When I was younger I thought that success was a fancy word that people used to describe events and people who were not me. So, I never applied myself further than showing up for school and barely getting my home work done when I actually decided to do it. In and out of the headmaster’s office had my parents wondering just where they had gone wrong.
To this day I can’t quite answer what it was that made me feel so alien that I had to rebel just to fit into humanity. I guess to partly address it is that somehow I had misunderstood that success is not a discriminating word, it’s not reserved for select individuals who can use 50% percent of their brain while the rest of us are stuck between 5 – 20%.
I could tell you that my brilliance soon caught up with me because I’m so awesome and all the other things classified as tooting my own horn or kuzvifonera but I think you guys and I both know that the new found revelation of my potential is God inspired.
After a long struggle with depression, unforgiveness and doubt I’m a step further today than I was a year ago or even yesterday. You see something profound happened in me, I met someone. I met the living God and though I didn’t rush to embrace Him like I thought I would, wrestling with Him has been paying off.
We are the bricks but God is the cement that holds it all together
As with any work, the artist is so committed to the final product that sometimes they work tirelessly almost as if in a creative trance to obtain the result gestating in their minds eye. As a designer I find myself under this same pressure. I can literally hunch over the beads all day just to get that Dazzle effect. An almost bout with shoulder tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome saw me revising this and consciously taking little breaks while I work. What’s my point?
We burn out and we were made with that inbuilt burn out function as a reminder that we were “made”. Sometimes we feel so alienated from God because someone lied that we were all meant to be the same. So, we don’t understand why He would ever make something like each one of us and dare to love us despite our persistent mistakes. I just want to take this opportunity to say that we ought not think more highly of ourselves than we should because not one of us is immune to failure.
Sometimes we fail to navigate turns on the road, sometimes we fail to navigate our feelings in conversations and other times we fail to navigate the gaping holes of mediocrity in front of us as we leap ahead in oblivion. Were it not for God’s reckless love some of us would have been distant bad memories to our families and those who loved us.
I deliberately used the word reckless there because it means no one is excluded even the most notorious ones of us whom even we frown upon were made and loved by God. He breathed the same air into their lungs as he did in ours and until we stop trying to fix ourselves and each other on our own we are always going to be disappointed by our buildings.
We all have something to give
Because our Creator is of infinite capabilities is it really so hard to believe that each one of us has a specific part to play in the grand scheme of the Kingdom. Not all of us can be worship leaders, not all of us can wear faded jeans and not all of us can mimic those who seem to be getting it right.
What each of us can do however is forgive someone who has done us wrong, we can each discover the unique attributes that flavour the ground we walk on, we can each collaborate with one another for the greater good of us all.
The other day at one of these local monthly events (Hustler’s Market), I was happily bobbing my head to some well put together old school and the thought hit me. There is only one person who plays like that and so I went round to see who was playing and there he was Reverb 7 playing only as he does. He made it look so effortless behind the decks and you could see that was home for him. I’m not advocating that we all become Dj’s (though I would like to mix just one set in my lifetime of all my favourite and “very white” music LOL) I am saying what is your thing that only you can do that way?
In this difficult economic time how about we skip chewing on the grass or sowing our cars, houses and laptops to the man who claims to take on behalf of God and start investing in discovering the gifts that God actually gave us. They are not just for show they are actually a means of enriching yours and everyone else’s lives in the process of smiling all the way to the bank. You want to be a success? Look no further… you are one
Now arise and shine, put on your shoes and get a move on. You only have to believe it and it will change your life.
