Great Christian Diaries

2003-08-26 - 9.08pm  previous entry  next entry

I'm back again, but probably not for long, as I'm just waiting for my mother-in-law to arrive. Neil's brother Ian is driving her down from Yorkshire, and they are due here at 2ish. It's 2.06 now, so I will probably have to stop at any moment when they arrive, but the house is tidy and vacuumed, her bed is made, the dishes are washed, the bathroom is clean, I am all ready and I have nothing else to do that won't mess up my house!! So here I am. The computer is in her room so I might not get the chance to update my diary for the next few days. It depends what we do.

It's a bit weird because even though I love my MIL and get on with her really well, I do feel a bit odd that Neil is at work until 6 and I feel a bit awkward about how to occupy us until he gets home! Also she is staying till Friday and Neil is working of course, so I am not crazy about the idea of all that time without anything in particular to actually DO. She says I should carry on as I normally would, and that she'll read or busy herself, or whatever, but it still feels kind of strange! I think it will be fine though. Neil has taken compassionate leave from work from this Friday through to next Tuesday, and he is taking his mum home on Friday, and staying up there until Tuesday. We have a mortgage person coming round on Tuesday afternoon because we want to change our mortgage, so he needs to be back for that. But his dad is really not good, and he is confused most of the time now. He is on high dose tranquilisers (sp?!) as well as his normal meds. So Neil wants to take advantage of the compassionate leave incase his dad isn't around by Christmas (when we are next planning to visit).

Oooh, a car.... Nope it's not them. Anyway, we keep thinking his dad is so ill that he won't live till the end of the year, and every year he's still here! But his quality of life is so poor now :(

Anyway, I wanted to write more about camp, so I'll get started and see how much I get written!

We are pretty much recovered now. I took a four-hour nap yesterday after we did the kids' work at church in the morning! I was so tired, but I think I have caught up now because I couldn't sleep in very long in the morning today. Church was good but I felt strangely detached and like it was a really hard effort to focus on God, which was a bit naff. Sometimes I think walking with God is like putting one foot in front of the other, or else you just stand still. Other times the wind seems to blow you and you can't stop if you try, which is wonderful! :)

On Friday night the girls were meant to have a "beach feast" instead of the traditional midnight feast in their dorms. They had painted glass jars with glass paints that afternoon, and they each had a candle inside. We had been shopping for the great hoardes of sweets for them to eat, and we were all set to go down to the beach once it was dark, and take the lanterns and the guitar and the little mini barbeque thingies for roasting marshmallows. But it rained. The first time in the whole week, it rained. So it had to be called off, and the girls were so disappointed. I can't say the leaders were too disappointed, because I think it would have been hard work keeping them out of the sea, which would have been necessary to avoid late night showers and sandy carpets and generally hyped up children well into the night!! So we hooked up a sort of makeshift tent outside in the garden, and put chairs under it and they huddled under there overdosing on sugar and chatting and giggling, and they even had toasted marshmallows as well because Mike managed to keep the mini barbeque alight for long enough! So it wasn't all bad. We let them stay up as long as they wanted to really, but many of them chose to go to bed by 11pm. They are always tired out by the end of camp.

Sandy and I were sitting in the big lounge which was our main room where we had our meetings all week. The lights were out and she was playing a worship CD that she had brought with her, and we just sat and chatted in the dark while we listened to the music, it was so lovely. Some kids came in to play with the puppets after a while, and one or two of them cuddled up with us to listen to our conversation which was great, because we were talking about Jesus and the things he's done in our lives. Outside, the feast got wetter and wetter, so they moved into the dining area and played Chinese whispers and stuff like that. Some of the kids wandered in and out of the lounge where we were, but mostly they stayed in the other room.

