Everybody starts from somewhere

When I was younger, because my teleportation powers had not  kicked in yet, the age of 30 was like the upper limit to all the cool and great things that I would do.

In my head, by 30 I would obviously be married and enjoying all the movie like bliss of a husband and wife including sex every day. Yeah I realize how unrealistic that is but back then sex seemed like the best reason to get married, especially for a true-love-waits card totting hyper spiritual overzealous pubescent Homo sapiens.

I also imagined I would have given up jeans and t-shirts as I embraced my new found wealth and jobs and status in life. That I was not looking forward to but imagined it was part of the growing up package.

I believed I would be an admired member of the church straddling succeeding at that precarious balance between work and ministry. I even believe I would be giving lavishly to the church coffers and would not need to heed those stuff old men and women at church stuck in the past.

There were so many dreams and visions and ambitions that filled my head each day and I prayed and planned for them as best as I could. I read books. Wrote the vision down. Looked for partners who dreamed as I dreamed. Declared prophetically. All this and more.

I can confidently tell you that very little of the stuff I dreamed about has come to pass when and how I thought it would. In fact some dreams have been abandoned all together and as 30 is winking at me from around the corner I still have a long to do list. But here are a few things that have not really gone according to plan, the minor setbacks in a major operation as it were.

I am still very much a t-shirts and jeans guy. More jeans and t-shirts than I think is healthy. Every time I have a dress shirt and pants event I really really have to plan. Many times I am like, where did I leave that shirt or I have to go buy a shirt just so people don’t get too bored of the 4 shirts I have.

I am definitely not married. Trust me I have tried but chic’s can knife these days. But more importantly I am not too bothered about being married at the moment. That does not mean I do not want to get married but it has lost its urgency and shine.

Sadly I am not having sex every day. I still believe in abstinence and obedience to Gods word about that part of marriage and life. I shall take this moment to say congratulations to all my married friends, I hope the sex was worth the wait and if you did not wait…well I hope…well I hope…hmmmm tight one.

About the admired member of the church…hmmmm that’s a long story and as of lathering the church coffers with my bounty…I don’t make it rain but I sure as hell try to make it drizzle.

So two things.

Our tomorrow is totally in the hands of God. We can plan and do all that, in fact we should, but ultimately our path is the Lords.

The other is that you may not be where you want to be at the moment but keep moving forward, we all had to start from somewhere.

May you find your second wind as you chase all your dreams.

P.S. i still have not figured out this teleportation thing.

Rethinking: friendship

Growing up we form friendships based on geographical proximity and I think necessity. There is no prejudice or malice, just the need for a play mate close to home. These normally develop into long lasting friendships that span time and distance. Well that’s true for most men. I am told the best friends in a girl’s life change with each PMS episode but I may be wrong in this too.

We then grow this to friends based on a shared torture regime namely school. So statements like we went to Kitante Primary school together used to explain how people know each other and are friends. Back in the day there were not that many schools and so you all went to the same hand full of school which meant you were more likely to meet you neighborhood playmate there.  This change allowed you to have both your home friends and school friendsi.e. those who were your friends only within the confines of the school perimeter.

This is further amplified when we move away to attend secondary school. This is where we come into our own. As we grow we meet different people from all over the country. We lose some old friends along the way and gain more based on our ever changing worldview and values.

This season makes for some awkward holidays when former childhood friends meet and feel like strangers or one of your former primary school friends keeps ducking you because he or she went to that weird school on the further side of civilization.

Somewhere along this high school journey, some of us meet God. He arrests and we swear undying devotion and allegiance to him. This causes a further shift in our friendship landscape. It is here that I suspect things start getting a little complicated.

You see, all your non saved friends are labeled worldly and your told to stay away, after all what does darkness have with light. This view point right here is just a pile of bull crap although we do need to watch who we call our close friends after all it’s easier to push a squatting man.

Now enter the young adult phase. I don’t know about you but phase seems to have the chemical confusion of adolescence and the morose depression of adulthood. Everything is changing and I mean everything. Suddenly they have removed the safety and the world is rushing at you full speed and you have nowhere to hide and no instructions to guide you through it all.

This phase is rather potent for me. You see I was a loner most of my life and actually happy with it. But I get saved and there is this change. I discover my inner people skills and I get quite the friendlist. I was relieved because deep down their friendship validated me. I was terrified of being alone or lonely. So I visited, kept in touch and hungered after these friendships. This was all done under the umbrella of ministry and don’t get me wrong it was all genuine most of the time. In fact these salient fears came up years later when as happens with life things begun to change again.

Everyone I know goes to one university and I alone go to another. I have to face my aloneness and loneliness. Luckily I was a proud chap determined not to let anything get me down. So I soldiered on but in the dark silent load shedded nights of Mukono I stood face to face with my fears and they won again and again.

