Our time

When someone passes away, we tell each other that maybe "it was just their time to go". We seem to use this as a comfort more than a realisation. But do we really know what that means - "its our time". A lot of the time when we say those words, many of us mean that God took them because it was their time to join Him in heaven but do we really understand that and do we really mean what we say when we say those words?

When God calls us to do something we humbly obey and follow his guidance which always ends in joy and success. As Christians, we believe and often express our excitement to join the Lord again in heaven but when the time arrives, we get scared, worried and sad. This confuses me. If we spend our life, no matter how long or short it is, expressing our joy to meet Him again, then why do we get scared and sad. Isn't this what we have been working towards our whole life on earth? Eternal life with the Lord?

This Thursday was Ascension Day and we celebrate it by having a special mass hearing about Jesus' rising into heaven. I often wonder how we would feel if we or the people around us sees our soul rise to heaven when we pass away. Would we still be sad or would it give us joy and/or peace knowing that our loved one's soul is going where we believe it to be?

To me, I can only imagine the scene when Jesus rose. I imagine tears being spent and then all of a sudden bright light showers the skies as Jesus ascends into heaven and the light stops the tears and showers their grief with peace and love, helping them know that even though it was Jesus' time to leave them, He will always be filled with joy, peace and love in heaven. An awesome sight!

On the flip side, I can't imagine if one of our loved one's souls goes the other way. Would that be dark and depressing for the soul and us? But yet, would it also still give us peace in "knowing"? We are very much a "see it to believe it" society and I wonder if this also gets in the way of our faith, of believing in the "unseen"?

Honestly, what I think it comes down to, is we know it happens because God shows us with Jesus and we just have to keep having faith that God knows and that is all that really matters at the end of the day. 

The Bible tells us that their is a time for everything, that God has a plan for each of us and we are in His book. We just have to keep trusting that He knows what's best for us, when He needs us to join Him and be filled with His joy, peace and love.

God’s Fruit Basket

Many homes have fruit in a bowl or basket, readily available for everyone to enjoy. We do this as we know fruit is healthy and good for us. It promotes good living. God’s fruits of the Spirit are good for us too. It too promotes a good life.

Love

For most of us, loving our family and friends come easy to us. However, God wants us to love everyone. This is not easy as loving people we don’t know are difficult. We can also find it difficult love our family and friends when they let us down. God wants us to love unconditionally regardless of choices made, lifestyles, colour, etc. He also wants us to love even when we don’t get loved back because God loves us. God loves us unconditionally even when we stray away from Him.

Joy

We should feel joy daily because as a Christian, we walk in the presence of God. Believing in God and having faith enables the Holy Spirit to fill us with joy and view each day as blessed gift. God’s joy fills us and we in turn, can share His joy with others.

Peace

Walking with God should give us peace but we don’t always feel peaceful. We should have peace in our mind, body and soul. This is also not easy to achieve. There are many things around us that eat at our peace and make us feel restless and uncomfortable. We can find this inner peace by never forgetting that God is in control and holds our hand during the good and bad.

Patience

This is a big one, well, for me at least. Being a parent, our patience is tested on a daily basis. We experience this regardless of their ages. As human beings, we become impatient with a lot thing in our lives such as our careers, wealth, relationships and life in general.

The saying “patience is a virtue” is very true as if we can have more and more patience we will start feeling at peace, experiencing God’s joy and love.

Kindness

We all could do with a bit of kindness. Kindness can be expressed merely by using our manners, “yes ma’am, no ma’am”. I feel good when I have shown kindness especially to someone who seems to be moody and/or rude. Their whole demeanour changes when you use manners to show your appreciation. Most times they will actually look up and smile at you.

Kindness should always be shown even if you think the person doesn’t deserve it. I try to make it a habit as I feel it’s a great habit to have. I don’t think kindness is earned, it is felt and expressed. Kindness changes the other person’s perception of you.

