To My Cheerleader, miss you so much!

African Praise Poem for my Dad (2/9/1950 to 4/4/2023)

Charles Beverly Balfour Browne, the man with a camera,

And a smile that never-ended;

With his twinkling, royal blue denim eyes,

Accompanied by his mischievous Huckleberry grin,

And a crazy sense of fun!

Dad lived all the emotions and juice of life

And tasted all the flavours of being alive.

As a father, he was patient and calm;

In living he was as Peace-loving as an African Elephant.

Yet, he was never afraid to trumpet for what was right.

With all of himself he was like an eagle,

Reborn and flying above the storm.

From the yin to the yang, and all the in-between,

He lived in the moment, noticing all the beauty around him.

Charlie Browne sang and danced to his own tune,

Especially in his own garden, in rhythm with his treasured birds,

Where he felt closer to God under African skies,

Amongst his strelitzia, camellia, gardenia and the like,

Where he was able to be himself, to be free.

From finance, to sport, to cars and wildlife,

He always lived true to himself.

Yet, like a chameleon,

He became all that others needed him to be,

Using his sensitivity that was as deep as the sea.

His fight with cancer was brave. His perseverance was true,

And he left his legacy through his boardgame: See, Say, Doo.

Be well in heaven Dad, you are now truly free.

Continue to be the light of kindness you were here on earth;

And help us let the world not be so much less without you.

Will miss that you aren’t going to like and comment on this one Dad. So much love and thanks, stay safe and free in heaven xxxx

God or Imagination? My wishful thinking or God’s Will?

“How to catch a Prince” by Rachel Hauck – ‘The Royal Wedding Series’. Page 293:

“He touched his finger to his lower lip, where the buzzing hint of her presence remained. He splashed his face again and tried to rub the buzz from his lip. When he snatched the hand towel from the bar to dry his face, the sensation of her touch had not diminished, but intensified. “Forgiven” . The word strafed his heart.”

I read that – remembering all my wishes over the last plus five years, confused over the buzz of post-kissing itchiness, for a kiss that never happened, on own my lips. How I have also been unable to wash away the burning… “buzzing” – why didn’t I think of that word?

Page 340:

“Esteemed guests… Thank you for being here… when I came home, broken from an intense battle, I felt I wasn’t worthy of her (his bride). So I sent her away… For over five years, she dealt with her pain alone, but through a series of divine events, we came together again… She loved me when I showed her no regard. When I rebuffed and rejected her. She loved me well. She loved me to Jesus, where I finally discovered what it meant to be a man of worth. So I want the whole world to know I love this woman!”

This hasn’t happened to me – but still, I pray for one man often, under my normal prayers my Spirit cries out for him regularly, that he would find God, Jesus’s Crucifix and Page 315 “moment by moment… become the man he’d always longed to be.”

The book ends with the Acknowledgements section… echoing my health problems and challenges and constant blockades to being able to sit and write…:

“I found myself in a physical battle while creatively struggling with this story. Not a good combination. Yet through it all, by God’s grace, I maintained my writing goals until my deadline, climbing to my office every day after a weak night of sleep, facing the page and writing despite my feelings, despite physical weakness.

As I prayed over this book, I felt the Lord would fill the “empty spaces” for each of you, telling you His own unique story to your heart. So ask Him. “Lord, what do you have for me as I read this book?”

God loves story. And He loves to speak to us through every aspect of our lives…”

“Fill the ‘empty spaces’”… bizarre how things unfold. How moments visit me and seem to be pregnant with hidden meaning and Godly presence, and then I look up from the realm of the written, the spaces imbedded books, the TV, DVDs, my imagination and all that seems to shout out about a different story to the one I’m physically living; and I don’t know which is the truth. If I am honest with myself, the quoted-above book screamed truth at me, echoed my 5 years of torment, of not being able to understand, not being able to seal and/or shut away the presence of what, if it wasn’t so ridiculous, if it was a completely different scenario, if it made any realistic sense in anyway, I would term: “Love”. At my sister’s wedding, where I was a bridesmaid, the pastor spoke of God Being Love, of marriage being a replica of that Love, how even when God isn’t physically there, you know He is, you know Love is, you can feel it, sense it, almost touch it. The pastor said that in a marriage of true love, even when the other half is not there physically, their love IS still there, their presence is still there, the Love is always there…

Other moments have happened too, that have reflected similar sentiments in echoing exactly what I am feeling / experiencing; moments that are inexplicably exact echoes of my being, my life and context. All it has served to do is pile on insecurity, being completely unsure, ridiculously doubtful, whilst at the same time, being filled with another force that holds nothing but conviction that it is truth. Conviction that it is God-incidence, part of an incredible story all for God’s Glory… which wavers under: Your wishful thinking dear?

