What I learnt from my first fender bender

A shaken Sharon stepped out of the car, heart pounding as I worried that now I’d really done it. At the most inopportune time I had slipped into that all too familiar place where my mind projects to the realm of False Evidence Appearing Real (FEAR) and I was worrying about my finances. That split second was all it took for me to land in a potentially precarious situation.

You see there had been an accident along Second street and traffic was moving painfully slow while I watched the clock turn to 8.05 on a day I’d hoped to show up for work on time. In my momentary lapse I failed to leave enough breaking distance and smacked right into the silver Mercedes Benz C-class in front of me. The loud smack jolted me back to reality and I quickly got out of my car to assess how much doo-doo I had gotten myself into.

Out of the Benz stepped a burly character who looked like someone you did not want to mess with at 8.05 on a Wednesday morning. As his face became clearer, I realized it was a good friend from Uni. The frown he had been wearing disappeared and he asked where I’d been rushing to.

I couldn’t answer as I was too busy scanning his car for damage, in my scan I noticed a side mirror strewn beside my car and cringed thinking this smack had done a bigger number on me than I had anticipated. He must’ve seen the look on my face and reassured me it was from the initial accident, again he asked “ko urkumhanyira kupi” (where are you rushing to?).

In a mixed daze of excitement that our side mirrors would live another day and confusion from my first smack-into I answered, “it was just a kiss”, complete wrong answer, I know LOL, but I’d heard my mom use that phrase when cars smacked into each other and didn’t amount to serious carnage.  I was lucky this kiss didn’t land me in trouble Lord knows it should have.

The whole incident proved to me that sometimes we really don’t get what we deserve. My good friend let it slide and I was free to rush to the office where I arrived at 8.20 and my boss wasn’t there to observe my tardy tendency. From that moment I decided I have got to stop stressing so much and I hope my message today will help you stress less in our highly stressful environment.

Gratitude in the simple things

When I woke up this morning I sat up in bed, looked down at my feet and wiggled my toes. I paused for a moment as I realized that another person somewhere in the world probably more deserving than I, does not have the luxury of such movement. I can be cheeky, rude, temperamental and downright sneaky but here I am with the gift of movement when I could be confined to a bed or a wheelchair. God’s grace baffles me and I will always cry when I think about it because it just makes no sense. We are so willingly flawed but still He renews mercies each day, still He will open the door if we knock and still, He will answer when we call. A love like this there is surely none.

Life is your canvas, but you don’t have all the time in the world to paint it

Like any masterpiece our lives are full of upward strokes and downward strokes and awkward strokes and big red strokes and little almost invisible white strokes. All the strokes combined make our story and if there’s anything I’ve learnt up to this point its that no one can paint your picture for you even if you think they could wield the paint brush better.

We don’t have time people. I’m challenging us to use the little that we have boldly, purposefully and with love so that our time here is not in vain. What work have you been dying to do but have stopped yourself every single time? Maybe it’s time to give yourself the chance, you never know what impact it could make on someone who needs what you have locked up inside you.