being achieved. Of realising that, as I had been promised I would -  "Farther along, [you']ll know all about it / Farther along,  [you']'ll understand why" - 'Farther Along', by Josh Garrels - I was discovering where my journey was leading me, and what all the hassle of the years before had been about.

 

2014 involved adventures in cooking and in drinking wine and gin & tonics. 2014 involved some plane tickets, some train tickets, some long-distance driving, and a lot of regular driving. 2014 involved more exams, involved part-qualifying, involved sunshine, involved promotions. 2014 involved coaching new staff, involved becoming friends with colleagues, and unkowingly at the time, involved mentoring a junior and having him do well. 2014 involved running, one foot in front of the other. 2014 involved supporting some friends, and losing others. 2014 involved frugal months, and properly veggie months, and dry months because of training for races. 2014 involved learning to simply fall into step next to a partner in crime who builds me up, and having us meeting one another exactly where we are.

I trained for, and ran two 10 km races, a 10 mile race, and the Great North Run (a half-marathon with Mo Farah, who had finished the race before I'd even crossed the start line). And then I slipped a disc in my back by doing nothing, and have been out of action for 3 months. I will get my groove back. 

 

L and I made a point of seeking out some adventures to appease our itchy feet. We said yes to exploring, and ended up in Istanbul. We said yes to adventuring closer to home, and ended up on long drives across the UK and shorter drives to fields and hills and reservoirs and homecooked meals and walking the dog.

 

I spent a weekend in the north of France with a friend early in the year. I went back to the house I grew up in, where none of us live anymore, for a pre-Easter break. I spent a weekend in Edinburgh with my old housemate, and she cheered me on my first Long Race. Oxford, London, Brighton, Yorkshire, Derbyshire. A weekend in Paris with my big sister in September. 

 

I made time to see some friends more often, but also sadly lost touch with some. I cheered on family as they made important decisions in their lives, and moved [back] across countries and timezones to be where they were called to be. I met up with work colleagues outside of work, and saw them become friends.

 

I supervised some Big Jobs and was praised. I sat some more exams, so I only have one left. I was promoted at work.  I sat down with people at work and had hard, uncomfortable conversations. I took some sick leave after ending up on a morphine drip in A&E. Twice. I was involved in a specific job which required 43 to 55-hour-long weeks for a good 5 weeks in a row. I burst into tears at work again, when the electrics on my car failed and needed a more expensive repair than I had planned for, at the beginning of Advent, after 3 weeks of working 50 hour weeks, when my emotional reserves were low. I sat down with people at work and had thoroughly enjoyable conversations. 

 

I read more. I read some detective novels and I read some poetry and I bought more books than I needed (what's new, hey!). I read Karen Campbell's 'This is Where I am' and vowed to get myself back to Scotland for a bit. I read Lean In and resolved to 'Sit at the table' at work and in life more generally. I read Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist and felt a drive to Go out and do something about injustices that stir me and to, once and for all, find a church to call home.

 

And I realised that 2015 will be the year of putting these things into action; of continuing to show that I am resillient. 2015 will be the year to thrive, being exactly where I am meant to be.

 

So here's to 2015.

 

Here's to laughing out loud and drinking good wine and driving with the windows down with music on. Here's to buying the plane tickets that seem too expensive, because seeing the world is a gift. Here's to getting back on the treadmill and trusting that my back will have healed, that my leg will not hurt, that I will run again. So here's to signing up to more races, and showing up every day and doing the unsexy everyday work that is required to get you from A to B. Here's to phoning friends and family more frequently and telling them I love them. Here's to cooking more, to reading more, to turning off the screens and spending time with people around me. Here's to finding a church and to giving my time to the things that matter to me. Here's to new steps forward in my life. Here's to more travel, to qualifying and to moving house. Here's to sitting at the table, and to going out there, and to getting things done.

 

Here's to jumping into life with both feet, knowing there's someone there to hold hands with on the way down.

 

Here's to thriving.