Truth of the matter is...

These past four weeks have been some of the most confusing days of my life. I’m talking about proper daytime TV worthy stuff (but then again I think my life is more interesting than it actually is).

Am I the only one who absolutely hates being confused?  I do not want to be Mary-Jane (if you watch ‘Being Mary-Jane’ you know what I am talking about. She’s one of the most confused people on TV. In my opinion.) I can hear my mother telling me ‘For God is not the author of confusion but of peace…’ (Side note: if you start something but do not feel at peace with it after a week or two, do re-evaluate)

Ever gone to bed feeling a certain way, and then you wake up feeling the extreme opposite of whatever you felt before you hit the bed? (No, this is not being bipolar) It just happens and there’s no one simple explanation what could have caused the change in feeling.

So you sit down, analyse the time lapse between events, evaluate, and draw graphs to try to make sense out of the madness. You fear you might catch a serious case of the King Leah (O, that way madness lies; let me shun that). Looking back at everything you have done to cause this state. In those flashbacks, you realise the very first moment you should have re-evaluated, the moment you could have nipped it in the bud, the moments you compromised your truth and let the fear of not being enough take over. You chose the known, the easier option over the unknown. In those moments it made sense, you could even justify it. (I want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with that, because now you know)

Slowly unravelling the madness, it dawns on you that this entire state of confusion was solely your own making. You fought so hard and yet you lost even harder. You ask yourself over and over and over and over ‘what was it all for?’ You could have easily avoided it all but you were blinded by the illusion of endless possibilities one compromise could yield but now you find yourself feeling depleted.

Have you found yourself in that place? You’re not sad, you’re not depressed, you’re simply meh and bleh (definition: a place between slightly unhappy and slightly happy). Going to bed feeling exhausted more from your own thoughts than the hard work of the day. You recognise bits of yourself but not all of you even when you are asleep, ‘you’re awake as a rumour of war.’ Do not compromise your truth; stand in it even when it seems difficult. The reward is better than the fleeting moment of triumph.

Bringing this back to myself, after my few weeks of camping in meh and bleh land making simple prayers, contemplating and assessing my own truth, God sent me someone unexpected, a Jewish stranger.

This gentleman indulged me in conversation; my job requires that I take the client as they are. So, I fully participated in this mid-afternoon convo like we were old friends. Halfway this intellectually stimulating convo, things got real, like REAL and he told me exactly what I unconsciously needed to remember about myself. (By the way, who does not love intellectually stimulating convos? the kind that balance wit, intellect and spirituality? They are to live for!)

Sometimes we forget who we are, who we deserve to have in our lives, we get so used to our parents’ praise or forget what God has said about us. Those times God sends you a Jewish gentleman to reawaken you to who you are and to your purpose. I am not able to disclose his message here, but the encounter closed the door of my meh and bleh days and pushed me back to myself and it feels so good to be at peace with everything that I have been trying to fix, and to make sense of.

You will find this peace after you KNOW where you’re stuck, admit it to yourself, take responsibility, and forgive yourself and MOVE FORWARD. Do not let the past define you, do not let people’s lack of seeing you for who you are define you, do not conform to what will make someone else comfortable because you will lose yourself in the process. Stay the path and stand in your truth.

Can I just encourage someone camping in the meh and bleh place, it is going to be fine. This is just one of those times when you have to find clarity out of the confusion and you will, keep at it and find your truth. It will literally set you free again. So “run mad as often as you choose; but do not faint”.

You may not get the Jewish man experience but take this from me. You may not have got things right but you have a story, and an experience to up your growth. You’re still lovely, you’re still beautiful, you’re loved, you’re worthy and you are part of everything that is right with this world. You are good!

In the meantime something unrelated to the above, I am reading Life is _______ by Judah Smith. I love books that challenge me to love more; love requires one to be selfless. I need to be reminded that way too often otherwise I get back to me, me, me. Honestly, with everything that is going on in this world, earthquakes, race issues, religious issues, wars of all kinds, gender issues, poverty, famine. The list as we all know is inexhaustible.

Be a nice human. Be compassionate. Be kind. Be love. Be forgiveness. Have a sense of humour. A lot of unhappiness and suffering could be cut back if we took our eyes off ourselves and looked at others.
 

“The opposite of love isn’t hate; it is selfishness.”