Prelude: “How did you lose your sight Shirl? You were born with proper vision.” Mom asked me last year but I was too embarrassed to confess, brushed her off with a smart reply and let the matter rest.
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As a teenager.
I walked about laden with a billion insecurities the multitude of which I can’t divulge, from heartache. I was still adjusting to new family dynamics that had flipped my world upside down. I remember quieting, secluding myself saying few grizzly words when I was coerced and honestly, preferred being mute altogether. I was angered by my paradigm.
I suppose my reticent personality was birthed then, thirteen years young lost in a cloud of sinister darkness encompassing my entirety. I walked down alleys, screen-like and pervasive; withering my inner child, regretful how I stumbled across my kin’s masked lechery. Still, curiously choosing what would eventually taint a piece of my childhood. I had never prayed as sincerely as I did on the bathroom walls of my high school, pleading for a cleansing to a God I wasn’t sure existed.
“Jesus, if you are real,” said I weeping, “remove these dreadful vile playbacks from my mind and I promise never to relive them again, please dear Lord rid me from this unexplainable anxiety.”
In an instant something came over me like a blanket of pure energy scattering the murkiness that hovered around me, it rested within me as an overwhelming unexplainable peace. I went back to class (shout out 1PK) sat on my desk and scribbled on my tiny journal “thank you Lord Jesus, I wanna live for you.” This is did, unawares what that even meant. All I knew was my foggy mind frame was now clear, sound and even happy¿ Whatever angst had been smothering me from the inside out had vanished in an instant and I beheld this dearly as if my first miracle. I then began a faith walk, scoring, reading the Word and grieving unseen things I often wrestled.
A year later no longer a “mono” I got lost in the hype, trynna fit in with friends I knew nothing of, acting myself out of the humble background I was brought up in. Becoming someone else, disconnected to a falsity from a pressure I’d unknowingly invited, demanding everything momma couldn’t afford at the time, sighing for her to understand me! Distressing her over midterms, birthing thorns on her side during holidays.
She prayed over me, interceded for me all the while I grumbled, “wow, I must be such a pain!” So much so family altar/prayer time vexed me, especially when my Pops led with preachy sermons. I recall loathing their restrictions, all my friends had non of that and I imagined it a lie that they swore they “loved me”. Mom was adamant my hair was perfect natural, even after much prodding for her to let me relax it. She said I shouldn’t alter it with chemicals just because of my fellow age mates at school. Her sisters were convinced my adolescence was at its peak and it’d fade in time, momma made peace with that hoping I’d come around someday.
But I grew rather distant, became lethargic, stopped helping around the house over the holidays. In second form, term two (I think)¿ I wore my desky’s glasses, she had two pairs and I thought the purple frames to be pretty and cool. They however wrecked my vision, I would soon learn that I no longer saw at a distant clearly. When I got home for midterm I told momma I needed frames but honestly, I just wanted them. At the ophthalmologist’s I’d feigned reading few tiny letters afar off, diagnosed with short sightedness ( almost metaphorically, should’ve perceived that as the futility of my folly taking everything for granted). I was choosing unwisely, cursing myself like Esau did his birthright. For this, I could never blame my Father in Heaven for not blessing my woeful decisions in years to come. She recommended glasses and I left with a subtle smile.
The night before reporting back to school my Pops shared a word as per momma’s request from John 15 and it piqued my whole being as I was absolutely disgruntled! I presumed he said so because my grades had since dropped. In hindsight I often wonder about that time, as if I’d cleansed my heart a year prior only for a preexisting devil to invite the vilest ones to reside somewhere in my chambers, deeply rooted, hardening me.
I inwardly scoffed saying, “well, who the F*$# does this Jesus think He is? what does He even mean that without Him I can do nothing???” I grizzled and gnashed my teeth enraged! My folks farewell blessings bid me good tidings to deafened ears. I remember standing in our living room mindlessly swearing.
“If Jesus is in truth everything even, The Almighty? Then I’ll lose my sight (i didn’t really need those specs remember?) and He should be able to restore me, if He is God.”
Writing this truly irks me, as in retrospect I understand the little devils I harbored were tempting The LORD. How quickly I forgot His saving grace from the bathroom walls is still a mystery to me. I remember stumbling across the piece I wrote about living for Him and tore it, threw it away embarrassed I had worded that. At the time, I’d been obsessing over multiple series specifically the vampire diaries with cut outs of my favorite characters on pages of my journal. My Pops caught me watching an episode of it late into the night a few days prior to my departure/his preaching. I’m convinced he was appalled but he never said anything of it except the John 15 counsel from which I could hear nothing of!
When I went for my check up in form three my vision had since impaired, my negative power was magnified, I couldn’t do without my frames for sighting tiny distant words on the lecture boards. Some chick stole my Baus frames weeks later and I felt damned at the time but repentance was only an afterthought. My friend (who was a cop) helped retrieve them when I explained my plight.
