BROKENESS

Has it ever occurred to you that while you think life is really weighing you down and so broken inside that others are going through worse?

I was just wondering day’s ago how a person manages going around with a broken heart yet smiling and yet ripped apart inside…life can be hard for a heart.

My friend has been going through pain of losing a brother which happened three years ago but you know grief,looks easy when you are not the one in it, through experience,grief has no expiry date only that people just get to know how to live with it.It becomes a part of you like it can say ”Hey good morning,t you are in grief yet another day and it will whisper again while you get to sleep like shall we awaken that grief emotion as you sleep?.

I do not know how i drifted away from my main story but thing is,while she’s still in this grief period,she receives a call that the young sister was in a car crush and died on the spot.Dear life, what kind of brokenness can one handle really?

I then hear of another energetic girl who recently got married and apart from being a sickle cell patient,she had a very bright future and so happy she found  prince charming and a baby on the way,am told she just died.How will the parents and husband mourn for her like how else can one handle this kind of brokenness?

It somehow seemed to be a day of receiving bad news about people dying suddenly.

As i end the day,i received a text friend a close friend asking me what she can tell a workmate who just lost her fiancee suddenly.At this point,am so dumbfounded….

PAUSE!!!

Thinking about life,it is all vanity,here today and gone tomorrow.A lot of things break us and i cant even point at anyone who has never been so broken,i mean so so broken and not wanting to face the world the next day.You have no idea how you will pull through,i have been there countless times.

We are still here friend and it’s ok to carry on,count it all joy like they say..A day at a time does work.I thought i was shaken by a few circumstances past days but no,people are going through worse so appreciate your strength and keep hoping for a brighter tomorrow because yes,some days are harder to pull through than the others.

I do not know your pain but keep learning from it,it shall be accounted for your tomorrow’s strength.LIFE GOES ON!

 

 

When Silent

So inconceivable just how the year seem to be moving so fast! its the last day of April today,wow!!

Just over the weekend,a friend of mine called me and as we were talking,he asked about a friend of mine who i had not spoken to for about a month,i had no idea how she was and all the happenings in her life or family.After the call,i was just telling myself to at least not end the day minus checking on this friend of mine…BOOM!! talk of telepathy,it was her calling at that moment of my thought. A Lot was happening in her life in just  months we had been silent on each other.

“There’s always a message in silence”

Recently while at the boiling point area in Zambia’s tourist capital -Livingstone,a thought just hit me as i looked at the water,how there was so much pressure just around one area,how no life can survive if tried to go near,the wave’s are always at an indescribable force,it made me think about life.The Victoria falls -“The Smoke that Thunders”  speaks much more about life when you take a look at it in deep thought.I looked at it over and over as though seeing it for the first time.

While someone is silent and looks so peaceful from the outside,the inside life which is the real life is thundering.The inside has battles no one else knows,no one else understands,while life happens on the outside,real things deep down are taking place. Its like a river looking so peaceful from a distance but real life happens under the river,all kinds of water species,water divers and alot other happenings.

Isn’t it shocking how we at times criticise people who go into depression or some kind of bad happenings? not everyone finds it easy to deal with the waves that bother them inside the canvas of there hearts,we have different personalities and some personalities wont just open up to speak it out.A thing that can break my heart will not break another .People deal with issues differently and it’s alright to embrace everyone’s difference.

This particular line i always love and it goes…. “Be kind to people you meet,you never  know what battle’s they are fighting”  oh It does feel good being that light in the world that has so much darkness.

Continue being the sparkle in someone’s life,that person you have been quite on,your silence,there silence may need to be distracted.

 

Holding On

It’s been said over and over that there’s always a purpose in every happening under the sun.This is such a comforting line that one would want to hear over and over.I love to hear it too when i do not understand the messiness that might be surrounding me given seasons.

I just don’t seem to stop rehearsing the pain I felt about losing my young sister in a road traffic accident.I have read self-help books,religious books,reached out for counsel just so to get that healing but it’s for sure,one line that always stands out is this…”There’s a purpose.”

