G is for the Grace of God

Happy Easter! I think you guessed that my acrostic word was AMAZING, and that this stemmed from Ang's comment about the Amazing Grace she experiences in her life - the Grace of God. I felt that I wanted to write something about that too, but what on earth could I say that hadn't already been said by the Bible, by hymn writers, by Philip Yancey..? Well, I thought, I could look at God's grace in MY life, because no one else can write about that...

So there we go, I've had a really rather indulgent week of telling my story, and you have been most kind to indulge me in the telling, with your generous and encouraging comments. But the theme behind the telling was meant to be the amazing grace of God, which means his unconditional love for each one of us. Although I gave away my copy of Philip Yancey's book about Grace, the words in the blurb on the back are indelibly etched into my memory: 'There is nothing I can do to make God love me more. There is nothing I can do to make God love me less'. I remember sitting on a London to Leeds train, discussing those words with a fellow teacher, as she worried about some aspects in her life which she felt were letting God down. It is perfectly possible to let God down - I know my anger and irritability do that frequently - but those things don't stop his love for me or you, not one little bit.

I know my life story is a rather cheery, easy one. Nothing terrible ever happened to me, so of course it is easy for me to say, as I did a week ago, 'Life is fun and God is good'. But I could have told my life story from the shadowy side, too. In every good thing that I recall, there is an element of God's grace making it work, and highlighting the light instead of the shadow. I can see God's grace in taking an isolated, slightly arrogant girl and teaching her gently what she wasn't prepared to learn from church or Christian friends. I can see God's grace in leading me into teaching when I thought I was preparing for museum work. I can see God's loving hand guiding me and Ben again and again as we needed to change home and church. I can see God's grace in allowing me to break open so that a softer, deeper, more receptive layer of my character was ready to learn about living with him, living with my family. Those could have been, in fact were, some of the dark sides of my story. But seen in God's light - seen in the light of Jesus and his Easter Resurrection, my story is just a little part of God's story, full of grace and hope.

N is for the Net

Thanks for staying with me in this little acrostic history of my life so far! Your comments have been really interesting and encouraging, and I'm particularly enjoying seeing what catches your interest in any given post - from colleges to gardens to churches, so far! We've found that we had things in common we never knew about before - I trained as a teacher at the same college as Penny from Violet White, and Ang of Tracing Rainbows and I may well have worshipped together on one Sunday in August 1997, which is quite remarkable.

At the end of yesterday's post we were heading off to France in a somewhat unprepared manner - contract uncertain and furniture and boxes stuck in a lorry somewhere over Christmas and the New Year. To top it all, I had a really nasty bout of illness while we stayed with Ben's parents and then with friends before heading over to France. Everyone was very supportive, but I could see that Ben was wondering how he was going to cope with everything on his own, and a wife so physically and emotionally fragile that she was refusing to speak her (very limited) French.I told some of that story back in January, on the seventh anniversary of our move. I think it took me that long to develop a bit of an understanding of what had happened, and to learn a language with which to describe it, too.

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We hit the ground running (even me, on the whole) and actually loved our first year in our spacious rental house in the French countryside. The boys were welcomed into a little village school and set off on the bus each morning from the track at the bottom of our hamlet, where I got chatting with other mums. I braved the roads to begin driving on the right, and it wasn't too bad. Ben came home exhausted each evening from a day speaking French, but the work was enjoyable and he was ready for the challenge. It was a good year.

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Once it was clear that Ben's contract was going to become permanent and that we were happy to stay, we started looking for a house to buy. My French developed in very specific areas of vocabulary - house buying, the gym, choirs and shopping, to be precise! We couldn't afford to buy in the area we'd started in, and looked at many, many houses before I had a quick glance around the one in which we are now so happy. I discounted it because it was run-down and slightly above budget, and less rural than we'd hoped for (we are on the edge of a market town, with fields in some directions but houses, flats and a supermarket in others). Some months later, though, I found my mind was still going back to this house, and I mentioned it again to Ben. My description this time must have been more enthusiastic than the original one, because he was keen to see it and the rest is history! And how glad we are that we chose a house within walking/cycling distance of all the schools in the area, and many of the boys' friends and clubs. Children and teenagers are better served by a populated area than they are by the deep countryside, we now see.

