The Personal Confessions of a Mad Woman

These things take time. I’m fine for a few days, a couple of weeks, two odd years, three even. Then one day I come undone, and start all over again.

 “I don’t feel my laughter inside anymore…so what do I do? I keep going back n forth, ‘cos I know I have felt it before, I’ve heard it before, and it’s part of me. It is me. And once this tunnel is past, I’ll hear it again, ‘cos it was never gone. Not for one second…”

That was my friend’s status on face book the other day and it felt like she was yanking the words from my mouth before I could even form the thoughts.

I was in that place again. Sometimes, it’s as simple as feeling like I’m sitting on the side-lines, watching life flow by, not exactly sad or anything like that, but neither happy nor joyful or live. At the other extreme, it’s like having this deep dark empty hole, like having this intangible entity in your head, all around you, sucking you in from the outside in and the inside out, it’s like having spiders crawling around in your head. Sometimes it’s this inexplicable desperation, this deep sad you can’t explain, it’s like looking out from a shattered mirror and all you see is a distorted reality. Sometimes, I feel like I totally understand what J.K Rowling was trying to describe when she came up with the idea of Dementors that suck the soul out of you. I have my good days too, my almost manically happy days that just like their sad counterparts, I really can’t explain. The only cloud that seems to hang over those blissfully happy days is the thought that I’ll eventually come down from the high and the crash is usually as bad as the good-feel high was.

I have often wondered if I was crazy (I probably am) or if there was something I was doing wrong because I look at everyone else around me and they all seem so normal, they all seem to have it all together in ways that I can’t seem to be able to. It made me wonder if, just if, everyone else was faking it, I mean, how do you manage not to get swallowed up by that intangible entity in your head? How do you stay sane every single day? How do you balance things out instead of living on the extremes?

Then my friend’s Facebook status goes, “maybe they just think or hope that if they laughed longer or harder, it’ll banish all the sad from their lives… or maybe they just know something we don’t!” So I ask myself, what could they possibly know? I wonder if we could trade our muddy spectacles for their rose-tinted ones so we could see the world as they do, see the magic they see, feel it, live it…

I remember quite vividly the first time I experienced a mood swing (at least, it’s the first episode I remember) and I was five. I remember playing with my sister one minute and the next feeling this overwhelming sadness and the need to cry and hide away from everyone. I’m not exactly sure of what triggered it, if anything, or why it started out at all but I know I’ve lived with it off and on for the last twenty some years. I’ve heard studies show that in a lot of cases, a traumatic experience could be a trigger. I have rather traumatic memories of sexual abuse also from the year I was five (what I can’t really remember is which came first, the abuse or the episode). Well, that offers me some hope because it means whatever this thing is, there’s a chance it’s not hereditary and my little girl will stand a chance of living her life whole…

I know that naturally, when we go through some life altering situations like the death of a loved one, the breakdown of an important relationship or the loss of a job, we might experience some depression to varying degrees. What I can’t explain is the unravelling that happens just because. It’s the nothing-ness that just comes for seemingly no reason. It is having twice as much difficulty getting over these life-altering occurrences as everyone else seems to. It’s getting weepy for absolutely no reason at all and being unable to stop the crying. It is living on that edge, knowing you don’t have the strength to be strong, wishing you didn’t have to have to be strong. It’s walking on this road that seems too long, thinking you don’t want to go on, thinking you can’t. It’s thinking you’ve finally gotten a grasp of this horrible thing in your head, only to circle back to the place where you don’t understand a thing. It’s the weariness that comes with fighting the same battle every day and the defeat of giving up on waiting for the day you’ll be fine, realizing it may never come, realizing ‘this really is me’. It is catching yourself thinking about doing it yet again, wondering how you’re meant to do it: right across or a thin straight line down the middle. It is trying to stop the hurting in your head and your mind and wondering why you didn’t just get it over and done with, why you didn’t just put an end to it because you’re going crazy with desperation and all you can think is please, please, Dear God please just let it stop. It is wishing you didn’t have to have to do it. It is the mind numbing fear that you might actually do it one of these days, tumble over that thin line you’ve been threading for much too long into nothingness, a week or a year or ten years from now.

