Thoughts about sunburn

Who is Nat?

My name is Natalie Husk, although most people call me Nat (except my parents!). I was born and raised in Cornwall and am proud of it! I have always been involved in the church, whether going to my local village chapel in Common Moor, joining with bus loads from Cornwall at MAYC events, helping at the District Children’s Holiday or even attending Synod a few times! I am very thankful to the Cornwall District, the Liskeard & Looe Circuit and of course Common Moor chapel for being such valuable parts in my journey of faith.

Today I live in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, where I work as a youth worker for the Methodist Church. I run after school clubs, youth clubs, a youth fellowship, do outreach work and organise trips away. Not long ago I was asked by a youth group, to give them a weekly topic for reflection, an email containing something to focus them on God for the week. So every week I sit at my computer and write down my thoughts! It started quite small, with just the young people receiving them, and now lots of people of all ages find my thoughts in their email inbox!

It is a huge privilege for me to find that people enjoy and are challenged by what I have written, especially that I can now share what God has done for me with those who walked with me at the beginning of my journey. Ultimately these reflections are aimed at the young people I now work with, but if God can speak to others through them, how great is that!!

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December
Advice
I Love You

November
38. Bald is beautiful
37. Fire
36 Sleep
35 Music

October 2006
34. Stupidity
33. Painting
32. mmm Pasties
31. Built to last
30. Phlegm

September 2006
29. Meetings
28. Crime thoughts
27. Colours
26. Unwanted guests

August 2006
25. Comparison
24. Waterproof Mascara
23. Tasty MSG
22. Helplessness

July 2006
21. Attraction
20. Hair
19. Hero
18. Laughter
17. Factoids

June 2006
16. Voiceless
15. Bruises (ouch)
14. Sunburn
13. Mistakes

May 2006
12. Arms
11. Willow Tree
10. Eurovision
9. Chicken
8. Addictions

April 2006
7. Age
6. Celebrities
5. Language

March 2006
4. Commonwealth Games
3. Decisions
2. Drizzle
1. Trelawney

Sunburn

Hello you,

I have feet the size of watermelons! Not usually, just right now. It is quite embarrassing, but I feel better for sharing it!

You see at the weekend I went to Scarborough, to the beach. I had never been before (which around here seems to be a sin!) and so when a friend invited me I thought why not? The best thing about it was that we were taking a kid to the beach – don’t panic, not a random child, but my friend’s nephew. Yay! Now we had a reason to build sandcastles, dig holes, jump over the waves and generally mess about!

We had a great day which we finished off with the obligatory fish and chips- mmm, they somehow taste better eaten by the sea! As we sat munching away I started to feel really hot on my feet. Oh no! My feet were sunburnt. As I shared this tragedy, (I mean, who gets sunburnt feet?!) it turned out that my friend had caught the sun on her thighs. It seemed we weren’t as good at applying sun cream as we thought! At this point, rather smugly, the 7 year old we’d dragged along with us, piped up. “I thought you said we had to put sun cream on all over?” As you can imagine he was a glorious shade of pale.

You see it was one of those, ‘do as I say and not as I do’ moments. We had made sure the child knew exactly what to do and yet the responsible adults had failed to fully follow their own advice. The fact is we are human (no surprise there!) and we are not perfect (again looking at my life, not that surprising either!). we have all these good intentions and we know what we should do, but it doesn’t always work out that way. As a youth worker I feel a huge responsibility to live up to the ideal that I would like to portray, but guess what, I’m always going to fail in some way. But far from being depressing news, I actually think this is great news…

…because there is hope, because there is Jesus. We don’t have to work it all out for ourselves but we can follow the example of the greatest role model of all time, the one person who is never hypocritical and who definitely practiced what he preached. So as I sit with my feet in cold water, I thank Jesus that He is far more reliable than I am, and I once again pledge to try to follow his lead. Now where does it say in the Bible about sunburn….!

Have a good one, and don't forget that suncream! Nat xxx