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Somewhere along the line, the good things began to be subsumed by the pressures we felt from having moved to another country. It's hard to put a finger on it but we felt continually on show, and as people who've always been brought up to care about how we affect others, we were very conscious of not being like the French, and not being like the Americans at our church, either. We felt very judged, and I suppose, occasionally, we were! But most of the time it was about how we felt, not about anything anyone else really thought. French children are quiet and (oppressively) well-behaved when adults are around. American Christians also can have very strong ideas about child-rearing. Our children are not quiet, and they do not sit still. If they are told not to do something they make a point of doing it, to see what happens - not out of evil intent, but out of a certain (inherited) stubborness. In fact, they also have (shared generously between them) dyspraxia and a leaning towards the mild ends of autism and ADHD, none of those things being much stonger than character traits, but certainly making them stand out in a bunch of quiet, well-mannered kids! We did not cope with those differences well in those years.

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Oh, the relief of being able to look back on that time, rather than feeling stuck, blind, in the middle of it! One of the things that has helped me to move beyond the mire has been blogging - hence, N is for the Net! I had various connections with internet groups before I started blogging, but in many ways they did not help me because I still felt I had to show a coherent front, and to hide the imperfections that I would not allow myself or my family. Then three years ago I started blogging, to create a new way of communicating with my mum who had become too ill for phonecalls and emails. I was also keen to enter the world of blogging and hoped very much for comments from other bloggers. I had no idea that the connections I was going to make through blogging were going to become God's way of leading me through the slough. This is something I've talked a bit more about in other posts, but the blogger Josie Crafter (Homemade and Happy) put me onto the book Simple Abundance, which, along with other things, taught me how to reflect on my circumstances and feelings, rather than bundle through life as though they were irrelevant. I have found that unconsidered emotions do not become meaningless, but that instead they take over and have a power they could never have if you spend a little time recognising and dealing with them. (See Jane Austen for more on self-awareness!)

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I felt somewhat selfish and unholy taking time to think about myself, but found, instead, that God used everything I learnt to make my life a blessing to others, especially to my family. Gretchen Rubin, in her really helpful Happiness Project, quotes the saying: 'If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!' and I've realised the relief but also the responsibility in that little gem of wisdom.

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It is inaccurate to think that I have 'arrived' anywhere, but God has got me to a point where I feel I know how to trust him, to open up to him and to others, and to grow and learn through new situations rather than shutting down and entrenching. Life has continued to present its challenges, especially my mother's death in 2010, but I am full of hope and conscious of forgiveness. That is a good place to be and I'm really grateful to you, my blogging friends, who have been with me on my journey to get this far.

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PS If you have been wondering about the vocabulary I've used to describe my faith experiences, there's a little post below for you!

A quick note on Christian words

As I've been writing the story of my life, much of which is linked to my experiences of faith in God, some of you may have been wondering about the Christian words I use, or choose not to use. For those who've struggled through the Christian bits but are more interested in the rest - thank you for sticking with me! I've tried not to use Christian jargon but to tell things how they are, using everyday language. I hope it worked.
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For those who (like me) have been trained to look out for certain key words and phrases, here's an explanation of why I've tried to avoid them: I believe very deeply in sin and salvation, in Jesus' death for me and in my acceptance him as personal Lord and Saviour. I find phrases like 'washed in the blood of the Lamb' are so important and so powerful that I feel uncomfortable in bandying them around just to prove to myself or to someone else that I'm saved. I hope that, by using non-jargon words to describe my conversion and walk with God, that I've been able to convey the truth of this in my life rather than cloaking it in what must seem to many to be off-putting, mysterious language. Again, I hope it worked...

