FIVE THINGS I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE EVERYDAY

I’ll just say it. I’m prone to mood swings.  When I’m happy, I’m really happy. I feel it perfectly and intensely and could almost spill over with the sensation of being totally filled up and satisfied. At the same time, when I’m upset, or angry, I’m completely upset or angry and no matter the logic you use, you’ll be hard pressed to talk me out of feeling that way.

Feeling things is a good thing, it makes one highly empathetic to others. And yet, I must admit there are times this doesn’t always feel like a good thing. There are times I wish I could not empathize with someone because it hurts to feel empathy, and because when you empathize too much with too many people, after awhile you begin to feel the weight of the whole world on your shoulders.

There are also times when my tendency to feel deeply can alienate me from relationships, disconnect me from reality, and prevent me from making calm, clear-headed choices. There are times when my tendency to over-emote can derail my entire day.

Recently, I’ve been focusing on keeping those mood swings in check by reminding myself of a few things I must believe no matter how I feel or what mood I'm in.

§      The world is a good place, with good people where good things happen. No doubt, bad things happen too. But when I start my day with the assumption that good things often happen, my attention tends to be drawn to the good things that happen to me and around me. When an outcome is hanging in the balance, this assumption keeps me from wasting time with needless worry. Either way, focusing on good things keeps me from catastrophizing my life. Even if I’m having a bad day now, chances are the next half hour will be better.

§      People are not out to get you, stop feeling victimised. When I assume that people are not out to get me (that most people, most of the time, are really doing the best they can), it keeps me from overreacting when someone does something I don’t like, that frustrates me or hurts my feelings. Though I may not fully understand the motives behind others’ actions neither will I also be able to control them, I can only assume that their motives weren’t meant to hurt me and I can choose to ignore rather than retaliate when I’m offended.

§      What feels like a “crisis” is rarely as tragic as it seems. Those things that feel like a “crisis” in our daily life; not hearing the alarm, running out of gas, being late for an appointment, etc. will rarely seem as tragic when we look back on it two, five or ten hours from now. I’m learning to remind myself of this fact each day, so that when “crisis” come, I can stay calm.

§      I still have a lot to learn. Having this in mind keeps me from the fruitless task of trying to change the mind of someone who thinks differently than me. It keeps me teachable, and allows me to approach life with my eyes wide open. It also keeps me from getting frustrated with others who have a lot to learn too because in the end, we all do.

§      Life isn’t rigged. Sometimes it feels like the game of life is rigged. Some people are set up to be successful, others aren’t. Some have the resources to be successful, others don’t. Truth be told though, we’re all dealt a different hand in life but the game isn’t rigged. We all get out what we put in (we reap what we sow).

The reward of these choice of thoughts has helped me bloom.

TO DO LIST

Live through this day one step at a time and not set far-reaching goals to try to overcome all your problems at once. 

Today, stay happy! Abraham Lincoln said, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" and he was right. Dwell not on thoughts that depress you, chase them out of your mind and replace them with happy ones.

Even if it's just for today, adjust yourself to what is. Face reality, correct those things that you can correct and accept those you cannot.

Improve your mind, do not be a mental loafer. Force yourself to read something that requires effort, thought, and concentration.

Do something positive to improve your health. Make an honest effort to do the right things by your health. If overweight, eat nothing you know to be fattening and make yourself exercise ~ even if it's only walking around the neighbourhood or using the stairs. We know so much more about nutrition  and how much exercise and sensible living can extend one's life and make it more enjoyable; so just for today, take good care of your body so you can celebrate many more happy years.

Make a conscious effort to be agreeable. Look as good as possible, dress becomingly, speak softly, act courteously and do not interrupt when someone else is talking.

Try not to improve anybody except yourself. Have a program. You may not follow it exactly, but it will be a guide will, saving you from two pests that so easily besiege one: hurry and indecision.

Just for today, gather the courage to do what is right, take the responsibility for your actions and bloom.

SAVING THE FRIENDSHIP OR THE FRIEND?

I remember reading somewhere: “you can pick your friend but you can't pick your friend’s nose”. Here’s what I understood from that quote – it’s never so easy to judge our friends. This brings me to the title of this post; it’s not easy to critique our friends because that may lead us to that corner where you have to make the difficult/hurtful decision of picking a friend over the friendship with that friend because a real friend cares more about the friend than the friendship with the friend.

Although I’m not a champion great friendships, I think it's important to note that the real beauty of truly great friendships is not the friendship in itself but rather the courage to choose that friend over the friendship. 

