Category: Life Experiences

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Transitioning seasons of friendship

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Seasons come

Seasons go.

My Instagram feed at the moment is full of  beach shots, icecreams and fishing spots but tomorrow the sun will be setting earlier, the brown leaves will be crunching our pavement and autumn will sneak across our small screens.

Before we even notice the season shifts but we are still acting as if it is still in full bloom. It’s awkward when people wear bikinis in the midst of winter but in summer no one even bats an eyelid.

Why don’t we have this same seasonal intelligence when it comes to friendship?

In 2014 one of my goals was to make some local friends. I have lots of close friends but in my local area I wanted some peeps who were close by, in my today.

A lot of my favourite friends are absent ones. They live over East, in New Zealand, in Perth, hours away from where I live. In my first year of novice motherhood I struggled to let go of the season that had past. Friends come and friends go, new people enter your days for particular seasons and some stay for years.

Releasing people to choose whether they are a part of your life for seasons or years is one of the greatest lessons I am learning. I believe the whole concept of a best friend for life is a Hollywood high school cultural false reality.

Do I believe in close friendships? of course.

Do I believe you can have besties for life? sometimes, but it takes a big and secure heart, to release people into new seasons and to love them just the same.

I have found some of my greatest friendships are the ones that I havn’t seen for a long time and we both act as though we have never been apart.

There is a freedom, there is an understanding, there is a deep comittment to the person and their now but a realisation that the season for being in each other’s pockets has changed.

A peace per say.

An ease.

A release into the movement and shift of life’s ebbs and flows.

When a season transitions and major life change occurs we need to take a deep breath and allow the sand to settle. The person I am today is so different to the one I was four short years ago.

I used to spend every waking moment in an office, I drove a large distance to my work place. I didn’t have children, I was available. My friendships then were very different to those who are in my everyday world today.

It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate and love those who were in my everyday then, today it is just different. Nostalgia tells us that we need to place ourselves emotionally in it’s kingdom but moving forward and opening ourselves to change is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

I have many precious friendships from seasons that have past, but if they are unable to be a part of my today in a mutually beneficial way it doesn’t change my love of them. I just let them go and some come back and others don’t. It doesn’t change the amazing experiences and memories we have had. It is just different.

Friends come,

friends go.

Seasons come,

seasons go.

Life moves, shifts and grows.

Are you willing to empower people to live gracefully in their new season?

Are you willing to hold friends loosely and if they move into new spaces be happy for them and love them just the same?

Are you willing to acknowledge your new season and make new friends accordingly?

These are some of my random musings this new year, not directed at any friendships in my current season but something I am learning across my days.

I want to love the ones I am with but also release people with freedom into their future.

What does your season look like today?

Do your friendships match it?

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Two clicks from the sea

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two clicks from the seas

Even though we live two clicks from the sea, each and every day when I look out my kitchen window I stare at a grey, boring, ugly fence.

Good morning, hello fence.

Olive trees awash the sky behind it and each new day become my forecasting friends. Bendy trees equal ‘Stay inside weather’, swaying trees; ‘it’s perfect beach-combing weather’ or when stillness pervades, ‘I must rush outside as the weather is sublime.’

Washing dishes is my household nemesis. Maybe you struggle with laundry? The floor? or maybe making the bed.

If my sink is clean I am calm then I am too.

Back to my original thread though, my ugly fence. You see, if you take three paces to the right you are out of my kitchen and officially in the hallway/lounge-room/playroom/craft-room and general assembly hall.

If my kitchen sink was where my front door is located, (in an around the corner type of way) instead of seeing that ugly, grey fence as I fight with my nemesis, I would see the ocean.

Although we live two clicks from the sea and the only place where my little old Hawaiian beach flat can see our dear friend the ocean is from our front door. The only place when you are standing at it, you are leaving the space.

My body builder has given me a little remedy to delight my senses as I wash our tribes utensils. A beautiful window shelf, that I am able to dry dishes on, plant herbs in and currently swoon over little flowers from. It belongs more in a French kitchen than a Hawaiian beach flat, but anyway back to my little story.

