Things I’m going to do differently this year

• Spend less on bottled drinks – seriously how much plastic do they use and how much money do I waste? I promise to carry a drink with me wherever I go and fill it from the tap! I figure I could save up to $80 a month this way. Lucky I’m not a coffee drinker too – imagine how much money you could save if you gave up buying while out?
• Actually write to my sponsored child in Niger, I got a new one recently and she is probably feeling rather neglected
• Try to be good with birthdays again – project coming when I get home to add birthdays to Outlook on my laptop.
• Get up early and exercise – I used to be thin(er) when I did this so it works.
• Spend that exercise time with God and kill two birds with one stone
• Be more purposeful about time – TV, internet etc
• Worry less about what others think of me, if 2008 taught me anything it’s that other people are not always going to get you. But God does and He’ll bring a few others around you to support you too.
• Put away $20 a week into an ‘escape’ fund… use it for a great holiday or towards moving overseas.
• Listen more
• Judge less
• Go to God more and first – boy that’s something I’m having to learn since the accident. I have no job in a time of redundancies and recession. I have to trust Him totally. It’s sort of fun in a scary way.
• Learn the friendships that I really need to place value on and not worry about the rest so much (I seem to have lost a few friends since my accident and I’m not sure why… but I think I need to not worry as the support I get around the ones who are still around is worth way more).
• Not be a selfish friend myself.
• Be more committed to church (whichever that is)
• Keep in touch with my disabled aunt better. I’m so crap at that. I feel bad!
• Learn how to tolerate my father again. Give me patience and grace Lord!
• Figure out how to negotiate my family situation better or at least have inner peace rather than burning resentment.
• Listen and support J better.

Things I am grateful for in 2008

This year has definitely being the hardest in some ways of my pretty challenging life to date. But I really feel challenged to actually acknowledge the good things that have happened and express gratitude.

• I had a great trip to Sydney in January and caught up with some amazing friends and met a lovely man….:-)
• I then got a free trip to Florida in March – and spent some more time with a lovely man!
• God provided my flatmate needs and I didn’t ever have to pay extra rent while a room was vacant.
• I had my car stolen, but the insurance payout was pretty good!
• I have made some lovely friends online who have really helped to keep me going
• Discovering Christ Fellowship’s internet community has been amazing for so many reasons – I get to watch church online and chat with others when I’m too sick to go to church in person here, I have had brilliant people support me and pray for me and I feel like I’m part of a church community and I also have had a great insight into church in West Palm and if I do end up moving there I feel like it will be so much easier.
• Which reminds me, I’ve met some great Americans (and American Christians who don’t have big hair and vote Bush – and some who do… but I like them anyway) who shatter all pre-conceived ideas and I feel so much more comfortable about perhaps becoming one myself oneday!
• I’ve learnt more about Gluten-free cooking and found a great flour blend that actually works. Seriously if you have tried gluten free cooking you’ll know what I’m talking about.
• That my endo has been under control mostly and that I’ve not really been sick for about 7 months. This is actually a miracle.
• Accident compensation – that I’ve been paid pretty well since the accident and that I’m not destitute or pushing myself too hard and I’ve just had space to get better.
• That God is in control even when I don’t get why things are like they are.
• God is healing me and I am SOOOO much better than I was even two months ago. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• I discovered biking and I really like it.
• That 2009 has to be a better year.

I am not a New Years person

You either are a New Years lover or you aren’t, and I definitely fall into the boycott the whole night category. In my adult life I’ve tried to have good ones and a couple of times had reasonable nights, but more often than not I have ended up disappointed. So somewhere around the age of 25 I think I gave up. In my old career in Telecommunications I worked a couple of New Years – yes even the one I spent in Sydney where I watched most of the famed fireworks on the big screen at work while peering at the glimpse of the display I could see at Darling Harbour out the window wistfully (I was about 4 blocks from the waterfront and revellers where everywhere when I finished work). Last year I was flying out to Sydney on the 1st at some un-godly hour so I had a really good excuse to just go to bed and try to get a few hours sleep. This year we’re barely acknowledging it and I think that is fine with me.