Throughout campus I portray one thing during the day while at night I was transformed into something totally different like a wear wolf under a full moon. It’s at this time that I start noticing my low times last way to long. My grades slip and my faith takes a dip. For some reason not even my dogged determination helps me. What’s worse all the things I used to do to get me up and going, the prayer and bible reading and fellowship just becomes bland. My soul was thirsty for a water I could not describe. I knew what I did not want but did not know what what I needed looked or tasted like.

Fast forward to now. I different version of the same battle and this time I just explode, covertly of course. First person we “stopped” being friends with was because I called them fat. Many months later I was unfriended in real life for reasons even now I still don’t understand. Others I avoided because they just exacerbated me more and left me acerbated. My mouth seemed to lead the way and the slights of my tongue were mightier than my apologies.

And so I gave up on friendships that seemed to much work. I opened myself to the possibility that people I had known for years and had shared important aspects of my physical and spiritual growth together would no longer be that important in my life and me in theirs. I realized that, hey, I can make new friends and so I let my fair people skills guide me. If I met someone and something about then grabbed me I struck up a conversation and then let it all to God, if it was to be we would link up.

I gave up strife and effort but I did not abandon civility and courteous behavior. I dialed down immensely. But still I lose friends and still my mouth is the culprit.

So this is what I have decided. I am an honest, opinionated, tactless man cursed with pride and the hard headedness of a buffalo.  My head , my heart and my mouth do not always coordinate and sadly my means do not allow me to demonstrate my love and concern. This means that one moment I shall be super nice and sensitive and the next moment as callous as a sailor in a whore house. Its not always intentional nor is it even obvious sometimes.

Like I pointed out, I am a little bit worn out so if I pull at these friendship strings and feel no pull from the other side, I don’t sever the rope, I tie it down somewhere for when I feel a tag from the other side.

Because I am a bull in a china shop, I expect things will break but I believe that as adults we can and we should look beyond some of these slights and if we cannot to be open, end the relationship. I am not one for pretense.

Oh yes, I have had a looong year and sometime I don’t want to talk to you or see you or pour my heart out to you and sometimes when I want to do all these things I don’t want you to open your mouth and spew some nice Christian jargon, I just want you to shut up and partner with me in hating. You can send you rebuke by text later.

Or sometimes I just want to swear and be mean to someone. You may be that someone. And know that sometimes my rave and rant has nothing to do with you. Good thing I always give fair warning…I think.

To me friendship fills that void left by family and God. Ti should be that one place where we can be honest and mean without taking everything to heart. It should be that combination, at this point in our lives of childhood friendship, I just need a playmate and you shall do as well as that of primary, we have been through shit together and that of high school we identify with something bigger than each other and that of adulthood…measured and tampered by experience and love and God.

I don’t know if I have been a good friend but I have tried. Right now the strong indomitable Andrew Is worn out and tired and just needs a break. If I call you be fine. If I don’t, be fine. If you call and I sound bored be fine. If I am weirdly excited be fine…I may have imbibed some happy meds. I probably want to spend a bigger amount of time alone and not with you. Be fine. Oh and when I come seeking you out it may be selfish…be warned…be fine.

This sun shall set and when the dust is settled from this epic rethinking of friendship, its it those left around with whom we shall skip hand in hand into the sunset leaving rainbows in our wake….or not. I am still re thinking all of this friendship stuff.

 

The Girl with the Blank Stare in her eyes.

(unfinished pieces)

There she sat, in her long blue dress, hunched up knees to chin with her arms wrapped round her legs. She swayed softly as if moved by a gentle breeze. The sun was shining but she seemed cold.

Her choclately skin seemed pale, almost grey and she stared listlessly at the ground. The sun was out, slightly toasty but she seemed unaware of it. Everything around her was bright and green drawn in palettes of colour and she and only she was drawn in shades of grey.  She cast an aura of shades of grey.

But not all was grey. Here and there you could see colour. Her finger tips were a delicate pink. Here hair band was a brilliant blue and her lips held just a hint of colour, evidence that life still coursed through them.  Her eyes lashes were long and black thick as an African mush.  The tips of her hair, natural and curly fluttered ever so slightly when the wind picked up slightly.

I walked to her gently, my brown suit drinking in the sun. I had a few minutes to spare and thought I walk through city square would do me good, after all it was the only place between my current stops that gave me a chance to sit and rest. Hers was the only bench with room. I had stopped when I had seen her.

Everybody seemed to avoid her as if she cast a spell that kept them away. Or perhaps they did not see her. They obviously did not seem to notice her at all, or the space on her bench. I guess not one was brave enough. I shivered thinking of the chill she most probably exuded. But I was drawn to her, that and my feet hurt.

Re Thinking it all.

I stop and see the confusion of the world and wonder…is the confusion of the church a better substitute.

