HOPE FOR 2018

For many people I know, 2017 was an awesome year…prosperity, health, love, holidays (myself included) and they are looking forward to see what the New Year brings…….

but I have also, during this year and especially more recently, spoken to and prayed for many others who have had the most shocking time. This year has left them shattered and barely holding on to the wonderful things I described above.

When we had builders working here earlier this year, they broke one of our garden cherubs (photo). I was quite devastated because it was part of my ritual to blow kisses back at the little fellow when I got home in the afternoons. He has been lying here for a few months now but I am not able to get rid of him. You see, he is my kissy angel - I do not see his brokenness, but just his beauty (the dark prince does not agree of course) - he has not lost his value to bring joy into my life!

When we have had an awful time, and we are left broken, we tend to think that our value has decreased and we are somehow less than we were before the bad happenings…we lost jobs, marriages, wrecked cars and did some damage to others. Some of us lost loved-ones and had our hearts ripped out. Simply walking away from situations are different than having a piece of yourself torn off. It can leave emotional scars where we feel we have lost our beauty or “acceptability” to others.

I cannot just say : “don’t worry it will all be better soon” or put a plaster over a gaping wound.

So how do we fix the broken and speak a word of hope for the future?

Sometimes we literally need to allow ourselves to be glued back together (KINTSUKUROI : to repair with gold – the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken), the gold and silver being love and relationship and understanding and respect…..AND MORE LOVE.

Other times we simply cannot fix a situation, but we can grow ourselves up from it. We can take a different path.

I spent a wonderful two hours with a friend, Soraya Brahimi, yesterday. We met three years ago when she came to Durban to do missionary work and is now back here for a month. She told me that 2018 in the Jewish calendar is the year of OPEN DOORS. This has massive significance my own life and I am hugely excited about a word like this…..but I am hoping that this will encourage others too. The other awesome thing is that this started in September already!

Why think that in 2018, some days from now, we will start feeling better, get the vision, set the goal etc. when it has actually already begun! We are now in this moment standing in the year of the open doors and we should not hesitate to step through.

Do not be afraid to leave your brokenness and choose a different path. (“She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It’s easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said” - Brian Andreas)

Your grief will not blame you.

Take hands in stead with those in your life that are standing strong.
Listen to advice, pray together, take a first step and make small choices –
it might even take a massive INCREDIBLE HULK choice, walking on some actual water…..
but do things differently.

Let us all own our ANNUS MIRABILIS – our year of miracles.

Let us be each other's witnesses so we can tell the stories in the days to come.