An Introduction

For so long I thought I was doomed to singleness for the rest for the rest of my life. People tried to tell me otherwise, but I didn't believe them. A long time ago, I stopped believing it would change, as I saw many of my friends start relationships and get married, some of whom now have children. I began to find contentment in my singleness and I aimed to get to know God better. I began to realise that my relationship with Him was more important than any of my other relationships. I don't remember actually making the decision, it just happened. I was content and happy in being single, despite the pressures of the world around me (I'll post my findings on that at a later date).

Last week, a friend came to visit me in the Netherlands and left yesterday evening. It's safe to say he didn't stay just a friend for very long. So this post is me introducing my boyfriend, Andy, to you. I never thought this would happen and I couldn't be happier. I know you're all very curious about how Andy and I met and what the future holds for us. We're both doing the same internship, Impact, but with different churches and in different countries. Thankfully there's social media and fast internet, so we've been able to keep in contact, which makes this long distance relationship a little easier. Over the last three months or so we've been in contact on an almost daily basis and when Andy was over here he asked my dad if we could go out, which my dad gave his blessing to.

The future is still uncertain and might be announced in more detail on this blog at some point in the future. We're still talking about what's going to happen next and we would prefer not to do it on the world's stage. To be honest, I'm only writing this here because I'm sure many of you are curious about where we want this to go and want to know about it. The reason this has been kept so quiet is because we wanted to talk to my parents first and that's why it hasn't been posted online before (we also wanted to surprise the other impacters). All I'm going to say is that you're gonna have to wait and see where this goes.

Music

I've loved music for as long as I can remember. Beyond my relationship with God, music has been one of those things that has really helped me with getting through some rough times. Having been through a lot in my life up to this point, some of which has been effected negatively by my choice of music at the time, I've become a lot fussier about what I listen to. My time in boarding school, for example, I know that part of the reason I was struggling so much with depression was effected by the music I was listening to. I don't want to go down that road again so I've forced my taste in music to become more... refined.

A few years back some good friends of mine bought me an iPod Classic (pictured) and its become something that goes everywhere with me, like my iPhone. It took me a few months to realise that my iPhone 6 couldn't handle having any amount of music on it along with the other stuff I had on it (photos and apps). In the end my old iPhone was too clogged up to even store more than 200 photos on it. Thankfully my new iPhone has considerably more space on it than my old one did, though I'm not planning to save any music onto it (except, maybe on Spotify), because I have more music than current free space on my iPhone. I guess that says how much music I have. The reason I have the iPod is for music.

Now you're probably wondering what the reason is behind why I'm sharing this with you. It's because I thought it would be interesting. There are certain things that play a big part in my life, like my music and my photography, and I know I've written about my photography before but not so much about my music.

Life Is For The Living

Life is a gift that we so often take for granted. I've realised, more and more, how precious life is and how I've been taking it for granted.

Spring is coming and the world is slowly warming up. I've been watching how the effect of the sun on the plants around me. I normally bike to work each day and I've been watching how the plants and trees are slowly growing new leaves and flowers. I love it. I love spring for the beauty of new life. It's something I took for granted when I lived in Uganda. It was always hot out there and I took that for granted. As Europe emerges from winter's cold grip, I can't help but look forwards to long days and a lot of sunshine. I love the sun's warmth.

Now, what does this have to do with my life? Well, we all have seasons of darkness, winter, in our lives and I feel like I've finally started coming out of a season of deep winter. It's something that taken a few months of slow progress, basically since January, but I'm a lot happier now than I was back in November, when I had depression. People all seem to have assumptions and ideas about the reasons why I'm so much happier. I think part of the reason for this change is that I've started going back to the gym on a slightly more regular basis than I have been. The weather has also heated enough to leave my winter jacket at home when I head to the office... I'm not sure how long this beautiful weather is going to last for but I'm taking full advantage of it. I'm one of those people who is affected by the weather and the amount of sunlight that I can soak up and how long the days are. Given that the clocks have been moved forwards by an hour (on Sunday 26 March) and this has really had a good effect on me.

I'll write again soon.

Do take a moment to fill in this survey in for me. It would be interesting to see what your thoughts are on the changes I've been making over the last few months. I'm planning to close the survey by the time I leave for Spain on 23 April.