Petra Bagust: It's all about Love

"If there's one thing you need to understand about God,” says New Zealand television personality Petra Bagust, “it's that He loves you. He loves you, He loves you, He loves you!” She pauses to regain composure.He loves the good bits, the bad bits, the annoying bits. If you can't handle the rest of the God-thing, just make sure you recognise how much He loves you Hot Property, Ice TV, travel.co.nz Time of Your Life.goodI think that if I say no, people won't like me,I have to remind myself that people will like me a whole lot less if I give them false expectations“If someone said, ‘Please, can you ...' and I didn't really want to, I'd say ‘Ask me next week,' and when next week comes, they'll get another excuse, until finally, two days before the event, I'll say no, and then everyone is really annoyed

I'm a great one for looking at people and identifying a problem. I'll know how to fix it, and I'll jump in to help—this is often known as ‘meddling.Did that person ask for help? No, they didn't. I've learned to step back from other people's problems, and give more help to my own two children, who need my help more than anyone else

Another of Petra's maxims is to trust one's instinct. I don't want to go.

Saying 'Yes' to God

Petra was 14 years old when she decided to trust God, that He would always be a part of her life. “I went through a stage where I'd pray prayers like, ‘If it rains tomorrow, I'll know You're real.' In the back of my mind was always the thought that 50 farmers were probably genuinely begging God for rain, and so my bargains didn't have any great importance in my mind.

“Ultimately I weighed up what I knew about God and the option of living without Him, and decided that He was so real and relevant to me that I didn't want to [live without Him].”

One of the significant events in Petra's life has been the publication of what she thought was an off-the-record comment.

Life is full-on in Petra's household. With two young children— Venetia, three, and Jude, one)— Petra finds herself relishing the role of motherhood over her career.

Source: Sarah Nealon, “Working Motherhood” inAustralian Women's Weekly(NZ ed), December 2005.