Our God is a kind God who shows mercy and He wants us to be kind as he has been kind to us.

Goodness

This could mean different things. Goodness could be that you are a genuinely good person. You respect and help others. You are positive and believe in yourself and others.

Goodness could also mean morals. It could be a person who has good morals and values and is not embarrassed to share them with others. Goodness is what you feel inside yourself, how you possibly conduct yourself.  I think goodness can be felt naturally and I think that it could also relate to the decisions we make.

Faithfulness

Having faith is believing in the unseen as mentioned in Hebrews 11:1-2. We always tell each other to keep the faith but what does that really mean. This means having faith in God that He will create the outcome that’s right for us. We forget that God is our Father and we are his children hence the fact that sometimes we don’t like his decisions even if deep down we know it’s good for us.

Faith believes in the good of people, believing in ourselves that we can get through with God’s help. Faith believes that our family and friends will be there for us no matter what decisions we make and what happens.

The faith we have in God is the faith He places in us.

Gentleness

To be gentle is to respect others and not to be rude on purpose. Being gentle and caring shows good character and reflects a part of your personality. It is not weak to be gentle as it shows that you have the ability to consider everything around you.

I think gentleness can also encourage kindness, patience and love. God wants us to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Self-control

Self-control is another big hurdle for many of us. God wants us to practice self-control in all situations and this is not always easy. Anger is due to a lack of self-control. Self-control is also related to sin as if we practice self-control there is less opportunity to sin.

It is also a personal choice. You have the free will to decide to show self-control or lose control and possibly hurt those around you.

We should allow ourselves to feel emotions such as anger but it is want we do with it that shows our self-control. We can also practice self-control when it comes to alcohol, partying and relationships.

Self-control is also God often testing our patience, faithfulness and goodness.

The wonderful thing about God’s fruit basket is that it never empties. No matter how many times we use the fruits of the Spirit, God always tops up the basket so we never run out.

Staying in tune

Doctors, therapists etc keep telling us to listen to our bodies. They tell us to take note when our body changes or feels differently because our body is trying to tell us that something is not necessarily right.

Many of us heed this advice, for example, when we keep getting headaches, we consider having our eyes tested, maybe stress is the cause and/or eventually go for a check up. Another example is when our muscles pain after exercising for a while, we consider reducing or stopping exercising for a while or soak our muscles. Our body talks...we listen.

We can listen to our bodies yet we find it difficult to stay in tune and listen to God.

We notice God's works around us and we all definitely notice when he answers our prayers the why we wanted but we don't always listen.

In this regard we are like children. As parents, sometimes you feel you tell your child to listen to you more than you hug them. Aren't we sometimes like that when God talks? Like children, we only hear what we want to hear, what we like to hear and the answer we are waiting to hear. However, we don't like to hear things God wants us to hear, wants us to learn and many times we could be missing out on great works in our life.

I sometimes wonder if God is like us earthly parents, asking if our ears work or if they are ornaments. Moaning to the angels if we ever hear Him or if we also have selective hearing like our children.

So....how do we stay in tune with God?

I think we can do this by being SILENT. Finding a comfortable space, praying to ask God to speak to us in our silence.

We are always encouraged to talk to God which I fully agree with but maybe sometimes that is all we do. Talk, talk, talk and forget to be quiet, just listen.

In our silence God could give and show us important messages, lay our next step on our hearts and breath His love and grace onto us and give us the confidence we need to take HIS next step for us.

LISTEN..........

We listen to our body now take the time to listen to the One who created it.

Angel's Wings

This week I received a lovely pair of angel wing earrings that I had ordered and it got me wondering......wondering what it would be like if we could physically see and touch our guardian angel on earth.

I can only imagine how it could feel knowing that this perfect being filled with light and God's glory walks besides me to help me, feed my soul and keep me safe. How glorious it could be holding their hand experiencing peace and warmth run through our veins to our souls.

