I am my Father's child

So it began almost 32 years ago. A young girl born to her married yet single parent. Rejected already in her mother's womb, the effects of that she would only begin to really experience in her late twenties. She carried around the labels of rejected one, abandoned one, unwanted one, not enough one, cowering constantly under the shame. Fear consumed her life, too afraid to do anything wrong, to do anything that no one approved of for fear of them too rejecting her and walking out on her. See she craved and worked hard to receive and maintain the approval of others, this fed her, it sustained her, it was the very reason she was breathing, living. The mere thought of losing this would cause her to tailspin in a whirlwind of depression that at best if she woke up the following morning she had indeed survived. 

Until one day she encountered the grace and mercy filled loved of One who saw every fear, who knew her pain, who knew her shame, who knew her. As she, sometimes not really wanting to, through the sometimes unbearable pain, lay herself down on the operating table of His love for Him to deconstruct and reconstruct her identity, she began to see herself through His eyes, as one who is loved deeply, as wanted, as accepted, as enough, as one who can be, that her identity lay not in her doing but simply in her being. Freedom. Often she stumbles, trips and falls over herself, over the things that others say about her, over the lies that still try to present themselves as truths, but now she walks with an assurance that in the thick of it all, she has been, is and will always be her Father's child.

Friends, are friends forever?

I’ve never been one to have a great many friends in my life. For as long as I can remember I was that girl that had just one or two close friends or a very small group of friends around me. Making friends was and is not something that comes naturally to me and neither is keeping them unfortunately as I’m growing increasingly aware of, not for a lack of trying on my part; perhaps not hard enough though. 

I really struggle with this. Am I the only one? I really struggle with making friends and maintaining friendships. It just seemed like I would make friends and learn to trust them and they would be the very people who would suddenly turn against me for no apparent reason. For instance in my neighbourhood, everyone suddenly decided one day that it was okay to turn against myself and another friend of mine, making it very difficult for us to join them in anything. In high school, a group of my girlfriends (all girl school) one day just all stopped talking to me, except for one or two again, and they wouldn’t explain what the reason was?? So I guess I learnt very early on in life not to trust this thing called friendship and to guard my heart; so I erected what is equivalent to the Walls of Jericho around my heart. I always keep my circle small, so small at one point that it was just I and another, my closest friend ever at the time; but this ended horribly, the ramifications of which I am still recovering from today.

Needless to say over the years I was and am still learning to trust again, to risk with people, to let my walls down, to walk transparently and to learn to be a friend to them. Last year was a tough year friendship wise, not that this year is any better :/. I remember beating myself up black and blue because I was keenly aware of all the people I just never managed to connect with and would have liked to. I felt as though I was the worst friend; that I had let them down and disappointed them. That they no longer would look at me in the same light again: Tshepi who cares and is interested in their lives and well-being, Tshepi who is present, Tshepi who loves them, Tshepi who they could depend and rely on, Tshepi who was there. Truth is I was not there, they knew it, I knew it and I hated myself for it, for not being able to be there in ways like I had been in the past AND that they too knew it and felt it. That I had hurt them and in some ways continue to do so, unintentionally, but I still do. Am I the only one?

I don’t really have anything profound to share except that I’m really struggling with this. I want to be a good friend. I want to be there for those I consider to be my friends. If you look at it, I was really concerned about self-preservation I’m ashamed to say. Harder still perhaps is to admit to myself that my life has changed, significantly so and so has my capacity for many things. I’m also realising that I can’t be there for everyone like I want to be; that I can’t be all things to all people, I have tried and I have failed, miserably. This is hard for me to admit, me who for so much of my life have based so much of my identity on being able to be there for others and them seeing me in that light. I no longer see myself that way, but you see my point..

