that genius woman Imelda and my version of adult school

I am blogging now. And because I have decided to write, all those fancy ass thoughts I always have floating around have disappeared. Sucks when they do that no? I wake up in the mornings and get started on my allotment for the day from Martin. If I’m lucky he sent them yesterday which means I got started. Not writing, thinking. Sometimes though I am unlucky, and I have to wait until the morning to think, research and write.

Somehow I don’t like that. I like to stew with work  at the back of my mind, get it mellowed down like fine wine that’s been allowed to breathe (I dunno since I teetotal totally and all, but I hear that’s what people do) and then sit down and print those 4000 words in less than three hours. Unless, again, they’re 1000-worders and above, then I just get bored and cry instead. I don’t cry, but I feel like it.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, so after work it’s time to fix dinner for Colin and then head out to school. Accounting school. Don’t ask how I got there, because the best answer I can come up with is usually a shrug. First I was doing it for the guys as DT&T, but after they totally snubbed me the answer changed to “*shrug*, because why not”.

It was easy in Sec 1 and 2, probably because I did no reading at all until the last month. But this time I thought I might do things differently, so I registered for class. That helps I guess, but Sec 3&4 are real work; the threats from everyone don’t help. I keep telling myself it’s just for fun and I shouldn’t worry, but easier said.

I’ve always gotten through school by sheer adrenaline. Allow me to explain. I’ll attend class (skive a few for no reason at all other than who attends 100% of classes. Or it’s Friday, or Tuesday), and proceed to forget about it until the exam is in a day or two. Then I’ll pick up my book, leaf through the first few pages and wait for the night before the exam. Then I’ll read and understand everything, only to discover that there isn’t enough time to read and understand everything. So I’ll cross my fingers and hope to pass. And thankfully, pass. Not with flying colors, because that’s for those guys who go to the library and stuff, but good enough to maintain the family standard.

I’ll explain further. My mother recently graduated from campus. She enrolled in a distance learning program to do Psychology Counselling (Counselling Psychology?), because you know, self-actualization. The bairns are out of the nest so what’s a girl to do? She had First Class Honors. Nobody in the family got that before. Even us guys who did full-time studying. But I have decided not to walk down that road. Because that woman Imelda is a genius. Or a lucky non-genius.

For four years I watched her come home from school with modules, grumbling about how the exams screwed her over a good one, and how ‘this time’ she’d start reading early because she never wants to go through it again. Once last year when dad was still in hospital and she had exams she punched a tout inside a Latema Sacco. Right in the face. It was an awkward girl punch, but she absolutely did.

Anyway, soon, she would abandon all good intentions until she was due to be in school in two weeks. Then she would magically remember the seven term papers she had to write and stay in the office until 8pm every night. And then go to school having completed five. Mbili atamalizia Nairobi. The following week was exam week, so generally speaking, aside from when she opened the module to do homework, she’s read nothing. The night before exam, the girl leafs through the module, if there was one, scan a few questions from past papers and goes for exams.

And dammit she would pass. All A’s and B’s too. In my campus I think I got a couple of A’s in some non-issue common courses like Zoology and Communication Skills. So that’s how that Imelda person got through campus, and got first class honors. You know how we always say campus lecturers don’t mark papers; they just broadcast them randomly into piles that will later be assigned grades? My theory remains that she was prayerful, and God was gracious, so she always landed in the correct pile.

She got a C once, and raised hell in the house about that mean lecturer who gave HER a C, HER, HEEERRRR, and in the computers common course no less. As I listen I remember that time I came from SAM Conference in Nakuru in 2010, praying so very hard for a D in this Calculus unit I took in sophomore year, because I just couldn’t stomach the thought of retaking another semester of Calculus and the integral of ‘ a^u ’. It is, by the way, 1/u, just so you know. Quietly, I postulate that perhaps this was the paper that was actually marked. She says I’m just jealous. I say she knows it’s true.

Again, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, that’s how I did school too, and I’m just peeved that I can’t do that anymore. This thing where you have to study every day, I don’t get it. Who does that, studying every day? It’s very new.  Which is why my exams are in six weeks and I haven’t started studying. And I have to pass, because I won’t allow myself the option of failing. Keeping up the family standard. Maybe I idolize Colin a little bit, but as well I should; he’s done very well for himself.

