Sadness that breaks a heart

 I lost another friend to COVID today... and it hurts like hell.

These past two years have been the most rollercoaster my life has ever been.  Nothing is like is was before and the worst of it is that my kids' lives have gone into a "pause" effect.  Just before we went into lockdown in March 2020 here in South Africa, my husband and I both got VERY sick, to the point that I thought he was going to die.  My boss had been overseas and had come back sick and infected our whole office.  At that stage Covid was only a rumor, the doctors didn't even know the symptoms so we didn't realize that this was in fact what we were ill from.  I'd never been that sick in my life.  My fears though, were for my kids and my father who were also living in the house.  Luckily we mostly kept away from them, but I still had to go to work every day, as sick as I was.  By the grace of God we both recovered, even after hubby's fever spiked for 5 days and he landed in hospital on a drip that broke the fever.  We were not even fully recovered yet when the country went into full lockdown 2 weeks later.

2020 Lockdown was heaven for me.  I'd been feeling so drained at work, especially after being ill, and now I was able to work from home, in a calm environment, knowing my family was safe and cared for.  Being an extrovert, I found the first month without people contact rather hard, but soon settled into the whole Zoom and whatsapp groups thing.  Not to blow my own horn, but I thrived.  I got more work done at home, got to spend quality time with my family and worked on my sidelines that had been laying dormant for years.  Even during this first wave, as we heard of people dyeing, we had not lost any family or friends, so the impact was less.

A few months later the companies started retrenching their workers, and I too went this route.  I was lucky to have a pension fund to fall back on, so I helped my husband build his business and worked on my sidelines.  By now the kids were going back to school - something I feared with every bone of my body.  I'd kept my babies safe from this thing for so long and now the government was exposing them to my fears without me being able to do anything about it.  It took many a prayer session to get me to the point of accepting my youngest's having to go back (my eldest homeschooled) and to my surprise it went very well.  By now we were going through wave 2 of Covid... and suddenly I lost my first friend.  I'd chatted to her via Whatsapp just two days before, surprised to hear she was in hospital as I didn't even know she was sick.  Two days later I got the call and my world pivoted.  My first Covid loss.

2021 came out swinging and I absolutely hate this year. My kids have no kid-experiences, masks cover our smiles and we fear being near other people. People are suffering due to loss of incomes.  As I write this we are stuck in the third wave of Covid here and it feels like this one is coming after us with everything its got.  I've lost 3 friends in 2 weeks and have one more currently in the ICU.  My eyes are sore from crying and my knees are calloused from praying.  I don't have the words anymore.  It feels like we are loosing this battle.  Yet, many more have recovered than have died and for that I know that God is listening.  My heart is just so sore for the ones I am loosing and once again I have a fear for my own family's safety, because now even the kids are getting it.

I pray, wherever you are, that the Lord will keep you safe from this thing.  But most of all... make sure you are right with God, now, before anything bad happens.  

Stay safe

 

Paying my dues...

I must be the only person I know who absolutely loves to pay my bills... I get a thrill from it! Let me explain why:

7 years ago we were on the verge of loosing our business, living on 2 minute noodles and sitting in the dark to save electricity. 6 years ago we'd lost the business and been burgled of our last valuables. I have no gold jewelry left except for what I was wearing that day. We lost all our dignity then. We started over, with nothing but my halfday position for income and my mom's living room floor as a place to stay. Mom helped to get us on our feet, by not charging us rent. GOD send me friends who helped me learn how to cope with creditors and what my rights were and He taught me the value of a budget.

In 6 years He took us from nothing, to something, restoring what we lost and giving us extra! I've gone from halfday to fullday, my husband found work and is now a manager. My youngest doesn't remember the tough times so much, but my eldest does, so she attaches value to the things in her life. We value our time together as a family, because when we had nothing, we had each other. So with each debt we faithfully repaid, our credit got restored to the point where people are OFFERING us credit (we don't take it, though). Learning the difference between wants and needs has been a great lesson... and one of the best I've learned.

So I love paying my bills, because it means I have credit again, I am not afraid anymore, and we can supply in our family's needs. I bless my husband Herman for working so hard by my side all these years, to get us back here. But I PRAISE GOD for all that He's done and taught us these past 6 years. And then He ends my 2018

year with my dream of my own stage production. 

He's a GOOD, GOOD FATHER.  Be blessed!

The start of a dream...

It all started with a book... a very cute children's book to be exact.  

Three years ago I took my kids to the library to take out books to read at home.  My little one Mia chose a book called Maisey and the Pirates - the ghost ship, by UK author Sam Walshaw.  To be truthful, it was the Afrikaans translated version of the book, but for purposes of this blog, I will refer to the English version. That night she asked me to read the book to her at bed time and being the actress-mom I am, I of course did it with silly voices and lots of gestures and weird faces.

She laughed herself silly the whole way through and I had to repeat the process for two more nights.

