Who are you?

I used to spend huge amounts of my time comparing myself to others. I now spend a lot less. I've not sorted, but it's improving. I hate comparing my work with other peoples because I then feel like my work is inferior. I spent a lot of my school life wishing I was someone else, I was able to do what they did, and there was one person in particular who I measured my achievements to and always fell short. Do you know why? Because I wasn't them. 

Nothing I am going to write is news, but I need to tell it in my way. 

I'm 28, I have 1 and a 1/3 degrees (in Biochemistry and Applied Theology), a car and a bucket load of student debt. My brother is 25, engaged, working in a good job in retail having been working his way up since he was 16 to be an assistant manager. He has a car and a house, his debt is in the form of a mortgage. And I feel like the failure. So many of my school friends have partners, houses, children, and degrees. Yet here I am, earning next to nothing. Depressing isn't it? Well, when I write it like that it is. BUT I am me, I have my life, my gifts and skills. Does the spouse and the house really make a difference? I am so blessed to be where I am, to be able to afford a car and to be able to follow where God is calling me.

I was talking to someone at church today about my future. I have 2 more definite years at my placement before I meed to start looking around. I could end up anywhere. And I can go, where ever, when ever. I don't have to sell a house, up root a family or limit my options. I am ME. 

By comparing myself to someone else, by striving for their live, I'm going to miss living my own life. I am not perfect. I'm not the most intelligent person, but my essays are my own. I am proud of the work I submit, and when I get the mark back I know that I did my best and earned that mark. Who cares if someone else go higher? It's still a process, but God is doing so much. 

I see it in my faith as well though. I'm envious when someone gets a word from God through someone else, I wish that I got as many pictures from God as.... etc. I'm missing the point again though. On Sunday God used me in a service to bring my gifts and skills to the church. Nothing I did this morning couldn't have been done by someone else. But God choose me to do it. He gave a team of us different ideas that pulled together to make a service that we pray will encourage each other when things are hard. Hear me correctly, God did that hard work, we just delivered it and let God show through us. But my particular gifts led the service in one direction. Another team would have presented something different. And whilst I wish that someone would come and give me a word from God, I could well be missing the way that he is speaking to me directly. 

If we wander through life constantly looking at everyone else, if we try to measure ourselves against one another and wish that we were slightly different: taller, shorter, brainier, spiritually gifted, able to stand and speak in public, able to cook a very good barbecue, we will miss that we are who we are. We can change, we can learn, we can develop, but let it be for ourselves. 

Be who you are meant to be, because there is NO-ONE else like you!

Take care,

God bless,

Ruth

Still alive, still breathing

I've been thinking about this blog a lot recently, it's like an online, very public journal. A place where I can put thought and they may drift out into the world, and may never be read, but they're no longer confined to my head. 

This blog has been dormant for well over a year. No regrets there, I'm sure that there would have been plenty to write, but that's not the point. 

I have reached the end of my first year of my second degree. This blog went through my first degree so it might as well do the second one. As my previous post (Jan '14...) said, I am now training with SWYM. I took the leap to start a BA (Hons) degree in Applied Theology with Youth Ministry. I am loving it but it is so hard! It may surprise you to know that a science degree does not prepare you for theology. I have had to spend a lot of time rewiring my brain and changing how I think and write. I am grateful that it is all essay and presentation based and that there isn't a single essay in sight, except maybe the end of module feedback forms! (joke!) 

To be able to start to get my teeth into the Bible and into my own faith has been a real challenge. You go from accepting everything and going with it to questioning, often in a good way, why you believe what you've been told. We've had to tackle questions like "how literal is Genesis 1 and 2?", "is everything in the Bible historically accurate?", "is everything in the Bible God's word?". Tough, sometimes controversial, and mostly in my mind without firm answers. But what we're all (I think) coming back to is God Is Real. The Bible shows us who He is, and that is an amazing gift. We are wanting evidence and proof, my science background needs evidence for it to be true. When our evidence is proved wrong, such as some of the historical events, the world thinks they've disproved the existence of God. The books of the Bible were not written at the time of Twitter or Facebook or Google. Moses didn't tweet "still in the desert, manna not running out, lost, lol" (because I think Moses may have put a lol!), there wasn't even someone running after them with a parchment and quill "excuse me Moses, can you repeat that last line for me?". Our world today expects everything to be told as it happened, and for the most part it can. In tragic accidents it is become possible to piece events back together minute by minute. Is there not a possibility that errors crept into the accounts as they were told over time. Good men became great men and great men became like gods? This is all speculation, and not even something that I would necessarily fully agree with, but it's where my studies are starting to take me. 

If you've made it this far, well done. It wasn't meant to go quite in that direction! Life is treating me well and God is treating me better! 

For now that is all, but there are other thoughts rattling around, so hopefully this blog will awaken!

God bless,

Ruth