Tuesday, December 30, 2008

December thoughts

I can’t my imagine life being any different to what it is today.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to not be alone.

I was at a good friends wedding on the weekend and I wasn’t sad for the first time in a long time. I was overjoyed for her joy.

As hard as I try I can’t imagine my own wedding. I can’t picture anyone looking at me the same way that the groom was looking at my friend – with such untempered love and hope. How people get together and fall in love is somewhat of a mystery to me. The chances of meeting each other, and loving each other are just so small.

I’m not writing this looking for sympathy. It’s just an observation. I think if I did find love it would scare me. I have become set in my ways, scarily selfish. That happens when you live alone, with only yourself to look after. I am coming to terms with this as my life. I figure that if I can be content and single, then maybe God will look down and decide to grant me what I really want – though the truth is that I don’t believe that – God doesn’t give good things on a merit based system, which is kind of a pity. If he did at least you could do something about changing the things that break your heart. As it is now, we have no control over them at all.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Tears

I used to rarely cry. I was tough and strong and I didn't need anyone. I often wore my independence like a shield, but lately my shield has been dropping and something in me has changed.

I cry more now. I tear up at the oddest times: happiness, sadness, injustice, love and empathy - anything at all.

I think what has happened is my heart has gotten bigger. It fits more in but there is more to squeeze out.

I used to see tears as a sign of weakness - now they remind me that I am alive and can feel again.

"When the heart is full the eyes overflow" Yiddish Proverb.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

A situation of desperation

Something very exciting and very challenging has recently happened to me. I submitted an application form to Watoto Childrens Home to spend a month helping the babies home in Uganda.

I'm not sure if anyone else feels like this - but putting an application in is a million miles away from actually going anywhere - but surprisingly I was accepted straight away to go over from mid Dec to mid Jan. I got the email and immediately my eyes teared up - it was actually happening and the enormity of the whole situation hit me all at once. I am going on my own, to Africa, in 16 weeks time, and I needed to find around $3500 for the opportunity.

Now with this comes the challenge of finding the funds to get there. In the back of my head I was thinking - "well if God wants me to go he will provide the funds" and my realistic brain says "so where are you going to get that money from Linda - why would God bother to get it for you?". I freaked out and worried for a couple of days and then came up with a solution - namely one that sees me sacrificing my independence (by getting my own place) for a couple more months so I can save the money I would have spent on rent for 3 months and putting that towards the Watoto costs.

It got me thinking - in an affluent society where weekly pay often covers all costs and sometimes a bit to spare - is the need to rely on God to provide diminished? It has always been my way to go out and get what I want or need - rather than praying and letting God provide for me.

I wonder if God provided me with a good job and the ability to budget so that I can fund myself in situations like this - or if by doing it on my own, I rob God of the opportunity for miraculous provision.

It is ironic that the week I have been thinking and talking to others about this thought, I get a call from a friend today telling me that she has won a much needed brand new car in a competition that she didn't actually purposefully enter. God has miraculously provided a car for her through a competition that she was automatically entered in when registering for something else - what a smart God we have!

It made me smile to see that God does actually step in when needed.

Maybe it is more a situation of desperation - when we have no other options do we ask God to step in then - rather than at the beginning and leaving the worrying with him?

I guess I won't know - but in my case it looks like within a week of getting accepted I have found the bulk of the money needed, and a family member is looking in to the possibility of using their frequent flyer points for one way of the flights as well - which will cover the rest of the costs.

Is this God's way of providing or my way of doing it myself and not giving him the chance?

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

What is a single girl to do?

One of the main reasons that i started this blog is to share my adventures in dating. I recently embarked on a challenge to meet 5 new guys a week - not to fall in love with but just to talk to and to get me used to interacting with guys again. When you have been single for a while like I have been you kind of forget how to be a 'girl' sometimes.

So anyway - i need to meet 5 guys a week or the consequence that i have implemented is that my sister is able to come over to my house and take my clothes as payment for unmet guys. So if i only meet 4 guys in a week, Alison gets to come and take something i wear all the time and hold it for two weeks.

This worries me muchly - as she has promised to come and take the things I wear the most ie my suits and boots and work clothes.

The meeting 5 a week hasn't been a problem so far as I have been talking to heaps of guys from a dating website but alas I am no longer the 'new girl in town' and my popularity has waned. I am now looking at this week and can only count 1 guy to my total - DISASTER!!

So what is a single girl to do - where does one find single guys to talk to without going in to a pub??

Wish me luck, or in lieu of that, wish me creativity in finding clothes to wear!

Friday, August 15, 2008

Can too much happiness make you ambivalent?

Recently I have been reading in the bible about Jacob and his wives - Leah and Rachel. We all know the story that Jacob loved Rachel and so he worked for her father for 7 years before he could marry her. But her father switched Rachel for his less lovely daughter Leah (thought it seems her only flaw was that she had weak eyes) - so Jacob married Rachel and worked another 7 years to pay the debt.

The thing that got me thinking was the verses that came next regarding the children of both women. Genesis 29:31 says "When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. 32 Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, [b] for she said, "It is because the LORD has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now."

It seems to me that God in a way punished Rachel because she was beautiful and was loved by her husband - God took away her ability to have children and blessed Leah instead. Does this mean that God's form of justice takes happiness from some because they simply have too much blessing in their life? It wasn't Rachel's fault that she was more beautiful than Leah yet her happiness cost her her children for a period of time (Rachel eventually had two sons - Joseph and Benjamin).

I truly believe God has plans for each of our lives, mine included, but it does make me wonder about the equality of it all.

Maybe too much happiness is a bad thing - maybe it makes us ambivalent to the sadness of others. You can't deeply empathise with loss until you have seen someone you love disappear from your world. You cannot understand loneliness until you have been alone - staring at the empty side of the bed, wondering if it will ever be filled. You cannot understand disappointment until you have seen your dreams dropped away and lost, one by one.

Anyway - just some thoughts for today from Linda!


Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Nothing says love like a good dose of food poisoning

So here is how my night went tonight... mum makes dinner, we eat, one hour later mum yells out from the lounge room "Linda are you feeling sick?"
Linda: "Yes"
Sue: "me too. I left the chicken in the microwave overnight"
Linda: "You gave us food poisoning!!!!"

Later after I went in to complain to mum about how bad I was feeling (and she commiserated that whatever I was feeling, she was feeling too), she mentioned that this was the first time in all her 30+ years of cooking that she had ever cooked anything bad. It made me think of just how many meals she has prepared for me over the years.. all those years when I was an ungrateful kid complaining about eating tomato and vegetables. All those years of watching my weight when I was in uni. All those years when I was dodging doing my turn at cooking.

So here is to my mum - for years and years and years of great, healthy meals that didn't give me food poisoning.