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How will I be remembered?

Recently I have been thinking about how I would like to be remembered, what my legacy on this earth will be. What people would say about me? I think they would say that I worked hard, that I loved my job, that I was passionate about justice, about ending poverty, about people’s rights.

But what would they say about me-as a friend, as a colleague, as a sister and a daughter or an aunty? For the last few weeks I have stood up in front of people and given talks about what it is to really love people, to really live a life where we love our neighbours as ourselves. In the context of my job and the work we do this is really important. We ask people to care about people living in poverty, people trapped in conflict or slavery. We encourage people to become involved in their own communities, to care for the homeless, the drug addicted, the lonely. I ask people to live a life where they put other people’s needs first. But the more I have given this talk the more I am asking myself if I do that. Do I live a life where I put others first? Do I love the people around me unconditionally?

You see it is easy for me to love people who are far away, to love refugees and people trapped in prostitution or living in poverty on the other side of the world. It is easy for me to stand up for their rights, to give 110% to my job, to encourage others to look beyond themselves-to people who are hurting around the world. But I realised, as I drove home from a talk one Sunday that loving the people who are around me is much harder. Showing mercy and grace to my friend when they hurt me or my colleague when they upset me is much more difficult. Being a neighbour to my actual neighbours is so much harder. Because it requires much more of a sacrifice. It means I have to have patience and respect and show people grace when I don’t want to, when I don’t feel like they deserve it. But isn’t this what we are called to do, isn’t this what society and communities should all be about. If you are a Christian or a person of faith you are called to live your life like Jesus. And even if you’re not, Jesus is still a pretty good benchmark for how we should treat each other, of what loving your neighbour should actually look like. Forgiveness, grace, mercy, non-judgemental patient unconditional love. What if we were all to live our lives like this? What would the world look like?

I saw a video on Facebook at the weekend, it was a little cartoon and the premise was- if you are not getting what you want from a friendship or a relationship then leave. If your needs are not being met then walk away. Because you deserve more and that person is of no use to you. And it made me think, it is not a bad message. If you are being hurt, if someone in your life is genuinely not good for you, if you are being physically, mentally or emotionally abused or used then absolutely that needs to not happen. But the real crux of this video was less about that, how we can protect ourselves from people who may hurt us and more just about ‘me’. The idea of ‘me’. There is a line from a song that talks about ‘a generation, a fascination of I, me and mine’ and I can’t help but feel like that is our starting point and end point sometimes. Me. It is my starting point and end point. I love my friends, my family, my colleagues and I would do anything for them. But do they always know that? Do my words and actions always reflect that?

I don’t think they always do. My colleague in work and one of the wisest, most gracious women I know, says that before you say anything you should ask yourself three things-is it kind, is it necessary, is it true and if it doesn’t fill one of those criteria then don’t say it. I fail at this, constantly and consistently but I am endeavouring to do it. We live in a country where one in five children are being bullied online, where people are so hurt and so broken our suicide rates are some of the highest in Europe. Where 450,000 people suffer from depression. Our country is in the depths of a homeless crisis like we have never before seen. What would our country, this world, look like if we all started to love our neighbours a little bit better? If we checked ourselves before speaking? What would it look like if I stopped thinking about me and started thinking about you? If instead of getting frustrated and annoyed I asked my colleagues how they are. If when my friend says something that may hurt me, I stop myself before hurting them back. What would happen if we all began to love unconditionally, to love without limits, to love extravagantly? To forgive, to let go.

I recently spent time in Ethiopia meeting with women who are part of a self-help group model of poverty alleviation. They have inspiring, jaw dropping stories of how their lives have been turned around. Of how they have gone from being the poorest of the poor with no money, no hope and no future to being able to send their children to school and college, to being able to feed their families three meals a day. The material and economic difference in their lives is nothing short of a miracle. But every time I left one of these groups; that was never the thing that was at the forefront of my mind or my heart. Every single time, without fail, I came away blown away by their love for each other. Their bond, their unfailing love and friendship. These women would do and have done anything and everything for each other. On one occasion we sat in a room, surrounded by these beautiful women, we had two words of Amharic, they had no English. But as one lady started to tell her story the whole room hushed. She spoke in her native language and we had no idea what she said but as she said it, we cried. Because as she spoke the other women hugged each other and cried, the women closest to her touched her and held her. And even though we couldn’t yet understand her story, we knew that these women had travelled a long road together, a road of pain and suffering. But they were still there, feeling each other’s pain, sharing in each other’s joy.

This lady had lost everything; her grown up sons, her husband, her livelihood and is currently losing her health. But she told us of the great love of her self-help group friends, the love of the women around her who have carried her through. Who every day go and collect her so she can be with them, who pool their money to pay her medical bills, who make sure she has food. These women who love her unconditionally, who never ever give up on her, who never forget her.

And that is how I want to be remembered. As someone who loved unconditionally, who put other people’s needs before my own. I want someone to say, they too, once knew a wise and gracious woman who changed the world around her. Not by her job or her blogs or her talks. By her actions, by her words, by her friendship, by her love.

