Thermo-nix

Posted on by

4

My name is Sue Ellen, and I don’t want a Thermomix.

(*Hi, Sue Ellen!*)

If you have any friends who have a Thermomix, or you have one yourself, you’ll know that’s a pretty radical statment. The “Thermie”, as it is irritatingly affectionately known by devotees, is the most shit-hot kitchen item of the moment. If the hype is to be believed, it does everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. And all in a fraction of the time and effort. Who wouldn’t want one?

Well… me. And I’ll be honest, for a long time my resistance has been due to the hype. Not to mention the babbling, disturbingly Stockholm Syndrome-like enthusiasm of Thermomix owners. (I’ve never been to a Thermomix demonstration but I am fairly certain that all demonstrators are taught to tout the benefits of “no nasty additives”, because I’ve heard the exact same phrase from every Thermomix owner I’ve ever met. Here’s a tip: being smug and superior about your awesome food choices doesn’t make me want to shell out $2,000-ish on a kitchen gadget. It makes me want to punch you.)

Anyway, yes. The hype. The enthusiasm. The occasional smugness. None of that does it for me. I do get that when people really love a product they tend to rave about it a bit. Heck, I did a whole blog post about a $30 pair of Target trousers I bought. I get it. But it still irritates the crap out of me.

However, I have recently wondered if I would ever buy one. Say that money was not issue. Say that I’d never heard anyone rave about their beloved ‘Thermie’. Would I want one then? Would the benefits of the machine outweigh the annoyances?

I’ll admit, part of me likes the idea of a kitchen gadget that does a lot of things in a short amount of time. But that’s only a tiny part. The rest of me isn’t interested. And it’s not the money, or the wide-eyed Thermomix disciples, or the hype. It’s that, for me, cooking is about more than the finished product. The finished product is great, but I also like the process. I like the sounds and smells as I gently stir a simmering pan. I like mixing wet ingredients in one bowl and dry in another. I like seeing if I can manage to chop the entire onion without having to stop and wipe my eyes. I like the silky-slippery feel of cornflour. I even like getting my fingers into sticky scone dough – and I was the child who hated finger painting because I didn’t like having dirty hands, so that’s a big call for me.

I’m not a complete Luddite. I certainly do use kitchen gadgets to make my life easier. I spent years creaming butter and sugar by hand, because that’s the way my mum did it and it hadn’t occurred to me that one could do it any other way, but I don’t want to do that anymore.  I’ll happily use a hand mixer for that. (I did, however, give away my food processor because I hardly ever used it.) I can understand the appeal of speedy cooking, especially in large families, and sometimes I need to get something on the table in a hurry too. But mostly… I prefer to cook slowly. I want to smell and touch and taste things. I want textures and sensations; I want slow simmering and gentle stirring. I want to enjoy food, and for me that means enjoying the process of preparing it. Maybe that means I can’t cook 12 different things on a Saturday afternoon, but you know, I’m really okay with that.

A barren wasteland

Posted on by

1

Life without Facebook… it’s a barren wasteland.

Okay, no, not really. It’s been less than a week since I deactivated my account and in many ways it’s been good. I’ve spent less time stuffing around on my computer, but I am realising that I haven’t necessarily spent less time stuffing around in general. I still play computer games, read books, crash out on the couch watching telly and hang out with friends. Getting rid of Facebook hasn’t stopped me wasting time, if that’s what it is. (Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s how I deliberately choose to spend my time.)

I wasn’t entirely sure what I hoped to achieve by deactivating Facebook. It was a sudden decision which was largely fuelled by my inability to sleep and my insomnia-driven obsession with Facebook, coupled with the feeling that all my creativity was being channeled into status updates instead of other forms of writing. Ages ago, a friend told me that he’d given up Twitter and was drastically minimising his Facebook usage because he felt it was sapping his creativity. At the time I kind of understood, but not really. Now I do. Things happen in life, ordinary things, and I find myself thinking about how I can frame it in a funny or thought-provoking way for Facebook. I have a blog, and I complain to myself that I’m out of ideas, yet I spend ages thinking up witty status updates while my blog sits here untouched. The witty status update is not a bad thing, but I really don’t want it to be the only thing I write.

