Quick writing exercise (five mins on the Rubik cube)
QUICK WRITING
Life is like a Rubik cube. There’s that constant motion, trying to figure out how everything fits together, without it getting out of control. Some days all the colours line up, but most often they don’t.
But that’s okay. Life would be boring if everything worked well all the time. I like the different colours in my life, the changing seasons and different surfaces. Being twisted and turned in the hands of God as He moulds me into who He’d have me be. Regardless of where the colours are at.
I love that no matter what happens, He’s in control of it all, that I’m always held by His hands, that they never tire or wear out, but just keep working away, sorting me out.
Of course sometimes it feels like I’ve been pulled apart and put back together again, but that’s okay too. Though not when I’m going through it.
I sometimes wish I knew all the answers, knew how to make the colours and squares line up like they did when brand new.
But that’s not how life is. It’s messy. Unstructured and disordered at times. But you know what?
I like it like that. I’m just glad it’s God’s hands I’m resting in.
0The story I tell to strangers
So much for regular posts. I seem to struggle to get on here each week, however, below is a lovely long one for you all. Would love to know what you think. - Kristen G’day. How ya going? So, what keeps ya busy? Do you enjoy it? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? What’s your favourite colour? Seriously, what is it? Do you have kids? Do you like being single, married? Lucky you! What’s the favourite thing about your job? Do you like to read? I love to read. How do you like Gippsland? Hope you can stay a while. It’s a beautiful place to explore.
My name is Kristen. I am a professional question asker. I hide behind a mask that’s forever smiling, beguiling, wanting people to think I’m pretty and worth knowing. I’m the girl who tells people to ‘shut me up’ as I can be quite nosy, but as that goes with my job. Or at least it used to, so you’ll have to just deal with that. I don’t like writing about myself. If anything, I’d rather write about you, that’s why I ask you so many questions. You see, everyone is interesting, even if they don’t realise it. In my twenty-something years of life I’m yet to meet someone who isn’t interesting. Though most people will tell you they’re boring. As will I. But I’m not.
I grew up on a large hobby farm at the bottom of a mountain in Gippsland. My school holidays were spent in the bush on a horse or up the paddock with the goats and dogs. Climbing trees, going exploring. Playing dress-ups with my little sister. When I discovered novels, they came second only to my horse, and if I could’ve, I would’ve read as I rode.
Until year seven, I thought a big school had more than 30 kids. Of the three primary schools I attended, only one had more than that, and that was a school in the big town near home. I was the first grade six to graduate, and one of the first enrolled. Our big school had 42 students. I was the tallest girl. Then came year seven. My class was the same size as my old school. I was no longer the tallest around. People didn’t know how to say my name correctly and I was too shy and quiet to tell them so. Somehow I made friends, though as puberty and low self-image set in, I started to doubt their stability.
I let Jesus in when I was 13, and got fair dinkum when I was 15 after I fell off a horse and landed in intensive care which I was not expected to leave alive. Thankfully, I didn’t, and now, 10 years later, I’m thankful for the experience that taught me so much. I changed schools for year 11 and 12. Mostly because of subject choice. Somewhere in there I decided I wanted to be a journalist. The shy girl in me liked the idea of hiding behind a camera, notebook and pen. Then turning those notes and photographs into a story people would read. I have always been a writer. In the early years I wrote mostly about horses and the various farm animals we had. I even penned a story written entirely from their perspective, presenting it to Mum as a present around my ninth birthday.
At uni I expanded my horizons to include people. I even made some friends, and for the first time in my life I felt like I fit somewhere. Three and a half years later, I graduated near the top of my class and became intent on pursuing my dream of impacting people with words. Then Black Saturday happened. I was evacuated, but went on to write one of the best feature stories I’d ever write, and at the time, the best story of my career. Soon after that, I was replaced at work, and wound up working several jobs to pay the bills each week.