By night three I was sitting with the book on my lap, looking at it and thinking "this would make a great children's theater show".  So I did something very scary for me... I looked up the author and actually CONTACTED her through her webpage, explained who I was, that I was involved in amateur theater in South Africa and that I would love to develop the book into a show.

For three months I heard nothing, so I basically gave up on the idea and kept myself busy as stage manager for an amateur theater company in our area.  Until one day when I opened up my emails and found a mail from the author Sam's publisher, Stuart Trotter from Rockpool Children's Books.  They LOVED my idea and had never even thought that such a thing could be done and gave me permission to go ahead, promising their support all the way.  I was ecstatic!  And then I realized my dilemma... I had no theater group to do the show with and no money to fund it.

They say man plans but God decides, and in my case He had decided that it was time that I realized my life-long dream of running a children's theater group.  So I contacted a few lady drama friends I'd gotten to know through various previous productions I'd worked on and asked them to come to my house for an idea I wanted to pitch to them.  On 16 April 2016, I told the founding members of what would become Drama Queen Productions about my dream of a Children's Theater company, which would also be a children's ministry group, and that I had gotten the rights to the books (there were 4 in total) from the author.  They all wanted to join me in this mad endeavor and so we founded our group.  We all agreed that our focus would be drama, music and puppetry for kids aged 3 to 14, to bring them the life giving message of God's word.  Along with this, we would work towards staging the books by Sam.

Choosing a name for the group was a challenge... nothing felt right to me.  We all suggested various ones, until I remembered a birthday card I once got, saying "happy birthday Drama Queen".  And it just... clicked.  More than just being drama queens in life, we made the attachment to the name that we were daughters of a most high God, our King, and that we used drama as our medium to spread our message to kids.

And so we were officially Drama Queen Productions... on our way to greatness!  I have so much more to tell you about our group, so more blogs about my queens will follow soon.

Love thy neighbor...

Last night my next door neighbor played music so loud that it was rattling my window frames... at 8 pm at night.  In my innocence, I sent her a message asking if they could possibly turn the music down just a bit, for the sake of my windows.  Thinking her a Christian woman like me, I was confident she would be a good neighbor.

I was wrong.

The response I got was that the music was turned off completely and when I sent a note to say that it wasn't necessary, I got a rather nasty reply back from her, coupled with being blocked on Whatsapp.  This completely threw me and I've been struggling to "get over it" since last night.

How can someone that gave them self out to me, on the day we formally met, as a Christian, be so vindictive and mean to a neighbor?  The hurt I felt made me look for solace in my Bible and I found a few verses on the subject of neighbors that told me:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.  Matthew 7:12
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Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. Romans 15:2

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Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Galatians 6:10 

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Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. Romans 14:13

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Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  Colossians 3:13

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The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. Mark 12:31

If you are a true Christian, our first thought should not be one of spite, but of being a good neighbor, as the Bible clearly instructs us to do.  Hubby and I've always tried to be good neighbors, yet thinking back, I've never had good neighbors anywhere we've lived as a married couple, who've treated us the same way.  Why is this?  Do people mistrust each other so much, that we cannot even be kind to the person living next to us who has to take our loud music late at night?  Life has changed so much... I didn't grow up knowing neighbors like this.  Our neighbors as kids were like family... we were constantly in each other's houses, laughing and playing together, got scolded by each other's parents, helped each other out in need and are still friends today, all grown up.

I struggle with small things like neighborly conflicts affecting my life.  I don't like people not liking me, ever.  I try so hard to please others, that it has taken quite a physical toll on me.  My eldest seems to be the same and can get affected by people's responses the same way I do, while my husband has this way of just letting things roll off his shoulders - something I envy and wish I could do too.

Every time I get upset like this, I mull it over and over in my head, making it even worse.  I don't sleep well and I grind my teeth badly, to the point where I am currently sitting with an abscess and am going for a root canal today.  I am praying so hard every day that this will be the year that God will deliver me from this evil and make me a happy person again.

So to you, my neighbor who so clearly needs to hear the Word more in your life - I forgive you for your response to my simple request.  I will keep on greeting you and if you don't greet me back, I will pray for you.  But I will not be defined by your response to my request - to be a good neighbor, as God expects us to be.  Some day you too will learn this lesson:

Smiling while you are breaking inside...

Anxiety... 

Depression...

...words I never really knew existed until I grew up.  They must have had other  names when I was small, names that were said in hushed tones and with rolling eyes by my family members about my mother.

When I was small, I knew her as a wonderful, fun, playfull stay at home mother who was always there for us.  Then our life took a bad turn with dad's bad business decisions and she had to go back to teaching, to try to save our house. I remember seeing my mother "break down" and cry for days when things got too much for her to bear.  Crying, sleeping, eating (not much), going to work, repeat.  I couldn't understand why she cried so much, why the efforts we in our childish minds were doing to make her feel better, did not help at all.  Nothing helped.  She would not speak to us, shut herself in her room and just cried.  The crying led to anxiety attacks, which triggered her epileptic attacks.  It was not a good thing for a child to see their parent in so much heartache and spiritual pain.