That seemingly ordinary Saturday in October was one of those unravelling days for me. It’s like a wool sweater unravelling from the hem, up until the breast pocket, but not all the way. I still have the wool all around me, in swirly whorls, waiting for me to un-undone it. It was one of those days that the sweater unexpectedly got snagged on something – a nail, a sharp table edge, a memory, a song maybe, - you never really know what exactly it is – and I came undone. It didn’t make sense really. It was the same day that I completed a Book that I’d been working on for a really long time. This was huge for me, it’s my first complete book project and I’d been working like crazy the last few months, working a full time job, weaving this intricate plot, seeing things through the characters’ eyes, laughing at silly things they were thinking, bonding with them, feeling their rush of adrenaline as they meandered through the plot, I had done tons of research (I became lawyer, marks man, Jason Bourne, gyno, ballistics expert and even Ismaila the mechanic all rolled up in one), scouring the internet (if there’s some secret service agent monitoring my browsing history ehn, they wee soon send a SWAT team to my house), writing every opportunity I could get, editing, writing some more and putting everything into the project. The writing process was a truly magical time for me and at the point that I finished, I should have been ecstatic, I should have been on a high, I should have been popping the champagne, I should have been doing cartwheels! Instead, all I felt was this deep, crushing depression. This wasn’t just a case of exhaustion, it was like being thrown into a vacuum with the flick of a switch, it was like taking a next step and just tumbling into nothingness without warning, it was like everything you have been, just ceasing to exist in a split second. I spent the weekend crying and almost unable to get out of bed. I just didn’t get it, I still don’t. Even now, I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back to the finished book, not to read or do the editing or anything. I wish I understood why at least, it would make not knowing what to do about it a little easier to handle.  I got unravelled inexplicably, but I didn’t go all the way. That’s something, I think. It gets better. Next time, maybe the sweater will stop at the bottom pocket. Or maybe just around the middle. It does get better, until one day I wake up and maybe realize I’m all fine and this too has gone away. I’ll wake up and not be so tired and weary.

In my twenty eight on-again off-again (I’ve had my good times, I even went sober for about two years at some point without even a little ‘sad’ episode) years of living with it, I’ve discovered some things that help with handling it. One is music. I really can’t describe how worship soothes my mind when I have an episode. It’s not how you would imagine it, not like break out the Tranquillity playlist and poof, it’s gone. It’s a little hard to describe, maybe quite like the saying that peace isn’t the absence of trouble or storms but finding your calm within the storm, something like that. God bless Hilsong United, they’ve been my go-to fix of late, especially the acoustic versions of their Empires and Of Dirt and Grace Albums.

Writing has always been therapeutic for me and it helps to just write out what and how I’m feeling, pour it all out, like bleeding out the poison from my veins. Sometimes, I don’t even necessarily have to write what I’m feeling. Writing almost anything at all helps. Sometimes I write these long, incoherent letters to God (these help because, call me unspiritual if you like, but these are the times that it’s hardest to pray the words, so writing God long crazy letters are my way of talking to Him in these crazy times. These are times when it’s so dark in my head that the notion of God loving me seems ludicrous at best. It feels more like a cruel mockery on some really bad days). Sometimes I write the long crazy incoherent letters to myself or maybe even a good story. Writing just about anything helps and I’m almost always happy when I’m writing.

I’ve kept journals over the years and this might sound counter-productive but writing down all the bad actually helps me look back and see how far I’ve come and how well I’ve done. For me, it’s like writing down your prayer points and then looking back over them and seeing how God has answered them over the years. (If it still doesn’t make sense, remember that these are the confessions of a mad woman, so go figure).

Sometimes, my therapy is losing myself in a book. If I can just pick something up to read, it’ll help me forget my present twisted reality for a while. So, whether I’m writing it or reading it, a good story usually soothes me.

