Happy New Year!

Wish I’d seen these instructions before I bought the candles 😉

If you’re a churchgoer of the traditional persuasion you may already know that the church year started on Sunday. The first Sunday in Advent is the first day of the church year.

Somehow it’s not having the same effect on me as January 1st does. There’s something about the world having a huge party the night before, and a public holiday, that makes New Years Day feel special.

Having said that, I felt like I wanted to do something for Advent this year. I want to make the lead up to Christmas something different. To prepare myself.

I am not one of those who puts a Christmas tree up in November. If you are one, more power to you. I find I’ve had enough of the tree taking up my living room once it’s been there a couple of weeks, so I wait a little longer to put it up.

I am also not organised enough to make up an Advent calendar of any significance, and I don’t want to eat extra chocolate every day before Christmas. (I was going to say, ‘eat chocolate every day’ but I realised that I’m probably going to do that anyway if the past few weeks are any indication.)

Just an aside, I have really great friends who have done an amazing thing for their kids. They’ve made up an advent calendar, in each little draw there are a few pieces of Lego and a page of instructions. Each day, the girls will pull out the draw and add something to the growing Lego construction. At Christmas time they will have a full Lego toy, and it’s one of those three-in-one things so they’ll be able to pull it apart and make the other two on Christmas day.

I was never going to do something that organised.

But I decided that there was something small that I could do to make the time seem a little more special and that is Advent candles.

My little Advent wreath

I went to the local everything cheap store (and marvelled at the overwhelming amount of sugar wrapped in plastic junk that is available to all of us). I found (eventually) some candles, and then after a little more searching I found candles that were unscented (so I don’t spend the whole of Advent with a stuffed up nose). And I found a little board. 

I’ve made my own Advent thingy. It’s not really a wreath, it doesn’t have greenery. But it’s Advent-ish.

Each Sunday I will light another candle. One for each of the Sundays, and the purple one for Jesus on Christmas day.

I chose not to worry about the pink one for the ‘Joy’ Sunday, and I think that technically all the white candles should be purple, and the purple one, white. But see the earlier comments about scent. All the purple candles in the store were scented and one candle is more than enough scent for me.

I’m hoping that lighting candles each week gives enough of a slow down moment to make the lead up to Christmas less hectic as I take the time to remember what it’s all about.

Oh and I saw this amazing Advent calendar on Facebook that I thought I’d share with you too. Maybe we can make this month a precious and joyful time and put some good back into the world.

What are your Advent traditions? When does your tree go up? Is anyone else doing a clever Advent calendar of some sort?

Shirt Sandwiches

Yes, this is exactly how neat and organised my workspace is. Exactly. Not.

You all probably know by now that I’m doing NaNoWriMo. That is, I’ve been writing a novel this month of November, aiming to get 50,000 words written by the end of the month. It’s been fantastic fun.

You may think I’m insane, but I have been enjoying myself immensely.

That is not to say that some days it is very hard to sit down and write the required 1667 words. And I don’t think I’ve had even one day where things have flown so well that I’ve not noticed the time go by and have looked up to find 4000 words on the page. It hasn’t been like that at all.

It’s been hard work.

Nouns and Verbs

I listened to Simple the other day and Tsh was talking about nouns and verbs. I’ll let you listen if you want the whole story, but the upshot was, you don’t get to be the ‘noun’ if you don’t do the ‘verb’.

For example, 

• you are not a writer unless you sit down and write.
• you are not a baker unless you spend hours in the kitchen getting all floury
• you are not a runner unless you spend time outside sweating and puffing and dodging geriatric dog-walkers

A person who sits inside on the couch and watches running videos all day may be very interested in running, they may love the look of running, but they are not a runner. Not unless they run.

A shirt sandwich.

Whatever you decide to do with your life, there are good parts of that thing and there are bad parts. But if you really want that thing, you’ll put up with the bad parts. 

Mark Manson asks this question (and I’ll give you the ‘The Good Place’ interpretation):  ‘What’s your favourite flavour of shirt sandwich?’

