happy space

Ok, the title is maybe not honest. 

I'm too dang hot to be happy. 

I do not like being hot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Now that that is over... 

I feel like I am rediscovering this lost part of myself. 

While all this new stuff is being born something old and special is finding its space amongst the crazy. 

I really appreciate the timing. 

I had written in my last post on my other blog (http://becauseiamredeemed.blogspot.com/) about the poetry I used to write. 

It was dark and inttense and fueled by alcohol and anger and hurt. 

At that time I was at fashion school creating, maybe not the best stuff, but creating none the less.  

When I was lifted out of the very gross pit I'd climbed in I stopped writing.

I stopped creating.

I think being a mom living the un... I don't know, un-something life I live I've needed desperately for it to come back to life.

I remember when I was in Gr6 or 7 how I confidently told my friends that I was going to be a fashion designing missionary.

 

between the last sentence and here my children had a monumental meltdown, we ran to Spar for a pre-cooked supper, ate supper and I led young adults while my love tried to get the kiddies to bed.

I think i may have lost my train of thought. It is less convenient blogging on your phone and our network provider sucks!!!!! And and and!!!!

I pose to you the same question I posed to the young adults group (and i'd like an answer if I may be so bold)what would be your personal success and your failure.

I must now love ya and leave ya, til we meet again and ya ya
Philippa

squishy heart

this is me

i cry

i cry on good days(obviously)

i cry on bad days (been going that a bit too much)

i cry watching adverts

i cry in movies and listening to certain music

i cry watching extreme makeover home edition

i cry reading about baby Ollie and her amazing family

i cry watching the news

i cry thinking about babies being abandoned

i really have a squishyheart

and i don't think it is a bad thing

sometimes other people do

i remember in fashion school i was once hauled into my lecturer's office and told to toughen up because my squishyheart would not handle the fashion world

at other times i, by my own hand, added cement and brick to build up a wall around it

i think it even became stone at times

i think God has been reminding me that He made me this way, the squishyheart way

i think what He has done as well, to make it a squishyheart that doesn't just pump lumpy custard, is burden me to take action

 there is a something a brewing

love ya muchly

Philippa

an afternoon with Alexander and Beatrice (she slept most of the time)

I know its a blog, but it doesn't really need words...

revelation

What I'm getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you've done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I'm separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God.

That energy is God's energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.

 Do everything readily and cheerfully--no bickering, no second-guessing allowed!

 Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night

 so I'll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You'll be living proof that I didn't go to all this work for nothing.

 Even if I am executed here and now, I'll rejoice in being an element in the offering of your faith that you make on Christ's altar, a part of your rejoicing.

Philippians 2:12-18

does my life reflect my salvation?

am I reverent and sensitive before God?

wow, wow, wow

my life isn't just about me

its about these people   

and my family

and my youth

and the students who live in the student house

and well, everyone who comes in to contact with me

and you dear reader...

 But turnabout's fair play--you must join me in my rejoicing. Whatever you do, don't feel sorry for me.

all in a days work (in photos and mommy's captioning)

beside the dining room table...

because i didn't want to sleep, i got so tired i past out on the floor

and i have a fat lip from bashing into something because when i'm tired i'm wobbly on my feet

  under the table...

i am dressed in my aunty zinny's builder bear's skirt

aunty zinny and me having a chat

now i'm trying to roll over

i just love her sooooo much

yes mummy?

(aren't they gorgeous?)

Perspective

Imagine that all of the world's problems could be changed simply by us all changing how we view things. Odd thought I know, but today I discovered again, that we don't all have the same perspective on things. And that can make life a bit tense, when a bunch of differnet people with different perspectives try live life, community, family together. The thing though, is if we are God's children, shouldn't we have His perspective? I think we've made the Christian walk so complicated that it looks like a bunch of individual perspectives. This may sound silly, but don't we all want the same thing?

As far as my funk is concerned I have some big things to pray for. Please just pray for Emiel and I for wisdom and discernment. Please also pray that God brings godly people to speak into our lives, who will walk with us.

Au revoir beautiful readers.
Philippa
p.s. New post at because i am redeemed for those who are reading

I can cook yummy food (and I love that I can edit and remove stupid things I say the next day)

I'd said I'd come back with recipe after my last post and while the space I'm in is probably worse then before I have been determined to come up with something yum.