One thing that I’ve found invaluable is my support system; that is people who to an extent know about it and who I usually talk to about what I’m feeling or going through. I see them quite like an Alcoholic’s sponsor. Having a support system is an amazing thing, it helps you share a tiny bit of that burden and it keeps you accountable, sort of. Unfortunately, I have found out that getting that support is one of the hardest things, especially in our culture where it’s almost taboo to even mention anything relating to mental health issues, not to talk of coming out of the closet and saying you’ve got them issue thingies. It’s just not done. We’re all sane, strong, healthy people, God forbid that we’re associated with any such thing! And the Christian community, I’m afraid to say, is even worse. I’ve found it harder to talk to Christians about it than I have other people. Even when I do get to talk to my Christian friends, it’s usually in a ‘non-Christian’ setting. People have implied that I’m definitely not really saved or filled with the Holy Spirit if I have mental health issues and at some point, it started me doubting my salvation and everything I know and believe too. Someone’s said to me once “How can you call yourself a Christian and be saying you’re depressed?” This someone (who until that point had been an important part of my life) cut me off totally because he couldn’t handle it and couldn’t imagine what people would think (his words) if they knew I was struggling with depression. Immediately you even start to say the ‘D’ word, people start to scabbash and bind and cast and I’ve often been left wondering if I’m the evil spirit that is so repugnant to them. We Christians are quicker to judge and slap labels on things we don’t understand. It’s easier than trying to explain how it fits into our ideals of God and Christianity and most times, people with mental health issues  do not really feel like there’s a place for them within the fold (okay, maybe I’m speaking for just myself here, but this is from painful experience) so we try to fit in, we try to fix our un-normalness, try to fake it until we make it, but believe me, that might work everywhere else but when it comes to the mad in your head, it just doesn’t! It’s been extremely hard getting a support system going and I’m ashamed to say that I’m still in the closet to a large extent (who am I kidding? I'm in the closet in the closet!) and I doubt that the few friends in my support system even know just how bad I have it. I remember my mum once catching me reading a book by Tim LaHaye, ‘Overcoming Depression’ and the alarmed look that came on her face as she asked me why I was reading such a book. I looked at the fear and terror written all over her face and I knew I couldn’t bring myself to tell her, I couldn’t do that to her, couldn’t do it to me. I just couldn’t bring myself to share this with her, my mother. I’m not totally sure of what I was more afraid of; breaking her heart and shattering the picture perfect illusion she has about our lives (I mean, where do I start from? The abuse from all those years ago? The crazy episodes and the baggage they bring? My lowest, ugliest moments?) or making myself vulnerable, opening up my deepest, most painful wounds? Maybe deep down, I was just terrified that I would see that look of revulsion and repugnance on her face as well, that look that said I was damaged and broken, that look that said I was weak and weird and crazy and didn’t fit in. Irrational maybe, but well, that fear was there as it has always been and I took the coward’s way out and told her some dumb story about how it was just a Christian book that I’d picked up at the book store in Church. Coward! Believe me, it gets really emotionally draining trying to make people understand, dealing with the judgement, especially that which you know isn’t coming from a spiteful place, that which comes from a place of love (and getting over that rejection in itself is usually a trigger for an episode, so it’s just way easier to avoid it). People tell you to snap out of it and stop being such a cry baby, and oh, how I’ve tried! I wish more than anything else that it was that simple. I am going to have this published anonymously (if it ever gets published that is!) because a huge part of me is still very afraid and wary. I’ve learned that no matter how understanding or forward-thinking we think we have become, biases still run deep in our DNA and it’s hard to let go of notions and ideas that have been ingrained in our thinking. I know just how fickle and fleeting acceptance usually is. I’ve seen the unveiled derision, I’ve watched the walls go up as soon as people know. I’ve watched well-meaning people flounder and stumble, trying not to show how uncomfortable they are with being uncomfortable with my damagedness, how they try not to make too much of it and then wonder if they’re making too little of it. You know that whether they judge you or just feel sorry for you, it will still distance them from you, you’ll still be different. Then, there’s the resentment that creeps in from handling all that judgement and snobbery and misunderstanding, and in a way, I’m starting to pass judgement of my own on people for not understanding (the irony, eh?). It’s a constant, conscious fight not to let these other negative emotions in and not to take the path of offense (see? This thing messes with you on so many levels). I must confess that in recent times, I’ve sub-consciously started to pull away from my support system as well because a part of me just wonders if, you know, even they are getting tired of my wahala because me sef I have tire. I find myself wondering, what if they’ve had just about enough of these bouts of crying for nothing and the long winding conversations that seem to make no sense. I wonder if they just might think I’m just a spoilt brat seeking attention. Sometimes I wonder if my burden is getting too heavy for them to carry and if it’s starting to drain them as well (kai, sometimes, I worry for the sanity of my Therapist, the things I have told her ehn!). An irrational part of me wants so much to be perfect for them, I want them to see me as whole and healthy and smart and inspiring and intelligent, not the broken toy who constantly needs their help. I want to be giving and adding value to people’s lives, not just needing and taking all the time. I’m trying to work on this but it’s hard because again, those notions and ideas that have been ingrained into our minds by our culture and society. This road can be a very cold and lonely one to walk. I’ll never ever take for granted the power of someone just being there with their love, even when (maybe especially when) they don’t really understand what you’re going through.  Sometimes it’s all that’s needed and it makes a whole world of difference, just knowing you’re still accepted despite everything. It makes the fight easier to fight. Sometimes, it’s absolutely everything because it just might be the reason someone walks away from the edge.

