‘I was furious. I had just come back from being interviewed by a college with a view to being trained to be a Baptist minister.

‘The last thing my minister had said to me before I left was, “The one thing they won’t ask you to do is a year’s experience because you’ve already done that.”

‘Guess what? They asked me to do a year’s experience working with a church before they would consider me for training.

‘In retrospect I now realise I hadn’t done well. I had a growing toothache and I was untypically reserved, but it still came as a shock when they threw me back into the pool for another year. It had felt so clear that this was the right thing to do.

‘I decided to let out my frustrations on some tin cans. I took them outside and started hammering them into submission with my father’s wooden mallet. (Remember “wash and squash”?)

‘At that point, my mum came home from choir practice and saw what I was doing. She said that they had been practising singing Psalm 126 for the church service on Sunday and that she thought I ought to read it.

‘It was so out of character for my mum to quote the Bible that I went to read it pretty much straight away.

‘The last two verses of the psalm spoke strongly to me: “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them” (verses 5–6).

‘These words spoke strongly to me and encouraged me that this setback was not permanent. In fact, I gained some really good experience working with a church in Bournemouth for that year and was accepted into college for the following year.

‘I may have been desperately disappointed, but God could take my tears and turn them into laughter. He still can.’

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