Guard your heart…

 

Two Sundays ago, it felt like my pastor had it in for me. I could have sworn he was speaking to me the whole service and I was so convicted. You see, I always say this: I love love. I am very quick to give my heart away, to fall in love or to just believe that each time, it could be love. Every time I do this, and every time I get hurt. I get hurt and it’s all my fault because I had no business giving my heart away like cotton candy. You see even the Bible tells us to guard our hearts, it is our duty to protect our emotions and the issues of the heart. So my pastor went on and on and when he said: God knows how delicate our hearts are, that’s why He put it inside our rib cage. He had to build a whole chest to guard it because He knew it needed to be safe. When my pastor said this, I felt like someone splashed a bucket of ice cold water on my face!

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It was definitely a wake up call for me. It is pointless to always blame other people when you get your heart broken. It is time to start accepting your portion of the blame and realize that not everyone deserves your heart and your devotion. Often times, we are so quick to say stuff like: oh! I am very emotional, or I love with everything I have in me but then nobody gets hurt but you!. It is time to become emotionally intelligent and also to ask God for the spirit of discernment. Too much time is wasted casting our precious pearls to the swine, we literally take ourselves, our emotions and our bodies which are precious pearls and cast them to people who have no business touching them in the first place.

These situationships have to go! Neither here nor there, neither hot nor cold, here today gone tomorrow. If there’s no clear definition of intent what then is the point? This heart is staying inside my rib cage where it’s meant to be, not on my sleeve, not handed away like party favors! Because giving should be reciprocated, if not you’ll give and give and give and one day, you’ll wake up and realize that you gave yourself all away and there might be nothing left.

“Above all else, guard your heart. For everything you do flows from it.” –Proverbs 4:23

 

 

Like Curry and Thyme…

Hey guys!

How have you been? 

So I had an epiphany in the kitchen this evening, like I always do… I come from a large family, so we do a lot of cooking every weekend; my mum is in charge of the soups and I’m in charge of the stew. I’d been sick on and off this past few weeks and so while I was cooking today, I was quite tired and a bit distracted.

I honestly cannot count the pots of stew I have made in my life time, I can make stew in my sleep. So here I was this evening, drowsy, nursing a swollen eye and a throbbing head, standing over the cooker, making stew. 

I made a mental note of all the ingredients I would need and I thought I had it all, but as I turned off the heat, I realized that I had skipped curry and thyme. I was slightly alarmed because those ingredients are crucial to the way I like to make my stew. I had concluded in my head that I had botched the stew for this week, but boy! Was I wrong.

After a unanimous taste test by my brothers, the consensus was that the stew turned out to be amazing! Better than the last few they said. And here I was stressing out that I didn’t add curry and thyme.

Curry and thyme proved to be dispensable in my stew this week, and just like that, I figured that we can do without a lot of things that we think we need. It also reminded me of the time I went off social media for a while and I realized that I didn’t die! You see I used to be very attached to my phone and my social media accounts; but when I signed off for a while, my life went on! I actually had very deep, very meaningful conversations with my family and a few of my friends. I went out more often, and I took notice of the world I had been missing by burying my nose in my phone.

A lot of things we think we cannot function without, we often find ourselves doing just well without them. Toxic relationships, situationships, gadgets, you name it! When you try to do without them, you’ll be amazed how easy it will turn out to be, because just as my stew did just fine without curry and thyme, when you let go of some stuff, you will be just fine!…

Why?

 

Why?

Why is it so easy to make new friends but so hard to keep them?

Why do we always want the things we know we cannot have?

Why, oh! Why do all the wrong things feel just right sometimes?

Why does one drink turn to five?

Why do we hurt the people we say we love?

Why is easier to lie than to tell the truth?

Why be a coward when you know you can be brave?

Why do we bemoan our situations but seldom change them?

Why do we talk about people rather than help them?

Why is it easy to accentuate people and their flaws but hide ours?

Why do we never admit to being insecure?

Why do we love and act like we don’t?

Why? why? why???

Do you wonder like I do? If you know why, I would love to know…

-Adaugo 2017

On Red Shoes & Malaria…

 

Of all the days for inspiration to find me, it had to be the day where malaria is busy dragging me all over the floor. Everything hurts. Even muscles I didn’t know I had are alive and throbbing. My taste buds are gone with the wind and my throat is so sore I cannot even manage a sip of water without wincing and in the midst of this all; I paused my binge watching of being MaryJane and I knew I  had to write.

The last time you heard from me, I was sending my brother off to the University. He was home last week, looking taller and thinner and so grown up or maybe it’s just me? These past weeks have been a roller coaster. I don’t even have words to begin to describe it. So much has happened and through it all, I just couldn’t write. I tried and tried but nothing. And then last night, my dear friend Mfon had me playing this game with her and she made me write about random words and I found myself writing about red shoes, sunrises, kissing and being a woman and I must admit it was really therapeutic.

Sometimes life can be a tad overwhelming, and all I want to do is to be a big baby and cry but the thing about crying is that eventually the tears will fade and you are still where you were. We have to hang in there right? Everything will be just fine.

