In this deeply moving episode of our podcast, we sit down with Emma Fast for an intimate conversation about her life's journey, marked by multicultural experiences, profound loss, and an unwavering faith. Emma's story offers unique insights into the complexities of identity, belonging, and the healing power of faith through the most challenging times.

Key Takeaways:

1. The vital role of faith in providing solace and direction through life's ups and downs.
2. The enriching impact of a multicultural upbringing on one's identity and perspective.
3. Understanding grief and loss through the lens of faith and community support.
4. The significance of small acts of faith and kindness in making a profound difference.

Join us as we explore these themes with Emma, whose resilience and deep faith provide a compelling narrative of hope, understanding, and the power of belief in the face of life's complexities.

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Whether you're navigating your own journey of faith, identity, or loss, Emma's story resonates with universal truths about the human experience and the anchoring force of faith. Don't miss this insightful conversation that not only sheds light on the struggles many of us face but also celebrates the strength and beauty found in diversity and faith.

Remember to subscribe to our podcast for more inspiring stories like Emma's, and if Emma's story touched you, reach out to us with your thoughts and experiences. Let's continue the conversation.

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And now, without further ado, let's get Let's meet your host and

our very special guest for today.

Hi, this is Sadaf Beynon, and I'm here with Emma Fast,

who is a longtime friend of mine.

We've known each other for years, since we were in grade

school, so I'm gonna Over 30.

Is that right?

That's scary, that's really scary, yes, of course that's right yeah, so Emma's

here and I'm really excited for you guys to hear her story and to get to know her.

So Emma, tell us about your growing up and tell us about how you became a Christian.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me Sadaf.

It's really my ulterior motive here was so I could have a nice chat with you, really.

So it's really nice to see you.

Yeah, so Sadaf, I grew up in Pakistan.

I'm not originally from Pakistan, as you can maybe tell.

So my mom is Finnish.

My father is from the UK, so he hails from Bristol, the West country.

And in 1986, they decided to move to Pakistan and work in Northwest

Pakistan, what used to be the NWFP, but is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

And they worked in medical work with a Christian Finnish Christian organization.

And the way things were done in those days, in the late 80s kids

were sent off to the boarding school.

That was in the foothills of the Himalayas and there were

what, about maybe 150 of us?

I want to say 150, yeah.

Yeah, from kindergarten to grade 12, from lots of nationalities.

So in our graduating class, I think there were people from, there were 18

people from 14 different nationalities.

Now of course, some of us work on a half, quite a few of those.

So then you get to two nationalities for one.

But yeah, so that's where I grew up in that boarding school.

So from the age of six sadaf was in the year above me, so we went through

boarding together, so we went Some of the information that I hold on

Sadaf, I will not be airing publicly.

Thank you.

Because it goes both ways.

So it was a very kind of weird childhood in many ways, quite

unusual, such a mix in a melting pot.

Not everything about it was beautiful or lovely.

I know some people had a real struggle with being in boarding.

I overall had quite a positive experience.

Lots of time to just play with friends.

Quite a tight knit group.

I'm still friends with a lot of people from those days.

Some of them are still my closest friends.

Also really benefited from a lot of really amazing people.

I sometimes feel growing up on the mission field, as we say, you see the good and

the bad and the ugly of Christianity.

It's like that whole thing that C.

S.

Lewis says about some of the best adverts for Christianity being its adherents and

some of the worst adverts sometimes too.

We're human, right?

Everyone is and people have anyway, different issues they bring to the table.

So I feel like I had the privilege of meeting some really amazing people.

Who really spoken to my life, and that's my story of faith is that, I can name

one moment when I prayed, Jesus, please come into my heart.

But as I've grown older, I've started thinking maybe that one moment isn't quite

as significant as I always thought it was.

It was much more of a process, just lots of people speaking into my life,

modeling their faith teaching me, I feel like I got really good education

in the Bible, what it teaches.