For instance, I've been faced multiple times with the choice of having difficult conversations with certain good friends. Conversations that would either save my friend from driving off a cliff (if they see value in what I’d say) or potentially derail and change the nature of our friendship forever (if they don't see value in what I say).

This is where we all take the easy route - avoid the confrontation, say a prayer for our pals, risk nothing and save the friendship. When the right thing to do would be to risk the friendship for the sake of the friend because unless we love our friends more than we love the friendships with these friends, we're only loving ourselves.

Loving our friends so much that we can spill the bitter truth to them gut honestly is so difficult and dangerous because it's costly, uncomfortable and sometimes costs us friendships.

Have you ever lost a friendship because of you didn’t want to lose the friend? If your answer to that question is no, you should have at least come close. If not, chances are that you care more about your friendships than your friends.

Let’s examine ourselves, what have you generally placed more value on through your actions, the friendship or the friend?

Help a friend bloom.

SURRENDERING ALL

"I surrender all..... to thee my blessed saviour". So, this hymn has been on my mind/lips for some days now and I can't help but write out the lyrics so I can actually realise what I've been singing.

Staring at the words of that song, I realise that surrendering my life to God really freaks me out. Probably for the same reason it freaks you out. It freaks me out because like you, I don’t know what God’s going to do with my life if I surrender it to him. 

You know what scared me the most about God while growing up? Being sent to live in some remote place for the rest of my life. Now that I think of it, I grew up in Africa – Nigeria for that matter, where else could be more remote than the white man’s grave? 

All my years I lived in Africa and for most of those years I had the same fear some of you had. I was afraid that if I surrendered my life to God, He would send me to some remote place where they don’t have light or cable TV and I just couldn’t take that chance.

I couldn’t take the chance that God would choose to do something with my life that didn’t fit with my hopes and dreams and so I did what so many of us do with our lives - I held on as tightly as I could to my life and everything that mattered to me because life felt safer and easier that way.  

                                          
You know what I think every single christian has in common? We're all holding something from God because we're afraid of what He might do if we let go. I honestly can't tell you how scary it is to "surrender" to God, so I just hold on.

Some of us are holding on to relationships. There’s no way we're surrendering our dating lives to God because we're pretty sure the moment we do, He'll ask us to be single for the rest of our lives. For some of us, it’s our finances, our career, a certain behavior, a secret sin, an addiction… the list goes on

I don’t know what you're specifically holding on to, but we all are holding something and tempted/deceived to believe life is safer and smarter that way. What if we got it all backwards? What if I told you that surrendering the most important things in your life to God is actually the smartest decision and safest thing you can do with those things?

How do I know this? I know because no one has ever surrendered his life to God and lived to regret it. No one! Not one person in the history of the world has ever given what mattered most to God and lived to regret it. Just ask Abraham, David, Moses, Esther, every and any person in the bible who surrendered to God,  Me. 

It's true, so true. If you obey Jesus and surrender your life to him, you will overly bloom.

"DETOXING "TOXIC" FRIENDS"

Periodically, I read posts about cutting “toxic” friends. I envision us all making lists of toxic friends and difficult people we need to avoid for our own mental wellbeing and I’m pretty sure we’ve all made it to some of those lists or at least, I know I have to be on a few “toxic friends and difficult people” lists because many days, I make my own mistakes, step on toes on purpose or without even knowing it because let’s face it: we can be really difficult sometimes.

Like, I really don’t fancy talking on the phone so I do almost anything via e-mails or SMSs and those messages are (more often than not) excessively long and include way more details, asides, and parentheticals than is conducive to conveying my meaning (like this one sentence, lol). Now, some find that annoying and sometimes passive-aggressive.

I’m also constantly optimistic that things will blow over without me needing to feel the discomfort of actual confrontation. I avoid conflict for so long that when I finally do say something, it’s like I’ve sprung the whole shebang on the unsuspecting person.

Another difficult thing about me is that I like having just one or two close friends, but I’m so socially inept that I end up clinging limpet-like to poor people who are just trying to be friendly. And because who knows when I’m going to move out of state again, I feel a need to make friends fast.  This sense of urgency just exacerbates this barnacling tendency.

Contrarily though, I’m suspicious of anyone who likes me too much. In the university, it was really bad. If someone expressed an interest in me—especially a romantic interest, but sometimes even just a close-friendship interest—I cut and run. I did my best to be invisible to that person hoping they would forget I existed. I’ve gotten better in the last four years, but that may be in part because it’s easier to be invisible when there’s no school or work to go to, or new people to meet. So I don’t have to work as hard to disappear as I did when I was an undergraduate.

