Married life.

My last post feels so different life from how I feel now. Obviously I don't blog enough!

Well... I'm married now and honestly I've never felt so full of life. My beautiful new wife and I live in a HUGE house and our rhythm of life is still being developed. It's very exciting and we're still adjusting to each other and our pattern of work rest and play. I think the best thing is that it still feels like a sleepover every night! haha... a bit silly and I know one day the novelty will wear off but at the moment I'm thoroughly enjoying hanging out with my new wife and enjoying her company. One surprising aspect of living in our own place is the amount of cleaning and chores I'm happy to do! I water the plants everyday and everything!! I guess it comes with the sense of belonging and ownership that comes with starting a new family and owning a space of our own.

The wedding day went beautifully. I can't thank the in laws enough for providing such a sweet venue and giving us the space and scope to make it our own. They were brilliant and everyone had a brilliant time :) If you didn't already know our wedding service took place in the local church and then the reception followed in a marquee at Ruth's parent's garden. I think a highlight was "play time" in-between the reception meal and evening do where everyone just sat around the grounds, played cricket, badminton, "Kubbs" or just had a good catch up. The next day Ruth and I spent almost the whole 9 hours in the car on the way down to Cornwall just looking back on the day, looking back on how we felt, laughing at friends and sharing stories. It was a good drive.

The honeymoon was beautiful as well! We played with a feral kitten, bought a "chocolate- mint" plant, ate lots of seafood, checked out King Arthur's pad, hung out in our pretty little cottage, drove and drove and drove and took lots of pictures!

Lately I've developed a keen interest in golf and sea fishing. Signs of old age are already creeping up and I've just gotten married!! If all goes to plan by our one year anniversary I'll be wearing corduroy, growing a beard, smoking a pipe, eating high tea, talking about the news and developing an interest in birdwatching or gardening... I've noticed in my conversation with friends or friend (Kenny) that we talk about the most trivial things but find then thoroughly interesting, sunken boats in Sweden and the like. I find it interesting though (well I would do I feel as if I'm getting more boring by the minute) that I'm leaving my rebellious and wayward nature behind and adopting a more sensible more grounded outlook on life. I remember as a teenager I was often a rebel without a cause, I just fancied saying no and deliberately doing things differently and did what I wanted to do. I no longer feel the need to buck against the trend or go out of my way to define myself as an individual. I guess I'm continually re-realizing how there is so much more to my life than just myself and that's immense. To live for more than just me, to live for more than my own amusement and entertainment is so fulfilling. Like I said in the beginning of this blog I feel full of life. In giving all of me away on the 23rd of July I gained infinitely more. Strange sort of economics that isn't it? I started this particular blog without an agenda, or a message as such but I guess I'd like to leave it here. I'd like to leave this blog recognizing that I'm full of life because in my marriage with Ruth I'm free to give myself completely away without reservation, to live for someone else which is so much more than... anything that I can think of.

Shifts.

The past few months have been difficult in work. I've been finding it near impossible to achieve a breakthrough in the lives of the three girls I now work with. When I say breakthrough I mean breakthrough in my relationship with them. Every shift I go on seems no different from the last and I can really see my patience wearing thin and their patience wearing thin with me. But in some crazy, upside down way I'm grateful because I'm beginning to see in myself where I lack character. I'm pushed so far out of my comfort zone and challenged that I feel like my weaknesses and insecurities are exposed. I'm impatient, selfish, irresponsible, cowardly, TOO laid back, and pretty terrible at teaching. The imagery might seem a touch extreme but sometimes I look back at my shift and think... bloody hell... I've just walked through fire. This past week alone I've been kicked, shouted at, made to feel 3 millimeters tall, told I'm a "perv", had febreeze-y stuff sprayed in my eyes, threatened by a boy racer as he headbutt the window and tried to get into the car to beat me up, and was kept up til 3.30am because one of the girls decided to listen to "Sister" by Goldie Looking Chain. I wonder if it's just me that the girls bully and abuse but I can see all the staff struggling and I've realized that even if you've worked there for years and invested in the kids you can get a rough time. The girls can sometimes make you feel as bad as they do. They hold onto their insecurities and brokenness as a part of themselves, it's a part of their identity. The chaos that they've grown up in, experienced and known is taken wherever they go and to go in their home, tell them that the world doesn't work like that and THEN turn their lives around is a huge task. The thing is we ALL have brokenness we cling on to and sometimes I feel like we're blind leading the blind. One shift not long ago in the evening when another experienced carer and I were talking about the job and how I felt in it she asked "Do you want it?". As in, do you want to invest your time and effort in these kids? Do you want to be there for them through thick and thin? Do you want to be there when they wind you up and drive you up the wall but there when they need you most, when their brokenness is too much for them? Obviously I wanted to say to her at the time, "Yeah! I'm in, I'm going to be the hero and repair their mistakes!" But that's about as real as Smallville is. Honestly, sometimes I just want to bolt out of there, to work in Asda stacking shelves or join "Eddie Stobart" and drive a truck up and down the country or... ANYTHING else...