 Another thing that keeps me off that line is remembering, even in my deepest, darkest moments, the things that matter, the things that are worth the fight. I remember during my last episode, trying desperately to hold on to something, anything just to keep my sanity. I remember starting up two lists, one for the reasons I just wanted it all to stop, reasons why I needed this overwhelming hurt in my head to end, this was my aye list for silencing the screaming in my head, getting away from that intangible entity that’s sucking the essence out of me once and for all, reasons why I had to end to it all. I do not write this lightly and I know how hard it must be for anyone reading this to understand why anyone would have the audacity or the state of mind to make such a seemingly selfish and self-absorbed decision or to even think of it. I doubt I can adequately put to words or paint a picture of the reality of such a state of mind or how totally you can get pushed over the edge or all the muddling that’s going on in your head and mind. I really can’t. But I’ll say this: it takes more than strength or will power or even a moral or religious code to walk back from that edge each and every time (at least for me). So, after I finished my aye list, I started out on my nay list and the first thing that came to my mind was my nephews. One of them turns ten in January and I recently started up a project to write him a book for his milestone birthday (he’s already an avid reader too) and in that moment, I burst into tears and became overwhelmed with all these emotions and memories and the elaborate plans for his birthday and the letters we write each other back and forth and the silly things he does and says and the storyline I’ve been working on for his book and how we love to read together and how he tells me stuff that he’s read and how naughty he can get and….that brought me back from the edge. I abandoned my lists and I knew I had to fight one more day, just one more day this time because I just couldn’t afford to give up, not just yet…

Well, it’s been a journey. It’s been twenty eight years since that first day I ran and hid in my mother’s wardrobe and I’ve learned a few things here and there. I made a conscious decision to have a relationship with God when I was about nine and I know my faith has been at the core of my still being – well, - being. In Taya Smith’s voice, my Soul knows well You’re here. Even in the middle of the broken glass shards that is sometimes my mind, He’s always right in there, getting cut and ripped along with me. In the midst of the spiders crawling around the corners of my mind, He’s there, holding me through the worst and the best of it (hey, I have my good/sane/normal days when I’m just the girl next door!). And I know that if while I’m in this broken, damaged body, I never get to be rid of this thing, I can draw comfort from knowing that He’ll always be right here in my crazy head, through the times that I’m aware of Him and the ones that I’m too far lost to even feel Him. I know (even in the times that my circumstances say otherwise) that He’ll always be right there with me, every single time I walk on that awful edge, every time I sit on that thin line, wondering if I should simply silence the roaring, end the emotional torture, He’ll be there through each one and whether it’s a week or a year or ten years from now, He’ll be there through each one until maybe one day, the edge becomes a distant, fuzzy memory too. Through it all, I can say “Even when I have no song, even when the fight seems lost, even when it hurts like hell, even when it makes no sense to sing..." I know that His love surrounds me when my thoughts wage war. I’m taking comfort from the fact that if one day, the wool sweater gets unravelled all the way and I have no idea how to put me back together again, He’ll be there to make sense of the mess and maybe He’ll even decide to make something entirely different from the wool…who says I always have to be a sweater!