And in spite of all she did, we still lost it all and had to start over.  She had to be strong again, keep the crying for another day.

Then I grew up.  And life started hitting me from all sides and I started understanding the feeling of just crying and crying and crying, because the pain inside was just... too much.

Now they give it names... clinically depressed, post natal depression, anxiety, etc, etc.  Yet no pill can cure what I feel inside.  I can be in a room full of people and still feel lonely.  I have a wonderful husband, yet I feel unloved.  I do well in work and play, yet constantly feel like a big failure.  I am not a happy person, at all, yet I have nothing to be unhappy about. I never feel good enough and no one ever tells me that I AM good enough, strong enough, brave enough, mother enough, wife enough.  Why don't they tell me so I can feel better?

So what do I do?  I cry... and cry... and cry... and then pick myself up as my mother did, and hope the constant hurt in my heart will lift some day.  Surely it MUST go away someday?  I feel like I'm only existing... never LIVING! I'm always the one with the sparkling personality, a quick joke and a smile that never reaches my eyes...

I've sat with pills in my hand so many times, just wanting to go to sleep and not wake up again... but never had the guts to actually do it.  I'm a Christian.  That would be like murder in God's eyes.  But why then does He let me feel like this?  Constantly sad, crying, but having to put up a smiling face and interact with people every day, when all I want to do is cover my head and stay in bed.

Anxiety... a horrible, terrible thing.  I hate you!  Depression - just leave me alone!  I need my life back. I need time for myself, to rest and do things I love, to smell the roses, to sit with a good book and a cup of coffee.

So life... Just back off, will you? I need time to heal.

The cry of a mother...

Mothers have an unfair advantage with the Lord. In Luke 7, Jesus observed a huge funeral procession in Nain. The entire town was present. He observed the young men and women weeping. He observed the pastors and apostles weeping. He observed the elders weeping. He observed the fathers weeping. He observed the children weeping. He observed the sadness on people's faces. Nothing seemed to move Him, until HE SAW THE MOTHER. The bible says He had compassion when He saw her and immediately raised her boy from the dead.

(Luke 7:12-15). It was the cry of a mother that moved the Heart of God.

Still today, Mothers who cry before the Lord for their families, for their marriages, for their homes move the Heart of God. When Mothers stop praying their families (especially their children) perish. Satan gets a foothold and starts to destroy the home, yet when they return to their rightful place as the anchor of the home, demonic strongholds get demolished.

In Psalms 17, 36, 57, 63, and 91 God's role is likening to that of a Mother. As a Mother protects, upholds and defends her children, so does God also protect us under the shadow of His Wings. We find refuge there and can hide there until the danger is over. A mother's role is so vital that a father cannot get his prayers answered if he dishonours/ disrespects her.

(1Peter 3:7). Because, of this favour over mothers, they are also the most attacked persons in the home. The devil is terrified of Mothers (the powerhouse in the home). Yet the Lord has put inside Mothers grace and resilience to overcome any situation. Today, As the woman of the home, consider yourself blessed.

Consider yourself highly favoured and consider yourself dangerous when you pray.  Be Blessed!!

Competition time!

 

So the Bellas are having the most awesome competition:  We are looking for a Charity Ambassador.  Wow.  I wish I was 18 again so I could enter...  and fit into those clothes again, haha!   For once it’s not all about looks and bodies... it’s about how you help your neighbour.  This is one of this things that I love most about Bella Donna:  Yes we teach etiquette and style and make-up and all that jazz... but we also teach social responsibility. 

 

So many young girls out there have no idea what kind of an impact they could have on their environment if they just took 1 hour a week to do something worthwhile.  There are so many shelters (animal and human) out there that could do with some help, so many people who need clothing, so many elderly who would love someone to just visit them.  Yet we never seem to have the time.  I for one am looking forward to doing some of the social stuff with the entrants from my area.  I want to really be there for them and to encourage them every step of the way.  And if one of mine wins... well, even better!

 

The prizes are beyond this world and include photography shoots, pamper sessions, a weekend getaway, a house party, money, a limousine ride, facial products... to many to mention!  But mostly, she will be standing for a good cause and be our Bella Girl, our face.  I get exited just thinking about it!  The crowning evening promises to be a gala event, with celebrities, music, lights and evening gowns.  Every girls dream!

       

So why not enter?  Come on, you have nothing to loose!  And so much to gain...  For once this is a chance for the girl in the corner to strut her stuff, show her skills en be reckoned, without having to worry about beauty or the perfect body.

 

Go see what it’s all about on our website at www.belladonnaclasses.com – NOW!!