However, in the past not-quite-a-week I have missed Facebook. I haven’t missed my obsessiveness with it, but I’ve missed my friends. I keep wondering what certain people are up to, and honestly, I don’t have time to check in with all of them individually. And there are some people who have moved around a lot and I have no idea how to contact them outside Facebook.

So I’m reactivating my account. There is a part of me that feels a bit pathetic, like I couldn’t even hack a week without Facebook. Maybe that’s true. But maybe… maybe I don’t actually have to prove anything. I stepped away from it, and in doing so I re-set some of my buttons. That’s been helpful. Is there a rule about how long I have to be away for it to be a “real” break? I don’t think so. I’m choosing to step back into Facebook. I think I’ll probably use it differently in some ways – there are already some posts and people I plan to block, because I can see now that they were causing me stress – and maybe I’ll even use it less often. I don’t know. I am going to make more of an effort to turn my status updates into blog entries when I can, and I’m kind of looking forward to stretching myself that way. And the rest of the time I’ll be checking out people’s photos, laughing at dumb jokes, getting annoyed with ads, rolling my eyes at utter stupidity, listening to friends, talking nonsense, having good conversations and wasting some time. You know… just like real life.

Disconnection

Posted on by

1

Today I was inspired by Kate, who posted about deactivating Facebook. I read her post and commented that I didn’t think I’d be deactivating my account any time soon…

…and then I did.

It was partly Kate’s post, and partly the fact that I realised I check Facebook before I even get out of bed. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, and have a quick look at FB on my phone when I get back into bed. Seriously? What on earth could have happened overnight that I need to know about RIGHT NOW? The answer to that is ‘nothing’. Not. A. Darn. Thing.

I’m not anti-Facebook, and I do plan to reactivate it eventually. (Possibly in the middle of the night tonight if I get up to go to the loo…) I love Facebook, really. I love connecting with friends, particularly friends from interstate and overseas, I love seeing what people are up to and checking out their photos, I like wasting time on games. And since I live alone and can be a bit isolated, it does help me feel connected. I am okay with Facebook itself, but I was starting to get a bit obsessive about checking it. Definitely time for a break.

Meanwhile, I recently downloaded a free audiobook app on my phone. It has public-domain books read by… well, anyone. Many of them are beautifully read by people with smooth, calm voices and beautiful diction. They soothe me to sleep wonderfully well. And then there are some… I downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, thinking that would be fun and entertaining. As I’m sure it will be. But the first adventure is read by what sounds like a 16 year old boy with a mouthful of orthodontic work. He pauses in weird places, he emphasises the wrong words and/or syllables, he attempts accents but can’t maintain them for more than half a sentence, and he valiantly mangles many words that I suspect he has seen written but never heard. Like ‘admirable’ (Ad-MIRE-abe-el), ‘chaise lounge’ (CHIZE-lounge) and ‘carte blanche’ (Cart-AY-blanch-AH). It’s 30% distracting and 70% HILARIOUS. It has this train-wreck quality about it that means I can’t stop listening. But I’m not totally heartless – on the rare occasions he flukes the correct pronunciation of a polysyllabic word I give a resounding “WELL DONE!” I’m sure he appreciates it.

“But… you’re nice!” and other helpful comments

Posted on by

5

Today, I have been single for 15,442 days. (In an amazing coincidence, I have also been alive for the same number of days.) In that time I’ve heard just about every kind of comment on my singleness. A lot of comments make me angry, which is actually kind of sad. For the most part, people are well meaning and I really don’t think they intend to be hurtful. Yet I have been hurt or offended or baffled or angered, so many times. When I talk with other single people they tell variations of the same story. Why does this happen? Are single people just extra touchy and more likely to take offense? Do we all happen to have insensitive friends? Are people really quite stupid?

Actually, I don’t think it’s any one of those things. There might be elements of some or all of them, but it’s never just one thing. In reality, I think we all want to care for each other, but often we don’t know how. We all know our own lives but we can’t fully understand someone else’s, and so we can inadvertently hurt each other. We’re human; it happens.

