…I walked out into the kitchen/livingroom just before to grab some coffee and Dad – who in his box of an office would not have been able to see me, calls out, ‘hi bec’.
It’s interesting to think that people know your step, your walk or something about you when you walk into a room.

It would a strange thing to be a parent. How would it be to watch your kids grow up – an external perspective (although I’m sure they’d miss a lot) on their life. Seeing them change, go off the rails, grow, watch their take on accepting the principles you’ve attempted to make base values, fall in love, get married, have their own kids. To see their birth, to see them x no. of years on.
To watch descisions affect circumstances. To wonder if you had failed or suceeded. To wonder if things got out of control one day and you never fully got back on track.
As much as I one day would love to be a parent, it’s a terrifying prospect, here you are completely responsible for a human being (:) excepting God)
How does single parenting work? You’d go out of your mind.

I understand a little more today of Monica’s fear. How do you respond to someone like that? I am as, no, more inexperienced than her. I can give her advice about getting a mentor, finding a young mum to talk to, discussing things through with her own, and prayer. But what else?

Looking at my own relationship with my parents… what would I rate it?
Good but not great. Not close, but not indifferent.

I have so much respect for my Dad and the Godly way I see him living, yet I don’t often hang out with him. Not as much as we used to. My excuse of doing the ‘boyish’ things, the enjoying computers, the building the occasional thing – I guess that was because I caught some of his enthusiasm. I’ve never thought of my stint of doing stuff like that as being an excuse to spend time with him. Subconsiously maybe.

We were out driving Hannah somewhere the other day when mum was away. I was getting driving practice. After dropping her off I mentioned something about grabbing some lunch (thinking a pie), He said no, not enough money. Then 5mins down the road made me stop at this restaurant thing on the side of the road. Lots in the Yarra Valley area. Gave him a surprised look, he did a ‘me’ thing… a ‘may as well’ shrugging off importance. Ha, pie or restaurant – which is cheaper? And so we had lunch. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that w/ Dad before. Not for years, not since he used to take us out individually to Macca’s for breakfast and that happened what? once.
It was strange really… I didn’t know what to feel, what I felt. Gratitude. It’s as if I’m not used to Dad showing love for any of us (bar mum) that way.
I got to talk to him about some gush stuff – it being, I guess, me realising it as a passion… it’s nice to have someone listen externally about stuff like that.

Weighing up Dad’s lunch, against Mum’s more frequent: stop by a cafe and love of coffee (which I have completely inherited)…

I don’t know. My relationship with Mum differs so much. I have had I guess a love/cant-stand relationship with her. I have been known in the past to get so unbelievely frustrated, to yell at her and her at me. Pinning the word ‘respect’ on Dad – I’ve not been able to do that with Mum, not as eaisly.
We spend more time together. 2003 – I would spend every Wednesday (in her picking me up from school to go to L. High for VET) with her at a cafe. It was important I think, in a slight attempt to regain some ground lost previously.
Of all people in my family, Mum is the one I still find hardest to get along with.
I go through stages of wondering what Dad sees in her :\ – how come she doesn’t frustrate him like she does me.
I understand reasonable, logical people. Mum is neither.
My attempts at passing over the fact that I am in disbelief at some of the conclusions she draws (in arguments)or just in her sometimes overprotectiveness aren’t always very sucessful. I should probably try harder.
She drives us everywhere.

What are my parents love languages…? Mum’s is most definitely quality time.

They’re doing a marriage enrichment course at the moment… Laura and I find the occasional thing that makes laugh about it 🙂 something this morning. You don’t everyday walk into your parents bathroom and find soemthing written on the mirror in lipstick. Before that and still, they use Saturday afternoons to do something specifically together (without us).
I want a marriage that works like that.

Talking about relationships w/ parents with people – I’ve found you get along better w/ the parent you are most like (yes probably generalising a little too much here).
Looking at myself and although I am more like dad characteristically I can see just as much of mum in me – the problem is, when I see those things they aren’t always qualities I like. Maybe I’m attune to look for the wrong things.

My Dad has incredible patience. Can say no. People look up to him. He has an awesome God relationship. I remember walking into their room one evening about 4 years ago, it was dark he was there praying. I remember finding something that he wrote before he was married… and how I still have that and how I want him to have it one day. I admire him.

