The most famous pregnancy crisis story, like, EVER

Pete Wilson did it again – he always seems to post things I’m already thinking about. Hee hee. This time he was talking about the nativity scene.

It kinda reminded me of one of my Sunday Scribbling posts from last year…on the prompt ‘Late’. I love the story of Jesus coming into this world, because it’s like the most famous pregnancy crisis story EVER. At the time of year when we will usually get a huge increase of pregnancy loss and pregnancy crisis clients.

So I’m doing a spot of post recycling. Here is the original scribbling:

In true Brunettekoala fashion, when you say ‘Late’ I think ‘period’.

(No, I don’t mean punctuation…)

Yep, it’s part of the joys of having a mind that has been mostly challenged to think and research in the world of women’s health. And of course now, most of my time is spent in pregnancy crisis work.

It gets in everywhere. Here are a few real life examples of where:

Open Scene: A group of Health Scientists eating lunch in medical school social space

E: “These new Birkenstock sandals are really great. So comfortable”

BK: (waking up from her wee zone out) What? Birth control sandals?!

Open Scene: A group of students on a worship leader training course

Pastor: So, I want you to think, and name me some women in the bible who heard from God personally.

BK: Mary and Elizabeth?

Pastor: Trust you to pick the 2 pregnant women in the bible!

…and so it goes on.

I still remember the day I realised I was ‘late’. I was on a school trip at the time. I came up with so many reasons why it wasn’t a concern so I keep myself in denial and continuing ignoring what was glaringly obvious. I get reminded every time a woman comes in for a pregnant test, and she lists the reasons why she hopes being ‘late’ isn’t a cause for anxiety.

Of course sometimes they are true. The woman isn’t pregnant.

This time of year, I wonder what it must have been like for Mary. I think we kind of forget that she was a person. Imagine a 14 year old girl in your church who’s dating one of the stand-up  15 year old boys in your church? She comes to you one day, telling you she is pregnant. No, it’s not her boyfriend, she hasn’t had sex with anyone. An angel came to her when she was in the house alone telling her that not only was she unexpectedly pregnant, but the person growing inside of her was going to be the Saviour of the world?

Would you believe her? Would you support her?

Oh, and when she’s 9 months pregnant, she has to traipse across the country (probably on foot I’m guessing) so she can take part in a census and pay her taxes. And then she goes into labour – not a midwife in sight. No pain relief. No ice chips. No shower. No bed.

And then imagine, just after you’ve given birth in a scabby shed. A whole pile of total foreigners you’ve never met before turn up unannounced saying they followed a star to get there. And then another pile of shepherds (the poorest and most uneducated people in your society) appear too.

The reality of the Christmas story…God became human to bring people together who wouldn’t have been brought together otherwise. God became to be truly amongst us, blowing our trumped up snobby and materialistic power hungry myths of him away. Because he was willing to come into the world under stigma and in squalor so He could show us what it truly meant to be human. So he could show us how to love. So He could show us that he truly knew what it was like to be us, to feel pain, to be mocked, insulted, to have fun, to know joy, to be angry, to show us where our priorities should be.

Tedious link? I have no doubt.

But then my chain of thought tends to work in bizarre ways.

Another teeny tiny fighter

Hi Guys,

Sorry if you already follow my @koalainscotland twitter feed as I posted this yesterday there.

Just wanted to ask if you could pray for Baby Dylan. He was born 6 weeks premature, and is currently in the High Dependency Neo-Natal Unit here in Edinburgh. He’s a little fighter, and is doing well though he still has fluid on his lungs and breathing rapidly.

Always with any preemie baby there is a higher risk of mortality/morbidity, but we’re hoping Dylan will be healthy and home in time for Christmas with his Mummy, Daddy and big sister (a friend of Elastababy who is now Elasta-toddler!)

We know that Dylan’s family will really appreciate your prayers.

Thanks everyone x

Riding the wave

Today one of our newest volunteers asked me about how I ended up working in the pregnancy crisis centre.

Yeah, long story, right? One of our mutual friends, who worked for the centre at the time of my employment came in and immediately started picking up on what I’d left out.