And how people have lived out their faith from a variety of different

cultures, lots of different denominations, a quirky childhood, but

yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

It was a very enriching experience for me too, but, and I understand not

everyone felt that way, but yeah, I'm thankful for that blessing for sure.

Emma, tell me how did you're growing up in this, your parents

are from two separate countries.

You're now in a third country rubbing shoulders with kids

from all over the world.

How did this impact or shape your identity and your sense of belonging?

Very good question.

So I feel really privileged not only to have grown up in that kind

of that what we call the TCK, third culture kid kind of environment, but

also the Pakistan side of things.

I sometimes felt like I had a few different lives.

You can relate to that, I know.

So then I had my Pakistani friends also where my parents lived and then I spoke

in Urdu and had, much more contact with a variety of Pakistani cultures.

And how enriching was that?

I've just feel so privileged to have had that opportunity to see such a part of

the world that my parents weren't from.

I sometimes feel like these

extremes, finish, very liberal and the cradle of nudity and sauna.

And just, quiet, lots of trees and peace and quiet.

And then to Pakistan very conservative.

Very busy, very loud.

But yeah I just, I consider a lot of my Pakistani friends,

still some of my best friends.

I'm very thankful to have had that experience.

In terms of kind of identity and belonging, well.

I once did a training because I was going to teach in Kabul one year and

I was working with TCKs and they gave us like this checklist, like these are

the typical features of what a third culture kid is like and I looked down

that list, I was like, yeah tick.

I fit the profile, basically read that and then you know who I am.

It's annoying to fit into a box so neatly, but yeah, I

think a couple things about it.

One, I think I adapt quite a lot to who I'm talking to.

Sometimes I feel like a bit of a chameleon that has maybe

strengths, maybe weaknesses.

It can be stressful sometimes, like feeling like I'm the translator, did

a master's in Finland some years ago and it was an international master's.

And so I had people from lots of different countries again, and I

had this Aussie coursemate and I had this Ghanaian coursemate, both

English is their first language, but the Aussie guy would always like use

loads of idioms like, Oh, the traffic was completely chocka this morning.

And yeah.

I could just see that my Ghanaian friend had no idea what he's talking about.

And I, I always feel like I've got to translate.

I've got to help them to understand.

Anyway, stuff like that.

I think I also always see that almost every issue has two sides.

There's this way of looking at it and there's this way of looking at it.

Oh, and there's this way of looking at it too.

And so I probably sometimes dither a bit and don't have one strong view.

I can always see multiple sides of looking at the same thing.

Yeah.

Then I think a sense of restlessness also, I always want to move.

If I can't move country, then I want to move house or I want to move job.

If I can't do any of that, then I want to move the furniture.

That's the only way

it reminds me actually, every time I do that,

cause I'm exactly the same.

I just end up moving things around in the house.

It reminds me of all the times in boarding school when we used to rejig

our bedrooms and make bunk beds back into low beds and then do triple

beds and then move things around.

Oh my word.

Do you know that, I learned something from boarding school.

Remember Aunt Hills?

Where you had the high bed, then the middle size bed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then the normal bed.

And then the single bed.

Yes.

And you can put them.

So now, because I have four children, we live in a very small house in London.

They have an Aunt Hill in their bedroom.

Oh, no way.

I didn't know that's what we called it.

Yeah, that's cool.

Life.

Life lessons that have come handy.

Life lessons.

Yeah.

Okay.

I wanna move on to your kids as well, but before I get there,

I wanna ask you, how has your.

How does faith help you navigate the complexities of, living in different

cultures and your identity in that?

Yeah, great question.

It's a hard question to answer.

There's so many different ways of looking at it.

But one very tangible example is I suppose, I've always had

a sense that God is with me and God sees what I'm going through.

So I've had many times when I felt quite misunderstood.

Maybe none more so than when I first moved from Pakistan.

So I was 17 when I graduated from our high school there in Murree and

came to the UK and I came by myself.

Was really quite alone.

And there was also quite a lot of stuff happening in my family.

