That One Word I Love So Much “Creativity”

I stumbled upon this absolutely amazing blog the other day. I thank God for the gift of blogs, my goodness! There is a wealth of knowledge, information and inspiration flowing through thousands of blogs everyday. It’s not everyday you find kindred spirits on the blogosphere though, when you do, cradle it and treasure it.

I just discovered two exceptional blogs, exceptional because they speak to me in a very deep place, I feel like they know me and know my life and journey.

They are Chatting at the Sky and Creative Something

Emily Freeman of Chatting at the Sky talks about art and creativity in a way that I’ve only imagined and dreamed and pondered about, in the loneliness of my heart and thoughts. It was pure bliss seeing someone put those thoughts into words,  they leapt out at me from the screen. With thoughts like, ‘Art is a gift wrapped up in a box of grace straight from the hand of God‘ and ‘I am an artist, and I make art with my words, my pictures, my ladle and my dishrag,’ she totally had me at hello.

She captures my every struggle with creativity and art. I always wondered about the authenticity of my claim to be a creative person, afterall, I can’t quite draw or paint, but with her perspective, I have affirmation for my ideas. There is art in everything, and there are dozens of ways to express creativity.

I won’t say too much about Tanner of Creative Something, the below picture says more than a thousand words.

What more can I say? I’m following these blogs, doggedly, I need friends like these in my life.

Tags: Chatting at the sky, Creative Something, Creativity, Lifenotes, Passion, Passionate Living

Flashbacks

Even I don’t believe my last post was in January. This for sure was not the plan. In the period since my last post, I had thought about blogging here but so much has gone on in this year, a whirlwind of events. This year definitely feels like a long one. Tons of experiences, thoughts, battles, decisions and paradigm shifts. It can be hard to decide what to talk about on a blog like this one.

The biggest one though was that I got an adorable new niece. A very beautiful angel, a true testament to how God looks out for us even at our blind spots.

On a completely different topic, I also witnessed the most bizzare diet in the world, a starvation diet that seems to work for the dieter. Gist for another blogpost though.

I’m hoping to drop by and say something here a lot more often *hands clasped in prayer* 

Right now, I’m trying to be grateful for my life up until this point. It’s easy to get stuck on what is not versus thankful for what is and what has been. So I want to do some flashbacks.

Many moons ago, I was a poet. I was a prolific poet in fact. I wrote many love poems as a teenager, I had an entire book of love poems and please don’t ask me that cliche question, ‘what does a teenager know about love?‘ I wrote from experience, every teeny weeny feeling in every teenage crush was inspiration for my poetry. I tell you, people consulted me for their Valentine love poem needs. My poems were so great that someone stole the poem book! Oh how I long to read what I wrote in those days, would for sure make for great comedy today.

As I grew older, I wrote less love poems and wrote a bit more about experiences relevant to me at a given period. My last wave of poems were written about six to seven years ago sadly. I especially remember this one…the Predator & the Prey, written about chastity, a virtue that is all but dead today. 

 

The Predator & the prey

 

Love you call it,

Bleary eyed ignorance…

…staring into eyes bulging with rampant passion

A predator feigned as the beloved…

‘Should I or should I not?’

…says the prey

‘Yes, you should’, whispers the Predator

…the whisper, wrapped in unabated craving

…craving for her innocence

                        …her purity

                            …her price

…’give it to me if you love me’, he whispers

…a whisper, it sounds like…

…but a growl in reality

…the growl of a ravenous one

 In similitude with his father’s

…the father of all lies

 

‘Should I or should I not?’

…thinks the prey

…’I think I love him’, she thinks

‘and I think he loves me too…’

…love? Reason asks

‘Do you know what love is?

Patient and kind it is…

…willing to wait

Preserving it is…

…pure and innocent too

There is no love in this discourse, my precious one’

 

…’you take too long in deciding’ growls the Predator

‘my patience runs out!…’

The prey stares wide eyed,

…was that a flash of anger she saw,
in the place that tenderness occupied?

