Over the past few weeks I’ve posted a couple of times about a crazy scheme I’d thought up, half stolen, slightly adapted, and planned to implement in the run up to my 30^th birthday.

My plan was to raise £30,000 to help tackle violence against women before I turned 30 – which is in March. I thought I would raise awareness, encourage people to take the issue seriously, know that it’s far closer than they might think. Violence against women is not something that happens to other people. It is not something the church is immune from either.

I was going to come up with some amazing fundraising initiatives, I was going to get hundreds of people on board, I was going to use them to exponentially increase the amount of money I could raise.

I was going to do a remote fundraising activity. Wherever you are in the world on one particular morning we would all do the same endeavour. This was my masterplan.

But I am throwing the towel in.

The worth in doing this is undoubted, the need for raised awareness: the need for raised money at a time when shelters are losing funding.

But I wouldn’t do it justice. I am exhausted, I am distracted, I can come up with a hundred reasons why I should still do it, but I don’t think I should. For this to work I would have to commit time and effort that I simply do not have.

I could drop other things, I could work earlier, I could work later. I have plenty of train journeys with time to use. That’s not what this is about. More about that tomorrow.

I also felt I was walking blindfolded into a complicated and challenging issue, I was conscious that I might say the wrong thing, back a project doing something in a way a swathe of people opposed. And this meant I stalled, I waited, I hoped it might miraculously fall into place.

I heard the passion of people who have done similar things, set themselves an outrageous goal and sacrificed to make it happen. The thrill of it, discovering themselves, finding someone on the journey. When they gave themselves to a goal this or that wonderful thing happened. I wondered if that might happen to me.

So I’m not doing it. I’m not trying to raise £30,000. But this is not about me, it’s not about my achievement, or my effort, or even my willingness to admit fault and do what I am doing now and packing the endeavour in before I have really begun. I hadn’t even settled on which charities I was going to do it for. There was no perfect project, nothing that really fitted what I wanted, I was being too picky.

Here’s some of the organisations I was looking at supporting, I’ll be making donations to each of these and I would hugely encourage you to do likewise.

Restored – Ending violence against women

Waterfall

A Way Out