Yesterday I made a dairy free banana bread that we could only eat today as it had to be refridgerated. It was a bit sweet and someone else's recipe, so I'll give you the link if you want it. Alexander loves the banana bread. I also made whole-wheat sweet potato cookies. I need to perfect the recipe before I share it. That being said the yumminess of these cookies has meant there aren't many left.

Thursdays are student house family dinner, meaning we have the students over to our section of the house and I cook. The cooking was a nightmare experience as Emiel was at surf coaching and I had Alexander and Beatrice both needing me. Let me tell you what I managed to do in an hour:
I started the sauce for the pasta with Alexander on my hip or on the counter.
I then made popcorn to keep him happy. Back to the sauce.
Beatrice wakes up and wants a bottle.
Finishing adding ingredients.
Start the mixture for the yummiest chocolately cupcake things.
Start feeding Beatrice her bottle.
Add more stuff to sauce and cake batter.
More bottle to Bea.
Leave sauce to simmer.
Fill cupcake silicone tray and place in oven.
More Bottle to Bea.
All the way through this I took pictures which I'll post at a later stage. And Alexander played drums on the walls and with some of our housemates kids.

I'm really spent, so I might fall asleep typing this.

1 cup pureed beetroot
200mls brown sugar
1/2 a very overripe banana
25mls soya milk
Mix
225mls white bread flour (its what i have)
50 or 60 mls cocoa
5mls baking powder
2mls salt
Mix to the wet stuff.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C Celsius or 350 F I think, for as long as it takes to halod its shapes when pressed.
Makes 12

They were yummy and I had fun making up the recipe.

If this post is incoherent I'm really tired.

What is up with my attitude?

I am going to give you the moral of the story first, so that you can make an educated decision as to whether you actually want to read this very journal like, introspective post.  The moral is this, we have to make the choice in life to look at the good and to sometimes disregard the bad.  It is very easy to see the bad and sometimes more difficult to see the good.  But let me tell you it is soooooo easy to become a miserable revolting mess.

 You have been warned.

I cried much of the day yesterday, big body rocking, snot producing snobs.  I cried yesterday because it was my birthday.  And because it was my birthday, I woke up in a funk.  And because I was in a funk I screamed at my parents in a horrible, hysterical, yucky fashion.  And because I did that I woke up this morning knowing I had yet again damaged the relationship with  my mom.  My eyes were swollen and piggy and I realised that all the sore I felt on the day most everyone I know is stoked (I am a surfer's wife, we use words like that) about, needs to be sorted out.  I learnt quite a bit actually and I want to share it with you:

1. I have major birthday hurt from birthdays having been forgotten in the past (ok it might have only been once) and just being too damn poor  for a bunch of years.

2. I have MAJOR church hurt.  I am a broken, crumbly, gross, mess as a result of things that happened in my previous church.  Man oh man!  I have the hugest walls put up now towards the people in my current church and because of that I am super critical of everything I see.  Yuck!!!!!!!  And how unGodly!!!!!  This most definitely has to stop.  I have realised (through my mom pointing it out) that my attitude is obvious and stinky (my thoughts on the matter).  How am I glorifying God in this?  

3.  I have a skewed perception of what others think of me.  It is always an overwhelming experience that Lucy, darling friend, wants to see me on my birthday (which she did yesterday) and blesses me with gifts and a thoughtout card.  It is always the card that floors me.  The way she sees me and the way I think she sees me are two totally different things.  

4.  I hate Valentine's Day.  For years on Valentine's day I was desperate for the card or rose or chocolate that all the other little girls (ok, maybe not all) got.  In the beginning my parent's would do something special.  As I got older my need to be noticed became more intense.  It really hurt me on that stupid day that I was not noticed (if it was as simple as that).  Then at about 13 I finally had a boyfriend (I think he was my boyfriend).  Finally somthing good was about to happen.  But he didn't get me anything.   And I think because I got him something his mom did a V card which he gave me the next day on my birthday!!!!!!!!  Years later on my first Very Horrible day with the love of my life, he splurged on that day and had no money for my birthday.   

