Humbled and thrilled all at once, I've decided that because Jesus made me so uniquely, I need to be just that -- and not strive proudly in my own strength to be anything more than His oh-so-particularly-created me.
And that means doing what I have adored doing for as long as I can remember: loving, encouraging and delighting people with the talents He gave me: spinning stories, making meaning and painting pictures.
Embroidering real meaning into the torn and threadbare fabric of our lives, mending the violent tears and moth-eaten holes with the gloriously gold thread of Jesus -- of the joy, peace and wisdom only He can bring (and I can boldly attest to this!) to even the most devastating and dark valleys.
And so, I will be me: for His glory, purposes and delight! To shine like the exuberantly glowing lamp I was made to be - and hopefully set your heart on fire, or make your eyes light up with awe, joy or new understanding. Maybe you will smile radiantly, or maybe my own little pool of lamplight might enough to light your next step in the darkness.
I became a storyteller, though not an inventor of tales, but a kind of thoughtful recorder of life, when I started writing letters as a tiny little 'Lalabuns' to my precious Nanna on the other side of South Africa. Then there was the pen pal correspondence with a Scripture Union bestie in the 80s who has long since moved from her father’s apple farm in Grabouw to Ireland.
There was also the most wonderful 'snail mail' correspondence with my best friend from school whose family returned to the US every four years on their Baptist missionary furloughs, with thick letters bursting with stories, photos, stickers and expressively smattered with punctuated emoticons --- long before they even became an Internet thing ;)
And so, when the Internet, email and then 'blogging' arrived on the scene, I happened to be living far, far away from my family and friends in sunny England.
Writing became a lifeline, a passion, a journal, a relationship maintainer, a friendship igniter and, around the time my daughter was bor
n, an extraordinarily unexpected social engagement mechanism for South Africans (more on that later.)
Marvellously, and as only our ingenious Author could plot it out, all of those years of writing prepared me for a life-sustaining career where, needing to suddenly strike out on my own, I found myself suddenly and quite perfectly equipped and experienced to launch a career where before, I had had nothing to show for myself.
Of course, I will tell you the stories as we go along, but for now, I hope this little backstory shed a glimmer of light on the 'why' of this blog!
:)
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