Navigating life's sometimes terrifying yet frequently wondrous variety, one prayer at a time
Facing this challenge one prayer at a time.
“I’m busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest!”
Dolly Parton in Straight Talk (1992)
Honesty time.
When you’ve managed to stay super busy for some months and people around you need your help, family needs you, you travel, learn a language, plan and dream – it can all be hugely rewarding. Probably almost enough to fill another void. Continue reading Asking the difficult questions
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Have you ever imagined telling a personal story or making a confession?
In the small hours of the night, when the seeds of the story begin to germinate, somehow the telling sounds better in your imagination. Such was the pattern of my thoughts a few nights ago, when I lay choked up with emotion and puffy-eyed, and Hubby suggested that I finally tell this story.
Deep disappointment is both difficult to carry alone and equally heavy to tell. Yes, we have told our immediate families and a couple of close friends. They have supported us in the best way they know how – sometimes helpful, at other times not so helpful, but always heartfelt. Continue reading When worlds collide: our fertility story without a happy ending … yet!
“It is my duty to help them solve the mysteries in their lives. That is what I am called to do.”
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
This morning I walked out of my front door to find that winter has officially arrived. My cardigan might just as well be a bikini for all the warmth it offers me. The cold that I have up to now been able to fend off by finding a sunny spot, putting on another layer or having a hot cuppa has finally found its way into my bones. When I get home later I will set up the heating.
No more denial. Continue reading ‘Why’ is a crooked letter and you can’t make it straight
“How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives? To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit and loss.”
Dracula by Bram Stoker
I have had many hopes and dreams in my short life, some of which have weighed heavily on me and have haunted me – hopes I’ve shelved, hopes I’ve not dared to voice, hopes I’ve boldly proclaimed – hopes upon hopes.
Hopes are flighty things, like butterflies, they are beautiful and colourful and hard to pin down. Sometimes they flit into our lives in surprising ways and then flit right out again. Sometimes we keep getting a glance at them, that ‘butterfly’ feeling rises up inside, and then it passes out of reach so that we wonder if it was even there at all.
Continue reading Hopes, dreams, prayers and the people you meet on the way
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I started writing this post on Monday. It began with:
“Devastated. Test taken. Test failed.”
I walked away from that draft to do something too unimportant to mention and when I came back to it this morning, I find myself removed from the lines I’d written. It’s a strange anachronism to be confronted with my very own ‘ghost of Christmas past’ – ‘Nyamazela yesterday’ was ready to give up, ‘Nyamazela today’ has picked herself up again. There is no rhyme or reason to this. Continue reading Life’s little contradictions
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
C.S. Lewis
“Under certain circumstances, there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure.”
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Still waiting and counting the days. 5 days until the big ‘test’. 7 days until building completion and I can finally clean up my house. 11 days until my birthday – I thought I’d include that, but I’m not really counting. 18 days until my family arrives. I wait, I wait, for a very important date!
The only way I’m able to deal with the current wait is to pop the kettle on and have a cuppa. Join me if you like.
p.s. Though frustrated, I’m trying not to wish time away as I firmly believe it’s the only time we have. It’s precious.
Musings about life, Christianity, and mental health.
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Nyamazela 