New J.O.B + busy social life = no time

But I'm ok with that.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of events, with getting my job, starting the very next day and then the children arriving the day after that...it has been full on, but really, really, good.

I like (most!) of my class, there will always be the ones that you want to strangle on numerous occassions during the day. I have 29 four and five year olds, 7 of which are non-english speaking Polish children, three high maintaince kids who cannot sit still, 14 different languages spoken at home, 2 stubborn (youngest child syndrome!) who throw fits and won't move, and 3 children other than the Polish that don't speak - even in their own languages. So needless to say it is and will be one major challenge.

I am having fun though. These first weeks have been really interactive, getting to know eachother and figuring everything out on my part. Monday is the day - the day that I will have to put on my super teacher hat and do things like Phonics and Handwriting and Literacy instead of just playing with balls and hoops and bikes in the sun (oh how I will remember these days sweetly!).

I am part of a really great team that enjoy what they do, care about the children and are there for them (not our glamorous life and salary that we pick up at the end of the month) - that's really nice to see in London because that has not been my experience thus far.

I hate starting sentences with 'I', but here I have done it again.

My (see what I did there?!) life outside of school has been incredibly busy, exhausting, but worth every hour of sleep that I miss out on. There is so much happening in the London life and I have amazing friends that continue to keep me busy and loving life. My church continues to amaze me in every way, and I feel so privileged to be a part of something so great, and to be serving a vision so great. We had church in the O2 Arena a couple of weeks ago to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hillsong London, and we had to turn away over 4000 people. What an experience!

There have been many visitors lately and I am looking forward to seeing an old friend from New Zealand who is currently living in Japan this weekend. It is exciting taking tourists around and it makes me appreciate what I have become so familiar with.

Other than that, this is my life in this moment: BUSY, FUN and FULFILLING.

Living Like I Never Have

How good is it when you figure out that you actually love your life?

I am singing.

I am dancing.

I am smiling.

I am enjoying.

I am happy.

There have been too many years wasted in my life where I have not loved it, there have been parts that I have loved, but I could never say that I love my life...I have realised in the last two weeks that I love my life.

I don't just love it because it is easy, if anything, it has been the farthest from easy since being back in London. I am writing this (still!) from my friends floor where I have a blow up mattress and am borrowing everything. I have no money, but after 2 weeks of solidly applying for jobs, I secured one at a school which is over an hour away - which again has been intense with everything that beginning a classroom in a foreign country, without my multitudes of resources that I have taken for granted on so many occasions, entails. I love it though, I love that even though I am here and have to settle back in to London life and push friendships and boundaries and step out of my comfort zone relationally everyday and be very intentional about what I do because of so many reasons, that I am undoubtedly in the right place. There is a knowing, a deep, beautiful knowing.

And I can safely say that I love my life...which, I think that you got the picture by this point.

I feel privileged to be in this position and I am not taking it for granted in any way because I know that in just a snap of a finger, a small change of circumstance can swing you to the opposite end of the pendulum, but, I think it is much deeper than just circumstantial.

I feel like I know who I am, I feel like I know where I am going (which, really I don't, but I feel secure about the future) and I feel like there is purpose and drive to my life.

There is a reason why I was created. I am not an accident, I am not some unfortunate event of an evolutionary process, I am the very product of the breath and life of God, placed here for such a time as this.

I feel alive. I feel free. I feel like me.

On High

For the last couple of weeks, I have definitely been 'on high' so to speak. I was undoubtedly excited to leave New Zealand to continue my adventure in London, and then when I got here, I was ecstatic to see all my friends and think about all the great things that are yet to come.

Yesterday, reality set in.

It wasn't a bad day by any stretch of the imagination, but a day where the high came crashing down. The day when I realised that maybe this isn't going to be as easy as the fairytale I had made myself believe.

But from the depths within me, I want to believe this fairytale. I want to believe that I can get a really amazing job and that something great will work out. I want to believe that I can earn enough money to pay my rent, to give and to save to go on trips to Uganda. I want to believe that I can be of some great value to the people in my life both immediately and in days to come. I want to believe that I can continue to live generously with everything that I have, my money, my time, my affection, my words, my compassion and my wisdom. I want to believe that I can build incredible relationships and have a community of people around me that will protect, defend and care for me, and I for them. I want to believe that I can run this good race with perseverance and determination. I want to believe that I can do something great, something worthwhile with my life.

These things are all in the core of who I am, who God has wired and created me to be, to impact my world, to make a difference, to stand up and make a change. I know I will never settle, it is not in my nature to do so.

But today, today I feel useless and have nothing to give.