I is for Immigration

Yes, Juanita knew it was going to be 'I'!

Yesterday I left our story when our boys were 1 and nearly 3, and Ben had just got a job in Harrogate. Leaving a tiny flat wasn't hard, but leaving North Tyneside was. We found ourselved a good-sized ex-council house to rent in Harrogate, and I spontaneously thanked God every time I walked into our kitchen - imagine having a proper kitchen again, and a table where all four of us could eat at the same time!

So Harrogate is the England that the boys remember - the fish and chip shop at the bottom of the road where we later bought a house, the easy walk to The Stray, where wonderful fairs and circuses would come and set up, and the mysterious dual nature of a town which is both Yorkshire and refined Spa Town. We had friends there who represented both sides of the divide, but our church was firmly in the 'nice' part, the majority (although not all) of the people living in whopping great houses and earning tons of money to keep up with the expectations of their neighbours. Apologies to my good friends from Harrogate who read this blog - you will realise that you are either proper Yorkshire or charming exception, and that's why I like you! Refined Harrogate was not my scene...

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I guess it was a difficult time. Working (even if it's not every day) with young children isn't easy, and Ben would usually drop the boys off at childminder's or school on the mornings I worked, and I would pick them up from their childminder on my way back from the train station at around 6pm - I was commuting to York for the last few years of our time there. Looking back, admitting that it was hard would have been a good idea. I would have looked for ways to offset the hard stuff, instead of ploughing on as if it was all perfectly feasible and nothing to fuss about. I think it would probably have been possible to do my job and look after the family, but that adding in the things I did in church as well, I never gave myself a break and, instead, used to find myself mysteriously ill for weeks at a time - well, that was a clue, wasn't it? I resented not having any time and ended up subconsciously snatching it back with days in bed and never having any energy to do the housework. Not a good balance.

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One part of Harrogate that the whole family loved was Harlow Carr Gardens, which happened to be near where Ben worked. My mum took to giving Ben family membership of the Royal Horticultural Society for each birthday, which meant that we could all get in, free, whenever we wanted. The boys had birthday parties there, and we walked there in snow, in rain, in wind and in frequent sunshine - I remember the hides where you could watch woodland birds feeding and the stream with wonderful flowers all around it. For all that my last paragraph talks about how hard I made things on myself, what happy memories I have of that place!

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Spiritually, I got back into Jesus. You may think this is a most strange thing to say, but the time that I'd spent living and breathing Jubilee 2000 had given me a really good understanding of the Old Testament (Jubilee as freedom and release from debts is a Jewish idea, of course) and I knew God as the Just yet Forgiving Father really well through those years. But when I prayed I realised that I wasn't living with a fully balanced attention to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I read Tom Wright's excellent 'Fresh Looks' on the Gospels, and my Jesus, the Jesus who died to save me, really came back into focus in my faith. I also remembered that I couldn't do it all on my own, and that God promises the Holy Sprit as strength, guide and counsellor to all who ask, and at least partially learned again to open up to his leading, instead of imagining I could do it all myself.

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It was in Harlow Carr Gardens, where Ben and I took to meeting up every Friday lunchtime, that we discussed our next, and biggest, move. Ben's job was safe but changing, so that the things he loved were no longer part of his work. He pointed out that the boys were 5 and 6, the perfect age to make a successful move to another country - if we left it much longer, they would never adapt to education in another language. Ben had been studying French in evening classes for years, to supliment his hard-earned O-Level (his parents used to send him to vaguely-known French farming contacts each summer, so that he would have to speak French and would learn enough to pass a language O-level, which was in those days necessary to get into university). Ben loved the food, wine and culture of France, and had gently got me used to the idea of a move to France over the years. When his job was going downhill, and he met the boss of a small French company at a conference in London, Ben put out feelers and discovered that this company would be interested in taking on a first language English speaker!

