Finding peace in midst of the nightmare

I’ve been to Kakuma once, and in my ignorance when talking to a few girls asking their ages, I mentioned that schools would be open at some point. A woman, not sure who her kids were in the group, looked at me as I spoke to the girls, giving me a cold stare.

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If you’ve grown up in comfort, the idea of things getting better when it’s consistently been bad is almost offensive to someone who’s been through the SI unit of hard times: rape, witnessing a murder or having a near-death experience whether through starvation, by someone else, disease, nature or an animal. In Dadaab, some people I spoke to have been there for over 25 years, their going back out of the question.

If you went to the camp as a child, gave birth there, and now you see your kids future taking the same shape, what does “things getting better” look like?

What does “things getting better” look like for people going through a chronic illness? What about those in a cycle of abuse with no way to get out? What about for the person who helplessly watches someone drink their life away? What does it look like when nothing has changed for decades?

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I was having a conversation with a friend, and I realized that telling children life is hard from early on should be something all parents do. Pain doesn’t leave anyone untouched, no matter the level of comfort that you’ve grown up in. I wouldn’t expose my offspring (should I choose to and actually be able to bear them), to Disney movies only. I’d thrown in stories of Jesus disciples being executed despite doing good.

So yes, life is hard.

More of us need to sit in this truth longer. Money and keeping yourself occupied don’t make it any less true, and we need to stop telling our children and those around us that those two are the answers to happily ever after. Don’t let them go through the trauma of experiencing their livelihood burn to the grown, or something of that nature, and they think it’s the end of life because even money and hard work weren’t enough to protect them.

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Next time you’re in a rubbish space, sit in it for longer. Jamie Grace talked about it in the pregnancy context, but we do need to look at rough times differently. We shouldn’t long for better days; what if they don’t come, or not in the expected timeframe, then what happens? As you might tell by now, I’ve been through quite an experience recently, and with a lot of help from God and close friends, it has me looking at my now differently.

My offer to you is this; find peace in God.

Girl, that’s so cliché! Yea, well, it seems your life is either overall fair weather, or your heart grew cold.

Friend, find so much peace that when your rock bottom gives way, and you’re falling again, though scared and angry and frantic and questioning, you’re freaking out in God. That you’re screaming out His name because you know He’s there and no one has “got you” as He does.

Even when they tell you there’s no going back home, that your children might grow up illiterate, the medicine will not work, when you get the call that a loved one died, when you lose your job, a threat of starvation, someone might kill you- whatever your nightmare is, choose to freak out and finding peace in God. The pain might not go away, but at least you know you’ll never be alone.

Don’t let the nightmare you’re in push you away from God. Once you’re in the peace headspace, it becomes easier to get why Jesus was quiet on his way to the cross. He didn’t fuss, curse, and he didn’t cry ‘crew you morons!’ He knew there was something greater up ahead.

For you.

Yes. Your nightmare isn’t about you. It’s so that you can change hearts and save lives, whether you’re around to see it or not. The reward isn’t always tangible. Think of the most peaceful you’ve been. Now think it more profound, and attainable for much longer. And now think that you made the world a better place for one or more people by merely being at peace.

Cheers.

Finding a home for your voice

“That’s all I want… to have a voice” Journal entry: 14^th November 2018

This post is to those who wish to share their hearts but haven’t found a home for it because they feel too different or too scared. For those who life has told you feel “too much” and you should “just chill out”. There’s nothing wrong with you. 

Alone and lonely- these are the two words that characterize my life. It’s a mix of loving my time alone and feeling lonely when I do want company. Very few people have waded into my heart and consistently known my whole truth; they are all of two people. These two are aware of and know in great detail my journey as a Christian woman trying to shed her ratchet edges. They are aware of the fight within me; the struggle to break away from the past that molded me, into becoming the amazing woman I intuitively know I can be.

That number is low, and it’s not anyone’s fault really. I can actually say it’s mine but to a lesser degree. I learned and made peace with the fact that it’s my personality. If you’re yet to know yours, click here to take a test. It adds clarity to the person you think you are. That’s a suggestion though because I realize many people won’t reach for resources they don’t think they need, myself included.

As Wambaire, remaining sane requires that I take a few days to recharge. On top of that, I am usually aware I am withholding information especially in contexts that don’t feel like a safe space. With just that to go on, it becomes increasingly clear getting to know me is like tilling a rocky field. In this rocky field, add thorns because of the isolation I grew up feeling and experiencing. Behold, you have a woman that only speaks cream and keeps the milk that you’d like to dip your cookie into to herself.

Before you feel cheated, know that it’s changing so hold on to your cookies!

