Everything is beautiful here

There are times you know you should burst out crying. Times when you're fighting tears as they stain the white of your eye because it's not a good time, they're people here, it's not dark yet. There's always a reason to cover, but when tears don't go out they dive in deep. And you can feel your heart getting heavy, insides too full tinged with pain it wants to burst right out the seams. So you fight it. You cover it. But your eyes betray you. And you watch your heart start to sink. And you walk away knowing very well it is a matter to be cried out and laid bare before God, but you don't want anyone asking questions. Not before you spill everything before Him. You've done it too many times before. And your eyes are still swollen red from yesterday. But you do it anyway hoping you'll get cried out someday. Someday... Does it ever come?

That was this morning for me. David and I were helping my mum edit, form and shape her online career coaching questions and she was using us to test it out and know what needed stitching and hammering. We've done it before. The last time I told her no but she begged me to, so I did. And I skated around my answers because it's a sore topic, and she should know better. This time, I cracked wide open and I went all samurai and swords on defense. Obviously, that didn't go well. And as I watched the conversation unfold before me, I knew the moment had burned itself in a wounded part of me that's still healing.

There's no easy way to say this: I'm not ok, but i'm fine. I've touched on most of it here so it wouldn't be that hard to put the pieces together. And it's partly the reason why I haven't blogged for a while. The greater part actually. I have days where I think, "This is it! I climbed right out of whatever this place is coz i've figured it out," only to find that there's still another layer peeling off me. And i've told Him how it drains me. How i'm afraid of spiraling. Everyday.

I'm in a better head space (and heart space) now, but July was a month of throwing hands up and flat out giving up. I was even questioning the point of life itself. I wasn't "changing the world" or doing anything meaningful so why was I still alive? I was not close to suicidal. Far from that. But I lost my connection to the world and life itself though I still lived. Everyday felt like all I was doing was breathing in air and breathing out. I'm trying to put it into words guys. I haven't even scratched the surface of my heart open enough yet so please, don't make assumptions. July had me poured out with still so much to empty. So I told God since I don't know what to do, i'll not do anything until I can't not do. I don't know if that makes sense.

The truth is, I don't know what to do with my life. I don't. There's no clarity or anything really. Some funk, huh? And my God I have tried. I've sent out CVs to magazine houses, newspapers, or anything that seemed within my scope of doing, but nothing. In all honesty, I wasn't that keen on much going through because I questioned my ability to deliver on the job (if I get it) because a bigger part of me was still wrecked and wounded. As for a solo thing, I have no clue what it would be and no juice anyway to do it. Sure, i can sing, write, and I have brilliant ideas but there's no wind under their wings for them to take flight.

So i've just been in a state of existence. It was worse in the first 3 weeks of July, but God didn't let me fall off the ledge. Of course I could listen to the endless questions and judgements hanging in the air, and I know at some point, they won't pierce me as deep as they do now.

I could say a lot more, really, but i've said enough. A godsend friend of mine, Mary, sent me a link to a youtube video of Steffani Frizell Gretzinger preaching, and it was such healing. It stilled me even though I cried calm tears and laughed out loud at some of her jokes. There's one thing she said I will carry with the me all the days of my life - I don't have to be ok or have it all figured out. I just have to be close (to God).

I just have to abide. To have myself gelled in Him. Just to be close. And in this place i'm in, I know and cherish Him as a hiding place. As a lover. A Father. A friend. A confidant. There's no greater substitute for what He is to me.

And this I know now more than ever: Everything is beautiful here.

When Prison Gates don't open just yet

Recap here

When I was 12 years old, my mother thought it fit to buy me a book - 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. She came to my room and placed it on my bed when I was away doing whatever it is 12 year olds do. My return home went like clockwork: Eat dinner rushingly, then head straight for my room. And so I did; only to find a reddish bluish book cover with large font that spelt trouble for me. Yes. The large font read "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens" but in my eyes, she was calling me trouble and the book was free therapy for her pubescent child. I hissed at it and sucked my teeth and put it on the table in the corner of my room. I purposed not to glorify her warped perception of me by reading the book. And I didn't, for a while...

In the coming days, there was a silence that hung about me, and the book seemed to have a glow about it. I found myself reaching out and holding it.

"I told myself not to read it, but it wouldn't hurt to know what it's about by reading the back cover," I reasoned.

And I did.

"Well that can't be enough. Read the acknowledgements and introduction. Just that," I told myself.