In other words, you need to look at the work involved in an idea and decide if you’re willing to do that work. If you love, like I do, sitting at a laptop and bashing out a couple of thousand words a day, if you’re willing to do that, then you may be ready to be a writer.

If you love, like I definitely don’t, pushing your body to the limit, watching your toenails fall off, and getting rubbing rashes, then you’re good to go to run a marathon.

There are payoffs for everything, but you need to be willing to do the work.

I’ve been employed in the arts since graduating.

This week on the podcast we talk with Catherine Gaffney, an actor and voice-over artist. She said she’s so blessed that she’s been employed in the arts since she graduated from her undergrad degree about twenty years ago. That made it sound like she’s had her dream career, that she’s been acting all her adult life. But when we pushed a bit further, it turns out that she hadn’t been working on the stage all that time – sometimes she was in the box office, sometimes coaching or teaching, sometimes narrating audio books, and yes, sometimes on the stage. She hasn’t stood on her dignity and refused to do anything other than act. She’s accepted that some of the work is less fun than other parts. She’s grateful just to be in the arts.

This week I wanted to make you think, what is it that you are willing to do some hard stuff for so that you’ll get the payoff? What is your shirt sandwich? What are some drudge jobs you are grateful for because they keep you going with your dream?

I’d love to hear your answers.

Are you missing some of my blog posts? They come out every Monday. Sign up to follow the A Quiet Life blog on WordPress, or you can sign up to my newsletter on www.ruthamos.com.au  and you will receive every post straight to your email inbox. You will also find my podcast, my book ‘My Year of Saying No’, and any short stories or other books will be up there as they come along.

If you would like to support this blog and the podcast then you can head over to Patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you so much!

Beautiful diversity

One thing I love about the spring is the flowers. Just walking along my street there is a plethora (don’t you love that word?) of different blossoms. The pig face is in full bloom this year and the delicate white flowers look like they are made from rice paper. There is a bush that gives huge flower heads – as long as my arm – and each covered with tiny purple flowers. Daisies flower in profusion opening with the dawn and closing at sunset. Some trees are covered with small compact blossom, some with large, flowing, pendulous blooms. Reds, oranges, blues, purples, whites, pinks, it’s glorious.

I know nothing about gardening, and I don’t know the names of the plants, but I love walking past all the flowers on my street, enjoying the different scents, and the different sights. It lifts my spirits.

Imagine if every flower was the same? I know what flowers are for – they attract insects so that the plants can be pollinated. Each of the flowers I see attracts insects. They don’t need to be as varied as they are. I’m sure that something with more uniformity would get the job done. But there they are, a motley haphazard collection of diverse and assorted flowers. 

I love them.

Look, you know all this. You’ve heard this sermon before. Isn’t it wonderful that we are all different? You are special just as you are.

Last week on the podcast we heard from Christina who has seven daughters. In a couple of weeks we will hear from Catherine who, by choice, has no children.

I love working at home in my own office with no one around, but Moz loves going in to school, surrounding himself with teenagers, having many conversations through the day.

My sister Catherine does an awesome job of being positive and joyous on social media, brightening people’s days with her posts. My friend Annette doesn’t even have a mobile phone. She is never online at all.

And so it goes.

It is so easy to feel guilty because you are not like someone else. Especially when you see them doing such a great job of whatever they do. I don’t know how we convince ourselves that we are valuable and have something to contribute whatever the thing is that we choose to do, but today I’m giving it a try.

Today I want to encourage you. You do you.

Be the beautiful flower that you are.

Brighten the world, or challenge the world, or comfort the world, in your own way.

Let’s be a garden full of beautiful flowers.

Partial Solutions

Do you have a dream? A really big and beautiful dream? A dream that you feel like you just can’t start working on yet?

Maybe it’s a book you want to write. A book you will write, just as soon as you can set aside a space in the house that is just for writing, and take uninterrupted holidays and spend a month or so dedicated to your magnum opus.

Maybe you want to invite people over to dinner. And you will. Just as soon as you get a dining table that can fit more than four, and can afford a new couch to replace your ratty old one.