And oh, if there’s anyone reading this who is crazy just like me, please know that it does get better, just hang in there…

Star Elite Traveller

I’ve always been a regular Joe when it comes to travelling. I jejely buy my economy tickets, go through the awful queues at MMA1 and moan and gripe along with everyone else about how crappy our dearest airport is. After going through the whole palava of checking in and all, I sit patiently and wait while they call the different categories to board and I’m almost always with the last group to board. I’m used to it. I hardly even think about it anymore. I guess it’s one of those things your mind just blocks out as part of its coping mechanism.

Then recently, I had the opportunity to travel with a couple of friends who had what is called the Star Elite Traveller status. You know, all those times that you go online to look for the cheapest tickets, and you see things like Air Miles blah, blah, someone like me just goes straight to sites like Opodo to go and look for the best deals. Who cares about buying from KLM just to get some Air Miles? So these guys have not only been jetting around the world like boomerangs, they’ve been accumulating these points and now they’re Star Elite Travellers. I feel like saying it one more time, just to…okay, I digress. So these guys are like the VVVVIPs of travelling. I guess somewhere in the periphery of my mind, I knew there were such things as Lounges at Airports but when you’re a gbogbo ero like me, you don’t allow yourself ponder such things too much. But because I was travelling with these guys, I was allowed a sneak peek into the Elite life.  At Heathrow, we just breezed through the whole check-in process, no long queues, no waiting around. My friends just flashed their cards and the airline staff simply opened up the retractable barriers and we waltzed through while the other passengers on the queue eyed us with jealous eyes. Even our luggage trolley was wheeled in for us and we were all checked in in a matter of minutes. Ah, this is the life! Then we were ushered into the Elite Lounge. I saw places I never even imagined existed within Heathrow’s Terminal 2! There was a never-ending buffet, free drinks, seats big enough to swallow me up, it was lit! Then when it was time to board, there was no walking through those zig-zagging tunnels (which get me claustrophobic). It was like they parked the plane right at our backyard and we just strolled on. No squeezing through miniature aisles, looking for your seat number and then trying to shove your carry-on into the tiny cubicles while the person already sitting on the aisle seat gives you the stink eye. We strolled onto the plane, sat in out mini-flats, stretched our legs (no annoying passenger in front of you pushing their seats in your face) and the drinks were on the ready from smiling hostesses (even those smiles were different from the ones you get in Economy, true!).

You know, by the time they asked the gbogbo ero to start boarding, I was probably half way through a movie already! And through the partly opened curtains that separated we the Elites from them, I could see them lumber onto the plane, looking really bleurgh with their tired grumpy faces, squalling toddlers and their gbogbo ero Economy tickets gripped in their hands as they started the weary task of settling in for a seven-hour flight in cramped quarters. That was them and this was me. I wasn’t one of them anymore, I was an Elite Traveller. I’d been invited into ‘The Club’ and it was oh so easy to see all that was wrong with those gbogbo ero. It wasn’t hard at all to point (and maybe even smirk) at how crappy and razz it was back there and to say to myself, thank God I’m not with that bunch. I couldn’t help my nose crinking up in distaste thinking of how messy the toilets get or how two people have conversations at the tops of their voices while everyone else is trying to sleep or how people would be taking silly selfies (okay, I’ll confess, I did take a photo or two in Business class, but who wouldn’t, eh?). It was really easy to distance myself from the common people.

