Category: 366 days of novice motherhood

Place: the couch

Poison: pumpkin soup

Favourite things: my husbands hoodie!

Winter has truly arrived at our house. My bedroom looks like a Chinese laundry with baby washing hanging on every pillar and post, I have developed a flu and the cold has set in deliberately.

Today I sniffled my way through the day and honestly didn’t have much energy or time to ponder all that I feared. Till I listened to the news about the lovely lady who was killed in Phuket. My sister flies there solo in a couple of weeks and my thoughts went downward.

What is it about our minds?

We can stop the thought, then it creeps back. We can think on other things and it sneaks around the back gate and knocks on your back door. We can remind ourselves of all the promises of God and then we drop the bundle at the first sight of rain.

The breeding ground of fear is most definitely my mind. How do I bring control and submission to my thoughts and the fear that grips me?

I once read a book by Joyce Meyer called ‘Battlefield of the mind’ and it really impacted me back then.

One of her key scriptures is this proverb

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he (Prov. 23:7)

How do we change the way we think?

How do we operate on the fear in our heart?

I think it happens by first of all admitting to yourself and someone close by the thoughts and fears that have taken refuge in your heart.

Someone safe. Someone kind. Someone who will listen and not try to offer solutions.

Maybe write a comment below and start the journey towards a new way of thinking.

I believe one of the greatest hurdles is just admitting that you are afraid and you want to change.

Secondly finding a space/way/opportunity for accountability. Whether its a counsellor, your husband, a friend who you start to unpack some of these fears with and begin the journey of accountability.

What is left in secret, only grows.

That which is brought out into the light, brings truth and perspective to its power.

What do you fear?

Operation fear not has begun in my house.

What about yours?

A

Place: home

Poison: water

Favourite things: visiting friends

I have never known fear like the first time I held our baby in my arms.

I have never known fear like that which plagues me at 3am as I feed him.

I have never really been a person who fears, but lately I have felt so afraid.

Afraid of death, afraid of him hurting himself, afraid of calamity.

One of the main reasons I have tried to turn the tv off this month is because of the desperation and depravity in our world.

The cancer, the decay, the bombs, the poverty, the rapes, the murder, the lies, the activity, the darkness.

It seems as if every new show is a police or crime thriller and the plotlines have to extravagantly outline the depravity of humanity.

As a youth, young adult and adult I have experienced seasons of real tangible confidence. Ability to step up and take on a challenge. The only real fear I have battled my whole life, is fear of man. Fear of people’s opinion.

It seems since I have become a mother the list has grown fanatically. Am I going to hurt him, am I emotionally scarring him, am I enough, will he be hurt by someone, will he be physically hurt.

I know a lot of my fear is based in an inability to trust God. I close my eyes and see pictures that my eyes don’t want to see. I pray and they disappear, but the feelings of fear remain.

I am going to go on a journey of trust and joy with you readers, unpacking and writing devotions from scripture on fear. I want to keep on doing this until I’m in a place where it is somewhat diminished.

What do you fear?

I know you fear something, because otherwise the bible wouldn’t have written Fear Not! 365 times in the bible.

365…

One for every day of the year. This year the extra day, the day you and I conquer it!

I know I’m not great at replying to your comments on here, but I’m going to respond to everyone of them on this journey.

Let’s encourage each other. Not with our fears, but how we have overcome them.

‘Fear not, for I have overcome the world!’

Expectantly

A

Place: home

Poison: water

Favourite things: the dream feed

Every decision we make has consequence.

Every decision we don’t make has consequence also.

Life is won and lost in the decisions we make.

More than often lost in the ones we put off.

What decisions are you avoiding?

What decisions scare you?

What decisions do you need to make for yours and your families future?

Decisions bring about change. Decisions define outcomes. Decisions are imperative.

This week I had a conversation with my husband and my sentence went like this ‘I am making it my goal to do…this week’. In which he quickly replied ‘decide to do it instead, making it your goal means you might do it, decision to do it is very different!’

He totally called my bluff and I needed the challenge.

There are a few things I have made my goal lately to do, yet haven’t really got around to starting them.

Decision point.

Now time to actually do some of them.

How about you?

A

Place: home

Poison: water

Favourite things: lance and karina on Skype from London!

Discipline is never a nice word to blog or talk about.

Discipline from others, from god or from ourselves is never easy.

However in my journey, the days of discipline always lead to new days of growth.

Growth is not mandatory for everyone. There are many people who are content with the status quo, content with their shagpile carpet from the 70s, content with their Sunday roasts every week served at 5pm, content with the same seat on the same pew in church hearing the same message year in year out.

Who says that this is not okay?

Nobody.

Good people, good lives.

However I want to live a life of growth. I don’t want to be the same today as I was yesterday. The only way this growth can come is through disciplines.

Telling myself that going to the gym or exercising on the beach is not negotiable, because this discipline brings about a change to my emotions and energy.

Reading my bible and praying are disciplines that are imperative to growth.

Reading books about marriage and doing devotions with my husband, taking time to communicate offenses and ask forgiveness. These are all disciplines in ones life. Disciplines that make growth not negotiable.

Today one of my hero’s Phil Baker, after a serious season of illness, ran a marathon. The discipline this requires for a man who is battling the complications in his world is unbelievable. Yet he does not allow excuses to prohibit his goals.

What excuses do you bring out in the area of disciplines that you need to curb?

What areas are you needing growth in?

I want to be more disciplined this week. I want to grow.

How about you?

A