To share or not to share....that is the question

Sitting at my dining room table last week, in my usual spot, at the usual time (which is no particular time but whenever Sophia sleeps in the afternoon...if she does at all) I was thinking. I really like thinking. Well, I both love it and despise it at the same time.

I love it because its just time to get my

thoughts in order and bring clarity to things I may have been thinking about for a while. I usually have a notepad and my Bible with me and I just note down what I feel God is saying to me about those thoughts. I also despise thinking though because I tend to over think! I think so much that if I let my thoughts wander away by themselves they usually come back all crazy and I have to get them in line again. Just me? ...Thought so ;-)

So, I have certainly learnt a lot of lessons whilst going though this period of waiting. Here, sitting at my thinking table, I have come to many conclusions, often to questions I wasn't even asking in the first place. I have also found many more questions that have yet to find their answer. I sit here and wonder if it is right the share them here and now. I am not sure. In sharing lessons learnt you open yourself up to writing all about what you were struggling with before. It isn't the same as saying "Hey! This one time I put plain flour in a cake rather than self raising and I realised I should have just followed the recipe because it didn't rise...lesson learnt!" 
The lessons I'm talking about have changed me as a person. It's hard for a coleric personality like myself to say "Can you believe I used to think this way?....Thank God I don't anymore" One thing is to be humble enough to allow yourself to be changed by a difficult event or situation but it's a whole other ball game to blog about it!

I have decided to share one little lesson to get us started, and we'll see where we go from there. Opening the floodgates! It may be the simplest lesson of all but I think it is one of the most profoud and has by far changed my outlook on life as I know it.

My definition of 'need' has been transformed.

Living in various living conditions with varying degrees of comfort surrounded by various different people (and varying spiritual atmospheres to contend with - perhaps more on that at another time) I have come to the conclusion that there are very few things that I actually 'need'. I would hear friends who would be having a new kitchen fitted and who were upset that the tiles they wanted were not in stock say "I need the pale pink marble ones" ... I would think "No you don't need them. You want them. I dont even have a house". I had friends who were upset they couldn't go on holiday (that year) remarking "I need a holiday". I would think..."No you don't. You want one. In all our married life we have only ever been on holiday on our honeymoon"(that's 8 years and 7 months in case anyone is counting!)

Please don't get me wrong, this is not a judgement of my friends who were each expressing their own needs at the time, however significant or otherwise they were to me, and perhaps them, at the time. It was certainly a matter of semantics which just highlights to me how we have come to use the word 'need' so flippantly in society. I knew my needs and they were pretty basic. Our own place to rest our head at night where we weren't told what to do, where people didnt get upset with you for leaving a dish on the side over night, where we could pray out loud and not disturb anyone and where we could call 'home'.

I have realised that I don't 'need' a washing machine because there are lovely friends and family who would allow us to borrow theirs. I dont 'need' a bed because an old matress will do. I dont 'need' a toaster, a kettle, a blender, a microwave, a coffee-maker, a TV, the internet, because, well, who does?! In all our years of homelessness, which is what it was because we didnt have a place to call home, I have realised that we can get by with a limited amount of things and with those few things we can in fact flourish, and without them we can die. Now we are in our house and I find myself saying "I need a wardrobe!" or "I need a plug socket here by the bed" and of course I don't, but I have perhaps forgotten what place of need I (we) have come from. Already. However, it only takes a moment of contemplation to remember how these past years have taught me what true need means and I am thankful for the lesson. When I can be tempted to feel put out by what I do not have, I recall those times of getting by (which have not entirely passed!) and bring my needs and wants into perspective.

"What do you need then?" I hear you cry. I heard it. Honest. What are the things that you need to flourish that without them you could die?! Well, in there past few years of moving from pillar to post I have found that my only need in this whole world is to be found in love.

Explanation to come in the next post...