This whole experience brings me, in a kinda weird, not-necessarily-logical way (I’ve come to realize that my mind doesn’t always work in a conventionally logical way) to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. The Pharisees are probably some of the most un-liked people in Christendom. We talk about them and their shallow lives and I bet they’ve had their fair share of sermons preached about them. They’ve got a Rap sheet more than a mile long and it is really easy to dislike them, in fact, that’s the default setting. The thing however is that, after my one stint at Elite status, I’ve started to kinda find it hard to point the accusing finger at them. I don’t know about everyone else but I’ve realized (the Elite way no doubt) that once we get invited to the inner circles, it’s so easy to turn around and see what’s wrong with everyone else on the outside. It’s easy to forget how unpleasant the feeling of being the outcast is that we start to ostracize other people who we deem not up to our status. I can stand here and say with all the indignation in the world that the Pharisees were the ones who accused Jesus falsely, cooked up stupid lies and bribed false witnesses to have Him condemned. I can shout all I want that they were the ones who stirred up the crowd to demand for Barabbas’ release and all, but the truth is when Jesus hung on that hideous cross, just as much as the Pharisees, I put Him there. One bitter truth I’ve been having to chew and swallow lately is that I probably spend more time being a Pharisee than I’ll like to admit. And that picture I’m seeing of me ain’t pretty at all. What am I trying to say here? (Hey, I have absolutely nothing against being an Elite Traveller! In fact ehn, I’ve been hinting at those friends to you know, let us take another trip). My point is I constantly need to search my heart so that even when I stand and point fingers at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, I’m not being a finger pointing Pharisee myself. I need God to put me in line so that if given even half the chance, I don’t become worse than the Pharisees I so easily condemn (you know, that thing about the speck and the log?). In my own little way, am I judging others or placing unfair burdens and standards (yeah, the Ten Commandments according to Yours Truly Tipsy) on them? Do I try to replace God’s grace and mercy with my own sense of right and wrong and judge others by my self-righteousness? This is just a heart-check for me so that as I go through this life-journey, whether I’m lounging in the Lounge (hehehe see rhymes!) with a Pina Colada or shuffling through those tiny aisles to the nightmare that the toilets become after about five hours into the flight, the only banner I want to be blazing through life is one that screams in capital letters: GRACE, GRACE! AMAZING GRACE!

Faith Like A Pharisee

Mark chapter 3 is probably one of those chapters that we’ve all built pictures around. Okay, that is if you’re weird like me and watch too many action movies and have a cuh-ray-zay imagination. Just indulge me for a moment.

The stage is set. The crowd is gathered. Enter left: Jesus and His crew. Enter right: the Pharisees with their flowing robes and chins in the air. They take their seats at the front of the synagogue, set apart from the common people.

Flash back to the sitting room of one of the Pharisees, say his name is Phineas. Three of four other top Pharisees are at this coded meeting:

PHINEAS:         That insurgent won’t be able to resist, it’s in his nature.

        AMOS:              I’m sure he won’t. He just can’t help himself.

CAIPHAS:          Yes he can’t help himself. (Gives an evil chuckle). He will help us wrap the noose around his own neck!

Back to the present scene. Jesus is doing His thing, probably reading from a scroll or teaching. All the extras are taking their cues from the director off the cameras and nodding and scratching their chins, as if discerning for the first time, the secrets of the universe.

Enter centre: the man with the shrivelled hand.

Flash back to Phineas’ living room again:

STEPHANUS:     We know that dude with the freakish hand likes to hang behind the crowds outside the synagogue.

AMOS:              Yes, he never goes in but he never misses Sabbath either.

PHINEAS:         I’ll make sure to rebuke him sternly on my way in for not ever dropping an offering in the bowls. He’ll be forced to go in. Guilt-tripping works like magic all the time!

STEPHANUS:     Even though God knows he’ll have nothing worth putting in the bowl. (Wrinkles his nose in distaste).

        PHINEAS:         And our dear little healer will be there to see him.

AMOS:              And everything will fall neatly into place! (Rubs his hands together as an evil smile steals across his face).

Back to the present scene. Jesus looks up from the scroll and stops mid-sentence. He looks at the man shuffling up the aisle, head down, withered hand hidden under his cloak. The poor dude looks like he wishes the floor would open up and swallow him. The crowd now turns with Jesus to stare at this man. Everyone goes quiet as if on cue. The only sounds in the synagogue are from the man’s shuffling feet. Some high-tension sound track starts playing. Camera zooms in on Jesus’ intent face. Then it picks out Phineas’ gloating, triumphant one from the front of the synagogue. It goes back to Jesus, then zooms in on the man as he comes closer and closer. We get a shot of Amos’ clenched fist in his lap, like he’s trying to use some Jedi mind trick on Jesus to make Him perform the miracle. The tension builds and the volume of the ominous sound track increases…..

