Good morning.

It's ten past eleven and I'm still in my jammies. It's lovely.  The girls are playing Mario Kart on the Wii. In a bit we're going to go out for the day, to where I'm not sure.

It's been half-term here.  We've had a nice week.  As you know I've been struggling with things and it's been an effort to motivate myself.  But once I'm out and about I feel much better.  It's just when I'm home all I want to do is go to bed.  My doctor said that leaving my church is like a grieving process, leaving the friends and community I once knew - particularly as we are essentially shunned now (there are very few who have stayed in contact - funny how 'love' can go so quickly).  If it is a grieving process I think I'm going through 'depression' stage, the next stage is 'acceptance' and I'm not sure I what that would mean in my situation.

It's more than a grieving process though.  I was so enmeshed in the philosophy of the church, I had put the Pastor up there on a pedestal, I thought it was the ONLY church in the world worth going to.  When we left all these props had gone, after a while I had a terror that it was all fake.  Everything is a lie.  I remember curling up in a ball in the bathroom and weeping because I had put the Pastor in the position of God.  I had made him my mediator and not Jesus.

But Jesus has never left me, I know that my repentance is real, I can move on now.

I started to go through a Bible study written by someone with a very strict set of beliefs about what the Bible teaches. I wanted to follow God's rules, not someone else's. I figured if it was totally scripturally based then the opinions of the man wouldn't sully the teaching. I suppose it was a reaction against all the times I heard, "God has told me XYZ and you must follow it" and the church was controlled by it, controlled by another man's relationship with God, controlled by another man's vision, it was almost like second hand faith...Brennan Manning describes it well in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel:

"We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly.  When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited".

But I soon realised that this Bible study [I'd started hoping to counteract (to unlearn if you will) what I'd learned under a man] was a man's interpretation of the Bible.  And boy was he into rules, he made up rules that weren't even in the Bible. He took Biblical teaching and extrapolated it to include things that aren't actually mentioned, or even suggested, in the text. It was a study full of fear not freedom in Christ. It was a bit like the gezeirah of Judaism:

"A gezeirah is a law instituted by the rabbis to prevent people from accidentally violating a Torah mitzvah. We commonly speak of a gezeirah as a "fence" around the Torah. For example, the Torah commands us not to work on Shabbat, but a gezeirah commands us not to even handle an implement that you would use to perform prohibited work (such as a pencil, money, a hammer), because someone holding the implement might forget that it was Shabbat and perform prohibited work. The word is derived from the root Gimel-Zayin-Reish, meaning to cut off or to separate." From Judaism 101.

I don't want to put up fences.  I want to boldly approach the throne of God, knowing that I am safe under the covering of Jesus, not rules.

Anyway, I've totally gone off at a tangent with this post!  LOL.

So, it's snowing now, which may mean our day out needs to be nearer home that we planned.

Hope you have a great day.

Here's a few pics from a recent walk:

Looks a bit ethereal with the sunlight coming through the trees

Aww, Chatterbox

Beef lasagne...haha (if you're British you'll get that)

Come on Squidge! Leave horsey alone we need to go!  "Awwww"

 Have a super day! xx

p.s. BLOOMIN' spam!  I don't want to put comment moderation on at the minute and as for word verification it's a nightmare! Perhaps if I stop anonymous comments? I dunno.