I am Peter

I am currently in the midst of performing in my first attempt at circus theatre. It is a thing that I had put on my bucket list and I am amazed and excited that I get to fulfill this wish only one year later. As is the case with performing arts, there are times of craziness, and then times of just waiting around. It is during these times that I have started teaching others to do handstands.

And in teaching others, I keep telling people that to learn to handstand, the best thing to learn is a concept that most people overlook: and that is learning to fall. Learning to fall and then getting back up again.

I'm learning this over again in so many other ways. I now feel like I live somewhere in limbo: between a lifestyle of "accepted", identifiable Christian behaviour and that of a "liberated" hippy left-winger. I struggle with explaining myself to either camps and it frustrates me...because I feel that neither understand how, more than ever, I am desperately clinging to the love of my God and saviour. I am hanging out with the tax collectors because I know what it is to be one of them. I am Peter as he steps out of the boat on to the water. And I understand him perfectly when he looks away, begins to sink and cries out. I am Peter when he reaches for Jesus as the waves slowly close over his body. And through the successes and (probably more importantly) the failures, I am still glad that I stepped out of the boat.

I am praying for the strength to keep going...to learn how to fall and to learn how to get back up again.

Learning to Stand

It's Handstand February and I am just in time.

My journey from neanderthal to hand-balancer has been a long and (physically) painful one. But it's been ridiculously rewarding. I feel a confidence in myself, whether upside-down or upright, that I didn't have before. And today, I'm happy to invert myself without the need for walls, cushions or people. It's still a hit-and-miss thing, but for the most part, I am hitting.

In the meantime, my journey from agnostic to Christ-follower has been an even longer and painful (in all ways) one. This past week, I've been battling some infections that, although hopefully minor, still leave me miserable and gritting my teeth.

One night, I woke up in a haze of pain. I felt like my chest was being put through a meat grinder. It sounds ridiculous, now looking back, but I briefly thought that I might die. And then I thought of all my friends that were still "unsaved" whom I still hadn't had the opportunity to share God with. And that was more agonizing to me than the pain in my body.

I woke up the next morning physically fine, but I was shaken. The night had taught me how I really felt about my friends and how unwilling I was to be without them forever. And if I felt that way, how much more did God? Thankfully, since we do seem to be on the same page in that respect, God seems to have given me little nudges along the way with respect to my friends. Sometimes, it's been the "love unconditionally" message, another time, it's been "be careful". But currently, we're in the "let me (God) handle it" phase. As relieved as I am that it's not all up to me, I'm wanting it to happen now. I want to be there at every twist and turn in my friends' lives. I want to applaud and sympathize and encourage where appropriate. But that's really more manhandling than trusting. And I'm not sure that manhandling ever produces great results.

I'm still learning to stand in entirely different ways.

Loving a Terrorist

Do you know what it's like to have someone in your life you couldn't imagine living without? I'm not talking about a spouse, a child or a family member. I'm talking about someone who is merely a friend - someone with whom you have no blood ties with, whom you could drift apart from if the right circumstances lined up to the point where that person could end up being nothing but a distant memory.

I have someone like that. And I would let go of the friendship were it not for one tiny fact: I love him. I'm not talking about romantic love or the love that we associate today with meat pies and favourite places. I'm talking about a love in which I imagine an eternity in God's presence and my heart breaks because at this point, I know he wouldn't be there.

When I first embarked on this friendship, I heard God telling me something distinctly: that I was putting my heart in the hands of a terrorist. Part of me understood that and part of me denied it because this friendship felt so natural. At that point in time, we fulfilled some gap in each other's lives that nothing else had been able to fill. That mutual filling is addictive and when two parties are willing to listen to each other, that is one of the most fertile grounds for friendship to happen.

Now, some time down the track, that fertile period is over and I now find myself in a friendship which many of us have experienced: one in which you are sometimes left feeling hurt, sometimes ignored, and sometimes the sparks just aren't flying no matter how much you try. And when that happens, I hear God's words again, that my heart is in the hands of a terrorist. But now I also hear him whispering addendum, "Love unconditionally."

With others in the past, when I've heard that, I've sighed and mentally rolled up my sleeves for the hard slog ahead. But while I have done that in this case, the slog is different. As I'm wading through the misunderstandings, the times of abandonment and general busyness that sometimes keeps us apart, I remember what it used to be.

And then at some point in time, it suddenly hit me. That I was seeing some part of God's heart. That this was no different to his love for me...for everyone. How many times has he been ignored and abandoned by me? How many times have I given him the worst part of my day, if at all, and expected him to still be there when I needed him? I am the terrorist and he...he has put his heart in my hands.

Yet he continues to remember and visualize what life with me was like and what it could be again. And that Past and Future shoulder his Present to keep on loving. How absolutely humbling and how I hope that I can reciprocate a small part of the delight that he cannot help but take in me.

The Little Lighthouse

The lighthouse at Miramar, Wellington

I was forced to stare at this lighthouse for a long time.

I won't go into the details of why this was. The public imagination will probably produce a better story than reality.

It was rainy and I was trying desperately to devour a good chunk of my Agatha Christie book without falling asleep (a frequent habit).

Minutes (or was it hours?) I woke up to find that not much had changed. I find most lighthouses remarkable, but this one that I was parked by was rather underwhelming. Small and unkempt, the path to view it was lichen-coated and slippery in parts. It even had a sign warning people to stay away. After a good nap, it was still underwhelming.

But it wasn't raining anymore.

So, like a good tourist, I got out and snapped a photo of it.

Now at home, I look at this lighthouse and somehow understand it more than I did in person.

How would I describe it? Abandoned? Resilient? Forgotten? Perhaps even haunted?

No matter what it is, the adjectives I fabricate make me realise how much this lighthouse and I are uncannily alike.

Taking Time

I have the place to myself for awhile. I am reunited with this feeling of having an immense amount of time to spend and when I realise this, I have to push down the accompanying guilt I feel; the guilt that has been ingrained so long in a life that has been far too busy. Something keeps whispering, "But there must be something needing to be done!" When I hear that, I have learned that it is something that is not myself.

It is now past ten in the evening and I have just come in from the hammock on the porch. I don't know if I have ever done that - lain out in the dark on a hammock - but in that time that I did, I have caught a glimpse of the girl I used to be. I miss her intensely and I understand that at the core of her, she understood what it was to be loved by God and that that was all she ever needed. I'm trying to remember what that feels like now. It's going to take time.

But fortunately, time is what I now have.