I’m struggling to figure out life, to manage it. I’m struggling to find the time for everything and for everyone and for myself. I am struggling to be okay with the fact that not everyone will be okay with me at the same time, that at times I will hurt and disappoint people; the very ones I consider my friends, that I will let them down, that they might not like me much, that they might start to believe things about me that aren’t really a true reflection of who I am in my entirety but perhaps only in that moment and that that moment will define who I am for them forever. Not only who I am but Christ whom I want my life to reflect at all times; this is the hardest one! Sigh. Yet it’s true, I am the mess that they think I am. I am flawed, I am at times selfish and self-focused, I am not who they expected me to be and even I expected myself to be. Man. Sigh.

I am also realising that I cannot control this, how i am seen that is. I am having to let go and forgive myself for how I feel I have failed the very ones I say I care about and love, how I have failed to be present in their lives as I have been trying, still am, to navigate the fact that my life looks NOTHING like it did at the beginning of last year, NOTHING. This does not excuse me or absolve me at all of the responsibility I have as a friend to nurture and tend to the growth of my relationships with them, to reassure them of my presence and love. I would get really defensive about it, saying things like: ‘with the history that we have built over the years how can she/he doubt our friendship’? ‘Clearly they don’t know me and our friendship is not as deep as I thought it was, how can they think that about me after all this time, have I not proven myself?’ ‘I wish they would ask me why I have been so m.i.a instead of assuming that I don’t care, can someone just ask me how I am doing and wait long enough to hear the response’. Anyone? Am I the only one? Why you ask? Because again I wanted to preserve the image. 

Where's the grace Tshepi!! Ai! If I stop long enough to put myself aside though, I realise that perhaps that was their way of just expressing that they valued what we had and are hurt it is no longer that way, not a personal attack against my character. Even more amazing is how brave they are, how they risk being vulnerable with me, putting themselves out there, being honest with me! How they value the relationship by speaking up and not being silent. I can't say the same about myself, it's the hardest thing for me to open my mouth and speak, bleh. However I am realising that I cannot preserve the image and I don’t want to anymore. The truth is this is a struggle, a major one for me. I sit here and wonder still, am I ever not going to at any given time, not be hurting someone or disappointing them? Needing God’s grace! Can friendships survive this? Can we start over?

I want to be a better friend. I’m just feeling a tad overwhelmed.

Am i the only one?

Layers...

I was watching the movie Bride Wars last night, starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. Basically a story about two best friends who had been best of friends for about 20 years and had both dreamt and planned their wedding days together since they were just little girls. So they grow up and both get engaged around the same time and manage to book their dream venue and date, until the wedding planners assistant books their wedding for the same day??? EEK! As every girl reading this gasps at the thought. Needles to say all war breaks loose and what was once a beautiful friendship turns into a broken and messy one. Yet as most of these Hollywood Rom Com movies turn out, they sort things out and in the end manage to be there for one another as they had dreamt all their lives.

The movie ended and as involuntary tears poured down my face, because I'm a hopeless hopeful and just love happy endings and relationships working out, it dawned on me that I had once held this dream too, but our story won't turn out the way it did for these two friends. Losing this friendship has been one of the hardest journeys I have ever had to walk out in my life relationally to date. Although the friendship came to an end a WHILE ago, there are times the pain of that reality hits home like a ton of bricks to my heart, causing me to catch my breath and feel the warmth of the sting of hot tears streaming down my cheeks. Last night was the reality of me not being present at her wedding day and her not being present at mine. We had dreamt, we had planned, even beyond the wedding day, of a life that never consisted of us not being in each other's lives. Sigh. Its sad. It hurts, at times more than others. 

As I spoke it out with God and two friends, I felt the Holy Spirit say that there are layers to every relationship, even lost ones. Much like there are layers to your skin, the atmosphere, the wall of the heart, the earth and onions, relationships have layers. That you might think you've dealt with every layer, I mean it's a few years down the line, ahh, until one day, caught by surprise, you realise there is another layer. Another dream you dreamt together that won't happen because you aren't together, that relationship no longer exists for a moment/s to be shared. Adventures you won't ever get to experience together, hopes you can't share, secrets, thoughts, just life in general. The realization and disappointment is still as real and as raw as though you were going through the break up in this very moment.  

