Chaplain's Column | It's Relentless

Club Chaplain, Ian Nicholson, pens the first Column of 2024.

So, this Chaplain’s Column has been a few weeks in the making!

It began as Christmas thoughts and then morphed into a New Year’s Eve reflection and is now, I guess, a mid-January update. I suppose with all the Christmas family madness, community projects, intense football calendar and then New Year revelries it’s understandable that time has just seemed to disappear like a runaway train with no brakes! I’m also sure that I am not the only one who is scrambling for a little respite and chance to draw breath in January.

Football is an intense world and once the first whistle sounds in August the rollercoaster is running and there is no pause or escape. The games come thick and fast, the motorway miles clock up and the most common description you hear is that it is ‘relentless’ or, as I saw it defined, ‘unceasingly intense’. The rollercoaster is also emotional with intense highs and lows and not much ‘normal’ in between – its ecstasy or despair! There is a lot of fun but it’s also hard work. It is hardly surprising that more and more of us feel mentally frazzled and stretched and as Club Chaplain one of my aspirations is to support people finding a place of wellbeing; however, ‘wellbeing’ sounds like a great idea in theory but pretty hard to find. New Year does give an opportunity to put the past behind us and set out again with purpose, but I wonder if we need to go even further for it to make a difference beyond January.

For me, I read the stories of Jesus as someone living under intense 24-7 pressure with hordes of people pressing for continual attention or help; He seemed to have unending reserves of compassion and time to respond. However, I also read account after account of Him withdrawing to be alone. As I have got older, I have finally accepted that my reserves of adrenaline fuelled activity are very limited and I will crash – I can’t do it all. It affects my sense of peace, wellbeing and close relationships. I also need those times of withdrawal, and, for me, reflection and prayer definitely renew my strength and help me be kinder and gentler with others. Wisdom from the Bible tells me to live each day at a time and a key to finding peace is to ‘be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and gratitude make my requests known to God’.

Life is intense and we each have our own challenges, but my prayer is that whatever our faith, we will find a place of greater peace, depth and rootedness in the coming year. I would add that sometimes things do get too much and we don’t have to carry it alone. As Chaplain, I am always available to chat and signpost you to places where you can get support. Reach me on ian.nicholson@wokingfc.co.uk

Beyond that – Happy New Year everyone, welcome to Michael and Ben and Come On You Cards – we can do this!