And if someone does succeed in becoming my close friend, they get the reward of dealing with my fierce and inexplicable mood swings. I’ve tried to find a physical, emotional, or climatic cause for my days-long mood swings hoping to find a cure for them, but to no avail. I just sometimes, without warning, become a total jerk. I can see it happening, but I feel powerless to stop it.

And then there’s my flippant attitude about gifts. I know at least a couple of people have been hurt when they’ve given me a gift and then I stylishly or bluntly turn it down for whatever reason! I really can be a jerk, too bad.

Anyway, that’s me. I still think that everyone’s toxic sometimes. Seeing the ways in which I’m toxic gives me a fair amount of empathy for other people who might be considered toxic. There are still people I avoid; people who are particularly creepy, paranoid, consistently belligerent or holding grudges.

Unfortunately, there are some persons we always try to avoid - being around them is like being exposed to nuclear waste. Unlike with some other people, we try to control how much we’re affected by whatever vibes they’re radiating. We think, maybe they’re just having a bad day, maybe they’re feeling as awkward as we are and are overcompensating, maybe there’s something really big going on for them that they aren’t talking about but that is coming through anyway. If all else fails, we think of them as poor babies; that’s almost sure to inspire gentle feelings in us.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s difficult all the time. They might always be difficult for me, but there’s always someone who loves them and whom they love. Or maybe I just feel this way because it’s pragmatic. Most social interactions carry a much higher price than they do a pay-out for me, and although I need to find some way to not be a hermit, being on people’s toxic lists does help decrease the number of people with whom I need to interact - it saves me from making my own toxic list and speeds up my bloom.

TWENTY THREE TRUTHS IN TWO DECADES PLUS THREE YEARS

In my one score and three years, these are twenty three things that I have seen to be true and I’d love to share.

God is real and He does heal broken hearts if all the pieces are given to Him.

A mother’s love can transcend the grave.

The psalm 23 prayer is no joke; God will indeed serve you a six-course meal in the presence of your enemies and you’ll only have to let them watch you eat.

Watch your thoughts and your words; they truly have an impact on your person.

Timidity really is a spirit and it can stop you from living. A friend said and I agree, “timidity is deadlier than you think”

I used to wonder why Nehemiah 8:10 didn't read “the strength of the lord is your joy” but now, I know that “the joy of the lord is truly our strength”

Being alone doesn’t necessarily mean you’re lonely and not all first relationships will lead to the altar.

And yes, true love can come more than once – don’t be scared to love again.

Being generous with who you are and what you have never drains you.

Life is short, make sadness shorter!

The heart has reasons that reason cannot know – not everything can be explained.

You will make decisions that even you may not understand, why bother about making others understand?

Bitterness is as toxic as… what’s the most toxic thing again? Please, let all bitterness go.

Your beginning never dictates your end, that you were born a certain way doesn’t mean you should stay that way.

We will learn a lot from friends who are older than we are, just as much as children can teach us how to be Christ-like.

There will be people who will forever be reference points for you, strive to be a reference point to someone too – invest in people.

Who you are at 19 shouldn’t be who you are at 23. If it is, something is definitely wrong – you really should be better.

You can never accurately tell God’s ways, just trust Him painstakingly because He is good all the time.

Changes will occur that may want to throw you off balance. Even if it does, do realize that change is constant – this change will probably be changed too.

If you don’t have a life, you don’t need a life partner – get a life of your own.

Some of the best relationships you’d ever have are those you never saw coming.

Never regret giving someone the benefit of doubt or telling someone how affectionately you feel about them.

For your own good and peace of mind, you may have to flow against the tide sometimes and this will help you bloom.

LETTER TO MY FUTURE SELF

When I was a brand spanking new teenager, age thirteen, I thought I had it all figured out. I would receive my first car at age eighteen and be married by twenty-one. Half true. At age twenty, I thought I would surely major in pharmacy, own a pharmacy store at age twenty-one, and be planning a wedding at age twenty-two. All wrong. After leaving the Junior Secondary School, my mother died and closet worrying set in. Moving away from home and enduring the shock of the loss, I still thought I had it all figured out.

As I begin a quick decent in a career, I am learning that I will hardly ever have it all figured out and that things change, which is perfectly okay. When you are eight or thirteen, twenty-one seems like a grown-up age. But I am currently twenty two and still do not feel as grown-up as I expected myself to be. 