But a few pages led to a few chapters and after some time I was pouring myself into every page. It still is one of the best reads I recommend for teenagers. Of course, when I think about it, my mum, a learner with an insatiable ability to devour books, was simply feeding my inherited hunger to read with a book she thought would be helpful. She must have enjoyed her copy of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" so my getting the book was her desire for me to acquire the same wisdom in a way that would speak to the heart of things in my life. And i'm thankful for it.

That book really opened my mind. I learnt about paradigm shifts. I learnt that I need to seek first before i'm understood when talking with others (the only habit I seem to remember and still need to practice) And most of all, I learnt that life is like an Olympic track field. Everyone has their own lane, only instead of it being open for all to see like the normal ones, each person's lane is separated from another's with high walls.

The lesson was this: It doesn't matter if your lane is littered with hurdles for the next couple of metres. It's your lane designed specifically just for you by God and you should go at your pace because the only one you are competing against is yourself. Even more, that no one helps their race by climbing up the wall to see how another is doing.

But don't we do that all the time?

Don't we look at other people getting into relationships and also hunt down for a companion as if life depends on it?

Don't we look at our friends getting married and feel like time is running out on us?

Don't we look at people having children and starting families and feel an inner sense of incompleteness?

Don't we look at people we know getting jobs so easily left right and centre and wallow in a pit of self condemnation (this one I still struggle with, honestly)

Again, what are we trying to prove and to whom?

Will it ever be enough?

If there's someone who I totally get right now in the Bible, it's Joseph. I just do. Like him, I had wonderful visions of how my life would turn out, but the process of getting there has been so tough. His brothers sold him as a slave to some merchants, but my family just looks at me with eyes that seem to shout, "You're letting yourself waste away. You have nothing to show for your life or education and you're just okay wasting away." And maybe that stings a little. A whole year and I still haven't found the right way to respond to their questions let alone to myself... Even more, in this season, like him, my incessant ache to run has quieted down because prison walls just aren't that big enough a track.

Prison here typifies a season of stillness, and waiting, and separation - just so I don't lose you. It's what I call God pushing pause on your life so that nothing interferes with what He's doing behind the scenes. Yes. Process. So unavoidable yet so necessary.

Anyway, there were times in the beginning of my prison days (LOL I had to) when I was bitter. Times when I felt like I deserved better and that I wasn't supposed to be in that place. I don't know if Joseph complained about being falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and then thrown into prison but I did. And I blamed the world and everything in it.

Weren't my grades great?

Hadn't I found my way back to God?

Wasn't I eager to do something, anything, to fill the "nothingness" (until God told me no)?

I was a battered person. In my definition, a battered person is someone who is going/has gone through a tough situation and survived and is laced with a godly wisdom that lifts up. Like Joseph, God brought on my way people who needed some counsel and advice. We'd talk and I'd encourage them, and their responses would be, "I thank God for using you to tell me this. It's just what I needed." And after a while, like the butler/cup bearer (Genesis 40) God would remove them out of the same funk we were in and into another place and I would be left in the same prison walls. Oh Joseph gets it!

I used to tell God, "Thank You for using me to be someone else's battered person, but can you send a battered person just for me on my way?" As if it is the battered person that elevates!

This remains true: the same God that lifts is the same God that brings low. And it's all for a greater purpose than we can comprehend at the time.

Oh how it broke me! I would hold myself together with tape and glue trying not to cry when God would push play in the lives of other people who were on hold like me. But I could only hold back the tears until the bus stop, and then I would leak on my way home.

The sad reality was that I was not confident in my process. I was not confident that God was working behind the scenes for His glory to bring me closer to the palace. I was elevating my circumstance above God's truth. And so I complained and wept and cried and kicked and screamed and sulked until God told me it does me no good (remember the Israelites in the wilderness?) Even worse, I was afraid to hope. Even when God would speak to me daily to encourage me that I was never alone, I would look at other's lanes and journeys and then at mine and I would doubt. 

"Why then was I less than?"

"Excuse me! Who told you that because it cannot be Me."

"Everything around me. Everything!"

"Have you learnt nothing my child?"

I had asked God sometime in April, "Why do I have to feel so alone and forgotten to know that I am not alone and that I am not forgotten?" Well, the answer to me was that faith has a different set of eyes that are not moved by what we see, hear or feel but by God's voice and His word alone (with an unshakable conviction that makes us say, truly, you are with me Lord)

And I realized my focus was set on everything but Him, and when my gaze would turn to Him, it would be for His Hand to move and rarely for His Heart. Still He kept encouraging me. How bad I need heaven-sight! I was too short sighted focussing on the here and now when that's not how the story begins. Yes. Begins. Not ends.

