And yesterday’s topic comes up today. I should be starting to know you’ll do that God. Why don’t we expect these things? CL was a blur most of today, but Intro to C. Belief – that’s where things hit home… its usually the other way around.

Rowan read Eustaces dragon story from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (CS Lewis). About the dragon scales been peeled away. His attempt to do taht own his own. We were looking at salvation and R drew a diagram that just made a heap of sense. At first it was just one U moving from creation>fall/birth to sin>exile>death>Jesus>life>salvation/forgiveness> etc… > new creation. Anyway, in further exploring sanctification the U became U with lots of smaller U’s. The small U’s being areas where we have maybe been through stuff before, but haven’t quite got a reality yet of what it means. It hit home taht this is what’s happening. My arrow is labelled ‘past’ although I dont really know why. However, this is part of santification, part of the process and for that I am thankful.
Funny how the obvious things haven’t been lately, and the smaller things so blatantly clear.

1 Cor 1:18 … we are continually being saved. As Eustaces dragon scales hurt when they were ripped from his body, it’s not a painless process. It needs to happen.

I am being saved
And my hope is in my creator who is working in me
To renew me over and over.
Tirelessly he walks with me through the valleys
And will be with me until his purpose for me is complete
And I am made full and fully known.
Even then he will always be,
My strength, my hope, my God.

God I’m stuck in this rut again. I get busy, stressed, my mind is working overtime trying to compensate. It’s so good God to see this stuff, to be shown heaps. Please, I need the environment for it to sink in.
This is life God. Its so rushed. What happened to be still and know God? Is seeing this awesome work part of taht? I wish God – and I want to know more o fyou. I’m being pulled sideways from both directions. I don’t understand! I don’t even know why I’m continually frustrated with myself.
I’m overstepping, overthinking. God I need more of you. Help me to stop. So much God, its as if I only get the slightest taste before I’m pressed an pulled to the next thing. It would be nice if more made sense. What doesn’t feel right? Take this hurry God, let your voice of truth speak into my life, help me to stop demanding results, plans, goald, you know what’s best for me. Make knowing that a firm reality in my life.

“O my strength, I sing praise to you; you O God are my fortress, my loving God.” Ps 59:17

‘still you hear me when I’m calling… you told me who I am. I am yours’ – Casting Crowns

Ah God, where is the hope when the frustration knocks boldly at the front door – why are the good things compressed into this tight place in my mind? When I sit to think the strugges express themselves inelequoently and flood my mind. Its a viscious cycle. Why does the frustratedness feel stronger than the peace, the joy – because that is there it just battles to show it’s face. Help me Lord to hold on tight to that joy, take captive my every thought. Help me not to get bogged down in attempting to sort out my own problmes, to complete task after tast, to slow the busy. I only need you.

forgive me God. You slipped to second place again. Keep first.

looking back… Romans 8:20-21, frustration is a good thing to push us forward.

God, has it taken four years? Is that why this is all coming up again? How much things have changed. I look back on the photos of when the Carters visited – I remember how chewed up I was inside. I can see it through my face. How confused I was. I wanted to shut out the world and was grasping desperately at the moment. What – how much did it show? How I want to go back and do some things differently.
Am I so fixated in the past still? I look at me now – how much more have you done.

I have that one thing to be thankful for – that he saw the potential no one else saw – somehow, and it gave me hope.

Would I still be the same old me otherwise?
So maybe you’re showing me again how to let things lie in their rightful place. To not force them to a backburner, or feel horrible thinking I have to forget. Those chapters of my life need to close. To be visible but not stirred. God, experience should be that shouldn’t it? The past, the past?

In hindsight, I guess leaving – You chose the right moment for me.
Why can I remember things like that so clearly – remember feeling?
I don’t know why I”m remembering all this stuff. What am I still holding on to?

Tradition girl, set in ways, holding too tightly, missing the now.

Fix me Lord, Piece me back together, a newer design not the same old same old.

Create in me a pure heart God and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

I understand.
I wish this wasn’t happening – is this a step towards complete?
What did I distort along the way?
Part of the road to better?
This is going back and cleaning the mess, dealing with it is what I’ve tried to do before, that and ignore it.
You want it.
Have it.
Your way is better.

“Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter avid dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.”
-A. W Tozer (The Pursuit of Godliness)

Went to the Mellows for tea tonight, Uncle James was there.

Explaining SITAG to people… usually I don’t try, they don’t ask. Strange having something so central to your life and so different from everyone else.

SITAG – Solomon Islands Translation Advisory Group
my family
my friends
my home

The adults become your Uncles and Aunts – hence Uncle James, Uncle Greg, Aunt(y) Heather. Familiarity, second families, friends all in one.

Worth saying something about the Mellows, didn’t just know them through the Solmons, we grew up with them. We have photos of Laura, Emily and I with Phillip when he was about 3.

Greg, Heather, Phillip (17 this year), and the twins – Leon and Kevin (15 this year)

It’s so unbelieveably nice to walk into somewhere – even if you haven’t seen them for ages and be so completely at ease. It’s as if I know how to have fun with them which sounds awkwardly strange even to my ears.

The twins… it’s as if they never change. Well they do – hearing Leon’s voice at the breaking stage 🙂 Full of questions as always.
Phillip’s changed. I’ve always got along w/ Phil really well. It’s like there’s this unknown, nonspecific understanding b/w us. I really would one day like to sit down and have a decent conv. with him. Funny guy, but he’s got a serious side – I’ve seen it.

We got to talking a bit about the Solomons. Not a lot. Just how we could all sit around every afternoon for months on end, playing cards in the ERC, or building mud houses in Cliffside and not get bored.
The Carters, the Mellows, Us, Nathan Lee, all the others who were in town.

Small things that set you apart… Blair (em’s friend who was w/ us) said something about Celebrities, some game. I’m, “I don’t know enough” and I had agreeance from Phillip in that he didn’t either.
What’s not important being an MK.

Talking round the dinner table. Em and her friend Blair were going to see a movie – mum to the shops. I thought briefly of what I wrote/was thinking about earlier and decided to go along.
Was sitting in the car and mum said something that seemed really, I mean really uncharacteristic – ‘oh good, I haven’t done anything with you for ages’ – mental jaw drop.

Anyway, despite the normal shopping thing, coffee at Gloria Jeans. I did finally manage to do something I’d been a very hesitant to do before, what I’ve been delaying on for months. What I’ve been told I should, and know I should talk to them about… and while wandering through the toy aisle in Kmart let her know about the whole Mon situation, impersonalising it as I knew I would, but probably not as much as if I’d tried.

I was thinking of that thing this morning of that stupid little adage: ‘do one thing a day that scares you’.
well that was it.

Let me add kind to the list of stuff about Mum.

woah. I just realised… a few weeks back I asked God to start showing me the things (small things) he does everyday, no wonder things have been blaring obvious lately.
🙂 I think he’s amusing himself with my life and frankly I don’t mind one bit.