So it was quite a troubled and turbulent time in many ways.

But I was incredibly isolated.

I'm here living with this bunch of white British girls who I, some of them are

still my friends now great friends.

But I really felt like an alien from Mars.

And, everyone's talking about what they watched on TV as kids,

and everyone's got this sense of humor that I just don't like.

It takes a while to adapt to a new culture's way of laughing at things.

And now these days, I feel quite British and I have to watch myself like, try not

to be exclusive in your humor, right?

Bear in mind that not everyone finds the same things funny, but I've always had a

strong sense that whatever is going on, however isolated I feel, God is there.

He knows.

I've been privileged to talk to the creator of the universe,

try and seek his perspective.

I might not always have the answer.

It's often a big process to figure out.

I don't know why something happened.

Maybe I don't know, we'll never get some answers, but just, I know

he's there and I can talk to him.

Amazing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's ultimately my identity is that, that I am his.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also belong to a community that's helped a lot over the years.

So that wasn't easy at the beginning.

It took a long time.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can imagine.

I know also from experience of moving from country to country and cultures,

you you become a foreigner, don't you?

And in every sense of the word, you move to a new country and you're a

foreigner and you become, as you say, you're feeling quite British now, but

then you feel too much of a foreigner to go back to where you came from.

So you're just in this middle ground that doesn't really resonate with anybody.

Yeah, it's not an easy, it's not an easy place to be, but I really liked what you

said there, that having the Lord in it with you, who sees you through it all and

understands you it's it's such a blessing, and I think it's what pulls you closer

to Him, isn't it having that space, yeah.

Yeah.

And to a degree, as a Christian, we are told we are foreigners and exiles.

We are sojourners in the world.

And I think having a little bit of that restlessness is not a bad thing because,

we, the world is not the way it's meant to be and we are on a journey and, one day

the world will be the way it is and we are meant to long for that new day and, yeah.

Yeah.

No, I totally agree.

So Emma, you're here now in the UK, as you said what does life look like?

So it wasn't that I came from Pakistan and then just stayed in the UK.

I've had a few other meanderings.

I alluded to working in Afghanistan for a year and then I was in Finland

doing my master's for a while.

And then I married this Canadian guy and who was living in Canada for a while.

Yes.

It's also a fellow, yes, see I fit that TCK just, I'm a living stereotype.

What was the question, what does life look like now, yeah.

So we find ourselves living in Sutton which is really like the most

average place in the UK to live, like we have average levels of ethnic

minority versus white British people, average demographics in every way.

I don't know why we're in Sutton in some way.

It's probably not the place on earth I would have chosen.

But at the same time, we've been here now almost 12 years.

So I was pregnant with our first when we moved here.

And now I have this wonderful community here.

I can't go outside without bumping into somebody that I know.

And I really like that.

I work locally in a secondary school.

Our kids go to school here locally.

We're involved in a local church who've been a really wonderful community for us.

And so life looks like, yeah, dropping kids to school, picking

kids up from school, going to work, teaching secondary school kids.

Now my kids are starting to get into that age, so I'm going to just

have a lot of teenagers in my life.

Jordan, my husband works as an engineer in international development.

So he travels sometimes, just quite a normal life.

Yeah.

I, it probably from the outside looking in, it probably looks

quite normal, but what's it like raising now multicultural kids?

Cause they're repeating that pattern, aren't they?

Interesting.

Interesting.

Thanks.

Yeah, on one hand, they, the kids have three nationalities.

They can have three passports.

On the other hand, they're growing up in Sutton and that sometimes is scary to me.

I think, oh quick, we've got to I don't know, move to Nairobi or

something so they can experience.

Some life experience, yeah.

It's been a journey for 12 years.

So I don't know if I've said yet, but yeah, we have four children.

Our third pregnancy I have to be a bit careful how I say this, but it

included a few surprising elements one being that when I went for my scan, I

I thought maybe I was about 10 weeks pregnant, however it turned out I was

about 18 weeks pregnant and it turned out there were two heartbeats and so

I was halfway through a pregnancy with twins before I kind of Twigged, really.

