Who Am I?

Who Am I?*


I am often a weary traveller through this life. But I am nevertheless a guide to others. I am a servant, a carer and a nurturer. I love to prepare food and feed people. I find therapy in baking cakes. I prefer to wear functional clothes but can see the pretty in adornments and the beauty in nature. I am a trained academic and a thinker, and I have a strong Christian faith. I love music in all its forms, and love to sing, both for praise and pleasure (often both at the same time). Books, I can devour by the trainload. I like to sit and a drink a mug of good old English tea (strong, with milk, no sugar.) I am married with children, something I never envisaged, but has been a major part of life's journey!

I help lead a Pram Service for the under 5s in our community, and assist with Baptism Preparation sessions for the parents of children to be baptised in church. I am an Anglican with Anglo-Catholic leanings, who appreciates what other denominations and faiths have to offer (some of my best friends are Methodist and Muslim) and gets pretty charismatic from time to time. I am qualified as a Registered Lay Minister (pastoral care) in the Church of England, and part of our church's pastoral visiting team, although I am technically now on maternity leave as we're about to welcome daughter number 4 (#4thSister). I am also somewhere on the path to ordination, if I'm interpreting God's will correctly :-)

I have blogged before, but this is an opportunity to start something new, and journal through the developments in my faith journey, and my learning. It is not really that long since I came to rediscover my faith,  but now everything I have done in the past seems to signal the way to a future in ministry, in a kind of join-the-dots puzzle that starts to slowly take shape as the journey between each number is completed. I have young girls (8, 6 and 2, with another on the way in March) and a husband to take care of, as well as my own spiritual needs, and those of others in the world. Yet, I feel God has put me on this path for now, so I will follow.

You'll see other things on this blog too, as well as spiritual musings. I love ingredients, recipes, food and ideas. I love novels, poetry, writing, reading, thinking and arguing. I love my family in a million different ways. I like to hike and walk places and stay fit (although I have pelvic problems so this can be difficult to manage!). I would suffer in a world without music; I studied piano and clarinet as a girl, and am now part of a singing group that performs fundraising concerts. I enjoy film, theatre, opera, ballet and other aspects of the arts. I'm better at thinking than doing, better at doing than playing.
There is much more to me, my thoughts and opinions, achievements and desires, but for now I'm happy to be growing into the person God is asking me to be.

* Oh yeah - 'Who Am I' is one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite musicals, Les Miserables. Seeing it live at the Palace Theatre, London, wasn't the experience I hoped it would be but I am almost as obsessive about the cast recording I have as Patrick Bateman is in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho.