the not-so-good days

Everyone thinks we make mistakes when we are young, but i don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up

~Jodi Picoult~

It's getting to that point when I'm realising I'm not as grown up as I thought I was... Apparently stupid decisions are not the reserve of children... well said Jodi, well said, that. I am of the opinion that everyone has a wild side they wish they had the courage to follow wherever... For a few weeks I forgot everything and went along with mine... 

I'm sitting on my bed, this cold November evening, exhausted, today was such a long day... two mammoth papers and one more tomorrow morning, sneezing every minute or so from the flu, and just feeling low-down all round... When I was in high school, someone once told me that sometimes when you are so down you can't pray, God raises up people to pray for you on your behalf... And I just feel like that, you know... I feel like "God, what do I even say?" I'm thinking of Kirk Franklin's song, Hold me now, I'm thinking of Still, MaryMary... Of Bebo Norman's So Afraid... i feel like this is it, Lord, You hold me or I fall, this is it...

Where do you run away from the past, where do you run away from the future? I feel like I'm on one long roller-coaster ride, and I just want it to be over... I don't know what lies ahead, sure the challenges grow with age... but i just want this constant nagging headache to be over... I know I made a couple of wrong turns, but is anything so big it cannot be forgiven? i just want this to end, i want it all to be over...

I am so afraid, that I'll find myself alone,

Looking for a Saviour, looking for a home,

I am so afraid, that I'll find myself alone,

Deep into the edges, deep into the foam

So don't leave me here alone, 

Don't leave me here alone...

~Bebo Norman~

#NowPlaying: Enya - Only Time, the next best thing after silence...

My Starry Nights

Friend of mine wrote this poem last year, one of the few true poets I've had the pleasure of interacting with. In recent days, I've found myself reading and reading this poem, for it's beautiful pictures, but more for how adequately it describes what's in my heart.

Every starry night

When the night is clearer than most

I take a glimpse inside

Assess the depths of my heart

When the night breeze blows gentle

And the sky seems to smile

I stretch out from within my depths

And seek that my heart should find an outlet 

Then every starry night

With every single glance inside

I am reminded of the rot within

I am reminded of the concealed wretch.

The crickets fill the night with the songs of their chirping

The stars hear and twinkle in response

The wind skillfully blows out a whistle

And the trees shake their leaves in gleeful dance

My heart hears, my heart sees, my heart feels

Then my heart breaks, it melts to pure flow

For my armorless heart is beaten, stretched to its ends

The raging battles of light and dark left it in shear turmoil

I cry to the Author of this simple peaceful starry night

That its harmonious patterns;

He may instill in the elements of my shambled heart.

Daggy Odipo

yes Sir, i'm fine

Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

Another poem we did back in high school was one called ‘Yes sir, I’m fine’. Something about the gap between the rich and the poor, it was quite satirical, no one’s put it up on the net yet, and I can’t find it right now, I would. So anyway, guy talks about how his boss just had a four course meal, and his car’s a Mercedes Benz etc etc, while he didn’t have any lunch and depends on old worn-out feet to transport him, then he says, ‘But sir, I’m fine’. However I digress.

It’s been a rough couple of days, truth be told, the worst there have been in a long time. But this Saturday evening, as I sit in my bed (which bed I have been in all day), I think, “Yes Sir, I’m fine!” Not because my troubles have miraculously vanished, and the gnawing pain that lodged in my chest all through is gone… the truth about broken hearts is that only time can truly heal… But what started as a bad day is now better, thank God. I know still there will be a few more bad days, a few more tears, a few more lying-in-bed-all-day days, a few more what-was-I-thinking's… But I’m fine. As sure as my Redeemer liveth, I know I will be alright, and though I can’t possibly see how He could right  now, He is working for me behind the scenes, He is lifting away the burdens, and the loads I have clung to even though I couldn’t bear their weight… He is taking all my mourning, He is turning it into dancing, and one day, one day I will stand up before a crowd, and say, “Come magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together…that which the devil meant for my destruction, He has turned into a song...”

My prayer tonight, every word in the 38^th Psalm:

 ¹O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath: neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure.

 ²For Thine arrows stick fast in me, and Thy hand presseth me sore.

 ³There is no soundness in my flesh because of Thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.

 ⁴For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.

 ⁵My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.

 ⁶I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.

 ⁷For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh.

 ⁸I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.

 ⁹Lord, all my desire is before Thee; and my groaning is not hid from Thee.

 ¹⁰My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.

 ¹⁵For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.

 ¹⁶For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me: when my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against me.

 ¹⁷For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.

 ¹⁸For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.

 ²¹Forsake me not, O LORD: O my God, be not far from me.

 ²²Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation.

 Forgive me, Lord... forgive me...

like the sea and its waters...

In my high school days, or rather in my mother's high school days (coincidentally, it was the same school) there was this man who would come to adjudicate during their music festivals and events and what-nots. In my days one of his poems, about my favourite, was part of our coursework. His name's Samuel Waigwa Wachira (yeah, that was to avoid using the tense, I have no idea whether he is still alive given his age when  mum was in high school). In and around 1998 I watched 'My Best Friend's Wedding' (and loooooooooooooooved it!!!) and that was the first time i heard the song "You fill up my senses", just a few lines, but it stuck with me till I was redoing the movie last year and i finally got it for real (thank God for the Internet, though it still took me forever). It was during those witch-hunts, armed with only the last line and a tune distorted by time that ma told me about Waigwa Wachira, that the only time she heard that song was when he sang it at their school back then, i was actually really surprised that she knew the lyrics still, especially cause all i knew was that last line, 'come love me again...'