Everything in my life has had a purpose that leading up to this point. It’s so obvious looking back now, but it certainly wasn’t always clear at the time.

In 4 hours time I need to be up to drive to the airport and start making the journey to Basingstoke. I can’t sleep.

I was reading Angie Smith’s blog. I wasn’t expecting to see a ultrasound picture taken at 10 weeks gestation.

Yes, that was the stage of pregnancy I was at when I had it terminated.

It was a little bit of a kick in the guts to see that, I’ll admit. Sometimes I wish I could turn back the clock, and bizarrely I don’t want to turn it back to the point before she was conceived to change things in that way. Turning back the clock I wish I would have had the information, support and courage to make a different decision.

You can’t think like that though. Because if it hadn’t been for Sophie being part of my life, I wouldn’t have the wisdom and understanding I have now. The perspective I have when I meet with clients, or abortion providers is different from many of my colleagues. It’s not that I necessarily agree with the people who think it’s all ok, it’s that I get where they’re coming from…because I used to have a totally different viewpoint.

God is doing some crazy things with this work, ministry or whatever you want to call it.

Crazy in the best and in some cases, most unexpected of ways.

He is, as Sarah Chia put it earlier this year, widening my territory.

And yet, I’m not that close to God as I once was. My quiet times are um, yeah, embarrassingly few and far between. My prayer life sucks compared to what it once was. There are lots of things in my life that need sorting.

I feel like I’m just riding this wave of God…He seems to have me along for the ride whether I like or not really!

The majority of the time, I do like it. I love it. The life God has for me is never dull.

But it is sometimes tough.

Um, actually a lot of the time it is tough.

I need to get prepared - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – as much as I can for what God has in store for 2010.

How do you do that? Answers on a postcard (or blog comment) please…

 

The Assassin of Zi Qi Qi Ren

And so we move on to the second of Jud and Mike’s named character assassins…the assassin of zi qi qi ren.

Say what now?

Yeah, I know, I didn’t know what that meant either until I read the chapter!! Tee hee.

Apparently it is chinese (of some sort) for ‘self deception while deceiving others‘

This is an assassin that I’ve actively tried to kick some ass in. One of the most common comments I get about me is that I’m usually really up front and honest about where I’m at. That scares people sometimes.

Transparency scares us.

We got brought up in a culture where we have to ‘keep up with the Jones’s’. I remember my Nana freaking out if anyone came to visit in case they thought her house was a mess (it never was). We go to church with our ‘happy’ masks on even when life isn’t going so great. We don’t want people to find out about the skeletons in our closets.

I spent my teenage years holding on some huge secrets. And huge secret got added on to huge secret.

Did that screw me up big time? Yes.

Did that screw some other people up big time? Yes.

It didn’t help me, and it didn’t help anybody else either. But I kept up my good grades, turning up to school, put my face on for going to work, and being the life and soul of the dance studio and encouraging my friends to drink bacardi.

So who knew? No-one until it all began to fall apart at the seams…

Assassin of Zi Qi Qi Ren had worked it’s magic.

It worked it’s magic again when I became a Christian. Every Christian had such a perfect life. Uh oh. I must not be able to be one then.

Or so I thought.

Until a few of the Christians who I thought were superhuman, always together, had perfect families and perfect lives suddenly went completely off track.

Why? Because they’d been secretly struggling for so long but didn’t want to admit to anyone because they thought it would be a ‘bad witness’ to show that they were struggling with their faith and life. They’d made some bad choices and didn’t want to admit they needed help and support.

Why do we lie? Why do we say ‘I’m fine’ when we’re not?

“Somewhere along this road we have concluded that in order to be liked by others we need to hide our true self…from the beginning of recorded history, humans have been covering mistakes and embarrassments. We once hid our goof-ups with large fig leaves placed in strategic locations. Now we cover ourselves with half-truths, shameless puffery, and exagggerations. We hide our junk, weakneses and frailties in a very large closet in our soul”

Deadly Viper Character Assassins p45-46

I still remember Pete Gilbert speaking at Imagine Scotland. He said if a journalist turned up at his door telling him he was going to reveal the scandalous truth about Pete Gilbert, he wouldn’t be worried. Why? Because he already confessed it to all the people who mattered to him. His wife knew, his kids knew, his pastor knew everything there was to know already.

