only the broken will be masters at mending...

I was just about to turn 18 when I finished high school, if six months count as ‘just about’. Those days computers were a huge deal. Okay, for me. My folks gathered up some good monies and bought a nameless one with 256MB RAM and 80GB hard disk space, and it was the jewel of our existence. They made one of those comp tables, you know, like with space for the CPU down there and the movable keyboard tray, and basically the picture was complete.

Anyways, after high school I was the only one at home, and I remember sitting there for nights on end. I did nights as late as 6 am, with that dim yellow light and the silence of the night as my friend. Made up for my sleep all morning, I think mum wasn’t very happy. I borrowed three 500-page novels from the library down at the community centre and went through them in less than a week.

Time was all I had, and whenever the inspiration hit I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote about friends, I wrote about home truths, I wrote to Nancy who was still in high school then. In longhand, and delivered them to her this one time I happened to be in Nairobi when she was on half-term. I read everyone but Tom Clancy (I just couldn't). I read Shakespeare; well, tried to anyway. And finally got round to Mills and Boon just for kicks, charm of the formerly forbidden.

I read Joyce Meyer too, and T.D. Jakes and Serita his wife, got started on my own Secret Keeper – a diary to God, something that has shaped my journaling to this day. And I wrote and wrote. It’s sad, my collection passed away with the demise of that computer, over the years I’d summon up a nice collection and it’d be lost in the course of one of my many shiftings. It’s what caused me to start this blog. I can get to them from wherever whenever.

I remember a little bit of what I wrote, I know some of them are in a brown envelope in one of the boxes in one of my many homes; if the fire and mice didn’t get to them first I’ll find them. But that wasn’t my point. I know, 400 words describing ‘not my point’ right? Just be cool. When I left high school I was still a little girl. Prim, proper, sarcastic as heck and tactless, but it was all bluster I guess. I didn’t know a thing. I knew about them, I just didn’t know them.

That’s where I wrote from, from the ideal and black-white world perspective. This guy whose church magazine and blog I wrote for always used to tell me that. But I couldn’t change, I didn’t know anything else. Life began to happen for me in later into campus. It was like, ah…. So that’s what that was like, and so forth.

It wasn’t until after when I went back to my work from then and actually saw these things like that for myself. There’s nothing God can do with a perfect person. I didn’t think I was, I just wasn’t you know, like so-and-so and the things my peers were into. still the same thing. I know Job prayed for me to come back down to earth. And I did. After that it was a pretty messy ride, but it taught me this one thing: only the broken will become masters at mending.

Why did God do all those things to Jesus when He was on earth? You know, take Him through obedience teach Him perfection through suffering, and whatever God was working in Him for 18 years before he was 30? It was because I guess human beings don’t like listening to lectures, they like experiences. You’ll identify more with someone who has walked where you have, it’s fact. You’ll listen to them more than someone pouring text-book knowledge, fact.

I already spoke of that here. But I saw this quote on one of my Thought Catalog runs, and that’s what’s inspired this:

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of their depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross~

I’m not the best person to say this, but I like who I became. That phase made me human. It made me a better friend, a better godmother, a better Christian. When you know just how easy it is to fall out of grace you won’t ever “How could you…” anyone ever again. It’s true that God can use you without having to have ‘a story’, but I think there’s a special graciousness and patience that comes from having been there. You allow people their journeys, their struggles and their stories instead of smacking them on the head with a Bible.

You discover that sometimes being a true friend involves mastering the art of timing. Not everything needs to be corrected now, solved now, sorted now. There is much gain in silence. 

So be a good friend. Shut the heck up.