Read, Pray, Love

I've always loved to read; it's my safe place. Somewhere I can just escape to, through the pages of a book. It is the very reason I study literature. But, even though I get to read all the time whilst studying, and I really love what I do, I miss simply reading for pleasure. I miss getting to pick up a new book, a book I have chosen to read, and going wherever my mood takes me. I've received a lot of encouragement recently to take more time out; to try not to stress about work too much, and to spend time for myself. So, in my time off, I've been taking time to read more, for pleasure. I was also challenged recently by a good friend who had been praying for me, especially about my Uni work, to spend more time with God. Even more time than I think I can spend, just reading and praying and being with God. I really felt this challenge. All last term I struggled to make it to small group due to my University timetable. I struggled to make it to church due to my lack of motivation. And I struggled to consistently spend time with God because I had so much work to do. Recently, my head has been a bit of a mess. There are a few reasons for this. The stress I put myself under with regards to Uni work does not help. But my lack of time with God is the greatest issue. I am going to be scarily honest here and admit that I have not actually sat down and read my Bible in quite a while. Nor have I even read any Christian books. And this scares me. The Bible should be the one book I read consistently and continually. It is the first book I should turn to when I need to rest. The first book I should turn to when I am struggling. And the first book I should turn to when I sit down to begin my work. But not only is it the first book I should turn to, it is also the last book. When the day is over; when my struggles have been overcome; when that essay has finally been submitted only ten minutes before the deadline. Then, also, I should turn to the Bible and thank God for the blessings He has poured out on my life; for fighting my battles for me; for helping me get that essay done and submitted in time.

I once heard someone say, during a preach, that he spent an hour everyday with God, except when he was busy. Then he spent two hours with God. My friend was right when she challenged me to spend more time than I think I can with God, especially when I am so busy with work. Because it is in the times when we are busy, or struggling, or stressed, or just consumed by work that we need God most. Sure, He is our rest and we should make sure to rest in Him often. But He is also our strength and so we need to rely on Him when we are tired and stressed and working too hard.

I've never been very good at relying on other people. Years of hurt and abuse and betrayal taught me not to trust anyone and I'm very independent and self-reliant, so I still find it extremely difficult to trust or rely on anyone, including God. I know that I need to learn to rely on God more and that to do that I need to read the Bible and pray more. Spending time with God - finding strength in Him, resting in Him - isn't just about reading the Bible, it's praying; being in conversation with God. My friend's challenge to me to spend more time with God wasn't just about reading my Bible more, though of course that's part of it, but it was about praying more and learning to rely on God, especially in hard times.

Learning to rely on God means learning to love God. I am not exactly a faithful person. I don't so much 'believe in' God as simply cannot deny His existence. For me, I know that God exists, I've always known that He exists, I can't even try to deny this. But that doesn't mean that I've always loved Him. In fact, I've always struggled to love Him and for a long time I was very angry with Him. Still am sometimes. It has taken a long time for me to even begin to learn to rely on God. I'm not there yet. And I'm not quite there yet when it comes to loving Him either. But I am getting there. Slowly. I don't think He blames me though, I have a lot of issues to work on here.

It is because God loves us that we are able to love Him and through loving Him, we can learn to love others and are instructed to do so. Sometimes I feel like I'm not a very loving person. I try. But I really struggle to even be around people sometimes, let alone to love them. It's something I constantly battle with. Not being able to trust people makes loving them rather difficult. It is the people I have loved who have hurt me most. Perhaps I have not loved very wisely in the past and so have hardened my heart. The Bible tells us to guard our hearts and perhaps I have guarded mine a little too fiercely, but I think I am beginning to feel again. It's terrifying. And I've still got a long way to go. But I am learning to spend time with God; to trust in Him and rely on Him, and to love Him.

***

I had initially finished the post there but I wanted to share one extra thing:

My biggest fear in posting this is that people are going to think that I'm going through a period of doubt or that I'm in a really bad place either spiritually or mentally But I'm not. I'm just being honest. And, honestly, I've been in much worse places than this. And I got out of them. My head actually feels clearer than it has done in a long time. I will be fine. I always am. And right now, that's good enough for me.