But I digress, this afternoon I've been thinking and remembering that poem, and I just thought I'd share it. The ladies will probably swoon, the men will probably be amused (guy told me when something makes ladies swoon, it'll probably just amuse them). Nonetheless, any lover of poetry will truly appreciate the candour and simplicity with which this most incredible piece is written. Mr. Wachira, wherever you may be, I wish I had met you, you inspire me...

I have seen the sun rise and set

with a volcanic passion of flaming orange,

And I have thought of a love that once rose and set

like the sun in the sky

I have watched the trees at sunset

And mountains at dusk with purple blankets

And soft clouds of ink,

and softly, I have thought of you.

I have stood on the ferry in the Indian Ocean

And have breathed the sweet scented air

that God gave to the sea

And I have thought of the fragrance of a love that shone so brightly

like the stars in the sky

I have sat barefoot on the rocks by the lake

Wondering what went wrong

Wishing I could hold you

Knowing that I have lost you

Feeling my thoughts fly

 like a bird across the sea

On the lonely wings of love, far…

Far away from home and you

And as I walk the sands of a shore

that out feet used to know

My eyes hurt with unshed tears

My soul turning as the wind calls your name

For I miss you desperately

And I long for you with every breath I take

If I could touch and hold the sun

I’d give it to you

If I could plant flowers in the sand and make them grow

I’d plant them just for you

For I have kissed you when you cried

and tasted the salty blue turbulence of your soul

And if in my turn

I should give up and die

or simply break down and cry

Forgive me lady dear

and help me dry my tears

For it is the cry of the fisherman

After the sea is gone

You are like the sea

and its waters to me

and I have loved you dearly

more dearly than the spoken word can tell…

Like the  sea and its waters - Samuel Waigwa Wachira

time to say goodbye

'Friends are nature's way of apologizing for our family'. it's been said quite a few times. so i found out a friend of mine's gonna be going away, too soon if you ask me. i was just getting used to having you around, you know... Sometimes as you walk life's road there are just places you can't walk alone, and thank God for people like you who just make it all easier. I've never written a whole blog post thing to one person before, its weird telling you all this here, but this way unless the Internet crashes my words will stay forever.
I can't begin to say how much your absence will be felt, but I'm grateful for what few moments the Lord gave us to share. i don't know what people do in situations like this, usually I'm the one leaving, but I figure it would be a nice gesture to give you something to remember me by. Something thought out and honest, something you'd never lose. It was a tall order. i thought of all my prized possessions, but there wasn't anything wonderful enough, nothing that would tell you everything I think.
So then dear friend, I give you my most prized possession: I give you Jesus. I pray that He shall watch over you, and bear you up in His arms. I pray for you with every word in the 20th Psalm. I give you the Friend who sticks closer than a brother, the One whom no ocean can keep away. i place you in the hands of Him who loves you more than I ever could. So long my friend, we shall meet again I know, should it so please the King.
One of my favourite rock bands are the Sidewalk Prophets, and they  sang a song just for a time like this. i pray over you the words of this song

Three in the morning,
And I'm still awake,
So I picked up a pen and a page,
And I started writing,
Just what I'd say,
If we were face to face,
I'd tell you just what you mean to me,
I'd tell you these simple truths,

Be strong in the Lord and,
Never give up hope,
You're going to do great things,
I already know,
God's got His hand on you so,
Don't live life in fear,
Forgive and forget,
But don't forget why you're here,
Take your time and pray,
These are the words I would say,


From one simple life to another,
I will say,
Come find peace in the Father,

Five years from now, hope you'll still remember me ;))))))))))

a tribute to Faith Nancy, aka Sweetie, gone too soon

Death and grief are little things. They are transient. Life must be before death and joy before grief, else there are no such things as death or grief. These are only negatives, life is positive. Death is only the absence of life, just as night is the absence of day, and if this is so, there is no such thing as death. 

Frank Norris - The Octopus: A Story of California

I don't know exactly who that Frank fella is, I'd like to know where he was coming from when he said those things, if he was just speaking theory or if he really did know true grief, that caused by the loss of someone close. An old school mate, Faith Nancy, passed away on Saturday in a car accident, they lay her to rest on Friday. Death is not something I have met often, thank God, but every time it comes around I find myself asking the very basic questions.

In a copy of True Love, about three years ago I read Carole Mandi's story. She was the then editor of True Love, now she's a publisher of that group of magazines: True Love, Adam and a few others i don't know. So anyway, Carole's daughter died when she was five, after some long complicated illness, I even remember her name, Misuka (and was she pretty!!!). I still remember Carole's words as she spoke of her, "A mother should never have to bury her child". If ever there was a scale of pain, I think this ranks way up there. And I don't think it matters how old they were, even if they were just a few months old, even if it was a miscarriage. One of my aunts lost her daughter when she was three years old, more than thirty years ago, and even to-date, whenever she speaks of her she says that not a day goes by that she does not think of her daughter: how old she'd be now, what she'd be like, who she'd be married to... No mother should ever have to bury their daughter.

As I think of Sweetie, I feel sad, for her mother greater than anyone else. I love how Mary Morand 'Sofine', puts it in her Motherhood - It will change your life. See, I have known the Lord, I know that God is love, and that in all things He is working for our good, everything He does is driven by His love. It doesn't make processing this any easier. She had a two year old chubby angel called Lasoi, and Faith's passing is supposed to be for her good. It's for her mother's good as well... I really want to question, I really want to ask why, I really want to know how it could possibly be for Lasoi's good, this her mum's passing. Frank Norris isn't helping. And if I feel this way, how must her mother feel? How will Lasoi feel when she's old enough to understand?

We make all our plans as though we hold the future, can we do anything but? But when all out of nowhere death calls, when the Lord calls home someone we thought would live forever, what does that say about our mortality?

...and you learn to build all your roads on today,

Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans

and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight

...and you learn that you really can endure-

that you really are strong

and you really do have worth

and you learn and learn...

With every goodbye you learn.

Veronica Shoffstall - After a While

Farewell Sweetie, I believe there is a plan bigger than all of us. I don't know the plan, but I do know the Planner, and I may not understand His ways, but I trust Him to do the best for all of us. I trust the love that He commended toward us, Christ dying for us while we were yet sinners. In His time, He shall cause all these things to be beautiful...

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom

Psalms 90:12

death by hunger in this age?

I've never been politically inclined, the first vote I cast was last year during the referundum for a new constitution, and at next year's general election I don't even have an idea about who I'm going to vote for. But of late, thanks to my adamant-about-news-hour peers I've began to watch news, and the things that are going on!!!
It's a most painful death, dying of hunger, and today I saw people literally dying of hunger, and here we are making ugali and discarding whatever's left of it without a second thought. It's a wonder just how much we have been taught to ignore, to miss, how we can walk past that man sitting with a bowl on the street, how we can watch the news, blame our politicians and then go to bed and sleep sound. Now, I'm new into this having-a-political-opinion thing, but I think those people in government have always been, forgive me not, douchebags, they've always looked out for themselves and, but for divine intervention, shall continue to do so for a while. But like my good friend Iddi says, we're just as self-seeking. A nation is its people, we elect those douchebags, we gnash our teeth at them but then give them our vote next time they come back to ask for it, because the other candidate doesn't belong to the right gender, or tribe, or party. Once in a while, a new kid moves to the block, all fiesty, as Ababu Namwamba did, then the older kids threaten and/or buy their silence, and the vicious cycle begins. And secretly, we all wish for our chance to "eat". Because, as the Bible says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, no one can truly know it except the Lord Himself. You may want to say that if you went there you wouldn't do that, but I don't think that's really true. It's hard to turn down a bribe when everything's falling apart and you know your next month's payslip's going to read some negative value. Even if, like me, your greatest need as yet is a pair of shoes in every colour imaginable (especially pink). It's human, and we do need to be saved from ourselves.
Well, that we need salvation was not the point I was going to make, it's my point every time, but anyway, I don't think counting on our leaders to sort our country out may not bear fruit now, especially with elections coming up in a year. It's gotta start with me. I'm not particularly crazy about Bob Collymore, but what they've done with the Kenyans4Kenya, giving us an opportunity to help with whatever little we can, they've done well. I only wish I was able to do more. But I can do more, I can pray, because this country really needs healing that only the Lord can give.
So I'm going to take a stand, I'm going to stand in the gap on behalf of this nation. Christ made the vilest men clean, there is no situation so grave that His blood didn't already cover it. God will heal our land, He will restore our soil, He will send rain and the awesome part is that He doesn't really need the government to be on His side. Especially now that the government spokeman claims that this whole people dying of hunger thing is "the media exaggerating" gava haijui vitu kaa hizo (the govt is not aware). Jehovah sees, Jehovah knows. And so, with the words of David I pray

 ¹ Unto You I lift up my eyes,
         O You who dwell in the heavens.
 ² Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters,
         As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
         So our eyes look to the LORD our God,
         Until He has mercy on us.         
 ³ Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us!
         For we are exceedingly filled with contempt.

Psalm 123, NKJV

a little ways down the road

There's this couple I saw on telly a few days back. They were really old (87 and 83), and get this, they had been married for 66 years!! Sixty six, imagine that! Even more impressive, she was enrolled in college taking some course or other, seriously HOW COOL IS THAT?!! But I got to thinking about my own marriage, something that in recent days happens more often than I'd like. These two looked beautiful, it's that picture we all want to be when we're eighty-some, sitting on the couch reminiscing about back in the day or even just saying nothing at all, just being.
Anyhow, Lady got married at 17, and as it stands I'm already five years behind her clock if ever I wanted to get to my 66th weding anniversary while still in full control of my cranial faculties ;) and even as we speak my prospects don't (yet) look too good ;)) Still, it don't stop me from dreaming, and hoping. After all, the Bible does say that hope does not disappoint, no?
I'd like to be 85 and taking a college course in something or other, still upright (literally and otherwise), still fiesty (Bless the Lord that He desires a meek and quiet spirit in a woman, but not necessarily a meek and quiet mouth!! ;)) And should it so please the King, still married to the same man I married in my youth. I'd love to  be going around the world with him, preaching  the love of Christ to those still unreached, being a mother to many sons and daughters in the faith, speaking words of grace unto those whose souls have been worn out by the storms of life.
If it pleases the King, I'd like, at the end of the day,  when tired from all the action, to retire to our home and rest with my husband,  listening to that boy go on and on passionately speaking of his dreams and ideas like he's 30 all over again, and to tell him that while they're the craziest ideas ever thought up, I still believe in him!! I'd like us to attend our great-grandchild's wedding, and to dance with him to some sweet old country number like "Love has been a friend to me" by Julio Eglesias. I'd like to still be flexible enough to get on my knees and pray for them; my children, and grandchildren and even their future generations.
And yes, should the Lord tarry in coming, and our time comes to enter into His rest, if the King so desires, I hope we go home together. Barring that, much as I may want to swallow these words come the day, I hope the Lord calls him home first. Knowing how clueless men can be, the picture of him trying to find out where I used to keep everything, trying to fix himself a meal or do his own laundry, sew a button.... well, I'd just wish he never has to. So, if the Lord so pleases, this is my desire. He says to delight in Him, and He shall give me the desires of my heart (Ps 37:4) and to commit my way unto Him with trust and He shall bring it to pass (vs 5)
So, yeah, dear Lord, these are my desires, insofar as they are Your will for me. Look upon them with many kindnesses (and also, I suppose, much much patience!!!)