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We talked and prayed about this through packed lunches and meandering walks around the beautiful gardens. Ben went out for an informal interview, and also applied for a few jobs in the UK. When one job in England nearly came up trumps, he phoned the French company hastily to see if they still wanted him. Of course they did! No, there wasn't anything in writing just yet, but they definitely wanted him... Gulp. So on this basis, which did get put onto paper in a rather vague way a little later, we moved out to Toulouse in January 2005.

Z is for Zipping Around!

Well, I'm sure that by now most of you, like Seranata and Ang, realised that the next letter was going to be Z. I imagine you wondered what word I was going to choose, too - I had to think about it! But 'zipping around' seems to fit the next few years of my life pretty well. If you've been reading my little acrostic story of my life, you'll know that yesterday I left you with our prospective move from the folksy wilds of north Cumbria to the busy metropolis around Newcastle.

In what some might call bad timing, Ben and I decided that the year he started back full time as a PhD student would be a good year to have our first child. I was 26, which was the age my mum had been when I was born, and I was starting to make friends with women who had babies (all those young mums I mentioned) and there's no doubt about it - babies are catching.

In fact it took a while before Son 1 came along (just after my 28th birthday), and we moved from an eighteenth century cottage (full of unrealised 'potential') in Cumbria to a rented Tyneside flat (that's one quarter of a semi-detatched house) in North Tyneside when I was about three months pregnant. You can see the downsides of this move but there were huge 'upsides' too - whereas before we were relatively isolated and could only get places by car, now we had a huge network of bus and Metro transport to get us anywhere our own feet or bicycles couldn't take us.

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Until Son 1 was born I did quite a bit of work back in Cumbria, continuing part-time teaching while borrowing a friends' house in Brampton for a few nights a week. When I was approximately the size of a blue whale I landed a job in Meadow Well, the depressed council estate (yes, the one where there were riots) about 20 minutes walk from our flat. This was my first permanent contract as a Special Needs teacher and was a great experience, despite some quite specific problems at the school (cockroaches the least of them). I started work there when Son 1 was ten weeks old, working every morning and cycling home to collect him from his childminder every lunchtime.
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The pattern of work continued when Son 2 came along seventeen and a half months later, and I got incredibly fit pushing the boys everywhere in their double buggy, and carrying them, one at a time, upstairs to our flat. The Tynesiders were open and welcoming, and full of love for babies and children - it was a fantastic place to bring up sons. People used to open up their tiny hands in the supermarket to push a pound coin in (checking first with me so that I knew not to let them swallow it!). It was a good luck thing for the locals but it was a mark of how much they adored children, too. Despite being blondes, our boys were very dark and colourful compared to Geordie babies, who were the whitest little people I'd ever seen. Viking blood is strong there!

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We went to church a bit along the coast - when we moved there from Brampton people would say to us: 'So you'll go to Cullercoats, then?' We quickly learned that Cullercoats is a really big, lively church - if Methodists had cathedrals, it might be one of them. It really was a pleasant church, and I did all the usual things (for me) like joining the choir, volunteering for holiday clubs and helping Ben with some youth work. The church was so huge that it didn't seem to need us very much, which was great for people with a young family. Instead, I found myself very powerfully drawn by something I'd never been interested in before - issues of Justice and Peace.

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A friend had given me a leaflet when I was newly pregnant - it was about Jubilee 2000 and the call to cancel Third World Debt. I'll be honest that my evangelical background told me to steer clear of campaigning and stick to salvation, but God was leading (pushing/shoving/dragging) me towards Jubilee 2000, so after a teeny crisis of confidence that's the way I went.