Last night I gathered with some great people and we took a moment to write down some things that we want to see happen in the next year. Adrian, my wonderful friend and leader, will then send them back to us in a years time so that we can reflect and see what we have achieved. It didn't take me long to fill the entire page with dreams and aspirations for the year, some easily achievable, and some that seem so far fetched that I couldn't imagine happening in a lifetime, let alone in the next year.

I am excited, I am expectant, but it's the waiting place that always gets me. I know, really know that there are so many incredibly good things to come, I know like I have never known before. I have never had such a confident feeling as this before and I simply can't explain it.

It seems strange and so adverse to my circumstances. Think about the reality of it for a moment. I am here in London, 18800 km away from my homeland of New Zealand in quite literally, the furthermost place I can be. I have no money and getting a coffee this morning was an extravagance that I simply needed on this day, but felt guilty for. I have no job and not too many real leads. I am sitting on a blow up mattress on my friends floor writing this, and this is now what I call home.

I am thankful nonetheless, that I have been here before, that I have met people, friends that I can call family, that are happy to have me squatting on their floor.

It seems that I have nothing, but truth be told, I have everything. I have a place to call home for now, I have friends, I have family and most importantly, I have hope. I am not without, this isn't a sad sob story, this is a story of hope and of confidence in the God that I know and love.

So those are my circumstances, that is the reality of life for me now in this far away land, away from the comforts and security of what I know and can trust in. But despite them, I am confident. I am hopeful. I am privileged.

So don't forget that this is what I chose. I did this to myself. I was the one that wanted to leave New Zealand, I was the one that left with nothing in my bank account, I was the one that left without a job to come to, but I just believe that I was being obedient to Jesus and following my heart, and because of that, I have this unexplainable knowing within me that everything will be ok.

It will be better than ok. It will be better than I can conceivably imagine, because that is the type of God I serve.

Really, a year ago?

On any normal weekend, you can wander through the delightful streets of Notting Hill and come across great architecture, green commons, cute shops and a market full of every fruit, vegetable, and bakery needs as well as the antiques, gifts and a vast array of eclectic objects down the infamous Portabello Road. It really is like the movie Notting Hill, it has that beautiful romantic feeling to it, and you half expect Hugh to pop around the corner and say Hello.

Except, this isn't a normal weekend, and it was a year ago that I experienced this bank holiday weekend for the very first time.

My memories from the Notting Hill Carnival last year were quite spectacular, I have never seen so many beads, sequence, feathers, boobs and butts shaking it with everything they've got for so long. Parade after parade vehicle having colourful followers dancing and celebrating and living. It was truly freeing to see, and sometimes join in, with these woman and men who were loving the moment so incredibly much.

This year, again, the carnival did not disappoint. With a vast array of colours and people, woman letting it all hang out without a care in the world, and fathers dancing with their little girls, it was quite a sight to see. I joined in on the parade, danced my little heart out to DJ Chuckie (who was actually rather good) and had fun wandering the streets with a couple of great guys who joined in on all the action with me. We got high off the second hand wacky dacky smoke that filled the air and made memories that will last a life time.

The Notting Hill Carnival is the largest carnival in all of Europe, filling streets with all types of music and food with a very strong African influence, but what I love most about the carnival, is that it doesn't matter who you are, what your background is and where you come from. Everyone can join in, party, have a great time and it be ok. You can be the token white girl celebrating and shaking your booty and no one thinks twice. You can be old and wrinkly and be playing the drums or trumpet or dancing like a mad man, and the young join in. There is no pretence here, no judging. It is probably the one and only weekend in London where you can really be you, no matter who you are, and no one cares, you can be fat with all of your muffin tops (and much, MUCH more) hanging out of your bikini and no one blinks an eye. Like I said it is very freeing.

Until, the riots start, and you get the heck out of there as fast as you can.

Faith + Hope + Love

It's the title of the latest Hillsong CD and it's more than good. It is an expression of the heart of the church and the life that it has created in people.

Today, as I stood and sang songs that have been born out of this house, with so much passion and fullness of life, all I could do was say 'thank you'. While sitting in the service, I was just struck with an incredibly deep love for this church, and for the 'house of God' on a global level. It took me back to when I was saved, at a young 17, and the church that I then called home for the next 8 years. It was then, during those first, intoxicating months of knowing Christ and His church, that I remember a deep love and passion beginning to develop in my heart.

For some reason, through the good and the bad that has happened in my 9 years of knowing Him, God has just rooted such a firm love for His house in my heart. At times I thought that I have hated it, I hated the hypocrisy and falseness that dwelled in what seemed like every corner I turned to, I hated the way the leaders treated me and didn't speak life and truth, but lies that fed my insecurity. I despised the way that we as servants, were treated more like slaves for 'his namesake' and I envied the leaders that were getting all of their hopes and dreams fulfilled when all I could see was them having the behaviour and personal skills of a six year old.