I could wish to know what this purpose is but no one seem to have it all,it remains a mystery. Surprisingly,it always feels better to know that nothing just happens,that no situation last’s forever even grief has its stages,the worst days and the healing days when one eventually accepts.Will i still wander about in search of the reasons behind all the happenings,the WHY’s and the HOW’s.

Like most people who have inspired me in every season,when they are going through the unexplained chaos of life,they hold on,holding on to hope,holding on to faith,holding on to love and the list goes on.It sings to me ”STRONG’…..to be strong is to still hold on to all the good things like hope which should be the last thing to die.

I hold on to the LOVE my sister left me with,the good memories,my pain is my automatic motivation to look on that brighter side,to see the blessing i shared bonds with her,remembering all the laughter,the adventures we had,including those sister quarrels and out of love we laughed again….AWWWWW!!! so sweet to smile and still love her even in death.

It gives bitter taste to the soul to hold on to Anger,Pain,unforgiveness,Sorrow and every kind of emotion that would never build us but rather crush our spirit man over and over.

One song rings through my mind even as i write this by a group called Casting Crowns titled “Just Be Held” and here are a few lines ;

Hold it all together
Everybody needs you strong

But life hits you out of nowhere
And barely leaves you holding on

And when you’re tired of fighting
Chained by your control

There’s freedom in surrender
Lay it down and let it go

Indeed,everybody who loves us would want us strong and we have every reason to hold on and keep the good fight.Each one of us if we try hard can do it.
Like a little child holding on to the mother for Safety,comfort,love,assurance,Keep on holding on.

Being Calm

We all agree that they are certain things that happen and leave us in panic mode.Its always difficult to master calmness especially when we receive disturbing news.We are bound to react in any way not realising the repercussion our acts would lead to.

It reminds me of my senior at church who had just lost his lovely wife after a period of battling with cancer (MHSRIP).It got me thinking why he was so composed during the funeral,i expected to see someone who was so ripped apart maybe even looking hopeless,he came were i was and said his thanks i was mourning with him,a good number of people around were passing comments why the widowed man wasn’t just in one place,i quickly thought to myself that people grief differently and besides,the real funeral starts when the funeral is over.

Burial day in the evening i received a phone call that a colleague had just collapsed after paying his last respect and the end result was he died though rushed to the nearest clinic.All we got to know later was that the man was so pained at the death of this lady,he was hypertensive and this condition requires a calmed heart,a calmed spirit regardless of the happening.

I realise just how important it is to master the art of being clam in all situations,its nothing that can be rehearsed but yet nothing to be taken for granted.Relationships have been destroyed because of hurtful words people say when upset,tensed,for others its when theirs betrayal and they immediately plot revenge.When you discover your business partner has been doing deals privately and now costing your business losing a lot of money…what to you do when you receive an evil report??

The bible tells us to guard our hearts above all else for out of it are the issues of life.It also speaks of a sweet spirit being good medicine to the soul.

I like to end by saying,regardless of what might be happening in this broken world with so many broken people,learn to master calmness,guard your heart with all the mastery it takes,when the heart is broken,fixing is difficult,fix it before it gets broken because at times mending is not guaranteed,others die because they failed to fix it or were to angered to realise they needed to be calm and just let life be after all,life always happens.

First Place (Tie) Breath and Bone Writing Prompt Challenge: Breath, Bone, And Blood/1WiseWoman

Just lovely

Brave & Reckless

A planet without an atmosphere

Empty space filled with fear

Wild child

Don’t come near

With your worries and tears

Take it outside

Hide

Not seeing anything more than breath and bone

Forsaking innocence

Turning my heart to stone

Alone

Can’t find a place that feels like home

Give what’s left

To anyone that felt like love

Seen again as nothing more than breath and bone

Searching for a midnight sun

Run

To a place built on my own

And fill the space

With love and kindness and trust

Bury the past in ash and dust

Secrets hidden within

Me

Protected

By this broken heart

Bruised skin

Tired muscles

And a mind that knows

The truth

I am more

Than breath and bone

---

I write about mental illness and chronic illness. I use a variety of writing styles to incorporate all of the ugly and beauty of living with mental…

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All Pain

At one of my doctor visits years ago, his first question to me was to describe the kind of pain I was experiencing. It’s nothing I ever thought of till he explained to me the different kinds of pain. Was it a knife kind of pain ,pinch or prick pain?. I then realised pain comes in different forms but still remains pain.