Don't just do something, stand there!!!

During the second world war, there was this lady called Cornelia Ten Boom. She was a Dutch Christian, and she harboured many Jews during the Holocaust, saving an estimated 800 of them. She never married, but lived with her dad and sister in the house that came to be known as "The hiding place". Anyway, that was hardly my point. Corrie, in the course of her endeavours, suffered so much loss, including that of her father who passed away ten days after their arrest and detention at the infamous concentration camps, as well as her sister, brother and nephew. She said:

Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.

Who better to say something like that to you than the woman who almost lost everything? Like the woman who sheltered Anne Frank, Corrie's family was rutted out to the Gestapo, who amazingly, never found the six Jews the family was sheltering at the time behind a false wall in Corrie's room. After hard times at the concentration camp, where her family died, she was set free in what turned out to be a clerical error on the part of the Gestapo, since all women her age were killed a week after she had been released. About which she only says, "There is no panic in heaven!! God has no problems, only plans". Seriously, how cool was that woman??!!
I've been reading this book Lady in Waiting by Jackie Kendall and Debbie Jones. Yes, it's about mariage and yes, I'm a little too young, but more than its being about marriage it's about my relationship with Christ. It's about becoming the right woman, becoming the Woman of Excellence God created me to be ASIDE from every other variable: husband, family et al. The biggest lesson I've learnt in that book is patience. We live in a world where all efforts are going towards getting everything now: microwaves, faster cars, faster planes, computers with more powerful processors and bigger RAMs so you can do everything simultaneously faster, faster internet, name it. And having been sucked in to this concept waiting is a foreign thing to me, yet the Bible is full of verses about waiting on the Lord, from Isa 40:31 to Lam 3:26-28 to many more.
But I think the only reason we don't want to wait, the only reason we'd rather be doing something to get us where we want to be is that we have believed the lie satan feeds us over and over again, "God helps those who helps themselves'. Probably one of the biggest heresies of all times. Where did He ever tell anyone, "Just do what you're able to, then I'll pick up from there"? There's this verse in Isaiah:

I am the LORD: that is My name: and My glory I will not give to another, neither My praise to graven images (42:8)

God's not going to kick in when you do what you can then reach your end. See, the glory's gotta be aaall His!! Corrie says that you can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have. For as long as you have a fallback plan, God will let you work it. But as soon as you come to your end, and have done all you know to do and are stuck, with Him as your only option, that's the time He'll come through, proving Himself to you in ways you never even thought possible. But first, you've got to wait.You've got to stand still. And I think it takes more energy to stand still.  So we want to cling to our little treasure boxes, we want to gather around ourselves hoards of things that can 'give us security', so that in times of danger, we'll be alright. But that doesn't work either, it doesn't keep us when the rainy days come. The peace that Corrie had, the grace to forgive her father's killers and to give her food and time and kindness to the other prisoners in the camps, that didn't come from some storehouse within. She says (of the man who came to ask her for forgiveness concerning her father's death):

Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.

The best thing you can ever do is to wait on the Lord. I'll conclude with another of Corrie's lines:

Dear Jesus...how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here!!

eighteen till i die

I was seventeen years old the first time I started seriously writing. Before that I knew I had a lot to say, I just didn't want to say it to anyone. I used to love writing compositions in primary school, even though no matter how good it got the teacher never gave me any more than 28 out of 40 "so as not to make any of us vain and complacent". It worked, I read anything and everything I could, I got new words and I applied them and got better. Then I cleared high school and went to college to pass time before I was due to go to campus, and I began to write seriously. That year my work was published  for the first time ever. It was just a small mag read by a few people but still, it was a huge deal for me. I began to write in earnest, about everything. Back then (like 5 years ago) we had one of those off-white unbranded comps with 256MB RAMs and 60GB hard disk space. I was doing IT so everyone agreed that the comp should come to school with me. I sat in front of that machine every night till late, I wrote and wrote and wrote. Eighteen years' worth. I still have most of the stuff I wrote back then, I read them once in a long while, and it's like I don't even who that girl is. I went and became that person I used to passionately dislike -  the conformist. It took me such a short time too.
Theodore Roosevelt said once:

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Maybe that 'Eighteen till I die' guy had a point.Of all the years of my life, I miss being 18 the most. I only hope that Joy-18 is not lost to me for good, she was maybe the best version of me yet: passionately confused, stubborn, starry-eyed and naive. I hope to meet her someday soon. When I was younger I thought in black and white. It was either wrong, or it was right. Then I started to grow up, and all that gray set in. Problem is, now I see no black or white anymore, only a darker or lighter shade of gray. I can see the letter past Joy wrote to future Joy: Every song ends but that's no reason not to enjoy the music. Past Joy wanted to become an interior designer slash wedding planner slash fashion designer slash outside caterer, present Joy's a biochemist with great fashion sense. Playing it safe. Where did past Joy go, and who is this I have become? Yeah, I was a bit starry-eyed, and I believed in too many movies, but at what point did the cynicism become so deep-seated that it's my reflex response? If sixteen year old Joy met me, would she even know me? Am I wiser, or am I just more scared of risk?

