What has your entire attention?

What is real, is what's before you.

Singapore's Marina Bay Sands

The rest of it doesn't exist except in your imagination, fantasy or worry.


It's 10:30am in the household and I am writing after the a late school-holiday breakfast and chores. Earlier I received a message from a friend, She shares one of her favourite verses, Matthew 6v34 ~ "therefore do not worry about tomorrow..." and then adds The Message rendering of it:

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

My entire attention.

Let's see, from the moment I awoke until now, what has managed to get my entire attention?

The personal time in the bathroom
The making of the bed
The setting out of food
The greeting of the children and the cat
The whatsapp
The breakfast meal
God

What about you?

Some things capture our attention.
Some we rather not have to attend to.
Some things it may be better not to pay any attention to!

bacteria - yes!

Our attention is trained.

From the earliest days, we train our attention. Were we taught to look out: at natural wonders, that crooked line, the neatly dressed child, that clever kid, the policeman who may catch us for misbehaving? Were we taught to look within: to notice our feelings and our motives?

When the children were little, we took walks often. Not very long ones, just around the neighbourhood, to the park, to the pool....and it is on these walks that they got their a good training to soak in daily wonderment, from bugs to leaves, from buses to lives.

Our attention is also strained.

As we grow older, more demands our attention. I find the children less able to sit still and pay careful attention because their lives is running on an RPM that would have sent the vinyl disc flying off the turntable. There is so much crying out for us to look into, consider, buy, plan, anticipate.

We gradually lose our ability to live in the now, to be real, to give full attention.

So today, with all that lies ahead and whatever surprises (including how my attempt at a new recipe will turn out), I am going to begin right now to pay attention to this one truth that makes re-gaining and re-training my attention possible: I am but a child of God. 

I am going to pay attention to this truth of my identity.

For out of this place of security, like a young child who explores because he feels safe; I can look out at a world spinning wild with troubles large and problems small... and ask, what is my Father doing right now? There is a place to ask what He is doing in Iraq, the church.. there is also the place and needful to ask, "what are You doing in my marriage, my children's growth, my own heart with all its many alleys and corners....

Little children are trainable. They have a natural curiosity. They are thirsty for absorbing fresh, new things. They are easily enthused, They are trusting.

As I return to my identity as God's child, I open myself to be re-trained to think and feel; to grow to become aware and attentive to His ways. Over time, we are able to pull away from our worries and be present to our lives, to what is real right now....and to live under God's sovereignty and goodness with a peace that is deep and abiding.


In fact, I am going to sit and give my entire attention to my Father for a while. Who knows what He will show me?

Why don't you do so too, and perhaps share what you saw or felt?

Resilient Kids..

The sequel. 

I always knew in my heart that the book to follow my first tiny parenting book, Simple Tips for Happy Kids 

-- would have to be Simple Tips for Resilient Kids!

But then, secretly I wished my kids would not have to help me learn it  - the hard way. I mean, if they don't ever buckle, why would I have to learn how to help them to become resilient?

Perhaps they are not real, but there are kids who just seem to have it all so together! My daughter has a classmate who does well, is head prefect, bakes for her classmates, well-liked and highly regarded by her peers...I studied her as she rides home in my car, and marvel at her motivational levels and her abilities! I don't like the fact that she sleeps six hours and less each day; but she appears to hold it all up and together just fine! My only conclusion: she's cut from a different cloth.

This is probably the first and most unlikely key to resilience: Acceptance.

You see, resilience is a combination of mindset and energy. They must work in the same direction. Very often, our complaining and whining saps us. Hankering for things to be different weakens us because precious energy is being used up. Eventually we cannot think clearly, withstand the current pressure, and make the changes required in order to see a different outcome.

If you want to go triumph over something, you have to first accept it is real. tweet this 

Which for the parent means accepting that your kid has limits.

Since there is no one sure-fire way to prefect parenting because it doesn't exist (yes, you can stop looking for it now); because the Parent is someone in a particular relationship with another human being and each relationship is unique. tweet this


Every relationship must recognise the limits the individuals confront at that point. Some limits are obvious: physical limits, abilities (will not touch a musical instrument?)... while others are limits due to maturity and mindset.

Resilience happens when we can push that mindset and broaden it.

It doesn't have to be about scaling Mt Everest. How about completing homework, being kind to a sibling, handling some form of peer judgement and rejection?



The younger one was struggling with attracting some heavy-handed attention from his peers (some kids are simply magnets for bullies and such like). He gets shoved, they find it fun to trip him up, or worse, sometimes gang up against him.

I can, and did, spend energy railing about the system, other parents, how unfair things were ...but it was when I accepted that somehow this is what my child was up against that I was strong enough to help him find his strength to face this.

Day in day out we talked about his emotions, his reactions, the scenarios.... we discussed our values and agreed on acceptable responses. He needed to know the world can be scary this way but he need not be overwhelmed. 

