Just one step at a time

Check out the Birthday Calendar for some interesting - and not so interesting - facts and trivia about yourself.

Your date of conception was on or about 23 August 1976 which was a Monday.

You were born on a Monday under the astrological sign Taurus.
Your Life path number is 9.

Your fortune cookie reads:
When you speak honestly and openly, others truly listen to you.

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 3, 6 & 9.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 1 & 5.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 7 & 11.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 4, 8 & 22.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2443279.5.
The golden number for 1977 is 2.
The epact number for 1977 is 10.
The year 1977 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/18/1977 and ending 2/6/1978.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Snake.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Beaver; your plant is Wild Clover.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Epipy, the third month of the season of Shomu (Harvest).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 28 Iyyar 5737.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 29 Iyyar 5737.

The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.18.3.15.15 which is
12 baktun 18 katun 3 tun 15 uinal 15 kin

The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Monday, 27 Jumadiyu’l-Avval 1397 (1397-5-27).

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 23 February 1977.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 29 May 1977.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 5 June 1977.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 13 September 1977.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Sunday, 3 April 1977.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 22 February 1977.

As of 7/18/2008 5:20:38 PM EDT
You are 31 years old.
You are 374 months old.
You are 1,626 weeks old.
You are 11,386 days old.
You are 273,281 hours old.
You are 16,396,880 minutes old.
You are 983,812,838 seconds old.

Celebrities who share your birthday:

Tori Spelling (1973)	David Boreanaz (1971)	Gabriela Sabatini (1970)
Tracey Gold (1969)	Janet Jackson (1966)	Olga Korbut (1955)
Debra Winger (1955)	Pierce Brosnan (1953)	Bob Edwards (1947)
Liberace (1919)	Henry Fonda (1905)	William Seward (1801)

Top songs of 1977

You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone	Best of My Love by Emotions
I Just Want to Be Your Everything by Andy Gibb	How Deep Is Your Love by Bee Gees
Evergreen (from ‘A Star Is Born’) by Barbra Streisand	Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder
Torn Between Two Lovers by Mary MacGregor	Rich Girl by Daryl Hall & John Oates
Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band by Meco	Got to Give It Up by Marvin Gaye

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 4.45636007827789 years old. (You’re still chasing cats!)

Your lucky day is Friday.
Your lucky number is 6.
Your ruling planet(s) is Venus.
Your lucky dates are 6th, 15th, 24th.
Your opposition sign is Scorpio.
Your opposition number(s) is 9 & 11.

Today is not one of your lucky days!

There are 302 days till your next birthday on which your cake will have 32 candles.

Those 32 candles produce 32 BTUs,
or 8,064 calories of heat (that’s only 8.0640 food Calories!) .
You can boil 3.66 US ounces of water with that many candles.

Your birthstone is Emerald

The Mystical properties of Emerald
Though not meant to replace traditional medical treatment, Emerald is used for physical and emotional healing.
Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)
Agate, Chrysoprase

Your birth tree is Chestnut Tree, the Honesty
Of unusual beauty, does not want to impress, well-developed sense of justice, vivacious, interested, a born diplomat, but irritable and sensitive in company, often due to a lack of self-confidence, acts sometimes superior, feels not understood, loves only once, has difficulties in finding a partner.

There are 160 days till Christmas 2008!
There are 173 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon’s phase on the day you were born was waning crescent.

Some small goals for the next few weeks.

• Go to a pilates class by 22 July.
• Go to St John Ambulance meeting on 22 July to see if I want to become a volunteer
• Talk to vicar about approaching Street Pastors to become involved in the new team being set up in my area
• Apply for job at Refugee Council (deadline 21 July)

I think that’s probably enough for now!

Thanks, everyone, for all your supportive and encouraging comments. I’m actually feeling OK at the moment. I think I might be a little high - the pills can make you a bit hyper at first. But I think also, it’s the relief of finally, after years of struggling, holding my hands up and saying “I can’t cope!”

And the doctor has validated it. Which now gives me permission to say to people that I’m depressed, sometimes I just can’t cope and need to take a time out, or talk it through. Why it took burning myself to do that, I don’t know! Putting safety nets in after you’ve fallen off is great for when you get back up again, but would have helped if they’d been in place the first time. Still, at least they’re being set up now.

I’m also high I think from passing some of the burden over to others. The doctor is taking control of some of this. Friends are praying and being supportive. I don’t have to fight it all on my own. In fact, I don’t have to fight it at all: I just have to face it and deal with it. And with counselling, I will deal with the issues. How I get past the feeling that I’m not worthy of anything, and hence why it’s taken me so long to get help. Why I think I’m unattractive and undesirable, and that the only way to get a guy is to sleep with him. Why I beat myself up everytime I “fail” at something, or make a mistake. Why I worry endlessly about things that might never happen.

