Incommunicado

This is a post communicating how I feel about being able to communicate.

If you know me, you’d know that I’m really big on communication. That’s because I’ve borne the brunt of not communicating properly and suffered the consequences that come with not communicating properly with people in my life.

Ironically however, it’s one of the things I find the most difficult to do. Growing up I talked so much. All the time. I had so much to say and was very expressive of my emotions. But nobody ever listened. The people who pretended to listen too were blabber-mouths and would carry my pot of beans around, spilling it all over the place. So I stopped trying. As a defense-mechanism, I just stopped talking. ‘No one would listen anyway‘ I thought to myself. It just seemed easier.

But what that did was that it made me start to internalise everything instead. Overtime I started to live and have most interactions in my head. Everything started and ended there. If someone upset me and I had something to say, I’d have the conversation in my head, rationalise it and turn it over three times like a half done strip of bacon till it went away.

The problem with that was, the more I did stuff in my head, the less I had the ability to actually talk out loud and voice out my opinions and emotions. I grew so comfortably into the habit of not speaking up at all, so much that I felt physical discomfort whenever I had to be emotionally expressive. I would actually wince and hesitate.

I really struggled to communicate and I started to get really bad at it. I’d expect people to be honest with me about how they felt but I couldn’t do same with them because I’d rather just say it in my head; often times forgetting that

communication is a two-way street.

What’s the point in being a good listener when you aren’t an equally good talker? How can you ever communicate to anybody when you can’t even say how you feel out loud?

One day God pointed out to me that I had started internalising so much to the extent that I wasn’t even talking to Him. I said everything in my head. I wouldn’t actually open my mouth to communicate or tell Him because well He’s in my head right. He must know what I’m thinking.

But you see prayer is communicating WITH God. Whether it’s through song, writing, rapping, actually chatting etc. Whatever it is, you have to find a way to actively INTERACT with God.

I read once that prayer is when you direct your communication to God. So if you sing TO God it’s a form of prayer. If you think thoughts about/to God it’s a form of prayer. As long as you’re communicating with God it’s prayer.

But I got so far gone that I couldn’t even talk to God.

My point is this.

Find an outlet. You need it. Don’t keep everything inside of you/in your head.

When I was depressed, I realised that I needed a way out. Keeping everything inside me was toxic and I would get actual headaches. I was sad for no apparent reason and I’d cry at the drop of a hat. I needed a way out.

So I started writing. On random fullscaps in my notebooks. Then I realised that it was therapeutic and gave me relief, so I started compiling my writings and decided to start a secret blog for them that no one would have access to (well now you can have access to it here)

Then I started writing letters to God. Then little notes on how I felt. And now I’m here today. Except I don’t really journal or write letters to God anymore. I’m going to start doing that again though. At least to help with my communication with God. Because now I internalise everything even with God and that’s not healthy.

It got to a point where I couldn’t even cry. I cried in my head. So when I actually wanted to shed tears I couldn’t. If I managed to get a tear it didn’t last past a minute.

I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be so out of touch with my emotions and not be able to effectively communicate them. I don’t want to keep all that gunk inside of me and end up creating a mess that gets more and more difficult to clean each day. I most especially don’t want my difficulty with communication to transcend my interactions with other people and affect my interactions with God.

I don’t want to be incommunicado anymore.

I want to be emotionally intelligent on every level possible. I want to be healthy and free and expressive of how I feel or am faring on the inside. I want to be able to communicate effectively with whoever I need to. My loved ones and the people I interact with deserve that much.

So help me God.

Coat of Many Colours

To many different people I am many different things:

A sister

A best friend

A lawyer

A ‘geyhey girl’ (what an alumna of Wesley Girls’ High School, my alma mater, is usually called)

My father’s daughter

A lifegroup leader

A member of Hope Church

Etc.

What that tells me is that identity is multi-faceted; a coat of many different colours. And also that most of the time, people will identify you in relation to themselves or to a situation they associate you with.

For example, if you’re in a relationship and you break up with the person, chances are you’ll gain a new identity as ‘X’s ex’ (see what I did there). In different circles different people will refer to you in different ways.

I personally have been often times referred to in relation to someone else.

‘Oh that’s Nana’s sister’

‘Have you met Maa T’s best friend?’

‘Did you know she was OB’s daughter?’

‘That’s the geyhey girl who’s a law student now’

‘Yep, that’s his ex!’

People’s perceptions of you are influenced by what they identify you as.