As I go through issues time and again, it gets to me that people go through different kinds of pain. A woman not married at 40 years and desires marriage so badly has a kind of pain and so is someone who lost a loved one to death or just lost a job.

Its not a matter of experiencing every kind of pain but recognising pain is real of whatever form. People look down on others going through a kind of pain as lesser pain compared to what they have gone through or seen someone else go through.

Having lost a mother at a young age, my pain was as real as someone who is dealing with a chronic sickness. I will never live to know how it feels like to grow up with a mother but I sure know how it feels like to grow up with a caring father. It is a kind of pain I feel not having the privilege to be groomed by a mother figure.

A woman who has been married for years and not having a child has a pain to bear of not knowing how it feels like to be married and within a year have a child. We have people who graduate from college and straight on get a job without the pain of job hunting yet another has the reality of staying many years jobless with all the qualifications, wondering why the door isn’t opening.

Pain does come in different forms and all of it so real. Its ok to understand people we encounter everyday of our lives if they share their pain and not look down upon them on the pain they are experiencing. Its ok to be nice to every person we meet for we may not know the kind of pain they are struggling with.
A smile, a kind word, a listening ear, a hug has so much impact on the other person going through a season of pain.
I share and I care, it always makes a difference.

Not in Control

So many things on my to-do list and feels very excited to think it’s very possible to achieve everything before the clock arrow sings mid-night. I am in control of this brand new day after all.

Everything seem normal and surrounded by the right people, the day starts and already up to the task working on the things that should be done for the day.

At the bank my time is mostly taken away due to unexpected poor service, talk of having bad network and no transaction being done online except going to the bank in person. I did not see this coming but I still had to go on to make sure the task was done for its importance.

I know I can’t be held in traffic till sometime after lunch but strange enough, am all held up in traffic and it starts to rain which makes it worse and while figuring out the best route to divert to, there’s a big bang and oh my, I just got hit behind…NOOOOO!!!! this is now getting downright messy. I don’t have much of a choice but to reschedule my next meeting, arrange for the kids pick-up by a friend as I sort out the mini accident in the midst of a rainy heavy traffic hour.

My watch says 5pm and nothing much has been achieved on my list and this makes me feel really horrible, so silly to the least and perhaps I should mention, the last call I got has me head straight to the hospital because a very close friend suddenly fail and fighting for her life. It’s hard enough to believe this isn’t even a dream.

Dramatic as a day might be, we just have to realise that we are mostly never in control of a day’s happenings. We always strive to be in CONTROL of every happening, it is in every human I guess…if only this was possible. We see even kids at school wanting to be in control of others or just in a home set up, your little girl/boy wants to rule some decisions. Most people do feel very important to be in control at work for example, at church or whatever place we will ever go to, someone wants the whole control. I have known people who want to take so much control even at funerals-their word should go all else no burial.

It is however ok coming to terms with ‘WE CANT ALWAYS BE IN CONTROL.’ I can say I have come to the terms. While we want life to go this direction, a rather different path comes to shield our initial plan about life. We find ourselves with no control over certain things like how the weather should be, rainy or not, cold or windy?

Do we always see it coming that we may get an infection the following day and be bed ridden the next hour?? Quiet impossible right? I have been there before, I knocked off from work to a hospital bed once. I had no control, it happened and I lived it.

Can we also talk about the day we die, if only we had control and reschedule this dooms day but Ouch!! No one has control over that hour when their life is being taken away, quiet a mystery I must say.