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This was about the time that I stopped being 'faintly hippy', as I put it yesterday. North Cumbria was all about folk music (from our friend Donald the builder with his accordion to Maddy Prior in the fells to our north), floaty clothes and hand-made shoes (I got mine in Totnes - where else?). North Tyneside was NOT about these things. When a SEN pupil of mine asked: 'Mrs H, WHAT have you got on your feet?' I felt that it was time to move on from Conker Shoes (crafted to fit my feet) to blue suede trainers from the retail outlet in North Tyneside. I enjoyed being faintly trendy and slightly sleek for a while - after all, when I wasn't pregnant I was slim from all that carrying and pushing, and it was worth taking advantage of it! It was also probably quite appropriate as I became the media spokesperson for Jubilee 2000 North East, and had to look vaguely credible when interviewed by the media about Third World Debt issues.

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We were a completely voluntary team of activists, many from local churches and charities, and 1997, '98, '99 and the year 2000 were really dramatic and powerful years of action on behalf of the world's poorest. You probably know that a significant chunk of debt was dropped by the G8 that year, and I hope you also know that the money the poorer countries stopped paying to us HAS been used for health care, education and other essential services in many, many cases.

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So there I was, zipping around northern England with two babies and a serious case of Saving the World, and there Ben was, finishing his marathon PhD, which he dedicated to me and the boys. I get the book out every now and then (more often than he does, I think) and have a little snivel it at that wonderful dedication.

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When he'd finished, he got a job (it's not so hard with a PhD) and we moved from cheery North Tyneside to Harrogate. 'You'll love it,' said a northern friend, 'It's like a little piece of the Home Counties moved up to Yorkshire'. Oh dear, I thought.

A is for Ambleside

I'm writing the third of my acrostic posts today - A is for Ambleside! While Ben and I were studying for our finals (I'd never worked so hard in my life) and preparing the details of our wedding, we also needed to think about our next move in terms of both work and location. Ben decided not to take a second degree in Veterinary Medicine, even though his grades were good enough - he opted to stay a biologist. I wanted to look into teaching, mainly because the Museum Education team at Exeter's Royal Albert Museum had been so helpful to me and influential in my late childhood and teens. I wondered if I could go into museum education, and so I prepared by going into schools and getting ready for a Post Graduate Certificate of Education.Ben didn't have any job lined up, so our choice of first home was mostly influenced by my choice of Teacher Training College. We scanned the map of colleges and spotted Charlotte Mason College of Education, in Ambleside, a market town in the English Lake District. 'What a good place to be unemployed!' said Ben...I got the place at the College, which really impressed me with its ethos (Charlotte Mason was an early education reformer with ideas in common with Montessori, who also influenced a lot of the early home-schooling movement). We found a flat, which the council was letting out to students - it was in Windermere Library, and had once belonged to the caretaker, and prior to that had been servants' quarters for the big gothic house. Quite a start! Following our wedding, we had our honeymoon (in the Lake District - booked before I got my place at college) then stayed with our parents until term started, and set up home in the Library Flat, Windermere, Cumbria. We shared the flat with Ben's elderly gerbil, whom I liked because he made companionable noises when it got quiet and spooky at night.

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Ben was often out quite late at night, because he'd got a job with the College kitchens! He had to go in before lunch, I think, and serve, clean up, and then help get everything ready for the big evening meal. He learned a lot about how students can be arrogant and condescending to people who serve them, which was a salutory lesson to someone who'd only just stopped being a student himself. He got really good with a mop and also brought home loads of leftovers, and sometimes managed to provide extra food to any of the PGCE students who'd come in with me to eat in the canteen.

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We were visited early on in our stay by a young nanny, who was part of the Methodist church in Windermere. Along with the students there were plenty of other young people in temporary jobs in the hotels and tourist trade, and we made up a group of young adults who met at the Methodist minister's home on a Sunday evening. We're still friends with that young nanny, who is now a Methodist minister herself!

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Teaching turned out to be hard (I was too 'nice' to easily control a classroom) and rewarding (sharing enthusiasm is something I love)! Ben found a 'proper' job in the north of Cumbria (he was researching safe alternatives to sheep dip, which was a huge concern at the time) and did a weekly commute from Windermere Station until I managed to get my final teaching practice in the wilds of the north Cumbria fells, and could move up to join him near Brampton.

