Reaching to my 2 year old self

I'll make a confession and I do not want to be judged for it. I never thought I would like kids. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike kids but I just never had an opportunity to really just hang out with a toddler. At least not one whose language I could not understand. I was a wary woman with jittery fingers. That was until hopper came along. Now that he's here, it's hard to imagine life without him. I kid you not, your own flesh and blood, that you can't deny. When you see your eyes on someone else, that's some *ish right there.

Now grasshopper(pictured above) was the first baby I actually held in my arms. My first real live hand held human. The first realisation that I could have maternal instincts if I was in the right frame of mind. If any of you have ever hang out with a 2 year old boylong enough, you realise that is when the evil genius in anyone fully matures. His mind is a place where an evil genius lives. In fact I think if you're not a genius at that age......sijui niseme. (loose translation: I don't know I say what)

Now that the anty-nal instincts have been awakened (anty-nal instincts are maternal instincts for aunties) I have learnt to grow with him. I now know that you learn more from a child than from fully grown adults. Children don't hide behind maturity and education and pain. Surely, anyone who can walk around with their poop hugging their butt for hours doesn't have too much to hide. :-).

He finds adventure in everything. Every nook and cranny (I have always wanted to use that phrase..hihi!) So he finds adventure in every nook and cranny (there I go again). Coming over is an adventure. Here hie's allowed to touch everything, enter every cupboard, climb every chair and bookshelf. He can slide up and down the stairs for hours (he lives in a bungalow where he allows his parents occasional peace).I remember we did that on the ramps at the hospital (yes, we!!) when his baby brother was being born. For 2 hours we ran up to the 3rd floor, then I'd watch as he tumbled down 2 floors. Then up and down again. So yesterday he discovered the connection between the hand rail and the wall. A little metal thing that he could hang on like a monkey. Now he has discovered a new game. Who knows what he'll discover tomorrow. So after watching him, I have learnt life is a little adventure. Get it where you can. Of course you may have me to look over you and make sure you don't hurt yourself so you have to be adventurous carefully. Life may not be amazing race but it's not meant to be a dreary, sad place either.

I wonder how this thing works
(Lesson no. 2) When you do something wrong, open your eyes wide and slowly edge backwards before anyone notices and then turn around and run like hell. I don't know where I lost my ability to sneak out stealthily. Its all in the eyes and the movement. Of course it would help if you're only 1 foot tall but the concept is still the same. If anything falls, breaks or gets lost......eyes wide, walk back quietly and pretend nothing happened. Best thing I ever learnt. It's all in the eyes.....in case your movement is not as stealthy as it should be.

Guess who else is learning this life saving habit....his brother.
(Lesson no. 3) Goodbye is goodbye. This was one of the first words he ever learnt. Amazingly he can't even say it properly to date. But he has learnt various variations "see you" "peace" "night" and his favorite "go". If there's one thing I have complete inability to do, it is how to leave anything or anywhere gracefully. I am one of those hover crafts who say goodbye and then are still there half an hour later hoping someone will have the guts to push me out the door. It happens at meeting, on phone conversations, at dinners, with clients and the worst, with boys I like. Sometimes I think it's a medical condition. One the lucky child does not suffer from. "Go" means go and "goodbye" well, it may come with a fist bump, a high five or a wave but it remains as such, "goodbye".

(Lesson no. 4) Sharing is caring. And so is hugging, wet pecks, showering, laughing loudly at your mishaps, dragging and following you to every single meaningless event in both your lives (bathrooms are not exempt.)His big on sharing. His food, his games, his hugs etc etc. He's also big on taking. He has all my model cars (they were not toys.), my powdered juice, my blankets etc etc. He has made our small community more accepting to the transfer of goods. He is also very free with his own version of kisses. His poor kid bro gets the bulk of them. The rest of us get hugs and mashed fruits which is quite ok! Not being a touchy-feely human myself, I have come to appreciate the value of sharing an caring. It doesn't eek me out as much as before. Come one, come all. Get my brand new hugs while they last.

That child may talk more than my mother and sleep more than his father, but he's the best of all of us. He has no worries and tomorrow is just another concept he wouldn't be bothered to understand. I hope he never loses that. Because if he does then I'll need to find another kid to hang out with. If only so that the 2 year old he awakened in me.

So class what have we learnt today.

1:Don't lose your sense of adventure.
2:You're ability to get away with your sins is pegged on your ability to fake innocence (train your eyes today!)
3:Learn to say goodbye and walk away. Leave the hovering to us professionals.
4:Sharing is caring. Although too much may be mistaken for sexual abuse.

Good stuff. Bye, Later, Cheers, ok, now go!

Say what you need to say.

Thomas A Kempis stated: "No conflict is so severe as his who labours to subdue himself"

Our battle with ourselves, with our pride, with our person is probably the biggest war of all. I don't think there are that many things harder than saying no to ourselves. Denying ourselves our desires.

I am not big on talking about myself. Of course if you're reading this this you're thinking " aiiii, lies. all lies!" But writing a blog loosely based on my day to day misconducts and thoughts is very different from sitting across a table from another person and talking about what or who I am. What disturbs me, what excites me, my desires, my hopes and dreams. It is not a natural occurring event to me. It is much easier to hide behind a screen, where I can pretend to be successful and open minded. For all anyone knows I am in a musky basement in my night gown, smoking a pack a day and stinking of unwash. However, I could also just be me.