Would we ever feel alone again? Would we ever experience free will, pain, suffering and darkness? I don't think we can fully comprehend what it would feel like. These big wings engulfing us when our spirit seems to be dwindling.

Then I questioned, why many of us find it easier to believe in having guardian angels but not able to fully believe in the God who gave them to us. We know this because in the Bible, Luke talks about how God sent angels to help Jesus. Jesus as a man was perfect. How perfect is God?

The answer I came up with is that God is so big and wonderful that we can't grasp the entirety of his being. Also like many humans, "seeing is believing". Writing this blog, I am still trying to imagine the "size" of God and it overwhelms me how big that really is.

If our guardians are so bright with light, glory, peace, strength, faith, hope, love that God's entrusts us to them, I can only imagine how bright, glorified, peaceful and strong our God is. How filled with faith, hope and love He really is.

Even though I can't see them, it comforts me to know that my Creator has angels he can send to all of us to wrap their wings around me, feed my soul, fill my soul and protect me from evil. It also comforts me that they keep me safe and with God's grace, helps me to walk the path of His will.

To protect, to serve, to save to heal – who helps them?

A couple of weeks ago, we all saw a YouTube video go viral about police brutality in Cape Town.  Police brutality is around and as I don’t condone it, what made me wonder is what is making the policemen and women so angry that their anger makes them go that far.

A lot of the time, we forget that our civil servants are traumatized and often on a daily basis. Try to imagine the emotions that you would experience if you had to see a murder scene, find a child that was raped, old lady mugged and this could be experienced in one working shift. How do you deal with all of this?

I know you are probably saying to yourself that no one made them choose that job but what would happen if no one chose to be a policeman, a fire-fighter, a nurse? Why aren’t the heads of these departments not making sure that they are being counselled on a regular basis? Why, do a lot of them, when they do get help are stereotyped by their industry?

I was a wife of a police reservist and I remember the look in his eyes when he saw or experienced something that bothered him. Now, imagine, going through all of this and coming home to your family and you can’t even discuss the case with your wife to help you decompress. Yet, your family also has to try and be understanding, coping with the mood swings and stress.  Imagine not knowing fully what your spouse or partner sees on a daily basis. A lot of them also don’t discuss it to protect their family of the harsh realities of the streets outside our front doors.

The psychologists hired by these departments, can they be trusted? Are they trying to encourage the men and women to come and see them or do they wait until they are forced to come and see them? Do they honestly and truly keep confidentiality? I am not blaming them for what is going on but something is clearly wrong. Whatever it is needs to be found and the issues need to be resolved or ways are the people in charge need to finds to help our civil servants cope and manage whatever it is.

Our civil servants should be among the highly paid employees in South Africa. Why, you say? Because our lives are in their hands on a daily basis and I feel, if we look after them, show them we support them and lift their morale, and then maybe they will stay on the straight and narrow to provide us with the best possible service.

In order for them, to reduce their anger, their out lashing of violence, we need to support them and give them the help they need for this anger, their stress and the trauma they experience.

Many of the people I still know in these industries don’t realize that I often see the trauma in their eyes, their face. I can only imagine how they feel when they try their best to protect people they might never know, get the person responsible or lose the person they sweated to save.

I can only imagine what it feels like when you spend so much time on a case, piecing the puzzle together just to see the person walk, the evidence lost and you get the blame. I can only imagine how it must feel to feel like you are working yourself to death and nothing changes. Crime increases, the same people walk the streets, lack of staff, low pay and low morale.  I can only imagine trying to work together to fight a fire, knowing you have already lost people among the flames. I can only imagine how it must feel beating a man’s chest with all the stamina you have to get his heart beating again just to stop with the realization that it was all in vain.

