Faith


So I’m finally tearing the band-aid off. Let’s talk faith, shall we?

If you look at my Facebook profile, I don’t talk faith much. Actually, if you look at anything I’ve written, faith doesn’t get a front row seat in anything I put out there. Reason for this is that I believe that faith is quite a personal journey and for me these last 5 years have been of tremendous growth, learning and possibilities. So why now? Because I’ve been prompted – or shouted out by HG to speak up. And where else to speak up then here?

Five + years ago, I was making Erwin a sandwich. Now this is a confession to the world. I was an angry woman at that time, and making him sandwiches in the morning was quite a selfish thing. If for example i would make an omelette, I would shove my bread with enough egg, and give him what was left of said omelette. So on this particular morning, I was baking some sausages to go in the mentioned bread. When suddenly, I hear a voice telling me to now stuff Erwin’s bread with the sausages and make mine with what was left. Startled, I let the bread knife fall as I thought there really was someone with me in that tiny kitchen. 

Looking around, seeing no one, I thought to myself.. this is my imagination. Pft! Not that it happened again! The same small voice told me the same thing. So fine, I did what I was told because by that time I was thinking “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?”

This was the beginning for me of communication through the Holy Spirit. Now mind you, before getting to this point, I was introduced to God in a very unusual way, which I will talk about another time. The pastor of a church told me point blank: “Listen. Go and build yourself a relationship with Jesus and then come back if you have questions.” Me: “Uhm what? How on EARTH do you do that?”

But that’s what I did. Found this app called YouVersion, which has many plans which guide you through the bible. And music too, as I love music, this also became a way for me to dive into the world of God. And faith. 

Am I there? Nope. By far not. This is a journey and every time there’s a peak you think.. oh wauw! Look at where I came from! And then off you go to another peak. Is it easy? No. But that’s what Jesus says too: You will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world.

So again, why am I sharing? The same voice which told me to stuff Erwin’s bread, told me since yesterday what I should be writing about today. And as obedience is better than sacrifice, here I am!

Tell us, what do you think about this topic? Leave your comments below!

 

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How many calories?


A friend of mine forwarded an e-book she got full of recipes of 300 calorie meals. The idea is to eat 5 times a day but then only up to 300 calories per take.

Flipping through the pages I was struck on how limited my diet has been so far. Greek yogurt? Nope. Cod? Nope. Asparagus? Nope. Quinoa? Uhm Nope. Now peanut butter! Finally something I can handle! 

You’d think it’s based on my ‘not-adventurous’ inclination towards food right? Well to a point yes, because there are certain things I just will NOT eat. This for example. That just goes too far. But I’ll be happy to try out this for example. And in the research I stumbled on this gem: edible vegetables. Seems nice!

So back to the meals – some of the items (ok, many!) are simply way too expensive for me to handle at this moment. Made me think – planting your own vegetables might not be a bad idea after all! The only hiccup would be time – when?!

My goal of staying on track with the food and exercise including the how many calories I intake might be quite difficult. I will try it out for the coming month to see if it’s doable. I’ll report back in four week’s time!

Now – this concludes the personal category. And also concludes me writing this way as it has remained difficult to talk about something specific. Back to chaos then yay!

Happy weekend, see you next week!

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Probabilities


What are the odds for a piano falling on my head at this point in time? Seemingly zero! But more importantly, seemingly you can calculate that too!

hebertmath | 6th Grade Math.

Of course using real figures instead of just putting in “piano falling on my head now” as I originally used it for! 😀

This got me thinking – how do I live my life in general? Do I consider probabilities before making decisions that are important? Or do I just do what feels right and wing it? Unfortunately for the mathematics in me, I wing it more often than not. Which means that I’m more willing to take risks than would be considered safe or healthy in ‘normal’ situations. 

Why am I talking about this? Because I heard a podcast yesterday from Erwin McManus and he indicated that when you die, how would you want to be remembered? As the guy (or girl in this case) who played it safe in everything that you did? Or as the person who did things ‘recklessly’ as it appeared on their path? He then explained that he heard some of his coworkers discuss how they entered into the most dangerous parts of countries with Erwin, while they both lived in before and have never ever ventured there on their own. Their conclusion was that the reality was way less dramatic than they were expecting.

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There are things that I’m naturally not inclined to do, and therefore I won’t either just because I heard the podcast. But, on opportunities that come on my path – even when they are disguised as challenges and difficulties – I will not bow down and just grasp them as they come. Because let’s face it: who wouldn’t want an adventurous life?

