I was 19 – in Bible College, forcing myself to go to the ‘pastor’s wives to be’ meetings! Rebelling (in my head) against flower arranging and organ playing roles. The importance of a hostess trolley tipping me over edge and causing me to make  the declaration, ‘I’ll never have a sisterhood and I will never speak at women’s meetings!’ This is not for me! I will not be moved!

Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t take any notice of our protests?! Because, fast forward 32 years and, speaking to women (and men) is one of the sweetest spots in my life! I love it! I love communicating truth in plain language. I love being real and, hopefully, scratching where people are itching. These Lock down blogs came from a ‘kick up the backside’  from a friend of mine, who sent me a word to say, you need to write more!  Here is what she said:

“Hi there, I wanted to say this to you for a while , take it , leave it , chuck it or embrace it .

YOU NEED TO WRITE AGAIN

I have lavished and savoured BRAVE … You bring a REALNESS into women’s lives ..we ( the everyday women ) cannot always relate to the the women with amazing words from God , but who walk in circles of rich and famous and in doing so … have lost the realness of being a working class girl . Debbie, you haven’t lost this and you must KNOW that all you have poured into us online , needs to be in a book for generations of women … stories of lockdown … Jesus in lockdown …

Do it ! I’ll buy first 20 copies!” (I’ll hold you to that Gana! – haha!)

Gana! She gave me the push I needed. So, thank you for your love and encouragement to get me writing again. I’ve written loads of blogs and you can subscribe on my page if you’d like to look back and get notification when I write a new one. In last weeks blog, I talked about Social media and I am gradually working my way off it so, if you enjoy what you hear/read from me, please subscribe!

I’ve decided to write said book in the form of a weekly  blog as it’s not as daunting as writing a book, and I feel this is something that is achievable in the business of life.  And, once they’re all written down, I will collate them into a book as I did once before..take a look here if you want:

ALL IN ONE PLACE

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

At the beginning of 2020, we initiated a catch phrase for our Church in Newcastle that said, ‘John 10:10 in 2020’ Everyone was excited, it became a buzz word and we were all up for it. March 2020 came and stopped us all in our tracks. Covid-19. A phrase none of us had heard before, suddenly became responsible for everyone heading into their homes not to venture out again for a good few months!

The week this happened, was the week before our BRAVE women’s conference and up until THE lock down day, it was on! When Boris announced BRAVE wouldn’t be on (he didn’t single it out of course, but I knew what he meant) I cried. My husband John, took me in his arms and I wept. The team had worked so hard and we had put together what we knew would be a fantastic day! It was heart breaking. Our BRAVE team gathered quickly at the church that same night – 2 of the girls were still painting in preparation for the conference – ‘It’ll be ready for next time’ was the cry! We sat in a circle bewildered at what was happening. ‘I can’t imagine not coming to church’ one of the girls said. ‘How long will this last?’ Was a question on all our lips! If I’m honest, I thought it would be for a few weeks – how wrong was I.

I think that if we’d have known  it would be around 6 months  before we began to meet in church again, that Monday night would have felt so much worse. I’m thankful that God so often only shows us a step at a time!

After a time of prayer, we left that meeting not sure when we would see each other again, and it felt so strange, even stranger as hugs had been banned!  We simply said, ‘bye’ and walked away from our church.

We decided not to retreat, we decided to keep going forward. For John and I, this wasn’t going to be a time to sit back and chill out – we made the decision to advance and not retreat!

We quickly realised that we would have to stream our services from our house! One of our tech guys came and set up microphones, sound desk, software on our laptop and got us ready to go! Our lounge regularly became a studio with books (for camera stands) wires and tables everywhere! If you tune in,  all you saw were our faces and the Lion! (We had a great picture of a lion as our back drop) if you could have seen ‘back stage’, you’d have thought our house had been burgled! But, it was worth it to communicate and try our best to keep our church together.

We decided from the get go to do all of our Sundays and later, Wednesdays, ‘live’ rather than pre-recorded. We don’t regret this even though it gave us a few challenges and gremlins to deal with on the spot. It just felt like even though we weren’t together, we were. That first Sunday was probably the most stress we’ve felt in the build up to church for a long time! Would it work? What buttons? What about the sound? What about the internet? Would anyone show up?

When the meeting was over and I pressed the button ‘stop streaming’ John and I collapsed on the sofa thankful to God that it had gone well. And, as the weeks and months went by, we relaxed into it more and more and actually got to enjoy doing live TV! Of course, it helped us greatly that we could do it between us as I lead worship too. In fact, someone quipped, ‘we’re grateful that our pastor lives with our worship leader!’

We did so much fun stuff too! ‘Dancing Queen’, ’Way to Amarillo’, ’Shoop shoop song’, ‘Reach for the stars’,  Social distancing videos, Through the Bible readathon (this is still continuing! We started in Matthew and are now in Romans!) Daily devotions! The list goes on, our church got involved. People who had no clue about all things internet and social media, jumped on it to be a part of what was to go on for months! We’d made sure that in the seriousness of the crisis, we found plenty to laugh about too.

We did Easter on line! We had our first year church anniversary on line. Parties were cancelled and life as we had known it, stopped!

It’s fair to say that we became very busy with the online world! 2 live meetings, 2 pre-recorded, zoom meetings and then of course, I started the BRAVE facebook group. A group where we could Be Real And Victorious Every day. Every Saturday morning, I went live and we joined together on a journey from bubbles, to balloons, to hot air balloons among other things!

The group has attracted many women  from around the place and so, another great thing to come out of lock down. We’d never have done it had it not been for this season and I trust that it will continue even if that’s in a different form, long after things are back to normal – take heart, they will be.

After Gana’s encouragement, I agreed that it would be good to capture what these months have been about for us as a group – for us to always have something good to remember in what surely has been a most bizarre time for the world. As I look back though my notes, we will revisit the things that we talked about and the things that we learnt via BRAVE. Join us on the journey if you want! 

See you next time!