Sitting on this fence – one side my soul and ‘fantasy’, the other side cold, hard, depression-creating ‘reality’. Which side to fall into? My being is tired and aching from 5 years in this position: squatting on a fence. If I fall into reality, it becomes lonely. If I fall into faith, it echoes imaginary, almost ‘crazy’. The few times I have fallen into one half, or the other, I’ve ended up climbing back onto the fence because I miss the other side, because my mind or heart talks me back into being up there to consider again, both sides… each side seemingly jealous of the other, but neither seeming to be able to be lived in at the same time as the other. It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense to me anymore… and The Word resounds within me that I am not ‘home’ on planet earth, that earth is not a place of peace, it is a broken world and a heavenly yearning cannot be content in worldly hells. Does my mind only think that because I have read it? Or do others know something I don’t in that they seem so busy and content and active in what I perceive as such a broken world, where I cannot find ‘contentment’ without buy-ness to ignore my discontent, unless I’m sitting with God, then it is very peaceful and joyous indeed… the cycle ravages me: God, world, God, world, and desire for the best of both, whilst the negative of both slams me in highly inconvenient moments.

I look at the book I have quoted from, I couldn’t stop reading it. I was so engorged and entrenched in it that only the ache of my tired eyes could stop me from devouring it… But it was not a well written or sensible book. It lacked in so many areas and would never reach the hierarchy of the ‘royals’ of prizewinners on the literature list of school or University teaching material. The plot: A woman loved a man and she kept on loving him well, even though he kept on denying his heart for his own selfish reasons. He kept putting his own perspectives into her mind and assuming that they were ‘truth’, when they were so far from it. He pushed through in personal torment, using imaginary perceptions of her thoughts, without (not once) even speaking to her, or asking her to confirm his thoughts and reasonings … Still she carried on loving him, intrinsically unable to stop herself, through the pain and torment and knowing that the man who was rejecting her was the one she was meant to be with…

Me? What “empty spaces” did the story relate to? Many! Maybe why I kept on reading it was because I have a similar bizarre space about someone I once met… over 5 years ago… someone who also out rightly rejected me, three times. Peter and Jesus style. This is where the confusion comes in… I know he must know his mind, himself and what he wants and does not want, who he desires and who he does not desire… As someone who loves him, I need to respect that, it is the Christian thing to do… so why? Why would a Christian book go on sale (From R170 to R35! to fit my budget!) and from picking up the poorly written novel right to the end, I could not stop reading it? I could not stop the pain, the ache, the empathy with the leading lady and the emotions involved. Is it my own thoughts being so strong and deep that they ‘attracted’ this book from the Universe to reflect my thoughts back to me? Nothing to be done, but accept: I’m still ‘working through it’? Or is it the work of God, asking me to keep waiting, to keep loving, to keep letting my subconscious pray for a man I haven’t spoken to in over 5 years? I don’t know… I hate not knowing…

On a very different level, however, if I bring in my realistic thoughts: The leading lady was a beauty pageant winner, an heiress, mountains away from my reality. He was royalty, (nothing like the man I’m just literally stuck on) and all of the story was blatantly FICTIONAL… it makes no sense to me that their interactions, their moments, would resonate with me so very deeply that it would cause my entire being to meet the pain of loss and rejection I experienced over FIVE (even that number is the same as their separation time?!?!) years ago. Am I experiencing the damage created by hope? Is this all simply pathetic effort to think I was loved, may still be loved at the intensity and unconditional level that I experienced in myself? Can such fiction extend into non-fiction at all? Especially as I have never personally experienced such fictional mutual love in any non-fictional scenario? Or is God simply using this experience once again as a parable to show me how much He loves me, so much it aches; so much for all His children that He aches daily for all those He loves who reject Him so?