Someone asked in one of the comments what has been happening with my spiritual direction. Honestly - nothing dramatic. Just little things that help me to realise that even if I might struggle to believe (and I think I need father’s prayer of Mark 9:24 “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”), God is still there.

Need to try and sleep now, otherwise if I can’t, after a few nights I’m going to need to crack open my emergency diazepam. Which I’m keeping for emergencies only. Which will hopefully mean I’ll never need them!

Jim Wallis was over here in the UK, and I’m very grateful a friend let me know he would be talking a church.co.uk about his new book Seven Ways to Change the World.

A few nuggets. He didn’t tell us the 7 ways, and although I bought the book, I’ve not got that far, having found a bunch of friends there too, so went to the pub after.

• When asked what had been the things that had got him most into trouble: Going the places you’re not supposed to go, particularly as a white, middle class Christian. Walking past those invisible ‘No Trespassing!’ signs.
• The 2 big hungers in this world are for spirituality and social action. And the movement that combines both of this will set the world on fire.
• People will get excited about this different kind of faith.
• We’re not to just ignore bad news. Revival is the good news for bad news.
• Politics is broken.
• The most effective social movements - Great Awakenings - have happened when politics has failed to address a major social injustice, and have always had a spiritual foundation.
• Faith is what moves the mountains that are the seemingly impossible social injustices: poverty, trafficking, climate change, racial injustice, and so on.
• Social change requires commitment from each one of us. We need to start in our own lives, lead in our communities and that will make a difference on a bigger scale.
• It takes time. Wilberforce put his first Bill forward 9 times, and it took another 30 years before the slave trade itself was made illegal.
• Charles Finney ‘invented’ the altar call; and got each new Christian to sign up to the anti-slavery movement there and then.
• God needs to be real and personal to sustain the commitment and faith that moves mountains.
• Hope is a choice. Cynicism comes from unsuccessful attempts to bring about a change, but instead of persisting, cynicism gives up and declares nothing can ever change.
• Hope means believing in spite of the evidence. Then watching the evidence change.
• Bad religion calls out of us our bad stuff. We’ve seen a lot of bad religion. We want to see more good religion, which calls out of us our good stuff: compassion, action and so on..

Oh, and I didn’t realise he was married to the REAL Vicar of Dibley, one of the first women to be ordained in the UK, who went on to advise Richard Curtis and Dawn French on the show.

Had an amazing week. Have had a hectic weekend. Shall update on my holiday during the week.

I’m going to Glasgow for the week for a holiday. Just me. Got some plans and am going on a sea plane tour. Very excited!

There was something I wanted to write but I forget what it was. I guess it wasn’t that important.

Update

Insane! How do people get this drunk/crazed/angry?

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It’s been an odd weekend. Last night we found out about the death of an 8-year-old boy from our community.

Today this turned everybody’s journey to church into a nightmare - the 7 minute journey became 20 minutes after the police cordoned off half a mile of the Holloway Road.

We had our final church service at the church hall, the processed across to our sister church. And got in the way of all those people who’d been diverted off the Holloway Road. We were led by the Bishop and 2 of the teenagers who were carrying the cross across apparently got into a bit of a barney. And they were next to the Bishop.

Then we had our annual parish meeting and ratified the election of the new PCC (I’m still on it).

And all through the weekend I’ve been very much under the weather, having been off work Thursday and Friday with a nasty sore throat, cough and temperature.

And tomorrow I have to get up early for a physio appointment about my wrists.

So I’ll be going back to work for a bit of a rest!

a·li·en

adj.

1. Owing political allegiance to another country or government; foreign: alien residents.

2. Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange. (Synonym: foreign.)

3. Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature: emotions alien to her temperament.

n.

1. An unnaturalized foreign resident of a country. Also called noncitizen.

2. A person from another and very different family, people, or place.

3. A person who is not included in a group; an outsider.

4. A creature from outer space: a story about an invasion of aliens.

5. Ecology An organism, especially a plant or animal, that occurs in or is naturalized in a region to which it is not native.

tr.v. a·li·ened, a·li·en·ing, a·li·ens Law

To transfer (property) to another; alienate.

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[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin - other.]

I’ve never gone quite this far, but have been tempted on occasions. I understand why people do it. Sometimes things hurt inside so much that you need to mask the pain. Some people drink. Some people take drugs. Some people have sex. Others keep fit. Others diet or overeat.

There’s also an element of self-despising. When you don’t value yourself, you can’t see that you’re made in God’s image. You can’t see that you need to respect yourself, and that part of respecting yourself it keeping yourself fit and healthy (not going to extremes). Part of if is about relationships as well. You think you don’t deserve to be in a relationship, so do things to yourself which make you ashamed, keep you away from relationships. It’s a coping mechanism. Of sorts. And it backfires.

But then it becomes a habit. And habits are hard to break.

Images: The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus