Thoughts after a Men's Breakfast

That was a BIG Bacon/Egg roll - shouldn't have had porridge this morning...

PJ Smythe spoke on the struggle to be masculine humbly, honestly, with healthy introspection, worshipfully and two other points which I forget...

He used Job as his text and spoke also of his own struggles with cancer over the last year. Some reflections/points follow below in no particular order:

• Job does not pretend everything is fine when his family is killed and his possessions taken away - he rends his clothes, shaves his head and falls to the ground... but in worship, not in rage or despair.
• Spurgeon says "Oh Blessed Hurricane that drives me onto the Rock of Ages"
• Sow your tears (Ps 126) - not randomly, but constructively; take them to God in the company of others (brothers)
• God plus something - if something is taken, everything changes
• God plus nothing - if something is taken, nothing changes
• Job reflects in the middle chapters on the following: sexuality, treatment of the poor and management of money
• "Shall we accept good from God, but not trouble" & "Job never accused God of wrongdoing" - troubles may come from God, but they are not wrong. Paul says they work for good.
• "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." Job 1:21
• See our disappointment in the context of eternity
• Don't idolise life, idolise Jesus

While I agree with the idea behind messages like this, that our relationship with God (and indeed with people) should not be based on what they can do for us, a scratch-my-back scenario, but is it realistic or even possible? In a human relationship where one party gives out but receives nothing in return, we would not condemn them for giving up on it, yet this is the ideal we are to strive for in a relationship with God?

This is not a new idea - it is the message of Daniel 3:17-18 that I heard as a challenge when I was teaching at Herzlia. Then it seemed noble, now it just seems foolish. It's not that I need/want material blessings in return for my worship, or expect happiness or contentment because I follow him, but a little feedback now and again would be nice - this talking to a blank wall became old long, long ago, and I've basically given up trying. So now of course the reason I hear nothing is because I contribute nothing to the relationship... so it's all my fault for not trying hard enough or persevering long enough...

Having said that, God made the move that started this most recent re-foray into counselling, I guess I need to make the next...

Counselling continued

Second session was last week and it was a busy weekend, so let's see what I can remember...

We talked a lot about assertiveness and fear - about how I live with an expectation that things will go badly and react appropriately; how I have schooled myself not to get excited about things to avoid being disappointed. We talked about how this affects my relationships with those I live with and with those I work with.

We ended up with her telling me that the promises of God, which are foundational to the rest of our faith are not dependent on us, but on Him. It wasn't as groundbreaking a session as the first - I suppose that's inevitable, but it felt positive, solidifying (if you follow me), plus, I have homework. I'm to download the 40 days with Abraham PDF from the church website and start working through it.

So I am

Counselling notes

So, I'm starting the counselling process again - it has taken me a long time to come to the realisation that I am not simply going to get better/fixed all on my own, and that I am going to need professional paid-for help to find my way clear of the tangled situation I find myself in.

We met up about a week ago - I liked her from the start (very important) and trusted her enough to pour forth all the things that have brought me to this point, starting with Zoe, but including being dumped by the worship team, Nix's ordination rejection, Malcolm, and much more besides. We spoke about journal-ing, but I have never had the persistence or enthusiasm required (just look at this blog), but she encouraged me to at least write down what we spoke about and the realisations I had had during the sessions as a record for me to look back on at the very least, so here goes. Most of it will be in a short hand on the off-chance that someone actually does read this :-)

• The struggle is to understand how things work in a universe where God exists - if he doesn't exist, then life is much simpler: "Shit happens"
• The "smackdown" phenomenon
• "This time it's personal"
• "something bad might happen" (Marlin, Nemo's dad)
• Thoughts/vision of God asking for volunteers
• Zoe being cuddled by Grandma

Daddy's boy

"No matter how long between entries..."

I once wrote that in a journal in a spate of determination to keep writing - so often, when there has been a pause, it is hard to start writing again, and the longer the pause, the harder to resume...

Tomorrow Nicole will book herself into Vincent Palotti Hospital to begin the process of inducing our son to be born - tomorrow she will have scans and injections and be monitored, on Tuesday they will administer a gel to (hopefully) trigger labour, on Wednesday (assuming nothing has happened) they move on to a hormone injection, and (if needed, i.e. still nothing has happened) a Ceasarian.

It has been a long, sometimes rocky road since his conception back in October 2008 - at least one occasion where we were both convinced that he was dead, Nicole several other times as well; we've refurbished our house, moved out of Elna's place and into our own and have only just finished unpacking!! Trust us not to do things the easy way - although, to be fair, we had planned things so that we'd move in a month or so before we ended up doing so, but there were delays in getting the plans approved and delays in getting the kitchen cupboards finished, and so we're finally comfortable just in time for our life to get turned upside down again...

