Category: 2020

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2020… the year that was…

As I sit today to look back and reflect on the year that was 2020, many things come to mind… it has been a year where we faced things that our generation would never have imagined in our wildest dreams. The year where people got sick and died alone, and funerals and weddings could not be attended by loved ones. The year that everybody had to cancel holiday plans as we collectively went into worldwide lock down. And the year where family celebrations and visits could not be held due to social distancing restrictions.

The year we ran out of toilet paper and hand sanitiser.

2020 will certainly go down as one of the strangest years we have ever experienced.

I think I can say with confidence that not a single person I know has not faced some kind of loss or disappointment because of COVID-19. And I know many of you have also had personal circumstances where you suffered loss and faced huge battles and difficult decisions this year. You have given me the privilege of walking beside you and praying with and for you as you fought those battles and for that I thank you. It is indeed an honour to bring hope and the love of Jesus into the dark and sad places. I have been inspired to see the grace, strength and courage that has been displayed by you as life as we knew it slowly came tumbling down around us…

For us personally, James and I have also faced struggles and fought some battles this year. But I can honestly say we will end 2020 far stronger than we started it. This has been a year of learning obedience, patience and perseverance, of clinging to hope, and of discovering what it truly means to put your absolute faith and trust in God… to not just say it, but to live it.

As we close the door on 2020 today, I pray that we will remember and learn from it. I pray that we will have found the good (and there was lots of good!) I pray that we will never again become complacent about our world and our relationships. And, above all I pray that we will go into 2021 full of expectation, of hope and in awe of our God, who was and is and is to come. He is still on the throne and worthy of our praise despite our circumstances.

My reading this morning was from Psalm 150… the final Psalm, fitting for the final day of a long year…

Praise the Lord!

Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty heavens!

Praise Him for His mighty deeds; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!

Praise Him with trumpet sound; Praise Him with lute and harp!

Praise Him with tambourine and dance, Praise Him with strings and pipe!

Praise Him with sounding cymbals; Praise Him with loud clashing cymbals!

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

Psalm 150 ~ ESV

And finally, I just want to say how grateful I am that you are still subscribing, reading and following my blogs. I genuinely appreciate each and every one of you and I honestly love hearing from you when my ramblings mean something to you, and you take the time to tell me. I am personally praying for more interaction, expansion and growth in my blog and social media pages in the coming year as I continue to do what God has called me to do in reaching, encouraging and bringing the hope of Jesus Christ to a hurting world. Thank you so very much for being a part of that!

Happy New Year from our house to yours … May 2021 bring much joy, peace, blessings and love to us all.

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Christmas Trees

Regular readers of my blog would know how much I love Christmas. Last year I shared the story about why James and I have two Christmas trees, if you missed it you can read it here: The Tale of Two Trees… – Redeemed

One of our trees is a white tree that I decorate with colour co-ordinated baubles in my favourite colours of purple, blue, teal and pink. The other tree is a traditional green tree which is decorated with a lifetime of memories… they are both beautiful in their own way.

Neither tree is shop window perfectly decorated, I unfortunately don’t have that skill. But to me they are perfect because they are decorated with love and meaning. It usually takes me about a week to finish our trees… I do the ‘first draft’ and then sit back to see where the gaps are, how it looks in different light etc until I am happy with the final product!

Our white tree is a fun thing to do, and the second of our two trees. The other tree, the ‘main tree’ is more significant, because just about every ornament on this tree holds a memory….

It holds memories of my kid’s chubby little hands proudly bringing their macaroni ornaments home from school. Little hands that are now grown up hands with their own trees to decorate, but still those first ornaments (now in their third decade!) hang proudly on my tree.

It promises new memories as the next generation of grandbabies become old enough to appreciate and make their own decorations to hang on Nana and Pa’s tree.

It brings back memories of special people, no longer with us to celebrate Christmas. My ex mother-in-law, my children’s Grandma, would buy them a new ornament every year to go on the tree. This is our third year without her here on earth and those ornaments have become more poignant as I remember the bond that she and I continued to share despite the fact that her son and I had divorced, a reminder that life and relationships can go on even when circumstances are less than ideal.

There are decorations that allow us to reminisce over memories of special places visited and times with treasured friends, seasons of discovery, exploration and joyful adventures.

And, it carries hope in memories of new beginnings. One of our ornaments a love heart I bought for James at Christmas in the first year we had been dating. He had a very forlorn tree as almost everything he had owned had been taken from him and he’d had to start again from scratch. This ornament is a precious keepsake from when our love was new and a reminder that there is always hope for the future, even when everything around you might be falling apart.

As I sit back and admire my tree, I can’t help but be so very grateful.

Grateful for family and friends, at home and around the world. Grateful for cherished times had with those who are no longer with us. And grateful for second chances and new beginnings. But most of all, I am grateful to my God who loved us so much that He sent His son as a baby on that very first Christmas and to the son, Jesus who willingly came and gave His life that we would have eternal life… and that is something worth remembering and celebrating!

May your 2020 Christmas season be one of love and happy memories. I’d love to hear your Christmas traditions… please feel free to comment!

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My baby mattered too…

Warning: potentially controversial and upsetting post. No offence is intended.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month in many places across the World. My Facebook feed has been full of posts acknowledging and mourning with the mothers who have been through the awful experience of miscarriage, stillbirth or SIDS. Please hear me when I say I am in no way demeaning or minimising these tragic circumstances. I am absolutely not. I know the pain and the grief of losing a baby in utero and I know many women who have been through this heartbreaking experience. But I, along with countless other women must remain silent and unacknowledged in our grief and mourning, because our babies died through abortion. We don’t get to have a say because we made a choice to end our babies lives… Now I can’t speak for others who have been in this situation, but I think I know enough to safely hazard a guess that most women don’t make the choice to terminate a pregnancy lightly, or easily. I know, of course that there are exceptions to this, but in my opinion, they would be in the minority.

