I Bi Dem: Woman, Wife, Mother

  We have always been told and rightly so, that anger is bad and that being angry is dangerous to one’s health and that of others. One does not have to think too deeply before examples of people who have reacted angrily in different situations have ended up destroying themselves and others. Take for example, a husband or wife who kills the spouse in a rage or sets all academic certificates ablaze in a fit of anger. Examples can go on and on. Religious leaders warn us about anger, saying it is a sin that will lead to hell. Verses abound in the Bible about the dangers of been an angry person. An angry man is equated to a foolish man (Ecclesiastes 7:9). A fully enraged person is incapable of thinking logically and coherently. According to Proverbs, an angry person is like a city without walls; without defense . It seems nothing good can come out of anger. I beg to differ under some circumstances. I contend that anger if well controlled can achieve great things. Anger is ...

We have two dogs in the family. They are from the same litter i.e. they were born the same day of the same mother. That is where their similarity stops, they couldn't be any different if they tried. For starters, one is a male, the other female and they look totally different; one with black curly fur, the other brown straight low-lying fur.  People find it difficult to believe that they are from the same parents. Their differences do not stop with physical appearances; behaviour wise, they are also opposites. Bella, that is the female barks a lot, won't move close to people and generally has a mind of her own. Anakin, her brother loves to be given belly rubs, moves close to people and will hardly bark. Without Anakin it would seem like we have guard dogs instead of dogs to play with and without Bella, anyone may just walk into our house. These two dogs serve different purposes and thinking that one is better than the other would rob us of enjoying these wonderful dogs...

RECALCULATING DISCIPLINE Deserving of recalculation is the way we discipline our children. A student noted in his speech that he was glad that physical beating is labelled a crime in classrooms and implored parents to also put an end to it in their homes. He labelled it as abuse of children. It was a wonderful well-thought out speech borne out of a personal experience of receiving discipline through the use of belts and I could feel his pain.   Many of us are so eager to tell our children that they must obey as instructed in Eph 6: 1-3 but so conveniently forget the next verse which says: “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” As a mother, I have given discipline through the ‘abuse’ channel and I have had course to recalculate my actions retrospectively.   A verse that I have heard quoted in support of beating is Proverbs 22:15 (NKJV)   Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child...

GPS: RECALCULATING On a certain day after dropping my husband in Johannesburg, I tried to get back on the freeway to Pretoria. I took the right turn off ramp or at least the one I thought was right until I ended up in gangster land. I had my children in the car; it was getting dark and I was scared. Eventually after several wrong turns I saw a police van. I parked and broke down in tears as I tried to explain my situation to him. He laughed, tried to calm me down and gave me direction to the freeway.   He said the right turnoff was just ahead of me. After over an hour of driving in a maze, I told him he had to lead me there. He eventually did and we were home in less than an hour.  That experience was the last straw. We decided to buy a GPS. We got a small one and tried so many voices available on the settings to navigate us through our trips. We tried the likes of the Australian guy, the English lady and the Frenchman and the old grandma. Unanimously the w...