I’ve had a very nice weekend and I hope you have as well! 

Friday night me and my friend Lena were responsible for preparing the  fika at the young adult meeting at Kafé Station (the café downtown that my church owns), fika is a very good swedish word for drinking coffee or tea (or some other non-alcoholic beverage) while having a sandwich, cake or cookie or something else too). It was a nice night altogether, one of our pastors gave a very talk on forgiveness; how God has forgiven us and also how extra-ordinarily hard it can be sometimes to forgive others. The rest of the evening was spent chatting with good friends, plus taking care of the dishes of course! Before going home for the night, me and a friend of mine called Jenny  went to a hamburger bar (Max) because we (especially I) were hungry! A little late night dinner. It was fun to do something spontaneous together and catch up.

On Saturday I was first at Yvette’s birthday party! And there was lots of cake and cookies to eat! Yummy!

Yvette next to the table full of tasty stuff!

Mmmmmm......

Perhaps not the best picture quality, but hey it’s my iPhone!

It was a very nice birthday party, was there for a few hours, chatting with Yvette and her other friends! Anyways, her birthday is tomorrow (Tuesday): Happy Birthday!!!

Saturday night was spent with two good friends of mine, having fika and watching a movie. The three of us were rather tired so it was nice with a relaxed evening cuddled up in a couch in front of the telly!

Sunday I went the church and the service was very good. We also had the big administrative meeting for the year, which went very well and surprisingly quick! Well done, chairman! After that post-service fika (fika is a very important part of Swedish culture) and then ten of us went home to a friend of mine and had the first barbecue for the year! Ten people sitting down and eating together is always nice, and we had really fun. We ended the weekend by watching the movie “Up in the air”, starring George Clooney! I enjoyed it!

So, as you can see it’s been a really nice weekend. And I feel really blessed, having so many wonderful people to call my friends. You mean a lot to me, all of you!

Bless,

Susanna

The upcoming election in September is going to be so important: will Sweden continue on the neo-liberal path that the government has begun or will we return to a left-wing government that must try to repair the damages done to the society I grew up in? The polls right now show that we are going to get a new government but that can change, and it’s going to be very interesting to see the next poll as the government just presented their budget proposal and that could change things.

My hope and prayer is that the government is going to be kicked out of office because I think what they have done is unforgivable. When I walk the streets of my hometown, Stockholm, I see that some people look wealthier and better off than when I lived there. And that’s nice for them of course. But I also see that those who were poor when this government came into office look poorer and there are more of them on the streets of Stockholm now than when I lived there. That is what I find unforgivable; to make some people wealthier at the expense of others. To make the rich richer while making the poor poorer. And this is not just my interpretation, investigations have shown that indeed the gaps between the rich and the poor in Sweden have grown during the governments time in office.

And I choose to use the word poor, not “having small margins”, eventhough it might be uncomfortable for Attefall and the government.

But when the spring comes and the tulips bloom when the sun stays up late in the afternoon this little lady wants to live a little more and it doesn’t have to be like before

Tulips bloom, Laila Dahl

Well, the tulips aren’t actually blooming here in Umeå yet, but those words from the song by Laila Dahl still pretty much sums up my state of life, mind and soul right now! The snow is melting away, the temperature is nice and warm and it has been sunny outside for the last four days! Joy!

As some of you might have noticed on Facebook I have now graduated from uni and I am a Master of Laws, which sounds pretty cool I think! I don’t think I’ve understood yet that I’m actually finished. Four and a half years (and a few more months) are over…. wow…But I’m still studying at uni, just taking a module I found interesting so I have something to do, and get some funding, while I write my application for LLD studies (the law version of PhD) which must contain a quite detailed plan on what I want to write my doctorate thesis on. The module I’m taking (“Humanjuridik”) is very interesting and we’re quite a small student group which gives lots of room for questions to and discussions with the lecturers.

When not doing uni-work I hang out with friends, last Saturday I was on one birthday party and this Saturday comes the next birthday party. And I bake my own bread too, now, which is nice. Guess it’s my dad’s fault, he is crazy about baking bread (to mum’s delight!).

