I need help!

On By auntyamoIn Health, weight & wellbeing15 Comments

I’m a bit down in the dumps at the mo.

I have gloomy seasons, no particular reason springs to mind for this one. Post Christmas blues maybe? Lots of my fam are on holiday together for my nephew’s wedding – well jel. And I’ve put on a bit of poundage.  arrgghhhh

I’ve lost focus since I’ve had to go dairy free. It’s hard be low carb and dairy free at the same time. And the Christmas fayre didn’t help. It’s cold and damp and as usual when I’m feeling like this, all I want to do is eat. And it’s hard not to.

Today a reminder popped up on my phone saying,

“It’s your My Fitness Pal anniversary – how are you doing?”

I have a vague memory of putting that in, but I forgot all about it.

It is actually 7 years to the day, since I signed up for the MFP app. For the first few years I didn’t make much of a dent in my weight. It’s only a couple of years ago that it changed, but look at my first entry…

Do not adjust your set! Those numbers are real. I am more than 5 stone lighter than that number today. And though I can’t seem to push very far past that 5 stone wall, I DO NOT want to return to those numbers.

I know I blogged about this recently. So some of you may be thinking, “this again? ” You bet this again! Cos if not, it’ll be her on the left again. And I made a promise to myself – always talk about it. This will never be an embargoed subject again!

So hit me up with some inspiration. Pray for me, give me a chuck on the shoulder or a smack on the head. Anything you think might help me out of the doldrums? A x

Starting again… again

On By auntyamoIn Health, weight & wellbeing1 Comment

So here comes the obligatory end of year pondering. We’ll probably all do it today. Some will be able to sum up their year in a tweet, or snappy Facebook post, but you know me, I like a good ramble. 🙂

In many ways, I’m a bit disappointed with 2018 or should I say, I’m disappointed with me in 2018. I hardly ran at all this year and I’m a little heavier than I was 12 months ago – instead of the intended loss of another couple of stone. The complication of having to go dairy free (a story for another time) has not helped, but I can’t blame it on that. I lost my focus and my vavoom for it all, and got lazy and careless.

So there you go, some super encouragement as we go in to 2019 – go forth my friends… move less and eat more…

OKAY THAT WAS A JOKE, in case you missed it.

My actual point is a cheery one. 😀

I take great encouragement in the fact that I am not hitting myself over the head with anything. I am not disgusted  with myself and so, heading towards a (chocolate) melt down. And I’m not hiding from it or ignoring it. I’m pretty chuffed that even though I have fallen off the wagon somewhat, I’m not throwing in the towel. I’m just starting again. I’m looking forward to getting my trainers on and clearing out the fridge so I can re stock it with the good stuff.

One of the biggest changes in my mindset over the last few years is my attitude to starting again. I used to hate the thought of it. The admission of failure, the dreaded stand on the scales and the despondent chant of ‘here we go again.’

Not this year though. This year you can bring it on – I’m ready for it, I WANT it. And the reason I’m so ready is the answer to this question…

What is the alternative?

The only option other than – starting again – is, heading back to 24 stone!

No thank you 🙂

So my dear friends, whether it be weight loss, smoking, writing, your professional career, your faith, your fitness or your finances. Even if 2018 was a complete blow out – just start again, again. We’ve all been given at least one new calendar, and probably a diary too. A blank page is so good for the soul.

And did you know, we are promised new mercies, not just every year, but every morning? Well, I’ll be grabbing mine every day, with gusto!

I thank God for all you lovely readers and I pray for each and every one of you. Thanks for your encouragement through another year. I look forward to sharing 2019 with you all.

God bless, and HAPPY NEW YEAR x

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

 

photo credit: Dominic Sagar BLANK page, PAD#315 via photopin (license)

Bleak Midwinter? a guest post

On By auntyamoIn Guest Posts, Health, weight & wellbeing1 Comment

Here’s another in the December guest post series.