I don't know if it was the setting or what, but I became absolutely desperate to worship God, I mean like when you need the loo reeeeally badly (!!!) and you can't ignore it at all. Sandy and I were talking about last year, and how the leaders had spent more time in the evenings praying and worshipping God, but this year we hadn't done that at all. This year we had been praying for a little while every evening once the kids were in bed, but Sandy and I usually had to miss it or leave halfway through to quiet our dorms down. But I didn't want to pray, I wanted to WORSHIP. Big time. Sandy said maybe we could have a worship time that night, and I'm soooo glad she said it because then I told her how desperate I felt to do that. I asked if we could do it right now! Sandy was so excited that I was so excited to worship God!! :) So Neil came over and Sandy got two of the other leaders (the others had gone to bed already) - John who played the guitar, and Barbara who was looking pretty ready for bed. We told the kids that the leaders were going to have their own time of worship, because we wanted to worship God, and that they were welcome to stay if they wanted, but that we would be doing our own thing for a while so please could they not interrupt us for a bit. Three of the girls chose to stay in the room.

Oooh they're here - I have to go. Back soon to post this, I hope!! :)

*****

Okay I'm back - I should have posted this when I wrote it, because it's six hours later now, but oh well, I didn't have time because my MIL rang the doorbell and I had to go. It was great to see Ian, I haven't seen him for ages! I like spending time with Neil's brother and sisters because I find it so much fun to see his mannerisms in other people! I guess I just love him loads :) Ian and Neil don't look that much alike, but some of their expressions are the same. I love things like this. I love Neil, basically. He looks like his mum though. It's lovely to have her here - I'm surprised how much I love having here here after being a bit nervy about it! She took a nap after the long journey and Ian left after a short while, and then we had a lovely long chat about allll sorts of stuff. Babies. I showed her my large collection of nappies and baby clothes and all that stuff. She loved seeing it all. I got to hear endless stories of Neil when he was a baby, and I love that kind of thing. Then we also talked about God, which always happens when I speak to her because of how God-focused she is. I LOVE that I have Christian family members. I am the only Christian in my family, and that has been really really hard at times. Most of the time actually. But then Neil's family is all Christian - charismatic, lively, whatever you call it. Like me. I love that. It's so refreshing to talk to someone in the family about Jesus and to be so excited and expectant about God's goodness with them. Wow I love God so much.

Anyway, but I really want to carry on writing about that last night of camp, where we had some worship time for the leaders. Neil didn't stay long because he wanted to supervise the girls out in the dining area a bit. Judith and Mike had gone to bed. So it was just me, Sandy, Barbara and John. John played the guitar, but sometimes we sang to a worship CD, and sometimes we just sang without any accompaniment.

I was so so so so desperate to worship God. I know I said that already, but it's like I couldn't bear not to, I was so impatient, hehe!! I feel like that tonight and I have no idea why. I can't concentrate on anything else, but I have no space to myself to just let rip and praise my God. Usually in the past if I felt like this I would have space to myself in the house or else I'd go out in the car and sing with all the strength I had, and cry if I wanted to and laugh if I wanted to. It feels like pressure in my spirit and I can't get comfy without praising God. I love love love to feel this way, but it's been a long time, other than that last night of camp.

Anyway, back to that night! It was so awesome. There were no lights on, but I could make out the silhouettes of the three girls sitting over at the side of the room. I knew they were watching us but for some reason I had no distractions at all, not even that. Oh we sang and we sang, and sometimes I couldn't sing because my throat squeezed up for joy like it does sometimes, and then sometimes their voices faded away and it was only me singing and I sang loud and free and didn't care, because I was singing to my God - the King of kings - and nothing else mattered in the world at that moment. My arms went up and up and my hands stretched out to God, just because it was the only way I could physically express how much I longed to give to him and be close to him. We were silent sometimes between songs, or else we prayed aloud to tell God how wonderful he is. It was just exactly what my soul had longed for. After a long time the girls went up to bed, one by one. They did linger though, which was nice. And John went up too, and Barbara, Sandy and I knelt together on the carpet and just absolutely basked in God's presence. It was so so amazing. I have missed that kind of worship and that kind of closeness to God so much. I don't know where it went, why it's been so long. I felt inside like I was building up for a sneeze, only spiritually, not physically, if that makes any sense?!! That's the best way I could explain it. I felt like I wanted to sneeze and that I didn't want the feeling to die down. So I told Barbara and Sandy that I felt that way, and they immediately wanted to pray for me. Barbara laid her hands on me and they prayed that God would bless me. Ohhhh nothing in the whole world, in the whole universe, is as wonderful as God! I felt like the lightest, tickliest joy you can ever feel was tugging at my ribcage, which I haven't felt since last camp, or when I got healed on November 10th 2001. I always seem to try to hold the feeling in when that happens, maybe because it doesn't seem dignified (?!!) or something. But who cares about being dignified before God?!! He doesn't. So I let go, and I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed until I could not breathe and my chest quivered, and all of me was shaking with the effort of laughing so much! After a while I realised both Sandy and Barbara were laughing with me, and it was just the most fun to feel that light and free and full of joy. Every time I stopped and thought the feeling had gone, it just came back over me a couple of seconds later, and I was just absolutely incapacitated!

