I’m kinda way trying to write about everything in the right sort of order, and next on the list is http://www.beautifulfeetbelfast.org. Mark Spence coined the name a year ago (otherwise known as the Big Soup Pot Thing – based on the wee prayer room thing – get it?  Oh never mind), and after discussing it together, the mad group that is Beautiful Feet Belfast abandoned the wprt domain name, and Ryan Mitchell designed us a new website, which is rather nice.   I won’t talk about the content, because I’m necessarily biased (ie I wrote it).

Tonight we go out on the streets again to feed homeless people, and just hang out with them.  We don’t know how many are coming, unfortunately, but all we need is three people, and I’m pretty sure we have that many.  If we have seven or eight, we can split up into two groups, but we don’t like fewer than three people for safety reasons.

On our rounds, we regularly bump into the people from Homeplus, a charity working with homeless people in North and central Belfast.  The biggest difference is that we can offer more time than Homeplus, even though we’ve seen them hang out with homeless people for upwards of 15 minutes before moving on to their next hangout, but the big thing that Homeplus do that we simply can’t even try to do is clothe people, give them sleeping bags if they’re sleeping on the street, and get them to hospital.  They and the Welcome Centre (near St Peter’s – not to be confused with the Touristy place in Donegall Place), together with other groups, do an amazing job just looking out for these people, in all weathers, and all days of the week.  I can’t help but be totally humbled by what they do.

In turn, they’re never shy to offer us help and advice.  They know that we’re Christians, but we’re not out preaching, simply trying to make people feel valued, and offer them our time together with a few rolls and some soup – although we will talk about Jesus, his love, and why precisely we’re out serving people every Tuesday night to anyone.  I think they respect this, that we’re determined not to give homeless outreach organisations a bad reputation, and that we’re more than willing to let them take the lead when we bump into them.  We’re not out until the next week, they’re out the next night, and like I say, that’s pretty amazing.

Tonight, like every other Tuesday night, we head out to pray our way round the City Centre and out to Botanic Avenue and back. Remember us and pray for what God can do through us, that we will let him get on with it.

This is the list – the things I want in my wife, from the deepest part of my heart.

A woman.
A Christian woman.
A Christian woman deeply in love with Jesus.
A woman who will share journeys with me, with whom I can walk, who supports me and whom I will support.
A woman with the intelligence and brains to argue and discuss effectively with me.
A woman who will complement me and whom I will complement.
A woman who loves with all her heart.
A woman whose inner beauty shines through her.
A woman I can be really proud to call my wife, because of the sum of what God has made her.
A woman with a really big heart.
A woman whose past will no longer matter.
A woman who will accept me as I really am, with whom I will not have to pretend I am anything else.
A woman who doesn't smoke, and never drinks to excess.
A woman I will delight in and thank God for every time I think of her, wake up beside her, or do anything with her.
A woman with whom I will share a relationship as deep as we can handle.
And above all, the woman who is God's best match for me in the whole world!

Love is a strange thing.

Part of the reason for my silence over such a long time is that in many ways, I’m still coming to terms with my relatively recent past and my present. I’m not a happy person at all, big grin or not.

I’ve been single for just over two years now, and apart from losing a year altogether to mourning that loss, one of my biggest regrets is that I haven’t had the privilege of meeting my wife.

Suddenly out of almost nowhere, i’m beginning to make sense of it all and figure out some truth that is going from head knowledge to heart knowledge about God and his plans for me.  And figuring out how to forgive rejection, which I have suffered in many forms over the 35 years of my life.

Part of the problem is the Northern Ireland expectation that people will be “just fine” and “good little boys and girls”.  We never are.  We are broken people, with broken lives, who sometimes just need people to stand with them, and tell us that not only does Jesus love us, they love us too.

And sometimes that just has to be enough.

One day I will meet my wife.  I’ve made a list of what I’m looking for, which i will post another day, and it’s all internal.  Everything I REALLY want in my heart of hearts, never mind what else I might like, is internal.

But for now, all I can do is wait.  I’ll continue to be frustrated, I’ll continue to be lonely, but I’ll wait.  And I will trust God to help me deal with whatever comes my way, and ask him to make sure I call on his help instead of doing things my way and crashing and burning.

Should anyone read this who is in touch with a certain ex-girlfriend of mine, please tell Mrs White that I pray all God’s most amazing blessings on her and her husband and on their marriage; I wish them many many years of happiness, and pray that as they grow older, they will love each other more and more, finding in each other the true soulmate, lover, friend, companion, and much more, that they have been seeking all their lives.

My day with my wife, whom I will honour in a way that I have failed to honour my ex-girlfriends, will come.