Spaghetti Bloggernese

Although we miss being in Canada very much, one of the great things of being back in the UK is being able to cook our favourite meals just the way we like them. Last week with Jenny and Steve we had Kashmiri Lamb, yesterday we had Spaghetti Bolognese, and today we had Chicken Curry, making three of my all time favourite dishes - YUM!!

Apparently Spag Bol was a favourite of mine even from days of being a baby in a high chair - I'd attack it like I hadn't eaten in weeks. I always looked forward to Saturdays when Rae (my sister) and I would go swimming and then come back to a healthy meal of Spag Bol. Probably one of the grossest things I have done is watch intestinal surgery while eating Spag Bol. When I'm feeling off colour, it's Spag Bol that I crave - many a time it has rescued me from feeling blue. Spag Bol is a food from heaven and I've just realised that it shares my initials (I don't have a middle name - my parents thought Stephen Belleguelle was long enough already) The funny thing is that my Dad loves it too - I obviously got his genes for that one - good one Dad :-)

One thing about SB is that it's MY dish, I make it and Heather is my assistant. This is the only dish where things are this way round and this is the way it has to be. I was passed the recipe by my Mum and although Heather has tried, she just doesn't do it as well as me. I don't think I'm too full of pride here, after all it is the only thing I cook better than H, but I do make a mean SB.

So how do I do it - well I take Mum's recipe, modify it a little, add a couple of other special ingredients and there you have it. If there's enough demand in the comments I may put the full recipe on a future posting, but for now you'll just have to make do with a picture. Enjoy!!

Yumm, nothing quite like it!

Todays blog was brought to you by the letters S and B and no numbers at all!

God bless you,

Steve

Pessimism, Optimism or Faith

I was thinking yesterday about pessimism and faith and realised that they are horribly mutually exclusive. The concerning thing about this is that I am a pessimist by nature but want to be a person of faith and I can't be both. This isn't the first time this has occurred to me, but it is something I really want to get to the bottom of.

There were a few definitions of pessimism on Dictionary.com and here they are...

1. A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view: “We have seen too much defeatism, too much pessimism, too much of a negative approach” (Margo Jones).
2. The doctrine or belief that this is the worst of all possible worlds and that all things ultimately tend toward evil.
3. The doctrine or belief that the evil in the world outweighs the good.

I guess, "Hi, I'm a pessimist, I expect you're having a lousy day" is not really the best chat up line, not that I need chat up lines as I am very happily married, but you know what I mean.

Having looked at the definitions, I am glad to say that I only subscribe to the first definition, if I can be glad to attest to any of them. As it is I want to be able to get rid of even that milder thought pattern from my life.

God is pleased by faith and obedience, but faith cannot coexist with pessismism. Faith says that God is bigger than my circumstances and even if the worst I can imagine should happen, God is so big that He will make things good in the end. The if is a very big one as usually things don't work out bad, they work out good. As a pessimist I can find myself thinking the most dreadful thoughts, like when Heather's home seriously later than I am expecting I sometimes wonder if she's been killed or involved in some terrible accident rather than believe the more likely scenario that she's got held up in traffic or got waylaid by some talkative person you can't escape from. If the last sentence made you breathless, well that's how a pessimistic outlook can make you feel too, breathless and panicky. At times I can hardly help myself from worrying like this. In its milder moments, you simply expect things to not work out for the best, that something will inevitably go wrong. It doesn't! Well not most of the time anyway, and when it does go wrong, there's always some good or other comes out of it.

Boy I seem to be rambling, but it's a big thing to get rid of, when you've lived with it all your life and want to change. But change is what I MUST do. Face it, part of the verse I have quoted a few times recently is, "Trust in the Lord with all you heart and lean not on your own understanding." Now the trusting bit is called faith, and the understanding part is what you know, your experiences and the things you accept as true. Now the pessimist takes what they have experienced and what they know and creates a bad case scenario as the outcome - "I lost my baggage on my last flight, after that my friends were delayed 42 hours on theirs, goodness knows what will happen next time any of us fly!" The optimist ignores this or maybe admits that all this happened so the chances of it happening again are so remote as to not warrant thinking about. The person of faith realises the possibilities but places their life in God's hands expecting the best, but knowing that even if it all goes horribly wrong that God is with them and will help them through. As it is, Heather and I got $60 off our next flight and Steve and Jenny got free return flights to England from Canada as compensation for their delay. Is God cool or what?!!