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We stayed in Brampton for what felt a long time, and what an influential part it has continued to play in our lives. We made wonderful friends of all ages at the Methodist Church - children, teenagers, a few young adults like us, middle aged and elderly friends. We learned so much - whilst we were firm in an evangelical faith, we met other faithful Christians who, for various reasons, found the word 'evangelical' quite inappropriate to describe their own walk with God. We learned to be very wary of judging other peoples' faith, because the 'liberal' who apparantly doesn't tick all the essential belief boxes turns out to be the only person who visits a lonely old man each week, in a living example of the love of Christ... It was a real, and very diverse, Christian family, and what a debt we owe to them all.

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I got a job in a tiny, two-teacher village school some way south of Brampton (all this is north of the Lakes, not far from Scotland). The head teacher was new too, and we had a wonderful time re-inventing the idea of a village school for the 1990s. I had a lot to learn, in terms of educational techniqes and also temper - maybe I wasn't so 'nice' after all! But I do remember those children fondly. I taught the 4 - 7 year olds, who are now all adults, of course...

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My real failing as a class teacher was that I found the unusual individual far more interesting than the class as a whole. Thanks to the headteacher, we got a name as a school which would consider the needs of dyslexic pupils, and some parents moved their children to us. I began to train more and more in Special Educational Needs, and finally gave up the full-time work to train as a Dyslexia specialist. In the meantime I did part-time special needs and class teaching all round the Brampton and Carlisle area, and even did some work for our church, aiming to meet the needs of schools, young mums and young singers in the area.

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I was so settled in the faintly hippy highlands of north Cumbria that it came as a terrible shock when Ben wanted to move on. He'd taken on a part time PhD at Newcastle University (look on a map - eastern England is really close to western England when you go that far north!) and wanted to study full-time, which would require a move. I could hardly believe it. How could it be part of God's plan for us to leave?

M is for Marriage

Hi friends, and thanks for your comments on the first of my faintly mysterious acrostic stories (posted yesterday, below the Thrill of What You Already Have picture for April). As I said yesterday, something Ang commented has set me off on this little story of my life, based around a key phrase - I'm sure you'll guess it before much longer!Our first installment got me as far as university, where I was completing my much dreamed-of studies in archaeology. As you'll see, this one will get us as far as my marriage, but we'll go there by a winding route!One of the things I loved most about university was actually getting to know and trust new people. I mentioned yesterday that I had a strong identification with my family, and not too many other people (although had, and still have, a few good friends from my school days). But leaving home is a great way to meet different people and try new things and discover that your way is not the only way.

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I had a great friend who loved to come Charity Shopping with me, but she was button-phobic (yes, I know she's not the only one)! We made a funny pair, with her sitting outside a shop, shuddering, while I knelt on the floor inside, searching through a button tin for the mother of pearl buttons I still have. She was, at that time, a biker girl with a leather jacket and big perm, and I was a floaty, wafty, lacey blonde. Actually, I can see she's come further than I have since those days..!

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I think it's my nature to need to discover things for myself - I don't like to be told. When I met Ben at university (oops, goodbye, previous boyfriend) it was interesting to me that he had recently become a Christian. His faith seemed, like the rest of him, extremely down-to-earth, and not much of the self-indulgent delusion that I'd suspected that other people could be suffering from. It matched my own practical approach, but there was something more. I read a lot about the idea of 'a leap of faith', and realised there was something in that phrase - I imagined myself standing at the edge of a precipice with God on the other side of it, and tried to push myself to jump.