In the last months as I have battled depression, failure and all manner of personal demons I have heard to think hard about some of the moments that have defined my past year.

I have had to rethink politics. Will all my friends shouting and campaigning under the Black Monday Movements actually cause change? Is it a passion filled tirade with about as much future as the white rhino and the life span of a fly? What are my views about politics anyway?  I have had to answer these questions and still refine those answers.

I have had to rethink church. Right now there seem to be several factions split between the traditional churches and here we have all those Anglican protestant and other traditional denominations. There is the “born again” faction characterized by wild gesticulations and noisy overnight services. Then there is what I call the alternative style churches. There are mostly new and tech savvy for the most part. This is where you find the bohemian crowd and the others who found their traditional churches too…well traditional and the born again churches I guess too noisy. Please note I said church and not faith.

I have had to rethink dreams. Anyone who has followed this blog or read any of my pieces on Facebook has come across the Chasing your dreams series . I have had to rethink this whole concept. I have accepted that time is a greater ally and the straightest path is not always straight and that sometimes I need to stop and camp a whiles on this journey. I have learned that when you smile, make sure you fangs show but like a gentle she wolf, never bare them in anger, malice or hate. Just let them know you have them as well and yours Is a choice not to use them…unless they provoke you.

I have rethought money and poverty. These two seem to be the yin and yang of my existence. Money is not what I work for but it’s a just recompense for the expenditure of my talent. The journey out of poverty is not that easy. Stop reading get rich quick scheme books, work hard, save as much as you can, give as much as you can and be content. The last bit is playing me.

I have rethought friendship. This is the one year that most of my friendships seem to have imploded or just gone into some sort of coma. I will not lie, I am not all torn up about all of them. In fact these days are am not as quick to save friendships. I believe they should develop organically and just go where they may of course with a little trimming and such here and there. I am not trying to grow a bonsai tree but a radiant flourishing bush or tree. I do my part or what I can cause at the end of the day no amount of water or manure makes trees or bushes grow faster…perhaps a little better.

I am still rethinking…perhaps soon we shall share deeper exactly what I have been thinking on some of these topics.

This marriage thing....

I have never feverishly desired marriage nor have I admired married men except for when I am lonely and horny or both.

There is however one couple that constantly revives my faith in this institution and I don’t know why.

For better or worse, no pun intended, I am at that age in my life where marriage hangs over my head like a nimbus cloud, pregnant and heavy, full with the promise of good things but also promise of disruption.

The major champions for this endeavor in my life are my uncles and a few well-meaning friends. I am normally honest with them. Sadly my answers to their query seem to hide a past hurt or a cynicism that seems misplaced in the heart of a God fearing youth clinging onto scriptures like Jeremiah 29:11. But that is far from the case.

A relationship, ‘oba’ love, is a two lane road of emotion and logic. I seem firmly embedded on the logic side of the lane. You see nothing that has been promised me from the time I started listening to teachings about marriage seems limited to marriage. It either seems like a lot of work or just too fairy tale.

Of course those who are married make it look like they have ascended through a portal into a realm of good things that only those that have partaken of it can express or understand. This is well and good, but the other side of the coin seems true. The world is full of couples, born again I might add, that seem to be existing in limbo. Like when they were making the jump into that portal Umeme load-shedded and they ended up in some other twisted ‘horrorverse’.

I feel, rightly or wrongly, that all the ‘marketeers’ need to change their strategy. I don’t need to be married to have sex and enjoy it. Contrary to popular belief not all acts of fornication are immediately followed by catastrophic or cataclysmic planetary collapse and blinding or numbing guilt. The many Christians having sex can attest to that.

I definitely don’t need to be married to have babies. All the single mothers and fathers can also attest to that.

I don’t need a wife to wash my clothes; my washing machine is doing just fine. Yes my house may be covered in a layer of dust most times however when I do get around to cleaning it is a good job…sort of. I don’t need her to cook, I have lived on my own since my second year at university, I can manage a proper sensible meal for over ten people and I am not just talking about one source and one food.

Companionship, conversation and most other things can be got from without marriage. So what exactly is the validation for getting married especially when the statistics say being born again apparently has very little to do with your divorce quotient, sex is freely offered and pregnancy out of wedlock is not “that bad” any more, the number of domestically inept bachelors has gone down considerably and ladies believe that men are ravenous, cheating canines with the men claiming that women are nine tailed green eyed vixens.

Don’t get me wrong I want to get married, I want to have kids but at the moment, I see no good reason to.

But, this couple I speak of seems to have landed on the answer. They have not told me, they have not taught me, they have shown me. When I look at them, it’s like I have caught a glimpse far beyond the reaches of all the married people I have observed or talked to, it’s like for a brief moment, a brief instant I gazed into something more beautiful than the stars and as endless and mysterious as the galaxies in the heavens.

