cleaning earplugs?

Since I last wrote on my blog I have been to Heidelberg and Hamburg as well as Berlin. One of my friends at church asked me today if I spent any time at all in Berlin. The answer to that is if he did more SMD things he would know I am in Berlin a lot. However, I have indeed been using my BahnCard (rail discount card) well in the last few weeks and have been really refreshed and re-joy-ed by my trips.

I also managed to wash my earplugs. I put them in the washing machine totally by accident but they were nice and clean by the end. I took them to Hamburg just in case it was too noisy. I only in fact used them to snooze on the train while people around me nattered (seeing as Rachel doesn't snore) and then put them in my pocket, the jumper of which I proceeded to put in the wash last night. Error. Although the plugs are indeed quite shiny now. And something I am super duper proud of is that according to Rachel I was talking in my sleep in German while I was sleeping in her room. Score.

So two weeks ago I went to Heidelberg to see Ellen and Lizzie. It was just wonderful to be able to sit and chat as a three who didn’t really know each other as a three before, but chat as if we’d known each other for ages. The awkwardness I’d feared was by no means there and in fact the one-way-ness I had also feared (in that the other two didn’t know each other really at all and I knew them both really well) was totally non-existent. And what was also really cool was to see each other after quite a period of time and to really notice the difference in each other. We were all talking and acting in such different ways to September when we set off on our year abroads.

It’s definitely a growing-up experience, the year abroad, most certainly many ways I have changed are simply that I am realising that I can’t really act as I used to act: I need to be more considerate of people around me… in fact in the past few weeks I have been doing quite a lot of thinking about how I might be when I get back – will I be the loud Emily that people might remember or will I (and hopefully so) be a bit more considered, and give other people more time to express themselves? I mean, this year I have certainly learnt it hugely from the other side: this time me not being able to express myself hasn’t come from want of trying, just want of words. But the frustrations have led me to practise the art of being silent and it has made me see the world so much more vibrantly than before. People take far longer to warm up than I had ever had the patience to learn. And they are often far more interesting than I realised. And perversely it has taken a great deal of self-confidence to learn to let go of this desire to grab attention and conversation.

On the train to Hamburg I was listening to a sermon on Ecclesiastes and a verse struck me more and more as I was flying through the countryside (although it was 20 minutes delayed so Deutsche Bahn gave me a chocolate in a little Deutsche Bahn box to apologise) … a verse that a good friend loved even before he became a Christian:

“I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favour to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.”
Ecclesiastes 9:11

The race is not to the swift: take heed from Psalm 27:14 and “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” What does it mean? Part of it means trusting that he will work out his purposes in my friends even when I’m not around. And therefore being able to so joyfully see such differences in them as I go and visit them. It was such a privilege both in Heidelberg and Hamburg to spend time with girls who love Jesus so much, and in so much more obvious ways than when I last saw them. Conversation was so differently focussed, priorities were unspokenly transformed, real joy was totally tangible. It’s really hard to describe but the effect was both such joy and such a challenge to me not to go to sleep but to continue to strive to do exactly that.

Another thing I have experienced which will stick with me especially from being out here – at an objective distance from the UK – is the nasty side of the British class system to which I have for all my life unconsciously subscribed, and at the times where I consciously put myself in a pigeon-hole it was for my own sense of superiority. I can’t at the moment articulate how I am feeling about the whole thing. I can’t quite reconcile my faith and my thoughts and my upbringing at the moment, it’s quite a weird situation to be in.

The race is not to the swift. The race is to those who remember their Creator in the days of their youth and who live for him from thence on. Read Ecclesiastes. It’s great. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes;&version=31;