Oh how my view on Facebook is changing...

Over the last few weeks I've been challenged with the questions of why do we post what we post on Facebook or Twitter. Why do we make our status's some of the things we make them. What is our motive behind what we post on social networks?

Is it to get a reaction? To see how many people "care" enough to message you and ask if everything is ok? Is it to see how many "likes" we get? Is it to show the world that we're happy, busy, social people seeing and experiencing new things? OR is just simply to share what's going on in your life with your friends and family?

I take selfies, not of myself but with people - so lets call it an "ussie" and then I post it on Facebook. Why I do this? I think it's just to share a little of my life with my friends and family... Well this is why I think I do it. I don't do it to make myself seem awesome/well travelled etc. I just like to share stuff. I like to think that it's not about how many "likes" a picture I post gets or how many comments I get on things I post. Lately as I've scrolled my news feed I've encountered quite a few posts by friends where it's clearly about the "likes" and then they seem disgruntled...

The thing that struck me the most is how Facebook contributes largely to a self centred lifestyle - where everything is about "me". This makes me uncomfortable because God calls us to a Christ-cantered lifestyle, one focused on Him and how he would want us to live our lives.  2 Corinthians: 11:1-2 says "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you." I somehow don't think that Jesus would sit on Facebook all day counting how many likes He got. I think he would be out there doing what God wanted him to do. I also doubt he would get upset when no one commented on post or liked something. I think Jesus would be out there making friends and being a real friend instead of disconnecting from community while thinking he's still doing community by communicating with people via a social network instead of calling them or speaking to them one on one.

So my challenge from this... to connect more with people in real life instead of through Facebook, to really build community with people and to actually build my friendships with people... Oh and to post less stuff and get out there and actually enjoy the moment instead of taking picture to post later or even during the activity. I also think I should commit to my whole "off line for the weekend" and not go online during the weekend to check stuff.... Let's see how that one goes.

xKx

The weekend that was...

This weekend seemed to have passed in a blur of activity...

On Saturday our house felt a bit like a train station with how there was a stream of people coming and going during the afternoon. On Saturday morning I experimented with making a ganache icing for the cupcakes I had made for the tweens meeting later that day and it worked pretty well and the cupcakes looked SO pretty. David enjoyed every minute of being the quality control checker as he tasted the ganache, the ganache icing and the cupcakes.

 

Just as I was about to sit down and my final read through of the material for the tweens meeting Rehana and Zulfa popped in to say hi - it was a really nice surprise.

We chatted for a bit and then they had to leave so I could finish the last bit of prep before the girls arrived. I felt totally our of my depth with the five 12 year old girls who meet at my house once a month. I look at them all starring at me and I freak out about what to say to them because I really don't know how to give them good advice on how to face life as 12 years... but somehow God just gives me the words as we sit down at the table, drink hot chocolate and eat cupcakes.

After the tweens left at 4pm, David and I went for a walk on the beach before I had to set up for our girls evening. We had a cupcake fondue...

We had ganache and icing as our "dunk-ables" and then we had various different sprinkles, marshmallows and chocolate balls as "add-ables" to it. IT WAS SO GOOD!

Sunday started with two of my favourite things with my favourite person ever.... I misread an email so David and I had an hour and half to kill before church to we got coffee and went to the beach. We sat there for a bit before going for a walk at the harbour, we even climbed on a boat or two...

 

The rest of Sunday was filled with a family lunch and a spot of gardening. We trimmed some bushes yesterday and I am living in fear of our landlady's temper when she see's what we've done... I just hope she see's the good in the trim and not how much "dead" bush we cut off leaving quite an open space in our garden... ho hum.. time will tell...

xKx

Coffee Dates...