i want a heart that forgives

I had a friend once, one of those people you just know are supposed to be your friend forever. She was as good as they came. Maybe she didn't have it all figured out, who does anyhow, but she always tried. Most of the time she didn't make it, but she would try again. All the odds were stacked against her, that one, and I mean every single one of them. She is perhaps one of the greatest people I know. Then one day we had a misunderstanding. I may not have been all right, but she was wrong, so anyhow we stopped talking. She was one of those people, I know she had a few friends, but almost none of them were available when she neeeded them to be, so almost always I was worried about her, with little I could do. I think about her, more often than I'd like,because I still worry. Love is not a switch you can just turn off. At the time we stopped talking I was so convinced that I was right, that I was justified, but now I'm just thinking, "Does it really matter?" 
Last Sunday in church we were learning about Jesus Christ's death, and the things He went through just before He died. He was betrayed by Peter, and before I just looked at that at face value, so I learnt something new. Of all His disciples, only Peter was over 30, like Him. In their time, anyone under 30 could not have inherited property, didn't pay tax and was not allowed to testify in court. So when Jesus was arrested, only Peter could have spoken out on His behalf. Imagine that, being denied by one of your best friends, the only one who could save your hide. I cannot imagine the extent of such pain, my disagreement with my friend dims a millionfold in comparison.
I ran into Kevin LeVar's song by chance, but it has got such powerful words that song. I want a heart that forgives:

I want a heart that forgives
A heart full of love
One with compassion just like Yours above
One that overcomes evil with goodness and love
Like it never happened, never holding a grudge
I want a heart that forgives that lives and lets live
One that keeps loving over and over again
One that men can’t offend
Because Your Word is within
One that loves without price, like You Lord Jesus Christ
I want a heart that loves everybody....even my enemies

I want to love like You, be like You, just like You did
I want a heart that forgives,

I want a heart that forgives!
When the ones that are closest, that I’ve known the longest, hurt me the most;
I still wanna love them just like You love me
Even though I’m hurting
I want a heart that forgives
When the pain is so deep, it’s so hard to speak, about it to anyone
Just like Your Son, I give up my right to hold it against them with hatred inside
I want a heart that loves everybody....even my enemies...

Those cliched people say that those who are closest to you more often hurt you the most. And betryal isn't easy to forget. But that pain, Jesus felt it too. And He gave up His right to hold it against them. I should too. Maybe she was wrong, maybe I was right, but the heart that loves like Jesus, it doesn't really care about that. Jesus didn't. And because He didn't neither should I. I should call her, my friend, I should call her.

i cannot love you

I love you,

In your eyes I see your soul

And the love in their depths astounds me

Your smile, it makes my heart skip

It skips and skips and skips

I love you, though I must not love you

But my palms sweat in anticipation

Every time you walk into a room

Of its own volition, heart runs to you

And I stop breathing…

For a moment I stand, frozen in time…

I’m lost in your gaze

I love you, yet I should not love you

Lila na fila havitangamani

Miye lila, nawe fila

Itakuaje kwenda njia moja?

But against all reason,

Defying all sentiment

You light a fire under my feet,

And with just one touch

I lose every train of thought

I forget everything but you

I love you, but I cannot love you

Because I love you too much

I cannot love you even though

Every time my feet set to walking

They’re going towards you

Every time my lips are parted

It’s your name they continually utter

I cannot love you

I have to leave you

Though I know I will die without you

I know my life is meaningless apart from you

And my love, I hope you understand

I hope one day you will forgive me

For walking away without turning

Even though every step I take is one mile long

Forgive me my love

Because I had to go

How can I tell them my child is white?

How can I explain this... what we have?

Believe me love, it was the only way

If they had killed my child, our child,

They would have killed me as well

I pay my dues everyday,

I die for my sins everyday,

My heart aches for you

My tears have run dry

For though I cannot love you, my heart won’t listen

So love, still love, I love you…

My first complete poem in over a year. It is, for the record,, not based on a true story. ;))) It just reminds me of my younger days in more ways than one

if the foundations be destroyed...

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Ps 11:3

Earlier this evening I set out to do some sudoku puzzle, that very involving logic puzzle. So I was just about done, and was feeling very proud, when I discovered I had just input the same digit twice in one line, all logic leading until that point had seemed rock solid,  I could not see why the math was not coming together , so I had to erase the whole thing and start from scratch. Of course I decided that my life does not really depend on this here one puzzle, and I lay it aside for more constructive self-driven activities.

Nevertheless it got me thinking about this whole state I found myself in – the whole being stuck in the middle. The resemblance to the puzzle I was doing was astounding. The game, for those unfamiliar, is a 9 by 9 square puzzle, so it has 9 rows, 9 columns and nine 3 by 3 smaller squares. The objective is to fill up those squares with the numbers 1 to 9 such that all digits appear once in every row, every column and every 3 by 3 square. It’s purely a game of logic. So back to my earlier point, I discovered that maybe when I started out, I may have been logically sound in my reasoning, following the clues I’d been given -  in the puzzle they give you a few numbers to get you going. But somewhere along the way, and I don’t know where exactly, some flawed logic found its way in. And so, from that point, no matter  how correct the inferences may have been, the answers, the decisions made, the conclusions drawn, none of them could have been correct, because they were based on wrong data in the first place. And when that happens, it’s easier to just erase it all and take it up from the start, moving once again from what’s known to the unknown, this time with the advantage of hindsight.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? So it turns out that the solution to all my dilemmas is really very simple: take it from the top. It’s always the simple commands that are the hardest to obey though. But like a wise man I have come to greatly rely on in recent times said:

The Lord will not go after you, He will not plead, but every time He meets you on that point He will simply repeat, “If you really mean what you say, those are the conditions, sell all you have. Turn it all over to me.” Undress yourself before God of everything that might be a possession, until you are a mere conscious human being, then give God that.