You want to get the dirt on me? Here’s the people to call: Liz, Jam, Raz, Tanja, Nicola, Gill, Alan, Claire, Jon, Ruth, Adam – people from student cell groups I was part of in Aberdeen. They have all the dirt on me.

And now although I’m not going to confess all my sins on my blog, I try to be as open and honest as possible. We need to create that culture of confession, non-judgment, grace, encouragement…

Sarah who I work with…she is getting to know about my whole self too. We confess our struggles, and we’ll pick each other up on things. We’ve had some pretty frank conversations with each other. It’s important because we’re leading up a Christian ministry together. We’re so aware that there’s a bunch of assassins out for our character trying to undermine our ministry.

I know, I for one, do not like getting into the business of pretending.

So on with making myself increasingly more transparent…day by day.

For more on Deadly Viper Character Assassins go to the Deadly Viper website

Feeling the prayer love!

Thanks for your prayers this week guys. I’ve felt them, I really have.

Monday & Tuesday have been stressful days. There is A LOT going on at the centre, a lot to be done. Just thinking about it my mind wants to spontaneously combust!

And I had a TON of malteser moments on Tuesday including sending an e-mail to myself instead of a school, walking to the Tesco at Holy Corner and realising that wasn’t where I parked my car and having to walk back past church to where I had parked my car, crashing my head off the side of Cassie’s door, and numerous gobbledygook sentences that caused Sarah to laugh at me as I tried to articulate simple things to her and failed miserably!

Including deciding that 669 + 21 = 700

(that’s wrong too)

I know God is going to get me through this – whatever it is.

If anything he’s given me a sense of humour. Heck, I’m going to make the first joke so we can at least find the funnies in this!

My friends are being awesome in taking me as I am….scattyness, not able to get out proper sentences a fair bit of the time, falling asleep, avoiding eating foods that seem to make me worse (like curry & pain au chocolat…sob!) and a BK with not a trace of make up on (I look like total crap just now, as confirmed by my friend’s Dad who saw me today – thanks Dave! lol).

I know some of my blog readers and twitter followers have been praying, and last night 3 of the folks on the worship team at MBC prayed over me. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t expect it, but I’m very thankful and appreciative of every single one of their & your prayers.

And of course there are the Elmo slippers. They never fail to cheer up Sarah and I!

I’m so excited what God is doing right now, and I hope I can tell you more soon.

I’m anticipating God doing some incredible stuff in 2010.

The Assassin of Character Creep (or Cassie & the shiny Jaguar)

So to the first of Jud and Mike’s named character assassins…the assassin of character creep.

It’s basically all about how the small things that cross our moral boundaries can build up and up until you lose your integrity big style.

First of all I have to confess that the first page of the chapter I found a wee bitty ironic…

“We don’t make an entry in our diary one day: Dear Diary, today I plan to commit fraud which will eventually lead to the demise of my career, a nervous breakdown, and ultimately jail.”

Deadly Viper Character Assassins p. 24

Now. I could take the uppity high road on that one, but here’s the thing. I work for a charity. And one of the things that Sarah and I feel really weird about is that we have to write the cheques for our wages. Especially me. I would rather not be tempted to follow in my father’s footsteps and my seemingly constant financial battles definitely put me at high risk to do it unless I’m really careful. How do we act transparent about dealing with the charity’s monies when we could so easily steal money?

We double sign every single cheque. And every cheque is photocopied with the receipt/invoice of what we are paying and why.

Our accounts are doubly checked – first by an accountant, then by an auditor, then by the Charities Commission (OSCR).

So we would never get away with it. Exactly the way it should be.

And I can say hand on heart that there is definitely too much at stake to lose…

When my Dad got caught out…it destroyed his family. We’ve been very broken in all sorts of ways I never expected possible. His career is totally down the toilet. He will never be allowed to have his own business ever again. And he could have made such a huge difference – he was getting the chance to do that.

I had to apply some ‘kung fu’ action the other week on this assassin.

I’d been ill our last few days in Cornwall, and wasn’t feeling particularly great driving back up. I’d pulled into a service station off the M6 about 4 hours from home. It was pouring with rain, cars everywhere, people running across the car park. As I pulled into a parking space I heard a horrible noise.

A severe lack of spatial awareness had caused me to crash into the side of the car next to me. I got out in the pouring rain to discover I’d scratched it in 2 places.

And not just any car. No, no.

In a car park full of old bangers I could potentially crash into, I had of course crashed into the posh, shiny Jaguar.

Way to go BK.

There goes your 5 years no claims on car insurance. You’ve just used all your remaining cash to go on holiday to Cornwall so that’ll be fun trying to pay damages you’ve just caused.

A thought crossed my mind…I could just leave the service station now, and no one would ever know it was me that crashed into the car. They’d not be able to find me or track me down.

I was shocked that I could even think that. But I did. So I gave myself a talking to, something along the lines of…

“Laura Anne, you are a Christian, and it is completely your fault that their car is scratched up. If you don’t own up…How Jesus like is that? You’ve just been reading about being a leader with integrity…well, time to prove it“

So I sat and waited. And while I waited I tore a page out my diary and wrote my name, address and mobile number down on it.

20 minutes later, a woman and kid appeared at the car. I got out, and asked if it was their car. It was. I began apologising profusely as I explained what I’d done. And handed over my details.

She was shocked that I’d stayed behind until they’d come back or that I’d even admit what I’d done

“Most people would just drive away and not say anything” she said

Gulp. If she knew that had crossed my mind….

Then her partner came back. I repeated the apologies to him. He was equally surprised at my honesty and really nice about it.

A week later he called me to say that he thought the quote he’d got back to fix it was ridiculous (over £1000), and said he had planned to get a paint job next year, and did I just want to give some money towards it so I wouldn’t have to get insurance companies involved?

Guys, that is grace.

They could have been really stroppy and angry. I wouldn’t have blamed them.

But they weren’t.

And I’m thankful that I didn’t do the loser thing of sneaking away hoping no-one would find out. I admitted my huge faux pas, and was repaid by kindness in return.

Now, I’m extra careful and super paranoid about parking anywhere near shiny cars…(well, I try to avoid crashing into any cars, people etc…but especially not the shiny ones as they are more costly to fix)

But being faithful and having integrity in the small things? It counts for sure.

Summarising the South African Adventure…

Waking up on the plane to our first glimpse of Southern Africa

Parachutes are fun!

Giving and receiving

This wee lassie has one mischievous personality…and fell asleep in my arms 3 days in a row. 

Alone we can do little, together we can do much.

We’d been singing and dancing to ‘the rainbows in the sky shows that God’s promises are true’…we came out of the centre to see a rainbow over Bhekuwandle.

Our Team…the live out loud girls, the Oasis youth group & SITC Team 23…

There’s no one, there’s no one like Jesus

There’s no one, there’s no one like Him.

I’m walking, walking, here and there

I searched and searched, everywhere

I turn around, around and round

There’s no one, there’s no one like Him.

Don’t know what to say…

Gavin is in his final moments…and I don’t know what to say.

Let the peace that transcends all understanding come…

Summarising the South African experience

Help ma boab! Someone from my church e-mailed me yesterday asking for a summary of my trip to South Africa when I took part in Soul in the City Durban in July.

A summary…huh.

errrrr….now just how many blog posts did it take me (at least 14). And I think the photo slideshow my poor suffering smallgroup got was at least 8 minutes long.

Help please! What do you reckon are the important points to include, people who followed the journey all the way from before I even got to South Africa…if you can even remember anything I said about it?!

 

 

Pray for Gavin

This morning my internet was down at home, but when I got to work @machroi had sent me a DM on Twitter to tell me that wee Gavin was back in hospital having spiked another fever…he was meant to be coming home.

Please, please, please would you join me in prayer for the Owens Family? Mum (Karen), Dad (Adam), big sister (4 yo Madison) and of course Gavin.

It would also be nice to leave messages of love, prayer, support to them on Gavin’s blog

They might not get a chance to read them, but I know that they appreciate all the love and support in this really sucky situation.