The Predator was quick to conceal it,

he must not blow his cover…

…’you were saying, my beloved…’ he cooed,

vicious claws caressing her lovely face…

…claws clad in feathers

By now the prey is trembling a little,

Reason seemed to be holding sway

…’love is patient’ she whispered almost inaudibly

‘willing to wait it is…if you love me, you’ll wait’

‘What?!’ screamed the Predator

‘It’s now or never, give it to me or it’s over’

The tender caress becomes a harsh grip

‘Oh no’ thinks the prey

‘This is not my prince, my beloved’

‘Never was’ Reason whispered

‘Never was…if I were you, I’ll run

…as fast as my legs would take me’

The prey let out a whimper…

‘You hurt me, beloved, your grip is harsh’

Maybe it was the whimper, or perhaps the pain in her eyes…

that made the Predator let go…

‘Please give it to me’ he begged

…’I love you so much, I want to show it to you…

…that is the only way, beloved’

‘Run!’ Reason cried

‘Run, as fast as your legs can take you!’

The prey looked into his eyes…

Deception incarnate, veiled in seeming affection…

…those eyes.

She cast her eyes at the gate…

a distance it seemed…

‘Can I?’ she thought

‘Sure you can’ reason urged,

‘Now is your chance’

She looked at him again,

The smile that was once charming, looked lopsided

His hands reached to touch her face…

With strength she never thought she had,

The prey yanked his claws away,

She ran…

…as fast as her legs could take her…

…’come back’, he cried

But away she ran

She ran…

Taking her innocence with her

            …her price

                …her purity

                    …her pride

‘Never again’ said reason to her

‘Reserve your price for the one who is worthy,

at the perfect time he will come for it and

his face you will know…’                                                                             

Estèe

 

Tags: Life notes, Poetry

Embrace Fear

As announced in my previous post, I found this great article on the Holstee Blog. It’s about embracing fear to have this dream life that I really want. I’ve realised that fear never really goes away, it keeps popping up, but as the saying goes. When fear knocks, let faith answer.

I read another blogpost by my friend today, it almost made me jump up and down and scream at work, it just resonated so loudly. It is about birthing your dreams, so poignant and apt for me this season, you can read it HERE.

On to the subject for today, this is the first time EVER that I will do a direct copy and paste of a blog post. I  think it is SO worth it. Dig in right after the jump

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We live in a society of some brilliant minds.  Look around, you and I are in the presence of some amazing people.  The unfortunate truth, however, is that most of us won’t even come close to maximizing what we are capable of doing.  We as a society tend to live life completely aware of a feeling of guilt we possess for not exercising the greatness that lies within, but fail to ever do anything about it.

What is it that is holding us back from reaching our true potential?

Is the person that we sit and watch day in day out on the television really that much greater than us?  Why is it that we are constantly questioning our abilities?  When we were kids, we weren’t afraid to dream.  Dreams were a daily occurrence, and there was no one anywhere that could steer us awry.  We dreamt with conviction and weren’t scared to think up the most gnarly of situations.  Some dreams fell through the cracks never to go anywhere, though, others either were on their way or blossomed in to real life success stories.

Despite our successes and failures during this dream stage of life, we really never got too high nor too low.  We just kept on dreaming, and kept on pushing the level higher and higher.

That was until we hit that threshold stage of life, when we reached that invisible line drawn somewhere in the sand where failures became more painful, dreams became less plentiful, and our progress became straight up pitiful.  We shifted our sites from dreaming to just keeping up.

What happened at this point in life.  What changes were introduced that caused us to just set everything aside for the so called ‘safe bets’ of life?

One word, FEAR…

Most people are crippled by fear, leaning on it to make most their decisions in life, horrible decisions at that.

We are great, and greatness stems from trust in ourselves, in our ability to truly know what’s best for us, not letting society dictate that.  We hang out with ourselves the most, why would anyone know us any better?

Once we fall victim to fear, it becomes a dirty game, our trust within ourselves is betrayed and our potential becomes compromised.  We shift from a sprint to a limp in milliseconds…it’s a trip.