Then I moved again. This time to somewhere bushfires could never reach – north-east Victoria. It was flat, sparse and seemingly barren. Then I learnt about the irrigation channels. This was my big break, and my first real job as a journalist working for a country newspaper whose readers I understood. But I was homesick for my hills and after the biggest floods in 200 years, decided to move closer to home. In four years I moved house five times. One of those times was due to floods, which I’ve discovered emits the same response in its victims as bushfires do.
So home I came. Officially to be near my parents and horse, but more because I’d quit my job to study writing and could see no reason not to move. When I first returned I wondered how long I’d be here for. But now, on February 29, 2012, I believe I’ll be here for a while yet. Maybe even for good. My new course is two years long, and I get to meet a whole heap of new people along the way. It’s exciting, all this newness, and rather fitting that I’m writing about it on a day that comes around only once every four years. Things never happen the same way twice. And for me, they rarely happen the way I expect them to, or when.
So, to answer my questions. I’m content and safe from the majority of natural disasters right now. I work as a cleaner four mornings a week, volunteer with a youth group on Fridays, train two dogs and one horse and somewhere in there I study and breathe. I love being a youth leader, the kids are amazing. I also really enjoy training my dogs, plus I’m getting my horse fit at the moment as well. Gippsland is where I’d go. It’s a beautiful part of Australia and the only place I’ll always fit. Though I’d love to visit Wales to see a Welsh Welsh Pony and go to Italy as well. Oh, and Canada. Always wanted to go to Canada. My dogs are my kids and I enjoy living with them and my cat. I share my house with Dad occasionally as well – he works here. My job is not something I’m passionate about, but I get to work with some lovely people. Oh, and my favourite colour’s blue. That and the green of the Gippsland hills. What else would you like to know?
0My happy place
I am at my best when astride a horse. Some people play music or walk or run or swim. I do these things too, but my absolute best, and worst, times in life have been on the back of a horse.
Not just any horse. My horse, Pride. He’s almost 22 now, and in a few years will be completely retired. Much like an era or extended chapter in my life. When I first rode Pride I was seven, he was four and newly broken in. Most mums wouldn’t let a young girl ride a young horse, but Pride was different.
So was I. Together we made a team and formed a bond that was to last many, many years.
Pride was a lot bigger than I. At almost 15 hands he dwarfed me and could send me flying with a shove of his head.
I looked a little like a jockey perched way up there, but thankfully I grew, and now my legs hang just below his belly, exactly as they’re meant to be.
We have a good relationship, he and I. I know I can trust him completely. He’s sure-footed and loves exploring the bush just as much as I do, regardless of the speed we’re going.
He’s taught me so much. This horse of mine has supported me through every cliche. He’s family and we’re mates. Something that will never change.
0Beautiful girl
You sneak around
Kissing the boys
Performing in church on Sundays
Singing the songs
Saying the words
Thinking you’ve fooled us all
Wasting away
Your youth and your kisses
Living for now is all that matters
Forgetting you’ll grow
Old one day
And regret the flimsy encounters
Why can’t you see
The damage you’re doing
All this sneaking and hiding and lying
Your word can’t be trusted
You’re watched like a hawk
All for a fleeting emotion
The thing to see here is
He died to cover it all
And every time you misbehave
You throw it all
Back in His face
You turn your back on Jesus
As He hung there dying
He loved you still
Why must you break His heart?
Do you care
Or even believe
All those nice words you sing?
Beautiful girl
I wish you could see
That you’re a daughter of the King
Ooops!
So I had some ‘techinical difficulties’ owing to running out of internet credit, but now I’m back online and raring to go. I’m also trying to see how many cliches I can fit onto one post.
So here goes.
Christmas was wonderful, joyous and peaceful, yes, it actually was, and no, I’m not making this up for entertainment.
New Years was great too, though I was a party pooper and went home well before midnight.
So, this is me, in my first (and hopefully only) boring post for the year.
More study, plenty of time with dogs and horses and of course, exploring Gippsland in store this year. I must say I am looking forward to it all.
