I believe life is lived forward but understood
backward.
Years, months, weeks, days and hours roll by, and we
have to focus on what the future holds for us. Sometimes we get so occupied in
the fantasy of a better future that we forget to pay attention to the present
or the past. We all have a past. It may be ugly, beautiful, boring, etc but it
forms part of us, and we can’t ignore its effect on how we face the
future.
Many times we are told to forget the past. This to me
isn't good advice. It doesn’t mean that we now focus all our efforts on our
past. Whatever attention we give our past, we can’t change it, but it can help
us be very intentional in how we want to design our future. Reflecting and
seeking to understand our past with a clear grasp of our present is a great
source of wisdom for living our lives forward. God is continuously at work in
our lives, and we have to know that even in that unpleasant past, there was something
God was doing. Our past is important, let's seek to understand it, so we intentionally
design our future.
We are all a product of Nature and Nurture; these two
contribute in a big way who we are. As much as we may have nothing to do with
both, but it defines our ability to choose how we want to experience our
future. Every day we are faced with choices, tough ones and not tough ones. We
make mistakes; we go through failures, we get disappointed, we succeed, we
experience moments of joy, etc. At the moment, we may never clearly see through
to understand why a situation is playing out but with time, looking back we can
join the dots and appreciate why it happened. It’s in the joining of these dots
that we can see a pattern, a thread that we can generate an understanding of
why us, why then and what it means to the future.
When I failed a subject on campus that I had never
even imagined failing in, I remember getting worked up how my world was over. I
blamed God. I told God he was unfair… my exact words as I stood in front of the
famous result notice board in the America Wing, University of Nairobi was “God
you are unfair.” I felt God had not lived out to His faithfulness. I had done
my part and was wondering how could this be. Little did I know that God had
ideas about my life. The same played out when my father died. I was only 11yrs
old. I couldn’t comprehend why this guy who I admired so much was gone. I
didn’t know what life meant after that. A lot of things happened including
conflicts at home. We had to relocate from our main home to rent a house in a
shopping center about 2-3kms away. Here again, God proved that He had it all in
control. What looked like the end of the road was a new chapter in my life. I
can go on and on…
My Life Map
I can now look back and join the dots. The dots lead
me to something that now I can say; I bless God for my father dying and me
failing. At least for these two experiences. There are more experiences in my
life that I can now look back and smile in my heart. I know most people would
not see it my way, but it's what my story is. It's my narrative, and this
narrative is what gives me hope that God is always at work and I just have to
remain faithful in what He has entrusted me with. I recently drew my Life Map;
I encourage you to do it. Contact me if you need help with it. Life Map is a
quick way to capture your story from the time you can remember to the present.
It helps you summarize your life story. As I reflected upon it, a lot of
things, I had taken for granted and just quickly moved past made a lot of sense
to me.
We all have a story, and we are the only one who can
tell our story. Our stories might be tough, complicated or beautiful and
smooth, but we have to own it and reflect upon it. We have to intentionally
look into it with the main goal of discovering what God has been doing and how
we ought to respond. We are not the same and the usual “How to’s?” will not all
over a sudden fix our lives. We have to discover our own unique paths from our
stories.
What’s your story?
If this resonates with
you, seek to draw your Life Map. Look for a small community of friends who you
can learn to do this together with. Being accountable to a few and
practicing with a few. It’s about building a community of friends to share each
other’s stories and learn from it. You
have to be deeply committed to each other and desire to see each other grow in
this journey. You have to create support, encouragement and accountability
platform for each other. The community has to be as small as possible so that
there is active engagement by all involved.
Find a community around you and see if these conversations make sense to
you.
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Credits: http://www.businessmalawi.com
By Gabriel Achayo
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