In the past I would have been upset with myself for even allowing myself to get as upset as I did about it or let it consume me for days and barely make it out of bed in the mornings because I would be fighting so hard to avoid the pain, the reality, yet nowadays I'm content to allow myself to feel the pain. To feel the disappointment, to own it, to allow myself to miss her when those moments arise and they do, often. To mourn the loss of something I had hoped for, a milestone, a moment and moments I won't get to share with her and she with me. A friend I had once cherished so very deeply and still do. Sometimes you just need to ride this wave of pain. You just need to sit in the current of His love and trust that He will lead you to a safe place, that He IS the safe place. A place of rest in the midst of pain, a place where you can just be held. 

And so I choose to let myself mourn the loss AGAIN and choose once more to lay it down, the pain, the disappointment, the hopes not realised, the friendship lost. I choose to allow God into this place with me. To allow Him to speak His Truth into my heart. Allow His Spirit to comfort me, to be held by Him. I'm reminded again in this moment that letting go is a process, that life is a process and that process is okay, we are so impatient with ourselves and with one another. We need to process, we probably will until that glorious day we meet Him face to face. Some things take time to process, a layer at a time, like I'm discovering with this particular friendship. Everyones journey is different, each ones process is different and that's okay. Some things can't be rushed, some things we can't just get over and move on with life as we've been told countless times. Some things just take time and that's okay. 

Today I am further along in my journey than I was before, I don't believe one ever arrives, not until Jesus does in any case. It hurts, but not as much as it did at the beginning. This is just God peeling off yet another layer, showing me what's in my heart, the stuff I have kept there and not even known it was there. Painful sometimes, yet with patience and such kindness, He lovingly leads me further into love, into healing, restoration and wholeness in Him. The pain is real, the disappointment is real, the sadness real, yet so much more is His presence. He is ever close. So near. He is Comforter. He is here, in this moment, with me. He speaks to my aching heart. I know I won't be here forever, this is a moment in time and even now I am well received here, I can be here, I can rest here, I can live a full life here...

Psalm 34:18

"The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed".

Knowledge, the source of validation?

As we have entered this very new year with all its possibilities and perceived impossibilities, it's so easy to get lost in the "having to know" and needing to "figure out" how the year will pan out. My friend, the astute and incredible wordsmith Zama Moyo shares his thoughts. 

We place a high premium on knowledge. You need not go much further than your primary school memories to see it: think of the feeling you got when, being somehow the only kid who knew the answer to the teacher’s question, you confidently raised your hand (in fact you had to contain yourself from leaping up in excitement) and proceeded to give the answer.

 

Or inversely, that one kid who always seemed to know a little more than most was in equal measure admired and disliked. Such a know-it-all.  Yet even this dislike was only there because deep down we wanted the same validation he did for knowing all that stuff.

 

And then our entire schooling careers are peppered with those familiar phrases that grace the classroom walls: ‘Knowledge is power’; ‘Know Your World!’ (Usually above those circular,blue globes at a corner of the class). Less obvious, those Latin mottos on our high school crests invariably have one or more of the following words: Conscientia; Scientia; Cognitio; Prudentia- all of which, of course, are a variation of what may be translated as ‘knowledge’.

 

We should place a high premium on knowledge. It can be the difference between victory and annihilation, break-through and frustration; between passing and failing a grade, and yes, even life and death. 

 

But the mistake of making knowledge the source of our validation is, I think, just as fatal as ignorance. As impressionable kids in the classroom we saw affirmation going to the kid who had the right answer. The residue of that followed us right into high school, with our dignified blazers reading Scientia something something. There, we put more pressure on ourselves to know more things (sometimes prodded by our teachers and environment): Know what subjects you should and should not do, know the people that will give us the most social cool points; know which university you will go to, know what your entire life will look like!