This one if from Judith Parry. Judith and I were just getting to know each other when she moved out of South Wales. I’ve tried not to take it personally. 😀 You can read her thoughts on her blog by clicking here, where you can find info about her beautiful new #chapbook ‘Taking Flight’. Judith is a Tweeter too @DithParryTea 

I’ll hand over to her…

Bleak Midwinter?

Since our recent move to a village in rural Staffordshire, the Husband has taken to watching Countryfile. I think he believes it makes him more of an authentic country dweller, despite calling every plant he sees a weed and every bird a thrush. That said, I confess to being a bit of a fan of armchair farming myself, but in truth my agricultural expertise extends mostly to popping a few spring bulbs in the ground.

During one episode of our new viewing pleasure, the presenter mentioned a process called vernalisation. This tickled an ancient undergraduate memory from my days as a student of Biological Science, and took me to the fount of filling-the-gaps-in-half-remembered-facts known as Google. I rediscovered there that vernalisation, the word being taken from the Latin vernus “of the spring”, is a something which crops such as winter wheat need to undergo in order to flower well the following season.

It happens something like this. If these wheat seeds, sown in autumn, have not had the requisite amount of days below a certain low temperature, they go on to produce a poor crop. Conversely, if the seeds have experienced a prolonged period of deep cold during the dark days of winter, they will flower well once the days lengthen and the weather warms, eventually producing an abundant crop.

Now, I do love a good metaphor, and this biological process speaks volumes to me. Sometimes, such as in periods of grief and loss, we just want things to be over. We would prefer to fast forward through the cold, hard times, or to go around them completely, circumventing the process. I know there were times when this was true for me, when I did not want to engage with the pain and sorrow, did not want to let grief do its work. I discovered however that there are no shortcuts, not if I desired to grieve well. To undergo my own vernalisation. I found that in attempting to short-circuit winter, I risked stealing some of the abundance of spring.

That is not to say we have to like it, for who truly enjoys those cold, dark days of pain? We can however draw close to God, let those who love us gather around, and so get through it as best we can. Winter can be hard, cold and seemingly endless at times, but experience tells us that this too shall pass. Seasons come and go, in rhythms and cycles, and our spring returns again.

In the meantime, we have a choice: whether to seek to avoid winter by hiding in denial and evasion, or alternatively to face – even embrace – the sharp cold pain. The season of abundance will return, bringing with it sweet results of the lessons grief has taught us in the dark. In the meantime, our actions help determine how fruitful – or fruitless – this coming season will be.

photo credit: PATRICE OUELLET Inverno (Winter, Hiver) via photopin (license)

Falling Out with Christmas – a guest post

On By auntyamoIn Christmas, Guest PostsLeave a comment

Today I welcome one of my fellow Association of Christian Writers friends to the blog, Keren Dibbens-Wyatt. Here Keren is sharing her thoughts on her changing ‘relationship’ with the Christmas season. Leaving us with lots to think about…

Falling out with Christmas

Christmas and I don’t really get along any more. We had a bit of a falling out somewhere along the way. It was okay when I was little, and someone else made it all happen, and it was quite fun when I was well and still young enough to enjoy parties. But since I became chronically ill, and chronically spiritual, the whole razzle dazzle thing has lost its charm.

Now I feel like we are childhood friends who have outgrown one another. Christmas seems like a time when we are all supposed to fix a grin on our faces, trawl round the shops looking for the perfect presents (which lo and behold are the very things which are the latest or most expensive), pretend we like everyone in our family, wear ourselves out writing cards and bankrupt ourselves buying the stamps to post them with and then pig out on way too much food. The one imperative thing is that we must, absolutely must, enjoy it, or pretend that we are.

But of course, as Christians, we know that’s not what the festival is really about. And yet, we all seem to buy into that whole perfect commercial fuzzy-feeling happy wonderful magic buzz. And when that’s not there, disappointment lies in wait. The whole thing feels like a hiding to nothing. And I wonder how, as someone who this year will see no-one but my husband, because family have all moved away and I’m too ill to socialise anyway, that whole “you must have fun” yuletide directive still finds its way into my head.