I’ve talked to a lot of single people, and I have my own experiences, and I keep hearing the same things that We Wish People Understood. So along those lines, here are my Top Six Ways To Care For Your Single Friend*. And to care for yourself, if you’re single.

(*In this case, I’m assuming your single friend is female and a Christian, because that’s what I know. But I think these points can be applied more broadly.)

1. “You’re so nice! I don’t understand why you’re not married.”
If your friend is single:
Let’s start with this: marriage is not a reward and it can’t be earned. No one deserves it, and being nice or pretty or thin or curvy or smart or funny or cute or whatever is completely irrelevant. By all means, tell your friends they are nice. Tell them they’re smart and funny and completely worthwhile. But don’t link it with marriage. When you do, you’re telling them that marriage and relationships are earned by being worthy enough. That marriage happens to nice people or pretty people or fun people. Which suggests that your nice friend perhaps isn’t quite nice enough. When you express surprise that someone so nice is not married, what your friend hears is “Nice = married. You’re not married. You must not be nice enough. Therefore, you have not earned marriage.” Oh, I know you don’t mean to say that. But trust me, that’s what she hears.

If you are single:
It’s worth repeating: marriage is not a reward and it can’t be earned. No one deserves it, and being nice or pretty or thin or curvy or smart or funny or cute or whatever is completely irrelevant. You are already worthwhile. If you marry, it won’t be because you earned it. If you don’t marry, it’s not because you weren’t good enough or because you did the wrong things. You are valuable, just as you are, and your marital status can never change that.

2. “You just need to trust God.”
If your friend is single:
There’s another way of saying “you just need to trust God”. It’s this: “you don’t trust God enough, and that’s why you’re not married”. And another way of saying THAT is “it’s your fault you’re not married”. You know what? Your friend already trusts God. She trusts God with her whole life, not just her marital status. If she didn’t trust God, chances are she wouldn’t be faithfully holding out for a relationship with someone who loves Jesus. Being single in a world that tells you to jump into a relationship as soon as possible involves a HUGE amount of trust, and it’s incredibly hurtful to hear our trust in God questioned, or to hear the suggestion that our singleness is because we don’t trust God enough. I know that’s not what you mean. So perhaps there’s another way of phrasing it. Perhaps you could say, “I’m impressed with the way you keep trusting God even when you don’t quite know where he’s leading you. I know that’s not easy, and sometimes it must feel like God isn’t listening to you. I’d really like to be praying for you in those times.”

If you are single:
When you hear this, I know that you start to question whether you’ve somehow not trusted God enough. Perhaps you question whether God is punishing you for your lack of trust. But again, marriage is not a reward, and it doesn’t happen when your faith is good enough. You already trust God, and I promise you he’s not holding out on you. He loves you, and he loves that you trust him. Don’t believe the lie that you haven’t yet earned marriage.

3. “You don’t know what it’s like to have children.”
If your friend is single:
Um, no. We don’t. That’s kind of the point here. Really, I do understand that this type of comment is meant to be helpful, and to express that marriage and parenthood can be a tough road. But you know, most single people know that. Those who have been single for many adult years have seen their friends marry and have children, and they have listened and prayed with their friends during many different tough times. Maybe we don’t know from experience, but we do know. It’s tough. And you know what? So is being single; it’s just tough in a different way. No one – married or single – needs to prove that their lot in life is harder. We all struggle in different ways, and nobody wants to swap their pain for someone else’s. When your friend says, “I’d really like to have children and it hurts that I don’t”, please don’t minimise their pain by telling them they don’t know what it’s like. Listen to them and be supportive.

If you are single:
This is a tough one, isn’t it? The temptation, at least for me, is to start playing “Whose Life is Tougher?” Sadly, I can assure you that this does not help friendships and doesn’t make you feel better. I’m not sure I really know the best thing to say, but I know this: life is not a competition. You will have good times and hard times and wonderful times and horribly painful times… and so will your friend. Be there for each other.