In some ways, there feels something wrong with being so excited about welcoming in the New Year – what was so wrong with the last one? Shouldn’t we be enjoying the journey we’re on anyway? But, I have to admit in recent years (since 2005) I get a bit scared each year as I think to myself “well, things can’t get worse than this year” and then they do. I thought 2008 was going to be an amazing year of abundance and it started off pretty promising before it took another path in May. I keep telling myself that possibly God sees the last 7 months of my life as abundance anyway and with hindsight I may too in the future. Who knows. I certainly don’t understand much at the moment.

One thing I do like to do is have some quiet contemplation around this time of year and think about who I am, where I’m going and how I’m going to get there. I wrote out some goals yesterday and I have to say it eased a lot of the anxiety I’ve been feeling (oh thank you 2008 for the gift of anxiety and worry…. it’s been great having to deal with this new habit) about my future, career and financial situation. I figured out that I can pretty much be out of debt by the end of the year if I continue living how I’m living and cash in my pension plan,which I think they will let me do given my current circumstances – it’s not much as they only just started the plan but it would be enough to clear one huge block of debt and then some and if they won’t then I know I can get a refund if/when I move overseas anyway.  I am going to get serious about buying a car in January too – I have a bit of money away and I will wait for another insurance payment to come through and then look. J is pretty keen I get down to business and buy one too and feels bad he didn’t help me with it when he was here. I actually live just up the road from a major car auction and my new flatmate bought a car there this week so I should just do it.

Am I the only one who is a bit unhappy with where they are in life at the moment? Obviously the accident has changed things for me and I’m still catching up on that. I have testing at the neuro-psychologist soon to check after 6 months how much I have improved and I’m hoping and praying that there will be a remarkable difference there. I do feel a LOT better, I’m just really tired. Though I think maybe the more I do (within reason) the less tired I’ll be so after I get back from holiday I’m going to test that theory out a bit – possibly I’m just a bit too slothful at the moment.

Where did I think I’d be at the age of thirty-one? Well, most women would probably say married with kids and I’m not sure really that is my answer. I think I thought I could squeeze the kids out late in my thirties maybe and that was great comfort to me until recently (with endo I sort of thought I’d made peace with the possibility of not having kids anyway) but meeting a boy who wants kids pretty bad has changed that. I’d definitely feeling more drawn towards the family thing which still makes me a bit uncomfortable at times as I almost don’t want to get my hopes up.

What I did think is that I would be off doing something exciting in my life, possibly in another country. Living big for God, changing the world. Hmm. Maybe I just need to re-think what ‘big’ is or maybe it will happen and all the crap that’s been thrown at me is just a way to prepare me for it. All I know is I need to be prepared and not get stuck in this spot that I’m in (thinking of that U2 song “Stuck in a Moment”) and jeopordise my future.

It’s sort of weird for me writing goals as they are very much single person goals at the moment (though one of them is around learning how to be better in relationships which is probably good regardless of who I’m involved with) and things could change in that department easily this year. I hope. And pray. This time last year I felt really challenged by God to pray for a husband and actually ask Him for one and I met J two days later. I’m still not sure about him and that and I guess I won’t be until I get to the States again and spend more time with him and in his life. I know I don’t want to spend much more time being unsure, but given my life currently I know I have to be ok with it for now.  In saying that, the stuff I am unsure on is all the practical day-to-day stuff that in a normal relationship you figure out really quickly. I do know I love spending time with him, he is pretty hot and I would love to spend a marriage not being able to keep my hands of him (sorry if TMI), he keeps me in line a bit and makes me feel less dominant which is actually pretty nice and he encourages me and believes in me like no one close to me really has before. I love that he’s a big thinker and dreamer and for a little kiwi girl that’s a good thing.

Though I still feel I’m at a crossroads in my life – is it marriage, kids, business being a bit more settled? Or is it travel, friends, living big? What I do know is I can’t continue along like this, feeling like I don’t belong and that my life isn’t significant.

My prayer today is that I hear from God clearly and significantly over the next few weeks. That I get complete healing – every prophectic word, vision and dream for my life involves me having a brain that works properly so I’m really struggling to understand where to from here if I don’t get better. No, scrub that. I am going to get better! God is going to bring me through this, He promised. 

