SILVER YEAR

August 12, 2015

SILVER YEAR

Last month was my birthday month. I had been waiting for the day for like forever… I mean I was to celebrate the much dreaded and equally coveted silver jubilee. I am pretty, talented, born again and I felt closer to God than I have ever felt in like forever. It was also the birthday I was expecting great surprises. God had clearly promised , Tracy, this is your year! I expected all my prayers to be answered, that I would miraculously wake up one morning with a voice like kari jobe, a body like franchesca battsellie, creative like heather Lindsey a cute boyfriend like Cornelius Lindsey and at work people will be smiling at me, everything I would touch would turn to gold... I would get a scholarship to a fancy university abroad, become a kickass journalist drive the silkiest Mercedes, visit my mum every weekend take my nieces and nephews out once every month, visit my sisters and brother more often and of course live in my dream house with one entire room as my studio and have my very own orchard and swimming pool with a couple of horses…you know all the mushy girlish dream (that all normal girls have) I had it all figured out…until my birthday arrived.

My worry face is not pretty at all!

A day before, 27^th, I opened my bible proverbs 16:9, popped up... we can make our plans but God has the final say. Looking back at my life, this statement could not be any less true! In my list of plans I discovered I had not accomplished any of them. A sense of failure and emptiness engulfed me and I felt lost like never before. Then I did the most inevitable thing that I usually do whenever I felt low…I knelt down and said a very short prayer… lord, I know I should not be feeling like this because everything works for good to those who believe in you,Romans 8:28 please give me peace. Amen.

I have read and heard time and time again how people immediately got peace after making such kind of prayer and as I got up I expected this unfathomable peace to just wash over me…but after the prayer I felt even more miserable. It was 9 at night, I had had a crappy day working under duress, I had lost my temper more than I normally do. As my life rushed through my eyes in the midst of sobs and angry hot tears rushing down my cheek, I feel into a troubled sleep.

I woke up from the dreamless sleep at around 2 am on 28^th. I still had an hour before my alarm went off and I tried to will myself back to sleep, which was impossible because my brain kept wondering off. It’s hard to fall asleep with a busy brain by the way. After a series of rushing thoughts and memories, it finally settled on my life.

I now prefer my list empty...So God can right my story without me
trying to help and end up slowing the process.

I got up picked my list and as I went through it I felt as if I was looking at it for the very first time, it’s like I never even wrote it myself. As I went through it point after point I realize in utter disbelive I had achieved everything I ever wanted, not as exactly as I wanted and also not as obvious as I would have expected it, but then again his ways are not our ways.

The essence of peace and joy I had expecteded earlier on, washed over me and I could not stop smiling and saying over and over again, thank you God, thank you dad. I felt so important and even though I did not have a overated or over exposed birthday party, and I received no gift at all, I have never felt more satisfied in my life!