For example when people find out my alma mater they automatically start to try and identify traits that are associated with that school and begin to see me in that light. When people find out that I’m studying law, everything I say or do gets ascribed to that aspect of my identity. “That’s such a lawyer thing to say” except it wasn’t a minute ago when they didn’t know I was a lawyer in the making 🙄

While none of this is a bad thing in itself, what it means is that if you’re not well set in your mind about what your identity is; if you don’t choose for yourself which facet of your identity you want to be defined as and evolve in, you will be torn in different directions and your life and actions will be only as a response to what people view you as. Overtime, you’ll start to lose yourself and your identity as an individual in how people see you; (eg. becoming a wife and losing yourself)

Decide today and be well set in your mind which identity you want to operate in, the one that will withstand the test of time and will remain the same no matter what. Decide that you will not let your identity be solely based on relation to another human being and things of the world, because those are all temporary identities that will fluctuate.

You may be all these things, a sister/brother, mother/father, lover, best friend, etc. But you are so much more than that.

You are first and foremost God’s creation, and if you’ve given your life to Him, a child of God. You are royalty, an heir to His throne. He has so much to say about your identity and until it is well-established in your mind who you really are, you will constantly live out your actions as a subconscious response to how other people see you.

I am so proud that I am someone’s sister, daughter, friend, leader, former classmate, future lover, etc 🙂 . I truly am. But none of these are the identities on which I want my legacy to be built.

I want to be known first and foremost as God’s child. I want God to be the first thing people see when they look at me (well besides my pretty face of course 🙂), and I want that no matter what someone identifies me as, it will always point back to God.

I am many things, but I am first and foremost a child of God, and royalty by consequence.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8:14, 17‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Jars of Clay

‘Every liar is a cheat. Every cheat is a thief. Every thief goes to hell.‘

Or something like that. I was all the above lol but I don’t know about the hell part though because your girl is saved glory be to God.

I’ve lied through my teeth several times. I’ve stolen. I’ve cheated during examinations. I’ve watched pornography. I’ve done things I cannot even believe I ever considered doing (my level of candour hasn’t attained such heights of transparency yet 🙂) Admittedly, I’m not the worst kid on the block but I definitely wasn’t the best.

Thing is, me then and me now are two completely different people. I am not a product of my past, and I will not let it dictate to me how I should act in my present time. I try to make a conscious effort to refuse to be trapped by things I used to do. I refuse to be labelled with old tags and bad habits I shed long ago.

But I realise that people tend to have this habit of boxing people up in their past life and refusing to give them the opportunity to show that they’re changed.

We judge people based on what was, instead of considering what could become. It makes us unwilling to listen to words of wisdom/advice from former worldly people who have given their lives to Christ because ‘you? Telling me to pray more ??’ or ‘You’re such a hypocrite, preaching celibacy when you’ve slept with everything in a skirt.’

It’s sad.

Why do we always forget that the least in the world is still the greatest in God’s eyes? Why do we forget that Moses was a stammerer, David an adulterer, Saul (Paul) an antagonist of God & His followers?

The point of this post is essentially this…

If you’re one of such people whose been boxed up in your past by society, this is a not-so-gentle reminder to refuse the negativity that people try to bring you down with. Turn a deaf ear to the naysayers who are stuck in your past and have decided to see you only in that light.

In Christ, you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and nothing or no one can change that fact. You’re never too condemned to come to Christ and He’s waiting and willing to give you a chance and transform you into a new being (2 Corinthians 3:18)

There is hope. No one is ever too condemned to be used by God.

It is possible that people are more receptive of the message I seek to share/ whatever I have to say because I’ve always been perceived as a ‘good kid’. And many people around me apparently consider me to be very in tune with God.

I contrast that in my mind with how flawed I actually am in reality, and how less receptive someone is likely to be of the same message I preach, shared by a person who is openly known as a former weed addict who slept with anything in a skirt.

People often times tend to judge people based on their past and what they’ve known them to be. We let our perceptions of what we think is the state of someone’s spiritual life be a measurement in determining who is worthy or not to preach The Message.

What we forget is that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

But I feel the need to point out that the power is in the message. That we are all vessels that can be used by God, no exceptions made.

I’m not perfect; I’ve had my fair share of ‘worldliness’ (still a work in progress) and I’m not a better messenger than the next person. God can and will use anyone who is willing. (1 Corinthians 1:28)

So next time, before you judge someone who’s changed and wants to share the Good News with you, consider that

1. You’re not perfect; you’ve come from somewhere too.

2. God will use any willing vessel irrespective of their past.

3. It’s wrong to judge someone based on their past; where they’d from doesn’t make their message about God any less relevant.

Remember that we’re all mere jars of clay. It is the precious gift of the Good News and the power of God that qualifies us. (Ephesians 2:8)

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” – 2 Corinthians 4:7 NLT