I think it is because I really do want to enjoy it. I really would like to recapture some of that childhood excitement and magic. I do want the candle halo to make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. But for me, now, feasting means something very different than it used to. It’s not about food or drink. It is about becoming so engrossed in the miracle of “God with us” that I feel like I’m bursting with joy inside. It is about the wonder of the person of Christ, the Logos Word of God choosing to become an embryo, to grow within a woman, to be born into this divinely messy world. It is that willingness to set his power aside and make himself utterly vulnerable, that blows me away at Christmas. It is a beginning that inevitably leads to the cross, which makes it all the more amazing.

The whole thing is incomprehensibly loving and vast. And so, for me, and for all those who share this faith, the celebration is one I carry in my heart every day of the year. It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the feasting, it just means that we hold it precious in a way that makes the presents and the mince pies simply symbols of love and joy, and not the centre piece of the day. Maybe if I can remember this, some of that worldly pressure might fall away, and Christmas and I might learn to like one another again.

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a disabled writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her full-length publications include Garden of God’s Heart and Whale Song: Choosing Life with Jonah. She lives in South East England and is mainly housebound by her illness.

Photo credit: Pixabay

December Blessings – A guest poem

On By auntyamoIn Christmas, Family, Poetry, Writing, Blogging etc2 Comments

Today’s guest post is from my sister-in-law, another Ann-Marie, (though she spells it wrong 😀 😀 😀 )

The poem is short, but beautiful. And here it is…

December Blessings

At last I escape
from head wreck and heart ache
The bright blue skies balm to my soul
Gusty breezes toss up the crows like black confetti
The silver birches are shapely and clean
And there is the Oak, just quietly being,
witness to petty life
As always, I place my hand on its cracked bark
and soak in its power
It gathers up the wind and blows a blessing
through my hair

(c) Ann-Marie Dunne

photo credit: Rojs Rozentāls winter hunter via photopin (license)

#debuke2 My second collection is out!

On By auntyamoIn Writing, Blogging etcLeave a comment

A quick  commercial break from the December guest posts to share my joyous news. After 5 years I have finally got my second collection of short stories out on Kindle.

It’s called. A Sense of the Sea and other stories. The stories are the same mix of funny (hopefully) and heart warming. There are some darker themes too. The last few years have had an impact on my writing and it has been very therapeutic to explore some themes of grief and death through these tales.

The book is available on Kindle now and will be available in paperback in the New Year. Click here to take a peak.

And of course my first book is there too, relaunched earlier this year. If you’ve never tried it click here to see that one… 🙂

There’s a handy hint for gifting Kindle book… You’ll find that if you click here. Books are lovely pressies, and ebooks are good for the purse.

Thank you lovely readers for your encouragement and support in 2018. There are some great guest posts coming over the next couple of weeks. Hope you enjoy them.

Love and blessings, A x

Some Christmas & Winter writing…

On By auntyamoIn Christmas, Guest PostsLeave a comment

I can hardly believe it is already December 10th! Where have the last couple of weeks gone. NaNoWriMo has come and gone and I’m pretty happy with my mass of 50,000+ garbled words. As I mentioned before, I’ll be returning to the Isaiah series in the Spring and am welcoming some guest writers to the blog over December.

I’m just sorry to be so late starting…

To kick off, here is a piece from my dear friend, back in Ireland – Mary Barber. Mary has shared on the blog before – you may remember ‘Paradise on a Penitential Island.’ I love her writing so much and am delighted to have her back. If you’re not familiar with Irish mythology, you might need to google some of the names. Mary seems to have entitled her piece, ‘Christmas Thingy,’ 😀 but I’m going to pull rank as editor and call it…

Darkness and Light

I don’t know much about Irish mythology. Having said that, I do remember snatches of the stories of Oisín, and the Salmon of Knowledge, and Diarmuid and Gráinne, and they have a fond place in my heart. My favourite piece of modern art is Fionn MacCumhail and his dogs Bran and Sceolan at the roundabout on the Curragh [in Kildare]. There is wonder and power in our myths.

