Honesty with Love

I was pondering the other day how often I hide my feelings and don't say how I truly feel, because I'm too afraid of offending someone. Nowadays, it seems no-one cares to listen to the honest to goodness truth, either about ourselves or about a situation in our lives. I think of the verses in Proverbs 27:5-6 that reminds us that a loving correction from a friend can be trusted more than a silent so-called friend. 
Yes, sometimes the truth can hurt, but at least we will have something to work with in order to fix it.  You cannot solve a problem, if you don't know of its existence. 

It rakes courage to be honest and wisdom to admit our faults, but we can never live truly authentic lives, if we fail to be honest, both with ourselves and with others.

In retrospect, I've realised how often I've not been a true friend and have kept my mouth shut, when I should have spoken up, or even worse, I've said what I knew the other person wanted to hear... and for that I seek forgiveness. 

When I use to work at Wesbank, our department did an internal project called 'Recommendations for Improvemnt'.  We had to evaluate our and other people's jobs and see how we can improve them in doing them better.  I guess this project has to get all the credit in helping me to see that ALL criticism is really just a recommendation for improvement!  

We need to welcome correction from a friend and reject false, and fake ones who don't love us enough to tell us the truth.  And we need to be truer friends in always telling the truth to them. 

Yes, the truth can and does often hurt, but it is sorely needed and should be encouraged.   As long as it is said out of love and with the right motive, we need not fear. 

So to all my family, friends and bosses, I must warn you that my 2017 New Years Resolution is to be a lot more honest, and may God help me to receive honesty from all of you without taking offence...

God's Promises come with an IF

There are many like myself who at one time in their lives, have ignorantly regarded God’s promises as quick-fix medications to some or other problems and challenges in life.  We like to claim the promise, but fail to read these promises in full context.  Yes, God does promise many things for those who believe in Him, but these always come with strict conditions.  We cannot expect them to ‘work’ if we do not do our part first.  We cannot get upset that our prayers are not being answered, when we have failed to meet God’s conditions in the first place.  God’s promises always come with an ‘if’ condition – when we meet that condition, only then can we expect God to fulfil His part and keep the promise. God’s promises were never meant to be chanted like an insurance guarantee.  We need to be immensely thankful for His promises, when we do meet His conditions and never take them for granted. 

This is not only true of God’s promises, but also the many favourable blessings that we ungratefully expect to receive as our right as a believer.  God will not bless us, if we are not living a life worthy of His blessings.  God’s blessings are like an earthly reward for when we say, do, act and think according to His Word. When we live pure and holy lives, it automatically activates and releases God's blessings and promises in our lives. 

Let us take heed of this next time we encounter a promise in God’s word and make sure that we have first met the condition, before we claim the promise as our own.

Hungry for More

My dog Coco recently taught me a valuable life lesson.  No matter how much she has just eaten, whenever I take her out for her walks, she always scavengers for more food or bones.  In a nutshell, she is always hungry for more, no matter how full she may be...

It made me think of how I am after a huge meal at a restaurant or after Christmas lunch - so satisfied that I swear I will never eat again! A huge exaggeration of course, but the same applies to my attitude after attending a Christian conference. I become so 'full of the spirit', that I ignorantly believe I will be able to maintain that satisfied, fullness indefinitely, but the truth is that I never do. Slowly but surely, I soon become complacent and return to my usual mediocre life. 

I believe that if we lived a life of always being hungry for more, we will be able to sustain our fullness of satisfaction and never be left feeling empty or unsatisfied.  I am certainly not advocating a life of gluttony with food, but in terms our our spirituality, we should be constantly eager for all kinds of spiritual crumbs that we can find, scavenging for morsels of treasures, like my Coco, to keep up forever full and never lacking!

How to manage your Fears

Being an avid note taker, I thought I'd share what I recently learnt at my last Writer's Group I attend... Although the talk was aimed at writer's fears, I do believe they are helpful in coping with all life's many fears...

I also don't think it was a coincidence that the symbolism of fear used in the talk was in driving, as for those who know me, this has always been my personal monster, but having used the skills shared in driving home from the talk, I can testify that they do really work!

How to manage your Fears 

Inspired by the Blog ‘Frab to Fab’ by Susan Dennard and presented by author, Rae Rivers

Fear is the umbrella word for all emotions that hold you back from your dreams and causes you discomfort in pursuing them. From a writer’s perspective, it is what causes your writer’s block and hampers your creativity and flow. You may think your many excuses causing the delays are valid, but the underlying cause is always some form of subtle and symptomatic fear.

How we combat these fears is to realise that fear is not our enemy. God gave us this emotion to protect us and keep us safe. We should never invalidate our fears, dismiss them or try to hide them from ourselves and others. We must acknowledge and accept them. We need to make friends with our fears so that we can interact and reason with them. You can even give your fear a name to personalise it in making it your friend!

How we silence our fears is to reassure them. Think of your fear as a car crash. We may be scared to crash, but we still need to drive! To feel safe, we need to put on our seat belts, which will soften the blow of a crash (failure). Symbolically, our seat belt is our protective measures that we can put in place. For an extra measure, we can reassure ourselves with an airbag, which would be our back-up plan if our seat belt fails.

Always consider the worst case scenario, ie our worst fear, and then fix it with a plaster of steps to put in place to avoid it or to soften the blow. Many mistakes and failures hold valuable life lessons that build character.