…You know, sometimes, we need to have faith like the Pharisees. Yup. Those guys had such unshakeable faith in Jesus’ ability to heal the man with the shrivelled hand. Their entire plot to trap Jesus in a faux pas was hinged on this one fact. I wonder how many of us believe half as much as they did that Jesus can meet our every need, move our every mountain. Just food for thought. Sorry guys that I took you through all that drama just to tell you what I could have said in about four sentences. E ma binu! #okbye

The Citizen

The story of the Prodigal Son is another story I’ve read, heard, been preached to, name it, a million times. Sunday probably made it the million and one(th???) time and it’s one of the stories I never ever get tired of. You know, usually the emphasis is always on the fare-thee-well see-you-later-alligator son and his father. Sometimes, we talk about his pissed clean-as-a-whistle brother and that’s it. Everything and everyone else in the story don’t really seem to matter. They’re all jus props, part of the setting. However, there might be just one character in this story who deserves a bit of a closer look. He gets just one mention (probably just about three words in most Bible versions) but he just might be one of the really important characters in this story.

In Luke 15:15, the prodigal son “went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his field to feed swine.” We don’t know anything about this citizen guy other than that he gave the broke, out-on-his-luck son a job in his field. Hey, we might even say he was a great guy who at least gave him a bit of a break during a bad time. Then we just skip on with story, painting elaborate pictures of the reunion to follow. We don’t pay that nameless, faceless guy any attention and that in itself might be a huge mistake, it might be dangerous even. Let’s look at this guy beyond his being the good-Samaritan-citizen. Is he really one of the good guys in this story?

First off, this guy give a Jew a job feeding pigs. Pigs. This is probably one of the very worst things you can do to a Jew. In fact, it is a great insult and the prodigal son, had he not been as desperate as desperate gets, wouldn’t have taken the job. As one Jewish writer puts it, there is no animal more disgusting and repulsive to a Jew’s sensitivities as a pig. Taking the job must have meant that the prodigal son was in a bad place, as in he’d reached the very bottom of his barrel and then even that had fallen right from under him. I can’t imagine how demoralizing it must have been for him. He hadn’t just lost all his money, he’d lost all his values and the very fabric and foundation of who he was. He’d lost everything. Why on earth would the guy even offer him such a job in the first place? Why not “Go and plough my field” or “Go and do some back-breaking work cutting stones.” Or even “Go and feed my cows or chickens or whatever!” it had to be pigs! Now, this Jew became even more desperate to the point of wishing for the pig’s food. I mean, how much lower could he fall? With every moment that passed, it would have become harder and harder to even consider returning home. Not only had he insulted his father in the worst way possible (asking for his inheritance was as good as telling his father he was dead to him), he had become defiled and an outcast to his people. I’m sure he would have figured that staying with this Mr Citizen was his only choice because he’d reached the point of no-return, he’d passed it by a mile.

There have been times in my life when I’ve felt like the prodigal son must have felt, like I’d messed up too much to even think of talking to God. There are those times when I don’t feel like I could even show my face, those time I’ve thought how can I expect forgiveness for that? Even I wouldn’t forgive me. And even when I know deep down that I’ll be forgiven and accepted, shame, deep, self-loathing shame, keeps me away. I’ve learned that the longer I wallow in this place, the harder it gets to approach God and accept His forgiveness. And you know what Mr Citizen says in those times? Yeah, you’ve messed up real bad this time. You can’t possibly go back now.  Stay right where you are, I can help you. You can even snag the pig’s food once in a while if you want…

I don’t know what it was that got through the thick fog (more like thick skull) and prompted the son to go back to his father and take his chances, but I’m guessing it couldn’t have been an easy decision. Who knows how many versions of that famous speech he discarded before coming up with the final draft. Who knows how many times he changed his mind. Who knows how many times he got to the bus stop (or donkey stop) and turned back? But there was that turning point when he realized taking Mr Citizen’s help wasn’t well, helping. He upped and said to his angel-in-disguise-not, “Thanks, but I think I’m gonna be on my way.”

