Live Exams

Sitting in the garden, eating breakfast, I thought whether I had passed this year. I thought which were my strong subjects and which were my weak.
I reflected the year and I came to the conclusion that I did quite well. It has been a good year. A very demanding year at the same time. A lot of things had happened.

We moved to the country side, the children went to the village school (thank God) after homeschooling them for a few months. We bought a new car and travelled for the first time since we live here. We took a stranger into our house, I made a new friend for life, I started a blog, our book came out, we went to Germany (first time after 3 years), we signed a new book contract, we went to Madagascar. And I am sure I forgot some important things.

I asked Sven if he thinks he had passed this year. He said, he thinks he made it. I asked him what was his best subject. He said love.
Mine was happiness and contentment. That was my prayer at the beginning of this year.
We just had moved here, I was swimming in the river and thought, this is heaven, this is what I had always dreamt of and at the same moment I started to worry: Why did we only sign the lease for one year? What if we have to leave this place?
And I realized that I lived most of my life worrying. Either I was anxious that things would come to pass and when they finally did I worried that they will pass.
Floating on my back I decided this had to stop. I prayed that I would learn how to be happy and content in every situation. And I think this is what I learned this year.

Even now, feeling change coming without knowing where to go and how to do it, I feel peace. I enjoy where I am, and I am grateful for it and at the same time I am excited for new things to come, knowing God will give me the heart for wherever he wants me to be.

My weakest subject is still patience. That was my last years lesson and I hardly passed. I never understood why you have to learn patience. Wouldn’t it be much easier if things simply would happen faster?
But even here I learned not to wait, but to enjoy live in the meantime. That makes it much easier. And there is always something to enjoy.

Final Destiny

Today was the last day in school.
Anton has finished seventh grade and passed. They went to school with their white shirts over their casual clothes for everyone to write on. He will be going to high school next year and that will be a big change. For all of us. Because there is no high school in Stanford and he will not board. We might all move. To the city.

This thought kept us busy the whole week. We went to the German school in Cape Town and liked it very much. I am soo excited thinking about living in the city. I think I had my share of country life now. It was great, I will miss it, but it is time for a change. Nothing is sure for now but we have to decide within the next six weeks. Than school will start. I must hold myself back not getting too excited.

We thought about all the plans that we had made. One of them was to travel the world with the children when they are still young and living with us. Our friend Michael said, while we were waiting for our children: “Yes, traveling the world would be great. As long as it is still there.”

This evening I watched “Edmond” on dvd. It was still light outside. I usually don’t watch movies during the day. I feel guilty doing that, but today it was a lazy hot day. The beginning of the holidays. Luzie was sleeping next to me, exhausted from the school year that has just ended, the sun was shining through the open door into her face and I hang a blanket up the reck where a curtain should be.

David Mamet wrote the screenplay to Edmond. It is not an excellent film, but an excellent script. It has got the best ending I have ever seen. I usually forget every ending but this I will remember forever. A burned out white business guy finding his final destiny in a prison cell in the arms of a black prisoner with a rotten front tooth who had sodomized him. Now I spoiled the movie for you but you might have never watched it anyway. Have a great holiday!

A Lazy Guide to Stay Thin

I find that I have a lot more to say about things I know little about.
For example diet. I never have been on a diet. Not that I never had too.

I am 1.80m. When I was 17 I weighed 57 kilos. My ideal weight now would be about 65. I don’t know my weight now because I only step on a scale when I feel really thin and that was what the hotel scale showed two and half years ago. When I feel too fat it usually shows 70.

The last time I got rid of 5 kilos was on my last reading tour in Germany. I had a nervous tummy bug and could hardly eat for a week. At the end of my journey I bought a pair of Jeans as encouragement to stay thin. I haven’t worn these jeans for a year. My skinny Jeans are still my measure.

For a long time I thought it is just luck that some people stay thin and others don’t. I honestly thought fat people eating big cakes is a chliche´. But it isn’t. I realized that most thin people eat less. All my friends which are thiner than me eat less than I do. And most people which are fatter than me eat more. Most thin people are always very disciplined with food. Most people have to be that. Always!
If I want to stay thin I have to stay hungry. I can not always eat untill I feel full.

I don’t believe in diets. I believe diets are dangerous. Only fat people go on diets. And they usually stay fat or get fat again. I believe once you starve yourself your metabolism gets lazy and you will store fat that you will never get rid of. I believe in eating less. So I slowly and carefully go down with my food intake.
I believe in a diet for life. A healthy eating habit that I found is working for me. I wrote down some of the rules that came into my mind. Depending on my weight and mood I stick to more or less of the rules. My body weight is only dictated by my own well being and the clothes I wear. No scales!

