22

Be you again

When you are a child, from what you see and from what you are told; you will eventually grow up. That is what happens in life, you are born, you grow and then “grow up” and die.

For me as a five year old I remember having the very point of living for me as the dream and achievement of “growing up.”

I pictured all the multitudes of friends, family and well-wishers gathered and applauding as I stood and waved back at them. I envisioned myself in the splendor of grown-upness as the eloquent voice of reason, flipping my blonde hair and smiling with sparkly white grown up teeth, welcoming all the guests to the celebration of me growing up. Then I would say something grown up and the crowds would go wild! Yes! I would be the brilliant epitome of adulthood. The elders would long for their youth at the very sight of my grown up self. This I would achieve and nothing would get in my way.

I would pass every end of year exam because excellence meant the next class. In kindergarten one day I would reach top class and all those newly weaned children would look at me and long for that glory.

I would be the P.7 student that run the whole school.  The one who talked about all the things we had in our knowledge, like the difference between an obtuse and an acute angle in the presence of the young-uns. To ask a comrade of the same rank the simple question would suffice. Let the young ones remain in awe of these terms that attack their ears. Pull out your Social Studies MK while at it and discuss the failures of Kwame Nkrumah. That’s right you P. 5 pupil, I’m all grown up. *insert slow and legit gangsta nod*

Just to be like all those beautiful girls I saw and observed days on end on the TV and Billboards. To attain the noble skill of flipping my amazing hair that for some strange reason was always blonde when I imagined it; to even grow out my hair to blondness for that matter. Even the Disney princesses and characters were all grown up. That’s why they could be the chosen ones to defeat the bad guys and the ones marrying princes and all that awesome grown up stuff. Hec! Grownups even sang better.  Even the animations were grown up animations. When they made the Lion King, Kierra and Kovu had grown up voices.

The universe was telling me something; growing up was lit.

Because of all the things I could not do because I was “still too young” I longed to grow and see the world. I longed to grow and “live” in doing all these things I could not ordinarily do.

One day I was too young to go to school, and then I wasn’t. I was constantly, consistently and persistently told I was too young to wear makeup, and then I wasn’t. I was too young to have a boyfriend, and then I wasn’t. I was too young to get married, and now I’m not.*refer to the Laws of Uganda*

It’s like that cardiac arresting moment when you hear a real grown up say something absurd like, “I haven’t driven a manual car in twenty two years.”

All you can do in that moment is clutch that arrested heart and go “Bro!” As in, yes. Arguably and by a certain standard and perspective I am still but a sort of grown up child, but in these twenty two years of mine I can write books and books and books about each moment and experience because so much has happened in my tiny life span.

So how is my whole long and detailed and expansive life span something as short as something you haven’t done in my whole lifespan!! *clutches heart once again*

What I see now is I missed the point in a way most of us do. We tie the bench mark of success at each stage of life by certain achievements. Like finally using a pen and not a pencil, getting that degree, getting married, that first car, that awesome job and the ages are just the points in the timeline the achievements should occur.

Of, yesterday I ran into a friend from high school that is like practically my age because she is only two years older than me and she was like “I’m engaged!” The expression on my face unfortunately wasn’t congratulatory. I was in too much shock. The first thought was contacting police coz in my head we are still underage for marriage and what not. I really wasn’t ready!

Moses in Psalms 90 asks the Lord to teach him how to number his days aright, that he might gain a heart of wisdom. With all these thoughts in this my birthday week, a whole new meaning of “growing up” came to mind.

Firstly, I can say now to myself that I am terrified of growing up and I wish I was 5 years old again.

 Secondly, I realize that in the end you actually grow. It is not a myth. In three years I will be 25 and the probably start throwing “Forever 25” birthday parties also till the day I die.

Thirdly and weirdly, in my mind, the exception is parents. They never grow! It’s like my parents never grow. With all the years that have been added to my life (as if I’m 60) they still look the same as when I beheld them on the day I was born. I real remember that day and they look the same.*Banange, if only my mom read my blog so some benefit might come in the process from this props I am giving*

I have learnt that growing up isn’t an event. It is a process. What makes the milestones is what you went through to get there.