So let’s go people – take that risk and feel alive even for that moment. You WILL thank yourself later. (NO! Do not jump off that bridge or life endangering things please! SJEEZ, context please! :D) Leave your comments below!

 

Food and exercise


Should actually leave the food out of the equation don’t you think? Food and exercise? Well no, can’t leave food out and just focus on the exercise. Because they both go together. Or so experts say.

I have a different theory though. And that theory is based on the fact that I love cooking. And of course, I love eating the food too! Am not laboring in the kitchen and then don’t eat, right?

So now where am I on the exercise bit of the equation? I just heard a podcast where the guy (note! guy!) was saying that you have to make something a priority if you want it done. And, he is 100% correct. If something doesn’t get the attention it deserves, then nothing will happen. Simple. 

Now let’s balance a few things, shall we? This is a small compilation of current priorities, and maybe you can help me shape them somehow in order to fit the exercise in there. There are actually only three things that take up most of my time. God (developing relationships take time and effort), taking care of the house (cooking, cleaning and washing clothes for the family), taking care of the businesses (ADG, PoF and PP). 

I have no idea how to fit exercise in there. So to level things off a bit (level the love handles for example), I started to walk the kids to school 2 or 3 times a week. That added around 2000 steps to my day, which isn’t all bad seeing that I am living a sedate life style. Now I’m looking for other ways to add more exercise which doesn’t put me in a position of having to get up at 3:30. Cus 4:30 is early enough thank you very much.

Any ideas or comments? Drop them below s’il vous plait!

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The news


Confession time again! With all the corona virus media drama, I’ve come to understand and appreciate the WHY I don’t watch the news.

My goodness gracious! All the drama! Don’t think I’ve seen posts of people before where you can clearly taste the fear due to all the ‘what if’ scenarios! By the way, as I am NOT a medical professional, I ain’t uttering a single word about the disease itself. I am only talking about the reaction people are having to this disease.

Now something totally unrelated, to illustrate my point. Last weekend I had the pleasure to speak to an older lady (she’s in her 90’s) and she told me that when she was strolling around her block, listening to the news on her portable radio, she didn’t see a banana peel on the street. What happened? Just like in the cartoons, she fell when she stepped on the banana peel! Guess the news caught her too much off guard for her to not look at her surroundings. If you hear her tell the story though, it reminds you like the cartoons of the 80’s! 😀

And that is exactly why I’m not bothering much with the news. I’ve been told countless times that I am ignorant and that I should.. no MUST watch the news to be informed. Informed of what exactly? That the museums in Rome have been closed? Or an almost calamity on the internet? Or embarrassment for Curacao about Venezuela? 

Unfortunately I would fail to see how that could contribute to my overall well being. When the news is big enough, people talk about it and you hear it anyways.

So unless there is something I haven’t heard yet, I’ll stick to my way. No news is good news. Happy Tuesday! As always, feel free to leave your comments down below!

 

 

Tax Monday morning fun!


Last Friday I got the mail that was delivered at my old address and lo-and-behold: three tax letters were awaiting me. 

I do not like receiving tax letters, as things are quite messy at the moment and a humongous clean up is underway. So with mixed feelings I opened up the letters, and see that they are letters informing me that I have 2 months to appeal to their decision.

Great! I thought, more paperwork underway. Not when I noticed that the deadline for these letters is Monday, March 9th, 2020.

So is God good or what? I now can spend my beautiful morning creating objection letters and wanted to share my inner joy with y’all. So – tax Monday morning fun! Enjoy this new week and we’ll c what tomorrow will bring shall we?

Some laughter to keep you:

Income Tax Jokes Or Quotes. QuotesGram

 

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Connections


Yesterday I had the pleasure of translating something where the topic was instructing a person on how to ride a horse. Now not just ride, but riding with half-passes and I learnt what a bit was and a wither and that pirouette is not just for ballerinas but also for horses. Who knew?

As a side note: translation has always brought me things to learn and even though I do not like translating, the learning-new-things-thing DOES prove nice.

Back to the horse story. It amazed me to no end, how many times the word “connect” was used in that instruction manual. Seemingly, to get your horse to follow you and your commands with ease, you need to connect to that horse.

How in the world does one make a connection to a horse? As I have no previous nor any future knowledge on horseback riding, I am transposing this question to: how do connections in general work? How do you connect to someone else and become friends? Is it just shared experiences, showing attention/care, or what is it exactly that makes you like one person but dislike the next?

Researching through duckduckgo has given me some perspective, but it didn’t talk about connection. Guess I found one thing that’s not really “research-able” what do you think?

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Screen time for all


“Mother!”