For my sixteenth birthday that year I demanded a “Breaking Dawn” novel, momma didn’t bring it over visiting, it was costly I presumed but again I was frothing exasperated. So much so I didn’t spare enough minutes to sit and enjoy the meal she’d heartily prepared with them. When I closed school I had flopped so bad and was so anxious about that but I figured I’d fizzle my way out from home for National library outings. I barely spoke to my parents, brother, cousin, house help and if I did, I was a ticking time bomb ready to explode. In me lay a vexatious spirit I couldn’t clearly trace with all my might if I dared try. Momma took away my cellphone citing my unforgivable misconducts and boy was it a bloody raged war.
She sat me down and said, “You need to change Shirl,” I inwardly fleered at her as if she was the one tripping but I was so blind. “You’re wasting time, your grades have got to improve!!” And that was that, I was phone-less right at the advent of Facebook. Later that year there was an intervention for me, I listened and mentally rolled my eyes hearing her/their cry. I tried changing my obnoxious attitude, tried loving, even somewhat apologized for being such a brat. I had written her a Godforsaken letter I can never delve in on these inter webs. I knew I broke her heart but never came around wording all my regrets, even though I‘d repented during our high school weekend challenge closing out that last term.
I soon afterwards sat down with my journal/myself choosing to re-evaluate, KCSE was the coming year, there were people I needed to prove wrong, those who had given up hope of my reformation. I did pass but with a little pain of a minus, reaping what the stuck up miscreant of my early teen-hood had sown.
These cyclical selfish habits entailing enclosed parts of me was no different in campus, tunnel vision got the best parts of me entrapped. My right eye was dying down. I would’ve been damned had I not rededicated my life to The Lord seven years since my bathroom conversion. I was twenty at the time, working through my attachment with barely a dollar and big dreams (a story for another day). A scale-like veil was lifted from my eyes to understand how dead I was in my sins (past and present) especially the lifelong lies I’d concealed within me, I saw the wretch I was. Beloved, Jesus saved me from myself knowing all to well I was my own worst enemy. I did transform my mind, and heart, realizing my need to walk in love; even though it was a struggle to die daily and pick up my cross. I had found Him as my Truth.
Aging really gave me perspective and mayhap all my warranted choices of little vices were all worthy of a big bloody redemption shed on a cursed tree decades ago. So, would you believe the thousands of miracles I’ve foreseen and relished in the years mapped out for me?
You best believe The LORD, Most High—Jesus gave me a prophetic word last year just as lost in misery business inside my apartment. I’d fallen short the umpteenth time, heavy with contrition of what my blind lifeline always entailed through the ages. This time, lost in my mind, teetering between enlightenment and insanity. He was there present, encompassing me with the same Love He forever embodied.
“Your sight will be restored to you, I AM THE LORD.” He said audibly to and through my spirit. I figured he meant, my spiritual vision which had been reawakened from whence it was concealed sleeping in the depths of my soul. I bowed to Him as not only Savior but LORD over my life for the first time in the longest time and gave all of me to His Will.
I trusted His Word all the same and He healed my crusty, blurry, teary-eyed sight to understand Him once more as The only Way, Truth and Life I had long perceived and professed but willfully ignored as LORD in the pride and arrogance my flesh bears—justifying my little sins.
I truly believe in the impossible, The Unseen, True and Living Light of the worlds, who cast out from before me the nebulous clouds that choked my essence. I now see clearly, as if a dawn had arisen from within me with the warmth of the sun in all His goodness, loving kindness and mercies. He called me out of the vanity of vanities and cold heartened fallacy I often stumbled in unwilling to bow to His perfect will.
I am that John 9 brother rejoicing in the truth of being absolutely nothing without Jesus, my LORD, my Savior-King. I am become (becoming) myself through Him and this is my confession.
I pray you seek Him in Truth, He’ll surely be found and heal you/convert your hardened heart ♥️
Truly yours,
Shirlin.
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Lessons:
•Jesus is everything and more ♥️ [John 15]
•He is The Way, Truth & Life. [John 14]
•Confess your sins, repent, return to The Lord, seek Him with your whole heart. [Psalms 90]
•Walk in love for The Lord and your neighbor [John 15]
•Obey your parents [Ephesians 6:1-4]
•Be content and grateful in everything [1 Thessalonians 5:18]
•Arise from the walking dead [Ephesians 5:14]
•Don’t be blinded by the vanity of this world John 12:40, [Ecclesiastes 12:9-14]
•Pride is the devil! Humility comes before honor
•Die to your selfish fleshly desires that amount to nothing other than spiritual and eternal death 💀 Romans 12, Mathew 10:38, Mathew 16:24.
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Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.