Victory In The Making

“Made a wrong turn, once or twice. Dug my way out blood and fire. Bad decisions that’s alright, welcome to my silly life” – Perfect, Pink

Growing up I used to yearn for the day I turned twenty-five. Twenty-five for me was that age when everything in my life would make sense. I figured by then I would have lived long enough to understand the ways of the world and I would have done enough with my life to silence even my worst critics. At twenty-five I would be established in my career, I would have my own place, a beautiful car and most importantly I would be married or at the very least be engaged. At twenty-six with less than two months to go till my twenty-seventh birthday, I could not be further from all the above aspirations. I made one crucial mistake when I was sitting there planning my future, I forgot to take into account all the bad decisions I would make, all the mishaps and mistakes that would derail me from path that led to my dreams. I smile as I think back because I have no choice but to admit that it was all rather naive of me.

I had a moment of panic a month or two ago when it suddenly hit me that 2012 would be the year of my ten-year high school reunion. I am filled with so much shame and want to cower away in a little corner and not attend because quite frankly I feel like I have nothing to show for the past ten years. Well I lie, almost nothing. I do have my CA qualification, too bad I cannot take that with me and beam with pride and adoration when I introduce it to everyone. It seems to pale in comparison to the husbands, new babies, luxury cars and stunning homes that people now have. Ironic when I think about it because even in high school my intelligence and outstanding academic record was all I really had going for me. As the person who came top of my year I cannot help but feel that I have a lot to prove. In addition to proving that I have made something of my life, I also have to prove that I did not sacrifice a “real life” for academics. As I sit here I have to wonder if I did not do exactly that?

Just as I am about to sink into a new level of depression, the rational side of my brain reminds me that I have beaten a lot of odds along the way and I have come very far. Despite my upbringing, despite all the mistakes I have made, despite being a teenage mother, I am still one of the 32,000 odd qualified chartered accountants. Not only that but I have traveled further than some will ever do in their lifetimes. While admittedly I did not achieve all I had set out to achieve, I still can say I’ve lived abroad for a year and I stuck it out for a whole year even though every fibre of my being was telling me to come home after just a month. In all that I have done in the past ten years, I didn’t just cave in to my circumstances. I did not just accept the glass ceiling that was imposed on my success. I have dug myself out of more holes than I care to remember. While I may not have much to show for all I have done, all I have accomplished by way of possessions, I know I have learned a lot and am well on my way to being on my way to being the woman I want to be.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says that there is a time and place for every matter under the sun. If only I could remember this when I find myself envious of someone else’s success and blessings instead of remembering this scripture long after the tears of frustration and the shame of all I don’t have have engulfed me. Last night I lay in bed, near tears begging God to bring my husband my way. Almost immediately I could hear the response and it was a resounding NO! He said to me I was not ready yet. I wanted to launch into a full-scale argument with Him but kept still long enough to realise we had gone through this one too many times before and deep inside I knew exactly what He meant when He said I wasn’t ready. Funny though because this quiet acceptance has not stopped me from yearning over and over again today for someone to love and who will love me. The Bible reading, God believing Christian in me knows too well that He will grant me blessings according to His divine time and plan. The frustrated, impatient part of me who feels immense pressure to produce tangible success just won’t accept this and keeps begging God in the hope that He will grow tired of my pleas and just give me what I want and yet I know that won’t happen.

It’s amazing the amount of pressure that society places on us. What amazes me even further is the number of people who feel entitled to put you under pressure. While people feel obliged to give you opinions on how you should live your life and what you should and shouldn’t have, it’s quite ironic that they will not lift a finger to help you achieve these goals that they have set for you. I have been back home for two weeks now and I am already sick and tired of being asked when am I buying a car! No one’s offering to help me with installments or the deposit so why ask me like they’ve given me money to buy one and I did not do so? The very same people who have never picked up their phones to ask me how I am in the twelve months I was in Edinburgh are the ones asking for gifts from me. I struggled to even buy a plane ticket home with no one contributing a cent and now I’m selfish for not bringing anything back for anyone? I am in awe of the arrogance of some people.