4. “I would love to have your life – you have so much spare time and no responsibilities.”
If your friend is single:
This may well have been true when we were all 17 and living at home. It may have even been true when your friend was 21 and single. Then again, it may not have been. Responsibilities and being an adult doesn’t automatically come with marriage and children. It comes when you decide to take on responsibilities and be an adult. Couples and parents do have some responsibilities and time restraints that single people don’t share, but many responsibilities simply come with growing up. Single people still need to cook and clean and shop and get the car serviced and buy petrol and go to the bank and mow the lawn and have medical checkups and pay bills… and we can’t share these responsibilities with anyone. If we’re halfway through dinner and realise we need more milk, we can’t send anyone else out to get it for us. If we want to go and have a coffee with a friend, no one is going to mow the lawn while we’re out. Perhaps instead of making assumptions about what your friend’s life looks like, you could ask them how life is going.

If you are single:
Same deal, really. Don’t make assumptions about your friend’s life. And don’t make assumptions about your own. When someone tells you that you must have loads of spare time and therefore should take on additional ministries, don’t say yes or no right away. Go home and think about YOUR life, not the life of the Single Stereotype. Do you really have time? Is this a ministry that uses your gifts? Do you want to do it? Are you saying yes because you think you should do it?

5. “I didn’t invite you over, because I thought it would be too painful for you to be around my children.”
If your friend is single:
Sometimes, it will be too painful to be around children. Not all the time, but undeniably there are hard days. There are days when it’s incredibly painful to be surrounded by the thing you desperately want but can’t have. Other times, though, the really painful thing is to be excluded from family life. We often don’t get many opportunities to be around families, and to be deliberately excluded can be isolating and make us feel unloved. Just invite your friend over, the same as you would invite anyone else, and trust them to know whether it’s a good idea for them. Sometimes they’ll get it wrong (for themselves) but that’s okay. That’s up to them, not you.

If you are single:
Trust yourself and your instincts, and know that it’s okay to say no sometimes. You don’t have to take on every babysitting request, but nor do you have to refuse them all. Treat all invitations and requests individually. Some days you will want to be around families and children and some days you won’t. And that’s okay. You need to care for yourself and stay emotionally safe.

6. “Cheer up! Your life is great!”
If your friend is single:
Being single and childless can be a choice. But for many single and childless people, it’s not. It’s not what we wanted and not what we expected. That doesn’t mean our lives are bad, or that we don’t enjoy life. It just means that our lives are not what we thought they would be, and with that comes grief. Not self-pity; actual grief. It’s real, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. Please don’t invalidate or deny your friend’s feelings. There will be days when she is suddenly, unexpectedly swamped by grief. She doesn’t need to be told that her life is great. I’m sure she already knows it. She needs to be allowed to feel, and allowed to grieve. Grief comes and goes, and it won’t last forever. Just be there for her, the same as you would for any other friend who is going through the grieving process.

If you are single:
Acknowledge what you feel, and don’t beat yourself up for feeling it. Your grief is real. Pushing it aside and tell yourself you’re wrong for feeling it won’t help you. The grief will still be there. It’s okay to acknowledge it – it really, really is. If you need some help to work through it, that’s okay too. Do what you need to do.

Bonus: “God loves you”
If your friend is single… and if you are single:
God knows every detail of your life, and he cares about it all. He knows what you’re feeling. And he loves you. Single, married, with or without children, happy, sad, angry, grieving, contented – God doesn’t judge your worth by any of those things. He just loves you.

Potential brain explosion

Posted on by

3

I’ve started the new job.

I LOVE IT.

I am utterly exhausted and my brain is more than full at the moment, so I fear it might explode, but it’s still all good. The job is very busy, in a wow-it’s-2pm-ALREADY-wheredidthemorninggo?? way. Which is actually kind of great. Everyone has been incredibly lovely and welcoming, and I’m starting to feel like I know what I’m doing, and that helps my confidence a lot. I’m not sure I’ll ever learn all the names, but I’m assured I will. Eventually.

As for the rest of my life… well, I’m struggling. More than I’m comfortable with, to be honest. There are reasons for it, and I’m working through them with my counsellor, but there’s not a quick fix. I don’t know that there’s a fix at all, actually, but I’m hoping to get past this current stage where all I want to do is curl up in a foetal position and cry. I know this will pass… in the meantime, I’m trying to focus on my new job and the positive distraction it provides.

Plus, new dress.

