Thursday, July 11, 2013

It's a Dogs Life

How much smoother this move would be if we didn't have dogs...

How much smoother it would be if we didn't feel that we really WANT our dogs there.

You would never have heard that last sentence come out of my mouth 5 years ago. If anyone had suggested spending the amount of money it's costing to get the dogs there, I would have laughed at them and told them they were daft. They are providing us with HUGE challenges since it seems that no-one there wants people to have pets in a rented house, and if they say "Pets Allowed" - suddenly it's only a "mini-pet"....

Truth is, our dogs are "home" for me now, and while we are away, and My Girl is not home, and My Man is at work, they are my company often - I can't imagine them not being there. I love them. They have their own characters and quirks, and they are our "kids".

We have pretty much run out of options for houses to rent there. We basically have ONE house left as an option. It's been there a while, and we have avoided it because frankly, it's been there so long - I am wondering what is wrong with it!

We have an agent there who has been - honestly - an angel. He is going to look at it for us this afternoon. I don't know what we would have done without him.  Funny story, we started speaking to him there in February about property, and it turns out he is married to a Capetonian lady, and we got together when they were here on holiday and had supper together... How amazing is that? Such cool people!

Annnyywaaayyyyy.....Too late to make a long story short - I know He knows what we need as a family, so I need to breathe and clean cupboards.

"It will all be alright in the end, and if it's not alright, it's not the end!"



Monday, July 1, 2013

Hitting Home Time

I've known at arm's length for ages that it was coming, but last night it hit me. Hard.

I suddenly realised that in exactly one month's time we will no longer be in our house, in our city, in our country or even on our continent.

It was as though a fog descended on my thoughts. "What the heck are we doing! I am terrified. Is this a mistake?"

I don't know if I am the only person that this happens to, but the middle of the night is not the time to start thinking like this. The enemy seems to love to take a small thought like that and drag up every mistake you've ever made and replay them to you. This makes the night long and miserable.

Eventually I just had to sit up a bit, open my eyes, give myself a good talking to and remind myself of precisely how present God has been in this whole event and that even the Main Manne in Scripture who were asked to move must have felt scared at some level, whether physically or emotionally - the fact that they were scared didn't mean that God didn't lead them, nor did it mean they didn't trust him, and nor did it mean that what they were doing, was a mistake.

As a friend said to me the other day "Fortune favours the brave" - I need to be brave this month.

I think being a little scared is probably human, and if I wasn't a little scared..... maybe that would be more worrying.

As scared as I am, I am completely at peace that this is not a mistake but a gift - a gift from One that knows how often we have dreamed of doing this and who is kind enough to help us do it.

Yes. Scary.
But good.

Cool Runnings....Peace be the Journey.


Reverse Culture Shock & Difficult Questions

The days are moving on and soon we will be home home. There seems to be a common thought coming through from friends there and here - Prepar...