Fear will drive people to do exactly as they are told to do without ever critically assessing the rules that are established, and will believe that by doing so, they’ll get further in life.

Fear will lead people to leaving the quality of their lives up to luck, believing deep down, that ultimately they’ll be liberated by someone or something magical.  As much as I am down with watching the Twilight love story with my wife, it’s fundamentally essential to be the hero in your own story.  The ‘persecuted maiden’ role is the coward’s way of living life. 

No one is free from Fear, it’s one of life’s guarantees, blessings.  Well, I guess it’s a blessing depending on how you deal with it.  You can either:

1.      Succumb and file in line

2.      Embrace it and reap the opportunity it provides

I am not going to touch on the first option, as it’s truly not an option.  The latter is where I choose to spend my time.  When I started running 3 months ago, I could barely run a mile without bending over and nearly passing out.  I have been a longtime sprint athlete, and my endurance, well, it was pretty much non existent.  I have kept at it, and just this past month I finished my first ever running event, a 12k, running at just over an 8 minute per mile pace.

That may be impressive to some, maybe it’s not, but that’s not where I am leaving it.  While running one day, a buddy of mine asked me what I thought about running in a trail marathon with him late this summer.  Well considering I could barely make it on flat ground more than 8 miles, not sure how I would be able to make it 26.2 miles on a trail.  On top of that, this trail marathon was part of an uphill Ultra series, starting in the valley and climbing up into the foothills.

Fear rumbled within. The thought of it pushed chills throughout my body, it scared me…but I like that.  That day I chose to commit.  I committed to preparing, committed to finishing, and most importantly, I committed to dominating my fears.

Fear is epic.  Whatever it is that scares you, you’ve simply just got to want it bad enough–bad enough that the pain of NOT moving forward is greater than the pain of taking action.  Doing this will give you no other choice but to rally every single cell of your body, mind, heart, and soul to move forward and fight for it–honorably, and with conviction.  And then make it yours.

Embrace Fear…your dream life awaits you.

You can read the original post HERE

Tags: Dreams, Fear, Life notes, Passionate Living

2012…Passionately!

It IS a new year and in spite of the shaky political/socio economic environment around me, I am excited and really looking forward to how the year will pan out. Let’s me start by saying…HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As usual, plenty talk about new year resolutions. I think it’s a jaded concept but you can’t help but be determined to change a few things at the start of a new year.

I’ve always been passionate about passion [no pun intended, lol], about doing everything you do and living your life out of passion, doing what you love etc, but you’ll be amazed that I’ve been locked into some kind of drudgery in recent years.

This year, I’ve made a decision, every second has got to count for something worth doing and worth getting excited about. Absolutely no dulling! I met the Holstee Manifesto some months ago, it was so refreshing to my soul but after the initial excitement, I parked it. Someone reminded me about it again towards the end of 2011 and that was the spark I needed. This is what my 2012 is going to be about!

You can read about the Manifesto and the amazing people behind it HERE

People have said to me that this is easier said than done and I agree! It is. I mean, who just ups and quits their job??? But it takes determination, a bit of madness and tons of courage to live passionately. But that really is what life is about, do you think God was bored and yawning when He created this magnificent universe? When He formed humanity and when He redeemed us through His Son Jesus? I can be very sure He did it with deep feeling, love and PASSION.

Today, I found a blogpost on the Holstee blog that is just such a MUST READ, I cannot over emphasize it. It holds the key to living out the life that we only dare dream about. Just so you read it right here, I will reblog it directly…in a separate post.

The one thing I am definitely going to start with this year is get a group of people together to share what they are passionate about. The energy will definitely spread among the group like wild fire and hopefully inspire us to go out there and climb some mountains, take down some giants, acquire some territories. I’m partnering with a friend to make this happen…we’ve called it The Passion Project. More gist on how that works out in subsequent posts.

‘Embrace Fear…your dream life awaits you.’ coming up next post!

Tags: 2012, Happy New Year, Holstee Manifesto, Passion, Passion Project

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas!