It’s new, this working for success. I hope it turns out okay. Especially those two courses I haven’t actually started reading for. And the four I have started reading for, and discovered that all the things I thought I knew, I actually know nothing about. KASNEB has a funny way of turning things around. We’ll do examples in class, and I’m like, yeah, I totally see how that makes sense. Then the teacher takes a question paper, and all of a sudden it’s just new things. How do they expect me to think about all those things within half an hour in an exam room?

Huh, when this is over I shall seriously reconsider whether that “*shrug*, because I can” will propel me into part III. Though I imagine that if I’m lucky enough to pass I’ll still do the same thing come next sitting. Because dammit, old habits. 

scheming in my pretty little notebook

There have been occasions wherein I have wondered about a variety of things as with all human beings, and I get struck by the urge to write them down. Usually, actually almost always, I score these deep thoughts in the middle of a road (literally) I’m crossing, or anywhere really, provided there is nowhere for me to write. So they end up floating around like cosmic rays in the universe, because as soon as I sit to write, they’ve got someplace else to be.

Today I’m lucky, I’m in the right place, so at least I get another post. I didn’t get to reading that editorial on making every sentence “at least good”, but I’ve read through the first paragraph, and I think none of those ones can be described as “bland, slack, utilitarian sentences”. Particularly if you think in images, like Dinah (it occurs to me from the number of times she gets mentioned on my posts that I need more friends). Anywhoo, I mentioned last time that I was supposed to be writing about things you cannot change, and now seems as good a time as any to get started down that crazy path. 

In other news, being an editor is fun, last time I made it sound like a really lousy job, but really, being an editor is a lot of fun. In fact, if I could be an editor for the rest of my life I would die a happy human. Like, don’t even pay me, just lemme go at people’s words with a thousand question marks and that forbidding red coloured font. Or let me be a teacher, so I can write things like these on the scripts of unsuspecting youngsters:

I had a teacher in primary school, or was it high school… I want to go with high school because chances of scoring zeroes on a test were higher in high school, but then I also want to go with primary school because I have just the teacher to fit that profile: one Mr. Wamae of Kiswahili. Anywho, whenever someone got a zero on the test, he went ahead to draw it as a crying face and happily announce it to the class when the scripts came back.

I found the concept so hilarious, so it was no surprise that when I got to high school and some nice boy from some school wrote me letters massacring, butchering, annihilating and decimating (thank you Thesaurus) the English language I was in heaven. We (in the interest of privacy I won’t mention your name) took red pens and went to town on letters we received, translating their words to hilarious pictures and laughing some more. It wasn't very nice, but I was 15 in Form 2 and I had no sense of tact whatsoever. 

As a side note, I’m beginning to zero in on the reasons I’m still single. And as a second side note, someone should have seen that and told me I was born to be an editor. Life might have been very different. So back to the things I cannot change, (this was supposed to be a serious post). 

I have and not once in the throes of anguish wondered (TMI ALERT!!) why endometrial linings have to exist. Why doesn’t the body have a mechanism to build one only after fertilization has occurred? Or why, like cows and other normal mammals, didn’t we just land an oestrus cycle, where the thing gets magically reabsorbed if fertilization doesn’t happen? You probably already know when exactly these thoughts plague me. 

Job is one of those deep thinking, philosophical people who quotes Leo Tolstoy and Bob Marley in the same conversation as you casually walk around in Kahawa Sukari. It’s interesting because he’s been dating this girl Naomi since we were in first year, and she has the memory and concentration span of a goldfish. A very beautiful, sweet, mandazi-brown Taita goldfish who I’m supposed to be having icecream with tomorrow. 

Anyway, Job told me once that life and relationships are about whose crap you’re willing to take. He said Bob Marley said that, and I have yet to confirm it for myself. I have a feeling he said it because he’d kept me waiting for an hour, but I have been thinking about it from time to time. And too about Danielle's statements. The spirit of them anyway, rather than the stark reality, hers is too, too something, severe maybe .. or too harsh, I think:

You can plan and scheme and write in a neat little notebook. You can create numerous lists that await the swift line of completion, but it won’t matter. Nothing will end up the way you thought it would. Things will happen that you couldn’t have possibly foreseen. Life doesn’t care about the plan. The scheme. Your neat notebook. Or your fifty lists.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to have kids, and what they’ll be like. I stopped taking that as a right, owing to a series of shifts within my circle of friends, and Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Sometimes I wonder what marriage will be like, and I get scared. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen a little bit of desolation and crap, haven’t we all. Maybe it’s because on occasion I have the disposition of a conservative educator in the 1960s, with thick glasses and a tight severe bun at the back of the head, telling children to get their minds off the clouds. Like Marilla Cuthbert in “Anne of Green Gables” which I’m now reading. 

