Tag: reflect

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Reflect – The final chapter

Now that my brain has done its channel hopping between my childhood and the past two years, I decide to sit quietly and gather my thoughts…..I have been reflecting all the way. I truly hope that I am not going to end up in a dead end and also hope that I am not going nowhere slowly (or fast for that matter).

I wait patiently for God to put some sense into my mind while he is busy calming the spout of thoughts that have been racing around in my mind. Why does one feel like this? Why is it as if nostalgia is trying to make a little nest in your mind and heart? Grateful is the next word that is starting to take the lead in my mind, racing to make it to the end of my fingertips so that it can be used and typed. Just like that. Grateful? I am starting a conversation with myself and God again about this.

Jip, you got it girl! Grateful. Alrighty then. Grateful it shall be. I chew a little bit on this. It is not long before the light comes on. I got it! I get it! I feel this way about everything and this time of the year, because deep, deep down inside of me, I actually have this huge sense of being grateful for everything that was and is still to come.

Grateful that we have been spared for another year on earth. Grateful that God provided for us despite the Pandemic. Grateful that we have work, can generate income. Grateful that we are healthy.

Now it feels like all these thoughts are streaming in through my mind. It is as if they are all jumping up and down, putting their hands up, as if to say “Pick me! Pick me!!” How can one pick only a few when there is so much to be grateful for?

Grateful for good memories despite the hardship and tough times the entire world finds itself in. That is why it feels like nostalgia. It is actually nostalgia in a good way….thinking back on good times…..fun times…..

With a grateful heart I close this entry. I ask God to give me a song that will fit in with what I am feeling. I close my eyes for a moment. Then I remember a song from Matthew West. Brand New.

I can hear the song, the music notes and lyrics dance through my mind. I am sure I have already blogged about this. But that is the wonderful thing about God’s word and praise and worship music too.

It is as if it lives and each time you listen to it or read it, then there is this whole new meaning that you can identify deep within. He is making you new, He is breaking your chains, he is making you BRAND NEW! I hear the words rumble around in my mind……

As time goes on and things happen, it is God who is constantly renewing us, IF we let Him, I might add. Everything that happens with us, the good and the bad (as it feels for all of us some times) is busy making us better and stronger for the next set of memories that we are going to make…..our time on earth is short. I realise that more and more every day.

When you are 20, 40 feels so far away. But when you are 40 you KNOW 70 or 80 is so close. Have you done your part for God’s kingdom? Do you still have enough time on earth to do what God has placed you on earth to do? Are you busy doing what He called you to do? Or are you waiting for one day? Goodness me, it is as if there is a whole new bunch of thoughts starting to march through my mind….

I listen to the song again…..drinking in the words. I am watering my thoughts like the rain feeds and wets the earth….in the hope that Godly thoughts will grow and come to be and that one will not be caught up in the demands of this world…..He is making you BRAND NEW!!!!!

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Reflect – Chapter 3

Today my mind wandered back to my childhood. How it felt when it was December…..as Christmas time approached. My mom usually worked, never had leave over a December month. Not that I can remember anyway but maybe I am just thinking of one December? Who knows….

I think it must have been hard for her. To get up in the mornings and go to work while the rest of us lied around at home. Due to a lack of being able to do anything else, I started to watch cricket. I taught myself how the rules worked and what everything meant. There are normally 5 day games on. That gave me lots of information as it was very boring and long (not the excitement of one day games or 20/20 cricket).

To this day, I still remember the King Pie advertisement. The one where the umpire stands with his finger up in the air, the signal showing a player is out. Then the words at the bottom of the screen would read One Hot Pie Please. My husband and I still laugh about this advertisement and sometimes joke about it when we feel like having a pie….

Then my mind wanders to Christmas eve. It was always at my mom’s parents in Benoni. She grew up English and they rather celebrated Christmas eve than Christmas Day. Come to think of it, maybe we did Christmas eve in that manner because we always used to visit my dad’s brother in Pretoria on Christmas Day, swimming and eating the whole day.

So we had best of both worlds so to speak. Both sides of the families were visited over the Festive season. Not the way we do it nowadays (sort of). This year it is her family, next year his family. We are not as strict with that, we spend most of the time with my in-laws in any event rather than my family, as my family (sisters and their families – not my parents and these days my father and his new wife) were always in different places over Christmas….normally camping at the coast….

We grew up with a Christmas tree. Not that many presents under the tree, but a little something. I always volunteered to put up the Christmas tree. When I was younger, I did not understand the concept of balance on the tree. It ALWAYS used to fall over when I was done, this was my BIGGEST frustration….

When we left to have dinner at my grandparents’ house, there were no presents under the tree. When we arrived home later that night, there were presents. Because I was the youngest, my mom used to pretend that Father Christmas existed for a long time. Today I know that NOTHING about how we celebrated Christmas, the tree or any other worldly celebrations are Biblical.