 

We have missed a trick if we only affirm the kid with the (right) answer more often than we do the kid with the courage to raise his hand.

 

I think what pre-schoolers can teach us is that beyond knowledge we need awareness. When a child is aware of the presence of her caregiver, then the knowledge of where her next meal will come from is irrelevant to her. Mom=security=food. Dad=protection=clothes. In each case, the awareness of the former trumps the knowledge of the latter.

 

So as we look forward to 2016, how about we stop obsessing about knowing where we’ll be in the next three years? Next decade? Heck, even in the next 12 months!  Vision and anticipation are great tools for navigating a world with endless possibilities and encounters. But deeper still, since we can’t know the future, what (or who) do you need to be aware of right here and right now?

 

We won’t have the answers all the time, but Oh! To be free to raise our hands in courage anyway.

 

Scientia cum libertate!

Zama L Moyo 

Checkout his blog Zama-m.blogspot.com

Happy 2016! Here's to resting in and enjoying the present :)!

His voice gives voice to my voice...

Lately I have been listening to Amanda Cook's CD, Brave New World, on repeat!! If you have not had an opportunity to listen please do yourself a massive favor and just do it, so so good.

God has been speaking to me through a song from the CD, It's called "The Voyage". 

Lyrics in italics :).

"speak, even if your voice is trembling, please, you've been quiet for so long, believe, it will be worth the risk you're taking..."

For as long as I can remember I've always struggled with expressing myself verbally.... Expressing myself through written form has never been an issue (case in point :p) but the verbal expression has often times than not found me tongue tied and swallowing my words or even more likely than not, just remaining silent. Makes for very awkward social settings :p

I can't say if a part of me just never believed that i actually had something worthwhile to say or if I just felt that even if I were to speak It just wouldn't matter really. I guess I must have learnt that somewhere but not only did I learn that, I believed it to be true and from that "truth" I then lived. For you see, the things we believe to be true in our hearts are the places we live from, from which we engage life from, from which we relate from, with others and dare I say with God.

O I had a lot to say, still do :), and I said it too, in my head :/. I  just could never say it out loud. I'm not talking about anything profound as such but even just my opinion about simple things, just such a struggle...

"You're afraid"...

Fear, that large tree that stands in front of you, its roots long established in your being. The rings around your heart, the evidence of years it has taken residence there. Its bark, the scaling wall around your heart, there to protect you, but also keeping the very nutrients you need to survive out.  Scales they are, for if you were to peel them away you would see that the Phloem no longer performs its function to carry sap to the rest of your being. That the growth in diameter that the Cambium provides has been stunted as fear conquers and takes more ground in your heart. The Xylem now dead and though the Heartwood is there, it is weak, it cannot support you...

Too scared to ruffle some feathers; to upset the apple cod. Too scared that if you were to actually open your mouth, others might come to see the inadequacies that you see in yourself;  the insight that  you feel you lack. Too scared that your words might offend them, might actually challenge them, might even challenge you. Too scared that they'll reject you. Perhaps even too scared that contrary to what you have spent your whole life believing, what you have to offer, to give, through words, might actually matter...

...but you can hear adventure calling, there's a rush of adrenaline to your bones, what you make of this moment changes everything "..

Is it any wonder that I now find myself in situations where more than ever I feel the need to speak up, then fear steps in and I feel as though I cant. At this point I have two choices to make: 1. I bow down to fear and have the life sapped out of me (which I have allowed for years), which is what fear does; it prevents you from living or 2:  bow down to the God who is love and let His love fill every space in me that is fear driven. My counsellor helped me to realize something a few weeks ago: to remain silent when you know you are to speak up is in effect to agree with and in actual fact contribute to things staying the same when they need to change...

It is so much like my Father to place me in  these circumstances, where keeping quiet could potentially be harmful for me but also to those I am in a position to speak to, for. Yet where speaking up allows me to experience more of His love, so much more of freedom in Him.