You know, it’s an honorable thing to be a parent, it’s the greatest responsibility on earth, and apparently the hardest. You can do everything right, and they still might not turn out how you'd hoped. But heaven knows you won’t. You’ll second guess every decision you ever made, you’ll make so many mistakes, and you’ll try formulae until it hits you that no two kids are remotely similar. And then you’ll eventually have to let them go and make their own mistakes. 

The reason I wanted to write about this on Sunday was because one of the poets mentioned something about why poor people have the most children. It reminded me of a book I read and this mother who could hardly feed herself had 12 kids, and when she had another someone asked her why. She said that the moment when brought another life into the world, that single moment before all the thinking about how they’ll eat and all the problems, she felt like she did something good for the world. And that maybe she wasn’t a complete waste of clay. So she did it again and again.

Life hardly ever turns out the way we think. I didn’t think I would be here now I know, not in a cocky I’m-better-than-this kinda way, but I just imagined my life would follow a decent path of events, like other normal human beings. But I get what that lady said, and why Rebecca Bloomwood loved shopping so much. I’ve shared this before. 

I think the best way to think about life is to take it like one of your kids. You do what you can to raise them right, you teach them God and ethics and discipline; you prepare them for the future and everything no one prepared you for. But then you’ve got to let go and realize that things won’t always go the way you’d thought. And it doesn’t mean that someone did something wrong, we only do the best we can with the information we have at the time. That’s what life is all about. Now all that’s left is for me to believe that.

In the interest of my 7 desiderata posts, let’s consider this the next installment, even though I’ve had to skip a few lines in between. The rest will come, they will come….

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here,
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

maybe in another life

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Living with an eclectic part vegetarian is really honing my culinary abilities. That and my mother’s penchant for never wanting to eat the same thing twice. Which makes it impossible for me to draw up a mental menu and just go with it come the day. I think I’m going to be one of those Internet recipe mums, using things like aubergines and watercress and making baked dishes for dinner, complete with dessert hopefully, which I think is awesome. Anyway. Now to begin.

I used to love watching One Tree Hill because it had the blueprint of the place I wished I grew up in. And very wise monologues. Where you had the same friends since nursery school and you could walk around at two am and not worry about muggers.  I very much doubt that anyone in Kenya can have that… maybe if you live in Nyayo estate you have a shot. For some reason I do miss my childhood friends; my runs around the universe would begin shortly after, but for those 7 years, I was with the same people and it seemed like nothing would ever change.

Funny, that life seems like nothing I ever lived, sometimes I can’t remember what was real and what no. But they were some fun years, even though I doubt I’d take them back for free. It’s true though; there will always be a greater or lesser person than yourself. I have a good memory (mum doesn’t think quite so). Faces, names, numbers, I carry them all in my head, plus a bunch of mundane details about their lives no should ever have to remember. Once I realized this (alert: sounds like those kids who wear ‘different’ like a badge and give speeches about being different) I sort of thought it ran through the ranks. Heaven forbid I should have thought myself special.

I don’t mind it much, I can reconstitute my phonebook fairly solidly after five different incidents, and it always helps when you’re stranded, perhaps because of the aforementioned incident. until I discovered it's not an everyone thing. Took me a while to stop begrudging people for not being the same way. I think no one escapes the trap of comparison, at least for a while, if not ever. Tonight I’m supposed to be writing about memes, I’m bone tired, slightly under the weather and I’ve got a before dawn start tomorrow. Still. So I read this one (whilst researching meme-like things). That’s how my blog posts always start, can you tell?

Today’s desiderata portion is easy I guess. Avoid loud and aggressive persons. Part of being mellow, if I dare use the term, is being secretly stubborn. Set in your ways. Avoiding confrontation and being silently piqued. In the past I would run and never look back (from those people). Thank heavens I’ve learnt how to cope. But I guess even in my higher state of existence, there are those who can only rightly be described as tedious. I still avoid those. Like the plague. Along with crowds of strange people. I’m a small party kinda girl, where small is two preferably close friends who also know each other. Awkward filler conversations I am unable. :) :) :)

I think everyone should learn how to surround themselves with silence. And how to live in their head. Maybe just not when you’re crossing the road or chopping vegetables. Being with me is something I do, not in any narcissistic way, it’s just, changing location every couple of months, you have to adapt. I did, even though sometimes I miss the company; you see something beautiful and immediately you know someone who would appreciate it just like you but they are too far.