5.  As bad as I felt yesterday, I felt so silly, no, stupid, sitting at a dinner that was gifted to us by our pastor and his wife, realising I don't honour people on their birthdays and I am not a grateful person.

AND FINALLY my tendency of late, to see the glass half empty, to pick out all the wrong, to focus on the yuck stuff, is SO not good enough!!!!!!  I am going to write out a list of the things that I am grateful for and put it up in a spot where I can see it every morning.  I am going to read it before I get it out of the bed.  And I AM going to CHOOSE to start my day off in a good space. 

So I love all of you and I thank you for reading.  The very next post is going have a recipe!!!!! I think I want to write a cookbook.  One that I think is beautiful with food that my family thinks is super delicious.

Be blessed and choose to keep growing, even if you find the process as painful as I do.  I serve a gracious, loving God who allows me these moments, but in loving Him in return I don't want to keep having them.

Philippa 

      

don't hesitate... to communicate...

When you are mom to a toddler you realise that bad communication (their inability) makes life rather tenuious. 

 

i don't actually know what he wants when he does that!



I want desperately to say I am but a mummy, not a mind reader.  That would be somewhat untrue.  Being a mummy I know my son has certain things he has to have to keep him in peaceful space (that space is not devoid of naughtiness mind you.)  It is simple, feed him before he's ravenous, offer him something to drink all the time and make sure he is well rested.  Luckily my child is not easily bored, so I don't have to worry about that one. 

I do wish he could communicate though, because when he starts screaching my ability to function goes out the window.  My brain comes to a standstill until the high pitched wailing of the little guy gets it going again.  Then we spend time trying to figure out what it is he wants.  It is super difficult at this point.

All that being said communcation with a toddler is sometimes simpler then communication with adults. 

I think us adults can be really useless at communicating. 

In marriage or any love relationship if we can't communicate we complicate things sometimes to a point of distruction. 

Sometimes the problem is not lack of communication, but miscommunication.  Emiel is Afrikaans and I am English.  We have had so many fights because of things being misunderstood simply because of not knowing the other's language well enough.  Silly, but really not a happy space,

I was most definitley not going to do a post on communication today if I had not been sent over the edge because of the bad communication. 

aNYwhoo, before I loveand leave ya, on this least fave day of mine, I've started my new other blog, check it out at http://becauseiamredeemed.blogspot.com/

Philippa

Wife, Mother, Philippa

Wife, mother, titles I wear with pride but sometimes frustration. 

The photo's are supposed to be the other way around because I am wife first and then mom.

Mamma to Alexander and Beatrice

Emiel's wife


 

I love being Emiel's wife.  And as much as I don't always get the wifey stuff right I love trying.  It brings me so much pleasure to prepare food that tastes good and I know will be good for him.  I make a point of dressing in a way that I know will catch his eye (so it is really beyond me that my wardrobe is so sparce at the moment.)  I want to be the best for him, that he feels daily that God gave him his heart's desire.

I've said before how grateful I am to be a mom.  My children are the most amazing gifts and I believe signs of God's favour.  Alexander is the most beautiful litle boy any mom could ask for, and Beatrice is truly the happiest baby.  I am priveleged.

Happy girl, who lives up to the meaning of her name of "bringer of joy"

My beautiful boy, beautiful inside and out

The frustration part comes in with the realities of being wife and mom.  There is a constant need for me, which is wonderful, but it is sometimes in conflict with the need I have to be myself for a bit.  This is not an easy thing for me.  I do not want to become the type of woman that Oprah would praise on her show for rememebering to put themselves first.  Blah!  Yuck!  I know I need to love myself to love my family, I don't think I have a problem there.  The thing is learning how to feed me, fill my tank (I think it is from Bill Hybels, not sure, just don't want to be stealing people's stuff), without putting me ahead of my family.  I need to learn.

Try telling your husband you need space, so you can come back nicer, more ready to take on all that there is to deal with.  Try telling him that he understands that that means not coming to kiss your cheek while you are furiosly typing away.  It is not easy!  But I have the kind of husband who loves me enough to try until he has fully achieved what I ask of him.  I really love you Emiel!

Maybe all of this is also being days away from my 28th birthday (YUCK!!! to birthdays not the age) and suddenly realising that I spend so much time moping and trying to pull myself together, that I am not living fully.  If I am living fully my family will reap the benefit.  Those around me will see and understand that Jesus came to give life,         

"A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of" John 10:10 (The Message). 

