An Adventure in Ministry

Recently I had a pretty scary experience with my daughter. She had been struggling with a cold and it had began to settle on her chest. One of the difficulties of children with Down Syndrome is their ‘pipes’ are usually a little smaller and so they can have colds move to their chest easier with a more dangerous consequence. As I sat and watched my daughter lying on me and having a second nap of the day (which is almost unheard of!) I started to worry. She was really laboured in her breathing. Every time she breathed it took the whole of her body to enable it and it was clearly getting worse. It wasn’t long before we were taking a very poorly little girl to accident and emergency. It was a very distressing night with lots of tests, lots of treatment and a good dose of oxygen. Thankfully the little one is back to her usual self and is doing well, but reflecting on the experience I have learned something about the nature of God. In the bible, in its original translation, the name for Go...

  I have always enjoyed football and there is nothing better than a European or World tournament. I have watched nearly every match of the European tournament this year and have loved (nearly) every minute of it! However, over the past few years I have began to notice something that makes me feel uncomfortable and this year I felt I needed to speak out.   I did most of my growing up in Liverpool and became a supporter of Everton Football club. I enjoyed watching matches but I also enjoyed cheering on Liverpool FC when they did better than my team and achieve cups and awards, after all Liverpool was my city and anything we as a city achieved was good in my book!   When watching sport I also enjoy cheering on other countries in the United Kingdom, having lived in Wales, and now living in Scotland, over the Euros I have loved celebrating their success and cheering them on! However I have been horrified to discover that this is not the case for everyone and in fact in...

A few weeks ago, as part of our staycation exploring Scotland, we decided to take a day trip to the Isle of Arran. The Island holds a special place in my husband’s heart and he couldn’t wait to show our daughter all the places he frequented on his childhood holidays.  In the afternoon we spent some time on a beautiful beach and as I sat listening to the sound of the sea, I had a magical moment where I could almost hear the sound of bagpipes on the breeze. However the sound continued for some time and we realized that the sound was real – there really were bagpipes playing! In fact there was a group of people doing a bagpipe display for a primary school in the local park. My daughter absolutely loves the bagpipes and will happily watch you tube videos of them all day long! So you can imagine how excited she was to seem some in the flesh! Later as we sat on the beach we started to talk about how, often when we are on holiday or daytrip adventures, we find there happens to be interest...

  There is a topic that I have been thinking on for some time. Every so often God would remind me or prompt me on this but it isn’t an easy subject so I would often brush it off…until the next time! However, it is something that I began to see so often that I began to think on it, ponder on it and wonder why there seems to be so much of it around…the thing I have been seeing in so many places, both in the church and the world is bitterness. Hebrews 12:15 in the passion translation says; What I sense in the spirit I have been seeing is roots of bitterness taking hold in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike. I have seen people bitter towards ·        People who have hurt them ·        People who have been hurt ·        People who try to love them ·        People with differing opinions to them. It has broken my heart to see people using p...

  Re cently I was watching my beautiful daughter playing and reflecting on our journey to becoming a family. At age three my beautiful little girl is still not quite walking yet and has few words beyond Mumma, Dadda, Good girl, the wiggles and cake – obviously the most important words! You see our perfect daughter has Down Syndrome, which means that she takes a little longer to do the things that come so easy to others. I smiled as she managed pulled a photo of her nana out of her photo bag, signed her name and clapped herself in congratulations and pondered on the truth that although this wasn’t what I had planned when I began my journey to become a mum, it was full of the golden threads of his grace.   As many of you know my journey to motherhood wasn’t an easy one, in fact I became the step-mother to teenagers before we even tried to extend our own family! We journeyed through years of trying to extend our family but never getting anywhere. Eventually in 2018 we decided t...

     I have written before about the Sabbath (you can find it here:  Click here to view  ) and I find that God often convicts me of the need to rest as I am someone who can so easily miss out on rest in order to work myself to the point of burnout! I have studied the Sabbath and preached on the Sabbath, but just over a year ago my relationship with the Sabbath changed completely. I had been pondering on what it means to rest for a while and my favourite podcast – A cup full of hope was also doing a series on the same thing and when I heard the episode on Sabbath, I couldn’t get it off my mind (you can find it here: Click here to view )Caroline Harries talked about how she had journeyed to practice the Sabbath and I knew I needed to do the same.       Pri nciples of the Sabbath      Before I share a little of my journey, let me just explain a little about the Sabbath to you. At the beginning of creation, God created the earth an...