When life is hard

Generally I like my life.  Sure, more storage space in my house would be nice, but I can’t really complain about my life. 

But when life is hard (read: I have any sort of deadline coming up) I sometimes wish that I didn’t exist.  Or, more like I wish that I was a bird or a tree and didn’t have to do things like exams.  I just want to escape. 

Last night I had a panic/depressed/pessimistic moment about my upcoming exams and the study that I’ve done.  I don’t feel I know my material like I should, there’s not enough time to learn it properly, and I feel like I don’t know enough to do my exams. 

But when the thought of being a bird came into my head last night it fizzled out.  I realised that the escape–my–life–and–its–problems feeling wasn’t there.  It’s not just my life that I’m in charge of at the moment.  I’m supporting another little life inside of me.  I couldn’t wish to not exist because a little life relies on me to exist. 

Of course, I know that it is God who sustains our baby but my involvement in this has changed my outlook on when life is hard.  I am humbled.  I am maturing.  I’m not so focused on myself.  Life is more than just these upcoming exams. 

I’m glad that this exam period is my last.  I’m sick of study–stress.  But I have to get through four exams before it’s over.  Please pray for me as I study, and for my memory during exams.  I don’t know if I have baby–brain (yet?), but it’s a convenient excuse if I don’t do well in my exams.  But I don’t want to have to use it.  I want to finish college well and be satisfied with my exam efforts. 

I am reminded by a friend who also posted about exam study today that while exam results are correlated with my effort, life results are not.  It’s incredibly freeing that none of my effort counts when it comes to God.  I don’t have to worry about if I’ve worked hard enough, or performed well enough.  I don’t have to wish for an escape when I feel like I’m failing.  Jesus has done all that is necessary for my salvation and my everlasting with God.  Hallelujah!

The end of the last three years

This is my final week of college classes.  I’ve been here before of course.  This started out as a one year project, but it joyfully turned into three. 

Mostly it felt like a normal week.  I feel like it should be more than this.  But classes go on as normal, they just might end in applause if it’s our last lecture in that subject.  I want to savour my time but I don’t really know how to do it.  

J kept coming up with all the things that are my last.  Last Ethics lecture, last chaplaincy group, last split chapel, last return thanks (prayer at the end of lunch).  This was a good reminder, but it never felt like the last to me.  There have been a few things that have helped.  We had breakfast in our chaplaincy group this week, and prayed for our chaplains.  Tonight is the farewell for the women (students and wives) who are leaving college. 

I have mixed feelings about finishing college.  I’m sad about leaving friends and daily in-depth focus on my faith.  I'm glad to leave essays and exams behind me.  I’m looking forward to next year with a mix of excitement and nerves.  

Partly it doesn’t feel finished because I still have 4 exams to get through.  They are a daunting prospect. 

There’s really no resolution to this post.  I don’t quite know how to feel about this week.  How do you deal with endings?

Thankful Thursday

Oops.  It’s Thursday again.  I had at least two posts that I wanted to write before we got here.  One was about the space thing I mentioned last time.  I guess that will have to wait, sorry. 

Here are some of the things I am thankful for this week:

Breakfast date and good advice
J and I went out for a breakfast date on Saturday.  We were already up early because our community had its annual photo that morning.  We had heard about a nice cafe just down the road and decided this was a great opportunity to check it out.  When we got there I saw that the menu had Nutella bombs! 

Now I understand if you don’t know what a Nutella bomb is; I myself only learnt about them a couple of months ago.  It is basically a Nutella milkshake, usually with a jam (or Nutella?) filled doughnut sitting on top of the glass with the straw pushed through it.  I’ve never had one before, so all this is just what I’ve heard from others.  The Nutella bomb at this cafe had a chocolate brownie on the top. 

I really wanted to get one, I’ve never tried it before and I LOVE Nutella.  But J convinced me that I wouldn’t be able to fit it in with breakfast as well.  So I made him promise that we’d come back some other time for a Nutella bomb.  Actually, I don’t think I made him promise, I just told him that we had to come back another time. 

