Freeing the Caged Bird

There were blood stains on the wall. The broken piece of glass was still in his hand. Amidst all this, he lay quivering and shivering trying to explain that it was an inadvertent action; he would never want to harm his only child.

She looks at him in disbelief; her angry gaze showed all the emotions that were ravaging her from the inside.

"How could you?" She demanded, not showing any sign of believing the explanation.

"Am sorry, it was a mistake... it really was," with tears rolling down his eyes, and a huge lump on his throat, that was all he could bring himself to say.

The events prior to this were replaying in his head... amidst the angry words he and his wife exchanged, he had forgotten that he had picked a piece of broken glass so as to throw it away.

But, in the heat of the moment, in a bid to respond to some angry comment coming from his antagonist, he carelessly threw the bottle onto the face of his three year old, who lay on the bed, somewhat nonplussed to the events obtaining in the room.

As the innocent cry played again and again in his mind, with blood oozing from its beautiful face, he kicked himself against the hospital wall.

"How could I? What kind of father am I?"

He would never bear to see the scar on her pretty face. How was he ever going to explain that he had marred her lovely visage?

He locked himself in a cage of helpless blame, wishing to undo the hands of time... if only wishes were horses.

There is more than one scar in the story: whereas one is a mistake, the other two are a choice. 

Over time, as I look at my own life with its fair share of mistakes, I realize that perhaps the one gift that we never accept is that of forgiveness, that of being able to forgive oneself.

Sometimes as I lie down, thinking of how far I have came, how many people I have hurt, I am overwhelmed with a sense of guilt. This guilt however, has a negative ripple effect. It creates skeptical and highly suspicious friendships, without trust and security, it also creates the inability to accept and forgive other people's flaws. Why, because of my lack of inner peace, I look at the world through a damaged lens.

The first step in forgiveness is accepting the forgiveness. In the parable of the unforgiving servant [Matthew 18:23-35], it is not that the Master had retracted his forgiveness; rather it shows what a lack of acceptance of the forgiveness can do. If the 'unforgiving' servant had truly accepted the forgiveness from the Master, he would have readily exercised it on the other servant who owed him a smaller sum. But, because he did not, he could not.

Forgiveness does not restore a relationship (not just yet, at least), it does not build back trust (not instantly, maybe) but it frees a caged conscience. It loosens up many a man and a woman from the guilt of their mistakes.

Much as the Bible has a plethora of texts on how God forgives, they mean nothing to us unless and until we accept the forgiveness and live no more under the shackles of the past offences.

And that is the lesson am still grappling with; to learn to forgive myself, because it is only then that I can exercise the same grace on others.

There is something about good gifts, you just want to share them with others!

So, you ask, what happened to that man? Well, I don't know. That part is left up to each of us to fill in, but so you know, that man is in all of us.

Identity

Bouts of I love me, I love me not... It is okay to change as long as the change draws you closer to who He intended you to be... He determines who you are first, then and only then can you be content with who an what you are...

Precious lyrics from Jonathan McReynolds' Pressure.. Spoke my mind when I had no words...

I, I can't even turn on my phone

Without being reminded of the lie

That I am alone and broken, unsuccessful

I, I can't always talk to my friends

'Cause they've got expectations

That I may or may not be living up to

I really need to rid myself

Chorus

Of the pressure, pressure, pressure

To be someone else that the world has made

Jesus take from me

All the pressure, pressure, pressure

To be someone that you did not create

Help me be me

And only see you

Let me decrease

And glorify you

(Help me...God...Help me)

I, I thought my intentions were good

Just act like a Christian should

And hope, that someone watching would approve

And be inspired

But, if you're not feeling my show

Then how far could I go before

All of my accomplishments

Go down in fire

Just cause of

Of the pressure, pressure, pressure

To be someone else that the church has made

Jesus take from me

All the pressure, pressure, pressure

To be someone that you did not create

Help me be me

And only see you

Let me decrease

And glorify you

I just wanna live

I just wanna live for you

Nobody else, but you

He Was There All The Time

"What about the time that He cried 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?' Wasn't it because you had abandoned Him, just like you have abandoned me!" He angrily shouted at the person he thought was God.

"Regardless what He felt at that moment, I never left Him," God responded, in a somewhat soft but broken manner.

"When all you see is your pain, perhaps then you think I have left you," He continued. "But, I never did, never have, never will."

That is perhaps the hardest thing to grapple with, to believe that God is there when all you can see is your pain, when gross darkness surrounds you.

It is in these moments that the little, still voice of faith should grasp the promise 'Lo, I am ALWAYS with you, even unto the end of the world.'

He was there all the time... He is there all the time.

(Some parts of this publication were obtained from The Shack, by W.M Young)

Reality Check

I guess I had reached that cross-road, I had reached that point where I could stare in the mirror and not be pleased with the reflection that stared back at me. Even though the laws of Physics tried to comfort me about the left hand looking like the right in a reflection, the truth was blatantly clear, in black and white and in that moment I was certain: THIS IS NOT THE PERSON I AM SUPPOSED TO BE.

Years had gone by and somehow I started getting used to the ideologies of how society defined me and slowly adopting them as I my own. With trying to fit into some half-baked, not purely-processed theory about what to be, how to act, what to say and when to say it, I lost out on the opportunity to grow, grow at the person I was meant to be.

You see, we live in a highly fictitious world, where people’s concepts about life are purely birthed out of some comatose, fantasy project displayed on T.V. We have let fantasy determine who a lady, and who a real gentleman is, what to wear, what to eat, the works. The demerit of this is that in as much as we may be captivated by this highly fabricated lifestyle, it is hard to be pragmatic. We cannot honestly thrive in a real life setting because everything is merely a bunch of well-thought out but difficult to live theory.

