• The giving up swearing is not 100% successful - but it's not as bad as it was.
• Giving up obsessing over a certain young man IS as hard as I thought it would be.
• Learning the guitar is not compatible with a job that involves typing. Bryan Adams was right - playing it until my fingers bleed is not an impossibility!
• I'm leading a church service in March - when the Bishop will be there! Eek!

A farmer is caught in a flood. The river is overflowing, with water surrounding the farmer's home up to his front porch. As he is standing there, a boat comes up, The man in the boat says "Jump in, I'll take you to safety."

The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, "Nope, I put my trust in God."

The boat goes away. The water rises to the second floor. Another boat comes up, the man says to the farmer who is now in the second story window, "Jump in, I'll save you."

The farmer again says, "Nope, I put my trust in God."

The boat goes away. Now the water is up to the roof. As The farmer stands on the roof, a helicopter comes over, and drops a ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer "I'll save you, climb the ladder."

The farmer says "Nope, I put my trust in God."

The helicopter goes away. The water continues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof. He drowns.

The farmer goes to heaven. God sees him and says, "What are you doing here?"

The farmer says, "I put my trust in you and you let me down."

God says, "What do you mean, let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!!!"

Yearning for Perfect Love

When we act out of loneliness our actions easily become violent. The tragedy is that much violence comes from a demand for love. When loneliness drives our search for love, kissing easily leads to biting, caressing to hitting, looking tenderly to looking suspiciously, listening to overhearing, and surrender to rape. The human heart yearns for love: love without conditions, limitations, or restrictions. But no human being is capable of offering such love, and each time we demand it we set ourselves on the road to violence.

How then can we live nonviolent lives? We must start by realizing that our restless hearts, yearning for perfect love, can only find that love through communion with the One who created them.
Henri Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation, January 19th 2007

Creating Space to Dance Together

When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, "Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me." But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together.
Henri Nouwen Society Daily Meditation for January 19, 2007

Smug-Married Dinner Party

Cosmo You really ought to hurry up and get sprogged up, you know old girl. Time's running out. Tick tock.
Bridget Yes.... is it one in four marriages that end in divorce now, or one in three?
Mark One in three.
Cosmo Seriously, though. Office is full of single girls over thirty - fine physical specimens, but just can't seem to hold down a chap.
Woney (thin veneer of concern while stroking her pregnant stomach) Yes, why are there so many unmarried working women these days, Bridget?
WHAT BRIDGET WANTS TO SAY: Bridget Because I don't want to end up like you, you boring Sloaney milch cow, and because if I had to cook old Chubby Chop's dinner, then get in the same bed as him just once, I'd tear off my own head and eat it. Cut to: Woney What do you think's the reason?
WHAT BRIDGET ACTUALLY SAYS: Bridget Ahem - I don't know - I suppose it doesn't help that underneath our clothes, our entire bodies are covered in green scales.
- People laugh
Mark Yes, for my part, I wonder if it actually doesn't make sense to wait.
Natasha Quite right. No use just coupling willy-nilly. It seems to me that a good marriage is like a well-planned merger. [She seems to glance a little towards Mark during this.] Both parties bring something to the table, both negotiate, both make little concessions—and what emerges is more than the sum of the parts...
Mark Yes no - you’re right, Natasha - but I suppose what I mean is... (getting a bit near his emotions) We tend to think we're failures... unless we rush headlong into marriage. Perhaps if we, you know, waited - found out what we really wanted...there might not be two lives in ruins...so often. As we lawyers find.
- This brings the conversation to a halt.

Living the Moment to the Fullest

Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not a waiting passivity until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somewhere else. Let's be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
Henri Nouwen Society

Obviously marriage is a good goal to have. It is an institution created by God and commands regarding marriage are woven throughout Scripture. Scripture upholds marriage and experience reveals it is the norm for most people. But what can a woman do about a goal like marriage? Obviously we are dependent on our sovereign God to orchestrate the details of meeting a future husband. We must also wait for the mysteries of love and attraction to work in a man's heart so that he will propose - more evidence of the Holy Spirit at work. It can be tempting to be passive. But I don't think that passivity is a component of godly womanhood. This is what I will attempt to unfold in the coming days as we examine together what steps single women can take for marriage.

