We Were Made For Such Moments

A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I was visiting these friends to catch up with. And so after it was done, it was a moment to leave to my place. I boarded a public service vehicle just like I know most of us will especially if you are yet to own a personal car. Not at any time did I think this would turn out to be the most exciting 30 minutes journey along Kenya’s Thika Super Highway. I sat next to a lady whom I did not even say hello but just assumed someone was seated. Like most of us, we think we too busy to even smile to a stranger seated next to us. The lady was busy listening to music from her smartphone and for this reason didn’t care much. She alighted along five minutes later and so I was alone in that row for the next 5 minutes before the next bus station when another lady boarded and sat next to me. The amazing thing was that I did not notice her face actually nothing about her. It’s quite common not to care about who is next to us when traveling. But along the way, the lady must have started calling someone but did not even care to hear a word since I was too busy with my own phone perhaps browsing for the latest news. What caught my attention was that at some point the lady must have become so distressed that she was literally audibly creating the “what-if” questions. It was at that moment I realized how far I had fallen from the reality that a soul next to me was struggling and had not even given her a second to know what was happening to her. Like from a slumber, I realized I had not even cared to say hello or at least give some form of attention.

There I was guilty and ashamed. I had to quickly switch off my data bundles, keep my smart phone away and smiled at the lady, said hello and asked what the problem was. Distressed, the lady gave me the whole story. Apparently she was to pick a relative from upcountry at Kasarani Bus Station but since the relative had no phone, she had all along been conversing with the driver of the Matatu her relative had boarded from Meru County. The driver had promised her he would drop her relative at the stage and she had waited for 3 hours. Later the driver changed his mind and now the lady was to pick her at Nairobi. Her worry then would be that there was a possibility that her relative would be dropped in town and since he did not know how to navigate the city, he would get lost or the driver could choose not to drop him but instead take him back to Meru. It’s at that time that I did calm her down, explained that it would be alright and nothing bad would happen. And sure she was positive, at least she responded positively. She took my words, smiled and was calm. I actually offered to call the driver on her behalf and with assurances that all would be well, for the rest of the journey she was comfortable, composed and confident. Of course I alighted some distance to the city center where she was to pick her relative. Were it not for the fact that I had a meeting to catch up that evening I would have walked with her to offer her a hand in making sure all will be well.

MADE FOR SUCH MOMENTS

The point is we were always made for such moments to offer our shoulders to struggling souls so that they can lean on them. But often we think we are too busy, we are stressed and so we experience burn outs from our own preoccupations. And for this reason, we too busy thinking we will find solace in our social media pages commenting and liking any updates. Times we offer to help when we realize a brother or a sister is struggling only in comments but we know deep within our hearts, it might not happen. And so we miss out the real moments to be of help to our immediate neighbors. It’s even too sad, that we never have the confidence to face our own conscious that constantly reminds us that we are guilty of our own actions. The least we can do to show kindness is to smile and say hello to people sited next to us in a PSV bus, next to our office or our next door neighbor. But what happens? We walk away. This is what Casting Crowns Band in the song “The City on Hill” depicted. That once the city was shining and it would still be shining had not each one walked away. One by one they walked away and the strength, the rhythm and the life in the town dimmed. This happens when we think we do not need other souls and that their struggle is not our struggle, their pain not our pain and their joy not our joy. We cannot afford to have a coffee break just to catch up with a lonely friend and get to know what is happening in their life. Yet we know all of us we have times we are so perplexed we almost giving up.

All around us there are people who are experiencing pain, they feel lonely, are on the verge of giving up or are dissatisfied with life. They are looking for people to share their burden with. Yet for us we think we are not made for such. We think our problems are more than theirs and that when we are happy, we do not need to know if others are. Our happiness always come before their happiness. But instead of hiding in our own business and in our own company, is it not more prudent to enjoy making investments on lives and things that matter most? Sure it pays more when we share in the moment we are in. listening to the stories being told and being in fellowship with others in pain because we are made for such times. We are made to connect with the sorrows and joys of people who are around us. We are made to talk about things going through our lives. We are made to love even people who we think do not need this love. When we lean, we connect with the emotions, we notice the crocked teeth of ours friends but still connect with them and we note the broken hearts and help mend them. And this is the beauty of things, because we are made to support struggling brothers, church and work mates. And because we are made for such times why not take time to have coffee with our neighbors so that we can get to catch up with them.