As 2011 draws to a close and I think ahead of what lies in 2012, I am appreciative of the things I have been through in the past year that are bringing me closer to the woman I am destined to be. In as much as I made so many mistakes, shed so many tears and felt lonelier than I have ever felt in my entire life, I am starting to realise there was purpose in all that pain. I was meant to lose the people I lost this year because they were enablers; allowing me remain stagnant and mediocre. The loneliness and isolation I felt was necessary to remind me that there is nothing more important than companionship and also taught me that you cannot be a good companion to someone else till you know how to be one to yourself. My stint of separation from God was necessary to ground me, remind me that I am nothing without Him and remind me that my relationship with God should be the basis of all that I am and all that I do.

Looking back at all I set out to achieve this year and all that I thought I would have achieved by now, it is apparent that I am far from the finish line. But like Jessie J’s ‘Who you are’ reminds me: “It’s ok not to be ok. Sometimes it’s hard to follow your heart but tears don’t mean you’re losing, everybody’s bruising, just be true to who you are.” I am at peace, even if temporarily, with where I am in my life and with all that I have and don’t have because it is simply not my time yet. I take comfort in knowing that next year will be yet another year I can try again and continue to strive towards God’s plan for my life. I have no doubt that I will stumble and fall along the way, I will not let that stop me because there is greater victory in pressing forward in the face of adversity than there is in succumbing to adversity.

Lessons from the desert Part 1

For at least the past week I have had a blog all written in my head but for some reason just could not bring myself to let my fingers meet the keyboard. It seems I have developed a fear of writing, some writers’ block. Before it consumes me whole and destroys any confidence I have left, I think it’s time to nip it in the bud so…..“Dear brain, in case you were starting to doubt this, I am in control and not you!”

In 35 days, God willing, I will be making my way back to my family and friends whom I miss dearly. Most importantly back to the me that I used to be. It sounds odd to say this because we all want to grow and develop, we never want to regress and yet here I am wanting nothing more than to be the old me. I can feel the heat on the side of my face from God’s stare as I type that but truth be told, I would rather go back to who I was this time last year and forget the past year ever happened. It would be easier. Less heartbreaking. Less painful.

Leaving home last year I was filled with childlike excitement at the prospect of a brand new adventure. I was about to embark on a journey I did not even dream possible right up until the day it was confirmed. I had hope in abundance and faith that this was meant to be. Like anyone granted the chance of a lifetime, I had high aspirations of all I would do and achieve and the kind of person I would return as in a few years time. Coming here, my goals and aspirations were clearly defined. I was here realise my life-long dream of travelling around Europe, I was here to advance my career, make new friends and maybe even meet the love of my life. Of bigger significance I was here to earn enough so I can clear off my debts and also help my family to get out of debt and finally start a comfortable, successful life. Above all else, I was to grow in my walk with God and learn more about the woman He wanted me to be. One by one each dream went to that dark desolate place where dreams go to die and just so I can look back and remember how it all went down, here they are:

1. Holidaying in Europe. I was going to see at the very least Paris, Venice, Rome, Milan and Madrid. Sad thing is I actually came very close to realising this dream. I had the trip booked, paid the deposit, had the two weeks leave that I would need booked and all I had to do was pay the balance. It broke my heart when I had to cancel because of competing financial demands and a part of me will remain sad that I never got a chance to do this.

2. Financial freedom. I was going to claw myself out of the pit of debt I’d been stuck in for the past few years. Well that dream quickly went out the window when I realised just how expensive it was to live in this country. Add to that having to send money home to help my family, now almost a year later I have sunk even deeper. Getting to a point where I wonder if this is what I was destined for? Will I have come out of it? In trying to do right by my family and to prove to my grandmother, aunt and mother that I’m not the selfish, self-centered brat that they seemed to think I was when I moved out from home to establish my independence, I was the one left stranded.

My dreams of financial freedom seem so far out of reach I doubt I will be reaching them anytime soon. I look at my peers and I’m filled with deep jealousy because I too want to be able to buy a car, buy a house and live comfortably and not have to worry how I’ll get through the month.

3. Career progression. Coming to UK was going to be a chance to jump start my career, I would come back having at least progressed one level. That dream was blown to smitherines pretty much in January! I do not know why things played out the way they did, all I know to this day it hurts more than I can even put into words. I came here confident in my abilities, I was certain I had the skills, the attitude, the strength and the stamina to make it here. All that confidence is now gone and I am left feeling exposed and vulnerable. So much so that I am scared of any job that comes after this.