So that wasn't a good lesson in human biology for me.

And I'm the model for all my friends of, yeah, be careful.

But of course, now we have them, we're not going to send them back.

So we had a one child, then three year gap, second child, and then

20 months gap, and then twins.

So I had three under the age of two, so that means three in nappies.

It means I have perfected some wicked juggling skills, like answering the

door while breastfeeding to while using the other leg to stop a toddler

from escaping, things like that.

Lots of memories of things like that.

Sorry, I can't remember what the question was.

Am I going into what I've learned about that?

Sorry.

No, that's fine.

Yeah.

Tell us what you've learned.

Let's be honest.

A lot of parenting is drudgery.

It is, it's just hard work and it's not glorious.

So shout out to everyone who's in those years.

Yeah.

They're coming out of that a little bit now.

Life is, it's still hard and busy.

Having three, the same kind of age just means that we're loud.

Wherever we go, we're loud.

We have lots of fights.

I spend a lot of time refereeing.

Identical twin girls and their fights are something to behold.

So even this morning, okay, you think you've reached the limit of how many

things that humans can fight about but this morning, so my eldest two

have read the Harry Potter series.

We're quite big readers in my family, which makes me happy as an English

teacher but the twins are now reading the second Harry Potter book, and they're

fighting about who's ahead of the other.

This was this morning's conversation, like how do you sort that

out?

One of them wants to take the book to school, but then the other one gets angry

because then she'll be like a chapter ahead of her later when we get home.

One of them wants to do it on audio book, one of them wants dad to read to them, one

of them wants to read it by themselves.

How do you navigate that?

And then how do you try and bring it to let's look at our hearts here,

how do we learn life skills about listening and expressing what you want?

And you're allowed to have opinions and feelings, but we have to do

that respectfully and yeah, that's just, that's before 7am, right?

Yeah, so I guess I've learned, I've made so many mistakes and I'm

very much learning about parenting.

I, it's hard.

It's wonderful.

I've got four healthy children.

Those are an absolute gift of God and they make me laugh and smile

and keep me busy and never bored.

But my goodness, do I see how much I like control?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Comfort.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let me go back a bit to your family unit growing up and your elder

brother Mikael was in my class when we were in school together.

Why don't you tell our listeners a bit about him?

Yes.

So as you well know, my brother was a brilliant person, possibly a genius.

I always feel like the black sheep of the family intellectually.

So there's three of us.

So it was me and my brother quite close in age, 18 months apart.

He's my big brother.

And then eight years later, my sister, like eight years

after me, my sister was born.

And she's wonderful.

and also very intelligent.

She's gone into being a doctor.

And my brother was always a big reader, big thinker.

What do you say you grow up with someone like that 18 months apart.

We were, sometimes it was like we were the same person, like all my memories of

childhood, obviously, are include him, and

he started he had some troubles over the years, starting

from his teenage years struggled with quite a few different things.

But he started having struggles with addictions in his

sort of late teenage years.

And he had that struggle for over 20 years.

And he died actually the anniversary of his death was on the two

years this Sunday just gone.

Yeah, it's very much, on my mind, very, still quite recent.

Yeah.

So he died following a long struggle with addictions of various types of

different substances, which has had a huge impact on me and our whole family.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what, if you're happy to talk about this, how did it impact you?

Because you said you're quite close in age, you almost felt like you

were the same person oftentimes.

How did this impact you?

It was just a big sorrow in my life.

I just felt like I carried around worry.

In the middle of the night, I'd wake up one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock,

and I just automatically pray for my God.

It's weird not to have that anymore.

He traveled a lot.

So there were times that we weren't massively in touch, but I'm so thankful

that we stayed in touch and had in many ways, quite a close relationship

all through those years of course.

It impacted so many things.

It meant that visits were often quite chaotic.