We might not have faith in them but we must also remember that God gave them the calling and the faith to follow the call. A call that asks for self sacrifice, unselfishness, to care without knowing and that we don’t become a policeman/woman, a fire-fighter, a nurse, a teacher, a paramedic, a doctor, we are called to it. I know that some become these things because they need a job but for many God called them to that career. And even though I am also one of those people who get agitated with the lack of service, lack of education, just lack of motivation to give a good service, I still like to believe that there are many roses among the thorns and I pray that when I need them for something serious, God will send His rose to me.

The Single Mom's Club

Last night I went to see Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club and I actually enjoyed it. I didn't expect it to be as funny as it was. The storyline is how five single moms get "thrown" together to organise a fundraiser for their children's school and they eventually become friends by agreeing that each mom will take a turn to babysit all of their kids while the other 4 have a break and go out together.

I like the way Tyler Perry created a movie that is not too serious but still makes you appreciate being a single Mom. 

There have been quite a lot of positivity and negativity around this movie but I liked the way Tyler Perry made you see all sides of being a single Mother. You saw some humour, ex husband issues, fear, sadness and all tiredness. As a single Mother, I enjoyed this being reflected back to me. Even though, my circumstances are different to the characters of the movie, I was still able to relate to them and understand exactly where they were coming from.

However, I was fascinated by the single Mom who become one by choice. Now that is a big decision. Honestly, I think I wouldn't have chosen it. This Mom thought she could manage it all, having a child and a successful career. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done.

It was also interesting how a Mother who has the domestic worker help her with kids becomes a single Mom through divorce and has no relationships with her children. She thought she was a Mother but really she wasn't. Her domestic worker replaced her.

Personally, for me, this movie reminded me that being a single Mother is not always an easy job and that single Moms, with all their emotions, are not alone. We do miss many special moments but sometimes we've had to sacrifice certain things for other things that our families need.

I did not become a single Mother by choice and not many do but honestly, if I knew I would be a single Mom, I probably wouldn't have had children. Don't get me wrong, I love my child and would never give her up for anything but trying to be a Single Mom and a Single person is not all that's it cracked to be.

With that said, I do wear my single Mom badge with pride and joy. The days that I am tired, she will brighten my day by saying something so funny we laugh together so hard. We are a team and because there is no "I" in team, I can sacrifice and work with a smile on my face for US.

God blessed me with single Motherhood for a reason and even though I know most of the "why", I still have a feeling that I have more "why" to learn. As single Moms we are successful but we succeed in many different things to others. God gives us the stamina to keep going, the smile to share, the tears to cry in secret and the grace to get us through.

I recommend all single Mom's to hunt down that babysitter, find a friend and take a night off to go and watch a movie that is light-hearted, funny but to the point.

The Karate Kid

I haven't been to training for over a week and then I returned last night. I was reminded how much I enjoy and get out of doing karate.

I originally started training to motivate my child but she stopped and I decided to carry on. It is interesting how going to the dojo is like being at home, my karate home.

Many people think knowing karate means you are trained to hurt, be violent, possibly dangerous but it is not true. Knowing karate means you have skills to defend yourself, have self control and able to walk away from a fight instead of starting one.

In the dojo, even though we are all different ranks, we are all equals. We do not train to learn to fight against each other but to help and push each other to become better people, train harder and sweat more.

A lot of people also think that karate has a religious base to it but it doesn't. Yes, we do have a bowing ceremony but it has nothing to do with religion. One of the top rules, if not the number one rule, is courtesy and respect. We do the bowing ceremony to show respect for our dojo, our sensei/sempai and our fellow trainees. We meditate to block out the outside world and ready ourselves for training. It is also to greet each other.

It also interests me how close we become as friends during training as well as after training. We just know that we are all there to help the next person leave training a better, stronger person. We are so proud of each other when we grade to the next colour belt as we have all helped each other get there.

The aim of karate is not to learn to fight but to have self control, respect, integrity and to have these traits in yourself, in others and also to take the principles from the dojo to the outside world.

Karate is not a sport, it's an art, not violent but can be life changing.