What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?

I’ve tried to honour the Sabbath since I was a teenager. I’ve not always known how to do it, but in the second chapter of Genesis, it says that God declared that the seventh day is holy, and I love the rhythm that comes from that.

It’s not always easy to know what a Sabbath rest looks like, especially when we’re helping at church, food needs to be cooked, things need to be tidied and people need to be fed, but whatever I’m doing, I try and do it restfully. I don’t make it a burden, but I love the relinquishing of things at sunset on Saturday nights.

I get my shopping done, I often make a big stew on Friday nights (my cooking isn’t much to be celebrated anyway), I limit my phone usage, I have an afternoon nap. I encourage my children to get their homework done on Saturday. It’s a letting go and remembering that we’re not in charge. It’s restful and liberating.

On that day one of my favourite things to do is spend time with my family. Whether I’m reading to them (we’re currently doing Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country), or playing board games, as long as we’re relaxing together, I love it. Long may these times last.

This past year, I’ve found three things fit together like a jigsaw puzzle: art, audiobooks, and my daughter.

I love to paint watercolours, my daughter loves colouring in or diamond art and we both love audiobooks. We’ve been enjoying Stephen Fry reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, as well as a truly gorgeous tween series called The Sinclair’s Mysteries by Katherine Woodfine, read beautifully by Jessica Preddy, about a young female detective in Victorian England. I hope we get many more hours doing this before my daughter is too grown up for it.

Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.

It’s funny. I read this and I don’t know what is meant by “home”.

If home is where I grew up in Kwa-Zulu Natal, it would be the Drakensberg mountain range. Central Southern Africa is at a relatively high elevation, and the Drakensberg is where the land crashes down in the form of mountains on the eastern side, as you go towards the Indian Ocean. I lived near its foothills, I’ve been driven through it to and from Johannesburg, and I got a taste of it on one or two church camps, but I’ve never really explored its most famous sites.

Cape Town feels the closest to home for me. These days my news feed is full of back to school photos there. The sunlight is so gorgeous I can almost taste it. I can smell the Cape pine trees and the shade they bring. In my love for it I think I’ve covered every corner of it. But I still have to paraglide off Lion’s Head.

If home is England, I want to see Durdle Door in Dorset.

List five things you do for fun.

1. I run. I have various chronic complaints that require me to do this, but it also means I can listen to whatever music I like, I can run to the places I love and I feel good afterwards, so it’s fun.

2. I do ballet. I dance in the kitchen and whenever there is space (and not too many people are watching)

3. I paint. I try to sell my paintings so it’s kind of work, but I enjoy it.

4. I read easy books. Something interesting but nothing intense or too heavy. My kids’ home-school curriculum has good options for the older years. Right now I’m reading The Return by Hisham Matar because a review of it by the New York Times made it seem very attractive. It hasn’t disappointed. The subject is heavy but it is written tenderly.

5. I nap. I love my naps.

What makes a good leader?

Power and control are very attractive to people. For some it’s about fame, for others it’s about a genuine desire to fix things.

Some men think that power and control are intrinsic to being a man, and that they are being godly when they exercise it even at the expense of others.

But a good leader is not one seeking power or control. He does not see people he serves as threats to him, or alternatively, vessels given to him to fulfil his needs. He is not more concerned with protecting himself than engaging with others. A leader is not one who portrays an image of himself for glory and forgets his own humanity, or who blames others for his mistakes.

A leader is one who will look people in the eye and not be afraid, who is gentle and cares, who engages, who listens, who commends, who encourages.

In short, a leader is one concerned with serving.

Jesus called them over and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Matthew 20:25-28 CSB

It was revolutionary back then, and it’s still revolutionary today. Good leadership is self-emptying. Loving.

Jesus set the standard for good leadership. It is the leadership that truly changes the world.

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

If there was one thing that made an outing with potty-training toddlers extra hard (and frankly, it would already be a super stressful event), it was those electric hand-dryers.

They are terribly noisy. They seem to hit at just the right decibel to hurt little people sensitive to loud noises. If someone used the dryer while we were in the restroom, I would be holding my kids close to me and covering their ears until it was over.

When I did use them (before kids), most of the time they didn’t even work. Hands were still damp.

As there is often no alternative, we end up drying our hands on my clothing.

We love a restroom with recycled paper towels and a rubbish bin.