It usually took me a few days to in some ways, recover from seeing him because

as much fun as we had together, and I tried very much to to keep it fun,

and he tried really hard to keep it, that it wasn't always really heavy,

that we were just having fun together, that kind of, we're two human beings

and that's not hard to do that with your brother obviously, I was still

fighting when we played Scrabble, about who would win, and, we'd still send the

board flying late into our 20s and 30s,

We, had a lot of fun together, but there was a very hard element to all the

visits, because there was just a huge worry for him, there was a huge sorrow.

It meant there was lots of sides of his life that I know

I didn't know about fully.

He probably tried to protect us quite a lot.

One way I cook was often by reading a lot and, I like to know about a topic.

I think quite a few of us in our family probably did the same, like

a lot of research into heroin.

And to understand him.

Yeah.

And best approaches to support someone with those issues and but at the

same time, there's a huge sense of powerlessness, helplessness, sometimes

guilt, am I doing the right thing?

Am I am I in any way enabling that behaviour?

Am I doing everything I can to let him know that if he wants to

get help, that I'm there for him?

It was, it's a constant churning and turmoil around that, of course.

Yeah.

And then, even then when I had kids, just a sadness that he wasn't in their

life as much as he would have been if he hadn't had some of those struggles.

He, it was hard for him to really be present with them.

So I really cherish the memories and some of the videos I have of him

with my kids when they were young.

But like my youngest, they never really knew him.

And that's really sad for me.

Yeah.

Um, his struggles with his addictions grew from

when he was in his late teens.

Yeah.

And it never really left him.

It didn't, was it always just something that just got worse and worse over time?

Ultimately, yes, there were breaks, and he tried

various different treatments.

A few times I was involved in helping him with some of those but he never really

was able to in the long term to overcome, if he stopped one addiction and sometimes

something else would take its place.

So it was pretty chronic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's, it is.

It's very sad.

And I'm so sorry for your loss.

And he was brilliant.

He was absolutely brilliant.

Such he made us laugh so much in class.

I remember that.

Oh my word.

Such a naughty sense of humor.

But I have to say too, yeah, that's true.

But I have to say as well that as, when he left school and we went different

ways, different directions, I lost touch with him for quite a while.

And I know talking to you I got a better sense of what that time was like for him.

But tell our listeners about his brilliance.

He could have done anything.

We always said, in terms of career, he chose to go into journalism,

and he was an amazing writer.

Honestly, some of the funniest things that he ever wrote were

about procrastinating about writing.

I'm a procrastinator myself.

It just, There's nothing funnier than like someone writing a

page about procrastinating.

I don't know, just, yeah, he made me laugh.

His humor was often quite dark.

He'd even make jokes about some of his addictions and things.

And, you feel like I really shouldn't be laughing about this,

but he could always make us laugh.

He did some really cool things.

He did some really interesting research into some kind of groups I don't know

how much to go into this really, but just some he was interested in the part of

the world that we grew up in, let's say.

And he researched some sort of political groups and did some

really amazing work on that.

He wrote court reports for asylum seekers.

And so say there was an asylum seeker from say Balochistan in Pakistan, where

there's so much awful stuff happening.

He wrote a kind of a situation report, which then aided their asylum claims.

So I just have this sense that, maybe there's people in the UK now.

We're Granted Asylum, partly because of him having written those.

They've benefited from his work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he was a lovely person.

That's what everyone said about him, even when we visited India, which is

where he died talking to his landlords, his friends, his drinking buddies.

Yeah.

He was helping, always helping people, had a strong sense of

justice, right and wrong, kind person.

Yeah.

Charming as anything, could talk his way through any kind of situation.

Yeah, he was a good guy.

So tell me then, how does his loss, your grief, how does that

how does that affect your faith?

Yeah, I have spent some time thinking about that.

My faith, I wouldn't say it insulates me in any way from the sadness of it.

I don't hover above because of some kind of Zen state that I

can achieve because of faith.

That's not what faith is about, right?