I know I think too much, I know I ask too many questions, I know that many have told me to just stop thinking and asking, to just ‘accept’; but accept what? How? I look, I see, I am amazed, I am blessed, this I do know and I have many moments in the knowing of these blessings, but then there are other moments, the challenging moments, the questions, the interactions and engagements that keep me pressing on to discover more, know more, be more and not lie dormant, letting all God blessed me with sit unexplored and turning to waste.

This week, a butterfly / moth has entered my classroom and left in 3 different lessons. In all my years of teaching, this has not happened; my God symbol has not flitted into my classroom. I have also recently been gifted with a gold four-leaf clover. I have even encountered his name TWICE in very important God moments recently…

And my mind shouts as me: It’s done, he didn’t feel anything for me. It’s only my imagination fueling this horrible nonsense, stop it! … and I don’t understand why I can’t stop it, why I can’t “change my thoughts”, “attract better people”, “Practice the Law of ‘The Secret’, the ‘Law of Attraction”. It feels like something far greater than me is at work. Still, I don’t understand why; after more than five years, the signs and symbols would intensify instead of fade away… I don’t know if it is God driving it, or my imagination attracting it. I don’t know if it is my own powerful mind keeping me a prisoner to something that happened so quickly, so suddenly and so overwhelmingly, so long ago, or if it is God’s Will, God’s footprints, God’s plan for a grand story, glorifying HIM and HIS perfect eternal planning and timing down to every minute detail…

The latter would be mind-blowing to see the end of; the former would be a rational, realistic course of action and result… So, does my mind really make the decision? Or is God sending me beyond insane-to-the-human-world, because that is where He exists, loving what doesn’t deserve to be loved, giving grace to what believes it is not worth His Grace, holding and keeping everything in the ‘insanity’ (by earthly construct and socialization) of unconditional Love?

All I know is that the heart ache, the pain, the longing, the confusion, the revisiting of what I haven’t been able to go beyond and get out of has been in full, overpowering, soul-wrenching force this last week – and it almost did me in; almost.

Lord, please, bring me to the end of the confusion. Help me stop thinking and just accept You and trust You, not this world. Please Father, please. Thank You Lord. Amen.

And God Answers… An Earth Father is …

On the 21st of June, 12 days ago, I posted a post asking what the criteria are for a “Father’s Day father”…
5 days later on the 26th of June the school librarian said I had to take the DVD “Courageous” home to watch…
7 Days exactly after that I was moved to watch it… Tonight.
With a restless Soul, with a saddened heart, in a space of praying for God’s peace and answers, He answered me.
In prayer, in thanks, in awe, in Love for His Awesomeness, I bow before the truest Father we have, the Greatest Provider, the Strongest Protector, the Most Glorious and Gracious being we will ever encounter… Our Heavenly Father God.
Thank-You Lord for speaking to me tonight and bringing peace to my Soul that it is not up to me to be anyone’s father, that I must simply pray that the men of the world will step up to realise the HONOUR, the RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY of their roles as fathers, as their roles as role models and how they are Your example on earth… Thank-You Lord. Amen.

And His Answer:
The Resolution Message:
“I do solemnly resolve before God to take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my children. I WILL love them, protect them, serve them, and teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home. I WILL be faithful to my wife, to love and honor her, and be willing to lay down my life for her as Jesus Christ did for me. I WILL bless my children and teach them to love God with all of their hearts, all of their minds, and all of their strength. I WILL train them to honor authority and live responsibly. I WILL confront evil, pursue justice, and love mercy. I WILL pray for others and treat them with kindness, respect, and compassion. I WILL work diligently to provide for the needs of my family. I WILL forgive those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged. I WILL learn from my mistakes, repent of my sins, and walk with integrity as a man answerable to God. I WILL seek to honor God, be faithful to His church, obey His Word, and do His will. I WILL courageously work with the strength God provides to fulfill this resolution for the rest of my life and for His glory. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. —Joshua 24:15”

Courtesy of: http://purposelyparenting.blogspot.com/2012/03/courageous-movie-quotes.html
From the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9VT_NBIVfs

Settle or Wait?