For the things we have control like choosing our career and controlling our finances, who to love and hang out with in our high days, why not do it so well, enjoy the controlling if we can put it that way as the heart still beats for tomorrow is never guaranteed to anyone. We live to accept and live with the things we cannot control and at the time things do not go our way……….tough luck but how about just breath in and out ,turn and twist or maybe yell and live on. Prayer and meditation works wonders always.

Everything gets to pass after all and am sure we have all come across one great line……….”NOTHING JUST HAPPENS.” There’s always a reason for all happenings much as we will never have all the answers as long as we live on this earth.

 

Framed

NOOO!!Ouch! Eiiiish! OMG!  Grrrr!! Damn it!!…these and many more expressions do give us an idea the person screaming them is either in shock, angry, made a mistake, is in pain or whatever situation that makes us utter that one word, some people feel comforted to just scream WT*…

Let’s say you woke up to learn you have just made the news, you are a headliner for something you have no idea of. Suddenly turned to a superstar, a super-hero that you are not. A lot of thought’s are racing through your mind at this stage doing a memory check of how you spent the last 48hours,what you did or who did what to you and what could this news be about? You are not a politician who would make news anyhow and not even a CEO of a multinational Organization or a sports person.

Imagine the worst case scenario and the headline reads ‘Former drug addict now a porn star’ with your names on it. I mean, you don’t even know the taste of marijuana or you have never even been exposed to pornography and after all, your lifestyle is more of a stone-age kind of person. Ok, this is really bad and what a way to be framed. I am actually freaking not knowing how I for one would handle all that bad reading.

What if it contains good news and make’s good reading like you just won an Olympic gold medal or you just made an entry to the Guinness world book of records for a discovery .Walking tall already, shoulders dusted and feeling all good about life and let the news be huh. I mean it’s most people’s imagination to make that good news, leave a mark on the face of the earth before checking out and remembered for it as long as the earth remains.

I can imagine making a discovery dictating what someone thinks soon as I hug or greet them but ummm…that’s just my wildest imagination but hey, don’t you think anything is possible?

It’s really confusing to just learn about all those headlines and anyone would want to know why, how did that happen, how was this news gathered, too many question rumbling.

Do call the media house that published the news and put in a lawsuit, after all this calls for a lot of money for free after winning the case because for sure, you were just ‘framed.’ Just leave it and in no time it will die a natural death in days, weeks, months maybe, you are not guilty so why waste time starting a fight with the newspaper company. Oh, a lot of damage control has to be done, imagine how social media is trending with the kind of news and a lot of people wanting to know who this person is. In most cases, this is the kind of advice our close friends and relatives would give us, what’s your take anyway? The final action is up-to you who has been ‘framed.’

What about the good news headline? People already calling and your phone line gets so busy with the congratulatory messages or rather asking you questions how and when that happened. Sure it would feel nice saying ‘thank you’ as you beat yourself up inside knowing the news is not true. It feels really good being that superhero after all.

NO it wasn’t me ,the paper made a mistake, please believe me, let me explain this, you obviously would want to make it right to all those around you because others have already taken it as planet truth…maybe save it for some talk show..hahaha. Good for imagination anyway.

As far as I know, no paper would publish something without gathering all the facts together, that would be such unprofessionalism to cost them a lot of $.I know these guys can be good at what they do especially putting up a headline and surely, why put up a mistaken identity ? Why frame you.?

You stormed the media house with all the sarcasm the world could ever hear, you want to beat up the reporter you meet on your way in. You are so angry and you want to know who is behind such news… why you? You are so ready to unleash that green eyed ghost in you!

Oh, yes ! the paper has your name and rather a vague picture and most of the details are similar to yours but you have just been told it’s a different person, the world has a lot of names same as yours. That just got you numb and tying to form the next thought. Pause for a moment….just pause. It’s 1^st April maybe. Deep breathe in and out….PAUSE!!!

This news made you ‘mad’ it was so bad and you felt happy-superhero for a moment but all is not real.

