It's a shame that having so much to blog about leaves so little time to blog.

For starters can you imagine how unromantic it is reading a psychology lab report on love - also labelled 'partnership love', 'romantic love', 'intimate attraction' amongst other boring words. All I have discovered so far is that psychologists are as clueless as the rest of us! Their term for being clueless is: 'love is subjective' - that means you can interpret it any way you want, just don't blame us if it goes wrong. In their opinion love cannot be defined (of course we're working outside the realms of 1 Corinthians 13), cannot be exhaustively explained and -although they wouldn't admit it - they give every impression it can never be truly understood. I can completely understand why they feel true love can never be understood, it's probably because it can't be. A good way to begin though isn't handing out questionnaires, asking open ended questions or sequencing cards with love related events on them - but feel the depth of sacrifice, especially to the extent of dying for someone; take a good look at the cross of Calvary. All this reading about love was necessary for a report on 'the influence of culture on romantic relationship formation' - the topic for this report was decided at university while I was away - a lesson never to skive was well and truly learnt.
I did, however, feel that skipping two days of uni was worth it to go and meet up with some friends, 3 of whom had flown over from France. We went a saw most of the big, free things to see in London - Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the British Museum, Tower bridge, changing of the guard, St James' Park, Buckingham Palace, London Eye, River Thames, Tower of London. It's amazing how little I know about my own country, which I didn't realise until I was showing visitors around. We managed to find our way to the beach, and had a barbeque. We went to Cambridge and went punting on the river something which I found I'm not incredibly skilled at, perhaps not least because I was so afraid that I could barely stand up at the end of the punt. Then the concept of leaning any part of me out over the river in order to let the pole sink to the bottom of the river and create any kind of driving force for the boat to move was slightly dizzying... it's not a wonder we hardly moved from the side of the river the whole time I was punting!
In three days I went from Birmingham - London- Bournemouth - London - Cambridge - Birmingham. The weekend before I'd been from Birmingham - Brighton - Guildford - Birmingham. I've had my 'new' car for 6 months and have added 5,000 miles to the clock!
This month I opened up a toddler group. I applied for and received a grant earlier this month, allowing me to buy equipment and pay for training of volunteers for a toddler group. We run for two hours one morning a week, and so far have had two families come - our maximum has been 3 children and 4 adults. Being the great dreamer that I am, I see this as the start of something so much bigger and feel ever so blessed by the opportunity to start it.
In all the activities I've been supervising recently I've been struck by the reality of responsibility - not only for things, but for other people. For their time and their efforts. I have so much 'at my disposal', so many people willing to do a job for me, to prepare a Bible lesson for club, set up toys for toddler group, and every time I take them up on a offer or ask them to do something extra I have added responsibility of using their time, making sure I'm not wasting their time or stealing it from them. Especially if something could be done more efficiently, or if I could have done a job myself if I'd been more disciplined. To him who much is given, much will be required.
Every day I feel more aware of my inability to do everything and the wonderful grace of God in allowing it all to get done.