Breaking out of a pattern of thinking can require a lot of courage.

Especially if it defines or guides your life.

And it isn’t always possible until you are ready. No one else can do it for you. No one else can make that heart-deep decision.

You may need to work through a lot of ‘baggage’ first. To let go of a lot of things. To understand what you cannot fix. To realise where you are too bruised to allow further damage. To drop the concern about what other people will think.

And in the years, months, days before the breaking it may seem not just impossible but frightening, even wrong. Your desire to conform to your own expectations and the expectations of others can box you to such a degree that you don’t realise – or don’t admit – that you don’t come box-shaped.

To challenge your own deeply held beliefs and ideals (whatever these may be) about certain situations – that takes a new kind of faith. Faith that Truth is not confined to your own culture or mindset. Faith that God is bigger than your tiny worldview. Faith that in our humanity we can try and tin our own complexity for the sake of familiarity or manageability.

Pass the tin opener, please.

Who am I? So easy to ask that question and choose as an answer what we believe is ‘right’ or acceptable. Sometimes we don’t know the answer. But if we feel compelled to put on a face or a front, or hide behind a template of belief or behaviour, out of fear that anything else is wrong – we end up lying, if that is not how we really feel, if that is not who we really are.

I wrote earlier on social media:

Don’t leave living until later.

I mean it.

Learning is intrinsic to our lives. Whether we are deliberately receiving education, or whether we are adapting to unexpected experience, every day is an opportunity to find out something new, to see life from another angle, or gain a new skill.

Much has been made of the fact we all learn differently. This is true. There is no ‘one size fits all’; our minds react to diverse stimuli and in diverse ways. We may learn best by listening or by interacting, by being alone or by being with others, in stillness or in movement.

However, even the ‘models’ people come up with to aid learning can never cover the complexity of us – you and me. There will always be those who don’t fit any of the ‘boxes’ or who claim two labels are valid, not one; there will be those who slide between classifications and categories. However hard we try to expand the boxes or create new ones, we will never be able to categorise the full diversity of human experience.

Our uniqueness means that we always have the potential to learn from one another, and also to teach someone else about the world from our distinct point of view.

Our different viewpoints and ways of interacting can make relationships a struggle sometimes, but they can also make them rewarding – we open ourselves up to the possibility of seeing things in new ways; we begin to discover how we can adapt our behaviour for the benefit of others. We see a little of what we’d like to become, not just what we are now.

Discipleship embraces the ideal of learning from another person, with real focus and intent. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me” – easing his listeners away from all the boxes and labels that religious leaders had chosen to impose upon them. These were too tight, too rigid, too burdensome. A yoke is worn by oxen pulling a plough – but if it is over-heavy or ill fitting, the animals will not be able to work effectively, and may even be injured in the process.

“My yoke is easy,” Jesus said. Are we so busy trying to figure ourselves out that we forget how to be still and listen? We neglect to learn from Jesus, who had such compassion on the tired and the weary. Have we injured ourselves by placing unnecessary burdens on one another’s shoulders?

Learning from Jesus should refresh and energise us, because we are coming to one who knows us as we are, with all our leanings and tendencies, with all our hopes and scars. We come to Jesus, tired and weary, knowing there we find rest for our souls. In Jesus we learn what it means to be true disciples – and what it means to be human.

(Matthew 11:28-30)

But life is what it is and, let’s face it, we all have muddled moments and patches of the journey where we need to stare at the sky for a bit.

Those of you wondering at my quietness, I have been very, very tired recently, and increasingly-severe chronic pain has led the doctor to suggest I now have fibromyalgia as well as ME. Regardless of the label, the symptoms are very real, so each day is its own unit which I tackle in the strength I have.

I have found plenty of things to bless me during this (very literally) painful season, so I have hope.

The other evening I noticed the gerbera on my windowsill was wilting horribly. It had one flower which had sagged beyond redemption. I had seen this before. I knew the plant was salvageable, but that I would have to wait for new blooms to emerge. This is not the first time my forgetfulness has shortened the life of a flower.

I watered it thoroughly.

I was making a cuppa the next morning when I glanced towards the window sill and froze in surprise at this:

It was one of those moments when you wish you had a ‘before’ picture. The petals had sagged so far back it had looked dreadful. They were dulled, lifeless.

But in that moment hope coursed through my veins … it felt like a heavenly reminder that transformation is always possible, even when it looks the least likely thing in the world.

And the words crept into my mind: with God, all things are possible