Life

It seems somewhere in your 30’s a sobering realism takes place, some probably call it “experience” or “maturing”. I’m thinking that even though the passing of one’s youthful naivete is sad there is some comfort or confidence maybe? in drawing the line at being someone else’s fool…I’m not certain or convinced whether this is good or bad but I do know that it has happened and I’ll certainly remember that the year that I turned 35 was the year I sobered up on life!!
I just pray that my Lord will know how to save me from it’s destructive power and use anything of value for my good. But I certainly won’t be analyzing it…those days are sooo gone!!! As for me,I’ll be simplifying the moment!

Cakes

*look what I found on my BB…this draft post*

So in true style I started my blog with a bang and then….sizzle…………

But here I am and hopefully a little more forthcoming with some posts.

So I did promise to share about my cake baking and last night while trying to tidy up some of my pics, I found some evidence.

But let me first tell you about the Bisto gravy cake….smiles…..for a minute I couldn’t recall on which occasion this tragedy happened, but now it comes to me, grimly and so unforgettable.

Gratefully on my part there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE of this cake.  My worst attempt ever!  Sadly, since it was baked for a very special occasion;  our 10th Anniversary on the 4th November 2010.  I so wanted to arrange something perfect and special.  So I still couldn’t make the trip to Cape Town and Hermanus happen but at least I could bake a special cake and plan an enjoyable day together.

The inspiration:  PICNICS! A fond and memorable activity for Jacques and I, so here goes, I arrange a picnic for the day with all our favourite eats and treats and embark on a cake that should’ve looked like this pic.

But somehow, I managed to end up with a large orange blob made with gravy powder instead of Cocoa…yug!

I think I must try make this cake again, when strawberries are in season!

I did, however, rise again from this disaster, tried again and made this cake for kenneth’s birthday.

 

Just excuse the random candles…hehe.  This was an awesome recipe…just wish I could find it again.  The cake was very moist and the icing to die for!

MIL’s 70th Birthday Cake

I think (considers), yeah I think this was my first real “successful” cake.  The repunzel cake (did I post it?…I need to check) was nice…a good start, but this one was another step up.  Oh I’m so indecisive!  I guess each new attempt always raises the bar and is always somewhat better than the previous one…that’s growth!

I’d say, the Repunzel cake was unique and an achievement in the scense that it was totally created from scratch by myself.  This cake had ready-made decorations but stilled wowed me!

Anyways…enough waffling…here is the pics!

Casino Cake

    

Update

Shew…so I haven’t blogged for sometime now.  It’s sad because I do enjoy it and I even got such a special email from a lady encouraging me to please continue doing so.  So here I am with some updates and to share some of the fun stuff I’ve been doing.

For one, I’ve previously promised to tell you about my cake mishaps which I still haven’t got around to doing, but I’m most certainly keen to show you some of my success stories….my creativity, lost with a sad death of an old friendship has been restored to me with a new friendship that has been born.

So needless to say, I’m finally into cake baking and decorating! Yippee…something I’ve desired for a long time.  (Thank you Lord for always being faithful with the desires of my heart no matter where I am spiritually…Your grace truly abounds forever)

I was asked by Nadine to help plan her wedding.  I really enjoyed every minute of it and the achievement I am most proud of is the wedding cake.

          

Burden God with whatever Burdens You

“Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with…cares of this life.” – luke 21:34

Isaac Page tells the story of a poor man in Ireland who is plodding along towards home, carrying a huge sack of potatoes. A horse and wagon came along and the driver stopped to offer him a ride. The man accepted and climbed up on the seat alongside the driver but kept holding the bag of potatoes in his arms.
When the driver suggested that he lay it down on the wagon floor, he replied warmly in his Irish brogue, “I don’t like to trouble you too much, sir. You’re givin’ me a ride already, so I’ll just carry the potatoes!”