Maybe you dream of running a marathon. And you’ll start training just as soon as you can block out an hour of each day to go for a run. 

Maybe you want to travel. But right now you spend every weekend at home watching TV because you can’t afford an international adventure.

Maybe you want to go into missions, but you’re worried about how you’ll finance your retirement if you leave now, so you’re staying at your job waiting until your superannuation is at a sufficient level before you take the leap and go.

Christina and I have a bit of a chat about our big dreams (among other things) in this week’s podcast. I’m finding that I’m becoming very enamoured of the idea of ‘partial solutions’. (I first heard that term on Tsh Oxenriders podcast, Simple.)

Whatever the dream that you have, I’m sure that there’s a perfect solution that will allow you to achieve that dream. And you may have spent hours thinking about that perfect solution, polishing it up, gazing at its beauty. But all that time and effort has not brought you any closer to achieving that dream. And in some cases, it might have pushed you further away.

Here’s a beautiful scene we found on a weekend adventure.

How about you start thinking instead about a partial solution?

Maybe you can start to write your book sitting on your bed in the last fifteen minutes of the day.

Maybe you can invite people over to dinner despite your small table. The kids can sit on the ratty couch and you and the adults can take the table. You won’t be so worried about stains if the couch is already ratty, and you can all relax.

Maybe you can pack some runners and go for a walk in your lunch hour at work. Or if you have kids, you can walk them to school. Maybe you can only get out for ten minutes; it’s better than nothing, and my experience was that a ten minute walk kickstarted my fitness routine much more effectively than a half-hour run that was never taken.

Maybe you can pack the car and go for a Saturday adventure. Just a day out, right where you live. A bush walk, or an investigation of a small town you have never looked at before. 

Maybe you can share your faith with those around you, reach out to people where you are, just like you would if you were living in a foreign country.

And here’s a thought, if you’re not putting partial solutions in place, then maybe you don’t actually want that dream after all. Maybe you just like the idea of it. Maybe it’s time to really examine your priorities and find out what your dream actually is.

What dreams do you have, and what are you doing to move towards them?

When you look at your life do you already see a partial solution in action that shows your heart for what you want to do or be?

Are you missing some of my blog posts? They come out every Monday. Sign up to follow the A Quiet Life blog on WordPress, or you can sign up to my newsletter on www.ruthamos.com.au  and you will receive every post straight to your email inbox. You will also find my podcast, my book ‘My Year of Saying No’, and any short stories or other books will be up there as they come along.

If you would like to support this blog and the podcast then you can head over to Patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you so much!

More Blessed

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

This week’s podcast guest is Celeste. Celeste and her good friend Priscilla visited our church some years ago. They came from Argentina as missionaries. They blessed us immensely. However, I felt guilty throughout their visit because I didn’t have much time to spend with them. I didn’t get to see them very much at all. I didn’t have them over for a meal or anything like that. In fact, though my daughter spent a bit of time with them, I felt like their whole trip passed in a blur and I pretty much missed it.

At the end of their trip the church threw them a farewell party. Somehow I managed to make the time to attend that. And for some reason I felt it was right to give them a gift. Just a small gift of  money. I wrote a card, put the dollars in, and gave it to them at the party.

They were a bit taken aback. They told me that they were on their way home now, the trip was over, and they didn’t need the money.

Tithing

I’m used to getting that reaction, people are not used to being given gifts and they often don’t know how to react or don’t want to take the gift. But the thing is, we put money aside to give to people. This is money we will never use on ourselves. Sometimes we give it to the church, sometimes to visiting missionaries, sometimes to a charity organisation. We give away about 10% of our income.

This doesn’t make us special. Tithing, or giving 10%, is a Jewish law, and Jews and Christians through the ages have given their tithe, and often given offerings on top of that. I’ve heard of people who give 90% and live off 10% of their income.

 In fact, if you’re having money problems and you come to me for advice, the first thing I suggest you do is tithe. It’s counter-intuitive. But it’s one of those laws of the universe. Your money management will go more smoothly if you put aside 10% to give away. 