This is what they look like.  When I tried to search online for Nutella bomb I couldn’t find it but it turns out the rest of the world (or just Sydney?) calls them Tella Ball Shakes.  If you click on the picture you can get the story about how they were created/invented. 

At the end of breakfast I realised J was right.  I’d only had a bowl of toasted museli with berries and yoghurt, with a glass of fresh juice, but I knew I definitely couldn’t have fit a Nutella bomb in as well.  Sorry I don’t have a picture of the food (it was delicious), but I’ve never been in the habit of taking photos of my food.  But when I have a Nutella bomb or Tella Ball Shake I’ll try to remember to take a photo!

A driver swap
As you know, our community organises a car pool to get to and from college each day.  This week I’m thankful for the driver who was willing to swap times with J and I so that we could get home a little bit earlier for an appointment we had to get to. 

Final assignment done!
Last night I submitted my final assignment (ever! J said, but I told him to never say never, or ever).  As far as final assignments go it was a pretty easy one to finish on.  It was the second of a two part research assignment where we had to reflect upon an application of our research and what we have learnt through the process.  And as maybe you can tell by the name of this blog, I don’t mind reflecting much at all. 

What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Thursday

Hi everyone! 

Here we go with Thankful Thursday again.  I hope you have some things that you can be thankful for this week.  Here are some of the things I’m thankful for this week.

Books on my phone
I spent several hours at the airport and in a plane last weekend and I’m thankful for technology that fits into my pocket that provides entertainment anywhere.  Sometimes I still marvel at how much phones can do.  I’m particularly thankful for being able to read books on my phone.  This weekend I read through Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.  I have recently seen the movie and I often find Austen novels easier to read after I’ve seen the movie.  I enjoyed reading it already knowing what was going on. 

Friends who feed me
I had dinner at our friends’ house Wednesday night because J was out at Bible study (which includes dinner).  My friends didn’t want me to have to eat alone.  Then after dinner we sat together in their house and studied (they are both students at college as well).  Being an introvert, I don’t often mind being alone but it was nice to have company that night, to chat about our day and companionably read together.  Thanks friends!

The relevance of the Bible
Today a dear friend preached in women’s chapel on Exodus 3:16-4:17.  We have college mission coming up in a couple of weeks and she used this passage to help us think about mission and encourage us to rely on God who uses even our fumbling words and who helps us to speak.  I’ve been feeling nervous about mission and if I’ll say and do the right things so this was a great comfort and encouragement to me.

The argument about poetry

This year at college we’re studying the Psalms and we had our first lecture on it yesterday.  Though almost all of my subjects at college are the same as J’s, this is one that isn’t (because I’m studying the Old Testament in English and J is doing it in Hebrew).  J will study the Psalms too but not until later in the year.  So I was telling him about my class later in the afternoon.

Psalms are examples of Hebrew poetry so we started the lecture talking about what poetry is.  It turns out that J and I have different definitions of poetry, specifically, his definition is much narrower than mine.  Now, I’ve written some poetry in my time, mostly in the anxiety-ridden final year of school, and I suppose not much of it was very good.  But I fought for my definition of poetry because what I’ve written doesn’t fit into J’s definition. 

Here’s what our lecturer had to say about poetry.  Poetry uses images and metaphors, it condenses experiences (economy of expression as J eloquently put it), there are less verbs in poetry than in prose (called verb gapping), poetry can have some sense of metre, and it can have structure with the use of parallelism, word pairs and so on.  But poetry is more like a syndrome than a disease.  To diagnose a syndrome you have to tick a number of boxes from a list of symptoms, but they don’t all have to be there, and it will be a different set of symptoms in each case. 

I didn’t really mean to write about our argument about what poetry is (but you might like to know that J apologised for devaluing my poetry with his definition, though he’s yet to read any of it). 