#CoffeeTimeWithJeremy

For this reason kindly connect with me on my Twitter handle @Jeremiah_wakamu and Help me connect with you using #CoffeeTimeWithJeremy make it trend. I want to be part of you. I want to have a chat with you over some coffee. Please make it happen.

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Options in Singleness

Singleness has never been an easy season for any person. It’s the time people will spend countless hours praying for their significant other. And if you are of faith, it’s the moment you realize that the pain of singleness can test your faith as an eighteen years old just as it will test you as you speed towards mid-twenties and finally approach thirties. Deep within, the unmarried souls lay the desire to finding someone that will love us but love God more.  And for the Ladies that is the Man that they will willingly and joyfully submit to. And for the Men, the desire is to have someone who will love God and submit to them. And the point is, a young person is unwilling to settle for less than what they best desire and is convinced that they should have.  Apparently we thus wait sometimes with confidence and expectation that something better will come our way at the best time but not without sometimes doubting that the life clock is ticking away. For this reason we tend to think it’s really a long and sometimes really long season where we strongly resist go through. We would choose not to experience it if we had a chance. It’s not really easy to go through this season. Greetings! Welcome back to my media space, hoping you well. Today’s reflections revolve around singleness, with particular reference as to why this season is not a punishment and having realistic expectations of the spouse that we desire.

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Sometimes I just really hate the thought of being single I mean how do you just survive it and get through it. But I dread even more the thought of being in love. It has certainly been a journey and a tough balance of attitude between the two kinds of life. While I see the benefits of singleness as a period of refinement and strengthening I certainly see its limitations. And thus I just wish I could push it through faster and get married. The point is, in singleness, you tend to feel lonely, less than and therefore inadequate. While these are lies, we feel that these lies are what were are and meant to be. This sometimes makes us think that this period has no benefit for us and does not help us to become any better. Therefore, in singleness we feel at times ashamed of who we are and what we are capable of being. From pressures from our parents, ministry and friends, we succumb and want to compromise. Mind you the world does not treat singles as people who belong. There are always expectations that beyond a certain age we must have done this or that. For goodness sake, note dear friend, if you are single let it sink in your soul, that in your singleness you are just a complete and equipped as married or engaged but again you are as vulnerable as they are.

Choices when Single

Matters are even more complicated by the thought that singleness is hurting you rather than developing you to be a man or woman with aligned motivations and expectations in marriage and romantic relationships. Frankly speaking when you are single it’s much easier to think that you have few options in life while you in fact have more. The choice of the options that you have entirely is left up to you and depending on what your priorities are then it’s easier to go through life. When deciding you want to break from singleness and become engaged, it’s critical that you evaluation of whether you want to be vulnerable to abuse, hurt and disappointed but it’s also experience a moment of learning to love, be loved, have people we can share our dreams and aspirations with. It’s a time to consider having people who you can frankly tell your fears and weaknesses without being worried that they will fail us. That moment that you are out in a city hotel or eatery and you see their face on the other side of your coffee it dawns on you that “Hey, you are you sure, this is her?”, “Will be enough for her?” And at that moment, tears starts to roll down your cheeks only hoping they won’t notice them, for once you realize you’ve started to fall in love. You start giving in; you really want to say it aloud but wonder whether your partner will consider this as genuine? Only God knows, when you are courageous you speak your heart and wait for their response and when you are timid, you want to go home and wish it away and keep the feelings hoping they will subsidize but then it’s more hurting. That’s the moment I realized how tough breaking from singleness is hard true story and only my heart knows that the struggle is real.