The tears grew less. the anger cooled, he devised his own strategies...and this year we alerted the teacher and enlisted his help. Resilience is not letting the kid charge headlong or go it alone. It is coming alongside to add your strength to his and help him find out how strong he can be as he matures. We all need each other to help us be strong.

In this instance, he needed to know he was strong enough to rein in his frustration and seek the good of others. It's a Grace moment and movement that happens in the heart as we cultivate the soil by ridding it of fear and planting hope.

Yesterday we were doing a school survey on pupils' experiences with peers. He chose 'yes' for a good number of negative experiences! But it was done with a matter-of-fact composure and he reminds me a few times, "Mom, I'm a good boy".

God loves me, yea,... but does he LIKE me?

adivsory: this post has fun cat pictures for illustrative purposes
Let's just say if you have a bad habit like forgetfully picking your nose in public; you will surely live. On the other hand, if you have a bad habit inside your head, it gets more complicated (especially if yours is a woman's head).  A bad head habit is a thought pattern and way of interpretation that is faulty. This has massive implications.

If you tend to think people are out to get something from you; imagine how you would respond to a spontaneous gift from me?


Our head habits, those regular thought patterns are like train tracks. We have train tracks just for God; and I have found that it is basically about God being far / unreachable / out to get us, and that this track runs parallel to another one about self: I am not good enough.

Guess what? I have a very serious hunch that for most of us those are the exact train tracks that run inside our heads of all sizes. And the train goes clackety-clack on those tracks so that no matter what we hear taught, preached, sung... it ends up as another carriage on this track.

How do we get off track, or on the right track?

The answer is Revelation. /an enlightening or astonishing disclosure / {Meriam webster online} 

Revelatory insight makes you bright, turns on the light and brings a smile to your face.

Like when you discover that God doesn't love you because He cannot help it since He is Love; and that not just that, He actually likes you.

I remember that afternoon well. We were dating so I was visiting and hanging around. The house was quiet and in the high of new-love, I was shaken by this Q: does God like me? I am not sure where the Q came from; but nearly twenty-nine, I wasn't head-over-heels in love as much as waxing and waning over my fierce emotions and equally strong resistance to this whole 'we're going to get married thing'. We were old enough and free enough to have gotten on each other's nerves too many times to count. So perhaps, I was disliking myself a tad.

The answer, the revelation came a couple of years later. Sure that afternoon, my mind put 2+2 together: God is all integrity, and we cannot use human measures for him; I comforted myself that He did like me. But I did slip in, "tell me God".

So another afternoon, I was sitting, no, I was crumpled, at the piano, trying to tinker some noise of praise out as my heart was filled with sorrow, anger and remorse (it's amazing how many things one can feel at once)... when I 'heard' "Jenni, I enjoy you". God caught me right at that tip of the train track as my trains were leaving. It was almost as if He interrupted me because just as those words came, they overlaid my own words, "I don't enjoy myself". 

I'm the poorer judge, and too weak to argue. So the words slipped right into me and found the empty space and lodged there. God likes me!

There are days when I am grossly dissatisfied with myself. Et tu? Like when I am hazy, lazy, and yes, plain crazy!  Like when I knew I should have but didn't. Like when I slip into my ennui. I am glad to report to my fellow women that I am on the downhill side of that dreaded the PMS mountain. But my inconsistencies, contradictions, comedy of errors are all wrapped up in a Love that likes - 

/ to feel attraction toward or take pleasure in / 

God is drawn to me and when I sit with Him, He smiles. He's glad I made the time and created a special space. Maybe he pats my head. Often I find a light breeze or a tune - both balms for this tropical heat. This may sound weird; sometimes I make up jokes for God! 

This morning I was going to write a funny piece on Twitterverse. 
I was going to group twitters by birds and have a bit of fun with my observations ...then I felt Someone laughing with me. As I brushed my teeth, I realised I wanted you to know this: God loves you, and he likes you!

Not some future version of you, all cleaned up and improved.Certainly, God is not like us and i do believe that when he sees us, he sees all of us; past-present-future. Yes, there are people He does dislike too - those described in the Bible who are not Godward; the evil. 

We separate Love and Like. It's easy to like (just click) than love. Not really. Very few of us genuinely like anyone else. We find way too many things to complain about them. It's easy to. I remember as a teen thinking, "I don't have to like anyone. I just have to love them". OK -- it is jolly hard to love anyone without liking them at least a bit!

Perhaps this is a false divide, another faulty train track. How do you love someone - who is a composition of his traits, habits, personality and values, while disliking them? So my conclusion of the matter is this:  I will stop pretending. I don't really love/like anyone. I even struggle to love/like me. And in my abject poverty, the emptied out space, when the train switch is off and the clackety is stilled - revelation comes and finds a home:

we love because He first loved us ~ 1 John 4v19 NIV

and if i may add: we like because he first liked us.

If I haven't met you yet, I am sure I will like you a tad when we do meet. Meanwhile, be brave, get to a scratching post and let all your angst out, Claw away till you have sloughed off some and feel space opening up for your moment of revelation. 

Q: What other revelations (that overturning of train tracks) have you experienced?