Lets Talk About Love

As it is/was the Month of Love I thought I would write a blog on Love. If you are in a relationship and you are not quite sure if it is Love, if you are not in a relationship but are thinking about it and the concept of Love…well this blog might just be for you.

I used to think that Love just grows…So if you spend enough time with that person, if you adjust myself to that person….then you will start to love that person. I do still think Love grows but that is only one component of Love. There is so much more to Love than just a four letter word.

Before I proceed with my love points I want to really emphasise something which is so crucial in the journey of unconditional Love…..and that is God is Love! Eish….some of you might be thinking “Kanya do you really have to go into the religious aspects of it!!!!” My answer is YES and why I am so adamant about this is because I never found unconditional love until I found GOD! Yes you could have different aspects/personal idealistic sides of Love. But true genuine Love comes from God! And if it didn’t come from God then where did it come from…the Devil??? I highly doubt that.

The devil is very creative in developing perceptions of Love….just to push you soo far of the track. So be very, very careful! The devils attempt to imitate Love is yet another four letter word that begins with L…(how original!) and that is LUST! SHO! Lust can come from all angles and it can only lead to destruction…. Pornography, lustful thoughts, adultery…even romantic books ladies… are all forms of Lust (even I was shocked). All these will lead you to a complete disillusion of Love! So once you have got the Love not Lust question out of the way…you can proceed to the following questions and points:

1. Am I myself around him/her?

If you are not acting yourself around him/her…you got a problem! You should not have to be someone else, be it look or character. If you are generally a funny person and find yourself so serious around him/her….Nope that aint Love. Love is being comfortable in your own skin, with your own flaws and allowing that same comfort in your partner.

2. Does he/she make me feel good about myself?

If you find yourself never feeling good enough for him/her….you got a problem. But first check if this is not your own problem because some people tend to bring such degrading feelings on themselves….Sort it out!

3. Does he/she bring out the Good in me and I in him?

No body wants that someone to bring out the Bad in them. This is one of the reasons why God is so important in the relationship. He helps us to forgive, He moves us towards a greater purpose together and He is truly the person who brings out the good in you and helps you to bring out the good in the other person. With out God …achieving this point can be very difficult.

4. Do we understand each others Love Language?
If you don’t know what a love language is please refer to my previous blog. If you cannot understand what that persons love language is or if you choose not to understand it then how can you love that person. Love isn’t just there for show….. it is fully present and that is why this is a language. You can express it through sign language or spoken language. Think of it this way. You cant speak Chineese to a ZULU and expect the Zulu to understand!!! BRRRR…. So don’t expect that in Love either….Learn each others love language. Take that time….and it will make a world of a difference.

5. Are our arguments Destructive or Constructive?

Destructive arguments usually come from past hurts..they can even be abusive types. If you are really serious about making this relationship work try moving towards Constructive arguments…you can’t keep bringing each other down! Get to the source of it… if it is unforgiveness you better try to forgive..if you want it to work. If it is past hurts from pervious experiences….Don’t target them to your partner…acknowledge that it isn’t them but you that needs help.

6. Do we understand each others expectations?

When Avon and I were doing our marriage counselling we had to write down what we expect from the other person. Understanding this makes the world of a difference. What are your expectations on household chores, kids, inlaws, privacy, love making ect. You name it we all have a certain level of expectations…. And when our partner falls short of these expectations it kinda hurts. But being aware of each others expectations helps avoid the miscommunication issues. So if Avon expects me to kiss him when he gets through the door I know I should…

7. Be honest with your Emotions!

I know most people try bottle emotions up, but we shouldn’t. You need to share the situation with your partner in a good and constructive way. Our thoughts can take us so far beyond what is taking place at that moment… it can be scary! Stop the thoughts dead in their tracks and confess them. It is okay to feel jealous we are only human… but how you express that emotion is crucial! What women tend to do is beat around the bushes and come up with our own crazy conclusion or maybe we nag the guy till we get what we want to hear! Or if he didn’t say something automatically means he is hiding something. …US WOMEN!!