I wanted this post to be about how I’m excited to be studying the psalms.  Though I didn’t always enjoy studying poetry at school I actually find myself wanting to go back and read some poetry again.  And I’m inspired to write some poems again.  Maybe, if you keep an eye out, you’ll even see some here one day!

Thankful Thursday

This week I am thankful for:

Exams are over now!
This week was exam week, and though we second years only had two exams I feel like I’ve been on the back foot the whole time.  I started study week with a cold and it lasted longer than that so my study has been slow and struggled.  So I’m thankful that now as I post this exams are finished!

Two wonderful years of marriage
On Monday J and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary.  We had an exam in the morning so we left the celebrations for the evening (and prepared during the afternoon!).  J made me a lovely dinner (chicken schnitzel and apple sauce) and dessert (salted nutella-chocolate tarts!).  He set the table with a new table cloth and placemats (all cotton, as the traditional second anniversary gift) and we exchanged presents after dinner.  I love how well he knows me, and the love and care he has shown me over the last two years.  Thanks for a wonderful marriage, my husband!

The Reformation
Monday’s exam was Church History, and we’ve been studying the Reformation this year.  I didn’t enjoy studying history at school, but I’ve loved church history at college!  I’m thankful that the church was reformed and as a result of it we have the Bible in our native languages (and we’re allowed to read it!), and we don’t trust in our own merit to save us but rely on the grace of God that through our faith we are saved.  Thank you God for the Reformation!

What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Thursday

This week I am thankful for these things:

A hen’s weekend in Adelaide
I’ve already talked about it here.  It was lovely to go to Adelaide and spend some time with my family as well as some friends for the hen’s event.  I am thankful that we had the money to fly me there for the weekend, and that my family was so generous with picking me up and dropping me at the airport, as well as with quick dinners, gifts and hot chocolates.  I’m thankful for the friendships I have with the girls I spent the weekend with and the fun that we had together.  I’m thankful that my dear friend is getting married and that I am able to support and help her as she prepares for her marriage. 

Studying with my husband
I love that J and I are studying the same course and almost all the same subjects.  This not only means that we can study together and help each other out, but our holidays also happen at the same time and we’re both really looking forward to them! 

My women’s Bible study group
Our college organises women’s Bible studies for the female students and wives of students.  I’m in one of the groups that meets at our college community.  So I only have to walk over to the next block of units to get to Bible study!  I’ve been in one of these groups since we got here and have loved it.  It has been a great way of getting to know some of the other wives in our community here, and a great encouragement to me.  All of the women are godly and switched-on theologically.  This week was the last week that we met for this term and so we had an end of term party of sorts.  We each brought along a recommendation.  More on that later!

What are you thankful for this week?

Help with my assignment

The study rooms were full on Friday.  Everyone was at the their desk, clicking and typing away.  Every so often the air was punctuated with a heavy sigh. 

That was the first Research Week that I was in the studies (last term’s Research Week I was sick and didn’t want to share my cold with everyone). 

I think I liked writing my essay there.  There’s a sense of camaraderie in the studies.  Everyone is working hard, and those who are struggling are happy to say so.  People would ask each other questions, talk through thoughts they were having and borrow books from each other.  We’re all in this together in some sense.  I also found comfort from the people who were still there, late into the night. 

But there was something else that struck me even more.  I was struck by the fact that there were people praying for me as I wrote the essay.  Not just the unknown-to-me-people who regularly pray for students at our college, or the friends I had asked to pray for me, but even some of my fellow students, also working hard to get the essay done.  Not just praying that I would get it finished on time, but that I would learn and grow from doing it.

In the spirit of the passage I looked at for my essay (Deut 4:32-40):  Search in days gone by and over the world, in what other field of study have you ever hear of this happening? 

This is such a great comfort to me.  The people who I study with aren’t students who I compete with for marks or try to beat in the bell curve.  Or even people I am ambivalent towards as I focus on my own learning.  They are friends, family in Christ, who care about each other, help each other out with resources, and even pray for each other. 