I spoke to my manager about my feelings and how I wasn't building any real trust or relationship with the girls and how much of a dead end I felt in and after a conversation with her manager she's assigned me to another care home for next week and maybe the week after. It's not that I'm abandoning my house but hopefully it serves as a re-focusing. Hopefully I can go and after working with the younger boys there I'll be able to gain a bit of perspective and learn a few things that I don't already. I'm really grateful for the management's support and I think the experience in a house is going to be so valuable no matter what happens. I don't want to leave my job, I know it's important and I know I'm good at it. It'll be interesting to see how I get on in this new house, it'll be interesting to see if I stay in this new house or if I'll move back in with the girls. We'll see...

On a completely different note and in what seems a completely different world my personal life is very exciting! My lovely Ruth has moved up to Liverpool and we're thrilled to be in the same city and the same house. The house we're moving into should be ready soon and all the wedding stuff is coming together. (44 more days to go!!!) Ruth and I have been talking and dreaming about hosting a prayer space in the house and we're super excited to have a space set apart where we can creatively worship, pray, be with God and share it with friends. The immediate future looks to be filled with new and exciting circumstances with prospects and dreams of Hong Kong in the not too distant future?

My prayer.
Thank you God for all that you are, for all that you have given me. Thank you that I can experience You, your love, and walk and journey with you every part of every day with the people around me. Thank you for continually healing me and continually refining me and preparing me for fullness of life. I'm excited to walk with you God and I trust in your goodness that trickles and soaks every aspect of life.
In your most precious name Jesus.
Amen.

My workplace.

Hi!

It has been a long time since I last blogged. A very long time indeed... Since my last blog EVERYTHING has changed. Well not everything but a lot... Since my last blog I've started working as a Residential Care Worker supporting vulnerable youths. The 4 kids I work with have attachment disorders which means that they struggle to form relationships and build healthy attachments to and with other people. It's a very rewarding job but immensely challenging. I've never been so angry, frustrated, pushed, stressed out and anxious in all my life. Before almost all my shifts I drive to work with a knot in my stomach just hoping and praying that today will be a good shift! Quite often tho that's the worst part of the day. I realize now that you don't need to go to the poorest parts of the world to love the "least of these". (Not that I would dare knock anyone who's dream is to go feed the homeless in Calcutta). I feel for me right now the neediest for me are those right on my door step, in exotic Runcorn. The neglect and abuse that the kids will have been through is one of the worst possible sufferings a human being can endure. My job is to care and to bring restoration and to repair the brokenness of the kids I work with. (Which by the way is often much harder than to start again, I think God knows what I'm talking about). To salvage and to grow in these kids a hope for their future and to help them realize their potential. It's a flipping massive task! It feels impossibly hard sometimes because of the nature of the work, I have to remain professional and sometimes that involves protecting myself and not leaving myself vulnerable to these kids, sometimes it feels impossible to communicate to the kids because they're teenagers and think they know everything! (I remember the feeling). And sometimes it feels impossible because I know that I am one carer of a team of 9, from one out of two or three houses that these kids will have lived in, after spending so many years with a foster family, after being taken away from they birth families by a social worker who they think knows nothing about who they are.

But it's not all about me. I'm becoming more and more aware of the joy and pleasure I get in sharing joy with other people. It multiplies. It's so fruitful! There's a real freedom in living a life that is completely invested in other people. Screw a lifetime of seeking fullness of pleasure for yourself. I think life gets REALLY exciting when you can share it with someone else. One thing I have learned from these kids is how difficult it is to live for "number one". The kids I work with are the most stressed out, highly strung, most scared, difficult and selfish people I have ever met. They're a product of the society we live in. I belong to that society, I belong to a generation of broken, lazy, uncreative, destructive and consumer cultured people who can have kids!

However! God cares. He's doing something about it. I can see in the heartbeat and work of my colleagues and my manager battling everyday to spin the ball the other way, to pull the gear stick out of reverse and back into first. I see the kingdom of God breaking through, (even if my colleagues aren't "Christian"), glimpses of the Holy Spirit, little shards of light flickering as God gradually breaks in to guide us, to save us from the destruction that we head towards. I want to shout "COME ON GOD! SHOW YOUR LOVE!!", suffering every kick, punch and bite, putting up with every racial, verbal and physical abuse that these children can throw knowing that in the end maybe one... maybe two might turn around and think, "hm, maybe there is a better way of doing things, maybe I am loved more than I will ever know, maybe there is someone who loves and care for me because honestly, that's what I need".