Probably the anxiety is much intensified by waiting on a perfect husband or wife or having unrealistic expectations. You rise up, stay alert in case your significant other shows up but anxiety is also sitting next to you and you keep wondering if today or this moment he will show up. You get stressed as you miss to see them. My dear friends, there is absolutely nothing wrong by us desiring for a soul mate. It’s because we are normal and thus desire companionship. Trust me, our only outdoing during singleness season is sitting down and doing nothing in preparing for the next phase of life. God knows that we desire a husband and for me a wife and of course he knows the exact moment that it should happen. At the right season, whether now or in the future I will move from my status to a new season of marriage or singleness. Meanwhile, I also appreciate it may not work for me (Oh, No Why do I think about this?) and so I keep my head on and keep hoping whatever the case, my heart desires to love, care and be kind to a noble lady.

Earnestly Waiting 

My entire body will ache with earnest expectation of giving in and loving despite the resistance of my soul but nevertheless I know possibly or possibly not that’s my destiny. It may be hard to wait any more and for your information the waiting gets harder the older you become and the temptation to settle gets even greater but why should I not hang on? Why should you not? It’s much worse since the temptation to orchestrate and manipulate things our way gets worse but we must run back to our inner self every time and say there is even more need to wait. I know the other side may be greener but I appreciate this side has more to learn and gain from. Meanwhile I will continue in laughter and write my wife to sweet love poems and stories in this media space. For indeed I would rather tell her that I love her albeit her not sure who she is than wait in her death bed to do it.

Read also: The Girl I’ll propose to

My Love Letter

For once I must let her know that I’ll not be getting married to her to be hero, nope. Dear lady, I won’t try to be one to you. Your father was and if he didn’t I’m sorry. I want to assure you that I want to be a hero to our sons and daughters that God will richly bless us. I’ll rescue them from the pawns of the ungrateful world by teaching them to fight on their own, to be noble men, to obey authority and to earn a living from their hard work and sweat. I’ll provide to them, I will read them bedtime stories, I’ll take them where dad works and spending a day with them in my desk when they are 8, I’ll help them with school work and more so I’ll teach them to respect you. For you, I want you to boost my ego, to enrich my strengths and reassure me of handsomeness, talent and cover my weaknesses. Promise to shield me from ungrateful world, praise me among other women and men. I in turn promise I’ll take care of, I’ll shower you will love, I will crown you before men and will not spare a coin or energy to let you feel you are the queen who deserves the best.

How To Deal with Singlehood Frustrations

Greeting!!! Welcome back to my media space. Its FEEL GOOD MAY when this blog is celebrating the second anniversary. As a way of marking the second birthday, the month of May is set aside for reflection of the two years’ journey. The first of the reflections was on bossing our feelings when pursuing our vision and dreams, click here to read it. Finally, this marks the fifty first article. Put it into context, at least two article every forty night. This is awesomely good! In the last two years I’ve avoided talking about my personal affairs unless it was personification for the purposes of bring clarity in my writing. I did understand that doing so would not leave me vulnerable in the blog-sphere and so expect what I was on the public domain, I completely ignored other information that was unnecessary.

SINGLE-HOOD AND FRUSTRATIONS

But wait, two years later, with a number of articles that were received well on my views of perfect romantic relationships, I am still single and to some extent am beginning to trace some sense of ‘frustration”. I have spent the entire of my 20* years being single minus a short stint relating with a lady which am not sure if we had agreed to relate. Take another context; I’ve gone through 3 years in college and 1 year Post College without hooking up with a lady. During those last four years it is when there is some urgency, pressure and a deep desire to search and find completion in someone else and also in ourselves. For that reason, it’s during this period of being single, that you oscillate between being perfectly hopelessly romantically unattached to happily single individual. At times you are tempted and stirred to awaken love and other times you are torn between your freedoms, anxieties and doubts. Times you are confident and enjoying your single hood but at the same frustrated its not and might never work for you - romantic relationship. And so you struggle between what’s familiar in single hood including your pride, control, priorities and greed with hesitation to embrace romance as an option that starves fear, pride and greed.

