18/02/2019

Yesterday was a grey day of rain, anxiety, essay writing and dissertation proposal submission. After waking up with my heart beating fast already, as if my body was afraid of the day, I brainstormed and submitted my dissertation proposal and then walked out into the drizzle to buy a lemon to cheer myself up and to make hummus.

As I cycled down to school I spoke to God, apologising for how short sighted my focus had been that morning - everything hung on the balance of how I worked, how I lived. I didn't think of grace, or the cross, or the wideness of God's mercy and His capacity and my identity in Him, separate from achievement or striving. I began this year determined not to let myself get anxious about work, but I realise I can't even do that on my own strength - I need God to change my heart, to take that anxiety away and to carry me through writing and reading and thinking.

As I prayed with Jacob that evening, I remembered a couple of weeks ago when I ran in Hampstead Heath. It was a sunny day, and I was feeling exhausted but happy, and I centred myself as I ran by thinking: 'I am a girl, in leggings and trainers, running in Hampstead Heath. The sun is shining, there are other runners out too - they are probably just as tired as I am but they know, like I do, that doing a difficult thing is rewarding.' And as I thought about the facts and the privelege I had to be where I was, doing what I love, with people around me who love and support me my heart swelled and I felt the lyrics of that child's hymn I used to sing in Sunday school 'this is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it'. On days like yesterday, when things are drab and not exciting - those days are still made by God and I want to be able to rejoice in them too.

This semi-long distance relationship

'Why do you love me?' I asked Jacob on a Monday night last term on a day where I was finding it hard to feel the love despite knowing it exists. A hard thing about living a semi-long distance relationship is not having all the ways of expressing love you used to have, and then having to trust that love exists (oh hello Wales villanelle) without those signs so unconsciously littered in every day life spent together. It's a lot like faith in God when you have 'valley moments' and God seems far away - you know he loves you, you know he exists, you know and yet you can't see or touch or speak.

The day after that I came back from a morning in the library to find a postcard for me on the stairs. 'This postcard is a sign' it said, with big words 'I LOVE YOU' on the front and a poem mixing semiotics and assurance on the back (I find semiotics fascinating if you didn't already know). He must have sent it before I asked him on Monday night, and yet it was like the question I asked had conjured that physical reminder of an answer.

All this to say, semi-long distance isn't easy, and it takes work and writing post cards and articulating why you love the other even when it seems the most obvious thing - and yet the love endures and grows all the better for it. Here are 5 important things I've learnt after a term and a bit of this semi-long distance relationship:

1. Say what you want/how you feel. 

Early on in our relationship Jacob sent me the song 'Honesty' by Billy Joel (just because he likes Billy Joel) but I took it very seriously and vowed that I wouldn't play games -  when I felt something I'd say it and when I needed something I'd ask it. That has been incredibly helpful with semi-long distance - when you aren't there to read body language or see someone's change of mood from day to day, when so much of their life is obscured it's impossible to be able to know what they need or want so instinctively. And what they need and want changes because of distance, but the adapting to that isn't easy unless they articulate their new needs.

Last term I had to tell Jacob that I needed to feel desired/wanted despite the distance between us. The change from seeing each other almost every day to seeing each other once every couple of weeks (if that) meant that articulating love in the every day together ways of time and touch and certain acts of service weren't an option any more, so I needed him to say he loved me more, or describe his day to me more or ask about mine. Telling him I felt that way instead of letting it make me hurt or frustrated inside was so good - it showed him that I trusted him to be able to adapt, and showed me how earnestly he does want to make sure I feel loved when he made conscious efforts after that conversation to do so.

`2. Stick to your rules.

Quite early on in our relationship Jacob and I came up with clear boundaries regarding intimacy. One important one was not spending a night in the same room together. This has meant that each time I visit him in Cambridge I've asked people if I can stay with them. It might be an added 'inconvenience' but it has been really useful in helping us respect each other and obey God even when I've not seen him for a while, and am tired from travelling, and his bed is so warm and the outside so cold...

But I do it because I love and respect him, and I love and respect God, and I know keeping my side of this promise shows him that I am someone who can keep faith, and it also upholds the purity that God asks of us to have in our relationships. So though because I love him keeping the rules are hard, because I love Him/him keeping the rules are worth it.