But this is not just a comfort to me.  It is also a rebuke.  I was so focused on my own essay; getting it right and getting it done, that I didn’t really think about asking God to help anyone else with theirs.  How selfish of me.

I am thankful for not just the things I learn at college, but also the way that my attitudes and motivations are being reshaped.  Please pray that God would continue to change my heart to be more like Jesus, as I will be praying for my fellow students.

Desk borrowing

I am currently borrowing a fellow student’s study space, in a kind of desk-share situation where he never uses it and will only take it back when studying at home is no longer convenient.  It’s an odd, indefinite sort of situation where I don’t know how much to make the space my own but do have the freedom to do so because he never made the space his own.  In fact I had to ask the other students to clear the desk for me because they had been using it as extra storage space.

In our college live-in community the garages of one set of units have been converted into study spaces for the students.  The front of the garages have been made into storage shelves and the actual study spaces at the back are accessible from inside the building.  There are three single rooms on this ground floor which are considered the ‘quiet’ studies, each housing 2 students, and the bigger one with 4 students.  The remaining four garages/studies are interconnected and are considered the ‘big study’ or the ‘communal study’.  Each ‘car space’ has three desks in it. Many also have bookshelves of textbooks, including a small selection of the college library that they have made available for our community.

J has had a space in the big study since last year and I studied at home.  But I found that I was easily distracted studying at home.  It was so easy to get up and make a tea or get something to eat, or just do something else entirely (anything but studying!).  This was particularly easy because I was the only one in the house.  I made it through the year fine but I thought it would be useful for my study habits if I could get a space in the big study.

I made inquiries but the studies were pretty full.  Priority of course had to be given to students with children who therefore didn’t have a spare room to study in.  However I knew that one of the guys in my year at our community had a study space allocated to him last year but never used it.  He was happy for me to use his space until he needed it.

So I’m using his study space for now.  I’ve stuck some things on the wall, put some books and pens on the desk.  Having other students studying around me has really helped me to concentrate on also studying and not wasting time.  I don’t know how long I'll be here but for now I will make the most of it.  Back to it!

One week down

We’ve finished our first week back at college and are quickly onto the next.  I admit that I was having some doubts about going back to college.  Was this really the right decision?  But as soon as I arrived I felt much better.  There were a number of things that affirmed this for me during the week. 

New things to study
I’m really looking forward to some of the things that we’re going to study this year.  We get to go into a lot more depth in doctrine and Old Testament this year.  I’m looking forward to studying John in New Testament (because he’s just so confusing sometimes!), and we start philosophy this year as well.  We also look in detail at the Reformation and I’m really looking forward to learning about what happened then and the detail in the differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. 

A focus on prayer
This year in women’s chapel we’re having a focus on prayer.  I’m not really sure what that looks like in practice, but I’m excited to be doing this.  I’ve been wanting for a few years now to look at prayer more closely and to improve my prayer habits.  I hope that this focus will help me to do that. 

The need for musicians
Due to some shuffling of people, Wednesday’s women’s chapel has been left with fewer musicians than normal so I volunteered to not only song lead (which I did last year) but also play the piano in chapel (as long as they’re happy for me to just play chords!). 

Filling out my committee
At college everyone is involved in a committee, be it prayer, tutoring, orientation, library.  My committee leader was pleased when he found out that I was continuing at college because it meant we had exactly enough (the minimum number of) people on the committee.  I loved helping out with my committee last year, I’ll write more about it soon. 

Keeping up in class
We heard last year that second year is a bit of a step up from first year in terms of workload and expectations.  I’ve been please that I’ve been able to mentally keep up in class (at least for now!), particularly in Greek, which is much more complicated and fast-paced than last year.  Additionally, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I drop behind in the set readings (as almost everyone inevitably does), it feels good to have started reading for a number of subjects. 

I’m excited to see what God will be teaching me this year and I hope you enjoy reading about it. 

