Bucket List

I have always wanted to write a book. It has always been a longing within me. I know I am not alone in this desire, but I think I had accepted that it would always remain as just that. A hope. An aspiration. Another thing that would remain forever on my bucket list.

I have tried before. In my eagerness to be published I followed a first degree in physics with yet another, hoping to get my name indelibly in ink. I think I thought that somehow then I would never be forgotten. I succeeded in part. I did publish a few scientific articles during my PhD, but I know I won't be remembered for them.  I'm not being modest when I state that hardly more than a handful of people will have read my specialist papers on the ground breaking work I pioneered (truly it was!) on the electron microscopy of Rare Earth metals. If you don't know what I mean by Rare Earth metals then picture in your head if you will the periodic table. There is a main group of elements sitting in a table in the middle and then there are a load of elements that sit below that in a chunk - a bit like they've fallen off. That's them - the Rare Earth metals.  They are incredibly unstable, even in air, and I spent three years of my life working out how to take pictures of how the atoms arranged themselves within these metals. Cool - huh!

Eleven years ago I moved to Devon with my husband and two young sons to start a church. The Church of England in Devon had created a post that was half time working across five rural parishes and half time starting a church that would reach out to the young people of Devon and Exeter. Young people who wouldn't ordinarily have anything to do with church. We moved to what looked like a 'chocolate-box' village in East Devon from the centre of Birmingham. We soon realised that rural life wasn't the idyll it promised. We left a church of around 1000 attendees to a church which was excited to get ten. Overnight everything we knew changed. Everything was uncomfortable, challenging and unfamiliar. I left friends and family behind. We started to build a whole new life. We knew we were called by God to do this. Not with booming voices or blinding revelations. We just knew inside that this is what He wanted for us. He didn't promise that it would be easy. He did promise always to be with us. Both of these things have proved to be the case.

After ten years of this journey my husband and I went on our first ever sabbatical. A complete break from ministry, from serving, from being needed. From having to organise, initiate, care for, pray, love a whole church. At first I was concerned that we would find there was nothing left between us. That the ten intense years starting this church would have left us with nothing to say to each other, nothing left between us. As you see - we did desperately need a sabbatical. My fears were ungrounded. The three months went by far too quickly. We had loads to say to each other! We laughed, we talked, we enjoyed each other's company. We walked, we read books. We went on holiday.

Perhaps most significantly we each went on retreat. My retreat was 24 hours alone in a a cottage in north Devon, with a prayer cabin in the woods. I was terrified I would be bored. That I wouldn't know how to fill the time. That God would be silent and wouldn't show up. Of course I went with a plan - I knew where I was going to start. It had been suggested that I should rejoice in all that had happened in the last ten years, release any pain or situations that I was holding onto and then receive for the next stage of our journey. And as I should have trusted the time went far too quickly - I could have spent many more days in the peace and silence, just being. Being still, and knowing that He is God. 

It was during this retreat that God took me back to my heartfelt desire to write a book. But more than just being a vague longing he showed me that I now had something worthwhile to say. I have always kept a journal. I don't write in it every day, but I do turn to it when there is something significant going on in my life. It may be something that I'm struggling with, it may be that it is something I think God wants me to learn, it may be that something to rejoice over and be thankful for. For the last ten years I had been keeping a record of what it felt like to start a church plant. The highs and lows. The struggles and the triumphs. And this journal is the genesis of what has become my book 'Beginning Unlimited'. I am not aware of any other books out there like this, a diary of what happened and how it felt. I know this is my journey, and mine alone, but I hope my honesty will inspire others to step out, to take a risk, to follow God's call on their lives. I also hope it will give permission for us to share that doing what God requires of us isn't always easy, doesn't always come naturally and doesn't always feel like one amazing adventure with God. Often the calling feels too much, and we feel too little. 

But ultimately through the book I hope we learn that it is not about us, it is always about the one who goes with us.