It's not, my faith isn't actually about me.

My faith is about what my faith is in, right?

It's about the fact that I have something quite firm that I hold on to and I believe

holds on to me.

Think maybe it's less about how my faith impacts my grief, but more about how my

grief also impacts my faith too, right?

So, when my brother died we saw, we had to go and identify his body at the

morgue, one of the worst days of my life.

And this was in India, you said?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I traveled with my mum and my sister after he died.

And, just the kind of deathness of death, the finality of death, it, obviously

it had never struck me in the same way as in that moment when I saw his body

and then as I went into Easter, and now again, we're now coming up to the

third Easter after that, I just think somehow the reality of what Jesus went

through, the fact that the God of the universe, that's what we believe, right?

That he came, he incarnated came and took on a body and then that body was killed.

And that's absolutely central to our faith, isn't it?

That's what he did for us.

And in dying, he took on all the sin and the sorrow and

the brokenness of the world.

That's really hit home for me in a very different way.

And even, though I still have so many questions about.

Why did my brother have to go through the things that he did?

I believe that Jesus having taken all that on himself is huge.

And the fact that we have a God who in the Bible, he's not the God who

created the planet and then stayed distant, but he's a God who came close.

And, so many verses have spoken to me, even though I walk through the

valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.

That Jesus came and walked through that valley and took on that valley

and took on all that darkness and that brokenness for us.

There's something very powerful in that.

Yeah.

That I hold on to.

And then of course there's the hope side of it.

The third day after good Friday.

Is that he broke the power of sin and darkness and death.

And He is making things new and will one day make things all things new and then

things will somehow make sense, yeah.

I just taught job actually this I teach at Sunday School.

Okay.

And we did a series on job for our kids age.

Six to 11.

So you really gotta think what do I believe I'm teaching these kids . Yeah.

And there's a job isn't necessarily the easiest book to teach.

To that age.

But I was just so encouraged again that the Bible is such a realistic book.

Like you look at Job and in some ways the book of Job doesn't

give a final answer to suffering.

That in some ways we don't have a final answer to how.

What's it for, and it would be wrong to give a really simple try

answer, wouldn't it, to what happens.

But to some degree, we're humans and we don't know anything.

But the fact that God spoke to Job at the end of the book, through the storm,

this absolute majesty that he would speak to job because Job mattered,

and just said, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Yeah.

Do you understand everything?

And yet, he was good to Job and cared about him.

And yeah, I believe God is there.

You're so right.

He is, isn't he?

And the hope that we profess, it's just it's just incredible.

I know that your journey hasn't been an easy one and you've shared some of

the things on here today, but I know there's been a lot of turbulence and it

hasn't been smooth sailing at all, but I love that, that you're able to hold on.

to that hope that you profess and you know that God is there and you're,

you have faith in him if you could go back, back to our childhood days,

even, and having gone through all this, I'm sorry, I should have said having

gone through all of this and you can go back, what would you tell yourself?

How would you approach life?

Would it be any different from how you've already done it?

Or would you approach it differently?

That is just a fantastic question.

Um, I suppose the thing I would say to myself is just be

still and know that I'm God.

Relax.

I'm here.

I do a lot of trying to figure it out and trying to control everything.

So that's probably still a still something I need to tell my 43 year old self, daily.

I'm sure I would have done some things differently.

Yeah, I I.

Yeah, but maybe you have to go through those things.

No, but yeah, be still.

I'm here.

Yeah.

I think I'm a bit like that too, the whole like trying to

control things and then just let it go, be patient and let God do his thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Emma, is there anything that you would, else you would like

to add to, maybe I haven't asked the question, but you think would be good

for our listeners to, to know or to hear?

Just a little shout out to my wonderful husband, long suffering.

When we got together I realized this afterwards, we only had

three things in common, really.

One was our childhood.

So like I say, we feel like we come from the same culture, even though

he's obviously he's from Canada.

But we have quite a similar childhood experience because of living in Pakistan.