- Never get on a scale when you are trying to loose weight.

- Never ever buy new clothes a size bigger because everything you own is too small. (This is a non-negotionable!)

- Don’t starve yourself untill you get so hungry that you could eat a whole cow (and do).

- Decrease your food intake slowly but constantly

- Don’t get bored. Get some excitement.

- Sport only makes you hungry (and even worse, your body will get used to it and you will have to keep on exercising to keep your weight). Walk more or have more sex instead.

- Go for an hour walk every day.

- Cook a lot. I loose my appetite when I cook.

- Eat less but more often. 5 meals a day.

- Never go on a diet!

- Avoid bread, cake, everything flowery, sugar (when you can) and potatoes (in any form!) when you feel too fat.

- When you had a heavy meal stay away from desert.

- Don’t eat after 6 o’ clock in the evening or only a light meal.

- Take only half portions and rather go for seconds. Stop eatings even when you still feel hungry, but feel full once a day.

- Eat little portions of many different foods. So your tastedbuds are fully satisfied.

- Only eat when you are hungry and not because everybody else does.

- Never feel guilty but feel good about yourself if you kept even one rule for today and keep on trying.

- Eat slowly! (I can’t, but I know two very skinny girls who eat veery slowly and thought there might be a connection)

- Only drink water!

Any other suggestions?

Next: My thoughts on the best way to spend your life. Stay thin!

Restless

I was trying to post some pictures for the last days but it didn’t happen. Pictures just don’t upload for unknown reason.

I am short of words at the moment. Too excited, can’t wait to go. A time of waiting and preparing and planmaking. That’s the best. Everything just falls into place. I have to stop myself making a plan for every day of our journey. There are only a few free days left anyway.

After last weekends hot summer days another coldfront. I spend most of the time with a hot waterbottle under the blanket. Sven and Anton got into blind garden activity. Cutting bushes (five days before we leave) and mowing clover, (leaving a big mess). Antons muscles were jerking for the next two days.

The sun came out today and we went for a walk, late afternoon. Luzie brought her elastic along and we played Gummitwist (ingle-angle) on the big field. I showed her how we did it when I was a girl and I only got to knee and almost collapsed afterwards. Jumping is incredibly exhausting! I am sooo unfit! Luzie laughed at me.
The other day Luzie came out of her room all sweaty and red in her face. She had practiced ingle-angle by herself because all the girls in school are so good at it and she ended up standing the whole time. I laughed at her.

I love the fact that the kids still play the same games as we did. After 30 years and even across the world! Another thing they did at my school during brake was the “mass-handstand”. One starts a handstand against the wall, another one against the first girl and so on. Up to 10 girls. I could never do that. Too scared.

I wish I could show you my pictures!

Loosing Myself

Sven found our video tapes the other day and I looked through all of them. The kids dancing in our Berlin apartement, on rollerblades on the Gendarmenmarkt, Luzie missing her upper front teeth and so much blonder than now. 5 years ago, before we moved to South Africa.

I enjoyed going back in time but it also made me sad. I thought it was because these children are gone forever, these times will never come back, but I also remembered how desperate I was at that time. I saw all these happy moments on camera, the beautiful children, summer in berlin and remembered I wasn’t really there. In my memory, I am absent and I remembered how much my life was determined to wait for something to happen: A new book, a new place to live, the children to get well again, winter to finish, summer to start, the children to grow up.

It seemed as I was always at a place where I was not. Was not or if not. If only… I could be happy, if not… I would feel much better. I had an overwhelming feeling of regret not having enjoyed every moment, realizing how happy they were and that they will never come back. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy my life, we had a great time together, but my underlining feeling was that of being somewhere else in my mind, not being where I should be, not enjoying what I should have enjoyed as much as possible. I worried too much. I looked into the future or into the past while I missed the moment.

It was painful to realize that, but it is also freeing to know that I live differently now, that I have learned to be in the moment and appreciate more what I have.
It was so sad looking back and realizing what I actually had and how little I was able to enjoy it. What a waste. At the same time I was grateful for everything I have right now and I told my husband how much I love him and appreciate him and I know how much he missed me in all these years where I withdrew myself.

Life now feels so much more real to me, I feel soaked, drenched with life. I stopped waiting for things to happen and I think it is because I came out of my snail house, where everything was about me and where I thought I had to take refuge to not loose myself, and instead opened myself as I never did before. And taking the risk of loosing myself, I did find life.

Truth Hunter

I woke up tonight with the sentence: I am a truth hunter. A truth collector.
I don’t remember the exact words. I didn’t write it down, because it was so clear that I thought I wouldn’t forget it.