It turns out it isn’t as much an issue of “How close can I get to my surrender without losing all control” as much as it is an issue of how yielded I’m willing to be, how capable I am of losing all control, how willing I am to give up my right to own myself (which is indeed rightfully mine) for the “goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”. It’s the ability to say, like Paul, everything is permissible, everything is lawful, but not everything is beneficial, not everything is expedient, I will not be brought under the power of any. Others may, but I can’t. Now, that right there, that is the real foundation. That is where the math must begin.

somewhere in the middle you'll find me

Many times, like every other writer I've got a lot to say, so much that sometimes I don't even know how to begin. That is usually the way of it. So I sit here tonight, buried in the midst of all that usual mumbo jumbo... but maybe today I can sift through it and try and make sense of this non-sense.

Casting crowns sang that 'Somewhere in the middle' song, and right now sioni how else I can describe the state I'm in, because their words just seem to fit the bill so perfectly, I wonder how many people out there understand this:

Somewhere between the hot and the cold
Somewhere between the new and the old
Somewhere between who I am and who I used to be
Somewhere in the middle, You'll find me


Somewhere between the wrong and the right
Somewhere between the darkness and the light
Somewhere between who I was and who You're making me
Somewhere in the middle, You'll find me


Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control...

 There are times I'm sure I've got a little bit of it  figured out, but over the past few weeks I've started to feel like I'm drowning under all the pressure of who my friends think I should be, what I should be putting on my head, what I should be listening to... It's all so jumbled up... Should I just conform without conviction, is God using them maybe and I'm just too stubborn to listen, what is it that everyone wants of me? I don't want to pretend that I don't care what people think, I do, certain people can shutter me with just one sentence. I'm probably a little more liberal than your average Christian, especially with stuff like clothes, music,, the works. And I feel stuck in the middle of both ends: extreme conformation (but I'm still in the world, aren't I?) or being lukewarm (that doesn't get me very far)... It's all so very confusing!! Like them, I find myself stuck somewhere in the middle, and with all my heart I wish things were just a little bit clearer. Maybe it's all wrong, all of it. Maybe all my foundations,the basis of all my arguments are wrong... But if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

nobody said it was easy

I learnt this lesson about five minutes ago: things are never what they seem. Sometimes this is a good thing. It is better to think of something as bad only to find out it was good, than to think of something as really out of this world, only to find that it is, but not in the direction you thought. I was hoping for something, something I hoped for a long time ago, so long I even forgot, then all out of nowhere it was as though it was coming to me, but then as I learnt five minutes ago, things are never what they seem. What I saw was a mirage, the closer I got to it, the farther away it seemed to move.

I love books, I love the vastness of the world they represent, the power an author has to transform the world using one story, sometimes not even a whole big one, sometimes even just a 700 word story. I love poetry, the undiscovered rhymes and rhythms, the tales, the music hidden in those words. And because I love these things, I have loved writing since I could hold a pen. I used to have a little book of poems when I was in primary, on its cover I put my name as an alias, just in case someone ever found it and found out how I think. In high school I got another pink book, I wrote poems in it, about love and the strange imaginings of a sixteen year old mind. I loved Okoth p'Bitek, and those funny poems of his we did as part of course work, so sometimes I tried to write like Okoth. This time I showed my little pink book to my three closest friends, after some long internal battle. Then I went to some college, and an editor friend of mine saw it, thought it nice. That was the first time the world ever knew what i thought. I was never more scared. But still I wrote, because if these things stay in the head, they threaten one's sanity. 

Last year my little pink book got lost, and a part of me went with  it, a few of my words, a few of my rhymes. I haven't written a single poem since. And those things I mentioned, they are threatening my sanity. my mind is full of half-constructed thoughts, my document folder full of unfinished work and my life seems like one big puzzle.I took on this blog six months ago, hoping that I would never turn it into another stage I act upon. There's supposed to be a lot of safety in masses, especially masses of people I may never know. But this too has become a stage, and so I have been omitting most of the things I would rather be speaking about.I've got to go back to the beginning, I've got to take it from the top. I've got to get down to the heart of the matter, try and finish those thoughts that lie half done threatening to overwhelm me. I've gotta figure out how to untangle this web. I've gotta be honest with myself. That's where the math is.

That mirage I was chasing, I'm still hopeful. What's a man without his hope? I very well know it may never be mine, but I suppose this is better than nothing at all. Playing in my head: Coldplay - The Scientist:

I was just guessing at numbers and figures

Pulling the puzzles apart

Questions of science, science and progress 

Do not speak as loud as my heart...

especially in my own home, where i long to act as i should

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. And they shall say to the elders of his city, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious;he will not obey our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so shall you put away the evil from among you...

Deuteronomy 21:18-21

I've been thinking about this verse for some time now. It was a very interesting law, not because they stoned them peoples who were gluttonous and drunkards ;))) , but what intrigues me most is how parents were required to kill, so to speak,their child. I know from my mum that a parent's worst fear is that of having to bury their own child. But now in this they are to actually kill him! Imagine that!