De Danann to me though just means great music from my childhood. I wouldn’t be one for believing in ancient gods that hid underground when the Celts arrived – it’s just not my kind of belief system.

Glorious Glendalough Photo credit: Annmarie Miles

I love the wonder and mystery that being a follower of Christ brings to my life. But in the run up to Christmas I find I have a lot more in common with the people that wandered this island in the days before pyramids.

It used to start too soon, but now Christmas is literally in the shops before Halloween. And this year the actual celebrating of Christmas was well underway by mid November. Real Christmas trees were bought and put up before Black Friday (don’t start me about the disregard for Thanksgiving!).

I’m just an old scrooge ruining the kids’ fun. Where’s the harm in celebrating Christmas early? I know how the criticism of my thoughts is expounded. Christians just hijacked pagan festivals….bla, bla, bla.

Sure they did.

God knew exactly how to speak to our hearts before he called Abram away from his home. He wrote it in our hearts that we would celebrate the light. And that’s what pagans did for thousands of years.

Not these modern pagans. They are too smart for that. They won’t fall for any Christian nonsense. So the tinsel and the trees go up in November and the celebrations begin.

But what is there to celebrate in November? The descent into darkness? In modern Ireland I can absolutely believe that a huge raft of our population would genuinely celebrate the encroaching darkness.

Allegedly, in Celtic tradition, druids would cut mistletoe and offer it as a blessing each solstice. And there is a myth that on the solstice each year the Oak King, in the Light corner, and the Holly in the Dark corner, would fight. And every year the Oak King of Light would be victorious.

That’s not bad for an ancient belief system…or any belief system. Darkness and Light in perpetual conflict, but Light always emerging victorious!

The ancients knew their stuff. They knew we didn’t want to surrender to the encroaching darkness. They knew we clung to the light and could never be sure there was a reason to celebrate until you knew for sure the light had triumphed. And to be sure to be sure, you’d wait a few days after the solstice before you’d celebrate – just to be sure!

And this is when I will celebrate – after the solstice, when The Light had entered the world.

Oh, and a Happy New Year!

Isaiah delayed… NaNoWriMo in full swing

On By auntyamoIn Bible Study, Writing, Blogging etcLeave a comment

I’m afraid I ran out of time, so my series on Isaiah is on hold for now. I’ll be back to it in January.

At the moment I’m up to my armpits in National Novel Writing Month 2018. The challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. If you’re looking at this on a laptop or computer screen, you’ll see to the right hand side my NaNoWriMo total so far. Just under 15k as I type. I’m really enjoying the story, and the more I write, the more it unfolds for me.

I’ve played around with cover art. and I’ve written a blurb. It might change, but here it is for now…

Molly is a school teacher who lives alone in the house her parents raised her. A solicitor’s letter informs her she has been anonymously bequeathed ‘Gorse Lodge’, the old Gatekeeper’s Lodge of the nearby Hepworth Estate. 
The terms of the legacy state that she cannot sell it until she has lived in it for 12 months. But it is in disrepair, and the only way she can afford to renovate it, is to sell her parents’ house. 
Together with Maggie, a homeless woman who has been in Molly’s life (and kitchen) for as long as she can remember, and Richard, Molly’s friend and colleague, she tries to find her mystery benefactor; and work out if Gorse Lodge is a millstone around her neck or the opportunity of a lifetime.

During December, I’m inviting  writers to contribute to a series of guests posts. Would you be interested? 300-500 words on the theme of winter or Christmas. Drop a comment below if you’re up for it.

For the Isaiah fans, I’ll see you in Jan 🙂 x

Isaiah 36 and 37 – The Power of Prayer

On By auntyamoIn Bible Study, prayerLeave a comment

We move from prophecy to history in the next few chapters.