"What if the path you choose, becomes a road, the ground you take, becomes your home"...

To speak or not to speak, that is the choice... over this period I have felt the Fathers prompting to speak, to challenge, to question, to encourage, to confront, family, friends, strangers, those in authority over me, eek. These might seem as simple things but for this mostly silent girl, what giant mountains they have been. The times I have chosen to be obedient to His prompting to speak up I have felt Him in it, His peace, even when my voice was trembling, in the very literal sense. He has given me the courage to face the noise, to face the fear, to face the possible rejection. The times I have chosen to keep quiet have been the loudest, the resounding sounds of my voiceless thoughts assaulting my mind and heart, screaming to be let out.

"the wind is high, but the pressure's off, I'll send the rain, wherever we end up, wherever we end up"...

More and more I  am learning to depend on Him. At just the right time He provides the words to speak, He provides the courage to speak them out, He provides the strength to receive the response; positive and negative. I can't do it on my own, for I am at times only able to see the large tree in front of me, inside of me. Perhaps then speaking for me is not so much so that I am heard, but perhaps it is for me to hear the voice of Him who speaks and enables me to speak..

And so I hear Him gently whisper  "for the longest time your focus has been on the magnitude of the tree. Take a step back. Do you not see the vastness of the body of water that surrounds it, the lush green around it. Increase your vision. The tree is not as big at it appears to be, but you won't ever see that if you don't step back to see what's around it; look beyond it. Be still, do you see the ripples in the water, even a gentle breeze is powerful enough to move a body of water, how much more powerful My voice to give voice to your voice, the wind of My love to carry you to where you need to be..."

"I am the wind in your sails, I am the wind in your sails"...

"Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the Lord means safety" Proverbs 29: 25

It's Okay

I know what it's like to feel as though you have failed at life. I know what it's like when yet another birthday approaches, and all it serves to do, is remind you of how far you have failed to come, as opposed to how far you indeed have come; because far you have come. The deep sense of disappointment at having achieved much but feeling as though you have achieved nothing, because what you have achieved somehow does not fit in to your own ideas about what success is and more so what society deems as successful, more so for people in your age group.

And so enters shame...I need to cover this up. I need to rationalise it so that not only does it make sense to me but it needs to make sense to others. To those who ask me why I'm still single when my peers are married with children. To those who ask me why I'm still not living on my own. To those whose eyebrows arch when they hear that I'm between jobs and I'm still trying to figure out what it is I want to do, what it is I'm truly passionate about. To those who find it difficult to understand why it seems as though my life isn't going anywhere, why it seems as though I am not thriving. Good gosh I too ask these questions sometimes. I too wonder.  I too question, Lord how come? Sigh. 

This past year God has shown me how futile an exercise for me to try and answer these questions for myself and for others. Sometimes, simply, there is no answer or an answer that is satisfactory enough. Life is what it is, at this present moment it is what it is and that's okay. It's not to say that it will forever remain this way, that things won't change, change is constant, good or bad or just mediocre. I have learnt that I can live on nothing and still have everything. I have had to learn humility and to swallow my pride and allow others to do for me when my independent (proud :/) self was screaming no. More and more I am understanding in my heart that my standing or position or worth in life is NOT tied to what I do or don't do, to what I possess or fail to possess, to what I have achieved or failed to achieve, or how far or not so far I have come in life, but to Whom I belong.  The funny thing about life is that some days are good, others not so good, today I'm employed, tomorrow maybe not, today I have wealth but tomorrow the markets could crash. The funny thing about people is that their opinions of you change constantly, today you're in their good books but tommorrow is a different story. There is only One who is constant, whose opinion of me is constant. 