It's not as short as it appears here. And although it looks grey, it's actually black with tiny white polka dots. It's lovely.

It’s not as short as it appears here. And although it looks grey, it’s actually black with tiny white polka dots. It’s lovely.

Let me leave you with a joke, courtesy of two small boys who came rushing into the office today to tell it.

Q: Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?
A: To get to the bottom.

Trousers are from Mars, skirts are from Venus

Posted on by

6

Men’s clothing is easy. They go to a shop (or a tailor, if they’re in an Agatha Christie novel) and buy clothes. Then they walk out, go home and wear the clothes. That’s it. I can’t remember the last time I saw a bloke fussing because his clothes weren’t quite right.

Women’s clothing… that’s a whole other story. I feel like we spend half our days fidgeting with our clothing. Trousers are cut weirdly and don’t fit right. Bra straps fall down or dig in. Shirts ride up. Shoes – don’t get me started on shoes. They can be comfortable or they can look nice. Apparently not both. I don’t know; maybe it’s a law or something. I can’t think of any other logical explanation.

And at the risk of sounding like a bad 80s comedian, WHAT IS WITH those long stringy loops that they sew into the shoulders of tops and dresses so they don’t fall off the hanger? Does ANYONE actually use them at home? Yeah, didn’t think so. We all either cut them out immediately, or leave them there, whereupon they will slip out at the neckline or armhole so we have to keep tucking them back in every five minutes.

Sometimes I feel like we’re in some kind of social experiment. Somewhere, a sociologist with a huge research budget is paying clothing manufacturers big bucks to produce women’s clothing that gets more ridiculous every season. It’s not because they think it’s what we want; it’s because they’re waiting to see what it will take to make us crack. So far they’ve given us weird styles, garish colours and patterns that no one really likes, skirts where the lining and the skirt are different sizes, fabric you can see through, fake pockets, ‘standard’ sizing that is wildly different depending on where you shop, fabric that clings, long skirts that wrap around your legs as you walk, stringy loops that fall out without us noticing, bra straps that will never stay up no matter how many adustments you make, the bubble skirt, harem pants, ballet point stilettos… actually ANY stiletto.

They’ve given us all these tests of our sanity and we haven’t protested. Where will this end?? I’ll tell you what… I don’t care what happens; I definitely won’t be wearing these:

Lobster claw shoes. Yes, really.

Lobster claw shoes. Yes, really.

Tale of Grossness

Posted on by

3

A couple of days ago I rearranged my bedroom. By which I mean, I moved the bed around 90°, and now it feels like a new room. (Yes, I’m easily pleased.) The ‘new room’ feel has inspired me to keep it tidy and make my bed. Based on past experience, this feeling will fade and I’ll be fine. ;)

Today I walked into my room and noticed that the towel that’s usually along the end of my bed (for the cats to lie on) was kind of scrunched up. Louis sometimes attacks the towel and rolls around in it, so I often find it like that. When I saw it like that this afternoon I thought nothing of it; I simply picked up the end of the towel and…

…Actually, let’s backtrack a bit to an event that happened some time prior to this. One of the cats (it’s still unclear which one) walked to the laundry and had a little snack of the mince in their bowls, then wandered into my bedroom and jumped up on to the bed. Said cat then thought, “You know, I don’t feel so well. In fact, I feel really very queasy. I think I am going to—-BLERGH!”

Cue hairball and largely undigested mince on the towel. “Oh dear,” thought Cat. “I can’t just leave that there. I’d better cover it up, just like I would in my litter tray.” Scratch scratch scratch, went Cat. Scrunch scrunch scrunch, went the towel. And before you could say ‘disgusting surprise’, the hairball and chunks of mince were nicely hidden in the towel.

Fast forward to Sue Ellen walking into the room and seeing the scrunched towel. “Oh dear, the cats have been playing with the towel again. Well, that’s easily fixed.” Sue Ellen picked up the end of the towel and gave it a firm FLICK to straighten it out.

Did you know that chunks of partially digested mince get up some real speed and distance when a towel is used as a slingshot?

Blessing

Posted on by

3

What does ‘blessing’ mean to you?