But it is true. This is what matters most to me. This is the purpose of everything I do. Finding truth. Collecting pieces of truth, looking for them wherever I go and putting them together like puzzle pieces, hoping one day the picture will be complete. And what a picture this will be. That’s what my life is all about.

Nothing gives me more joy than finding truth. Nothing leaves in me in greater desperation than walking in the dark, not knowing right from wrong.

Maybe this is the reason for my “fiction crisis”. I am still searching for a way to put truth into a made up story.

That night I had another dream: Sven came into my room and walked with his big, dirty boots across my sacred carpet, leaving heaps of sand. As I mentioned it to him, he didn’t care at all. It’s true. So much about fiction.

Honor your Parents

Today was a beautiful day again. The air was warm, no wind, very mild, not the typical crisp sea air. Soft and gentle and the smell sweet with a hint of fire. How I love this smell. I wish I could post it. It smelled like Thailand.

K. told me about the healing course she was doing last night. It was about honoring your parents. In Ephesians 6 it says: “This is the first commandment with a promise: If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you and you will have a long life on earth.” This is a promise!

No matter how good or lousy your parents were, you must honor them, because everything you will hold against them will come back in your own life as an unresolved issue. For example if they disappointed you in a way, people will keep disappointing you in that area or you will perceive them doing it even if they don’t.
This is the relationship of all relationships you have to get right, before the rest of your life will become right. That makes complete sense to me.
The good news is, that even when they messed up, you can still heal by forgiving them. Instead of blaming them.

Found this one-night teahouse in a book I bought the other week. It is called Space Craft. Fleeting architecture and hideouts. Such a great book. Only at home I realized it was German. From Die Gestalten Verlag. Germans are great!

No Lukewarm Way of Living

One of my intention writing this blog was sharing one insight every day. No matter how little or insignificant. For me to remember and for others to laugh.

I started years ago to do this in my diary but I never managed to follow through.
I don’t know whether too few insights or too little discipline. Maybe both of it. But I am sure, no, I am determined, to learn something every day. It is more a matter of discipline and awareness than of opportunities
I also wanted to take one picture a day. Never did that.

What I realized yesterday was that maturity has to do a lot with conscious decision-making and sticking to it. Not letting things – not letting a life – happen to me that I don’t want. Knowing that everything I do has a consequence.
For example, if I want to have an excellent love-relationship, I have to do all I can to maintain it. To respect him, even when I think he is wrong. To focus on his good sides, to love him, even when I don’t feel like it, to make him happy and not nag him. Trying hard at the beginning, it becomes a habit after a while.

If I want to be happy and healthy, I quit smoking, don’t drink too much so that I won’t have a hangover the next morning, don’t watch movies the whole night, get up early, walk every day and only dwell on positive and productive thoughts. If I want good friendships I have to be a good friend. And so on…

There is no lukewarm way of living, I can’t do the wrong things over and over again, expecting good results.
That doesn’t mean that I have got it all together. I mess up a lot but I try every day again. Repent and move on is the right lifestyle.
Because I realized that I have full responsibility of my life with everything I do and every thought I think.

Yes, I am a late and slow developer.

Do Not Worry

We were reading Matthew the other night, The Sermon on the Mount, and I realized that “do not worry” is an actual commandment. Jesus says, “can all your worries add a single moment to your life?” I know that, but I never took it serious. It is as serious as not to kill and do not to steal. Worry is a sin.

K. says, we have only enough grace for one day. When Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt through the desert they started to complain because they were hungry and thirsty and even wanted to go back to Egypt into slavery because at least there they had food.
God gave them manna every morning. The morning dew turned into bread and they had enough to eat for the day. They weren’t allowed to keep any of it, and when they kept some it was full of maggots the next day. They had to trust God every day again.

K. says, same thing with grace. We only have enough for one day. When we use it up for worries about times that have not come yet, we will not have enough to take us through the day and enjoy it as we should do.

Through God’s Eyes

Today I was praying for a woman who was sleeping. She has been in the hospital for quite a while. She is huge. I was shocked when I saw her the first time; half naked on a blood stained sheet. She moaned in her sleep. When I finished the prayer she opened her eyes and looked at me. She said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were praying for me”. She thanked me and smiled at me. Her face was bloated and she had no front teeth. But her eyes were soft and her smile was beautiful. She was so grateful, she was so helpless, in pain for such a long time, but she was smiling at me, as if I had done a great thing for her and when I looked at her, I only saw the beauty of her humility and gratitude. It was, as if I looked right into her heart and all the sickness and ugliness disappeared and I thought, this is who we truly are. This is our innermost core. This is how God sees us, each and every one of us, and for a moment I could see her with His eyes.