REDEEMED PIONEER

Thirty years ago a toddler at the top of a staircase spotted his daddy standing at the bottom of the stairs.    He grinned from ear to ear, because down there was his daddy - the strongest, smartest, bestest best daddy in the whole wide world.     He was absolutely certain that nothing could harm him when he was in his daddy’s arms, so he proceeded to leap with open arms from up high.     The little boy was also equally certain that his daddy would always catch him and he was blissfully unconcerned with minor details, such as his off-guard-unaware daddy downstairs facing the opposite direction while in conversation with friends.     An alarming crisis was thwarted when, during the chortling toddler’s mid-air flight, his mommy swung his daddy around and shouted CATCH OUR SON!     The daddy caught his son in what appeared to be a beautifully choreographed slow motion action within a nanoseconds-to-disaster timeframe.     Despite ...

  One of my dear friends recently made a visual representation of his own life in a grid of 7x10 blocks, which depicts a rough rounding of the estimated life expectancy of 70 years in South Africa.  With each birthday, a block is coloured in while the remaining blocks stay blank.  At my friend’s age, and with his birthday around the corner, at least 81% of the blocks on his life grid are coloured in.  Within the exact same constraints, the part of coloured blocks on my own life grid, at 76%, is only marginally “better” than his.  That got me thinking…. What does it even mean?  I have other dear friends who already have at least 114% of their life grids coloured in and my darling daughter-in-love lost her life when only 37% of her life grid was coloured in. The longer I live, the more I realise that we live in a world which is hellbent on getting us to focus on and fret about things we cannot change and miss opportunities to bring about real change in places...

  A thirty-second wedding anniversary celebration Today at 16:00, I will have been Mrs Lulu van Aswegen for 16.8 million minutes or 32 (2x16) years.    On this day in 1993, I was instantly promoted from Miss Lulu Smit (the title I held for the first 20 years, 2 months, 3 weeks and 2 days of my life) to Mrs Lulu van Aswegen, wife of Mr Wouter van Aswegen (my beloved Assie), and I embarked on the very best journey of my entire life.    During the first part of this exhilarating 32-year-7G-rollercoaster ride, my beloved Assie and I became parents to two sons and two daughters.    During the last decade, we have also become parents-in-love to two daughters-in-love and two sons-in-love, and so far, grandparents to two grandsons and two granddaughters. On a warm afternoon in the Summer at the start of 1993, inside a church in a mining town in Mpumalanga, two youngsters made a commitment to spend the rest of their lives with each other as exclusive marital pa...

  This is one of my favourite pictures of 7-year-old Jessica performing the song I LOVE YOU, LORD on the dining room table to an audience of friends and family.    She called it the EAR SONG after the words in the lyrics LET IT BE A SWEET, SWEET SOUND IN YOUR EAR. In the early hours of Friday 26 November 1999, 35 days before Y2K, a 27-year-old mother recognises the signs of early labour.    She doesn’t raise alarm about it, because her C-section is scheduled for noon on that same day, at 38 weeks gestation.    This precious little bundle of joy is baby number four, the one destined to complete her family of six.    None of the antenatal ultrasound scans could confirm, without reasonable doubt, the new baby’s gender.    If she gives birth to ALEXANDER AMADEUS, then she will have three boys and a girl, but if she gives birth to JESSICA, then she will have two boys and two girls.    At exactly 13:13 JESSICA made her way into ...

This reflection is a letter addressed to my granddaughter, Emily Hay, who recently took part in POCAHONTAS2024 presented by  Elna van der Walt School of Ballet . To my dearest beloved Boo Thank you so very much for filling my heart to overflow with the delight of unconditional love and humble gratitude.    I am so proud of you for your beautiful ballet performance and I am so profoundly grateful to be your Nana.    In my eyes you were not only the prettiest butterfly, but the prettiest ballerina on stage.    This was also exactly what your  OumagrootjieMakkie  and  OumaDalene,  who travelled all the way from Ladysmith for the show, expressed to me afterwards.    I can only hope and pray that every ballerina in the show had at least one Nana/Granny/ Ouma / Oumagrootjie  in the audience feeling the same way about them as the three of us did about you.    You are only four years old and this performance was you...