Great Christian Diaries

2003-09-02 - 11.00pm  previous entry  next entry

Oooh, where did the weekend go?! And it's September already! Where did the summer go?!! Time is passing so fast lately, I'm sure it never used to go this fast. Still, that helps when we are trying for a baby though.

Well I have had a good weekend, and survived without my husband! He is on his way home as I speak - his mum phoned a little while ago to let me know :) But I think he'll be another 3 or 4 hours probably. It's a long way.

I have kept busy. On Friday I did a ton of laundry and some housework, and it was THE most beautiful day so I hung washing out on the line. I like doing that. Not much longer though, it feels like the season is changing to me, and there's never usually good weather for hanging washing out till spring from here on out! Still I like the change. It's cooler and fresher, which is nice. On Sunday I went to church, and I decided not to phone people and ask for a lift after all. Firstly I hate doing that, and secondly I thought it would be good for me to do something different. I could always ask someone to drop me home once I was actually at church if the journey was a pain. But it was great!! I got up at 8am and when I'd got ready and had breakfast, I walked to the bus stop. It being Sunday, I had half an hour to wait, so I walked half a mile to another bus route incase that one was sooner. It was, but only by 5 minutes! Oh well. Exercise is good for me, and the day was so beautiful. Sort of autumnal, but the sky was the bluest I've seen it for ages, and there were no clouds in the sky, and the sun shone so bright and clear. But the air was fresh and cool instead of hot and humid, it was so lovely. The perfect day for a walk!

So I got the bus!! I haven't done that for yeeears!!! By the time I learned to drive and a few years later when I got my own car, I was totally fed up of public transport! So I haven't used it since really. Well, except occasional trains and tubes into London, etc. But not buses. I particularly hated buses. But it was actually fun!! I felt like I should be getting the bus more often. It made me feel like I live in my little boxed-in house, and when I want to go somewhere I get in my little boxed-in car and drive from a few feet outside my little boxed-in house directly to the little boxed-in building that I want to get to, and then I do my thing there, and get back in my little boxed-in car and drive back to my little boxed-in house again. It felt soooo different to leave my little boxed-in house and walk in the open air for half an hour, and then get on a spacious double decker bus, full of other people and a sense of community somehow, and then get off the bus into another open space, and thank the driver (I always used to) which adds to the sense of connection with other people, and when I get off the bus there are still other people around me. And then I walked through the town centre (more people, more open spaces) for a fair way to my other bus, and I waited in more open space at a bus stop for 15 minutes, where the sun was getting hot enough to make me shed my sweater and close my eyes while it warmed my face, and then the bus arrived with more people in it, and took me to church, where I arrived feeling fresh and connected with the world instead of climbing out of my little boxed-in car ten minutes after I climbed into it at my little boxed-in house.

So I like the bus now! And I might give it a go more often and not take Neil to work sometimes, but let him take the car instead.

Church was good. I did the kids' work by myself, but there wasn't much to do since it was the last week of the August Family Sundays, and most of the kids were on the bouncy castle and stuff so I didn't have to do much of my bit. The service was great and we sang the Run the Race song, or rather jumped and gasped the Run the Race song!! I love that song, it was so much fun. And we sang Great Big God. The kids are so enthusiastic about our action songs - lots of them rush up to the front to do the actions for everyone to follow, it's the sweetest thing. The ones that run to the front are all aged between 5 and 7, and they look so so so cute up there with their faces lit up and their eyes shining, lisping the words through the gaps where they've lost baby teeth and doing the actions so energetically! :) I love our kids.

