Things I Love

This month has been a drag. Wet, cold, windy and dark, it's fortunate Christmas is fast approaching- definitely been feeling a touch of the November Blues.

I really like lists though, and thought I would compile a list of other things I like to cheer myself up.

Here it is.

Choosing a new tea from the tea shelves at the supermarket

The view from campus over the city on a sunny day

Finding a new band or artist you instantly love

Walking through dancing leaves when it’s really windy
Walking into Fenwicks, spraying my favourite perfume on from the tester bottle, and walking out again smelling awesome for the rest of the day

The smell of fresh coffee

Bookshops

When you beckon a cat and it comes to you to be stroked

Bacon
The first day of the year you can feel the sun’s warmth

Giggling over silly things with my housemates

The mutual joy my brother and I share whenever I go home, and the mutual arguing that happens five minutes later

Crisp winter mornings
Being given chocolate

Playing the piano
Belting out the Wicked soundtrack when no-one is home

Mint choc chip ice cream

Finding something amazing in a charity shop

When someone’s laugh is really funny

Wandering around Canterbury town centre’s back streets

Long walks with the family
The sound of waves on the shore

Sunday mornings at church

Vintage shops and markets

Belly dancing

Writing and receiving letters or cards
Holidays abroad

Wine

The anticipation before Christmas

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Crunchy leaves
Reading a book in my favourite chair at home

Getting excited about future events or plans
Coffee and cake at Oma's 

Summer evenings

The smell of roses           

Timely encouragements

Going on day trips to London
Spring flowers

Long chats with best friends

Dressing up to go out

The sound of my Portuguese family all talking over each other at high volume

Small group

Cute cafes

Babies laughing

Walking along beaches

Good essay marks

Hugs

This Week

Feeling inspired after reading Emily Dickinson, I decided to be brave and try my hand at poetry. It's at once more liberating and more restrictive than prose; I have the freedom to say less and let my meaning remain ambiguous, yet these few words must be more carefully chosen.

I have no idea what good poetry really is. I don't know if it's about its structure, rhyme and meter, or if it's purely about emotion. The following is just some of my musings about the past week. They are not intended to make a lot of sense, and for the record, I am very close to getting excited about Christmas, finally!

For your reading pleasure. Love, C.

Christmas feels wrong this year

Too early still for M&S promotions and obnoxious 80s hits

To these indifferent crowds I am another obstacle

Slowing their progress toward the display of cashmere sweaters

They have them in every colour; I picture middle-aged men pulling safe brown ones from the wrapping

Pecking well-meaning wives on the cheek

‘Thank you darling, just what I wanted’.

The expectant frosty twinkle cinnamon feeling floats ahead

Not too far off now, but far enough still

To make enjoying every day for its own sake

A possibility; life now has its share of excitement, the present reality is adequate

A hope - a dream - became reality this week

Berlin is no longer a musing, safe in its disconnection

I ask myself, can I have made such a decision?

Perhaps I am two people at once

Brave, smart, confident, joyous

Anxious, stuck, proud, a fake

Mechanical smile, forced laugh- not trying to be, but who doesn’t wear a mask?

Is it a mask when you are happy and hurting both?

More happy than hurting at that.

Life has bipolar tendencies. I cannot remain unmoved.

Why does one sting make all the good insignificant?

Humans have the best memory for negativity

So many words of love given by so many, easily forgotten

I choose to cling to these affirmations, take heart in God’s promises.

What a fragile strength is mine

Thin as spider silk, it bends but does not break

Corinthians flashes in my mind; in Him I am strong.

Truth can be slippery

I feel that I grasp it, before a careless word

Startles it, and it slides through my fingers

And I am back to second guessing myself, feeling guilty for not being above it all.

Telling myself I shouldn’t hurt

Shouldn’t take offence

Shouldn’t care too much when understanding too little.

‘Part of life is a lesson

Of how to let emotion ride in the backseat without letting it drive’.

Such wisdom is what makes Sunday mornings such a blessing

 ‘blessing’ ‘blessing’  ‘blessing’ so often this week

It doesn’t look like a word anymore.

If I wrote down every answered prayer this term

Being out of control would feel like relief.

Love, love, is a verb; love is a doing word.

Being an English student can be a wonderful thing. Fellow course-mates left, right and centre seem to be overflowing with creativity; ideas coming fast and exploding into poetry, short stories, even novels. It’s great to see that. Unfortunately I often feel a little left behind.

Having a blog is my way of forcing myself to be creative when I feel like I can’t. As a child I had such a huge imagination, but university is busy and much of the time I’m exhausted and I have no idea how to translate my life with all its mundanities and absurdities and blessings and trials into something beautiful that people would want to read about.

So I write my blog, when I feel just a little bit more inspired and little less blah, and though it may not be poetry it’s still my life organised in a way I can make sense of, regardless of whether others gain from my posts or not.

There is always the challenge of deciding what to write about. I was in a boring and slightly irrelevant lecture yesterday, so I used my lack of concentration to my advantage and asked myself, ‘what do I love? What am I passionate about? What’s been important to me recently?’ Because if I could figure that out, I’d have something to write about, right?

Well as I thought about it I realised that this term so far has been largely about love. Love given, and love received.

Before you start making faces at the screen, let me clarify. I don’t mean the romantic kind, with the big sweeping orchestra and the flowers and the fuzzy feelings.

I mean the type of love that is a reflection of the infinite, overwhelming love that Jesus has for those he has created.

This kind of love is ultimately a decision, not an emotion. Those lines from Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ popped into my head suddenly as I sat in my lecture yesterday: ‘love, love, is a verb; love is a doing word’.

On Sunday I stood in church and once again was so moved by the free, abundant love that is shared among God’s people. It was the end of the service and people were praying for one another. As the worship team continued to play, people stood with a hand on a friend’s shoulder, praying blessings over each other’s lives. 

