Blessed

Truth is I’ve always been blessed; but for the longest time I have suffered because I thought being blessed meant something is going right in my life at that particular moment. So whenever my life was challenged or was getting less than I thought I would or prayed for, I would think I wasn’t blessed.

The word of God says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁸ in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. And that always puzzled me, until I lived it; until I went through the worst possible life experience and had nothing to hold on to but God’s love for me.

I was trying so hard to make sense of it. I was trying even harder to breathe. The pain I felt was like I had my heart ripped open and left to bleed. It was like nothing I have ever experienced or imagined. It was just sore. It ached. I couldn’t do anything. Everything hurt. Only laying down in my bed and keeping still hurt a bit less.

My whole being wanted this pain to be over. My mind was fixed on it. My eyes cried all day from it. I prayed that God would take it away, but I’d be woken up by it in the morning. Sometimes my head would feel so hot, I feared it would explode. But it wouldn’t. I couldn’t go on. I honestly couldn’t. 

As I lay on my bed thinking as I usually did, I questioned myself about the whole purpose of this pain. I thought if I could figure that out, it would hurt less and I can have my life back.
I think we hurt ourselves by thinking God is conditional like us. When I married Mbu I thought I was blessed. When Mbu passed on I thought I was not blessed, because the blessed I was hoping for was seeing Mbu recover from cancer.

I wasn’t happy getting to this conclusion. I have always thought of God as abounding in love. I then thought more of what being blessed really meant in my circumstance; this is what I learned from my personal walk with God about being blessed.

Because God created me and gave up His only son for me meant I was blessed. It meant that not even a single heartache or loss can change God’s love for me. It meant that I was made durable to withstand it all. It meant that I was blessed because I was allowed and deemed worthy not only to experience all seasons of my life but to keep coming out on top after everything has been thrown at me. It meant God trusts Himself with me. Why would He allow me to tear up, shred and crash only to let it be the end of me?

I was still breathing right? So that counted for something, although I wasn’t sure what that something was but I think I’ve got an idea now.

That something was my purpose!

The Price Of Love

I don’t know if we were brave or stupid.

We agreed not to tell anyone about the news on Mbu’s health except our immediate families, mainly because we didn’t want to be more overwhelmed than we already were.

Mbu was a medic and that would have led to at least a thousand diagnosis from his colleagues and friends stemmed from fear and panic. All well intended but still overwhelming. We needed to think clearly. Gosh, how does one even begin to keep it together after such horrific reports?

I still don’t regret a single thing. Under the extremely challenging circumstances, I think we did great; both Mbu and I.

The first thing I did was delete all the people on my Facebook account, I left about only 3. I did this in a bid to have some privacy. It’s weird and it probably doesn’t make sense to you but to me it did. I felt I had some control left of my life.

Love sometimes comes at a very high price.

The price is you give up your-self and become one with your spouse. I guess the beauty is that you both give up your-self and create a new self, which is a combination of both your dreams, ambitions, goals and fears and sometimes even illnesses.

I say illnesses because although Mbu had the cancer physically, I very much had it psychologically. Which is why even to this day I still struggle with the whole ordeal.

Although it’s over now on his part, on my part I still very much carry the scars of that war. Brave; choosing to try this life thing without my dearest love.

On the outside I seem fine, but on the inside I’m no different than a limping man.

Life hasn’t really given me much choice, I can’t sit and watch it go by; I’m obliged to participate in it for the sake of my purpose…