20 years and 14 days ago, on 8th December 1994...
Ok...let's not start right at the beginning! Fast forward 18 and a bit years to when I started this blog. I had just finished my A Levels and was preparing to go off on a gap year that would take me to Tanzania and Colombia. And rather disgustingly cheesily I would 'find myself' (or at least find out a lot more about myself). But more importantly I would find God in a totally new way.
Those of you who have known me a while or have heard my testimony will know I've been brought up a Christian, and would have called myself a Christian well before this gap year. I don't dispute that now. But belief in God isn't an end goal - it's a journey. We focus so much on the ends in our culture that it can be all to easy to forget the significance of the means by which we get there. What I learnt and experienced over my time away resulted in a real deepening of my faith and a much clearer understanding of God's unconditional love for me, and what the amazing consequences of Jesus' death and resurrection actually mean for me on a day to day basis, as well as an eternal level. Before you accuse me of over-glamourising cross cultural mission work, I'm not saying my time abroad was easy. In fact if you read some of my blog posts you'll realise it can be demoralising, hard, sweaty, dirty work. But at the same time I found it a lot easier to hear God in it all (and we did have some pretty amazing times too!). Without the comforts of a culture and language I knew, and out of my natural skill area, dependence on God was not an option. It was a necessity.
And then I had to come home and go to uni. It's a good job I applied for deferred entry - there's no way I would have actually applied during my gap year. When I came home from Colombia I spent the weeks counting down, saying 'Come on God, you've got 6 weeks to give me something else other than this uni place'. At Momentum I was eagle eyed for any possible opportunities. And in-keeping with God's beautiful sense of humour, everything I looked at or picked up said 'graduate degree required'. TYPICAL! So reluctantly I headed down to Cambridge to study law.
I expected a lot of work. I didn't expect quite so much work! But I've settled in well. I live with an amazing group of people. The other law students at Jesus College are really great too. As are the CU. And I've found a church home at Eden Baptist, which is full of friendly people. But all term I've been fighting God. I couldn't dispute the fact that he had called me there (although had he changed his mind and told me to fly off to the other side of the world, I'd have been there in a second!), but I was constantly questioning if I'd somehow ended up doing the wrong subject. It's a lot harder to find where God fits into law than it was to see God in my gap year projects. I was praying for confirmation all term and yet closing my mind to every time God answered that, because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. Had I really learnt nothing in my gap year?!
Claire, another law student at Jesus, and all round incredible woman of God, had a vision to create a group for other Christian law students. I caught the vision of this and subsequently we spent all term scheming and praying for how this would advance. We've had endless meetings and coffees with different people, several Skype calls, and lots of connections made for us. It's one of those instances where God just opens doors and things fall into place. Yet despite all of this, I was still adamant that law wasn't really what I should be doing. Two days before coming back home for the Christmas vacation (it's not a holiday - we've had that one clarified many a time!!) we met with Timothy Laurence, from the Lawyers Christian Fellowship in London, who wanted to reach out to law students as well. It turns we've each come to the same vision independently and God's now connected us up in the middle. When Timothy was telling us about his background, he introduced himself as a 'reluctant law student'. Claire looked at me and burst out laughing - it summed up me and all my complaining about having to study law in a nutshell! Timothy's explanation of how Law and God fit together made so much sense, and things began to fall into place. It's not a completed work, and I still fall under the title of a reluctant law student (especially when I'd rather be baking mince pies than reading R v Brown, and my Facebook feed is full of beach pictures from Santa Marta) but at least I'm now a reluctant law student confident in God's calling - even though I have absolutely no idea of the reason why yet.
I've really missed blogging, writing about all the random thoughts that go through my head. So at the request of a few people, I've decided to take it up again. In one of my procrastination sessions I have given it a make-over (complete with background photo from Bogotá - you can't escape Colombia just yet!). I'm planning on writing in 3 main categories: Crime (for anything law related), Corinthians (for anything faith related) and Cake (for all the food related goodness. Let's be honest this will probably be the biggest category...!). All my gap year posts are still on here, should you be sad enough to want to re-read them...And one day I will finish my blipfoto journal!
I hope you find some encouragement (or light relief...) through my blog. Please feel free to leave me comments, and if there's ever anything you'd love to know my thoughts about, send me a message and I'll write you a post (insert legal disclaimer here just in case I don't)!