My efforts fall short when looking at Mum. I wish I really really want to see more, to start picking out the good things in Mum. She’s a very generous person… I can get only so far and then I run out of stuff. I don’t want to. God, please show me.

I’ve been told your relationship with your parents improves when you move out.

No, I’m not one for being candidly honest and talking through stuff with Mum or Dad (I hardly do that with friends), I don’t know if that will happen and I don’t think it will for awhile. I think things could be better though.

What would it be like to watch me – from birth, to now, to then?

What does my ‘then’ look like?

my coffee is cold.

Why those things God, that change a perfectly OK day into one that just brings up stuff you thought you were kind of over? One tiny video clip of the view out of a plane window, crossing a coast – not even the same country and you’re sitting there will all those mixed feelings and an overwhelming sadness for what was.

You know you can’t share it, because there’d be no point, because people do not understand unless they have been in similar shoes. I had chosen to forget – or I had forgotten what it was like.

That Christmas day was a horrible ugly blur, that when looking back has been captured and plastered in your mind in a series of very rememberable slow motion scenes.

The stark memory of the day before you left. Sitting there looking across. Wanting, willing it to go away, wanting them to talk to you and knowing they wouldn’t know what to say. Just staring, thinking about everything and anything.

The night before – crying in the perfected art of silence.

The last touch and looking back out the window at your stupid lovely dogs.

The Christmas lunch, with the mock cheer, the bad chicken stuffing, the good American food.

Standing behind that computer… that last opportunity, wondering if to, and how to say goodbye, and thank you.

Walking down the MAF steps for the last time, remembering that they used to be crooked.

The drive to the airport, that felt so long and so short all at once.
The mountains on Guadacanal.
The Lunga river bridge.

The wait at the airport, the many photos, the hugs, the clinging that you tried to stand back from.

That awful moment when you couldn’t any longer hold back from crying… you held out longer than any one else.

Walking out the door and looking back one last time, trying desperately to capture their faces, picking out the few who meant so much.

That flight that you cannot remember except for the blurred crossing of the caost. The green and the blue. Saying good-bye to your home one last time, knowing that every little thing from there on would be so very different.

I feel a bit silly posting this, but we were looking at Song of Songs in Old Testament today (:P for once the class was interesting – and yes we did do other stuff!) and it reminded me of this song… The words are I’m pretty sure taken straight or almost out of Song of Songs.

Arise, my love, my lovely one come,
Winter is past and the rains are gone.
The flowers appear, it’s the season of song,
My beautiful one, arise and come with me.

Who is it that appears like the dawn?
As fair as the moon, as bright as the sun?
Show me your face, let me hear your voice.
My beautiful one, arise and come with me.

Set me like a seal on your heart,
For love is unyielding as the grave.
The flash of it is a jealous fire,
No flood can quench,
For love is as strong as death.

Arise my love and come with me
Before the dawn breaks and the shadows flee.
You ravished my heart with just one glance
My beautiful one, arise and come with me.

Do not arose or awaken love
Until it so desires.

Arise, my love, my lovely one come,
The Winter is past and the rains are gone.
The flowers appear, it’s season of song,
My beautiful one, arise and come with me.

I am my love’s, my beloved is mine.
Arise and come with me.

-Michael Card

Some of the responses when we were discussing it (Song of Songs) were interesting.
One girl J hadn’t ever realised what it was about and her surprise 😛
Sam(antha) has always taken the thing very allegorically or whatever you call that, of it being God and the church. Yes there are some elements of that. But what a beautiful picture of love. The celebration and perfection of love, sex etc… appropriate love. How real.

“When you drop a lot of the connotations, word’s like intimacy can only be described as heavily beautiful”

I’m floundering again, or maybe I’m just a little lost. I don’t know why I get this feeling. It’s different this time. I came to the conclusion sitting in class today that I don’t know myself any more and I can’t work out if that’s a good thing or not. Maybe it’s a case of knowing myself or beginning to understand myslef with a lot of walls that were previously there smashed. My inside is being rennovated… and I’m sitting here over analysing again.

God, I do wonder what you are trying to show me with all this worship stuff lately. It’s like you are holding a neon sign in front of my face but still cannot read the words. Help me to understand Gd if there are specifics adn this is not just the beginning of a progressive journey – which is probably better in the long run anyway. Or is this just another way of you showing me small stuff through my everyday?