As it is, I don't just want to become an optimist who unrealistically expects the best all the time, I want to become a person of faith who recognises the facts but who also recognises they have a God who is far bigger than the facts. The pessimist in me says that it will never happen, but the man of faith says that facing the facts head on, that although I have lived with pessimism for so many years, I will believe and I will become a person who lives by faith.

So the next time Heather is late, I shall expect to be able to believe that she has been waylaid by some very talkative person which although this may seem like a fate worse than death to Heather at the time, is far more likely to be what has actually happened!

God bless you,

Steve

Funtastic fortnight (and Flying fiasco)

It’s Saturday evening and a chance to finally catch our breath! The last two weeks seem to have been a whirlwind with coming home, having Jenny and Steve around, sorting out our home, starting work, catching up with people. We had anticipated maybe having a quiet couple of weeks, but it didn’t quite work out that way, but we had great fun instead!

I have a pile of stuff I could write about most of the days between now and my last blog, but I don’t expect you want to read a diary. Instead I’ll mention a few highlights which stand out to me.

On the Wednesday night, after the blue morning that got me blogging last time, Jenny and Steve came round and after a curry out of a jar we played Balderdash – a game that always entertains and shows you a different side to people. It was a scream and some VERY interesting definitions were suggested causing much laughter indeed!

Friday night was great as Ben came round and so we got to spend about four hours together after not seeing each other for a year – it was good to chat.

Tuesday we went to Beamish with Jenny, Russell, Steve and Anna and had a very fun time. Beamish is an historic attraction featuring reconstructed mines, mining villages and a small town from early last century. It is very fascinating and we are looking forward to going there again in a couple of weeks with Heather’s sister’s family. After Beamish we sent for supper at the Hatch’s with a meal made by Russell and a dessert provided by us. It was a wonderful evening and we sat and chatted and laughed for several hours – a very special time. It was great to spend time with Russell again – for Heather and me it seemed like we’d known him for ages when it’s only been two days. I do like making friends like that!

Back to school at Beamish




Reconstructed town

Thursday was a momentous occasion, with Jenny and Steve around for supper we finally cooked our first homemade curry since returning – YAY!!! And Yum!

Friday we went with Steve and Jenny to Alnwick Gardens which are absolutely beautiful at this time of year. The roses are out in full bloom along with many others of the flowers to make a fabulous blend of colours and aromas. There are a number of water sculptures, one of which is a fountain that starts up at regular intervals (I won’t bore you with details of hydrostatics and valves et cetera) and Steve and I decided to stand inside it waiting for it to fire up. We got absolutely soaked and had the most fun I have had in ages!

Enjoying Alnwick

Fun in the fountain

In the evening Tim and Anna Hatch took Steve, Jenny, Lisa and ourselves out with themselves and Francesca, one of their daughters to the most incredible Japanese restaurant in Newcastle. You sit at a table and a chef comes and prepares the meal on front of you on a hot plate so large it probably ought to be called a hot table! The chefs are very entertaining and as part of the fun they toss eggs in the air and catch them in their chef’s hats. Having done this, they then invite the diners to have a go. Francesca was game for a turn but sadly she missed and ended up with a bit of egg on her shoulder, but not as much as the guy on the next table who ended up with it all down the back of his shirt!! A great fun time was had by all and it was a wonderful way to end our time with Steve and Jenny as they were to return to Canada the next day.

Crazy chef

Fran's egg endeavours

So today is Saturday, we took Jenny and Steve to Glasgow airport, had lunch with them and then left them to get onto their plane. I shed some tears as we left them, as I usually do when we go our separate ways from the Moshers, Jenny particularly. However as we drove back to Morpeth, Heather and I got chatting about other things after a while which was a good distraction. As we drove I noticed the time and mentioned that they should be flying over the Atlantic by now. Not long after Heather’s new phone made a noise and Heather found a text from Jenny saying their plane was delayed, so they weren’t over the Atlantic at all. As I write, at 10:30pm we’ve just spoken with Jenny who’s told us there are no hotel rooms available in Glasgow as there is a doctor’s conference on with 8,000 doctors present as well as a golfing event, so the best they could hope to do was pay for a taxi to Edinburgh, an hour away from Glasgow, hope to get a hotel or B&B room and then get reimbursed at some future point in time! So they are getting ready to kip down for the night on the not exactly comfy seats in Glasgow airport and then fly at around 1:30pm tomorrow. I do hope it doesn’t get delayed any more than that!