I pray that wherever you are – physically and emotionally – you find comfort tonight and that 2009 will be a great year for you. Whatever it brings.

The view from here

I’m in a tiny little town at the moment in the middle of nowhere – well it’s about 25 mins from the nearest city so that probably isn’t totally accurate - but it’s still pretty isolated. It’s a small town by NZ standards too – definitely less than 1000 people live here, but it’s actually pretty lovely. The coast is so near you can see the ocean off on the horizon at the end of the driveway and there are lovely walks along a stoney river bed and quiet country lanes to walk (or run, though I haven’t managed that yet) down.

Here is the view from the backyard – the mountain is Mt Taranaki – which starred as Mt Fuji in the movie ‘The Last Samurai’ – you can probably see why.

Pretty amazing huh?

Christmas in Taranaki

I hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas break and managing to relax. I’m doing both - I have been sooooo lazy and sleeping so much (but I’m guessing I needed it) though  it doesn’t seem quite right considering I haven’t been working for months – it’s not like I needed a holiday!

Mathias and Lucas are so cute – it’s making me just a teeny but clucky and it’s been nice to be around small children during this time – here are a few pics of our Christmas. We started the day with breakfast and listening to the Hillsong Christmas album which set a lovely tone.

Here is Mathias with the extra special Mickey Mouse pancake I made for breakfast on Christmas day. Unfortunately it was so cool he didn’t want to eat it so it sat around looking rather pathetic most of the day until his mum threw it away!

 

 Bath time with the new little  brother – don’t they look so sweet?

 It all got a but much around midday on Christmas Day – poor thing had a cold (which luckily I don’t seem to have picked up yet).

On the beach in the afternoon. It was too cold for swimming but nice for running backwards and fowards from the water (well for Mathias anyway) – Opunake is on the West Coast of NZ and has black sand (from the Iron Ore in it). I was thinking about how cool it is to live on a long skinny island where the East and West Coasts are so different (East – white sand, more mild weather, West – black sand and rugged Westerly winds that change the landscape) and how you can choose if you want to watch a sunset or a sunrise at the beach. I guess there are not many places in the world you can do that.

After the beach we went home for a roasted free-range chicken for dinner (I had to cook) and watched another chick flick (been some fantastic ones over the Christmas period). It was a very simple day, but I needed that.

Merry Christmas

Here is a picture of the Pohutakawa flower which is also known as the NZ Christmas tree as it blooms at this time of year. I hope you all have a great Christmas and enjoy good food and nice company and have time to contemplate the meaning of Christmas as well.

I’m off to relax in Taranaki on the beach and hopefully I’ll get some bike rides and runs in – think of me as I work on my tan (or freckles) and lay out in the sun hopefully!

PS I might just have a post about random Christmas presents coming after Christmas. I just opened my ones from my parents as I didn’t want to have to take them away with me. They have outdone themselves this year on stuff I won’t really use (chocolates with lactose in them that I’ve told them before I can’t eat…. when you get them EVERY year it’s hard to keep saying that you can’t eat them). Let me know how you go…

Update: Ok so I’m here now and it’s cold! It’s wet and windy and I don’t think I bought enough warm weather gear to survive without Auckland’s humidity. Hildah and I are feeling less than Christmassy though so sitting around watching TV might be good if we can’t go have a picnic on the beach.

Ten things I love starting with G

Dawn has assigned me the letter G and I have to think of ten things I love starting with that. Lets see how I go – I’m not sure there is much I love starting with that letter… I can definitely think of things I don’t love – Golf being one!

If you want to join the game, comment here and I will send you a letter so you can play along.