We sometimes do the same when we try to carry life’s burdens by worrying instead of turning them over to God. No wonder we become weary, our hearts faint with us, and we lose courage. Any circumstance over which we have no control can become a “bag of potatoes” if we fret and worry about the outcome.
Some burdens must be borne/carried, but even those become lighter when we trust the Lord to give us the grace to bear them.
The next time you start worrying, ask yourself, “is this burden something God wants me to beat? Or does He want me to let Him carry it?” You don’t need to worry that you will overburden Him.

– 2011 Calendar with Our Daily Bread readings (September)

Surrender All

Our Pastor’s sermons this year have really been instrumental each and every week from his first sermon when he returned from his holiday about Prosperity.  While preaching about Lazarus being raised from the dead, he stated that God’s commands give back life!!  This was a benchmark in my life’s journey with God and particularly the start of an adventurous spiritual journey for 2011.

In September, I worked on a Ladies Camps and came back touched by God and I really want to blog about it because God deserves to be glorified by His hand in my life.  Thankfully however, He didn’t stop on my journey home, quite on the contrary He has been so at work that I find myself frustrated at how little time there is in a day and I have more time than most. 🙂  In a nutshell, He released me in a mighty way of a people-pleasing bondage of insecurity that has crippled me all my life and has taken me on a road of activating my Faith in the most authentic and practical way, a way that I trust once I’ve experienced it more fully, I can share with others and minister to them.

So why I started this post….because I want to share with you my understanding of Surrendering All.  Graham preached this Sunday about “Give unto Caesar his currency (the money that has his head/image stamped on) and give unto God what is His (your life! You have His stamp/made in His image)  What is Caesar’s and what is God’s is two very different things….God wants you to surrender your life to Him….Surrender All.

And so I meditated on surrendering all, remembering that God had spoken to me just before the camp about this. 

From Saturday, I started to feel very downcast and sadly insecure, insecure amongst and with the people who I should feel the safest and I nearly lost heart,  after all, He had released me, but today God showed me that Satan will always hang around to remind us of our weaknesses, our “thorns”, our iniquities, always ready to condemn, especially when we are in God’s will and hungry to do His work, but just like Jesus handled him, we need to confess our feelings of condemnation (coz keeping them to ourselves just gives Satan the upper hand and he fuels those feelings of guilt and shame) and then push through with God’s promises. And that is what I did (and it felt so hard and so scary even when doing so with people we can trust) and thankfully, God was faithful and He protected my heart.

And amidst me “handling” my distraction He didn’t stop talking to me about Surrendering. Part of trying to “handle” things that felt like Giants, I put “Facing the Giants” on to watch.  I felt led to watch it because, one, I felt like something that was supposed to be a good thing…God’s calling on my life…was in fact feeling like a giant chasing me back into my “safe hole” behind my walls of self-protection and, two, I remember that God revealed to me after the second time I watched the movie when it was first released that it was about surrendering. The first time I thought it was about giving God the glory.

So as I watched it and opened my heart truly to the prayer that He prays (I couldn’t do this before because He says to God that if He chooses not to give him a child, it will be okay…I couldn’t pray this, not then) but this time I could, because I knew that when God commands me to come out from my grave of death (like Lazarus) and step out and surrender all to Him, He will give back life.  And so as I prayed…YOU ARE MY GOD…and watched the movie further, I realized and decided to Surrender all to God, by honouring Him with my life.

When you honour Him in the smallest of actions, decisions etc…you are actively surrendering it to Him. It’s not a once off announcement….”I surrender all!” its a doing thing, an active thing! Just like our Faith.