A lot of times, we really are blind to who the real adversary is and until we can see him clearly for what he is, it is impossible to get away and return to our Father. The devil will rather have us live in ignorance of the ways he manipulates and ensnares us. He’ll rather have us believe we’ve messed up too bad to return. Sometimes, he’ll even plant the fear of failing again and doing the same thing all over, in our heads (I think I’m class captain here!) because he knows that if and only if we can just come to our senses like the prodigal son did, then we can have life, “the best robe, a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.. and…the fattened calf…”.

God's Little Helper

Yesterday, I was going to be God’s not-so-little helper. Yep, I was going to give God a tiny bitty hand. My three year old had come to me yesterday, his face looking like someone had cancelled Christmas.

        “Mommie, I can’t find Rory!” he’d wailed. “I’ve looked everywhere for him, but he’s disappeared!” he said, thrusting out his lower lip and fighting hard not to burst into tears.

My son has an obsession with racing cars (which I hope he’ll get over really soon) and he’ll spend hours on end either playing with his toy cars or watching any car related cartoon. I even caught him once, totally fixated on the TV, watching a Formula 1 race (helping him get over that obsession is probably another thing I’m willing to help the Lord with!). How he even managed to tune the TV from CBeebies to Formula 1 (loun loun!) is still beyond me. Of his collection, Rory was his favourite (at least for the next two weeks or so until another one catches his fancy) and I could imagine how devastating losing his precious Rory was to him.

        “Mommie, can we pray that God will bring Rory back?” he asked earnestly and my heart constricted in my chest. My sweet little boy knew to pray about the little things! That’s a lesson Mommie can like to re-learn oh!

        “Yes darling, we can do that.” I replied.

When he went to bed last night, he told me that he wasn’t sad anymore because he knew that when he woke up in the morning, Rory would be back on his shelf with his other cars. I believed him absolutely because Mommie was going to make sure of it.

That’s how last night, I drove to the 24 hour ASDA not too far from the house and marched resolutely to the aisle that I always eyed evilly because it was the cause of many trips over toy cars, the incessant noise of whirring toy engines, a blocked toilet (don’t ask!) and a wrecked vacuum cleaner. You won’t believe it but last night of all nights, not only did they not have a Rory racing car, they did not have any toy cars at all! Panicked, I asked the guy stocking the shelves adjacent to me and he smiled apologetically at me and said “Oh, we just ran out.” Imagine! They didn’t run out all those times that my son made me buy car after car after car oh! They didn’t run out the time he dropped not one, but THREE cars into my shopping cart and I didn’t find out until we got to check out, mba. They didn’t run out the time I stood my ground and told him NO and all the other shoppers turned to look at me like I should have had a special feature on Bad Moms, iro oh. The one time that I actually carried my two legs waka come, to willingly buy a car, a whole ASDA did not have! Did these people even realize this was a matter of heavenly urgency? Were they trying to sabotage my son’s prayers? I know he will one day have to grow up and realize that life doesn’t always go the way we want it to, but biko, that day wasn’t today!

I returned home, racking my brain trying to think of an explanation to give him when he discovered his prayer had not been answered. I tossed and turned all night, fuming at the audacity of ASDA, running out of racing cars of all things. Awon alai nikan shey!

When I went to wake him up this morning, what did I find clutched in his fist? You got it right, a shiny red Rory. I just stood there and stared. It was a truly humbling moment, seeing the truth that my little boy had the simple faith I lacked. In trying to help God fix the problem, all I’d succeeded in doing was waste my time and my fuel and my peace and a good night’s sleep. God had answered the prayer while I was running around ASDA like a headless chicken. As was with Sarah, God had looked into the future and had seen beyond Isaac all the way to Jesus, while Sarah was still busy prepping Hagar for the job.

Did I learn a few lessons today? You bet! The most profound of them I think is this: God-sized problems don’t fit mommie-sized hands.