I hope one day I get to live in a safe place, cause I’d really love to take a midnight walk. I’ve always been drawn to the night: the quiet, the peace, the clarity. I’m at my best in the night. Some of my best work happens after midnight. And the stars. And the lights from a distance. Maybe I should go camping. It’s like the best of both worlds. Being out at night and being in at the same time. These concrete jungles we’ve built, no one can even see a single star for all the electricity. You can’t see a nice moon out and stuff like that…

I really want to go for that walk someday. And go to Greenland and see the Northern Lights (and then get out of there really fast). Also, I wish Lucas’s book was a real one; it would be an awesome read. I really am quite tired. 2500 words from me tonight? About memes? Well, if you’re going to be awake all night it might as well be about memes rather than offer courses on Guang Zhou I presume.

Well, that will be all for now. More later. I do wonder what lies ahead. What’s at the end? And I wonder why certain scents refuse to fade. Did you know the nose can identify and store 50,000 different scents? And attach memories to them? Thinking about Lifehouse isn’t quite the thing to do either, much nostalgia.

Let me get my socks and get with the memes. Else Martin won’t like me very much come morning.

Your plans are not the Bible

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Let’s pick this up from the top. I tried last week and ended up with a muddled piece of anti-sense no person shall ever read. I am that no person. Okay, it’s been a couple of weeks, I’ve been itching to come back I swear. It so happens that my 7 posts are going to span a couple of months, but eventually I’ll be done. There. Apparently my foot can fit in my mouth after all :) :)

That four personalities chart thingy places me as a melancholic. Mostly that’s true. I’m also a little phlegmatic. I like silence. I work in silence these days for some reason, even though I can get all the music I want. It’s strange for me, because my schooling years I couldn’t abide silence. Mum says people who are afraid of silence are afraid of themselves and their thoughts. So maybe that’s a good thing. I’m beginning piece number one of my Desiderata series on that note.

As a side bar, I have had an interesting couple of weekends. First my five day hiatus at Muki’s which provided the perfect mini-vac from the recent events. And I finally watched my first 3D movie on the second try thanks to Colin. I hope I’m not the last to that party. Transformers 3. It was quite something I guess. The rest of the weekends have been spent around love and friends. Who I cannot be grateful for enough. Also this isn't what we did that Sato

The truth about life I discovered is that it moves on. Whether you want it to or not. Whether you hide or not. Life goes on. And that’s never a bad thing. I’ve been watching this series, and the granny said that life is about solving one problem after another, and then we die. It seems like a pessimistic analysis, but it is not without its truth. Jesus does say Himself that we will have tribulation. Meredith Gray says that you cannot outrun pain. I say that life is as easy now as it’s ever going to be. Wherever you are. Think about it. Really think.

Our dad has finally gotten up. He has finally gotten up on his feet. It’s not complete, but God’s truth, it’s the most amazing thing that’s happened all this year. I think I’ve learnt that we have good friends, my family and I. people who clung on for us when we lost  it. I’ve always believed that that’s how God works. He raises people to cover your back when you can’t have it for yourself. It was amazing. And we give thanks.

Of late I’ve been learning how to let people be themselves, and let people run their own lives the best way they see how. Sometimes that doesn’t work out for me; many times that doesn’t work out for me. The best expression of love I know is getting involved. Sometimes that's blurting out the first thought in my head. Sometimes it's fixing. So taking a step back and letting things unfold is new for me. I hope it works out.

I don't know much about speaking to strangers. I would if my life depended on it I guess. But like just because? I doubt it... I've certainly mastered that art of self-company, maybe a little too well... But there is some truth in those lines up there. i shall have to spring forth from this shell and embrace novelties. I’m still bugged all over by this verse

…except that no man can understand the work that God does from beginning to end

I don’t know why, because I’ve always known that. Maybe it’s because it’s the so little spoken of addendum of the ‘He has made all things beautiful in its time’ verse. I came so close… waiting is hard sometimes. Waiting indefinitely is even harder. I usually think myself capable of dealing with most things, but silence and not knowing beat me down. I know every piece of this puzzle will fall into its rightful place at some point. But I don’t know where that is. So it’s hard.