One of the things He is forcing me to surrender is that I cannot fix everything and I just know Jacques is going to love hearing that God is sorting this out in my life, he always says to me, “you can’t carry everything on your shoulders, stop trying to!” and so I found a song on my phone that I don’t know where it comes from, and at first it doesn’t seem to make sense and then it starts to make sense to me as it describes ME….the old ME…trying to be responsible for things beyond my control and learning to just give in, get used to a new state of mind, let go and surrender to God…

 The Boy Who Stopped The World :

Don’t think you could stop it now
I’d like to see you try somehow
Realize that it puts it all on you
There’s nothing you can do

Right now you’re sick and tired
You’re feeling sad, feeling uninspired
But the clock just won’t slow down
Like it gets it kicks pushing you around

Maybe in the morning it won’t be
Quite as bad as it seems

The fact that you can’t change
The speed of sound, the rate of age
Is an understatement to
A state of mind your not used to

You’d be forever known
As the boy who stopped the world
And made it his own

Right now you’re sick and tired
You’re feeling sad. feeling uninspired
So I pray for you my friend
That you’ll fall down
You’ll give in

And then I listened again to the song Veronica sang at the camp, “You are Why”

 You are Why

I live for you
All that I am
All that I do
My heart beats with you
And each day I wake
I think of you

You are why I sing
You are why I live
Everything of me
I release at your feet
You are why I love
You are why I give
Everything of me belongs to you

I live for you
You are my God
You are the truth

You’re all that I need
My soul it longs more of you

You are why I sing
You are why I live
Everything of me
I release at your feet
You are why I love
You are why I give
Everything of me belongs to you ( x4)

Everything of me belongs to you ( x2)

Again I exclaim…”YOU ARE MY GOD”

If anything that we do, working, loving, giving, caring, teaching, relationships, ministry, anything and everything, if it is done for the slightest of self-affirmation and for one’s own self worth it is of no value…it’s only when it is done in a way that honours God is it in His will and it will bear fruit…life giving fruit that will add value to our lives and to who we are, beyond what we could ever imagine.

So may you be inspired, as you tarry here, to actively surrender all in each area of your life and in each moment of your day, simply ask if this honours God, let His Spirit draw you to His heart and into a real, life giving relationship with Him and although you’ll have to push through and it will cost you some of the stuff you’ve become dependent on, I assure you that you will experience progress and you will be blessed with LIFE!

Waterkloof Airshow 2011

Breathtaking Display !

Awesome show!! After 6 years it is great that they brought it back to Waterkloof! We’ve missed it!

All the items were spectacular!

The jets were breathtaking….my daughter loved the Mass Helicopter Display, approaching us like a huge swarm of bees. The 737 was a highlight for me 🙂 The pilot was having fun and we loved it !!

It is also so special doing these kind of things with a child: “Shoewee!”…..”WOW”….and all the questions and you are their hero and expert. It’s so awesome listening to all the parents trying to explain all the stuff that these excited minds are trying to comprehend.

~ It really is NICE being a parent!! ~

I’m certainly going to keep looking for and making family outings a regular activity in our lives….life is hard enough without still foregoing such pleasures and blessings!

 

Sometimes it is just beyond you….

….and that is when God is glorified !!

So I’ve been preparing really hard for a Ladies camp that is coming up next weekend.  I have never worked so consistently hard at something, that I can remember….being an instinctive or conditioned procrastinator, I’m pretty okay and good at working and excelling under pressure.  But what a journey I’ve been on.  So exciting and so challenging and so rewarding.  It really is great to work hard for God!!

We have such a humble worship team and we’ve been stretched, really stretched but its been so conducive to growth.  Like pruning a tree.

And yet, regardless of….or in fact  BECAUSE OF this I have had and continue to have my fair share of distractions.  As the time draws closer, I don’t become anxious because I know my God and I know what He has promised:   

“Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” – 2 Corinthians 5:5

but I begin to feel powerless and so totally incapable of sidestepping the distractions, temptations and attacks on my self-worth that some, rightfully so, nervous opposer of God’s work (aka Satan) and his fox terrier cronies relentlessly direct at me and I find it crippling to stay focused and effective in completing what needs to be done as we approach the weekend and time is running out.

But true to His promises God reveals to me that this is the truth of the situation, just as I’m about to doubt my calling and give up on my hopes and dreams….last night we sing….