Take a look at 2 Kings 18 and 2 Chronicles 29 and you’ll see what a good King Hezekiah was. He reversed a lot of the pagan practises that Ahaz had brought in.

“Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses.” 2 Kings 18:5-6

After 14 years of his reign, Isaiah reports the coming attack from Assyria. The King of Assyria, Sennacherib, thought that because he had been able to destroy the ‘gods’ of other nations, Judah would be no different. Hezekiah, being the faithful man that he was, prayed. See 37v14ff. His prayer does not deny the power of the enemy. His prayer is realistic — this is the situation, and on first glance, it looks bad! Unless of course, God delivers them from the hands of Sennacherib.

It struck me that some people who don’t believe in God, think believers use prayer like a false sense of security. But it was Assyria’s presumption that all gods are made of wood and stone — made by human hands and easily indestructible – which led to Sennacherib’s failure.

Prayer is not a talisman. Prayer is vital because we cannot rely wholly on ourselves.  Relying only on what we think we know or what we are confident we can do, is more likely to send us down the wrong road. Sennacherib was relying on own strength and past success. He didn’t see the Kingdom of God’s people any differently than the other places he had ravaged and ruined.

In v21 b God responds to Hezekiah’s prayer – because you have prayed… this is the word the Lord has spoken against him… 

We know there is a difference, and that prayer changes things – even if  it’s only our attitude. As believers, we need to dig in in prayer, trust God to answer, and never fall into the trap of thinking we can do it all ourselves.

“I will defend this city,” said God in 37v35. Pray, and exchange the word ‘city’ for your particular issue. He will answer. He always does 🙂

 

 

A few thoughts next time from chapter 39 and then 40, will see the end of this series for now. I’ll be delving into NaNoWriMo in November, and launching a collection of short stories too, please God.

In December I’ll be welcoming some guest posts here on the theme of winter and Christmas. Do give me a shout if your interested in writing something.

ttfn x

Waiting for the abundance of Isaiah 35

On By auntyamoIn Bible StudyLeave a comment

Greetings all. Welcome to the new followers – and thank you 🙂 I’m continuing a short series in Isaiah; sharing some of the encouragement and challenge of reading the book over the summer. If you like, you can read Isaiah and Me or The Isaiah Disclaimer as these were my introductory posts.

It was a  joy to read the first couple of verses of chapter 35 from the New Living Translation…

Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days.
    The wasteland will rejoice and blossom with spring crocuses.
 Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! (v1,2a)

It reminded me of church.

At times church can feel a bit like a desert and a wilderness. There are seasons when I have felt church life to be a spiritual wasteland.  If you’re shocked and/or you disagree with me, then you should count yourself extremely blessed. You should thank God every day, that church life has never been like that for you.
It has for me, and for many I know.

Thankfully, those seasons pass, and church life becomes a literal,  ‘abundance of flowers and singing and joy.’ I’m grateful to God that is also my experience.

What struck me about these verses was that there is a reason to be glad, even in the wilderness days. Our spiritual wastelands have the potential to bloom. And this message of hope is to be passed to those who need it.

With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands,
    and encourage those who have weak knees. v.3a

The image of tired pray-ers comes to mind. Hands raised or simply joined together; on our knees – either literally or emotionally. It can be disappointing; praying for the same things over and over. Waiting is tiring, but the news of God promising an abundance of blossoms and joy from desert lands, brings strength. And of course, that promise comes back again in chapter 40. Strength for those who wait on Him.

We should tell people that. I bet we all know someone with tired hands and weak knees. Or maybe it’s you who needs to hear it. I know it cheers my heart every time I read it. So be encouraged, or be an encourager. No matter how dry and desolate the situation, there is promised cause for celebration.

It might not feel like it everyday. It might not feel like it today. But there’ll be flowers, and singing, and joy; and lots of it.
Just you ‘wait’. 🙂 x