 

This morning David and I went on a coffee date before work. We wanted to get coffee from the mobile place along the Atlantic seaboard, but when we got there we received a rather rude greeting where the owner banged the sign saying they were still closed. We were 10 minutes early and quite happy to wait until 7am when they opened - but we decided to leave and go and get coffee from Vida in Camps Bay. The sad thing about the "rude" greeting is that it's things like that, that make me hesitant to stop there again. He could have served us bad coffee and been really friendly and I would go there again...but rude service and good coffee doesn't necessarily get you another visit from me.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to rant about rude people.

I really enjoy spending time with David in the morning before the day starts and everything gets crazy. One of my favourite moments is when we eat breakfast together or sip coffee in bed before facing the crazy of our day, so this morning it was even extra special because we sipped our coffee on the beach - one of my favourite places to go. It was also really nice to spend an extra 30 minutes with David this morning before jumping on the bus and heading to work.

I also think God did a bit of showing off this morning with the amazing sunrise/dawn break He gave us. The sky was SO beautiful - here are some pictures but I don't think it does it justice.

 

 

 

....we are super blessed to live in such a beautiful place!

 

xKx

pinterest - anxiety - unmet expectations

I have Pinterest and I love it - maybe even a little obsessed with it in that it consumes a LARGE chunk of my time and now my thoughts and how I want things to be.

I started a Pinterest account around about the time I started wedding planning and all the warning bells went off my heard when I saw all the "pretty" and "perfect" pictures of wedding photos, dresses, décor etc. I wanted my wedding to be as perfect as the pictures I saw. I think, if I remember correctly, I even had to take a step back at one point and say to myself, "my wedding is not going to be like that - it simply can't". This started a process of letting go of my imagined perfect wedding and a new focus was put on the reality of what David's and my wedding will and can actually be like. I personally think our wedding was way better than what Pinterest said a perfect wedding should look like anyway...

Now that David and I have a home of our own Pinterest expectations have once again reared it's head again in my life. I see all the DIY things you can make for home to make it the perfectly decorated home and I want to make my home look like that. It becomes this all consuming thing to have "perfect" according to Pinterest and when I can't achieve this because we can't afford it or there's not enough time in our already busy calendar to make the things I get filled with anxiety. Luckily I have David who gets through to me in my panicked state and reminds me that we don't need a perfect Pinterest house and my expectations are out of line for me to calm down, but a couple of days or weeks later and I find myself filled with anxiety caused by my unrealistic expectations found on Pinterest.

As I was typing this Romans 12:2 popped into my head, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will."

Is Pinterest another way of conforming to the world? I think it can be - it causes me to want perfect according to what Pinterest is saying perfect is, which is made up of a bunch of people posting things based on what they think is perfect. Therefore when I get filled with anxiety because I don't have that thing or can't make that thing to fill a random space in my home to make it perfect I'm just conforming to what everyone else says a perfect mantle piece should look like.

I want my house to be Katherine and David perfect and not the worlds version of perfect... I think it's time I took a step back from Pinterest to realign my thinking to what God's idea of Katherine and David perfect is...

xKx

Two years ago...

It all started with some ice-cream and a cycle race...

 

Two years ago today I looked down Suikerbossie, locked eyes with David as he cycled up the HUGE hill and felt like I had been punched in the stomach. In that small, simple look God punched me in the stomach and I knew, that I knew that that boy cycling up the massive hill was the boy I was going to marry.

Let's back up a bit and look at the journey before I knew, that I knew.... because according to me we got back together and started the amazing journey towards marriage two days later on 13 March 2013. If David reads this, he'll be like "no - we got back together on 13 January 2013 when we went for ice-cream"

Whatever the correct date is for when we got back together - even though I still think it's the 10th of March and I agree to disagree with David, it has been an awesome adventure getting to know him more and more each day. I smile and giggle at how God orchestrated each date that we went on and how awkward we were in the beginning.

God did a super awesome job at writing our love story... in round one, the break up and healing and in round two. I also think he's still busy writing it for us as we are married.

I am beyond blessed that God chose to start the journey again two years ago and picked me to marry this awesome, courageous, brave and mighty man of God.

xKx