c'est la vie

So that “Empty Nest Syndrome”.  How about it hey.  It comes.  If you have children it comes.  Sooner or later.  And mine has arrived.  Well sort of.  OK now that I think about it, it is 50/50 ish.  I had one child giving me ENS and the other one here.  Now the former is back for a while so it is a full nest.  For the moment.  So maybe it is more like “Last Child Out of School Syndrome”. So mine has not completely arrived.  How confusing. Now I was expecting to fall down in a flood of tears and loneliness and confusion and regret and sadness and many other things as described by magazines.  And I didn’t.  Although there will be those that say I did.  I did way better than I thought.  And this is one of those things you can only fully fully fully understand when you have kids.  Who are now all finished in school. I actually felt much sadder when my daughter finished Matric in 2013.  It was a “oh ...

🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼 I love Christmas. For a lot of reasons. I can sit and stare at our Christmas tree forever.  My favourite is like now, as I go to bed (yes I know it is 3am but that is a story for another time), when I turn off all the house lights, leaving the tree lights until last.  In those moments, the lounge swathed in the glistening lights, I find myself completely mesmerised.  It seems as good a time as any to write my next blog.  In the dark, with just the lights of the tree.  I have been thinking a lot about my year.  What made it unbearable, what made it awesome. What made me almost drown in laughter, what made me almost drown in tears.  The people who walked into my life and the people who walked out of my life. The joys and sadness's.  The shifting as our last schoolchild finished Matric (and got his licence) and our daughter moved home from Cape Town for a while. The completion of my almost 5th year in the parish office.  My ...

💙💚💛💜💖 We need to learn to "Let Go and Let God" Fr Sibonelo at Ngome reminded us a few months ago on our weekend retreat.  It sounded like a great plan.  There, all rejuvenated and revived and spiritually excited I agreed that I would try.   So here I am. A few months later. Thinking about Let Go and Let God.  Wondering if my motto should not rather be something more forceful.  And please do not ask me WWJD.  I am under an unusual amount of pressure presently.  Mentally I sometimes find myself floundering in a newly changed situation, as so many areas of my life are currently altering and shifting and realigning themselves.  I am like a child in a learn to swim programme who has moved into the big pool.  I am familiar with the environment but still want the safety of the rail while I settle.   I have been surprised to find that some people that I thought were the rail are actually those taking the screws out of it a...

Labels.  You find them everywhere.  On all kinds of things.  Even people.  Tins, Bottles, Boxes, Containers and much more - all have labels telling you what is in there - descriptions that usually match the contents quite well.  The same cannot be said about human labels.  They are very often given to us by others, and very often do not accurately describe the person behind it.   What labels would you give yourself?  Beautiful? Talkative? Passionate? Warm? or do you fall into the trap of giving yourself negative labels - Fat, Incompetent, Tiring, Boring .... the list is endless. Why do we find it so easy to believe the negative labels others give us, yet so hard to accept the positive ones which we know to be true? One of the most soul destroying things I experience is those who label me, incorrectly, and in the process make me believe the labels to be true.  How is it that we are less inclined to believe the positive ...