F.R.O.G

After an almost 3 month hiatus - I am back :-)

Now, those who know me well know that I have this (terrible) tendency to hibernate and disappear when I have things going on that I have no idea how to tackle or handle, or even what to do. My contract at work wasn't renewed at the end of March due to lack of funding (I worked for an NGO). I knew this was going happen from the end of February and had hoped that something would open up by that time but that wasn't the case.

So here I am now - unemployed for one month and four days now.

During this period, I have come to the realization that I really like to be in control of the things that happen in my life. I don't like not being in control or not knowing what is happening or is going to happen. It sucks. Yet a part of me feels like I keep being thrown in these situations because God needs me to learn how to trust Him and I probably haven't fully learned how to do that yet.


In many ways, this should be a depressing period for me. It usually is for most people. And I have definitely had my depressing moments over the past 3 months. I will not lie, I have had my days when I have been really down, I have thought and thought till I could think no more, I have felt like everything is falling apart. I have been there. But now, having come to the end of one month and having passed pay day without receiving a salary, I smile.

I smile because if there is one thing I have learned beyond any doubt is this - God is my sustenance, God is my provider, God is my source. Being off a salary, even if for a short period of time, has really given me perspective. God provides. He does it in many ways and sometimes, a salary is just one of those ways. But we often get so tangled up in that, believing that we provide for ourselves simply because we go to work everyday and get paid for that. But with or without a salary, God takes care of me. And God will take care of you. It doesn't matter how he chooses to do it, He will ultimately do it.

Secondly, I have never felt as much part of a team as I do currently. Mr. O and I are a team. And if there is one thing I know beyond doubt, we are in this together. He has really had my back over the past three months. We've thought together, planned, changed plans, prayed, hoped, trusted.... We have all round really bonded on a whole new level as a result of this experience. This is another thing I am grateful for. I am grateful to have shared this experience and learned the lessons we've learned through this BEFORE getting married. I consider this a privilege. And in the entire time we have been together, there has really been no experience as sweet as learning to trust God and wait on him together, as a unit.

Whatever situation you find yourself with, allow God to show himself strong for you. Allow him to perform that miracle for you. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Whatever situation you find yourself in - good or bad - learn to always be grateful. Because wherever God plants you, he wants you to learn, grow and thrive so that he can propel you to your next assignment. So thank Him. Every single day. There is absolutely nothing that happens in your life that catches God by surprise, but even more importantly, there is nothing that happens in your life that you and He cant handle together.

F.R.O.G - He's got you :-)

       

You Will Never Walk Alone

" Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves."
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

The past 2 weeks have been really rough on Mr.O and I. Quite rough. I'm not one to share the roses and not share the thorns because they are a package deal. We are good now, but in the past two weeks I have learned so much but the biggest lesson is this - when you commit your life to someone, you should never have to walk alone. That's why they are called life partners.

It sounds almost obvious, right? That's why we are together. I'm here for you and you are here for me. It's easy to remember that in the happy times. It's even easy to remember that in the rough times, when the rough times hit only one of you. But its also extremely easy to lose focus of that when the rough times hit the both of you, and hit you hard. It becomes easy to think that it's partly your responsibility to figure out whatever is going on. It becomes easy to think that you need to sort this out on your own.

From the time we are children, we are raised to be independent. We are raised to figure life out on our own and have a plan and ensure it works. This coupled with the fact that we are also inherently selfish, entrusting yourself to someone and trusting that they will actually be there for you is a skill. And it is a skill that takes time to cultivate. But that's why you are a team. A problem shared is a problem half solved.At the end of the day, is is not HIS problem or HER problem, it is OUR problem. And WE will figure it out. You will never walk alone.

I believe that's one of the things that makes marriage so amazing - you don't have to have it all figured out before you say I do. It's a lifetime journey and you will keep learning along the way. You will keep learning how to allow this stranger into your space and into your life. You will learn how to stop being selfish. You will learn how to stop being proud. You will learn that you are a team. You will learn that you are not alone. If absolutely no one else will be there, your partner will. If absolutely no one else gets it, your partner should.

Like I said, this is not something that will occur to you naturally simply because you are in love. It is a process. It will be refined and imprinted in your brain through the years as you do this thing called life together. As you go up the mountains and down the valleys. After all, smooth seas a skilled sailor never did make.

So this is the commitment we made to each other at the end of all this - You will never walk alone. We wrote it down, we signed on it and we promised to always remind each other of this whenever we begin to forget it.

