Well today was my second and final call with Mike, albeit that he was some place different and at another number.

In amidst all the personal reflection and direction, making an international phone call still rates up there with my least familiar experiences! You can see I am no global C.E.O.

Talking with a life coach is very much like having a sounding board and also someone who will ask those tough questions, that perhaps a good friend would like to but doesn't ?!

For me the life coaching was the 'push' that I needed to get me through the bottle-neck to enter the next phase of my (God) journey - living in fulfillment and being true to my authentic self. Or I hope it is!

Mike challenged me to think about what my life would be like if Onyx never changed. Would we divorce? Is it that I have desired for his success or expected his success? What do I need to do to be financially free?

Inadvertently Mike was the person with whom I spoke a day or two before my next adventure presented itself. He helped me look at it from another perspective that lessened the ever-raging guilt that I have about being selfish or hurting others.

In between our first conversation and this, I have felt like there have been synapses firing in my brain that were previously muted by religious thinking, gender conditioning; and re-igniting them feels like walking a fine line between christian and secular teaching.

Would a christian bring up divorce? Would a christian ask what you needed to be fulfilled? I'd think that the off pat answer to both of these is to hide them both behind a warped interpretation of christian marriage that does little for continuing to cultivate individuals, preferring to blur the husband and wife concerned into a gelatinous 'you'.

"I" is not often taught in churches instead it is "Jesus first, yourself last and others in between".

So okay, to a certain extent this is also true, but what about balance? What about there still being a "you"? What about living that life of abundance, which to each person looks different.

And that is key...as unique as we are designed, our needs are different and I believe God wants for each of us to live that life described in Jeremiah that says:

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I don't know if this verse is written with "you" being individual, plural or simply corporate, but I still interpret it as meaning that He gives me, plans that I will recognise as bringing good things into my life - adding to it, and that it is His intention that I am in no way harmed etc.

How many christian's are harmed in their marriage, perhaps not by violence, but by being unequally yoked?

My thinking is therefore changing from the mindset that when a couple marry, they loose themselves in the 'institution of marriage', and that their commitment means that individualism is a blurry thing of the past. God talks about the transformation that water and spirit baptism bring. He does not say that we are to be transformed by marriage into something 'new'. We remain the same one-of-a-kind master-crafted talented person BM (before marriage).

I know that day-to-day life can drain us of our 'get up and go' to pursue our interests of what delights us and adds beauty and character to our lives, as before we wed, but I would sincerely hope that we each have a respite, that feeds our soul. If not huge plans, at least frequently.



I see this metamorphosis in thinking like that of leaving traditional church to find freedom, or the traditional modern education system to home school. It is requiring that I dissect all that I have heard, read and watched in light of what the bible says.

Like the Ogre in Shrek who says he is like an onion skin - having layers, I too feel as if I am peeling off this old skin little by little.

It is an amazing feeling of personal growth that I can not attribute has happened voluminously in my life under the influence of church.

Once again, thanks Mike! You and Laura must have a fabulous life!