When the sentences stop and that’s the only word being uttered, you know already what will follow. Either a tantrum or a reasoning match where your 7 year old proceeds to tell you why he would need xy or z.

The scene described above, I’m very fortunate to say it doesn’t happen too often. So far I have been able to keep them busy with their trains, cars, occasional games (monopoly or “mens erger je niet”) or worse, gasp! Bored! And when they are bored, I get the question I don’t like much: “MOTHER! Why can’t I play the phone?” or, “But all other kids …”

So, where did my aversion and love-hate relationship with the phone, TV, tablet and the likes originate? I have absolutely NO idea! What I do know is that deep down I do think that kids should bore themselves to death, because if they do, their brains somehow gets triggered into getting themselves out of that bored situation.

Now, mind you, I am addicted to my phone too. Specifically to a game called Solitaire Tripeaks. So I understand that for the kids, it’s even worse once they’ve been exposed to a certain feel-good-instantaneously game, they want to play it again! Who would not?

There seems to not been scientific research to back up the yay-vs-nay debate on screen time for kids. But I want to challenge us all to look at not just for the kids, but screen time for all – kids and adults alike. And be critical about it: do you feel happy when you’re endlessly scrolling Facebook? I look at myself and how it affected my mood and no longer have FB installed on my phone. It is just mindless and endless scrolling into nothingness so no. I’d rather play with my kids (and be bored haha) instead.

What’s your belief system? Let us know in the comments below! 

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Cooking delights


If you have been around me long enough, you might know I love cooking. Furthermore, this blossoms into my love for feeding people so the two kind of nicely go together, don’t you think?

Now, one of the things I still would love to d is go to a proper cooking class (not to mention an actual cooking school) to learn not only about flavors and what works together with what, but also to learn techniques.

One humongous reason to support this is that I almost chopped my index finger off the other day… the scar is pretty thick and visible still while this happened a good month and a half ago.

Now mind you, I don’t cook that many things well. As I’m now in a kitchen I can truly call my own, I have started experimenting again. Loving it! For example.. any type of beans? BLEH!!! Not on my watch as the texture of beans just isn’t what I can say wauw about.

Till I got a can of beans as a present (yeah, I hear you thinking.. who gives beans as present? Leave this bit alone please!! :D). And one day looking in my cupboard that was the only thing left, with a can of pasta sauce. Well then, looking up recipe it was and let me tell you. DELICIOUS! I still voluntarily wouldn’t buy the beans, but at least now when I get a can of bean I know one thing I can do with it!

Every time I was going to NYC, I looked for cooking classes I could attend. Like these at this institute. Would absolutely love to be able to learn more about good tasting food in general but also would like to know why butter makes everything better!

So that was it on cooking delights! What’s your experience with food and cooking? 

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Morning routine


Are you a morning, midday, afternoon or night person? And if you are anything but a morning person, how do you cope in the mornings? Do you have a routine set out to get you out of bed every day?

I am definitely not a morning person, although I am typing this at 4:50AM this morning. There is just something about night time that gets me highly productive and capable of getting things done, that morning time just doesn’t do. But then what happened? Yeah. I got myself a couple of kids.

Now in the first two years of my life – you’ll notice that I will refer to my life as before kids and after kids – I was trained quite expertly by Justin and Bryan. Both of them were experts at getting up at 10, 1 and 4 so no matter how tired I was… well there was this little human who depended on you to get fed, changed or sang to. I did fail miserably at the singing part as it is just like counting sheep to me:

 

Counting sheep

Needless to say is now that they’re 5 and 7 respectively, the morning routine still is a thing, as they need to go to school. Groan. WHY, oh WHY? Nevertheless I’m looking to a bright future  – in 5 years time we are going to travel the world for a year. They will be going to school yes. But thanks to technology, we can follow something like this. Which means creating our own routines and hours. Not being pressured into a certain box of you have to and must and absolutely need to‘s. Am I looking forward to that? Most definitely: who wouldn’t?

In any case, back to morning routine. My alarm goes off anytime between 4:30 and 5:30: depending on how rough the previous night was. Regardless of the time I get up though, I make sure to have at least 30 minutes to myself where there is no pressure that something MUST be done. You know the drill – making sandwiches or finding the last clean sock or whatever. No – my 30 minutes of solitude and time with the Lord are mandatory.

After that life can really start. So that’s it. Nothing else is routine in my life except that 30 minutes. What about you? Do you have morning routines that you can’t skip? Like coffee? Or morning-road-rage as I see many parents racing by in the morning with a set face… well might be they didn’t get their coffee yet! haha

Feel free to chime in with your two cents – what are some of your morning routines?