1. Green – I grew up in a farming community with green rolling pastures in a country that has higher than normal rainfall. When I moved back from London I arrived in June and the green of the grass was almost garish, it was that bright. It’s the overwhelming thing you notice when you come back to NZ and it almost hurts your eyes.
2. Garlic – I hope that doesn’t sound gross, but it’s a staple of my cooking. When I first learnt to cook almost everything I made involved diced onion, garlic and tomatoes and I got some pretty good meals out of it. I hate the stuff that comes minced in a jar though – I just can’t believe that people can’t find an extra 10 seconds to crush and cut it – the flavour difference is worth it. And I try to buy NZ grown garlic too – we mostly get Chinese stuff here and now there are only about three growers who produce it, which means that mostly we’re eating stuff from a country with questionable food practices, that has come a long way, has no flavour in comparison and is fumigated. I’d rather pay more for local produce myself. Who knew I could type so much about garlic!
3. Green and Blacks chocolate – I’ve written about it before, but it is really good chocolate and it’s Fair Trade. I used to buy it regularly in the UK, but it took a while to be available here and it’s still pretty expensive so it is a very rare treat. The orane and spice flavour is divine though.
4. Gaudi – I fell in love with his architecture on a trip to Barcelona and have been fascinated by him ever since. The Sagrada Familia is an amazing place and it’s incredible to walk through a cathedral of it’s magnitude while it’s still being built. I have visions of showing my grandchildren pictures of when I was there and urging them to go see it finished.
5. Gelato – mmmm….. the best treat for a lactose intolerant person. I can’t really get good stuff here in Auckland but have fond memories of the palours in Sydney (Blood Orange or Lychee flavour) and in Spain where you are dazzled by the array of flavours. Caffe Eis in Wellington is also pretty good – and used to be on my walk home which was both a blessing and a curse!
6. Generation X – I feel a lot of sympathy and affection towards my generation – we’re sandwhiched between two larger more dominant generations and we always seem to draw the short straw in life. But now we’re in our thirties and forties we’re also doing some great things in the world and I’m excited to see what the first Gen X President will do in his term. 
7. Girl Guides (do I get extra points for a double G) – I was one from the age of 10 – 14 and it installed in me huge amounts of confidence and introduced me to so many new experiences. We got to go camping (rough, we dug our own toilets and collected our own water from the stream) and cooked pretty good meals over open fires, learnt leadership skills, did all sorts of other challenging outdoor activities and served in our communities. Yeah, it does seem sort of geeky, but it was an excellent movement for girls and I know I was a better person for being involved.
8. Gluten-Free – it’s been two years since I tried to give up gluten (mostly – I’m not always strict on it) at the suggestion of my surgeon and various other experts in an effort to manage the pain involved with Endometriosis. The words Gluten-Free are becoming more and more common, which is great but I have to fight the urge to eat every gluten-free cake I see now as I would just be eating way too much cake!
9. Grey’s Anatomy- one of the few tv series that I love to watch and I’m currently trying to download episodes from the latest series showing in the States as it won’t start on tv here until after the summer.
10. God – I probably shouldn’t put Him last as He’s much more important than anything else on this list, but thinking of things that start with G is pretty hard. It’s amazing how God is always there, even when we are running from Him and how He has the small details taken care of. Sometimes it’s the attention to the small details that amazes me so much more than the big stuff.

There I did it… ten things I love starting with the letter G. Comment here if you want to play along and I’ll send you a letter.

Do they know its Chiristmas time at all?

I’m sitting at home watching a countdown of Christmas hits and was reminded of perhaps one of the better Christmas songs to have been produced in the last thirty years – Bob Geldof’s Band Aid contribution. Everyone remembers the classic 1984 version when Bono still had a mullet and Sting, George Michael and everyone else  had considerably more hair – I think I even spotted some of the Geldof babies looking sweet and innocent before Vegas weddings and their mother’s suicide.

I have a few issues with this song as I listen to the lyrics – the line “there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time” is a bit ridiculous considering it’s proximity to the equator! There is not snow in the majority of the world at Christmas time actually – we don’t really want pity for it and we don’t really know any different. And considering a vast proportion of the continent is Muslim I’m not sure they even care about Christmas! Still the sentiment of raising awareness of the starving is of course fantastic and it’s a piece of history with all those rock stars in one place.

In the 1990s they produced Band Aid 2 – which is often forgotten about and watching it I can sort of see why (though I was about 13 when this came out and I was seriously into a lot of the performers in the video so I thought it was pretty great at the time) – though it’s funny that Bono wasn’t arguing for the “tonight thank God it’s them instead of you” line, I wonder why!