So this was just a random post to let you all know that I am alive and well and though malaria is currently dealing with me, it will pass soon. Hopefully this is the end of my dry spell and I cannot wait to share all the things that have been going on in this head of mine!

“Writing is a sickness only cured by writing.”

― Niall Williams

 

 

 

For my brother Didi…

It was always me and my sister for the first seven and half years of our lives. We would squeeze our eyes shut at meal times and bedtimes and ask God for another sibling, Everyday without fail until He answered and gave us our brother Chukky. Chukky was and still is so quiet; as a toddler it was hard to know there was a baby in the house because as long as he had his bottle, he was fine. For four years, he was our muse, our big toy and our only brother until Didi came roaring into our lives.


Didi was a sweet suprise. We were glad our mum was pregnant again and we looked forward to when the baby would come, but nothing about Didi was on schedule. I remember my mum taking long walks, dancing and doing everything she could to induce labor; all to no avail. I remember all the false labor and the disappointment each time until that fateful night in December. Oh! The drama that surrounded your arrival! From rushing to the hospital in the dead of night, to having surgery soon as you were born, God showed Himself strong at your birth and I guess that’s why dad named you “Chukwudike”: God is powerful…

The cutest kid with the biggest afro and tiny little perfect teeth, how have you become a man with the deepest of voices, as tall as I am and with a face full of beards? I cannot believe I just saw you off to the University, wow!!!

I cannot believe how time goes by. My tiny sister whom I wouldn’t even let into the kitchen for fear that she would break is now a mum, Chukky who was bow legged and following me all around is now over 6ft tall and set to graduate from the University this summer, and now Didi is off to University as well. 

Dear Didi,

I know that as you read this you’re probably rolling your eyes and wondering why I’m so emotional, but as you venture into the world all by yourself, don’t forget how much I love you and that I am only a phone call away! 

Love,

Maama

On mangoes and cheating spouses…

I love fruits, I really do. My favorite fruit has to be grapes, especially when they are frozen. I can write an entire post about my love for grapes. Udara is a close second (I don’t know the English name for it.) The number three spot goes to…You guessed it!!! Mangoes. Particularly the sherri and German species.

I have bought my fruits from the same woman for as long as I can remember and I truly consider her a friend. When I saw her in February after years away from home, she gave me a bagful of fruits and we spent a good thirty minutes catching up; I digress. You’re probably wondering what mangoes have to do with cheating spouses, here goes:

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So unfortunately, Udara season is over *insert tears of anguish* but the silver lining is that after udara goes, mango resumes LOL so it’s almost a win win situation for me. This afternoon on my way from Church, I had my smile in place and I headed to my favourite fruit stall. After our usual banter, I looked at her wares but the mangoes weren’t calling my name. They didn’t look ripe and they weren’t just appealing. I was still rummaging around, trying to find some good ones when I looked at the stall next to hers and saw the most beautiful, perfectly yellow, succulent sherri mangoes. I was so torn. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by buying from her neighbour but I also wanted the ripe mangoes from the next stall.

I managed to stifle my longing for the luscious mangoes, bought a few unappealing mangoes from my friend and went on home. Let’s compare our spouses to those mangoes shall we? I recently watched a show where people who have cheated on their spouses were interviewed and they gave their reasons for cheating. Majority of them cheated because their partners weren’t as appealing as they used to be or because the magic simply wasn’t there anymore. Those excuses are lame mehn! If the magic is fading, make new magic, rekindle the flames or whatever! Stay with the wife/husband you promised to love till death did you both part!

I guess my point is if I could walk away from those delicious mangoes, you can walk away from temptation!

“Everyone must choose one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”-Jim Rohn

Be A Unicorn! 

Sometime ago, I made a batch of cupcakes. I followed the recipe to the letter, and so I had lofty expectations and I expected them to turn out perfect. To my dismay, they turned out wrong. Some of them looked lopsided, others were still a bit runny. The truth of the matter is that out of a batch of eight, only one came out decent. I was a little salty that the other seven chose to go awry, but I was super proud of the one that turned out right. 

Thinking about it now, I should have been proud of all them. They had the same amount of ingredients, they were in the same pan and they baked for the same amount of time. But Sometimes, being different is not a terrible thing. We all started out the same way, cells that latched on to each other and did not let go; but when the time came to be born, we came differently; the point being that we came nevertheless. Via surgery or natural birth we got here and we got here with our own unique set of personalities. 

It’s hard and almost impossible to own your flaws or what others see as your shortcomings, but it is deeply comforting to know that those things that some people loathe about you, others will love. So be like my seven cupcakes, be your own version of okay. Love your freckles, your stretchies, your vulnerability, your whatever it is that makes you somewhat different ; be a unicorn! Be magical, be different, be you. Don’t apologize for your uniqueness, it is not your job to make being around you easy for anyone or to make anyone like you; those who will, will like you regardless. 

“Conventional is not for me. I like things that are uniquely Flo. I like being different.”  –Florence Griffith