this part added by my wife, TBV: Step away from the emotion of the moment. I really struggle to think clearly, reason well, and see things from Brett’s point of view, when I am caught up in the emotion of the immediate argument. I may be hurting, angry, frustrated, sad, feeling sorry for myself, or incredibly teary. I often cannot think straight at all and this results in me “blanking out” – literally shutting out [...]
I don’t think tbV and i are there yet, in fact i know we’re not. It’s definitely a work in progress and there is definitely progress because we are working on it. We argue a lot better (in terms of nicer, friendlier, love-lier) than we used to when we were going out, but we can do even better. But there are definitely some principles we can share from what we do take care to do. [...]
This one goes out to those of you who have girlfriends or wives (and if you’ve been paying attention and using your brains all along this series you will realise that most of what i say would fit into a ‘how to love your man better’ series or be applied to family and friends and work colleagues to differing extents so i hope no-one has been put off by the titles – i am specifically [...]
why is this stuff important? i don't think this is about arisefest and my blog - not anymore, that was just a catalyst to a lot of in depth thinking about a crucial topic which i feel is hugely lacking in the church... [was i right in wot i wrote about arisefest? i'm not sure, perhaps not - the one principle that was intentional though was mentioning names of some of the bands i was [...]
and that seems to perhaps be the principle [your thorts are greatly appreciated] - that if you sin in public, you need to be cautioned/rebuked/challenged/held accountable in public - and my reasoning is this... the people observing the non-Christ-following behaviour need to be made aware that that is not Christ-following behaviour otherwise they might think it is okay and go and do the same... so when peter is chilling with the gentiles and then the [...]
what came to mind and this is really just to get people thinking more than making any point cos i think i naturally would have gone with the 'gently pull aside' approach is a bunch of incidents when that didn't seem to happen: in matthew 16.23 Peter starts to rebuke Jesus for speaking about His death and Jesus responds by saying, "Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not [...]
so my arisefest blog got quite a few people heated in terms of the manner in which i dealt with some of the frustrations i had concerning my arisefest experience (which for the most part was a completely incredible experience - the people who missed the point certainly didn't spoil it for me or anyone else i doubt) and some of the behaviours i witnessed... [what was an interesting phenomenon was how quickly the issues [...]
so this morning the beautiful val and myself and a whole assortment of other people went off to polkadraai strawberry to do some strawberry picking which is the first time i have ever done that... it was immensely hot, but a lot of fun and the reVolutionary part of it being that it was a new experience and that one of the changes i want to make this year to my life (especially as half [...]
i have never been a big fan of the whole 'new year's resolution' vibe mostly from the point of having been indoctrinated into that way of thinking from an early time in life - "arr, it's rubbish, you make promises that you break within a week, arr" [it seems like a pirate may have been doing that particular indoctrination but i think it was quite possibly more my parentals] but the last few days of [...]
so one of my absolute highlights of the new years festival was my wife... no, but above and beyond the usual reasons for loving and liking her – two moments stand out: the first is the moment of new years when we were backstage and sitting next to slash behind a giant speaker box semi trying to avoid the whole run-around-and-hug-perfect-strangers (perfect sweaty rained upon strangers who have been partying it up since 7 hours [...]