Yesterday, as happens often in my life, I was asked a deep question: “Do women know when they are walking down the aisle that they are making the wrong decision?” The person asking me said that she knew she was making the right decision and there was no doubt in her mind at all that she’d repeat the day in a heartbeat, but some of her friends are now divorcees and in chatting to them, most knew on the day they were making a bad decision. My answer, in my never-had-a-date, never-been-a-bride state “Yes, I believe that those brides who end up divorced knew deep down in their souls that their marriage was not going to work.” My interrogator then said: “but there’s so much pressure on that day and so many people there, you can’t just walk out after all that money, you have to go through with it.” I looked at her and said that I believe women know long before they walk down that aisle, deep down, that they are walking down the aisle for the wrong reasons and they aren’t completely convinced that the guy they are with is ‘the one’. Gen X’ers are a trial and error generation as per psychology journals, so that probably applies to marriage and different partners too. She agreed with me and then said that she guessed the embarrassment of the admission that they have made a mistake is probably too great on their wedding day and people tell them it’s just nerves in a stressful situation, but when you know, you know.

We went on to chat about the reasons why women are settling with guys who they know deep down in their souls are not the perfect supplement to their beings. Obviously there are the 5 Love Languages differences. She goes in thinking its love so she’ll get poetry and one-on-one time with him and he goes in thinking he’ll get someone to serve him. She doesn’t get the words or one-on-one time and he doesn’t get a fresh meal and towels every night, so both feel unloved and that the marriage isn’t working, so they split. Secondly, they’ve never known perfect to exist, so they no longer believe it exists. Thirdly, they’ve had no role models to tell them they are worth perfect so they settle for someone who gives their ego attention.

Fourthly, women are taught to manipulate to get there way (as are men, sometimes even worse so than women). Any manipulator in a relationship and the other will realise eventually that it isn’t truth or real, but a manipulated fabrication. A 9 year old asked me a few months ago what kind of man I was waiting for? What kind of a man did I want? My reply: “The One God has prepared for me and is sending to my front door.” Along with that I gave her the rundown of what I’d love, what I need and how I felt a marriage should be. Her response: “Shoe, but you are going to be waiting a very long time to try and find someone like that!” So, from 9 years old this beautiful girl’s opinion of men is low. Given her context, it didn’t surprise me. But what made me sad was her belief that a perfect partner probably doesn’t exist and if he does, then you’d have to wait for him and in her generation waiting is unheard of. Her generation has parents who feel guilty about working and the relationship with their children is based on demand and supply. Scream and satisfy. No waiting, no delayed gratification, no sense of earning anything or growing responsible enough and proving yourself first. So this approach has translated itself into her perception of marriage and finding a partner. It appeared she “Doesn’t want to wait that long”. She is now 10 and already has her second boyfriend after the first ‘broke her heart’. AT TEN! What is she going to aspire to for the next EIGHTY YEARS if the ultimate journey of learning to love happens with dissatisfaction before she’s out of her teens? As she may not even want to wait that long, she’ll probably just settle with what she thinks she can cope with in the flaws of a boy; the ones she believes she can manipulate (if subconsciously) and change to become what she really wants, on her terms.

This lead onto fifthly: Women are impatient. The Wait. This is without a doubt, by my personal experience, THE worst and most horrible part of practicing faith. The Wait. Depression, loneliness, low-self-esteem, feeling rejected, worthless, becoming completely self-sufficient that you can’t even justify the need for another anymore. Becoming recluse and absent from ‘happy family’ events and functions. Declining the 40th wedding invitation because you’ve been single at every one of the ones before. Throwing yourself into work, studying, cause after cause, after cause, just trying to get through each day of “The Wait”, knowing it will go by more speedily if you are busy. It will hurt less; and kill the soul a little less, by helping others. Being busy will help to pay less attention to the hell you are living through by being separated from love. On top of that is the physical frustration and torment. The ego feeling like it’s an outcast. As you are the ‘abnormal’ one waiting on God, waiting in faith, waiting for the Universe’s perfect timing to make what will be, be. Sitting as a real-life, genuine Rapunzel waiting … It is nothing I would wish on any girl in the world with a heart full of dreams, but neither is being married to and stuck with someone who would kill her soul further more than if she were on her own. I remember dreaming of love and finding someone well over 20 years ago now. My story reads and feels both pathetic and empty, separated from love and my other half. Of course, The Wait could be life-long and the journey was never about meeting someone else, but about becoming whole within my Self, alone… I don’t think many women have the faith, perseverance, trust or self-discipline and control needed to wait, so they go ahead and ‘know’ they can ‘make it work’ by their own doing and manipulation and control of the situation. They’ve been told their whole lives “you can do anything…” the question begged here: but is it wise to?