I often stand as I am washing up wondering, who designed this flat and why didn’t they place the kitchen closer to the ocean and create a view? Retrospect is a wonderful and all-consuming disease. Those deep moments of ‘Why didn’t I’, ‘I should have’ and company.

It is not until life teaches us little lessons that we have the foresight to make these decisions. The bible calls it wisdom. The world calls it Karma. I call it life.

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Life teaches us a plethora of information if we are willing to slow down and breathe it in. I don’t believe any decision we make is unrepairable. I believe that all things are working together for good, for those who love and trust The Lord.

Mostly I meet people who are stuck because they are unwilling to make changes, afraid if they make a mistake.

The kitchen window overlooking the grey, ugly fence, is a monumental mistake in my books. The architect wouldn’t have known though that one day in 40 years time, a creative Mama would spend half her day at that sink, washing a whole families eating utensils. A Mama who loves to cook and is addicted to hospitality.

Foresight or wisdom.

However my dear internet friend, window sills can be built.

Heck! We are even contemplating shifting the front door, the windows and the kitchen sink, just so I can have my little ocean view.

Just make a decision to keep moving forward.

This coming New Year, why don’t you make time with me and download this change reflection pages and contemplate a little shift, two clicks to the right.

You may just find a whole new view.

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I Learned Love Always Leaves a Scar

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I went into “missions” with the sole philosophy that I would not let it be about me.

“I am only here to serve them” was my personal mantra, and it sounds like a good one, doesn’t it?

But my attempt to wage war on my own narcissism was one of the most narcissistic moves I could have made.

I thought I could take my suburban middle class self into situations I had only ever seen in documentaries and come out unchanged.

I thought I was the only one with something to offer to the people I was serving. I thought it would be wrong to expect them to have anything to offer me.

But that’s not how human encounters work. Human encounters, the kind that change lives, they leave both parties affected.

And that is how you know you have crossed the line from charity to love.

Love always leaves a scar.

There was a homeless man who used to sit across the road from my work. Each day I would give him money when I passed and he would smile at me.

I thought I was doing a good thing, and maybe I was, but it was only charity.

I never sat down and got to know him.

I never heard his story.

I never learned from his hard lived life, because I assumed he had nothing to offer me.

I deemed him only worthy of my charity, not worthy of my love, not worthy of a real human interaction, not worthy of a scar.

I don’t know if altruism is possible, I don’t know if we are ever capable of being truly selfless, I don’t know if we will ever know because God designed giving releases endorphins.

But here is what I learned on the mission field:

Charity always feels good, love always leaves a scar.

I learned it piggybacking my shoeless friend after she gave her shoes to a prostitute in a brothel.

I learned it sitting across from a refugee as she swore she would return to her war torn country one day and change the government.

I learned it when a teacher from Pakistan on the Taliban’s most wanted list had to help me when teaching English class.

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I learned it when we said no to buying a bracelet from Nigerian hawkers but came back later with lunch, invited them to an art exhibition and watched their whole demeanor change.

I learned it when I could not leave a country because a girl younger than me needed help for her and her three children.

I learned that the mission field is not about charity, it is about love.

And when you choose to love people, when you choose to be affected by their stories, when you choose to let their worlds permeate within your own, you realise how silly it is to think that you could leave unaffected.

Because love always leaves a scar.

Speak again next Saturday,

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Trust without borders

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One of my most memorable moments of the last six months, was when two blogs combined powers to help a woman in need in a small village half way across the globe.

During those few short days, the readers from this blog and people around the world were moved with compassion for a stranger. A young woman who we will never meet, is currently studying english, has a roof over her head and is taking steps towards life change.

Bethany Bracegirdle was the catalyst for this journey and I have asked her to write each Saturday about her recent experiences on the mission field and her clash of culture as she lands back in her home town for the summer.

Her series is called ‘Trust without borders; lessons I learnt on the mission field.’

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She is an amazing writer, with a malleable heart, a raw honesty and a big future.

I couldn’t be more excited to have her write here on Capture life, during the month of August.

One more writer to introduce tomorrow and then our series begins.

#captureaugust with any photos or inspiration you are having along our journey together.

Thanks so much to all the contributors, you are all inspiring me already.

With love

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