I probably cried in my first three months here more than I’ve done in any given year in my life. By the time March came around, I was seriously considering resigning, packing up my things and returning home. Looking back I probably should have, I would have done far less damage to my emotional and mental stability!

It really hasn’t helped that I have struggled for nearly four months to find a job at home. Something that came as a complete shocker because so many people had so knowingly told me what a wonderful opportunity this was and that it would boost my CV and make me stand out from my peers. It hasn’t quite worked out that way for me and I can’t help but feel I jeopardised my career and set myself back.

I have come to accept that this year has set me back and I will now have to work that much harder(on myself) to ensure the effects are not permanent and I do not create self-fulfilling prophecies. How I will do this, I do not know!

4. Love. When I left Durban I was determined to leave the heartache and pain of past relationships and use this as my fresh start and hopefully meet someone new who would love me and teach me to love past the hurt and the pain. Sadly I guess tis was never in the cards for me. At first I thought I would leave it to fate and see what it brought my way and then when that strategy did not work decided it was time to “put myself out there”. I registered on a couple of internet dating sites, started going out more and nothing yielded any results. Months ago I started to resign myself to the fact that maybe I am just one of those people that were meant to die alone! Yet, that quiet romantic in me refuses to believe that God can ever be that cruel.

5. Friendship. I had often heard of all the wonderful, life-long friends people make when travelling or living abroad. As my time here winds down, I need to probably admit that I will not be telling such stories to anyone. Not for the lack of trying! I arrived open to meeting new people and expanding my friendship circle. Much to my dismay the only things that this venture has yielded are many tearful nights from sheer frustration and loneliness, months of feeling undesirable and just completely useless. It’s one thing not to be wanted by the opposite sex, but when women do not want your companionship it compounds you become convinced that there’s something wrong with you!

6. Realising God’s plan for my life. I still remember the day I wrote Send Me To The Nations. Everything that could have gone wrong with my move here, seemed to have already happened. Yet amidst all that I had the quite confidence and the peace that I was walking the path God had wanted me to walk. This year was the year my relationship with Him would grow exponentially. This was the year I’d be drawn closer to Him and we’d do wonderful things together. When I wrote Just God and I in January, I was starting to believe that maybe all the things that had started going wrong and all the longing I had in my heart was all to reinforce that He was merely drawing me closer. I was still on the right path. I don’t know when I wandered off that path but months it’s been feeling I have been stumbling through a wilderness where God refuses to show His face. I went through months not wanting to pray let alone open a Bible. I was lost, wondering around aimlessly and no matter how much and how long I cried for help, He just did not want to show Himself to me.

I probably could have dealt with each of the above “failures” if I had been hit with them individually. Together they have come very close to consuming me and burying me alive. I probably could have dealt with the first five if I had felt the presence of God, His companionship and His comforting embrace through it all. Through all of this it feels as if I’m the only person excluded from the protective cover of scriptures like Psalm 55:22, 1 Peter 5:7 and Psalm 37:5. No matter how much I try cast my burdens to Him it seems He has turned His face away and closed His ears to my cries and has left me stranded in the middle of a desert with nowhere to turn and noone to turn to.

Life Comes Full Circle

“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” ~Author Unknown

In life there are no guarantees…You’ll never know unless you try…It’s better to try than live with regret…What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. All clichés that gained their status because people like me needed to be told the same thing over and over again to spur them into making some sort of decision. Despite me knowing that nothing is more uncertain than life itself, I search for guarantees when making a decision. Even though I know that trying your hand at something with the threat of failing is better than never having tried at all, I sit terrified at the thought of venturing outside my comfort zone. All the while forgetting that this too was once a vague dream that I never thought possible. Forgetting that my life has been filled with leaps of faith that not only worked out just fine, but also brought me some of the greatest milestones in my life. Knowing all I know, why then is it so hard to make a decision and stick with it?

Up until now I have never really thought about it feels like and whether you see it ahead of time when your life is coming back full circle. A picture of an athlete running on a track appears in my mind and I wonder, were it for the markings that demarcate the start and finish line would he know when he has completed a full circle? Would he know he has run the distance he is required to run or would he just keep running until he wore himself out? As I sit thinking of my life and routes that lie ahead, I wonder what more needs to be done to make it clear that I need to stop running. My legs are weary, they feel like they will give in at any minute now, I know I have run the best race I could have run, I know up ahead lies the finishing point, besides a physical barricade to stop me from running further what more am I looking for?

This time last year an ongoing debate raged in my mind about whether making the move to Scotland, and leaving behind all that was familiar to me, was the right thing to do. Similar to where I stand right now, my mind was almost made up but the doubt still loomed and everything within me trembled at the thought of the journey that lay ahead. How could I not tremble? Up until last August I did not even own a passport let alone had experience of setting foot on any soil beyond the borders of South Africa. Even though I had applied for a job here and things looked promising, I still found it hard to believe that I was going to end up here. It didn’t help matters much that the process was riddled with problems and I ended up only arriving here in December as opposed to September as originally planned.

A year later, here I sit with yet another battle raging in my mind bearing an uncanny resemblance to “The Battle of 2010”. Similar to last year, I am unsettled in my life and I feel I have lost my bearings. As much as it makes me sad to say this but I really do not feel like I belong here, I belong back in South Africa, among my own people. Which all seems somewhat strange to me because I had the same feeling of not belonging in South Africa a year ago. As much as people would like to lead me to believe that this should all be written off as random ramblings of a schizophrenic mind, I have enough faith in my God-given senses to know better. Do I listen to the part of me that says going back is the right thing to do, it will bring me peace and reunite me with the life I built for twenty-five years? Do I silence these thoughts and listen to the part of me that says I am making the wrong career move, I am giving up a great opportunity and all I am is just being a quitter right now?

While it might be true that I have not accomplished all that I had set out to accomplish by coming here, I feel I have done enough to earn an A for effort! Whilst I have not progressed up the ladder as planned nor have I travelled around Europe, as was my primary non-work goal when I moved here, I still feel it is time for me to go home. It brings me great sadness to know that I did not do these things and it makes me feel like I have let not only myself down, but also my supporters who were standing on the sidelines cheering me on. While at times it feels like I am quitting on this race simply because my legs are cramping and I’m just too tired to attempt taking another step, I know in my heart this is not the case. Why then is my heart riddled with guilt? Why is my heart so sore at the thought of giving this up?

Truth be told, I do not think there is much that I would be giving up by returning home. I would incur a lot of unbudgeted costs yes, but to me the costs to my heart and soul are way higher by staying here. I am a fragment of the woman I used to be, yet two or three sizes heavier. I cannot remember the last time I went to church, an activity which used to be the centre of my life. I walk around numb because after months of suppression my tearducts have staged a protest and refuse to work. I long for the embrace that let’s me know that everything is ok, that I can cry and be vulnerable it’s ok. I have no one who allows me that in that country. I might have more than I did when I was in South Africa but life feels emptier than it has ever been.

I will not lie and say being here is not a fantastic opportunity because it is. If it wasn’t I would not be torn by giving it up. We often hear people say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In as much as I agree with this, I also think there comes a point when the hardships that you go through only succeed in making you hardened. There also comes a point where you need to stand up and say enough is enough, I refuse to go through this again. Let’s face it, we can only keep growing stronger to a limited point and after that what didn’t kill you will eventually kill you. The human body was never designed to be immortal and I think we tend to forget that at times. Which makes me wonder then; what good will a brilliant CV do for me when I am dead?

Knowing all I know, having rationalised, gone back and forth and held numerous discussions with numerous people on either side of the ocean, why does this whole situation still seem so hard? Why am I filled with so much doubt? Why do I still feel like I’m looking for affirmation that I am not messing up my life even further?

I would be naive if I believed that the decision would be easy from this point on. It would certainly show that I have no understanding for my own character if I thought I would stop doubting myself now that I have processed and laid out my thought process because let’s face it, that is not about to happen. At this point all I can do to silence voices in my head is just pray. Pray that my heart is in line with God’s will for my life and I will not be shamed in His eyes by the path I choose to follow.