Turning Full Circle: Words and Freedom

This morning I came to the extraordinary realization that my life had turned full circle. I started the day in prayer and then strode out into the fields above my house, and there in the hazy autumn sunlight I wandered through the early morning mist that rose from ploughed furrows, while listening to the beautiful Celtic strains of Enya. It was magical and in the ephemera of the first light, I felt a profound sense of coming home.

I grew up in a rather unconventional household, a haven of bohemian creativity, where my father spent days in his pyjamas writing poetry and my mother bashed out books on an old upright typewriter, wreathed in ideas and cigarette smoke.

My childhood home, a !7th century cottage called Larkland, was situated in a tiny hamlet – so small it didn’t even have a pub, church or shop – and was surrounded by fields and woodlands.

As a child I was almost feral and reveled in my freedom. Every morning before school, I would put Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells on my record player and lean on the windowsill watching the sun rise over the fields to the crescendo of sound, and would then walk out over the dew soaked hillsides until I could look down upon the unfolding day, wondering in amazement about its originator.

As an adult, I inevitably had to leave this idyll and enter the more conventional world of work. But I never really took to the concept of the nine to five workplace, and flourished best when I was free to roam gathering stories, ideas and people. I once told a former boss who was trying to persuade me to give up the freelance life style that I couldn’t be a compliant employee as I just didn’t know how to kowtow. It was said in jest but there was probably more truth in it than I cared to admit.

The other day a friend told me that I was the most non-conformist person he had ever met, and another, that I was the most rebellious. The fact that I took both comments as enormous compliments shows that I really am my father’s daughter. As a child he would always encourage any sign of non-conformity, no matter how eccentric I may have appeared.

And now forty years later, here I am once again wandering the fields and woodlands bathing in the glory of God’s new day. But now when I return home, it is I who will sit down at the key boards and lose myself in words, seeking meaning, truth and God. Life really has turned full circle.

Stepping out in faith, I may have given up the security of full time employment but I have found a new security in obedience to God’s command to declare his works, and a freedom to become all that He and my parents intended me to be since those days of childhood.

‘I will not die but will live and declare the works of God. (Psalm 118:17).

Kate Nicholas will be speaking about ‘Stepping out in Faith: The Christian’s Guide to Freelancing” at the Churches and Media Conference on 19th October at the RSA London. http://themedianet.org/conference



Kate Nicholas’s best-selling book Sea Changed – recently shortlisted as CRT Biography of the Year – is available in Christian bookshops and Waterstones throughout the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon Worldwide