You will never walk alone :-)

"I'm a movement by myself, but I'm a force when we are together. I'm good all by myself, but baby you make me better"

~Fabolous/Ne-Yo~

Keeping Score

Would you understand what unconditional love is if the person you loved met all your conditions?

~Horacio Jones~

Relationships aren't designed for selfish people.

When it comes to Love and relationships, experience has taught me that things are rarely exclusively black or white. We'd like to believe they are but they really aren't. However, that being said, one of the things I know falls in the black or white category is this - A relationship is not a competition. We say that a lot, but I think very few people understand what that means (myself included, sometimes LOL!).

Have you ever been in a relationship (and/or situationship) where you feel like you are giving everything but getting back very little from your partner? Most times when you feel this way, if you talk about it to people the first thing you shall be told is how this person doesn't deserve you and you should pack up your bags and leave (#ByeFelicia). So if I'm not getting from you what I feel I should be getting from you, or what I feel I deserve from you, this relationship cant work. The thing is though, as "good sounding" as that advice is, it's not always practical in a relationship. And growing up has taught me that not every piece of advice that sounds good, is actually good.

It's important to remember, we don't arbitrarily choose who to love. We all have our likes, preferences etc, that may subconsciously determine who we grow to like, and consciously determine who we choose to love. We pick and choose who to like based on their personalities and character and how that blends with ours, but when we choose to do the work of loving them for life (and it is work), then you just do it. That being said - we are supposed to give 100/100 in a relationship. You should give 100 and so should your partner. But this is not always the case. Sometimes you are running on 40 and your partner is still on 100; sometimes they will be on 50 and you will be on 70. Basically it fluctuates a lot and during this fluctuation we "rely" on our partner to stay strong as we fuel up.

Yet herein lies the issue - the moment that you even notice there's a fluctuation, it probably means someone has been keeping score. And nothing will drain you of your fuel faster than keeping score. And I will be the first to admit that there are many times I find myself keeping score, and mostly when my love tank is running close to E.

Here's the thing - Human Beings are at their very core SELFISH. By nature. No one needs to teach you this. We are all about "what's in it for me". We walk into relationships with expectations, and if we are frank with ourselves, most of our expectations have to do with us individually - what my partner will do for ME. How our relationship will make ME feel. And this is just how we are built. Yet, this will always end up being the very basis of how we begin keeping score. We become unhappy because our partner isnt doing the things we expected them to do, or making us feel the way we expected them to make us feel.

After some time of feeling this way, the mature mind will begin to realize It shouldn't be about what you can get, but what you can give. I actually (honestly) received the most satisfaction and happiness in my relationship when i stopped expecting him to do things for me. Also, you have to be a great catch in order to get a great catch. Some people want to have their prince charming yet their soul's uglier than a garbage collection truck. You want a man/woman who can be all these amazing things to you and do all these amazing things for you, but what do you (yes, YOU) have to put on the table? If I'm doing all I can to ensure that your needs are met, and you are doing all you can to ensure my needs a met, what a happy world this would be :-)

Also, Worrying about "settling" will destroy your life. And lets face it, the fear of settling especially when trying to select a life partner, is one of the major cause of keeping score. Of course you know when you deserve better. There's those people you're with and you just know you deserve better. However it should be because you realize that who you are and how you understand love versus who they are and how they understand love just don't mix. And sometimes this is the reason why you feel like you're with a person who just isn't meeting your expectations. You want to love someone who you feel deserves your love (Ladies especially). You want to feel like they work for it, and you loving them is the reward for their work. And all this is because we are all afraid of "settling", settling being ending up with someone who we feel is not deserving of the love we have to give. But, the whole point of love is that we don’t deserve it. We are flawed human beings running around and making mistakes. We are, and will always be, imperfect. It’s not good or bad, that’s just the way things are. We don’t need to become perfect in order to love and be loved. No one needs to be good enough to be loved because the act of loving someone has nothing to do with this. Love has nothing to do with measuring up, we don’t sit around with a clipboard and start (or stop) loving someone based on how many good or bad acts and characteristics we can check off. Love is a gift, not a purchase.

The main reason I've taught myself to stop keeping score is that keeping Score will always leave you unsatisfied and unhappy. When you say “I will only love someone who gives me as much love as I give them” you are instituting a scoreboard, and once a relationship has a scoreboard you will never be happy with it again. Think about it — does it sound at all pleasurable to spend your relationship tallying the number of nice things you have done for them versus what they have done for you? Thinking in terms of “enough” is a poison to any relationship because nothing is ever enough or permanent enough to stop thinking about the scoreboard.