From a writer’s perspective, we must always write for joy and not for money. Keep hold of your dream, but find a way to make your writing work for you. Don’t rely on it for an income. Connect and reach out to other authors.

Never expect smoothness – if we expect the unexpected, we can learn to be more resilient and less afraid of challenges and obstacles.

When we stop seeing fear as a monster and start seeing him as our friend, our fears will settle. They may remain, but if we manage them well, we CAN cope and become more confident and live a less fearful live!

Nature's Medicine

After watching the movie August Rush recently, I was reminded of the therapeutic power in the sound of nature. Unfortunately, our lives have become so noisy with man-made sounds that we have tuned out God's medicine for calming, quietening and relaxing our minds, and restoring our peace and creativity. Walking my dog along our canal recently, I purposely switched off my headphones and listened to the natural sounds around me instead and I was blown away... 

Who would have thought such diverse sounds of nature could make such a harmonious melody and that it could bring about such a sense of overwhelming peace to my soul. There were different birds chirping, ducks quacking, frogs croaking, trees rustling in the breeze, water gushing, canoeists rowing and together they made a beautiful song.

It is no wonder people buy nature sound CDs to fall asleep to. I honestly believe that when we reconnect with nature and focus on their sounds, we can tune out our worries and problems and bring peace to our minds. I encourage you to try it - close your eyes, switch off your phone and your music and allow the therapeutic sounds of nature sing peace to your soul...  And if you live in the city, check out the free collections on the Internet to download!

Rejoicing with Jealousy

I was reminded recently of how difficult it is to be happy for someone when they achieve something you strongly desire. After my second miscarriage, my sister fell pregnant, leaving me in an awkward emotional journey of wanting to rejoice with her, but being consumed with anger at the unfairness of it and being so jealous of her.  Fortunately, I only had to endure 2 months of my ashamed fakeness with my sister, before I myself fell pregnant again and we were able to rejoice together! 

I have since learnt that being able to rejoice for another persons good-fortune, while you are dreaming or have lost your own, is a sign of great character maturity, that takes some years to learn.

As an aspiring writer, I often encounter authors who have successfully become published, and find it hard to understand why they are often so tight-lipped about sharing their secrets or contacts. If I ever become published, I aim to go out of my way to help others achieve success, for I will have walked in their shoes and will have experienced their journey of repeated rejections. Sometimes experiencing things from both perspectives allows us the capacity to empathise, and it is only in having gone through it ourselves that we will fully know and understand the level of excitement. I believe God brings certain people along our path to either help them or for them to help us, and recognising the role is crucial.

So next time you encounter someone you are intensely jealous of, be honest about your feelings with them and as hard as it is, force yourself to share in their joy, even if it does feel fake.  Focus your jealousy on learning from them. 

And for those who may be in the position to gloat, be sensitive to others whose emotions are raw and tender. 

I believe that when we learn the lesson of rejoicing with others in our jealousy, we will learn the valuable lesson that when we put another person's happiness above our own, we end up attracting our own heart's desires! 

The trouble with silent treatment

It saddens me to hear of how many couples resort to the silent treatment after there has been an altercation or quarrel.  Be it for reasons of punishment, control or simply because of clamming up due to a lack of communication skills to adequately express ones feelings, it is never the answer, and in most cases, just makes the problem worse. What I've learnt is that silent treatment only magnifies the problem, causing a greater rift or wall in the relationship.  What the silence does is to force one to have to presume and interpret things falsely.  Ignoring someone is as powerful and damaging as emotional abuse. 

Although I do believe it is healthy to give each other some space to process any negative emotions, there needs to come a point where you sit down and discuss what happened and allow each other to express themselves openly and honestly, without pointing fingers or placing blame. When one sticks to 'I' language instead of 'you', then this allows each other to view the problem from the other persons perspective.  If your emotions are too raw or sensitive, then the best solution is to write the person a letter. Bottling our emotions up, especially negative ones, is extremely unhealthy, not only for your spirit, but I believe it causes illness and disease to take root in our physical bodies as well. 

Unfortunately as is often the case, when the one spouse or partner becomes silent and abrupt, it often causes the victim to do tit for tat.  This dysfunctional cycle continues until some crisis forces them to communicate or God forbid, the bitterness and resentfulness is allowed to grow to such an extent where the relationship becomes terminal.

The other side of the coin, which is just as dysfunctional, is when couples act as if nothing happened after a fight, bottling up whatever negative feelings they had, hoping for them to dissolve, which they never do - they just become volcanic weapons we hold onto in our hearts for the next fight.  Communication is the key to a healthy and happy marriage! Only when we force ourselves to be vulnerable enough to express our feelings honestly, can we break the pattern of silent destruction. It is only with the truth that we are set free from fear, where the healing in our relationship can begin...

Christmas - Festival of Lights

After looking at some Christmas photos of our tree and balcony decorated with colourful lights this past year, I was forced to smile as I recognised that as Christians, Christmas is our special "Festival of Lights"!  Hindus and Jews may have their own, but for Christians, we too should consider that the lights that we decorate our Christmas tree with are symbolic and have a far greater meaning than we give them credit for.  If you consider how God used the light of the stars to prophesy to the wise men of when Jesus would be born, and how again the light of the stars were used to guide both them and the shepherds to where he was born, we can conclude that Jesus is the our light in the darkness!  So next time you see Christmas lights shining, give a thought to what they represent - just like the gifts we get under the tree should remind us that not only is it's Jesus's birthday, but that He was the greatest gift of all...