To Believe or Not to Believe

I was raised in a home with no religion. My father was an agnostic / atheist. I am still not completely clear on the difference, even having looked them up, they seem pretty much varying degrees of the same thing.

My Mom was just apathetic. I find it funny that since Dad died and she has remarried to a staunch Catholic that she is now going to church and believes in the existence of 'God'.

I am left pretty much befuddled in the concept that people who have suffered unbearable hardships and challenges find comfort in believing that they are just part of a bigger plan and that they are blessed or that 'God is Good' to them. I have a friend who lost her Mom to breast cancer while we were still kids. She lost her Dad a few years ago. Her baby brother was born with spina-bifida and had been in a wheelchair his whole life. After years travelling around the world in the forces, she decided to settle back in the south to be near her brother. She built a house with her husband, got jobs there and tried to settle back into life there.

And then her brother died.

She was devastated. She said that the only thing that has gotten her through all of her suffering and pain is her belief in God.

I just don't get it. If you believe 'he' has your destiny in his hands and everything that happens is 'his choice' and your life is full of pain and heartache, how do you rationalise this?

However I can understand people who are ill, who get tragic news, or who have been left devastated by things which happen who then turn to 'God' and pray for help. But to me this just seems like hopping on the bandwagon as a last chance desperate measure.

I can't relate to those who have always had and who maintain such unfailing faith and who are not distracted by hardship or tragedy from this belief.

Another friend has a sister who is very devout. She and her husband have sold off their farm as this is what 'God' wanted. And now they are waiting. And waiting. And while waiting they are treating themselves to some jolly nice holidays. But they have no plans for their future - they are just spending the money from the farm sale as they please.

Want to know what they are waiting on? They are waiting on God to tell them what to do - to send them a message about what they are meant to do with their lives.

My question is how do you know the message when you get it? Is it when your cheese toasty looks like it has Mary burnt into it?

As you lift the lid on your toasty machine, do you have an epiphany 'oh Em Gee I am supposed to open a sandwich shop'?

How do you know what the 'message' is when you get it?

I attended a charismatic church around the time that my 1st marriage was breaking up. I had a man I had never met come up to me and tell me that it was 'not God's will that my husband and I split up.' He had never been to that church, he woke and had a 'call to attend' and to pass on that message to me. He told me that if I went through with the divorce that I would have terrible sadness and unhappiness as a result.

I was so dumbfounded I just looked at him and walked away.

At that time, I was in such a poor mental state then that I could not comprehend any pain which was worse than my marriage.

The man was right, I did have a horrible time of it as did my children. But we survived. I followed the path which I felt was right for me and for the children. It detoured from where I wanted that path to go, but I do not blame God. Nor do I blame myself. I made some mistakes but they were MY mistakes....the way my heart & head led me.

I do pray - I pray to my ancestors. I call on my ancestors when I need help, when I need power, when I need support. I feel my ancestors around me - they communicate with me by visible means. I have even heard their voices & felt their touch.

So this interaction I feel with my Ancestors, is this God in another person's context? Is this the Universal Spirit? I think everyone needs something in their lives - whatever that may be I hope that everyone finds that something that gives them comfort.

Progress

I finally feel as if I am making progress in my new role at work. As always with anything new I was intimidated, insecure I was not up to it, that my skills were not good enough.

But like most things, the secret to cracking an insurmountable task is to just get started. The fear usually dissipates after the 1st step.

So this week I kicked off one of the tasks which seemed the most intimidating. I called a workshop, told them what my objective is and just let them run with it while I desperately tried to get it all down on paper. They came up with a technical solution in 30 minutes! I then documented it, knocked up a visio map of the process and delivered the document all in the same day.

I then started on the other list of things I have to deliver by the end of April. I realised that I can achieve all of these things.

I finally feel like I can do this, I don't have to know everything - I have a whole team and we are working in a collaborative style which is how I work best.

I also completed and handed over my massive deliverable to my other client. It was a 30 page document analysing all of the external suppliers of data. But not without rocking a few boats. I was reported to the account manager who manages the external relationships outside the company. My process was quite straightforward I thought, but this numpty could not figure it out. I talked him through it on the phone, I explained it all via email...but he could not understand it. If he is in the data industry he should understand terms like 'derive' for feck's sake.

Anyway, he messed me around and I kept allowing him more time for submission, but when he came back to me on the day I was delivering and asked could we have a teleconference next week I just lost it. I phoned my project manager and asked him to deal with it as I have a tendency to have no patience, and if you are behaving like a moron then I have been known to make that clear by my tone of voice. Not that I do it deliberately, but the Virgo in me makes me snappy.

That's my excuse and I intend to keep using it :D

I did feel better when my project manager phoned me back to say he also thought the guy was a fuck wit. Apparently he told him straight up he had lost the potential of a contract. So mr fuckwit phoned the client and had a go, reported me for violating the contract over the use of the data they provide. When the client phoned me I explained to her what the objective was, that I had not used the data anywhere, we were doing due diligence on the suppliers to determine which one we would use. She seemed to grasp it quickly, so that validates his fuckwittedness.

I feel such a weight off my shoulders having delivered - it was a huge piece of work and I am quite proud of having achieved it. I just got to hope that my client is happy with it and I can focus all of my attention on my current client.

Worth

How do you measure your worth? Is it by what you earn? By how many people love you? By how much savings you have? How many properties you own?