God doesn’t ask us to test him much. Almost never. But he asks us to test him when it comes to tithing. In Malachi 3:10 he says, ‘Test me in this, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.’

A quick aside, I am not talking prosperity gospel here. I am not saying give money and you’ll get rich. I am saying that if you give your 10% as a sign that you trust God to provide, then he will provide for your needs. And he’ll bless you in other ways as well. And this story that I am telling you (yes, I’ll get back to it) is one of the ways that God has blessed me through my giving.

Had I failed?

When I got home from the party I felt a bit strange. Why had I only given this money at the end of the trip? Was this just another failure in being part of the church response to these beautiful two girls? Should I have given the money much earlier? I felt bad, but what was done was done. I got on with life. I forgot about it.

I forgot about it until Celeste reminded me in this week’s podcast. She tells us the end of the story. And I’ll share it here too.

Perfect timing

Just before Priscilla and Celeste flew out of Hobart, they found out that the flight from Sydney to Argentina had been cancelled. They had to spend a night in Sydney and then catch the next flight out. And the money that I gave them covered the cost the hotel room for the night.

It had been right to give them that money at the end of their trip. It was a necessary gift to cover an expense that they hadn’t seen coming.

When I heard Celeste tell me this I had truly forgotten that I had even given the money. And when I heard that it was me that God had used to provide for their needs I was truly blown away. I had done the right thing. I had heard God correctly and done what he asked. He used me to provide for these girls. What a blessing! To them, for sure, but also a huge blessing to me!

There is joy in receiving a gift, and there is also so much joy in giving.

Let me challenge you. Test God. Give 10% of your income. Find out just what an amazing blessing it is to give.

Do you have a joyous giving story? Or a story where someone has met your needs at just the right time? Please share with us in the comments! Let’s encourage one another.

Are you missing some of my blog posts? They come out every Monday. Sign up to follow the A Quiet Life blog on WordPress, or you can sign up to my newsletter on www.ruthamos.com.au  and you will receive every post straight to your email inbox. You will also find my podcast, my book ‘My Year of Saying No’, and any short stories or other books will be up there as they come along.

If you would like to support this blog and the podcast then you can head over to Patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you so much!

A Very Important Question

Photo by Daniel Frank from Pexels

This week’s podcast interview is with Michelle, a dentist. Talking with her reminded me of a teaching session I attended recently at the Bishop’s training event, Shaped.

Rev Stephen Carnaby talked to us about going to the dentist. You can hear the talk here, and it’s really worth listening to because of how specific he is. He talks about having a black spot on his tooth for a while, and then how suddenly half his tooth fell off. OK, so it’s all a bit painful, but in a schadenfreude way it’s also hilarious!

Stephen says that after his tooth fell off, he started going to the dentist regularly (believe it or not) and the dentist asks him every time he goes, ‘Have you been using dental floss?’

We all know that question. I suggest that if you don’t know that question, you’re not going to the dentist regularly enough. If this is you, and you live in Southern Tasmania, let me know and I can put you in touch with Michelle. I’m sure she’ll do a wonderful job on your teeth.

I’m also sure she’ll ask, ‘Have you been using dental floss?’

Flossing is something we all know we should do. But it’s time consuming, it’s sometimes painful, and it’s uncomfortable. And it’s difficult for us to see the benefits. We only find out if it’s been helpful when we take our annual trip to the dentist (or every ten years, depending on who you are).

But there are so many things like that. Even if we just look at our physical health there are many examples.

Exercise. I know it’s supposed to release feel-good endorphins. I don’t get that so much. I exercise in faith that it’s doing me some good. The results come much later.

Eating well. It’s much easier to eat junk food. It’s tasty, it gives you an immediate reward. But healthy food, well, you need to eat it for a while before you develop a taste for it, and the rewards come later.

Sleeping. You can stay up and binge-watch Netflix and get those constant dopamine shots in your brain, or you can go to bed. The first few times you get a solid eight-hours sleep you might feel dopey in the morning, or you might have trouble getting to sleep in the first place. But after a while you’ll start to feel the benefits. You’ll start to feel more rested, more energetic. But you have to put in the effort first.