Something we have learnt in expressing our emotions is beginning our discussion with “It makes me feel…… when this and that happens.” So for example saying it makes me feel unappreciated when you come home late!” …..the completely wrong way of saying it is “You always come home late and I can’t stand it!” Where is the construction in that. I know, I know…the later is what you really want to say…but you shouldn’t coz it doesn’t help you or the other person. But when you try saying it with your emotions it really helps you understand why you feel the way you do.

Okay I think that is all I have for now on my random points on love. There is so much more to talk about when it comes to love but you will have to call me to get it lol.

Happy Birthday Bianca and rest in peace always

Hi Bianca Warburton not sure if you remember me, but we sat next to each other at life group…two nights before you died (a year ago). No worries if you don’t remember me. .. It’s all cool. Avon and I know Clifford your husband pretty well. Well since it is your birthday today and it is over a year since you have been gone I’d thought I would dedicate a blog to you because you were a super amazing person.

Avon was at work when I got the message “Pray for Clifford, Bianca has been shot dead by an attempted hijacking.” I was alone at home doing the ironing and the message cut my heart like a knife. Bianca I didn’t and don’t know how to deal with death and couldn’t imagine ho Clifford was doing. I ran to my bedroom and fell to my knees crying to God. Why, Why, Why…why had he taken you? You were such a kind person, pure and God fearing. I just couldn’t understand.

Then God reminded me of the vision you shared with us during a prayer session. You had a vision of a little boy on a white horse going into battle. Your vision is still clear in my mind. You sensed that the boy was struggling to hold his sword to fight…. You interpretation was that God is the horse and he will take us into battle…but we still have to fight. A lot of people in that prayer session related to it. But to me you were not only talking about the present battles but the future battles that need to be fought here in Johannesburg. Which I believe is the battle of the hearts of people which is between Good and Bad. My racing heart then slowed down and I began to understand that your plan is so much bigger than I can understand.

At your memorial I went into a deep trance of thought. The song Malibongwe was playing and I envisioned you dancing. They told me you were such a good dancer. In my mind your spirit was dancing through the church. It was so beautiful…more beautiful than I had ever sensed a dance before. I then put myself in your shoes. Not that I was kind, pure and God fearing. But what if I died…was I ready….did you know that it was your time? Would everyone I love know I love them? Have I said enough, done enough… those kinds of thoughts? Because as I learnt more about you I realised that Wow you were amazing. You had done a lot. Sho when I heard Clifford talk about you (yes your amazing Husband) I couldn’t control my tears. I felt his pain as I pictured Avon in his shoes.. the pain of losing the one you love.

But Bianca I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for living your life and only fearing God. You were a helping hand in a township that most of us would never venture into. You saw past the crime and dirt or black and white. You used Gods gift in you to the fullest and were never afraid to show it. And as your murders go on trial I pray that their hearts get won by Gods love. That they see what they have done and they change for the Good. I pray that Gods goodness ripples all over the city of Johannesburg and that we win this terrible war for Gods Glory.

Overcoming the Insecurities of life

You know those moments when you can stand and look at yourself in the mirror looking so good covered in make-up dressed good….and yet you do not feel beautiful! Maybe it’s just me…but when these moments used to come along it never occurred to me that it was an inner struggle. You can put on more make up buy new cloths but everything is short lived forms of happiness. Basically it is look to the outside world to fill a very important void. Funny enough when this moment of insecurity and ugliness which comes to haunt me happens to be the time when my relationship with God is at its low.

See in my opinion real beauty has nothing to do with your hair or the cloths you wear. Real beauty is a reflection of Love and real love can only come from God because he created it. When you trust in God you are more than beautiful because you are not trying to prove yourself to him and you are standing on solid ground. See when we turn to the things of this world and to people for our security…. we struggle to find it . Let me give you a typical example. If we look to our relationships to feel beautiful – we fail, when we look to new cloths to feel beautiful – we succeed for a brief moment. Its all temporary - relationships go up and down, cloths get old, hairstyles pass…but God is consistent. Even in a marriage you can feel insecure that’s why they say marriage is a 3 way thing you, your husband/wife and God. We are all human…we all make mistakes. But if we keep our eyes on God you can feel safe in knowing that his plan is for the GOOD.