So many of us could not wait to get the hell out of high school, but I miss that place so much. I realize it is more because what mattered happened in between and in the midst of the moments I was wishing and couldn’t wait to get out.

Life is not an event. It isn’t just that job, that boyfriend, that thing that comes at the right time like perfect and “successful” clockwork of life’s timeline. It’s everything that builds up to the next event and the next one and the next one. That’s the danger in dreaming about a kind of life; you could forget the one that you are living.

I have learnt that living is more important than the event of “growing up.” Even when one day I will forever and everlastingly be 25, I should cherish and enjoy being 22 right now. Be where you are and love being where you are because somehow that’s where you are right now.

The wisdom is right there in those lessons at that time in that place. It is no wonder we have adults making childish decisions and the like. They really failed to grow up and mostly because they didn’t learn in the process of life and living.

Be “you” while you are still “you”, whatever and whoever “you” is. Don’t live in the future. Don’t live in the past. Be you and live as you are. Be you again and not all these demands from society and that voice in your head.

Life is dynamic. Move with it. Learn with it. Grow with it.

Don’t let it leave you behind.

Beat again

Beat again

The thoughts about this song concerned that moment in time, when it hits you that the chaos is here with you and here to stay for a while.  It is that moment when the worst part of the story sinks in to the foaming and stirring oceans that rage within you. The clouds had been gathering for a while but like any other person, I hopped they would disappear and the sun would come out again. It was the moment I realized that I had to learn to live with a few facts that had to be accepted by my mind and heart.

I had been going through a lot in life with school, friends, and my walk with God.

My mind suddenly seemed incapable of understanding or even accepting it all. Those facts caused so much entropy and inward tumult.  I asked myself how anyone could ever contend with such a struggle, yet I knew that I had to. What was happening to me was part of life.

For a time, I had the inkling that something was not right. Yes, external happenings had their inward influence. But inside, it felt ten times worse than what had happened on the outside.

It’s like it all sunk in that my heart was under attack in some way.

It hit me that I was going through all these things and I had to deal with it all rightly. I had been reluctant to admit that this is where God had allowed me to reach but there was this knowledge of his hand directly involved in all I went through. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel completely better. It made me more scared and despairing.

I knew most of what I was going through I had gotten myself into. I knew that if this affected me more than it should it would still be my fault. I looked back in retrospect wishing my life had made different turns from the ones I had made. If that was so I wouldn’t be where I am, but there I was and somehow I knew I had to reach and endure this point id I was to move on.

There was a way it was rock bottom but somehow I was moving and doing things. In my head, everything about me had completely shut down. I even wondered where the will to press on came from. I was in bewilderment at the situation itself; every ability to continue with the normal was such a surprise. To do assignments and hand them in on time, to go to class, do be part of church, to socialize with my friends; all of it was happening even while I feel like my insides were being consumed in a sulfurous concoction of chaos.

So one evening after a long week at school, I got back home and these thoughts filled my mind. I was sort of stilled and silenced by how big and serious it all seemed. My heart felt dead but there I was breathing in and out, living life normally or with the capacity to do so.

I sat and wondered in my room at how I would deal with it all. What would I depend on? Time to even things out?  Some magic trick and suddenly it would all be over? A new habit to distract me? A shrink probably? lol

I knew I had to go through this and that made me scared. In panic I instinctively recoiled at the thought of a pain- like endurance. I felt I didn’t have it in me to persevere.

It would be like that moment when the doctor said you had a disease that would kill you unless you accepted to take a sort of medicine that albeit would cause you more pain, would make you well too. In that moment, I was considering dying from the disease anyway because I knew what the healing process would entail.

My prayer was simply that God would keep my heart safe from me.

The Psalmist in Psalms 139 asks the Lord to search his heart and know his ways, to try him and know his thoughts, to see if there is any wayward way in him and lead him to life everlasting.

It is like within himself he knew what he struggled with; he struggled with himself. He struggled with his fear that wanted to overwhelm his courage to do the right thing, especially when he knew what the right thing was. He knew how prone he was to despair even with the truth of God’s faithfulness experiences and manifested in his life again and again.

He didn’t trust himself to know his heart even when he knew it. He trusted him who made it and him that is perfect. He trusted in the God who knew him in and out more. He trusted in the purpose of the father that had made him.

