“Today is the first day of the rest of your life”. Charles Diedrich believed that by saying this everyday, we get the chance to start a new life every day and not limit ourselves to our past.
Every now and again we all get the need to start or restart life. Maybe it’s after a season of lukewarm living, a desire to cut off of certain things, a season of too many bad choices, or just the need to begin again.
What ever the reason may be, on any day I choose to start or restart something in my life, I begin by being intentional about my feet; I put on comfortable shoes that could take me anywhere and everywhere the entire day.
I don’t know how, but it works for me.
For me, my feet are the tool for possession and repossession. Deuteronomy 11:24 and Joshua 1:3.
So today, on my journey to turn a new leaf in my attitude to a very long list of things, I have kitted up and I’m ready to go.
It’s the season again, we begin to hear all kinds of greetings and then we get confused and out comes the question; “How many mother’s day do we have in a year”?
To be totally honest this really got me bothered at some point. When on two of the “mother’s days” I didn’t get to call my mom because I didn’t even realise it was “mother’s day”.
These days have always been marked but they have become more popular because of social media. It’s very likely to go online and find out it is this day or that day for so and so.
Women are a special specie of humans. In 2022 the Word of the year (most searched word) on dictionary.com was woman.
She can and must be celebrated daily.
I have listed a few selected days for celebrating women and why.
Women’s day is an international day set aside for celebrating and recognising women’s achievement and development. It’s also a day for recognising women’s rights (gender, reproduction etc) and violence/abuse against women. It is celebrated yearly on Marth 8th.
Mother’s day – This is celebrated on different dates, depending on the country. The dates change every year. It often is between the months of March and May (commonly second Sunday in May). It is a day set aside for honouring and appreciation mothers, motherhood and maternal bonds. As there isn’t any specific day for mother’s day, it’s likely for someone in Australia to wish a ‘happy mothers day’ on her social platform and then someone in Nigeria could go ahead to assume it applies there too.
Mothering Sunday is a day when people honour their mother church (where you were baptised). On this day, the mothers are also honoured, along with Mary the mother of Jesus. Some also honour mother nature on this day.
Women’s History Month – March
Today, I join women all over the world to celebrate ourselves.
May we find the strength, peace, wisdom and courage we seek. May we be bold enough to rise up and take It.
Mimi stop that… Mimi don’t do that…Mimi why did you do that?
It was always one thing or the other.
One time it was a bead, passed through my nostril, my mom had to rush me to the clinic. I don’t know how but thank goodness it eventually passed through the northern end.
Another time, when I was four years old, my mom and I had to spend weeks at the hospital… I had successfully burnt my right thigh with a flask of boiling water.
Of all my wild adventures, one that always gets me is the look on my dad’s face when he came home one day found me on top of a hinged door.
The one that scared me the most was when I got stuck in a mango tree with a monkey who seemed to be out for revenge because I and the neighbourhood kids used to make fun of him.
At 40, I wonder where this wild child is.
Do I miss her? I am not so certain.
Do I like who she was, oh yes I do. She was wild and free.
But for the way I drive, I think everything else about the child seems to have been tamed with age.
We often get to feel many different kinds of emotions…pain, joy, fear, sadness and more. Of these emotions, only the positive ones are permitted.
One of the major reasons for the rejection of the expression of negative emotions is religion. We often believe that if we say we feel it then it has won.
For me, I think the stories from my religion are not just for story telling. These stories teach me that God loved open and honest relationships. We can see different examples with Hezekiah, Moses. Abraham, David, Job and many more characters.
As a believer of openness, showing/saying how you feel and feeling your feelings, I do not subscribe to the rejection or avoidance of any kind of emotions. You can read about some of my views in Feelings and Beauty in Candour.
It’s okay to feel it, what I beleive is harmful is staying in the feeling. But how can I work my way out if I don’t call it what it is?
Many have died in silence…literally, because they are afraid to say the words; I am sad. I feel lonely. I feel anxious. I am afraid.
The world will not let them.
Even when they do not say anything in return, their stares screem ‘How dare you’.
Prayer means talking to God. This is the simplest of definitions we all get taught right from children’s church from an early age…but I fear that we have mystified and complicated prayer so much that it has been interpreted as hard and tedious.
Prayer is not meant to be rigid.
For a person who finds it difficult getting up very early, I often have a difficult time doing a thorough word study or spending quality time with God before I leave the house.
The thing is, on week days, I am usually out of the house by 7am for school run and by the time I’m done with that, I usually find myself in the parking lot of my office with some extra 20 to 30 minutes to spare before the start of work or before the first humans begin to show up at work.
That’s where I make my sanctuary. In my car. I use this time to spend time with God, I tell Him everything and I listen to hear from him.
And He hears me. He hasn’t failed me. Not ever.
Prayer time is not meant to be bondage. It is a time to be free with your Father and your Friend. Take the opportunity anytime, anywhere. Speak and listen. He is Shekhinah.
Growth is not limited to physical development alone. We never stop growing. My sister Angie wrote a poem some time ago; we never stop playing, our toys only change.
It is the same with growth. We never stop growing, the factors only change.
As adults, we need to continue to grow, develop and renew ourselves mentally, emotionally and even physically.
Read a new book, watch a movie, find a good television series and spend time with it, research every new thing you learn from these.
Switch your genre. Move out of that comfort zone.
Have intelligent conversations, ask questions. Confirm facts from the conversations, don’t digest everything you hear.
When I listened to John Legend’s wonder woman for the first time, I thought of myself without any sense of modesty. I thought of my sisters and then my mom. By the 4th listen, I decided every man needed to dedicate the song to their good wives, significant others or moms.
My friend Helen is one of the women i think about whenever I listen to the song. She’s an amazing human. I’m very certain she has got some super power that I am not aware of. In the midst of all that she strives and reaches, she always takes the time to check up on me.
Why, Helen, why? She tells me I’m an amazing sister and she appreciates me. I am both thankful and flattered whenever she says this. On one of her lovely check ups, she shows up with a huge mug with the inscription “blessed” and hands it to me. We share a very long, warm hug and of course, we cry a bit.
Helen, you make me wonder, woman, how do you do it? You are super human.