In  all of this, in all of my wobbling, my moaning, my pouring out, it is because I am not satisified with

they way I am doing things.  I don't want to be striving, I just want to be really sure that I am giving God all of me for His purpose. 

My encouragement to you, as I start this process, is that you search yourself and lay yourself vulnerable and find what it is that you should be doing to be living fully. 

Much love

Philippa

And for those of you that prayed for baby Ollie, all went well with her birth!  This is an amazing family.  http://housethatjadebuilt.blogspot.com/

i carry your heart with me...

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                  i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
by e.e. cummings

 

i love this poem.  it is maybe the only romantic thing about me.  i first heard it in the movie "In Her Shoes" and was instantly hooked.  that is when poetry still hooked me, something i need to get back to.  i really love words and the ability they have to carry meaning.  

 

my darling husband is a romantic.  he sometimes writes love letters (not as often as he used to mind you).  i've tried to write letters but lose thought after half a page or so.  something i really need to improve on.  i have realised that i don't affirm my husband enough.  i love him desperately and will claw any person who does wrong towards him, but i fail to tell him how wonderful he is on a daily basis.  

 

my husband sang Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" to me at our wedding reception

i have realised i also fail to tell God all that is on my heart to tell Him.  i know He knows my heart but i also know He desires realtionship.  i'm a little scared.  there have been so many years of dissappointment.  the dissappointment is my own, because i think i keep fighting.  i am fighting for the wrong things.

 

i am loved.

 

it is Valentine's Day in 5 days, not my favourite day of the year (it's my birthday the day after), but i know i need to do something to tell my husband how much i love him.  what are you going to do for Valentine's Day?  if you are alone and trusting for that person i pray that this year you would know the love of God and that God would bring that person for you, not for Valentine's Day, but sometime soon after.  

 

       

 

 

People, I need people



The Us's abou to walk to town



Us in doing our nerdy look

UI am craving community.  And please don't get me wrong, it is not that community is not offered at the church we go to, I just need people that are a bit more like me.  We are different, and I don't think that is a bad thing it just doesn't make it easy to always fit in.  We have kids that we are raising a certain way.  We listen to certian types of music and read certain types of books.  We nothing, I just need people.  I am loving the bloggy world, I'm reading the blogs of all these amazing people, but they are not my people.  I don't know really what my people are like.  Ok, that being said I have some beautiful, special friends.  I love them dearly.  Ok, maybe it is more a couple thing.  We need our people.  And by that I mean we need the people that we raise children with.  We used to have something like that at our previous church, but when we left it changed.  And I think maybe it was a bit like Sunday people.  I'm not intersted in that.  I know that this is maybe a tad too real, but dang, who wants fake?  I am no longer going to be fake. 

I love my little family

  
Wow.  I sincerely apologise for that, but the place I am in means I need to be honest. 

I'm not sad by the way.  And I'm not as angry as I was this morning. 

And more importantly I am finding it difficult to talk to God.  Did I say that yesterday?  And the funniest thing is I keeping commenting on one blog kinda about that, but I do it on the phone and it seems to get lost as I click the comment button.  Ok, before you think I randomly pour my heart out to everyone this blog is beyond amazing and this woman's faithfulness is so encouraging http://lifewithapersonalgod.blogspot.com/

Would love to know if you all feel you have your people.  Drop me a line.
Ciao
Philippa

Tha happenings


I would love to be blogging everyday,  I would be really happy.  We need a couple of things in place for that to happen.  Firstly we need the internet at home.  I think I need to do to some investigating.  If anybody in the South African area is using no-phone line, wireless internet please let me know about it, costs, if you're happy.  Secondly we need a happy laptop.  Our current one is on its old legs (makes no sense).  It was someone else's (thank you, it came when we really needed it) and came with quirks.  And we share.  I love my husband, but have you ever tried to share a laptop with a Theology studying, Old Testament lecturing, school's ministering husband?  Have ya?

him looking all dashing like


So to fill you in on the details of the last while.  I cut my son's hair.   I love doing stuff like that, in college I even cut my hair, until my parent's complaints got too loud.  I would have let it but he was starting to look waif like.  Anyway he looks supa cute.

he is forever chewing his fingers

We had a really cool play afterrnoon, Alexander and I. I realised its something I'm not very good at, but my little man was starting to really cry out for time, just the two of us.  I will do a whole post of at a later date (need to be home for supper at 18:30.  I've at least made a wierd tomatoes, veg sauce for gnocchi that still needs to be cooked.)

