About Her is my new regular blog feature, where I’ve asked many different women from all sorts of different backgrounds about their faith. I hope it’ll give you food for thought, encourage you in your own faith journey and maybe even inspire you to try something new.
It’s me, Olivia! I’m the creator of this blog, so it felt right that I’d be the first to undergo the questions. I’m a wife, mum of 1 pre-schooler and training to be a priest in the Church of England. I live in Lancashire, and I love to run. I’m not particularly fast, but it’s great for the mind so I keep plodding on. I am passionate about the sharing of stories – I think we understand so much more when we’ve heard some of the story behind a person. Stories give us insight and encouragement; they can move us to laughter or tears; they can create community and a shared identity. Stories are brilliant!
Q1. How do you pray?
In all sorts of different ways, mainly sporadically throughout the day. I’ll be walking somewhere and spot something and it prompts a prayer in me. If I hear an ambulance siren (which I do quite a lot, because of our proximity to a hospital) I pray for protection over that life and for strength and peace for those treating the patient. I love to pray in bed, before I go to sleep. For me there is no better way to end the day than to run through it all again and let God know where I struggled and where my heart soared. Sometimes I even let God get a word in edgeways and he shows me where he was at work.
Pre-lockdown, I had my routine of dropping the 4yo at pre-school each morning and praying over her before she went in. Then, as I was driving home I would turn on my Bible audio to listen before getting home for some silence. However, that routine has disappeared, with pre-school closed. Instead, I’ve been praying with the 4yo. Sometimes she joins in, sometimes she doesn’t. We always say the Lord’s Prayer together – because she knows its rhythm – and then I’ll just start praying out loud and sometimes she will just start praying her own prayers over mine. Most of the time she just picks her nose and climbs over me, but sometimes we have these magical moments. In fact, this reminds me that I need to ask her more what does she think God’s saying to her / us.
Final bit on prayer with a small person, I promise. About 18 months ago we were walking through town. Well, I was walking, and carrying a rather heavy and lazy 2.5 year old. She closed her eyes and then said amen. I asked her why she’d said amen, and she told me that the man we had just passed was sad so she prayed for him. Children – even tiny ones – can pray. Sometimes we just need to help them.
Q2. How do you read the Bible?
If you’d asked me this question 18 months ago, I’d have said not very well. I think one of the only ways to read the Bible badly is if you just don’t read it consistently. I was a dipper. Dip in, dip out. I followed study plans which jumped around different parts of scripture. And then that all changed.
I was inspired to read the overarching story from beginning to end, which meant going deep into the Old Testament. I’d largely avoided anything tricky or heavy because I just didn’t have the stomach for it. But one lecture on Deuteronomy changed all of that, and so in June last year I began following a Bible in One Year plan and I’m not just a month away from completing it. Sometimes it has been heavy, but the overwhelming feeling I have from it is that the more I read God’s word, the more I hear God speaking to me about my life and the lives of others around me. And the more I read God’s word, the more I can see my life and character changing (for the better). And the more I see that… the more I want to read the Bible.
So, I read it. I read a portion of the Old Testament and then a portion of the New Testament, and sometimes a Psalm or Proverb too. I have missed my old plans which were more devotional in content and included questions and reflections, but I have enjoyed reading through the entire Bible in one year with 2 other people. It’s kept us accountable, and it’s been good to share questions and thoughts.
The best advice I’ve ever had on reading the Bible is: read your Bible, read it all, read it slowly, read it again.
Q3. What’s your favourite Bible verse for this season?
I’ve had a few that I’m clinging to in this time. One in particular is from Habbakuk 3, where the writer is saying even though there are no grapes on the vines, the fields produce no food, calamity is at our door, “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.” Lockdown has been hard for many reasons – even though all in our family are well and safe. There have been days where I’ve wept and this verse has helped me to lift my eyes up to my saviour Jesus, to remember that, even in these calamitous times, I can rejoice in Him.
Q4. What songs are you singing at the moment?
I’ve been listening to Elevation Worship’s The Blessing since they premiered it on March 6th this year. You may have seen it’s been turned into various covers by churches across the world, and when I heard it for the first time I just knew that this was an anointed song which would minister in this time. I cannot stop listening to it and singing it out over the streets I run down.
I’m also listening to a lot of Disney because we subscribed to Disney+ at the beginning of lockdown. I love how much Christian truth we can find in what the world would call secular.
Q5. How are you seeking joy in lockdown?
I’ve been seeking joy by giving myself permission to “fail”. By that I mean what society expects of us, or what we expect of ourselves. It just isn’t possible for me at this time to do life at the sort of pace I would normally. I’ve had to slow down and God has hard wrestled much of the busy-ness and distraction out of my head, hands and heart.
As such I’ve been spending much more concentrated time with the 4yo. She starts school in September (hopefully!) so it has been a real joy and privilege to get this extra time to enjoy with her. As soon as I’d relinquished control and stopped beating myself up about all the things I couldn’t do now with her on top of me 24/7, I breathed easier and the joy became easier to find.
So, we bake, we go for bike rides, we sing and read stories, we watch films and have lazy mornings and breakfast in bed. We fall out with each other, we have strops and we even cry together. But above it all I look at her and in her eyes of wonder I find the joy of the everyday, the joy of stripped back living, the joy of an unhurried life.
Tune in next week for the next instalment of About Her. Do get in touch if you’d like to answer the 5 questions. You don’t need to be a mum, but you do have to be a woman.
A New Mission 