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

I feel loved when I open the fridge and it’s full of food.

I feel loved when I’m warm.

I feel loved when I can close my eyes and feel the sunshine on my face.

I feel loved when my husband makes brownies.

But I really feel it because I’ve known a deeper love.

I was 15 years old and on a confirmation camp with the Methodist church that I’d grown up in. The site was a dazzlingly green forest somewhere in the Kwa-Zulu Natal midlands in South Africa.

I remember sitting on that rough carpet floor typical of simple, cheap camp halls, with a group of similarly aged boys and girls. The youth pastor sat on the floor with us and asked us:

“Who knows what grace is?”

There were some responses that I don’t remember at all.

He went on:

“Grace is undeserved love. It’s the love that God has for you. It’s love that is for you no matter what you’ve done. It’s the love shown when Jesus died on the cross. He died because he loves you.”

Not merely accepted, not merely tolerated, not simply told to keep going to the next level.

Loved.

I’d been to Sunday School all my life. I had read my Bible every night. But I had not heard this. I needed someone to tell me this.

And something clicked. Like most girls my age I was plagued by a constant sense of not being good enough, of not working hard enough, a sense that we’re not going to make it. And suddenly I felt something completely new.

A person who loved me with the deepest purest love.

And I felt all put together. Words were clearer. I felt connected where before I had felt immaterial.

I felt confident. Human. It was all going to be ok.

The next day, I sat on a hillside with a gentle older woman and for some reason I wept. There and then I responded to that love. And said thank you to Jesus.

“Sometimes the Lord heals us with tears,” she said.

Where can you reduce clutter in your life?

The title for this piece is both a reflection of my lack of inspiration for a title, and the content of this article.

I despise clutter. Less is more. A home should at all times have enough empty space in it for a spontaneous grand jeté.

I’d like to have you think that this is what I’d look like ⬆️

So I’d like to plead innocence when it comes to any clutter in my home. I know who the culprits are and they shall remain nameless.

Nevertheless, having home-educated my children, there are certain small cupboards that have been declared off-limits to me by certain said children, and yet contain things that I know they have hardly looked at – in years.

In fact, I suspect even they don’t know what is in those cupboards.

They are in general rooms in the house (not their own rooms), so I might claim a mum’s over-ruling prerogative and attack those cupboards when they’re not looking.

And there is still hope that one day I might look like the gif.

What snack would you eat right now?

But not just any brownie.

I know it’s unusual, but I’m not interested in things packed with sugar, white flour and butter. I think we can totally make delicious, happy-making, indulgent food that is also actually good for us.

So I’m all for a dark chocolate brownie. One that isn’t made with loads of eggs and flour, but with things like ground almonds, nut butter, coconut oil and even (trust me) sweet potato or black beans.

It’s chocolatey and gooey. It’s good for you. It’s heavenly.

I would eat it any time of the day or night.

Edit: I’m including a link to one of my favourite recipes here.

What is your mission?

About six months ago an elderly neighbour of ours started losing his keys. He lives on his own. Another pensioner living in our area – a friend of his – committed herself to visiting him regularly. It seems he’s always managed on his own and liked things done a certain way. He didn’t easily accept help, and he can’t hear very well. His friend – let’s call her Samantha – persisted in regularly checking on him.

A few days ago she was outside calling for him as he wasn’t answering the door. It turns out he had had a stroke and fallen. An ambulance came and took him away.

I shudder to think what could have happened had Samantha not been regularly checking on him. As it is, no-one knows how long he had been lying there, but had it not been for Samantha, it could have been much longer.

It’s people like her that make things so much better. They’re not famous, they don’t have a big social media following, they don’t give stirring speeches. They’re simply flexible if they see someone in need, and whether it’s appreciated or not, they’ll commit to meeting that need.

I don’t know what my mission is. When I was much younger, I had ambitions to achieve great things – be a gifted Bible teacher, write for famous websites, teach many about Jesus. These are good things. For me they had the outward appearance of nobility, but they were largely about myself.

Now I’m trying harder to follow the one who told a story about an unlikely helper: someone who deviated from his own plan to feed and care for someone else. He stopped and bandaged his wounds when church people were too busy and “holy” to do so. Jesus told us to go and be like that helper.

Right now my family need my attention, but in general I want to be ready. I want to be more like Samantha.

#bloganuary