What to study next year

So you might know from a previous post that I won't be studying psychology next year.  But I've also been rethinking all of this since discovering a desire to be involved in pastoral care.

Not having gained a place in a psychology course, people expect that I will now apply for a counselling course.  This is fair enough; that's what I said I would do.  But I also started thinking about continuing at college.  And I couldn't let this idea go.

I would love to continue studying because I loved this year at college.  Just thinking about continuing made me excited.  I want to be equipped to be able to better answer people's questions about God, to teach the Bible well and to care for people in a distinctly Christian way.  I will never get a better opportunity than here and now to study theology and study it with J.

I also feel that if I studied counselling next year it would be because others want or expect me to and not because I wanted to.  I don't think this is a good way to decide what to do.

Choosing to study at college again next year is not the easy option in many ways, or at least not everything about it will be easy or enjoyable.  I will have to preach in women's chapel and I hate public speaking.  I'm sure philosophy will turn my head upside-down.  I'm not looking forward to the holiday homework or fighting the temptation to eat sweets at morning tea every day for the next two years.

When I told J that I had decided to continue at college and would email college to apply for this transfer he was really excited.  Until then he hadn't shown me exactly how he felt about me coming back to college, not wanting to sway my decision.

So that's it, I'm going back to college next year!  College has allowed me to transfer into the Bachelor of Theology which means I'll be at college for two more years.  I have to do a bridging assignment for church history, as well as the regular holiday work that everyone does.  I'll be busy doing that for the rest of my holidays, having not done any yet because I didn't have to!

I'm looking forward to what God will be teaching me while I'm at college and I hope you enjoy following my journey.

Do what you love

Many have been asking, and rightly so, whether I've heard from any of the applications I sent in to study post-graduate psychology next year.  I thought I would have heard earlier than this if I had gained an interview.  Now I have heard from them all.  I didn't get in.  No interviews. 

When I told J he made to comfort me.  But I wasn't actually very upset (except perhaps my pride, but not too much).  I was just glad I finally knew actually.  I knew that entry into these courses was competitive, and I knew that my application wouldn't be very near the top.  And the fact that I realised my desire to pastorally care for people means that I don't have to limit myself to a career in psychology.  This has been a comfort.  It has been freeing actually. 

But even before this I don't think I ever had my heart totally set on psychology.  It was an idea based on my enjoyment of the things I learnt in class.  I was never certain that I could work as a psychologist. 

The truth is that I've never been a particularly "driven" person, if I can put it that way, at least in terms of a career.  I never had this one pathway, one specific career that I wanted to pursue.  I didn't know what I wanted to be like some people seemed to.  I didn't know in high school, I didn't really know when I was at uni, though I started forming the idea of pursuing psychology while in second year. 

I wanted to do something that I enjoyed, so I followed that path.  I've heard people say, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.  I enjoyed science at high school, so I decided to to a Bachelor of Science at uni.  I enjoyed psychology at uni so I majored in it in my degree.  I've wanted to study theology for a while (I even thought during high school I might pursue it when I finished school) and so I studied it this past year with J. 

I've realised that I want to pastorally care for people.  This could be as a psychologist, or a counsellor, or even a theologically-trained worker in a church. 

I've loved studying the Bible this year at college.  You can read about it here.  Maybe I can combine my love of theology and my desire to pastorally care for people.

I've been thinking about this for a little while, at least since I realised my desire to pastorally care for people and since God had closed at least two of the doors on my psychology applications.  I'm never going to get a better opportunity than this to study what I love, and study it with my husband.  Other study, particularly counselling, is much more flexible. 

I don't know what I will do next year, but I want to do what I love. 

Why I enjoyed studying (at Bible college)

I've already talked a little bit about some of the perks of studying at my particular Bible college.  But those aren't really the reasons why I loved studying here.  In fact it has little to do with the college itself at all (though it is a great institution).  I loved studying at Bible college because of what I learnt, and am still learning (and who says I can’t vicariously learn more through J next year!).  It is the content that made it so enjoyable. 

