Hi!
My name is Beth. I have lived in the UK for twenty years, and in Scotland for four years. I moved from the state of Georgia, USA in 2005 to work for the Methodist Church in Britain but developed the autoimmune disease Lupus and was forced retire due to ill health.
Before I moved to the UK I worked as Registered Nurse in the USA where I specialised in maternal-infant care. In addition to providing care and support for newborn babies and their mums, I taught classes on sibling preparation, breastfeeding, and newborn care. Near the end of my nursing career I qualified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and worked part time (so I could care for my two young children), exclusively with mums and babies who were learning to breastfeed.
Though I didn’t go to church as a child, I began attending in my mid-twenties. Not long after, I began to feel a real pull to serving God. What I learned about God and the Christian faith helped me to understand that I – everyone, actually – have a unique role to play in making this world a better place. What role was I to play? What was I called to do?
Though I was able to make the world a better place for the mums and babies I cared for, it became clear that there was a WHOLE world of need out there, women and men, babies and children of all ages. So I left nursing and began a course of Theological study and discernment. This was a long and complicated process, and it led me into ordained ministry in the UK to my ordination as a minister.
I led churches in rural and small town settings, preparing and leading worship services and bible studies, visiting people in hospital and at home, baptising, marrying, burying, and doing all the admin that goes with running a church.
Not long after I was ordained I developed an odd rash. Turned out I had Lupus. Though the medication I was started on then has controlled the disease very well, I will never have the same levels of energy and fitness I once had. Knowing that many with Lupus retire early, I managed 10 years of full-time ministry after my diagnosis before it became a real issue. Life became a revolving door of work and sleep. I dropped to part-time hours, but that didn’t help. After two years I retired, aged 54, on the grounds of ill health.
Retirement has been the best thing ever. Without the pressure of meeting everyone else’s expectations I have been able to rest and develop my own life-rhythm. I have been well, in as much as I am ever well.
In the eight years since retirement I have expanded my chicken keeping hobby, and started – and finished – keeping honeybees. I also used the pandemic lockdown to consider life’s priorities. This led me (and my husband) to make a move to Scotland to set up a low-carbon, sustainable smallholding. We moved in autumn 2021. In autumn 2022 we welcomed two Shetland cows to the holding, but by 2023, after realising our land was too wet and shady for cows, we moved them and (their bull calf) down the road where they are owned and cared for by smallholding friends who have better pasture and barns.
In 2024 we welcomed six Royal Golden Guernsey goats to our holding. They are much more suitable for us and our land. I’ve learned to milk the nannies, support the kids through illness and good health, and enjoy them very much. I think they like me. By autumn 22026 we will have our own Golden Guernsey Billy goat for breeding our nannies.
I am second-time married, and have two adult children from my first marriage. I love the created world and all its inhabitants. I am as happy to sit and stare into the pond as I am do to anything else. My husband Phil has spent his life doing long-distance walks and growing plants. He is in charge of the vegetables and fruit.
Covid lockdown changed my way of thinking about ‘church.’ Instead of church being a single place, or a group of people, I have come to see the whole world and all of creation as ‘church’ for me. I spent two years exploring the Forest Church movement. This time allowed me to develop a broader understanding of the God and what my part in this world is. I am now an active participant in our local church, still leading worship from time to time, but I am more focused on wonder and love than doctrine or belief. And instead of worrying about ‘saving souls’ I am now focused on saving the Earth either through my own actions of sustainable living, or teaching others what I have learned. By becoming ‘greener’ and living closer to the Earth, working within its patterns and parameters, I serve God by caring for the planet and all its creatures.
Welcome!
Sweetness and Light at the McLunt Smallholding 