Other difficult and uncomfortable things

Flossing-type activities are also helpful for our spiritual and mental health.

Stephen talks about reading the Bible. How it is so useful and helpful to us, but only if we take the time to do it.

I have been reading about prayer, and again, if you put time aside and actually do the praying, it is beneficial. You can do it once every now and then (like flossing on the day of your dentist appointment) and it will be of some benefit. But if you pray daily, put time aside, invest in prayer times, it will be of much more benefit.

If you are not a Christian, this principle still applies to you. Taking the time to read good books, to think about the larger issues, to spend some time in silence and solitude, these things are beneficial. Especially if practiced regularly.

These are not easy things to do. They are uncomfortable. They are time consuming. They can even be painful at times. But I think that the benefits are huge if we make the effort, take the time, do the flossing.

How am I doing in all this? Well, I am nowhere near perfect here. But I am reading the Bible more each day, and taking more than five minutes to pray. I’m making an effort to go for a daily walk and listening to an audio book while I do that. I’m menu-planning a bit more so that we buy takeaway a bit less.

And you’ll be pleased to know that in preparation for this blog post, I flossed my teeth this morning. Did you?

The cheesiest smile photo I could find.

Are you missing some of my blog posts? They come out every Monday. Sign up to follow the A Quiet Life blog on WordPress, or you can sign up to my newsletter on www.ruthamos.com.au  and you will receive every post straight to your email inbox. You will also find my podcast, my book ‘My Year of Saying No’, and any short stories or other books will be up there as they come along.

If you would like to support this blog and the podcast then you can head over to Patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you so much!

What we did on our holiday

I’m back! Did you miss me? I hope not, I went to a lot of trouble to schedule blog posts and podcasts so that you wouldn’t.

But I have had a wonderful holiday. Two weeks of unscheduled work-free bliss. Well, almost work-free. Nothing in this world is perfect. But it has been incredibly refreshing and joyous.

As I get back into work again, I thought I’d tell you one of the things that we did on our holiday.

We went tulip hunting.

Moz hunting for tulips

I found one!

OK, so Moz and I see this differently.

I tell people, ‘We went up to Wynyard to see the tulips.’

He says to people, ‘We went up to Wynyard to have some time away, and while we were there we saw the tulips.’

It’s similar, but different. I really wanted to see those tulips. For a long time I’ve seen other people’s pictures, or seen them advertised. We’ve been to Wynyard at the wrong time and driven past the fields and tried to imagine them full of colour. But I haven’t been able to go and see them because when I worked at university, this time of year was always flat out.

But this year I was on holidays and when I realised that the tulips were in bloom, I organised for the two of us to travel up to Wynyard (about five hours from home) and go to see the tulip farm on Table Cape.

Pinks and reds

A white among the pink

Beautiful yellow

I tried not to get my hopes up. I thought this experience might have been over-advertised. I expected the flowers to be lovely and colourful, but not anything super awesome or overwhelming.

But they were awesome. They were beautiful.

There is something about standing in a field surrounded by colour, by bright colour, by natural colour, by nature’s beauty. There is nothing like it.

I took a billion photos and so did Moz and I’m only bombarding you with a few of them. They don’t capture the feeling. I guess you have to actually be there. They remind me of the feelings I had though.

Walking through the fields of colour was joyous, it was refreshing, it was delightful.

The good book says, ‘See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.’ So true.

Annette Young, in our podcast interview this week, talks about being in nature and how God spoke to her through it. For her, the Overland Track and Wine Glass Bay were the places where God blew her mind and made himself real to her. Those places have a different kind of beauty to the highly tended beauty of the tulips, but both kinds are refreshing in their own way.

I think it’s so important to get out into nature and listen to what it’s telling us. And I’m glad I got the chance to do that this holidays.

Do you make a priority of getting out into nature? What lessons has nature given you? Where is your favourite part of creation? Let us know in the comments.

Are you missing some of my blog posts? They come out every Monday. Sign up to follow the A Quiet Life blog on WordPress, or you can sign up to my newsletter on www.ruthamos.com.au  and you will receive every post straight to your email inbox. You will also find my podcast, my book ‘My Year of Saying No’, and any short stories or other books will be up there as they come along.