If we think about it too hard, it is very easy to get very scared - we've been this close before with Zoe, and we lost her. I've found myself telling people that in the best-case scenario, we'll be home by Weds evening, and in the worst-case and then trailing off... I'm meaning to say something about how we may need to spend a few more nights in a ward if Nicole has to have a C-section, but it keeps coming out differently. "That's why I don't think of it." (from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead)

I can't imagine how life will be - whatever the outcome. I can't imagine another baby in the house - it seems we have our hands full with just the one, we so seldom have time to/for ourselves, I can't picture it when there is another bundle to care for. Even more so, I just can't bear to think what life will be if we lose another child. First time round was bad enough, but to have it happen again, well, I fear it might be too much... At least one thing has been resolved - we have a fantastic cell group who we have seen in action already (another member of the group has leukaemia), and we have our family all around us, so we will be cared for should the "inconthievable" (The Princess Bride) occur.

And now, to wait...

Phonecall followup

Well, the meeting happened, and frankly, I was disapointed... it just wasn't... enough. I'm really not sure what I was expecting, but this wasn't it...


We drank some really nice coffee, and chatted about me and my family and job and life, and he told me about some of the initatives that the church has going. When I mentioned Zoe after half an hour or so, he mumbled something about "I saw that on your form, I was going to ask..." and then never mentioned the topic again. There was no pastoral nature to the meeting, it was more like a business meeting - it wasn't a sales pitch, but there was no depth to it. Friendly enough, but nothing to draw me in or draw me out of myself.


We went back to the church that Sunday, and I took Janel to the Childrens section this time. I was able to leave after less than 5 min which was fantastic - she is really feeling comfortable there!! For this reason alone, I guess we will probably keep going - I have just recieved an email circular from the church as I'm typing, must be a sign :-). The service itself was fine, the preacher was the best of the three weeks so far, although I was dissapointed that he didn't really end up answering the question he posed at the start. This was how the "obnoxious" God often portrayed in the OT can be reconcilled with the merciful God depicted by the New - a question to which I have not heard a satisfactory, evangelical answer. But he got side-tracked into a discussion of how the three epochs (pre-fall, pre-cruicifixion and post-resurrection) of relatoionship with God affect us as humans, rather than addressing how God's side of the equation changes. Nevertheless, he was an organised, engaging speaker.


The rest of the weekend was lovely, we went to Janel's second cousin's first birthday party, and while Nicole had to rush off to her business course planning group, I stayed and watched SA thrash Aus at rugby and enjoyed watching Nellie play with her cousin - she was so relaxed and happy, it was a delight to see. The weather was appaling, with storms and gales all over the Western Cape, but we had good family times in front of the fire.

Lazy rainy afternoon...

It's a wet and wintery Saturday afternoon, and the Springboks are playing Australia (in Durban I think). I'd forgotton this fact and so haven't made any plans to go somewhere that has M-Net (the pay digital channel) showing and will have to watch the re-broadcast on SABC later. Nicole is at a staff development day, listening to Ben Zander speak, so I'm looking after Janel. We've watched "Insectopia" (her name for the movie "Antz") and I've managed to wean her off the television and into her playroom. At the moment there is a lot of unpacking going on, most recently her musical instruments, so she is trying to figure out which end of the flute to blow into...

It's been a busy few weeks - the budget season at school has begun, so I have been helping various heads of subjects to consider their options for electronic/IT equipment and then get prices so that they can draw up budgets for 2009. At the same time, I'm trying to do my own budgeting for the four areas (IT, AVT, ICDL & photocopiers) that I have become responsible for. And with Nicole's seemingly endless busyness still ongoing, life at home is busy too - although we spend most evenings collapsed in front of the TV after getting Janel to bed, it never feels restful, and we always wake up almost as tired as we were when we went to bed. Nicole is sick at the moment, but I'm actually feeling OK, although my back is constantly sore - as if a vertebrae was out of position.

I got an unexpected phonecall this week. When I visited the new church we're trying for the first time (Nicole had been the week before), I filled in one of their newcomers slips, and at the bottom, after I had filled name of spouse and children, I wrote "Daughter Zoe, stillborn 24 March 2007" - in part because I always agonise over how to fill in how many children I have, but in part just to see how they would respond. When Nicole had visited, I had been impressed by how quickly they followed up on her "newcomers form" - just an email saying "thanks for visiting, here's how to find out more", but I thought that it showed they'd at least noticed you'd been. So I was a little miffed when my form didn't get followed up after a week to 10 days. Then I got a call from one of the church leadership team/elders/whatever they call them inviting me to meet up for coffee. I assume that it's in response to my note, as he seemed quite awkward about it. As it turns out, on the afternoon we were supposed to meet, his wife got into a traffic accident, so it's been postponed a week. As fate would have it, we haven't been back to the church since I filled in the form - last week was Janel's godparent's son's christening, and this week we're on creche duty at Christ Church. I'm intrigued to see how it all pans out.