For those of you who are new, or unfamiliar with my story, here it is in a nutshell.

I was sixteen, fresh out of high school when I met the boy who I thought was going to be the love of my life. Six months into our relationship we discovered I was pregnant. While the news came as a shock to me, it never occurred to me or entered my mind that this baby would not grow to term and enter the world. It was an idea I simply had never even contemplated. But unfortunately, I was not supported in my resolve to give our baby life. My boyfriends mother demanded in no uncertain terms that I was to dispose of the problem I had created (her grandchild) and my boyfriend, for whatever his reasons failed to stand up for me, or the baby I was carrying. So, just weeks after my seventeenth birthday, and at twelve weeks pregnant, I found myself alone in a sterile room while the ‘doctor’ literally sucked the life I was carrying right out of my body.

Did I make that choice? Well, if you want to be pragmatic, yes. But, in reality, no. I guess it could be argued that I went into that room knowing what I was doing. But the truth is, in 1984 I had no idea what I was doing. I had been deceived into believing the lie that I was undergoing a simple medical procedure to remove tissue cells that had yet to form.

I’m not here to argue the pro-life vs pro-choice debate. Anyone who knows me already knows how I feel. But that is not the intent of this article. The point of this blog is to acknowledge the millions of babies whose lives were violently ended by mothers who like me, were young, insecure, uninformed and bullied into a decision they would live with for the rest of their lives.

Our babies mattered too.

If you have lost a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth or SIDS, my heart goes out to you and I mourn for you in your loss… I can only imagine the shock and heartbreak of unexpectedly losing your child. If you have lost a baby through abortion, I know exactly how you feel. I see you, I hear you and I grieve with you.

If you, or someone you know is carrying unresolved grief and shame from an abortion, please get in touch. You are not alone. God can and will forgive and heal you. And I know you can, and will forgive yourself. I will answer all messages, on any subject, in the strictest of confidence and compassion. But I will not tolerate name calling or judgement. We are here to lift each other up, not tear each other apart.

I will finish with one of my favourite scriptures:

When they continued to question Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” And again He bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard this they began to go away one by one, beginning with the older ones, until only Jesus was left, with the woman standing there. Then Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Lord,” she answered. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Now go and sin no more.” John 8:7-11 

With much love,

Vikki

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Turbulence

On a trip overseas, (before COVID!) we were on a long haul, overnight flight between Nadi and Los Angeles. In the middle of the night while most people were sleeping, the plane started to jolt as we encountered some turbulence. This is nothing unusual and does not usually bother me, but then the plane suddenly dropped quite significantly. Significant enough to cause a lady behind us to scream at the top of her lungs…. and if the turbulence hadn’t woken you…. her screaming certainly did!

When the plane dropped, I looked out my window expecting to see rain or lightning to see what was causing the turbulence. But instead of seeing stormy weather, it was a beautiful clear night and all I could see were the stars in the sky. I have since discovered that this is called ‘Clear-Air Turbulence’.

According to Wikipedia, “Clear-air turbulence is the turbulent movement of air masses in the absence of any visual clues, such as clouds, and is caused when bodies of air moving at widely different speeds meet. Clear-air turbulence is usually impossible to detect with the naked eye and very difficult to detect with a conventional radar with the result that it is difficult for aircraft pilots to detect and avoid it.‘

The turbulence we encountered could not be seen or detected easily. It was sudden and unexpected. 1 Peter 5:8 says “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” When a lion is prowling and stalking its prey, it is silent and stealthy. It does not make its presence known until the moment of attack. This is also how the devil works, he is constantly watching and waiting for us to drop our guard and then he pounces on our weakness to cause us to stumble and fall. We can’t afford to get complacent; we must stay alert. The pilots on our plane were alert and took action to avoid the turbulence when it hit by taking the plane to a higher altitude. Our higher altitude is Jesus.

I couldn’t see our pilot, but I had heard his voice over the loudspeaker, and I knew he had illuminated the ‘fasten seat belt’ sign to keep everyone on the plane safe. And because I couldn’t see him, I had to trust that he was there and in control of the aircraft. It is the same with our relationship with God. We can’t see Him, but we can listen for His voice to reassure us and guide us through the periods of turbulence we all encounter. God’s ‘fasten seat belt’ sign to keep us safe is the Bible and prayer. “Stand firm against him (the enemy) and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So, after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. All power to him forever! Amen.” 1 Peter 5:9-11  

When we are going through periods of turbulence, we can go to God’s word for His promises, wisdom and hope. God is everywhere and always available “Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, even there your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast” Psalm 139:7-10

On board all large aircraft there is a secret compartment where the flight crew can go to rest and sleep. I know this because my sister in law used to be a flight attendant for an international airline and did many long haul flights. The crew are obligated to do this at least every few hours. They need to do it so that they can be effective in looking after the needs of their passengers, but also so that they themselves don’t burn out. When we are worn out or discouraged, we need to go to our secret compartment, to God, to be refreshed and recharged so that we can continue do what He has called us to do.

We all encounter turbulence in our lives. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes like the clear air turbulence that we encountered on our flight, it comes suddenly, unexpectedly and can knock us off our course if we’re not careful. We are not guaranteed a smooth ride. But if we are well rested and secure in who we are, and in who is ‘piloting our aircraft’ then we will be able to withstand the times of turbulence when they come.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

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