Christmas has definitely come this weekend. We have collected our Christmas tree which is currently in the back garden sitting in a bucket of water ready to be erected and decorated next Saturday.

After collecting the tree we visited a large garden centre in Maidstone with the children to look for some new additions to our decorations. That was a downfall as the children and Sarah decided that they wished to but a fibreoptic skiing snowman which is now tastelessly flashing outside my front door. I suppose I should apply my ‘be like children’ post from a few days ago and smile at ‘Frosty’ as I come home like every other member of my family does.

Sadly it looks like Frosty’s arms have stopped moving so guess who has to return to maidstone tomorrow with a 3 foot snowman under his arm!

In the evening we joined friends, Lucy, Heath, Charlotte and John for a great time, fantastic food (thanks loads Heath) and good red wine. It was good, after such a busy week, to just relax and be with people who you knew you could just be yourself with. It was a great time to end a Saturday.

This afternoon Rachel and Emily joined us for lunch. They are part of D2 which is Gillingham YFC’s creative arts team. They have both become good friends and it was just nice chilling with them on a Sunday afternoon.

So cool to have a weekend where you can just chill with people you like to chill with!

I have just got home from church with the children as they wanted to see the teenage girls group from church, Girls of God, perform a dance, drama and song. I mention is as I am sitting here totally amazed at the bravery of one of the girls in particular.

Sarah is just 18 and her mum recently, in the last few weeks, died of cancer. In a talk she shared how she had felt, how on her birthday she deliberately went out and got drunk and puked in the loo blaming God as she knew mum would die in the next few days. The whole church was close to tears as this young girl honestly and bravely shared her thoughts and struggles. She shared how she did not know how she would have survived without God. She shared how she would not cope without her Christian friends. She shared how she would have found it impossible without her church.

I find it incredible that anyone can show such courage when the emotions must be still so very raw. I was challenged particularly by the importance she placed on her Christian friends and she mentioned particularly little things like a text at a key time. Who would believe something that took 30 seconds to write and send could have such a profound effect. Who could believe 30 seconds could make such a difference to someone’s life? For this young person I am so glad that someone took that brief time to show her love.

This challenged me particularly to think about how I use by time, those odd minutes here and there, and I have to ask myself if there are people I could be encouraging and supporting by using them. I quite often say I want to make a difference in people’s lives – maybe its a lot easier than I have been thinking.