Relearning (again) intimacy with God...

Just back from 3 weeks off and really aware that I shut down a bit during that time, not least because of grief (having lost our wonderful Nan and Grandma in the same week), exhaustion (completion of another school year and summer camp)and a degree of uncertainty (finding myself pregnant again after a miscarriage just a month and a half before).

I was also berating myself from having switched off from God too, not having been to church since heaven knows when (not that heaven's keeping a record)not reading or feeling particularly open to things spiritual then I read an interesting post from Simply Simon quoting an old Christianity Today article by Eugene Peterson and I think it really rings true for me and my good evangelical background...

Interviewer: "Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God".

"That’s a naive view of spirituality. What we’re talking about is the Christian life. It’s following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we’ve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff.

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it’s like any other intimacy; it’s part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don’t feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn’t primarily a mystical emotion. It’s a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency".

I think it's in those moments of shutting down that we're sometime most aware of God (maybe in hind sight)as the fabric of our lives, when we're fully living each moment or feeling most alive we can forget that weft and warp, as that's when we're busy embroidering our pattern on top.

We're "having a baby"!

I'm not sure why that phrase is in my head in a scratchy northern accent a la Jonny Vegas but I'm sure there's an old comedy sketch burried in my brain somewhere!! Answers on a postcard to...

But a joke this is not, we are now gloriously 17 weeks pregnant and our little foetus is as big as an avocado!!

The great news - in the light of my previous miscarriage and losing our two remaining grandparents - has been really special but understandably maybe it's taken ages to sink in. Hearing it's heart beat at my last doctors appointment made it all a little more real, as did realising that we're already heading to half way through the pregnancy - scary!!

Ever since that appointment I've had the lyrics of the Iona song "No Heart Beats Like Your Heart" in my head, I love to think that we're all - past, present and future - part of God's great heart beat!

"No heart beats like Your heart keeping me in time
No hand as warm as Your hand holding onto mine
No eyes can see through me
No smile ever drew me like Yours

No voice like Your voice can calm my fears
And no prayers like Your prayers can move me to tears
And no arm around me
Can fully surround me like Yours"