Father, I really cannot imagine a world without you. I can't begin to visualise or even try and feel the way I'd feel without you. Knowing you are here and love me and want a relationship with me and have one - I couldn't walk away from you and feel myself. You make me who I am. I am incomplete without you. I am in your image and I pray that I will never forget who I am and who You are.

Grumble

E is sorta beginning to annoy me again. Like when he tries to make out that nothing ever happened... that there was no way he was interested in me! I hate it when people get like that - you come in and disrupt someone's life and (in this case) scare them with your overly flirtatious ways; then you suddenly realise you're not being godly; then you suddenly get over it and then you pretend you never ever said anything compromising, and that it doesn't make sense in your world how ever they (and some other people) got that idea??!!!?! I don't mind him ignoring it and pretending it never happened to him - it will make his life easier and he will feel better about all of it. But to act polite in a certain kinda way before people?? Why? Because I didn't flirt back? Or because I prayed about it? And that scared you? Not that you ever heard or saw me pray. Yet on an online conversation you will make an oblique reference to a previous conversation... Okay before you interrupt, these things are not in response to anything... not a defence mechanism at all. E just uses them because he feels it keeps him safer and because he is not aware enough of himself to see why he's doing it. E is the kind of guy who won't love a girl enough to lay it out with respect. Plays it safe, but not quite safe for other people! He had a 'someone' far away even when he was flirting with me and then with A as well! I had no idea obviously... just glad I take a very wary approach to these things and wait on God. E hasn't affected me any more than a grrr-sorta feeling. A now provoked a different reaction.

But yes, maybe it's hard to remember you don't have to try to make other people feel small to be big yourself... That's only in Hollywood special effects. We are big enough without that. E and A are - God made them and loves them. But I just sometimes wish he'd grow up. Ah well, I have that sorta feeling about lots of people including myself.

5 Things...

1. Will it ever happen?

2. Often I'm too polite to say what I really want or think.

3. It's funny how there are so many ways to waste time when you haven't got much of it!

4. God's got it covered.

5. Spectrograms are fascinating.

Love

To be in Your presence, not rushing away, to cherish each moment, here I would stay...


Try as I might, I can't find who wrote that song but it holds me captive just now. It is all I want. Whatever might come, this one thing is certainty. He will hold you in the palm of His hands, so close to him that you are never out of his sight. He is in love with you. So t-o-t-a-l-l-y a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y in love with you... has been since the moment He first laid eyes on you. Even before you saw him or even came to be.

Just know that... :)

Helllooooooooo

No, grace is not a pretty picture. It involves the biggest messes humankind can imagine and then implement. But grace is beautiful. Like when you look in the mirror and you see that spot or blemish, the disproportionate features or the kinky hair or the need for a haircut or the need for some make-up or a need for something to take the tiredness away.... and still God looks into your naked eyes, still God sighs: It is good.

That is the kind of picture grace paints. Not the kind of glossed-over fashion magazine product. No, not pretty at all. But beautiful.

Would you believe it? I am still taking my time to get over whatever happened to produce my previous couple of posts. I believe it is a people I do not understand, and yet and yet and yet - I understand a few of them from that place. In a few, I saw sparks of recognition. I believe God is teaching me something very permanent from all this. I still have 'romantic notions' as Mrs Lynde would say if I were Anne. But there may not ever be a Gilbert - at least from my point of view down here. I learn too much from people and people learn too much from me, I suppose. I don't know what God wants in the area - so this is very human prognostication... But there has to be someone who is sure enough of what God wants to wait for me to be sure of God and of him - boy, that will take some patience! I mean I need to be sure enough of it all to let myself love. It's probably a shortcoming, but it keeps me safe and I'll stick with it. And only then would I be willing to consider beginning such a relationship - and you read and hear about people like that, but it will probably never be that way with me... particularly if it is true that opposites attract! LOL. I love logic, btw. So I still haven't fallen in love with anyone else since I was 10. And I've never fallen out of love with Him since either.

Meanwhile I am also a bit concerned about my studies. With all this it has taken a beating. I don't think such a thing has ever happened before. But I don't lay it entirely at this door. I think the main problem has been that as my supervisor put it: "We've gone about this the wrong way". And that observation came a whole term too late unfortunately. So I am left with the beginnings of ideas of what to do just coming up. And basic books I still feel I ought to read. And a whole assignment and a half completely un-upto-scratch!!! I was in this position at the beginning of my Master's thesis and I had three months to go. I now have one and a half and need to be slightly higher than a Master's level to sufficiently impress. I have come to the conclusion that 'worry' is the wrong word to use. I believe I can do it - I know how in a candle-light rather than a lightning-flash kind of way. But I know that I cannot do it. If that makes any sense.... I know that God is the one who will fight this battle for me. I am also greatly indebted to my parents and aunts. And often fight the feeling that I have let them down. But suddenly light shines - and I know that I am doing the best possible if I am doing what God wants!!!

In fact, it may not be the problem I think at all. And may be due to Oxford's special ways of dealing with teaching and guiding. From what I hear, everyone's just as worried and has been clueless, and they have not been living in 55G, have they? LOL. I miss P&ST and the Ms at church, especially J. She's become very dear to me and I know that she is growing up and things may change. I know that I might move from the place depending on how it goes. But I wish loyalty to 'A' church did not come before loyalty to God's family. That remains to be proven. But Bangor has stood me in good stead and made it very clear that I will always be family! So, I am more than blessed.

I have both my parents in a strong godly family, two aunts-like-parents, and then these surrogate mums and dads in Bangor and a grandmum for good measure!!! More people to tell me off - true.