 

Fear, my old friend

I read in a book one of the best descriptions of fear and depression I have seen so far. The book described them as people, who take up occupancy in your life. They walk alongside you throughout your day, you don’t want them there but they turn up none the less. You think you have out run them but then just around the corner there they are again, waiting for you, ready to take hold. The author of this book did a much better job of explaining and illuminating this than I am but the idea of it always stayed with me. The idea that our struggles are so well known to us that they are always there, sometimes dormant, lurking in the background and sometimes front and centre ruling our decisions and our actions. Like an old friend, something that has been around so long, you can’t remember when you first met.

My struggle is fear, it always has been. I’ve lived in the shadow of fear for as long as I can remember. When I was 13 my best friend died, a year later another friend passed away, the next my beloved grandad and two years after that, a childhood friend lost his battle with cancer. I began to live in an anxious state of waiting for the next tragedy to strike. I went through life with bated breath. Fear became my friend. Fear became my tool-to always be ready. To be prepared for the worst in all situations. To always be one step ahead of disappointment, to be prepared for grief when it would come. And life had taught me that it would come. Of that I could be sure.

So fear followed me throughout all of my life. My old friend that walked around with me, that came into new relationships with me, that said ‘Told you so’ when they ended. That told me not to bother with new ones, ‘it won’t end well’, fear would say, ‘you know that’. And I listened. Fear and I have been very close. Fear is where I run when life is hard. But not the good kind of fear, that tells you when something is wrong, that alerts you that it is time to act. The other kind, that stops you moving, that paralyses you and traps you. That tangles you up in a web of untruths and maybes. The little voice that tells you you’re not good enough, that there’s no point in even trying.

Fear is where I have run because hope was too big a risk. To hope meant to imagine a world where things were different, where people didn’t die, where people didn’t leave. To imagine a world so far beyond the one that I had known, that imagining it was almost an impossibility. To believe that there is good, that death has not won, to believe that the worst will not always happen seemed so alien to me I didn’t even dare to try.

But then one cold December night all my biggest fears came into being and I soon found that I had no other option but to sit down and have a good old chat with my friend fear. To face what he had in his ugly box of tricks. To go to the deepest parts of my soul that held my biggest fears, the parts surrounded by grief, both felt and imagined. The undreamt dreams, and hopes too big to be allowed out. I soon found that I didn’t like my old friend fear quite as much as I thought. Fear stopped me moving on, stopped me dreaming dreams; stopped me living life. And paralysed me in ways I can’t even begin to explain.

I began to wonder if maybe there was a different way. If there was a way through the dark, through the tangle, through the pain and the hurt, to a place where fear no longer exists, to a place of freedom. And slowly but surely I found it, I emptied the box one little broken piece at a time. The friends lost, the broken hearts, the disappointments, the final goodbyes. And through that I found healing. I found freedom. Freedom to live a life filled with joy and expectation, the freedom to become the person I was created to be and in uncertainty, to find courage. To know that no matter what happens I will be ok. To let go of fear, and to dare to hope. This is where I lay my foundation. In the courage to hope, to build my house on firm ground.

Of course sometimes I come home and I find fear has taken up residency again, I see him admiring the view, getting comfy. Sometimes I give him a pillow for his head and it’s like old times again. But more often than not I thank him for stopping by and reminding me how far I have come. He talks to me about pain and I tell him about joy. He mentions hurt so we talk about healing. He brings up vulnerability so I remind him it’s just another name for strength. He reintroduces himself as fear in case I’m confused so I introduce him to my new friend Courage and our best friend Hope.

 

The Reason

Just as I was about to tell the world about this blog i.e. my Facebook friends and about four people on Twitter, I realised I hadn’t said anything about what it is about! Mostly because I was not really sure what to say or where to start. I have wanted to start a blog for ages, I had the architecture all set up; pretty picture and everything, for about a year. But every time I went to write something I went blank and headed back to the much safer world of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook.

But then recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine about how, when things in this world seem so bleak, do we keep going. What is it that keeps us getting up in the morning, when it seems from everything around us that humans can be so cruel. When we are bombarded by terrible news stories and the hurt in our own lives. And when I started to think about that, it made me want to write something that brought hope. That inspired people, which to anyone who knows me may seem ironic given how much time I spend talking about human trafficking and poverty! But hope is all I have to cling on to. And to get a little Biblical on it, hope never disappoints.

My mentor said these words to me years ago, as I sat on her couch crying and nursing a severely broken heart and they have never left me, even though it took a few more years for me to believe it. But I can say now that hope does not disappoint and that it is, without doubt the confident expectation of good. So here I am, digging deep to see the hope and the beauty in the world, even in the most horrible of situations.

And this blog will undoubtedly cover the most horrible of situations for which I apologise in advance, but it can only be in knowing about these situations that we can change them. And I wholeheartedly believe that we can change the world, even if that world is the world of just one person. Whether it is the world of someone who is having a bad day and just needs a little bit of hope and a little bit of light. Or someone trapped in slavery who by our actions can be freed or the homeless person on the street who just needs one kind word.

We can change the world. Hope can spread like wildfire if we let it and to once again steal J.R.R. Tolkien’s quote…’where there’s life – there’s hope’. And there is beautiful, crazy, complicated and precious life all around us.