Finally, life experience. I’m realising as I type that these aren’t separate points, they are actually just different perspectives of the same thing, human flaws and how we just replicate them generation after generation after generation. In order for women to realise they have doubts, to realise that it isn’t going to work, they’d have to be in tune with themselves. Not their friends, family or colleagues or society and its major complexities, but just in sync with themselves in the quiet of their own beings. They’d have to ask themselves and trust the answer, not let their egos get in the way, or the thoughts planted in their minds. If they are in tune with their body and soul, then they would absolutely know that something isn’t ‘clicking’.

Being a ridiculously honest person I’ve never been able to hide my knowing that something was wrong with the energy between myself and a guy. My body irrationally flinches and closes off at touch, like an instinctual, uncontrollable reaction. My mind swings into analysis, pissed off that I’m not playing the game. My ego gets cross with my body and gets my mind to ‘sort this out’ and create justifications as to why I should be grateful for the attention and the touch. My ego is over the moon at the attention and my body doesn’t want it. This has been my experience with every guy who sits or stands near me, I don’t like it. Society would tell me that I have a problem, that there must be something bad in my past that I’ve blocked out to make me feel so irrationally uncomfortable around men. I’ve never been able to make myself feel any different, so I gave up trying and God blessed me with a very female environment. I’ve left it to God to sort out in His time. If I didn’t have faith that God’s got my life, then I would be faulty. I would have to be in psychology sessions and I would have to “force myself” to be comfortable around men and date them (I was genuinely told this by a counselor). Forcing my body to do what it is completely uncomfortable with. This would have created great dissonance with myself and my being. Depression, low self-worth you name it. Still, this was my experience before my 30th year. If I had forced myself to make myself love and be with someone, then I would have found myself in front of the mirror telling myself to “Get happy!” telling myself off for not being happy like I’m supposed to be in this ‘perfect’ relationship. Controlling my soul and being and forcing them to be ‘dutiful’ because I swore ‘forever’. I would be living with societal guilts and pressures that I think may overwhelm many women. That would have become my ‘norm’ if I’d done what the world told me to. If I’d bowed to the nonsense of this world; its faulty standards without faith in God and His plan, then I’d be divorced by now too.

When I was 30 though, something happened. At 30 I met a man where for the first time my desire was not to step away from him, but to step into his embrace. Not detach, but engage. Suddenly the dynamics changed, my mind was against him in every way due to the unfortunate situational context, but my body and soul relished in pure undeniable, unadulterated never-before-experienced joy! The energy was so good, so attractive, so coated in unconditional love like I had never experienced before, never known, never sung and danced in before. It was like an electric shock to my entire being. A lightning bolt from Heaven that radiated a joy I had never known existed. The realisation wasn’t on first meeting, it was only weeks after that, then it was realisation and 3 weeks of confusion, mayhem, disorientation, anger, hope, delusion, tears, joy, everything! Every emotion you could name catapulted through me in those 3 weeks. Finally, when I had to walk away, thanks to the situational context, the only thing that kept going through my mind was the realisation that I belonged by his side. That is where I fit in this life. I want to be the one standing next to him no matter what. “I love you”. I finally know what love really is! I’d never come close to thinking that about any man in my life, ever.

He felt nothing for me.

The whole experience showed me that it was possible for me to feel the intrinsic desire to tell someone I loved them and I truly meant it unconditionally, in the context of: “everything I have is Yours.” In parallel to my relationship with My Father in Heaven and understanding His love for us: what I was feeling for someone who felt nothing for me, was akin to what God feels for every human being, even though most don’t feel it for Him. I realised through this encounter that I haven’t been waiting in vain. That my body knows me and the Universe and the plans God has for me, and my physical reactions hold a far deeper meaning and knowing than I’d realised.