This too is reality as often times we have over-reacted to something we shouldn’t have, of course something pointed to us but no, it wasn’t us, oh yes, you could have been framed along your path in life and you reacted without gathering the facts, something’s could have been true but again certain reactions injure us and the other person more.

Out of rage, people have pulled that trigger, they were accused and couldn’t stand that accusation then face the repercussions of that jail cell. We have many who have lost friends because they felt betrayed and said one word which turned the good friendship sour. Think of the many things we do, what your brother, sister, friend, uncle did out of anger, was it worth it?

We all at some point could have felt trapped sponsored by nature but that’s life and the bitter pill it can at times give us, we go through situation’s we couldn’t have possibly imagined or maybe you are going though that right now. We live to regret some stages, we live to say I wish, I wish I wish to certain things…

True to it also is we have had things so good we never thought we could have them someday, maybe won a gold medal, got a good job with that lesser qualification, won a jackpot maybe and so on, oh how it felt so good to be in the moment. Can you attest to this, oh I can.

Here’s to life and living, controlling that anger, taking our time before putting up that act, hey Miss Thang, heard me? re-connect with yourself for their is power within you to fight that anger no matter the circumstance and yes, you can do it, don’t worry about who is saying what against you, don’t worry who is framing you and besides, you and me know too well that life is way too too short to live with all that anger or trying to repair some ‘framed’ news and besides, news gets to fade in no time. I understand certain situations are way too much, we are provoked badly and it feels good holding on to anger against that person but try to get over it. Help is all around us and you can still have that joy, peace that you have always dreamt of putting at the back of your mind that as long as we journey on, staff will make us angry but we will surely handle it well.

All the best as you make sure that the SUN doesn’t go Down with the anger, at least I will not hold on to anger, it DAMAGES.

ME….

 

 

 

OVERWHELMED

 

Still early hours of the morning and already sorting out a family problem, not that its a carry over from days past but its just a sudden happening and before i could even get a minute into analysing the matter, my phone rings and its not even anything I would have loved to hear but its rather news of a close relative being rushed to the hospital.

I should be finalizing preparing for work before I could hit the road and there seem to be a crowd of thoughts running through my mind, i don’t know what the day holds but I do know I started it right, oh yes, i started it with a prayer and my human mind says everything should go smoothly  but hey, its not always that way,anything is bound to happen in 24hours.

By lunch time,work gets seriously overwhelming, a lot of work pressures-misunderstandings, undelivered promises by some clients and just so much tension around and more busy making a few phone calls  trying to make things work out for the best and while at it, the calendar date rings a bell, ‘school assignment due date’ and its almost impossible to work on it on this not-so good day and i could beat the  hell off me why it wasn’t done till the due date. Ok, I know most will face this similar experience and I guess you know what I mean or you are yet to if you are a student and in full employment. At this point I seriously need a breather-I NEED A BREAK.

I should end the day by buying a few items at the mall and that feels good but the good that should have been unleashed just got held by a dropped transaction, have you ever been at a till and a transaction is dropped? I mean network is not just available and you cant do a withdraw at the nearest dispenser machine,besides, you step out and within minutes the shop is closed.Can anything go right in this day?

everything has just been overwhelming, the ‘To Do List’ is different from what has been for the day. Its been one innocent day that started with so much joy, high pitched songs, i mean the kind of songs that  just revitalises your spirit and look forward to facing the day, a declaration that its a day worth living and as the day unfolded, the messiness has been so ‘overwhelming’ and lessons are learnt.

Just because we start the day with all the energy we need, the prayer we prayed, the to-do list we did does not guarantee it will always go as planned, it does not even mean we have done anything wrong neither does it mean we made wrong decisions but rather life just happened and its all about how we handle that ‘overwhelming’ feeling while its happening. Bad news will come at anytime for no one can ever prepare or look forward to bad happenings. We just stay strong, face the day,say a prayer of strength as we put at the back of our mind that its a temporal situation yet to pass and the next and next days to come to be different and at the end of it all, grace keeps carrying us and it always wins in all situations.