As I begin a new year in life tomorrow, it is with great anticipation that I seek to refresh my thought process of having my act together. Here I sit today, my last day as a twenty-two year old as a French educator, not a pharmacist. Isn't it funny how life changes with time? Moi? Teaching? I didn’t I could do it!

It seems as though with age, time, and change we transition into the mindset of "yeah, I have it all together" then to the point of "I should've had it all together by now" but what is the deal here? Why do others seem to know what is going on all the time and I seem lost? Honestly, I am not sure if I will ever know what is best for all situations in life. I am not sure that I will always learn something new or attempt something new. I do know that I am perfectly okay with making mistakes and learning from those mistakes.

As I humbly welcome year twenty-three, I am blessed to understand age is age and life is life. Instead of conforming to the mold of age expectations our society places on young adults, I have begun to embrace the trials and triumphs of each day, prepared or not.

When considering the implications of age, I am learning that number truly does not matter. Instead of being controlled by age and what I thought I should have accomplished at a certain time in my life I have instead begun to consider my blessings thus far. I have begun to consider that, like many others, it is perfectly okay to not have it all together because independence sometimes makes us shy away from dependence upon Christ. Life lessons and doing things at different ages are what make us unique. Straying from the mould of age is what allows us to not conform, rather create our standards and personal stories.

A few months back, I wrote a letter to my sixteen year old self. Looking back, there is always a lot to learn from the past. As I approach the future I thought it would be fun to write a letter to my future self in hopes of holding myself accountable for what may come and go, while being reminded at all costs that it is totally okay if things take a different course. It is just important to also have that reminder to keep moving forward, too.

Dear Oyiwodu,

I hope life and time have been kind to you and that you are well. As you journey through the next few years of life and love you will more than likely eventually become a professional career woman, a Ph.D student, wife and mother as the Lord sees fit. As time passes and seasons change, life will change also. Remember who you are, where you started and where you are headed. I hope that you forever still feel as fit as you are today.

Be strong in the Lord. It is with great joy that you have been saved by Jesus Christ.  His blood has washed all your sins away. Take time to pray. Continue to wake up each day thankful to live life with more than enough. Seek to remain dead to the flesh. Never stop listening for the call of the Lord and pursue life as a Christian, wife, mother, sister, and daughter in such a way that others see Jesus in you. May you always do the work of the Lord. Your Christian faith is, and always will be, about Jesus and not merely only works or only faith.

While others may see you at your best, it is at your worst that Christ sees your best because you run to Him instead of from Him. Whatever you may profit as the years pass by, consider it all loss for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Love sanctifies those in weakness when they need it most. As Jesus shows selflessness and compassion, seek to always fiercely love and care for your husband with the same affection. Honor him continuously. Serve him covered in grace and mercy. Always see him at his best, encourage him at his worst, and never pull him apart when you are the one he needs most. Never stop communicating, dating, or sharing the most intimate depths of your heart with him. For he is the one who will lead you until the day of Christ's return. Follow and serve in his leadership, submit to him. Love like the warmth of the sunshine, for that warm will always remain in your heart even as the rain falls.

Never take your friends or family for granted. Remember those who have accepted, loved, and encouraged you at your worst, for those will be the ones you can still call on. Engage and pursue the heart of others. Seek to never live life vicariously through another. Strive for joy in the moment. Shy away from things of this world with materialistic value. Unplug and really communicate with others. Seek the beauty in simplicity. Live life in the present instead of stressing through each step along the way. Find balance in the pain and joy in the mundane. Continue to always be in bloom no matter where you may go. Hold yourself accountable for your actions, words, and thoughts. Do not judge without walking a mile in another's shoes. Live without fear of tomorrow or regrets from yesterday. Accept yourself as you change and grow spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Forgive and forget, but do not forget why you are here. Love life and those the Lord places in your path as if each day is breathtakingly beautiful.

Although your experiences have been such a teaching tool for sharing and journaling life, love and faith, continue to use them as a platform for Him as time and change allows. Seek to share life, love and faith in a manner for growth and encouragement. Use your words in light of what the Lord can do through a nobody like yourself. As you transition into each day to live life, never lose hope. Attempt to impact a life, love a stranger, and have faith embedded in the small lessons of each day's devotions. Teach your little sisters with passion, strength, and heart. Light the fire and fill the pail of every mind that will walk by your side.

You were created to do great things. God's got his hands on you and has molded your path just for His master plan. Be present in every moment. For what happens while you are working and waiting is more important than what you are working and waiting for. Be thankful for each and every single moment, for you do not know when the Lord will call you home.

Bloom,
Your twenty three year old self.