Drawing Strength from Yourself

I saw a post on a friend’s Facebook timeline that stayed with me. Her name is Naomi Shoko, and she regularly posts messages of upliftment. But of all the things I’ve read from her, this one struck a chord. She said, “Have you ever been in a situation where you have no-one to encourage you when you are in need of encouragement? May God remind you of the very words that you spoke and strengthened someone …. It is possible to draw strength from words of life that came from you at one time. Be encouraged to encourage yourself.”  

Excerpt from Naomi Shoko's post

Naomi’s message resonated with words that I spoke to a friend who had suffered a significant material loss. She and her husband intended to buy a car, but were conned of R90,000. Her pain was so raw that she could not even explain what had actually happened. “Maybe another time,” she said.  With only a small percentage of the story to work with, I still had to comfort her. My words to her were, “Sometimes there are hard lessons in life. When I get into a situation like that, I tell myself that because I’ve lost so much, I’ll be more careful in future dealings. Some have lost their lives in bad deals, but as long as your heart is still beating in your chest, it means there’s still tomorrow, and with it comes a chance to do better.”

And here I am sitting and typing this after 1 am, in a state of disquiet over a particularly disturbing chain of events that has left me feeling short-changed. My message has come flooding back to me, and I feel I could have been talking to myself when I spoke to the friend that was ripped off. What this shows me is that sometimes you might think you are helping or ministering to someone, when in actual fact you are ministering to yourself. (I guess the same goes for when you think you were being nasty to someone and then one day you realise you were actually shooting yourself in the foot).

Going back to the message, if it’s one that God would like you to hear, it will pop up from other corners too. Today I was checking my contacts’ Whatsapp updates, and came across my nephew Brandon’s post.

Brandon's Whatsapp status

It was a popular quote by Jon Sinclair, “Failure is a bruise. Not a tattoo.” Brandon added, “You are still young, even if you’re old, you are still alive. The chance to try again is there.”

And it is there. Tomorrow brings with it a chance to do better, watch your back, grow eyes at the back of your head, connect better with God, be your own knight in shining armour, whatever it takes to keep your head above water. Do whatever it takes not to fall into the same trap twice. And do whatever it takes to get out of the entrapment you might have fallen into. It doesn’t matter if you walked into it with your eyes open or you were hoodwinked into it. The important thing is to get out. And as they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Take that step. One foot in front of the other until you get to the destination you yearn for. 

Not a long enough post for someone who has had a long hiatus as I’ve done, but the message is an important one, even if I say so myself. I know I'll come back to it time and again, and I hope it will hit the right note with someone else who might pass by this street.