Well, it’s time I went off to bed. I shall be thinking of Steve and Jenny as I lay in my bed, wishing the airline had gotten their act together several hours sooner so we could have helped them out. Bah!

Well God bless you, and Jenny and Steve, when you read this I hope it won’t be too long before you can look back and laugh at it all!

Steve

Wrapped in my Father's arms

So here I am back in England again, jet lag still tugging at my brain, sadness of leaving so many good friends in Canada tugging at my heart, the concerns of an uncertain future trying to bring me anxiety, and yet God has me in His hands, and He has my heart wrapped in His arms. I’ve changed the title of my blog to this, it may stay, it may change, but right now it’s where I’m at and where I need to keep running to.

I could talk on about the journey and all that, but that’s not what’s interesting me at the moment. What’s in my heart is a mixture of sadness and joy. Sadness of leaving so many friends, joy that I have them all and of seeing other friends back here in Morpeth! We had a wonderful send off from Lloyd, with many tears shed, a love offering that blew us away, many gifts and cards, and almost the entire congregation coming forward to pray over us as Pastor Lyle invited anyone who knew us and had been touched by our lives to come and lay their hands on us and pray for us - it was pretty overwhelming! It is so wonderful to have such a wonderful church family in Lloyd.

We went on to the Moshers’ in Ottawa and spent nearly five full days with our adopted Canadian family. It was so good to catch up with Gord, Glenda and Steve again and it was a lovely surprise to see Lindsay, Phil’s girlfriend, as she dropped in to see us all. We did very little really, it was just a pleasure to be together again. We sat and chatted, watched a rented DVD that we then kept forgetting to take back, went to see the new Superman movie which we all enjoyed, munched Chinese food together and simply did family type stuff. As well as being a blessing to see them, it made a good buffer between leaving Lloyd and returning to Morpeth, both potentially very emotional experiences. Flying with Steve Mosher to Glasgow made leaving Gord and Glenda easier for us, although a lot harder for Glenda I expect. It was helpful to be able to catch hold of Steve’s excitement in visiting England and seeing Jenny, it helped us not to dwell on our own sadness of leaving.

As it is, our arrival back in Morpeth has not been too bumpy, a bit emotional at points, but in general pretty good. It was so good to see Jenny again on arriving in Glasgow, I had missed her a lot since Christmas and so to see her was a delight as she stood waiting for us at the airport with Anna who very kindly picked us all up. We hope to see a good deal of Jenny over the next few days as she returns to Ottawa mid-July, so we only have a short crossover time.

On Monday after an unpacking marathon, a bit of shopping and dropping in on Douglas and Ruth who run the Christian bookshop, we gatecrashed the start of the training evening for the team heading off to Canada, it was so good to catch up with those team members we saw and to see Mike and Lisa as well. It was wonderful to see Beth and Louise, both from the youth group we led until leaving for Canada. It was great to see Ali again as he came bounding up the stairs and nearly knocked Heather over when he heard we were in the building!

Yesterday we met Jenny’s boyfriend Russell and went to Holy Island with them all. Sadly the weather was overcast, but we had great fun and it was good to get to know Russell a little bit – he seems a really genuine and friendly guy –we very much enjoyed his company. I hope he didn’t find us (okay, I hope he didn’t find ME) too crazy! Jet lag does wonders for an already bad sense of humour!

In the evening Jenny and Russell went off for supper on their own, and we had supper with the Hatches who kindly invited us to stay. It was good to have such a fun day -it’s good to be distracted at times!

Today I am not distracted and my heart feels mixed up, but that’s not surprising. We have fun times to look forward to with our friends here, the sadness of Jenny and Steve leaving again in about 10 days, concerns over the vote on whether New Life and the Baptist churches should merge, grief over leaving so many friends in Canada, the sorrow of losing Yoda our kitten three weeks before leaving Lloyd (we suspect he was supper for a coyote), uncertainties about the future – it’s enough to make one more than a little discombobulated! So I guess I will be emotional for the next little while, but through it all, I know that God has wonderful plans for Heather and me, that He knows what our hearts can take and how to heal them even as they are hurting. Right now, I’m glad my heart is wrapped in God’s arms, it’s the best place for it to be.

God bless you,

Steve