I’ve been thinking about this today. This morning I read the part in Genesis 32 where Jacob wrestles all night with a man, who may or may not be God (it’s not clear), and towards morning he says he won’t let the man go until he blesses Jacob. This resonated with me. I so want God to bless me. But I’m not sure I have a good picture of what that looks like.

Sometimes I say that I feel blessed. Or that something or someone is a blessing to me. I use the word quite a bit, actually. And I am realising that I use it very narrowly. I feel blessed when God gives me things, like a new job or a sunny day. I feel blessed to have friends, and to spend time with them. I feel blessed to have a great counsellor who has been incredibly helpful to me. Sometimes I feel blessed when my electricity bill is not as high as I feared it would be. I’m not wrong – those things are all blessings. But they’re all very tangible, aren’t they?

What about when I don’t feel blessed? When I feel condemned or cursed or just plain ignored by God? For me, feeling ‘un-blessed’ also tends to revolve around tangibles. I feel un-blessed because my prayers for marriage and children haven’t been answered. I feel un-blessed when other people have things I don’t have, especially if they didn’t really have to work for them. I feel un-blessed when I am still more anxious than many other people, despite all the hard work I’ve put into managing my anxiety. I feel un-blessed when other people have relationships I don’t have. I feel un-blessed when I can’t see and feel and touch things that somehow prove God loves me.

Hm. That seems a bit warped, doesn’t it? Is that really what blessing means? When God gives me the desires of my heart, or when he just gives me ‘stuff’, then I’m blessed? When I feel loved, then I’m blessed? And when I don’t have the things and the relationships and the feelings, then God hasn’t blessed me?

I know that’s not true. The stuff, the feelings, the relationships – they are all blessings from God and I will continue to be grateful for them. But the Bible doesn’t just talk about ‘stuff’ in blessings. It says in Ephesians we have every spiritual blessing in Christ. Not just some – EVERY spiritual blessing. And if I’m honest… I don’t think I know what that means. I don’t know what it looks like and I don’t know what it feels like, and so I don’t know how to be grateful for and rejoice in those blessings. I hope – I pray – that in my stroll with God this year he will continue to show me his blessings. All of them, not just the ones I understand today.

 

Messaging

Posted on by

12

What Bible translation do you use?

Over the years I’ve been through a few. My first Bible, bought by my parents when I was 10 and I attended Sunday School for a while, was a King James Version. The language is archaic and, in this particular version, the text was tiny. I didn’t really read this Bible much. When I was 17 I started going to church with a friend, and eventually became a Christian. The church I attended had the NIV (New International Version) as their standard Bible and most people there used that one. That’s what I bought too, and even now, most Bible verses and passages that I know well, I know as an NIV translation. Since then I’ve also used the NIrV (kids’ version of NIV), the TNIV (NIV with inclusive language), the ESV (more literal translation), NASB (even more literal translation) and the NLT (less literal, more sense-for-sense than word-for-word). I’ve read bits from various other translations too. I think the important thing is to find a trustworthy translation – ie, one without glaring errors or heresies – that suits you. If my Bible is written in a style that I don’t enjoy or I find inaccessible then I’m not going to want to read it. It will become a chore rather than a time to hang out and listen to God. I don’t want that. I don’t think God wants it either.

One Bible translation I’ve never liked is The Message. It’s an idiomatic translation, with Hebrew and Greek idioms translated into modern English equivalents. The translator, Eugene Peterson, says this about why he translated it this way: “Writing straight from the original text, I began to attempt to bring into English the rhythms and idioms of the original language. I knew that the early readers of the New Testament were captured and engaged by these writings and I wanted my congregation to be impacted in the same way. I hoped to bring the New Testament to life for two different types of people: those who hadn’t read the Bible because it seemed too distant and irrelevant and those who had read the Bible so much that it had become ‘old hat.’” (source) And that’s great, but unfortunately the very first thing I ever read in The Message was Psalm 1. Here’s how I was used to reading the first two verses:

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night. (NIV)

And here’s how The Message translates it:

How well God must like you—
you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon,
you don’t slink along Dead-End Road,
you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.
Instead you thrill to God’s Word,
you chew on Scripture day and night.