Naturally the rejection has been beyond hell and back over and over again. The separation from a love that I now know, for sure, exists, has been nothing short of hell and torment. The break down after being left, the depression, anxiety, tears, melt-downs, all resulting from my soul’s knowing that something so miraculously joyous does exist and I lost it, I don’t have it. This has all been traumatic. BUT what I now know absolutely, without doubt, is that real, unconditional, relaxed, companionable, enriching love does exist. I now know that what I’m hoping for, whether it ever arrives again or not, I know it does exist. I know that I am in tune with myself and my body isn’t lying to me. My ego is the liar. Even if the rest of the world tells me I’m not normal, that I’m dysfunctional, and running on the wrong schedule, I can walk away from them with conviction, because I have experienced the real deal. I know what is possible now. I’ve touched it, experienced it and been spoilt by it too. Sadly, I now have the conviction of knowing by experience what desire feels like, what unconditional means, what sacrifice is, and I know that love truly is incredible. People who haven’t experienced this, don’t ‘know’. They don’t want to ‘wait for it’. They want to settle and take what they have and ‘work with it’. I’m not about to settle and/or force and/or make it have to work as a fabrication of what I’ve dreamt of. A fabrication of love that I know I won’t have the energy or ‘fakeness’ to maintain and sustain all my life. I don’t want “she settled for less” on my gravestone. I’d prefer: “Their love was God’s gift and creation and the hard relationship work so much easier because of it.”

Maybe my one intrinsic, instinctual, I-don’t-need-you-to-say-it-back moment of “I love you” is all I’ll get in this lifetime, or maybe God is good for His Word, and I’m destined for Heaven after this wait… only time will tell… so I have to keep on keeping busy to get through each long day, just in case I’m right and God’s got this… Amen.

27.4 Dec ’13 … Oh My MasterCard, HELP!

Another interesting aspect of Andy Stanley’s DVD yesterday, as he worked through the story of Jonah and the fish/whale, was when he dealt with Jonah’s prayer inside the sea creature: “in my distress I called to the Lord and He answered me.” Andy pointed out something very poignant. In times of distress, that point when you have to tell your wife/husband something before they find out… the point of waiting for an AIDS / teenage pregnancy test result… while you wait for the jaws of life to save… the tsunami wave to hit… the earth tremors to stop… No-one cries out:
“Oh dear credit card!”
“Oh, my MasterCard!”
“Oh, my Job!”
“Oh, my Wife!”
“Oh, my Money / Clothes / Labels / Car…”
No-one prays those words when they are in their darkest hours… I’ve never heard anyone pray to the things they have invested their whole lives in getting to save them from their moment of hell… no, the prayers I’ve heard and made myself are more like:
“Oh Lord,…”
“Help me Lord,…”
“Help me Father…please, please…”

People seem to return to their soul-knowing in their tears, in their brokenness, in confronting their deepest fears and darkest miseries… as that appears to be the case, I battle to understand why most people choose to adore and worship money, significant others, clothes, fame, or whatever, when those aren’t things that can answer or even help their souls when it is most needed. If they cry out to God when in need, then why do they invest so much in the outside stuff that has no meaning?

I look at how incredible my relationship is with God and how He has held me through hell and back on many occasions, and I wonder how people ask for the help of a stranger? How do they accept/expect His grace and then walk away again so ungratefully?
How do people survive their darkness’s without a best friend in their soul to hold up a light and say: “Come this Way, it’s safe this Way. I’ve got you, I’ve got this.”?

Man, I know I get by, and have a little material stuff on this earth, but I would never ever even think of trying to conquer darkness, in all its difficulty and desperation, without My Father there with me. That would be hell. Who in their right mind would choose hell over heaven? (I define hell as the separation from God, Love, not the picture book nonsensical burning/torture stuff)
Those out there doing hell on their own – wow! Wow! Being separated from love, wisdom, strength and everything awesome. Wow, what a choice you have made, and, in all honesty, I have no idea how you have managed to cope. I’m surprised things haven’t fallen apart….yet, if you ever need help…
Heh heh, I think your soul already knows what to cry out 😉
“Oh, my MasterCard, help!”