M1

There's something about being back at home that just inspires me to write. Perhaps it's something to do with being back in the place where a lot of my dreams were born, where I first learnt to share and externalise my thoughts, and later learnt how to internalise them too... I think it is also possibly to do with the journey I make to get here. Three hours down the M1 may not ordinarily strike me as something inspiring, but oddly enough, for me, every single time it is!

I remember the first time I made the journey from Farnham to Leicester, when my Dad drove me up to begin my first term of my first year. Five years later, and that journey has changed me. Whilst the route has not altered, the scenery has changed, and so has the person making that journey. When my Dad used to drive me up, my favourite part of the journey was when we reached Northamptonshire, because at some point (and I've never quite worked out where it is, except I recognise it when we're near it) we pass an expanse of open countryside, and on the right hand side there an old farm building in the middle of a field.

I remember the first time I saw it, an old red-bricked, red-roofed single storey building, with a roof that looked not dissimilar to the kind of sloping (about to fall off) roof that you might make for a gingerbread house, the kind where the gingerbread is too soft to hold itself upright, so it caves a little in the middle. Well, anyway, it looked a bit like that, the edges of the roof not quite meeting the walls in some places. the next time we passed it, on the way back from Leicester a few months later, the roof had slipped further away from the walls at the corners, some of the tiles had fallen off, and cracks were beginning to show in the walls. Over the years, the cracks have got wider, the tiles have continued to slide off until there is almost no roof left, and little green tufts have begun to show themselves through the holes in the roof. It is like that dilapidated, unused and forgotten old building is being brought to life. As the original structure slowly crumbles into insignificance, wild saplings, shrubs and climbing plants have made it their home. Now when you look at it, it resembles more of a very cramped walled garden. And before long, the walls will give way under the weight of the greenery, and what was once a building will become a copse in the middle of a field.

This to me has been hugely significant over the years, on a quiet, rarely mentioned level, except to my Dad, who, every time we passed it would have to put up with me pointing out this dilapidated, forgotten old farmhouse. I'm not sure what attracted me to it originally - I suppose I find beauty in things which appear to be long forgotten. And there seemed to be something incredibly soulish about this place. Not much to look at in itself, to me it represents a great deal. It speaks to me of my life, of who I was five years ago before I started my studies. Over the years I have seen that building change in ways that I know I have done so too. Ok, so I haven't fallen apart or been taken over by climbing plants, but I have learnt, and had to surrender many of the ideals and attitudes that I started out with. I have learnt to be broken by the love of God, and made completely vulnerable before him. I have also learnt that the power of his love has been renewing me, tearing down the walls that I have put up between myself and him, and allowing him to make me come alive by the power of his Holy Spirit. I have never felt so content, so at ease, so simply and wonderfully alive as I do right now. And whilst I will miss that old red-bricked building by the M1, I know I won't need it on my journeys anymore...