Read also: Why I will marry a woman who loves solitude

Being single when you are approaching your mid-twenties in this generation where no one wants to be “alone” is quite a challenging task especially when you are required to explain your single hood status. I mean when you are with your peers who settled on a lady and they are either married or about to get married, you just wonder, are you becoming a bit choosy or not strategically positioned to interact with potentially good and fair ladies? And so the easiest route and advice these friends give you is “go easier on the ladies” you are not strong and capable on your own though you are want to be independent. At such times it dawns on you that the excitement you had on romantic relationships is beginning to fade as you interact with guys with different viewpoints of true and authentic romantic relationships.

DISTORTED IMAGE OF LOVE AND ROMANCE

Take this example, a couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with Jane* in her desk. Jane is a colleague who is probably two years younger than me. She is unmarried but has had four men in her life with whom two they have been sexually active. The current boyfriend works a bit far from where she lives and occasionally visits to spend “few nights” with her in Jane’s house. She then tells me that when her boyfriend spends more than a week in her house, she requests him to leave, Reason? Who wants to be someone’s wife anymore? You see dear readers, Jane thinks and believes that women are no longer able to live full time in the same house with a man, no wonder she cannot let him stay for more than a week. And she’s honest, she believes she can’t. She’s just a representative of many others like her whom the distortions of the truth regarding romantic relations have tendencies to frustrate our picture of what is romance in the picture of a lifelong commitment in the context to marriage.

Related: Created in Eden, Learnt out of Eden

The problem with this twisted truth about marriage is that it hurts the image of singleness as hub of vanity freedoms, security, safety and control. While true that singleness is a period when a person has full control of their own schedules, control and finances, singleness is also the greatest killer of strengths that exists in true love. Clinging on to single-hood threatens our abilities to grasp the beauty of being under the shadow of someone who cares for us to bring perfection for us. On one hand, the reluctance is refueled by lack trust and our unlearning of childhood education to keep off girls and boys.

CONCLUSION

In my deep frustrations of viewing myself as having being left behind, I have learnt to stare longer over the ocean waves and the expansive skies and deep darkness listening to their magic to understand the work of God being made manifest through them. In the uncertainty, when I just watch the anonymity of directions of the waves and I know the solution of my frustrations is not just in finding a spouse because I must be like my peers but to understand the perfect timing of seasons in life. I must alternate my swinging desires and excitement about romance with silence of expectation of better days and faithfulness during this season of being single. The last words I would cling to rather than my single-hood or romance is in the story of John Kavanaugh in a book Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning. The brilliant ethicist John set out on journey to Calcutta city with the intent of finding “the best way to spend his remaining life”.

On the first morning he met with Mother Teresa she requested her to pray for him and when he was asked what he wanted the Nun to pray for her he said, “Pray that I may have clarity”. Mother Teresa declined to honor his prayer request and asked why, Mother Teresa answered, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and you must let go of”. For me that is a perfect answer to my search for a perfect and beautiful life. If I am searching to have clarity on whether I still want to love I must first let go of that desire and look beyond my trust and will and let it be. This will lift the heavy burden of finding endless answers in a painful process instead I should invest my efforts and heart on having the freedom to love and live fully. The summary of this as Brennan puts it is that there is a certain beauty that has learnt to trust eternally and that in all circumstance has no capacity to say, “note mine will, but God’s will”. This process requires raw honesty, authenticity and gratitude where we can maturely express our stale faith, sense to belong and doubts without being overwhelmed of the pleasures and pains that we are inflicted from the external world. We are able to progress from in obedience to our calling without ever complaining of our inadequacies of not having or having a romantic partner.

Read Articles: My entrepreneurial wife

                        The Girl I’ll propose to

Have a reflective life. Remember to stay in touch with me at jeremiahwakamu@gmail.com or on Facebook Jeremiaho Wakamu to keep this discussion going. And again referrals though you social media network/connection and word of mouth is the best you can do for this blog.