Yesterday I watched the movie 'The Freedom Writers' , decidedly the most dopest movie I have watched in a long time. This is a story of teenagers growing up in the hood, where the kids handled guns on a daily basis, and you could be shot for being the wrong colour of skin. the black shot the whites, the Hispanics shot the blacks, and no one cared about justice, only about 'their own'. People got put away for crimes they did not commit, because the star witness was protecting the real perp. It was never about justice, only that someone had to pay, it didn't matter who. I've grown up sheltered from all kinds of crap, so I can't speak with much authority on the subject, but I have friends who've grown up in the ghettos (of  course in Kenya it's probably not that bad). Still, trying to educate those kids was a tall order for anyone, of what good is good grammar to a child who may never get to school tomorrow morning? And at thirteen, fourteen years of age, kids have already learnt hate, are already in gangs, and have already lost three or four friends to gang violence. How do you teach kids like that, what do you say to them to make it all better? How do you bring sense to a situation which has no sense? How do you stop the Hispanic from punching the black student in class? But Erin Gruwell, a white 24 year old school teacher, full of vigour and life, was able to do it, she made a difference. She invested her life in them, those hopeless teenagers who hated her on sight, because she was white, she taught them good grammar and tenses, and she taught them life. She did the impossible: she earned their respect, all of them. I cried when I watched this movie, it's just one of those stories. But that may not have been my point.

One of the young men in that class, Marcus, his mum threw him out when he joined a gang. How do you bring up straight-shooting children in an environment like that? How do you teach them justice, when they see their father being carried away for someone else's crime? How do you teach them to have faith, growing up homes where the next meal was a miracle? How do you unteach them violence, and retaliation, kids who, at sixteen, had seen more dead bodies than a mortician, most of them of people they knew? But that's how they were brought up. While 'normal' kids are taught how to ride bikes by their dads, these kids were taught boxing, how to handle a gun. They were taught that nobody's innocent. 

I'm now trying to get my hands on the Freedom Writer's Diary, the real book (the movie was based on a true story) I don' think I have ever been affected this much by a story. I keep thinking about my kids, about how hard it might be to bring up kids, even in the best environment. Sometimes you can do everything right, and still... Sometimes I may have to be the one to pick up the first stone... Like David, all I can say is 

I will try to walk a blameless path, but how I need Your help, especially in my own home, where I long to act as I should!

Psalms 101:2

i'm nothing without You

Michael W. Smith's song, "Grace' from the album, 'A New Hallelujah' speaks volumes to me. I never understood what it meant to be lost and without hope. Not too long ago I seriously considered getting into trouble, just so I could have a before and after story like so many of us. You know when you know what the 'other side' is like, when God takes you out of there, you really don't want to go back. He who has been forgiven much loves much. But when, like me, you were brought up in a Christian home and have never known the other side of the great divide, sometimes it's easy to forget just how much you have need the Lord. Yeah, definitely I had issues, what most people would call 'small' issues. But I always knew I could figure it all out, and get myself out of any mess unscathed. And most of the time I actually did. Until I got myself into one big trap. Trouble found me, and it went downhill from there. When I went to Him, I was lost, lost and hopeless. And then came Michael W Smith's song, and for the first time I saw myself for what I really am, a wretched and evil piece of clay, who received God's grace somehow. And maybe I have not fully understood that, but I pray daily, that I might not fall into the trap of self righteousness, just because I was rescued from the before-after scenario. for me, that in itself is enough of a testimony, and Lord, Let that be enough. Amen.

10 THINGS I WANNA SAY TO A BLACK WOMAN

Joshua Bennett

1.    I wish I could put your voice in jar, wait for those lonely winter nights when I forget what God sounds like, run to the nearest maximum security prison and open it. Watch the notes that bounce off the walls like ricocheted bullets, punching keyholes into the sternums of every brother in the room, skeletons opening, rose blossom beautiful to remind you that the way to a black man’s heart is not through his stomach, it is through the heaven in your ‘hello’; the echo of unborn galaxies that pounces forth from your vocal cords, that melts ice grills into oceans, baptizing our lips, and so harsh words fade from our memories, and we forget why we stopped calling you divine in the first place.

2.       When I was born my mother’s smile was so bright, it knocked the air from my lungs, and I haven’t been able to breathe right since. It’s something about the way light dances off your teeth, the way the moon gets jealous when you mock her crescent figure with the shape of your mouth. Queen, you make the sky insecure, self-conscious for being forced to stare at your face every morning and realize that the blues of her skin was painted by that symphony doing cartwheels on your tongue.

3.       Who else can make kings out of bastards, turn a fatherless Christmas into a floor full of gifts and a kitchen that smells like the Lord is coming tomorrow, and we must eat well tonight. I used to think my sister was a blacksmith, the way she baked fire and metal and made kitchen miracles at fourteen, making enough food to feed a little boy who didn’t have the words to say how much she meant to him back then, or enough backbone to say so the day he turned twenty.

4.       Your skin reminds me of everything beautiful I have ever known: the colour of ink on a page, the earth we walk on and the cross that hung my Saviour.

5.       I’ve seen you crucified too, spread out on billboards to be spiritually impaled by millions of men with eyes like nails, who made mothers of your daughters; so I’m sorry for the music deals, for Justin Timberlake at the Superbowl, and that young man on the corner this morning, who made you undershade your flesh and become invisible. Never doubt, he only insults you because, men are confused. Now we are trained to destroy or conquer everything we see from birth.

6.       If I ever see Don Imus in public I will punch him in the face, one time for every member of the Rutgers and Tennessee Women Basketball Teams. Then I’ll show him a picture of Phylicia Rashad, Assata Shakur, Arthur Kit, my mother, my grandmother and my seven-year-old niece, who’s got eyes like firebombs, and then dare him to tell me that black women are only beautiful in one shade of skin.

