Seeing God through the ruins

When I was a little girl, every time an adult bent down to ask me, “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” I would answer, “I’m going to be a writer.”

I never said, “I quite fancy being a writer” nor yet, “Well, you know, this being the nineteen seventies, I could be a writer if the nursing or teaching or housewifeing doesn’t work out.” No. I seemed to have a definite career goal and clearly did not yet know about the many obstacles and stumbling blocks which would be strewn in my way.

At Sunday school, we sang songs about Jesus loving us whatever we looked like, being like lamps in corners and other popular choruses which sparked beautiful pictures in my busy little brain. I knew I was loved by someone I couldn’t see and this seemed perfectly normal. The Bible stories our teachers told us were great - who wouldn’t be gripped by the tale of a chap being swallowed by a whale and spending three days in its belly before being vomited out on to dry land? Rural West Essex was short on such thrilling events, but I never doubted the veracity of these stories for a minute.

But as it always does, life intervened. My unshakeable belief in a kindly God who loved me took a battering. Grammar school was a place where I didn’t fit in and I turned my back on church, God and the whole shebang. At twenty-six, I found my way back to faith, but it hasn’t been an easy journey.

Aged around fourteen, I decided that dreams were for other people, and that mine was simply pie in the sky. God had other plans. In 2008, when I was heavily pregnant with child number three and running a catering business, He sent me my first freelance writing job in the Christian charity sector.

Do you remember that feeling on Christmas morning when you awoke, early, and saw your stocking full of presents? That still, expectant hush over the house? The feeling of unabated joy? Multiply that by about a million (hyperbole, but I am a writer, after all) and you have the feeling I got when I secured that first job.

God knew. He knew that I was going to struggle with all kinds of things, to have to work hard to achieve what I wanted, that He was going to have to whisper reassurance to me in a still, small voice over and over until I began to understand.

Last month, I went on a retreat day at the RM hub at Clare Priory, Suffolk. It was wonderful. I sat and listened, shared, prayed and soaked in the beauty of the place. Jo Allen and I walked in the garden looking at the ruined stone walls and the window arches and I thought to myself, “The people who lived here must have had dreams just like me, and watched as they crumbled, or didn’t come true. How did they cope?”

I’ve cried out to God so many times on my walk with Him. I haven’t always heard His answer, nor got the one I wanted. But walking around Clare Priory, a thin place if ever there was one, I was reminded of the way He has always been there. He planted that seed of creativity in me before I was born and now, decades later, it is blossoming. In just the same way, people born centuries before me lived and worshipped at the Priory and called out to Him for help and guidance. It was a sobering yet uplifting thought.

God has bestowed on me far more than I ever asked for as a trusting child. He’s given me the opportunity to write for a living, to share Jesus with people I’ll never meet, to make up stories that travel around the world and shine a light in dark places. Writing for Rural Ministries gives me the opportunity to reach back into my memory of growing up in a place where everyone knew everyone else, where neighbours were friends and church was a safe place. It’s wonderful to have the privilege of interviewing missional listeners, ministers, community workers and everyone who is being salt and light in the rural context.

Is it easy? No. Am I sure and certain of my path? Not always. But these words come back to me again and again, and I hope you will find them as encouraging as I do.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.  (Joshua 1:9.) 

Ruth Leigh

Guest contributor

Ruth is a Christian author, freelancer and editor of RM's MOSAIC Magazine.