Um… yeah. Let’s just say this put me off The Message for a VERY long time. Possibly to the point where I’ve mocked it as a rubbish translation. Ahem. Anyway. So I’ve never read it and never had any desire to read it. Then the other week I was chatting with a friend and she mentioned that she’d bought a devotional with passages from The Message. Now, this is a friend whose intellect, theology and opinion I trust deeply. And she was reading… The Message? Really?

I’m currently a month behind in a one-year Bible reading plan. I’ve been trying to get this finished before the end of the year (not going to happen). So after this discussion with my friend I decided to go through a few readings in The Message rather than the NLT which I’ve been reading all year. Honesty compels me to confess that I wanted to prove to myself that The Message is NOT the translation for me and that it really is a bit ridiculous. So I switched translations in the Bible app on my phone and sat down to read it. And… it was okay. It was more than okay. It was helpful, and several times caused me to pause in the middle of some passages that I know very well and think, “Oh. That’s what that means.”

I contacted my friend, who was well aware of my opinion of that particular translation, and confessed that I’d read some of it and… yeah, maybe it was alright. Maybe it was actually pretty darn helpful. Maybe it even made me want to read the Bible. And maybe I’ll have some extra cream on my helping of humble pie, thanks.

And THEN, in church yesterday, whilst I was still picking that humble pie out of my teeth, my pastor pulled out The Message in the middle of his sermon and talked about why he found it helpful occasionally. He’s never done that before, with any translation. I laughed to myself, and my friend slipped me a note that said ‘Heh. The Message. It’s coming to get you…’

So… er… I think I’m probably going to have a go at The Message this year.

How about you? What translations do you like? What do you think about The Message?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Posted on by

2

I have a new job!

Yeah, a good blogger would probably have told a funny and interesting story before getting to the point, instead of just blurting it out, but what the hey. I’m not one of those bloggers. ;)

So, new job. I’m excited. And very sad to leave my current job. And mildly terrified about starting a new one. That’s all normal, right? Here’s how it went down: my current job is great. It would be even more great if it were a three day per week job, not four, because that’s about how much work there is. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to work only three days. So my options were (a) to stay here and be bored and frustrated, (b) to scratch around here for more work, which would have meant doing ad hoc tasks with no guarantees that there’d be any tasks on any given day, or (c) to look for a new job. I went with option (c), because I’m also ready for new challenges. This is a great job, but the tasks don’t ever change, I can never move to another position and there are only five other people on staff, all of whom either work part time or have one of their ‘weekend’ days during the week because Sunday is a work day. All of which means I’m not intellectually stimulated and I spend a lot of time in the office alone. That was great when I wasn’t particularly well. It was perfect, actually – it meant I could concentrate on my health without being stressed at work. A low-pressure, part time job was exactly what I needed (thank you, God). Now? Not so much.

ANYWAY. New job. Man, it takes me ages to get to the point, doesn’t it? It’s in a Christian school, where I will be part of a team of admin staff. I’ll be looking after the attendance database and the student/staff reception desk. Apparently they were previously two part time jobs which they are now combining into one SuperJob. Apparently I will be very busy, which is good but kind of scary. Also, I haven’t worked full time in nine years so I imagine for the first few weeks I will be exhausted and full of ridiculous, unfounded doubts about my abilities. Because that’s how I roll. The job comes with four weeks of annual leave, as is pretty standard, plus a two week shutdown over the Christmas/New Year period. Plus a day off before Cup Day. I could have negotiated to have some or all of the school holidays off but it would have meant a significant difference in salary.  As it is, by going full time I’ll end up with about $12K pa (pre-tax) more than I’m earning here. That is such a weight off my mind. I’ve been making an effort to spend very little but even so, money has been ridiculously tight and getting worse every day as bills get more expensive. It’s really not fun to burst into tears every time an electricity bill arrives. So, although I certainly won’t be rich, this gives me a LOT more breathing space. I’m extremely grateful for that.

I had two interviews and a three-hour “working interview” where I met people and checked out what the job entails. So I feel quite comfortable there – I liked the place, I think I will enjoy the job and the people were all very friendly. Fears aside, I’m really looking forward to working there.

So that’s my news. Not bad, hey? :)