 

Of course I also enjoyed studying with a fantastic group of people.  Studying at Bible college was so different to school and uni.  People looked out for each other, shared notes and study tips, prayed for each other.  It is easy to think, after a year of it, that all of this is normal, but it really isn’t.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be in such a supportive learning environment ever again. 

But it was what I learnt that made this year so valuable to me.  I learnt about the most important person in my life by studying the most important book in the world.  I've staked my life on what the Bible says, and I want to know more about it.  If I could study only one thing in my life it wouldn’t be the human body or brain, it wouldn’t be our planet or any of the things on it, it wouldn’t even be my husband or the streets of this new-to-me city.  It would be the Bible, because by it I can know God. 

 

This year at college I learnt how to understand the Bible better, not only by learning some of the ancient Greek language, but also by learning about different styles of writing, some historical background to both the Old and the New Testaments, and how Christians of the past have understood the Bible. 

 

I will be a student of the Bible for the rest of my life.  I will always be seeking to understand it and by this draw closer to God.  This year was a wonderful chance to do this in a more “full time” way.  Thank you God. 

Where's your career plan?

Sometimes I feel like I've mucked up my life.*  Well to be honest that's a bit dramatic.  If I think about it for more than a second I realise that what I really mean is that I feel like I've mucked up my career path.  I love everything else about my life.  I do not regret at all getting married to J at the time we did, or coming to college with him to study the Bible for a year.  

I feel like I haven't planned for my career or future study very well at all.  I've found myself thinking that I should have done something more productive with my year after honours and I berate myself that I didn't.  Then I remember that I did try to.  I tried to find work that was related to psychology and would give me some exposure or experience to help me on my way to studying masters.  But I was never hired for those jobs that I applied for.  Instead I got a job somewhere else.  Perhaps God used that job to teach me something, or develop my character or godliness.  But even if he didn't do any of this and my job last year was of no benefit to me whatsoever (which I don't think is true), it's not about me anyway!

I've realised that ultimately my career or job doesn't really matter at all.  What's more important, what God is concerned about, is that I glorify him.  There is no instruction in the Bible about what career I should have.  God knows what I will do, but he hasn't got one specific door for me to walk through and if I don't I fail at life.  I don't believe that there is one thing that God wants me to do and I have to ask him to reveal it to me. 

Maybe I haven't organised my life well enough to get into a psychology master program next year and follow the plans I had made for my life.  But what if this has given me the opportunity to reassess those plans?  What do you do when your dream changes?

I planned to continue study to become a psychologist some time during my second year of uni when I decided that I enjoyed learning about these theories of human behaviour and I didn't want to become a scientist (the other subjects I was studying at uni).  I was attracted to psychology because I found the subject fascinating and I want to be able to help people by talking through problems and listening to them.  

I feel like I can't change my dream of becoming a psychologist, like I'm betraying myself and the plans that I've tried to make.  Changing things now makes me feel like I'm drowning in the unknown next year.  But I shouldn't let the fact that I've been heading in this direction stop me from changing my mind or taking a detour.  Maybe I'll discover that the detour was the better way to go after all. 

I don't know if I'll get into a psychology course or not.  I don't know if I'm suited to the job anyway.  Maybe I'll try counselling first, or instead.  I just want to know how to listen well and have the skills to be able to help people with emotional problems.  But above all of this, I want to be glorifying God and serving him wherever I am.  That's what I want to focus my life on. 

*Note: I'm taking a leaf out of a college friend's book: because this post is a bit depressive it was not written on the day that I was feeling like this. 

The unknown next year

I don't really know what I'll be doing next year.  I have some plans, but there's no guarantee that they'll work out.  I have to admit that I'm a little bit jealous of my husband because he knows exactly what he'll be doing for the next three and a half years.  He'll be continuing to study at Bible college, finishing off his degree.  These remaining three and a half years while we're still in this new city that isn't home yet, I have no certainty about what I'll be doing with my days in any of that time.