BLAMING MY BLESSINGS
I grew up disliking what I looked like. I couldn’t appreciate myself when I was alone, worse still, when I was amidst people. I Just couldn’t tell why I had to look bad, even before I began to feel bad.
I couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘r’ and the fault wasn’t because I was ibo by tribe. No! my tongue was the misfit here. I became less fluent in speech because I had to train my brain to eliminate any word that contained the erring letter. It was tedious seeking synonyms to represent every word that had an ‘r’ in it but I had to improvise that way else my peer group would have nailed me with mimicry. With time I overcame that defect (I really cant say how, but I lived a difficult life till I did overcome it).
Time passed and my looks began to evolve. When I took my first matriculation picture, I felt accomplished but sometime later a group of friends who went through my album commented about the picture ‘Charles, this your sister is fine o”. I was there and I couldn’t tell them it was me. if they couldn’t even tell the difference between a male and a female, then I really looked feminine.
They never got to know that “my sister” was really me! I couldn’t blame them because I know that I looked real feminine when I was younger…traces could still be seen even now
As I grew older, I looked less feminine and this gave me some confidence and I celebrated my masculine looks then… I began to notice the protruding of my “adam’s apple”. As a male, its nothing strange but mine began to attract attention so much that photographers wouldn’t take me a snapshot until I have bowed my head a bit. When I knot a tie, it rides atop the tie and causes distractions. You should not even be close by when I drink water, it just goes up and down like a gigantic pump,. It was so annoying but I had to bear it, I couldn’t hide it.
As If that wasn’t enough, I didn’t have ‘body’. I wasn’t fat. I was really skinny back then. A classmate of mine once described me thus “You are just a set of well arranged bones with a tight stretch of skin across”. I need not explain the complement further. I was depressed!
I also remember that one day someone in my family told me that I had a pair of slippers for buttocks and she was so right, I did and may be still do have a flat buttock but must it be emphasized?
Years passed and without warning my hair began to recede as I grew older, unbelievable! I knew my dad and maternal uncles were bald-headed but did I deserve to look like them? This was too much, just too unfair. I now looked older than my age, no thanks to the hair erosion I had inherited.
I could go on and on but then I realized that I wasn’t made to be perfect, I was to be nurtured in life and presented as perfect beyond this earth. I was a ‘work in progress’. I had been looking at all my flaws and had forgotten to count my blessing. It then dawned on me that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things he has (physical attributes inclusive). When I took it upon myself to count my blessing, I almost wept. I was so so so blessed.
Blessed beyond blessings, blessed beyond counting measure and here I was blaming all my blessings.
I began to look inwards and I saw TREASURES, buried deep in my earthen vessel. I had focused on the vessel and forgotten to look inside. I decided it was high time I refocused
Today I am a marvel and mentor to many, not because my hair grew back or my ‘adam’s apple’ was reconstructed or I grew fatter or my looks so improved. NO!. it’s because I learnt to focus on the land and not the wind when sailing. I learnt to sort the wheat from the thistles when harvesting. I learnt that I was wonderfully and fearfully made even before people began to notice me. I learnt that I was chosen even before I was called. I learnt that I had purpose and calling, unique and different from that of other’s. I am who I am not by what I am but by who HE is!
It took me TWENTY-NINE (29) years to learn…to learn that I was ME and I am ME!
Father Almighty, thank you for being so patient to listen to all my foolish prayers and quick retorts all these long years. Thank you for not sleeping or slumbering along the way. Thank you for being God irrespective of what I have been and have become. Thank you for giving me a hope and salvation. Thank you for making me partake in your concept of creation. Thank you for making me your son. Thank you for being GOD. Thank you for making me see my 29th YEAR.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO… THE ME THAT IS ME