Tag Archives: change

I want to change the world

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There. I’ve said it.

I want to change the world.

I want to every child born to have enough love, clean water and food to live and thrive.

I want to see governments that use their resources wisely.

I want a justice system that truly rehabilitates drug users instead of letting them get sucked back into addiction and the underworld.

I want people to be open about mental illness.

I don’t want words like hate, or stigma or prejudice to ever need to be used because they don’t happen.

Some would call me an idealist, and they would probably be right. Some would say its because I’m young, and they would probably be right, too. But, I am all too aware of my limitations and I know that some of what I hope for probably won’t be seen on earth until Jesus comes again.

And it has struck me recently, that I spend a lot of time limiting my dreams.

I tell myself I am too young, too female, too broken to make a difference. Sometimes, I am too cynical.

But if I trust in a God who is bigger than my dreams – surely I must trust that he can make some of them come true?

If we all spend the energy persuading ourselves and others that we can’t make a difference, on actually going out there and making a difference – what would the world look like?

I get so scared that I’m not good enough to make a difference, that I make too much of a mess in my own life to help others, that I end up dithering around and not doing anything!

So my challenge to myself, is to dream big dreams, to allow myself to want to change the world and do all that I can to affect that change.

Join me?

 

Times are-a-changing

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I decided that as I’m now a theology graduate to give the blog a bit of a redesign and a new name! 

I’m currently swimming in boxes. Boxes to take to my new flat. Boxes to go to Mum’s new house. Boxes of things to get rid of. Boxes to…okay you probably get the point now. 

Regular readers will know just how much I love change(!) and it is a bit unsettling. I certainly won’t be sad to say goodbye to the boxes. It’s an odd feeling, leaving the home I’ve lived in for over nineteen years and going to do the ‘grown-up’ thing sharing a flat with a friend. 

Unsettled-ness is a strange state of being, and I for one am looking forward to being moved in, beginning to volunteer in my local mental health unit with a lay chaplain and beginning my year of post-graduate study!

Graduation

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After three wonderful, weird, painful and challenging years I graduated from the London School of Theology on Saturday. It was one of the best days of my life, and the pictures from the service show that I smiled ecstatically for most of it!

I also managed to cry only once – and that was when I left the room that has been my home for the last time. I had accessorised it, covered it in Cath Kidston, laughed, cried, studied and socialised in that room – and I was leaving it, and as I slid the white piece of paper with my name on it from the sign on the door I knew this was it.

Hours earlier as I had walked up the steps to shake the hands of the Acting Principal and President of LST, I heard the cheers of my classmates and looked out at my family.

Graduation reminded me how far I am now from the scared, scarred young girl who stepped through the doors three years before. I still get scared, I still carry scars, but I am getting better. Graduation felt, for me at least, that it marked something else. It marked that I had survived, when so often I felt I could not go on.

I have certainly not been alone in that feeling. Indeed, many of my classmates have fought battles that have not even featured in my nightmares. We all arrived with our own baggage. I think many of us now feel that even if that baggage has not disappeared or lightened – it has changed shape.

Because we have all changed shape. I cannot think of a single member of my class who has not changed for the better over the past three years. Above all, graduation day reminded me of God’s amazing transformative power.

God transforms. He transforms through His word. Through His Church. Through His Spirit. Through His people.

His people have shown me the love, grace and oh so gentle shoves of God.

I am well aware of the high levels of sentimentality in this post and I will take this opportunity to apologise to those of you who have been reaching for the nearest bucket!

So now I’m a graduate. I’m preparing (hopefully) for post-graduate study. To move out of my family home and live in my own place with a great friend.

It’s a new chapter, and while I am gutted to have finished the last, so far the best chapter, I can’t help but be a little excited for what is coming next!

Trusting through Change

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It’s a strange time. I’m fast approaching the end of my degree. The end of three years which have formed me, challenged me and changed me in unimaginable ways.

It’s daunting, because I love LST. I love the people, the atmosphere and the teaching I’ve received and, this evening I bumped into a PhD student who I met on my interview day in 2008. I recalled our meeting when she was in the second year of her undergraduate degree, and I was only seventeen.

Fast forward four years, our lives look very different. I know I look different. At seventeen I was frail. A strange way to describe a 17-year-old, but it’s true. I was exhausted by life, faith and mental illness. LST was my hope for the future. The very thought of the place had sustained me throughout my GCSEs and it focussed my mind in during my A-levels.

It is a scary thought, therefore, that such a change is impending. That the period I had longed for, is nearly over. I have never coped particularly well with change, it has always scared me, even when the change is good.

I’m looking forward to what is to come, but I don’t particularly want to think about the transition. I’d quite like to skip to the bit where I’m used to the next phase. I am determined to make the most of my final few months as an undergraduate before I embark (hopefully!) on post-graduate study and a job in the mental health sector.

I do trust in the fact that God has brought me thus far, despite my doubt and fear. I am thankful that God had brought me through those times when I did not believe I could go on another minute – let alone complete a demanding degree course.

I admit that I am fearful of the future. I admit that I hate change.

And yet,

I trust in the God who remains the same. I trust that God will work through the change.