We went to a party!!!!  We were invited to a friend's 40th and it was amazing!  Emiel and I weren't sure how many people we'd know, so decided it would be a date.  We danced and chatted and had so much fun.  Even when the car wouldn't start and we forgot the house keys at the party (after getting the car to start and picking up our children from Granny and Grampa), it was still one of the most enjoyable nights we've had in a long time.  The party was made up of lots of differrent types of , mostly Christian people.  Some smoked and mostly everyone had a beer or a glass of wine, but nothing felt wrong.  To clarify that, we for the longest time were in the frame of mind that drinking was against what we believed and anyone who smoked was...?  I don't know what we thought, it just wasn't right.  We've recently found out a friend of ours, who passionately loves and serves God, has a cigarrette every now and again.  This is something our friend, of maybe 5 years, did not feel he could share with us.  The birthday girl and her husband are an amazing couple.  They are in ministry, and have been able to do something mind boggling, they welcome people in without judging them or making them feel crappy about their lives.  In the way they treat people, the way they love them, people get to know God.  Wow!

Ok, what else happened?  My daughter is starting to get very unhappy.  My sister is singing so loudly from the bathroom, my brain wants to explode.  Look at the time!  Ok, well you will have to be told the time, it 18:21 and I'm not finished.  Aaagh! 

Ok, what else, what else?  I made yummy peanut butter, seed, raison, cranberry, mulberry jam, coconut muffins.  The stuff was all in the house and the boy doesn't like it all.  He loves the muffins, though!

And one of our lovely, beautiful, graceful students left after only 2 weeks.  She had been sick(not badly) and her dad demanded her home, so he bought her an airticket.  Now home is all the way in Minnesota, America, and my heart is feeling a little broken.  Please pray for her, for peace and direction and a miracle of the family kind.  Her name is Tanna Howie.

Please also pray for baby Ollie (to be born on Thursday) here is the link http://housethatjadebuilt.blogspot.com/

Now I can say goodbye,  love to you all
Philippa

I had to add this.  My daughter is only six months on the 13th.  She's already developed a kind of crawl.

 

Why can I not come up with any good titles?

Yeah and wow.  We have a gorgeous enormous, loud, gusty, wind blowing storm after a hot day.  i love the change in weather and I love freak weather.  That being said I don't love the loss of life or possession.  It just blows my mind that God-engineered weather can be so explosive at times.   Emiel says I am a bit of a nautral disasters kind of gal. 

SO you may be wondering how The Challenge has been going.  Well  until a little while ago it wasn't.  Since being grossly sick, my sweet-natured Bea also got sick.  I was so mad at myself, but I don't think there was anything I could have really done.  She had a fever the whole day yesterday, but still maintained just the most lovely nature.  This child is something amazing.

The gorgeous storm outside has stopped but it was replaced with a storm of another kind (no the storm wasn't as quick as all that, but mommy was called on duty as daddy is surf coaching).  Toddler behaviour is not for the fainthearted.  There has been screaming and shouting and just general yuckiness from my darling son.  Mind you this current behaviour is so unlike him I fully believe aliens have taken over his moods. 

Back to The Challenge and its lack of progress.  Shortly after I posted the last piece (so not sure of the blogging lingo) I had a doctor's visit that put me in a really, really bad space.  It shouldn't be the case that something bad happens and the whole thing goes wobbly, but for the last year that has been the way I've functioned.  Sad I know.

Can I scream and shout because mommy is not being allowed the time to do this?  Can I?  Mr Boy Child?  Can I?  On that can I pee unaccompanied?  Or have a bath without you?  I love precious child with every fibre in my being, I just sometimes need an hour where I am not needed.  And I don't think I'll do the whole crazy screaming thing over not being able to blog. 

Ok so I am going post this craziness not because it is any way worth reading.  I don't want to try add to it tomorrow when I eventually get to do this again.