We had our final puppet show and learned more about Peter and how Jesus changed his life. The August family services have been excellent I think. We never did anything like it before, but I think it's been a great success. I think I'll miss it! But it will be good to get back to the kids going out to Sunday school and learning about living for God for the adults. In the past, yeeears ago, I would have been missing the "adult" worship by now, and maybe tiring of all these kids' action songs, but you know what? If the song is about God and it's praising him for stuff, that's all I need to worship him. My heart leaps for joy at the words we sing and the actions just give me a chance to worship him with my body as well. Sometimes we have been singing quieter worship songs as well, but not so many, so it will be nice to sing those again. But kids' songs do not restrict me from worshipping God. I once read/heard someone say they wished their church did fewer kids' action songs in the worship time because they wanted to be able to worship God more intimately. I guess I can see there is great great intimacy sometimes when there's a quiet heartfelt song without children making a noise around you. But worship is what's in the heart, and I find that I feel just as close to God sometimes jumping about and praising him with our whole church family present, as when the children are ushered away and the music gets slower. God is delighted with his people dancing before him, it says so in the Bible. And he loves children, and he loves family. I used to feel that way myself when I was a fairly new Christian, because the kids distracted me and I had just discovered the amazing times to be had worshipping God in those quiet beautiful songs. I don't know why it's changed. Maybe I don't need the worship to be a certain way to "woo" me into getting close to God. Maybe I just love him so much that lots of things make me feel close to him. Maybe being ill and getting healed has made the difference. I don't know. I did learn a year or two ago that if I do not feel like praising God I need to do it anyway. I used to just go with the feeling. But it's never about feelings. Not where God is concerned. You just praise him because he's worthy of it. Once I figured that, I started practising it when I felt far from God. I used to feel all guilty and hypocritical, like I shouldn't be praising him or singing this song if it wasn't all full of lovey feelings. But then someone wise told me that was one of Satan's finest lies, used frequently on believers to stop them worshipping God and to encourage them to rely on their feelings and stay in that viscious circle. So haha (!!) I stopped listening to that.

Basically if you are singing the words and you believe what you are singing about God is true, then what do the feelings matter? Just sing the words because they're true. That's a declaration, and it's made even more powerful by the fact that you're declaring his glory even when you feel far from him. Oh yeah! So now I am used to worshipping God just because, and if I have a ton of amazing feelings while I do so then it's even more wonderful - and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't - but I worship God because he's worthy of it, and because I want to give him glory, and that has made me free to take any song that declares great things about him and worship with it. Even bouncy action songs. Which I love anyway because you can't do those when you're sick with M.E. And now I can!

Ahhhh I don't know where all this came from!! But oh well, it's written now so there we go! I'll just carry on! :)

So church was good! I did more kids' work outside after the service, and I got a little bit burnt in the sun :( Just a tiny bit though, but I was not pleased with myself for not taking more care. It was so fresh and delicious outside that I didn't think so much about the sun as when it was hot and summery over the last couple of months. They had a giant Jenga game with enormous blocks of wood, and nobody was playing with that and there were no kids at my "stall" so I sat down on the grass and started building the blocks into a tower. I just like that kind of thing! :) I built them up and up, and chose a way of laying them so that the tower would be pretty strong to go quite high. But it was really really strong!! I had to stand on a chair to keep building it up because it was still standing above my height! By then the kids were all interested and wanted to watch, so when I couldn't reach any higher, I got Andrew to finish it off, because he's over 6ft tall. But even he had to stand on a chair, and then a table which we pulled over, to lay the last two blocks on the top!!! It was so cool, the kids were jumping about with excitement and I was all proud of my tower! :) Hehe! The kids wanted to pull a block out of the middle and watch it fall, so we cleared everyone out of the way and spent a while deciding which block to pull to make it fall in the cleared space. I stood back with some of the kids and Andrew pulled the block out. As it fell, I was kind of horribly reminded of September 11th all of a sudden, which wasn't nice. I guess the tower was similar in proportions, and when the block got pulled out, it literally just came down on top of itself so fast, not over to one side like we'd expected. The top just folded on the broken part and then the whole thing crashed directly downwards. It made me feel weird, for the couple of seconds it took to watch it fall. Urgh. I hadn't expected to see any similarities, but it was just as it started to fall that this horrible feeling started. Hmmm.

But anyway, the children didn't seem to notice, they were jumping with glee and picking up the blocks to try again. I didn't see their second attempt because I left to go home after that. I had decided that the journey to church was so nice that I would make my own way home as well. Instead of getting two buses, I put my rucksack on my back and walked a mile down the bus route to Sainsbury's, where I bought a few things I needed for meals until Neil got home. Just veg and bread and stuff like that. And then I walked into town and got the bus home. I was tired by the time I got home! But I felt like it had been a really productive day, and that was nice!

