It's the end of December everyone! Where did that year go?
So at this time of year I look back and celebrate the year. Usually with some favourite photos. People who have influenced me. Life events. Photos of holidays.
Let's start with the flippant stuff and then I will move on to the more serious stuff.
This year I went on holiday to France and Greece. The little island of Hydra off the Greek mainland was a dream. No cars, no motorised traffic. I met a monk riding a donkey who made me laugh on the way back down from Mount Eros !! He told me that he had taught his donkey to say CHEEZE.
Oh my goodness, I nearly forgot I also went to Barcelona all the way back in January. It was one of those excellent BA deals where you get a flight and hotel at a knock down rate to fill the empty hotels up in the Winter months. It worked because I went to escape the grey and hunt for a tiny ray of winter sunshine. I walked and walked the streets of Barcelona. Enjoyed the waterfront, admired the Gothic Cathedral. But my favourite discovery was a great hotel in a garden of trees and statues way up above the city. Drinks were very expensive but the outdoor heaters and soft chairs and view made up for it.
I also discovered my first painted pigeon which looked like some exotic bird that had escaped from a bird aviary but was actually a painted pigeon. And I found this amazing little marching lines of caterpillars!
The first quarter of the year unfolded with the normal TV escapism at the end of 5 long cold winter months. The sunny island of Corfu has kept me distracted for 3 or 4 years now. Hence I was very sad to watch the very last episode of The Durrells, especially as it didn't really leave me with any happy ending. But it was nice to see Peaslake and the cute little blue cottage where they play Jazz every August Bank Holiday at the Peaslake fair, featured as the cousins house in Dorset where Margot goes to stay.
( Photo Credit - The Durrells )
The Durrells may be over but fortunately I did get to be around Keely Hawes and Josh O Conner when Loseley swung into the season of filming which usually happens in the Spring before we open to the public. This year I watched the crew from Netflix film a tiny piece for the 3rd series of the The Crown. Josh - Larry in The Durrells starred as Prince Charles. I spent a day peering out of my window and watching him sitting on the back of a trailer carrying a car as it drove up and down the drive with a flying drone camera skimming down the tree line.
Also Hugh Grant and Matthew McConnaughy visited for a Guy Ritchie film called 'The Gentleman' where Loseley gets turned into the home of a drug dealer. There was some big scene down on the farm and I think a car might have been blown up !
Rebecca was also filmed here with Kristin Scott Thomas, Keely Hawes ( Mrs Durrell) and Lily James in lead roles. (By the way, found out Keely Hawes' second name is Julia and her birthday is in February. Hip hip hooray.)
Moving into the middle of the year, a momentous part of my summer was the final Port Eliot Festival. It was very poignant considering it might be the last ever.
( Photo Credit - Port Eliot Festival )
( Photo credit - Manger )
The people who have influenced me this year have shifted slightly. In 2017 I discovered Mimi Thorenson and her husband Odur and I have continued to watch their lives unfold as they bought a second home in Turin, Italy and continued cooking and photographing the most beautiful places in France and Italy and all of that glorious food.
I still occasionally keep an eye on Chateau Du Gudanes in the Pyrenees of Southern France as the Chateau continues to be restored.
( Photo credit - Chateau Du Gudanes )
At the end of 2018 and into 2019 it was Jamie Beck and her husband Kevin living in Provence and the birth of their daughter that captivated my creative attention.
( Photo credit - Ann Street Studio )
I have also continued to keep an eye on Jonna Jinton and her beautiful Swedish life in the middle of the Scandanavian wilderness .
( Photo Credit - Jonna Jinton )
Then towards the end of this year I discovered that Stephanie Jarvis who partially owns Chateau De La Lande has her own website with Blogs and Vlogs galore. So over the past week I have spent many happy hours being inspired to keep painting & keep dreaming. I watch Stephanie tottering around the grounds of her Chateau in fabulous clothes and high heels even when they are totally unpractical. It has inspired me to continue to live in community. Continue to appreciate beauty. Maybe even buy a Chateau with 2 of your best friends.
( Photo Credit - Chateau De Lalande )
She even has me thinking about discrete nude photography, enjoying and celebrating our bodies at whatever stage we are in life! Ok, now I expect there will be a few raised eyebrows.
Talking of all things feminine, I had fun this year with my girlfriends from church. And this has been accompanied by enjoying TBN's Better together. Wise Women and friendship at it's best.
As I may have mentioned before, being at my current church has lifted my head and given me fresh vision, energy and joy in my journey. It makes all the difference in the world to be in the right environment where you belong and can flourish. This year I have flourished and am so grateful to my church for feeding that growth.
First can I just celebrate the fact that every other person in my church is not British! Yes, does that surprise you? It shouldn't but it also should. Every Sunday I sit next to someone from another country. Ghana, South Africa, Holland, Poland, Australia, Kenya, Philippines, Brazil, Zimbabwe. That is one of the reasons I absolutely love my church. It represents the whole world. It is not a white middle class church.
Through spending time with some of the people that attend my church I have learned so much. I have a friend who never learnt to drive because they had a chauffeur and never needed to! I have a friend who has a husband who was released recently from prison and another one who has a warrant for her husbands restricted movements.
I have friends who enrich my life with their experience and insight coming from such different cultures. Someone I know from New Zealand is able to clearly see the problems that we the British have created for ourselves having come from a different culture. She knows what freedom she has come from and how restrictive our society can be.
My Kenyan friend grew up in a school where as well as reading and writing and maths, it was also important to learn how to sew herself a dress, be responsible for a little section of school ground and grow her own vegetables as well as tend to a few livestock. Now how amazing would that be if my kids were taught such practical skills!?
