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Showing posts from October, 2012

"The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved"

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Mother Teresa sums it up pretty well. Loneliness and feeling unloved is horrible, it can make feel desperate and worthless. For many months I have left each and every church event feeling lonely and unloved. Two weeks ago, I finally decided to make a change. 2 and a half years ago I moved to Brighton. I tried one church, got scared of making a decision and then went to CCK. My reasons were...the awesome worship and the free bus from campus. Not necessarily bad things to base the decision on, but also not everything I needed to consider. 2 and a half years later, after much encouragement from friends I've found it in me to try and find a new church, one were I feel loved, accepted and like I belong. Don't get me wrong, I know many many people who love CCK and feel a part of their mission but it's not where I am right now. The preaching is great - Joel Virgo is fantastic. The worship, the atmosphere, it's all fine. I just never really settled though, I feel incredibly

World Mental Health Day 2012.

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What a fantastic video. I urge you all to watch it, whether or not you've experienced depression. October 10th was World Mental Health Day, to be honest I paid little attention to it aside from reading the odd tweet or Facebook status here and there. It's a bit of a controversial one, people tend to fall into one of two categories; one, recovery is awesome, it will get better, keep trying, keep hoping or two, well I'm not recovered, I never will be, I don't want to play along with all this hope crap. There is also the added dilemma that the majority of the focus is placed on depression despite there being many many other mental illnesses. One thing that did really annoy me/make me uncomfortable was Stephen Fry tweeting the following "It’s # worldmentalhealthday today - thinking of everyone with problems. Let’s at least start by addressing the stigma # proudtobemad " . It's all great until the last bit. Proud to be mad? I wouldn't say mental illne

Healing.

I hated church today.  That's probably a bad thing to say but it's the truth. I didn't want to go, I knew the preach topic and it's one I find difficult. Everything in me wanted to stay at home in bed, I was bargaining with God right from when I left work. "If the bus home is still there, I'll go", it was running 2 minutes late so I caught it easily. "If there's a sensible bus to church, I'll go", there was one that'd get me there with time to spare. I misplaced my keys and my water bottle emptied in my bag..."if I still manage to make that bus then I'll go", I made the bus. Don't bargain with God, He'll win. I didn't want to hear another preach on healing and incidentally I had a shooting pain under my left clavicle every time I inhaled today but the fact I didn't want to hear it made me go and listen. It's often the things that we need to hear most that we really don't want to. Plus, after posti

Feeling valued.

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The other week I had a late night heart-to-heart with the wonderful Rachel. It's so great living within walking distance of friends. And Rachel is one of the best. One thing we established as an area that people can struggle in life is that of feeling valued by those around them and as a consequence, struggling to show others how valued they are. I like to show people that I value them as friends, I love making cards, sending snail mail, meeting friends for coffee, little texts to tell them I love them and that I'm thankful for them. However, I feel that in a lot of my friendships I do a lot of valuing but don't feel valued in return. Now, there could be two reasons for this: 1. I don't believe I'm worthy to be valued. 2. They genuinely aren't showing me that I'm worth anything to them. I'm pretty sure in my case that it's a mixture of the two. I come across as a pretty confident person but my self worth is pretty non existent. However, I do think