Somehow here I was understanding all this wretchedness in what I was going through and myself, but somehow the hope was in the fact that God’s knowledge and purpose and will surpassed, or wasn’t constrained by that wretchedness, however dark it was.

He would keep my heart safe from me, even if that’s what it took; that horrible and dreadful healing process. And so as I prayed that in that moment my heart would beat again from its deadness,  that dead heart hoped and knew that God would keep it and it would live again.

In the midst of the chaos I had to remember that pain is never meaningless, nothing is wasted and that a beating heart is always light….

 and heavy.

About the Chaotic Heart EP

Chaotic Heart<3

This is project is about a Chaotic Heart.

Mine.

Yours.

Sometimes I think about it and that’s about all I can muster in my very many thoughts.

I’m supposed to know what the words I’m singing are supposed to achieve in me who sings them and in those that listen to them. I’m supposed to know what the anthem I present is titled and concerns.

But sometimes I don’t.

When I do in everyday living, that certainty I have about is always questioned, destroyed, mocked or slowly being hacked at into disappearance. I sit down and question in search for that reason; why my faith and strength wane more and more each day with each pang of the felt chaos.

I look around myself to the lives of those that surround me and sometimes it feels like this war is mine and mine alone, and that is true. What we go through is ours to go through particularly and peculiarly.

But we all go through it, and that’s the point.

The point is that the human heart is chaotic.

If we all go through this chaos, then what is its relevance?

The mutinies and Tsunamis of red are very recent and everyday events in every inward city.

We wonder if we can ever accept the presence of struggle. Can we ever be ok with that process?

Even when we might know that it achieves our salvation, how do we count it all joy when faced with every trial? Yes, especially when we know what it achieves.

All we seem to know more is the chaos and where it takes place; in our hearts. That chaos is caused by our many decisions and choices. We indeed know what causes the pain. It is our nature. It is our weakness. It is other people with the same futile nature.

We feel a subjection to that situation of war and failure. It is almost like it cannot be helped. Strife will always find its way around and threaten the hope for peace.

This chaos constantly clashes with the Hope that someday things will be different.

I can see other people and how they have dealt with the war inside. Most of them have given up and are dying somehow; giving into the demands of the inward enemy to prevent bloodshed. They have decided to be fine with being slaves to the chaos and have convinced themselves that it is how life ought to be. All is fair in love and war after all; you must do what you must do to survive.

We have become complacently apathetic to the whole situation. We are fine with losing the war because it is too hard to fight he tides of rebellion in ourselves against that hope. We have failed and have convinced ourselves that inwardly the war must be lost. But hope you see, never disappoints. It is not put to shame. We forget that.

The chaos is chaotic of course. It is real and excruciating pain which is why I probably picked up the pen to write about it in the first place. But the chaos clashes with hope; the need for redemption and sanctification. The great need to “unbe” who I am and become as Christ is. I understand this.

I am open to believe a lot around me and in my head because it seems easier. I have done that sometimes and that has instead energized and helped chaos. But in everything you must find the truth.

For me even in the confusion and very chaos I talk about, my confidence remains in the fact that I shall be conformed to the perfect example. But you see, it is only through the chaos, not before it and not somehow after it magically disappears. It has to be after you have gone through it, and that process ends when I draw my final breath.

Most of the time, I give into the fear and intensity of the chaos and forget what it will achieve; what it achieves even. I lose all strength and desire to continue with seeing the point of it all: salvation. Somehow growing and becoming stronger because I live, as the chaos is so part of life.

The chaos is ugly and difficult.

It is to do with so much pain.

I’m just saying what you already know, and the message my heart is so burdened with. I’m on the road to figuring out how to deal with it all, just like you.

I’m still internalizing that bit and maybe this project, in sharing it with you will encourage you to something I could learn that you have learnt. Or maybe the whole process will open my eyes to something I will finally realize. For now, I know I’m just writing about the difficulty of a fiery sanctification in a time when it is hard to see the point.

But this I know; that if he promised pain it can’t be meaningless.

I know the presence of the chaos is the means to truly being free of it, and one day I will by His faithfulness alone after all, a beating heart is always light and heavy.