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My mind just wouldn't do that! I suspect it's impossible. Instead, I came to one of those tearful evenings that you have when you're in love and something's just gone wrong that seems beyond bearing, and I just poured my heart out to God, including the bit about not feeling what I was 'meant' to be feeling about God. Well, God is so patient and loving with silly teenaged girls! Anyone, including my own mother, would have told me to buck up and sort myself out, but God is more gentle than a parent, and gave me all sorts of ideas, images, things to read, things to see, people to talk to in the next few days. Lo and behold, he was leading me to him, where I couldn't make the 'jump' myself! I got to the point where I realised that Jesus comes to me - he died for this - and it's not about me pushing my way to him, but about me being ready to accept him, just where I am.

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Well, the tearful moments passed (although more were to come - hey, this is a romance!) and Ben and I got into going to his Anglican church in Reading city centre. It was fun, and sociable, and the hymns (which I'd always loved in my Methodist church at home) finally made sense - what happended to the hymn writers was happening to me!

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I was nineteen and a half when we got engaged. We wondered vaguely about getting married while we were still at university (my mother disapproved of this idea) and finally settled on a date a few weeks after our graduation, in July 1990. It was a fun business, planning our wedding, although we both suspect that it's even more fun planning one when you're paying for it (and therefore in total control!) We chose some really fantastic hymns, including And Can It Be? which our minister said he'd never heard at a wedding before. But to us it summed things up. Wow - looking back on it, we were young. Ben's cousin (at 23, a year older than him), commented, "Oh, they're so young!" and their granny replied, "Well, you're no Methuselah yourself, dear..." But looking back, we see her point. I'm teaching students older than 21 now, and few of them seem exactly grown up. It must have been hard for our parents to believe we were really old enough to have made this decision. But almost 22 years later, it doesn't seem to have been a mistake!

A is for Archaeology

Hello! Something Ang said in response to my post yesterday has really grabbed my attention, and I'm going to do a little acrostic series this week - I'll leave you to work out the key word, but suffice to say, A is for Archaeology! It's kind of a little story of my life, but the challenge is to make it all fit to the meaning of Ang's word... here we go!So, archaeology was my real passion through childhood and my teens (OK, there was a guy too, for much of that period, but we won't talk about him today... much). I was, and still am, captivated by the everyday lives of people in the past. Things that bore other people, presumably because they are merely the pages of a book or the stones of a wall or the broken remnants of a pot, jump into life for me. Interestingly, our Son 1 is the same, and the photocopied words of his history lessons become real people to him.

I spent long periods of my childhood and early teens alone, excavating a midden of broken pots in my grandparents' garden, accessioning artefacts in the spare room which became my museum and researching the history of our new home at the local library in Pinhoe, near Exeter in Devon.

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Looking back on it, it's wonderful to have such an interest and such an occupation, but there are some curiosities, too! How much of my solitary enthusiasm stemmed from an unwillingness to relate to real people outside of my own family? Was my passion for the people of the past a safe way of relating to people who couldn't relate back? I rather think so...

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I was isolated by my experiences of having moved a lot (father in the Royal Navy, new homes and new schools in new countries where I always had the wrong accent, whichever accent that was). And I deliberately isolated myself further through the common childhood perception that my family's way was right and everyone else's way was therefore, logically and inescapably, wrong. In a gentle and understandable way, A was clearly for Arrogance, too.

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I went to Reading University to study Archaeology in 1987, leaving behind my boyfriend of three years (there - I mentioned him!). University was all that it should be - an absolutely delightful upheaval from all I'd ever know, with some education thrown in for good measure. I can't say that my arrogance was shaken much, but some serious life-lessons were still learned, and I did realise, with a shock, that my family church-going had had virtually no impact on my personal faith. I believed things, but just as I had prefered to learn about people in the past who could have no effect on my life now, I found that I believed in a God who had a stately disinterest in my daily life. When some hard times came around, and I saw some Christian friends turning to Jesus as their daily support and eternal saviour, I was quite confused. Their relationship with Jesus was quite unlike anything I knew about, and quite an uncomfortable thing to see. I wondered if they were deluded, or if it just worked that way for some people and not for others.