I look at this ‘lesson’ so to speak and where it began…
My guess now i sthat it started before the worship conversation and with that week I took off music, what did I ask You then?… I asked you to teach me through the ‘silence’ and who me more of your greatness. From the week off you bought me a conversation, a day to reflect more on it with a sermon/words closely aligned. You had me go listen about ‘passion’ wiht Christine Caine and you gave me a CL class on worship of all things! Remarkable coincidences some might call it. I love seeing you work. But I dont’ understand.
Ha, thats right, another thing, you gave me that article.

Surprisingly it didn’t feel as if I got as much out of theis week’s Creative Living, maybe because I’ve been ‘primed’ and have been exploring the lingo so nothing hugely stood out. Should it matter if there are standout moments or not, probably not.

So things that did make half an impression: the wearing of a facade etc… is not worship. God doesn’t tolerate lies, worship is the same.
Jane came up with the word ‘conformity’ as a word thought of when hearing the concept ‘worship’. That is pretty much the most explicit way of describing so many services, hypey or not.

“If you cannot worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is not very likely that you were worshiping on Sunday” – Tozer

We listened to the ‘Hallelujah’ song by Jeff Bukley (the Shrek one) discussed it and determined that worship was giving your hallelujah’s to something/someone be it God or other.

Romans 12:1-2 and 1 Cor 10:31

God please work in me, help me to give my hallelujah’s only to you….
Be first.
Conformity as a lifestyle sucks.

…I wrote this earlier, and I don’t know whether or not, now to delve a little deeper into my mind or just let things be.

God, today has been so full, there’s so much I could think about, explore mer and learn so much from, but all I want to do is know that I am wholely and completely yours… to forget the intricracies of theologically and doctrinely correct nitpicking and to be with you. Be my safety. Everything in me just wants to say thank you… I could be as low as someone with their face pressed into the ground and never be able to praise you enough. thank you thank you thank you…

the fullness of my day from the following:

Church.
It stood out to me today, as we were light on ‘vocalists’ although we had a fair ammount of other music, and about 3/4 of the way through music stuff one of the other guys (not on the team for this week) got up and helped them out. I liked that, it’s funny but you don’t often see expressions of genuine kindness even in a church setting.
Sermon was on thankfulness.

My mind must have been well ahead of me, because looking at it now, my afternoon was not really that full. Aside from walking the dog and reading my ‘doctrine’ book (homework) I didn’t do a whole lot.

My mind has been further playing on the worship conversation I had with other person a week back – I think because it stemmed from a discussion based on the dissatisfaction of my church. Align with the whole ‘worship’/’passion’ thing has been me noticing the sincere lack of joy in most of the members of my church. I am not surprised to some extent, the general population being well, older. The whole matter or not being surprised is kind of disheartening.
Geoff said today, with the thankfulness stuff – why don’t we show it? What about smiling? Clapping? It’s OK to lift your hands. haha oh yes.
If I struggle watching the lack of ‘anything’ as an introverted ‘part of the congregation’, how much more does he go through trying to put a little genunine (yes I like that word) enthusiasm into the place?
I know God, you are working there, WPC has come a very long way from what it was a few years back, it’s been through a rough patch. I just find it incredibally difficult to keep making these mental excuses for it when I feel like we are drastically missing something.

When Jess called Laura this afternoon and said, do you and Bec want to come to ‘Generate’ to hear Christine Caine… my initial response was: no, not really – I’ve got stacks of other stuff to do tonight. I called Laura back about 2 minutes later and asked her what was being spoken about.
Ah the irony, ‘Passion’.
God you have a strange sense of humor.
I decided to go.

mm. so now. after thankfulness, wandering thoughts and an evening of passion :).
I am here.

Have I come to any more conclusions on me, where I stand as a ‘passionate person for God’? No. No further than to say, to be authentic is the most important thing.

“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.” -John 4:23 (MSG)

This has been affirmed over and over.

God, I went to tonight’s thing with the intention of exploring more of ‘worship’ and being ‘passionate’ for you. Help me to live out life concerned with the ‘whatever’s’. You put in me a greater desire to work for you in the things that I am involved in now.
I was encouraged for being right where I am.

My perpetual want for stretching myself a little bit further all the time has wound me back to the position of again remembering the importance of now. Do I ever learn?