But even throughout all of the hurt and pain and what I saw, I still, for some reason believed that the church was Gods answer to a hurting humanity, and that, maybe oneday, other people would see it that way and start standing up to the responsibility that we, as Christs body, have to this dying and lost world. I thought maybe oneday, that the church would look beyond its four walls, look beyond its 'incredible' leaders, look beyond prosperity and blessing to see something so simple...a world in need of faith + hope + love.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God, without hope we have no expectation of good for the future, and without love, we lack the fundamental need of all humanity. We not only need these things, we were created to live and breathe and function out of these things.

To me, Hillsong is a place that continually challenges me to rise up and live out of this 'faith+hope+love' life, a place that has no constraints or limits to who God is and what He can do. A place that is so expectant for good to happen in my life, in the life of my friends and family, in this city and in this world. There is such an incredible atmostphere of God being BIGGER than any circumstance or situation and I love it.

I more than love it.

God doesn't just love the church, He can't, or not in the sense that we know love. If He were to love church like I love chocolate and ice-cream, then we may as well pack up and forget about it, give up. I will abandon my love for chocolate and ice-cream when I get diabetes, or when I decide that I need to eat sugar free, or when I am just bored of it. But God will not abandon His plan for His house, for His people, for His name to be exalted far above all.

See, God more than love's His church, and I think that I'm beginning to see it in a new light, in His light, and I think that I'm beginning to love it in a way that can never be explained by our word 'love', or probably ever explained. It is deep rooted, and it is profoundly breathtaking in the way that it has captured me.

wow.

London is my Ice-cream

This process and journey back to London has been like one of those exciting but furiously tantalizing moments when you're standing at the ice-cream store as a little kid being promised something so delicious, but having to wait for what seems like an eternity for it.

You pull your face up close to the ice-cream counter, deliberate over all of your choices and eventually, after your dad pressures you to hurry up, you make a selection of only one, how do you narrow it down like that? Despite your curiosity of other flavours, and desperately wanting to try them, you can never go past your favourite and ask for that one. You can see the store person scooping up that delicious Hokey Pokey (had to have kiwiana) and plonking it in the cone, you hope and pray that they give you a really, really big scoop, but you're too embarrassed to ask, so you just look up with your big puppy dog eyes and hope that they see you, succumb to the look of desperation, and add another. The ice-cream is so close, you see it dripping off the cone in the hot summer day, but, it is still so far. You can see it just in front of you, and almost touch it and taste it, but it's not quite yours, until the glorious moment happens when they pass it over and you skip out of the shop without a care in the world.

I've felt like that so much lately in life, how do I choose out of all these options? How do I wait so patiently for my ice-cream to be rolled and put on the cone? At last, this ice-cream is mine. I have it in my hand and it is the sweetest, most delicious Hokey Pokey ice-cream I have ever tasted (probably Kapiti or something). I have been waiting for this for months, and now that it is here, and now that I am consuming it, I am skipping around without a care in the world...

Almost.

You know, for me, I have almost put this expectation on God that He is my ice-cream shop owner and I am just waiting, so desperately, for him to give me a really giant scoop of all things good. I am happy, over the moon, with being able to be back in London, but would just like that added scoop please? So I look up with my big puppy dog eyes, and hope and pray that He sees me, but never really just be frank and ask for my extra scoop...isn't that kinda rude? Or so that's what my Mum always told me.

But I seem to think that there are different rules for God the ice-cream shop owner. I mean sure, things aren't always served to us in nice yummy scoops with a waffle cone and chocolate topping, but surely we can just ask. Isn't that the point in God being God?

So here, today, I find myself not only looking up with eyes that will melt His heart, but with sweet words of pleading for my extra scoop on life.

Actually, there's more than just one scoop that I want right now - but for this moment my added scoop that I really need is a job and some money. It's not too much to ask for, but in a way, I feel like I already have my delicious scoop of London, I just need the more. The more is just to enjoy the first better.

I arrived back in London 4 days ago and I felt like I have arrived 'home', which seems to be anywhere for me, but for now, my heart is here and therefore, my home. Getting back on the Underground Tube with my two suitcases from Heathrow airport never felt so good, it didn't matter to me that I had to lug them up and down multitudes of stairs or that no one even offered to help, because, I was home. I waited in one of the longest customs lines that I have ever seen (and I've done my fair share of traveling), but, it did not phase me, because I was home.

There is just a feeling of deep satisfaction and a knowing that life is about to get really great, maybe to a degree of greatness that I have never experienced before. That is my hope, that is my dream.

What ever it is that is waiting ahead for me, I am ready, I am excited and I want to rip it out of the hands of the ice-cream store owner and delve into it with the enthusiasm of a 6 year old.