JESUS, ALL FOR JESUS

ALL I AM HAVE AND EVER HOPE TO BE

ALL OF MY AMBITIONS HOPES AND PLANS

I SURRENDER THESE INTO YOUR HANDS

FOR ITS ONLY IN YOUR WILL THAT I AM FREE

Quite something eh?….and then Paula bought a DVD for the camp and on it is the most powerful and profound music DVD & song I have ever heard and experienced since I Belong by Kathryn Scott.

You Are More 

(If you can, rather watch the video it is life changing)

There’s a girl in the corner
With tear stains on her eyes
From the places she’s wandered
And the shame she can’t hide

She says, “How did I get here?
I’m not who I once was.
And I’m crippled by the fear
That I’ve fallen too far to love”

But don’t you know who you are,
What’s been done for you?
Yeah don’t you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you’ve made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You’ve been remade.

Well she tries to believe it
That she’s been given new life
But she can’t shake the feeling
That it’s not true tonight

She knows all the answers
And she’s rehearsed all the lines
And so she’ll try to do better
But then she’s too weak to try

But don’t you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you’ve made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You’ve been remade.

You are more than the choices that you’ve made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You’ve been remade.

‘Cause this is not about what you’ve done,
But what’s been done for you.
This is not about where you’ve been,
But where your brokenness brings you to

This is not about what you feel,
But what He felt to forgive you,
And what He felt to make you loved.

You are more than the choices that you’ve made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You’ve been remade.

You are more than the choices that you’ve made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You’ve been remade.

You’ve been remade
You’ve been remade.
You’ve been remade.
You’ve been remade.

Be blessed, dear reader if you’ve wandered here….it was for a reason!!

*I’m just a girl called to be real so that in and through that He can be revealed, lives can be transformed and He can be glorified*

What do you want…continued

Sharon loved this song, especially when she first came to stay with us. As I watched her sing it and when she listened to it, I could clearly see it was her hearts cry and I took as her expression to us when she didn’t know herself how to, but hey I might hear one day that I was wrong…

Just don’t give up, I am workin’ it out
Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down
It messed me up, need a second to breathe
Just keep coming around

I never gave up on you, Sharon and I still haven’t. Just like I tried to give you room to breathe, when you stayed with, to figure it out and find your true self that you were created to be, I trust this time (even in years) serves the same purpose.

But thanks for lovin’ me ’cause you’re doing it perfectly

This line truly gave me encouragement. I took it for my own!

But I think you could save my life

I certainly hope we made some difference or had some inpact on your life.

Hey, whataya want from me?

I want you to be all that you desire to be and more. Believe enough to reach for better and when you can’t, be kind to yourself and look after yourself coz you are precious to someone!

Adam Lambert: What Do You Want

Whataya want from me?

Yeah, I’m afraid, whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

There might have been a time when I would give myself away

Oh, once upon a time, I didn’t give a damn

But now, here we are, so whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Just don’t give up, I am workin’ it out

Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down

It messed me up, need a second to breathe

Just keep coming around

Hey, whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Yeah, it’s plain to see

That baby you’re beautiful and it’s nothing wrong with you

It’s me, I’m a freak, yeah

But thanks for lovin’ me ’cause you’re doing it perfectly

Yeah, there might have been a time

When I would let you slip away

I wouldn’t even try

But I think you could save my life

Just don’t give up, I am workin’ it out

Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down

It messed me up, need a second to breathe

Just keep coming around

Hey, whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Just don’t give up on me

I won’t let you down

No, I won’t let you down

And so just don’t give up, I’m workin’ it out

Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down

It messed me up, need a second to breathe

Just keep coming around

Hey, whataya want from me?

Just don’t give up, I am workin’ it out

Please don’t give in, I won’t let you down

It messed me up, need a second to breathe

Just keep coming around

Hey, whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?

Whataya want from me?