Yesterday (Monday) I started getting itchy to clean things again, which has been an on-and-off problem (!!) for a while now! So I cleaned the oven, and just to give you an idea, the oven was absolutely disgusting when we moved here nearly 2 years ago, and - oh the shame!! - I've never actually cleaned it!!! I know, I'm disgusting. But it was so horrible, I didn't want to tackle it (though strangely I was happy enough to cook in it?!?!). So yesterday I spread newspaper on the floor, got the "highly damaging to skin and eyes" oven cleaner out, and foamed the inside of the oven all over! I left it for 2 hours like it said on the can, and in the meantime I had a go at the oven racks. These are silver stainless steel, but honestly they have been brown and black ALL OVER and sticky since we arrived. How revolting is that?!! We've never cooked on them, we use oven trays that ARE clean instead!

So I used Power Kitchen, Jif (oh whoops sorry, CIF - can never get used to that name change!), all sorts of stuff. I got out the heavy duty scourers and the rubber gloves, and it was soooo bad that by the time the oven was ready to rinse (ie. 2 hours later!!), I had only succeeded in cleaning the middle bars on both racks, and my wrists and shoulders were absolutely killing me. My arm muscles must be in fairly good condition now because they were just tired and sore, but my joints were really cross with me! :) So I rinsed the racks and that's as clean as they're going to be for now, until I let my joints recover and give it a second go. But the bars I've finished are soooo shiny and silver!! :) Then I rinsed the oven, which was so utterly disgusting, but wow, if you have a scummy oven use Mr. Muscle Oven Cleaner!!! It works amazingly. I just wiped and allllll this scum came off the oven, just from a wipe! The only thing was it took forever to rinse off and ventilate adequately, because the oven kept on smelling of cleaner till I'd put the fan oven on and rinsed and put the fan oven on and rinsed and put the fan oven on and rinsed and - you get the picture! But I think our oven was so yucky that I'll need to clean it again before it's like new. The scum is gone, but there are still some bits that won't scour off, so I'll do it again sometime when I can face it!

Today I want to clean the windows but I'm not gonna. I would also really like to scrub the glass front on the oven and get the mould off some tiles behind the sink. Doesn't this sound like my home should be flagged to Social Services?!! It's mostly clean, honestly! Just the scummy bits in the odd corner that have been overlooked, that's all. I just really want to cleeean!!! But I can't because I am doing something this afternoon. Judith promised one of the girls who came to camp last year that she'd take her out one day in the school holidays because she couldn't come to camp this year and she was so disappointed. She suggested ice-skating because this girl really likes skating, and she phoned me to ask if I'd go along too. But the school holidays finish TOMORROW (!!!) so we are getting in there at the last minute and taking this girl and another one from this year's camp to the ice rink this afternoon!! Yay!! I haven't been skating for ages! Judith isn't well enough to skate but she says she is up to driving us there and back, so I'm gonna skate with the girls, which is fine by me. One of them has never skated and is all nervous, so I will hang onto her and maybe teach her how to skate if she will let me. I've got to find my skates! Oh but I think I know where they might be. I hope! So that will be fun.

I have been taking care of myself really well while Neil has been away. I am eating well and sleeping well so that's great. I even cooked myself salmon in a white wine sauce (!!!) with pasta and veg on Sunday evening, and I cosied down on the sofa and watched Three Men and a Baby, which is one of my favourite feel-good movies. Last night I had pizza (from Sainsbury's) and salad and I watched Three Men and a Little Lady :) Except I got too sleepy so I went to bed half way through the movie. But I've seen it a million times anyway.

Early on Saturday morning it was all chilly in the house and the air was fresh and cool outside, so guess what I did?!!!! I put the heating on!!!!! First time since April or May I think!! A sure sign that summer is over. Which is fine by me because I love cold weather! The heating only went on for five minutes, just to take the chill off the air, but still it was on! It poured with rain on Friday which was lovely. I am waiting for the trees to turn pretty colours, but I don't see any changes just yet. I love autumn. Except for the viruses and bugs. But I do not have a phobia of being sick anymore. It's my new thing - I am declaring that all the time so that I'm not talking myself into still being afraid. If I tell myself I have a fear then what chance do I have of NOT having it?! So I'm doing the opposite, and praying a lot about it. And God is giving me a much greater freedom from the fears I've always had than I'd expected actually! So pah, what does flu season matter?!! Hmmm. But I still don't want to get anything. Except I want to be pregnant!!!!!! And if I have to be morning sick, I'll just have to be morning sick. Anything for the reward at the end of the race.

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