Well what can I say, it’s Christmas again, it’s the end of another year. What a year it has been indeed. Today, my eyes well when I think of God’s goodness, His faithfulness, how rock solid He is. The way He just cares and makes provision for His children, in spite of all odds. He just will NEVER give up, He keeps finding a way to get us right where He wants us to be, in HIM.

I am so confident in the knowledge that God holds me, He does. And through 2012, I’ll be holding Him, not a chance of letting Him go.

I love Max Lucado, I don’t know any writer who uses words like he does. If you do, please tell me. My Christmas message this season is an excerpt from him. It’s the ultimate prayer, that this Christmas and in the new year, God’s character can be formed in us and we can be an extension of His love to the world around us. At the end of the day, that was why He came.

Merry Christmas!

 

HE LIVES IN YOU….by Max Lucado

The virgin birth is more, much more, than a Christmas story; it is a picture of how close Christ will come to you.  The first stop on his itinerary was a womb.  Where will God go to touch the world?  Look deep within Mary for an answer.

Better still, look deep within yourself.  What he did with Mary, he offers to us! He issues a Mary-level invitation to all his children.   “If you’ll let me, I’ll move in!”

Proliferating throughout the scriptures is a preposition that leaves no doubt- the preposition ‘in’.  Jesus lives in his children.

John was clear, “Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them” (I John 3:24 NIV, emphasis mine).

Christ grew in Mary until he had to come out.  Christ will grow in you until the same occurs.  He will come out in your speech, in your actions, in your decisions.  Every place you live will be a Bethlehem, and every day you live will be a Christmas.  You, like Mary, will deliver Christ into the world.

God in us!  Have we sounded the depth of this promise?

God was with Adam and Eve…God was with Abraham…God was with Moses and the children of Israel.  God was with the apostles.

But HE is in you.  You are a modern-day Mary.  Even more so.  HE was a fetus in her, but HE is a force in you.  HE will do what you cannot.

Can’t stop drinking?  Christ can.  And he lives within you.

Can’t stop worrying?  Christ can.  And he lives within you.

Can’t forgive the jerk, forget the past, or forsake your bad habits?

Christ can! And he lives within you.

Tags: Christmas, God, Max Lucado, Merry Christmas, Nativity

I Will Not Fear…

I started this year out with fear. So much fear I could literally feel it. And you see, once fear walks in, faith isn’t even in the room. And fear generally invites all its other friends, doubt, guilt, condemnation, depression, anxiety, worry. They all just come in and bunk with fear and they take over the mind completely.

It was fear about the normal things that get us concerned, e.g. will I be able to be all that God wants me to be? Will the year turn out the way I really want it to? These are things that I should have had faith for and trusted God about but hey, I chose fear, and the fear grew and multiplied till I had no clue what I was afraid about. I just had a massive pool of fear sitting in my heart.

Fear is so dangerous, I can’t even emphasise it enough. One of my friends used to say ‘fear is the devil’s calling card’ and trust me, it is. From experience, it is the devil’s massive calling card.

I got out of the messy situation the fear had created just at the tail end of this year, when God directed my steps to an amazing class in church. That’s a massive testimony on its own because I didn’t see it coming. The interesting thing is that the fear will always try to come back, it always starts with a question, along the lines of, ‘are you sure about this?’ ‘are you sure you can sustain this?’

In recent days, I’ve seen quite a few messages talking about why I should allow fear no access. So I see what God is trying to say, get fear out of your heart permanently and fill your mind with absolute faith in God. Once again, today, I found these lovely cartoons, ‘Joyful toons’ by Mike Waters. The messages they bear just  hit home!

For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we may boldly say:
“ The LORD is my helper;
I will not fear…”

Hebrews 13:5

When fear knocks, let Faith answer...

Tags: Faith, Fear, God

One Single Girl’s Call To Her Beloved

The topic of singleness is one that I’m just a little bit passionate about, passionate because I’m curious. Curious as to why there are so many lovely single ladies I know who are looking to get married, and it’s like…ok, where are the  men? So I just wonder why.