Oswald Chambers says that you pour yourself out for others in the meantime. So that’s my plan. To actively prevent myself from sinking into the shadows. I’m very accustomed to not sinking roots anywhere, or making immediate future plans. I’m trying to make an effort. Nothing come from nothing. Nothing comes for nothing. Your plans are not the Bible. Your happiness is a fringe benefit. His purpose comes first.

It was a remark that cut into me when I saw it, “your plans are not the Bible”. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I know this hasn’t had much to do with the desiderata portion for today, but oh well. Eventually one of them will find a story of best fit. Plus, I need to get ahead with it before silence kills me. He beautifies everything, that's what's so awesome. Nothing is beyond rescue with Him.

living down the bucket list

Grrrrrr…. It’s Friday. Okay, since it’s 1 am, it’s Saturday the 26^th. One of the perks of my theme is that it doesn’t date stamp my posts. It seems like it should still be Friday because I haven’t slept yet. That’s not news I suppose. Yesterday (as in Friday) or earlier tonight, I in my opinion outdid myself with this Biryani thing I’ve been dying to make for like ever. It’s been a while, hence how I forgot the pawpaw part until it was time for blending. But I guess it still turned out amazing. Colin didn’t like the part about the pink rice though. Still.

I’m supposed to be at IMAX. Crossing off the ‘Watch midnight movie and see city in wee hours’ item off my bucket list. We went. We didn’t make quorum. We returned. I did however cross off that ‘see city (girls) in the wee hours part’. They have grit. They don’t feel cold. And walk in twos. Except this one who was on University Way alone. Or maybe she wasn’t alone. But we did get to do this on Standard Street or whichever; the one after Trattoria. It's like a whole different reality, town at these hours. 

I want the green bag. Also, I must go to the supermarket and find out once and for all what this saffron thing is. I’m tired of seeing it in recipes and not knowing what it is. Aunty Beaty says everything in a recipe is important, you miss one, it’s just not the same. She said it about the Biryani recipe she taught me years ago, I’m just extrapolating.

Blogger needs to up their game and ask me what’s on my mind every time I come to write a new post. Like Facebook. That way, I can say ‘desiderata’. That go-placidly-amid-the-noise piece from way back. I’ve been thinking about that all week. I’m going to look it up now, before I say what I’m going to say next. My mouth is too small for my foot ergo.

Good, all done! I’m going to do 7 days, 7 posts, about that really old and clichéd piece. Not sure how yet. And I didn’t say 7 consecutive days. Just 7 posts. Hopefully the days will be consecutive. Knowing myself, I know piece number 7 will come a month after today. It’ still acceptable, methinks. I’ve grown so accustomed to having a Martin deadline to sail through that I’m finding myself writing my own thing more and more often, like when I’m done earlier than usual. The blog’s not complaining, neither is hopefully those angst-y kids in the U.S. of A. with long unpronounceable emails. 

I went shopping yesterday (again, as in Friday). Didn’t find what I set out to look for, came back with a full bag all the same. Feeling reborn. I don’t know what it is about shopping. And I found. The. Most. Gorgeous. Maxi. Dress. Ever. For a bargain. I promise, it is like a dream. Now saying maxi dress reminds of me of these 40 articles I’ve written about dresses this week. And of the proverb ‘Mwamba ngoma ngozi huvuta kwake’. I was writing for a dress site, whose biggest size of dress is a 12 probably. Maybe 14. But I still managed to throw in a few articles about big girl dresses. Mostly because I ran short of ideas at number 23. But also because, you know mwamba ngoma. But you learn something new every day. I’m going to miss this once I have to give it up.

I actually looked up shopping and its psychology. Because I remember the  day the Kindle got lost, I was soooo depressed leaving town. I didn’t want to get home. So I went grocery shopping instead. And I kid not, as I was selecting those tomatoes one by one, I dunno, it’s like the sun started rising again. I didn’t even impulse buy like anything for myself. But just the whole thing… I dunno, maybe it’s gaining back control by taking an issue you can control. I wonder who’s got it. I wonder what they’re using it for. Maybe they sold it to someone else. Hhhmmmm…

Now I’m sleepy. And I have that headachy thingy that comes in between my temples when I’m tired. And this laptop has reached teenage. Tacky? I know. But it’s just not the good little girl I used to tell things and it listens to me. And Job’s not there until next week. I dunno how much more of this I can take. The weekend of 2^nd is going to be really interesting. We’ll see. My stuffed animal needs washing. And I need to go find Mama Debz before my hairs all fall out. Go home Joy, you're drunk.

to the sea, i crawl on my knees

I met Jars of Clay, like really, thanks to Daggy, and I took to them the same way I did Brandon Heath - hook, line and sinker. This is just one of my faves.... They always did have funny titles for their songs. It's okay, I love them all the same.