This isn’t a blog to tell you to Find God so that you can be beautiful and that your relationships will go well! No this is to tell you that in Gods eyes you are radiantly beautiful, you are more than enough to Him, that there is no scar or sin that he cannot overcome. …That if God is in your relationship He will lead you to happiness. The moment I decided to seriously put God first in my relationship was the moment I found my husband. Was the relationship easy ….No! But every trial brought us closer to God and closer to each other.

So if you struggle with insecurities about yourself and your relationship. Take a moment to pray for freedom from it …to pray that God shows you His Light. Life is way to short for you to live feeling not good enough ….for yourself or the person you are with.

God are You here? (Reflections from the movie Eat Pray Love)

Last night, October 7th, my good friend, Parusha Naidoo (Goodhope FM, DJ) and I attended the premier for Eat, Pray, Love, and what an enlightening movie it was.

The movie wasn’t a typical happy-go-lucky kind of a movie but a deep spiritual search with its highs and lows. The movie really shows how it isn’t always easy trying to listen to that inner voice, it isn’t easy to find your self (and do we ever really?), it isn’t always easy to forgive ourselves or others and it isn’t always easy to find God and peace in this world. But it does require a search as it so clearly shows in the movie.

Eat, Pray, love ignited moments in my life when I was searching for the deeper meaning and purpose; when I was trying to figure life out. I remember going up to “Gods Window” in Grasskop thinking maybe I would find God there. It was the most gloomiest days of that summer and I hiked right up to the top of this mountain alone…thinking for sure I would find God or God would find me. As I hiked up, the clouds came down and it became dark as I walked through the rain forest vegetation. I started to feel like I was not alone, yet there was no one around me. I got to the edge of the mountain where you supposedly would look over the clouds as if you were looking out of Gods window.

Breathless and tired I sat on the damp rock with the mist surrounding me and talked to God in my mind. I said “Okay God I am here. . . You could have at least have removed these clouds for me. I can barely see you. I have driven 3 hours alone…Where are you?” Still there was nothing. Isn’t it sad that we expect God to do some miracle to prove himself to us as if he is on our time and that we are not on his. I waited for God and soon my fears came to haunt me. You are alone Kanya…if you died right here no one would know.Do you really think people care about you? My mom had already said it was a stupid idea for me to be in the mountains alone. Suddenly I felt like she was right. I got scared. “God remove these fears.” I got a brief moment of suicide which had never crossed my mind. I panicked and began to run down the mountain, like a child that had just seen a ghost. I ran as if my life depended on it. As soon as I came to the open path, a busload of tourists were right in front of me. I stopped dead in my tracks and began to walk as if nothing had happened.

Although I was mad that I didn’t feel Gods presence or didn’t have that Godly moment which I was so searching, I realised that when we begin to search for God – the devil searches for us. The devil loves it when we are unhappy, when we are senseless and engulfed in unhealthy relationships, money and greed. These are the false illustrations of happiness and our inner being screams until it isn’t heard anymore. God rescues us by saying “Wake up there is more to life!” hopes that inner feeling will move us into a search for Him.

I think we all have different paths that God has called us to walk on.- when he calls us or when we realise He is actually real. It could be to leave all your treasures and find Him? It could be to leave the person you love in order to find the maker of Love, it could be to be in a place where you feel the presence of evil and realise then there must be a God. Whatever it is and whenever it happens you will know…your heart gets stirred up and you acknowledge this void that only God can fill. When it does don’t think about yourself…you will be just as confused. Just like the beginning of the movie, she got on her knees and prayed and God lead her step by step. Just get down on your knees and pray, and the light will begin to shine through the darkness.
God hears every prayer and counts every tear that falls J.

Fathers Day Special: Loving My Dad

So tomorrow is Fathers Day and I thought I would share with you my experience in loving my father.

I must admit I am not a big fathers day fan, more so a mothers day fan. Not because I love my father any less but because I know how much my mother values Mothers day and that makes me value it too…my dad even gets excited when it is Mothers day. Probably because if they are together they get to have breakfast in bed…so it is a bonus. Maybe I am not so into fathers day as much because I find my dad to be so hard to please. My dad seems to have everything he needs and if he really wants something he could buy it. So trying to think of a gift or a present for Dad is challenging, even for Christmas it is hard. But whatever we buy dad he loves and he is so good at letting us know he loves it.