They may not have been married that long but for now they are my sextant, my rule, my campus…my north star on this thing called marriage. They renew my faith in marriage.

Chasing your dreams: The space in between.

As you may have noticed I have not written for this series in a while. The spaces in-between inspiration to write is filled with the everyday voracious survival tasks.

And so like a soul survivor in a treacherous land I am reminded of the spaces in between. The spaces between the inception of the dream and the fulfillment of that dream are sometimes many and sometimes long but we must survive them. The spaces in between are also the times between revelation of different aspects of the dream like a much needed encouragement/confirmation, the appearance of a divine connection or the sudden realization of what is needed for your next future move. The space in between are many and in between (no pun intended)

The spaces in between are where most of us spend our lives. They are those pleasant platues filled with the sweet fragrance of everyday living that slowly lull us into a cycle of wants and needs. There are like the mirage in the sun scorched desert, a hope that our parched throats will soon be sated. They are ever present but always far. And so we keep walking.

Like the mists of an English bog, they cover the pitfalls and paths, obscuring our way forward and our way back and so we wonder aimlessly constantly aware of the danger that lurks in the murky depths.

And so we walk hunched over, watching the ground in constant fear of falling into poverty, our dreams lost to sight and our consternation growing and growing and our journey seemingly endless. For a person of faith, it’s not the brutal onslaught of the Devils blows but the subtle espionage of a weary soul that will get you.

I have to constantly remind myself what this dream is, what it is for and why it was given to me. I also have to remind myself of the one who gave me this dream and the promises He gave and continues to give.

I must also prepare. I love the story of the building of the temple. David had a dream to build a house for God but Solomon was the one appointed to build it. But David prepared. He was not allowed to build it but he saw nothing wrong in preparing for it. In Isaiah, we are encouraged to “enlarge the place of your tents”; Elijah was sent to prepare the way for the messiah. The reference goes on and on.

And so I prepare, my heart, my mind, my spirit, my hands and my substance (home/house, equip etc.) for the time when the dream comes to fruition. In my case I have seen the dream unfold like a parchment, and for each page, each chapter I must be ready.

So my dear friend, as we seek out the dreams God has placed in our hearts, use wisely the spaces in between. 

Flags of our fathers: Unclaimed Baggage.

We are the sum of our experiences. My earliest vivid childhood memories are of my parents separations and the premonition filled dreams I had before. It’s a dream that recurred over and over in varying degree throughout my life.

My second most vivid is sitting on the floor at my mother’s feet playing with toys as she sipped her trademark cup of tea. In almost movie like frames I remember her looking at me and smiling as me totally engrossed in my toys.

The rest of my memories are snapshots of various events but most of my childhood seems black or at least locked away in some deep memory vault until the right key is found.

I do however fondly remember my petrol sniffing escapades. I and a couple of friends would sit behind a friend’s dad’s car and through a hole in his makeshift petrol cover inhale the petrol fumes. We would then lie back and giggle away in a petrol buzz. We would then stagger home eat everything in sight and then repeat. I can tell you this ended quickly when our moms found out. We never did it again. Our bums still tingled with the memory of a well taught lesson.

Today I sit here a little sad and angry. I am sad because in the space of 24 hours I have had major run-ins with two close friends and mad that I feel apologetic for speaking honestly. I am mad because I find myself afraid of being alone and wondering whether I should have spoken the truth. I am more afraid of being alone than standing up for myself.

I am mad because I should not be here letting another’s  behavior go un checked especially if I am constantly being hurt or put down for being human, for being me.

As a man of faith I have continually vowed and tried to be different, not in the hip cool way but in the Biblical way. I have despite my inclinations to anger and resentment tried to be more forgiving, understanding and patient.

I chose to not hold a grudge which seems simple if you are not a choleric for whom grudges and vengeance come easy. Take a survey of a choleric's weaknesses and you shall begin to understand the extent of my cross (smile)

More than my inherent weaknesses I am weighed down by some pretty deep mental chains. All the unclaimed baggage left by careless words and actions. To deny them would be foolishness. To allow them to rule me would be suicide. And so I write.  

To get over my fear of failure, loneliness, losing people and to an extent being a victim I write.

I write to tell myself that I don’t deserve to be treated badly and yes I am worth being loved or fought. I write to extend my boundaries and discover my limits, to learn to shove some shit and also not to take some shit.

I write because I hope that someone else will find the strength to start their journey and face their demons, to take inventory of their baggage and to day by day remove all that is unwanted, perhaps put in some much needed supplies and with each passing day travel light.

My pen is the blade that cuts away my pain. It is the surgeon’s scalpel that allows me to dig deep and find the cancer. It is the rescuers search lights that allows me find myself in the night and it is the scribes torch that illuminates the library that is my soul and allows me to find the answers. It is the gift that God gave me to deal with all this excess unclaimed, unwanted baggage.