That misfortune is what I found myself in. And it was not long before it became visibly clear even in the little things of life: setting unrealistic goals, harnessing absurd ideas, like what! It was not rocket science that something was amiss.

Here’s my theory: all these twisted rules and standards we have created are a sign of our brokenness, our dejected, hopeless state. In all of us is the desire to be ultimately satisfied. To be content and happy is the quest of many a man, but sadly we seek this right desire in the wrong places, thereby ending up in a confused maze of a lost identity, to all intents and purposes.

And so many things, like opium have sought to numb us and give us a short, warm-fuzzy feeling of “I have attained” but when the feeling melts away like butter in the sun, we are back to our dejected state. The sad part is not many of us are bold enough to accept that we are a mess. And so we carry ourselves round, with fake smiles, trying to act whole when we are broken pieces of glass.

Many a Christian friend will chant the old faithful ‘God is good all the time’ without fully believing it; without fully appreciating what ‘all the time’ really means. And you see this especially in those dark days, leaving you to guess that maybe, just maybe when they coined the phrase, they only had warm, sunny days in mind.

I grew tired of all this, and I honestly wanted more. I wanted a real experience.

And so I ventured on a path of self-discovery; of understanding my nature and not trying so hard to look good when I didn’t feel good, or of not saying the right things when I didn’t mean them. I had had enough of playing church when my heart was far away from Him; of telling people Jesus loves you when I didn’t, in my heart of hearts, believe that He did love me (I know, as hard as it sounds, not many of us have sunk and appreciated the idea that God really loves us… if we did, we wouldn’t be mutilating our souls the way we do).

And it was then that I discovered that it is okay to be weak, it is okay to cry, it is okay to be broken because with that realization, I knew I was on the way to achieving my objective. Realizing you have a problem is the first step in finding the solution, they say.

In as much as the relationship with God is premised on principle, it is also highly emotional. I mean, He sympathizes with us, ‘He is touched with the feelings of our infirmities.’ And God, more than anything else, wants us to be real with Him, cause it is only then that He can save us, only then that He can mend that brokenness and give us the satisfaction we so desire. We don’t win anything by pretending; by looking good and saying appropriate things when deep down it’s all a fake garb used in a bid to attain approval from people who have set standards that Jesus would condemn!

And so for the first time in years, I stopped. I stopped all these games and looked long and hard at myself and realized that things needed to change and I was so determined to live life the way He intended, not the way society decided, not the way the media wanted me to. I decided to get the blueprint and follow in the Great Architect’s master plan…after all, His way is always the best.

“...For I have created Him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.” [Isaiah 43:8]

Growing Up Into The Perfect Man

2016 is only halfway done but it sure has been a roller-coaster. This has been perhaps one of the busiest years ever, being characterized by a lot of 'firsts': first job, first this, first that, and of course turning the Big 22. That notwithstanding, this year has brought with it some lessons, both good and bad and I thought it best that I share some of these experiences, this being the first article the year.

1. Know Yourself.

So on my birthday, a friend of mine got me this teenage-looking book about discovering one's worth. Thinking that 'I had attained,' I quickly wrote it off as one of those self-help books for depressed teenagers, struggling with self-esteem. I am definitely not a teenager, neither am I depressed (well, not in the very sense of the word) but to my amazement, that book had a lot of insights that every what-year-old could make use of. And it is then that I discovered that maybe I was the teenager still, maybe I was struggling with those low bouts of esteem. 

See, in each of us, God placed a desire to love and be loved. We all feel the need to be appreciated but the problem comes in when there seems to be no way of satisfying this need. The common way that seems readily available (at least on my end, and I discovered that I use it unconsciously) is to look at that one being that seems to get the most attention and try as hard as possible to be like them.

However, one lesson I have come to learn is that by doing so, I hurt myself in the process. Not only that, I rob the world of my individuality, my uniqueness. I may not be the prettiest, smartest, but there can never be another like me. 

The solution then is to know myself, to love myself and be content with me. All real self-esteem comes from an appreciation of who one is, why one exists and going hard about being yourself. Yes, we may have our flaws, yes we may not match up to the next person but who says we  have to be like X for us to be happy? The fact that God saw it fit to create a crazy, weird, Madaliso who is fearfully and wonderfully made is enough!

2. Live for a Purpose

My second struggle was knowing why I am alive. I do not think I was just created to be the 14th million individual on earth and that is all. There is indeed a purpose for our being alive and until that purpose is realized we shall merely continue to exist and not live.

In the creation account, God had a purpose for everything He created:

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven TO DIVIDE THE DAY FROM THE NIGHT..."[Genesis 1:14]

If the lights were created for a purpose, what more man? So my challenge this year was to know the reason for my existence. I cannot say that I have attained but I know am on my way. That is my challenge to you: think critically about your life. Are you living your purpose? Do you even know your purpose? Let not this year go by without having had time to know this.

3. Be Real

This is perhaps one of the biggest lessons I have learnt this year. So, one day I was given a task at work, and being the timid me, I decided not to ask how to do it and guess what, I made a mess! A good friend and team-mate told me something:

"Do not be afraid to ask. Nobody expects you to know everything."

You are probably wondering what this has to do with being real, oh but it has everything! You see, I discovered that I had set unrealistic goals and standards in my life, and that was amongst the reasons why I never made significant progress on most of them. And so I had to wake up from the dream that I could be an island, wake up from the dream that I could be a perfectionist and be happy, wake up from the dream that people do not have weaknesses, wake up from the dream that all days will be sunny.

Being real borders on every aspect of our lives. It is call to be honest with oneself, even if you don't like the idea because it only when we are honest; when we are real that we can change for the better, and become the persons we want to be.

These are not all the lessons I have learnt, but most of them stem from the three: to know self, to live for a purpose and to be real about it.