I choose Hope...

I'm back :). I haven't written in a while, a while being months 😲 simply because, well a lack of inspiration and motivation i think. Not that i have not had things to write about, i just did not have the energy to do what i'm doing right this minute; carved out time (pivotal), laptop on my lap and typing fingers. 

"There is no such thing as writers block, you simply just stopped writing" Steffany Gretzinger

So, here I am again, beginning again..

What did you get up to on New Year's Eve? As most people where out and about partying into the New Year or just hanging out, i spent the last day of 2016 cleaning, yes, cleaning, the whole entire day. Why do you ask? I had the sudden urge earlier that week to rearrange my living space, to move things around, to go through cupboards and to do away with items i had not used in the past year, so what better day to do that than the very last day of the year 🙈 (please withhold your judgmental responses 😃, i really had intentionally not planned to do anything that day, including cleaning :)). Please indulge me, there's a point to all this; besides my apparent lack of social life 😉. 

To be honest, i never anticipated that it would take the WHOLE day and it would be as hard as it was; moving furniture is no small feat and clearing out cabinets as well. It dawned on me just how much stuff i had collected over the years, reluctant to let go of, because i somehow believed that i would probably find a use for it at some point. I of course went back and forth about whether to give stuff away or to keep it but there seemed to be a resolve in me, the same resolve in deciding to do the massive clean up, that i needed to do this. 

It got me thinking about the condition of my heart for some reason, the thought would just not leave me alone. Know when that happens, how annoying at times. I've been in a funk for months, can't really explain how i got there, but it's been dark and ugly with very little communication with anyone, including God. Do you ever find yourself unable to put words to your thoughts or emotions? You open your mouth to speak but nothing comes out, but the pain stays with you and the thoughts continue their assault on your mind, heart and spirit? Yeah, its been that way. 

I feel like God began to speak to me about how there were things i had held onto for too long (much like the clothes,books, etc) and needed to let go of. How i had allowed these things to take root in my heart and what they were producing was depression, resentment, and a deep disillusionment with life, which has resulted in a growing sense of hopelessness pertaining to my life and God; who He is and who i am in relation to Him. 

These things are not necessarily bad things, but i got to a point where none of them had been fulfilled and i felt like God was holding out on me. Honestly, i have known for as long as I've been in a funk that i need to do some heart stuff with God, but i kept avoiding it because every time i would think about it, my eyes would fill to the brim with a fresh supply of tears (much like right now) and i just did not "have the energy to go there". There, that place we avoid, that place we do everything in our power to not connect with and numb ourselves to its reality. In actual reality, it's taken more energy to try keep myself together. I felt, as i have many times before, the invitation to come, to come and be broken before Him. I'd allowed the debris of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, of bitter disappointment, of carrying too much responsibility for the well-being of others, sometimes to the detriment of myself and them, of fear, of bitterness and anger to collect in my heart and i just let it sit there, like rocks, heavy and destructive. 

Yet God in His mercy on this day, reached out to me again, extending His grace to come and begin to remove the rocks that weighed so heavy on my heart. As i cleaned and moved things around i realised that somethings we have been walking through for a while Him and i and He has been so patient with me. Some things i needed to make the CHOICE to lay down, and CHOOSE to trust that even in the unknown and uncertainty of life that i so struggle with, He is a certainty and He can be known. That it's okay to sit with the pain of my disappointment and know that God is near, that He is present in it and to it; i don't have to avoid it, or numb it. Some things would be like that heavy furniture, hard to work through but possible with Him and in community, i needed to choose community; I'm a serial isolator (made up word for this context :p), when things get hard, i hide. 

So, i took a step, it looked like just lying on my bed and crying a whole lot, and that's okay, i finally allowed myself, in like forever, to connect with my heart with Him.

Do i feel more hopeful about life stepping into 2017, honestly not really, i still feel a little lost, but i know the One who is Hope and i choose to hold on to Him. 

Are there things you have been holding onto for far too long and need to let go of? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you, hear His invitation to come, trust Him to be with you as you bring it before the Father. He is your Hope. 

1 Peter 1: 3-6 

"3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 

4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 

5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials."

Worship U Days 1-4 :)

"It is not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society, but those who write the songs" - Not sure who said this

We are four days into this school and everyday I stand jaw ajar, gob smacked at the goodness of God. There is a hunger and thirst for the presence of God in this house that is so real and tangible and unlike any environment I have been in before. We've had incredible times of worship, amazing teachings by incredible speakers, but the thing that stands out the MOST for me: The levels of transparency, vulnerability and authenticity, I have never seen in the context of the Church before, it is just so refreshing. For a "Worship School" the greatest lessons (as in every session almost, ha!) taught are about the heart, not your gifts, not your talents, not your abilities but about your heart, your connection to God and relationship with others, this is what drives the heart of this house. My heart is just like "yes Lord, more"! It's just really cool being here. I will post longer once I have processed it all. In the meantime, enjoy some pictures below.

Pretty much Worship everyday

I'm getting to do some fun things like going to the lake, enjoying some authentic American restaurants and convenience stores, meet people from all over the world

It's no longer just a dream

It's almost 01:30am here. Yes I should be asleep, that's the problem with traveling to another country where the time difference is 9hours; you go to bed at 17:30 and wake up at 22:00🙈. Needless to say, I am here. I am here. I.Am.Here. Lol, I'm repeating that more for myself really than for anyone else. With all the endless hours of travel; 36 to be exact, the stress of not missing flight connections, of getting through US customs, of finding my way around the BART system (train), walking through the streets of San Francisco (which is just so stunning, and no I didn't take pictures; too much stress) to find the Greyhound bus station and the bus ride WITH a layover (huh??), uber not working at 1am in a strange city where I don't know another living soul (eek), and finally getting a taxi (it was yellow ☺️ ha!) to my accommodation (phew 😅), i am here! I AM HERE! Haha!

It feels like my heart is just playing catch up as I sit on the bed, under the blankets, of this little dorm room which will be my home for the next two weeks. Deep Breath. It's no longer just a dream. The past few months I've watched as God took a ridiculous, completely out of reach dream in October 2015 when I submitted my application for WorshipU ( I've often wondered if it was just a Tshepi dream or something He put into my heart to dream, I like to think we dreamed together 😊) and made it a reality. Look what He has done. It is no longer just a dream!

I should probably go to sleep now 😋😴

P.S. The last picture is where I will be staying the next two weeks.

Sunrise over Zurich

Flying over San Francisco 

Sunset in San Francisco 

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 :)!