There were people with their arms around one another, groups laughing together, others supporting those in tears. I am so very grateful and blessed to be part of that.

But loving is not always as easy as it is on Sunday morning when we’ve all been worshipping Jesus and are feeling fresh and pumped up. What about those days when you are swamped in work, or haven’t had enough sleep, or are just generally feeling rubbish? What is love then? Certainly, it’s not a girly, flowery, pink loveheart feeling.

See, that’s where love becomes a conscious effort. Love is gritty. Love is stubborn. It breaks through how you’re feeling. It gives to people who might not be giving it back. It is patient and persistent with friends who let you down and drive you up the wall. It makes time for those who need it.

Let’s be real here- that kind of love is hard.

When you choose to love someone, whether they are a friend or a stranger, you take a risk. It takes a huge amount of vulnerability to really be there for someone, to listen, to support them and expect nothing in return.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8- this passage right here sums up what real love actually is and how we should be living it out.

You might be thinking that all this self-sacrificing nonsense is a bit of drivel. Maybe you’re thinking that the God I serve doesn’t want me to be happy, if He is commanding me to love in this way. That includes loving people who might not deserve it.

But see, Jesus loved us first. (Read this post - http://beccathinks.tumblr.com/page/7  by my awesome friend Becca for more of that). None of us deserve the depth of love that Jesus has for us. Jesus didn’t have to die for me. I sometimes look at myself, the real true self that I can keep hidden from everyone else, and wonder what God sees in me, that He should love me so completely.

Having known that love is what enables me to pursue this radical life of loving others. I fail quite spectacularly time and time again; but instead of letting guilt make me feel inadequate, I lean on God. Because God always, always provides.

This is the thing. God knows that I need to receive love just as much as the people He commands me to love. I might not get the same love back from the people I give it to. But the right people are there at the right time, often unexpected but so valued. They probably have no idea how much I needed that smile, that hug, that word of encouragement.

Sunday mornings, evenings laughing with my housemates, a chat with my mum on the phone, small group, coffee dates with friends. Whenever I feel discouraged, I think of these things.

The best thing about choosing to live this way is that sometimes, loving others isn’t hard at all, because those people are loving you right back. 

The Insecurity of the Introvert

Inspiration comes in the most unexpected of places, and in this case it was on the train last night as I travelled home for my mother’s birthday. I’d been wondering recently whether inspiration was going to strike at all or if my blog was just going to end up like another project I’d started and abandoned somewhere along the way. Of course, I don’t expect it to last forever, as there is a time and place for these things, but it would
be a shame for it to end after only a few months.

Sometimes I get those days where I just take things too personally and assign negative motives to everything everyone says and does. (In other words, sometimes PMS just affects me really bad).

Even on normal days, though, this feeling rears its ugly head now and then- the insecurity that comes from feeling misunderstood.

Insecurity is something that affects everybody to a greater or lesser extent, and feeling like no-one understands you is probably something a lot of introverts experience. Being one myself, I hope any reading this can identify.

Firstly, the word introvert is often used incorrectly. Being an introvert does not necessarily mean you are a) antisocial, b) shy, or c) have no friends. It just means you gain energy from having time to yourself and doing solitary activities, whereas extroverts are stimulated by more social interaction. Introverts think a lot, but they may not say much. Introverts often express themselves better in writing than verbal communication; they may hate small talk but enjoy deep discussions.

Secondly, most people are not extreme examples of either end of the scale but lean more to one side than the other. This means an extrovert might still value some alone time, and introverts don’t hate all parties.

When I discovered this insight into introversion/extroversion, I finally understood and accepted myself a whole lot more, but sometimes I still get insecure about the way I come across.

Because being an introvert in today’s culture is not really seen as a desirable thing, at least in my experience. In school, I was constantly told off at parent’s evening for being ‘too quiet’. I was made leader of a group project and then told I did ‘surprisingly well’, as though my quieter nature was expected to equate with no confidence or leadership abilities. (I eventually became a House Leader, so that theory was disproved). The louder, more talkative kids in my class were given more attention than those who spoke less. Being an introverted university student can also be difficult- if you’re not massively into partying, you can end up feeling isolated. There seems to be a lot of pressure on people to be very social and outgoing, when that can actually go against their true natures.  

As somehow who is quite introverted, I’ve often felt misunderstood. I am by nature reasonably quiet. I’ve been blessed with an encouraging family and many opportunities to develop confidence, and I’ve reached a point in my life where I can comfortably say I’m fairly self-assured. So when others mistake me for being shy and withdrawn, I get really frustrated.

I don’t always say much, but with a tendency to blunt-ness and no-nonsense, I worry that people think I’m standoffish. I can come across as too serious and I worry that people think I’m boring, but if I try too hard to be more light-hearted I just tire myself out. I’m naturally friendly, but then people expect me to want to be chatty all the time, which isn’t the case at all. Sometimes all I want is to read a book and be left alone.

The above is surefire evidence that I worry too much. I don’t need to feel validated by anybody. God thinks I’m wonderful, so it’s silly to waste time trying to please people.

Introverted traits can be misconstrued, but there is a value in quietness. Sometimes I need to remind myself that my quietness is not a flaw but a strength.

I shouldn’t have to feel a need to apologise for who I am, what I enjoy doing or who I enjoy spending time with.

Well now that that rant’s over, I feel much better.

Any other introverts who’ve had trouble accepting themselves, or wanting to be understood?

Hopefully the next post will be less moany!

(Just to clarify- in no way is this post meant to make introverts look better than extroverts. We are all needed and valuable, and I envy you extroverts with your ability to get on with everyone so easily without needing to crawl back into your bed and watch a film afterwards).