So challenge yourself to get rid of the scoreboard if at all you have one. And if you don't, I hope this helps you think twice before walking down that road. Remember - you would never understand what unconditional love is if the person you loved met all your conditions.

You Are Perfect

I love The Bachelor.

Corny I know, but I am not ashamed to admit it :-) .. Everyone needs their dose of trashy television and this is mine. Though also having studied psychology, its just psychologically fascinating to me.

Anyways, this seasons Bachelor is the sweetest guy called Chris (AKA Farmer Chris). He's a large scale farmer (I love Farmers y'all!!) and made it to top 4 of the previous season of The Bachelorette. He only got kicked out because she just couldn't see herself living as a farmers wife in the middle of nowhere (She has no idea what she's missing out on - this is the life!) .. If I wasn't with Mr.O, I would have applied for a Greencard to go and steal Chris' heart :-D

But this post is not about the Bachelor, though it is inspired by it. After failing to receive roses and being kicked out it was very interesting to me that two of the ladies said the exact same thing in their exit interview - "I wish I could know what I did wrong so that I could Fix it"

Wow. That blew me away. Especially that not one, but two totally different women said it.

Two years ago, that would have just passed me. two years ago, I actually thought like that. That statement was normal. Right now, not so much. The thing is I realized relationships will not always work out. And it wont always have something to do with you, It wont necessarily be something that you need to fix, There wont be something about you that you will have to change in order to make the person stay or want to  be with you.

It really is as simple as that.

Granted, we all have certain character or personality flaws that could use a little improvement. Everyone could use some self improvement, But it should NEVER have to be because you are trying to get someone, keep someone, or convince someone that they should stay with you. This thing that you may want to fix so badly for this person will be absolutely celebrated by another person. Think about how much infinitely easier a relationship with someone who 'fits' into you would be, as compared to being with someone that you are constantly trying to improve for.

It really is as simple as that.

There will always be something about you that's not right to a person that's not right for you. Your flaws are perfect for the heart that's meant to love you. (See video below)

You are perfect. Never forget it :-)

When Winter Becomes Home

Happy New Year guise! :-)

I am  laughing because I finished this post, my computer crashed and I lost it. ALL OF IT. It didn't save. And yes I am laughing because this year I choose to laugh through all my "problems", because I know there are going to be quite a number of them (starting with all the money that needs to appear in my life by October, wacha tu!). And this happened on Monday. Today is Thursday. Ummm... Clearly...

I am just going to try and reconstruct it, for all I know, maybe what I had said in the original post was not what was meant to be said,

"Just because things didn't work out the way you wanted doesn't mean they didn't work out the way God panned."

~Sarah Jakes Roberts~

I came across Sarah Jakes sometime back on Instagram. This girl really is the poster child for that quote above. Pregnant at 13, married, divorced now re-married.. all this coupled with the added pressure of being the daughter of one of the biggest preachers in the world. Yet she's still standing. Flourishing in fact.

One of the things that has always gotten me through some of the tougher periods of my life is knowing that it could have been worse. And for some people, it is indeed worse. Whenever things are feeling crap in your life, it usually feels a lot like Winter. Its cold, its dreary. It snows and rains a lot. Everything seems dull. You never want to go outside. And you feel all these things inside your heart. And this state of feeling can easily become home for you. You can easily become comfortable existing in that state of constantly walking with a cloud over your head.

So if this year hasn't started out great for you for whatever reason (and i do mean whatever reason - big or small) - stop and remember, its just a season. Even Winter doesn't last forever. So don't allow that winter that you feel to become home for you. As one of my bible school teachers (yes, i went to bible school)- "Cry a river, build a bridge and get over it!"

I mostly celebrate my new year on my birthday - it's when I'll set out a lot of the things that I would want to do or accomplish for the next year. This year has forced me to do it in January, for various reasons, but one of the things I have purposed for myself is to be happy. Actually, to be joyful. Coz happiness is dependent on your situation. Joy comes from your soul.

And I would encourage you to do the same. Purpose to have Joy this year. After all, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it :-)

Have a joyful year, wont you? :-)




Ps: If you are struggling to keep track of all the good things that are happening to you despite whatever storm you may feel like you are in - make a point of writing down at least one good thing that happened to/for you each day. Something that made you smile. Fold it and keep it away. Do this everyday, and  store them in the same place. Whenever you are feeling really run down, or even at the end of the year, take out those notes and read through them. You'll realize it's not always so bad after all :-)