Nine weeks ago a dear friend decided to begin teaching me how to cook. Our first dish? Schnitzel!

https://instagram.com/p/4SDWKnJqlt/?taken-by=aoifekeegan

Dust the meat with flour, dip into the beaten egg mixture, and press in the flavoured bread-crumb mixture before frying in butter… delicious! My favourite part comes before all of this though: covering the meat in clingfilm before beating it with a meat hammer. There are few things more satisfying than the rhythmic thump thump thump of the hammer pounding the flesh into a uniform thickness.

Life feels a bit like that sometimes. No escape from the relentless thump thump thump of circumstances. Last week our leadership team had to tackle a difficult situation which required wisdom and outside help. It brought me back to events five years ago that battered my heart so hard it took years for it to dare come out of hiding again.

I was surprised at how readily those old fears and anxieties came flooding back. Continue reading →

Wake up eyes open phone beeping new notification- oh crap- 8 new notifications bleary eyed reading before I get out of bed into shower reading phone as I head down the stairs pause on the last step to answer an email breakfast can wait porridge in the microwave empty the dishwasher microwave beeps phone beeps can we postpone our appointment what appointment? the appointment due 2 hours ago oh Lord… head like sieve apologise profusely eat cold porridge check all the boxes who do I need to call back? who do I need to double check appointments with? where’s my passport? write new prayer update can’t remember what’s happened, check calendar- was that last week? it seems like yesterday and months ago simultaneously what’s next what’s now what’s- new message please pray urgent hopeless pain tears confusion why, God, why- Continue reading →

I posted this quote recently. If the number of “likes” is any indicator, it touched a lot of hearts.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” Henri Nouwen Continue reading →

These past few weeks I have been Ruth Haley Barton’s “Sacred Rhythms“. Usually I read books fairly quickly and make a decision whether or not I’m interested enough to finish the whole thing. This week I have read and re-read Barton’s chapter on “Encountering God through Lectio Divina”. It’s pulling at me and I don’t want to be moved away from it. Continue reading →

You know when God tells you the same thing a few times in the space of a few hours?

Last night I had a massage appointment with a client who was having a lot of tension in her back and neck. I shared with her that many of us have tension in our shoulders because we try to carry a “yoke” that doesn’t belong to us (see Matthew 11:28-30). Steve Murrell recently wrote a blog post about how sometimes the Spirit leads us where we don’t want to go. Then this morning my Bible reading was from Deuteronomy 9. Continue reading →

Names.

Birth name or nickname, names give us significance. They set us apart from others, sometimes with hilarious results!

At home in Ireland, my name, Aoife (pronounced EE-fah), is a fairly common one. Abroad, however, it’s positively exotic. Visiting Starbucks in London became an adventure. Every time I ordered my tall latte the barista would pick up the cup, pen in hand and ask the question:

“What’s your name?”

At first, I always took the time to spell it out correctly. Continue reading →