People were seeing the rain in my life and the flood around me, and I was looking on with them. So like Peter, I would often drown. Here's the thing though, they were not seeing me elevated through it. I was wading. My feet were not touching the ground and it scared me but I need not fear. God was and is right here with me carrying me through it and healing my mind and heart.

I needed to see beyond the lightning in my situation. I needed to listen beyond the howling wind and thunder surrounding me now and hear the Father's voice louder than everything else. That because God is here with me, I will not be moved or shaken.

Wasn't this the anchoring in Christ I so badly desired?

Aren't storms and turbulence what make a sailor sea worthy?

Why was I not inviting Christ to calm the storm raging in me?

Even more, why wasn't I praising?

I was living as though prison was an end in itself when yet it is a preparation of the season God is preparing me to enter into. God brought me low to learn some pertinent things and to form my character before He lifts me to a higher place of responsibility. Even then, life is all about moving forward trusting Him, and knowing that your life will make sense backwards. That's when the process makes sense - when you look back.

My time of lifting is closer than ever, but am I prepared? Joseph was. When Pharaoh called, he first shaved himself, changed his clothes and made himself presentable. He wasn't caught unawares. Why? He knew that he was being ushered into the next season. This was the elevation God had been preparing Him for all that time and he wasn't going to enter into it with the same clothes or the same countenance or mind set. He knew that he was in prison for such a time as this (Genesis 41)

So what do you do when the prison gates don't open just yet? You praise and praise and praise God who is at work behind the scenes. Because as you praise, you rise.

And this truth remains: When the prison gates don't open just yet, praise God. Because you're closer to the palace than ever!

When the ache to run quiets: A backstory

2012 was a year of restoration for me. Life had me crawling back into the arms of the Father when everything I had leaned on failed me. I had just graduated, was jobless, had no clue about what was to come next and even worse, I was not motivated. My life had become an empty shell as God had stripped me of every trophy I had. I couldn't write, I couldn't sing or record, and God told me to stop doing business (I was selling clothes) and just wait.

Wait? What for? Why? It was madness! Here I was having remembered and returned to the unfailing God I had walked away from years back, and instead of things picking up, my life seemed to be stalling. But I was looking through the glasses narrowly, and with time I realized that the wait was to afford me a time of anchoring in Christ and learn how to view life with heaven-sight. 

All the same, at that point in my life, the hurt had caused me to retract and step out of it all for a moment. The holes in my so called "5 year plan" shone bright like stars in the night sky. My choices stood lame before me.

All that time I was rushing through life busying myself, where was I running to?

What was I running from all those years?

Who was chasing me?

What was I trying to prove and to whom?

The heaviness of these pertinent questions that were running through my mind choked me. So I complied with God's instruction to wait. I stopped running, traded my track suit for a pair of jeans and a fitting tee, and I sat for a while and took in the world.

When most of your life is spent on the go, stillness can be unbearable. For most of the year, my life felt like an endless blur of nothingness. The simplicity of it all astounded me. If anyone asked what I was up to, i'd tell them that i wake up, take a shower, have some breakfast, then go to my bench someplace and watch the world spin madly about me. Then bright lights for sore eyes will remind me to go back home. And yes, I will press repeat the following day. It was a sarcastic way to put it, of course, but I was hurting.

In all honesty, for some time I felt like I was one less significant warm body in the world. There, but never quite registering much. I was the set of footprints always washed away by the tide before sunrise. Almost, but never close enough. I was the girl in the corner with nothing to chase. And the madness of this false reality ate at the walls of my mind.

Things began to change this February when God told me that He was proud of me, words that I had longed to hear as I had been wondering about it. He said that He had seen my fight and my faith, and was very proud of me. He told me that I give Him great joy.

But my first response was, "What for?" Yes. I didn't understand how God would be proud of me when I had nothing "grand" to show for the past year. Even more, I confessed to Him saying, "Of course You're proud of me even when I've done nothing. You're God. You're supposed to love me anyway."

That must have wounded Him. When you feel like God isn't enough, it points to the holes in your identity and relationship with Him, and mine made a loud creaking noise. I had to get to the end of myself, and that proved harder than it sounded. But I eventually resigned myself to Him. Because when you find out who you are when everything is taken from you, you can no longer hide behind things and doings but God alone. And that's when anchoring and establishment in Christ and God's purpose for you truly begins.