New Year

So it is that time of year when you start looking back at the year you've had and looking forward to the year ahead. Well at least that's what I do. I've always done the whole New Years Resolutions thing and re-write my five-year-plan every year. And I used to use it as a way of telling myself how crap I've been and how much better I need to be. But in recent years I've begun to look not at just the bad things, but at how far I've come and at all of the good things I, and my friends, have achieved. This year has been pretty spectacular for me. I finished St Andrew's, I went back to University, I handed in my first essays in about three years and I did really well in them. I also made loads of new friends, have had a lot of fun, have laughed more than I think I ever have before in my life and have actually worked hard at something for the first time in my life - I'm talking about St Andrew's here, but I've kind of continued the hard work into Uni as well. I actually like life most of the time and I like being around people. And I have been massively blessed to see all of your achievements as well. I am so proud of all of my friends! This year has been a good year. And we have the power to make next year even better. And that is what I intend to do. So, I have made my New Years Resolutions and I have re-evaluated my five-year-plan and I thought I would share them with you.

These are my resolutions, in no particular order:
1. Lose weight/get fit

2. Work harder
3. Be more organised
4. Have better focus
5. Write more (for pleasure as well as work)
6. Read more (see above)
7. Keep a journal/blog/both
8. Be wiser with money
9. Try to get a job
10. Learn to like myself
11. Have fun
12. Complain less
13. Love more
14. Practise patience
15. Read Bible more
16. Pray more
17. Volunteer
18. Rewrite five-year-plan
19. Be healthy and happy
20. Take pride in my appearance

I know there are quite a lot, but I feel like they are balanced and actually easily manageable. I'm not setting ridiculous goals or impossible regimes for myself. I've included fun things and things that I enjoy. I'm not punishing myself for things that I've done wrong or just failed to do this last year. It is probably the best list of New Years Resolutions that I have ever made. And I really have a feeling that next year will be a good year - thanks to everything I've learnt and done and all of the people I've met this year.

I have already started number 18, rewriting my five-year-plan, and for once in all of the years that I've written and rewritten my five-year-plan, I haven't included anything romantic. Because I figure, you can't plan for that and I want to be surprised. I want to enjoy my life and whatever comes along and if I get to enjoy that with someone then great, but it's not necessary to have someone, and it would be even better for that to be a surprise relationship rather than something I've tried to plan for. If that makes sense. My five-year-plan mostly involves finishing Uni, getting a job, travelling, writing, volunteering and eventually doing a PGCE. I may not stick to it; I don't think I've ever stuck to my five-year-plans - but I feel like it's a good plan. It's a healthy plan. And I can't wait to get started.

I've actually been thinking about and re-evaluating a lot recently. It probably is mostly to do with this time of year and the fact that I always do it but my head has been in a weird place recently and I guess I've just been thinking about a number of things, including the sort of person I want to be and this has led to a change in some of my thinking. I'm not sure I want to clarify that anymore right now but I feel like it's important to mark that my head has been in a weird space recently and may continue to be so for a little while longer while I work some more things out. But at the end of the day, I am okay. I'm doing well, actually. So don't worry about me, I actually will be fine.

Happy New Year!

Failed by the NHS?

Being someone who suffers from mental health problems, I have been extremely interested in the BBC's current 'It's a Mad World' season. Recently there has been a great deal of campaigning for greater awareness of mental health issues, which is helping to reduce the stigma attached to mental illness. Tonight's documentary on BBC Three, entitled 'Failed by the NHS', involved several young people explaining how they have been let down by NHS mental health services and describing the impact of this on their lives. It is true that a vast number of people who try to access mental health services are disappointed and left feeling let down by the very people who are supposed to help them. Suffering from mental illness myself, and having spent a lot of time around other people with mental health problems (especially in the last year), I have heard countless stories of how the NHS has failed people, and not just with regards to their mental health. It is truly upsetting to hear these things and it does make me, and many others, feel angry and disgusted at the NHS and the government, for lack of funding to various health services.

I also happened to catch part of another documentary, earlier in the evening, this time courtesy of Channel 4, about the short-comings of the NHS 111 service. There are so many documentaries and news reports and personal tales of the failures of the NHS; and I am not doubting for a second the validity of these accounts and concerns, but, having had a lot more contact with NHS services than the average person, I feel that people have a tendency to ignore the good parts of the NHS and, I must admit, I feel a certain kind of protectiveness towards the institution that has done so much for me.