As another birthday approaches I am learning to be. Be myself, be in the moment, be right here right now, whether good or bad or just mediocre, to be. To feel, the here, the now, the joy, the pain, the doubts, the fears, the disappointments, the questions, the suns rays on my skin, the warmth of another's embrace. To hear, the laughter and giggles of my two year old niece :), the melodious sounds of conversations taking place all around me, my Father's still small voice. To see, others as He sees them, not just what is visible but the invisible, the what cannot be explained by human understanding. 

So, I choose to live in this moment, because this moment right here, right now, is okay. The present is okay, it's what I have, I can't control the future, I can't undo the past. Me, I am okay, broken, not perfect, not yet whole and that's okay because my hope rests not in me, but in Him, the One who holds me together, the One who knows what my future holds, the One who is in my present. 

A Note to my Absent Father...

Today marks the 31st Father's Day I'm spending without you. Almost 31 years of life have gone by, that's something to stop and think about. It's a confusing thing for me this concept of fatherhood; I suppose that would be the case when one has never had a true life example. I can't say I know what it is you were meant to be or do, only that I find myself awed at the sight of a father and his daughter as he walks her to school or just carries her around the mall, a near permanent smile remains on my face and the longing of my heart awakened; what is that like I wonder? What would it be like to hold your hand in mine or have mine held in yours? even 31 years later.  What would it have been like to have sat on your lap? To have been held in your arms, would I have found comfort there, would I have felt protected, loved, wanted, seen?

I can't imagine that it was your intention when you made your choices to sear rejection and abandonment in my heart from my mothers womb. Your failure to be present at my birth and in my life etched in my heart and in my self a deep sense of worthlessness, I mean children are very ego-centric. You could not carry the weight of my conception and birth, how then could others my existence? How then would anyone stay when you chose to leave. I was either too much for you or not enough for you, for you chose something else, how then could I be enough period... In your absence I failed to experience love from you and therefore to be taught that I am indeed loveable. I never received encouragement from you and therefore never really learnt that I can do 'it,' whatever 'it' may be, even when I don't believe that 'it' can be done. You never acknowledged my existence and so I find myself often wondering if my existence really matters at all... Do I matter to you dad? Have I ever mattered to you?

I have often wondered about the kind of man you are and like most kids have fantasized about what life with you and mom would have been like. In what ways am I like you? In what ways am I  different from you? After all, I have 23 of your chromosomes in my genetic makeup. You are a stranger to me, an enigma. I recognize that you are a flawed person, as am I. Broken, as am I. I remember you once said that your father was just as absent and so in some ways I can understand that you did not know how to be a father, how could you. Yet sometimes I wonder if that's my way of making excuses for you, of lessening the deep sense of rejection and abandonment, the deep sense of loss that I carry In my heart today, in my relationships with others. As I grow older, I'm coming to understand that that which you do not possess, you cannot give and to expect one to give that which they do not possess is to be continunally disappointed and to set them up for failure. Forgive me please for continually doing this. Should you have been present in my life, yes. Should you have protected me, provided for me, loved me, cared for me, called me out into being, yes. Yes, yes, yes, you should have. More than anything, I just needed you to be.

There must be some good in you for my mother to have chosen you as her husband, as the one she trusted to father her child. This Father's Day I set you free, free from the responsibility of having to father me. Does this mean that I won't get angry at you at times, that I won't wonder, that I won't  be annoyed by your absence, disappointed in you, no, but simply that you are no longer responsible for me. For though you may have been the most amazing father, or not, there is One is who most amazing. There is One who loves me, who loves you, infinitely more than I could have ever been loved by you. One who has never and will never fail us. One who knows us by name and the number of hairs that are on our heads. One who is intimately familiar with all our ways. This One, He's a good good Father, and this Fathers Day I pray that you would experience the Fathers heart for you, as I am daily coming to know His heart for me and who I am in Him, sometimes extremely difficult to believe and receive, but my journey in life is not yet over, and neither is yours. May you truly come to know this Good Good Father, it's who He is, it's how He is.

Your Daughter,
Tshepi