...lovely Kath time...

I was passing by Co-op one day in Goring, just after I’d got back, when that old music teacher, Kath, I’d spoken to about my dad so long ago at school appeared in the window about to do some photo-copying. I knocked on the window and went inside to get my hug. We arranged to meet up and I think I probably went round to hers that week.

She’s a Christian, and a Kiwi so she wanted to hear all about where I’d been and what I’d been up to. She listened excitedly to everything I had to say and asked question about this place and that. Suddenly I had this overwhelming urge to open up to her and I cried quite a lot in the times we met up. Although the travelling had been an amazing experience, that was all it was, an experience. I wanted a new life, I wanted answers to the questions that hadn’t been answered about why the world is how it is, I wanted contentment, direction, meaning...
I went back week after week to chat with Kath and we talked about my family, my friends, my questions, my life, just about anything… and she just listened and genuinely cared. I loved going round there to see her and she was always so welcoming and so helpful in the little she had to say. I asked question after question about God and why she believed in him etc. and I found it absolutely fascinating and had even more questions come up. Although I’d heard stuff about Jesus before from school, I didn’t know anything about what Christians believe in. I remember feeling sorry for Kath so many times listening about her belief in this Jesus guy and thinking how stupid she must be and how desperate to believe in something that for me was so impossible and so blatantly made up.

I remember one day though, when I was round her house, looking out her window and thinking how beautiful the sea was and how far it goes on, just how huge the world was and just how much I didn‘t know about it. We started talking about security and I realised that I didn’t really have any REAL security, and when Kath said that she did, I wanted it! I realised that my family, my money, my body, my ability, my friends, my life… could all vanish in an instant! What did I actually have that I could hold on to? In reality there was nothing!