…..establishing a focul point by visualising the outcome is an exercise in the beginning.  Drawing, dreaming and planning gives us direction, but flexibility often results in an outcome better than originally envisioned.  (Syd & Shea McGee)

33 years ago I left England for a three week trip that started in Kenya!  I leave South Africa today with a heart that is overflowing with sheer amazement and gratitude for the friendships that I just hold so very close to me, and the experiences that I have been apart of.  

I am overly calm at the moment but I know that this is just a brilliant brain mechanism that is allowing me to savour these last times here without emotions that would be hard to bear.  I have found some wonderfully unexpected joys of packing up our home of 25 years:

Finding special letters from family and friends – enjoying the memories;

Going through the photograph and being reminded of events, friends and journey’s taken;

Seeing our house through the lens of deep gratitude of so many occasions – gathering of friends, sitting on the lawn under the tree and reading, conversations around the table, the sounds of the birds (I love the squark of the Hadida’s).  This home has held our family – we created our home over time but from the beginning we have fully lived here – and it has been a good place too for all who have visited, whether for a meal, a cup of tea, or a good long stay.  Through each stage of our packing up, I kept walking the rooms – absorbing their atmosphere and memories.  Thank you thank you thank you.  I am grateful too for our pack up and the sense of calm happiness – this is what I had prayed for before the backup started.  I had imagined how I wanted these past few months to be like, and though not all exactly as planned – it has been better than I imagined.  And again, I say thank you for this.

I am taking this lesson into our next chapter.  Pray, visualise, imagine and think how you want the outcome to be like.  Dream it.  Also, be very open to that other possibilities that you have not even thought out … knowing that you have in you the ability to navigate the unimagined and unplanned for.  It is retrospectively that we see how the dots connect.  And often in the most amazing of ways.  As you will have heard so many times, there can be so much good that comes from the great challenges.  

Thank you for these astonishing years in South Africa – I love this country and its people so much.  Thank you thank you and thank you again.