You remember my theory on survival rate for bad days being 100%? That doesn’t make sense now. It makes sense in the cursory perspective, you know, in the it’s an awesome life and what’s the alternative kind of way. In the things that sound deep and pretty to say and all that it all works out okay, let’s hold hands and be happy way. That sounds sensible in my head I swear.

I sort of think a lot. I get bugged by things. I walk around and have these conversations about things I see. Sometimes aloud. Sometimes I laugh. It’s why I love walking so much. But I guess I hide also. From things that I can’t change. From people who make me face things I don’t want to face. I’m currently hiding from what I know is going to be a difficult conversation with the people who still call the shots. It’s okay for me to do that now, because the call hasn’t come. That it should have over a week ago is no matter. It hasn’t come, therefore, I am waiting for the call. That should hold water for a while.

This Kate girl makes failing a lot at things look like a bed of roses. I know this because that’s the finished product. It’s easy to talk in used-to’s and in was’s because it’s a testament to growth. Because after, you can see what it all meant, you can see the bigger form that got you to solid ground today.

…except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

Sometimes you really want something because the alternative is worse. Not because you think that’s what’s best for you. Sometimes you want freedom from anxiety so badly, you’ll line up geese and swans, provided you get duck-looking birds in a row. Maybe it was a little like that. Maybe all of it was a little like that. Or a lot. Been finding myself at this same junction often. I’ve had to have this conversation many times. So I’m hiding also from the people who care about what happens to me too. I’m going to go through this one solo. Or with my blog. Eventually the show-down will come. Maybe there will be tears. Maybe I’ll take the high road for a while longer. It's easier than feeling selfish I guess, even though that's not what that is.

One day a friend of ours came to the house. She’d been sick, like sick sick, not the cramps or flu or headache sick. But she was coming to see a someone worse off. So when we asked her how she’d been, she wouldn’t say how sick she really felt. Because in comparison, she was fit as a fiddle. Only she wasn’t. The fact that someone else is having it harder than you doesn’t change the fact that you’re having it hard, does it? I got that from this in my opinion meh  ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ movie that others seem to have loved. That is what happens when you take books, awesome books, and put a cast to them for an hour and a half. 102 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.” 

I’ll end with this poem that was written a few years ago.

'Trudge on, boy,'
He told himself.
'Put one foot ahead
And follow with the other.'

So he stepped into the raging river,
And when the waters threatened to sweep him away,
'Trudge on!' 
He told himself.
When the raging waters
Threatened to submerge him,
He swam.
When the raging currents 
Threatened to pull him under,
He clutched at everything he could
To keep afloat.
And he reached the other shore.

'Trudge on, boy,'
He told himself.
'Put one foot ahead
And follow with the other.'

And barefooted, he stepped on dry brush and thorn.
There was blood as plant pierced,
There was screaming as plant was pulled out,
There was the anguish 
Of taking the next step,
No easy way, no painless way.
'Trudge on boy! Trudge on!'
Until, exhausted, he got to the other side

'Trudge on, boy,'
He told himself.
'Put one foot ahead
And follow with the other.'

And so he started up the mountain.
Bare clothing lost his heat,
Sharp winds caught his moisture,
Lips parched and cracked,
Feet blue with frost,
Teeth clattering like a ramshackle tuktuk,
And all he wanted was to stop,
To stop and sleep,
And let the cold freeze his heart
And die in his slumber.

'Trudge on, boy! 

Don't stop now! Trudge on! 
And he put one foot in front of the other
'Almost there, boy! Almost there! 

Keep moving, lad! Move! Move! Move!'
All strength summoned and consumed,
He finally crossed the mountain,
And relieved, he fell flat and cried for joy,
Finally, it was over!
He got up and looked around,
His shoulders sagging with every second.

In front of him, was a desert.

'Trudge on, boy'.

at the sea, i wait on my knees...

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.