As for how this story ends or when, i'm unsure. I'm still in that season of stillness and my incessant urge to run has quieted down and eased within me. I no longer crave for senseless locomotion (story continues here)

And though it's taken a while, i've began to realize that the blueprint of my life is taking shape. I'm no longer going to run into castles and dreams so far removed from me but into solid doors and walls that God built with His Hands and I helped paint.

This is my peace: That the aching that flamed the seasons of running in my life was so that I would never have to run again.

For the weary and searching

Hi there?

Do you always feel the incessant need to "do, do, do" or be somewhere doing something productive, or busying yourself changing the world in your own little way and all that?

Then you and I are in the same boat. Is it a good place to be? Not really. Not at all. But I bet you already knew that.

Hi! My name is Koki and I struggle with performance identity.

Performance identity is when the urge to DO overpowers the need to BE.

Doing is an outflow of being. Not the reverse. Who you are defines what you do.

Think of it like this: When someone asks you, "Who are you?" How do you answer?

Probably with: I'm a musician, a banker, a writer, a lawyer, a fashion designer/model etc.

Now, forget what you do or your hobbies and interests. Scratch all that and answer the question. Who are you?

Makes it tougher, doesn't it?

Many times we put our identity in what we do because we never quite know who we are (or have the time or mind to bother to look deep inside to find out who God says we are)

The world demands that we be perfect and "put together" having figured it all out or else it points fingers and so we end up stuck finding our identity in performance - in career, in relationships, in every aspect of our lives. And many of us never get the chance to get out of that crazy spiral..

We get ourselves worked up to be accepted by the world/family or even worse, ourselves, in the hopes that we will fit into the standard of acceptance.

Ask yourself:

Who are you proving yourself to? Who do you need to see you perfect?

I realized that this mind-set is the reason why God has pushed pause on my life. And it has literally driven me crazy. I have screamed (inside and sometimes out) run away (to another country for refuge and rest many MANY TIMES) sulked (this one lasted and seems to be my automatic go-to) praised and given thanks (then gone back to sulking) wept (a lot. A LOT) slept for hours (got tired of it) pulled disappearing acts (till it gets really lonely) 

In short, every time i thought I was at my end, I found out I wasn't and that I still had a couple hundred tricks under my sleeves and even more masks in hiding to put on. And believe me, I have not fazed God. Not in the least bit. It's been a year+ and He is sooooooooooooooo unmoved.

The scary thing I realize is that maybe nothing from my situation will change until I see that I don't have to prove myself with God. That He can't say it enough: "Stop looking so far in the past. Stop thinking and looking so far into the future. I want you now. To abide with Me and abide in Me now."

That's what the birds do. They chirp and fly from tree to tree colouring the day, seizing the day in their own birdy way. That's why Christ told us to look at how they live. They live from moment to moment each day, but they live! 

The present has never been a focus of mine. Never. I scheme through here and now and the present lightly because, my God! Don't I have so many things I have to do and so little time?

I. Me. Finite. Flesh and bones and blood have plans that I need to see through. As if I know any better! I think I do. But do I? Do I really?

So I'm on time out. God has me on time out. There's no running from this. And I can do nothing but submit because you see, He loves me. And knows what's best for me. And this is Him working it all out for me.

"May I decrease that He may increase." << What did I think would happen when I prayed that so many times?

God is using this season to teach me to rest in Him. To just chill and love on Him. He's using this place i'm in to reduce my reputation to rubble and to grind the expectation of what my life is supposed to like into dust. Dust. All of me is dust.

And I can continue banging my hooves on concrete or I can just enter rest.  Surely, if I am on time out, I am on His time - He who can take me in a day where it would have taken me 15 years.

So why am I fretting? Really? Why do I so badly want to be relevant without sufficient knowledge, wisdom and understanding of who I am?

To all the people like me stranded at sea (on God's time out):

Be still. Surrender and just be. Find rest in just being, in resting in Him. Be content and thankful for the place you're in. Let His able arms carry you. Learn that and you'll learn the most important thing in life: In Him you live, in Him you move and in Him have your being.

You see, you appear stranded at sea but that's just Him separating you to Himself for some quality time. Why? So that in that season of seemingly nothingness you get to an intimate place with Him and know with undoubted conviction that He loves you, truly, madly, deeply, eternally, just as you are. And that nothing you do or don't do can or will change that.

God is ALREADY proud of you so stop trying so hard! Relish His love.

"We will never be secure until we realize we are fully loved by God no matter our failings." ~ Beth Moore.

Dear marooned at sea: This is a season of being anchored in Christ ALONE. And you'll be thankful for it someday..

Love,

Someone who totally gets it.