I have a friend who married an amazing man from Sri Lanka who hears clearly from God and is able to navigate the whole prophetic realm and regularly has to pray food into the fridge at the end of the month because the wages coming in are under the cost of living in Guidlford. An amazing couple. Living on the edge has been exhausting for her but also deeply rewarding.
( Photo credit - Hillsong Sisterhood )
Creativity and spirituality have continued to be tied together this year. One naturally flowing into the other.
( Picture Credit - Charlie Mackesy )
My appreciation of Charlie Mackesy has continued and I have enjoyed watching his Instagram drawings of a boy, a mole, a horse and a fox take escalate to the point where he was printing a book which has been awarded as book of the year at Waterstones !
I went to my first Davids tent. What can I say? Worship changes the atmosphere. It draws heaven down to earth. There is nothing like spending hours and hours soaking in His presence. If you have never done it, I challenge you, do it! You will never be the same again. This was definitely one of the best things I did all year.
( Photo Credit - Davids Tent )
It seems that we would all rather hear about our struggles and the harsh reality of living. We value empathy over flawless perfection. Looking back it was my blog posts on singleness that were the most popular blogs this year. I am glad that finally we are beginning to talk about the painful wait that many of us have been enduring while happily smiling and supporting friends and family who are moving through the normal life stages of marriage, kids and retirement. Through no choice of our own except a desire not to compromise, there are hundreds of us living under the weight of waiting!
In that spirit - If I am really honest much of 2019 has been marked by sickness and death. Terrible defeat and no real answers to the big question Why? At least I learnt the lesson a long time ago never to ask the question 'Why?' because it probably won't be answered this side of heaven. But in the midst of the painful reality I know He cares, He carries me, He is still in the centre of my WHY? And that gives me strength to carry on.
Earlier in the year Maury Carlisle's wife died of cancer a couple of months after giving birth to a precious child. Since she was pregnant when she found out she had cancer it was not safe for the baby for her to have any chemo. until after she gave birth. Not long after giving birth she died. Maury became a widowed single Dad with a little baby and other children to look after! WHY?
Another friend also found out she had cancer at roughly the same time she found out about her own unexpected pregnancy. Again no chemo until after giving birth but at least she is still alive. A mother to 3 children. And then just recently Sam Rice died.
For me 2019 has basically been consumed by my brothers brain bleed and lengthy 7 month slow recovery.
At the same time as my brothers brain bleed my cousin had aggressive breast cancer. This has resulted in a double mastectomy. Just recently a good friends husband had a stroke. As I said, lots of sickness and death in 2019. WHY? I have no answers to that question.
I have watched this happen and lived through the days, weeks and months of supporting others in their pain. Yet personally in 2019 it has been a rather weird year of God ordering my steps and causing me to have several divine encounters. At the end of last year I wrote this ...
' Get ready for a miraculous year in 2019. It's about to get interesting. Keep your eyes & ears open. Glory is coming our way. Signs and wonders. Bring it on.'
Sounds over the top but it was bang on correct. I was right in what I wrote.
2019 has been personally marked by some unusual encounters. I have been forewarned of things in dreams. I have had my steps ordered so that I have been in just the right place at the right time to meet people who I never knew were coming my way. People who I never would have met if I had been just 5 minutes later or earlier. People who I would never have met if I chose a different train carriage. 3 people who came and knocked on my door! God knows my address. It is incredible to live through some of these things. People came with messages, people sent to help, people sent to point me to heaven. These were events I could never have manipulated into occurring. Unusual, unexpected encounters. Things that made me wonder. Things that left me in awe. Things that were so extraordinary that I was stopped in my tracks and had to acknowledge ... this was God. There was a $50 dollar note that showed up with my Christmas card and let my cousin know... In God We Trust!
I will not retell any more of them, except for one. This year I met myself, a second Julia Stevens, also a writer and lover of Jesus, roughly the same age, married to Matthew and living in Farnham. When we first started talking in a crowd of people and I introduced myself and she introduced herself, I thought she might be slightly muddled. I said I was Julia Stevens and she said No, she was Julia Stevens. And I said, no please tell me your name. Thats my name. And she said seriously, I am Julia Stevens. She said she wrote books and I said, so do I. And I said I wrote my first book about Namibia and she said she wrote her first piece about travel as well. And she was the speaker that night. And her good friend Simone invited her and I have a good friend named Simona!! It was such a strange conversation. She talked about praying for the sick in Exeter and I said, but I've just come back from Exeter this weekend.
As I said, this was just one of multiple occasions this year where I have been forced to stop in my tracks and ask the question ... What is going on here? What does this mean? Are you trying to tell me something God? How on earth did this happen? There is absolutely no way I could have made that happen.
So I was right, 2019 has been full of signs and wonders that have made me marvel and left me in awe.
As you read this I will be heading off to Devon for Christmas and then the Lake District for a New Years Eve Murder mystery evening and plenty of hiking possibly in the snow.
And next year I have determined will be my year of Jubilee. As I will be 49 years old but entering my 50th year on earth. I have declared this to be a year of celebration and dreams coming true and I shall be wearing lots of green to mark 2020.
Psalm 126
When the Lord brought back the captives who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream it seemed so unreal.
Then were our mouths filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing. Then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.
The Lord has done great things for us! We are glad!
Turn to freedom our captivity and restore our fortunes O Lord, as the streams in the South, the Negev, are restored by the torrents.
They who sow in tears shall reap with joy and singing.
He who goes forth bearing seed and weeping at needing his precious supply of grain for sowing shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
I believe 2020 is going to be a very significant year marked by justice. I look forward to reviewing how this unfolds at the end of 2020.
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