Yummy bread!

More yummy, and healthier, bread!

Beautiful flowers mum and dad sent me after I graduated! <3

Well, now that the Monster is finished and I am in such good mood, I’ll try to be a better or at least more frequent blogger!

Bless

For the last couple of weeks I have been almost unforgiveably asocial and bad at replying to messages from people. I’ve been so tired and felt like completely drained. Anyways, after a nice and social weekend spent together with lovely friends, plus a tearful chat on the phone with my parents sharing my anguish concerning the Monster and the future), and finally realising when I was in the church on Sunday that I have forgotten quite an important someone (God) during this time when everything has felt so heavy and hopeless, I think I am back on track. (Wow, that was a long and complicated sentence!) Now I’ve gone deep into the dungeons to fight the final, long and bloody battle with the Monster. (Hmm, I think that sometimes I see the Monster as my friend that I keep feeding with words, but now I see the Monster as something I have to defeat, by completing it.) I hopefully will re-surface in a couple of weeks time with a finished thesis.

I was almost furious at myself in Church the day before yesterday (Sunday) when I realised that I yet again had let myself go so far down into some sort of despair and depression before turning to God. Last time I did it (which was a much worse experience) was when my grandmother died. I’m much better at turning to God when I’m happy and content with everything. The reason for this, I think, is because I am so extremely introvert when it comes to more negative emotions and states of mind, I just don’t like to talk about it with people, even those who are close to me. I become so introvert that even God becomes an “outsider” in my mind – which is really silly because who is closer to me than the Lord? He already knows how it is, but He just wants me to come to Him and say how it is. So I did and now I feel loads better. Some Scripture that suits this little reflection perfectly I think is Psalm 40 : 2 (NIV)

 ² He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
       out of the mud and mire;
       he set my feet on a rock
       and gave me a firm place to stand.

(Quote from www.biblegateway.com)

So yeah, now I’m gonna see to finishing this thesis and try to not forget God as I enter my future. Those of you who believe in prayer, please pray for me. And encouraging messages from all you lovely people will help as I wrestle with this Monster of mine.

God bless!

God bless

• wake up, think you have overslept, and then discovers that it’s 4:25 am.
• miss the bus you usually take and when you are about to take another bus that leaves eight minutes later you discover that you forgot your wallet at home
• when, once at uni, after leaving your stuff at the table you share with a friend to go and leave some books in your locker and fetch some new ones there plus get a library book from the library, you discover when you come to the locker room (which is quite far away from where you sit and study) that you have forgotten your keys which are in your jacket.

Luckily me and Jenny take turns in being stressed out about our thesises. When she is stressed about it I try to calm her down and when I’m stressed she tries to calm me down. We are compassionate hypocrites.

Anyways, the monster is alive and well and so am I. Yes, I am stressed and worn out from this semester but I’m still enjoying myself and my life at the moment. About a week ago the stress was much more negative and I felt almost paralyzed when it came to writing but the meeting I had last Monday with my tutor it all felt so so so much better! She really liked what I had done and she wondered if I had thought about going into legal research as a doctoral candidate (in Swedish doktorand) and I had actually been thinking about it before she asked and now I do think about it even more! It would mean that I could stay here in Umeå, which I consider my home, for four more years!

And as I sit here, stressed and worn out, the thought that I am going to celebrate New Year’s at a spa (Lundsbrunns kurort) with Yvette encourages and comforts me! Plus, I’m going home to my parents for the weekend and will see my brother who comes home from Brazil! What joy!

Now I really should go back to my monster, she is eating words about the relationship between gender and language right now and they are yummy!

Bless

Right now I’m at gate 65 at terminal 5, Arlanda Airport, Stockholm. The flight to London Heathrow departs in about 30 mins. There’s been no trouble so far, despite the snow. It felt a bit strange when I walked down the hallway to the gate because I realised that it was the same hallway and almost the same gate as it was when I went to Stoke for the first time ten months ago! Soon boarding will start so I’m on my way, oh yeah!

Have a great weekend everybody because I’m pretty sure I’ll have one!