But people like me, we got more issues than we can deal with. Mostly because we do not share, we do not let go, we do not exhale. We think we need to solve every single problem alone. We believe we are X-men or something. Every single fight needs to be fought alone. It is a little hell we don't know how to get away from. So we let our issues fester and breed bed sores, we allow them to rot until they start oozing to the surface. Until our issues become us. They become the only thing we know.

That is how I started writing. As a way to try and get it all out. A way to relieve the pressure that was building without an outlet. At first it was a way to talk to myself and clear my head. Now, its become my sounding board, my confidant, my little rock. People I have never met advice and encouragement. My friends quietly nudge me on and hold me up. Others just empathise and nod in understanding. But either way, it releases me from whatever small hell that I had built.

I envy people who have the ability to open up about their most mundane thoughts. Every single twitch on their finger, every broken nail, every eyelash shed is a point of deep conversation. Their hopes, their dreams, their aches and pains....it's all laid bare and somehow such people seem to lead an easier life. It seems more.......simple for them. Less hurdled. They share their problems with the universe and then let it be the universe's problem. I used to think they are just being selfish. Now it seems they are just much stronger. Some of us are just terribly afraid of disappointment. You try once and if that first time doesn't work out, you walk away and go deal with yourself the best way you know how.

But letting it out to someone else, I think, is usually a starting point in the process. Your excitement is doubled, your problems are halved, lives are shared and intertwined. Life is generally an easier place to be. So if any of you is like me out there, it is important to occasionally let people in. Let them see your battle wounds, let them experience your victories. Let them love you in totality. Unhindered. As I am slowly learning; in sharing, it is easier to let go, it is easier to forgive and forget, it is easier to smile, it is even easier to persevere.

So maybe you get disappointed from time to time. Maybe sometimes the process hurts. But it is not every single time you shall be disappointed. Someone out there wants to hear the voices in your head and to hear the music in your soul. Say what you need to say. Someone is listening.

All of this lines across my face,
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am,
But theses stories don't mean anything,
If there's no one to tell them to,
It's true,
I was made for you.

Brandi Carlile - The Story

Losing My Religion

Religion:
A strong belief and following in a higher/supreme being.

Faith:
The ability to believe in something in which there is no physical evidence even exists.

(cue in song)

I saw an accident today. It was at a place that I had never seen one before. Not even a run over dog or chicken or whatever. In all the decades I've been up and down our road, I had seen them at junctions and at gates, even at random blind spots. This was a straight stretch with little to no traffic. The car had rolled on the road severally. I guess the rolling was broken by the fence that it eventually flattened on the other side of the road. Usually such scenes freak me out. But not this time. I looked at the scene with cold calculation and an uncaring demeanor. I passed the cops, ambulances and cars with not a care to speak off. He had people to take care of him, if all the cars parked on the side of the road were anything to go by. I just could not be bothered to be one of them.That was what scared me. It shook me to my core. My hands were still shaking when I got to the office. And my heart is still beating funny as I write this. I didn't care for him and yet I wanted to be him.

I made a prayer many years ago. In a matatu on my way to campus. A prayer I still hold onto til this day. A prayer I make in different variations as recently as yesterday morning. But I woke up today, I opened my eyes and everything was still the same. Nothing had changed. I was still in the same position, I was waking up to do the same things. What had I been praying for all this years? What do they say, The fervent prayers of a Righteous man availeth much? James 5:16. I don't know where I was going wrong. Maybe I wasn't fervent enough with my prayers, maybe I wasn't Righteous enough, maybe He just didn't feel like availing to me anymore. It felt like He didn't care. So as I drove past that accident I wondered if I had any reason to care. And if I stopped caring now, if I would ever care again.

So when I woke up today I made one prayer. Not the one I had repeated over and over without reply.

"Lord, give me a miracle. Give me super Jesus"

You see I attend an LG (Life Group) where people seem to have their prayers answered instantly. So every meeting was a celebration of one kind or another. And it was cool. It was hopeful. I wanted what they had. So I started praying harder than before. I did everything I needed to. I even did that thing in The Secrets where you send out only positive things into the universe and they bounce back to you. Then it started feeling like they were praying to a Super Jesus and I was praying to the trainee on probation. Not a single answer. Kinda like all those letters that come and tell you, "Thank you for sending us your application but we regret to inform you..." I needed Super Jesus and I think He was on leave when I started praying harder so when He came back, there were more urgent matters in his inbox.

So yesterday for the first time I screamt at Him. I asked Him whatever I did wrong. I asked Him if it was anything I could fix. I threatened to move on. Yesterday I lost my faith. I lost my strength. I was giving up. I was losing my religion and I had been losing it for a while now. Why should I keep talking if He wasn't listening?

I'm no stranger to running away when things get thick. But it's a bit hard to run from someone who is everywhere so I said the prayer. Then I saw the accident. And I envied the man who was behind the wheel. He could for a little while forget about the world. Forget about his work and his life and his problems. For a moment he could let someone else deal with the crap the world was throwing at him. I didn't feel sorry for him. I envied him. and at that moment when I drove past unblinking, I could have traded my life for his in a heartbeat. Maybe then He would hear me. Maybe then He would think what I had to say was important.

So for the past month I have been searching for my own Super Jesus. Even as my faith dwindles to a small light in the distance, I am still searching. I'm itching to run but still I search. I hold on hopefully to a situation I am beginning to think is hopeless. I have one prayer today,while I am desperately clutching to the little religion that I have left:

Lord if You can hear me; I need a miracle.