7.       You are like a sunrise in a nation at war; you remind people that there is always something worth waiting up to.

8.       When we are married I will cook, do the dishes and whatever else it takes to let you know that traditional gender roles have no place in the home we build; so my last name is an option, babysitting the kids a treat we split equally, and our bed will be an ancient temple where I construct altars of wax on the small of your back. We make love like the sky is falling, moving to the rhythm of bedsprings and Bell Biv DeVoe. Angels applauding in unison, saying this is the way it was meant to be.

9.        My daughter will know her father’s face from the day she is born, and I can only pray that the superman complex lasts long enough for me deflect the pain this world will aim at her from the moment she is old enough to realize that the colour brown is still not considered human most places. But my daughter will have a smile like a wheelchair, and so even when I am at my worst, when the Kryptonite of this putrid planet threatens to render me grounded, the light dancing off of her teeth, will transform the shards of my broken body into heart-shaped blackbirds, taking flight on a wing that reminds me of my Saviour’s hands, my daughter’s smile, my mother’s laugh when I was in her womb.

10.   Never stop pushing, this world needs you now more than ever...

to feel or not to feel...

Yesterday at service came a man with his son. The boy looked like he was around eight years old, but i couldn't tell exactly. His arms were clutched around his heart, his face was mostly expressionless. I thought he must be the saddest little boy I'd seen in a long time. His hands could not stretch, there was something wrong in his elbow joint. So he walked all of those years in his life with his hands clutched around his heart. Being that his father was hardly able to make ends meet, it was likely that the boy couldn't go to school, couldn't play, or do any of the things boys his ages should be doing. My heart broke.For the first time in a while I wanted to ask God why such things happen to poor innocent people.

But we see them everyday. The beggar on the street walking on all fours, the man in the wheelchair selling sweets. We see them, but we do not see. We have become so numb to other people's pain. We walk along looking straight ahead, consoling ourselves with shallow words, "I can't help them all", "They should find something to do". That way we can make their problems all about us, and sleep easy at night. True, there have been those who have preyed on the humanity of others with false disabilities, walking around with crutches in the daylight, or until chaos ensue. Crutches long forgotten, "ghafla bin vuu, wananunua pujo nambari mguu niponye" as my Swahili teacher would say. And one too many I'm afraid.

Still, I'd like to go back to that time when parents didn't exploit their children and send them begging, if it ever existed. I'd like to be able to help a beggar on the street because they actually need it, not see the same guy walking at night and spending my former money on alcohol. And though I may be mostly sarcastic and no-nonsense faced, deep down my heart isn't as strong. No matter how much I try to close my eyes and pretend they are not there, I can't shut them out, and I can't do much about it at the moment. And I feel...

I do not deserve the life I now live. I remember when I was talking about the good lady who stole from us I said I saw myself in her, and I had no idea why. So i sat and thought about the life I now live, the schools I've been in, probably ranking as some of the best schools in the country. But what if I, being me, was born to some woman in the village out of wedlock. I could be smart, but how much chance would I have, going to the local village school where the best student would never manage half the mark in the national exam, if I would be lucky enough to just finish primary school, that is. I'd probably not go to school a week every month when "the visitors" came. Or I'd be married off early to cut on costs. The only difference between me and her was where I was born, because Lydia was probably smarter than many people I'd ever met.

I can never understand His ways, His purposes, I don't know why things turn out as they do, why a loving God would allow so much pain to go unchecked. It's easy for me to say "Suffering exists to cause us to turn our eyes on Him", but when I don't have food, and no money, and no education or means, sitting at my doorstep helplessly watching my children cry because they are hungry, will I say the same thing? God help me, I don't want to ever be that person who can look at pain and never see, I don't want to grow cold and dead inside. It may break my heart over and over, but I'd rather that, it'll drive me to do something, and then, even if it's just for one person, I could perhaps make the world a little better a place to live in. God help me.

you don't know the cost of the oil in my alabaster box

Have you ever met those people who are so sure they know everything there is to know about everything? Now there are those who do, those are fun to listen to, like listening to  a geek going on excitedly about something or other i probably will never get Then there are those who are just plain annoying, propagating ignorance with such a sense of righteousness in their own eyes.
I'm one of those people refer to as plus-size, thank God for development and activists, before i was just "fat'. At some point this was something i definitely minded, but in recent years after it was concluded that it was not going to go away, I daresay it's now a thing I don't completely dislike about me. Every so often though there comes a few crude Kenyans who test this resolve. Yes, you know who I mean, those who not only call me 'fat', that's a good word, the Swahili word they use is far much worse, 'mzito' translated 'heavy'. The picture drawn in my head when I hear that word is a 90kg sack of maize slumped against a wall. I'm talking about those people who insist on asking you really rude questions that are none of their business, like "Huwa unaenda gym?" (Do you go to the gym?) Those who assume that you automatically eat a whole lot, "Uko sure utashiba?" and when you don't they assume you are on some kind of a diet, "ama unajaribu ku-slim?" (Are you full, or are you trying to be slim?) It's worse when you skip the meal altogether!
I like to think we're in a new season where everyone is allowed to be who they are. But that aside, in any case, what should give you the right to make someone feel bad just because you got thin genes. My mum says as long as they still make clothes that fit well then there is no problem. You don't know where people have come from,  you do not know what they have overcome to be able to stand up straight. i like Cece's version of Mary's story, you don't know the cost of the oil in my alabaster box. Before you try to point fingers and claim I am wasting it, take time and find out its cost.