End Month Reflections -February 2024
Happy New Month!
Greetings friend:) If we could use emojis here I’d have used the happy/smiling-with-all-her-eyes-and-cheeks-emoji.
It feels as if it has been forever since we last connected, thus I promised myself that come what may, I wasn’t going to sleep tonight before we made contact. Yes, I have missed us, (you and I), that much. I can’t wait for the times we shall meet in person.
Allow me to do this like I would a journal entry: I always write the day, date, time and location for every journal entry:
I am doing this on this 4th Day of March 2024. It is 9:00 p.m. my time. Location: doing this from Nairobi Kenya, from my bedroom, with “Reflections- The Full Album” from Secession Studios playing in my headphones.
If this were truly a journal entry, I would also do a ‘Heart/Soul Check-in”. What this entails is a genuine metacognition- observation of my heart, my soul, the thoughts in there, the feelings in there. “Do I feel settled or scattered. Do I feel joyous or nonchalant”. Then, whatever the state of my heart, I write on/ask, “What events/thoughts from my day/ week have contributed to that state of feeling?”
Well, currently, I do not have much to check in with my soul, than the awareness of how intentionally grateful I am that I finally get to do this. I have been longing to get back to writing since I last wrote last week on 28th February. I have journaled in between, but it is not the same as writing for public reading.
I say this with a lot of love and humility, but I wonder if I could challenge you to identify that thing that makes you come alive. That which makes you come so alive, that no physical factors like exhaustion or emotional threats of frustration from external circumstances can get in the way of the joy you feel when you do that thing. If you have already found what that is for you, I hope you make enough time to dwell in it. If you are yet to find it, may you be encouraged. I am always careful to say that I am writing such statements with a lot of love and humility- and perhaps the word I am looking for is empathy- because I have been in a place where I felt so discouraged hearing of people who have found what makes them come alive- and I hadn’t found mine.
As the topic of today’s entry suggests, this is a reflection. So I will go to a few reflections of what I picked from the Month of February. I do really pray that something will speak to your heart, and encourage you for the Course Correction journey we’re on.
First off, Please Journal. And while at it, perhaps be as detailed as possible, whether it be with joy, frustration, desires or prayers.
On 29th February 2024, God inspired me to read my now full 2024 Journal on my way to work instead of the usual book I’d been reading- “Breaking the Habit of being yourself” by Dr. Joe Dispenza. (Also oh yea, my first journal for the year is already full). Anyways, I literally found myself shedding tears in that public bus while reading that Journal, overwhelmed by seeing how faithful God had been to me, yet it’s not as if I hadn’t been falling short. There are some prayers and desires I had expressed with regard to my personal growth- including a very honest acknowledgement of my fear that I might sabotage myself, because that had been my biggest roadblock to growth for a very long time.
To see how faithful God had bee, answering prayers I had even forgotten I made, helping me with fears I had even been too ashamed admitting to people … I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with joy, and gratitude- The kind that tags at your heart and makes you so emotional, you heart can’t help but just shed tears, because you know you have only overcome because you were helped by one with a love greater than your own doubt and self-condemnation.
Journaling can be a very great way to see one’s growth, especially internal growth- that soul growth that others cannot see - and neither is it necessary for them to see, because true growth- now I have learned- is not about what others can see, but about that internal development and transformation from where all other ‘projects’ of your life can be built on.
Which Brings me to my second Reflection: The truest growth is internal growth- The growth of our souls, that increases our confidence from the inside out- the kind that no one can see. The kind of growth that even when no one ‘can see’, you know you have changed, you can tell that you walk and move different from the inside, because you are privy to (have access) to a knowledge about you that no one can see or take away from you, because it was forged in a secret place.
Said with a lot of humility, this is the kind of growth I feel I am experiencing (continuous present tense). I do feel different. I have this new sense of power and conviction, a different kind of inside-out-confidence. It is not arrogant or as against anyone (comparatively). It is more like a knowing. It is as finally stumbling into yourself, and starting to know depths to yourself that have nothing to do with comparison, or pride, or arrogance, or proving yourself to anyone- and neither is it an attitude of ‘defiance’ to authority or any space where you felt diminished. It is just a knowing — of a kind of intangible but irrefutable truth that you are okay, you will be okay, you matter, and you are sustained.
This will actually be the last reflection I give, and just end it with a bit of a personal story:
For a very long time, I had been anxious about ‘growth’. I do not what broke me, or at what point the breaking happened, but I just had this sense of resigned belief that I wasn’t capable of growing internally. I would actually get discouraged when I heard of concepts such as internal discipline, or consistency, or rest.
Why? If put into a speech, as if my innermost -most-desperate part of my soul spoke to describe what this ‘resignation’ felt like, it would have sounded something like,
“You guys just don’t get it. I would actually really like to be able to just settle into a long term commitment- like reading a book till the end or teaching myself a new discipline- but is as if I just can’t do it. I get anxious. My soul fears. I get restless. I fear processes others cannot see, because then how will anyone know “I have been growing”. And if no one can see it, have I really grown. Y’all don’t really get it. It’s not like I do not want to grow. You have no idea how desperate I am to just feel that I have grown from the inside out, that I committed to an inside process, and I didn’t feel anxious that others- the external world- couldn’t see it.”
The honest truth, my dearest sojourner in Course Correct, was that I was so afraid that I would sabotage myself- because it had become something of a stronghold that I just couldn’t overcome despite my best intentions — that I just wouldn’t let myself hope that I could one day, manage to do something consistently, even for just two weeks before I got in my own way, and frustrated myself.
Well, testimony time!!
Before, I go on- fair warning- by now I have made peace with the fact that I cannot speak of what I write; or the inspiration for my work, or the internal help I have this time round; and not talk about God. That’s kind of just that … do with that information what you will:)
So what’s the testimony? (Drum Rolls….)
For the very first time in my entire adult life, I successfully finished a ‘long-term’ internal process that no-one knew of except perhaps just one friend- A 40 Days of Sanctification process where I was deliberately staying away from things that distract me such as movies and social media- and emerged on the other side! 40 days might sound like a simple or even nonsensical thing to celebrate, but had you walked in my shoes all these years where I have struggled with fear and self sabotage, you would get how big of deal 40 days are- given only to internal growth- reading, seeking, praying and meditating on God’s word. I am not saying it was all perfect- there were a few days I gave into old ways- but the overall process- that started sometime back at around 20th/21st January 2024 ended as a success on 29th February 2024, and for that I am forever grateful.
I will end here. I’ll not even try choose what ‘lesson’ you can walk away with from this blog entry (but you could borrow my journaling process wink) … The rest I’ll leave to God and your mind. After all, trust me, I couldn’t do this without Him- and if you don’t believe me, ask my old self why she could publish consistently all these years since this blog started in 2020, yet it’s not as if the gift of writing in me had ceased existing.
So, shalom friends. I hope you go seek help in the best place of all, where love for you never ceases; where patience with your shortcomings doesn’t run out; and where the end goal is always a truly whole, restored you, no matter how long it takes.
I am really excited for what this new month brings, as I know that it will be even more epic, because my confidence is in a source that can never fail me. I call Him the Eternal Hope Peddler- God Himself- whose love never fails.
Cheers to a great March 2024 Friends. This will be one for the books!
Written with all my heart and love (as always), Risper.