3. Comfort each other with truth

On a crummy day I was telling Jacob over the phone how I was feeling frustrated, and finding it particularly hard to pray. 'Jesus is right by you,' he said, 'he's holding you in his arms and smiling down at you.'

I laughed. 'I was with you until you said smiling,' I said, 'In my head he was frowning and disappointed.'

'No! He's smiling - he loves you and you're his child.'

It's particularly hard not being able to 'be there for each other' in the immediate sense when either one of us is going through a hard time, but the most loving thing either of us can do is speak the truths that both of us believe in. Jacob reminds me that God made me, loves me, and that He has a plan and his plan is good. Those three truths are good no matter what the situation, because they remind me that I have a purpose, a comforter, and a guide. The reminding is loving and comforting in itself, but it is also a humble recognition of a greater and more constant comforter than either of us can ever be.

4. Have a shared ritual

Jacob and I have prayed together almost every night since we started this year. We begun this in Singapore, continued in Wales and so we had that ritual pretty much rooted when we parted for the term. Nightly calls have been such a source of joy - we've seen so many prayer come true which is incredible, but it also is a way of caring for each other actively since we know that prayer works, and if we pray for the other person's peace or productivity or courage or... we know that God will take that prayer and use it according to his plan and purpose.

Particularly in the early weeks of London, prayer was such a familiarity in an unfamiliar environment and routine, and it really grounded me to know I could keep praying no matter what, and that Jacob was praying too. When Jacob was in Rome, he stood in the stairwell of a noisy hostel and called despite the shaky wifi. If I'm out late, I often call him on my cycle home, keeping one earphone out to listen for traffic and the other in to hear about his life. It's a ritual that has become so interwoven in each of our lives and which weaves our lives together.

(Other rituals include having porridge while sitting on the bed whenever I visit him in Cambridge, or going for a run together whenever he comes here/I go there)

5. Make time together more than ordinary

In a conversation with Lucy (who is so wise, and so easy to confide in) about how she and her boyfriend work with distance in their relationship, she mentioned how one of the beautiful aspects of a long distance relationship was the specialness of the time together. Since they wouldn't see each other often, when they did see each other they'd make it a point to make the time extraordinary.

When Jacob is coming over, I try to get as much work done as possible before he arrives, so that time is free for doing joyful, special things with him. The last time I went to Cambridge we went to a play and a burns night party, and the last time he was in London we went to Pierre Bonnard's exhibition and the orchestra - things we wouldn't do usually, and things we probably wouldn't do alone. Sharing them with him makes them extra special, though they are already special in themselves. It's a way for each of us to show the other that we value them coming over and that we save the best of our time for them.

From "A Brave and Startling Truth"

Cool art by www.kanghee.kim

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

(Maya Angelou)

Compliments from my brother

A Chinese New Year's Eve conversation with Tim about our respective strengths and personalities resulted in this gem:

Tim (on why I am like Monica from friends - apparently): 'You have your shit together.'

Me: 'I do not have my shit together.'

Tim: 'You have the most shit together out of all of us!'

Um - thank you?

i thank You God for most this amazing

Today I sat on a park bench in the late afternoon sun, diary in hand, thinking 'How do I distill this golden weekend into words?' Even that precise moment, sitting there, was beyond the capacity of my writing - because of my own literary limitations and the moment's infinite nature. I was in the park because I went for a walk because the world is beautiful and no other reason, and the sun shone on my face - I am unworthy, and yet I basked in it.

This morning Jacob left, but not before sharing this weekend with me. We shared yoga and a run, overdue hugs and kisses, the paintings of Pierre Bonnard in the Tate Modern, a long bus ride, a vegan quiche and Christmas muesli, and a concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra which left me breathless. Sharing is a far better word than doing, partly because often we aren't the makers of the joy we partake in, and also partly because this weekend has impressed on me so strongly something I'd been thinking on Friday after reading Romans 12 - that as part of God's community we belong to each other, him to me and me to him.***  Therefore, somehow the joy I feel at the sun on my face is also his joy, because I know my joy makes his complete. 

That was something else we talked about this weekend - the possibility of a 'sated joy' this side of heaven, and we concluded that it must operate like that phrase Christians often use to explain the tension between the fact that the kingdom of God has fully come with Jesus and is also yet to be fully expressed: that we will see the full expression of joy when we finally see God, and yet here on earth because of His grace, we can feel joy that is full and complete.