If you would like to support this blog and the podcast then you can head over to Patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you so much!

Can we have it all?

You know, we can’t do it all. Not all of the time. None of us can.

Sorry to start the post with such a strong pronouncement, but I’m hoping it’s not too much of a shock for you.

I think that each of us wants to have every area of our lives sorted out beautifully all the time. Each of us is striving for:

• Good family relationships
• A satisfying career
• A healthy body
• A vibrant spiritual life
• An exciting social calendar
• And the ability to eat unlimited amounts of chocolate

But it’s just not possible to be there in that paradise at all times. No, not even that last point.

Not even if you quit your job and start your own business from home. Even then it’s impossible to have all of it, all of the time.

There is no silver bullet. And believe me, I’ve spent a fair bit of time searching for one.

This week’s podcast interview is with Professor Matt King, and I asked him about his work-life balance. I know that in academia, the pressure to work long hours is intense. And Matt is trying to balance that with a young family and some ministry opportunities as well.

He said something really wise.

He said, ‘I’d prefer for some parts of my career to be diminished than to just respond to the pressures of being more, more, and more. … At the moment, my personal research is taking a hit. … It’s about priorities.’

So there’s a difficult path for each of us to walk. Which thing do we compromise on right now? Which thing do we concentrate on? What is the aspect of our life that needs special attention, and what needs to be dropped lower on the list for the time being?

Perfection will come, but not until the next life. For this life we are stuck in an imperfect, fallen world and that means making some hard decisions.

I think I may be worse at this than a lot of people. I love being needed. I love it when someone sends me a text and says, ‘Can you help out?’ Whether it’s ministry or editing or just being there for a friend, I love to help out in a crisis. But this means that my schedule fills quickly, that my life gets too full, and that I run out of time for myself, for my family, for my spiritual growth. I need to continue to learn that sometimes it is important to say no.

As I write this, I am frantically working on getting all my jobs finished so that I can take two weeks of holidays next week. I haven’t had a proper holiday for a long time, so I’m really looking forward to it. And I’m intending to book this type of holiday into my schedule regularly, even if that does mean saying no to some editing jobs, or saying no to some ministry opportunities. It’s not easy, but it’s very, very important.

How do you set your priorities? Do you feel the pressure of being ‘more, more, and more’? How do you deal with it? Do you take holidays?

 

Are you missing some of my blog posts? They come out every Monday. Sign up to follow the A Quiet Life blog on WordPress, or you can sign up to my newsletter on www.ruthamos.com.au  and you will receive every post straight to your email inbox. You will also find my podcast, my book ‘My Year of Saying No’, and any short stories or other books will be up there as they come along.

If you would like to support this blog and the podcast then you can head over to Patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you so much!

When a To Do List is the Worst Thing To Do

I got up on that awful Monday morning, got dressed and ready to go, and sat at my desk to begin my day’s work.

First, I wrote out a list of things that I needed to accomplish in the week. I usually write that in my bullet journal. I write about the projects I’m focussing on and the tasks that need to be accomplished. So the list has things like:

Write DM3 (that’s the latest novel in the Deadly Miss series that I try to write something in each day – that’s one of the project-type tasks)

and

Book car in for a service (a task that doesn’t really relate to any special project)

Then I turned to my day planner. This has the day divided into hours and I can plan my day with it, using the tasks I’ve written in my bullet journal. Having the time allocated to certain projects or tasks usually helps me to work when I need to, and to not put too many tasks into any one day.

Usually it helps me to get my work done.

Usually.

On this particular Monday morning, I finished my list in my daily planner, looked at the day and the week, and realised that I wouldn’t get it all done. Again.

I had been through many weeks like this, where there were just too many tasks for the time available. And here was another one. And I couldn’t see how the work could get done.

I couldn’t handle it.

I went to bed and cried for half an hour.

Sometimes lists are a really good idea.

Sometimes crossing the tasks off makes you feel so productive and useful.