After a while, Sandy and I knew we had to check our girls, so we went up and made sure they got ready for bed and had lights out, etc. Then we went back downstairs and drank camomile and spearmint tea, and talked and laughed some more. It was the best feeling ever. I just felt so happy and so excited about God and about life, and so wonderful inside. At 1am it was kind of getting too late to be up (!!) so we headed upstairs. As we left the kitchen I said, "Sandy, I love you" because I just did. I felt overwhelmed with more love for any of the people at camp, leaders and kids, than I ever knew I could feel. It was too much bubbling up under the surface for me not to shout it out. So I told Sandy I loved her, and she gave me a huge hug and said she loved me too. Ahhh, I was walking on air!! :) God is so good! Right after that, she took both my hands and looked me right in the face, and she said, "I don't want you to be too anxious about this baby thing." I had told her a few weeks before camp that we are trying for a baby, because she had asked if we were expecting - for some reason she had felt that we were trying. But I don't know why she thought I was stressing about it. But I have been, and I told her so. She said she just knew, and that she has been praying for me about it for the last few months. Wow. She said if God wants to bless us with a child then he will bless us with a child. And it's that simple. I mean, really, I couldn't possibly have taken that on board a month ago, but right at that moment it seemed all good and perfectly simple. If he wants to bless us this month, he will. And if not, then later. Or maybe not. But if not, there will be something more amazing than we can fathom in the pipeline for us, because I know that God plans to prosper us and not to harm us, and he plans to give us a hope and a future. That's from Jeremiah I think. I haven't got time to look it up, though I know it's written in the back of my Bible. Neil is serving dinner while I do this, so I have to round things up now.

So yeah, Sandy said she really knows how I feel, and I know she does, since she was never able to have children. It really meant a lot to me that she said that.

We went upstairs and got the gigglest most terribly whilst cleaning our teeth in the bathroom. That is a really bad time to get the giggles, but everything was funny, I mean everything, even things that aren't funny. The fact that we were practically choking on our toothbrushes and covering the place with foamy toothpaste made everything much more hysterical than it would have been I think!! We doubled up on the floor - honestly, I am not kidding, it was that bad! - for five minutes at least, and I cried with laughter till I had tears mixing with toothpaste on my chin, hehehe! Oh it was so great to laugh like that. I love to laugh. I love God. I love Sandy. I love camp. I love my life.

I feel absolutely longing for a time of worship and love like that again. Ahhhhh, it was so good.

God is so great. That's pretty much all that's left to say. Camp was amazing, and I learnt so much and got stretched a lot, and was blessed by God hugely. My relationship with the other leaders got stronger and closer, and I am just so happy and full of love for God right now.

But I have to go, because dinner is ready! I'll write again soon though (and get round to checking my emails!!!). xxx

Recent entries.....

Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24
Update - 5th Anniversary and other stuff! - 2004-08-16
Church picnic and being happy and things :) - 2004-06-27
Barbeque at Cameron's house... - 2004-05-18
To Tara... - 2004-04-19