Category: 366 days of novice motherhood

Lately I find myself living moment to moment rather than years in advance.

For many years I was in event management so I lived a couple of years ahead.

It created a tension in my life, that only now I can see with clarity.

I dealt with the pain of today by planning and preparing greatness in tomorrow.

Often I found myself in the most amazing places of the world, planning another trip to that exact place. I would miss the joy of the moment, because I was busily planning a future date.

I never found one place that I could just abide.

Christ says abide in me.

I think I found myself living in the future, but I lost the joy of abiding in the now.

Do you find yourself busily planning the future?

Do you project your thoughts to future plans to take away the pain of the present?

Today I am learning to abide.

‘Abide in me’ the bible says.

That is my challenge today.

What’s yours?

A

Romance takes effort.

Romance is not for the faint hearted, but romance changes everything.

You don’t need to be married to create romance.

Romance is just about intentionality.

It’s lighting a candle, it’s turning the tv off, it’s creating a space for conversation.

Romance is a little easier at this time of year, the lights, the celebrations, the effort.

In fact romance could be replaced by a simple word effort.

It just takes effort.

A note in the lunchbox, a special garnish on your same old dinner prep, spraying some air freshener and opening all the windows in the house.

Romance is actually easy, if we just try a little.

Romance someone today, even if it’s yourself.

Romance changes the atmosphere.

A

We have grown up with cotton wool balls surrounding us telling us that it’s okay give up!

Sometimes we just need to push through.

We are stronger and have more capacity than what we can imagine.

A better day is ahead, just don’t give up.

Exert yourself.

Push through those invisible walls we create.

Step through.

Exert yourself.

No one who exerted themselves ever comes home wishing they hadn’t.

Achieving a dream by exerting yourself never ends in ‘I wish I hadn’t!’

Exert yourself.

Step up.

Push through.

You can do it.

It will be worth it when you realize those walls were actually thin air.

Go you good thing,

A

The word desire has been kidnapped by our culture and been placed in the realm of fifty shades of grey.

The whole definition of desire in its purest form is not sexual at all.

It is based in a sense of hope.

To desire for something greater.

The bible says that God will grant us the desires of our heart.

What are you desiring?

I think we stop desiring and hope because we don’t want to be disappointed.

Disappointment rocks our inner world and we stop desiring for more than we have, we even stop believing that more is possible.

The bible says God gives us abundantly more than we could ever hope or dream of.

Desire what will benefit your life.

What benefits our lives is not more stuff but more time communicating.

What benefits our lives is giving to those in need out of generosity not getting.

What benefits our lives is perspective when we realise that we have so much to be grateful for.

Desiring more like this can’t help but benefit our lives.

Desire more internal peace and get rid of external weights.

Desire it’s not such a dirty word.

A

It’s most often the days that we don’t want to, that risk becomes necessary.

Taking risks is an essential part of creative and inspirational living.

We need to take risks.

We need to live on the edge.

We need to explore.

Just like our children naturally do. We say to our children all day everyday, ‘be careful’…

Careful living leads to boring, suburb dwelling.

Risk taking, emergent, thought provoking behavior leads to world changers!

When was the last time you went somewhere for the first time?

When was the last time you scared yourself by doing something new?

When did you last take a risk?

When I was learning to scuba dive a couple of years ago, everything within me was petrified. From the shark stories, to my fear of failure, I was paralyzed with fear most of my dives. One thing that scuba diving taught me though, was that I had a major trust issue with my instructors and Charl. We learnt to scuba dive before we got married and one solo dive we did together I refused to allow him to take the lead. It was a dangerous situation, the waters were really rough and someone had been taken by a shark in the area.

My lack of trust in his leadership opened up a major debrief which helped our pre marriage journey immensely. What if we hadn’t taken that crazy risk together? My trust of him as the leader in our marriage could have never been tested and therefore developed and grown.

Risks open us up to vulnerability.

Vulnerability exposes our weaknesses and our strengths.

This place of exposure causes us to thrive.

Are you struggling to thrive?

Maybe your not taking enough risks?

A