Keeping the milk for me has been predominantly because I didn’t, as a human being, feel valued. That then extended to what I thought I had to offer, including my thoughts and feelings. But that’s change- you don’t go .com if you think you’ve got nothing of value to say! Even before that, blogging has been the one place I can put my thoughts and feelings out since high school because, unless you hack my account, you couldn’t make me take my words back. That rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because they couldn’t understand why they were learning about a part of me on the blog sphere and not in person.

Er, well, perhaps because I am intense and you’re not? If you’ve read this far then you’re more likely to be the type that’s more interested in the human journey than who did what and went where and why they said and did what they did.

So imagine being surrounded by people who, when you go into your intense mode, grow quiet, and watch you talk. After, they do one of two things: change the topic and for the most part gracelessly or give you advice that has almost nothing to do with the purpose of your sharing in the first place. Ah yes, there’s the third type; they compare their life to yours to show you just how much harder they have it.

In short, they manage to dismiss everything you’ve just said. It’s not because they are bad people, it’s just who they are, albeit it being a weakness. It’s the reason why we have a personality tool that says there are 16 different types. Being surrounded by everyone who thinks like you is almost impossible especially if you have a type that makes up less than one percent of the human population.

I guess where I am going with this is, if you’re like me, your inner circle will be super small. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It will, however, mean learning who to lend your voice to and who to withhold from. Not in a bad way though; not everyone should know about your intimate parts. It’s why in Proverbs 4:23 we are told to guard our hearts because everything we do flows from it. Now imagine what’s flowing out of wrecked hearts!

If you’ve experienced a lot of false starts with friendships and relationships where you reveal too much too soon only for it to fizzle, it means you should be keener and become purposeful about spotting your tribe. There really isn’t another way, you just have to be smarter about the bonds you make.

That will take a while. Until then, there will be times you scroll your phone and come up empty as to whom to call in your moment of distress. In as much as it hurts, I want you to remember this: there’s nothing wrong with you.

From that space, look again. Who do you need to stop opening up to? Who do you need to trust more? Most of all, ask yourself, who accepts my voice in its truest form?

And yes, that process sucks. Something about pain accompanying growth…  But that’s just my experience. What has your journey been like? Let me know in the comments section.

Cheers.

 

Letter to the depressed self: Believing that you’re still loved

I’d open with scripture but even we Christians have to admit that side-eyes all around are sometimes the order of the day when things are rough.

Something I am learning about living with depression is that it’s something you manage, especially when chemical imbalance is at play. When I say manage it means becoming familiar with it to the point that you know how to help yourself or get help when you feel things are getting out of hand. Michelle Williams has a new show Chad loves Michelle where, in the first episode, she talked about checking herself into a facility after a bout of depression and taking meds to manage it.

Full disclosure: I found me a therapist after I saw that I couldn’t handle my internal battles alone. And even after that, I had three episodes of near suicide that thankfully I had another voice urging me to ask for help from friends. If you’ve been here or are going through this, let it be enough to know that you’re not alone and that you can soldier on, despite how crappy things look. 

Just watching how Michelle’s depression is affecting her relationship (and Chad’s frustration), I could see a lot of my life too. Among other things she talked about her room being her safe space because she wasn’t able to feel safe anywhere else, especially to be honest about her feelings. When I was watching I was all around saying “YEP!” because that’s something I can attest to.

If you followed my blog before you can possibly tell that I was, to a degree, censoring certain aspects of my life. It wasn’t intentional. I just didn’t feel safe. And I still don’t. Something that has been a constant in all my relationship is my inability to find a safe space to open up. While I had due reason to be skeptical about the space provided- I have dated some guys with the emotional capacity of a white wall- I still think that even when a fantastic guy is to roll up (like the one in the vicinity), I could still keep my walls up.

And that’s the thing about depression.

Even the most amazing things feel threatening. If you’re in a relationship with someone and they say stuff like “I am not good enough for you” or “I will hurt you, just go find someone else” I am not expecting you to stay and understand. Sometimes it’s not your portion to be a doctor and love someone to health. Leave that to people whose natural disposition has them loving someone back to health. I’m saying that so that you never feel bad about leaving someone who was difficult to love especially if you now have the awareness that depression was the cause.

I guess this post is for the person who’s depressed and has if they dared even hope it was true, love around them. That could be a spouse, friend or family. I’m realizing retreating when you’re super depressed is easy when wondering why you’re alive in the first place. But even when (as a family friend put it) you’re looking at the bottom side of the bottomless pit, choose courage to believe that you’re loved.

That’s my pompom word for you today. Choose to believe that the essence of you is worthy of love. If you’re finding that hard, then consider this; you can’t possibly be surrounded by morons who choose to love you as you are!

Choose courage.

 

Cheers.