But sometimes the list just shows up how much you’re not getting done. How far you still have to go. How overwhelming life is right now.

Sometimes a to do list is (gasp!) a bad idea.

I got out of bed eventually, and I made it through the day and through the week. But for that week I ignored the daily planner, and just worked off the list of tasks and projects in the bullet journal.

That is, I sat at my desk, knowing that I had half an hour or two hours or whatever, I looked at my lists of tasks, evaluated whether I should be doing a thinking or non-thinking task, and just had a go at whatever took my fancy.

And I got through the week. I got heaps achieved. I felt great about it.

I didn’t knock everything off my list, but for that week I went easy on myself. If I achieved anything I gave myself high praise. If I missed things, I didn’t let myself worry about it. The aim was to get through the week with my mental health intact, not to get everything done.

This week’s podcast interview is with Amber. Amber suffers from a couple of fairly severe mental illnesses and she shares with us how we can help those we know who are mentally ill. But talking with her also made me think about each of us, and how we can help ourselves stay mentally healthy.

In the same way that we eat healthy food and exercise to keep our bodies healthy, each of us can also do things that help our own mental health to stay tip top. (And, of course, in the same way that we go and see a doctor when our physical health is breaking down, any of us may, at some time, need to see a specialist about our mental health.)

Sometimes the thing we need to do is give ourselves a break, like I had to do in the ‘no to-do list’ week. Sometimes we need to put down our phones and have a break from social media for a while.

I also think it’s important to think about what we’re putting into our brains. The Good Book says, ‘whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable –  if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.’ (Philippians 4:8) We can help ourselves to stay mentally healthy by reading good books, watching uplifting shows, talking about positive things.

What do you do to take care of your mental health? Have you had to give yourself a break at one time or another? Have you found that sometimes to do lists don’t work? What excellent or praiseworthy thing do you like to think about?

 

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Joining the Dots

I love talking to retired people on my podcast. In fact, sometimes I need to remind myself to keep the balance by talking to some younger folks as well. But the older ones among us are often the wiser ones, and they can look back on their lives and join the dots to see how experiences early on have been used later to help with the projects they have been called to.

The podcast interview with Greg Foot this week is like that. He can see, looking back, how his teaching work contributed to the work with World Vision, and how that helped when he came to work with Scripture Union, and how all of it has come together to contribute to his ministry work in the Anglican church now. There are also some amazing stories of timing and risk.

But when it comes to my own life, when I’m looking forward, when I need to decide whether to leave a house or stay where I am, whether to change jobs, or move cities, or move into a new ministry, I can’t always see the way those dots connect. And I’m sure it’s the same for you.

Don’t worry, I’m not moving house or job or anything right now but I am fascinated by the question of change.

Sometimes when you’re feeling really uncomfortable in a situation it means that change is on the horizon. My wise aunt once told me that change can’t happen without discomfort. And that’s all good. But sometimes discomfort means that you should stay and pray through the situation. And sometimes you need to talk with the person causing the discomfort so that they can make a change that they need to make. Sometimes you only need to change your own attitude and everything else should stay the same.

How do you know when your discomfort means it’s time to jump?

We can’t know for sure. We are living forwards in time, we can only look back to see what happens once we’ve made the decisions and taken the risks. And I even believe that there isn’t necessarily a Plan A for every situation. Sometimes the choices are balanced and we just need to lean one way or the other and take what comes.

I do believe that there is One who knows the future, and who can cope with every choice we make and turn it to good. And that helps me live my life now with a lot less anxiety and fear.

How about you? How do you make decisions about the future? Do you have a story about a time that you just needed to jump and hope that the parachute held? Can you already see the dots joining in your life?

 

There is a bit of change here – I’m trying something new. Each week I will write about something that links with the podcast. You can hear more of my thoughts in the interview each week, and get a musing on some aspect of the podcast through the blog. Let me know what you think!

You can receive this blog in your inbox each week either by following on wordpress or by signing up to my newsletter at http://www.ruthamos.com.au. You can support me at patreon.com/quietlife and help me out for as little as a dollar a month.