What will this look like? Well, I think we can find helpful counsel in the words of author Douglas Wilson: "[T]he time a person spends when he is single should be time spent in preparation for marriage. This is important even if he never gets married. This is because biblical preparation for marriage is nothing more than learning to follow Jesus Christ and to love one's neighbour. In other words, preparation for Christian marriage is basically the same as preparation for Christian living. Christians are to prepare for marriage by learning self-denial, subduing their pride, and putting their neighbour first."

Carolyn McCulley, 'Seeking Wisdom for a New Year', Solo Femininity

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8oz. to 20oz.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow.

Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested.

Life is short....Enjoy it!

And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.

* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

* We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colours, but they all have to live in the same box.

* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.

* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

* If you lend someone £20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

* Never buy a car you can't push.

* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

* The second mouse gets the cheese.

* When every thing's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

* A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

"Meant To Live", Switchfoot

Fumbling his confidence
And wondering why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he's bent for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly, fly

[Chorus]
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside
Somewhere we live inside
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Dreaming about Providence
And whether mice or men have second tries
Maybe we've been livin with our eyes half open
Maybe we're bent and broken, broken

[Chorus]

We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And everything inside screams for second life, yeah

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live
We were meant to live

"Every woman has needs. But many of us are guilty of looking to other people to meet them - especially the men in our lives. Too often we expect them to meet the needs that only God can fill. And then we are disappointed when they can't. We expect too much from them when our expectations should be in God."

"[For centuries women have] wrestled and waged war with the sons of Adam in an attempt to get them to bless us and affirm our value. But this struggle has left us frustrated at best.... In the end, it is all a senseless and exhausting process in which both parties lose. It is not the fault of the sons of Adam; they canot give us the blessing we seek, and we have frightened them by giving them so much power over our souls. We must learn that the blessing we truly need come only from God."

"We will never be happy until we make God the source of our fulfilment and the answer to our longings. He is the only one who should have power over our souls."

Shrek: For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example? Okay, er... ogres... are... like onions.
Donkey: [sniffs onion] They stink?
Shrek: Yes...NO!
Donkey: Or they make you cry.
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave them out in the sun and they turn brown and start sproutin' little white hairs.
Shrek: NO! LAYERS! Onions have layers. OGRES have layers. Onions have layers... you get it. We both have layers.
Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. [pause] You know, not everybody likes onions. [pause] CAKES! Everybody loves cakes! Cakes have layers!
Shrek: [restraining temper] I don't care what everyone likes. Ogres. Are not. Like cakes!
Donkey: You know what else everybody likes? Parfaits. Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Hell no, I don't like no parfait"? Parfaits are delicious.
Shrek: NOOO!!! YOU DENSE, IRRITATING, MINIATURE BEAST OF BURDEN! OGRES ARE LIKE ONIONS! END OF STORY! BYE BYE! [whispers] See you later! [pause]
Donkey: Parfaits may probably be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet!
Shrek: You know... I think I preferred you humming...
Shrek

He Is Your Life

So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ - that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.

Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life - even though invisible to spectators - is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too - the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offence. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ - the Message - have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives - words, actions, whatever - be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
Colossians 3:1-17 (The Message)

• God will give me the words to say instead of swearing;
• God will enable me to trust in Him and stop obsessing over whichever man has caught my fancy this day;
• God will call to me, draw me to Him so that I might become more deeply embraced by Him.

There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. Listen, my son, and be wise, and keep your heart on the right path.
Proverbs 23:18-19 (NIV)

Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future.
Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 (NIV)

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
Jeremiah 29:11-12 (NIV)

This is what the Lord says,...
"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
Isaiah Chapter 43, verses 16, 18 and 19