Hello, my name is Anne-Perpetua Lally and I am 33 years old, I come from Birmingham and I am growing as a Christian within the Catholic Church.

How did you come to do this Course?

Applying for the Christian Ministry degree just seemed a natural way to go as it places a great emphasis on being responsible and accountable for your own learning. Most of the work you do for this course is done by essay and presentation. The only exams I would have to do would be in my support modules from Religious Studies, Social ethics, Applied Social Science. Most other courses were highly exam based and that put me off. My own preferred style of learning is through essays and presentations.

Is this then another ordinary modular studies degree?

Well yes and no is my answer to this as I could balance both my exploring of a calling to follow Christ as a Christian and do more exploration of developmental models to psychology and sociology. I felt that I could learn to become more aware of my own attitudes, values and beliefs and explore how these had been formed thus far and where possible change them. One example of this was encountering my own fears with working and relating to others from different Christian Churches other than my own. This also was painful at times because change is never easy and encountering another faith or culture brings its own problems of miss understandings and miss conceptions of the person in that faith.

If you were to sum up your point of learning on this course what would it be?

I believe the hardest thing for anyone is to accept them selves for who they are. This means ‘being loved for you are.’ In the society in which I grew up in and live today I fear this unconditional love because it seems too good to be true. As I explored my own false beliefs i.e. fear of failure, rejection, blame and shame; I begun to learn how I had misread situations as a young person and I learned to let go of false beliefs about myself and others. These false beliefs can prevent people from being loved for who they are. Writers such as Henri Nouwen and Robert McGee also advocate and give ways of walking to freedom from these false beliefs.

You speak of these Fears can you explain further?

We long to belong in good and effective relationships, relationships where we can feel safe enough to let down our masks to be ourselves. The false beliefs such as fear of rejection, blame and shame as I have come to understand can lead us into a false sense of belonging or security as we tend to get caught up with getting things right so that we won’t experience the hurt of failure or rejection. However God does not reject us as he continually embraces us in these fears with love. In this God desires me, calls me, invites me to respond. Because I don’t view myself as good enough I always think there is a catch. As a Christian this is like learning to swim, not be drowned by my fears of self rejection but allow myself to be embraced by love every time I experience fear. It is allowing change to happen so that I can walk to freedom from my fears.