HAVING JOY IN YOUR HEART

So in church this week I met a very interesting 87 year old woman. For someone her age she looked super happy and full of joy.

Let me just rewind this story from the beginning. So this Sunday in church as I was standing in the queue to have my bowl of soup, lost in my own thoughts and worries about life and all things worldly. This old lady turns around looks at me and says, I have so much joy in my heart in fact I have so much music in my heart I just want to sing. I was busy being in the bad neighbourhood of my mind, I looked at this lady and I said to myself what the hell just happened.

I politely asked her to repeat herself and she said “I have so much music in my heart I want to sing for the Lord”. Obviously having just been in my bad space I said to her I have no music in my heart at the moment. With that she turned around looked at me and smiled and started sing for me about having joy, the love of Christ through music in the heart. Upon finishing the song, she told me I don’t blame you for not having any music in your heart because things have changed so much so since she was a young girl. She said I can tell you this because I am 87 years old. I looked at her and said no way can you be that old. This woman had the body of a 70 year old and the spirit of a happy child. In fact reflecting upon this woman now, I can say I was jealous of the joy she seemed to have in abundance.

With that she continued singing the song for me until in finished. With which she looked at me and said I have seen so much in this life time I am ready to go home. Of cause, I was a bit slow to get her drift as I saw her walk away towards the table to have her soup in peace. I think she was telling me that she has lived a full life if she passed on now she would have no regrets.  In her absence from my side, I suddenly started asking myself who was I to have a heavy heart when even old 87 olds who has clearly seen more was not complaining. This woman has lived almost three life times compared to me yet she had the joy that even I didn’t have. In that moment I told myself to snap out of it because, I had not seen as much as this woman had in my life so I had no reason whatsoever to be this gloom.

GROWING UP AND MESSING UP

Today I woke up feeling rather odd. The kind of odd that you can’t explain yet it brings you so much peace you smile to yourself and wonder what the Lord has planned for you. The joy I feel in my heart at the moment is unexplained. If fact, it has put me at such ease that I know all will be well for a worrisome me. It is in this joy I chose to write this poem or whatever you want to call it.

GROWING UP

Remember how when you were young you couldn't wait to be older, I also use to be like that. I hated the fact that my mom made most of the decisions for me with regards to what I wore, where I went to school,  how I did my hair and to some extend who I could play with. Every time I did something wrong and I got scolded, I would say in my heart, I can’t wait to be older because I wouldn't have to deal with this shit no more.

For a while there growing up seemed to have its peeks. I felt that independence coming on and I started being able to choose what to wear, how to do my hair, who I could hang with and where to go to school. As a matter of fact I was being almost independent of my mom not forgetting I still received an allowance from her. Gone are the days when I needed her advice. I was now able to take decisions and be proud of myself. My mom’s hold on me was slowly diminishing and I loved it. I was slowly getting into the world.

With time, I found out boys were cool and having a boyfriend was just as great. In that point my mom has almost if not completely been erased from my mind were decisions are concerned. However, she notices the change in me and advises that one needs to be careful of boys. I look at her and smile and think to myself, what could she possibly know about guys. The arrogance of young people I tell you. In fact, I forget that my mom was once a young adult herself and she had lived through all this before.

However, when my first heartbreak kicks in, I realize how much I need my mother. I remember the days when she took all the decisions for me because they never led to any breaking of any sorts. The more mistakes I make the more I miss the dependence of having someone else take the decisions for me. A mother I had taken for granted and at times undervalued her wisdom just for the trill of this little thing I call independence. How foolish we are to think we can go through life without adult consult, wisdom is not born it is grown. So seek consult from your parents and appreciate their advice because when they are no more all you will have are mistakes and regrets of not having seeked it while they were alive. 

THE THINGS WE TAKE FOR GRANTED

I know I’ve not been writing as much as I use to but I've been busy so do bare with me. In the wake of my absence from blogging so many wonderful things happened. As a matter of fact, it is because of these wonderful things that I got the time to reflect on life in general. After much denial and debates with my friends (God bless their sweet souls) they figured its time I started writing about more positive things and less of the agro stuff. Having ears on my head and my heart I took this advice to heart. I am not totally ditching the juicer topics; however, I will try to balance the blog posts from now on. With that said, today I am going to touch on the issue of APPRECIATION.

What is appreciation?

I am not one shy of showing emotion and appreciation. I try to tell my friends and family how much I appreciate them because every day we have is borrowed. As human beings, it is in our nature to take certain things for granted like friends, family, a good education, a good lady/man etc. We are so wrapped up in overlooking the people we care about, we forget to tell them how much they mean to us because we assume they know we do.

Assumptions can be pretty dangerous, and you don’t want to live a life of regret. How often do tell the people you care about that you appreciate them, or how often do you pray and thank the Lord your God for a new day? I mean we don’t just miraculously wake ourselves up without the grace of a greater being. Do you even take the time to thank him for always holding your hand in the darkest hours of your life? Growing up I always use to wonder why our parents become so religious the older they got. They are always reminding you to have the presence of God in your life and go to church. In fact, I even use to mock the fact that only disappointed people went to church, boy was I so wrong.

A good friend of mine once told me, you can not want to succeed in life and not be anchored in the grace and guidance of God. At the time I had actually laughed it off and said whatever. However, the older I get, the more I've come to appreciate the institution that is religion. In this human life, there is only so much that your parents, family and friends can do for you. It is in this space that need to seek God, because where all else fails, God will still be the last man standing by your side and telling you all will be well. This is the space in which our parents place us when we venture out into to the world without them. Every time I went home my mom would fuss about my lack of religions grounding and I would tell her to chill and every time I gave her that answer she would reply “my dear owapumbwa kalunga mongalemweno yoye, Tameka uutale hoyikongeleka” (which translates into, My dear, you need God in your life please start going to church) and I’d reply soon mom, soon.  

When I called her to talk about anything that was bothering me, she would always tell me to pray. Its only when I started taking her advice to heart that I finally came to appreciate why she felt the need for me to find God because only then could I appreciate him and his teaches to make me realize that all the things I considered to be problems were actually not especially if I prayed about them.