Tenacity to Purpose

I think that I've figured it out. The holidays are about love and happiness. They are just covered up by loads of food, vacation plans, and tree decorations. There are so many people that feel lonely and depressed during this time, for many logical reasons...But the fundamental one is that they don't feel loved. And the scary thing is that you can be in a room full of people but still feel unloved. They may not have done what they promised to, they didn't give you that warm embrace you were longing for, or they didn't remember what your favorite dessert is. Different things make us feel loved. For some, just being in the same room is enough. This festive season I have learned that it's not the bad fried chicken or the missed trip to church that ruins the holiday season for people. It's the broken promises, the unspoken words right along with the spoken ones. It's the misunderstandings and the unmade phone calls. We are all longing for and seeking the same ...

Everybody wants to be accepted. No matter who you are, or how confident you are. We want to be viewed as enough, as good, valued for who we are and what we bring to the table. When you don't get accepted, the feeling of rejection is intense and it brings with it pain. It's like applying for university. Not getting accepted is them saying that what you used to apply was not good enough, the thing you brought to the table was not sufficient, others did better than you did and so they get in but you don't. As humans we reject each other all the time. Not just in the big scale things like saying no to a marriage proposal, but in little acts every single day. Your loved one tries to open up about their feelings and you sweep them under the rug. You are saying that their feelings aren't important enough for you to sit up and take notice. Your friend tells you about how terrible his day was, and all you're worried about is getting the conversation over and done with...

Facebook has this new On This Day memories thing, where it tells you what you posted on that day in previous years. The other day a memory from 2011 left me in shock. Have you ever read something that you wrote in the past and wondered who that person was? Wondered what on earth you were thinking? This was that moment for me. In the post I was going on about how I was tired of waiting for things to come together. In the comments someone told me to make them happen by myself, I then told him that I didn't know how to and that someone would have to come and tell me how to do it. I sat there in disbelief because I was acting so helpless. I looked as if I couldn't even think for myself, that I couldn't do anything unless someone came and showed me how to do it. How many of us are like that on a daily basis? We play the victim role so well, we act as if we are helpless, even worse we believe that we are helpless. How many of us have dreams, projects and aspirations but they ar...

From a young age we all want friends. When we’re toddlers, our friends are the people we play with, the people we share our toys with. For most of us our first friends are our siblings, and our cousins. As we grow older we start looking for people we have similarities with. People we have something in common with. When we’re adults, life may separate us from those people, so we build friendships based on proximity. Friendship is something that never needed explaining. To some it may not seem as complicated as a romantic relationship.  Brene Brown, an American scholar, author, and public speaker, says that connection is why we are here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering. Friendship is all about connection.  Let’s take an example of a great friendship from the Bible, Jonathan and David’s friendship. In 1 Samuel 18:1 it says that Jonathan loved David as much as he loved himself, so muc...

As I sat on that bench and took in my God’s creation, I couldn’t help but feel at peace. A peace that only God could give. I listened to the music the birds were creating and I couldn’t help but smile. I breathed in the untainted air and I couldn’t help the feeling of wanting to stay there forever. I imagine this is how Adam and Eve felt every single day. They got to take in the full colour palette of God’s mind. They got to live in His idea of what paradise should be in sum total they had a completeness, a wholeness, a tranquillity, a perfectness, a fullness, a rest, a harmony, they had a Shalom indicating the absence of discord and agitation. I was sitting in a garden: one planned and planted by man and yet, my breath was taken away. If this garden was a result of man’s wisdom how much more was the garden of Eden!!!!  I can imagine breakfast at the pond with God every morning. While He explained how He chose the colours on the feathers of the bird standing on that rock...

Have you ever had a day where your feelings are just trying to rule the day? Where you know that these feelings are going to get you into trouble but they are just taking over? So you try to tell your feelings to shut up! You try to tell them to get behind you! But telling them off doesn’t work, so you go to God and ask Him what you should do. He gives you an answer and tells you what to do. Then you go to a friend and they confirm what God said. But sometimes we just can’t take an answer for what it is. Have you ever met a person who just cannot take no for an answer? Just because it’s not the answer that they wanted, they just keep asking. The thing about our feelings is that we cannot run away from them. That person that advised you will walk away. That conversation with God will end but your feelings will stay with you and they feel more real, sometimes more important than the conversation you just had and the outcome of it. In all honesty, regardless of how intense feelings m...

Security measures are defined by Vocabulary.com as measures taken as a precaution against theft or espionage or sabotage. It is a type of guard, a precautionary measure warding off impending danger or damage or injury.  We all lock our doors, literally and figuratively. And some lock their doors more than others. Some lock only the doors that lead to specific rooms. We lock them in case someone wants to come in and steal something; a piece of your heart, a page out of your life or your jewellery. It’s almost as if you’re always just ready for somebody to come and hurt you. So we say to ourselves that we will not allow people into our space. We will not allow them to come in and destroy. We can have many reasons for locking our doors. Past hurt, lessons learned and wounds that remind us to stay safe. I used to lock my door all the time, even during the day. Locking your door has practical reasons, like we live in South Africa and crime is a real thing. But one day I slept wi...

                               The only thing to fear is fear itself( Franklin Delano) Every day in our lives we are grappled, numbed with this emotion “FEAR.” Fear, Fear Oh Fear!!! Webster’s Dictionary defines FEAR as an agitated state of mind that cripples us from looking further than the hardship itself. Every human struggles with the emotion of fear; fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of a certain disaster, fear of men, fear of the future, fear that God has abandoned them. Fears of all sorts elbow their way into the out stream of conscious thought, while some fears are constructive-many heroes are born by their reaction to a life threat Yes there are a lot of things in life that stir up fear in our hearts. The world is a scary place, and there are many things that have the potential to steal our joy. The future, is one of the biggest fears, for it comes with an uncertainty, the unknown...

The thing that we always talk about. The thing everyone wants so badly. It is easy to find…depending on which variation knocks at your door.  Many people promise to show it to you, not knowing that what they have to offer is a cheap knockoff.  The scary thing is that you can take it and run with it, thinking that you’ve found the real deal.  Many people settle for what knocks at their door because they think that it has to be the best offer on the table.  That if they don’t take what is in front of them that another offer will never come.  You stop questioning authenticity because you can’t bare the thought of being without it ever again. This love…this love that forgets to put you first. This love that wrongs you but hands out apologies as frequently as it snows in South Africa. This love that doesn’t encourage your dreams but calls you stupid. This love that puts it’s homies before you.  The sad thing about love these days is that it can cha...

From the moment a child is born, speculations are made about what they will grow up to look like, what they will like to do, what kind of personality they will have, what kind job they will do, who they will marry, and so on.  There are questions that are always asked. Like why are we on this earth? What is it that we’re meant to do with the time that we’ve been given? And how are we to fulfil those things?  For some, these questions keep them up at night. Wondering if what they did with their day will add up to anything. Wondering if the path they are on is even the right one. You know, the kind of questions that lead to a mid-life crisis. We innately assume that there has to be a reason for existence. It just makes sense.  So we live our lives day by day making choices, choosing paths that will give us clues as to whether we’re on the right path or not. Kind of like a treasure hunt. Well, it dawned on me that we were created to live for eternity. And that earth is ...