Oh, and if you haven’t tuned out by now, I hope to post something on here each week during the year. Stay with me people, I’m new at this :p
0Impossible much?
I just watched a very small spider run rings around a very small bug that was twice the size of the spider. Looking at it from my giant’s point of view, I could see the spider had no hope of securing the bug, but it took the bug a long time to figure that out.
The spider crawled over it, around it and even pushed the bug around, before it finally gave up. The spider retreated to its hole, which was so small I couldn’t see it, while the bug, somewhat dizzily, continued on its way.
Size-wise, it was the equivalent of a toddler’s tricycle attempting to take out a b-double freight truck. Impossible. The thing is, the spider didn’t know that. In fact, the spider gave his best efforts to turning that bug into his dinner, which though unsuccessful, had the effect of confusing the bug enough that it didn’t crawl away in a straight line.
I wish I had the tenacity of that little spider. Imagine if all the things we think we can’t do we actually COULD do. That little spider had never learnt the word ‘can’t’. It didn’t know the odds and statistics stacked against it and I think even if it had, it would have set out to prove them wrong.
So often in life I find myself facing an ‘impossible’ obstacle. I focus on the size of the thing, never imagining that there is a way around it and that I can in fact, achieve the impossible. Or at least make it very dizzy.
The Bible says that nothing is impossible with God. That means that if God’s on our side (and as Christian, I know He’s on mine), there is absolutely nothing standing in our way of achieving what we’ve set out to achieve.
Too often we focus on our limitations, we look at past experiences and remember only the failures, not the triumphs. As we head into the silly season, which happens to be my favourite time of year (not the least because there’s a lot of birthdays in December), I challenge you to shake off all the cannots and ‘but I shouldn’t do that’. Next year will soon be upon us, and with it, a whole new set of challenges to be overcome.
I believe the time has come to step out of our limitations and to stop putting God in a box. Why not make 2012 the year of ‘I can’? After all, if a teensy weensy spider can make a huge bug dizzy, then the sky really is the limit in your life. Unless you become an astronaut.
0“ A commonplace life, we say and we sigh,
But why should we sigh as we say?
The commonplace sun and the commonplace sky
Makes up the commonplace day.
The moon and the stars are commonplace things,
And the flower that blooms and the bird that sings;
But dark were the world and sad our lot,
If the flowers failed and the sun shone not.
And God who studies each separate soul
Out of the commonplace lives makes His beautiful whole. ”
Unknown
0Social life?
Yesterday I created a profile on an online dating site.
Last night, I deleted it. Something just didn’t seem right about it all.
It’s like we’ve got so used to accessing everything online these days that we no longer want to step outside our front doors to meet people in person, face-to-face. It’s as if we fear something bad will happen if we venture from our safe little cocoon of a house (or apartment or unit or flat).
I’m not having a go at online dating. In fact, I think it’s a rather good idea, specially for those of us from small communities. However I do believe that some things, like friendship are best left to fate, or God if you believe in him (and even if you don’t). I mean, He’s bigger than, well, everything.
I study online, shop for many gadgets online and even read magazines online, though nothing beats actually sitting down with the paper version. If I chose, I could buy my groceries online too.
In these increasing days of globalisation and technology advancement I have to question the sanity of it all. I’ve heard people talk of the days when everyone knew everyone else and neighbours were friends.
I don’t know my neighbours, I wouldn’t notice if they went on holiday and I sure wouldn’t recognise them if I saw them down the street.
I may be young, but lately I seem to be asking the question of my grandparents: What is the world coming to?
So, as I sit at my computer, typing these words into an internet blog (a concept which my grandmother may struggle to understand), I’d like to challenge you, and myself, to get off the computer, step outside, and say g’day to people.
You may be surprised at what you find.
0“ Kind words are easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless ”
Mother Theresa
0“ God doesn’t make obstacles. People do ”
Rose Brehaut
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