Should we give it the answer we give to everything that is not happening the way we expect? “it must be the will of God” or should we be wondering if there’s something going on? Something we should be praying about? And talking and thinking about ? I tend towards the latter. For reasons I’ll probably discuss in a separate post. The gist of it though is that the common enemy of our soul has a lot to gain and little to lose by keeping Christians from forming marriage alliances. Just read the purpose of marriage in Genesis again and you’ll get the drift.

The purpose of today’s blogpost is a piece I got from my friend today. I find it so deep and profound, it had me spellbound from the first word.

It’s basically one young lady reaching out and calling forth what is hers. Instead of sitting around idling while waiting, with theories or complaints; ageing with bitterness and dissatisfaction, she’s using one of the most potent abilities God has given His children. The ability to craft, create and speak things into existence, just like He spoke the world into existence.

Clearly, this also applies to every area of life…

Please read and share with people you think could use it.

A CALL TO MY BELOVED

I ‘met’ him a few weeks ago when I had a revelation about ‘calling’ him forth, something I now do aloud, every morning (at dawn), and have discussions with him whenever I can, during the course of the day.

I tell him how I love and miss him, how this is me (I say my name) calling for him (I have a name for him too) to come because our destiny cannot wait to start, our children cannot wait to be born, that many marriages are waiting for ours to survive and thrive because our marriage is  a ministry; that many people are floundering because they need us together to counsel them.

That he had better hear and listen to me and start to make his way toward the sound of my voice, so that the distance and miles shrink each day, and speedily. And that when he arrives, it should be clear he is ‘home’. Everyone around us will know and confirm; there is no room for error.

I tell him I know he is very attractive and tall, because shey he knows I have to be able to bury my head on his chest (no matter how high my heels!), and that he has to be able to bend lower to kiss me on the forehead, and that I have to be ‘lost’ in his side when he hugs me to himself…I tell him I know he takes my breath away because of his kindness, generosity and compassion, and how he loves family even more than I do. A man who is both father and mother to our family and friends and staff…I tell him he is my best friend, and I never want to be with anyone else what I can’t be with him. I tell him that no matter how stubborn and pig-headed I get, he ought to know that I love him to distraction; he is my life, duh!

I tell him I know without a doubt that he is the king and priest of our home, and that when he brings a word from the Lord, there is a confirmation of it in me because he knows I am also a woman of the spirit. I tell him how our home is a haven, where the hungry gets fed, where the poor becomes buoyant, where the homeless finds a home, a place that is the fragrance of the field that the Lord Himself has blessed. A place of peace.

I say to him that who says marriages can not be a success from day one?? And that all those myths will not come to pass in our marriage because my God is not about myths, He is about favour, grace and mercy, more, He is about LOVE. And that in that, we must bask!

I tell him he has to come quickly so  everything becomes easy and work out for him. He has to find me to find (greater) favour with God, and that while he waits to find me,  God’s grace and favour, open doors, fresh anointing is on him, I pray for a great level of love and friendship between us. I pray for a great communication line between us, I pray to be relevant to him, that I would be whatever he needs at any point, wife, mother, sister, wife, lover etc and vice versa. I pray for the times we would have challenges, because those must come, but that during those times, we can be friends while we wait for the challenges to be sorted.

I tell him that I pray for our physical and intimate life, that it be passionate, always. That we would be vocal about our needs and we would fit in every sense of the word. That we would be all we both need in this aspect of our lives, for as long as necessary.

I speak to him about where we would live, about our children’s needs, the schools they would attend, how God would use them as pace-setters in their generation, long after we are gone…

I tell him how, sometimes when I arrive home into the quiet of my house, I miss him terribly, and want to discuss my day, and that though I had mumbled stuff to him all day long, it’s not the same not seeing him to give him the full details, and to lay my weary head on his shoulder and feel the stress seep away…and then I laugh, and (still!!) say to him that soon…sooner than I think, there he would be…at home.

A lot more discussion but hey, this already gives the idea. And I believe this can be reproduced in every other area of life…

-       Anonymous.

Tags: God, God and world, Life notes, Singleness, Speaking