Someone was talking the other night about how they can do whatever it takes, turn on the charm, smile and be patient as long as people pay their hourly rate. I wish I could detach and do that but I can't. Sometimes I tell myself that as long as other people think I am worth what I charge per hour then I must be worth that.

It's like when we were trying to sell our house in the UK during a very depressed market. We were told that despite what we owed on our house, it's worth was defined by what people were willing to pay. Unfortunately we had to weigh up what we owed vs how much we were offered and then try and guess when we might get another offer, weighed up against what we would pay in mortgage fees each month while waiting on another offer, which may never arrive.

We took the offer.

It was like a weight had been lifted, knowing that we had an end to the debt, we knew that we were untethered from the responsibility of coming up with the monthly payment in pounds sterling.

I'm in this period of transition at work, still with one foot back with my last deliverable, still not complete due to external dependencies. The other foot trying to climb this vertical learning curve, doing a role which is new to me and very different than what I have done for the last few years.

However I know I will do my best and I must keep focusing on the skills which I do have which is why they chose me for the job.

Maybe my strong work ethic and desire to do my best is driven by my insecurities and lack of self worth. Or maybe it is just because I am a Virgo. Ha. But I would rather be this way than to be one of those people who just show up, do the bare minimum and just don't care.

After all without passion, what would life be like? Pretty boring really

The Rules for Being Human

Thanks to my friend Bob for Sharing this with me

(Originally printed in the book "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules" by Cherie Carter-Scott)




When you were born, you didn't come with an owner's manual; these guidelines make life work better.


1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "Life on Planet Earth". Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. "Failures" are as much a part of the process as "success."

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it -- then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. If you don't learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.

6. You will know you've learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

7. "There" is no better than "here". When your "there" becomes a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that again looks better than "here."

8. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.

9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life -- or someone else will.

10. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences, and people you attract -- therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. There are no victims, only students.

11. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn't help. Judgments only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.

12. Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

13. You will forget all this.

14. You can remember any time you wish.

Spoiled

Today someone called me spoiled because I had posted that my hubby took me to Chapman's Peak Hotel for dinner last night. They were just teasing me, but it touched on a point which we had been discussing last night.

My daughter did not want to come out with us as she was engrossed in sorting out her new bedroom, so on our way home we stopped to get her KFC as she had asked for. There was a family there eating out and Mr Kitten mentioned that KFC was a special treat to some people, same as Chappies is a treat for us. It is all based on your perspective.

I do know that I am privileged to be able to afford a nice car, a beautiful home and meals out. But as I was raised in a middle class American household, I guess I do sometimes take it all for granted.

Last weekend a friend took her domestic & her daughter out to the cinema as it was her daughter's birthday. Apparently neither of them had even heard of the cinema, much less been to one. I could hardly believe that. But then I started thinking about how much a domestic earns in a day and how much it costs to go to the cinema and then it was not so hard to comprehend.

But before you start projecting me as one of the Hilton's, my life has not always been so 'easy'.

There were years after my divorce when I could not get a job in what was my chosen field in those days. Instead, I worked as a waitress, I had no money other than what I made in tips. I barely got to see my kids and when I did I was so stressed all of the time it was not always what I wanted it to be. I lived in fear that my ex-husband would harm me. This was not irrational it was based on the years of abuse during my marriage and the dirty tricks he pulled to enable him to get custody of our children.

And then I had a nervous breakdown.

I was lucky enough to have a friend who cared enough about me to take me into her home, to grab me by the scruff of the neck and drag me off to a mental health facility and to sit outside the therapy rooms every day and wait for me while I tried to get myself back into a functioning mind frame.

It took a lot of strength for me to get back to work, to establish my own home, and to learn to love myself enough to realise that all of the things which happen to us do not define us.

What defines us is how we react to those things. How we recover and move on from those things.

Surviving.

It was just about the time I had gotten back on my feet, I finally felt that I deserved to be happy, I deserved to be loved & I deserved a life surrounded by people who felt the same about me, that I met Mr K. We were introduced by a common friend. I will always remember when he walked in, spotted me and his friend and realised I was the person his friend wanted him to meet. His whole face lit up and I was a smitten kitten. :)

On our very first proper one on one date I arrived hours late & more than a little bit tipsy. But he waited for me. I had a screaming row with the car park barrier attendant, then drove us both to a restaurant where I proceeded to be more than a little loud and crazy...and he stayed.

He asked about my kids and I burst into tears over dinner. He just looked at me tenderly and said 'I get it now, you're damaged' as if that explained my extroverted crazy behaviour and he understood me. He said I was only pretending to be 'hard' he saw straight through me.

He still sees straight through me.

He is clever enough to say when I over-react that he knows it is not him I am reacting to, it is my past.

So yes I am so blessed now, we have a great marriage, we still find each other attractive, we still enjoy each other's company, we both love to entertain and we both value family above all else. He is a wonderful step father. He is the rock who stays stable while me and my mini-me x2 are thrashing around being dramatic, hormonal and emotional. He is my stability.

Whether that makes me spoiled or blessed is again dependent on your perspective. Whatever you choose to call it, I feel so lucky that my life has come full circle. I have 2 of my 3 kids living with me, the other just a few hours away. I am finally back in Cape Town where I feel most at home. I am so content and feel so happy - sometimes it scares me to think it might be taken away from me again. But for now, I will just relax into it, embrace it and breathe it all in with gratitude.