And that's pretty big, actually, it just means there's a lot of

things you don't have to explain.

Yeah.

Then we also had Eric clapton in common.

So we had These are separate music collections and the only CD we

had in common was Eric Clapton and now I'm really annoyed because

of Eric Clapton's politics.

I can't go to a concert with Eric Clapton because I feel, so it feels

like that's been a bit marred actually.

But Jordan's a big musician and honestly he wondered whether he could

marry me because I don't like jazz.

It was a really big deal for him, but he's somehow still holding on 15 years

later, but the other really big thing that we have in common is our faith.

And I just think that has held us through thick and thin, that we're both

absolutely committed to each other.

And I think that a lot of that comes from our kind of faith that

there's an unconditional commitment.

I say that unconditional.

Of course, there are cases where we're not talking about cases of abuse, etc.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're not giving up on each other, however hard things get.

And we have had some really hard times, through my brother's death,

but also I had long COVID, I've had, various illnesses and it's been hard.

And also parenting and marriage together at the same time, you think, could I

just get marriage sorted out first?

And then it's so much easier to parent, but it happens all at the same time.

And it's just so much to try and figure out.

Yeah.

But I'm just, yeah, I'm very grateful to God.

Someone said about Jordan once, a friend of ours from church, if you

cut him open, you just find gold.

And I thought, that's just him.

Both in terms of the fact that he's just so solid and kind, but

also he's strong, because, I'm.

I'm much more the extrovert and I don't know if you know the Enneagram, I'm very

much an enneagram type 2 and Jordan's a type 5, like there's a lot of tension that

comes from that, we're quite different.

And I worry, I worry that I'm the dominant one or whatever, but he's strong.

And that's been really good for me.

So I'll finish with a little romantic note there.

No, thanks for sharing that.

And Jordan is all that for sure.

Yeah.

Emma, tell us, what's your one message?

I think something I've been learning recently is

that little things are okay.

And what I mean by that is I think sometimes as Christians and people who've

grown up with a lot of very amazing Christian people around us, you, we know

we're not saved by our works, right?

It's a gift of God.

It's grace.

We don't save ourselves.

But we can put this other pressure on ourselves that you have to live

like a really radical life and do something really big and amazing.

And I think that does put quite a lot of pressure on.

And of course, it's true, right?

We want our lives to make a difference and to use the gifts that God has given

us to bless the world and to do good.

But I think I have been learning that little things are also okay.

Like just kindness to someone else.

It's at the school gate that not many other people talk to, and I don't

have to sort that person's whole life

out, in fact I can't.

Just being a friend, that is actually a little thing, but it's so important,

And I can be quite, as we talked about with this whole sense of restlessness.

Oh, I need to move somewhere.

Maybe I need to be living in Pakistan, maybe I need to be

doing more things than I'm doing.

Actually

God has put me where I am and he's given me these

four kids that I really need to.

Focus on what he's put in front of me and like even

sometimes I think very often about changing career.

There's my 21st year since I qualified as a teacher.

I haven't been doing it linearly.

I've done lots of different things in between, but sometimes I start

thinking, oh, 20 more years of teaching, I can retire is that

really what I'm going to do?

I don't know.

Who knows?

It might not be.

But.

The way that I teach my students.

They come into my classroom and there's 25 to 30 kids in there.

I know

sometimes very little about their lives.

Sometimes you hear and you hear the challenges that kids are facing.

And I just think, oh, I can be there and I can do as good a job

for this one hour that they're in

my life as I can.

I can pray, I can try to build them up.

I can teach them because education is a blessing.

And I just feel let me do those

little things.

That God has given me.

So I don't know, just relaxed.

Am I?

It's okay.

Yeah, I know.

I get what you're saying.

That's it's so true.

Like being present.

In the space that God has placed us in.

It's not always easy to do, but it's so important because

he's got us there for a reason.

And I think you're right.

Like we often think of what can we do that's out there and that's big and that's

gonna, make a huge impact on someone.