I thought, as I sat there, about a question my friend Pierre had asked me this week: whether I feel overwhelmed that Jacob might come to Singapore at the end of the year if God provides a way. I said no, then I said yes, and I meant it both times. Not overwhelmed because I feel so certain that this is good, and he feels sure too - besides, the alternative seems more 'overwhelming'. But also yes, because love is the scariest thing and it means coming up with the terrifying and beautiful realisation that you are wanted, cherished, that you could change someone's future and they yours. And yes because I wouldn't want to have such a commitment from someone I didn't feel overwhelmed by. It wouldn't be love if I wasn't overwhelmed - I feel quite strongly that some part of yourself must be drowned in the face of something so good.

I only sat there for ten minutes, thinking, writing, reading some of the poems from the anthology Alex gave me for Christmas ('forgive me' the letter that came with it said, 'I found it in Oxfam books a couple of weeks before Christmas and couldn't resist') - I will leave you a poem now.

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e.e. cummings

*** God's people are told to 'belong to each other', in a segment about the community of Christ following the call to offer ourselves to God in worship. I gathered that in some ways how we offer our bodies to God has to do with how we operate in the body of Christ (as Romans 12 puts it - I don't think the metaphor's echo of the 'offer your bodies' is accidental) and cultivating humility, valuing diversity, 'belonging' to each other and using your gifts generously and cheerfully were what I saw as ways the passage encouraged Christians to live in a way that made the body of Christ a worshipful one, a community pleasing to God.

Devotion

This year, I decided to hold a word as my 'word of the year': a word to go through and grow through this year with. The word I chose was 'devotion'.

The word 'devotion' in the bible (greek - προσκαρτερῶ) has its roots in words meaning strength and perseverance, attention to one thing or adherence to one person. I wanted to be attentive (Mary Oliver, after all, said that attention is the beginning of devotion) in my interactions, giving myself wholly in conversations and time with people, with God, with my work and my running. I suppose you could think of it as being a fully present person at any one point.

God was so good a the beginning of the year, giving me reminders of devotion (when cycling down to see Jacob on that wondrous St Martin in the Fields day I passed a statue that had the very word inscribed onto it in big capital letters) and giving me the strength to actually be single-mindedly attentive in what I did. Spending time with someone (or someones) and being absolutely invested in the present, not planning ahead for the minutes and hours after or worrying about what you left undone in the past, is so liberating and makes time with people so special. I feel this more acutely in London, where it is far more difficult to arrange a meeting with someone, so when you do see each other the time seems surrounded by a palpable halo of preciousness. Something did  worry me though - devotion requires rather a lot of giving of yourself to that thing. A half-hearted devotee is a creature of oxymoron, but I wondered how I could retreat and rest, and still throw myself into this life whole heartedly?

On a run a while ago, I realised something that quite simply cleared every thing up (from a theoretical point of view - practice takes practise):

You only need to be devoted to one thing. 

After all, you can only be devoted to one thing, or you change the definition of the word. Devotion requires adherence/attention to one thing or person - and I have no doubt in my mind who that shall be. Teach me Lord, I thought, to be devoted to you. Because where devotion to other things asks that I give my all to them alone, devotion to God means attention and love to my neighbours, honouring my time and my work and my body. But the attention and purpose I approach all else with is rooted in the strength and perseverance that comes from God.

In practice this has meant sacrificing my 'goals' and the intentions behind what I do apart from God (for instance, maintaining a good grade average, getting faster/stronger in track, finishing every bit of reading, only eating healthy meals...) and letting him lead me.  It hasn't meant I don't care about these areas - in fact, I care more about them because I see them as areas to use God's gifts and express my thanks to him in creative ways. It just means that the end point, where my eyes are fixed upon, is always (ideally, though obviously not realistically) God's glory rather than measures of success in these areas. It has meant that I've felt a lot less anxious, a lot more joyful, and learnt a lot more about God's character which has meant worship has become so much more of a real and a living part of my life in and out of church. I'm excited to see what the rest of the year teaches me and how that will change me...

When I walk out into the world, I take no thoughts with me.  That’s not easy, but you can learn to do it.  An empty mind is hungry, so you can look at everything longer, and closer.  Don’t hum!  When you listen with empty ears, you hear more.  And this is the core of the secret:  Attention is the beginning of devotion.
-Mary Oliver