THE ENCOURAGERS LIFE

  As the dog toddled beside me sniffing every scent, smell or gross thing that he could find all I could think about was the feeling I had. I thought about this often on our walks. About how I wasn't where I needed or wanted to be. I thought about all the hills I would have to climb to get there. All the mountains in the way. All the things I didn't know. The skills I don't yet have. And the overwhelm of 'cluelessness,' would come meaning by the time I would return home I would be returning to life feeling like those mountains where higher, those hills were steeper and the skills I would have to learn were impossible for my brain to comprehend. I loathed feeling that way. Because the fact is I am a hard worker. I accomplish in the face of my limitations. I am like a Jack Russell pup who refuses to give up the toy. I am relentless. Yet adorable. But I also get tired. Discouraged. Demotivated. Just like everyone else. We are human. And that is both wonderful and a pai

As I watched the men throwing the rope out to wrap around the deer's antlers I empathised with the deer all too deeply. It was stuck in mire. It was tired. It was scared. It was breathing heavily groaning under the strain of its ordeal. Sweat and muck on its coat. It was in a bad state. The men pulled. I worried for its neck. The pull forced its nose into the muck making the deer catch its laboured breath. The truth was, if the men gave up. It was done for. But the pulling was also dangerous to its mortality. The deer had wandered in. It relied on its successes in the past to be the foundation of its accomplishment with this crossing. It's trapping was its own instinct gone wrong. Now it couldn't move. Bogged down by the mud drying around it. Encasing it. Surrounding it. The deer just wanted to get to the other side. It just wanted to make it. So it went for it. It took a chance. It believed it could make it. It pressed through. It made it three quarters of the way cross be

  Some of us search. We long for the moment when the calm will wash over us. The a-ha moment. The moment when everything clicks. However, years go by and the pangs within us never fade. We never feel like we made it. We never feel like we can relax. Instead we feel unworthy. We feel as though he aren't good enough. Smart enough. Good looking enough. Well dressed enough. In a world that is fast paced, it can feel as though we are always chasing something. The dream. The goal. The qualification. The job. We say to ourselves, "If I can only get this, then I will feel secure.  I will know that I am good enough.  I will feel like I have finally arrived." And then we get there and its anti-climactic, because we are still us with that qualification charged with sustaining that dream, goal or job.  The pressure never leaves. And for those whose lives take twists and turns. Where reinvention is a melting pot of work experience and service and the unthought-of reality that pops up

  Details of the book referenced in this article will be listed at the end.   As I rolled around my back garden, developing games with my child, I never could have predicted the depth they would also bring to my walk through life.   My story of Hip Hooray and Robot Ray sailing the sea only to be eaten by a whale, involves, in every moment, the backpack that Hip carries with her on their journey.   Even though he has grown up. My child and I still play the game. We still sing the song. We still talk about the story. And most recently the backpack has become a focus of our deeper discussions.   I was surprised and humbled that God had made His way into a funny song and story. Making me see that He is part of the story.   In the book, the backpack is something they open up when they face troubles. The backpack is something they carry wherever they go. They rely on the backpack always. Much like how Christians rely on God.   “Who [God], does great th