PECULIARITIES: STEPPINGSTONES

 

Hello there dear gist partner.

Happy new month! I pray that God gives you manifold reasons to smile and laugh joyfully this month.

Welcome to today’s gist.

Early this week, something, I can’t remember what exactly now, happened to me and the first thought that came to mind was “I wish I fit tell Daddy about this thing”, but then I couldn’t tell him, at least not in the way that I wanted to be able to tell him. And that broke me.

Then I woke up today again missing my dad a lot; I miss him everyday, but today I woke up especially missing him, I really needed to talk to him today, not to say anything in particular but to just say anything and have him reply, even if it would be with a grunt and not actual words. While I had that feeling at the back of my head, I encountered today’s date and I realized that in 10 days, it would be one year since my dad passed💔, where has the time gone to? This time last year, my mother and I were still doing “no, make we no give am this thing eat, e no go go well with him belle”, not knowing that in a scant 10 days from that, all of it won’t matter to him….

I’ve cried today at intervals, I’ve barely held screams in today because I sorely wanted to give in to the urge to shout, and to keep shouting until my voice turns hoarse (I didn’t do that of course because if I did, una for see news of new addition to the mad people community of Lagos).

Today, I’ll share one story about my dad.

My dad used to take walks, he called them strolls, around our area for exercise every morning when he was stronger. He had a permanent route that he followed. When we were placing the fliers for his burial, my brothers and I unwittingly followed his stroll route, we didn’t even realize it until we had gone some ways into the chore, especially when people who knew him from his strolls would see a flier after we pasted and exclaim. One day, my dad came back from his stroll and said he killed a snake while on that day’s stroll, this happened more than once by the way, he came and told us this fact in conversation like he was just talking about the weather and moved on.

Let me put some things in context for you: one, my father had stroke, was paralyzed on his left side; two, my father used to take those strolls by 6am in the morning and would usually get back in 30 minutes (he worked at it till he got to an average of about 18 to 22 minutes before age caught up with him) so he would usually be home by 6:30am, I am letting you know this so that you understand say day never break when this man go dey waka that waka. Yet he saw a snake and decided to kill it.

While we were placing the posters, we got to one of the places where he had killed a snake all those years ago and we thought among ourselves: only God know the kind of force wey Daddy use hit those snakes. Now how did we know it had to be a lot of force? We knew that because he was never aiming for 2 strikes; he had to get the snake with one strike because partial paralysis made it such that he wouldn’t be swift enough on his legs to escape a recoil attack by the snake, he was a Veterinary Doctor so he of course knew the most latent place to strike, but we wondered at how his decided course of action was to kill a snake so that it would not harm others. Instead of looking for someone to protect him from harm, my father decided to be the one who protected others.

Thinking about this today reminded me a lesson I learnt before from my father’s life: your disabilities are not an excuse for irresponsibility. Early in the year, I had shared how one of the first things God told me this year was that there was no room for me to be making excuses for why I haven’t done what I should do and this remembrance of how my father didn’t let his disability stop him was a needed reminder.

So, dear gist partner, don’t let your disability, or whatever disadvantage life has put on you, stop you; be willing to put in the effort, use the peculiarities as a steppingstone to achieving what you need to do.

I hope my ramblings have made some sense to you and I pray that God will help you use your peculiarities for good.

TUNES AND THOUGHTS: our song recommendation for this week is the hymn ‘The Comforter has come’; this was a hymn my father loved, I can picture him keeping beat to the song by tapping his right hand on his right thigh during Saturday morning devotions🥹. This song is for people who, like me, are in need of the Holy Spirit’s comfort, I pray that He visits us all.

Audiomack: https://audiomack.com/gospel-harmony-quartet/song/the-comforter-has-come?share-user-id=140072136

Spotify: https://audiomack.com/gospel-harmony-quartet/song/the-comforter-has-come?share-user-id=140072136

YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0rffQHrzgEI&si=CWXCF52Ne6f0kq6A

It’s a hard time for me, so please bear with me if you find me unable to post here as I should or if my thoughts always contain ramblings of my dad. And please keep my family and others like us in your prayers.

See you when I see you.

 

Love,

Achenyo.

 

PS. Today is Pamela’s birthday; she is really dear to my heart. Please say a prayer of blessing for her and please check her blog out, you’ve never seen anything quite like how she writes: https://pameladiyenau.blogspot.com/?m=1