Which brings me to my dads Love language , which I have learnt to believe is Acts of Giving . This is something that has taken me a while to learn and I am probably still learning it. A person whose love language is “Gifts” means they show their sign of love through giving gifts, money or anything. I think my dad got this love language from his dad or maybe it was a cultural thing…..THE PROVIDER kind of love. Now if your love language is something else like quality time or acts of service….trying to love or to feel love from someone who has a different love language can be very hard. One of my love languages is “Quality time” which is that I feel loved when someone spends time with me and I show love through “Acts of Service”. So on your birthday you won’t necessarily get a present from me, I am terrible at that, but you would probably get a handmade card or baked cookies and I would spend some quality spend time with you…somehow.

Now back to my Father-Daughter relationship. My dad and I have always loved each other and always will but over the years of growing up I have probably held a lot of resentment and anger towards my dad because I never understood his love language. Something I hope others can learn from. I would get frustrated that he would work so hard and I would get angry that he would put work in front of family, something I vowed never to do or marry into. All those late nights at the office, shorter holidays - all built up in me. For my dad it wasn’t necessarily an issue…(unless my mom made it an issue) because he was loving us in a different way…..providing for our education and for our lives. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for my Fathers hard work. Yet why did I hold onto the lack of time?

I used to think it was a cultural problem….the fact that I didn’t feel like I had a true relationship with my father, but it wasn’t entirely. It wasn’t good for me to blame it on culture, because it made me upset that I was Shona (in a strange way). I would think that if I wasn’t Shona I would probably have had a better relationship with my dad. In my mind Shona culture didn’t enable a healthy father-daughter relationship. But this isn’t a battle that just Shona daughters experience….but many daughters.

But the problem was not my Father and it was not the Shona culture, it was me. I put so much pressure on my Dad for being the perfect Dad. I had so many unnecessary expectations from him that I found it hard to just love him for who he was. It wasn’t till the day that I got married and I heard my fathers speech that all my frustrations, resentments, and unforgiving nature melted into nothing. It had to also do with a lot of our conversations and discussions prior to the actual wedding ceremony. But I realised that night that I had expected my father to fill a gap that he was not suppose to fill and heal hurts that he was not designed to heal. A gap that only my heavenly Father could fill and a wound that only my heavenly father could heal.

I had heard it many times that we should not hold onto the things of this world but only onto God. But as a daughter I held on so tightly to my dad that I wasted time looking at the areas where he fell short and not the areas where he was my Dad. As the words rolled out of my fathers mouth, that night of our wedding, I just cried. I cried not only because every word he said was everything I wanted to hear my father say or that he called me a miracle child. But because I was so wrong in the battle I was fighting. He was destined to be my dad, to be the man that he is today and has always loved me and my family. I was the one loving him wrong. I loved him through daughter tinted sunglasses and not through Godly filtered sunglasses. I still have my moments where I fall back into my frustrations but my prayer is God helps me love my Father with all his perfections and imperfections and I now just thank God that I even have a father.
I love you Dad :).

Coming up:
This morning Avon and I had a meeting with Rachel and Ryan, one of our close friends at church. We were discussing the whole event of tomorrow….the visit of Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, to our Church. Yup that is right folks the president himself is coming to God First. What is even more exciting is that Avon and I have been asked to help host him and Zuma’s Crew. This will be a private visit and it falls into our Celebrity series “What would God say to _________” Last week we did Madonna and tomorrow we are talking about ‘What would God say to Jacob Zuma?’ Each series has been pretty interesting and I have learnt a lot from them all. I am so curious to hear what PJ (our Pastor) has prepared for tomorrows preach. Jacob Zuma will be coming with his daughters. My thoughts are that his daughters have struggled with the same struggles I have faced. My dad could be the president of Zimbabwe and I would still have to love my heavenly father for me to love my own dad. Look out for tomorrow’s blog…..encounters with the president.