Hi again

I’m finally at a place where I feel like I can share what I’ve learned from my relationship with God in the past year or so. There’s so much to say that I hardly know where to start but I’ll try my best to relay what He wants to say through me.

First of all, I love writing. It’s so cathartic for me and even when I’m not writing on this blog, I write in my journal as a way to clear my head and spend more time with God. As you may have noticed though, I haven’t written on Nganzi in a few months and I’ve even been writing in my journal less and less. I didn’t really know the reason for this at first, or maybe I always knew but didn’t want to acknowledge it. 

Proverbs 27:3 (KJV) tells us that, “For as [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.” Let me expound because that’s a little vague. Simply put, I became quite jaded. Sometimes life gets hard and sometimes we lose faith (we being me). I stopped intrinsically believing good things were going to happen to me and as a result, I lost a lot of the inner peace that I’m so accustomed to. 

I’m a pretty optimistic person, even when things look like they're going wrong, I look for a silver lining or a bright side and if there is none I just trust that God is using the event in His master plan and that even though it doesn’t make sense to me, everything is working out in my favour (Romans 28:8). In fact, most times I trust God so much that when something in my life directly opposes what the Bible says, I still don’t believe it and I let His word trump what the world is telling me or even what I see right before my eyes. I took this for granted and would just thank God that I’m not an anxious or overly fastidious person. However, last year my faith was shaken a little. To make a long story short there was a series of events that made me feel unlike myself and caused me to lose some of the trust I had in God, at least in a particular area of my life. As bad as that sounds, when I really think about it, it’s the truth. I believe I owe it to myself and you to be as honest as possible about my thought process and the way I’ve been feeling.

So, I became doubtful. I wondered if God was really listening to my prayers and why things weren’t working out the way I wanted them to. In the midst of all this, I was experiencing the day to day issues believers, and human beings in general, face: fatigue, anxiety, failure, external pressure. Inasmuch as my problems are insignificant compared to the things that many people go through and even though they look less important now in hindsight, in the moment they weighed heavily on me and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why certain things were happening to me. Admittedly, I did adopt a very victim mentality; in my eyes, I had tried my best to please God and I felt kind of like Job when all those unjust things were happening to him and he didn’t know why. 

I couldn’t find it in me to reconcile myself and my actions with God because I was upset with Him, I guess? And I was upset with myself for even feeling that way because… you don’t get upset at God. It also felt hypocritical (and sacrilegious even?) to start talking about the other lessons and experiences I had with Him here on Nganzi, when that aspect of our relationship was unresolved. Unknowingly, I made a pact with myself that I wasn’t going to write on the blog until I had understood and come to terms with myself and my feelings, especially not until I had made things right with God.

I realised very quickly that all the traits I admire about myself: my patience, kindness, relentless optimism and innate peace and joy are from God because as soon as I grew distant from Him, they faded faster than I could have anticipated. I became apprehensive and nervous and, worst of all, jaded. I started caring more about what people thought about me over what God has to say about me and I stopped asking for His input into everything in my life the way I typically do. 

Obviously, this isn’t anything new, I’ve written many a blog about not letting guilt get the better of you and allowing God’s grace to cover a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), but it’s still the biggest thing that I struggle with and it's become abundantly clear that no matter where I turn and how long of a detour I take, I’ll always end up back where I started: at a crossroads between picking God, with whom I have eternal safety and peace of mind, or continuing to push through on my own with the weight of the world on my shoulders. 

It reminds me of the lyrics in the song “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”,  that say:

O what peace we often forfeit

O what needless pain we bear

    All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned during this time, and an incredibly hard pill to swallow, is that life is going to be hard either way. Deciding to trust God with my future and recommitting myself daily to living holy is hard, trying to please Him and emulate Him each day is hard. Likewise, living in sin and feeling guilty and unworthy constantly is hard. Being brutally honest with myself and taking accountability for my actions is so hard, especially because I’ve noticed I tend not to dwell on things that make me feel uncomfortable. When things get too hard or too emotional, I push them aside to deal with them later because I don’t like how they make me feel. So confronting myself and calling myself out on things when I’m wrong is exceedingly difficult. But it’s even harder to live with myself each day when I know I’m not being honest - both with God and myself.

Therefore, if both options are difficult, I have to make the decision that is beneficial for me and will give me peace in the long run, despite it being onerous initially. Instead of being a coward and running away from difficult situations, I’m learning to face them knowing my God is with me and will never fail me, leave me or forsake me. 

So, the reason I didn’t write for so long is really an amalgamation of many different excuses but it boils down to the fact that I was scared. I’ve always been nervous when it comes to public perception but Nganzi takes it to a whole new level. In my view, my relationship with God is the most intimate, personal, intense, beautiful and complicated part of my identity. Truly, I find my identity in being a child of God and every good thing I know stems from being in His presence. Obviously, I love sharing the lessons I learn from Him here but it’s daunting to open myself up like this. It’s especially intimidating because there’s a sense of inadequacy involved. I’m not a pastor, I haven’t been to Bible school and my journey with God is… dynamic to say the least, so who am I to be giving advice? I know that ultimately, it’s not about me and this blog is a channel for God to reach people, but I’m just being as transparent as possible.

I’m honestly so grateful for Nganzi though, because it doesn’t ever let me get complacent in my journey and it never lets me feel alone. Who knows where I’d be if I had no one and just pondered over these thoughts on my own. Thank God my friends, family and this blog really keep me on the straight and narrow. I’m blessed to have support to fall back on when I need it. 

Especially my friends, I’m so thankful for each and every one of you. Your encouragement, prayers and you just being the amazing, genuine people you are has had more of an impact on me than you know.  :)

Okay, I think I’ve expressed what I’ve been thinking and feeling as best I can. Today’s entry has been really long (I'm sorry) and introspective (😀), but I want to find my footing again when it comes to writing, so please let me know if you like these kinds of entries and what you prefer. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it and I hope to see you again soon.

Bye! 

<3