And I think what you're doing maybe because you're in the thick of it, you

don't see it, but you're making a big impact even by doing those small things.

Yeah.

And so my question actually, do you find that takes a lot of effort to

think about what those small things are or does it just come quite

naturally if you just let yourself.

Relax, as you said.

Yeah, no, I think it doesn't take an effort.

I think, of course, it takes cultivating an attitude of waiting on God and

praying for his perspective on things.

Yeah, I think it, but it's a slow growth like most things in life, slow process

of learning that, but actually it's a much more liberating way to live.

Yeah.

To not constantly have to be proving myself but just a trust and a

waiting, waiting sort of attitude.

Yeah.

Oh, that's great.

Emma, thank you so much for sharing some of your story with us.

I know that it's going to resonate with so many of us who's just, life is

complicated, life is hard and how do we navigate it with our eyes on the Lord.

So no, thank you for bringing that out.

Emma, is there anything that you would say has been helpful to you in this journey?

Yeah, a number of things, actually.

A memorial for my brother.

As actually, you were there a year ago.

That was very helpful to have a community of people really supporting us.

I loved it that you were there and other people who knew Mikael from

childhood, that was just so important.

It really was a time of celebrating his life without, sweeping under the carpet

all the sadness that came from both his life and struggles and his death, but it

really was celebrating him as a person.

And it was.

I'm really thankful for just good friends.

We also did a, like a memorial with some of his other friends, some of

his London friends in a pub soon after he died, and that was a real

eclectic mix of people, and a lot of people there, people that I wouldn't

normally mix with people a little bit.

Alternate with much more alternative lifestyles than my very straight

laced lifestyle, let's say.

And people who've, a lot of them have had issues with addictions in their

own life and they know that story.

I found that such a powerful event in that pub because they

all wanted to know how he died.

They wanted to know details of, what substances he was using.

But it was done in such an.

Like they all knew what it's like They there was no judgment whatsoever in their

talk and I actually had this moment where I was like, wow, as a church, we could

learn so much from these people, about not at all being judgmental, about being

loyal friends through thick and thin.

So I actually found that, that event and those connections

really meaningful for me.

And I think probably vice versa, for them to meet the family as well.

So I'm really thankful for that.

Sometimes in church, we do like to just focus on the good stories and the happy

stories and struggle a little bit more with just sitting in the sorrow and in

the tension of unanswered questions.

But I have to say, I've had some really really good Christian friends as well.

And like when my pastor visited after my brother died.

The verse that he quoted was, the day that I was dreading has come upon me.

And I just thought, spot on.

And thank you, God, that the Bible has verses like that in it, because

that was my experience, for over 20 years, I was always waiting for bad

news about my brother in many ways.

And yet when that phone call came that he had it, it took the floor out from

under our feet and that is exactly, it just summed up how I was feeling.

And I just really appreciated that kind of verse and just coming and just sitting

in the sadness with me at that time.

I have a book also that I really recommend about grief and it's American author.

She's called Tish Harrison Warren.

And it's called Prayer in the Night.

And it is full of very rich theology around grief and being human.

Really, I find her absolutely excellent.

She's written another book that I've just read recently

called Liturgy of the Ordinary.

Okay.

And it's very much about kind of meeting God in our very ordinary lives.

Really recommend those strongly.

Oh, thank you for that.

We'll add those to the show notes as well so people can have access to them.

Yeah.

Great.

Emma, so much for sharing that.

That's really helpful.

Really helpful.

And I think our listeners might want to reach out to you.

So if they did want to do that, what would be a good way for them?

Yeah, I'm happy for my email address to go in the show notes.

Yeah, it's actually my maiden name still, the name that you accidentally called me

when you introduced me at the beginning.

Yeah.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

And I'm conscious of time, so I think we'll wrap it up.

Emma, thanks again.

Really appreciate you being on here.

Oh, thank you.

So nice to chat with you Sadaf.

And you too.

And just like that, we have reached the end of

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