In the UK we are privileged to have a national, public health service. If we didn't have this service, and health care was provided only to those who could afford either the cost of treatment or insurance (like in countries such as the USA), millions of people would have to go without treatment for serious health conditions and perhaps even die as a result of not being able to afford health care costs. From a very young age I suffered from a number of serious health conditions, some of which are still ongoing, that required a lot of treatment, including surgery. All of this treatment will have come with a very hefty price tag which my family would not be able to afford and no insurance company would insure me with so many pre-existing conditions requiring expensive treatments. I cannot help but feel so lucky to live in a country where I am able to receive all of this treatment for free, especially as the risks of not receiving treatment (and in some cases emergency treatment) could have actually been fatal.

I have spent a great deal of time in doctors' surgeries and hospitals and, yes, a lot of that time was mostly spent sitting in the waiting rooms of clinics that were running late for whatever reason. NHS waiting times can be long and boring, and extremely uncomfortable, but whenever I have needed a referral to a different department or even surgery, I have received the care that I needed; eventually.

When I first came home from University to seek some kind of treatment for my mental health problems, I had hoped to be able to only take one year out of University to get well and then I could return to University the next year. That didn't happen. I have now had two years out of University and, though I am returning to studying, I am not returning to the University I was studying at before. There are several reasons for this but one of them is simply that, though I have had a year of intensive group therapy and am significantly better than I was before I started the therapy, I still feel unable to live so far away from home and from the support that I have gained here from my family, my friends, my GP and St Andrew's - where I received my therapy. But this isn't a result of prolonged NHS waiting times. Yes it took just over a year to actually get on to the intensive group therapy programme but I didn't spend that whole time just sitting around waiting and twiddling my thumbs. After seeing my GP a few times, during which time he took the time to get my medication right, I was referred to my local Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). I then had a couple of assessments with them before I was referred for an initial assessment at St Andrew's. Whilst I was waiting for the referral with St Andrew's to go through I received Occupational Therapy sessions from an Occupational Therapist who was attached to the CMHT. When I was then assessed at St Andrew's, I was given three appointments at the end of which time, I was referred on to the group therapy programme and I got a place relatively quickly. I then underwent a year of intensive group therapy which brings me up to the end of June this year. And since then I have had a follow up appointment with my key therapist from the programme and attend a monthly follow up group for people who have left the group programme.

All of this has taken a grand total of two years. Which to some may seem like a long time but during that time I had regular appointments with my GP and when I discovered that some people on the group programme with me had waited literally years to get on to the programme, I felt blessed to have had to wait such a relatively short amount of time to get my place. This has all been since I returned home to York from University in Brighton. Admittedly, in Brighton, it wasn't quite as easy getting the help that I needed but part of that was down to me taking a long time to actually admit that I had a problem. I have suffered from my mental health problems for a long time; since about the age of seven. And in that time I have received a lot of therapy and counselling for various issues. As a child and, more so, as a teenager I was very stubborn and refused to accept any kind of help. I decided that I disliked all therapists and help professionals and I refused to cooperate. I feel that, to an extent, I was justified in my feelings towards some of the so-called 'support' that I was given but now I can also see that, whatever my feelings about that help, I was still given a lot of help. And I am aware that not everyone does receive the level of care I did. This actually makes me feel very selfish and ungrateful that I didn't accept help earlier. And perhaps if I had, I wouldn't have ended up on my own in Sussex County Hospital at four a.m one morning needing nine stitches in my arm and a psych consult after an episode of self-harming. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Anyway, my point is that the help was there. I may have chosen not to accept it, for whatever reasons my screwed up teenage brain came up with, but it was there. Repeatedly I was referred back to counselors and therapists and the eating disorders team and family therapy and you-name-it whoever else. This, to me, does not speak of an NHS service that fails to provide mental health services to adolescents and young people.

I'm not saying that the NHS doesn't have faults. And I'm not saying that my experiences are the experiences of everyone, or even of the majority. I really do feel for everyone who has been let down by the NHS; be it for mental health issues or any other health problems. Maybe I have just been extremely lucky to have received the amount of treatment and care that I have. And I don't want to belittle any bad experiences that anyone has had with the NHS. But I do feel that not enough is said about how much the NHS has and does help people. I feel terribly sad and disheartened by reports of yet more and more bad service from the NHS. And the current economic climate really does not help matters. But I just really wanted to say that it isn't all bad. And to those of you who are reading this and work for the NHS or have worked for the NHS; Thank you. You do an amazing job. I'm sorry you get such a bad press. But you really are awesome.