Back to the Christmas tree and presents. I could NEVER understand HOW Father Christmas got into our house. There is no chimney or fireplace for him to come in with. My mom always said that he used to make himself very small and entered the house through the key hole in the front door. That still boggled my mind, but I think I accepted that explanation.

Innovative and creative, the stories of my mom! When I was older, I used to ask her how she managed that? The presents under the tree. She then let me in on her secret. She always, just as we were about to leave, “remembered” about something she forgot. She would run back into the house, put the presents under the tree and take the forgotten item and put it in the car.

I wonder the whole time why my mind keeps on jumping around to different times in my life….

To be continued……

Reflekteer – Hoofstuk 3
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Reflect – Chapter 2

It is as if the call from a certain bird, in Afrikaans we refer to it as the Piet-my-vrou, wants me to Reflect on what was and what happened. This past week I heard him almost the whole day. From early morning. I can hear him sitting in a tree close to our back door.

It is as if he is calling to only me. I hear him. Then my thoughts wander back to 11 April 2021. It feels like yesterday, yet it was 8 months ago already! I calculate on my fingers (yes fingers) how long ago it was. I could have calculated it by deducting 4 from 12 too. But I decided to do this calculation on a physical manner.

Yes I know. CA’s are NOT supposed to do calculations on their fingers. Yet, I still did it, because it works for me. Why I don’t know. Back to the Piet-my-vrou and 11 April 2021. That day we celebrated my birthday.

40 years old. I cannot say one or two hands full, because we only have 10 fingers….but it marked the day that I turned the BIG 40. The Piet-my-vrou also called from early in the morning on that day. It was as if he tried to leave a sound memory in my brain. Every time I hear that sound, I think back to that day.

My mom did not see me turn 40. It was very sad for me, but I know it is also ok. I will survive. Many people’s parents do not see them turn 5 or 10 or even 18 years old.

The previous year, when I turned 39, we were in Hard lockdown. That day I realised and knew why God sent me to earth in 1981 and not 1980 which I had wished for while still at school. Stupid wish that I had, I know…

When I look back on 2020 and 2021, it feels very intertwined and inseparable to me, as I had mentioned previously. It is hard to distinguish between this year and last year. Things that happened in 2020 feels like yesterday and things that happened in 2021 feels like ages ago. And vice versa. It is strange. Weird.

I talk a lot to God about this and WHY it feels like this for us as humans? One thing that I do know is that people are not that eager to hide behind their masks and walls since the start of the Pandemic.

For the first time people SHARE their emotions, how they feel, how they experience things. Previously we all just gave the standard Well thanks and you? answer if someone asked us how we are doing. But since March 2020 it was DIFFERENT.

To be continued…..

Reflekteer – Hoofstuk 2
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Reflect – Chapter 1

This time of the year it always seems to me that there is some or another form of nostalgia (I had to google what the English of heimwee was and I am not entirely convinced that this is the right word…but perhaps it is?) that tries to make itself at home in my heart. This makes that I actually do not like this time of the year. I would not say despise, as that is such a strong word. Dislike is a better word to use….This is the time we are all supposed to celebrate one of the biggest events that occurred for mankind – the birth of Christ. I know there have been many debates on when He was actually born but let’s leave that out of this conversation…

I often wondered WHY it is like this for me this time of the year. Why do I feel like this? Why is this time of the year hard for some people? As the questions spin around in my mind, making something similar to a funnel, it is as if I can feel the Holy Spirit placing His hand in the midst of the turmoil to calm all the thoughts I am having.

I take some quiet time and try to HEAR what it is that I feel God is trying to tell me. The word that stands up above everything else is REFLECT. Reflect? I ask. The answer comes back to me – Yes, reflect.

Reflect. I chew on this word like my son does with his bubblegum the whole day long. Reflect. I decide to look up a more formal meaning in the English Oxford Dictionary. Not because I do not know what it means. No, just to be a bit different in my blog entry and also to be sure that I do understand the context in which God is giving this word to me.

I take the dark blue dictionary off the bookshelf and I blow off the dust that has settled on it from not using it as often as it probably was intended to be used. This dictionary has a few more meanings and explanations than the Afrikaans dictionary. But I find the one that I feel fits what God is trying to say. Here too it is a verb and the meaning I consider the closest to what I am trying to say is meditate. To meditate on something. Another one I found is to remind oneself. So basically I am meditating on or remining myself of what has happened in the past.

The only difference is, I am not only looking back, reflecting on 2021, but rather 2020 and 2021 together. You see, last year and the current year feels like they are intertwined and twisted into one another. I cannot tell the difference between the years. I am sure this is how everyone feels, not only me.

To be continued……

Reflekteer – Hoofstuk 1