Meet the women at Charlotte - Diana

This post marks the next in a series of interviews with different women who are part of the Charlotte Chapel family.  We hope to allow you to hear a little about the different lives we live, what makes us tick and how we seek to grow in our faith.  This time, we would like you to meet Diana.

Q: Thank you for sharing some of your story Diana. Could you tell us your favourite Christian song or hymn so readers can listen while they read on?

A :“Great is the Darkness” by Noel Richards, also known as “Come Lord Jesus”.

Q: Can you tell us how you became a Christian?

A: I don’t ever remember a time when God was not a part of my life.  I grew up in a Christian home and so church was an important part of family life.  I attended an Anglican church which sowed a seed in my heart in accepting Jesus as my Lord and Saviour at around age ten.  Unfortunately there was no real discipleship so it was not until my late teens when I changed churches that I began to truly understand what it meant to be a follower of Christ.

Q: What would be your desert island book? (we'll let you take the Bible of course!)

A: Ooh that is a difficult one.  I do so love to read and belong to a book club.  Probably “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom.

Q. This month in the blog we are thinking about appearance. What do you find challenging about the way the world sees beauty for women?

A. As a Christian I know that I do not have to be enslaved to the world’s idea of beauty. I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God Himself.  However sometimes it is easy to be tempted to fall into the habit of being concerned about worldly beauty and how I match up to that. The world’s perception of beauty however will not take me anywhere. This sort of beauty never satisfies. Proverbs say that it is fleeting (Prov 31:30).

Q: I know you grew up far away from Edinburgh, in Australia. Could you share your earliest memory?

A: While certainly not my earliest memory, learning to swim is a strong childhood memory.  I remember after having properly dived off the blocks and swimming one length of proper freestyle in an Olympic size pool (50m) without stopping, I was given a very special reward. The following day, my mother took me on the train into the Sydney’s city centre to a jeweller’s shop whereby I chose my very first watch! My mother made a grand day of it including a lovely scrumptious lunch at Miss Browns, at Sydney’s famous centrepoint tower. We did not have many family traditions but this was one, I remember very well.  

Q: What is your signature dish in the kitchen?
A: We enjoy practising hospitality, and endeavour to open our home to all sorts of folk.  Pasta Topped Beef Casserole is a favourite.   My dear late friend and fellow worshipper at Charlotte Chapel,   Andrea Maskell would very kindly call me the “Queen of Trifle”. She once asked me if I would make a trifle for Christmas Day celebrations.  My immediate thought was “oh no – I don’t like trifle – it reminds me of boarding school which I did not enjoy very much”.  However, not wanting to let a good friend down, I found an updated Australian trifle recipe with a delicious mascarpone topping.  Making it was a great success and I finally overcame my silly fear of trifle.

Q: Do you have a favourite place in the world to be?

A: If a cold place, then probably Iceland, for we love the beauty and the ruggedness of the landscape – another wonder of God’s creation.  Also my husband Bruce loves to ride the beautiful pure-bred horses there, which are very different to our horses back home. 

If a warm place, then southern Spain, or the Canaries, in particular Lanzarote.  I would of course say Australia but we don’t travel back home as often nowadays.

Q. Can you share a recent encouragement in your faith?

A. A recent general encouragement in my faith with the Lord has been joining the 5 o'clock club, meaning getting up earlier that perhaps I would desire to – not necessarily 5am, more likely 6am and making God my first priority (reading and meditating on His word, lots of prayer, worship and listening).  I have found this to be instrumental in cultivating a daily intimacy with Him and in turn my faith has grown significantly.

Q: Finally, what brings you the greatest joy?
A: I do mentoring and one to ones, both of which I love.  In particular with regard to mentoring, my greatest joy is being used by God to dig out the rubbish and find the treasure within.  It is then pure delight to see folk equipped to live their lives abundantly for the Lord, as we have been called to do. 

Thanks to Diana for sharing some of her story. Do feel free to suggest other women who you would like to get to know through these interviews.