A Curious Girl: On the mountain

It's quite funny finding old stories I wrote. There was one I wrote in 2000 (when I was 16) which I reread today, containing such lines as "his parents go out at weekends, usually, and then we have the whole house to ourselves to do mad things in." Which, now I reread it , I notice isn't as bad as the version I told Christina this evening "his parents go away so we can have fun in his bedroom" still to me implies that my heroine wasn't getting up to the sort of wholesome activity I imagined her doing. Ah sixteen. This is why people should have been calling me sweet when I was sixteen. I mean, I might have had an inclination for singing very loudly in public places, having spitting contests, watching Jerry Springer and spraypainting my hair purple, but these things are childlike and sweet when you realise that I couldn't possibly imagine people ever actually, you know, doing it.

Next Saturday I journey up to a lovely but very flat university town... nothing much changes, except it's a different flat university town to the one that actually has my university in it. This is because on Tuesday my new job starts - I actually, for the first time in my life, get paid for skilled labour! This is going to be for an entire year instead of spending it at university. Scary. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also nervous. I hope I can find a church, and make friends. My landlord (who lives in the 'apartment' below me) and neighbour (next door) have expressed their inability to socialise with me. To be honest, I feel rather depressed by their insistence. It feels like school again. Don't want to be friends with you, Helen. Don't bother us. You're on your own now.

I'm a bit scared that they'll turn me loopy, to be honest...

I've been trying to come back to God - to remember to talk to him, to know that he's always there. And to be a part of his plan, not just make him a part of mine. Mum and Dad and I went away for a few days to visit my brother and his fiancée. It was lovely, and strangely, although we didn't talk about God or anything, I found it easier to go and pray. It's strange - at uni I found that the first week everyone distracted me away from God - they didn't mean to, but I let them distract me. But spending the time with other people kept me a bit more aware, when there was a quiet moment I went to read and pray.

I miss the intimacy I once felt with God. Soul in the City was really helpful - Louie Giglio, the week's speaker, said lots of amazing stuff, like how the perfect Christian life is impossible but God doesn't want us to try to do it on our own. He wants us to let him use us. And I remembered the image I always had when people mentioned "backsliding". I imagined Christianity as a great mountain, dry and rocky, and I'm dragging myself up it, to get closer to the beautiful sunshine of God at the top. Sometimes I lose grip, and stumble back, then I'm back to dragging myself up. And it's OK, because God still loves you no matter where you are on the mountain... Yet it's such an awful struggle. I long to get close.

But it's not true. God doesn't want us to climb the mountain. He just wants us to look up, and see that he's offering us his hand. We take it, look down, and discover that we've been placed on the pinnacle. We don't have to try. We just have to let ourselves be loved.

Random word for today: lorgnettes

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