The twenty year anniversary version is pretty interesting too – there are bands that I’ve almost forgotten about already, along with the greats Chris Martin, Robbie, Dido,  Bono again. The tragedy is, I guess, that two decades later there are still people starving in Africa while we celebrate mass consumerism and stuff ourselves to the point we need to go on diets.

Feed the world – let them know it’s Christmas time!

Feeling… uncomfortable

The last couple of days have been extremely blah as I recover from lack of sleep and being busy with J and I’m fighting feelings of dissatisfaction with my life. It was too short a time with him, but it was nice all the same. I just feel like I’ve come back down to earth with a crash and I’m now having to get used to being alone again with a life that is probably less than ideal. I’m also sick of people questioning why he didn’t stay for long (I’d been deliberately vague about how long he’d stay, so everyone assumed that he was here for weeks as we all take a few weeks off at Christmas) so I’m hibernating away a little right now. I also have some sort of infection and am on really strong anti-biotics so bed has been a nice place for the last three (oh dear was it that many?) days. I burnt the candle at both ends a little while J was here and didn’t always have afternoon sleeps so it’s probably good that I’m taking things quiet now. Though the good news is that I coped pretty well actually, I think he hardly noticed a difference in me – yes I am getting better!

We had some lovely road trips exploring around Auckland where he drove – apparently I drive like a nana and he couldn’t handle it so it was nice to let him take the wheel to be honest. I love being in the car with him both here and in Florida, it’s where we have the best chats and he luckily has a great sense of direction so I didn’t have to stress too much about navigation - though we did have a few um, discussions. On our last night he took me out for a nice dinner out at his favourite restaurant here and I wore one of my new little black dresses, which was appreciated. It’s so nice to have romantic nights out with your boy – don’t take it for granted if you get to do it all the time! The funny thing was the restaurant remembered him from last time he came and I’m sure they gave him a bigger than usual portion of the lamb that he loves – he hadn’t been there for two or three years but last time he went he liked the lamb so much he ate two mains in one sitting and then came back the next day for more!

Goodbye at the Airport was hard, but luckily it was very early in the morning so we just got up at 3.50am and went so there wasn’t too much time to think about it. We’re getting better at it I think… well I am and I didn’t cry until he was through security. I slept most of the first day he was gone but I’ve had random tearful moments in the last two days, possibly more about me and my life right now than him going.

I have two new house mates now too - they moved in over the weekend and they seem pretty nice. I’m totally over living with strangers and both of them may not live here long term, so I could have some decisions to make about moving in February or March. The business that my boy is setting up could mean that I’m here in NZ for longer than I expected (though hopefully going backwards and forwards a bit) as he’s going to be keeping me fairly busy here I think so I’m not sure if I’ll keep one room as an office and just get one flatmate in or whether I’ll move. If I’m working outside of the house part time I can probably afford to do this. Lots of decisions, but all I can think is that I want my life to be looking VERY different to what it is right now by this time next year. I’m sure it will, I just need to set some goals, trust God and go on the journey.

One word how you live

I stole this from Dawn’s blog and with a lack of anything resembling inspiration thought I’d share some mundane details from my life.

1. What wakes you: noise
2. Your initial look in the mirror reveals: eek

3. You usually first put on: knickers

4. Your closet: large
5. Your mood before 11am: best
6. The first thing you look at online after email: facebook

7. Something you tend to snack on: nuts

8. What you see out your front door: driveway

9. Your takeout menus: none
10. Number of boxes of tissue out in your home right now: none
11. The way you sneeze would read: ah-scream sound-choo

12. Number of times a day you probably brush your hair: once

13. The most predominant thing in your pantry: flours
14. A smell commonly coming from your kitchen: curry
15. How you sort your books: genre
16. The way you keep your place in a book: folding (bad)
17. Something you hide when people come over: junk

18. Number of people normally at your table during dinner: none!
19. Something you put on your nightstand before bed: glasses
20. How high you pull the covers when you go to sleep: shoulders