Happy Customer

I had such a great customer service experience today. Lately I have heard others excited about their positive interactions with sales people. I am happy to report my own. May be it is a new trend! My baby buggy is a couple of years old. My son has figured out how to take apart some of the buggy's inner workings. The other day, without me noticing, he tossed a part that he had removed out of the buggy as we were strolling along. So I emailed the buggy company explaining which part I needed. I figured that my warranty was expired so I would have to pay for the part. Really it was my responsibility since I let my son remove the part and toss it. Amazingly I got an email in reply from the owner of the company saying that the needed part was being shipped to me FOC. What's FOC I wondered briefly? Aha! Free of charge! How cool is that?

Whispers

I have a friend who yells at her young son all the time. It makes me uncomfortable, but I don't say anything because she comes from a different culture than I do and I feel I need to give her some leeway with her parenting. She took her son to their Plunket appointment the other day and the Plunket nurse told my friend that her yelling was counterproductive to disciplining her son and it was scaring him. She had no idea that she was yelling. She was completely unaware.

With this in mind I called my dad today to chat about some things going on in my family. My two youngest brothers have just moved to China and to the UK. Another brother is having a turbulent first year of marriage. Soon it will be the first anniversary of my oldest brothers death. The fact that all his children are so distant from him weighs heavily on my dad. I can tell that he dreams of having his family close. God was whispering to me today, soft words of encouragement, that I wish I could repeat to my dad without him thinking I was crazy. I wish we could be more aware of each other, not necessarily physically close, just emotionally connected. I have hope that my friend and her son will have a wonderful relationship.

A Warm Day

What a beautiful day today! I know I shouldn't get too excited. We have lots of winter ahead of us. I feel so thankful for the rain and now the grass is so green. We collect rain water for our drinking water at our house as many of our neighbors do and we also need the grass to feed animals. The thin layer of ice and snow that was on the ground last week has melted into the soil and made us all very happy. My son was especially happy to play outside. His joy brought me closest to the Kingdom of God today.

The week in reveiw

I've been thinking about the bigness and smallness of the world this week. How we can magnify moments in our lives and they seem so intense and then read a story in the news about people who were held hostage for eleven years being released. What a speck I am in this world! My life, my joys, my sorrows are so minuscule, yet I feel connected to the hostages in Colombia. My high school classmates are scattered all over the globe now, but we still, twenty years later reminisce about our English teacher dying and talk about our children. God has given me a lot to think about this week.

I Love Humans!

Today a friend sent me an amazing video. I thought I would share it on this blog because, what is a blog without a link to You Tube?

It made me laugh and think. It transcends culture, politics and even religion. My friend is in the video and I recognised her, but I also thought how the love emanating from the video connected me to all the people in the video.

Open your heart, watch the video and see if you can keep from dancing!

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com

Having Faith

I was driving through the port hills yesterday, when suddenly a chicken flew in front of my car. It was very large and had a wing span of just 30 cms or so. I'm actually not sure what was keeping it aloft. It was flapping like crazy, but was hovering barely a meter above the ground. Now my experience with chickens is that they are not so good with physics. Or philosophy for that matter. The chicken and I were in the middle of Gebbies Valley. I get nervous driving on winding, hilly roads. You expect the odd cyclist, but not domestic fowl. I knew where I was going and I had my baggage of driving fears packed. What was the chicken thinking? Did it assess my speed and the wind to time it's flight perfectly? Dare I ask why did it cross the road? Animals share our planet with us, but experience it differently—each has its own abilities and gifts that allow them to interact successfully with the natural world. Animals are closer to the rhythms and cycles of nature and have fewer distractions from it than humans do. Just by being themselves they remind us of the wisdom of the universe, and that all answers are available to us when we reconnect with God.

A New Day

I believe that things happen for a reason. My son is struggling with teething and as a result we have not been sleeping well. I get cranky when I haven't had enough sleep. As my husband says: "When Mama's not happy, nobody is happy." My moodiness has unsettled our house. When I got up this morning and saw the beautiful weather, I was hopeful. I thought we deserve a break from the winter weather. I hoped for a break from my mood too, but I missed my morning appointment because I just couldn't organize myself in time. When I felt so low, my husband decided to take time off from work and help me rescue what was left of my day. It was awesome! We had lunch with friends and he helped me with some errands that would have been challenging to accomplish with a toddler in tow. I think my husband got something good out of the day too. Since he works at home, he misses out on workplace camaraderie. By taking time off from work he got to spend time with people who have similar interests and see really fancy film making equipment. All three of us had a lovely day together. I've never been able to "Let go and let God." May be today I did.