Quiet Unfiltered Notes: From the Fire

It is Saturday morning. I am sitting here with my first coffee of the day, trying to wake up properly, while Ember is causing complete chaos in the living room. There is something about cats that fascinates me. They can be completely relaxed one minute and then, without warning, decide that the entire house has become an obstacle course. A noise. A movement. Something that apparently only they can see. And suddenly there is chaos. Ember is doing exactly that this morning. Running. Jumping. Investigating things that have apparently been sitting in the same place for months but have suddenly become suspicious. And as I sit here watching it all unfold, coffee in hand, I find myself reflecting on the week that has just passed. It has been a huge week at work. One of those weeks where you get to Saturday morning and realise just how much you have been carrying without really stopping to think about it. Then, somewhere in the middle of everything, there was my orthopaedic appointment with Pr...

Favourite words from writers and preachers who have shaped the way I think about God, grace, faith and life. C. S. Lewis “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms “Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity “We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity Matt Chandler “The marker of those who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ is that, when they stumble and fall, when they screw up, they run to God and not from him, because they clearly understand that their acceptance before God is not predicated upon their behavior but on the righteous life of Jesus Christ and his sacrificial death.” Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel “Without a heart transformed by the grace of Christ, we just continue to manage external and internal darkness.” ...

As I reflect on my Saturday off from Queensland Health and think about my day and week, I have found myself thinking about something that I do not particularly like admitting. I can sabotage my own peace. Not always. Not deliberately. Sometimes I can be having a genuinely good day and somewhere deep inside my own mind something starts moving. A thought. Then another. A memory. A possibility. A concern that wasn't there five minutes earlier. Suddenly my mind starts searching. Searching for something. Anything. Something that might go wrong. Something I might have forgotten. Something I should have done differently. Something somebody might have meant by what they said. Something that could happen tomorrow. Something from yesterday. Something from ten years ago. It is almost as though my mind becomes suspicious of peace. That is the thought that has been sitting with me today. I even struggled with it today. Why do I sometimes struggle to simply have a good day? Why, when everything...

There is something strange about arriving at a new season when you are already tired. You would think a new season would feel exciting. Fresh. Full of energy. Like standing at the beginning of something with your hands wide open and your heart ready for whatever comes next. But sometimes a new season does not arrive like that. Sometimes it arrives quietly. Sometimes it arrives while you are exhausted. Sometimes it arrives while you are still carrying things from the season before. And sometimes you only realise you have entered it when you stop for a moment and look around and realise that things have changed. That is where I find myself now. Tired. Grateful. And quietly aware that something is shifting. There are things in my life that have been sitting in uncertainty for a while that are no longer uncertain. The administration is done. The paperwork has been worked through. The details have been organised. The things that needed to be locked in are locked in. Even the date that once ...

Last night I was sitting talking with Bianca about something that has been sitting heavily within me. Yesterday I wrote about memories. About the strange way we keep returning to certain people, certain conversations, certain seasons of our lives. About the memories we refuse to lose because somehow they have become part of our survival. I thought I had finished with the thought. I hadn't. Sometimes a thought does not leave when you finish writing about it. Sometimes it follows you into the evening. It sits beside you while you talk. It appears in the silence between sentences. And sometimes, if you are quiet enough, it takes you somewhere you were not expecting to go. That happened to me last night. I was talking with Bianca about my friend, about loss, about the things that remain with us when someone or something has changed and there is no way to go back and make it different. And somewhere in that conversation, something became painfully clear to me. I have spent a lot of my l...